Olivier Poirier-Leroy

This New Mental Training Workbook Will Help You Swim Like a Rock Star This Season yourswimlog.com/new-mental-t…

Does the Barbell Back Squat Predict Start Performance? yourswimlog.com/do-squats-pr…

Plateaus for Swimmers (The Complete Guide) yourswimlog.com/plateaus-for…

Sneak Peek: “Resisted Sprint Training for Swimmers” 👇 Doing the last edits and finishing touches on my newest book. So what’s this thing all about? Using resisted swimming to unleash PB-cracking speed in the water. Resistance tools like chutes, tubing, power towers, DragSox are commonplace on pool decks and inside mesh bags. But they are rarely used to their full potential. Here’s a sneaky peeky at what you’ll find inside Resisted Sprint Training for Swimmers: ➡️ The performance benefits of resisted swimming. Yes, it will help you swim faster. But more than that, it can improve technique, tighten up dead spots in your stroke, and show your body how to move better through the water. ➡️ Build a complete sprint performance. Elite sprinting is a set of qualities—force, power, stroke rate, coordination, technique, speed. The book shows you how to develop all of them to build a complete sprint performance. ➡️ Using resistance like a certified smarty pants. Typically, swimmers choose resistance like this: More hard = more better. You’ll learn evidence-based ways to choose the correct resistance every time to improve the things that matter. ➡️ Stop guessing with resisted sprint sets. How heavy? How far? How fast? How much rest? Get evidence-based guidelines for loading, rep lengths, recovery, and training volume so that every rep has a gold-medal purpose. ➡️ Get faster in all four strokes (and underwaters). Freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, and dolphin kicking. You’ll learn how resistance changes the demands of each stroke and how to use it to your advantage. The book also includes 30+ ready-to-rock-and-roll sets, from simple, straight-up resisted sprints to clusters, contrasts, and other advanced (and fun) ways to charge up swim speed. Plus, a whole bunch of ready-to-use training programs (8 weeks, 16-24 sets) that you can plug directly into your swim workouts. That’s just flirting with everything that is inside. It’s getting let off its leash very soon. Look forward to sharing it with you.

Make the last kick the fast kick 👇 Watch your favorite dolphin kicker, whether their last name ends with Walsh, Phelps, Dressel, or Mac Neill, and you’ll notice something. They kick explosively all the way to the surface. And it’s not an accident that they do this. Swimmers keen on fast underwaters typically jack-hammer the first couple of kicks… But then the kick starts to slow, the swimmer starts to slow, and finally they surface. Losing precious velocity. Which is why you should exit every underwater with the mindset of making the last kick the fast kick. Gonjo & Olstad (2020) analyzed 14 national-level butterflyers as they did a 50m butterfly in a short course tank. They tracked velocity, kick frequency, kick count, body position and the favorite colors of each swimmer during their underwaters off the start and turn. So what predicted fast underwaters? It wasn’t kick frequency, distance underwater, or time spent kicking under the surface. It was how fast swimmers were moving during their final dolphin kick of their breakout. More simply… Swimmers who carried more speed through that last kick tended to have faster underwaters. The goal here isn’t to literally make the final kick your fastest. It’s to avoid taking your foot off the gas as you approach the surface. Attacking every breakout with this mindset does three fun things: ➡️ First, you’ll prioritize speed over distance. Instead of chasing a specific number of kicks or trying to get as far underwater as possible, you’ll be dialed in on maintaining speed before it sinks to the pool floor. ➡️ Second, you’ll tighten up the transition to the surface. Clean transitions are essential, and that final boom-of-a-kick gets you into that first stroke with style. ➡️ And third, you'll train yourself to finish your underwaters with intent. This is where things compound over time. Instead of mixing some great kicks and some sluggish kicks, every underwater and breakout is all about velocity. Being able to kick far is great... But it has to be fast, too. ** For more insights and strategies on improving your underwater dolphin kick, check out The Dolphin Kick Manual. It’s packed with technique guidance, sets to get you started, how to use dryland to improve your underwaters, and much, much more. 👉 Unleash your dolphin kick here: yourswimlog.com/the-dolphin-…

How Swim Paddle Size Changes Technique and Speed yourswimlog.com/how-swim-pad…

How Often Should Swimmers Strength Train? yourswimlog.com/how-often-sh…

The Best Relay Start – Long Step or Short Step? yourswimlog.com/the-best-rel…

Why Elite Sprinters Don’t Breathe in the 50 Freestyle yourswimlog.com/sprint-frees…

A Race Pace Set for Winning the Back Half of the 100 Freestyle yourswimlog.com/a-race-pace-…

A Sprint-Focused Workout for Explosive Underwaters and Closing Speed yourswimlog.com/a-sprint-foc…

Goal Setting for Swimmers: How to Set Goals that Drive Performance yourswimlog.com/goal-setting…

Dryland Training for Sprint Freestyle: What to Do and How to Program It yourswimlog.com/sprint-frees…

A quick self-talk tip for high pressure moments 👇 Self-talk is one of the best mental skills swimmers can use to get better in the water. And one trick to making it work really well? Self-talk that is smaller and simpler as pressure gets bigger and heavier. Swimmers often go overboard with using mental skills, thinking that more = faster. But keeping things simple and succinct is where it’s really at. Instead of: “I need to swim with excellent technique, kick like a motorboat, nail every turn, not get flustered when other swimmers go fast, time my breaths better—" Try: ➡️ Swim strong and tall. ➡️ Attack the walls. ➡️ Lock in. Short. Punchy. Useful. No Shakespeare required.

Why Core Strength Isn’t Enough for Swimmers yourswimlog.com/why-core-str…

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How to Dolphin Kick like Caeleb Dressel yourswimlog.com/how-to-dolph…

Why More Swim Strength Doesn’t Always Mean More Speed swimswam.com/why-more-swim-s…

The missing piece between training hard and swimming fast 👇 To get faster, we often break up our swimming up into smaller pieces. In the water, this can mean doing more kick, pull, drills, or using equipment like paddles and fins. Outside the water, we lift weights, jump rope, core training, and all sorts of other fun stuff. And this kind of training can work and be motivating, especially when we see progress, whether that means more plates on the barbell or faster times when doing a kick set. But often, those improvements don’t show up where we want them most… In full-stroke swimming. For example: ➡️ We kick past our teammates during dedicated kick sets, but our legs are a hot mess when swimming. ➡️ We can deadlift half the plates in the gym, but those bigger numbers aren’t reflected on the clock at the Big Meet. ➡️ We can pull like a freight train when using a drag chute or swim tether, but struggle to use that same power when swimming without resistance. In each example, there is improvement. We are getting better. But not necessarily at swimming faster. The missing piece? Connecting those improvements to our regular swimming. After all, having an awesome kick on a kickboard doesn’t guarantee faster swimming. Neither does lifting heavier weights or making swim tethers strain and squeal from force. We have to train those improvements in the context of full-stroke swimming. ✅ With kicking and pulling – Keep working on them separately, but also practice using that stronger kick or more powerful pull while swimming full stroke. ✅ With lifting weights – Use resisted sprint training to take that raw strength and force and apply it to swim-specific movements in the water. ✅ With heavy tethered sprinting – Mix in lighter, semi-tethered efforts that better reflects how you actually move through the water. While it’s great to improve your kick, get stronger, or pull more load in the water, the ultimate goal is faster swimming. Keep that in mind when breaking down your swimming into smaller pieces. And have a clear path between the isolated training that you are doing and the swimming you want to show up on race day.

How to Use Music to Improve Stroke Tempo in the Water yourswimlog.com/how-to-use-m…