Swim what? Swimming DPS means distance per stroke. In trying to improve your swimming speed you must work on two things; efficiency of your stroke and the turn over rate of your arms. If your arm pull is technically sound under the water, you apply good hand and arm pressure and your turn over rate is high you will swim fast. If one of these things is missing you will not be swimming to your potential. Working on DPS during workout sessions will help you become more efficient technically so when you increase your stroke rate to swim faster you will be pulling water correctly.

Below are two sets that you can implement into your pool workouts. Swimming with DPS takes concentration and it is hard work. You are going to slow down your stroke rate and increase the hand and arm pressure on the water. Keep your kicking to a similar rate and intensity that you would have while you are swimming at a moderate speed. This is not a test of how few strokes you can take while you kick like mad. Keep the kicking at a normal level. As you swim think about pushing as much water as you can from ahead of you, to underneath your body and then behind you while keeping a smooth pull. Every opportunity you have to apply more pressure against the water should be taken while focusing on perfect body position. I would compare swimming DPS to swimming with paddles except that you are the one that is forcing the increased pressure on the water and not the paddles. Because your stroke rate is much slower your body may have a tendency to relax; don't let this happen. Use your core muscles to keep your head, upper back, bottom and legs up and close to the surface. You don't see the fastest boats in the world going underwater, they fly along the top of the water so you should aim for the same body position.

Getting stronger in the water will mean that you will begin to do few strokes over the same distance in the same time. DPS is a similar drill to doing one legged spinning on a trainer. Your efficiency will increase and when you pick up your arm speed to swim faster you will get more out of each stroke.

If you know how many strokes you typically take in a 50m length then your aim for DPS should be 10 strokes lower at minimum.

Set #1

100m swim regular stroke (count how many strokes you take on the second 50m)

:20secs rest

10 x 50m Freestyle @ :20 rest with a stroke count of 10 less than the number from the 100

*The number of strokes is important but keep track of yours as well. Make sure you keep within 8 seconds of your fastest 50m freestyle time. This is a hard set and you must stay focused on hard hand and arm pressure, perfect body position and keeping track of your times and stroke count. Write down your average time and stroke count when you get home and aim to do fewer strokes in the same time the next time you do the set.

Set #2

Do the following set 2-4 times.

4 X 50m Freestyle (#1: Regular stroke, #2: 2 strokes less, #3: 2 strokes less again, #4: 2 strokes less again.) @ a pace time that gives you :20 rest

*The aim is to keep your times the same for all four 50s in each set. You should feel the muscular fatigue on the 3rd and 4th 50. The set should be repeated anywhere between 2 and 4 times with the goal of reducing the total number of strokes and maintaining your time.

Thanks to Suzanne Weckend for her contribution to this piece