Please use the link below to see the latest swim video analysis of an age group athlete who dropped almost 90 seconds in 8 weeks for an 800m swim TT. With most improvements in the swim, it is never just one thing that improves. Dan on another thread referenced this article on how Katie Ledecky swims faster than everyone else, the important quotation to highlight is Katie talking about the improvement in her stroke over the years, “I think my stroke changes. It’s a little bit every year as I get stronger."
Technique and training can’t be separated out from one another. If you don’t have the fitness specific to swimming then you probably aren’t going to be able to improve your technique. You have to put the time and focus in the water to improve, but there is a path forward.
If anyone has any questions, please let me know. Always happy to help.
Sorry for my delayed response. I just put on an open water swim for the local community. Can you be a little more specific about “elbow lead recovery?†I don’t know if I follow.
Yardage per session isn’t the greatest metric since we went hard, but call it an average of 2500 per session.
I don’t know about the splits other than the watches sometimes aren’t that great on splits.
she was typically swimming 3x-4x a week and was doing a little more total yardage.
If you have any other questions, please let me know.
Tim
Interestingly, no one wants to swim enough to see this improvement. I can show the results from my first few races to what I got to but apparently that was done by magic. I dropped way more time than that in about 6 months or so… now it was coming from complete shit but still haha.
Yardage per session isn’t the greatest metric since we went hard, but call it an average of 2500 per session.
I don’t know about the splits other than the watches sometimes aren’t that great on splits.
she was typically swimming 3x-4x a week and was doing a little more total yardage.
If you have any other questions, please let me know.
Tim
Interestingly, no one wants to swim enough to see this improvement. I can show the results from my first few races to what I got to but apparently that was done by magic. I dropped way more time than that in about 6 months or so… now it was coming from complete shit but still haha.
when i was roughly 30 i determined to get faster in the water. back then there wasn’t really anything formal that banned me from racing in the pro wave, you just signed up (if you wanted). but the swim was a problem. so, i took about 8mo, and swam masters 4 or 5 times a week, and got my 1000yd time, off the wall - time trials on my own - down from 13:52 to 12:26. that might not sound like a lot, but that got me to the point where i could usually hang in the main swim pack (or a main swim pack) of a pro race (mind, this was in the 1980s; that speed wouldn’t suffice today).
that swim had real effects for my bike speed; when i got out of the water everybody around me biked a lot better. i had to up my cycling game.
those masters sessions were typically 3,500 to 4,500 yards. but they went by as fast as a solo workout of 2,500 yards. best to do something like this when you’re young - say, 45 years old or younger - and can handle the bigger yardage without it wiping you and keeping you from the bike and run workouts.
And in the context of swimming it’s not an obscene amount of work. But it does take a lot of focused, consistent effort to see improvement. Congratulations on yours and keep up the good work.
And in the context of swimming it’s not an obscene amount of work. But it does take a lot of focused, consistent effort to see improvement. Congratulations on yours and keep up the good work.
Tim
That’s the thing, I was swimming 5-6k a workout pretty consistently, everyone thought I was crazy but I needed to catch up to the people who did that since they were kids. It worked for the most post part.
Hi Tim, thought this video was great! It really shows how swimming really takes commitment and consistency. I think this will be required viewing for my athletes
Sorry for my delayed response. I just put on an open water swim for the local community. Can you be a little more specific about “elbow lead recovery?†I don’t know if I follow.
Tim
Wait, what? You have a life outside of ST?
On a serious note: during the recovery phase, you can get the hand from your hip (where it exits the water) to where it enters the water by either recovering with a straight arm or a bent arm. I tend to go with the bent arm. I guess this can be done in a lot of ways, but the main 2 options for me are
leading the recovery phase with the wrist, i.e the elbow is trailing behind (It would look like this seen from above /\ and you can’t really see the elbow from the front. See Cam Wurf`s latest insta post to see what I mean), or
Leading the recovery phase with the elbow so that the elbow constantly is above the wrist, from the hip until the wrist is just outside the shoulder (it would now look like /\ from the front and you wouldn’t be able to see the wrist from above).
My question is if one is better than the other. I feel that 2) is better but it is a bit more demanding (at least for now, as this is a new discovery) and I would like to hear what you think.
Note: English isn’t my first language so if anything is unclear I will try to link to videos showing what I mean.
I needed to catch up to the people who did that since they were kids
That’s exactly it and as triathlon gets more competitive the swim becomes the discipline with the most amount of “low hanging fruit†for a number of reasons and it’s the only discipline that can impact every other discipline in the race.
I can’t think of a time that I would cue an athlete with “lead from the wrist†or “lead from the elbow†on the recovery. Ultimately, you want to get it to the point where your focus and attention is primarily on your hands and the amount of pressure you can put and hold through the pull phase of the stroke and the connection to the core with the core coordinating/directing a lot of the power of the movement… Your attention will check other parts of the stroke, but we are trying to train it where a lot of the movement is automatic and there isn’t much conscious thought involved in making the movement.
In regards to the recovery part of the stroke, you should be relaxed. If you want something specific, most of the best distance swimmers have their shoulders about 30-40% off the plane of the water on the recovery.
This video was just posted of the reigning Olympic champions in the mile swimming a best effort set in practice. You can check out their strokes.
I needed to catch up to the people who did that since they were kids
That’s exactly it and as triathlon gets more competitive the swim becomes the discipline with the most amount of “low hanging fruit†for a number of reasons and it’s the only discipline that can impact every other discipline in the race.
Tim
I think people under estimate the how much swimming wears you out for the rest of the race if you aren’t in swim shape. Mainly because they’ve never been in a scenario when they weren’t out of shape, its just normal from a swim perspective. The problem you’ll always run into with swimming is the amount of time it takes to get good and it isn’t that fun for a lot of people. It does impress me how many people love swimming. I like it but not enough to do that as much as I would have needed to get from decent good to FOP at nationals/worlds.
Does this athlete have any history of having a swim coach or swimming with a masters team? I’m curious as I’m about to start swimming with a masters group and feel like there is so much low hanging fruit related to form and technique.
Tim, you reference connecting the core quite a bit. What are some of the exercises/drills you have your swimmers perform to work on the core connection? What are the visual keys and/or sensations to look for? Apparently, it’s a common issue since most of your swim analysis videos bring it up.
She swam by herself before she started to swim with the team, but has been in triathlon for a while. But the thing I would emphasize is that it’s not all about technique. You need the fitness specific to the technique and that only comes from focused, hard work.
