Here's my take on it. A lot of folks disagree with my take on the swimming part, but the run/cycling part is straightforward.

Swimming fast requires both technique and power, and triathletes who haven't swum a ton usually vastly underestimate the importance of the power in going fast. It is true that as a raw beginner if you have major stroke errors, you SHOULD practice slowly to fix them before speeding it up and going hard.

But once you're pretty flat in the water, power >> technique for AG triathlete swimming. And triathletes continue to underestimate the training required to swim well/fast (Measly 2-3 swims a week is pretty typical for even 'advanced' book training tri plans.)

If you think technique is so dominant, a competitive swimmer with their arm tied behind their back should come in near-last in a triathlon swim. You all know that in reality, they will likely beat 80-90% of the AGers despite that arm tied back there. Yeah, technique, right.

As for cycling - not much technique needed on the power generation part, you're pedaling in circles. If tri bike courses were more technical or drafting was allowed, you'd see a technical cycling rise greatly in importance. As it stands, it doesn't.

As for running, humans are evolutionarily developed to optimize run form for body type and fitness. Yes, it is a singularly special ability we have, and this has been intensely studied by scientists who confirm this in many ways and trace is evolutionarily. As opposed to skiing, swimming, and other sports, we don't have to learn technique really at all - you just have to do it and you'll naturally optimize your technique to YOUR ability/body type. A lot of swim coaches make the big mistake of thinking run training should mimic swim training, so heavy emphasis on identifying technical running flaws and then focusing on drills to fix them, where in reality, these technical errors will self-correct very quickly as you get faster. And in fact, if you force technical correction on someone who's physiology doesn't prefer it (like Ryan Hall 2:05 marathoner's low arm swing) they will almost certainly run slower/worse.

If you think technique is so dominant, a competitive swimmer with their arm tied behind their back should come in near-last in a triathlon swim. You all know that in reality, they will likely beat 80-90% of the AGers despite that arm tied back there. Yeah, technique, right. //

I think your argument here is ass backwards, and actually describes why swimming is so technique loaded. The reason a top swimmer will beat 90% of folks with a one arm swim is because of technique, not from any real strength component. It is the technique of moving your body through the water, and losing one arm for top swimmer is just a slight drawback. With one arm a swimmer can still hold that great body position, using a little more legs and glide to keep that momentum going.


There are a lot of really weakish long distance swimmers that overcome that with technique. Sun Yang comes to mind, imagine he would have trouble doing 10 pull-ups and bonk after a minute of push ups. But put him in a pool and he can swim circles around most for hours on end.. Same with a lot of the ladies, you won't find a lot of traditional strength in their bodies, but speeding through the water all day long regardless..

It's still very hard for me to reconcile the importance of heavy lifting for triathlon swimming which are all non-sprint swim distances.

I mean, Lucy Charles, was a legit pure swimmer and her arms and back are far from the buffness you'd see in Crossfit. Same with Alistair Brownlee, who consistently led the swim in his prime - his arms are really small. You could go on an on - Jan frodeno, etc.

Now for sprint-type swim (and bike/run) events - yeah, muscle power matters a LOT. We all know how huge the swim sprinters are, but it's no different in run/bike. Chris Hoy's got quadzilla legs. And in a youtube video, the buff british pro boxer absolutely crushed both Brownlees and Mo Farah in a short track run sprint. It wasn't even close, which actually surprised me, since I didn't know pro boxers trained sprinting. (Apparently they do!)

Telling an AG triathlete to prioritize heavy weightlifting as do swimmers doesn't seem as useful to me. Particularly as it's entirely possible that the added weight and training fatigue from that weightlifting may be offset by penalties on bike/run. That said, I still weight train myself a fair amount - but not to get faster in the swim.

Actually, triathletes often DO gain too much muscle if they are wishing to optimize their tri performance. Not as much as issue for AGers, but Rinnie even says this outright in one of her videos when a trainer is working with her. The pro/elites specifically avoid weight training that will bulk them up. Not true at all for competitive swimmers though, and it's pretty obvious in terms of their builds.

Some will gain/lose more than others. But if you are going from little-low weight training, you can easily put on 5,10, even 15 lbs depending on your starting point and size. Especially if you've dieted down your weight and probably consumed some of your muscle in the process already. (When I was on marathon-specific training, with no weight training, my upper body and leg bulk atrophied to the point I was -20 lbs compared to today, and I have a six-pack today so not carrying a ton of fat.)

Even avoiding the weight gain issue, again, the point is that you're fooling yourself as a triathlete if you think significant weight training is going to significantly improve your OWS speed at triathlon race distances, especially if you're comparing it to just spending more time in the pool or OWS. Not even close! It might improve your swim sprint speed, but 1500yds/meters+? Doubtful.

I agree with you as I said previously about weightlifting for AGers just for general well being. This applies to all folks, not just triathletes. At my mid40s, it was getting alarming to me that I might strain my back doing something as routine as replacing the jug on the office water cooler, so I've been good about weight training. But the goal here is to avoid weird muscle strains in acts of daily living - NOT to improve my swim pull strength.

Fair enough, but OP wants to SWIM faster.

My sincere and humble apologies.
Obviously the OP can and will learn at your feet.
You added so much to his knowledge and confidence about pure swimmers.
Now that they know what a pure swimmer should be like they can model themselves on that or take up tennis..
Once again please accept my abject (grovel grovel) and sincere admission of guilt in questioning your wisdom in projecting minimum standards of excellence.

Wow. This thread has a ton of posters making some very strong claims about physics and swimming despite clearly not being physicists nor swimmers.

dunno wrote:

There is plenty of literature, chat and training advice about going slow to go fast with running.

Does they same hold true for swimming though? A lot of training plans seem to be the complete opposite-lots of short sharp intervals. Why is this? Can you approach swimming in the same way-long comfortable low HR sets with a speed day or two during the week?

I think you make an excellent point. Seems to me most triathlon coaches trade more on their own success in the sport than on the success of their athletes.

That said, I think there are many former swimmers immersed in the sport for long enough to have picked up some nuggets of knowledge. Including that technique is important and that you have to train fast to race fast.

But since you bring it up perhaps you’d like to share your own qualifications for giving advice in this thread.

I think having flexibility is a lot more important than bulking up for swimming. Thats for the average swimmer. I understand college swimmers its a bit different and they are really sprint oriented. So you see some crazy dryland stuff from them.

x3

If you are swimming slower than 1:30/100 your technique is awful. In that case about 50% of all your time in the pool should be spent on drills. And hire a coach. And have a video taken of your technique to analyze.

Real swimmers can effortlessly glide through the water, I mean just no effort at all, faster than 1:30/100.

1:30/100m is floating pace.

It takes a high level of mental effort for me to slow down to 1:30/100.

It takes a high level of mental effort for me to slow down to 1:30/100.

1:30/100m is floating pace.

If I swam that slow my kid would be kicking my ass... trying to stave that off. I figure I have 18 months.

f**k you that's ridiculous. 1:30 / 100 m is something that's unachievable for me unless it's an all out sprint.