There is plenty of literature, chat and training advice about going slow to go fast with running.
Does they same hold true for swimming though? A lot of training plans seem to be the complete opposite-lots of short sharp intervals. Why is this? Can you approach swimming in the same way-long comfortable low HR sets with a speed day or two during the week?
There is plenty of literature, chat and training advice about going slow to go fast with running.
Does they same hold true for swimming though? A lot of training plans seem to be the complete opposite-lots of short sharp intervals. Why is this? Can you approach swimming in the same way-long comfortable low HR sets with a speed day or two during the week?
No.
Swimming is all about technique. Your technique when swimming 2:00+/100 is not the same as when swimming sub-1:30/100 (or whatever). Swimming slow just practices bad technique.
I do a lot of long slow swimming. But because I love it. Not because it makes me fast… I’ll be the first to admit it doesn’t. I swim up to 30K a week, sometimes up to 3 hours at a time, 90% continuous. Keeps me feeling and looking good, calorie burn, and I can eat anything and as much as I want. But it doesn’t make me any faster in races, than I average in the pool, which is about a 1:40 - 1:45 pace. When I was swimming half as far, with speed sessions, I was racing at sub 1:30 paces. I know, nothing compared to the natural fish here, but a good example of the difference between long slow swimming, and lots of intervals type swimming.
There is plenty of literature, chat and training advice about going slow to go fast with running.
Does they same hold true for swimming though? A lot of training plans seem to be the complete opposite-lots of short sharp intervals. Why is this? Can you approach swimming in the same way-long comfortable low HR sets with a speed day or two during the week?
No.
Swimming is all about technique. Your technique when swimming 2:00+/100 is not the same as when swimming sub-1:30/100 (or whatever). Swimming slow just practices bad technique.
Wouldn’t peoples technique fall away in hard efforts? Wouldn’t you be able to better focus on correct technique at more controlled efforts?
I do a lot of long slow swimming. But because I love it. Not because it makes me fast… I’ll be the first to admit it doesn’t. I swim up to 30K a week, sometimes up to 3 hours at a time, 90% continuous. Keeps me feeling and looking good, calorie burn, and I can eat anything and as much as I want. But it doesn’t make me any faster in races, than I average in the pool, which is about a 1:40 - 1:45 pace. When I was swimming half as far, with speed sessions, I was racing at sub 1:30 paces. I know, nothing compared to the natural fish here, but a good example of the difference between long slow swimming, and lots of intervals type swimming.
Interesting, thanks. I wonder why this is and why its so different to running or even cycling?
Wouldn’t peoples technique fall away in hard efforts? Wouldn’t you be able to better focus on correct technique at more controlled efforts? //
No, it shouldn’t if you are doing the intervals right. When technique start to fall off, you just take more rest between intervals. If it still falls off, then you shorten the swims. At some point you will be able to do longer sets of middle distance on shorter and shorter rest, the ones that most mimic most of the triathlon distances for training… An extreme example of a starting point would be 25’s on the minute+ for AOS/BOP swimmers…
Wouldn’t peoples technique fall away in hard efforts? Wouldn’t you be able to better focus on correct technique at more controlled efforts?
There’s a difference between slow and a controlled effort pace; for example swimming at c/d speed to swimming at 1500 speed- technique shouldn’t be going on a 1500 pace rep, but your going quick enough that you are in the ‘fast swimming technique’. I don’t quite know how to best describe it, by I feel like their are three slightly varied techniques when i swim- my c/d easy technique which is not quite there, feel like I’m not moving quickly enough to be settled in the technique, my race technique for 200m upwards where I feel my technique is best- pushing but still smooth and strong, and my sprint technique which is appalling because I don’t practice sprinting (cause 50 and 100m hurts).
Interesting, thanks. I wonder why this is and why its so different to running or even cycling?
Because water has 1000 times more resistance than air, and swimming is not an ingrained, natural motion that our bodies have evolved to do instinctively over 100,000 years. Its a 100% learned, and totally unnatural motion.
Cycling is mindless, there’s no technique…just pedal, to go faster, pedal harder. Even aero penalties are nothing compared to swimming position penalties.
Running has a technique component, but its still much smaller than swimming. So, it’s kinda in the middle between cycling and swimming.
Been swimming since 2000 ish, waster polo before that so not a real swimmer 
Last year tool up with Tower 26 (2019 through to March). While prior masters programs were always get through all your sets in an hour, T26 is largely focused on effort levels. I have to say, I swam at more easy and medium paces in T26 workouts and my fast sets got faster.
Just my n=1 experience
I do a lot of long slow swimming. But because I love it. Not because it makes me fast… I’ll be the first to admit it doesn’t. I swim up to 30K a week, sometimes up to 3 hours at a time, 90% continuous. Keeps me feeling and looking good, calorie burn, and I can eat anything and as much as I want. But it doesn’t make me any faster in races, than I average in the pool, which is about a 1:40 - 1:45 pace. When I was swimming half as far, with speed sessions, I was racing at sub 1:30 paces. I know, nothing compared to the natural fish here, but a good example of the difference between long slow swimming, and lots of intervals type swimming.
Interesting, thanks. I wonder why this is and why its so different to running or even cycling?
Here’s my take on it. A lot of folks disagree with my take on the swimming part, but the run/cycling part is straightforward.
Swimming fast requires both technique and power, and triathletes who haven’t swum a ton usually vastly underestimate the importance of the power in going fast. It is true that as a raw beginner if you have major stroke errors, you SHOULD practice slowly to fix them before speeding it up and going hard.
But once you’re pretty flat in the water, power >> technique for AG triathlete swimming. And triathletes continue to underestimate the training required to swim well/fast (Measly 2-3 swims a week is pretty typical for even ‘advanced’ book training tri plans.)
If you think technique is so dominant, a competitive swimmer with their arm tied behind their back should come in near-last in a triathlon swim. You all know that in reality, they will likely beat 80-90% of the AGers despite that arm tied back there. Yeah, technique, right.
As for cycling - not much technique needed on the power generation part, you’re pedaling in circles. If tri bike courses were more technical or drafting was allowed, you’d see a technical cycling rise greatly in importance. As it stands, it doesn’t.
As for running, humans are evolutionarily developed to optimize run form for body type and fitness. Yes, it is a singularly special ability we have, and this has been intensely studied by scientists who confirm this in many ways and trace is evolutionarily. As opposed to skiing, swimming, and other sports, we don’t have to learn technique really at all - you just have to do it and you’ll naturally optimize your technique to YOUR ability/body type. A lot of swim coaches make the big mistake of thinking run training should mimic swim training, so heavy emphasis on identifying technical running flaws and then focusing on drills to fix them, where in reality, these technical errors will self-correct very quickly as you get faster. And in fact, if you force technical correction on someone who’s physiology doesn’t prefer it (like Ryan Hall 2:05 marathoner’s low arm swing) they will almost certainly run slower/worse.
If you think technique is so dominant, a competitive swimmer with their arm tied behind their back should come in near-last in a triathlon swim. You all know that in reality, they will likely beat 80-90% of the AGers despite that arm tied back there. Yeah, technique, right. //
I think your argument here is ass backwards, and actually describes why swimming is so technique loaded. The reason a top swimmer will beat 90% of folks with a one arm swim is because of technique, not from any real strength component. It is the technique of moving your body through the water, and losing one arm for top swimmer is just a slight drawback. With one arm a swimmer can still hold that great body position, using a little more legs and glide to keep that momentum going.
There are a lot of really weakish long distance swimmers that overcome that with technique. Sun Yang comes to mind, imagine he would have trouble doing 10 pull-ups and bonk after a minute of push ups. But put him in a pool and he can swim circles around most for hours on end… Same with a lot of the ladies, you won’t find a lot of traditional strength in their bodies, but speeding through the water all day long regardless…
Any of these little girls in swim programs.swim so hard in their practices that most ag triathletes would just give up.
We can’t even swim over 3x a.week without complaining!
And I disagree that the competitive tied up.swimmer has so much better form while tied up. Especially against agers assisted with wetsuits which greatly improved body position.
They are just stronger. A lot stronger. Like 80+100k meters per week for a decade stronger. They could literally do.the worst possible propulsive.movement and still crush triathletes. That include swimming with head out of water, crazy fishtailing, you name it.
Note when I say strength here I mean swim specific strength. The type that requires kill yourself hard swimming to get. Not weightlifting strength which is very different. I likely can crush alistair brownlee in any upper body weightlifting motion but doesn’t meat squat for swimming 1500.
You are ignoring the talent component. A one-armed competitive swimmer beats a triathlete because that person is more efficient in the water. It’s not a strength issue and probably not even a better conditioned/trained issue. It’s swimming ability pure and simple.
Any of these little girls in swim programs.swim so hard in their practices that most ag triathletes would just give up.
We can’t even swim over 3x a.week without complaining!
That’s true - I can’t get proper recovery when I reach 5x per week - practices on 2 consecutive days already make me tired as hell.
And I disagree that the competitive tied up.swimmer has so much better form while tied up. Especially against agers assisted with wetsuits which greatly improved body position.
They are just stronger. A lot stronger. Like 80+100k meters per week for a decade stronger. They could literally do.the worst possible propulsive.movement and still crush triathletes. That include swimming with head out of water, crazy fishtailing, you name it.
Note when I say strength here I mean swim specific strength. The type that requires kill yourself hard swimming to get. Not weightlifting strength which is very different. I likely can crush alistair brownlee in any upper body weightlifting motion but doesn’t meat squat for swimming 1500.
If they are faster mainly because they are stronger, I will give up the whole damn sport. Among the 3 disciplines of triathlon, the one which I want to do the least is biking because it’s all about power (FTP). I believed that the way to swim faster is to get the position such that the drag is the absolute minimum such that each stroke can carry me the longest distance before I’m stopped by the resistance. If it requires strength that is obtained by killing myself hard swimming, I will give up the sport. I’m doing currently ONE hard set (i.e. a set which pushes me to the limit until the point I physically can’t sustain anymore) per week but I’m already so fatigued that I can’t concentrate on everything the next two days.
You are ignoring the talent component. A one-armed competitive swimmer beats a triathlete because that person is more efficient in the water. It’s not a strength issue and probably not even a better conditioned/trained issue. It’s swimming ability pure and simple.
No, the one-armed or head-out-of-water comp swimmer is absolutely NOT more efficient in the water. I can’t even believe anyone would make this argument - sheer physics makes this impossible!
Talent is real and I agree it is absolutely the main reason competitive swimmers are well, competitive swimmers. It’s genetics. It’s not because they were started at age 2 - you take someone with no swim talent ,start them at age 2, and they’ll be crushed by the talented one once training gets real. All the non-talents in youth drop out way earlier, who’d continue with that if they couldn’t keep up?
But the talent in swim is both technical AND conditioning. These are kids who have awesome VO2, awesome swim muscular endurance, and require a lot less training than an AGer to make big gains. That’s why they can swim using ridiculous handicaps and still crush AG triathlete in swimming at 1500 - not because they are magically more efficient (no way) or have better body position (seriously, even with a head out of water completely handicap and against wetsuit AGers?!)
But to get these talented swimmer to where they are, they still had to swim a LOT. Like so much a typical AGer would quit triathlon before they even did the 5-7x/wk practices of a 12-year old girl comp squad for a year, let alone numerous years.
Again, note that I’m not saying at all that comp swimmers don’t focus on technique or it’s not important to them. On the contrary - I’ve repeatedly made the point that in comp swimming, technique is likely THE major factor at the high level. At that level, everyone is training to the max, everyone’s got great genetics, and everyone’s swimming a ton. And when races are decided by fractions of a second, yeah, something miniscule in your technique may mean the difference between 1st and nothing for comp swimmers.
@miklcct - I believe you’re not that experienced a swimmer yet - I don’t think you’ve even been swimming ‘for real’ for even 2 years yet?
At that stage, it’s way too early to say you can’t make more gains. Sure, you’re not going to be Michael Phelps ever, but I think you’ll be surprised at how much more volume AND intensity you will be able to add on with incremental swim gains. If anything, it has sounded like you were overzealous and unrealistic at first - if I recall, your goals weren’t just to ‘swim a Oly in 30’ or something like that (which is really good for a relatively new AG triathlete), but to swim some long Channel , and even train with some guy who had broken some sort of swim record. Just temper your goals, don’t give up, you’ll be surprised at how much better you’ll get.
I’d argue from my experience technique plays a bigger part in it that you allude to, but that your right the pure swimming strength of even the scrawniest of swimmers is seemingly incredible, but I’d argue this is in part due to them having the best technique for them. I swim with my local club as well as my triathlon and although one of the older and stronger swimmers (18 in a 12-20ish group) I am regularly left for dead by the guys that swim 7 times a week to my 3-4, where they have much better technique in a pool (I’d give them a run for their money in open water but that’s a whole new thing) and are so much more efficient. A good example of this is kicking- my leg power is brilliant, yet I have a poor kick technique (tendency to bend at the knee - I’m slowly getting better) and get left for dead in kick sets by 14/15 year olds 1/2 my size who just flutter their legs and fly away! On the other end of the spectrum, a couple of the other older swimmers go really quickly simply because they have finely tuned the perfect place in their stroke to get maximum distance from their considerable power, so even though their stroke doesn’t look the most elegant they simply know how they swim so well they can maximise their efficiency to make the most of all that power. I saw a video of Eddie hall swimming against some other strong men, they’re all incredibly strong but his technique took him away from them by miles in 25m.
There is plenty of literature, chat and training advice about going slow to go fast with running.
Does they same hold true for swimming though? A lot of training plans seem to be the complete opposite-lots of short sharp intervals. Why is this? Can you approach swimming in the same way-long comfortable low HR sets with a speed day or two during the week?
No.
Swimming is all about technique. Your technique when swimming 2:00+/100 is not the same as when swimming sub-1:30/100 (or whatever). Swimming slow just practices bad technique.
This. 100%.
Maybe once you can swim sub-1:00 for 100yd (a testament to at least modestly-efficient technique), then yes, doing some long slow HR days with low stroke count per length could be valuable. Until then, work technique with a very skilled and detail-oriented coach.
Often, the winningest youth club coach in the area is the best coach you’ll have access to, in person. You can’t just recruit youth talent and train them poorly and win in swimming. You absolutely could (and many do) in track and field, especially sprints, relays, and jumps. You may have to chase the good youth swim coach down and twist their arm to coach a triathlete, and maybe pay a pretty penny but they’ll probably make you fast with 1:1 coaching sessions.
FYI: Rory at icanswimfast.com is excellent for remote coaching value. No personal affiliation, just crazy-impressed with his service and expertise.
@miklcct - I believe you’re not that experienced a swimmer yet - I don’t think you’ve even been swimming ‘for real’ for even 2 years yet?
At that stage, it’s way too early to say you can’t make more gains. Sure, you’re not going to be Michael Phelps ever, but I think you’ll be surprised at how much more volume AND intensity you will be able to add on with incremental swim gains. If anything, it has sounded like you were overzealous and unrealistic at first - if I recall, your goals weren’t just to ‘swim a Oly in 30’ or something like that (which is really good for a relatively new AG triathlete), but to swim some long Channel , and even train with some guy who had broken some sort of swim record. Just temper your goals, don’t give up, you’ll be surprised at how much better you’ll get.
I’ve been swimming ‘for real’ for 2 years. I started in 2018. Although my short-term goal is to swim the Channel (because I think it will be a fun thing to do while I do a working holiday in Europe), the ultimate thing I want is to become competitive in 10 or 25 km swimming races, getting up in the AG ladder and eventually join the elite class. If this is unlikely I will give up the sport and find another one which I’m interested.
I’m not thinking to be Michael Phelps, but the name which always comes to my mind is Trent Grimsey. The average person swims with the tide to cross the English Channel which results in the typical S-shaped track, but he conquered it and got across in a STRAIGHT LINE! That’s spectacular!
I do a lot of long slow swimming. But because I love it. Not because it makes me fast… I’ll be the first to admit it doesn’t. I swim up to 30K a week, sometimes up to 3 hours at a time, 90% continuous. Keeps me feeling and looking good, calorie burn, and I can eat anything and as much as I want. But it doesn’t make me any faster in races, than I average in the pool, which is about a 1:40 - 1:45 pace. When I was swimming half as far, with speed sessions, I was racing at sub 1:30 paces. I know, nothing compared to the natural fish here, but a good example of the difference between long slow swimming, and lots of intervals type swimming.
So you are the jim fixx of swimming? I’ll save you the google search. guy preached and wrote books that you can eat whatever you want as long as you jog off the calories. He died of a heart attack during a jog.