I swim 30 minutes twice a week and 20 minutes once a week for training up to 1/2 IM distance. That nets me about a 32-minute swim at that distance. I do zero drills, sets, etc. Just swim straight freestyle, no kickboards or paddles, fins, or pull buoys. I can live with that. For full IM I’ll throw in some 45-minute and a couple of 1-hour swims in the month leading up to the race.
My advice is that if you have 30min IN THE WATER, then that CAN BE enough time to get in a quality workout. Is it important to sometimes get in longer swims? Yes. But if you are dedicated and disciplined, 30min is plenty.
My general rule of thumb is:
20 minutes is enough time to get a beneficial/productive run in
30 minutes is enough time to get a beneficial/productive bike in
40 minutes is enough time to get a beneficial/productive swim in (the reason I say 40 is that getting ready to swim generally takes more time; most people can’t just head out the door and swim. In terms of actual time in the water 25-30min is plenty)
I’d say for someone who is not a great swimmer - the more time in the water the better.
Once you get to the point where you are a proficient swimmer, you can spend less time in the water to “maintain” and spend more time on other two disciplines.
I’m one of those folks who needs at least a 500 easy as a warm-up and takes about 1500 before everything starts to feel right and good in the water. So no point in a 20-30 minute workout for me.
20 minutes is enough time to get a beneficial/productive run in
30 minutes is enough time to get a beneficial/productive bike in
40 minutes is enough time to get a beneficial/productive swim in
Wow…hearing this just opened up lots of white space in my weekly calendar! Sorry for the basic question, but would you mind giving us examples of 20 minute run workouts and a 30 minute bike workouts that would be beneficial/productive? Are you banging out hills for 20 minutes? Doing a recovery run? Just curious…
I think as low as 20 minutes in the pool can be beneficial (especially if you are limited to only a few swims per week). That said, since I’m traveling to the pool, I’d like at least 45 minutes. I wouldn’t be too interested in packing up the bike to travel to a 1/2 hour ride either.
I like to get more time is but my schedule and the pool’s schedule limit me to 3-4 swims at 30-35 minutes a piece each week. Occasionally I have more time but not too often. I skip the long warmup and get in to my set as quick as possible. No drills. Fortunately my longest swim in a race this season will be 1500m.
One of the things I’ve been trying with some success is combining a short run with a short swim. So I run 20-25 mins. before getting into the pool and then do about 35-40 mins in the pool. Very brief warm-up in the pool (200-400yds.) and get right into some quality work (1000-2000yds). Not many drills, although I do some kick sets. I do this 3 or 4 times a week and from a time management perspective it works well, plus it allows me to run every day.
I swim 30 minutes twice a week and 20 minutes once a week for training up to 1/2 IM distance. That nets me about a 32-minute swim at that distance. I do zero drills, sets, etc. Just swim straight freestyle, no kickboards or paddles, fins, or pull buoys. I can live with that. For full IM I’ll throw in some 45-minute and a couple of 1-hour swims in the month leading up to the race.
I think as low as 20 minutes in the pool can be beneficial (especially if you are limited to only a few swims per week). That said, since I’m traveling to the pool, I’d like at least 45 minutes. I wouldn’t be too interested in packing up the bike to travel to a 1/2 hour ride either.
Since going to the pool eats up time (as opposed to running or swimming where an hour is usually an hour), I try to get 60 minutes in twice per week (long course training). I would be faster if I did more, but I would be trading time on the run or bike.
I have swam some in my past, so maybe I am a little better off than some, this has gotten me to an easy paced 1:01 at IMFL and two HIMs between 23 (current assisted) and 34 (beat to hell by waves).
I am usually in top 8% of AG swim in big TRIs. At little ones I am higher.
I agree with Jordan that if you can spend at least that much time on a workout, it is worthwhile.
I don’t think he is saying that is all you need.
Yesterday was a good example - On a beautiful day, I had planned an 8-10 mile run. Life popped up in the form of a call from work,
kids that needed a ride and a music lesson that gave me a hard stop. I decided I could still get 30 minutes in - and headed out the door
for a quick run.
I don’t think that in any way equaled a 10 mile run - but the 30 minutes was an honest workout. If my window had been cut to 15 minutes of running
I don’t think I would have gone. There is also a school of thought that 20-40 minutes of super intense intervals is all you need…there are people who
train like that… but I don’t think that is what Jordan is recommending or proposing.
Sure 30 minute is productive, but it just depends on how much faster you want to go…
For example, a month ago I was swimming 3x a week at about 20-30 minutes a pop… I’m now doing 3x a week at 45-50 minutes a pop… My 500 time has dropped from 7:22 to 6:53… I bet if I could squeeze in another workout and increase the others to 1 hour or so, I could get down to <1:20 per 100m easily.
Also agree, 30 minute runs are great. Just get out and run for 30 minutes, no speedwork or anything. I try and add in as many as I can a week in addition to my other runs.
I’m lucky, the pool I go,to is about 2Km away via pathways. I have a nice little 2.5 Km run plotted out so I can do a warmup run to get there, then swim for an hour, then a jog / run back. As I get more into this and the weather gets a bit better I’ll increase my distance on the way back.
I’m admittedly a lousy swimmer with no swim background, but I’m a respectable cyclist and runner with a significant background, so I’ll comment, as I am usually limited to 40 min swim workouts over lunch and often do 40min max run/bike workotus after work.
30-40 mins is absolutely enough to get back a huge chunk of whatever speed you developed in the past, whether it be S/B/R. I can run a 5k-10k at 95% of my PR speed when I was running well over 65 mpw by just running a measly 20-40 min 5x/week with speedwork. However, there is no possible way for me to actually improve my PR on that low a volume. All my speed and ability was built from prior hard work - I’m just getting back to near it with the 30 min workouts.
Because I have no swim background, this really, really shows. I can swim 5x/week, near all-out with intervals every time (dang that hurts) but I barely get any faster after about a week. I think every single second of gain I’ve made swimming (from 2:00+ to 1:40ish in 2.5 yrs) was made from higher volume blocks where I really ramped up volume and kept the intensity (that was really tiring.) If I removed all those big weeks of training, I’d likely be a 2:00+ swimmer despite swimming 4-5x/week 30mins/day. (That was where I was at until I did a few broken blocks of 15,000k/week.)
I’ve been busy with a 1.5 yr old toddler and busy work for the past 2 months, and have done zero long swims, and only 30-40 min swims, 4x/week. Needless to say, I ain’t gettin any better, but I’m still about 95% of my all-time swim PR speed. It takes a lot to break through, and 30 mins doesn’t cut it.
I swim 30 minutes twice a week and 20 minutes once a week for training up to 1/2 IM distance. That nets me about a 32-minute swim at that distance. I do zero drills, sets, etc. Just swim straight freestyle, no kickboards or paddles, fins, or pull buoys. I can live with that. For full IM I’ll throw in some 45-minute and a couple of 1-hour swims in the month leading up to the race.
