Not an expert, but have tried a lot of methods for swim improvement, and for my n=1, swimming harder even if the form is sort of breaking down is way better than cutting it short for 'perfect technique.' In fact, in my case, I improve way more from swimming really long, really hard, even if I've fatigued to the point of really losing reach and pull, than if I don't. (I rarely go this hard/long, though, and I often swim in excess of 6 hrs per week already).

I'm old enough now to have tried so many approaches, and I've found there's no magic bullet. Invariably for me, training harder = better results. (Obviously, within reasonable limits, you can still overtrain in swimming, just listen to the body fatigue). I've tried doing 9-10 short sessions per week vs 3-4 longer ones, mixes of both, all intervals like HIIT style for months with nothing over 200yds, the reverse of that with mostly 500-1000yd steady state swims, focus on OWS, etc. I basically end up swimming the exact same expected speed given the effort and time I've put into it, and the type of input doesn't seem to matter a whole lot at the nonimpressive speeds I'm swimming.

In fact, in my case, if I do NOT push occasionally to the form-breakdown point, I absolutely don't improve at all. I have to push either the distance or the intensity/rep# of intervals hard enough to really be struggling on the last few. And it's even better when after I'm toast, I can add another 1000 or more of easier effort swimming on top of it.

Pushing to that point allows you to hold that correct form more comfortably and for a lot longer than you ever could had you just swam within your comfort range with perfect technique. There's still a time and place for focused all-technique work where you're not fatigued at all, particularly when fixing specific stroke errors (like those you see on self-video), but even that doesn't translate to speed in the water until you both ingrain it and then work it hard.

I would suggest maintaining what you're doing and swimming a 5th or 6th time.

My experience...Back in 2022, I set a goal of getting better in the water. I swam 5 days a week for 30 minutes at least. After a few weeks, I started doing intervals (10x 25 hard/25 easy) on MWF and 4x500 on T/Th. I was able to improve from 1:5x per 100 yd to 1:36 per 100 yd.

When it comes to shoulder rehab, I do band work and avoid using the paddles as I find it's too much resistance. I think low weight, high reps is better.

Good luck with your progress.

Thank you for asking about swimming and muscular endurance -- I hope this topic gets a lot of replies, since it's a question/concept that has been on my mind as friends of mine get older.

I am no coach or expert. However, working with bands has helped my strokes per length and form more than any other work I've done without being coached. I feel like I can replicate parts of my stroke -- that break down in the pool at the end of a set or, let's be honest, a 200 -- with a lot of resistance and a lot of repetition. For example, for me, recruiting lats and upper chest seems like a problem, so it's a matter of setting up the bands and my body so I can focus on those things. I bet everyone does stuff like this, but it was an aha moment for me: do 20 reps with bands of that one part of the stroke that breaks down, vary the resistance, number of sets, and recovery time, and voila.

It took some experimenting, but the results were/are striking. I feel like I have pretty good feel (you say you have good prioperception as well) for the water, and I'm a little nerdy, so the process was fun for me.

(I have a friend who keeps bands in their car and hooks them up to stuff before a run if there's a chain-link fence around for 15 minutes of this kind of training. Weird, but who are we to judge.)

Long story short, I suggest: use bands to replicate the muscles/movements where you need better strength.

I'm making an assumption that your swims feature longer intervals - 200+ y/m repeats. I'd recommend shorter distance intervals. 50s-150s, 200s are your long intervals. Determine if the fatigue is coming in through longer intervals or if it is actually the duration of your swim sessions. Its just been a month of 4 sessions per week? Probably not enough time to see progress yet... I'd suggest getting a coach's eyes on your stroke asap, though! They can help you with specifics rather than general thoughts.

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KJ
Swim and Triathlon Coach
AllTerrainEndurance.com
KJ@allterrainendurance.com

one of aus best ever swim coaches john carew said on this point 'strength endurance in swimming is an important consideration for endurance as well as sprint swimming. some athletes cannot swim a high quality over distance effort eg 3000m for time because their muscular endurance is low, rather than a limited aerobic capacity per se'

so if you cant lift your arms above your head after the swim you are doing it correctly

dont listen to me listen to matt koorey. need to do some high quality and race pace when really going for it for a few weeks but getting a good grounding of muscular endurance matt koorey has a nice video on this

Speed Through Endurance: Get Tired...Then Keep Going! - Matt Koorey Coaching

2:15 minutes onwards

Swimming 4 x per week at 4-6k per session of the right type of workout is definitely enough to get things really tending nice in the pool, if you do it over months and years not just a few weeks. Swimming with a crew or coach - good idea - particularly if you didn't grow up swimming all the time.

Not sure if you disagree with that but if you do disagree with that I guess we will rest on our disagreement

Just chiming in to follow. I'm 5 months out from a total shoulder replacement/multiple rotator cuff tears and haven't even got back in the pool yet, so I'm still quite far from utilizing this advice, but I will eventually!

I am curious about your injury and how long until you felt your shoulder was more or less "back to normal".

All endurance is muscular.

I was just waiting for the first pedantic comment on "muscular endurance," - a Slowtwitch classic.

You could at least include something helpful to the OP along with that!

Ah, the apocryphal friend 🤣 Definitely need to keep increasing the band work, my delightfully neglected Stretchcordz are happy to see me again, I can't say I feel the same way (yet). It's humbling how hard they are right now, but it's an indication of their necessity, and I will pay dearly if I get lazy on the form! I will probably start bringing around a set of bands, especially when I travel for work to sneak in some rehab exercises as well as stroke reinforcement. I am definitely receptive to convenience. If they are in my car, why not? Versus I just worked 10 hours, did a ride and a run, I just got home, need to shower, WHY??

The different perspectives here are interesting. For once in my training, I am willing to be patient and probably move into these different ideas as I progress. I love diving into the data and seeing progress, playing science experiment along the way... but I have learned with swimming, that you the more you force it with impatience, the worse you get. And in my case there is more to lose than seconds per hundred, soft tissue/tendon injuries are a substantial risk right now! I've chalked up 2024 as a development year with the option to do some standalone bike and run events and IF I am in a position to do so, maybe a middle distance tri late in the season.

Thank you for the endorsement of the extra band work, it's not as frequently talked about online as it's not as sexy as the ladder sets, fancy drills, and the like!

What a delightfully useless response with the added benefit of being wrong.

Hey Sarah, I think time in the pool will just take care of things if you had a long layoff. As others said if you can gradually up it to 6 or 10 sessions a week (doubles on some days), you will gain the oxygen delivery mechanisms in your body to deliver oxygen to the muscles causing the load in swimming verus cycling.

In cycling your core is using limited oxygen and your shoulders and arms almost nothing. Just your legs. Now your entire core is demanding oxygen (if you don't believe it do some hard 50's with and without a pull buoy with a two beat kick with pull buoy). The core of your body uses a decent amount of oxygen on top of the arms because the core connects the opposite leg to opposite arm to provide a stable platform for the catch. Imagine a tennis player trying to hit a ball with legs on a swivel table and legs spinning....you would get no force on the racket/ball.

So probably your legs ARE endurance adapted from cycling, but you need your core and arms to catch up now. Your heart should already be in good shape.

It's not about how much force we can apply on any stroke. Largely forces are pretty low once we get past an all out 100m. 12 year old age group swimmers swim circles around most of us on ST. It's about timing, breathing, streamline.

I can't emphasize how awesome doing swim doubles is. Suddenly a 5000m day becomes super high quality all the way. I really should get back to doing doubles, but hard when I am trying to cram in bike-run. The reasons why doubles are do good is the average intensity it way higher, meaning you are swimming faster more often and also under more aerobic load which will accelerate the mitochondria adaptations etc etc.

Phelps used to say for every day you spend out of the pool, you end up 2 days behind. Roughly I find this to be true. The brain has to connect with the body often in anything technical. Even when I did calculus or programming, I needed to throttle my brain multiple times a day for it to become second nature.

The problem with swimming is it is a learned technique. It is like hitting a baseball, or tennis ball, or catching a football. Running we are evolved to do the moment or spine takes the load from crawling to baby running (generally we actually do a run before we get stable at walking with the baby forward lean and throwing feet under ourselves to prevent a fall), Swimming in an unweighted environment with no weight on the spine and no connection to coordination from the sole of the feet, you gotta practice over and over and over. I say this as a lifetime runner who was forced to get serious about swimming during a two year period during which I went from not being able to walk at all to eventually walking....how I ended up with doubles, was I just replaced all my running volume with swimming, and since I was training tri with two sessions a day, I ended up training swim with two swim sessions a day.

I knew from my other sports (running, cross country skiing) that all serious programs have 2x per day (maybe less so in XC skiing due to facility availability, but second session tends to be dryland), and of course "real swimmers" live doubles or triples, so that is my input.

Thank you for the very detailed response! Cycling and running are absolutely my strongest domains both physically and with relative expertise in the science and physiology having done countless hours poring over the scientific literature and documentation/books from thought leaders in the coaching space. Swimming.... not so much lol. Before my hiatus, I could put up "respectable" times, and put a lot of attention into technique to basically save energy for the other disciplines. I didn't spend too much time delving into the same level of scientific and physiological minutiae as I had with cycling and running, but am being more diligent with that additional self-education now.

I think what I really didn't communicate the best in my post was the palpable difference in biomechanics that have come from what I can only describe as atrophy. Beyond detraining in Swimming, the muscles around my shoulders are categorically different than before I started training in swimming pre-injury. I have simply gone through the last several years of my life using my biceps and forearms balanced by my core and legs to manage pretty decent upper body strength. It's not obvious from the outside that there's a weakness, but I am engaging all the wrong muscles, massage therapists and PTs can see it instantly as both scapulae can move to places they just shouldn't! It becomes much more obvious when muscle engagement is more isolated, for instance, I can do several chin ups but zero pull ups because I can engage all biceps in the underhand grip and can't brute force to use them overhand. I am pretty sure I ingrained this habit at the tail end of rehabbing both injuries when their was still pain. I was able to avoid the pain by using different muscles and still accomplish what I needed to. I can't really run away from it anymore and have to work back from essentially a negative state. Cardiovascular fitness and leg strength, as you said aren't the limiter here. My shoulders will just turn into melted garbage and my heart rate will be in low zone 2, But, that point of "failure" is happening later and later each session, so making inroads for sure.

Here's the wrinkle with the two a days or even adding additional pool days. The logistics to get to my pool kind of suck. 30 minutes one way means that every time I go to the pool for an hour, that's 2.5 hours if I dress and shower after like a rocket. Getting swims in before work are almost a non-starter if you consider peak drive time for what may no longer be a 30 minute commute back and my pool opens at 6, not 5, so I'm limited as to how early I can get there. I start work around 8 - I won't say it's impossible and my start time is somewhat flexible, but the impetus to do that same circus again after work, through peak drive time again is a tough one. Not to mention needing to maintain some semblance of training for the other disciplines in my discretionary time.

That said, I do have open water available within striking distance for simple volume, but it's not quite warm enough yet. I am on Lake Erie that freezes and is still thawing now. Even with a thermal wetsuit, it's not quite "safe" to swim in reliably. My village is also opening an outdoor swim center this year on June 8th. It looks like they will only have afternoon and evening availability, but that opens up more opportunities for lunch swims or adding additional days within a mile of my home. I'm thinking I could probably incorporate some morning open water swims in the summer before work and work on technique and intervals in the evenings after work without huge routine modifications.

Considering I have no illusions about multisport events with any performance expectations during the 2024 primary season, I am not particularly desponded about another month before those options becoming viable. But I think it will be the right move to bring in the extra sessions while I can, and when Western New York decides it wants to turn into an igloo, I will hopefully have a very healthy base to maintain on 4 longer sessions per week over the winter season.

The simpler of the shoulder injuries was a labral tear that was repaired with laparoscopic surgery. The worse part of the recovery was actually not directly related to the tear, but rather the bursitis that was cleaned up and bone spurs that had developed along the clavicle... indescribable discomfort from that post-surgery. The first week was a bust as the nerve block had to wear off and acute surgical pain needed to subside. I started PT on week two and was back to full range of motion in a couple of weeks. Feeling "normal" took a few months though. I could use my shoulder, but there was some residual pain (much of it from the bone). Because the repair was in the front, it was a little less complicated than the process for something like a rotator cuff, but my understanding is that going from 0-75% is roughly similar between the two.

The 2019 injury was a bit more sinister. After a very hard impact with an outstretched arm, I broke the head of my humerus with two fractures when it struck the inside of the shoulder socket. One fracture went roughly halfway into the humeral head and while severe in it's own right, was uncomplicated. The second fracture went clean across detaching the bone at the head roughly 2 inches wide. I was tremendously lucky that the piece did not displace, requiring a surgical pin, but that made recovery substantially more complicated. The shoulder needed to be practically immobilized for 6 weeks until partial fusion of the bone could prevent normal movement from pulling that piece of the humerus out of place. If it sounds awful, that gets you halfway to what it felt like.

Traditionally with shoulder injuries, even those very serious breaks to the scapula and clavicle common in cycling, physicians prescribe near immediate rehab to ensure the shoulder doesn't "freeze." In my case i was only permitted to mitigate that with dangling arm swings and rotation with very little range of motion. For the first two weeks of that, the inflammation was so bad that that portion of my arm felt paralyzed. I don't think I could have moved it regardless of the pain or risk. That's a mildly terrifying sensation, assuaged only by the fact that everything past my elbow worked fine. I did start feeling that I had the capacity to move it after that point, but did not tempt fate with anything more than necessary activities like gingerly (and awkwardly) putting on clothing or finding a comfortable position when the sling came off.

At week 6, I had imaging done and confirmed fusion was approaching 70% and I was cleared to start PT. The first couple of weeks were very conservative as there was some scar tissue to break up and there was a healthy amount of atrophy, but progress came quickly. Within 2 months I was at the point that insurance tells you to kick rocks (85% recovery). Range of motion was there, but there was definitely still pain over that last 10%. As the pandemic took hold and activities shifted, I felt pretty much normal from a day to day perspective by 4 months post-break. However, without swimming and while getting lax on the rehab exercises, I did not realize that I was compensating for the pain/discomfort that remained in certain activities by engaging different muscles - a vulnerability that is exposing itself horrifically today.

That said, I am not terribly concerned as I have always been a fast responder to physical stimulus, whether it's been rehab, coming back from illness, taking on new activities, etc. After 3 weeks of moderate swimming and adding in more targeted strength work, progress is visible even day to day. The biggest limiter I deal with right now is biceps tendonitis (long head tendon) which has been relatively chronic since before I started swimming again. It's uncomfortable but is able to be worked through with myofascial release and generous warmups. I know it is coming from overuse of the biceps offsetting the scapular instability. I expect the tendonitis to improve as I build and activate the lats and supporting shoulder muscles to take the burden off the front of arm in day to day use and won't be subject to aggravation when internally rotating the shoulder.

Suffice it to say, different injuries than the rotator cuff injuries, but I think the same vulnerability exists for you to compensate away from the back of the shoulder. My "do as I say and not as I do" advice is to keep on the PT exercises and band work as part of your normal routine. They aren't the sexiest exercises in the world and feel like more of a chore as they aren't really challenging, but you can never underestimate the body's proclivity to adapt to dysfunction. "Oh, this piece doesn't work? That's fine, we can use this muscle instead." Hope this insight helps a bit 🙂

Not a physio/coach. Just a random tool.

I had something similar, though not anywhere near as bad as you. Due to something that must have happened in a lifetime of running injuries (I started swimming late), I had essentially no proprioception in my left ankle. So not only was I not kicking properly with my left foot, but I could not even hold it in a "streamlined" position, so my left foot would just drag rigidly toes-down through the water. No good for speed. I could get in a streamined position no problem as I kicked off the wall, but I'd just eventually lose all sense of where it was while swimming and muscle "commands" to get in the streamlined position would just stop working.

Without any scientific justification or physiology ka-nawledge whatsoever, in training this, I always chose "quality" over pushing "endurance." In swimming practice as soon as I started to lose the ability to command my ankle, I'd just throw a fin over my left foot (a fin basically forces into a streamlined position) and do my workout as usual.

Took a long time to very gradually progress so I could at least hold it streamlined for an hour, and then gradually working to a bit of proper ankle thrust...without being "left finman."

I can imagine feet being extra frustrating! Further from the head to feel and/or see when something is going sideways. At least I have the ability to both see and feel things aren't right, which helps a lot. I love the thought of people looking around the pool thinking "who's this guy with one fin on! Can someone buy this guy a full set?" 🤣

I am far from an expert in swimming, but I have learned enough to agree with you and know that quality over quantity is a critical cliche. Getting to the pool is enough of a chore for me that I want to make sure that I am using that time to go longer and get faster, not make a bunch of bubbles and see no progress. I'm trying to look at this period like an extended technical phase, putting in the reps and foundation for ramping up speed and long course endurance. I'm glad that you were able to make what sounds like solid progress with diligence and patience! It's reassuring to say the least.

I knew I could keep it light because DevPaul would take care of you.

Hey, mainly I was saying at if sport specific endurance is the challenge then sport specific volume is the best way to get there.

Sarah said she can do chin ups but not pull ups. Either way this is good news. My thought from way on the outside, is that unless she is racing the 50 free/fly/back, shoulder integrity is probably good enough for gradually ramping things.

Sarah, if you do doubles, when your lake is warm enough use the pool session to do more leg and core work (kick on all four sides, flutter and dolphin) and during the open water session you can work the upper body harder with support from a wetsuit for the core and legs, but if core and legs get better conditioned and in better position, you may not have work as hard with shoulders with a more hip driven freestyle.

Not a coach of any kind just speaking from personal experience.

In 2018 I broke my scapula (went over the handlebars at about 50 km/h, ouch). When I was able to use my shoulder again I had severe impairment of shoulder mobility as well as a large imbalance in the strength of my two shoulders. Stretch cords and swimming helped, but one thing that hasn't been mentioned on the thread yet is cross-training. I bought a Concept2 rower and used that 2 or 3 times a week and found that it restored my strength and made my back feel a great deal stronger. Obviously, increasing swim volume/frequency is the A1 solution here, but if getting to the pool is a big challenge/time suck, then another possible solution to look at is having a rowing machine at home. I can do a 30 minute rowing workout and it takes about 35 minutes out of my day, so it is way more time-efficient for me than swimming. If you can't swim 6 times a week but you could swim 4 times and row twice, that might be a good solution to rehabbing the shoulder/upper back muscles.