Swim everyday.

Frequency > Volume

Personally, I have a better feel for the water if I swim 4 days per week at 3k per rather than 3 days per week at 5k. Or any variation of more short days over fewer long ones.

I know I should do more long days but time is what it is.

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Too old to go pro but doing it anyway
http://instagram.com/tgarvey4

Very much this. Swim as much as you possibly can.

not disagreeing as such, but i wonder if Frequency > Volume is actually as true as that.
i suspect it is at least partially that volume of quality swimming is the key driver of improvement. when you do a long swim the last say third is typically poor quality, especially with regard to technique so the 4x3k might be 12k of quality whereas the 3x5k might be only 10k of quality

Don't drown.

Swimming on the rivet is the best thing to accelerate your swim, swimming with people who are better than you helps you do this with less mental taxation. It isn't without risk though, the main risk being injury risk. Probably best to do in isolated swim block as well. Too many athletes suffer from their inability to give up the bike/run to truly work on the swim.

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Find a masters swim team and use that a few days a week or in place of whatever swim plan you have

Swimming with a group trying to get to same speed or faster (ie race) as faster people

Descending sets. I.e., something like, 4x4x100 descending on a fixed interval, or 4x50, 4x75, 4x100, 4x150, 4x200 descending on fixed intervals.

Get outside assistance.

enjoy swimming

you can not always focus in improve your fitness, your critical speed, your form... you need to swim more volumen, more frequency... but at the end... you shall enjoy swimming.

you are doing it as a hobby, and even more is swim is you weakness, you shall enjoy it.

What do you think was the major benefit for doing so?

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http://www.masteringflow.info
http://www.youtube.com/@masteringflow
http://www.andrewsheaffcoaching.com/...freestyle-fast-today

Swim more.

count the strokes per length and aim to N-1

You improve faster with the help of others.

Because technique is so important in swimming— and because it is so hard to know what you’re doing wrong— you need to seek out assistance. Ideally that would be an experienced coach in a Masters program, but that is not feasible for a lot of us. The next best option to get eyes on your stroke is periodic filming combined with some form of outside assistance (e.g., remote coaching, online instruction).

For me the biggest advantage was moving from swimming 3 to 4 times a week

Secondly having a solid schedule with what I had to do - Not just on training day but also on the months ahead - measuring my improvement or noticing if there was no change at all.

I had spent time watching other people swimming and I have asked to film me while I was swimming - Most of the time what we feel is not exactly what we do so it helps a lot to see ourself swimming.

Understanding the volume that have to be done.

Few private lesson to get an understanding of our problems.

Those few things helped me quite a lot.

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https://www.lupoacademy.it

https://www.instagram.com/lupo_academy/

Swim more.

It was that simple for me. I was making steady but slow progress, then I started swimming more frequently, with longer main sets, and more total volume. The results came quick.

ETA: nice post Rideon77 :) didn't see your reply yet when typed the exact same thing

another notch in the Master's Swim/Coaching camp- otherwise you are just cementing all your mistakes.

Stop being afraid of getting wet !

(Reflecting how many triathletes would prefer to not have to get in the water. Especially wet water. And trebly ao if its wet water that is below 29 degrees C.).

I should bend my elbows and pull closer to my body versus rotating my arm like a windmill from the shoulder.

:) I was going to say don't inhale when your face is in the water.

But serious, mine was to primarily focus on the catch. That doesn't mean to not focus on hand entry, when to breathe, etc., just that it's the primary focus.

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Not a coach. Not a FOP Tri/swimmer/biker/runner. Barely a MOP AGer.
But I'm learning and making progress.

Hiring Adam from Mastering Flow to coach me

More improvement in body position, timing and coordination less than a month than the previous years of 5 days a week of killing myself with sets upon sets of hard swimming

Who knew having a video analyses by a coach could make such a vast improvement in such a short amount of time.

And strangely enough the sets were not the killer workouts I had been doing for years (USRPT, Masters Swimming etc). They were focused on correcting what was wrong with my stroke

Just to complicate things a bit, I found that my catch improved after I focused a bit on hand entry and extension. Because the latter two were shabby, I was not in a good position at the start of the catch and I really struggled to get an EVF and good elbow angle. Once I improved my initial hand and arm position, it was much easier to focus on the catch. That's the great challenge of swimming; it's all connected. Without external assistance, it can be very hard for one to know where to start.

Also, I don't know about others, but I really can only work on one thing at a time. I usually can't even focus on both arms. If I'm working on hand entry, for example, I might focus on the right hand for one length and the left for the return length. Or, I alternate the focus in each interval; 50 yards concentrating on right hand entry, rest, 50 yards focusing on left hand, repeat. I might work on multiple aspects of technique over the course of a workout, but on any given lap I can really only think about one, sometimes two, things. It's part of why my progress is slow.

Grow your awareness of how ANYTHING you do or modify effects your speed via the expert utilization of a poolside, not wrist mounted, timing device.