Paging Dr. Stern Dr. Doug Stern STAT

Paging Dr. Jill Dr. Jill STAT

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I'll be what I am
A solitary man

I'm also 19. I also required some help with my swimming, so I signed up for a master's swimming club at my University. It was full of babes, and coached by a cool guy who just so happens to have gotten 11th at both the 5k and 10k Open Water Races at FINA this Summer.

I went from knowing how to dog paddle last January, to being passable at all 4 strokes, and a 1:40 / 100m freestyle by the middle of August.

Naturally, if you have more experience swimming, improvement takes longer, but a Master's Swim club at your University or College or Local pool with an attentive and skilled coach will be a big help. Swimming is hard to improve on your own, in my opinion.

P.s. Hot babes in swim suits.


EDIT: Another thing I forgot to mention. Some days our program got some pitiful attendance, even to the point that I got 3 or four sessions solo with the coach. Not bad considering for the price I paid.

Masters programs hands down, will whip you into shape and yes some hot babes in swimsuits. If there were more hot babes at ours it would just about perfect:) This is the best way to improve your swimming besides hiring a personal coach.

Thanks for the advice, but if I get smoked by a lot of triathletes in the swim, won't I get killed swimming in a master's swim club at my school? I'll most defintaley check it out and could probably use the coaching; i just think it would be extremely intimidating. and yeah, babes in swimsuits also gives me some incentive to go.

I was a little anxious about the skill levels in the pool as well. My fears were completely absolved the first day, as there was several swimmers in my skill level, including a few other newbie triathletes like myself. For our group, the lanes were sorted from one end of the pool to the other in terms of speed, allowing you to seed yourself just like you might at a mass swim start. At the beginning, my lane was the turtle lane, with few flip turns and a perfectly reasonable pace; I've managed to upgrade a few lanes in my time with the club, hooray!

The hardest part of it ended up being the distances covered in the pool per workout. Totally unacheivable at the beginning of the season, now I'm finishing the posted workouts 9 times out of 10.

One of my limiters now in the swimming department is actually sight-breathing. An Open Water / Tri skill that wasn't ever mentioned during my master's sessions. But that is certainly something I can develop on my own.

As sort of a special treat, our coaches broke out the underwater camera, and I now have footage of myself in the pool on DVD. A very valuable resource that would be difficult to obtain outside of this environment. Its a little embarassing to watch now, since I've improve a great deal since it was taken, and I just sort of cringe at my appearance.

As far as my perfomance in Triathlons go now, I have the opposite problem that you have. Since I joined Master's Swimming, and left the Biking and Running to do on my own, and thus a little neglected, I've become a relatively stronger swimmer than biker or runner. I'm hoping to fix that this year by joining a Triathlon Club. Combines almost the same swimming group (Same time in the pool some days), with Spinning groups and weekly coached brick workouts. Eventually I'll train on my own, but since I'm kind of just starting out, I think the group will be helpful.

If you're in college... there's probably a swim team at your school. See if you can get the coach to help you out.

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maybe she's born with it, maybe it's chlorine
If you're injured and need some sympathy, PM me and I'm very happy to write back.
disclaimer: PhD not MD

I also second getting a swim coach or joining a Masters program. There are some things that can be self taught, swimming is not one of them. It is almost imposible to see yourself swimming while swimming, hence you need another set of eyes watching your stroke and making corrective recommendation. Don't be intimidated by a masters program, there almost always is a lane (typically lane 1) open for beginners. No coach would put you in a lane with the sharks, the fast guys and girls. Also, you would be surprised to find that a good Masters coach will probably spend 80% of his time with the beginners, the fast people mostly know what to do and just do set after set.

Sure you'll get smoked by some of the masters swimmers. So what? The whole idea behind joining is to get coaching and eventually smoke them!

Does the "Cortland" refer to a state university in New York? If so, what better place to start looking than at the university pool? You'll find something to help you provided you don't lurk in the shadows afraid to join. It sounds like you could have a very successful tri career with just a modest increase in swimming proficiency.

Good luck!

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Lou Battaglia

Why didn't I retire last year?

Don't wory about getting smoked. It's happened to all of us. I was swimming 29 min in a 50m pool for 1500 when I first started triathlon. I went to a stroke coach and two weeks of stroke work (10 hours of being corrected) was swimming 22min for 1500m in the same pool, consistently.

You need to work on your technique and self teaching might help, a very little bit. Finding someone who can communicate with you, to rebuild you stroke, will save you more time in your next triathlon than any aero bike, aero helmet and race wheel combo will.

Go to the masters program, go talk to the university coach or assistant coaches, find an age group swim coach in your area. Just find someone you are comfortable with and can communicate with who is willing to work for more than a session or two with you.

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

I will advice the same thing.. Get a proper coach to look at your technique..

Because of a shoulder injury I have been training technique all the time A2 tempo and a lot of kicking. And I improve.. I have always been swimming but in the beginning not much technique only meters and hard session.. Before my injury I could swim 4.32 400free SCM and now with no speed work at all I swim 4.24 in the same pool..

A few tips/technique you can do on your own:

1. Count strokes, as few as possible. Lets say you have a technique set: 20x25 on :45. Count strokes try some other kind of crawl.. Crawl is not just crawl, watch the Olympics..! Everybody has their own style. Like maybe your hand entering the water. Try 20 different ways to put it in the water, and see what works best for you.

2. Think about your core strenght.. Think about swimming straight not twisting.

3. A bit like number 1 but "play" with the stroke called "CRAWL".. Because as I said crawl is not crawl (okay, maybe a bit), but crawl is very individual.. Try out a lot of things, headposition, hand entering, kick rhytme, breathing and so on..!

Hope you could use the advices.

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Long Distance PB: 8:25
Instagram: larsschmidttri

Lookig at your orginal post, you may one or both of two issues:

• Technique/speed
• Navigation

As for technique, what are your average splits per 100 in a pool? Masters will help you here.

As for navigation, are your open water 100 splits slower than a pool? Do you go off course? I think that open water practice will help. A great drill is:

• choose a sighting object on the horizon shore.
• swim towards it doing the following:
  • sight every 3 or 4 strokes
  • incease the increment of sighting by one stroke until you can hold a straight line.
  • That stroke count is our base sighting count.
• Swim by sighting on your base stoke count.

I agree, just do what you can in the drills-nobody really cares. I usually swim 75 to 80% of the distance that the fast guys cover in the same time. Hopefully, some day I will be up with them.

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I'll be what I am
A solitary man