Don’t Tell Me You Can’t Swim; Pt 1

I meet too many triathletes that are resigned to swimming poorly. After months and maybe years of trying to improve their ‘technique’, they’ve all but given up hope. The number of times I’ve heard; “I’m feeling strong on the bike, running is coming on alright but the swim…

I meet too many triathletes that are resigned to swimming poorly. After months and maybe years of trying to improve their ‘technique’, they’ve all but given up hope. The number of times I’ve heard; “I’m feeling strong on the bike, running is coming on alright but the swim… is the swim…” Sound familiar?

At the start of a new triathlete’s life cycle, yes, it will take a disproportionate amount of time and effort to make significant gains in the water because it can take many hours in the pool to dial in the feel for a powerful open water stroke compared to an efficient, gliding, pool stroke. If a triathlete can ‘more or less’ swim, it usually makes more sense to grasp the low- hanging fruit first; developing bike strength being the most common. Most athletes that experience the initial gains from starting structured bike and run sessions will keep banging away at them because it will seem like a better way to improve overall race performance. Falling back on a “hammer the bike and run” strategy can work moderately well but you will never race to your full potential if your aim is merely to “survive the swim”. Once the bike and run development are underway, it’s wise to look at how to get quicker in the water. Most of you will know that it’s not just the 2 – 4 minutes of ‘real time’ that you save on the swim, although this does help, but the fact that those precious minutes also means you’re coming out of the water with the fitter and better bike riders. This sets you up nicely for a solid and steady bike ride, working with and pacing off those around you, instead of stressing and spending too much time in the red at the start of the bike, playing catch up with the contenders up ahead. 

This article, written in 2 parts, highlights the key points that will make a difference to your journey to swim improvement. I hope that it resonates with you, gives you hope and inspires you with new ideas on how to improve your swim split. In Part 1, I share 3 basic styles of swim sets that I use with my athletes to build all round swim fitness and race readiness.

But before we get to that, for the sake of completeness, I am including a few pointers here on Drafting and Sighting – the 2 most obvious and simplest improvements that can be made to open water swimming. A reduction in 30% hydrodynamic drag and swimming the shortest distance in a straight line from point to point is a no brainer – It’s free speed. Having written a separate article on this, I will cover these points just briefly:

1. Drafting is NOT just for the fast swimmers. There will always be someone that swims just a little bit faster than you, find their feet and follow them around, making sure to checking that they are in fact swimming straight.
2. It’s perfectly reasonable to fight hard for your draft and to hold on to your territory once you’ve found feet. Don’t be timid, it’s a race!
3. Make sure it’s the right draft for you. You ought to be working between a moderate and a hard effort level to stay in the stream of bubbles ahead. If you find yourself swimming easily and constantly bumping into the set of feet in front of you, chances are that you’re better off looking for a quicker swimmer to pass you. When this happens, don’t hesitate and jump right on that train.
4. Even a small change in direction from the swimmer in front can leave you wondering where their feet have disappeared to. This is true especially when visibility is poor. Do not fret, do not give up. Immediately pop your head up and look for your swimmer slightly off to the right / left. Get your head down and pull hard for 10 – 15 strokes and tell yourself that you can rest when you are back in the slipstream. These little tactical surges will make all the difference to your drafting game and they should be rehearsed in your weekly training sessions. I find Variable Speed intervals, discussed below, very useful for this.

Improving swim fitness

To a large extent, to swim faster in the open water, you just need to swim harder. With the chop swirling around you while navigating currents and dodging flying fists and feet, a graceful gliding efficient looking stroke with a low stroke rate, is not going to serve you well. At times like this, you just need to muscle it.

1. Strength Sessions

A weekly swim strength session consisting of short All-Out sprints with long recovery is a must-do session to keep the Growth Hormone stimulus ticking over in your swim-specific muscles. I like to start these sessions with no gear and finish up the last 1/2 – 1/3 with paddles and pullbuoy because they help you hold good form as the fatigue sets in and force you to work harder on tired arms. Take note that paddle size is important too. Many guys (yes, this is usually a guy thing) think that bigger is better. While larger paddles do provide more resistance in the water, which is good for building raw strength, I constantly see big strong guys with big huge paddles that are unable to:

• engage a proper 'Early Vertical Forearm' catch; Instead, the forearm and paddle end up “trawling” through the water at an angle instead of with a high elbow and fingers pointed towards the bottom of the pool.

• turn a high enough stroke rate to develop good momentum.

After a 2 – 500m dynamic warm up, a basic strength set can be structured like this:

30 x 50m / 20 sec rest after each 50 / structured as (2 easy, 1 All Out) / with paddles and pullbuoy in the second half/ efforts are either very easy for recovery or All Out sprints. Make the goal of your set to finish with dead arms. I know that the squad is doing them right when I can hear their underwater grunts from the pool deck!

The other aspect of swim strength is dryland work. 20 – 40 mins of basic dry land exercises a week, will complement the strength building process as well. Basic exercises include Push ups, Pull ups, Scapular push ups, Planks, Side planks, V- ups, Leg Raises, Back Extensions and Pikes. You can start these with body weight resistance and progress to variations with light weights and/ or a Swiss-ball.

1. Tolerance Sessions

If Strength sessions give you the ability to swim harder, developing cardiovascular tolerance will allow you to swim harder for longer. If you want to be able to swim your best 1.9km in a race, then in training, you need to find and adapt to the hardest effort that you can hold for that distance. I like to keep my tolerance sets very simple so I am clear about what I want to achieve – maximal sustainable effort over a given distance. The most basic tolerance sets are simply the race distance, we’ll use 2km as an example, broken down into 100m repeats, with 10 seconds or less rest after each one. So;

20 x 100/ 10 sec rest interval. Your session goal each week is to find the fastest split that you can hold for the entire set of 100’s. The short breaks are just enough to afford you a little bit of recovery and a mental ‘reset’ to remind yourself of the sensations that you may be picking up. This will allow you to maintain or, better still, improve on the ‘feel’ for the water in the coming repeats. Repeat weekly for 4 – 6 weeks until you have nailed it.

Moving forward, break it down the same set to: 5 x (4 x 100/ 10 sec rest) + 60 secs. This means you are taking an extra 60 sec rest after each ‘mini- group’ of 4 x 100’s. By focusing on swimming ‘only’ (4 x 100/ hard) at a go, you can work harder than before because you know that the sweet relief of a 60-second rest interval is just round the corner.

Again, repeat this for a 4 – 6-week block and then drop the ‘long rest’ that separates the (4 x 100’s) to 30 sec. Work hard to hold the same splits as before. Yes, it will be tough and you may not make it to the end the 1st couple of times without blowing up, but persevere; the body has an incredible ability to adapt to whatever challenges you may throw its way. This style of tolerance session will start to resemble your race-day effort as it approaches. You will feel confident to swim the entire distance at a hard effort level.

1. Heart Rate/ Variable Speed Sessions

This style of swim session has you changing gears 'on the go'. You are essentially forcing your heart rate to spike and recover several times within each interval. I like throwing in a weekly Variable Speed sessions in the 4 – 6 weeks coming up to a race because my body gets to rehearse the dynamic changes in pace that I will ask of it on the day. These sessions will give you the confidence to:

1. Start hard, clear the crowd and settle onto a pair of feet.
2. ‘Bridge up’ to a swimmer that is 1 – 5 meters away to get on their feet. Your swim fitness and guts/ intuition will tell you if the gap is closable.
3. Tuck into the streamline of a passing swimmer if you are shopping around for a quicker set of feet to follow.

*Race-day tip; don’t wait until the swimmer has past you completely (i.e. when you see his feet) to then surge up to them. Instead, get in close them as they pass you, and once their hip has past your shoulders, you can start your acceleration to get on their feet. That way, you are already up to speed as their feet pass you and a slight lean into the slipstream will have you comfortably in the draft.

This is my ‘go to’ Heart Rate/ Variable speed session.

7 – 10 x 300m/ 45 – 60 sec rest interval; Where each 300m interval is swum continuous as 25 Hard/ 25 easy/ 50 hard/ 50 easy/ 100 hard / 50 easy. The recovery period is substantial because you want to go hard enough to elicit a significant change in pace and effort between the easy and hard sections. Beginner swimmers may like to start with variable pace 200’s (25 hard/ 25 easy/ 50 hard/ 50 easy/ 25 hard/ 25 easy) or even 100’s (25 hard/ 26 easy/ 25 hard/ 25 easy).

Variable Pace sessions will give swimmers of all abilities the skill and confidence to intuitively change pace and execute a dynamic swim on race day.

The bottom line is that, while there is a place and time for lapping up and down the pool painlessly (more on this in Part 2) if that’s the only swimming you do, then you’re likely to get very good at just that. Minimally, swim twice a week and differentiate the type of sessions you are putting in. I like to start a 12 week race preparation cycle with Strength and Tolerance sets for the 1st 7- 8 weeks, and then shift to Tolerance and Variable Pace sets in the last 4 – 5 weeks. Be clear with you what you are trying to achieve during each session and pay attention to how your body responds, copes and ultimately adapts, both in ‘real time’ during the swim, as well as progressively from week to week. 

In the next part of this article, I will highlight and address the various sensations that contribute to that elusive ‘feel’ for the water. See you then!