Let me first begin by answering my own question- swim more, do drills and mix it up with some hard and slow intervals. Now that we got that out of the way I want to share some background.
I started swimming my first year of college and it was tough to make it to the other end of the pool (you would think being an all state wrestler and a “meat head” in the weight room would have atleast got me two laps Anyways I kept working at it and in 6 months I was down to around 24 mins for an olympic swim. Not bad but not great considering most of my competition were around 20 minutes. Its been six years now and am hovering around 23 mins for olympic, 30 for half and an hour for ironman. In the pool I’ve been stuck around 6:40 for my 500. I try to swim around 8-10,000 yds a week. I know by some standards thats damn fast and to others just mediocre.
There are alot of success stories on here of people going from 2:00 to 1:40ish per 100 but what I want is some success stories of people who took it from 1:20ish to 1:10/100 for say a 1000yd tt. So what Im looking for is some good stories/inspiration and maybe good drills/sets that helped you break that barrier.
Step 1: go triple your yardage at minimum. You don’t get into 1:10 range by technique work alone.
To get into 1:10 range, you need to get into the mentality that feeling like you’re going to barf during practice and can barely lift your arms to wash your hair afterwards is a Good Thing.
I grew up with a pool in the backyard but that was the extent of my swimming until triathlon. At this point, I’ve been in the pool pretty consistently for the past 18 months. The poster above suggested tripling your yardage. I certainly don’t swim that much volume (24000-30000 yards a week if you were to triple), but most every time I’m in the pool, I’m pushing myself almost to the point of puking. I suggest you do that.
I find that “going hard” can mean vastly different things to many different people.
I was about 10 years old. I had just moved into lane 3 to swim with the big kids 10-12 years old. At that age, we were swimming 5K or more 6 times a week. So, I guess it’s true at any age… you need to triple your yardage to see improvement.
I know I had a good workout if at sometime during the main set I wanted to 1) puke, 2) cry, 3) quit. If I can hit all 3 of those and keep going it’s a good workout. going and doing 3k of just swimming moderate is going to get you good at swimming slow, you have to push it.
This is assuming you are looking to get on the podium overall for smaller races.
If are absolutely certain that your swim technique is great, yes, you can increase your yardage. But for olympic distance racing, swimming much more than 20,000 yards a week is not going to be super helpful. You still have to have time to bike, run, and recover.
If you have still have some problems with your swim technique (and this is highly likely), don’t just do random drills, thinking this will fix your problems. Get expert help and instruction. If the expert help assigns specific drills in specific quantities, of course do them. Then, after you fix your technique problems, boost your yardage to about 15,000 yards per week.
Step 1: go triple your yardage at minimum. You don’t get into 1:10 range by technique work alone.
To get into 1:10 range, you need to get into the mentality that feeling like you’re going to barf during practice and can barely lift your arms to wash your hair afterwards is a Good Thing.
The most yards I ever did in a week was about 22,000, and that was an outlier. I hit 11:40 for 1000 (1:10/100 as requested) on about 12-15,000 yards per week, and that was within about 6 years of starting swim training at age 26.
Joined the swim team my senior year of high school (only swam during the 3 month season) My times went from a 1:20 all out 100 to a 1:04 all out 100 and my 500 down to a 6:20 from not being able to do it. 5x6000yds really kicks your arse into shape.
After I started college, I didn’t have the time to train quite as much… My weekly yardage dropped to about 16k/wk in 6 sessions. But like everyone said, I would get out of the pool barely able to open the door to the locker room. This got me to a 56s 100yd & 11:51 1000yd TT. About a year of swimming. (And a year of busting my ass!)
Personally, I found it better for me to not have so many off days… 16k/wk in 6 sessions was more beneficial to me than split into 4 sessions. (This is also because workouts did not start with a 1000yd warmup and 500yd cooldown.)
First off, you knew that when you asked for motivational stories this was gonna get hijacked with questions and here I am!
I know I need to put more time in the pool; especially considering I’ve got the slow down in slowtwitch. However, isn’t it counterproductive to go more distance if your not in good form?
I’m getting mixed signals: “If you don’t have good form, the distance is all for not.” “If you don’t go the distance, you won’t get faster.”
I do drills, but this whole idea of almost throwing up bothers me. I do intervals, but if I get to the point where I almost throw up, I’m useless for any other drill work; especially if you’re doing it on a timed rest period.
I started swimming at age 30 and like you was in good physical condition but unable to swim more than a length without exhaustion. I can’t say it’s quite 1:10/100, but I did a 12:19 (1:14/100) 1000 yd TT in December (after three years of swimming). The first year I took some basic classes and got to perhaps 1:30ish/100 level through lots of persistence. I’m kind of OCD about things. I was always (and am) determined to do my best at all aspects of swimming, not just thinking in terms of triathlons. So I learned all four strokes and flip turns, and then later starts, etc. I think that’s the approach you need for all three disciplines really.
What got me from the say 1:30 level to where I am now was primarily Masters swimming. Having a prescribed workout and other people to push you really helps. But I believe it’s possible without that. I think the biggest thing is to go hard all the time. I haven’t seen improvements when I was swimming less than 4x/week, and the last big jump in pace for me came while I had Achilles tendinitis and couldn’t run (and limited cycling). I swam masters in the morning and then did a lot of backstroke/kick sets in the evenings. I’d recommend getting to 15k/week, trying to speed up your kick, and make sure you do one set/week of high speed stuff, like 10 x 100 on 2:30.
This is assuming you are looking to get on the podium overall for smaller races.
If are absolutely certain that your swim technique is great, yes, you can increase your yardage. But for olympic distance racing, swimming much more than 20,000 yards a week is not going to be super helpful. You still have to have time to bike, run, and recover.
If you have still have some problems with your swim technique (and this is highly likely), don’t just do random drills, thinking this will fix your problems. Get expert help and instruction. If the expert help assigns specific drills in specific quantities, of course do them. Then, after you fix your technique problems, boost your yardage to about 15,000 yards per week.
Just some suggestions.
x2
The key is really good technique advice. The rest is equally important, but easier to come by.
I don’t quite qualify, my most recent 1000yd TT was at 1:18/100 in December (although
I’ve gotten a bit faster over the last few months), but I did recently write up some notes
about how I improved over the last year+ by quite a lot that you might find useful. See: http://josephabank.blogspot.com/2012/01/how-i-learned-to-swim-going-from-mop-to.html
I joined the swim team my senior year of high school in 2000-2001. I had never swam before that except in a pond for fun. First practice it took me 10 minutes to swim 500 yards, end of season(3 1/2 months later) I was down to 5:55 for 500 yards. Still not very fast, but an improvement. To get there I swam alot, not many drills…but was up to 3x a week in the morning 3-4,000 yards. And 6 days a week in the evenings 6,000-8,000 yards…and on top of that was lifting weights 3-4x a week for 45-60’ minute.
***“I hear lots of stories of guys who went from 3W per kilo to 4W per kilo ***FTP…what I want to hear about is guys that went from 4 to 4.5 W per kilo!”.
I think most of your answer is related to getting more swim fitness, but its entirely possible that you may be limited by your engine and could easily hit a ceiling. For some reason, in running and biking we accept that our engine limits us, but for some weird reason when it comes to swimming, everyone thinks there is some magic that will get them to the front of the pack.
Anyways I kept working at it and in 6 months I was down to around 24 mins for an olympic swim. Not bad but not great considering most of my competition were around 20 minutes. Its been six years now and am hovering around 23 mins for olympic, 30 for half and an hour for ironman. In the pool I’ve been stuck around 6:40 for my 500. I try to swim around 8-10,000 yds a week. I know by some standards thats damn fast and to others just mediocre.