Good debate on ST about swim training
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/gforum.cgi?post=3698825
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/gforum.cgi?post=3698386
I actually agree with Paulo and Jordan Rapp and Brett Sutton.
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http://forum.slowtwitch.com/gforum.cgi?post=3698825
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/gforum.cgi?post=3698386
I actually agree with Paulo and Jordan Rapp and Brett Sutton.
Comments
Do you have a link to the Sutton article that they're referencing? I disagree with Paulo's tweet if it's applied generally across the board (it certainly would have a different outcome for a 1:10/100y swimmer as opposed to a 2:10/100y swimmer) , but will wait until I read the whole article for any further comment.
It's in the second link I posted which didn't seem to hyperlink for some reason: http://forum.slowtwitch.com/gforum.cgi?post=3698386
Thanks for the link. I think his advice makes sense. For people who already have good enough technique, that is. Generally I'd say that's in the 1:40/100y and under crowd. If you're in this ballpark, you can certainly get better by grinding out the yardage. If you're much slower than that, technique is probably your limiter and any yards you throw on top of that bad technique will not buy you much. It seems like a lot of the ST'ers are arguing it as an "either/or" proposition, when for most people it's a combo of technique and swim fitness that will buy them some speed in the water. The percentages of each vary wildly with each swimmer, and it's pretty near impossible to make a generalized prediction that will work across the board for all swimmers. Thus the ROI for each swimmer's investment in technique instruction vs. yardage will be different.
I don't think swimming is as analagous to biking and running as many triathletes seem to think. It's more like dance or martial arts, where you learn good technique first, then build good fitness on top of it. A very fit ballerina who has not put in the practice of 1st position, 2nd position, tendue, etc. still isn't going to be a good dancer. A very fit martial artist with poor techique will break their wrist when they punch wrong with all that force. I've seen all too many triathletes grind out yards and yards without ever getting faster. Some seem to develop a natural feel for the water, some people really struggle with that and yards won't fix it.
That being said, I do agree with him that swimming in the open water is vastly different than swimming in the pool, and a lot of triathletes don't spend enough time in the open water (often because they don't have the opportunity). A higher turnover, and more emphasis on the back end of the stroke, with less emphasis on the glide, plus sighting makes OW swimming a semi-separate skill. A swimmer with relatively good body position and an efficient distance kick can get a lot of mileage in the pool out of pull buoy and paddles to build open water skill and durability. But frequently people use these toys to mask a poor body position and an ineffective kick and in that case they're not doing much good.
In general, a good swim coach can let you know where your weaknesses lie and where best to put your limited swimming time - technique, yards, or a mix of both.
"Technique" is a very broad term. See my discussion here about technique related to body position vs propulsion, the fitness requirements for each, etc.
I think Rapp is a very thoughtful guy. But I infer that his premise is built on the basis "I'm not just a hobbyist with a job and family, but I am a 20+ hour/week guy who is out to maximize my potential." The sum of his advice that I've read over time is never about doing less (unless it referred to specific rest) or what you ought to do if you want to spend 8-14 hours/week...it is always about how to be the best you could possibly be. And, frankly, that's the source (I think) of some of the disagreements with him.
I don't have a life that allows me to absolutely maximize my potential. Like most of us around here, I maximize my performance within certain life constraints that don't allow for year round 20 hour weeks and 10 hours of sleep every night.
So even thought it's well documented elsewhere that I could stand to save a few minutes on the swim, it just isn't time I can realistically spend to be swimming 12-15K or more at this time of year, even though I have convenient pool access. (I budget about 3K/hour) Or if I did, it would be a conscious swim-focus, and I'm sure I would hear from Mr. Rapp that I ought to be keeping up a 2 hour run all year in the next paragraph.
For me, the whole ROI and season/time/effort management is a "limiter" and something I just have to live with.
My apology if this may sound abrasive, but just cannot resist. I admit I did not read Sutton's stuff, neither did I go past Sousa's twitter statement on ST, I really did not care about what ST community had to say.
Here is my thought, if one wants to learn about swimming, than the individual selects a vast library of USA Swimming and ASCA, start reading such a wealth of reading material that accomplished american swim coaches have written about swimming. There are too many to list, but you cannot go wrong looking at any of those. You certainly should not be learning about swimming from Sousa.
The statement made could not be further from the truth. I could take it appart from any angle, however keep this in mind:
1. Novice 6-10 year old swimmers spend first 2 years doing 90% drills during practice with a total disregard for volume or intensity, we rarely let them put a full stroke to use as in most cases it has not been mastered yet, so pounding length after length engraving wrong habits is a recipe for a dead end in one's swimming career. Deconstructing/ correcting in many cases becomes next to impossible. Where stroke construction is done in group setting, stroke correction is strictly done in one on one mode.
2. After that, we ship them over to the competitive side of the team, where technique work is further reinforced and makes up 50% of total work early in the season. We than introduce doing drills at the back end of the practice, teaching holding perfect stroke even when tired.
3. It is when they have had 3-4 years of solid technique based foundation work that we turn focus to building fitness to maintain the stroke integrtity deep into the hard interval session/ late in the race. The one that maintains his stroke integrity the longest, wins the race, proven over and over.
Yes, it is not the other way around. Swimming has no other sport similar to it but golf and tennis. Just remember that.
The rest, I did not read there, nor I care. When I need to learn something about swimming, I read Salo, Urbancek, Councilman and recent Maglischo work, many others too, but all very accomplished american coaches that have produced mulitple Worlds and Olympics medalists. Not Sousa. I hate to say this, but reading his stuff is almost wasting your time.
Please forgive me for sounding abrasive.
I think most of the disconnect with Sutton and Paulo's comments come from competitive swimmers or swim coaches who think technique, technique and technique. That's what you guys know and you'd be right. I don't think anyone is discounting the virtues of technique just that the good enough technique crowd gets a bigger bang for their buck by hammering away distance as opposed to spending time drilling. If that means using pull buoys and paddles the get through the distance than so be it.
I'll use myself as a reference point. I'm a good enough technique swimmer. I certainly have a couple minor flaws that I could correct but I'm not inept in the water. I've never once had a swim lesson. I just did what I thought made sense in the water and have made minor tweaks as I've went along. I'm not a top-5% guy out of the water but I'm top 15-20%. I've done 1:06 IM swims and 32 minute HIM swims. In late 2010 and early 2011, I did most of my training with straight sets using swim toys and felt on top of my game. After the Texas 70.3 in early April, I made a conscious decision to lose the swim toys and concentrate on sets and drills with some straight set stuff thrown in. I had several non-wetsuit swims coming up so I thought that made sense. That's what my competitive lifelong swimming friends said was the thing to do. You know what happened. My swim times suffered. My swim endurance suffered.
This year I plan on doing only one non-wetsuit swim. The toys are coming back out and I'm not doing any set and drill stuff. I think my best bet is straight set, endurance stuff using swim toys to hold form -- and I'd do that even if I wasn't mostly doing wetsuit races. It's what worked best for me.
I agree with Rich's take that went like this:
[quote Rich Strauss]
In my experience, and I'm admittedly swagging these numbers, most swimmers swimming slower than about a 1:15-20 IM swim still have gains to be made from improving the technique of body position. That is, if you're swimming a 1:35, for example, you have ~15-20' to be gained by simply turning your barge into a speedboat hull. Doing so should be approached much like learning to play a musical instrument until about 12-14wks out from your goal race, at which you shift your focus over to fitness swimming so you can sustain your new technique for the distance of your race.
Propulsive swimming:
As your body position improves (barge --> speedboat) and you become a faster swimmer, becoming faster still becomes more about better applying your fitness to the water...generally, grabbing more water. This is the technique of the pull, catch, hand position, etc.
Absolute swim time gains on race day become smaller and smaller, requiring a greater and greater time/fitness/hard work investment.
That said, in my experience, swimmers between about 1:08-12 can usually get a quick 4-6' swim split pop from finding one small technique tip that just clicks for them. But below about 1:05-6...it's definitely about putting in the work. The sub 1:00 learned-to-swim-as-an-adult triathlete is very, very rare and usually requires a massive time and effort investment.
As has been noted, many people in this thread do the math on the time invested vs the gain on race day. Many people make their own time value assessment and decide where they should spend their time, given the other priorities in their lives. For example, a 40hr work week father of 3 does the math on the time investment required to go from 1:15 to 1:10 and makes a decision. Someone else with different considerations makes a different decision.
My general guidance is:
If you are slower than about a 1:15-20 IM swim, swimming faster for you is generally more about body position and less about fitness, ie, the power needed to grab more water. You should be doing a lot of body position drills until about 12-14wks out from your race, then transition to more fitness-swimming.
If you're faster than about 1:15-20, swimming faster is becoming more about grabbing more water and the fitness/power associated with that.
Sub ~1:10...future gains will be smaller and harder to achieve.
In my opinion, anyone with limited time resources should consider this above to decide how to best allocate those resources: how/when/what flavor of swimming should I invest in at different times of the year? The answer is individual and is a function of current swim ability, your personal time constraints, race day goals, etc.
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I 100% agree with your assessment of Jordan. He does not understand what it's like to be a mere mortal. That stated, I think he's arguing for ROI in that thread when it comes to swimming. While not in the same manner as we do around here but he and Paulo are basically saying to quit worrying about technique drills and get your ass in the pool and bang out some distance because that can make one a better triathlete. Their comments, however, weren't aimed at the slow swimmers who can make much better strides actually learning how to swim. It was aimed an ability level or two above that. That's the way I took it and felt it rang true.
I'm firmly in the camp that, for some of us, swim fitness can make a difference. How much? In my case, apparently, a lot. But I disagree that all it takes is a lot of endurance swimming.
In my 50's, I was a 1:06 IM swimmer, after swimming on and of (more on than off) all my life. Then I got injured, was out of the pool for 5 months, losing strength and muscle mass. After 4 months of just slogging through the water for 45 minutes at a time (all I could do at that point), I went 1:25 in June in IM CDA. In the summer, I was strong enough to add some "sets", by which I mean swimming shorter distances (50-200) at a much harder/faster effort. This started in August, and I am now at the point where I can do 1000 yards just 20 seconds slower than before my problems began. (My first test in Feb was 3:30 slower). I think I cojuld pull out a 1:10 2.4 mile swim now.
I swim with either a pull bouy or DeSoto speed tube, and use paddles for 400 yds each session. The paddles are my "technique work". I use them to remind me how to grab the water and pull straight through it.
I think that both strrength/fitness, and hard efforts, like we do on the bike and the run, are necessary for clawing one's way to time improvements once the good enough technique is there. As we all know, it's just a question of how much time one wants to invest. For me, I was motivated to invest the time to get back to where I was before, and because, with my IM goals, every minute does mean something to me, and I have a bit more freedom than others (I only work 6 days a month) to look for that time.
I agree w/ Bob here. I also thought the gist of it was aimed more at the pointy end of the field rather than the 2:00+/100y swimmers. But a good discussion nonetheless.
I haven't read all of this thread, or the ST thread, and I posted some thoughts to the ST thread, replying to Jordan...so let me know if that thread has gone south since then and I'll step in. To be honest, I was using the post to tee up another post that will direct people to download our swim clinic ebook for technique help
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But understand that Jordan and Pablo Salsa are part of a cadre of ST'ers who get off on giving short, pithy advice that basically calls you a pussy, you need to do more work, etc. Why they have to give this advice in a tone that no adult would ever use with another adult...I just can't understand.
But the world is full of athletes swimming lots and lots, not doing technique work, and continuing to swim very, very slowly. If you can't understand that swimming is fundamentally different from biking and running, and is much more like golf and tennis, then in my opinion you just don't understand swimming.
Alexander's progression is spot on. I'm sorry, but if you're swimming slower than about 1:50/100yd/m, swimming faster is 100% about technique. That is NOT a fitness problem. That's a jacked up stroke problem, period, and swimming lots and lots just makes you very fit with your shitty stroke.
Paulo's/Jordan/ST's advice is similar to me telling you go whack 10000 golf balls/tennis balls, bang on the piano keys for hundreds of hours. Just wrong...
Interesting discussion.
My name is Linda, and I have bad form.
I could not agree more with what Rich says. To that end, like my running, I am back to the basics completely rebuilding my stroke. I have to. Somewhere along the line, whatever technique I had swirled down the toilet. My catch is terrible, and I'm just slipping through the water instead of propelling. I am getting slower (duh). So with video, above and below the water, guidance, and a progression of how to rebuild, I'll spend as long as it takes to do it right.
I know the swim world very well as I live with two Div 1 swimmers, and what I have been doing is crap. Swimming in my current state of devolution is counterproductive to my goals and a stupid way to spend my time. So my promise to myself is "to never take another bad swim stroke." Period.
I also want a Vasa swim trainer--fantastic piece of equipment to workout on in many ways. Hunting, hunting for a used one.... :-)
Totally agree with Coach P and R...
My Name is Nate Parady and I am a non swimmer who started in March 2010, who listened to everything Coach RnP told me, watched the videos in the Swim eBook 100 times, continued to do things that felt "weird" in the pool (they felt weird because it was probably good form that I wasn't used to) and swam a 1:09 at LP...Good enough for this MOPER...
IMO, for the vast majority of folks i.e. people who aren't worried about Kona the swim is just the price of admission to the rest of the day where you have so many more ways to make up a few minutes of time over the next 138 miles. Now, to be honest, if I had a pool in my back yard or in the basement of my mansion (yah right), I would probably swim year round b/c its such a good overal fitness sport with minimal body impact (assuming shoulders aren't an issue).
Next season swim goals are to find that One thing that Rich describes that gives me a POP in my swim time of a few minutes. Or honestly keeping roughly the same swim time but doing it more efficiently might be even better.
It went south already. Jordan replied, respectfully in my opinion, but some of the hanger-ons weren't so kind. :-)
Rich wrote: I'm sorry, but if you're swimming slower than about 1:50/100yd/m, swimming faster is 100% about technique. That is NOT a fitness problem. That's a jacked up stroke problem, period, and swimming lots and lots just makes you very fit with your shitty stroke.
I think everyone is more or less in agreement and arguing the same thing but it's the way in which things are being said that is causing confusion. Like I stated earlier, I think Paulo and Sutton's initial comments (and Rapp's replies) were aimed at the 1:40/100m and under crowd and not the 2:00-plus/100m crowd. I think that was implicit in nature.
I strongly agree with Jordan's statement of: "The point of Paulo's (and Brett's) advice is NOT just to HTFU and swim lots. It is to HTFU and swim *MORE* while also *USING TOOLS THAT FORCIBLY CORRECT YOUR TECHNIQUE.*"
^^^ I get that ^^^
Noodles and arm floaties.
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Pull buoy and paddles.
I'll quote Jordan Rapp (two separate quotes), who made the following comments:
"There is also the use of the tools to make that hard swimming even more productive. Band/paddles/pull-buoy/etc. all are what Paulo and Joel (and maybe others) call "brute force" tools. If you want to actually make it across the pool with banded ankles, you need to hold the water. Likewise, paddles are great for putting your hand in a proper position and helping you hold the water. Pull buoys help correct and establish body position. You can waste time drilling. OR you can simultaneously work on your fitness AND your technique. This is more of what Sutton was saying than what Paulo was alluding to in his tweet, but it's part of the same overall message."
"Paddles, and/or a pull buoy, and/or a band DO actively force changes in technique. Paddles have the most dramatic impact on actual mechanics, while a pull buoy will have the most dramatic impact on body position. The band is more like the equivalent of running hills; it's just harder swimming and the better you swim the easier it is. But pull buoy and paddles fundamentally change things about how you move through the water. The pull buoy isn't like Newtons; it's (sort of) like a Zero-G treadmill. It's easier to run fast when you effectively weigh 50% of what you really do. Likewise it's easier to swim correctly when you don't have to actively think about keeping your hips up, something that can be especially challenging on legs that are tired from a lot of running/biking. I can't actually think of a running equivalent for paddles, perhaps because the ability of the human body to propel itself correctly with a running stride is pretty basic. It's a much simpler act to do correctly than pulling the water is. Yes, you can still swim like crap with paddles, but paddles do a remarkable job of putting your hand in the proper position to catch and in helping you hold the water throughout the entire length of the stroke."
I went back through the thread and thought the advice from Coach Daz was most interesting, but I had no idea what he meant when he said age groupers should invest in swimming ROM. Any idea?
That's like any piece of advice. There's always a counterpoint. My n=1 was I was at my absolute best from both a technique and fitness perspective when using the buoy and paddles... and once again, I'm an above average swimmer with good enough technique. I wouldn't condone paddles and buoy if you're a 1:30 IM swimmer. There's better gains to be made by addressing serious technique issues despite any forcible corrections a buoy or paddles may help with.
I wanted to get Coach Daz's post as well but I also had a hard time following some of it.
Getting back to the original question, paddles (used with a pull buoy) should be part of that picture, but they should be used in moderation. Yes, they can help improve technique and power. Personally, I think they're more helpful for the former, especially for less experienced swimmers.
I have done 3 IM swims, 1:36, 1:26 & 1:40, in that order.
I found a coach who is a swim coach by trade (as well as a tri coach) he started me out on very basic technique building drills for 5 sessions over three weeks. he is constantly timing me and counting my strokes, he has gotten me to focus on things I may have lost touch with, as I know I was a much better swimmer as a kid.
After just a few weeks of drills and work and getting me to focus on swimming slower, EG: gliding more, less strokes, being on my side more (rich's speedboat) i am swimming a length 11seconds faster with ten fewer strokes, huge improvement... i am fully confident that when i get back on the IM plan next spring, i am going to see huge improvements in my overall swim times if i can keep the new technique ingrained in my head and not fall back to old ways...
To this discussion I add, that working on your swim in a matter of "when." Yes, we should all work to becoming triathletes who can swim 1:15, or below Ironman swims, but you have to have the bandwidth to do the work.
For my first Ironman, I had a solid, MOP time, with a really horrible swim time. Overall result? I probably did the best with my available training bandwidth to focus on Ironman execution and not worry terribly about the swim. Okay, maybe I could have worried a little more about my swim.
Now, I've been on this team long enough and training long enough to have mastered the basic training load, built a good amount of biking and running fitness, know how to use my power meter, and all sorts of stuff about nutrition, rest, and core strength. Would I have had bandwidth to work on my swim while trying to figure out all this other stuff? Probably not.
Now, I do.
a) the interesting thing to work on. Learning to swim and swim well is really rewarding and interesting to this athlete.
b) Swimming technique and endurance is my current low-hanging fruit of training. Swim training, for me, has really been directed on this principle: do the easiest thing first. Some years, that was becoming confident in my ability to float, or making friends with the open water.
Scott: excellent example of the proper use of time, money, and local resources to make "easy" gains on an Ironman day -- swimming faster, when your major flaws are related to poor body position, are essentially free in terms of the energy you are asked to spend on race day.
Beth: excellent points. One of the major hurdles that triathletes have to overcome is the typical lack of availability of quality local technique instructions. In my experience, most swim coaches are guys like me -- the drills we grew up on were focused on improving the application of power to the water because we had learned all of that body position stuff when we were 7-9yo. If your local masters coach is giving you drill stuff that's focused on the arms and he's not addressing body position (very likely a more fundamental issue for you), he/she is not the best resource for you.
I'm one of those borderline swimmers. I DID swim competitively from about age 10-18, but wasn't very good and never had very good stroke-based coaching. (Swam something like a 26 sec 50 and 1 minute 100 SCY. Can't remember 500 time.) My last IM split was 1:13.
From experience, I know that my adult times improve both with technique and with fitness. I have had some good coaching off and on, but it's hard to bring myself to pay $100 a lesson over and over again for the full monty with video, etc, I'll admit.
I am lucky to have very easy pool access with both a college and municipal pool having lap swim times. But there has been no organized adult swimming for years and years. I have long been quietly agitating for that organized swim, and the new club coach where my kids swim (at the high school/municipal pool) wants to reach out to a broader audience and decided to give a masters lane a go. Unfortunately, he decided to start it earlier than I would have chosen, i.e., January 2.
Given the social situation, I don't really have any choice but to start swimming now or it may die on the vine. We need a nucleus. And $50/month is pretty reasonable - I made it clear to the head coach that my needs were as much coaching as just holding workouts, and he seemed to get that. It'll be 3 x 1 hour per week, which is pretty workable.
First workout kicked my ass a bit, but at least I'd been wise enough to go to the pool a few times first. :-)
But it's looking good, at least for a first day. there were 5 coaches on the deck working with all the kids (and us) during the workout, and I got interrupted for stroke instruction twice, and was obviously being observed by 4 of them at one time or another, even though the 11 year olds in the lane next to us were kicking my butt. Here's hoping that my "learn to swim at least sort of like a swimmer" project works without being too costly to the rest of my life. :-)
http://joelfilliol.blogspot.com/201...l?spref=tw
Joel Filliol weighing in...
The Top 20 Rules for Faster Triathlon Swimming
1. Conditioning trumps drills. Technique matters, but the way most athletes try to improve technique doesn't work. Get fitter, and your ability to hold good technique improves. It takes a lot of work to develop aerobic conditioning in your upper body. If you think you are already swimming a lot but are not improving, swim more and keep at it. There are no shortcuts.
2. Traditional drills don't work. The type of drills and the way that most triathletes do them don't actually have any material effect on swimming technique.
3. Swim more often. Frequency is the best way to improve your swimming. Also see rule #4
4. Do longer main sets. You can't expect to swim fast and be fresh on the bike if you rarely do main sets with the same or higher volume and pace than you expect in the race. For short course these should be at least 2km, for IM 4km, or more. And that looks like 20-50x100, not many short broken sets adding up to 2-5km.
5. Don't over think it. Don't under think it. Be engaged with what you are doing in the water, and use tools to help get a better feel for the water. But don't over think every stroke, and suffer from paralysis by analysis. Swimming fast is about rhythm and flow, when good technique becomes automatic.
6. Increased swim fitness translates to the bike and run. Being able to swim harder, starting the bike both fresher and with faster riders is how that works.
7. Deep swim fitness allows you to swim on the rivet. See rule #6. Most triathletes don't know how to really swim hard for the duration.
8. Include some quality in every swim. If you are swimming less than 5x per week, having easy swims is a waste of time. Always include quality, from band, to paddles, to sprints, in every swim.
9. Don't count strokes. See rule #2. The objective is to get faster, not take fewer strokes.
10. Learn now to use your kick but don't spend a lot of time with kick sets. Kicking is about stroke control and body position, not propulsion for triathlon. Kick fitness doesn't matter.
11. Use a band frequently. The best swimming drill there is. Do short reps with lots of rest at first. Both propulsion and body position will improve.
12. Use paddles with awareness of engaging lats. Paddles are primarily a technical tool to take more strokes with better mechanics, the result of which is learning how to use your prime swimming movers: your lats.
13. Keep head low on breathing and in open water. Head down, feet up. It's a common body position error.
14. Do many short repetitions for stroke quality. It takes fitness to swim with good technique for long durations. Start shorter, and swim faster. 50x50 works wonders. Don't have time to do a 2500m main set? Drop the warm up and warm down.
15. Learn to swim with a higher stroke rate. This takes conditioning. It will pay off on race day, and particularly anytime swimming in a group and in rough conditions.
16. If you need to write your swim session down on the white board or paper, it's too complicated. Keep it simple.
17. Find a good masters programme. Long main sets is a good sign. Swim with others to challenge yourself. These are the exception rather than the norm, unfortunately.
18. Don't use swim tools as a crutch. Paddles and bull buoys are tools with specific uses. Don't reach for them out of simple laziness, because the set is hard.
19. Do use swim tools when you are very fatigued, and will otherwise swim with poor quality. See Rule #18.
20. Dry land and gym can help swimming for some via improved neuromuscular recruitment. Use body weight and tubing not machines.
Bonus: Love swimming if you want to get faster. Embrace the process of getting faster in the water. Chlorine sweat is a good thing.
@ Bob/Joel Fillol - This is good stuff for those of us trying to get from 1:15 >> 1:05 in an IM swim. I could comment on all of these, but I'll confine it to # 7, swimming on the rivet. I believe that when our coaches say "just swim hard enough so you can maintain form", this is what we should be thinking. It's about swimming as hard as you can, within that "maintain form" constraint. I've noticed around here that when someone starts taking their IM/HIM times seriously, trying to take a step up to podium finishes or thinking about qualifying for Kona, they realise there's no slacking allowed in the water. It's no longer about just punching your ticket to start the bike, but rather getting a leg up on the race. And swim "fitness" enables one to do that. All these little epigrams are ways to think about what swim fitness actually means, and how to go about getting it.
Not sure I buy doing 100s and 50s as an exclusive route to that, though. Doing sets of all sorts of distances should be encouraged: 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 6:30, 10 minutes, and 25-30 minutes worked moderately hard, for time. Those shorter ones are a good way to start the year, and maybe get ready for 1500 meters, but 3.8 k, at near-olympic distance speed, requires another level of aerobic conditioning.
I think again it comes down to where you're starting from, and whether at that point you need more technique work, more distance/yards, or both. I agree with @Al, when you're talking about going from 1:15 to 1:0X in an IM, these points are pretty useful, and you do need to be putting in yards. But to tell that same thing to someone struggling to make the swim cutoff of 2:20, as so many of these articles seem to do, is really not doing many athletes any favors. I definitely see people who put in yards and yards year in and year out and never ever improve. More yards is not a surefire recipe for improvement if your technique is that bad. OTOH, I have never had someone come to me for technique work who was not able to improve their swim times. Never. So I guess I fundamentally disagree that technique is not important, at any level.
I also wonder if a lot of this discussion really distills down to needing a swim coach in order to benefit from technique work. Most triathletes are self-coached, and self-coaching with swim drills just doesn't work all that well. So perhaps that's what people mean when they say that drills and technique work don't do most triathletes a lot of good. This is why I think the analogies to either biking/running or things like golf fall down. Swimming to me is more like dance or martial arts, and no one attempts either one of those without good instruction. Well, I shouldn't say never, if you watch shows like So You Think You Can Dance, you can usually tell if someone says they taught themselves to dance or they "do their own thing", it's going to be a horror show. Yet in those sports you also need to build good fitness on top of that good technique in order to do well.
Sadly, many athletes don't have access to good coaching, and sadly many swim coaches who hang their shingle out are high school swimmers or lifeguards who don't understand much about distance swimming technique and how to help swimmers get better. But the internet and video coaching also give people more options than before, and there are some good coaches out there doing seminars that you can attend for a weekend.