CADENCE COUNTING IN SWIMMING
There is no official standard of how to count
cadence in swimming, but there are commonly accepted ways that swim coaches and athletes utilize. This article is written from the
Pose Method® point of view and explains how
Dr.Romanov counts
cadence in swimming which is similar to how the majority of prominent
swim coaches do it.
Cadence is a measure of frequency of repetitive movement per unit of time. Movement is change of support. In Pose Method cadence is a measure of frequency of change of support per unit of time. A "stroke" in swimming is calculated on one side only, i.e. a complete cycle of one arm starting at the point of entry and ending at the same point. It is easier to count that way.
SPS or "Strokes per second" is used mostly for scientific study purposes since calculations can get pretty complex. It is more practical to calculate cadence in "strokes per minute" in training.
SPM or Strokes Per Minute is exactly what it is - an average number of strokes you take per minute, it is measured to determine our cadence and all beginning swimmers should operate with. It is calculated by taking a given number of strokes, it could be any number but Dr.Romanov uses 10, then using stop watch time how many seconds it takes you to make those 10 strokes, then divide 10 strokes by the number of seconds that's clocked on your stop watch and multiply the result by 60 seconds.
SPL or Strokes Per Length is a number of strokes you take per length of pool, pretty easy to count that. SPL is used to calculate our swimming stroke length. Better swimmers have a lower SPL since their average stroke length is higher. It is calculated by taking the length of a given pool (say 25m) and dividing it by the number of strokes it takes you to cover that length (SPL). Then time with a stop watch how many seconds it takes you to cover the 25m and divide the number of strokes by the time that it takes you to swim 25m.
Counting cadence on video is sometimes complicated by technological differences of various cameras. Regular standard video cameras films at about 25 - 29 frames per second.
Article by Dr. Nicholas Romanov
Composed by L. Romanov
