What does "counting strokes" mean?

[boston340]

I am looking at doing this swim workout on Friday, but will probably only be able to do about 1/2 of it for now (or less).  What does "counting strokes, trying to take fewer" mean?

WORKOUT #1
2000 yards or meters

Warm-up
500 free, counting strokes, trying to take fewer

Ladder
5x100 (20 second rest)
5x75 (15 second rest)
5x50 (10 second rest)
5x25 (5 second rest)

Backstroke
5x50 swim, kick, drill, swim. Big hip roll.

[tuggyruns]

It's pretty literal- count the number of strokes you take from wall to wall. IE: Each time you arm comes out of the water and re:enters is a stroke

[centralperk]

Sept 4, 2013 12:51:02 GMT -5 tuggyruns said:

It's pretty literal- count the number of strokes you take from wall to wall. IE: Each time you arm comes out of the water and re:enters is a stroke

Yup!

[emilyj]

Ditto above.

If you did 25 strokes on your first 25, then you would want to try to do less on the next few to 'try to take fewer'. When I try to drop my stroke count, I first try to lengthen my arms in my stroke (for example, if I knew my hand was landing by the top of my head when it came back in the water, I would try to reach it out further), and then ramping up my kick intensity.

Does that make sense?

[Susie]

Right, what everybody else said. It's a drill to work on stroke efficiency.