- How much you should be swimming
throughout the course of a week.
You can start actually backing off of the number
of times that you swim and tearing apart races.
(upbeat music)
(water splashing)
(mumbles) Trainiacs, just a tasty 1500 meters,
it's the first time that I've been in the pool
since I got a little bit crabby and ill on January 1st,
so, I felt like a manatee out here.
Fast manatee, though.
Alright, Trainiacs, today let's dive into (laughs)
dive into, and I'm gonna talk about swimming,
how much you should be swimming throughout the course
of a week, or training plan, especially if you're just
getting into triathlon and becoming familiar with swimming,
and I'm gonna break it into three phases.
First phase I'm gonna set the bar at, if you are unable
to swim 400 meters or yards without feeling out of breath
or feeling really taxed at the end of it, like you need
to take a big break, if you can't do that, that means that
structurally, mechanically, there's a lot that you can work
on before you really need to work on
getting fit for swimming.
And what I recommend for those athletes is number one,
go to TriathlonTaren.com/swimdrillprogram.
That is a swim video series where I lay out the 15 drills
that I sequentially did when I went from literally being
unable to swim across the length of a pool, to being able
to complete marathon swims of 29, 37 kilometers very easily.
These drills are gonna teach you how to float on the pool
instead of sinking down, having sinky legs, it's gonna teach
you how to control your breath, and it's gonna give you the
foundation that you need for actually enjoying swimming
for the rest of your life.
And if you are in this camp, I'd recommend doing
those drills as often as you can, because what we're looking
to build is muscle memory, and the more frequently you can
do something, the easier it's gonna be, the quicker it's
going to come around.
So I would recommend doing these drills about four times
a week, and if you're doing that, then you're not having
more than a one-day break in between your swim sets,
and it's gonna be really easy for your body to get used
to all these drills and become a really good swimmer.
Now let's say that you go through all those swim-drill
programs and all of a sudden swimming 400 meters is
fairly easy, it's time to move on to phase two,
at which point you're gonna start building fitness
and you're gonna build vascularization, all the capillaries,
all the veins, basically the blood flow in your upper body.
And you do this by swimming quite frequently.
At this point, you can drop back of just doing drills
upon drills upon drills to build the foundation
that you need to move forward.
You're gonna be swimming, at this point about four times
a week, a Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday swim
is good enough, and the distance doesn't really matter,
it's more the frequency to ingrain all of those techniques
that we built in the first phase, so anywhere in between
1500 meters and 3000 meters is tons at this point.
It's the frequency that we're looking to build, you're
gonna end up at the end of this phase very, very comfortable
in the water, and you're gonna be ready to go into any race.
And at the end of it, you're gonna be able to move on
to phase three, at which point you can start, actually,
backing off of the number of times that you swim,
and tearing apart races.
And there is a series of two years, where one year I
did all the drills, built that foundation.
The next year, all I was swimming was three times a week.
When I ended up the year after swimming four times a week,
my swim times in a sprint went from 13-and-a-half minutes
down to 11-and-a-half minutes, and I really didn't change
a whole lot with my technique.
It was just that increased frequency that made
a huge difference because I built an immense amount
of comfort in the water.
All of a sudden being in the water was normal,
and then it was just how hard can I push it?
And that's what we're gonna talk about in phase three.
Okay, so here's the good news about getting into phase three
of triathlon swimming.
At this point, you can actually swim less, you can back it
down from four times a week to three times a week.
And the reason for that is that once you've built a solid
foundation of swimming, the difference between swimming
three times a week and four times a week, it kind of
tapers off, the effect isn't as great once you do that
for a year or so.
But there is a really big effect between swimming, say,
2500 meters and swimming 4500 meters because it's such a
huge overdistance, you're swimming so much further
than you would a sprint, an Olympic, a half-ironman.
Now, what's gonna happen is, in phase three, once you get
through, we are going to go from four times a week to three
times a week, but bump up each of those swims from, say,
2000, 2500 meters to 4000, 4500 meters, and it's going to
end up resulting in the swim basically taking nothing
out of you in a race.
Also, it's gonna use your time more efficiently,
as age-group triathletes, we've gotta be very choosy
about what we spend our time on, and saving a trip
to the pool, unpacking and packing all of your swim gear,
washing the swim gear at the end of the day, showering
in an environment where you gotta pack and unpack things.
You're gonna save a huge amount of time, and all you're
gonna have to do is tack on, say, a half-hour, 40 minutes
to the end of the swims that you're already doing
throughout the week.
And here's how you're gonna design the swims
once you get into phase three.
There's gonna be a warm-up phase, just doing anything,
moving really lightly for about 400 to 800 meters.
Then, this is critical, you work on your technique
while you're still fresh and you're not so beat up
that you can't feel and perceive your body awareness.
So you're gonna do technique, then, for about 400
to 800 meters, then you move into the main set,
which will be anywhere from about 1200 meters
to 2500 meters, and this is doing a ton of fitness,
high-intensity, you're really working on building
that top-end of swim fitness.
And this is actually the swim protocol that our
triathlon group uses, and we've got some of the
fastest swimmers in triathlon in the province in there.
It's also the protocol that Gerry Rodriguez,
who is the guy who has been coaching Lionel Sanders'
swim improvement, which has been immense over the last
couple years, this is what he recommends.
But if you end up following this swim protocol,
being patient over the course of, I'd say, 18 months,
you can go from literally not being able to swim across
the short length of the pool, to being able to do
marathon swims or triathlons, and just absolutely
killing those swims, I promise.
It just takes a little bit of patience.
Swimming, you can't really brute-force your way
through it, unfortunately.
There you go, Trainiacs, if you aren't yet subscribed,
hit that subscribe button below, and if you wanna see
more triathlon swimming videos, feel free to bing-watch
the best of our swim video playlist over on the side here.
And if you're already subscribed, hit me up in the comments
below with what phase of triathlon swimming you think
you're in.
Alright.
Later Trainiacs.