I am a cyclist and natural sinker with fairly lean body. Swimming 50 meters in the pool gets me gassed. Me legs sink. If I bring my legs and hip up to the surface of the water, my head is too low to breath easily. Breathing every 2 strokes is better than 3 for me. Swimming faster to gain inertia helps but gets tired fast. Swimming slow helps breathing but legs sink.
My goal is to do an Olympic distance tri, so 1,500 meters. Can anyone help?
Struggle Swimmer
I don’t think being lean is leading to you being a sinker… olympic swimmers are most certainly lean and aren’t sinkers. So it sounds like you need to either learn how to engage your core better or get stronger through your core (but probably both!).
Your head should be inline with your body; you breathe by rotating during the stroke cycle. If you lift your head to breathe, your hips/legs sink.
One of the hardest things for AOS (adult-onset-swimmers) is to get to the point where they can swim at an easy “all day” pace. In the beginning poor form usually means they have to swim hard to maintain body position.
Ideally, get some 1:1 coaching at the local pool. That’s a bit tricky w/Covid restrictions in many places though. Try some books and videos to get a sense of what you should be doing vis-a-vis body position.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5hL9GRT52c&ab_channel=GlobalTriathlonNetwork
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2_t5C1v0E4&ab_channel=SwimGym
Do some of you swimming with a pull buoy or floaty shorts to both get a feel for what good position feels like, and to allow you to practice swimming without having to go full gas. You can’t really kick w/a buoy, but for endurance freestyle the kick is much less about propulsion and more about body position and facilitating rotation.
Thank you for all your tips. That is helpful. One more question.
My breathing may be due to my fatigue so easily. Should I start expelling air slowly as soon as my head in the water or hold until head is almost out of the water then exhale fully before inhaling? The latter gives me more buoyancy but fatigue sets in after 25 meters.
You should exhale as soon as your face is in the water. Only take in as much air as you can comfortably exhale. When breathing, your head should turn to the side, with only one eye and half your mouth out of the water. The goal is to minimize unnecessary motion. Any breathing pattern is fine. Breathe every time your right arm comes up, or your left, or every other (ie alternating left and right), or 3:2, it doesn’t matter. If you alternate you can’t just breathe on the left and then immediately on the right.
A mentioned, steady exhale while your face is in the water. When you finish exhaling, your lungs should still have some air in them (similar to being at rest). When your face is out of the water that should be for inhaling only (don’t use that time to finish your exhale). Breathe every stroke cycle, this is what most elite distance swimmers and pro triathletes do (O2 is your friend). For open water people may switch breathing sides for better sighting or to avoid chop, but that’s a more advanced technique for later.
I am a cyclist and natural sinker with fairly lean body. Swimming 50 meters in the pool gets me gassed. Me legs sink. If I bring my legs and hip up to the surface of the water, my head is too low to breath easily. Breathing every 2 strokes is better than 3 for me. Swimming faster to gain inertia helps but gets tired fast. Swimming slow helps breathing but legs sink.
You’ve already identified the cause of the problem, sinking legs, poor body position. This can take a while to fix, but is critical. Probably best to goggle it, lots of info out there. I don’t like this analogy, but you will hear people mention “try to swim downhill”. Try it for 25m, then swim “normal” for 25m. Totally over-exaggerate trying to swim downhill, like you are trying to get to the bottom of the pool. This is not how you should swim, but you will feel your legs pop up to the surface. Also clench your glutes, tense your core, push your sternum down, push your head down and when you go to breathe really force your head down. Do all of this and when you swim bend your leg and try and stick your foot out of the water, if you feel air, you need your body position is more or less ok or your legs aren’t sinking as much
Do some of you swimming with a pull buoy or floaty shorts to both get a feel for what good position feels like, and to allow you to practice swimming without having to go full gas. You can’t really kick w/a buoy, but for endurance freestyle the kick is much less about propulsion and more about body position and facilitating rotation.
This is what helped for me. I’ve also had the sinker problem, as a very low body fat, skinny ass, late in life swimmer. When I started 5 years ago, I was a 2:20/100 pace swimmer. To date, my fastest pace in an oly tri is 1:28/100. Not super fast, but very competitive for my age group (60-64). All the information about breathing and head down, and looking down not forward, and breathing with rotation and not head-lifting, is all stuff that has helped me too. After getting nowhere for the first 6 month, I started using a buoy to get the feel for proper body position. Then I went to floaty pants, and they worked great… but I couldn’t afford replacing them every few months with chlorine deterioration. Then I went to small (TYR Burner) fins, and as Titanflexr mentioned, the mental breakthrough for me, was to concentrate on kicking for body position, and not to worry about kicking for propulsion. That changed everything, and it finally started clicking. These days, every few kicks, I like to get my foot just out of the water, and plunk it own with a splash, to keep reaffirming that my feet are at or near the surface, and my position is correct.
I have tried swimming downhill before. It does bring my leg up but then my head is so far below water that I would have a difficult time breathing properly. I lift my head up or I wait until my head is clear the surface of the water. Is this a drill for me to understand balance? How to breath properly if swimming downhill?
I have tried swimming downhill before. It does bring my leg up but then my head is so far below water that I would have a difficult time breathing properly. I lift my head up or I wait until my head is clear the surface of the water. Is this a drill for me to understand balance? How to breath properly if swimming downhill?
I’m not even sure if you would call it a drill and as I said I think it’s not a great phrase to use as it just confuses people. You don’t want to try and swim downhill really, you just end up in a bit of a retarded position and end up swimming worse. But what will happen is that you will feel your legs pop up. You keep on plugging away doing things like swimming downhill, pushing your top half (sternum, head etc) down, it will soon feel normal having your legs near the surface and when your legs do drop (say if you’re tired) it will be very obvious. I saw some guy swimming the other day and his body was almost at right-angles, his feet almost touching the floor. But he wouldn’t feel like his legs are doing that. To him he probably feels like he’s floating on the surface. So very simplistically it’s about your legs being near the surface feeling normal and dropping your legs feeling abnormal.
Same with lots of things with swimming really. You can get an average swimmer and teach him a correct catch and pull, it will feel horrible and unnatural at first. His completely messed up and inefficient stroke that looks terrible to anyone looking actually feels OK and natural to him. It’s a case of flipping that around, horrible stroke feels horrible. That way you can fix it. If horrible feels OK, you’re in a bit of a quandary.
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One of the hardest things for AOS (adult-onset-swimmers) is to get to the point where they can swim at an easy “all day” pace. In the beginning poor form usually means they have to swim hard to maintain body position.
Yeah I agree with this. And it’s a sure sign your stroke is stuffed so when you struggle to swim slow.
Are you referring to a 2-beat kick to just get to the surface or a light 6-beat kick?
I am a cyclist and natural sinker with fairly lean body. Swimming 50 meters in the pool gets me gassed. Me legs sink. If I bring my legs and hip up to the surface of the water, my head is too low to breath easily. Breathing every 2 strokes is better than 3 for me. Swimming faster to gain inertia helps but gets tired fast. Swimming slow helps breathing but legs sink.
My goal is to do an Olympic distance tri, so 1,500 meters. Can anyone help?
Struggle Swimmer
You’re doing fine - this is a NORMAL and expected situation for anybody when they learn to swim.
As you’ve learned, it’s not easy easy as just ‘pressing the head down’, although that sort of advice does help.
A big reason that you are finding yourself so gassed is that your motions, as expected for a beginner swimmer, haven’t developed the coordination and balanced such that one movement doesn’t disrupt your body position or another motion. As a result, every stroke you take, every little kick you take will force you to expend energy to bring your body closer to ‘flat’ in the water.
There is no simple fix. You just have to stay at it, swim more, practice more. All of the aforementioned advice helps - try swimming with toys like a pull buoy with no kick at times to isolate the arms - you’ll quickly see how imbalanced your stroke is and how it’s messing up your body position. (It’ll likely feel near-impossible at first to swim with no kick.)
But you’re on the right track, with being aware of body position, and actively working on it. It’s hard, takes time, but you will progress, just be patient. Took me over 2 years of ‘serious’ swim training to even get to ‘not horrible a swimmer’, but you will be able to finish an Oly swim (albeit at a slow pace) within 6 months.
For you, swimming slowly but comfortably for the vast majority of your training, if not all of it until you get easily swim 1000+ at an easy pace no problem, is in order, as your technique is by farrrr your limiter. (I rarely say this on this forum, as most folks here are intermediate swimmers, but in your case, technique technique technique, forget about swim fitness. Lots of easy swimming, study up on drills and use them in a targeted way, but swimming as much as possible is the #1 priority.)
Lightheir summed it up pretty well. Stick with it.
Your lungs aren’t used to having to expel air forcefully over and over again, so I bet your lungs are sore after a swim session.
To help with your stinky legs, get a pull buoy and hold it between your thighs as you swim. It won’t be an automatic fix, but it will help.
I’ve always analogized swimming to a golf swing. There are a lot of moving parts that have to synch together to work well. Time, practice, and youtube videos will get you there. Even better if you work with a coach.
find a masters swim group. swim with masters swim group.
find a masters swim group. swim with masters swim group.
I don’t agree. OP is not good enough to remotely keep up with a masters group.
A ‘beginners’ group would be appropriate. But a masters group will be demoralizing, as most folks there can swim for an hour no problem already.
You are right. When I first swam 1,500 metres, 50 meters non-stop with 30 seconds rest, I felt my lungs were to explode. Thank you for your advice. I will patently practice.
lungs feeling like they are going to explode can be because you are really exerting yourself (albeit in an inefficient manner) – but it can also be that you are not getting enough air. In either case, you can try slowing it down, relaxing, and really concentrate on not lifting your head or shoulders at any time during your stroke (e.g., keep one eye under water when inhaling). Also, an under appreciated way to get your feet up is to kick lightly – it takes very little energy but you have to do it right. You want your ankle to be a hinge so that the water pressure makes your foot rotate to pointed back when kicking down and the flop down when you recover. Your knees flex slightly (don’t hold your legs stiff). Do not lift feet above water (don’t splash). You can practice kick holding onto the wall and look back under your body and see if your legs are on plane. Also, kick some with a kickboard – if you are being propelled ahead around half your swimming speed or better, your kick has to be right (unless you are doing something weird like a big scissor kick)
This is where Total Immersion (TI), despite all its sins, could really help. Nobody I think has explained as well and given as good instruction and drills to fix this particular problem than Terry Loughlin in his various books and other means of disseminating his vision for swimming learning.
I would buy a TI book, do the drill progression for learning how to balance in the water, then when you’ve got it, ditch the book in the bin 
(to make sure you don’t follow some of the other advice in there)
find a masters swim group. swim with masters swim group.
I don’t agree. OP is not good enough to remotely keep up with a masters group.
A ‘beginners’ group would be appropriate. But a masters group will be demoralizing, as most folks there can swim for an hour no problem already.
and, from the OP:
Swimming 50 meters in the pool gets me gassed.
I’d ask the OP, if someone told you they could not ride an exercise bike for 2 miles without getting gassed, what training would you suggest? Would you recommend form or technique advice, or that they build fitness in the sport?
I am no coach, so I don’t want to interfere with others who are experts, but maybe you should get a lot of laps in, with somewhat low expectations about improvement or improving efficiency, as a first step. Often, people ask for swim advice from ST and I think to myself, you need some volume. Come back in 8 weeks! (Just a reaction and not ‘sound’ physiological advice, to be sure, but your 1 lap comment struck me.)
On a more positive note, a beginners swim team could actually be a lot of fun. Lots of age group and HS swimming is filled with novices who are out of shape, swim-wise, and sets of 50s or 100s where** everyone** is miserable makes for camaraderie. Even as a somewhat motivated guy, a personal workout of 20 x 50s on :10 rest is not always a set I complete! Come to think of it, I think I have never swum all 3 x 300s outside a team practice.