Need some good advice and/or experiences about moving from a BOP to MOP swimmer during the season? For my HIM last May (White Lake, NC) I swam a 47:43 which was 392/432 overall males. My bike and runs places were 158 and 150 respectively. In my last sprint my swim place was 560/593; the bike and run places were 153 and 163 respectively.
My dream would be to do IMAZ in '06, but with my lousy swimming I am very reluctant to make such a big investment, only to start the day off w/ a terrible swim. My bike and runs are solidly MOP. I have taken the first step and started lessons, which I hope will pay off, but I would like to hear if anyone has crossed the BOP to MOP swim chasm.
A couple of questions for you:
1- have you been video taped so you can see what you need to correct?
2 - how much do you swim now and how much time can you invest in swimming per week? (hours and yards)
I think improving the swim takes a solid time investment and improving technique is the first step.
I find a lot of b) comes when you do a). However you can address b) through lessons/coaching and drilling.
Improving you swim time requires a dedicated effort in the pool. Consistency is key. Quality in your workouts is essential. A little suffering each workout is par for the course. Sometimes you must spend hours fixing the smallest thing. When it all comes together it is a rewarding thing. That said, no amount of laps can teach you to swim straight in the open water.
I’m going to dedicate more hours in the pool as a solution and my coach seems pretty good. I hate it when she makes me do the one arm out - kicking on my side drill. Like you say a little suffering should go a long way for improvement.
A few things from my days swim coaching. One technique is everything. Develop that, no scratch that, perfect that first, then worry about gaining fitness. I know tons of fit triathletes that swim poorly and do a great job at it. They are also the one’s who don’t show up to masters on drill day…hmm go figure. After technique then worry about swimming fitness. Third, 2000 scy for your total workout is not very much, not enough to make great gains from anyway. Your main sets need to be around 1500-3000 scys, then you’ll see improvement.
A lot of guys on this forum knock it but buy and read the book “Total Immersion” by Terry Laughlin. His techniques are great for taking a BOP swimmer to a FOP swimmer. I’m proof. I’ve never swum competitively and when i started training for my first Ironman it took me 35 minutes to swim a mile. Using the TI formula I’ve become a FOP swimmer with a 57:04 at Ironman LP which was the 75th best swim split.
I don’t train all that much especially swimming. I never swim more than 2500yds (35minutes) a session 2-3X per week usually 2X. I like to stack my limited training time on the bike and run.
When I started training for my first triathlon (IMLP) I swam 35min/mile------pretty slow. I worked on the TI stuff and jumped in an occasional masters class but only swam 2x per week. My IM swim was 1:03. Kept at it ever since and have brought my time down to 57min in the last two IM’s. I don’t swim a lot of yards but when I do swim I concentrate very hard on every stroke to improve my technique. I also swim exclusively open water in the summer in all kinds of water conditions so i am very comfortable in any open water situation.
Seeing yourself on video will do more for you in 15 minutes than anything else you can do. I video athletes swim form all the time and the improvements they make in the one hour we spend together is usually pretty substantial. Get that done if you can.
Like another poster mentioned, getting your main sets up to 2-3k will help you as well. I do think you need endurance as well as good technique. Lots of different things work for different people. The biggest jump for me was to get over that 1:00 mark and it took a focus on my technique and also doubling my swim volume. Granted I was averaging 4k per week at the time when I was swimming 1:02-1:03 in an IM, but now 1:00 is pretty easy with little or no effort and I have been in the 58:xx now too without too much difficulty.
Doing 2x a week of 1:15 swims with 4-5k of swimming with a main set of 2-3k will make a world of difference. Another quick note is that I work on my stroke with drills EVERY day I am in the pool. I think that is a big help too.
These are some great suggestions. Ones that I will definitely initiate and attempt. I’m pretty lucky here in the Research Triangle Park, NC area in that there is a large tri community and getting stroke video won’t be a problem.
It sounds like deliberate and focused drilling along w/ increased main set yardage is key. Also a buddy let me borrow the TI video, and it was basically all drilling as well.
I’ll share the suggestions w/ my coach and get some help from her implementation. She’s a former Div I swimmer and is also a big proponent of drilling. We meet weekly and after a warm-up we always start w/ drills.
One question though, can anyone suggest the best technique/drill for getting my hips high in the water? I’ve gotten feedback the my hips are low and I know this really increases drag.
1 - first off try to push your chest down into the water and see if that helps your legs come up
2 - work on kicking on your side and going from left side to right side and back again. Learning better balance may help you learn the ‘poistion’ your body should be in
3 - work on head position. lots of people will tell you to keep your head down, and for many people this works, but I would experiment to see what works for you. We are all built differently with a different center of gravity so just experiment with head position
4 - some people will tell you not to do this but I will say in all my years of swim coaching (since 1988) I have used it for the good more times than for the worse. Swim with a pull bouy - why? So your body can understand the position you are supposed to be in. Don’t get addicted to it, but use it so you know where your legs should be vs where they currently are.
I’ll just give an AMEN! to the Total Immersion system. I’ve been living by the drills in that book for years now, and it was a heavensend. I had already gone through two well respected swim coaches with meager results, and TI really made it click.
There are some great coaches out there, but get at least read the Total Immersion stuff as a supplement if nothing else.
Since 2001, my “A” race and personal benchmark for swimming performance have been my Ironmans. IMUSA in 01, 02, 04, and 05, and IMWI in 03. Until this year, my swim splits have been consistently in the 1:16 to 1:21 range, putting me in the bottom third of participants. This year, though, I improved my time at Lake Placid to 1:06, which catapulted me to comfortably within the top third (almost top quarter). And while I am no coach and no one to dole out advice, these are things I did differently in the past year.
Worked with a swim coach over the winter who showed me how to improve my stroke. My sessions with her included underwater taping - she was even able to show me the videos on the pool deck so she could show me what I needed to do differently; then I could jump right back in and try another lap with her advice in mind.
On the coach’s advice, learned how to alternate breathe. I don’t do this in open water, but I do alternate breathe in almost all my pool workouts and I think it’s helped me balance my stoke.
Worked a lot on my back and breast strokes.
Learned to flip turn.
The coach showed me some drills, and I’ve done them religiously in my pool workouts.
Swam a lot more in the open water this summer. At least twice a week.
Cut out almost all the really long intervals in my pool workouts. I used to do like 3000-4000-yard nonstop sets in the pool, once or twice a week. But I finally admitted to myself that I was swimming about 500-1000 yards well, then just getting real sloppy (mainly out of boredom) for the rest. I don’t think I’ve done a pool set longer than 500 yards this summer, though I have done long swims in the open water (see #5). Now, in my mind, the pool workouts have to be dedicated to quality.
Changed my strategy on race day. This year, instead of swimming the inside of the course (shortest distance, but very chaotic), I started and swam to the outside, taking all the turns wide, drafting off others when I could, but happy to swim in ‘clear’ water otherwise. I think this helped me avoid a lot of fatigue on the second lap of the 2.4 mile swim.
Some of these things, like working with a coach, have an obvious correlation to improving my freestyle time. Some, like learning to flip turn or improving my backstroke, maybe don’t. But I would say that overall I’ve become a much more well-rounded swimmer in the past year, and that, as much as working with a coach, I think has helped me become a faster swimmer too.
