Learning From Experience - Swimming

I am celebrating 3 years since signing up for my first Ironman 70.3! Through my experience on this journey, I want to share what changed and what has remained the same since starting triathlons. In the coming weeks, I will release a new topic each week.  

Madion 70.3 - 2017 (5:24:37)              Muncie 70.3 - 2019 (4:30:31)     

Let’s dive into the first topic, SWIMMING!

For those who have been in the sport a while, hopefully you get some laughs out of this. For those who are still new, please try to find some takeaways!

When I first started training: I swam in trunks, used open turns and would just swim 80-100 laps straight. Please enjoy my very first training video…

Now, I swim in jammers (maybe upgrade to speedo if I start holding 1:20’s), flip turn (even though they aren’t pretty), swim with a Masters group, and mostly utilize drills and interval training.

Let’s break these down a bit:

Trunks to Jammers – Jammers mostly stopped the Masters Swim Group from making fun of me. One could argue that they help you “feel the water” as you practice streamlining, but I made the switch because it helped me hit those faster intervals.

Open Turns to Flip Turns – Now WHY would an open water swimmer care about flip turns? They only make you faster in the pool and you don’t use them in triathlon (excluding the indoor sprint). I would argue that they DO make you faster in open water and here is why:

1. Increased lung capacity. If you are doing open turns, pay attention to the giant breath you take at the wall before pushing off. By holding your breath during a flip turn (instead of an extra breath), it taxes your cardiovascular system. When you finally get back into open water, you will feel much less exhausted.
2. More fluid and maintained rhythm. An open turn causes more of a disruption every length of the pool. Just like running or cycling, I hate when my rhythm is thrown off by traffic lights.
3. Joining a Masters Swim Group. There are many benefits to Masters Programs, and learning flip turns made it much easier for me to train with them! It’s also easier to lane share when the pool is busy.  

Straight swimming to intervals – If the goal is to simply log yards, straight swimming works great. If you are looking to increase your speed and efficiency, intervals are key. I was once told, if you want to learn how to swim faster, you need to…swim faster. Profound right??? Let me explain. By doing 100 yard intervals, I can drop my usual pace of 1:30/100yards down to 1:20 or faster by giving myself some recovery time between each 100. I obviously cannot hold that 1:20 pace for very long, BUT my body is learning what that pace FEELS like. To swim that faster pace, my body is making adjustments whether it be adding power or increasing efficiency. As speed increases, the intervals become easier and I give myself less rest.

Key Takeaways: Flip turns don't take very long to learn, and you can slowly start incorporating them into your warm up and cool down until it becomes second nature. Interval training is the key to increasing speed, and a Masters group will teach you how to utilize them.

My swim is only considered decent in the world of triathlon, but Please let me know if you have questions and I’d love to discuss further! Next week I will break down the changes I’ve made in the world of cycling.