Swimmers, triathletes and their coaches love a good acronym when it comes to remembering something that has well-meaning intentions to help you improve your swimming.

Take S.W.O.L.F for example - this is actually half-acronym and half-portmanteau (a fusion of two words), ‘swimming’ and ‘golf’. It's been used for eons by both coaches - and now smart devices – to purportedly give you a measure of your efficiency in the water by combining the number of strokes you do per length and the time it takes you in seconds to complete each length, i.e. 56 strokes and 56 seconds = 112.

To get a ‘better’ (lower) score one should either take fewer strokes and/or complete the length in a shorter time.

Like improved prowess in golf, S.W.O.L.F purports that to be more ‘efficient’ when swimming you have to try to reduce your total number. However, this is very much not the case, and just like the acronym B.L.A.B.T, we’ll demonstrate today how both of these age-old swimming acronyms might actually be holding you back, and then give you a short sequence you can practice this week to work on what *should* be the first letter of the stroke correction hierarchy acronym - B, for BREATHING!

Don't forget our brilliant Swim Smooth Coaches can help you with all of this, including the video analysis required to identify what issues are holding you back: https://www.swimsmooth.guru/coaches