Your goal is 1:24/100m. You are currently around 1:40. It's a big stretch to make over a winter, but if you put in the work, it's achievable. Putting in the work probably looks like 15-20K/week (at the very minimum), with a team and a coach.

Thanks for the advice!

My coach tells me that it's all about technique and that you don't need to swim that much.
But since i haven't improved at all the last few years i will do some extra sessions and try to do at least 20k a week, hopefully that will do the job!

Technique is key. I surf A LOT so the cardio and movement is second nature - but I was a slow swimmer. Would get super winded. Then got taught technique and it was a whole new world.

Also think about some swimmers on college teams you have seen. Hefty guys or girls but they will blow you away in the water. Technique my friend. Learn it and love it.




Also avoid the beer and pizza :-( haha

I made a similar improvement over the past year down from the low 1:40's to the high 1:20's. I'm 63 and had been an age group swimmer in my youth, but had been kind of sloughing along with my training until I decided to get serious again about my swimming a couple of years ago. I got there by:

1. Bumped up my yardage from 200K per year to 500K. 5-6 days per week/12-15K per week.
2. Started swimming full-time with a coached Masters team, rather than on my own.
3. Worked hard on my technique initially, so I could train harder/longer without reinforcing bad habits.
4. Lots of 50's and 100's on tight intervals.
5. Lots of kick sets. Lots of dolphin kicking to build core strength.
6. Swim-specific dryland strength training.
7. Entered some Masters swim meets to work on swimming fast.

Bottom line is that I started training more like a swimmer than a "typical" triathlete, just banging out long interval sets.
I'd also mention that by focusing on my technique initially, I was able to avoid any injury issues when bumping up my training volume. In fact, I have fewer issues now than I did a couple of years ago.


Mark

Get some video of your stroke, especially underwater. Technique is key, but you need to know what to work on.

"My coach tells me that it's all about technique and that you don't need to swim that much."

it's about technique AND you DO need to swim that much. based simply on what i'm hearing secondhand from you, your coach is not equipped to take you from where you are to where you want to be. but before i rag on your coach, it depends on what is meant by not needing to "swim that much."

to make the gains you want to make, in 6 months, you're looking at 3 out 4 of your weeks each month of 14,000m/15,000yd, plus or minus, and then maybe with a couple/few 20,000 yard weeks thrown in there. short of that you're not going to get there.

when i really decided enough was enough, and this goes back 25 or 27 years, i was swimming a 1000 yard time trial in about 13:45. after 8 months of taking myself to the woodshed i got it down to 12:25. i improved 1:20 over 1000yd in that time but it was worth more than just the 1:20 for 1000 yards. it meant i could draft off a faster pack, which really meant more like 2 minutes for 1000 yards and about 3 minutes over 1.5km. it meant coming out in 20min instead of 23min. now i was finally ready to make some headway in the bike and run.

that's the sort of thing i think you want to achieve. i don't see that happening for you unless you commit yourself to that sort of volume. PLUS the technique work.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

We're on the same boat. I'm swimming around 1:45/100yd race pace on a 500m swim, and I want to drop down to 1:30/100yd over the next 6 months. Following STers advice, and my coach's, I'm swimming 5/6 times a week, with an average of 2100-2300 yd per session for now, as I don't want to over do it and fudge up the whole plan. All these sessions are done in Masters. We'll see if it works.

Thanks for the tips!


i was told for years i should just focus on drills and technique. That didn't result in significant improvements so i almost started thinking that this was it, that i reached my limit and just didn't have the ''talent'' to become faster. It's really motivating to reed these stories of big swimming gains due to pure hard work.

I will start swimming at least 5-6 days a week, work hard on my technique and hopefully that will be enough to make the team next year!

Swimming is half technique but also half swim-specific muscular strength and muscular endurance. There's a reason why virtually all swimmers have the trademark "V shape" espec when looked at from the back. The so-called "hefty" swimmers have a good bit of muscle below that surface fat, and it is specifically conditioned to swimming, and that's why the 200+ lb swimmers are lapping the 140-150-lb tri geeks. Some extra weight does not impede a swimmer near as much as a runner.

Back to your original question, my first question is are you absolutely certain you are swimming in a meters pool, not a yards pool. I say this b/c many, many tri geeks have no concept of the difference, and the 25 yd vs 25 m is only a roughly 10% difference. Also, 500 yd is a standard yards racing distance whereas the meters equivalent is 400m. So, is your pool 25yd (scy), 25m (scm), or 50m (lcm)??? This question is also important b/c there's a big diff from between going from 8:20 to 7:00 for 500 yd on a 25yd pool vs 500m in a 50m pool. If we look at in terms of the AR for 500 scy vs the WR for 400 lcm, the 500 record is 4:08.5 vs 3:40.1 for 400 lcm. If there were a WR for 500 lcm, it would be around 4:37 or thereabouts, vs 4:08 for 500 scy. So, getting down to 7:00 for 500 lcm implies going 7.00/4.62 = 1.515 ==> about 51.5% slower than the WR. Going 7:00 for 50 scy implies going 7.00/4.14 = 1.691 ==> 69.1% slower than the AR. Thus your 7:00 500 lcm is considerably faster than your 7:00 500 scy. THIS is why I ask about your pool length. Sorry for the long explain but lots of tri peeps just don't understand these things. :)

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

I am working on my swim this winter as well. Tired of swimming 34:XX in 70.3 and losing 3-5 minutes to the top 10. Currently under the watchful eye of my masters coach I am only doing stroke work for the next few months. For me that is a lot of snorkel work and buoy at my ankles. This is the first winter I just didn't throw "volume" at the problem (quotes because that is by my historical volume standard), so excited to see how this change impacts race speed.

Thanks for the long reply!

I'm pretty sure ;)
I live in Holland, here we don't use yards at all.
All pools are either 25m or 50m long, i do most of my swims in a 25m pool.

I definetely need to improve my technique, It's hard to ditch the bad habits though (slow stroke rate/ not a lot of shoulder rotation).

If it were me- I would try to do 6 practice a week with an age group swim team.

If that doesn't work I would do the same thing but with a masters swim team that has ex-age group swimmers and a swim couch.

I would avoid anyone who offers "triathlon specific swim training".

You are young enough to become a "real swimmer".

Forget about swimming 500 m in 6:30.
Focus on swimming 100 scm in 62.

Once you can do that the 6:00 500m will come easy.

I train 3 times a week with a tri club where I get some technique based feedback as well.
In addition to those swim sessions I am going to join a masters group 2 times a week.

I'm being forced to join the masters group. During my first practice last week I was asked if I could join their age group team but they just laughed a bit and told me ''you're probably to slow''.
I think I''ll ask once more if I can join the age group team because their training just seems so much more serious.
The masters group that I joined doesn't even get any technical feedback (the coaches are focusing on the age group team at that point, masters and age groupers swim at the same time).

wow those are fast times! However, I think those times are well out of my reach.. I have an athletic body type suited to swimming but I think I lack the talent or ''feel'' for the water to reach a time like that.
I am really hungry though, I really want to put in the work so hopefully that will lead to good times. I would already be super content if i get anywhere close to 7 minutes!

One more question though, Isn't there a big change that I overtrain when I start swimming 6 times a week?

Over-training is a concern for me.

That's why the only hard swimming I do is focussed on sprinting.

If I were you I would train like a swimming sprinter in the mornings. And train like a triathlete in the afternoons and on the weekends.

Don't try to push the distance swin sets. Perfect your kick, your turns, your stroke. And get some speed.
Grant Hackett and Sun Yang (greatest distance swimmers ever) could both break 50 for 100 SCM.

Swim skills learnt early can last a lifetime. Strength and fitness come and go,

Yup this. I'm probably repeating what most have said, but technique is so important. I have not seen a slow swimmer under 40 with good technique. You can get quick by swimming lots and forgoing any work on your technique, but you will have to put in a lot of hours (sacrificing riding and running) and you run the very real risk of picking up injuries such as swimmers shoulder, largely attributable to poor technique. Your stroke doesn't need to be flawless, but at 1.40/100m I'm guessing there are some fundamental issues with your stroke that need sorting out. A video analysis session with someone like Swimsmooth would be very good at identifying these flaws and providing you with drills to fix them up. I did a session with them a while ago and it helped enormously, I went from 1.30/100m to 1.25/100 in a short space of time and can now do 100s on 1.15 (leaving on the 1.30). What I found that helped, was focussing largely on 100s, I had lots of stuff to work on, body position, kick, stroke rate, body rotation, high elbow etc etc and I found doing 100s a good way of determining my progress i.e what is working, what isn't. Some 100s I would have a higher stroke rate, see how my times were, others really rotating or almost over extending my arms, kicking like mad one 100, barely kicking the next, hitting my tumble turns hard, breathing every 2, every 3 or every 4, trying lots of different things and seeing how times and fatigue varied.

If you can't get a video analysis done, see if you can someone to film you, preferably underwater and above water and post it up here.

I don't see a big issue with that kind of drop. Based on your description of how you train and your coach's approach, you could probably drop half that time in 3-4 weeks.

Here's a couple questions that would give me a better idea of how much time you'd need to devote to getting a bigger gain in the swim:

Did you compete in any sports growing up? If yes, what sports?
How tall are you? (Metrics is fine)
How much do you weigh?
What do run a 5k/10k in at end of a Tri?
How long have you been swimming?
How many open water swims/triathlons have you competed in over the last 4 years?

Yes, it's about technique, but it's also very much about the training. You can't separate those two components out from one another. They are linked and build off one another.

Let me know if you have any questions and I look forward to your responses.

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http://www.magnoliamasters.com
http://www.snappingtortuga.com
http://www.swimeasyspeed.com

OK, glad you're sure, and since you're in Europe I believe you completely. :) So, you're currently going 8:20 for 500m, and you want to get down to 7:00, vs an estimated WR of about 4:28. 7.00/4.47 = 1.566 ==> 56.6% over the estimated WR. If we take the 1500m run as a comparable event (WR 3:26.0), then you'd need to run 1.566*3.43 = 5:22 for 1500m. For American readers, that would be 1.566*3.722 = 5:50 based on WR of 3:43.3 (run by same guy who set 1500m WR.)

My point of all this is that, if you can run the times above, then you should in theory be able to swim roughly equivalent times, given equal abilities in both sports and equal effort put into each. Some people can do this but many can not, butt of course only way to find out is to take your swimming seriously, as you are starting to do. In any case, as dirtymangos pointed out, at 22 you're young enough to become a real swimmer. Perhaps after you improve a bit with the master's group, they'll let you move into the AG team. I swam with an AG team for about a month a few summers ago, and it was awesome. You're totally correct that the kids are a lot more serious about their swimming than are most of the adults, e.g., no one ever complains that a given set is "too hard". Anyway, I think you've got a good shot at improving a lot. Keep us posted on your progress. :)

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

"I'm being forced to join the masters group."

you are lucky you have a masters group to join.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Hoi! Ik sprek een beetje nederlands. Wat doe je nu in het zwembod? (give us some typical workouts...)

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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

do you do flip turns?

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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

Most people don't realise that guys doing 100m races often have a decent amount of fitness also. If you are undertrained, you can still fade quite badly in a 100 race. Swimming is kindof a weird sport in that elite sprint swimmers are often swimming much more distance than your typical triathlete, even your typical elite age group triathlete and maybe even some of the itu guys...

You're getting some decent feedback. Do not limit yourself. You're probably correct that you'll never reach the elite levels, but you can hack your way to becoming a fast swimmer. The talent is what separates you from a national team, not from reaching 6-7 min/500. You'll probably get there if you put in the work.

There is a chance of overtraining at 6/wk, but only if you don't work into it. It will take a little time to figure this out, so focus on making the practices at first, then work out how far you can push it. You'll feel crappy for 2-4 weeks. Stick with it. Lots of kids swim this much (and more), and they're fine. I would consider running 6-7/wk harder on you, and even I can do that (slow/old). Good luck -J

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Life is tough. But it's tougher when you're stupid. -John Wayne

Goedzo, dus we kunnen Nederlands praten...?;)

Yes i do flip turns, or at least something that looks like a flip turn.

A typical swim session with the masters groep would be something like this:

Warmup:

1000m freestyle 1:55/100 (no break just a 1k non stop warmup)

Main set:

2x250 in 1:30-1:35/100 pace
5x100 in 1:25-1:30/100 pace
10x50 in 38 sec leaving every 1:15

At the triathlon club we do some more technique focused training as well but when i train with the masters group at the swim club there is no real focus on technique or technical feedback.
For that reason I e-mailed the head coach of the swim cliub yesterday and he told me i can join the age group team from next week on.
I'm a bit scared that I'll over do it when i start training with people that are that much faster but we will see.

Thanks for the reply, that would be awesome in such a short period of time!

To answer your questions:

1) I did a lot of bmx racing when I was a kid but I didn't really do any endurance based sports.
2) I'm 1.86M so 6 feet something if I guess correctly :P
3) 73 kg
4) in sprint tri's I run low 18s/high 17s (I run on average a little under 20 miles per week)
5) 4.5 years after 8 months I got to 8:35/500, but after that I haven't improved much. it should be noted though that I didn't train much in 2014-2015 due to injuries and being overtrained.
6) I think about 20 but I'm not completely sure.

I definitely want to put in the work, I'm just a bit scared that I get overtrained again.
Especially since I don't want to lose all my running fitness either.