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Help designing swim block
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Hello,
I'd like to get some recommendations for an 8-10 weeks swim focused block I intend to do in the beginning of next season (around october-december depending on when I finish this season). First, I'd like to give some general context about myself and some long term goals.
I'm 24 and in my second season of triathlon I started swimming around November 2017. First season I was doing around 4 to 7 km of swimming a week (2-3 sessions of 2000-2500m), trying not too do too much with the pull buoy, fear of paddles destroying my shoulders, etc. Results were horrible as you might imagine around 16' with a wetsuit, around 17' without one for 750m swims. I decided enough was enough and I decided to focus on swimming, I believe I'm young and dedicated enough to become a good age-group triathlete swimmer (let's say the one who can get below 1h in Ironman with a wetsuit, just for reference since I have no intentions of doing anything longer than olympic distance for the next few years). At this point (around July 2018), what did I do?:

  • I knew I had to get the volume up, but it was a struggle, swimming was too taxing aerobically so I had no clue how on earth I could manage to get to swim 3000-4000m in a session ~4 times per week. Enter the pull buoy, following popular triathlon advice, I abandoned any previous reservations I had and I've basically doubled my swimming volume and done most of it with a double pull-buoy, at least during the main sets.
  • Slowly at first, I began to introduce paddle work. I have done weeks of around 7000m of paddles with no shoulder discomfort at all. Probably, I still swam additional 3-4kms that week with just the double pb so shoulders seem to hold fine. I followed some of the recommendations I received last year ( https://forum.slowtwitch.com/...s_P6677927/#p6677927 ) and bought a pair of agility paddles (size M) and a pair of basic flat paddles that I use without the wrist strap (photo below, size S)
  • Some USRPT (or my version of it, because I still used my beloved pull buoy for some of the sets). Examples:

    • 30 x 50s (holding 50") leaving @1:10 swim no buoy
    • 24 x 75s (holding 1:15) leaving @1:35 double pb and band
    • 40 x 25s (holding 0:22 leaving @0:40 double pb and band
  • Some other more technical stuff in the warm-up loosely following Tim Floyd's warm up approach

    • 300 swim w/ fins; 300 kick w/ fins; 300 pull (double buoy, snorkel, ankle band)
  • I signed up for a triathlon club but I don't like their practices so I don't usually go there. 1h30 to swim 2500, lots of strokes and kicking without fins that make me wanna kill myself because I suck at those
  • This amounted to an average of 9691m and 3.5 swims (1h-1h30'/swim) per week

Results of the approach, which I'm very pleased with:
  • 400m test swim (no buoy) : January 2018 9:08 --> March 2019 7:10
  • 750m wetsuit swim: June 2018: 15:50 --> June and August 2019 13:10 and 13:40 respectively
  • No non-wetsuit swim this year

Now, onto the question. As I stated, I'm quite happy with the results so far, but I'm still far away from my end goal so I plan to keep hammering at it until I can get out of the water in less than 11:30 for a sprint tri. Therefore I plan to devote some time to swim around 6 times a week, between 15-20 km in the beginning of next season. However, I don't know how to go about this and I'd like you to help me out. Below some possibilities, but I'm still very open to any suggestions that I have not listed or mentioned:
  1. Keep hammering the pulling

    1. Some fin work to warm up
    2. Virtually no drills
    3. Virtually no swimming without buoy
    4. Varied intensities
    5. Intervals from 50 to 400, focus on pace clock
    6. Basically, pick workouts around the 2500 to 4000m mark and swim it hard, no particular periodization
  2. Middle ground

    1. Some fin work to warm up

      1. Maybe a bit more kicking than in approach 1, but still with fins
    2. Virtually no drills
    3. Still heavy emphasis on pulling, but making sure that I swim at least 20% of the workout
    4. Varied intensities
    5. Intervals from 50 to 400, focus on pace clock
    6. Basically, pick workouts around the 2500 to 4000m mark and swim it hard, no particular periodization
  3. "Technique light":

    1. Some fin work to warm up

      1. Maybe a bit more kicking than in approach 1, but still with fins
    2. Some drills:

      1. Mostly following the emphasis points of the guppy challenge
      2. Trying to do the drills without fins as suggested

        1. This is going to be difficult I HATE drills, feel like I'm drowning
    3. Learning to kick without fins

      1. Not going crazy on this, but maybe 4 x 50 per workout
      2. Absolutely hate kicking without fins, classic triathlete going backwards
    4. Still focusing on pulling, but maybe more 50/50 ratio between swimming and pulling:

      1. Love pulling, don't like swimming so much
    5. Varied intensities
    6. Intervals from 50 to 400, focus on pace clock
    7. Basically, pick workouts around the 2500 to 4000m mark and swim it hard, no particular periodization
  4. Guppy challenge

    1. Mostly do it as it is, but:

      1. Swim the designed guppy meters
      2. Pull the difference up to tuna meters. Example:

        • Guppy: 5x200; Tuna: 10 x 200
        • Me: 5 x 200 swim; 5 x 200 pull

Sorry for the long post, but I thought having some context about my abilities and training preferences would help you giving better suggestions
PS: I have no intention of getting to my end goal next year, simply I want to keep moving forward to it.





































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Re: Help designing swim block [dense] [ In reply to ]
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Hi @dense it's great see that young people are still interested in triathlon!

You sound like you're asking for a program. This forum is not the best place for that. The sincerity of your question deserves more of an answer than you could get here. I'm sure you know that in swimming, technique is far more important than for biking and running. Just "hammering" is not the answer. Everyone needs more than a program to get better. Further, technique needs to be done off line in the pool! So my advice is to keep looking for a coach or club (maybe just swimming?) as enthusiastic as you are so you don't get bored. They can help you with technique and a program. That's your best bet. They're out there. Good luck.
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Re: Help designing swim block [dense] [ In reply to ]
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Sounds like you are ripe to learn how to properly integrate a kick into your swimming. I developed a 12 week program that teaches the fundamentals of kick timing, as well as overall rhythmic development, body awareness, and relaxation; all focused towards the goal of propulsion. It's called Finding Freestyle and it is easy to find on Training Peaks. You'd want to start with the 12 Week Basic Course.
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Re: Help designing swim block [Mark57] [ In reply to ]
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Thanks for replying, I'd really love to find a good group for me! Unfortunately I had no luck so far, there are young people who do good solid work in my club but they're obviously too fast for me to swim with them (like ~2+ min / 400m faster) and people my level simply I don't think they do enough to keep moving toward the faster lanes (not many people stupid enough to go swim 6 times a week when you're not going to win shit and you have other things to do haha ). Anyway, I'll keep my ears open to see if there are other clubs (even swim clubs) that have the structure to make lousy swimmers become decent swimmers.
I had the suspicion when writing the comment that probably it was too much detail for the forum, still I tried. Hopefully, there is someone with similar experiences (or simply an opinion) who can chime in since at this point I'm just looking for ideas.
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Re: Help designing swim block [FindinFreestyle] [ In reply to ]
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Hello David,

Thanks for answering, I agree that it might be a good time to get better at kick coordination so I'd take a look to your course in more detail when the time comes. However I must admit from what I've seen, it seems a bit too complex for my liking and I'm highly doubtful of my ability of making good use of drills without a coach looking at me.
Also, I'm hesitant to invest too much time in kicking since body position gets automatically corrected when you put a wetsuit on. I'd take some personal pleasure on being able to swim well in the pool as a challenge, but at this point I'm not sure it has the best return from investment given my situation. Anyway, thanks again and I'll keep in touch.
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Re: Help designing swim block [dense] [ In reply to ]
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Great question.

I have similar ones but am nearly twice your age... I wish I knew about Tri and swimming back then...

I might have missed it, but you may want to state where you live. A good one-on-one coaching session will go a long way. Or post a video.

I have been at it for 4 years and watched a lot of videos and done a number of coaching sessions. I am firmly in the MOP at races. The advice I typically got from my instructors, but didn’t want to hear was: Swim more.

My fear was that swimming more with bad technique wouldn’t be productive. The reality is I run 4 hrs per week, bike 5 and swim 2. Given the time I allocate to swimming I am probably where I should be: in the MOP as an adult onset swimmer.

Without access to the one-on-one sessions I suggest above. I think your on the right track with swimming more. If you are doing wetsuit legal races the buoy and paddle work is great.

Swim hard. Your technique is likely good for those 25’s and 50’s.

I tend to do longer sets because I find the time goes by quicker. But I am going to go back to doing the harder/shorter efforts.

I hope some of the ST swim gurus will chime in.

Good luck!
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Re: Help designing swim block [SBRinSD] [ In reply to ]
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Thanks, I imagine that there might be quite some people in similar situations. Hopefully we'll manage have some discussion going on. Also I'll see if I can get someone to film me during the next few weeks, at least regular film if underwater is not possible. Good luck with your races!
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Re: Help designing swim block [dense] [ In reply to ]
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Go and try to swim with the fast kids at the club. Problem solved. You also mentioned you struggled with kicking when you tried it so that should be another focus for you. The fins need better integration into your workout. Use them for drills and some speed work and maybe occasionally when you are hurting at the end of a practice. The pulling I would do no more than 1K a practice and even skip it some practices. I think you should try to enter a swim meet. Do a 50-100-200 free see what kind of speed you can generate and you can work on power and swimming fast.
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Re: Help designing swim block [dense] [ In reply to ]
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You seem to have put a lot of thought into this and are very detail-oriented.

At a glance, I suspect that at the end of the program the difference in performance results between these various programs would be minimal/negligible/non-existent.

So, my suggestion would be to step back and look at things from a more general perspective (ie: forest/trees) and maybe think about these three questions:

From both a physical and mental perspective, which program do you think you are more likely to complete and actually swim 6 days per week for 8-10 weeks?

I'm guessing that although you're doing a swim block you still want to maintain some bike and run fitness so which program do you think offers the best compromise?

Lastly, which program do you think you'll get the best results from?

I suspect that if you answer these 3 questions, you'll get the best answer to your question.
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Re: Help designing swim block [Abergili] [ In reply to ]
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Abergili wrote:
Go and try to swim with the fast kids at the club. Problem solved.

I'd love to, but trust me, when they're getting out of the water in a sprint tri around 9 mins or below and I need 7:10 to swim 400m I think I'm gonna need more than good intentions and effort to swim with them. Probably I wont be able to do it even with fins and paddles...


Abergili wrote:
You also mentioned you struggled with kicking when you tried it so that should be another focus for you. The fins need better integration into your workout. Use them for drills and some speed work and maybe occasionally when you are hurting at the end of a practice.
Even if I deeply dislike it I'm coming to terms it will probably be one of the technical focus of the block. I have no problem kicking with fins (~same pace than swimming without fins) but without fins it's really a struggle. It might be some kind of low hanging fruit for me if I go from going backwards to slowly moving forward.

Abergili wrote:
The pulling I would do no more than 1K a practice and even skip it some practices.

Have heard some similar opinions to this (and of course many against it), but I cannot agree with it at all given the importance of being able to hold technique under fatigue in an open water (specially with a wetsuit) situation. What's your reasoning behind this statement?

Abergili wrote:
I think you should try to enter a swim meet. Do a 50-100-200 free see what kind of speed you can generate and you can work on power and swimming fast.
Yes, I'm considering it.
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Re: Help designing swim block [Bill] [ In reply to ]
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Bill wrote:
You seem to have put a lot of thought into this and are very detail-oriented.

At a glance, I suspect that at the end of the program the difference in performance results between these various programs would be minimal/negligible/non-existent.

So, my suggestion would be to step back and look at things from a more general perspective (ie: forest/trees) and maybe think about these three questions:

Bill wrote:
I suspect that if you answer these 3 questions, you'll get the best answer to your question.

Thanks, it's true that I feel right at home here at slowtwitch with my tendencies to maybe put to much emphasis into some not so important stuff. Anyway, your common sense approach seems helpful to me in the sense that takes into account the big picture of my training and personality (but also it's accommodating for my biases which are strong being a typical slowtwitcher...)

Bill wrote:
From both a physical and mental perspective, which program do you think you are more likely to complete and actually swim 6 days per week for 8-10 weeks?
No doubt the easiest will be approach 1, followed by approach 2 since it's basically what I've been doing but simply more. Mentally I think if I believe in the program I can make me go to the pool 6 times per week, even if I dread it (although I don't know why I'd put myself through that). Physically, I don't know. I have never swum that much so I don't know how the body will react.

Bill wrote:
I'm guessing that although you're doing a swim block you still want to maintain some bike and run fitness so which program do you think offers the best compromise?
I'm not kidding myself in here, bike and run are going to suffer a bit although it's not terribly worrying since the block should be finished around mid december. I think that should give me more than enough time to build good fitness come June. My plan so far are 3-5 easy runs when I can fit them and 2 easy or moderate rides per week. I think this should at least give me a platform to start training again without much building into it.

That said, again I think the easiest to train around would be 1 and 2. The heavier the use of the pull buoy, the fresher the legs will be for other sports.

Bill wrote:
Lastly, which program do you think you'll get the best results from?
As I told before, I do have by biases and I think a program that gets you aerobically fit would give you the best results also I'm not very convinced of the value of doing drills when you're just trying not drown while doing them. From what coaches have told me, my technique is decent for my level, no major flaws that they insist on when they give feedback to me so that could be a green light to the "swim more" mentality.
However, I think that the best program would be somewhere in between 2 and 3:
  • Long main sets, with not so long reps, with an emphasis in pulling (with and without paddles, buoy and band, snorkel, etc). For this I'd either create my own workouts or just check the internet for sets that I think I'd like to do and I modify them
  • Not neglecting swimming, make sure I still swim AT LEAST some percentage of the workout

    • When just swimming, keep everything pretty short (usually 100m per rep or shorter)

      • Some USRPT sets, some tighter interval work, etc
    • Probably focus in something like improving my performance in some set like 10x100 or 20x100. Still very open to suggestions about how long of a set should I use as a measurement.
  • Give some space to keep working on technique. For example, I have not so great body position in the water that makes me kick harder and fatigue myself easily:

    • Learn to swim with just a band and no buoy.
    • Learn to kick better with no fins.

To be honest, this looks very good to me. Allows me to just go swim often and more, but it also has some specific technique aspects to improve. What do you think?
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Re: Help designing swim block [dense] [ In reply to ]
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Send me a message and I’m happy to talk about what could help going forward. Great job on the progress you’ve made.

Tim

http://www.magnoliamasters.com
http://www.snappingtortuga.com
http://www.swimeasyspeed.com
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Re: Help designing swim block [SnappingT] [ In reply to ]
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Thanks a lot, I sent you a private message
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