Swim Systems

If you are a swimmer, the algorithm no doubt pushes Brenton Ford’s Effortless Swimming (ES) content at you. It is by far the most visible swim content in my feed. Not that I mind -  I find his approach and advice to closely match my own. Confirmation bias? Maybe so much so, that during the Black Friday sales I recommended my squad swimmers to take his 50% (around 40 USD) deal on the “Eight Weeks to Faster Freestyle Course”. Since then I have been incorporating each week’s focus into our swim sessions. Here I’ll give you an overview of the course and my thoughts. The weekly focus is as follows:

Week 1 - Breathing and Relaxation

• How to breathe deeper to increase your oxygen intake (instead of taking short and shallow breaths)

• Why you should exhale through your nose

• Where to look when breathing so you create a bow wave and can avoid lifting your head

• Why breathing every two strokes isn't as bad as you've been told

Week 2 - Posture, Head Position, Kick (& Attitude)

• The three things you need to do for perfect posture

• Where to look when swimming (hint: it's not straight down!)

• How to stop your kick from slowing down and make it effective

• Why 'tall and proud' could change your swimming

Week 3 - Balance, Alignment & Hand Position

• The 'train tracks' method

• How to lift your hips and legs up (it's not about head position)

• Why the starting catch position is a subtle change that can dramatically improve your speed and catch

Week 4 - Rotation, Recovery and Entry

• Why you should 'rock' not 'roll' in freestyle

• What 'high elbow recovery' really means and why most people screw this up

• The elbow slap that happens when you enter correctly

Week 5 - The Catch

• Why the catch isn't the power phase of the stroke (and why it's the setup phase)

• Why a high elbow catch isn't a good way to think of it (and what to think of instead)

• What your 'big paddle' is and how to use it

Week 6 - Power Diamond

• How to increase the surface area during this part of your stroke

• Why your elbow should point to the side and be the widest part of your arm

• The biggest mistake people make during this phase (and how you can avoid it)

Week 7 - Kick Timing and Type (& The Serape Effect)

• Why your movements in swimming should be slow to fast

• How to coordinate your kick with your catch for maximum speed

• When to use (and how to swim with) a 2-beat, 4-beat or 6-beat

• Why the serape effect is the invisible secret behind an effective stroke

Week 8 - Stroke Rate

• The three ways to increase your stroke rate

• How to avoid 'spinning your wheels'

• Finding your stroke rate sweet spot

Testing it with my Bromma Squad

I have a broad range of swim speeds in the squad ranging from 2:00+/100m to a low 1:20/100m threshold pace and I was hoping everyone could get something out of it.

When it comes to teaching the swim stroke It’s difficult to know where to start, but I liked the progression. It should be thought of, as circular and iterative rather than purely linear and sequential. Without balance and relaxation, the propulsion lessons will be impacted but equally by improving the timing and movement patterns of the catch some of the issues with balance and drag may be corrected.

I am okay with the order, I feel I typically have a lot of focus on the topics week 5 forward but I do believe without building on the basics of weeks 1 to 4 progress can be slow. Those weeks worked through the fundamentals to reduce drag. Even for the more advanced swimmers, I felt it was great to touch these points first. I also like the week-by-week focus. Trying to convey all these points in a 60-minute PT session is problematic - both in terms of what can be mastered and what can be remembered!

Learning Context and Other Systems

It might be a little unfair but it seems that the swim coaching culture comes from elite swimmer development. Throw enough kids, at a young enough age, into big volume weeks. The ones that can, do, and the ones that can’t, drop out. Teaching adult learners is very different. When I became interested in swim coaching (now over ten years ago) I came from an alpine ski coaching background. In that context, there were very clear learning progressions. These were rare at that point in swimming with notable exceptions being Total Immersion (TI) and Swim Smooth (SS).

I liked TI’s use of structured, sequential progressions to build technique with drills focused on balance, streamlining, and reducing drag (good for the weeks 1 to 3 topics). But on the negative side as you progress to the full stroke it can lead to an overly slow stroke rate and reduced propulsion, particularly in competitive or open-water settings. 

Swim Smooth with Head Coach Paul Newsome encourages a tailored approach to swimming, recognizing individual differences in technique and physiology. It blends technique improvement with fitness and speed development, focusing on open-water swimming and triathletes. With most sessions being Critical Swim Speed based (swimming at target paces) this can be off-putting to some beginners as they find this complexity/pressure overwhelming. These days I still have a Swim Smooth, inspired base philosophy but bring in complementary elements from other coaches and systems.

If you are a swimmer who is not part of a squad and trains mostly on their own my recommendation would be to look at the Swim Smooth Guru as it provides a holistic structure with a dynamic tailored training plan. You need to have a Garmin or Apple Watch to get the most out of its many features. 

Another ecosystem worth looking at for the solo swimmer is the Form System with its smart goggles which also provides coaching and guided workouts. 

For those already in a squad swim set-up the specific courses and content provided by Effortless Swimming are a great complement. If you are stuck at around 2:00/100m the progress to 1:45/100 is 99% skill (not fitness) based which in turn, is attitude-based, see Slow is Smooth, Smooth is Fast. Doing mindless laps is not your path to better swimming. Purposefully practicing (see Wrestling the Bear) focusing on stroke timing, catch set-up, and basic movement patterns will accelerate your development. Here is a stroke analysis checklist you can use.

Did we get faster in 8 weeks?

The course and Brenton’s general advice and insights are solid. I wouldn’t recommend randomly following all the sources of internet swim tips. I like a clear system and a philosophy, but as the ES and SS approaches have a lot in common I don’t find that a problem.

Gauging swim speed improvements is tricky. The density of water and the laws of physics quite literally slow your progress. The resistance a body creates as it moves through a fluid varies approximately with the square of its velocity. So a swimmer doubling their speed increases the resistance to forward motion fourfold. So the better you get the more marginal you can expect your improvement.

Then there is the fact that swim training is based around sets of intervals. An improvement of 0,5s on a 100m split might be missed on the wall clock - but that is 5s per km - that’s not negligible. 

Whether these 8 weeks made me faster is debatable but they certainly ingrained good practices that I will iteratively cycle through my swim training this year. I also received positive feedback from other squad members who had signed up for the online course. Let’s hope by the time we get to ultraswim 333 Greece in September that 2025 is truly a year for faster freestyle, and I don’t mind giving it more than 8 weeks!