The days of counting strokes on every lap you SWim to keep track of your distance per stroke (or short DPS) are over. With the SWim-Wise.app you can now easily keep track of your DPS while SWimming freestyle, breaststroke, backstroke and butterfly without having to count strokes anymore.

What DPS is all about and how SWim-Wise.app helps you improve your Swimming through calculating your DPS on every lap you will learn in this article.

DPS – What is it all about?

Distance per stroke (DPS) is exactly what it sounds like. When you swim, you should try to cover as much distance as possible with each arm cycle. The distance you cover with each stroke (or the average per lap of all strokes), is your distance per stroke. The ultimate goal of every swimmer should be to swim as efficiently as possible. This requires swimmers to maintain a good distance per stroke to maximize the benefits of power put into each stroke.

With the SWim-Wise.app you can now easily monitor your distance per stroke for a full Swimming session or for specific swimming styles. You can also see improvements in your distance per stroke for specific styles, swimming sessions, and laps.

Why is it so important?

When you slow down your stroke but increase the distance and the power of each stroke then you speed up. At first, this might be exhausting and you might not be able to do it for long, but after training this for a while, you will be able to swim more efficiently and with higher speeds while taking fewer strokes and using less energy.

3 Tips to improve your Distance Per Stroke

1. Improve the power in your catch! Aim to push your body forward with every stroke you take and maximize the power in each stroke.
2. Aim to improve your feel for the water! Attaining a better feel for the water will help you to take fewer strokes.
   Try sculling exercises to improve your feel.
3. Ride the horizontal plane – reduce underwater drag. Improving drag reduction with a streamlined body position underwater is absolutely critical to improving speed. You want to have the best possible body position in order to minimize any unnecessary water resistance and move through the water as efficiently as possible.

How iPhone SWim-WiSe.app helped me improve my DPS?

With the SWim-Wise.app I was able to get detailed analytics on my stroke count and my (average) distance per stroke on whole swimming sessions, for different swimming strokes and even for single laps. Seeing these analytics enables you to adjust your stroke, your stroke rate and your distance per stroke and enables you to see how your adjustments played out in the pool.
Now it’s finally possible to make a relationship between swimming technique, speed, and efficiency. And with the SWim-Wise.app you will get the insights you want and need to be delivered to your Apple Watch while swimming and to your iPhone after your swimming session.

Get your 7 Days free trial with SWim-WIse.app

By: Gottfried Eisenberger
A former professional swimmer for the Austrian National Team