Articles and Videos
Or explore our comprehensive overview on the following topics:
How to Do the Breaststroke Pull
While the kick often dominates breaststroke instruction, a powerful pull is essential for generating forward momentum and elevating the upper body. Refining catch mechanics, maintaining high elbows, and completing a smooth recovery enable swimmers to maximize propulsion and reduce drag throughout the stroke cycle.
Can You Really Eat Your Way to a Better Metabolism?
Metabolic eating aligns nutrient intake with exercise intensity and biological demand to optimize performance, accelerate muscle recovery, and support metabolic health. Swimmers must focus on strategic carbohydrate timing before workouts, targeted protein intake for muscle repair, and consistent daily fuel to sustain energy.
Coach in the Machine
Preparing for an English Channel swim, David McGlynn turned to ChatGPT for coaching support. While AI offered tailored nutrition and stroke mechanics feedback, seasoned channel swimmer Marcia Cleveland warned that AI's high-yardage workouts and static pacing advice lacked crucial tactical adaptability and accountability.
How to Do Something Impossible
World-class marathon swimmers achieve the seemingly impossible by reverse-engineering immense goals, managing risks, and building mental resilience through intentional preparation. By breaking down daunting distances, embracing fear as courage, and focusing on immediate actions, anyone can overcome self-doubt and accomplish extraordinary feats.
Feejee Mermaid
P.T. Barnum captivated 19th-century audiences with the Feejee Mermaid, a famous grotesque hoax crafted from monkey and fish parts. The relic highlights humanity’s enduring fascination with ocean mysteries and the imaginative, sensational narratives we build to explain the unknown.
The Most Overlooked Cause of Shoulder Pain
Shoulder pain in swimmers is often driven by neck tightness and poor thoracic mobility rather than direct shoulder weakness. Identifying neck-related symptoms and performing targeted exercises—quadruped chin tucks, thoracic extensions, and overhead shrugs—can resolve referred pain and improve overhead mechanics.
Sweet Potatoes Four Ways
Sweet potatoes can support immunity, skin health, eye health, and enhance athletic recovery. Packed with antioxidant-rich and energy-fueling carbs and nutrients, sweet potatoes are a golden nugget for swimmers. Here are four easy ways to cook this delicious, nutritious root vegetable.
Go On—Skip a Day
Skipping workout days is essential for physiological recovery, injury prevention, and athletic performance. Exercise stresses the body, but cellular repair and muscular adaptation occur only during rest—making intentional downtime, proper sleep, and adequate protein intake critical, especially for aging athletes.
How to Get Your Resilience Back Fast
Mental performance experts recommend overcoming setback rumination by externalizing three post-event reflections: identifying wins, choosing constructive improvements, and extracting key lessons. Combining this strategy with mindfulness, improv, and strong social support helps athletes build long-term resilience and bounce back faster.
The Social Side of Open Water Swimming
Joining or building an open water swimming group provides safety, shared experience, and structured accountability. By coordinating swim buddies, practicing sighting and drafting, and organizing safe routes, group members make outdoor swimming safer, more effective, and far more enjoyable.
The Missing Thing From Your Dryland Routine
Balance is a frequently overlooked component of swimming that helps maintain alignment and minimize resistance. Incorporating single-leg stability and core-control exercises into dryland routines improves body awareness, streamlines, power transfer, and overall stroke efficiency in the water.
From the Center Lanes: Sandie Easton
USMS All-American Sandie Easton excels in IM events despite shying away from dedicated backstroke and breaststroke workouts. She attributes her success to mastering aggressive transition turns, tailored interval sets, and maintaining strict stroke mechanics under fatigue.
Home Pool Advantage
As a child, Heather Mohorn campaigned for a Greensboro natatorium bond that failed. Years later, the facility was built, turning her hometown into an aquatics hub. Now a mother of four, Mohorn returns as a USMS national champion.
I Am a Real Swimmer
A 65-year-old beginner recounts joining a Masters swim club, struggling through challenging practices, and overcoming a grueling meet. Despite difficult conditions and slower times, persevering through exhaustion helped her finally embrace her true identity as a real swimmer.
Into the Sunset
As SWIMMER magazine ends its bimonthly print edition, the former editor-in-chief reflects on the publication's evolution from a 1970s newsletter to a glossy magazine. She shares fond memories of her dream role, dedicated colleagues, and passionate community.
Ask the Coach: Linda Bailey
Coach Linda Bailey emphasizes the benefits of IM-focused workouts for all swimmers to build diverse fitness and break monotony. She improves IM performance by focusing heavily on stroke transitions, building up to full events, and using three-round sets for continuous improvement.
Rich Burns Receives the 2026 Capt. Ransom J. Arthur M.D. Award
His longtime dedication has led to him being named the recipient of the 2026 Capt. Ransom J. Arthur M.D. Award, USMS’s most prestigious volunteer award.
How Triathletes Should Use Masters Swimming to Improve Swim Times
For triathletes coming from cycling or running backgrounds, swimming can be a major hurdle. Masters Swimming helps triathletes improve their times through expert on-deck coaching, structured interval workouts, social accountability, time efficiency, and open-water skill training like drafting and sighting.
Head Up! Heels Up! Snap!
If there’s one go-to drill to fix your breaststroke timing, it’s this one. I call it “Head up! Heels up! Snap!” The drill helps you learn to correct the timing of your breaststroke, which includes pulling first and kicking second.
Pool Training for Open Water Swimming: Skills that Actually Transfer
While open water training is ideal, the pool is an excellent place to build crucial skills for open water success. Swimmers can master stroke efficiency, sighting, straight-line swimming, drafting, and nutrition strategies in a controlled, repeatable environment.
