I'm still waiting for my a-ha moment. My swim is frustrating and depressing, yet I'm so determined. I'm pretty sure I'm ST's sloooooooowest swimmer. The "you shouldn't do an IM if you can't swim faster than a 2:00/100yard" thread didn't help either....literally consumed my thoughts when I was doing "laps" last Saturday.

---

---

"Though she be but little, she is fierce" ~Shakespeare | Powered by HD Coaching | 2014 Wattie Ink Triathlon Team | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

Oooh, I like that one!

Definitely giving that a go next swim. And you're so right with fighting the 'fly - I lose every time...

Have you considered taking a season and doing all your swimming with 'swimmers', not triathletes? If you are not doing this currently and take the leap I'd be surprised if you didn't come out the other end more than pleased with the results. I spent over 2 decades 'frustrated' like you until I jumped into the swimmer realm. Love it so much it's all I do now:) My n=1 was two fold. Outstanding technique instruction and extremely spicy workouts. Have yet to do a cookie cutter workout in 3 years with this coach. And the trajectory of my gains has been far and away greater than the entire sum of all my triathlon swim coached days. It's gonna be humbling so just take it as first day of school freshman year. If you have great eyes on deck it's a huge win as long as you carry through on your end.

YMMV....enjoy the journey!

my aha moment came within the past few months, while training for an ironman.

before that, i had seen little improvement from doing it on my own and joining a masters swim.

for me, it was to slow it WAAAAYYY down and focus on form. i'm talking, ridiculously slow. after two or three weeks of really concentrating on form at a really slow pace, something clicked. i felt stronger and faster in the water when i was swimming normal.

i've added on to that now, adding intervals to my workouts (swimming with much faster ppl). it's tough, but it pays off.

This is exactly what I need to do. I get in and I'm so tense and not relaxed...I feel like I need to start each set crazy fast and I know my form is awful. When I'm relaxed focus on form I have a much better swim with better results.

---

---

"Though she be but little, she is fierce" ~Shakespeare | Powered by HD Coaching | 2014 Wattie Ink Triathlon Team | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

Yea fly can be a bit tough if your shoulders aren't happy to begin with. It's definitely made my free better though I love it for that alone.

Isn't that funny how when you get enough air a lot of other issues melt away? I still sigh when I hear people talk about never leaving their 1:3 bilateral breathing no matter what. So they are floating around with their over gliding stroke at 50 spm with a 1:3 pattern and wonder why they are stuck in 1st gear. At 16 breaths a minute I would barely have enough O2 to watch tv!

After being involved with triathlon for 30 years my "a ha moment" came this summer.

No, I didn't finally put it all together and start swimming like I knew what I was doing.
What I did was finally wake up to the fact that I basically wasn't put on this earth to swim.

So that's an easy fix. Henceforth I will only do triathlons which have less than 1/2 mile swim and look
for more duathlons.

---

Find out what it is in life that you don't do well, then don't
do that thing.

Quitter! Kidding, do whatever makes ya happy. I hear ya though b/c after having my knees done x 2 I knew the only thing I'd ever do w/o any pain of the 3 was swimming. I quit too:/

Hey I gave this swimming thing 30 years. I should have seen the handwriting on the wall very early on when my 1500 meter swim split and 10k run were
almost the same.

---

Find out what it is in life that you don't do well, then don't
do that thing.

Perhaps in looking down you are pushing your head under as well and not really decreasing drag as a result? It might be worth playing with the feeling of looking toward the bottom but having someone watch or filim you from the side to see what the alignment of your neck is doing. In either case, (head forward vs looking down) the idea is less where you are looking and more what the frontal drag profile is like with your haed in different positions.

That being said, My guess is you might have an intermediate position of looking a littel forward that creates less tension in the neck, but also may improve drag. hard to know without seeing it on video.

---

Suzanne Atkinson, MD
Steel City Endurance Coaching

Funny you should mention the breathing. Last night at squad, we had a 2km warmup at an alleged easy pace. I was really struggling just to hold an easy pace. Then I realized I'd forgotten my inhaler. I leapt out, had a couple of puffs and it was much better. Unfortunately, my body was already shattered from battling so hard, but at least it reminded me just how important breathing is. We finished with a 400m balls out sprint. I was about 30 seconds slower than normal, just because my lack of breathing had shagged me so much. I was shattered when I was finished, and my bike ride home was a complete daze. When I got home, I was such a wreck, my wife asked if I was OK. LOL

---

TriDork

"Happiness is a myth. All you can hope for is to get laid once in a while, drunk once in a while and to eat chocolate every day"

Eewwww sounds not nice. Asthma? Scary.

Speaking of a 'squad warm up'. I have been doing kind of a stock warm up lately that is working out great and it has shortened my warm up time which can be kind of a pain time wise. I typically need 12-1500 b/f I feel my engine is really warm, but this new 1000 is working out great. I swim down free, return kicking on my back. So it amounts to 500 swim 500 kick when all done. Seems to get me all ready head to toe a bit quicker which I'm digging b/c I don't start main sets until I'm warm since it's a recipe for a crappy swim all around. If I don't have the time for a full warm up I end up missing part of the build to the main set.

My a'ha moment came this summer during an open water practice swim for my 1st HIM......my goggles fogged up and my head smacked into a bouy. It left a large strawberry on my receding hairline. The fogging goggles may or may not have had something to do with the group of girls doing yoga on the beach. Embarrasing but I was happy nonetheless because I obviously was swimming faster than thought as evidenced by the pain. :)

And dont let Paul fool you...Ive seen him swim and hes usually one of the early ones to leave the water around these parts.

---

"WHEW...I really regret that workout!"..............Noone

There is nothing wrong with admiring the wildlife during open water swims, especially when it results in negative splitting.

I think that's where some of the fun comes in for me at my stage in the game too. I can beat guys in the water who can run or ride 20-30% faster than I ever could even b/f I had my knees rebuilt. Swimming is the one of the three where I can train balls out w/o injury and still be fairly competitive in sprint/middle distance pool events. Even b/f my knees were all torn up I was never that fast on wheels or feet, at least not comparatively to my relative swim speed. I suppose if I hadn't dropped 30K on my knees and was a good runner though I'd be all about entering the next 10k though.

I think it's great we have 3 to choose from though, or 1 or 2 with duathlon or aqua bike. So many neat choices to fit the desires of the athlete if they part ways with full on tri. Safe ridin' and runnin' to ya.

Maybe my video could help somebody to have one of those "a-ha" moments... ;-)

---

-------------------------------------

JuanjoNTP (@JuanjoNTP)
http://www.ironman-finisher.com

I think one of the aspects of swimming I hear more triathletes complain about is their inability to develop a functional kick that provides any appreciable grip. Much if not all of that is due to inflexibility in the anklesI think most of us are familiar with the stretch on the ground sitting on our shins with ankles flat on the ground. Sorry for the lame pics they were the first google pics that came up:




For many of us the stretch above can be extremely uncomfortable on the knees and low back. Now look at the pic below. This is not quite what I'm after, but picture doing this while sitting in a chair. So, if you can translate this pic below to a seated version you can do it pretty much any time you are stuck in a chair. This stretch took me from the crowd of 'I just don't think mine will stretch' to 'so this is what a decent kick feels like'. I could have been named 'cement cankles'. If you develop the flexibility to give yourself a chance at having an ok kick then you won't want to do breath holds in the diving well when coach calls kick sets so much any more;)