How to Improve Swimming Speed: Fix Drag Before Fitness

If you want to swim faster, reduce drag before you add fitness. Water is roughly 800 times denser than air, and drag rises with the square of your speed. A swimmer who fixes a dropped hip and a lifted head will gain more than one who adds two training sessions a week and keeps both faults.

This is the single most common conversation I have with adult swimmers who have hit a wall. They are fit. They run, they cycle, they are not short of breath on land. They get in the pool, swim hard, and go nowhere. Then they conclude they need to train harder, which makes them tired without making them faster.

Swimming is not a fitness sport pretending to be a technique sport. It is a technique sport that punishes you for being inefficient, and the punishment scales.

Why Effort Is Not the Same as Speed

Push a hand through air, then through water. That difference is the whole problem. Because drag increases sharply as you speed up, every bit of extra surface you present to the water costs you disproportionately more the faster you try to go.

Which means a swimmer with poor body position has a low ceiling that no amount of effort will lift. You can double your work and gain almost nothing, because the water takes it back.

The swimmers who improve fastest are the ones who accept this and stop treating every session as a test of will.

The Order to Fix Things In

Work down this list. Do not jump ahead. Each step makes the next one easier.

1. Head position. Look down, not forward. A lifted head sinks the hips, and sunken hips turn your body into a plough. Neutral neck, eyes to the pool floor slightly ahead of you.
2. Body line. Hips at the surface, not trailing. If your legs sink, the fix is usually the head and a light, steady kick — not a harder kick.
3. Breathing. Rotate to breathe, do not lift. One goggle stays in the water. Lifting the head to breathe undoes the body line every stroke cycle, which is why breathing feels like it slows you down. It does.
4. Stroke length. Count strokes per length. Fewer strokes at the same pace means you are holding more water. Chase distance per stroke before you chase turnover.
5. The catch. Get the forearm vertical early and press water backwards, not down. Most beginners push down, which lifts them instead of moving them.
6. Kick from the hips. A small, fast kick that stays inside the body’s shadow. Big bicycling kicks add drag and burn oxygen your arms need.
7. Walls and turns. Every push-off is free speed. Streamline tight, hold it, and do not surface too early.
8. Then, and only then, fitness. Intervals, threshold sets, sprint work. These make a good stroke fast. They make a bad stroke tired.

Where the Time Actually Goes

The Mistakes That Keep People Slow

• Swimming more laps at the same flawed stroke. Volume rehearses whatever you already do. If that is wrong, you are practising being slow.
• Living in fins and paddles. They flatter you. Fins hide a sinking hip; paddles hide a weak catch. Use them sparingly and with purpose.
• Sprinting every set. If every length is maximum effort, technique breaks down and you never learn what a good stroke feels like.
• Never counting anything. No stroke count, no clock, no idea. You cannot improve what you do not measure.
• Ignoring the exhale. Holding your breath underwater builds carbon dioxide and panic. Breathe out steadily through the nose or mouth, all the way, between breaths.
• Copying elite swimmers on video. Their stroke is built on a foundation you may not have yet. Copy the body line, not the flourishes.

Getting Honest Feedback

You cannot see yourself swim. This is the fundamental difficulty of the sport, and it is why swimmers plateau in ways runners rarely do. Video from the side and from head-on tells you more in ninety seconds than a month of feel.

Failing that, get eyes on you. A coach watching from the deck will spot in one length what you have been guessing about for a year. Structured swimming classes build this in; if you prefer one-to-one attention on a specific fault, private swimming lessons are the faster route. Swimmers wanting to train alongside others at a similar level often join a squad — see swimming coach for how to find one that suits your standard.

Sport Singapore’s Sport Singapore site lists public facilities and programmes if you need pool time to work on this.

Training, Recovery and Eating

Once your stroke is worth training, interval work does what it says: repeated efforts with controlled rest teach your body to hold pace under fatigue. Build gradually. Rest days are when adaptation happens, not when it stops.

On food, keep it simple and do not chase numbers off the internet. Eat enough to train, favour carbohydrate around hard sessions, get protein across the day, drink water even though you cannot feel yourself sweat in the pool. If you want specific targets for your body and training load, that is a conversation for a doctor or a registered dietitian, not a blog post.

Safety Notes

Do not use hypoxic sets — restricted-breathing or underwater distance swimming — to build “lung capacity.” Repeated breath-holding in water can cause shallow-water blackout, where you lose consciousness with no warning and no visible struggle. Strong, experienced swimmers have drowned this way. There is no speed gain worth that risk.

Train where a lifeguard is on duty. If you swim early or late in a condo pool, do not swim alone.

Shoulder pain that persists between sessions is not something to push through. Nor is knee pain from breaststroke kick. Reduce volume, get it assessed by a physiotherapist, and let the diagnosis guide the return — swimming through a shoulder injury is how swimmers lose seasons.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much faster can technique alone make me?

More than most people expect, and the less experienced you are, the bigger the gain. A swimmer who has never had their head position corrected typically finds the same pace suddenly costs far less effort. Pace follows.

Should I train for distance or speed first?

Neither, at first. Train for efficiency. Once you can hold a stroke count across a set without it falling apart, then build endurance, then add speed on top.

How often should I swim to get faster?

Three sessions a week is enough for most adults to progress steadily, provided the sessions have a purpose. Two focused swims beat four aimless ones.

Do paddles and fins help?

In small doses, for specific drills, under instruction. As a default they mask the faults you need to feel. If you cannot swim a length well without them, do not swim it with them.

Why am I slower than people who look like they are barely trying?

Because they are barely trying. They have low drag and a long stroke. The visible calm is the result, not the cause.

Is strength training worth it for swimming speed?

Yes, once technique is sound — particularly core and posterior chain work that helps you hold a body line. It is not a substitute for holding water properly.

Slow down. Fix the line. The speed comes as a side effect.