My swim situation - advice requested from the team
I need advice on how to improve my swim. I've managed to hide from my swim deficiency by doing half-ironman races but next year I'm planning on competing at the ITU long-course worlds which is a "triple Olympic" distance…i.e. the swim is long and matters a lot more relative to an M-dot race.
My situation:
- I have subscribed to the EN swim philosophy since 2011
- In 2012…
… I took a handful of lessons, dropped 15 sec/100 off my t-pace
…avg weekly yardage 7,200
…pretty consistent about getting in 3 swims/week
…best 1000yd TT was t-pace of 1:31 SCY
…swam 34' with wetsuit in my half-iron races
- In 2013…
…only swam for 7 weeks before my first race, then 3 another weeks of minimal yardage to my A-race
…avg weekly yardage 6,700
…pretty consistent about getting in 3 swims/week
…best 1000yd TT was t-pace of 1:34 SCY
…swam 34' with wetsuit in my half-iron races
- In 2014…
…very inconsistent about getting in my swim workouts, most weeks were 2x/week swimming
…avg weekly yardage 5,500
…best 1000yd TT was t-pace of 1:35 SCY
…half-iron swim splits of 37', 38', 37'
I think in 2014 I just took the "high ROI" approach too far. Technique is a limiter for sure, but in 2014 I probably just didn't get the fitness part to where it needed to be. The questions and thoughts in my head that I'd like feedback on are:
- If I do "high ROI" like in 2012, I think I can get back to the 34' fitness. Is that what I should target? Or should I aspire to more?
- If I aspire to more, what will it take? Is the 34' technique-limited or fitness-limited?
- In other words, if all I did was increase volume to 12k/week in the pool for 16 weeks before my race next year, would I be materially better, or is that 3k/week going to be a waste of time and get me something like 1' improvement at the cost of bike and run workouts?
- Are the EN swim workouts the right workouts for me?
In case the answers is a Master's team, I'll have to say that's literally impossible. I work 60-70 hours/week and travel 4-5 days. Committing to being in a particular place with any regularity is just not going to happen. Each week is a jigsaw puzzle of "fitting in" workouts around travel, meetings, etc.
Many thanks in advance for all your input and I'll close with the below chart that I'll call "4-year swim profile of the prototypical EN athlete"…
Comments
I'll just add my thoughts here Matt but you know I'm not one of the fast swimming breed so I "think" I'm in the same boat as you are.
For me it's much more critical to have a frequency of AT LEAST 3x swims per week! It's not so critical how long these swims are so I aim for the 3x swims according to the GF, HIM or IM plan and the last few weeks before my race I try to squeeze in 1-2 additional (preferably open-water) swims.
Last year I strictly followed the EN swim workouts without any trainer or guidance from outside as I was mostly alone in a damn 20yrd pool in Fremont. This took me to a 1:05 swim split at IMAT followed by a 33' at my HIM 2 months later (both times with wetsuit).
This winter I was looking for a "different" approach to get more speed in the water as I was absolutely sure it was not about fitness at that time. What I found was "Swim Speed Secrets" from Sheila Taormina on Amazon ... so I ordered the book and the training cards providing a 3x per week workouts for a 16 week phase which I tried to follow as much as I could until now.
My race next week will tell me if my feeling that I'm "faster" than last year is really true
So bottomline of this story - this are MY top-5 for getting faster in the water:
1) minimum of 3 swim workouts per week
2) focus on the catch+pull instead of body position (80% of your speed comes from a strong C+P)
3) do a drill-set on every of your workouts after WU - eg 8x50 as 25 drill and 25 free easy is a great start
4) do a lot of really fast intervals (50's, 100's,) and reduce endurance sets like 4x600
5) add tubing to the end of all your swim workouts - you can also do a lot of "dry swim training" with that device so I really think this would be an extremely valuable device for you (I used it on all of my business travels this year)
Hey Matt,
I found myself in a similar situation several years ago. I wanted to get faster in the swim, so I asked my bro-in-law (coach, former Olympian) to critique my stroke. After a couple hundred meters, he stopped the video, told me to get out, and said: "You have two options: (1) fix your terrible form and train good form on 7-10k per week or (2) train to drag that s&*%#y form through the water by swimming 25k+ per week." Easy choice. He advised me to quit my Masters team, gave me a copy of Total Immersion, and told me to stretch, drill and keep all intervals short enough so that I never compromise form. Muscle memory must only learn good form. 6-9 months later . . . drastic improvement. Moved from top 30% in the swim to top 10% (HIM from :35 to :30-:31, IM from 1:12 to :59-1:02).
Based on your huge cardiovascular system and seemingly endless power, you've almost certainly been using fitness to drag "sub-optimal" form through the water. Swimming is 75-85% hydrodynamics, so fitness is a relatively small lever and can only do so much. In addition to Stephan's good recommendations, here's what I would suggest:
1) Video. Take it after a good warm up and let your natural form take over. Share it with a friend who's a phish or coach, publicly in the forums or PM it to me or others who would be more than willing to watch.
2) Resources. Rich's e-book is great, and watching his video critiques of other swimmers after viewing my own video was very powerful and helpful. TI is still good. Pay attention to the smallest of details. Once any positional issues have been addressed, move on to Sheila's great book and attack the catch and pull - the place where your strength and fitness will generate serious speed . . . if done properly.
3) Flexibility. This can be a serious limiter. Shoulders and ankles. With that bike and run strength, I'd be willing to bet quite a bit that your toes don't like to point - water foot brakes are bad.
4) OS. If you can logistically get in a swim or two each week this winter with continued focus on form, you'll be better prepared to add volume onto your newly refined form in early 2015.
5) Skip all of the above and swim 25k per week.
I'm very happy to see you attack this low-hanging fruit. And I have no doubt that you'll quickly tackle it (see where Tim's swim went from IMTX13 to 14 through lots of focus, drills and Cronk-like work). I moved swim form to the back burner last season and paid for it at IMTX. Last 2 months have seen lots of drills, cord-work and hyper-focus on form . . . I saw big results after just 4 weeks (13:50 1k TT).
I'm sure you see your recent HIM results and realize what 4-7 minutes would mean. But I would contend that 12-15 minutes on the swim at a mass-start IM could actually translate to 20 minutes (with a 1:15 swim, the entire swim will be very congested and probably quite crooked, T1 will be a slow moving zoo, and you may have to pass more than 1,000 on the bike - bad for VI, ^ penalty opportunities).
Just my $0.02. Feel free to ping me anytime. Best of luck.
Mike
Taormina's book emphasizes the catch/pull. She contends that's where the ROI is and she contends that most people have pretty good body position. Last year (2013), I had a very good swimming year following her workouts, which emphasize drills and sets designed to build some catch/pull muscle. Just to give a couple examples, she has you do a fair amount of "Tarzan" swimming, i.e., with your head completely out of the water and a fair amount of butterfly. Neither of these has much if anything to do with getting good freestyle position, but both are good at developing catch/pull power.
For reasons that are irrelevant but well known, high intensity training has not really been possible for me this summer, and I would not have done well with Taormina's workouts again...but that's a personal issue. I had to find something else this cycle than 20 x 100 at fastest possible average with 10 seconds rest or doing a lot of butterfly. She's also big on tubing, which can be done at home or at the pool (or in a hotel room in Tokyo).
I know I have a body position issue. Anyone who swims faster with a pull buoy and no kicking compared to normal swimming (both at moderately hard intensity) has a body position issue. If that's you too, I'll tell you something that on my n=1 dataset has helped me get to the high end of my "normal swimming range" without a lot of really fast swimming this year. I bought a swimming snorkel, and I kicked for a non-trivial time without a board but with the snorkel and in streamline position at almost every workout. 10-12 min of kicking as part of warmup was my baseline. i've not seen anyone else endorse this, in part because kicking is not so important in distance swimming, especially with a wet suit. But darn it if it didn't help me get my body position better. There's nothing else to do but stretch out, get the core fairly solid and get your ass a little higher or you won't get anywhere. Also, there are some smaller stabilizer-type muscles that get strengthened.
1. My guess is that 34' for 1.9K pace won't cut it. I took a look at the results from the last few ITU Long Distance World Championships in Mens 35-39 and estimating 27 minutes for each 1500 meters will put you at or near the back of the pack. You are a great biker and runner, but you just can't leave yourself that much of a hole. Looking at past results, it looks like you will need a swim time of 1:10 to 1:15 to be in the mix out of the water. That's 23'-25' per 1500 meters. Depending on how good you are at turns in the pool (irrelevant in the open water), my guess for the equivalent 1000 yard TT is 13:00-13:30, so 1:20/100 yard pace.
Here's the result page:
http://www.triathlon.org/results/search?event_name=&event_category=348&event_sport=356&event_distance=&event_year=all&event_region=&event_country=&button=Search
2. I think the answer to the technique v. fitness question is "it depends." Your best 1000 yard TT this year is 1:35, but what can you do for 100 all-out? 200 all-out? If you can swim a 1:15 for 100 and 2:40 for 200, then it's fitness based. If the times are 1:25 and 3:00, then it's probably a technique problem.
3. Putting in the extra miles in the pool will hurt your bike and run. No way around it. But since you are coming in with such high bike and run fitness, the tradeoff is probably worth it. I don't know how hard you swim in training, but I suspect that you don't push yourself like you do on the bike and run. Just like the Outseason workouts teach you to redefine what "hard" really means, I would guess you need to redefine what swimming hard means.
4. You might consider committing heresy and swimming in the Outseason. I find that it takes at least a month of regular swimming following a multi-month break to even get back to a level of fitness where I can start doing real swim workouts. Perhaps if you swam once or twice a week throughout the winter, you could build your fitness much higher.
5. It looks to me like you are averaging 2,200-2,500 yards per swim workout. I don't think that is enough to make real improvements at the speeds you should be aiming at. For a race distance of 3000 meters or longer, a good main set is 2000 yards at least. 3,200-3,500 yards per workout is closer to the min I would do.
Here is my two cents (from a non-fish adult onset swimmer who is much slower than you on the bike and run :-)  
:
If you want to swim faster you need to swim more, and do lots of hard sets.
I think you would really benefit from a swim block of 3-6 months of swimming this fall/winter 5x week and working up to 15000+ yards or metres. A lot of people say the gains you get from this you will keep your whole life.
I think you are so fast on the run and bike you can afford to give up some training in those disciplines in the short term. And theoretically the swim fitness you gain may allow you to leave the water fresher and help make up for perhaps being a bit less fit on the bike or run (which I don't think you would be anyway).
If you can't make it to the pool that often , have you thought about the VASA erg? There is a thread going on at slow twitch about it. A lot of swimming is technique I agree , but I think that if you don't have specific muscle endurance then your ability to hold good technique will suffer. If you can't get to the pool often enough , the VASA might be the answer.
As to technique, I've never seen you swim, so it's hard to know how much of a limiter that is. But Byerts suggestion to check you sprint speed in a 100 is probably a good place to start. A fast 100 doesn't require *that* much fitness (unless you're going for the Gold), but it will expose deficient technique. If your 100 sprint time is closer than 10 seconds to your 1000 yd TT avg/100, you would benefit from a coaching evaluation.
WAAAAY back when I was an age group swim coach (kids under 15, in general), they seemed to respond very well to one particular piece of advice: "Finish Hard" meaning, finish the stroke all the way back past the hips, accelerating the speed of the hand all the way thru the stroke - slow at the catch, fastest just before exiting the water.
And one thing that has helped me maintain a good "feel" for the water (meaning a stable catch and pull, enabling the use of back and core strength) as I lose my own arm strength is the use of paddles. Specifically, taking the straps off the paddles, and doing 50s at a time, alternating with swim 50s. this not only increases my feel for the water, it forces me to (a) point my hands down at the start of the pull and (b) avoid too much "wandering" by my hands in the water. If you're not grabbing and holding the water right, the paddles will fly off my hands. NB: underwater, my fingers are flat and together on the paddle; I grab the edge with my thumb and little finger only as I exit the water.
Much of what has been said already has been important for my improvements, so I'll bullet those and tell you specifically whats working for me.
1. Consistency. Not just 3x a week but 10-12 mo a year.
2. Yardage: 2800-4000 per wko: 8100-11000yd a week.
3. Technique, Technique, Technique. No swimmer is ever beyond doing drills, drills every wko.
4. 3 WKOs s broken out as: Technique Day, Fast Day, Long Day. However, almost every workout has at least 600-1000 yds of drills. Fast Days are threshold wkos, ( like the Bike FTP 40' @ z4 wko or the Run 3x1mi @z4) repeats of 400's, 200's, or 100's w/ short rests at threshold pace. Long days are the long steady pulls usually open water, but maybe 1000 repeats often only ~ 5 secs slower than threshold.
So I've been using a workout set from SwimSmooth.com (http://www.swimsmooth.com/trainingplans.html) and substituting these for the swim wko in my EN plan. They are highly structured. Each book has 11 wks of workouts @ 3 days a week, each workout is completely different and focuses on various aspects of roll, catch, pull, cadence, speed. Never boring. I HIGHLY recommend them. I typically will just keep recycling the book throughout the year, starting over when I get to the end. In the course of a little over 1 year I've seen about a 1sec per 100yd improvement every 2-4 weeks depending on consistency and other life issues. I've dropped from 1:45/100 last summer to testing in @ 1:30/100 tonight. I'm thinking 1:25 isn't out of reach this fall. I can't say enough about the plan, and about SwimSmooth. Their philosophy on training and technique works for me very well, and I think based on what I've read elsewhere its very compatible with Stephan and William's suggestion of the Taormina book, or with Tower26 training.
Hope that helps some!
Rian....are you referring to the waterproof plan thing, I'm assuming? Do you recommend getting both the HIM and IM distance plans?....or would you just shorten some of the IM workouts for HIM training?
Sorry for the hijack Matt. Jeff, yes the waterproof books. I use the IM plan regardless of time of year, since thats my ultimate A race. I'm not sure how it compares to HIM plan really, sounds like volume is similar, likely more speed work and less long distance swims.
My reaction most immediately is that there may be lots of ways to skin this cat and perhaps I have to better understand which if the multiple potential approaches is best for me.
There seems to be a fundamental "fitness vs. technique" question. My all-out 100 is of ~1:20 is naturally right smack in the middle of the range Michael suggests is a good "fitness vs. technique" diagnosis. Lovely. My guess is that this year my swim training was simply deficient and if I trained as hard as in prior years (3x swims and 10k yd/week) I'd have been back at the 34' swim I had in prior years. But I think that's where my top fitness would leave me and I think the next step-change is really quite dependent on technique. Notwithstanding the foregoing, I do agree with the multiple comments about the importance of frequency, swimming in the OS, higher volume per workout, etc.
In terms of technique, I am such a beginner in this area that truthfully I don't even understand half the advice that you all gave me. It seems catch+pull is critical, and I don't even understand what makes a good catch+pull let alone how to focus on it. This requires professional intervention and I'll need to invest in that. I like the idea of swapping EN workouts with some swim workouts from SwimSmooth or Taormina or whatever, so I will look to do that after I get some coaching and as I get into the meat of trying to improve.
One piece of advice that really resonates with me is Michaels point #3 which I think is implied by Stefan as well is about swimming harder. This is consistent with some input I got from Matt Ancona when I emailed him on this topic – he talked about his improvement from 1:10 to sub-1:00 IM swim and about pushing himself in workouts beyond his comfort zone. I'm sure I don't do this. A couple of years ago I dropped into a couple of masters swims at a pool in DC (unintentionally…they happened to be there when I showed up and had most of the lanes) and in those 3 swim workouts (a) I managed to do sets swimming 1:25-1:27/100 getting chased around the pool that I would normally do at 1:37-1:38/100 and (b) I was sore the next day and incurred recovery cost (which NEVER happens to me when I do swim workouts). So I understand there is probably opportunity in that respect.
Tactically, I need to figure out how to fit this all in. I am committed to swimming in the OS and doing a swim block, so this isn't about willingness to carve out hours in the week. The more critical issue is how to fit it into an overall season plan between now and the Sweden race at the end of June. Aside from the classic dieter's mentality of forever saying "I'll start next week" (which I thankfully don't succumb to other than with the "swim improvement project"), I do wrestle with how to fit this in without compromising my strength in the other sports…strengths which, frankly, will still be – MUST still be – the underlying performance driver for me. I guess one thing I should do is just be more confident that I won't lose all my strengths in the other sports by taking some time to focus on swimming. After all, looking at 2013/2014:
- I took 18 weeks off of biking and yet fully rebuilt my FTP essentially between March and June and was biking as fast as I ever have in my races June-August
- I got injured and had my foot in a boot with zero running Jan/Feb, didn't start real training until April yet set run split PRs in June
Sorry, the above is more me convincing myself. But I'm sure you can understand how I feel about it.
Given the two running races I have on the calendar and my likely work schedule, maybe the right gameplan is:
1. Through Oct 12
- finish my Chicago Marathon build
- run focus + maintenance bike 2x/week
2. Oct 13 through Nov 16 (5 weeks)
- marathon recovery and short burst to prep for RnR half-marathon in Vegas
- run focus + maintenance bike 2x/week
- add unstructured swimming "as able" to prep for a swim block, with the logic that I won't benefit from proper coaching and workouts if I'm coming in with literally zero swim fitness…for example recovery week from the marathon I won't be running much, I have a vacation in Mexico for a week in October so could aim to swim a bunch there, etc.
3. Nov 17 to Dec 28 (6 weeks)
- swim focus…coaching plus 4-5x swimming/week
- maintenance bike 2x/wk
- minimal running (open question how to work in any running but will probably look like 30 min runs "as able" based on schedule)
4. 1 week "transition"
5. 3 months of a "balanced outseason" that managed to work swimming into the mix (3x workouts, 10k yds target weekly)…specifics will need to be defined…
6. 3 months build to Sweden "A race"
A few years ago, we had masters in my area for almost exactly 2/3 of a year (long story...not the fault of the club), and I swam it regularly. It was 3 days/week and I was the slowest swimmer (though not by a ridiculous margin). It provided a great challenge, and even when there were only a couple of us, the kids were there to swim "against" in other lanes, so it was a good setup. It ran roughly Jan - August. It was coached by the local youth club, so it was a quality, coached program..it was coached workouts, not lessons.
There's no doubt in my mind that I worked the hardest swimming during that Masters period that I have in all the last 10 years or so. My pool swimming was also the fastest then than it has been. My open water times have held despite this (and even improved a bit), but I think this is because (a) I've learned to be a better open water swimmer, and (b) my baseline not-super-hard swimming has held up fairly well, even if my top end speed has declined. I've accomplished that through a few more lessons and just getting smarter about that level of training.
For you as a more significant vet than I was at the time, I am quite confident that you learning more top end speed would improve your race-day performance. You discovered this with your biking and running in sequence, and it will be the same for your swimming.
That said, the recovery cost issue is a real one when you are focusing on swim fitness and swimming hard. You're obviously focusing on swimming in Oct and Nov, so that's not a big deal. However, if you keep up 3 hard masters swims in the "balanced outseason", you may find that there is a cost that carries over to the other workouts. I am not saying this is bad...but I am confirming what concerns you.
SwimSmooth: Just check out their site and I have a feeling if the EN philosophies of FTP and vDot resonate with you than the CSS (Critical Swim Speed) will translate well. I just started working with a coach who got me thinking about things like cadence and stroke length and it's an entire new dimension if you haven't already been exposed to it.
Frequency: Super helpful, IMO. Not to a ridiculous degree... but if you can get that minimum set towards 3K and hit that 3-4x/week most weeks in the OS you'll be well ahead of yourself from last year.
Also, good job logging all your deets - super helpful when you want to flush out something like this!
It will be great to watch how and what you implement so we can all learn from your swim project!
Good luck!
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But then I changed my gameplan. The reality is that when I add up all the hours and commitment required, this just doesn't meet my personal ROI bar. I have come to some decisions about my 2015 season which I will post separately but the bottom line is that to make the next leap forward in my triathlon performance I will need to invest time that I just don't have right now.
In 2012 and 2013 I swam only "in-season" but was very consistent swimming 3x/wk and doing hard workouts. In those years I swam "satisfactorily" in my races…around 34' (wetsuit) in a half-iron and exiting the water feeling like I hadn't pushed hard at all. This past year I was inconsistent and only did 5-6k yd/wk with many weeks only doing a single workout <3k yd. So I reaped what I sowed and had poor swim splits. I do believe that if I hit my in-season swim workouts as consistently as I hit my run and bike workouts and "do what I did in 2012 and 2013" (ok, with more yardage and prob different workouts) that I should be able to swim around 70' in the ironman and exit the water feeling fresh. That is my goal. Targeting a breakthrough 60-65' swim split just isn't worth it for me right now. <br />
If I train hard in-season but swim 75 or 80' in the race then I made the wrong call. But I'm rolling the dice on this one. Too much else going on right now.
Thanks again for all of your input and I'll certainly keep you all posted with how things go.
Happy holidays,
Matt
"I do believe that if I hit my in-season swim workouts as consistently as I hit my run and bike workouts and "do what I did in 2012 and 2013" (ok, with more yardage and prob different workouts) that I should be able to swim around 70' in the ironman and exit the water feeling fresh."
That;s good enough.