A Sprint Set That Builds Stroke Length at High Stroke Rates

By Olivier Poirier-Leroy on SwimSwam
Higher stroke rates are one of the defining features of sprint freestyle swimming.
At the Paris Olympics, the men’s finalists in the 50m free averaged over 60 stroke cycles per minute.
Compare that to:100m freestyle – 51.43
200m freestyle – 42.31
400m freestyle – 41.9But just spinning your arms out like a set of bald tires on wet pavement isn’t a guarantee for speed either.
A study (Staunton et al., 2025) with sprinters at the Eu