How to swim faster: improve your 100m freestyle
Swimming speed is mostly about doing less wrong before doing more right. This guide works through it in that order: drag, propulsion, breathing, walls and pacing, then the training that turns a better stroke into a faster time, and how to measure whether it is working.
Where swimming speed comes from
You swim faster in two ways: by cutting the drag that holds you back, or by producing more propulsion per stroke. For most adult swimmers, cutting drag is the bigger and cheaper win, because drag rises with roughly the square of speed.
That square relationship is the single most useful idea in this guide. Going a little faster costs a lot more effort, so a swimmer whose hips drag low is paying a growing penalty on every length, and the penalty gets worse the harder they try. Fitness helps, but it multiplies whatever technique you already have. A strong engine in a body shaped like a parachute still goes slowly.
Speed itself is just stroke length times stroke rate: how far you travel per stroke, and how many strokes you take per minute. Beginners usually need more distance per stroke. Experienced swimmers who already glide well often need to lift their rate without losing that distance. Knowing which one you lack tells you what to work on.
Reduce drag first, then improve the catch, then train the engine. Doing it in the opposite order is the most common reason adult swimmers plateau.
Typical 100m freestyle times by level
As a very rough guide for adults in a 25m pool: beginners are often around 2:30 to 3:00 or slower, fitness swimmers roughly 1:50 to 2:20, club and masters swimmers roughly 1:20 to 1:45, and competitive swimmers under about 1:10.
| Level (rough) | Approximate 100m freestyle | What usually limits them |
|---|---|---|
| Beginner | Around 2:30 to 3:00, often slower | Body position and breathing. Often needs to stop or slow down to breathe. |
| Fitness swimmer | Roughly 1:50 to 2:20 | A slipping catch and low hips. Swims every session at the same comfortable pace. |
| Club or masters | Roughly 1:20 to 1:45 | Structured threshold and race-pace work, turns, and holding stroke shape when tired. |
| Competitive | Under about 1:10 | Fine details: starts, underwater kicking, race pacing, power. |
Treat these as orientation, not a grading system. Age, sex, swimming background, pool length and whether you dive or push off all move the numbers a long way, and a 25 yard pool is quicker again than a 25m one. The only comparison that tells you anything useful is your own 100m against your own 100m from a couple of months ago.
Drag and body position first
Get long and flat: head in line with the spine, eyes looking at the bottom of the pool, hips near the surface, and the body rotating as a unit rather than snaking from side to side.
Almost every slow freestyle has the same root problem. The head lifts to look forward or to breathe, the hips drop to balance it, and the legs hang down behind like an anchor. Fix the head and much of the rest follows. A few specific checks:
- Head position. Look down and slightly forward, with the waterline around the top of your head or your hairline. If you can see the far wall, your hips are paying for it.
- Press the chest. Leaning gently onto your chest and armpits lifts the hips. It feels like swimming slightly downhill.
- Rotate from the hips. Roll to each side with the whole body, roughly together. Flat swimmers push water sideways with their shoulders. Over-rotating swimmers wobble. Aim for a stable line with a roll.
- Stay narrow. Hands that cross the centre line on entry, or legs that scissor apart when you breathe, make you wider and swing the hips off line.
The quickest feedback is stroke count. If your strokes per length drop at the same effort, you have cut drag. That is also why SWOLF, which adds strokes and time, is a useful efficiency check, provided you keep the pace honest.
The catch and pull
The catch is the moment at the front of the stroke when your hand and forearm turn to face backwards and hold the water. A good catch means you move past your hand, rather than your hand slipping back through the water.
Most fitness swimmers press down on the water with a straight arm right after entry. That lifts the front of the body, which sinks the hips, and pushes water towards the pool floor rather than behind you. The fix is to bend at the elbow early, keep the elbow higher than the hand, and treat the whole forearm as the paddle, not just the palm. Then pull back along the body and finish past the hip without rushing it.
Two cues help: "reach long, then tip the fingers down" and "pull yourself over a barrel". If you hear lots of bubbles and splash on entry, you are probably slapping the water and losing the hold before you have it.
The catch is best learned with drills done in short repeats, alternating a drill length with a normal swimming length so the feeling transfers. Fist drill, sculling and single-arm freestyle are the classics. Our freestyle drills guide covers what each one is for and how to slot them into a session.
What the kick is for
For most adult freestylers, the kick's main job is keeping the legs high and the body balanced, not driving you forward. A small, quick kick from the hip with relaxed ankles does that at low cost.
A big, knee-bent kick does the opposite of what you want: the shins and feet drop into the water like brakes, and the large leg muscles burn oxygen you need for the arms. Stiff ankles are a common hidden limiter, because a foot that cannot point turns the kick into a push forwards rather than backwards.
That said, do not neglect it. Regular kick sets build the endurance that keeps your legs up late in a race, and in a 100m the kick does matter more than in longer swims, especially for the final 25m and off every wall. Two or three short kick sets a week, some with a board and some on your side with no board, are enough for most swimmers.
Breathing pattern
Breathe by rotating, not lifting: turn your head with your body roll so one goggle stays in the water, and exhale steadily underwater so the breath you take is only an inhale.
Holding your breath underwater and then trying to exhale and inhale in the short window above the surface is the reason many swimmers feel they are suffocating. Blow out continuously through your nose or mouth while your face is in the water, and the breath becomes quick and relaxed.
Pattern is a matter of distance and comfort. Breathing every three strokes, alternating sides, builds a balanced stroke and is a good default for training. Breathing every two strokes on your stronger side is perfectly fine in a hard 100m, because oxygen matters more than symmetry once the effort is high. What costs time is breathing irregularly and in a panic, or lifting the head forward to breathe, which drops the hips every time. Some experienced swimmers skip breaths on the first and last few strokes of a length, but that is a refinement, not a starting point.
Turns and push-offs
In a 25m pool a 100m has three turns and four push-offs, so the walls are a big share of the race. A tight streamline and a quick turn are the cheapest seconds available to almost any adult swimmer.
Most recreational swimmers lose time at the wall without noticing: they glide in slowly, stand or pause, push off in a loose position, and come up early. Fixes, roughly in order of payback:
- Streamline. Hands stacked, arms squeezing the ears, body straight and tight. A loose streamline after a strong push throws away most of the push.
- Push off underwater, not on the surface. Slightly deeper is faster than skimming the top with your arms half spread.
- Hold speed into the wall. Do not slow down on the last stroke to prepare. Plan the final stroke so you arrive at turning distance at full speed.
- Learn the flip turn. An open turn is fine while you learn, but a decent flip turn is usually quicker once it is comfortable. Practise it at easy pace first, then at speed.
- Break out with a stroke, not a glide to stop. Start swimming just before your push-off speed falls to swimming speed.
Practise walls deliberately. Swim sets of 4 to 8 × 50m where the turn in the middle is the focus, at real effort, and count how often you breathe in the first few strokes after the push-off: fewer is usually better.
Pacing a 100m
Go out fast but controlled, then hold on. A well-paced 100m usually comes home a little slower than it went out, typically by a couple of seconds over the second 50m, not by ten.
A 100m is short enough to feel like a sprint and long enough to punish one. The most common mistake is the first 25m flat out, followed by a stroke that falls apart in the third length. A useful way to think about it:
- First 25m: fast and long. Smooth speed off the wall, not thrashing.
- Second 25m: settle into a rhythm you can hold. This is where stroke count discipline matters most.
- Third 25m: the hardest length mentally. Hold the stroke rate, keep the turn tight.
- Final 25m: lift the kick and the tempo, keep the head still, finish on the wall with no glide.
Get a timed 50m split whenever you test, from a watch, a pace clock or a friend. If the second 50m is much slower than the first, go out a touch easier next time. If it is faster, you left time in the pool.
The training mix
A faster 100m needs three things: an aerobic base to recover between efforts, threshold work to raise the pace you can hold, and race-pace and sprint work to teach the body to swim fast with good form.
The trap is swimming every session at the same comfortable pace. It feels productive and it maintains fitness, but the body has nothing new to adapt to. The other trap is doing nothing but hard sprints, which builds fatigue faster than speed. A balanced week uses all of these:
| Type of work | What it does | Example set |
|---|---|---|
| Aerobic base | Builds the engine, lets you recover between hard repeats, carries technique work | 4 × 200m steady, 20s rest, focus on stroke count |
| Threshold (CSS) | Raises the pace you can sustain, which lifts the floor under your 100m | 10 × 100m at CSS pace, about 15s rest |
| Race pace | Teaches you to swim your target 100m speed with good form | 8 × 50m at target 100m pace, 45 to 60s rest |
| Sprint | Builds power, stroke rate and speed off the walls | 8 × 25m fast, full recovery between |
| Technique | Installs the changes that reduce drag and improve the catch | 8 × 25m alternating drill and swim |
Threshold work is built on your Critical Swim Speed, the fastest pace you can hold for roughly 20 to 30 minutes. If you have not tested it, the CSS guide explains the 400m plus 200m test and the five pace zones that come out of it. Race-pace and sprint sets are short and need generous rest on purpose: the point is quality, and a sprint set swum on short rest quietly turns into a tired aerobic set.
Most of your weekly distance should still be easy to moderate. Hard work is potent and costly, and a week with one threshold session and one race-pace session is plenty for most adults.
A sample week
Three swims a week is enough to make steady progress on a 100m: one technique and aerobic session, one threshold session, and one race-pace and speed session, with an easy day between the hard ones.
This example suits a fitness or club swimmer who can comfortably swim 2,000m in a session. Scale distances down if that is too much, and use your own CSS pace rather than guessing.
Swim 1 · Technique and aerobic · about 2000m
- Warm-up · 300m200m easy, then 4 × 25m build.
- Technique · 400m16 × 25m alternating drill and swim: catch-up, fist drill, sculling, single arm. 15s rest.
- Kick · 200m8 × 25m kick on your side, no board, 15s rest.
- Main set · 900m3 × 300m steady, 30s rest. Count strokes on one length of each 100m and try to keep the count the same.
- Cool-down · 200mEasy, choice of stroke.
Swim 2 · Threshold · about 2200m
- Warm-up · 400m300m easy, then 4 × 25m build.
- Pre-set · 200m4 × 50m as 25m fast, 25m easy, 20s rest.
- Main set · 1200m12 × 100m at CSS pace, about 15s rest. Same time on every rep. If the last three slip, take a little more rest next time.
- Pull · 200m2 × 100m pull with a buoy, easy, long and connected.
- Cool-down · 200mEasy.
Swim 3 · Race pace and speed · about 1900m
- Warm-up · 500m300m easy, 4 × 50m build, 20s rest.
- Walls · 300m6 × 50m moderate with a focus on the middle turn: tight streamline, quick break-out, no breath on the first stroke. 20s rest.
- Race pace · 400m8 × 50m at your target 100m pace, 45 to 60s rest.
- Sprint · 200m8 × 25m fast from a push, full recovery, about 45s.
- Easy · 300mEasy swimming with some backstroke or breaststroke.
- Cool-down · 200mEasy.
Swap the sprint block for a timed 100m every four to six weeks. If you can add a fourth swim, make it easy aerobic swimming, not another hard session. For full sessions at other levels, see swim workouts by level, and for how many swims per week make sense for your goals, see how often should you swim.
If your shoulders ache after hard sessions, back off the intensity and check the catch and breathing before adding more volume. Pain that persists or gets worse is a reason to see a doctor or physiotherapist, not to swim through it.
How to measure progress
Use three measures together: a timed 100m every four to six weeks, a CSS test every six to eight weeks, and the trend in your SWOLF and stroke count on a repeated set. Each one catches what the others miss.
- The 100m test. Warm up properly, swim one all-out 100m from a push-off, and note the time and the 50m split. Same pool, same time of day, after an easy day if you can. This is the number you care about, but it is noisy from one attempt to the next.
- CSS. Your threshold pace moves more slowly and more reliably than a single sprint, and it sets the intervals for your training. If CSS is improving, your 100m will follow.
- SWOLF and stroke count trend. On a fixed set you repeat every few weeks, such as 8 × 50m at a steady effort, a falling stroke count at the same time is direct evidence that a technique change is working. Compare only against yourself, in the same pool length.
How fast can you expect to improve?
Typical, not promised: beginners swimming consistently two or three times a week often improve by roughly 10 to 20 seconds per 100m over a few months, almost all of it from body position, breathing and the catch. Intermediates with a settled stroke usually find roughly 5 to 10 seconds per 100m across a focused training block of a few months, and that gain needs both technique work and structured threshold training. Progress comes in steps rather than a straight line, and plateaus of a few weeks are normal, often while a technique change settles in.
SwimTune can do the bookkeeping for you: it records your swims on Apple Watch or imports them from Apple Health, tracks SWOLF, stroke count and pace per 100m over time for free, and runs a guided CSS test that sets your five pace zones.
Common questions
What is the fastest way to improve my 100m freestyle time?
For most adult swimmers, reduce drag before adding fitness. Get the head down and the hips up, stop the hand slipping at the front of the stroke, and breathe without lifting the head. Then add one threshold session a week built on your CSS pace and some short race-pace work. Sharpening turns and push-offs is the cheapest time you will ever find: in a 25m pool a 100m has three turns, and a sloppy one costs a second or more each.
What is a good 100m freestyle time?
Only as a rough guide for adults in a 25m pool: beginners are often somewhere around 2:30 to 3:00 or slower, regular fitness swimmers roughly 1:50 to 2:20, club and masters swimmers roughly 1:20 to 1:45, and competitive swimmers under about 1:10. Age, sex, background and pool all shift these a lot. The useful comparison is your own time from two months ago, not anyone else's.
How long does it take to swim faster?
Typical rather than promised: beginners swimming consistently two or three times a week often improve by roughly 10 to 20 seconds per 100m over a few months, mostly from technique. Intermediates with a settled stroke usually find roughly 5 to 10 seconds per 100m across a focused training block of a few months. Progress comes in steps, and plateaus of several weeks are normal.
Should I kick harder to swim faster?
Usually not much harder, but better. For most adult freestylers the kick's main job is keeping the hips and legs high so the body stays streamlined, not producing lots of propulsion. A small, fast kick from the hip with relaxed ankles does that cheaply. A big knee-driven kick burns oxygen and adds drag. In a 100m, sprinters do kick harder in the final length, so it is worth having a kick that can lift when you need it.
How should I pace a 100m freestyle?
Go out fast but controlled, then hold on. Most well-paced 100m swims come home a little slower than they went out, typically by a couple of seconds over the second 50m. If your second 50m is much slower than that, you went out too hard. If it is faster than your first 50m, you held back too much for a race that short.
How often should I time my 100m?
An all-out 100m every four to six weeks is plenty, and a CSS test every six to eight weeks. Testing more often mostly measures day-to-day noise and how tired you are. Between tests, watch the trend in your training sets: the pace you hold on repeat 100s and your SWOLF on a fixed set tell you more week to week than one maximal swim.
Train for the time, not just the laps
SwimTune builds sessions around your CSS pace zones, weaves drills from its guided library into them, and adjusts the plan as your training and readiness change. Recording, history and analytics are free.
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