Swimming is the one discipline where I’ve had several eye openers over the years, where I haven’t in bike or run. I think everyone comes to it differently but key moments in recent years were joining a (proper) swim club for a season, and a couple of one on one swim classes with someone who ‘clicks’.
I don’t think I gained much from simply swimming more or when I could, nor from gym swim clubs. But those early things probably did help in that stage of my journey.
Currently using formswim goggles and planned workouts every week much like TR and the gains keep on coming. I joined an impressive swim club and they just wrecked me instantly - but this is how I learn/improve, you get to a level then you find there’s a whole ‘nother level by reaching out. Then, hopefully over time, you reach that level…
I did some masters swimming when I was more well-developed, and they put me in the “fast lane” which was utterly intimidating. I did some OW workouts with Jim Vance here in San Diego and he always put me in the A’s. At the time, I was like WTF, I can’t swim!
Turns out I could and I was selling myself short.
I did one-on-one with a coach once or twice and honestly didn’t get much out of it. Like with the rest of my sports, I really learned quite a lot doing my own exploration in the water and finding things that worked for me specifically rather than dogmatic approaches (beyond TI and the basics of efficiency).
My various cycling coaches over the years helped me out quite a bit, but the running and swimming stuff I was much more “on my own, self exploration”.
The biggest advice I got from a tri coach I used for a couple of seasons was on swim FREQUENCY, and I agree with what he had me do. I made gains just going from 3 to 4 swim sessions in a week because I was just refining technique more quickly and developing that muscle memory.
So my advice #1 for most people on swimming is: swim more frequently. I’d MUCH rather someone do 8000 yards in 4 workouts than 8000 yards in 2 workouts in a week.
This is the silver bullet. I posted here at the start of the year not knowing what I was going to do for swimming. Fast forward to last week where i’d swam 4 days straight and able to do 5 x 200’s at 1:40/100m pace without absolutely gasping for air between efforts. Then I take a few days off, have some fun life events, get back in the pool and i’m having to remember all the cues i’d been doing naturally just last week.
For anyone just reading this and thinking about swimming - learn from me and pick a pool that works with your schedule. The hours at my rec center are atrocious and the masters swim squad trains 8-9am which is typically pretty hard to navigate with full time work.
I must also add - I think my overall fitness has improved since starting to swim. I just hit a 300watt ftp and running paces are getting faster at the same HR and RPE all while feeling like i’m doing less cycling and certainly doing less running. It’s got to be related to the breathing patterns during swim carrying over to the run and bike. Things are just feeling smooth… Or maybe its just all that winter training showing its worth and i’m about to be humbled in the summer heat. We’ll find out!
Debating transitioning to TR for 70.3 training but its unclear to me how exactly the Tri training works. I have never used TR before as you may infer from my questions
My understanding is that for tri training users are typically using their own run/swim workouts and then leveraging TR for the bike.
Do the bike workouts RL/GL consider the stress/fatigue from swim/run workouts?
What is the philosophy behind the bike workouts? Is it 80-20 for base phase, then more threshold and then more race specific?
Are principles such as progressive overload visible in the workouts proposed?
Is there flexibility to plan bike workout days and duration per day?
Do you have to use ERG mode with TR? I am not a fan of ERG in general, since most are not very flexible (I find Rouvy has the best ERG mode for me).
Anything else I should consider when training for a 70.3 with TR? I have used Tridot in the past so anyone who has experience in both platforms, feel free to share gains/differences. Now I am mostly self coached
The plans include swimming and running workouts. You don’t do those on the TR app.
Do the bike workouts RL/GL consider the stress/fatigue from swim/run workouts?
Yes.
What is the philosophy behind the bike workouts? Is it 80-20 for base phase, then more threshold and then more race specific?
I’ll let someone else tackle this one, but I’m on a high-volume half-distance plan with four bike workouts a week. In general I saw a lot of sweet spot in base phase, a focus on VO2max workouts in build, and more threshold work in specialty. All phases included tempo and endurance work for the remaining workouts.
Are principles such as progressive overload visible in the workouts proposed?
Yes.
Is there flexibility to plan bike workout days and duration per day?
Yes. You can set the workout days and duration for each discipline when setting up the plan, and you can move the individual workouts around the calendar as needed (as well as replace them with shorter/longer/easier/harder alternates at your discretion).
I’m not the person you’re replying to, but the most recent ‘wow’ moment for me was to ‘pivot weight in front of me’
Coach saw me plodding along with a kickboard and I was a straight as an arrow… but not perpendicular to the floor - legs pointed down. He told me to just try to put weight onto the board and ‘pivot’ over my front half. After another 50 thinking about that while kicking I jumped into normal sets and my legs popped right up, my head angled down, my catch was stronger, and I was smoooooth.
Something I think about often when i’m finding i’m dragging
Speaking of swimming, do any of you have any advice on how to make the most of an endless pool?
My rec center’s pool just closed indefinitely due to a mechanical issue, but I found out a local gym has an endless pool, so I got a membership just to use it. It’s a weird experience, though. The pace it shows isn’t real/accurate, you can’t track distance, you’re just looking down at the exact same spot at the bottom so it feels interminable. I’ve just been cranking up the speed and doing sprints in one-minute intervals until I get bored. This might be good enough to get me through St. George in three weeks without losing too much swim fitness, but if I have to do this long term, I don’t know how I can make this more productive (or at least tolerable).
Swimming in an endless pool is a great workout. I wouldn’t do sprints myself. If it were me I’d be doing different sessions similar in style to TrainerRoad workouts. Don’t worry about splits. Focus on RPE over the duration. Depending where you are at with your swim you might look to hold the feeling of ‘race pace’ for something like 6 x 5 minutes with 1 minute rest (think threshold?). That’s just what I’d do. You might find something like 2 minutes on 15 seconds off might work better for you. Try to dial in that feeling of the pace you can hold over the distance.
In more general times and NOT specifically leading into a race I’d focus quite a lot on the technique work in an endless pool.
If you find swimming boring you are going to have a hard time sticking to it. Become immersed in what you are doing (pun intended). Try to be fully aware of what your body is doing and how you are moving through the water. Make changes to your stroke and feel how it changes the different elements of your technique.
Don’t ‘just swim’. That goes for any type of swimming. Go with a plan or at the very least an intention.
I’ve found with swimming it isn’t practice that sees progress. It’s perfect practice that sees progress
Finally to add… Beware unsolicited advice from strangers
There are a lot of people out there who like to give their opinion and they may not be best qualified to do so. They may offer advice and because they are ‘faster’ than you, it may appear plausible. The reality is that their advice might lead on to poor technique or injury, as an example.
Let’s also remain aware that people may have different physical abilities in terms of flexibility and range of motion. This is often overlooked by strangers.
I used to swim with a guy who technique is arguably pretty poor. This is just due to how his body is. However he will swim sub 55 minutes for an Ironman swim fairly comfortably with this ‘poor technique’. He makes it work for him.
I’m not saying don’t try new things and experiment. More just to be aware that the advice you receive may be totally wrong.
It sounds like you had a good interaction though
I’ll always remember a story I heard about a lady swimmer who was hitting a training session. Some guy (from a different lane) thought he’d stop her to compliment her swim but tell her where she could improve. The catch here is that this random guy was trying to talking to an Olympic medalist
Yeah. Sadly, and speaking as a man whose JOB it is to explain things to people, mansplaining is a real thing. I’ve seen it a ton with women who are competitive shooters, or skilled entrepreneurs/businesspeople. Men want to explain things to them: it’s a form of status-seeking mating behavior, I think.
Women really value being seen, and feeling protected and understood. They value a man who delivers those things. So mansplaining is a natural, almost biological instinct to establish status as a guide, protector, and someone who sees/understands her.
The behavior is good when the woman wants/needs that advice. What we need to unlearn is the instinct to offer it without having a clue as to whether that advice is useful or even welcome.
See if you can hire one or try on a few from someone who knows how they should fit. I had an eye opener when I was hauled up by the neoprene in my shoulders and movement became so much easier.
Wisdom from me, no. But my one and only wetsuit experience has been with Roka, who has a product tailored specifically for beginner swimmers (more buoyancy, slightly different balance). That’s what I bought and I was very happy with its help in surviving my first tri. I’ll be using that wetsuit until I feel ready to upgrade to a “regular swimmers” product.
Yeah, swim as a newbie. Not easy. Doing it for about 6 months now. Started with 400m in 9m40, last week I completed it in 7m23. So, slowly getting faster. CSS captured now at around 2:01/100m
Try to go to the pool 3 times a week, maybe should try to go 4 times but ok…Sometimes I got a feel and connection with the water…hey…i am splitting and gliding through the water…but that is usually just a few laps ;-). But still hoping, it will come step by step. But when I look at the better swimmers in my local club. It is all about balance and efficiency in the water. They look so smooth and go darn fast. That could not only be propulsion ;-).
Does someone know? Maybe @kurt.braeckel ? Where I can find somene online who can give advice based on a swim video? I have some videos of me swimming but want to look for some advice of what to do to improve…
I don’t know of anyone I’d recommend for video analysis, sorry can’t help there. It’s something I’ve done for my athletes that I work with but typically not something I just offer because I am by no means an expert swimmer/swim coach in that regard.
Two resources that I used that are available to anyone: Total Immersion (I liked the books, and this was like 20 years ago) when I was first starting out in triathlon because I needed to learn how to be efficient through the water; Swim Smooth which is another Aussie option, but they had some drill programs that helped me focus on some things that made me markedly faster once I’d been going at it for several years. Back when I used Swim Smooth material it was quite a bit smaller scale than it appears to be now (with an app, charged coaching online, etc.). When I used their material, I think I paid some small nominal fee for a drill program PDF I printed out and took to the pool with me. Feel like I just aged 20 years.
Overall though, just swimming and a lot of self-taught technique refinement was “my way”.
We’ll find out!
mostly because I know it drives me 
