You could call it a stroke of swimming genius. U.S. Olympian Katie Ledecky has galloped away with two more gold medals in the 800 meter and 1500 meter women’s freestyle swimming events at the 2024 Paris Olympics. This brought her career total gold medal haul to a whopping nine. And part of the reason for her success—with an emphasis on the word “part”—has been her freestyle stroke: nicknamed the “syncopated gallop” or the “giddy-up” stroke.
Now, when you hear the words “gallop” and “giddy-up” you may think more of equestrian events. But in this case, the gallop refers to the fact that Ledecky takes longer strokes with her right arm and shorter strokes with her left arm. This is basically what you do with your legs when you or a horse gallops, taking shorter steps with one leg and longer steps with another.
During each cycle, her left arm also drags more, staying on top of the water for a longer duration than her right arm. This motion means that Ledecky always takes in a breath when her head is tilted to the right, which she does every two strokes. It’s called “syncopated” because this uneven motion needs to be carefully coordinated.
Contrast this to the strokes that most other swimmers, especially recreational ones, use. These typical strokes are more like metronomes as if they were moving to equal regular beats. They involve taking even and equal length strokes on both sides, going right-left, right-left, right-left, and so forth in a even manner.
Ledecky reportedly changed to this gallop in 2011 after her coach at the time Yuri Suguiyama had watched film of Michael Phelps, who was also kind of good at swimming. In a article for the Washington Post, Dave Sheinin quoted Suguiyama as saying, “[Ladecky at the time] was swimming more like a classic female distance swimmer. She would breathe to both sides. She had kind of a sporadic kick, or what we call a two-beat kick. And I don’t know — I just didn’t like the way she swam.” The quote from Suguiyama continued with, “I think I was watching a Phelps race from 2007. His legs were moving the entire time. He had a nice little hitch, or a gallop, and I was like, man, Katie could swim that way. . . . It just takes advantage of the aggression and the kind of fury that she swims with.”
Of course, keeping your legs moving all the time ain’t easy. Doing so while keeping your body straight with an uneven arm stroke requires a lot of core strength. And Ledecky’s ability to keep her body steady and straight was on full display for years ago when she was filmed swimming while balancing a glass of chocolate milk on her head:
Yes, Ledecky got milk…and brought it all the way across the pool.
A big advantage of the gallop stroke is that it makes you use your hips more and hips can generate even more power. But as Shakira has sung, the hips don’t lie. They’ll reveal your core strength or lack of it. If you are trying drive yourself fast through the water with your hips, you’ve got to have strong core muscles including your abdominals and obliques.
Of course, just because you do planks until the cows come home and can mimic this gallop stroke in some way doesn’t mean that you can call yourself the next Katie Ledecky. (Well, you can call yourself that but no one will listen.) Ledecky’s success is not just due to her stroke. There’s a lot more that goes into her dominating performances.
For example, her strength is also evident in her starts when she explodes off the blocks and quickly moves ahead of her competitors. It also helps in her turns when she pushes off the wall to propels herself.
Additionally, she probably has a much higher aerobic efficiency ratio than most other people. Aerobic efficiency is the ratio of exercise intensity to the effort put forth. Effort is typically measured by heart rate. So Ledecky likely can swim much faster with given amount of effort than others can. It is possible that Ledecky’s heart rate during a swim may be only as fast as someone sitting at a dinner table eying a bacon double cheeseburger.
Then there’s the body part that Ledecky’s arms circle around during the gallop, her head. Ledecky is known for her drive and her ability to focus. In order to maintain that stroke and that speed, you can’t let thoughts like “Oh this is painful” or “I could use some ice cream” get into your head.
Sure, elite athletes often have physical advantages over your everyday athletes. But often the best of the best aren’t necessarily physical dominant over everyone else. Ledecky, for example, is five-foot-eleven, which is taller than the average woman but not taller than many top female swimmers.
What truly sets apart the elite elite in sports from everyone else is mental toughness. And that may be what’s really allowed Ledecky to reach heights that few swimmers ever have. When you’ve got such mental toughness, you don’t simply rely on a stroke of luck to win 14 Olympic medals in your career and become the most medaled female American Olympian ever as Ledecky has.
