List of conflicting Swim advice you have heard or seen :)

Triathlon Forum
1

Ok this is for fun so don’t take it too serious

Add your own to the thread

Never do sets longer than 200 yards. Your stroke breaks down

VS

You have to practice to race it. Definitely so long repeats and swims 400 to up to race distance

Any good swimmer can do all 4 strokes even if you are a triathlete you should practice them all

VS

You only have to do freestyle. Don’t bother with the learning other 3 strokes

Kicking uses your largest muscles. And most swims are wetsuit legal so do minimal kicking even during practice

VS

Any good swimmer, including triathletes should train kicking all the time

Spend most of your limited ltime running and biking That is the best bang for the buck

VS

If you don’t put significant time into swimming it will slow down your bike and run in a race so you need to really focus on swimming. It will save you time in a race

Pool swimming is the same as swimming in a triathlon. There is no such thing as triathlon swimming

VS

There is a significant difference between open water/triathlon swimming VS pool swimming. Technique and style of swimming is different

Distance per stroke is most important

VS

Open water has chop you need to practice a faster swim stroke don’t worry much about DPS

NEVER do your next set until you can use optimum form

VS

You have to learn to swim fatigued. Your stroke will break down don’t worry too much about it

Don’t do long swims until your form is very good. You will just be ingraining bad technique

VS

Just pile on the yardage you will figure out the best technique for you

It is very important to have proper rotation to get a powerful pull

VS

Lucy Charles Barkley barely rotates. It’s not important she has very high cadence which would be impossible with the rotation other coaches tell you to have

Lol. So add your own for fun

2

Bilateral breathing

VS

Oxygen is the limiter

Straight arm recovery

VS

Bent arm recovery

Flip Turns

VS

We don’t turn in triathlon
.

3

Ok this is for fun so don’t take it too serious

Add your own to the thread

Never do sets longer than 200 yards. Your stroke breaks down

VS

You have to practice to race it. Definitely so long repeats and swims 400 to up to race distance

Any good swimmer can do all 4 strokes even if you are a triathlete you should practice them all

VS

You only have to do freestyle. Don’t bother with the learning other 3 strokes

Kicking uses your largest muscles. And most swims are wetsuit legal so do minimal kicking even during practice

VS

Any good swimmer, including triathletes should train kicking all the time

Spend most of your limited ltime running and biking That is the best bang for the buck

VS

If you don’t put significant time into swimming it will slow down your bike and run in a race so you need to really focus on swimming. It will save you time in a race

Pool swimming is the same as swimming in a triathlon. There is no such thing as triathlon swimming

VS

There is a significant difference between open water/triathlon swimming VS pool swimming. Technique and style of swimming is different

Distance per stroke is most important

VS

Open water has chop you need to practice a faster swim stroke don’t worry much about DPS

NEVER do your next set until you can use optimum form

VS

You have to learn to swim fatigued. Your stroke will break down don’t worry too much about it

Don’t do long swims until your form is very good. You will just be ingraining bad technique

VS

Just pile on the yardage you will figure out the best technique for you

It is very important to have proper rotation to get a powerful pull

VS

Lucy Charles Barkley barely rotates. It’s not important she has very high cadence which would be impossible with the rotation other coaches tell you to have

Lol. So add your own for fun

apart from this advice Distance per stroke is most important i have given every advise above to different swimmers and wait i had one water thrasher i did tell distance per stroke improvement is crucial for you

i guess different folks … based on power profiles , backgrounds , levels , goals skills etc

4

You can’t be a good triathlete if you aren’t a good swimmer, if swimming is your weakness you should prioritize it

vs

Swimming is only 10-20% of a triathlon, you’re better off spending more time on bike and run training

Drills are vital to a good technique, don’t skip them

vs

If your time is limited you should spend it swimming, not doing drills
.

5

Bilateral breathing is important.

vs

Bilateral breathing doesn’t matter (there’s a video interview somewhere, of professional swimmers and triathletes about this topic where many of them said something like “my coach says I need to practice bilateral breathing but then I ignore it”).

Reach encourages good form and maximizes pull.

vs

Reach will make it difficult to achieve good high elbow form.

6

This is a great topic!

Pull buoys/ paddles builds strength

Vs.

Pull buoys/ paddles teaches bad form

7

Agreed, but this is ST, so it will turn ugly by page 3?

8

The most confusing one for me has been about hand speed and timing during the pull. A previous coach told me to think about “holding on to the water” and letting my hand stay where it gripped the water so I could roll my body past the hand, which leads to fairly slow hands underwater. Current coach tells me to pull harder on the water and move my hands faster underwater to increase my cadence and speed. Previous coach told me to reach out in front and spear my hand through the water reaching forward as far as I can, current coach says I should speed up my recovery arm and let it drop into the water and “get to the catch” quickly. Previous coach had me practice “front-quadrant” swim drills, current coach tells me to “turn my arms over quicker”. Previous coach told me to look straight at the bottom of the pool, current coach told me to look slightly forward. Lots of other technical advice that seems to be contradicting what I had previously been told, but I’m sure (as with all of these pieces of advice) the “truth” is somewhere in between the extremes. I think it also depends on the “style” of “freestyle” a particular coach is emphasising. The funny (okay, not funny, really frustrating) thing for me is that I listen to the coach, make the adjustments, try my best, and my times stay EXACTLY THE SAME. Which leads me to suspect that maybe the details I’m being told to focus on don’t actually matter all that much.

9

Very very timely topic for me as it’s been frustrating as hell! Most recently:

  • start exhaling as soon as your face is in the water

VS

  • hold the air in your lungs and then exhale rapidly just before you take the next breath.
10

Haha great topic! Ive heard AND tried/failed all of the ones mentioned above, and I still have no opinion as to which of them are right! (They’re probably right/wrong in the right/wrong circumstances or person!)

My addition:

  • You can swim as much as you want with buoy/paddles/simshorts, it only helps. (from Brett Sutton)

vs

  • Ditch all toys as they’re just crutches that aren’t really helping you compared to swimming without them
11

S-pull (scull) vs. Straight pull

Look straight down vs. Hairline at the surface (i.e look 1-2M ahead)

TI will make you faster vs. TI teaches you to be efficient but slow

Mimic the technique of Phelps, Ledecky, Yang, Hackett, etc. vs. They are outliers so don’t try to copy them

12

You NEED to be strong and able to do pull-ups to swim fast

VS

I coach world level swimmers and some can’t perform a single pull-up
.

13

quality matters more than quantity in swimming

V

just swim more
.

14

Very very timely topic for me as it’s been frustrating as hell! Most recently:

  • start exhaling as soon as your face is in the water

VS

  • hold the air in your lungs and then exhale rapidly just before you take the next breath.

Love this one

Actually just heard you have to expel the air in your lungs fast and only half breaths Full lungs cause your chest to rise and your legs to drop

15

Size down your wetsuit since tight = hydrodynamic
v
Size up your wetsuit to reduce shoulder fatigue, ease breathing, and faster to remove in T1
.

16

Very very timely topic for me as it’s been frustrating as hell! Most recently:

  • start exhaling as soon as your face is in the water

VS

  • hold the air in your lungs and then exhale rapidly just before you take the next breath.

Love this one

Actually just heard you have to expel the air in your lungs fast and only half breaths Full lungs cause your chest to rise and your legs to drop

Which leads us to:

  • keep the air in your lungs as long as you can (and exhale rapidly just before you take the next breath) to improve whole body buoyancy as you press the chest down into the water

VS

  • don’t turn your chest into a life vest or your legs will sink - get that air out of there.
17

GTN must have heard that your thread is far to civilized and put this video out today to stir up trouble… :slight_smile:
https://youtu.be/n4XWiXvrl6E?si=TpYQfzNdTTTsCyF7

18

Too much muscle and too lean to swim fast…need more body fat
Vs
muscle/fat thing has nothing to do with who swims fast. Technique and swim-specific

19

Drills are vital to a good technique, don’t skip them

vs

If your time is limited you should spend it swimming, not doing drills

Following on from this one:

Do drills every swim

Vs

Don’t do drills unsupervised
.

20

Volume and VO2 and threshold training

vs

USRPT

Oh. I’m coming at this from the swim-specific side.

USRPT has essentially an N=1, but it’s gotten an immense amount of attention and press. It helps that he’s a multi-event world champion, but in all honesty, he’s a multi-event world champion in the 25m pools in the shortest events. He won an Olympic gold medal, but largely on the strength of the other guys on his relay, which included two WR holders in their events. Famously, Michael Andrew led the 2021 Olympic 200 IM into the last 160m, but died so hard that he finished 5th. USRPT has very little relevance to any swimming events beyond the short races in the 25m pool. And hardly any relevance to the kind of swimming that almost everyone on this forum does: OWS (800m to 3900m or more). Certainly the high-speed interval training is a part of some training, but that stuff should already be in your plan anyway, just not to the exclusion of volume and aerobic and threshold training.

Reminder that training for OWS has much more in common with a runner training for X-C and 10k-21k-42k training than for most pool swims (except maybe the 800 and 1500m long course races).