Swolf

This is essential reading if you are looking to swim longer distances, swolf.

SWOLF is a measure of swimming efficiency. It is a simple and general measure, calculated by adding the time in seconds to the stroke count, for a given distance. Essentially the fewer strokes and less time you take, the more efficient you are in the water. As your swimming technique improves you should reduce your score. The name swolf comes from joining the words swimming and golf, as swimmers attempt to lower their score.

Swolf

SWOLF is a way to measure efficiency and encourage you to be a better swimmer. SWOLF sounds scary and like something that would stalk you in the dead of night as you walk home after a long session at the pool. SWOLF is a score that combines the number of strokes you take and the amount of time it takes you to swim a lap into a single figure. As with golf, a lower SWOLF number is considered good and is reflective of increased speed and efficiency in the water. While most swimmers focus solely on how long it takes for them to swim a lap, or a pair of laps, a SWOLF score gives you another metric with which to measure your swimming. Your SWOLF score takes two crucial numbers, one regarding your speed in the water and the other measuring your efficiency in the water to give you a holistic number that does a good job of reflecting how good of a swimmer you are. When you see elite swimmers in the water, they move with grace and precision, but they also take fewer strokes. This is because they are exceptionally efficient, maximizing every last stroke and kick in the water. By traveling across the pool with fewer strokes, they can swim longer and faster. SWOLF is a data metric designed to encourage you to think of both in terms of speed and efficiency. This is just the reality of expertise and mastery— the better you get, the harder it becomes to improve. But by adding stroke count and SWOLF scores to your training, you get a new metric to try and improve on.

Subscribe to our newsletter and receive our latest updates! The chart provides each interval SWOLF score which from swolf below diagram you can see as the purple block of results, swolf.

Here are all the answers. Your SWOLF is pretty simple to calculate — you simply need to add together the number of strokes you take to swim a 25m length of the pool with the time in seconds it takes you. You can do this yourself using a basic stop watch or pool clock and counting your strokes, or for ease, ask a friend to do it for you poolside. Many sports watches will do it for you though — in the example below, a Garmin Fenix was used to calculate SWOLF and averaged the score out across the swim based on stroke rate and m swim times. Like so much data, your SWOLF score is pretty useless unless you understand it and can use it to improve your swimming. Using your base starting score, play around with tweaking your swimming and working on technique improvements.

Check out our tips for reading SWOLF analytics and learn how to improve your stroke efficiency to improve your score! Efficiency fixes this problem, so you can compare apples-to-apples in different pool lengths. For freestyle and backstroke, stroke count is calculated each time an arm pulls underwater. For breaststroke and butterfly, a stroke cycle is completed when both arms complete a pull together. As you can see in the 4 x 50s IM set below, each stroke carries a different pair of metrics.

Swolf

But what exactly does this score mean, and what numbers indicate an efficient, fast swim? Lower swolf scores are better, as this indicates faster swim times and fewer strokes. Like golf, the goal is to minimize your total swolf number. Swolf provides a blended measurement of both your fitness and form. It is a proxy for overall swimming power and technique. Fitness — Your time reflects your cardiovascular conditioning and strength to swim fast. Technique — Strokes indicate your mechanical efficiency to move forward with less resistance. An ideal swim combines fast times with excellent technique to produce smooth, powerful movement.

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At last I understand. Full catch. Swimmers know that swimming fast means swimming efficiently. A strong push off the wall and glide half the pool. By experimenting with different techniques, body positions, and propulsion methods, you can find ways to swim more efficiently and achieve a lower SWOLF score. The comparison also compared swim efficiency compared to a wetsuit […]. Starting with how the number is calculated. SWOLF is a great example of a metric that can be used to monitor improvement and progress in the water, especially when you look back at your scores at the beginning of the season. Perform screening of health risks and obtain informed consent. But if you simply reduce your stroke rate and glide at the end of each stroke you will reduce your stroke rate but increase your time to cover 25m and may see your SWOLF score increase. The app then allows you to overlay this result with either your Pace measured over metres or your stroke rate over a 35 metre distance. Read Edit View history. SWOLF is a great concept as it helps to gamify your swimming. This mirrors your targets for pool swimming.

Apple, Fitbit and Samsung have joined the likes of Garmin, Suunto and Polar in dishing out fitness trackers and smartwatches that are built for swimming. These wearables can help you massively improve your swimming, but as with any piece of tech, you have to know how to use it to make the most of it. You get in the water, start tracking and both during and post-swim you try to work out exactly what all of that data means.

For example, can you slow down your stroke rate and work more on extending your reach, rotating your body and then pulling more strongly? Read Edit View history. Focus on the tips outlined to improve and your SWOLF will go down and your swimming efficiently will follow. Any comments, suggestions, or corrections? Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Want to take your swimfandom to the next level? Testing Extra We have over fitness tests listed, so it's not easy to choose the best one to use. Looking for a swim workout to dust off the speed in the early stages of the swim season? For open water swimming in lower temperatures you will benefit from a swimming wetsuit. These are things you learn and can use to gauge performance as you become proficient at counting strokes.