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Beginner Triathlon

Russell H.
Russell H. Sendmail

Swimming Drills

posted 6 months ago | Report

Not really tri-athlete but do admire the speed & endurance of your discipline. Just wondering what workouts & drills you do in the pool in preparation for a tri.

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  • Ryan
    Ryan Sendmail

    I don't do drills, per se - but every swim I try to work on some aspect of my form to become as efficient going through the water as possible. Many people do things like descending drills or sets of X yds in such-and-such a time, but I find that focusing on form and minimizing drag has allowed me to swim at a 30 min/mile pace for up to a mile and a half straight without any of those speed workouts.
    Although just recently I did a pool workout where I worked on trying to lower my strokes per length (of a 25 yd lap). Just another way to analyze form and see how tiny changes can have an effect on efficiency.

    posted 5 months ago

  • Andrew W.
    Andrew W. Sendmail

    There are lots of workouts you can do when swimming to increase your preparation and speed. Most of it depends on stroke and your current ability. A lot of folks don't think about the fact that swimming uses a lot of leg muscles, but it really does, so work the legs and really make sure you have a fast, strong kick. That said, do some speed work with a kickboard. Isolate the legs and really go at it. Another good thing to use is to grab some fins. Sure, you might think it makes swimming easier because you're going faster, but in reality, it again works the legs and helps strengthen them, as well as giving you a good feel for how you should be kicking.

    posted 5 months ago

  • Russell H.
    Russell H. Sendmail

    Thanks for the suggestions, I'm already working with fins & paddles. Pace wise, I really need to squeeze it down a lot. Right now, I couldn't imagine doing a 30 minute mile in the water! I'm paddling along at about 47 minutes right now. That means I have a lot of work to do. Any suggestions on how I can pick up my pace? I pretty much do my pool work outs alone right now. Wish I could find someone just a little faster to try and keep up with and feed off of that competitive streak I have!

    posted 5 months ago

  • Ryan
    Ryan Sendmail

    Some of what I'm about to say will sound like it's directly countering what Andrew said, and it does, but it's because there are different approaches to swimming, and they depend on what your goals are.

    For someone like Michael Phelps, who is essentially a sprint specialist - they want to expend as much energy and force as possible and power themselves through the water faster than the next guy. That takes a tremendous amount of energy to move all that water with both arms and legs, and their workouts and form will tend to follow a certain style. Thus, things like paddles, fins, sprint lap sets and such are used to increase the amount of power that can be generated while swimming.

    For people who are into the longer distances for triathlons - you can get away with some of that for the sprint distances, where the swimming distance is relatively short. However, once you get into olympic distances and greater (one mile plus), form and minimizing wasted energy is absolute king.

    Most people, when they start swimming, tend to kick - a LOT. They often fall into something like a 6-beat kick, where the feet kick 6 times per stroke. They may do a 4 beat, or an 8 beat - just depends on what they learned works for them when they were learning to swim. The problem is that kicking uses a lot of energy because the leg muscles are so damn big. So for longer distance swims, it is better to use a two beat kick, where the kick happens only once for every time a hand enters the water. It's not usually an easy thing to master because, believe it or not, the secret is in body positioning - keeping the head down far enough so that the legs don't sink, since it's legs sinking that cause most people to start kicking more often.

    So the first question is: what are your goals? If you are looking to swim faster sets for distances under 500 yds or so, I'd say keep going with the paddles and fins to build up the muscles (but I will fully admit that I know little about training for that kind of swimming). But if you are looking to more comfortably do longer distances, the first place I'd suggest you look is the Total Immersion books/DVD's - it'll teach you drills to totally reinvent your current style of swimming so that you can reach those distances by maximizing efficiency through the water, which is accomplished by moving as little as possible. There are also a bunch of videos on youtube for TI to give you an idea what it's all about.

    posted 5 months ago

  • Russell H.
    Russell H. Sendmail

    Ryan, I would really like to swim 800m in less than 16 minutes so really the 30min mile pace would best describe my goal. As far as my kick goes, it's been 2 beats for as long as I can remember. Also thanks for the mention of the Total Immersion stuff on YT. It's giving me an entirely different direction to consider. Most of what he is saying makes sense.

    posted 5 months ago

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