Lots of examples in the monthly fish thread. They can all be scaled to ability.

Workouts are typically anywhere between 1500 and 4500 m /y in there.

On a typical squad, the first 4 weeks or so of the season and heavy on technique focus, after that it's more meat and potatoes, nose to the grindstone stuff. You might want to spend a little longer on the technical side (but you never really forget about it).

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

Pay for a couple of lessons with your local Masters coach so he/she can show you a couple of technique pointers. Then just get in the pool and swim from end to end as many times as possible as often as possible. It's just like running. Consistency is all that matters when you're getting started. Get in the pool 4-5 days a week for 4-5 months and then come back and check out some of the sets on the fish thread.

Swimming is all technique/efficiency in the water, asking for help from a Masters swim coach is a great place to start.
Here's a Masters Swim Group in your area:
https://www.facebook.com/seawolvesmasters/
Stony Brook School (0 mi)
Club: Seawolves Masters (SEAW)
1 Chapman Pkwy
Stony Brook, NY 11790
Lap Swim / Workout Times: M,W,F 5:45am-7:15am
Contacts: Mary Fleckenstein: seawolves.masters@gmail.com
Record Last Updated: 2016-12-01

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Karen ST Concierge

Coming on here and asking if anyone is an expert is a bit like going to karaoke night and asking if anyone can sing. We all think we're experts here. ;)

If you're still in college, go to the local natatorium and ask if it's possible to get any personal coaching sessions, or if anyone on the swim team will tutor you. Or find out if there's a triathlon club on campus. There's bound to be someone around who's willing to help.

If you literally can't swim (freestyle), I'd say do breaststroke til you get swim fit and comfortable in the water. Then build up to consistent 50yds free. Then a diet of 50yd sets with not much rest in between. Then go fwd from there... And start watching technique videos on YouTube.

Bear in mind, there's a wide disparity in ability here. Most of the folks over in the "swim challenge" thread are fish. So some recommendations you might have to take with a grain of salt..

Yeah, I'm assuming that the OP can swim reasonably well already, just doesn't know how to structure practices, since he's talking about taking "the next step" in his triathlon career.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

I just did a search of your posts, and got a better sense of your swim background. You would be a good candidate for the Guppy Challenge, slowman did I think 10 weeks worth of workouts aimed at new swimmers. Get through those and you'll have a much better idea of what you need to work on

You have several things in your favour, you are young and if you are running collegiately, pretty fit. So that stuff will help.

I'll pm the link to the Guppy Challenge to you once I find it.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

Don't do what I did when I started running - which is to try and replicate your workouts but on land (water).

It didn't go well.

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"The person on top of the mountain didn't fall there." - unkown

also rule 5

First of all, swim training is nothing at all like run training. Or cycling for that matter. I used to row, and found the parallels there were better. In run/bike, it's almost all about effort. Put your head down, grit your teeth, slam yourself, rest, and get better.

Swimming, like rowing, is all effort AND all technique at all times. Honestly, for a true adult onset swimmer I would look in to Total Immersion. The way they systematically introduce new swimmers to proper body position is great. For example, they way I learned (as an adult) was like this:

First 3 practices, our coach had us swim 25m at a time, completely relaxed and slow, face down, arms at your side, just kicking. Stand up whenever you need to, breathe however is comfortable, the whole point is to learn how to balance your body in the water.

Next practice we swam back and forth at the same pace on our side. The whole point being learning how to balance yourself on your side . You learn that of you life your head, your legs go down. By eliminating all other variables (rotation, arms, pulling, recovery, etc) you really get the feel for what is right and what isn't.

Anyways, after three weeks of very basic drills like this, we were ready to start swimming, but, we started knowing how to balance our body and have great body position which, Imo, is the most important factor in both improving quickly, AND enjoying the process. With this basic training, I went from the slowest lane at masters to 2nd fastest, just behind ex colligate swimmers, in around 2 years.

Lots of people who just jump right in to sets and swimming never learn these basics as there is just too much to focus on while swimming.

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Long Chile was a silly place.

https://www.obstri.com/tower26/

You won't be disappointed :-D!

Hear, hear!! Also a subscriber and loving it.

IMO, 999.9% of the folks that swim well, don't remember what it was like to suck. In contrast, I remember what it was like to suck. Because it was only 2hrs ago.

Swimming is like ballet. And the sooner the runner/cyclist understands that, the sooner they'll unscrew their swimming. So approach it like ballet. That is to say, obsess over technique. Only after your technique is pretty good, and you're able to swim a mile or two routinely w/o any shoulder pain, should you start treating it like it's the "fitness" based sport like your running.

My suggestion would be to get the Total Immersion freestyle video. That will teach you about good body position. If it it takes you a couple years to really get that, don't sweat it. I've seen my kids fix more swimming problems in 5min then I've fixed in 100 swim workouts. Once you're pretty good at being "long and skinny" with good body position, then shitcan the TI approach and go get the Swimsmooth simulation. TI, imo, over-emphasizes the glide. The result is a slow stroke rate, and loss of momentum between strokes. The Swimsmooth simulation will help you figure out how to ramp up your stroke rate to something more reasonable, like, I dunno 60 strokes/min, something like that.

Coaches. I used to be an absolute disaster in the swim. I did not have the first clue as to what I was supposed to be doing. I had numerous flyby's with coaches over decades and those flybyes did me zero good. I had no idea that I simple did not know how to swim. Those coaches simply stood by the side of the pool and said useless things like "be more smooth", "odd hitch in stroke". I didn't know about high elbow, rotation, pointing toes, feet up, I knew nothing. But those coaches couldn't see anything because none of them got in the pool and none of them took video.

My point with the coach bashing is to make you cynical about coaches. If you find one that gets underwater so they can see what you are doing, then they grab you and force your body parts to do the things they're supposed to do, that coach has potential. But if the coach doesn't do that, don't waste your time. Go back and obsess over those TI drills, good body position, being long and skinny, and a nice "high elbow" catch. Fix the huge problems yourself. Then when it's time for some fine tuning, talk to a coach.

One last thought. Swim technique flaws can easily cause shoulder problems. So when your shoulders start twinging, work hard to figure out what you're doing wrong before you beat the shit out of something, have to take time off, and end up with a bunch of scar tissue that will forever be a problem-child. When your shoulder is twinging, slow way down and figure out exactly what motion is causing the pain,

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Books @ Amazon
"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart

When you are talking about coaches, you mention "flybys". How long did you stay with any given coach, and what was the environment? one on one or group? How many in the group?

Reason I'm asking is that a good coach, or even just an average coach, will be able to see 90% of what you are talking about without underwater video. I don't think anyone I'm swimming with now has ever had underwater video taken, (maybe some of the younger ex-collegiate swimmers, but for anyone my age, that tech didn't exist).

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

School's tri team had a swim coach. She was with us for 3yrs. Didn't do any actual coaching that I ever saw. Prob a dozen swimmers.

Tri team at an Army base had a coach. I swam with them for 3months. All he did was write workouts down on a chalkboard. Prob 10 swimmers.

Both the above were accomplished swimmers that now "called themselves" coaches.

2 flybys with accomplished swimmers. Once I found out that they had significant competitive experienced, I asked them to spend an afternoon with me at the pool, so they did. So those 2 were 1:1.

Two of our 3 boys are on a swim team. The team has gone thru a couple coaches over the years. I'm at the pool a lot for my own workouts so I see their team swim. None of those coaches have really taught the kids anything more than some dry land basics. Since I'm in the water, I can see just how awful the kids are. Coaches don't care. I once made the mistake of trying to gently coax them towards teaching technique. They just got annoyed with me.

I see other kids teams at the other pool I go to all the time. There's one team that grabs a bunch of swimmers from a local college and they at least do some good dryland efforts at trying to show the kids some subtleties. Better than nothing. The other teams at that don't even do the dryland demonstrations. Just the same old "workouts on the whiteboard".

I don't understand swim coaching culture. I try to help people at the pool all the time. Most everyone is so terrible, and they just don't know it. I've not seen anyone else every help anyone in the next lane with a technique issue, I don't mean someone else during a group workout, I mean some recreational swimmer that can do no more than 50m without resting and panting for a while. Technique is so crazy important, yet no one helps the people that suck. It bewilders me.

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Books @ Amazon
"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart

My experience has been very different from yours. tri-club swims after my masters group a couple of days per week, they typically have 2-3 coaches on deck (current or recently graduated varsity swimmers, mostly) and I do see them work on technical stuff with the triathletes.

All of my coaches have been pretty heavy on technical side, especially my AG coach way back in '85-87. She was awesome. Although some of what we learned is no longer taught as correct (S-pull, head position), most of it still applies.

I don't typically walk up to people at lane swim and provide random tips. but if someone asks me (which happens on occasion) I'll help out.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

Both the above were accomplished swimmers that now "called themselves" coaches.

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That's probably because most competitive swim team coaches do very little to improve a swimmer's technique. Most of the technique is done by the athlete themselves just figuring it out in an attempt to keep up with the lane and through a competitive team environment. The only technique training normally given out is for glaringly horrible stroke problems that might cause injury or disqualification. The rest is done in tiny increments over thousands of yards every single day by athletes who are uber-obsessed with the deck clock and getting faster.

Triathletes simply don't want to put forth the time and effort it takes to make those improvements. They don't have the patience to make the necessary gains yet hope to come in line with times put forth by swimmers who have logged hundreds of thousands of yards/ meters a season. They've even coined a disease, called "Adult Onset Swimmer", as a means of justification for not putting in the yardage. ST will often recommend that a runner who wishes to get fast will run 6+ days a week. People buy in as gospel without quarrel. Give that exact same advice to improve a swimmer and it will be met with impossible resistance.

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Take a short break from ST and read my blog:
http://tri-banter.blogspot.com/

Re. Improvement is up to the swimmer. I totally agree, that's fits my experience.

Re. Triathletes don't want to put forth the time and effort. Maybe. But I would argue that there's also lots of folks that just flat-ass don't understand the importance of good technique. I was always a runner and cyclist. But in 3 separate 3-4yr efforts, years apart, I oriented on triathlon and so swam 3x/wk for years. And I was terrible. I completely failed to understand that I didn't know how to swim. I went at it as if all it took was hard workouts.

Just because we might decide that successful ballet artists often did much of their training on their own, doesn't mean that's the most efficient way to learn ballet.

Also, poor technique creates shoulder problems with puts the brakes on swimming. That becomes circular because the unskilled swimmer might not figure out the technique flaw that is causing trouble.

Now that I've done all this whining, I acknowledge that the WWW is a huge resource for struggling swimmers. This shit didn't exist in the 80's and early '90's, and only barely existed in the late '90's. I was trying to learn how to swim out of books, for christ's sakes.

Now that I'm old, I can't swim big miles because I can't recover. So big miles doesn't work for most folks >50 either.

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Books @ Amazon
"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart

^^That.

Coach is of great help if you find the right coach. There are probably only a few, count them on one hand, in your area, that are good enough to spot body position issues, waist bending, scissor kick, hitch in your stroke, not rolling like a log etc etc etc.... and can work with you to fix it. Most coaches, if you just google and find a coach, will yell generic instructions at you from the poolside and you won't get any better.

You need to "get" what your body is doing in the water. Are you short stroking, or crossing the midline, or bending your waist, or scissor kicking, or not pointing your toes, or feet sinking, or are in a hammock position where you rely on kicking to keep the feet up but your butt and hips have sunk. Bad swimmers do ALL of that, and more, and they don't know it.

There are two ways to fix the swim. Get a good coach to work with, able to point the flaws in the swim technique and tell you how to correct it. Or two, look up tests you can do that will reveal the flaws in technique and then do drills to correct it yourself. Slowman's one armed swimming on your side with other arm in superman position will reveal if you are stalling in the water. Swimming with an ankle band will reveal if you are bending your waist. A video or a spotter will reveal if you are keeping your head, and probably your chest too, too high out of the water.

(Quote RangerGress) Re. Improvement is up to the swimmer. I totally agree, that's fits my experience.
Re. Triathletes don't want to put forth the time and effort. Maybe. But I would argue that there's also lots of folks that just flat-ass don't understand the importance of good technique. I was always a runner and cyclist. But in 3 separate 3-4yr efforts, years apart, I oriented on triathlon and so swam 3x/wk for years. And I was terrible. I completely failed to understand that I didn't know how to swim. I went at it as if all it took was hard workouts.
Just because we might decide that successful ballet artists often did much of their training on their own, doesn't mean that's the most efficient way to learn ballet.

Also, poor technique creates shoulder problems with puts the brakes on swimming. That becomes circular because the unskilled swimmer might not figure out the technique flaw that is causing trouble.
Now that I've done all this whining, I acknowledge that the WWW is a huge resource for struggling swimmers. This shit didn't exist in the 80's and early '90's, and only barely existed in the late '90's. I was trying to learn how to swim out of books, for christ's sakes.
Now that I'm old, I can't swim big miles because I can't recover. So big miles doesn't work for most folks >50 either. (Quote)

A couple of serious questions: I don't mean to seem flippant but, during your efforts to learn to swim better, did you ever try to form a mental image of the stroke of a good swimmer, then try to reproduce that yourself??? Assuming yes, were you able to do this??? This is the simplest way to learn good technique IF you can do it, but my impression from years of watching people try to swim is that perhaps only a minority of something like 15-20% of the total population has this type of visual learning ability. I'm guessing this did not work for you, or at least not for a very long time???

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

I'm one more vote for Total Immersion.

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<The Dew Abides>

Here are the Guppy workouts: http://forum.slowtwitch.com/gforum.cgi?post=5089915;search_string=guppy%20week%201;#5089915