When training for the Iron Distance swim leg what is the best way to structure a workout on the pool?
Do you do drills (Kicks, Different Strokes, ect)?
Do you ever do a steady freestyle swim without stopping (1hr freestyle laps)
or is it always broken up into drills. I started just doing steady endurance efforts but whenever I google what real swimmers do its always broken up into these complex interval formulas
Everyone’s different, but for me the important thing is that my arms and shoulders don’t get tired after 3km of swimming. So my longest swims are 4km, and that’s doing mainly 100s or 200s. Whatever I feel like. Nothing special. And I’m a 1:00-1:05 guy
Swimming straight for an hour is not an hour well spent. I’m no expert in the water, so I’ll let the fast swimmers weigh in with good advice, but I’d focus on sets between 100-500 yards. Occasionally throw in some 50s for pure speed and test your 1000TT once every month or two to get your base pace. Drills are good. Aerobic sets are good. Anaerobic sets will be good. Use the clock at the pool. The sets don’t have to be complex. 15 x 200 or 10 x 300 with warm up and cool down would be better than just swimming.
Doing 1 hour straight? I would only do that if you aren’t sure if you can do the distance, basically a confidence builder. Otherwise, it’s mentally too hard to do that well, it’s a recipe for burnout.
General structure of an all purpose workout
Warmup 400 to 800 put any drills here, mixed in with regular swimming.
Main set with some threshold / aerobic work. Say 10 or 15 X 100 on an interval that gives you 10-15 secs rest
Short recovery swim
Additional set working on speed. Say 10x50 building to a sprint on each.
Warmdown
That should give you 3 -4 k if you want more, make the aerobic set longer.
What is you background? Personally, I think the most important thing is to swim, and swim consistently. I had no swim background and have made it to FOTW (First out of the water) at an IM. No masters, no flip turns, no toys, just swim. Just stay away from the kick board . . . no help whatsoever for triathlon swim and may even hurt.
Swim on!
I think lots of sets of 300s and 400s would do well. Just swim and forget the drills unless your not time crunched. Focus on strength and endurance in the pool. Throw in some 100s and 50s too. But try to swim 4 times a week at a minimum. I lost 20 secs on my 1000y TT in one month by lower volume and less frequency. Maybe it was a fluke and if I did it tomorrow I would be faster but I really thinks it’s from the lower volume and frequency.
Thanks everyone for the response; it all helps. my swim background it weak. I learnt to swim at a young age and then just would dip in and out of water up until last year when I started getting into tris. Im a poor swimmer my 1500m open water time was 28min, but that was only after 2 months of swimming 3 times a week. Ill give drills for now and do 1 session a week come summer where I go 30-40min steady
Swam 48xx at Ironman Whistler. 1 long IM distance swim in the year leading up to the race. The rest all intervals mostly 100s and 200s. Did 10x 400 twice that year.
Lots of different ways to skin the cat. Depends on your objective, background, current swim fitness, overall time available to train, and optimal time to devote to swim training…
That said, I think all of these things will help you generally, some more than others:
Swim lots of yards each week
Swim more frequently each week
Swim faster when you swim
Structured interval workouts of varying lengths and rest periods
Full out TTs every now and the
Continuous long swims (I like swimming 3-3.5 miles at my target IM pace in the open water
Drills focused on stroke flaws.
Masters group swimming
Getting a coach to help
All of these are true given the caveats above. The right mix varies by person and circumstance…but if you do more of these you will get faster at the swim…
There’s about 50 threads in the archives, some more informative than this thread, some less.
You should really search. There is a ton more info where this came from.
As others have said there’s no real value in a long continuous swim except to check you can do the distance.
Definitely focus on intervals, 10-30x100 and 5-15x200 should be your bread and butter imho. I think frequency is the most important thing, so try to get to the pool at least 3x a week.
I swam 3x week. One swim was a distance swim focused on pace using tempo trainer. Sets would be 1000-2000 repeats or 3000-4000. Goal for wko would be maintaining pace. Other two workouts would consist of middle distance repeats and shorter sprint sets. Total volume would range from 9000-12000 meters
Not trying to thread jack but I had a somewhat related question. Do you guys largely swim freestyle for your entire sets or do you switch it up? I know most folks add in kick drills/sets but I’m talking more about your stroke for the 200’s/300’s/etc sets.
Not trying to thread jack but I had a somewhat related question. Do you guys largely swim freestyle for your entire sets or do you switch it up? I know most folks add in kick drills/sets but I’m talking more about your stroke for the 200’s/300’s/etc sets.
Pure swimmer now, primarily butterfly and freestyle, occasional backstroke or IM race to mix things up. Probably 60-70% is just swimming freestyle, at various intensities. Maybe 10-15% is kick, 5-10% pull, and the rest is non-free strokes and drills.
If I’m doing a set of 200’s on lowish rest interval, i.e. an aerobic set, that’ll be, usually, all freestyle.
If you can already swim 28min for 1500m you are off to a good start.
That is a 1:11 IM swim speed. Anyone below 1:10 is in the top 1/3 overall for the swim.
A lot depends on your ambition.
Bare in mind that for the “fish” crowd, their muscles are backed up by 10 or 20 years (or more) of 15,000m weeks (and way above 30,000 for the serious ones).
Swimming a straight hour (or even 71mins) is no problem, so they work on speed.
If you don’t have that twenty years (and don’t have the pool time to wait) then it doesn’t hurt to have confidence in your ability to do the distance.
Once you have that confidence a little speed never hurts either. Speed needs a little muscle, mixing in a little work on those specific muscles is also usefull.
You can do that with paddles, speed work and weights, or if you really like pain, do a little butterfly (it’s amazing what mixing it up does for you).
When I was training initially for IM distance, swimming alone, I tended to do sets which never stopped, kick, pull, swim, repeat, add in speed and time as able.
(I will confess I was a swimmer in my youth, but never that serious and not past my teens and not freestyle, picked it up again at 50)
Admittedly I never broke an hour, but then I started IM’s at 50 and didn’t do multiples until I was 60.
So check your age against the stats and decide how much you can gain in swimming over riding and running.
Age, believe it or not, will slow you down, but in swimming I find you lose the least over the other disciplines.
But that’s the beauty of three sports, you can be average at all three and do really well.
Good luck.
During the winter it’s typically shorter faster intervals to include all strokes. As it gets closer to race time, I usually switch over to free and more race specific training.
I give my athletes some stroke work 2-3x per week. But it could be mixed in with some other stuff. It’s not often some # x 50,100, 200 stroke.
My simple rules (assuming you are under 50 y o)
Until you can swim a 1:05 off the block SCY, spend your time at a quality masters swim program,** Year round.** During your racing season, throw in 1-4 OWS per month, to work on sighting, managing waves and learning to live without a black line under you.
If you swim
1 day per week - you can Improve technique
2 days per week - you can get somewhat better in the water over a period of time
3 days per week - you get faster every 4-6 months
4 days per week - you get noticeably faster every 2-4 months
5 days per week - you give up triathlon for swimming
After 50 - 55, it is a matter of who is winning … recouping your youth vs achieving your ripe old age.
Excellent info in this thread.
Thanks to all…
Background - former college swimmer but only swim enough now not to drown during swim leg (2-3/week)… Lots of good advice here, so I’ll add what I do these days.
I always start with the same warm up of 500 meters / yards - 200 IM + 200 free + 100 free - slow and stretchy (and fly on the first 50 helps overcome the cold water). This way I can turn my brain off completely and wake up my muscles. It’s then followed by a more structured warm up of another 500-800 meters which varies every time and includes drills, pulling etc - still not going full speed, but starting to pick up pace and get ready for the work ahead. Main set is anything around 1,500-2,000 meters, but I only focus on distance once a week - and by that I mean I hardly ever swim more than 1,000 meters straight, and typically distance sets are only 400-600 as the longest length to swim at once. On other days I prefer shorter and faster stuff. Main set is done with the most focus and has to hurt to have a benefit. Total workout is usually around 3,500 meters.
I do swim with the masters team now - it’s more social this way, I usually work harder, I can’t give up half way through the workout, and I don’t have to worry about planning the workout. But when I have to do it alone, I find a set online somewhere. https://www.usms.org/ has a pretty good forum (though you have to be a paid USMS member to access the workouts) where they post various workouts regularly that I like. Unless it’s a ladder (50+100+200 etc), I can’t do the same workout too many times.