When I was browsing around T26s site earlier today (out of curiosity more than anything else) that seems to be in line with Gerry’s thinking too. It seems from the site that hekinda lays out 2 “A” sessions a week which are the core practices, one “B” session which supplements the A sessions, and a C session which is a “technique and recovery “ practice. You do the B only if you are doing both A sessions, and the C as an optional 4th.

I couldn’t see the specifics of the workouts, I don’t think he’s a “no drills” guy, but it’s clear that putting in the work is more important to him than drills. I know that Joel Filliol and Paulo Sousa have a similar mindset.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

I've overheard a number of triathletes talking about how swimming is "all technique" and hence, if they can just find the drill that perfects their stroke, then they too will cruising effortlessly at 1:10 per 100 yd pace, no grinding out the yards required. Those of us who have actually swum a bit know that this is not at all true. As you and Jason have said, swimming is "100% technique and 100% fitness". :)

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

+1 AOS, myself included, often find drills to be the first thing that they are successful at while swimming. Drills are great in that they break swimming down into little pieces that you can master. Non-swimmers feel zero mastery in the water so when they learn some drills they think they are on the way and want to stick with that way.

Putting the drills together and swimming fast is hard because it takes an interval like effort. And, a person has to move away from the satisfaction they get from doing the drills. Many people keep doing the drills without moving on because they are now swimming better than they ever did and why not continue to believe in the first thing that ever worked for them.

We could use a coach to teach us drills. Then we could use a coach to move us off the drills.

PS

Big picture is that we might be failing many beginners because we often don't teach them drills early on. While we no longer do "sink or swim", most people's experience with swimming is that the natural swimmers continue and the others leave the pool. On many youth swim teams, they want to see who can swim - end of story.

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Indoor Triathlete - I thought I was right, until I realized I was wrong.

I apologize, I can't find them anywhere. I must have tossed them in a 'free stuff' bin I brought to the Madison swap meet in January.

In general correct as I understand it. I've been swimming with Gerry since late December after switching over from a more informal masters for the last ten years. I go 3 x per week, and it's structured as easier recovery Monday, I guess that's the C, which is 15 minutes shorter and about 1K less yards than the A sessions Wed and Friday. Saturday is I guess something in between as the B. I do not recall doing any drills in the A sessions, and some drills in the C but a pretty small amount.

For example last Monday was 3700 M with 4 x 100 fist drill, that was it for drills.
Workout (without intervals) was
500
4 x 200 as kick 50 / swim 50
400 pull 75%
400/300/200/100 pull increase effort by 5%
4 x 100 fist
5 x 100 80%
100 ez

Also depends on the time of year. In December/off season there is more of a focus on certain drills but they're very focused (i.e. on tautness and alignment than say one armed drills or catchup, haven't done any of those types of drills at T 26).

As a Tower26 swimmer, there are definitely "drills" in some of the workouts. But there aren't many and they are pretty focused on a specific purpose. I've never thought of the pull sets that we do regularly with the Tech Paddles as drills. Maybe it's getting a little too much into the weeds about the definition of a drill... but I see those as primarily pull sets that have a particular focus on proper arm position and technique.

Maybe it's getting a little too much into the weeds about the definition of a drill...//

finally, someone brought up a very relevant thought, what is a drill? Here are some debated items;

1.Buoy
2.paddles
3. kick board
4. snorkel
5. paddles and buoy
6.band(with or without paddles and buoy)
7.one arm swimming
8. kick, kick, pulls
9. Alternate or breath holding while swimming


And there are a few others.


If these are all drills, then I do about 80% of my workout as drills. But what is a drill? To me, it is something you slow down on, and focus entirely on the particular exercise. All of the things I listed can be done as a hard set or workout. My feeling is that if you are going hard, it is not primarily a drill, it is working out. Not to say that you cannot be working on things while going hard, in fact that is the best time to be working on stuff, at race paces. But drills in the sense of breaking down single aspects of the stroke, and focusing solely on that part, should be aerobic and targeted..


Just thought I would put this out there, as I'm not sure what everyone is even talking about. I do so many laps doing different stuff, that the lengths just get confusing...

Thinking about it, I agree with you. pull sets with paddles aren't really a drill, even if they are weird funky paddles. It's just pulling with paddles. I SUPPOSE you could call it a drill, but it's not what most of us would think of as being a drill.

To me, a drill is something that isolates or exaggerates a particular component of the stroke, but isn't a full stroke or is very different from the "normal" stroke in some fundamental way. So sculling would be a drill, one-arm swimming would be a drill, fingertip drag would be a drill, catchup would be a drill. Technically, pull and kick would be drills, but we kind of lump them off into their own special categories..

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

finally, someone brought up a very relevant thought, what is a drill?
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I've been thinking about this and I'm going to stumble over this thought process (for those who default to outrage, bear with me). If the activity is geared more towards building technique instead of building fitness, I'd call it a drill. Paddles, buoy, kb, snorkles, etc are toys that may or may not used in drills. Activities that break down part of the stroke or kick= drill.

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Take a short break from ST and read my blog:
http://tri-banter.blogspot.com/

Let me sum up Tim's advice in my less than subtle way...

Just fucking swim.

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Favorite Gear: Dimond | Cadex | Desoto Sport | Hoka One One

Right on cue from the man himself.

https://swimswam.com/...ith-gerry-rodrigues/

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

I'm kind of shocked that he says one hour per week "could be plenty of time in the water".

The balance between technical work and training is crucial, but is frequently do not achieve, “Many people swim one hour a week, which could be plenty of time in the water, but they don’t do very much volume in that hour. Many are doing stroke drills all the time and they become good drillers, but they don’t swim fast.”

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

Well, he’s talking about plenty of time in context of what their history is and their goals. If I’m coming off a lay-off, I can improve on an hour per week, provided I make that a quality hour. It’s situational, and I’m not about to second guess Gerry.

ETA. That’s also not a particularly important part of the overall message, although I can see how some could take it out of context and say that swimming once per week is all you need.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

Personally, as a late adult onset swimmer, I think this is dangerous advice. I don't doubt that most of the time that people spend doing drills is wasted, but saying "just f'ing swim" could be bad advice as well. In my case, that's pretty much what I've done for the last couple of years. My main focus during this time has been regular attendance at master's swim sessions. The coach is great for giving us good workouts and pushing us hard, but there are too many people for him to really spend time giving any individual technique advice and I'm not sure that's his strength anyway. Unfortunately, my swim has stagnated during this time.

So I'd been feeling that something wasn't right with my technique but couldn't seem to figure it out on my own. So recently I did a 2 hour clinic with a swim smooth coach (Peter Russo in Rhode Island), and it was humbling to actually see the video and realize the basic mistakes I'd been making over and over again. He did give me some drills, but it was the simple advice about what I was doing wrong that proved key. In short order I almost instantly improved a good 5 seconds per 100 across the board. That's as much as I've improved in the last 3 years of swimming hard. In my case, I already had a good fitness base to build on and I'm sure not everyone will see improvement so quickly.

The interesting thing is that I've kept track of the technique advice I've gotten over the years, and a lot of it echoed what this guy said, but some of the feedback was wrong and that contradictory advice negated the advice that was good and held me back.

I think anyone that's stagnating in their swim improvement should seek feedback from a qualified technique coach and then hopefully be able to have actionable improvements to make on an ongoing basis. That may involve adding some targeted drills to focus on your particular weakness but those drills shouldn't be at the cost of fitness. And likely, periodically go back and repeat as it's a long term process to becoming a better swimmer for those of us that didn't learn as kids.

Just my $.02.

This is awesome. I just got a Slowtwitch “Anger Translator.”

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http://www.magnoliamasters.com
http://www.snappingtortuga.com
http://www.swimeasyspeed.com

So then the real trick would be, since triathletes have limited time in the water and as a coach you want to be as efficient as possible, how do you do both?

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http://www.magnoliamasters.com
http://www.snappingtortuga.com
http://www.swimeasyspeed.com

I know Peter Russo!

Been a long time but he is a hard man!
Dont know much about his swimming but what did he tell you that was so helpful?

And to the OP
My HS swim coach said this about fist drill:

Get your wallet and put a 5 dollar bill in each hand. If it is dry after doing fist drill you can keep it.

Substitute any monetary amount/type you want. Still the same. If you wan the effect of FIST drill. Make a fist.
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Lastly, to share a new warm up and warm down tip. For the past year I have been doing the first 500 to 700 of each warm up using fists.
I have found this to be a great way to help me slow down in the warm up as well as work on a higher tempo for my swimming.
** side note: It is amazing how fast and aggressively swum warm ups are by the triathletes I swim with. THey will blow by me in warm up, (while Im using fists) yet in the main set, get lapped in anything longer than a 200.
And please dont misunderstand.. I share this information with them. They have chosen not to abide.

Good luck with swimming.
daved

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http://www.theundergroundcoach.com

yep. a lot of the people I swim with have just one speed.

I'm doing a lot of non-free or drill in warmup. fist drill with a band might be a good one to throw in....

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

Well, I'm was doing a bunch of things wrong, overrotating, crossing over and splaying my kick outward. Plus some smaller things. I'd heard that I was crossing over before but didn't realize how much. But the big one was the overrotation, I'd also been told in the past that I swim flat, and correcting the overrotation greatly helped with the crossover and getting my kick tighter. Just all seemed to click once I heard that.

Hey thanks for the suggestion.

Im not opposed to using "gear", which is to say, I will absolutely try stuff out and see how it works so I can be educated and experienced with what is available. But on a regular basis, i just show up with a water bottle. I have tried and need to do a bit more with the ENEY BUOY. So i can offer up some intel there..
As far as band use... I am a sinker.. and struggle mightly with bands. Put just a pullbuoy between my legs and Im faster than ever. Most radical sinkers find band super hard. And sadly not super useful. Natural floaters (ive talked about this in forum chats previously) can use a band and get the desired effect.

daved

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http://www.theundergroundcoach.com

Super happy youre improving! well done.

daved

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http://www.theundergroundcoach.com

What would be the point of using an aide to do the fist drill? I thought it was to encourage you to feel the water with your forearm and use the forearm more effectively for propulsion. I'm not sure the fist drill does much anyway. Currently I am being kicked to death by my coach. About one quartter of workouts seem to be kicking. Some of that is drills like three point touch and six kicks on side pull rotate to other side and so on. It is making me faster though.

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They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

So then the real trick would be, since triathletes have limited time in the water and as a coach you want to be as efficient as possible, how do you do both?
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You work the drills into the warmup. In my world, the WU is roughly 20-30% of total yardage, say 500-1000 yards. Of that warmup, I'd put in ~200 (max) yards of drill work. Less than 10% of the yardage is cool down. The rest of the yardage should be work. Actual, honest to god swim work. During the main sets of a swim workout, there should be minimal 'easy yardage', especially for athletes in the water for 2-4x per week at 3000 yards per workout.

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Take a short break from ST and read my blog:
http://tri-banter.blogspot.com/

I'm no Keegan-Michael Key but I have my moments. ;-)

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Favorite Gear: Dimond | Cadex | Desoto Sport | Hoka One One

I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said, but what I was getting at is if you add in some “constraints” like “drag Sox”, “brick kickboard” and “sensory mitts,” you can work hard, get fitness and improve your stroke at the same time.

The other thing to point out is swimming faster against the pace clock on repeat after repeat while focused on your stroke is the best drill there is.

Tim

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http://www.magnoliamasters.com
http://www.snappingtortuga.com
http://www.swimeasyspeed.com