Endurance Nation | Triathlon Coaching, Ironman Training, Half Ironman, Beginner Triathlon

Please Get Out of The Water — Until It Matters
photo credit: m.gifford

It’s pretty well-known by now that Endurance Nation recommends that you don’t swim during our OutSeason training cycle. That means for a grand total of five months, our athletes aren’t swimming a single stroke. This approach has generated a lot of buzz, mostly negative, that how we train is in someway incomplete. After all, what’s a triathlon training plan without swimming in it? The Long Answer: It’s an incredibly focused approach to building the required bike and run fitness that will carry you through a personal best on race day. The Short Answer: Re-Learning how to swim is better than constantly swimming and making tweaks.

The Problem

As adults engaging the water, we are at a distinct disadvantage because we simply don’t have the time to train like actual swimmers. And by time I mean the five days a week for years that will allow us to develop an insanely effective stroke. To further compound the issue, most triatheletes spend an inordinate amount of time working on building their swimming fitness as opposed to developing an actual stroke. The truth is, it’s way easier to just pile on the miles in the pool every year than it is to dig down into the fundamentals of what can make you a faster swimmer and eliminating whatever is holding you back.

The Facts: Swimming Is 80% Technique and 20% Fitness

As a triathlete you are very aware of just how much technique plays a role in swimming speed. There’s nothing like being a ridiculously fit athlete on land but getting your butt handed to you on a regular basis by an out-of-shape, former collegiate swimmer with a nice beer gut. Or, as some of our members can attest, by their own 8-year-old kids who are way faster. While Mr. State and your kids don’t hang out, they do have something in common — they have put the time in to learn how to swim, and they started young.

Your goal as an Age Group Triathlete looking to improve your swimming is to find the most time-efficient way of improving your stroke. Your job is to seek out the advice, coaching and learning opportunities that will allow you to improve our stroke given the basic constraints we all face (lack of time, two other sports, job, life, family, etc.).

Inside Endurance Nation we eliminate the time cost of off-season swimming by removing it entirely from the schedule. Now you can sleep in an additional two to three days a week, and you are more rested to hit the run and bike workouts on your schedule. Most importantly, you have the advice and support of 600+ athletes who all are telling you that swimming in the winter doesn’t actually make them any faster than the work they do in the final three to five months before their big race.

Let’s learn more about why that works…

Re-Learning Beats Tweaking

With swimming being such a technique oriented undertaking, your mental and physical focus has to be 100% if you are going to be able to identify and make the changes that will improve how you swim. Nothing dulls this mental edge more than the combination of year-round swimming and group swim workouts with forced distances.

While common sense says the more you swim, the better you’ll get at swimming, actual experience says otherwise for the time-crunched triathlete. Just as in any individual swim set, say a 300, you know that the first 50 is better than the last 50; that the first half is better than the second. Over time your form and skill succumb to fatigue and lack of focus. (Note: This is why we recommend swimming lots and lots of repeat 100s with rest, to ensure that a large part of your swim workouts will consist of actual quality strokes.) But the same effect happens on a macro-level scale as well: the more often you swim as an Age Group Triathlete, the less likely you are to have a technique breakthrough.

In other words, being away from swimming makes you much significantly more prepared to become a better swimmer when you do return. This is not the case for fitness dependent sports like cycling and running, but it is born out in the swim on a regular basis.

“my ‘haven’t swam 1 stroke in literally 6 months’ self swam about 1 minute slower than my PR self from the previous year. Less than a month later, I set a 30 second PR, after focused technique work and some fitness sets. “

Compressed Timelines Make a Difference

Finally, there’s nothing like a deadline to motiveate you to improve. If you only have fifteen weeks to swim, then you make the most of it. Giving yourself all year only means that you are spending more time in the water since extra time doesn’t in and of itself guarantee improvement.

What Can You Do?

If your race is more than 20 weeks away, you can back off the swimming right now. When you do drop into swimming, spend the first 30% of your time on technique alone. Once you feel comfortable with your form, then it’s time to begin adding a bit more fitness each week.

The 1k Time Trial Challenge

We can talk all we want, it’s the performances of our athletes that really sets the tone for what do here at Endurance Nation. To that end we have fired up a 1000 yard challenge. We are asking our folks to:

1. Record their last timed swim. For many this will be several months ago.
2. Perform a 1k time trial in the pool. Preferably, this will “cold,” with little to no swimming in the weeks beforehand, so we can quantify exactly how much time they have lost by not swimming.
3. Repeat these time trials every month so we can document how quickly they get their swim, and then some, back.

Our experience is that their cold TT will be a bit slower then their last season PR, the second TT a month later will be spot on (4-6 weeks of swimming) and the third test will show improvement over last year’s previous best…in just 12 weeks.

But talk is cheap! We’ll record these results and share them with you in a few months after we have many data points!

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photo credit: k.steudel

Auth Note: PSA = Public Service Announcement

Attention Triathletes: Do Everything You Can to Avoid Swimming This Winter

If you are like me, you don’t like to wait. We live in an on-demand world, and nowhere is this more true than in the realm of our performance, where we seek out incremental speed gains by dropping cash on wheels and carbon widgets. If you are planning on being faster next season, and are ready to do the work to get there, here’s the single best tip we can give you this winter: Stop Swimming.

Swimming in the winter is the fitness equivalent of voluntarily waiting in a really loooooong line at the post office.

You are effectively saying some version of the following:

• I don’t need to recover or rest in the Winter.
• I don’t need to do quality bike and run sessions that will boost my fitness.
• I will do the same work now, in the winter, that I do during the regular tri season, and I will hold out hope (against all odds) that I will see different results by my next race.

Training Isn’t Complicated: If you want to be fast, you have to train fast.

Since 2007 we have helped over 2,000 triathletes build the baseline strength and speed over the winter months that has carried them to personal best performances during the regular season. Let’s take a closer look at our No Swim Policy and what it means for you.

The Average Swim Session Is Twice the Time for Half The Work

Think about it: 30 minutes drive + change, 60 minute swim, 30 minutes change + drive. Do this three times across a week and your 6 hours of time is only netting you 3 hours of training. Contrast this with a bike or run session from your house (or in your basement) where an hour long workout takes just that — an hour.

But it gets more challenging. Most swimming pools aren’t open at “regular” hours that fit our basic schedule. Most triathletes have to be at the pool between 5-7 in the morning to get in their swim, meaning an early morning wake up call and reduced sleep at night.

The real rub on swimming? Swimming is a technique-oriented endeavor. For most of us triathletes, proper swimming is about 80% technique and 20% fitness. This makes it incredibly muscle-memory dependent — meaning that unless you are a human rock in the water, your swim time is much better invested closer to your actual race season — when you can build your skills and fitness and then put them directly into a race.

And the final straw? Swimming is the shortest leg of any triathlon. Improving by 5% in an Ironman swim, for example, will move you from a 1:05 swim to a 1:01:45. Put that same 5% improvement into a 6 hour bike split and you’ll be flying to a 5:42 (that’s 18 minutes faster!).

Real Swimmers Don’t Have It Better

True swimmers have been in the water since age 5. By the time they are 20, they have been putting in 25, 50, even 75,000 yards per week! They have swum more in the first 15 years of their career than you or I could ever hope (or want!) to, given our jobs, lives, and multisport focus. But at the end of the day, those 15 years of swimming might earn them a 50 minute Ironman Swim…maybe only 15 to 20 minutes ahead of you. You can make that up with a solid bike and a smart run…and you got to watch all those episodes of the Smurfs and the A-Team while they were swimming away their youth.

But…But…But…

Everyone has their own reasons for swimming, and we certainly respect that. Outside of it being a powerful social activity, there is no real reason to suffer through the winter and miss out on better bike and run training.

#1 — Social Butterfly: If swimming is the only place you get to hang out with and get your tri-mojo, then cut that back to 1x a week in the winter. Think about it…if you save the other 4 hours, you could get stuff done and then actually have time to go out for a social night!

#2 — The Ambitious Upstart: After one year of racing, you are ready to pour your heart and soul into getting better. You have figured out how to squeeze the most time out of your week by cutting back on social stuff, curtailing family time and leveraging the trust of your employer to be a bit late (or leave early)…combined with a few well-placed sick days, you are ready to train 20 hours a week for the next 8 months….YEAH! With an IM swim time is slower than a 1:15, you aren’t a rock but you do need to focus on swimming. Don’t waste the better part of your winter in the pool…get faster on the bike and run while you research a good 1:1 swim coach in the area and plan on starting your “real” tri season in the spring with a few good weeks of multiple 1:1 sessions. Done.

#3 — The Rock: Yes, you. You are a great athlete, able to defy gravity on the bike and the run…but there’s something about the water that makes it your personal kryptonite. You are the sole exception to PSA #132 — you can start to work on your swim stroke. That said, instead of signing up for a masters program with tons of hours but little personal attention, we suggest you find a swimming workshop (think Total Immersion) that will get you the fundamentals. Then put those into practice 2x a week during the winter…keep the sessions to technique only so these days are very similar to a day off. When the season is nearing, you can begin to look at the guidance for the Ambitious Upstart listed above.

The Background

We launched the “No Winter Swimming” policy with our 2007 OutSeason training plans to a great deal of buzz. A triathlon coaching company who say don’t swim…people thought we were pretty crazy. We had to do a lot of damage control, as folks assumed we meant never, ever swim (not true)…and we even capitulated and now offer swim workouts and our swim ebook with all of our triathlon training plans, even the winter OutSeason plans. As the results trickled in from the 2008 season, we saw athlete after athlete who took 14 to 20 weeks off from swimming and swam just about the same speed as the previous year.

The real rub, however, was that these folks had taken their newly found free time and used it to recover better and get stronger on the bike and the run. The net being a season full of PR performances ranging from 10 minutes to almost three hours! This cycle has since repeated itself every winter, with a new host of Team EN athletes taking the no swim pledge and making the most of their focused winter training. If you are interested in taking your triathlon game to the next level, and know that swimming 5k three times a week in January for a September Ironman event just ain’t right, then please check out our OutSeason Training Plans here.

Interested in learning more?

Please take the Endurance Nation FREE five-part “Rethinking the OutSeason” Email Seminar. We’ll cover these topics above in much greater detail while also teaching you the basics of training with power, pace, annual scheduling, and much more. Join the more than 5,000 athletes who have benefitted from the EN approach to winter training!

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photo credit: MattJP

One of the big changes for the 2010 Ironman season is that there are no more official open water sponsored swims in the mornings before the race. Triathletes will be on their own to get in some swimming before the race. On one hand, the swim is really the least important part of your day. It’s really the price of admission to the rest of the race: it’s the shortest leg time-wise, it’s the shortest leg distance-wise. But all that said, if you measure the stress levels associated with the different legs of an Ironman Triathlon, the swim would probably rank the highest.

Whether you are a great swimmer or not-so-great, there is a lot of anxiety around the swim. The majority of Ironman athletes learned to swim as adults, and as a result, don’t have significant amount of experience in the water.  Swimming by yourself in a pool is great, but doing so with 2,000 other people around you…not so great.  And whether you have a beach start or your all jammed into the start like at Lake Placid, it’s going to be crowded and your going to get bumped.

There is no real way to train for being pushed or shoved, other than to understand that it’s going to happen.  The number one thing you can do is simply be mentally ready to know that  someone is going to bump you, and your goal is to just let it go. Let it slide. Let it run right off the outside of your wetsuit like that water, and continue focusing on what you can control. The minute you begin to internalize the pressure and anxiety from folks around you is the minute you stop focusing on you swim stroke and you start slowing down. Slowing down means you spend more time with those folks, and you want to get out of the water. There are a couple different things that you can do to prepare for what can happen in the swim.  

First of all, before the gun even goes off, seed yourself according to not only your speed, but also your anxiety level. You’re really concerned about being bumped, but there is no rush to jump into the front of the line. Take your time, go to the back, let everyone go when the gun goes off, and then work your way in.  You’ll still be bumped, but not as badly.

Second, you can be careful with how you swim.  It’s very easy to get drawn into a race with other people and your goal is simply to exude confidence and swim with purpose.  In our world, we ask you to only swim as your ability to maintain form and as such, your going to swim very smoothly and deliberately. In this way you are going to carve out your own space in the water, essentially making your own place to swim. While you want to avoid making any final tweaks to your stroke, you might consider putting your hands out a little wider at the entry. This has the effect of putting out little antennas, little feelers, that other folks who are swimming around you will probably bump into that hand or bump into that arm, and as a result they’ll redirect around you. Most people don’t want to swim over the top of you, so when they make initial contact they’re going to adjust. Put that hand out there as a means of forcing that adjustment to happen and that way you are being proactive by sort of putting up a perimeter that people will go around as they come in contact with you.

The worst that could happen is that you get pushed under water. Since you’re a swimmer and you’re in a wetsuit you’re going to pop back up again. You should strive to remain calm…people are not going to hold you under water for a while. Once you bounce back up again, your goal is to catch your breath and get back to the business of swimming. The more swimming, kicking and splashing you do, the more likely it is that people will go around you instead of mistaking your stationary swim cap for a buoy.

The fifth thing that could potentially happen is someone grabs your leg or ankle. If this happens, don’t start kicking furiously. That’s a great way to get a hamstring or calf cramp. Instead, just keeping pulling with your hands and let your legs go limp. Just let them go dead. If your legs go dead, there is really nothing for them to pull against, there is no tension, and they’re going to let go of you. If you start kicking like that, you are setting the bad karma train in motion. If you kick them, they’re going to kick the next person, and the bad mojo will just go down the line. So, cut it short by just letting your leg go limp and take it easy — no need to fight it.

The sixth potential thing that could happen is a common fear: somebody knocks off your goggles or the goggles fill with water. While not super frequent, it happens enough that you should be ready for it. Some people like to swim with goggles under their swim cap, some folks keep them on top. It’s up to you and what you want to do in terms of comfort (and try it out in your training before you get to race day of course). If your goggles do get dislodged or kicked, don’t worry about it. It’s a very simple deal and it’s actually a drill that we give a lot of our athletes.

This is called “three by threes”, so you’re just going to be swimming freestyle and on one of the strokes when you reach that hand out in the water, you’re just going to reach extra far and roll right over onto your back right into backstroke. It’s a very simple thing to do, it’s just rolling from your tummy to your back. When you complete that roll and now you’re on your back and all you have to do now is keep kicking, keep the bubbles going, and adjust your goggles. Reset them on your face.  Take a couple strokes on your back to get your momentum up again and then roll right over onto your tummy and keep swimming.  The goal here is to continue to moving so you’re not mistaken for a buoy.

While you can’t eliminate race day issues, you can get them under control without even getting wet. Start by understanding that:

1. Something’s going to happen, and that’s okay.
2. If / When something does happen, the best thing to do is to approach it calmly and deliberately.
3. If you get grabbed or kicked, all you have to do is just slow down and go limp, catch your breath.
4. If your goggles come off, you can fix it very easily with that protocol I gave you. You can roll over on your back.

And your overall goal is to just swim as steadily as you can, as well as you can, the duration of the distance.  Focus on the rest of the race.  Because that’s really where the rubber meets the road.  Don’t get caught up in the swim, and don’t let the swim dictate your day.  Be smart, be smooth, have fun.  Stop that bad karma train if you see it coming, go fast and have fun.

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Endurance Nation in Boston, MA — January 17th & 18th 2009
Official Event Page

The Triathlon Revolution is coming home to Boston. Join the coaches and athletes of Endurance Nation for a unique weekend of learning, training, and social activity.

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Coach Patrick McCrann of Endurance Nation presents the Off-Season Swim Clinic on Sunday December 14th 2008 from 3pm to 6pm at Bosse Sports Club in Sudbury, MA.

Swimming is approximately 80% technique and 20% fitness…and off-season is 100% about technique! Proper swimming requires focused mental attention to every lap, instead of mindless wall tag. A critical step in improving your ability to swim well is to master the basics of how you interact with the water.  Coach Patrick will review the fundamentals of position, breathing, and balance, he will cover the EN basic swim drill progression and conclude with the mechanics of a proper catch.

Participants will leave the clinic with printed speaker notes, a free copy of our Swim eBook (including underwater video of the drill demonstrations) and an 8-week training plan. This is our sixth consecutive year running our winter tri swim clinic series; come and experience what has helped hundreds triathletes get faster in the water!

The clinic space is limited to 12 participants, cost is $125 per person. Use the link below to sign up today!

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