To benefit from making the ‘hull’ of your body as streamline as possible you can learn to swim ‘downhill’. The downhill body position in the water involves keeping your head in line with your torso whilst looking at the bottom of the pool. This, of course, will mean you have to start orientating yourself using the black lines rather than constantly looking at what’s in front of you. When you get it right you will actually experience just the slightest sense of actually swimming downhill - it is a real feeling. In this position you will be optimally horizontal in the water.

Pull your body forwards. The most important thing here is to focus not on what the movement feels like to you but what the relative movement is with respect to the water itself. Imagine the top of your head cutting through the water like the bow of a ship and you will probably find you have already reduced your stroke count!

In sprint swimming we must try to develop every opportunity we have to add to our forward propulsion. In a standing broad jump, for example, we swing our arms vigorously forwards before checking them just as we take off. The momentum, the amount of movement in the arms, is instantly transferred to the body in that forward direction and we end up being able to jump further than if we had not employed the arms in this way. Try it for yourself!

In sprint front crawl it is just the same: each individual arm is swung forwards at the end of the pulling phase developing its own momentum which is in turn transferred to the body in a forward direction as the arm enters the water - thereby contributing to the body’s forward propulsion. The length of the arm and the forward component of this bowling action are key elements in maximising this effect.

If you want to learn to swim really fast you have to practice swimming really fast and you cannot do this if you are trying to do so when your are fatigued. Taking sufficient rest (we may be talking about several minutes here) between those race-pace repeats is the key. You will end up not swimming for most of the session but that’s more than okay if it means you can train at top speed!