Jot it down

Level up your swim confidence Vol. II

In March, I released an article intended to help you level up your swim confidence. If you took the opportunity to play along, you may be ready for the next step in the process of developing your swim.

Establishing the frequency of swims was the theme of the first article. Touching the water often is essential.

The next step has little to do with adding more volume or more intensity. A reasonably dedicated triathlete is plenty fit aerobically to swim well but may be lacking the ability to move through the water in a way that puts that fitness on display.

The following is a guide to help increase your Aquatic Awareness.¹

Feel journal

A strategy that has always worked well for me is to translate feelings into writing. I have been swimming for a long time and still find new ways to express a certain feel of a pulling pattern or body position.

For a novice swimmer, these word-feel cues can be essential for building an understanding of “better” swimming.

Here is how I do it:

Immediately after a swim, I put a note into my TrainingPeaks. It’s short but captures my immediate feelings. Waiting until later has, in my experience, led to false impressions about the session. Immediacy is key.

At the end of each week, I look back for trends. Was I riding high all week? Did I have a sour attitude about my pull or kick? These small entries pay off over time and lead to:

1. Fewer mistakes

2. Faster corrections when mistakes are made

3. Confidence

Kick and pull

They work together, can be trained as parts, and are both essential.

In a triathlon sense, the kicking takes on a different role from pool swimming where it is a propulsive mechanism. We want the kick to be supportive for body position, but kicking all-out during a triathlon swim can be an unnecessary tax for the legs.

My buddy Marko and I. We kicked a lot in our pool swimming days to meet the demand of kicking all out in a race. While kicking is still a part of our swim training, it is not a point of emphasis.

The legs include many of the major muscle groups and can send your heart rate to the moon when over kicking. This is a common mistake amongst novice swimmers in triathlon, leading to feeling smashed only a few hundred meters into the swim.

A nice cue: “Relaxed and compact” kick.

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Enter pulling. One of the more common mistakes from novice swimmers is neglecting the use of the entire arm to achieve a full pull. Pulling from the shoulder joint down can double your surface area as opposed to pulling from only the elbow down. This picture courtesy of Vasa Trainer presents a great visual:

The swimmer pictured is able to access more muscles by using the entire arm as a lever. When trained consistently, these muscles provide more propulsion and improved efficiency in the water.

To make this point work for you, you’ll want to cue yourself to

1. Reach

2. Anchor & grab

3. Rip! Hand to hip

A simple set that I have used is as follows

• 9x100

• (1 right paddle only, 1 left paddle only, 1 no paddles) X3

• Your rest is the time it takes to switch out paddles

The set provides one arm that is aided (paddle) which should enforce a pull consistent with the idea from the photo. The other arm is unaided and you can receive real-time feedback of the differences between the two arms. With the non-paddle rep, the idea is to close the gap between swimming aided and unaided.

A propulsive and efficient pull becomes increasingly important in open water when pushing off the wall is unavailable.

Speed

Smashing 25s is quite fun, and developing specific speed is a great skill to learn in the water. If the swim training is comprehensive and consistent, speed work is a component I would place in every program.

However, I am skeptical when triathletes assimilate 25s to “take out speed”. Many races are moving away from the mass start to a rolling start, removing the need to intentionally work on take-out speed. A back-of-the-pack swimmer who hits the gas right away on the swim is taking a major risk in spiking heart rate.

If the race is a mass start, and you have front-of-the-pack ability, it may be in your best interest to train to go above threshold and then settle in, but in a solo time trial type race, “take out speed” is not a prerequisite.

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Vol. I covered making a point of getting to the pool.

Now that you have made it there, it is time to develop a Rolodex of technique cues to help you make fewer mistakes and accelerate your improvements in efficiency.

Stay tuned for Vol. III where we will discuss pacing, during a race and a workout, to tie together your frequency and technique gains.

1. I think I will coin this phrase. It is quite clever and a practical description of what you need!