BACKGROUND: There are four different strokes in competitive swimming; butterfly (BU), backstroke (BA), breaststroke (BR) and freestyle (FR), all strokes demanding different skills from the athlete. Numerous studies have examined the relationship between upper body strength and FR swimming performance while the other strokes are scarcely investigated. AIM: The aim of this study was to investigate the strength of the correlation between absolute upper body maximum strength, examined by the latpull, and swimming velocity, evaluated by swim sprint performance time, in the four different strokes in sprint swimming. METHODS: Fifteen elite male swimmers, age 14- 29 years, were included in the study. The study had an experimental design where the subjects performed a swim test including 50 meters of each swimming stroke in an indoor 25-meter pool. A maximum strength test was performed 12-72 hours after the swim test, using the latpull as an upper body strength measure. The Pearson correlation coefficient was used to analyse the strength of the correlation between swimming performance in the four different strokes and absolute upper body maximum strength. RESULTS: The strokes displaying the strongest correlations between swimming performance and maximum strength were FR (r=0.49, p=0.065), BU (r=0.48, p=0.073) and BA (r=0.46, p=0.081). BR presented the weakest correlation (r=0.11, p=0.69). CONCLUSIONS: There is a moderate correlation between upper body maximum strength and FR, BA and BU swimming performance and a weak correlation between upper body maximum strength and BR swimming performance. The transferability to other groups can be questioned since the results were not statistically significant. Further research is emphasized examining a larger number of subjects specialized in a certain stroke to develop the understanding of resistance training’s influence on swimming performance in the four competitive strokes of swimming.