How to Reduce Drag in Swimming: The Secret to Swimming Faster Without More Effort
What if I told you that one of the fastest ways to improve your swimming has nothing to do with getting stronger?
Most swimmers spend countless hours trying to pull harder, kick faster, and build more power in the water. While generating force is certainly important, many swimmers overlook the thing that slows them down every single second they’re swimming: DRAG.
The reality is simple. Swimming fast isn’t just about creating more speed — it’s also about eliminating the resistance working against you. Think about it this way: if you’re driving a car with the parking brake partially engaged, adding more horsepower isn’t the smartest solution. The first step is releasing the brake. Drag works exactly the same way in swimming.
This is why some swimmers look effortless in the water. They’re not necessarily stronger than everyone else. They’re simply moving through the water more efficiently. The less drag you create, the easier it becomes to maintain speed and the farther every stroke will carry you.
In this article, we’ll break down the different types of drag in swimming, how coaches identify drag-related problems, and most importantly, how to reduce drag in swimming so you can start finding some “free speed” in your next practice.
What is Drag in Swimming?
Drag is the resistance a swimmer experiences while moving through water. Every movement you make creates interaction with the water around you. Some of those interactions help move you forward, while others slow you down.
The challenge is that water is roughly 800 times denser than air. That means even small technical mistakes can create a surprising amount of resistance. A swimmer with excellent technique can move efficiently through the water with relatively little effort, while a swimmer with poor body position may feel like they’re working incredibly hard but are actually fighting the water every stroke.
This is one of the reasons elite swimmers obsess over body position, streamlines, starts, turns, and stroke mechanics. At the highest levels, success often comes down to who can maintain speed most efficiently — not who can work the hardest.
Drag vs Propulsion in Swimming
One of the most important concepts for swimmers and coaches to understand is the relationship between drag and propulsion in swimming.
Propulsion is what moves a swimmer forward. Every pull, kick, push-off, and underwater dolphin kick contributes to forward movement. Drag, on the other hand, is the force that opposes that movement.
Swimming performance is essentially a constant battle between these two forces. The more efficiently you move through the water, the less energy you waste overcoming resistance.
Many swimmers focus entirely on producing more power while ignoring drag. Unfortunately, that’s often like trying to drive faster while keeping your foot on the brake. Before you worry about generating more force, make sure you’re not creating unnecessary resistance in the first place.
If you’d like to learn more about the force that moves swimmers through the water, check out our article on Propulsion in Swimming.
The 3 Main Types of Drag in Swimming
When discussing the types of drag in swimming, coaches typically divide drag into three categories: form drag, friction drag, and wave drag. While all three affect performance, they don’t contribute equally.
For most swimmers, form drag is by far the biggest issue. Small changes in head position, body alignment, breathing mechanics, or streamline can dramatically increase resistance and slow a swimmer down. This is why so many coaches spend their time correcting technique before worrying about strength or conditioning.
1. Form Drag (Pressure Drag)
Form drag occurs when your body shape creates resistance against the water flowing around it. This is the biggest source of drag I see with age group swimmers, masters swimmers, and even some high-level athletes.
Common causes include:
- Head lifted too high
- Dropped hips
- Bent knees
- Excessive side-to-side movement
- Poor body alignment
- Inefficient breathing mechanics
A great example is when swimmers look forward instead of downward while swimming Freestyle. The moment the head lifts, the chest rises. When the chest rises, the hips and legs sink. Suddenly, instead of slicing through the water, the swimmer is pushing a much larger surface area against it.
Is your Bodyline Making you Faster… or Quietly Slowing you Down
One concept I teach frequently is that swimmers should strive to get as close to “hydroplaning” as possible. Obviously, humans can’t hydroplane across the surface of the water, but we can find a balanced body position where roughly 70% of the body is below the surface and 30% is above it. This allows the body to move through the water with minimal resistance.
As you’ll see in the video, many swimmers create drag simply by holding their head too high. When that happens, water rushes over the cap, down the back, and along the legs. The easiest correction is often pressing the chest down, engaging the core, and allowing the head to settle into a more neutral position. Small adjustments like these can dramatically improve body alignment and reduce drag.
2. Friction Drag
Friction drag occurs as water moves across the surface of a swimmer’s body. Your skin, hair, swimsuit, and equipment all create a small amount of resistance as water passes over them. Compared to form drag, friction drag is generally a much smaller contributor to overall resistance, but at the elite level, every little detail matters.
This is one reason competitive swimmers wear swim caps and tight-fitting racing suits. The goal isn’t to magically make swimmers faster — it’s simply to reduce anything that creates unnecessary resistance. While most age group swimmers don’t need to obsess over friction drag, it does help explain why elite athletes pay attention to even the smallest details before a major competition.
3. Wave Drag
Wave drag occurs whenever swimmers create excessive waves at the surface of the water. The larger the waves, the more energy is being wasted instead of being used to move forward.
This is one reason underwater dolphin kicking is often faster than surface swimming. When swimmers remain underwater in a tight streamline, they avoid creating large surface waves and can maintain higher speeds. It’s also why Olympic swimmers spend so much time practicing starts, turns, and underwater work. Those phases of the race often produce the fastest speeds you’ll see all swim.
How to Reduce Drag in Swimming
The good news is that most swimmers can significantly reduce drag without getting stronger or fitter. In many cases, a few technical adjustments can make an immediate difference in how efficiently they move through the water.
1. Improve Body Alignment
Body alignment is one of the biggest contributors to swimming efficiency. When the head, hips, and legs stay connected in a straight line, water flows around the body much more easily. When that line breaks down, resistance increases quickly.
One of the biggest challenges with body position is that swimmers often can’t feel when it’s wrong. You may feel strong and think you’re swimming efficiently, but poor alignment can create drag every single stroke. As I explain in this video, the water doesn’t care how hard you’re working—it only responds to the position you’re putting your body in. When your body line improves, the water feels smoother and every stroke carries you farther with less effort.
2. Master Your Streamline
If you’ve ever asked a swimmer why we streamline off every start and turn, most of them just stare back at you blankly (trust me, I’ve asked). The answer is simple: a streamline is the most hydrodynamic position a swimmer can achieve.
Every time you leave the wall, you’re traveling faster than you’ll be swimming on the surface. A poor streamline immediately throws that speed away by creating unnecessary drag.
A strong streamline should include:
- Hands stacked
- Arms squeezing the ears
- Head tucked between the arms
- Core engaged
- Legs fully extended
- Toes pointed
Even small gaps between the arms and head can create additional resistance. The best swimmers understand that starts and turns are opportunities to carry speed, not lose it.
3. Strengthen Your Core
Core strength plays a huge role in maintaining good body position. Many swimmers focus on their arms and legs while overlooking the muscles responsible for connecting everything together.
Without proper core engagement, hips tend to sink, legs drop, and body alignment falls apart. This is especially noticeable at the end of races when fatigue begins to set in. A strong core helps swimmers maintain efficient positions throughout the entire swim instead of only during the first few laps.
If you’re looking to improve body position both in and out of the water, check out our Virtual Dryland Strength Training Programs.
4. Improve Your Breathing Mechanics
Breathing mistakes are one of the most overlooked causes of drag in swimming. Many swimmers lift their head forward, delay the breath, or over-rotate when trying to get air. While these mistakes may seem small, they often create a chain reaction throughout the body.
Every time the head lifts, the hips tend to sink, increasing resistance. At the same time, a well-timed breath can actually help buoyancy because the air in your lungs helps keep your body higher in the water. The goal isn’t just to get oxygen — it’s to maintain body alignment. Swimmers should rotate to the breath while keeping one goggle in the water and allowing the breath to support, rather than disrupt, their body position.
5. Focus on Efficiency Before Power
One of the biggest mistakes swimmers make is trying to overpower poor technique. When races aren’t going well, the natural reaction is to pull harder, kick faster, and increase stroke rate. While this may feel faster, it often creates even more drag and causes swimmers to burn through energy unnecessarily.
Imagine increasing your speed-producing force by 10% while increasing drag by 20% at the same time. You’re working harder, your heart rate is higher, and yet you’re actually moving slower through the water. This is why elite swimmers spend so much time refining body position, streamlines, and stroke mechanics. The best swimmers in the world don’t simply produce more power—they waste less of it.
How Do Coaches Measure Drag in Swimming?
One of the most common questions swimmers ask is: how do you measure drag in swimming?
The honest answer is that directly measuring drag is difficult. Researchers often use specialized equipment such as swimming flumes, motion capture systems, velocity tracking tools, and pressure sensors to evaluate how swimmers move through the water.
Most coaches, however, estimate drag through observation and video analysis. We look for common signs such as excessive head movement, dropped hips, poor body alignment, short distance per stroke, and rapid deceleration off walls. These are often clues that a swimmer is creating more resistance than necessary.
Underwater video is particularly valuable because it reveals mistakes swimmers usually can’t feel themselves. This is one reason our Video Analysis Packages are so effective. Seeing your stroke from underwater often reveals technical flaws that are impossible to identify from the deck.
Final Thoughts
One of the biggest misconceptions in swimming is that the fastest swimmers are always the strongest. While strength certainly matters, elite swimmers are often successful because they are exceptionally efficient. They maintain better body positions, hold tighter streamlines, and eliminate the little mistakes that create drag.
The next time you’re looking for ways to improve your swimming, don’t just ask yourself how you can create more power. Ask yourself where you might be creating resistance. You may discover that the fastest way to drop time isn’t working harder — it’s simply removing the brakes.
Want to discover exactly where you’re creating drag in the water? Check out our Video Analysis Packages, where our coaches break down your stroke frame-by-frame and identify the hidden technical mistakes that may be slowing you down.