A week won't do much of a difference...

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"Yeah, no one likes a smartass, but we all like stars" - Thom Yorke


smartasscoach.tri-oeiras.com

Well, the effect would be more than a week. Knowing I'd NEED to be in condition enough to make use of that week, I'd "train" for it.

And isn't swimming as much technique as it is fitness anyway, and thus a dedicated week could be disproportionately helpful? Well, at least for someone like me who would be fine w/ a ~40 min 1.2 swim.

How do you get better/faster quickly? And how do you do that with the typical swimming constraints (i.e., crowded lanes, "motivational challenges" from nightime outdoor cold temps, etc)? I refuse to believe that many of the decent or better swimmers did more than 3-4x/wk!!!

Or do I extrapolate my progress to date and just throw my hands up now and say "F it, no can do by June"?

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Too f@ckin depressed from various injuries to care about having a signature line.

Sponsored by Blue Shield PPO.

"How do you get better/faster quickly?"



Not gonna happen... you need consistency and time in order to improve.



"I refuse to believe that many of the decent or better swimmers did more than 3-4x/wk!!!"



I had a good laugh with this one :-) Refuse all you want!

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"Yeah, no one likes a smartass, but we all like stars" - Thom Yorke


smartasscoach.tri-oeiras.com

It sounds like it probably still is your swimming form. If you can run or bike correctly, you have enough strength to do way more than a 50. Question that might help: are you breathing out underwater? That is the most common newbie mistake to hold your breathe and then quickly breathe in and out with your head turned. Also, you should be barely kicking when you swim. The main purpose of kicking is to keep your ass afloat. I'd hope any coach would have told you that, but if not, give it a try. good luck!

Hey, I'm here to entertain!

I did mean that comment somewhat tongue-in-cheek, though. Sadly for me, I have an unrealistic example in one of my friends. He went from leg-sinking slug to an effortless ~32 mins half IM with a couple TI sessions and 2 swims per week for a year or so.

Agreed, it has to be technique. I see the dudes on DVDs getting, for lack of a better term, traction in the water. I don't seem to get anywhere near as much (which could be because of drag or poor catch, etc). My coach does preach a small kick, and I am getting to a decent position now, where my hips are closer to the surface. Note than when I'm gasping at the end of a 50, and massively losing form, it's because of air... never fatigue in the arms/shoulders/back. Never. I have yet to feel even remotely worn down, despite 1000yds worth of 25s and 50s that leave me totally breathless at the end of each.

Re: whether I exhale underwater... I do. But perhaps not enough.

I understand it takes time and practice, thus why I was thinking a week of nothing but practice and rest would be useful. Note that I say practice and not workout. The idea would not be to tire myself, but rather take as much time as needed to do 1000s of yards with good technique (which I would hope to have, plus better fitness, by then).

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Too f@ckin depressed from various injuries to care about having a signature line.

Sponsored by Blue Shield PPO.

"Agreed, it has to be technique." -Aztec

Yep, get yrself a good swim coach. Get video taped underwater. Swim a lot with a lot of drills thrown in to help you roll your hips, keep your elbows high, develop your catch in the water, and do plenty of catch up stroking so you get a feel for gliding in the water and not struggling or fighting with the water. You've got to think like a canoe.

One week ain't enough. Plenty of practice (and real consistency) over several months (and longer) will allow you to see noticable improvement.

Remember: there is no "off season" with swimming, you gotta do it year round and learn to love it (sort of).

I had the same problem the winter I was training for my first 1/2 IM. I was only able to swim 2x a week, but I stuck with it. After 3 months I was still only doing 200's and (barely) 300's before I needed to catch my breath. Then, all of a sudden one day I kept swimming and swimming. Something just clicked and I did a full 1200 meters before I stopped (and I could have kept going).

I agree that 1 power week will do nothing for you. Consistent swimming week in and week out is what will get you there.

D.

If you're so set on a week of swimming, it should be a week of [i]coached[/i] swimming. With technique as your limiter, you'll need someone correcting you early and often.

Your best bet is to set up individual sessions with your current coach (or a new coach). If you're thinking of doing this in February, the sessions don't need to be two hours either, they just need to be long enough for the coach to point out and correct stroke faults when you start to fatigue.

"Agreed, it has to be technique."

Agreed by all. It sounds like you have a major technique flaw that is eminently fixable. If you've been working at it a while with no success, follow the poetic advice and get thee to a (better) swimming coach. If there isn't one locally, travel somewhere for that week or two where there is a compassionate coach available for hire and get some serious work done. You could probably get your breathing fixed with a short burst of serious coaching. I hear Portugal is nice in February :-) If you wanted to stay domestic, go to SoCal and have Rich Strauss beat on you incessantly.

(Note: while I have neither received nor expect to receive remuneration for these referrals, I'd really like an Ergomo. :-)

Dan

I'll chime in with the thougth that you are not comfortable in the water.

No insult intended. If you are otherwise aerobically fit, a 50 should not suck all of your wind. Form is important, and if you relaxed a bit in the water, it might happen easier.

Try spending time in the water. Do monster yards on a kick board, do drills, if you have training partners, try a little water polo, things that will help you with that elusive "feel" for the water. When swimming, can you feel part of your butt out of the water? Can you feel the waterline around your head?

As for the tongue in cheek comment, a couple of workouts a day, 5-6 days a week, essentially year round for 5-15 years is not at all uncommon. On the plus side, it is also not necessary for 1/2 and full IM swims!

Good luck.

I bet you are confused....;-)

I put a fair amount of time and effort into TI and found that it screwed up my stroke more than I possible imagined. I was a competitive swimmer years ago and wanted to get efficient, but all it did was make me twist through the water like a jitter bug.

Swimming is so much in the mind, because of all the sensory feedback, that it is easy to get twisted out of shape by thinking too much. TI has great attributes, but I think it has to hit just the right person and frame of mind to work. Try getting it completely out of your mind and just swim and see what happens. It probably taught you some good lessons that are in there and just need you to relax to come out. Short, long whatever, just see what happens if you go to the pool a few times with no expectations and no worries.

Here's a helpful thread from the other side (Tri Newbie Online) about getting some swim endurance

http://www.trinewbies.com/...d=33275&posts=36

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Those who know do not speak, those who speak, do not know.

Technique and conditioning is very important to swimming improvement but newbies and weak swimmers can benefit too from just some basic ratching up of toughness in the water. Too many tri swimmers demonstrate extremely wimpy behavior in the pool that they would never contemplate on the road while biking or running.

Try to remember back to when you first went from running 2 miles to 4 miles without walking. It was hard. It hurt and you thought you were going to die. But you did it because one day you decided that you would not quit. Apply that grit to the pool. If you can't swim longer than 500 yds without stopping just commit to doing 1000 in your next workout and don't quit until you are done or dead. If you can only do 3 200's in a set, do 5. You sucked it up and got tough to get where you are on the bike and in the run. You need to do it in the pool too if you want to improve.

That being said, a 2 week "camp" like you are proposing would not be the best approach for you. You'll be better off upping your weekly training time in the pool by 25% and increasing the intensity of your swims. Do this over a period of months rather than just piling on yards for a week or 2 and you'll see improvement.

Friend, I hear your pain. I am hopeless in the water - just out and out bad. I applied myself all winter and swam as often as I could, and now I find in my races, that I am not a heap faster, but I do the swim and come out not feeling shattered as before, but relaxed and ready to go. For me what mattered was not so much what I did in my sessions (25s/50s/100s/200s/400s/hypoxic/drills/freebackbreastfly - who cares?), but just getting wet and working on technique 4/5 times a week for 5 months. I got coaching, too, every couple of weeks, to give me stuff to focus on, and that is what I did.

I think for non fish, consistency of workout with swimming beats everything. Just swim.

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kiwipat

per ardua ad astra

Look into having a coach analyze and video type your stroke. Find a masters swim team, focus on making the workouts a priority and you will see imrovement. The key to swimming is proper technique. Unfortunately, there is no magic formula. You must swim slow and learn proper body position/technique in order to make improvement. Just putting in more time like you would in biking and running doesn't work!

Good luck!

What IM are you doing?

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Enjoy the journey!

To answer some of these questions...

I'm actually pretty darn comfy in the water. Grew up surfing. Of course, the kickboard is a lot bigger in that sport!

I have at least some feel for the water. I can detect even a minor change in my balance. In fact, I'd bet that I could guess the depth of my hips, back of head, heels, etc, pretty darn closely. I can adjust my position in the water easily (in TI drills, and sometime swimming). When doing catch up, or one arm, I can feel and adjust for the bob from being front-heavy as your hand recovers and they come together, etc., etc.

As for toughness.. dude, every now and then the last 10 yards of a 50 are approaching the point where I take a breath on BOTH sides, and if I miss one, I nearly give in and breathe under water. It's that close. Seriously. Toughness ain't the limiter. And I add lengths when the coach isn't watching.

I've had (still do) a TI coach. And a masters coach. Both seem to know their stuff. As a sinker, I think I struggle more than most, and the quality of the coach is less important than my own internal struggle to hold form.

I need a 50m pool, where I can just go go go! The community pool has 5 people to a lane, where even I'm as fast as the fast lane. The only uncrowded times are the 3 hours/week I can get to the masters group.

Sooooooooo frustrating.

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**************
Too f@ckin depressed from various injuries to care about having a signature line.

Sponsored by Blue Shield PPO.

Doing the Honu half IM. Full IM... pipe dream (as I'm starting to think about Honu).

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Too f@ckin depressed from various injuries to care about having a signature line.

Sponsored by Blue Shield PPO.

Have you tried slow your swim speed down? From what you've said, you shouldn't be getting all tired out even if you've got stroke/form flaws.

Next time you're at the pool, try a couple lengths going as slowly as possible and see if it makes a difference.

As for locations for a camp, Ft. Lauderdale has a really nice outdoor set up at ISHOF- two 50 meter pools, a 20x25 diving well with tower, and a small splash pool all located a block from a good open water swimming beach. Couple of hotels nearby. Shouldn't be too crowded once the college kids clear out in mid-January either.

http://www.fortlauderdale.gov/flac/

That's what I'm talking about!!! Bad news - that part never goes away because that is how it is supposed to feel. I swam in college. I was fast. I had great technique and I was in superb condition.

Most days I felt just like you describe at some point during the work out.

Keep working. It sounds like you are on the right track.

You might try swimming with a pull buoy for part of practice. That way you can relax and naturally float in the water (saving oxygen) and also concentrate more on your form and breathing all the way out underwater. It's at least worth a go.

A great pool, though not 50m but 25m, is the Univ of SF pool. If you are not a student, alum, or faculty, the cost to use the pool is $5.00 when you buy a pack of 15 swim entries, $75. They have special package rates from time to time. You can swim from 6a - 2p. There are 17 wide lanes. I swim between 9a and 11a and usually have a lane to myself. In the early morning, the master swim group take up about half of the lanes. You then have you share with others and swim circles. The $5.00 entry also allows you to use their gym. I think it's the best deal in SF.

why so expensive?