I'm right there with you! I just got in the pool last week for the first time since March 3rd (although I did a few OWS sessions during the summer). My splits were about the same but certainly required more effort. My motto is to swim so that I'm not spent for the bike and run. A few years ago I decided to focus where I will make the most gains which is cycling and running.

I also tried swimming with a Masters group on several occasions. On each occasion, I was handed a workout schedule and the coach on deck basically told you when to start. I had asked the coach for help with my stroke and received nothing. The coach seemed more interested in spending time at the lanes with the elite swimmers. I ended up leaving Masters for the last time. After pulling drills off of the internet and using my fitness center pool, I've seen my swim splits improve for the first time. This is not a knock of Masters programs in general, only my personal experience with this particular program.

IMHO a lot of the posters on ST seem to be of a different type in that they tend to be more DIYer and tinkers. Given what you said, I think you may benefit from swims on your own where you can focus on other things than just pure swimming. I am a big fan of Masters but if you aren't getting the guidance and you don't suffer from any accountability issues than swimming on your own is perfectly fine.

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I had the same experience years ago when I was in a Master's group in Scottsdale. There were some really fast guys in the group and he spent all his time with them and basically just gave the others a schedule and didn't provide any input. I dropped out pretty quickly. I won't join one again unless it was to get a specific time in the pool.

The reality is, not all "Masters" groups are created equal nor do they have a coach that is willing to help triathletes. In my program the best swimmers get less of my time ... they are technically more proficient, understand pacing concepts better and can simply 'get after it" once they have the workout. They are there for the structure and the partnership of their lane mates.

I also have athletes I coach who go to Masters 1 or 2 x per week then any other swims are on their and find a good balance within their program. You do not have to be an All In or All Out with a swim program, maybe balancing both is the way to go.

Good luck!

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Dave Latourette
http://www.TTENation.com

The masters group I was with became a swim as many laps as you can workout without any progression to anything.

People are getting older and only 1 or 2 people can make the intervals so it's like a hard 4X300 set with with 5 sec of rest, and if you can't do that put on paddles or swim a 250 and get 50 sec of rest which is way too much.

No speedwork or progression.

Nobody can kick without fins and they won't even try.

Then they have a set with 6X100 IM on 2:00 when the best everyone can do it 1:50...once except for 1 or 2 people. Nobody teaches any strokes, just do it.

I stopped working out with them when it became that shxt show and went back to the "Workouts in a Binder" book.

I had the same disappointing experience here in my city.

On the advice of many I joined my local Masters Swim group, and on the intake, of the 10 or so newcomers, 7 were AOS triathletes looking to get better at swimming. We spent the next 6 months doing IM with literally no advice on technique and the deck coaches basically ignoring our slow lane.

I mentioned a few times to the coach after a few sessions that a lot of us were triathletes, needed some help, particularly with form in the front crawl, and was told that this was a swim group, and we do it a certain way. After the 6th month of focusing on IM (seriously, when the hell am I going to use my terribly fly in a 70.3) I quit and started swimming on my own until I got a tri-coach who understood the specific needs of triathletes.

Now I still swim on my own, but with a prescribed workout to follow and have seen a lot of improvement.

I too stopped going to Masters a year two years ago, after 3 years. I wasn't disappointed with the group, I just needed a change.
I did Dave Luscan's online course (you can find it here somewhere. I'm not connected to him in any way.) and saw some improvement for my poor swim times. I did a self guided USRPT progression after that and was OK with the results.

Sounds like my experience is not that uncommon...maybe it is also too difficult to accommodate a very broad range of swim skills. I am sure the folks in the fast lane would be bored to death by doing drills and want to hammer and work on their fitness, whereas for me it does not make much sense to engrain my poor technique even deeper in my mid brain....

Get a swim coach and do a few months of 1x1 instruction once per week or every other week.

If you’ve been swimming with a group for 3 years and can barely crack 2:00/100, you’ve been swimming with the wrong group and should have made a change sooner.

I'll take the devils advocate position here.

I've been to a variety of masters groups. Honestly, I think they are over-rated for triathletes. (Note I said triathletes, NOT pure swimmers!)

None of the masters groups I have been to have done real meaningful stroke correction. Literally none. The best you get is like a quick one-liner, but that's it. I mean, it's masters, not private swim lessons, so they don't have the time or place to correct your stroke in the middle of a group workout.

They also often do too many strokes. I swim infrequently enough that the last thing I need to be doing is a lot of backstroke, breastroke or fly. Sorry, I'm not buying any argument that it's better for a triathlete who swims <5hrs a week and often 3ish hr/wk to be mixing it up with other strokes unless they already can do them fairly well.

It's also exceedingly rare for the masters workout to match up with your race-specific planned swim workouts. It's often too hard or too easy.

The best training thing about masters is that for most of us AGers, you will have the chance to swim with people slightly (or much) faster than you, so you can push yourself harder every time you go. Again, is that even good? I'd argue not. I don't go out every SBR workout trying to kill myself every time. And even on my hardest training days, it's just a bad idea to all-out it like race day. Might have made my swim briefly better, but in the grand scheme of a training plan with near-max SBR, not a good idea.

Some masters groups have TONS of down time waiting around in the lane for sets to finish, or next set. Most of the masters i've been to I've only been swimming about 60%, max 75% of the time, the rest is waiting, and that's not even counting the rest time between sets. Just lots of talking and waiting for other groups to start at the same time. It's pretty normal for me to swim another 1000 or even 2000+ after a 60min masters because we probably swam only 1000-1400 yards total of freestyle during the entire session - the rest was waiting, kick sets, toy sets, and other strokes.

Then there's the scheduling headache, it is what it is. And it sucks in most cases.

I don't need a masters group just to make me show up at the pool to train or to motivate me to go hard when it counts. If you need that, then ok, it's better for you because the alternative is not showing up or not training hard. If I want stroke correction, I'll hire a coach to do it in detail with video analysis, which is like 100x higher yield than masters stroke-correction advice. And I can follow a workout, and do Z4-5 and all-outs when prescribed.

The one thing I definitely do miss about masters though, which is a real benefit - being around other fellow swimmers or triathletes who are excited about the sport and happy to be there and sharing the experience. That's a great thing, and I absolutely wish I could have it for my own swim workouts every time. Alas, all the problems I've listed above simply outweigh it for me in this stage of my already-too-busy life. So it's back to doing my own thing the vast majority of the time and dropping in on masters periodically for the fun of it.

I also know folks who really benefit from masters, and love it - they are typically going nearly every day and are all pure swimmers (not triathletes) who were ex-collegiate swimmers and can't fathom swimming less than 5x/wk.

Everyone says join a masters swim group to get faster....but that really depends on the masters swim group.
I swim with an open water specific training squad....in saying that it is not that everyone in the squad does lots of open water, just we only swim freestyle (along with drills) and all work is focused on being good in the open water environment.
For me the squad does a few things:
1. Social environment: we work super hard but to turn up at each session with friends with similar interests is great. It is not like we talk and have lots of chit chat, but just to have the same people there all the time makes life a lot easier.
2. Structure: the sessions are structured across the week so I can get a good mix of technique, pace and endurance.
3. I can't swim far on my own as I get bored: for some reason I can easily turn up each week and do a 5k pool set, but give me that same set to do on my own and I will likely bail after 2k, I just find it boring and don't have the motivation to keep going whereas with the squad you pretty much just have to.
4. A coach who is always there for you.....my swim coach is amazing and it helps when they have won numerous open water titles and really know what they are talking about, but they just know how to help you and when you might need a break.
It sounds like you need another squad....but they can be hard to find.

https://effortlessswimming.com/ have a look at this. He has a YouTube channel by the same name, probably check that out first🙂

I did masters for a couple of years and it was the hardest and most I’ve ever swam. The coach gave some of us pointers in improving our stroke but not very often .. what really helped was the push I got from swimming and trying to catch up with others, the speed drills, different sets that focused on different strokes/ body positions etc and learning how to use the pool toys (paddles, pull buoy, kick board etc) to not only improve my stroke but my swim fitness. For me the sessions were hardcore and looking back - my times did improve, not substantially but I certainly improved my swim ability and fitness. Thinking about the different things we did ... I look at it really fondly and wouldn’t rule out going back (I do need to build up my fitness first though as we swam 1.5hrs nonstop and leaving early was frowned upon).

It gave me some base skills that I continue to use today and some ppl will love it while for others, it doesn’t work and that’s okay. There are other options such as DIY or hiring a coach who can provide the direct feedback. Or you can do a mix of masters swim one/two days a week and DIY on another 2-3 days. If I was purely focused on swimming again that’s probably what I’d do.

I concur with all of this.

Almost every masters club is overrated for the amount of work the standard triathlete is willing to put in.

Keep in mind that I am a triathlete that swims 20-30km per week these days, so I am swimming around 2000-2500m of fly, 4000m of backstroke, 4000m breast stroke, 3000m of kicking and rest is free every week. This leaves me swimming 7000m to 15000m of freestyle (roughly).

If I was just training exclusively for tri, I would be swimming 7000m per week and that would be plenty. All those other strokes would be a waste of time because my goal would be to do the free leg of a tri as fast as possible. Telling me to swim backstroke would be like telling me to go do cyclocross in my limited time when I need my time to ride my TT bike. Backstroke would be a nice diversion but it is not useful if I am racing a 1900m free with a wetsuit and quite happy to give away 1 min in the swim just to get to T1.

Here is the problem with Masters swimming. I race masters swimming in various events. As a masters swimmer, I am trying to take a 1/10th a second off my 50 fly or a quarter second off my 200 breast stroke. I can do zero training and be 2 seconds on my 50 fly, or 5 seconds slower on my 200 breast. Masters swimmers are fighting for those last few fractions of seconds. This is what we train for.

Triathletes at an age group level don't care about fractions of a second or seconds. 60 seconds on 1900m is 3 seconds per 100m. I can get within my ultimate 1900m split off 4000m of free per week because I already have cardio fitness from swim and bike. I need to go from 4000m per week to 25000m per week to get me that final 1 minute. Or I can swim slower and spend 5 min per day on race week working on my transition and have the fastest transitions in my age group (I won Kona and 70.3 combined transitions in my age group in 2010....world champion at combined transitions....way easier than swimming faster)

So if I show up at masters for for my 4000m per week and they make me doing half my time on other strokes, I am wasting my time.

I am sold on masters swimming for various reasons, but its to become a faster swimmer, not to get the fastest triathlon time I can get on limited tri training.

If you have a good triathlon focused squad and its a good social scene than great. Most triathletes would just benefit from doing hard 100's, with a pull buoy at high turnover (forget about glide, its overated in a wetsuit in chop), getting as much oxygen per minute (high turnoover does that), and get to T1 "fast enough".

But you go to most masters swims and they tell you to glide, they make you do all the other strokes, and they do pretty well everything that you don't need to do to be a faster open water wetsuit swimmer with 1000 friends in waves off your 2 hrs of swim time per week.

For sure if you want to be a better pure swimmer, then go to masters 3x per week and go compliment that with 5 other swims per week, but that's not what most triathletes will do so its pointless recommending something that does not maximize time investment.

having coached swimming for a few years, swimming with some masters programs & watching others/ guest coaching on deck/guest swimming from around the world my observation is master programs range from awesome to horrible and everywhere in between, sometimes in the same program depending on the coach that day.

If you're not getting stroke correction work and you have some serious flaws if you're stuck ~ 2min/100 it may be better to do some video analysis with a swim/tri coach get 1-2-3 specific things to work on for a few weeks then repeat.

I can't tell you the # of times I've seen triathletes doing drills to improve their technique that did just the opposite. 50-60% of the time. It's often bad swimmers helping each other get worse with the best intentions of helping them get faster. I'm going to list some problems from the thread, the reasons why they persist and some solutions

Problem: I don't get specific technique work. One of the problems with masters programs is you've got 21 swimmers in 5 lanes. You don't have room to pull someone out fix things and dump them back in. They need to be doing something like 10x100 w/ fins & snorkel as 25drill/swim on :15 rest while the rest of the group is doing 10x200 on :20. It clogs the lane.

Solution: If this sounds like your masters program you need to talk to the coach about working technique focus sessions in when the pool is open for general swimming.

Problem: No progression in the workouts and half the swimmers half ass the swim
Solution: Talk with the coach about the lack of progress. Ask to lead a lane. It's probably better in this situation to lead the lane 1 slower (assuming the gap is only a few seconds) then be 4th of 5 in the faster lane. Or start closing that gap so you're riding the person's feet in front. Then halfway through the set ask to move up. Bring your big game swimming though bc you're often only going to get 1 or 2 shots at that. You may need to slay yourself for the rest of practice to earn that slot moving forward.
You have to realize a lot of master swimmers do it so they can drink beer & socialize. They're not in it to compete but for their health. You may need to find a program that's about slaying dragons vs petting kittens. Often the slaying dragon groups come with some of the problems you are reading about in this thread.

Problem: Tons of stroke/IM work and we're triathletes
Solution: Learn other strokes. It will benefit you for triathlon while increasing your feel for the water. Now if it's all stroke very day talk to the coach. Describe how you're basically distance swimmers, not IMers and that you want to learn & do some swimming in the other strokes but that having a high threshold velocity not an awesome back stroke is ideal. Some stroke work every swim will make you a better overall swimming which will help you in OWS. I give my triathletes some stroke work in nearly every workout. Could be something like 8x50 odds stroke/fast evens k/stk as a warm up set. Now if you're average workout is 30% or more stroke work, talk to the coach.

Problem: The coach on deck is unresponsive to the needs of triathletes/only spends time with the fast people.
Solutions : It's really easy to coach the fastest people. If the coach is spending all their time with the fast people my thoughts are 1. they are a former college swimmer 2. low coaching skill set 3. new to coaching 4. don't realize it 5. all/any of the above + whatever I missed.
You, as a paying member of that squad, need to vocally exercise your rights. Mention to them you notice they spend a lot of time w/the fast dudes and that you guys in the slower lanes want to swim like them. can they help you guys out more during practice bc you guys need some help figuring out how to look that good in the water. That coach may not even realize they are doing it. Don't be a dick about it either.

Problem: I've got a specific race coming up & the workouts don't match up with my sharpening. OR there's a masters meet coming up and the workouts are getting tailored for that
Solution: Swim on your own. Be lucky that you're in a group that is tailoring workouts and some of those workouts are actually going to help you sharpen the blade. Or drop to the lanes where people aren't going to the meet if possible. Realize though that even if triathletes make up 60% of your masters group, which while not common isn't uncommon, often these programs are geared around masters swim meets. And doing a few of those as a triathlete would not be a bad idea. Especially going off the blocks for 100,200. Feel the need for speed!

hope that helps give you some ideas to think about for next time you hit the deck

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

Here is the best advise you can be given. I am not taking credit for it, merely repeating what every swim coach and lifelong swimmers already knows:

The best way to get faster is to consistently do interval work with a keen awareness of your pace and a constant drive towards getting just a little bit better every week.

You said you can do a 400M in 8:00. Okay. Can you do 16 on 2:10? Yes? Your next goal is to 3 on 2:10 and 1 on 2:05 repeated 4 times (so 16 100's with 4 of them at 2:05). Then alternate 2:05 / 2:10. When you are getting close to being able to do that, maybe do 1 on 2:00, followed by 1 on 2:20 followed by 2 on 2:10 repeated 4 times (again, 16 total). When you can do that set well, decide you are going to do 16 on 2:05 on a Friday or Saturday. Circle it on your calendar. Commit to posting that you did in on ST : ). Then take exactly what you did to move from 2:10 to 2:05 and simply subtract 5 seconds. Keep going. Keep going. You will get down to 16 on 1:45.

The only thing a masters group will do for you is a little more variety and a little more accountability. Sounds like you were getting neither. Meh. I'd move on too.

For me, personally, if I was looking to get faster I would be more keen on "hardasballssswimming.com"

Dev - you are 100% right about lost time in transitions, especially with comparing it to the yield per time spent practicing for marginal swim gains!

I'm guilty of not practicing my transitions enough, but the few times I DID invest near-minimal time in my transitions, it paid off in spades, having the fastest or near-fastest transitions on race day.

I'm luckily experienced enough now that I rarely have big hiccups with equipment transitions on race day, but two things I do have to recheck every race, every time, and remind myself over again before the race starts is:

1. Check the location of entry/exit to transition, as well as scout the first 400m coming out transition so you can see any danger zones/bottlenecks.
2. Memorize the landmarks for your particular spot in transition. And then re-check it right before they close transition, as things look at lot different when there are few bikes racked compared to all bikes racked.
3. Prepare to run FAST out of the swim (if you're a stronger runner than swimmer). Scope out the entire T1 transition run, and make sure you know what's coming, and be prepared to run fast. Honestly, I think for the the top transition guys, speed of this run is the dominant factor in how fast T1 is - you don't need to be a frenzied turkey putting on and removing gear in T1 (none of the top pros are frenzied, even in ITU) but you do have to move fast during that time-killing run to T1. AGers are particularly terrible at this run, probably because they didn't account for it in the swim pacing.

Thanks a lot for your input... in sum I think I should try solo for a while.

Thanks for suggesting this set... this is kind of why I would like to go solo because at the moment I have very little control of my sets and can't control for what works and makes me faster and what not.... We'll see how it goes.

I would caution on the fast run in transition. Treat it like biathlon...get through with purpose but don't go anaerobic out of the swim when all the blood is in upper body and you need to shunt it to the legs. For the last 50m of swim, kick really hard and soft stroke, but then once on land, gradually build from a jog to a run back to a jog before bike so you can focus on not fumbling in T1.