When you are drilling, and you should add some drills to most every swim workout, swim-golf is a great way to track your progress. Essentially what you do is combine your stroke count per 25 or 50 y/m with the time it took to complete. It is a proxy measurement for technique efficiency and you should try to bring that number down over time.

Here's a great excerpt from excerpt from Swimming Fastest by Ernest Maglischo reprinted with permission.

"One of the most common drills for increasing stroke lengths is to count strokes for one pool length and repeat the drill while attempting to cover the distance with fewer strokes. All of this is done at a slow speed. This is a good drill for young and inexperienced age-group swimmers. The efficiency of their strokes and their performances will improve when they attempt to cover each pool length with fewer strokes, regardless of the speed of their swims.

Although a drill like the one just described is excellent for inexperienced swimmers, it has limited value once athletes can swim with good

Here's another excellent excerpt reprinted with permission from Human Kinetics of High-Performance Cycling by Asker Jeukendrup

"Throughout this chapter, we have used a set of reference values for aerodynamic drag area. Although these values represent good approximations to the drag area of a 70-kilogram (154-pound) rider in each position, those values are not fixed. Rather, a cyclist can influence his drag area in several ways. Riding with knees close to the centerline of the bicycle frame can reduce drag area by approximately 8 percent compared with riding with knees wide apart. This knee position will affect drag similarly whether the rider uses conventional racing handlebars or aerobars.

For riding with standard handlebars, arm position, including elbow bend and forearm alignment, can even more dramatically influence drag area. Bending the elbows allows the rider to lower his torso and thus reduce frontal area. Indeed, carefully positioned arms with the forearms horizontal and parallel to the bicycle can reduce drag area by up to 12 percent compared with widely positioned arms or straightened elbows. A wide-elbow position may result from poor technique, but it also may be due to poor bike fit and thus may not be within the control of the rider. Specifically, if the saddle-to-handlebar distance is too short, the rider may be forced to widen the arms so that they do not contact the legs. Consequently, drag area may be substantially increased because of a poorly fitted frame-stem-handlebar combination.

Optimal Time-Trial Position
Riders often ask, "How do I optimize my time-trial position?" The simple answer is, "Go to a wind tunnel and have your aerodynamic drag measured in various positions." But, of course, not every cyclist has the opportunity to take part in wind-tunnel optimization.

Kevin M. Beck has been a runner since 1984 and is currently a senior writer for Running Times magazine.

Beck has served as a distance running coach at various levels and is coached by two-time U.S. Olympic marathoner Pete Pfitzinger. He also helped coordinate a research study on exercise and diabetes at the University of California at San Francisco, where he was a diabetes researcher and exercise technician for the Mount Zion Medical Center.

He has written a book called, "Run Strong". In part of it he talks about Perfecting Running Form. With permission of Human Kinetics, I quote part of it here.

"As a physical therapist, I am often asked how the body should look while running. There are many biomechanical interpretations of proper running form. Most physical therapists’ stand is that an athlete’s individual flexibility, strength, and joint mobility define his or her form, so there is no one correct answer; however, a runner’s knowledge of what constitutes basic proper form is important.