There’s a lot of wisdom amongst the members of this forum. I’d like to hear what are some of your lessons learned, recommendations, and thoughts regarding the swim. This can and should include what’s worked, what’s been less effective, and what you’d wished you knew when you started out.
Asking from a place of an experienced Olympic and 70.3 triathlete and life-long endurance athlete seeking to learn and share nuggets of wisdom.
Volume…and most people swim too slow in training.
Dont do intervals in Z2… (-;
Overtraining (bike and run) and over-racing will far and away be the biggest limiter in your swim improvement.
I love the solitude and individual nature of tri-training. But the revelation for me was after years of drills, structured sets and lots of hours/km in the pool solo, joining a squad made a huge difference to both pace and losing my hatred of swimming. Just like zwift racing pushes you harder than you could ever do on a dumb trainer, the benefits of pushing to hold onto the feet of the person in front is massive.
So much so that when I joined a new squad and was the front of my lane as opposed to middle/back then my swimming declined. I need that carrot to chase.
Overtraining (bike and run) and over-racing will far and away be the biggest limiter in your swim improvement.
The concept that AG’ers doing 12 hours per week think they “overtrain” always makes me laugh.
Join a group where you’re chasing people and banter is high, they do sets you consider to be messed up and hard, F off your buoy and paddles and fins, and be prepared to struggle to not nap at work. 90 minute swims.
When you’re doing everything at max effort every session, you can overtrain in much less than 12 hours a week.
When you’re doing everything at max effort every session, you can overtrain in much less than 12 hours a week.
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Maybe so,but the vast majority of age group triathletes are doing very little max effort training…especially in the water.
When you’re doing everything at max effort every session, you can overtrain in much less than 12 hours a week.
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Maybe so,but the vast majority of age group triathletes are doing very little max effort training…especially in the water.
Swimming is a different kind of hard. It still hurts, but there’s a much bigger gap between “I gotta stop” and actually needing to stop than there is in bike/run. One of the guys in my masters group always says ‘don’t think about it, just keep going’ and that’s mostly true.
Swim more…
Swim more open water…
Swim more rough open water…
Listening to the actual swim coaches here who advocate more swimming, professional technique critiques and drills actually DOES make AOSers faster
Go figure
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Don’t overlook the smaller franchise gyms that advertise a pool. I joined a VASA fitness gym for $19.95 / month. They had a 3 lane 25m pool that was rarely used. No lifeguard hassles, and always open. In three years, I never ever not even once had to wait for, or share a lane. And 90% of the time, I had the pool to myself.
Swim in open water as much as reasonably possble. Cold, Green water, that moves around alot is a different monkey than a pool.