I was surprised to hear that a competitive swimmer could swim 20k in a meet despite only specializing in short <2 minute events. Is this true of most swimmers, not just the uber-world-class elites? Curious as to how much swim volume in a single meet day a decent HS swimmer would end up with.

Otherwise, good article. I guess my only other niggle with it is that I think it's perfectly fine for triathletes to train 2-4 hours for the swim, so long as they're not holding themselves up to the standard of hi-level elite/pro pure competitive swimmers. Heck, if you held triathlon runners to the same pace standards as elite marathon runners, it would look pretty darn ugly too! 2-4hrs is typically enough for a solid finish for an AGer triathlete unless they're shooting for top national-class results or looking to make big improvements in a swim-focused block.

I think the thing isn't that they aren't training enough, its how do you train so as not to reduce the quality of the other disciplines you have to concurrently train as well. What would happen if you added 2 more hours of swimming a week? You would become a better swimmer, but I imagine for most it would wreck their next bike or run sessions.

I'm not a good swimmer though, which irritates the fuck out of me, but as a non-coached person, I find it difficult to balance all 3 sports so as not to over-train in one and diminish my results in the others.

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If we are getting really specific, 20k would be for distance swimmers and more than likely female distance swimmers. They typically need to keep the volume up even at an end of season, championship meet.

In regards to a HS swimmer in a single day meet, the high school meet program is fairly compact with nothing over 500 yards. It’s nothing like a championship program at a USA swimming meet where everything is contested from the 50 through the mile and up to the 800 free relay (4x200).
But for a HS swimmer in a duel meet where they would swim 2 individual events (500 and 200) and 2 relays (50 on medley relay and 100 on 400 free) over the course of roughly 2 hours, it wouldn’t be unusual with warm-up/warm down to swim 4000 during the meet.

I agree. All depends on what types of goals you have. I was more addressing the general misconceptions about training the triathlon community has about the swim.

Tim

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Hear hear.


So, how much should we swim for 1500m / 3800m?

Depends on your goals.

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Just adding time won’t necessarily make you a better swimmer. If you are over-training the bike and run which is common in the triathlon community, there won’t be any room to make an adaption in the swim.

I agree that it is all about balance and efficiency in the training. And it sounds like you might be at the point with yours where you could benefit from an experienced and qualified coach to help you find that balance.

Hope this helps,

Tim

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I'm not quite sure I understand the point of the article . . . I was looking for a "conclusion" and don't think I really saw it.

Triathletes not only swim, but also bike and run. And, work, family, etc. That probably is the biggest difference between swim training and triathlon swim training. Again, and not trying to be dense (although may be accurate) I'm not quite sure I understand the point.

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I agree with this. But the problem most long distance triathletes face is that there is only so much time they can dedicate to training. Dedicating another 3 hours to swim each week might come at the cost of less running or cycling (or recovery). If I steal 2 hours from cycling and 1 hour from running will I end up with a net loss in my ironman time? Obviously it’s athlete specific. But for a typical 10 hour finisher the swim represents maybe ~10% of the total race time. A 1% improvement in the bike or run makes a bigger difference than a in the swim.

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Matt

Also, people spend too much time at the wall. I swim only three hours per week, but it's nonstop easy with sprints mixed in. That type of work has sped me up to a 1:22 to 1:23 average pace for the whole hour. I end up with 13,000 yards per week in just three hours.

I set a beep timer on my watch to go off every 1:23 and I just swim casually along that pace, looking for changes in technique that speed me up vs. makes me slower at the same effort. If it's faster (beat the beep by the flip turn) I keep it. If it's slower, I drop it. My swim form is dramatically different than when I started doing it years ago and it's now super casual to swim that pace - like chill meditation. I found the stuff that was slowing me down and threw it out, so now I can just glide along and apply effort when I want to, not because I have to.

I dropped a lot of time on my swim pace that way and lots of people could too. Use a beeping pace timer on your watch to find what makes you faster slower, mix in some sprints, and be more time efficient so you get in your volume. It works if you swim a 1:25 pace or a 1:50 pace - it'll help anybody drop time.

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Yes, and according to cycling coach we dont cycle enough and according to running coach we dont run nearly enough.

I fall solidly into that 2h 8km category per week. This is consistently enough for sub <1h swim (AG45) (57min in Kona 2016). If I would double that, considering inefficiency of getting to pool etc, that would mean something like 3.5-4h impact on other disciplines. I doubt this would give me a better triathlon result. Any thoughts?

The last line of your comment and I appreciate your comment was one of the misconceptions I was going to address, but didn’t work with the overall article.

“A 1% improvement in the bike or run makes a bigger difference than in the swim.”

That statement only rings true if you “silo” off all the legs of the race from one another. The swim is the only leg of the race that impacts the whole race. I have enough anecdotal eveidence to know that a slow, inefficient swim can significantly impact your bike.

I don’t disagree that there isn’t enough time. But based on the training plans I routinely see for the bike and run, the community isn’t looking for ways to be more efficient in the training.

Hope this helps,

Tim

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It’s not always about pure yardage. But I can tell you from experience that if all you are doing is straight non-stop swimming for 3 hours a week, you could be significantly faster than you are right now with a little bit different training. It would be the exact same number of hours, but you would be dramatically more efficient.

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But how much more time would I have to invest in swimming? Because it's not just the in water time we're talking about, we're talking about the commute. Whereas Cycling and Running I can leave from my house. To be honest if I had a lake in the back I'd swim a lot more.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

it all depends on your goals. But to address some of the general training times for age group triathletes, I would say that 2 hours a week to train for a 3800m swim without a swim background isn’t enough.

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Well currently my goals have me looking at cycling and running a lot more because there's a lot of fat that can be cut there. I'm a horrible swimmer, now, I'm looking at investing more time on the swim piece going from two to three hours. But that three hours looks more like 4.5 hours because of commute time.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Going from 3 to 4 swims per week can make a big difference. What I find is that if I'm trying to make any technical improvements, the longer the gap between workouts the harder it is to hold onto any changes from the previous session.

I can maintain "enough" fitness for triathlon swimming on 2 swims per week, but I won't see any improvement on that. If I'm really trying to improve my swim, I need to do a minimum of 5 swims per week.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

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Pretty good article.
Sure, agreed that triathlon swimming is much like pool swimming with some important caveats:

Triathlon swimming is like distance pool swimming, which is quite different from sprinting.

Then, the only major things to add/modify to pool swimming to be a good "triathlon swimmer":

1) be able to open water sight (pretty easy to learn if you swim ok)
2) be able to easily modify your stroke and breathing when encountering waves (say, like 5 foot waves)
3) be able to jostle about and swim with a big flailing crowd in the water without anxiety
4) have no "fear" of the water.

For most people, it is no. 3 and no. 4 that is the toughest to internalize ...

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This was true in my case. Did a big swim block over the Winter and not only did my swim times improve, but my heart rate starting the bike was consistently almost 10 bpm lower than in past races.

FWIW, that 20k sited was for a "distance swimmer" over a 4 day championship meet with prelims/finals session formant. Which may actually be light.

A HS sprinter at a dual meet might swim a 1.5-3k general warm up + 2 - 400 yards of competition. Cooldown between/after events might be another .5-2k, or might be nothing, depending on the availability of cool down pool/lanes/diving well.

I think it's entirely possible to train effectively for the swim leg of triathlon on +/- 10k yards a week, especially for anything 70.3 or shorter. I do agree that the training needs to be fairly intense, though. Shortish (no more than 15 min) warm up (do your drills here, if you must), then get down to business with high intensity, short rest intervals of some sort or another.

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^^^^^COMPLETELY Agree! Funny, but when I added more swimming the recovery it provided my legs through the gentle kneading motion made my bikes and run so much better! I have good buddy who is mid 50's and after 22 Ironman and 7 Konas left the sport to run marathons. While he is one of the older runners in his group, his 6 days a week of hard swimming gives him SOLID aerobic capacity to race faster than those much younger and more pure speed. He swears by it. It's no impact, aerobic base building that pays HUGE benefits!

You are also coming to it with a significant swim background...;)

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Nice article, thanks for sharing. The only bone to pick I would have is that people generally do change their strokes from the pool to OW. Sure you can cherry pick an athlete here and there that pretty much hold the same(although even those usually speed up a bit) but if you look at the entirety of the lead groups in OW swimming and pro triathlon, you will find people tend to speed up their turnovers. Referencing outliers just ignores the conformity that we see in todays racing in using higher stroke rates..

And wetsuit swimming is a totally different animal from pool swimming, and since "most" triathletes do virtually all their racing in wetsuits, would have been nice to focus more on that aspect...

Easily 20k for the top D swimmers, especially if its a 4-5 day championship meet. Maybe they're only swimming the 400 and the 1500, depending on the schedule those events might be at opposite ends of the meet. So they'll do Day 1, say its the 400 they'll do 3-5k of general warmup, pre-race warmup, race, post race cooldown. Then a day or 2 of "real" training, then swim the 1500 on day 5.

For a HS swimmer in a 1 day meet, 3k warmup, swim 800 yards in competition, warmdown.... it all adds up.

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