Why You're Still Slow After 6 Months of Swimming

Did you ever wonder why your shoulders are keep hurting you for like three months straight? Or why you're getting slower even though you're swimming more? Yeah, I see this pattern constantly. Probably with hundreds of swimmers every month. A lot of adult swimmers come to me at this point confused why their swimming isn't working anymore. And in this video I'm going to break down exactly what happened to your body position whenever you swim with a bad technique. And honestly some of this stuff is reversible if you wait too long. And that's the bit that worries me the most. Hi, I'm Alex Coce. I'm a former olympic swimmer. I competed in 2012 for my home country Romania. Now I coach adult swimmers mostly who has been swimming for years but never had a proper coaching. Now here's the thing that is going to sound harsh but this is true. Most adult swimmers are practicing bad technique thousands of times per week. You're literally training your body to move wrong. Then you're confused whenever things are starting to break down. By the end of this video you'll understand exactly what bad technique does to your body. Not just it's inefficient but the actual consequences, injury plateaus, all of it. I'm gonna break this down into four main areas because bad technique does not affect one thing. It's a cascade effect. Honestly, each problem creates more problems. And this is the stuff that I see every day coaching in ocean swim school. And the thing is that if you caught early most of this is fixable. Wait too long though and you're looking at months of rehab. Sometimes surgery. Who knows? Hopefully we're not gonna get there. I have swimmers right now telling me that they need probably surgical intervention because they ignored the warning signs for too long. Oh wait, I'm not trying to scare you here. Well, maybe just a little, right? But mainly I want you to recognize these signs of early so you can actually fix those things before actually get serious. All right, are we good now? Now let's dive in. But just one thing before we actually get into the heavy stuff. If you want video analysis on your technique so you actually know if any of this applies to you, join my ocean swim school on school free to start. Inside you get technique breakdowns, community support, training plans, courses, all of that. I can literally watch your swimming and tell you yes you're heading to the injury or no you're just fine. Continue like that and you can improve with other exercises that I'm going to give you. Premium is 39 a month if you want me to personally analyze your video. But start for free, see if you find something useful, and then you can join the premium later on if you wish. Link in the description. Now let's get back to what's happening to your body. The first thing is the big one. Overuse injuries. Whenever you swim with a bad technique, you're using the muscles in a way they're not designed to be used. Your body tries to compensate then. Then it creates tension pattern. Over time it becomes inflammation. Then it becomes chronic pain and then a structural damage. Most common, swimmer's shoulders. It's technically called shoulder impingement. So basically, your rotator cuff tendons get pinched between the bones and that causes that sharp stabbing pain whenever you're trying to lift your arm. Now here's what happens. Look at this freestyle stroke. See how my elbows drop below my hand during the pull? And this creates an internal rotation at the shoulder. Pinches the tendon. Do that 2000 times per swimming session, 3 times a week for 6 months and you've got tendonitis. Keep going and now you've learned something. Now let me show you the difference between the wrong technique and the right technique. On the first one, on the wrong technique, dropped elbow, internal rotation, shoulder impingement. On the right technique, I'm having a high elbow catch, external rotation and no impingement. Other overuse injuries I see constantly. Lower back pain from arch body position. Neck pain from lifting your head too high. The hip flexor strain from incorrect kicking. Tennis elbow from hand entry issues. So the thing is here that they don't show up immediately. They build, then you feel a little bit tightness, then soreness, then pain and then injury. By the time you realize that this is serious, you've already done a significant damage. So one mental cue to keep in mind if you're worried. Pain that shows up after swimming and it doesn't go away after 2-3 days, that's not normal soreness. That's your body basically telling you that something is wrong. Now let's move on to the second thing. You stop improving. Literally dead stop plateau. So most swimmers think that oh I need to train harder. So what do they do? They add more volume. They swim more laps. They push harder. But it doesn't work like that. And you know why? Because a bad technique has an efficiency ceiling. There is a limit to how fast you can swim with poor mechanics. No matter how fit you're gonna get. So basically you're working against the water instead of working with the water. Now I see this all the time with people who have been swimming the same speed for literally years. Same pace, same distance, same practice, same everything. Then they get frustrated, burned out and they cannot figure out why they're not getting faster. Now I had this guy probably about mid-40s, I forgot his name, but he was stuck at 210 per 100 meter freestyle for about two years. Literally two years. Now came to me to Ocean Swim School. We fixed his hand and body rotation. Within six to eight weeks, I can't remember more, he was already at 155 in six to eight weeks. Literally in about two months time or so. Now that's 15 seconds drop from just the technique. Now here is what happens mechanically. Bad technique creates drag. So you're pushing the water forwards instead of pushing it back. Your body position is all over the place. Your hips are dropping, head is high, legs scissoring. You know all of this because I've been saying this in the past videos. So you're basically swimming uphill. Let's say that you can generate a thousand units of force with good muscles. Basically with good technique. Maybe 70% of that force goes into forward proportion. But with a bad technique, you're lucky if you get 40 that goes forward. The rest goes wasted, creating drag, moving the water in wrong directions, fighting your own body position. At this point, you can train your cardio as much as you want. Yes, you will get incredibly fit because you're still working your cardio. But if your technique is capped at 40% efficiency, that's basically your ceiling. You're never going to break through that without fixing the mechanics. Then the frustrating part, you don't know what you don't know. You think you're doing freestyle correctly because you've been doing the same thing or the same way for years. Feels normal to you. But normal does not mean correct. Let's move on into the third thing. And this one is actually really sneaky. Because you hardwire bad movements pattern into your nervous system. So basically your brain learns through repetition, right? You do something enough times and this will become automatic. That's brilliant whenever you're actually learning the good technique. Terrible whenever you're learning the bad technique. Every time whenever you swim with incorrect mechanics, you're strengthening those neural pathways. You're literally training your brain that this is how swimming works. After probably, who knows, 500 hours of bad technique, it becomes deeply ingrained into that muscle memory. Then whenever you're trying to fix it, your body fights against you. It feels wrong. It feels awkward. Uncomfortable. Because now your nervous system is like, no, you've been doing this way for years and that's the right way. Now, let me tell you a quick story. I remember this whenever I was about maybe 14. I had this weird breathing pattern in butterfly. Slight head lift, but actually rotate a bit too far to one side. So whenever I was breathing, I was kind of tilting my head a bit slightly to the side. Probably swam like this for like 2 million meters with this pattern. At one point, my coach heard basically enough and he said, okay, let's try to fix this together. And generally, it took us six months to fix that problem. Six months to unlearn what I had wired previously with the bad technique. Now, you might argue, oh, but wait, Michael Phelps used to breathe to the side. Yes, he did used to breathe to the side, but then he also corrected so he could breathe forward. Now, here is the problem with this. The longer you swim with the bad technique, the harder it becomes to fix it. It's not impossible. Definitely it's fixable, but it requires way more conscious effort and time. Beginner fixing technique after six months, maybe two to three weeks to rewire. Intermediate fixing technique after five years could take between three to six months of focused work. And this is why I always tell people, fix them early. Don't wait. Every single session with the bad technique makes the eventual correction harder. Now, let's move on into the fourth thing. You burn way more energy than is necessary. You get exhausted and you start hating swimming. The bad technique is inefficient. Simple as that. You're working basically three times harder so you can go the same speed as someone with a good technique. Your heart rate goes to the roof. You're gasping for air. Your muscles are screaming. Meanwhile, the person in the next lane is gliding past you looking relaxed. And this creates a mental problem. And then you start thinking, Oh my God, I'm not a good swimmer. Or swimming maybe is not for me. Oh, maybe I don't have the fitness level. But actually, is your technique just making everything way harder than it needs to be? So here is what typically happens. On the month one to three, you're excited, you're motivated, you're swimming frequently. On the month four to six, you're not improving much. You're a bit frustrated, but you still push it through. On the month seven to 12, you're actively getting slower and more tired. You're starting to dread swimming sessions. On the month 12 and beyond that, you either quit swimming or you're barely swimming once a week and you lost all your motivation. And all this because the bad technique had made it unnecessarily exhausting and unrewarding. And the swimmers who stick with this long term are almost always the ones with decent technique. Not perfect, but decent. Because it's enjoyable whenever you're not fighting the water every single stroke. So if any of that sounds familiar, shoulder pain, plateau, or just feeling exhausted after each session, you probably need to fix your technique. But here is the good news. Caught early, all of this is reversible. Seriously. I worked with hundreds of swimmers who had at least one of these issues. They fixed the technique, problems went away. Sometimes in weeks, other times in months. But here you're gonna have to actually address it, hoping it will improve on its own. It doesn't work. Swimming more laps with bad technique just accelerates the damage. And if you have been swimming for months or years and you never had your technique analyzed, like actually analyzed by someone who knows what to look at, you probably have issues you don't even know. And this is not criticism. This is the reality of self-taught adult swimmers. I personally, like I said, didn't even realize that my butterfly breeding was actually wrong for years, years. I thought I was actually doing correctly, but my coach would keep telling me. But back then, we didn't really have any smartphones available. Now picture this. You get your technique analyzed, you fix the major issues and suddenly swimming feels different. Easier, smoother. You're not in pain anymore. You're actually improving again and you look forward to swim every single session instead of dreading them. And that's where you can be in weeks or months if you commit to fixing your technique issues. And if you want all of that, join my Ocean Swim School. If you want video analysis, I'll watch your swimming, tell you exactly what you need to fix, give you drills, point you at the correct training and premium is $39 a month. Link down below. Drop a comment if this video made you realize that you need to fix your technique. Tell me which issue resonates the most. Was it the shoulder pain? Plateau? Honestly, I'm curious. And if this thing was helpful, hit the like button, subscribe. I post technique every single week, so ring the bell so you don't miss any of them. And if you're still working on freestyle, watch my next video. All right, I'll see you in the pool. And seriously, get your technique checked. Future you will thank you.