Posts: 132
Location: Canada
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I'm in the process of getting back into triathlon training after an injury and I'm taking the opportunity to focus a lot more on swimming. Aside from being the one sport I can go full bore in at this point, it is also by far my weakest discipline. Prior to the injury I was at the point where I could largely swim as long as I wanted (I've done as long as 6km continuously), but I was stuck at a sluggish ~2:00/100m pace and not really getting any faster.
With a fresh start, however, I'd like to try and find ways to train a bit smarter on this front. I came from a running background, so my approach in the water was largely an extrapolation of those techniques (ie long continuous freestyle sets). That was somewhat exacerbated by the fact that I've always liked getting into a rhythm during exercise and drills/intervals break me out of that comfort zone.
When I look at more formal programs, however, I see a lot of short/fast work with a variety of strokes. They don't seem to do much (if any) of the longer sets. Unfortunately, there isn't a lot of documentation to explain why they do it that way and I always wrote it off as a holdover from pure swimmers used to doing short 50-400m races.
Either way, as I head back I'd like to get some input as to what people have had success with on this front. I have to be careful with the foot, so I won't be doing any races this season and hence have a bit of time to work on my approach to things. The main questions that I'd have are as follows:
- In order to prepare for longer distance Triathlons (half-irons right now), what kind of balance do you guys have between long continuous sets and shorter interval work?
- Up until this point, aside from drill work, I've pretty much exclusively stuck to freestyle. My logic was that I had no use for the other strokes in racing, so there wasn't much point in doing them. With that said, I see a lot of Triathletes doing significant amounts of work outside of freestyle so is there some benefit I'm missing (avoiding muscle imbalances, etc.)?
- When doing complex workouts with a multitude of different sets, how do you keep track of everything? I have enough trouble keeping everything straight in my head (length counts, remembering times to calculate pace, counting strokes/length, etc.) with a half dozen sets, so I'm not sure how to do it with dozens of them. With running and cycling I have electronics to do all that work, but in the pool I'm on my own.
Naturally, I'd welcome any other input that you guys can provide. I've got an opportunity to work from a clean slate here, and I'd like to try and break out of the bad habits that my old routine used to have.
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Posts: 134
Location: Virginia, USA
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I swam on a masters team for almost 15 years and got my triathlon swim training from three workouts a week with this group. Unfortunately, the team has recently disbanded, and now I'm facing doing most of my swim training on my own.
I don't come from a competitive swimming background, and on my team I was solidly in the middle. The workouts seemed to be traditional swim workouts, geared a bit towards average people trying to get some exercise, and triathletes. Swim workouts are almost always structured (at least from my experience), as opposed to running and biking workouts, which are usually - just go out and run or bike, sometimes harder, sometimes not.
It was rare to swim anything over a 200, but we would often do sets of shorter distances that added up to significant distance, such as 800, 1200 or 1500 yards or meters. Even though these weren't continuous swims, I still think they had good training effect. The rests were usually not long (5-15 seconds), and we could swim each part of the set harder. I would usually do between 2400 and 2900 yards in an hour. When I coached the 1.5 hour workouts on Saturdays, I would try to have a good 1500 yard set aimed sort of at triathletes who might be doing an Olympic distance race, but it wouldn't be a continuous set. Bottom line is that even though in a swim workout you seem to take more breaks, I don't think it's a big deal. Nothing says that just because your swim leg in a triathlon is going to be 1500 meters that you have do a bunch of long distance sets.
As far as the other strokes go, I have mixed feelings. I am lazy, and the only stroke I can do competently is freestyle, so I would always dread doing other strokes. But I knew that even if I would not be doing breast stroke during a race, there was some benefit to doing it in a swim workout. I can't really say what that benefit is, other than vague things like balance, or feel for the water, or working different muscles, or whatever. Now that I'm swimming on my own more, I don't often do other strokes, but I know that I probably should.
To go faster, I think you need to push yourself faster. The good thing about the structured workouts was the challenge of meeting an interval, and maintaining that for a while. Try setting some challenging intervals, but with a bit of a rest. If your pace is 2:00/100, try doing sets of, say, 5x100 on 2:10; 4x100 on 2:05; 3x100 on 2:00; 2x:100 on 1:55; 1x100 on 1:50.
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Posts: 132
Location: Canada
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dw152 wrote:To go faster, I think you need to push yourself faster. The good thing about the structured workouts was the challenge of meeting an interval, and maintaining that for a while. Try setting some challenging intervals, but with a bit of a rest. If your pace is 2:00/100, try doing sets of, say, 5x100 on 2:10; 4x100 on 2:05; 3x100 on 2:00; 2x:100 on 1:55; 1x100 on 1:50. Thanks again for your detailed help! I'll give those progressive sets a shot and see where it takes me. I've lost some fitness during the downtime, so the 2:00/100m pace is going to take some time to build back up to but hopefully this will accelerate the process. Any tricks to keeping the traffic flowing well in a busy pool? With the long sets it was easy enough to get a feel for how fast everyone is and keep things well spaced. With smaller sets, however, things get knocked out of sync and it's hard to keep the breaks short without gumming up the works.
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Posts: 25
Location: Philippines
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I have had the benefit of receiving advice on swimming training as I was once part of my university's swim team, albeit not a competitive one. Even on long-distance events, it is never advisable to do continuous sets as endurance should not be the focus of the training. Technique is. By doing intervals with adequate rest in between, you enable yourself to maintain proper swim form and improve the quality of your workout. Plus, you are able to push yourself with a faster pace, thereby enhancing your ability to go faster during the race.
Like you, I tend to focus on the front crawl as I do this exclusively during races. There are some benefits though in doing the other styles. You are able to trigger more swim muscles and enhance your feel for the water. Drills are also essential in checking whether your technique is optimum. You may not know it but, there are times you may be over kicking relative to your pull. Drills will allow you to balance that out.
Using a big-face clock or wrist watch is very important in tracking your swim training. It makes you aware of your intervals and improvement in your swim time.
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Posts: 102
Location: United Kingdom
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I appreciate this may be 'after the horse has bolted' - but I couldn't resist, having coached Endurance Runners, Masters swimmers and Triathletes (and raced multi discipline events) for more than 20 years.
Whether your training consists of Swimming, Running and/or Cycling, if all you do is long steady plods, you will only ever be good at doing long steady plods! You have got to vary the pace in any discipline if you want to move faster over distance.
A mixture of sprints/interval work/reducing sets/aerobic/anaerobic/tempo/endurance must be the diet.
If you are content with only about 85% of your maximum water fitness, just swim front crawl - if you prefer to be 100% water fit, use ALL strokes. NO SERIOUS SWIMMER trains on one stroke only, and a triathlete should be no different! Arguably the toughest event on the Olympic swimming programme is 400IM - much more so than say 1500Free. (try it!). Swimming front crawl only will tend to overuse a limited range of muscles, risks shoulder injury particularly, compromises water fitness as said - and can be boring!
Best advice, join a Masters swimming club and work with a decent strokes coach. Dump the wetsuit as much as possible (there's no water in the UK cold enough to merit wearing one anyway - particularly during the tri season) learn to achieve the optimum body position without swimming 'boil in the bag') If your Tri Club doesn't have a decent strokes coach, tell 'em to get one.
Adopt routine of warm up, drills, main set and swim down. Do some drills every session, check with a coach or competent swimmer to make sure you're doing a variety of drills and properly in all strokes. Single arm, high elbows, catch ups, sculling, popovs, etc etc.
Swim broken 100s, broken 200s, etc pyramids, reducing sets, aneorobic sprints of 12m (ie really sprint last half of each 25m length in a continuous 200m swim say). Try 10length IM 25fly, 50Bk, 75Br, 100Fc - say 4 times with 30secs between each 10lengths. Swim Hungarian, 25Fly 50Bk 100Br, 200Fc 100Br, 50Bk, 25Fly, or a shorter version just adding 25m each time. Swim Fc 100s with sprints on lengths 2+4, 2+3, 1+3, 1+4 etc. I have always found a useful set in a public pool is based on a 400m model of 5 lengths good working pace, 2 lengths 'thinking drills', 3 lengths flat out, 3 lengths recovery, 3 lengths flat out. This mixes speed endurance, strength endurance, technique and recovery. Now join the 400 to another to make it 800, and another...etc. A good workout for 65/75mins is 4000m swum as 10 continuous 400s swum as above. Can be varied to suit level of ability, vary the stroke if preferred, but really make the effort to vary the pace. Drink plenty in between sets (not poss in the continuous 4000 swim, but don't do that every session) vital to keep hydrated - you will be sweating profusely whilst working hard surrounded by warm water.
Aim for horizontal body position on Fc and Bk with plenty of shoulder/trunk/hip roll. Kick using whole leg from hip NOT just from knee, ankles loose with toes pointed (not dorsi flexed). Kick will only give abt 15% propulsion on FC, but use it to balance the stroke, prevent snaking, maintaining body position and streamline and avoid just adding drag if you don't kick!
There's no quick fix, no titanium gadget (so loved by triathletes) to avoid the hard work and acquisition of technique.
Good luck.
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