A week won't do much of a difference...

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"Yeah, no one likes a smartass, but we all like stars" - Thom Yorke


smartasscoach.tri-oeiras.com

Well, the effect would be more than a week. Knowing I'd NEED to be in condition enough to make use of that week, I'd "train" for it.

And isn't swimming as much technique as it is fitness anyway, and thus a dedicated week could be disproportionately helpful? Well, at least for someone like me who would be fine w/ a ~40 min 1.2 swim.

How do you get better/faster quickly? And how do you do that with the typical swimming constraints (i.e., crowded lanes, "motivational challenges" from nightime outdoor cold temps, etc)? I refuse to believe that many of the decent or better swimmers did more than 3-4x/wk!!!

Or do I extrapolate my progress to date and just throw my hands up now and say "F it, no can do by June"?

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Too f@ckin depressed from various injuries to care about having a signature line.

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"How do you get better/faster quickly?"



Not gonna happen... you need consistency and time in order to improve.



"I refuse to believe that many of the decent or better swimmers did more than 3-4x/wk!!!"



I had a good laugh with this one :-) Refuse all you want!

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"Yeah, no one likes a smartass, but we all like stars" - Thom Yorke


smartasscoach.tri-oeiras.com

It sounds like it probably still is your swimming form. If you can run or bike correctly, you have enough strength to do way more than a 50. Question that might help: are you breathing out underwater? That is the most common newbie mistake to hold your breathe and then quickly breathe in and out with your head turned. Also, you should be barely kicking when you swim. The main purpose of kicking is to keep your ass afloat. I'd hope any coach would have told you that, but if not, give it a try. good luck!

Hey, I'm here to entertain!

I did mean that comment somewhat tongue-in-cheek, though. Sadly for me, I have an unrealistic example in one of my friends. He went from leg-sinking slug to an effortless ~32 mins half IM with a couple TI sessions and 2 swims per week for a year or so.

Agreed, it has to be technique. I see the dudes on DVDs getting, for lack of a better term, traction in the water. I don't seem to get anywhere near as much (which could be because of drag or poor catch, etc). My coach does preach a small kick, and I am getting to a decent position now, where my hips are closer to the surface. Note than when I'm gasping at the end of a 50, and massively losing form, it's because of air... never fatigue in the arms/shoulders/back. Never. I have yet to feel even remotely worn down, despite 1000yds worth of 25s and 50s that leave me totally breathless at the end of each.

Re: whether I exhale underwater... I do. But perhaps not enough.

I understand it takes time and practice, thus why I was thinking a week of nothing but practice and rest would be useful. Note that I say practice and not workout. The idea would not be to tire myself, but rather take as much time as needed to do 1000s of yards with good technique (which I would hope to have, plus better fitness, by then).

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Too f@ckin depressed from various injuries to care about having a signature line.

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"Agreed, it has to be technique." -Aztec

Yep, get yrself a good swim coach. Get video taped underwater. Swim a lot with a lot of drills thrown in to help you roll your hips, keep your elbows high, develop your catch in the water, and do plenty of catch up stroking so you get a feel for gliding in the water and not struggling or fighting with the water. You've got to think like a canoe.

One week ain't enough. Plenty of practice (and real consistency) over several months (and longer) will allow you to see noticable improvement.

Remember: there is no "off season" with swimming, you gotta do it year round and learn to love it (sort of).

I had the same problem the winter I was training for my first 1/2 IM. I was only able to swim 2x a week, but I stuck with it. After 3 months I was still only doing 200's and (barely) 300's before I needed to catch my breath. Then, all of a sudden one day I kept swimming and swimming. Something just clicked and I did a full 1200 meters before I stopped (and I could have kept going).

I agree that 1 power week will do nothing for you. Consistent swimming week in and week out is what will get you there.

D.

If you're so set on a week of swimming, it should be a week of [i]coached[/i] swimming. With technique as your limiter, you'll need someone correcting you early and often.

Your best bet is to set up individual sessions with your current coach (or a new coach). If you're thinking of doing this in February, the sessions don't need to be two hours either, they just need to be long enough for the coach to point out and correct stroke faults when you start to fatigue.

"Agreed, it has to be technique."

Agreed by all. It sounds like you have a major technique flaw that is eminently fixable. If you've been working at it a while with no success, follow the poetic advice and get thee to a (better) swimming coach. If there isn't one locally, travel somewhere for that week or two where there is a compassionate coach available for hire and get some serious work done. You could probably get your breathing fixed with a short burst of serious coaching. I hear Portugal is nice in February :-) If you wanted to stay domestic, go to SoCal and have Rich Strauss beat on you incessantly.

(Note: while I have neither received nor expect to receive remuneration for these referrals, I'd really like an Ergomo. :-)

Dan

I'll chime in with the thougth that you are not comfortable in the water.

No insult intended. If you are otherwise aerobically fit, a 50 should not suck all of your wind. Form is important, and if you relaxed a bit in the water, it might happen easier.

Try spending time in the water. Do monster yards on a kick board, do drills, if you have training partners, try a little water polo, things that will help you with that elusive "feel" for the water. When swimming, can you feel part of your butt out of the water? Can you feel the waterline around your head?

As for the tongue in cheek comment, a couple of workouts a day, 5-6 days a week, essentially year round for 5-15 years is not at all uncommon. On the plus side, it is also not necessary for 1/2 and full IM swims!

Good luck.

I bet you are confused....;-)

I put a fair amount of time and effort into TI and found that it screwed up my stroke more than I possible imagined. I was a competitive swimmer years ago and wanted to get efficient, but all it did was make me twist through the water like a jitter bug.

Swimming is so much in the mind, because of all the sensory feedback, that it is easy to get twisted out of shape by thinking too much. TI has great attributes, but I think it has to hit just the right person and frame of mind to work. Try getting it completely out of your mind and just swim and see what happens. It probably taught you some good lessons that are in there and just need you to relax to come out. Short, long whatever, just see what happens if you go to the pool a few times with no expectations and no worries.

Here's a helpful thread from the other side (Tri Newbie Online) about getting some swim endurance

http://www.trinewbies.com/...d=33275&posts=36

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Those who know do not speak, those who speak, do not know.

Technique and conditioning is very important to swimming improvement but newbies and weak swimmers can benefit too from just some basic ratching up of toughness in the water. Too many tri swimmers demonstrate extremely wimpy behavior in the pool that they would never contemplate on the road while biking or running.

Try to remember back to when you first went from running 2 miles to 4 miles without walking. It was hard. It hurt and you thought you were going to die. But you did it because one day you decided that you would not quit. Apply that grit to the pool. If you can't swim longer than 500 yds without stopping just commit to doing 1000 in your next workout and don't quit until you are done or dead. If you can only do 3 200's in a set, do 5. You sucked it up and got tough to get where you are on the bike and in the run. You need to do it in the pool too if you want to improve.

That being said, a 2 week "camp" like you are proposing would not be the best approach for you. You'll be better off upping your weekly training time in the pool by 25% and increasing the intensity of your swims. Do this over a period of months rather than just piling on yards for a week or 2 and you'll see improvement.

Friend, I hear your pain. I am hopeless in the water - just out and out bad. I applied myself all winter and swam as often as I could, and now I find in my races, that I am not a heap faster, but I do the swim and come out not feeling shattered as before, but relaxed and ready to go. For me what mattered was not so much what I did in my sessions (25s/50s/100s/200s/400s/hypoxic/drills/freebackbreastfly - who cares?), but just getting wet and working on technique 4/5 times a week for 5 months. I got coaching, too, every couple of weeks, to give me stuff to focus on, and that is what I did.

I think for non fish, consistency of workout with swimming beats everything. Just swim.

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kiwipat

per ardua ad astra

Look into having a coach analyze and video type your stroke. Find a masters swim team, focus on making the workouts a priority and you will see imrovement. The key to swimming is proper technique. Unfortunately, there is no magic formula. You must swim slow and learn proper body position/technique in order to make improvement. Just putting in more time like you would in biking and running doesn't work!

Good luck!

What IM are you doing?

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Enjoy the journey!

To answer some of these questions...

I'm actually pretty darn comfy in the water. Grew up surfing. Of course, the kickboard is a lot bigger in that sport!

I have at least some feel for the water. I can detect even a minor change in my balance. In fact, I'd bet that I could guess the depth of my hips, back of head, heels, etc, pretty darn closely. I can adjust my position in the water easily (in TI drills, and sometime swimming). When doing catch up, or one arm, I can feel and adjust for the bob from being front-heavy as your hand recovers and they come together, etc., etc.

As for toughness.. dude, every now and then the last 10 yards of a 50 are approaching the point where I take a breath on BOTH sides, and if I miss one, I nearly give in and breathe under water. It's that close. Seriously. Toughness ain't the limiter. And I add lengths when the coach isn't watching.

I've had (still do) a TI coach. And a masters coach. Both seem to know their stuff. As a sinker, I think I struggle more than most, and the quality of the coach is less important than my own internal struggle to hold form.

I need a 50m pool, where I can just go go go! The community pool has 5 people to a lane, where even I'm as fast as the fast lane. The only uncrowded times are the 3 hours/week I can get to the masters group.

Sooooooooo frustrating.

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Too f@ckin depressed from various injuries to care about having a signature line.

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Doing the Honu half IM. Full IM... pipe dream (as I'm starting to think about Honu).

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Too f@ckin depressed from various injuries to care about having a signature line.

Sponsored by Blue Shield PPO.

Have you tried slow your swim speed down? From what you've said, you shouldn't be getting all tired out even if you've got stroke/form flaws.

Next time you're at the pool, try a couple lengths going as slowly as possible and see if it makes a difference.

As for locations for a camp, Ft. Lauderdale has a really nice outdoor set up at ISHOF- two 50 meter pools, a 20x25 diving well with tower, and a small splash pool all located a block from a good open water swimming beach. Couple of hotels nearby. Shouldn't be too crowded once the college kids clear out in mid-January either.

http://www.fortlauderdale.gov/flac/

That's what I'm talking about!!! Bad news - that part never goes away because that is how it is supposed to feel. I swam in college. I was fast. I had great technique and I was in superb condition.

Most days I felt just like you describe at some point during the work out.

Keep working. It sounds like you are on the right track.

You might try swimming with a pull buoy for part of practice. That way you can relax and naturally float in the water (saving oxygen) and also concentrate more on your form and breathing all the way out underwater. It's at least worth a go.

A great pool, though not 50m but 25m, is the Univ of SF pool. If you are not a student, alum, or faculty, the cost to use the pool is $5.00 when you buy a pack of 15 swim entries, $75. They have special package rates from time to time. You can swim from 6a - 2p. There are 17 wide lanes. I swim between 9a and 11a and usually have a lane to myself. In the early morning, the master swim group take up about half of the lanes. You then have you share with others and swim circles. The $5.00 entry also allows you to use their gym. I think it's the best deal in SF.

why so expensive?

$5 is expensive???? Most are $7, one is $10, another is $440 for a 3 month membership, etc., etc.

I wish the SF pool would work, but sadly, I am at the office well before then and until well after!

Lorenzo -- You lucky dude. No wetsuits allowed in Hawaii.

Re: swimming slow. Trouble is, as a serious sinker, I simply cannot go at that lazy, cruiser pace that some others do. I'm literally underwater when I try. I'm balanced -- nice and level -- but to breathe, I have to pull extra hard to get high enough and roll farther.

I've tried the pull buoy (yuck!), probably should more. I use zoomers sometimes, which gets me higher in the water and lets me cruise. But that's cheating! I could probably go 2x or 3x as far that way.

You know, despite all this, I still kinda dig swimming (though I hate peeling myself off the warm sofa after dark to swim in <45 degree weather). A good length of 25, where it comes together, feels great. And I like the challenge of doing something that seems ridiculously hard.

I'll look into that Florida sitch. Wish I could find that in California!

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Too f@ckin depressed from various injuries to care about having a signature line.

Sponsored by Blue Shield PPO.

Wow, I hardly ever charge people at work because I feel bad about $3 a day or $30 a month. Maybe I am just a cheap bastard.

They actully have certain hours during the day thats it is a 50m pool w/ fewer lanes at USF and a lady there gives lesson and she is amazing Allison Wagner. I worked w/ her last summer and learned how to swim for the first time in my life.

Dan

Lorenzo--I could have written that myself. Same tale of woe. :(

Are you able to get to a pool and watch elite swimmers practice? If you can, get to a Cal practice, a Stanford practice, a USC practice, etc. See if the coach will just let you sit in the stands and watch the masters at work. You will gain a lot of knowledge by watching these swimmers. Cal, Stanford and USC all have top notch programs.

You shouldn't be sinking. If you are, it means that you are likely very tense in the water and are trying to "muscle" your way through it instead of gently gliding through. Work on total relaxation in the water. I have some of the people I coach do a lot of kicking on their back. I find people can relax more if they don't have their face in the water. I have them kick a 25 on their back, and then simply turn over and keep kicking on their front. The goal is to maintain the relaxation they had on their back when they turn over. It has been working very well so far.

If you are in the Oakland area, let me know. I have a friend who coaches a local swim club there and he is outstanding. He could help you out. But, it seems like if you already have 2 coaches available, they should be teaching your properly. Admittedly, I am not a big fan of TI.

Uptown, I'm on the other side of the bay. Too far to Oakland other than for a lesson or two.

I'm actually fairly relaxed in the water. And if I make an effort to relax more, I actually sink more. Here's an example... If I submerge at the wall and pushoff, where others slowly float to the surface, I just stay submerged. Or doing the TI Zipperskate drill, the moment my elbow begins to break the surface of the water, down I go. I laughed at the TI DVD when the narrator (Laughlin?) notes that one of the swimmers is a "sinker" as she Zipperskates and drops an inch or two in the water. Ha! I drop at least a foot. I'm balanced, though!

I don't think there's anything wrong w/ TI. Something's wrong with me!

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This has me thinking... perhaps I should still consider that week, once I can make use of it (i.e., I've improved enough to benefit from even more woork in the pool). It's the coaching/instruction that I should add.

Someone mentioned Rich Strauss above. This leads me to another question... with this idea in mind (50m pool + instruction), who would be the best for me to spend time (and money!) with? Perhaps I should start a separate thread on that.

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Too f@ckin depressed from various injuries to care about having a signature line.

Sponsored by Blue Shield PPO.

Re sinking. I sink if I exhale all the way. With a full breath I float. Perhaps a fuller breath will help. I'm a bad swimmer, but I've heard that swimmers tend to exhale and inhale rapidly, which would increase buoyancy.



Styrrell

Not taking a deep breath will blow you up pretty quick, and breathing fast means you have to pick up the shoulder rotation, which is easier said than done, and so you start with the shorter strokes and it all goes downhill from there.

Aztec be patient - I can run 6:10 pace & ride a half IM at over 23 mph, but I get beat out of the water by 10-year-old girls who weigh 40 pounds who have awesome technique.

I think swimming is 90% technique, 5% fitness & 5% attitude. It's not a natural thing for us to do, & you simply need to do it a LOT in order to get better. Some people's bodies are better suited to it sure - I sink straight to the bottom after taking a deep breath of air - but anyone can learn to be efficient.

When I began two years ago & couldn't stay swimming freestyle for a whole race, now I come out mid pack. This was almost completely due to technique - finding someone to watch my stroke & telling me what to fix.

Oh, and the 5% attitude I mentioned above is this -- the runners & bikers out there know how to really push themsleves while running & biking, but in the water it's not so easy to push out of the comfort zone because you're scared of the possibility of drowning. Learn how to put that fear aside & really push the hell out of yourself and you'll be a better swimmer.

Bingo. I never get a full deep breath. More like a quick shallow one. By the end of the 50, I am breathing on both sides of the stroke (i.e., with every shoulder rotation). But when I breathe more fully, it takes too long, I see my hand passing my head! And then I get lectured from the coach for turning over too slow!

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Too f@ckin depressed from various injuries to care about having a signature line.

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When do you begin to exhale?

How long have you been at this?

I begin to exhale right as my mouth starts to come out of the water.

Kidding! Actually, I sort of leak air out slowly once my face is back down. I keep exhaling at a slow/medium pace (I don't really think about it much and just go with what feels natural now). I don't think I'm fully exhaled by the time I inhale, and since I can't waste time exhaling once my mouth has reached air, I take in what I can get. Fairly often on the right side, I get some water with that yet manage not to get it into the lungs. The more I think about it, I'd guess I get 75% of a breath to the left, maybe 25% of one to the right.

I started TI drills back in late summer when it was warm and toasty. 2 or so pool visits per week. Then in mid-October, having gotten almost nowhere, I started up 3/week with a masters group.

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Here's a tip ---- if you can't breath well to one side, don't breath to that side.

You are living proof of the fact that anything you have heard about a need to breathe to both sides to "balance" your stroke is complete and utter BS.

Wow.

I don't breathe well to that side because I suck at it. That's no reason to not build better breathing there. A month ago I couldn't breathe on either side. In another month, I expect to be able to breathe equally well on both sides.

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Too f@ckin depressed from various injuries to care about having a signature line.

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I am really no one to give advice, but I don't think swim coaches and other people who can swim really feel our pain. They are heartless and unfeeling. They mock us. Try doing what you are doing but expel the rest hard as your mouth is coming out of the water. Don't just keep topping off the bad air with a little good air--you won't be getting enough O2 and your aerobic system won't be able to your muscles what they need to rotate, pull and kick...and call for help.

The thought I hold onto is what someone told me when I started: Its all about the breathing.

Let me throw inone other thing, that may or may not be true, its just my belief--your body will find the most economical way to do whatever it is being tasked to do, over time, and so the other piece of advice is JFS, and let your body figure it out.

Very sound advice. Tonight I will take that as my #1 focal point, like a pre-swing thought in golf. If my body has zero fatigue, yet I'm sucking in O2 at the wall like I just ran a 1:02 400meter, I must be overestimating the quality of my breathing.

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Too f@ckin depressed from various injuries to care about having a signature line.

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Aztec, "sinkers" should focus on a quick turnover and less 'down-time' between propulsions (tempo style). Try finding your center of mass (in your upper chest, you need to lean into the water). You can do this by focusing on balance drills (kicking on your side and back, as someone else suggested as well) in every swim session, improving your lean into the water (chest down/hips up). You can do some pull sets with a buoy, leaning into the water and staying long. For instance, 5x100 pull at a moderate pace. Count your strokes. Take the average of the four (round down). This is your goal stroke rating for regular swimming -- anything more strokes means you are lifting your head/shoulders.

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“You can't coach desire.” --Dathan Ritzenhein
http://xtreme4.com/ -- an extreme ride for extreme change: go green

Swimming is not figure skating. You do not get style points. If you can't breath to both sides without killing yourself, don't do it. If you are faster and more comfortable breathing to one side, swim that way for a few months than, if you insist, go back to trying to breath to both sides. You'll be a lot stronger swimmer then and it may come easier.

Despite what you may have been led to believe, virtually all fast freestylers strongly favor one side for breathing and to the extent they breathe both ways, they do it for tactical reasons, not for stroke mechanics. Unless you really need to see on your weak side what is going on several lanes over, don't breath that way, at least until you have totally mastered breathing on the side that comes most naturally to you.

You should be able to comfortably bilaterally breathe every 3 and every 5 strokes while swimming a couple hundred yards at a relaxed pace. Think of it as basic swim competence. You want to be able to comfortably breathe both sides if you have to- navigation or dealing with waves and currents and such sometimes dictates breathing on oneside or the other.

Once you can breathe both sides when you have to, train and race breathing whatever pattern ends up feeling most comfortable to you. You'll naturally figure out what works best/most efficiently for you when you test your stroke under stressful conditions.

This is an interesting thread......to bring up another can of worms, send a PM to Ironguide for this thoughts on the subject.....he knows whats hes talking about.

Forget the swim camp, in my opinion. Swim camps are about milegage, hard yards....you will not be capable of them and as someone said, will end up swimming 50% maybe more very fatigued as your body trys to cope with the massive overload of swim time.

When you can handle swim sessions - 3-5k of intervals - swim camps, wow, best thing in the world. I have one from 17th-24th Dec. 2hrs 5.30-7.30, 30mins conditioning. back to the pool at 3 for another 2hrs. Everyday. Might even add a few to crack that magic 100k barrier.....

BUT....im not a very good swimmer, but Iv learned alot from very good coaches - the best infact.

I would advise, if you were my athlete -

To get in the pool and swim pull, all the time. 90% min.

AND USE 2 PULL BOUYS - get your legs right up. your head down. If your body position (from sounds of the posts) is a limiting factor, experience the joy of swimming like a swimmer!

Lie in the water like this, and breathing will become effortless. Bi-lateral - Watch Athens, how man bi-lateral triathletes? Maybe to check out the opposition now and again....

If your going to slow to 'swim relaxed' crack those zoomers on....

I think it is very very poignant for you to say you have been on lots of TI etc courses, and have not cracked a 50m without feeling out of breath. It says alot I think. Swimming is simple, dont make it complicated.

Not that it matters. When I started I wouldnt have swum 10.00 for a 400 free....Never enjoyed the benefit of a swim club. I followed these ideas and developed them (I use 2pull bouys and a band for 80% of my swimming - not just main sets). I now swim under 5.00 - I tried lots of fancy styles and techniques.....I hated it when I found out, but the simplest ideas worked.

Hope some of that helps and dosent sound like preaching!

Swift.

PLEASE DON'T TAKE MY ADVICE. I stink at swimming. Figure what I am saying is what I might tell a buddy to just get him to be able to make a 2.4 mile swim and survive so he can have the joy of a 112 bike and 26.2 mile run.

Other people are posting up now, and they actually know what they are talking about--I would listen to them before my BS.



See what I mean about Heartless? Jill wants you to get thrown overboard about two miles out so you can "test your stroke under stressful conditions". Heartless. Uncaring.

On another front--have you tried swimming with a wetsuit yet. This added buoyancy will give you the false impression that you can swim, sort of like the pull buoy, but better. If nothing else you will get the feeling of how your body should be going through the water, and the form of the suit helps hold you in the right position. I am ten seconds faster per 50 yards in the pool in a wetsuit--evern faster after about a mile, because my arms have tired (without the wetsuit) from pulling a bad body position through the water. Try to remember that position when you swim without it--people talk about "pressing the "T"" and swimming downhill, I also try to think about arching my back somewhat like there is a stick in my...nevermind--it is the position the wetsuit holds you in.

After the thought that "Its all about the breathing", the next most important is "Its all about the body position". This --- goes through the water much better than this "/"--and it is your poor weak little stinking arms that are having to do all that extra work.

I meant to post this a few days ago. Aztec, get a new coach!

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"Yeah, no one likes a smartass, but we all like stars" - Thom Yorke


smartasscoach.tri-oeiras.com

Two miles out if the great whites are present. If not, three miles from shore :)

or

5-10 x100 swum anaerobic on an interval that gives you about 20 seconds rest after every 100.

Pick which one sounds best to you. Swim hard once in a while, and see how your stroke changes when you go hard. Remember that there really is little consensus in swimming- it's a sport that's never managed to decide whether a lap is one or two lengths. Same applies to strokes- you'd never conscoiusly try to teach Yuri Prilukov to swim Like That, but after millions of meters, he's got an incredibly fast distance freestyle stroke that manages to go against a lot of conventional wisdom about that discipline.

You see Aztec--Heartless--and she even smiled afterwards. But don't worry, you don't have to outswim the Great Whites--only one of the other swimmers.

Come out to Kona and work for a week or so with coach Steve Borowski of Kona Aquatics. The man is a guru! Plus the air temperature is very agreeable anytime of year. If you would like more info on Borowski, PM me. Peter Reid, and other pros have worked with Borowski and have publically attested to how great the man is.

See you in June??? Cool!

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Have you hugged Your Mom today?

Swiftsam -- 2 pull bouys? Bah. My hips aren't that low in the water. I don't have all that much trouble getting level. What I DO have trouble with is kicking correctly (it's that cyclist in me, kicking those knees down) and then running outta gas at the end of a 50 (and I think that's just poor breathing?). My arms/shoulders are *never* fatigued even the slightest. I use the zoomers (fun!) now and then, and they do indeed make it fast and easy, but that's because I do a length in about 10 or fewer strokes that way!

Football mom -- you are on to something. Kona! Added bonus... my wife would absolutely LOVE that (danger: she was eyeing the 4 Seasons the last time we were there :-O). I'll PM you shortly. I wonder if there are others in the So Cal area just as good? Either way, I'd bust my rear to make sure I showed up for that coaching already as good as possible... As for June, well, I have a long, long, long way to go before I can even attempt that swim, and I only have a modest amount of time. That registration fee may end up being a donation. :-/

Monk -- they really are uncaring aren't they? I haven't tried a wetsuit yet because I don't own one. As for your advice, don't worry, I rarely actually take anyone's even if I say I will ;-) The part I thought most useful from you had to do with breathing -- I think I need to pay closer attention to whether I'm actually getting enough air. I've been so busy thinking about keeping my recovery elbow high, etc., that as soon as I could effectively get ANY air, I stopped thinking about it. Tsk, tsk.

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Too f@ckin depressed from various injuries to care about having a signature line.

Sponsored by Blue Shield PPO.

Not getting good air (shallow breathing--not getting the stale air out of your lungs) can lead to a panic on a swim real easy--and that can take a while to get over psychologically. When and if that happens, for me at least, the best remedy was to go back to swimming, real easy, and get the breathing under control, instead of panting and trying to climb up on top of the water. When and if that happens it will be in open water--try to remember what the old Monk told ya: "Go back to swimming."

2 pull bouys - bah????

Interesting....It is a technique directly used by Brett Sutton. Olympic Swim coach..most succesful triathlon coach - espec when having to teach runners to swim.

And I do beleive if you were to go swimming with Craig walton....youd find him doing it...along with the rest of the top Aussie squad.

But your right - 2 pull bouys Bah to that...my hips are obviously in a better position that all those top professionals.

2 pull bouys - bah????

Interesting....It is a technique directly used by Brett Sutton. Olympic Swim coach..most succesful triathlon coach - espec when having to teach runners to swim.

And I do beleive if you were to go swimming with Craig walton....youd find him doing it...along with the rest of the top Aussie squad.

But your right - 2 pull bouys Bah to that...my hips are obviously in a better position that all those top professionals.

Classic case of what's good for them isn't necessarily good for me. I've used a PB and it really doesn't make a ton of difference. I know where my hips are supposed to be.

I'm sticking with what most coaches say for guys like me, which is minimize use of PBs and fins, and certainly never use paddles.

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Man, I've been there. Reasonable stroke count, decent speed, but gasping for air after 50yds. I didn't find any 'magic' cure, but a few things seemed to help:

1) Keep trying. Lots of yards, but as drills. Rest & recover fully (as long as it takes) between sets. Make sure your breathing returns to normal before the next set.

2) Getting in a good warm up BEFORE getting in the pool. I usually hop on one of those 'cross-trainer' elliptical machines that work your arms as well as legs for about 20 minutes before swimming. I go hard enough to get my HR up to 85% of max and some pretty hard breathing by the end of the warm up. I find the cardiovascular warm up more important than the muscular one.

3) A lot of swimming with a pull bouy. I don't have to kick or think about kicking which seems to free up mental capacity to focus on stroke and rotation.

4) Try not to think about breathing--the more I thought about it, the more frantic I was about getting the next breath.

5) Breathe out hard and fully while under water. Squeeze all the air out (pull your stomach in), so that when you breathe, the air seems to rush in on its own.

6) Practice deep breathing a couple of times a day. I have an old 'inspirometer' (sp?) that measures how much air you take in. I went from only being able to suck in 3 liters to above 5 liters (the max it measures) by practicing 10 really deep breaths twice a day for a couple of months. This really helped me go from breathing every stroke to every other one.

7) Take a week or two off and forget about all the stress swimming is causing you...then start all over again.

I've seen some pretty good swimmers at my gym train with snorkles for part of their workout. I've never tried it, but it might help improve your technique without having to worry about breathing. The improved technique might then ease the demands on your breathing without the snorkle.

Have faith. By sticking with the above for about 7-8 months, I now swim 1/2 IM in 31-33 minutes, and full IM in 1:14--1:16 with relative ease. Nothing special, but not bad for an old Clydesdale with no swimming background.

Good luck!