So given swimming is a highly technical activity how much time should be spent on technique versus just smashing out laps?
As an example, as a 1:15 IM/ 36 half swimmer would you be better swimming 1k of strict form based laps, or 3k of sloppy form to get the mileage up?
What about 1k strict form followed by 2k sloppy?
I’m concerned any ‘sloppy’ form swimming is just going to ingrain bad habits, but also concerned about losing swim fitness by reducing milage as a compromise for form?
Swimming sloppy is called “garbage yardage” and you don’t wanna do that at all during a “workout”.
In our masters program, we have a drill session in every workout where we are working on technique, be it fingertip drill, closed fist, etc (for freestyle only). We have other drills for the other three strokes. During these drill sets, we may swim upwards of 900y, eg. 6x150 as 100K/50 drill out of a 3500-4000y practice.
If you’re only swimming freestyle in any and all workouts, at least incorporate kicking and drill sets into every one of them. Then try to focus on that technique drill you just worked on by swimming 25s and 50s only. Once these get ingrained in your muscle memory, you can start swimming longer distances. We don’t swim anything longer than 400s (LCM) or 500s (SCY) and that may only happen 1x per 1-2 weeks.
Joining a masters swim program, if one is available near you, will provide you with great benefits and value.
So given swimming is a highly technical activity how much time should be spent on technique versus just smashing out laps?
As an example, as a 1:15 IM/ 36 half swimmer would you be better swimming 1k of strict form based laps, or 3k of sloppy form to get the mileage up?
What about 1k strict form followed by 2k sloppy?
I’m concerned any ‘sloppy’ form swimming is just going to ingrain bad habits, but also concerned about losing swim fitness by reducing milage as a compromise for form?
I’ve seen a shitload of triathletes that have joined squads or doing programs, do the drills diligently, do their 3 swims a week and have very little progression. So I’m not sure if you mean by working on technique as in doing drills or something else? You’ll get people that will do certain drills that are supposed to correct issues with their stroke, they do the drill great, but as soon as they return to freestyle, the issue returns.
IMO if you want to fix your swimming, I would take 6 months off triathlon, do little run/bike and focus 100% on your swim. Get a video analysis done, get a coach, join a competitive squad and swim lots. By the end of the 6 months, you should have a reasonably good, efficient stroke and you’ll have that for life. Swimming 3k 3 times a week is going to do much more than maintain your current swim fitness.
Swimming sloppy is called “garbage yardage” and you don’t wanna do that at all during a “workout”.
.
Thanks, this is the feedback I was after!
I’ve seen a shitload of triathletes that have joined squads or doing programs, do the drills diligently, do their 3 swims a week and have very little progression. So I’m not sure if you mean by working on technique as in doing drills or something else? You’ll get people that will do certain drills that are supposed to correct issues with their stroke, they do the drill great, but as soon as they return to freestyle, the issue returns.
IMO if you want to fix your swimming, I would take 6 months off triathlon, do little run/bike and focus 100% on your swim. Get a video analysis done, get a coach, join a competitive squad and swim lots. By the end of the 6 months, you should have a reasonably good, efficient stroke and you’ll have that for life. Swimming 3k 3 times a week is going to do much more than maintain your current swim fitness.
What I’m getting at is most of us have terrible technique when it comes to swimming. So to get faster is it better to concentrate on drills designed to improve your technique, or smash out hard 100’s, 200’s etc ignoring your form and just going hard hard hard…?
So what’s the balance between form focus, and smashing out vomit inducing laps to get fitness? Does one preceded the other or lead to the other, in unison or distinctly isolated etc. Baring in mind this is for an average 37 min half swimmer…
I’ve seen a shitload of triathletes that have joined squads or doing programs, do the drills diligently, do their 3 swims a week and have very little progression. So I’m not sure if you mean by working on technique as in doing drills or something else? You’ll get people that will do certain drills that are supposed to correct issues with their stroke, they do the drill great, but as soon as they return to freestyle, the issue returns.
IMO if you want to fix your swimming, I would take 6 months off triathlon, do little run/bike and focus 100% on your swim. Get a video analysis done, get a coach, join a competitive squad and swim lots. By the end of the 6 months, you should have a reasonably good, efficient stroke and you’ll have that for life. Swimming 3k 3 times a week is going to do much more than maintain your current swim fitness.
What I’m getting at is most of us have terrible technique when it comes to swimming. So to get faster is it better to concentrate on drills designed to improve your technique, or smash out hard 100’s, 200’s etc ignoring your form and just going hard hard hard…?
So what’s the balance between form focus, and smashing out vomit inducing laps to get fitness? Does one preceded the other or lead to the other, in unison or distinctly isolated etc. Baring in mind this is for an average 37 min half swimmer…
In swimming, form./technique and fitness go somewhat hand in hand. You can’t improve your technique by just doing high yardage without focus, but you can’t improve your swim by doing mostly drills either. This is why some coaches (including Tim Floyd here) advocate for shorter repetitions (25’s or 50’s) for triathletes (especially beginner triathletes) so that you can keep focus on best technique while still doing volume. Things like 40 x 25 with between 15 and 20s rest. Warm up with fins, and drill/swim sets to imprint good technique before the main set.
I think you’re looking at it in the wrong way
You do a drill for 50 or 100 yards and then you swim at 50 or 100 yards using what you’re teaching yourself and that drill
And on and on and on and then in the middle, you have a work set and use what you learned in the drills
You can still work, your heart and lungs, while using what you learned the drills
Your post makes it seem like the mutually exclusive that in order to push yourself then you’re gonna have crappy form
I don’t think you need to have a gut, wrenching puke inducing sets
In the past six weeks, I’ve paid more attention to technique and I’m swimming 20% as much yardage and less intensity since I was a year ago and I’m faster
.
I’ve seen a shitload of triathletes that have joined squads or doing programs, do the drills diligently, do their 3 swims a week and have very little progression. So I’m not sure if you mean by working on technique as in doing drills or something else? You’ll get people that will do certain drills that are supposed to correct issues with their stroke, they do the drill great, but as soon as they return to freestyle, the issue returns.
IMO if you want to fix your swimming, I would take 6 months off triathlon, do little run/bike and focus 100% on your swim. Get a video analysis done, get a coach, join a competitive squad and swim lots. By the end of the 6 months, you should have a reasonably good, efficient stroke and you’ll have that for life. Swimming 3k 3 times a week is going to do much more than maintain your current swim fitness.
What I’m getting at is most of us have terrible technique when it comes to swimming. So to get faster is it better to concentrate on drills designed to improve your technique, or smash out hard 100’s, 200’s etc ignoring your form and just going hard hard hard…?
So what’s the balance between form focus, and smashing out vomit inducing laps to get fitness? Does one preceded the other or lead to the other, in unison or distinctly isolated etc. Baring in mind this is for an average 37 min half swimmer…
In swimming, form./technique and fitness go somewhat hand in hand. You can’t improve your technique by just doing high yardage without focus, but you can’t improve your swim by doing mostly drills either. This is why some coaches (including Tim Floyd here) advocate for shorter repetitions (25’s or 50’s) for triathletes (especially beginner triathletes) so that you can keep focus on best technique while still doing volume. Things like 40 x 25 with between 15 and 20s rest. Warm up with fins, and drill/swim sets to imprint good technique before the main set.
I’m really surprised by how OP is approaching this. I’m reading it as: “Should I only do drills, or should I swim like shit to get better?”
It’s doing the proper technique work for whatever issue with your stroke you want to improve, and developing the fitness to maintain that technical change.
I freaking love me a 40x25 with 20s rest. I’m by no means a fast swimmer but the last time I did it I was coming in at around 19 seconds and leaving on the 40.
Sorry I probably didn’t explain myself adequately. The question I guess is more on form than drills. Is it better to swim 25, 50 or 100 with strict form, have enough rest to hold form for another 100 rinse repeat. Or smash out 100’s as hard as you can not thinking of form, reduced rest and focus is on intensity rather than form. Does this make more sense?
Personally I can swim 4k easy, no problem at all in my sleep at a 2min pace. But I want to get faster and trying to understand how to get there. I know I drop my elbow quite a bit and this is exasperated with fatigue hence the chicken or egg questions
Sorry I probably didn’t explain myself adequately. The question I guess is more on form than drills. Is it better to swim 25, 50 or 100 with strict form, have enough rest to hold form for another 100 rinse repeat. Or smash out 100’s as hard as you can not thinking of form, reduced rest and focus is on intensity rather than form. Does this make more sense?
Personally I can swim 4k easy, no problem at all in my sleep at a 2min pace. But I want to get faster and trying to understand how to get there. I know I drop my elbow quite a bit and this is exasperated with fatigue hence the chicken or egg questions
Ah yeah, that makes more sense. Like the other commenter said, Tim Floyd is an advocate of shorter reps and making sure you are swimming with good form, that 40x25 set is really good. I end up swimming it faster pace than I would if I was doing 10x100, and my form is exponentially better than just mashing 100s.
I could be totally wrong but when I feel my form start to deteriorate I do a longer rest or slow down
.
I could be totally wrong but when I feel my form start to deteriorate I do a longer rest or slow down
You have hit on the key.
most AOS swimmers (I am one)…
Swim too slow to teach themselves good technique and strength (swim specific), and/or don’t give themselves enough rest between intervals, such that they not only can’t “hold” good technique in each repeat, they don’t even start with good technique.
In order to get fast, one must train fast and forget about logging yards/meters.
A triathlete who wants to be competitive needs to not consider the swim a “workout” from a cardiovascular standpoint.
My go to is 12x100 on 2:05. Long rest? Maybe. Should be coming in between 67 and 80. Do that 5x a week for 6 weeks, each day about 1,600 yards. Then do a few all out 500’s or 1,000’s and see how much faster you are.
Speed IS a teacher of technique, if done correctly. The pace clock is the enemy/friend
I used to think this too, that most AOS triathlete swimmers just don’t swim hard enough. And that they’d get a lot faster by doing lots of fast work.
Then I tried it myself. For several years. LOTS of 50s, 100s, sprinkled with some longer work but workouts like 20 x 100 or 10 x 200 were a staple. Very hard effort for me.
My results were very underwhelming. Sure, I could have swam more overall volume, but for sure I got no magic gains like people here make it out to be. I was hoping my technique would gradually improve with all that speedwork, but it honestly didn’t.
And after being at a bunch of masters and tri-masters groups now, I’m more convinced that (slower) AOS swimmers just LOOK like they’re lollygagging in the pool and taking it easy, when in fact, for most of them, that’s just as fast as they go (as slow as it is) for hard 100s. I’ve seen myself on video doing essentially all-out efforts, and I look like I’m doing recovery compared to world class swimmers, as I’m so much weaker than them, but I’m literally dying as I finish those.
It reminds me very much of running in this regard - I’ve been to countless group track interval day, and I used to always wonder why it seemed like 70% of the people looked like they were barely working out there. I mean, I was breathing like a dying horse, and keeling over after a few intervals, and these people looked like they were barely trying. Then I listened in on their conversations, and it was pretty clear that it was the fastest they could go. (Muscular endurance limiters likely - like me in my earlier days of swimming where my arms/back couldn’t generate enough power to really exhaust my overall energy.)
So given swimming is a highly technical activity how much time should be spent on technique versus just smashing out laps?
As an example, as a 1:15 IM/ 36 half swimmer would you be better swimming 1k of strict form based laps, or 3k of sloppy form to get the mileage up?
What about 1k strict form followed by 2k sloppy?
I’m concerned any ‘sloppy’ form swimming is just going to ingrain bad habits, but also concerned about losing swim fitness by reducing milage as a compromise for form?
Think about it this way, every stroke you take, you are ‘training’.
You are training yourself to move in a certain way (for better or worse) and you’re training your physiology to meet a specific demand.
So, if you just swim hard, you may be training your physiology appropriately, but you’re also training yourself to move through the water poorly.
If you just focus on skills, without any physiological challenge, you’ll never develop the physical ability to execute those skills in any sort of relevant context, or develop the fitness to execute them in the first place.
EVERYTHING is skill work AND training.
If you’re not engaged technically and physically, in what you’re doing at all times, you’re leaving improvement on the table.
As others have mentioned, they’re not separate processes. They’re the same thing.
This knowledge base/series seems very conversational and technical, and may answer many of your questions. It was a Slowtwitch series last year.
https://www.slowtwitch.com/Training/Swimming/Final_Week_Guppy_Week-12_8455.html
I’m linking the twelfth in the series because it links back to 1-11. Give it a read?
Sorry I probably didn’t explain myself adequately. The question I guess is more on form than drills. Is it better to swim 25, 50 or 100 with strict form, have enough rest to hold form for another 100 rinse repeat. Or smash out 100’s as hard as you can not thinking of form, reduced rest and focus is on intensity rather than form. Does this make more sense?
Personally I can swim 4k easy, no problem at all in my sleep at a 2min pace. But I want to get faster and trying to understand how to get there. I know I drop my elbow quite a bit and this is exasperated with fatigue hence the chicken or egg questions
If you’re a triathlete, you’re getting loads of general cardio conditioning from your bike and run. You don’t need to be doing that in the pool.
Make sure you’re swimming with good form “all the time”. If you can’t hold form, that’s your cue to get more rest or back off the intensity.
My response is similar to MasteringFlow’s above.
How you do you know your technique is worse when you swim faster? Have you seen your stroke on video? both underwater and above. Then have it analyzed by a coach so you know what to work on. Hell, even submit it to slowtwitch and use the community of coaches here to help.
Otherwise my take is to focus on your technique every single stroke of a main set. Once you know the specific cues for your stroke then you can do that throughout your whole set. You can swim your main set and be mindful of your stroke at the same time. If you get in the water for 1k easy swimming to focus on technique I think you are in for a rude awakening when it comes race time and you can’t go faster. If you have an on-deck swim coach then disregard and follow their guidance.
Sorry I probably didn’t explain myself adequately. The question I guess is more on form than drills. Is it better to swim 25, 50 or 100 with strict form, have enough rest to hold form for another 100 rinse repeat. Or smash out 100’s as hard as you can not thinking of form, reduced rest and focus is on intensity rather than form. Does this make more sense?
Personally I can swim 4k easy, no problem at all in my sleep at a 2min pace. But I want to get faster and trying to understand how to get there. I know I drop my elbow quite a bit and this is exasperated with fatigue hence the chicken or egg questions
I think you have pointed out something here. Holding correct form when it isn’t hardwired is tiring. It is a workout. I quite like doing a drill for say 25-50 meters then completing with 100-150 of freestyle trying to use what the drill is teaching me. It helps to have a coach telling you what the drill is trying to accomplish.
The SwimSmooth guys say that open water speed is one third technique, one third fitness and one third open water skills. Like drafting and sighting for instance.
I now swim a half in about 35-36 minutes at age 56 about the same as when I was in my early 20s. Strange but my fulls are all 1:07-1:08 I think that is because I have more time to get a good draft etc and get out of heavy traffic? I guess I am getting more efficient but I am a slow learner.
So given swimming is a highly technical activity how much time should be spent on technique versus just smashing out laps?
As an example, as a 1:15 IM/ 36 half swimmer would you be better swimming 1k of strict form based laps, or 3k of sloppy form to get the mileage up?
What about 1k strict form followed by 2k sloppy?
I’m concerned any ‘sloppy’ form swimming is just going to ingrain bad habits, but also concerned about losing swim fitness by reducing milage as a compromise for form?
Think about it this way, every stroke you take, you are ‘training’.
You are training yourself to move in a certain way (for better or worse) and you’re training your physiology to meet a specific demand.
So, if you just swim hard, you may be training your physiology appropriately, but you’re also training yourself to move through the water poorly.
If you just focus on skills, without any physiological challenge, you’ll never develop the physical ability to execute those skills in any sort of relevant context, or develop the fitness to execute them in the first place.
EVERYTHING is skill work AND training.
If you’re not engaged technically and physically, in what you’re doing at all times, you’re leaving improvement on the table.
As others have mentioned, they’re not separate processes. They’re the same thing.
Exactly this. It’s called swim practice for a reason. Every single stroke should be practicing correct technique, no matter how fast you are going. Tune into your stroke. If you detect something you did wrong, correct it on the next stroke.
I used to think this too, that most AOS triathlete swimmers just don’t swim hard enough. And that they’d get a lot faster by doing lots of fast work.
Then I tried it myself. For several years. LOTS of 50s, 100s, sprinkled with some longer work but workouts like 20 x 100 or 10 x 200 were a staple. Very hard effort for me.
My results were very underwhelming. Sure, I could have swam more overall volume, but for sure I got no magic gains like people here make it out to be. I was hoping my technique would gradually improve with all that speedwork, but it honestly didn’t.
Hope is not a plan, and there is no magic. Your technique won’t gradually improve all by itself. You have to deliberately improve your technique. That means knowing what is correct technique, identifying how your technique differs from the correct, and applying the appropriate fixes. Not everyone can do these things, and few can do it without external input.