Pacing
The Holy Grail of swimming (and the other two sports to be fair) as you can achieve an overall faster time by going slower. The basic gist of this is don't start too fast, try and hit the same time per length ratio and you should be able to put the hammer down for the final 100 or 50 metres.
Take a look at the attached chart to see what even pacing across 400m can do for you.
If you take the 1st example of an 8 minute swim being 30 seconds per length - "I can go faster than that" you might say. Fine but can you sustain that speed across 16 lengths of a 25m pool? It's pointless blasting off for an 18 second 1st length to be clocking up the middle 200 at around 40 seconds per length. If you get a second wind you might drag it back to 30 seconds per length for the final 100 but you've lost out on so much time. If just the middle 200 is 40 seconds per length you've lost 80 seconds overall bringing you in around 9:20 instead of 8:00 dead.
The Tempo Trainer can be a great help here but you have to be able to do this on your own so the best way to do it is to count your strokes over 50 metres. If you know how many strokes it takes to cover that distance and the time it takes you will know if that time is sustainable over a longer period. We're back to trial and error but once you get this right you can start to push yourself harder to bring your times down.
Take a look at the attached chart to see what even pacing across 400m can do for you.
If you take the 1st example of an 8 minute swim being 30 seconds per length - "I can go faster than that" you might say. Fine but can you sustain that speed across 16 lengths of a 25m pool? It's pointless blasting off for an 18 second 1st length to be clocking up the middle 200 at around 40 seconds per length. If you get a second wind you might drag it back to 30 seconds per length for the final 100 but you've lost out on so much time. If just the middle 200 is 40 seconds per length you've lost 80 seconds overall bringing you in around 9:20 instead of 8:00 dead.
The Tempo Trainer can be a great help here but you have to be able to do this on your own so the best way to do it is to count your strokes over 50 metres. If you know how many strokes it takes to cover that distance and the time it takes you will know if that time is sustainable over a longer period. We're back to trial and error but once you get this right you can start to push yourself harder to bring your times down.