Triathlon swimming made easy

by Terry Laughlin

  This is for Alice, the most generous and caring person I know and my precious partner in life. She makes it all possible.

  Acknowledgments

  Joe Friel and Lew Kidder shared priceless insights into the sport of triathlon.

  All my Total Immersion coaching colleagues helped build "buzz" for TI among triathletes.

  Bill Russell allowed us to use the Moriello Pool in New Paltz for photos used herein.

  Thanks to Barbara Tomchin, Kermit Hummel and Rob Lias for demonstrating drills and open water techniques.

  Thanks to TI coaches, Danielle Sepulveda and Theresa Tolbert on page 72, and Keith Woodburn on page 91 for buddy system and ZipperSkate demonstrations.

  Thanks to Joshua Gold, Carol Charbono and Bob Wiskera for demonstrating the exercises in Chapter 19.

  Barbara Tomchin, Tara Laughlin and John Delves turned my words into a book. Thanks to all.

  And, as ever, thanks to Fiona, Cari and Betsy for humoring — and occasionally sharing — my lifelong swimming immersion.

  Introduction

  Why You Are About to Become a Transformed Swimmer!

  In 1989, I began teaching adult swimmers at Total Immersion summer camps and was soon teaching a few hundred improvement-minded swimmers each year. Early on, few were triathletes; we were teaching all four strokes and triathletes were mainly interested in freestyle. In 19911 began writing for Triathlon Today magazine (now called Inside Triathlon) and began to see so many triathletes at my swim camps that, in 1993, we began offering freestyle-only programs. Triathletes flocked to these workshops and I recognized their powerful hunger for instruction in swimming technique.

  In 1995 I published a book called Total Immersion: The Revolutionary Way to Swim Better, Faster, and Easier, which quickly became the best-selling book on swimming. Though I didn't write this book specifically for triathletes, thousands of multi-sporters made it their swimming bible and the number of triathletes attending TI workshops exploded.

  Teaching thousands of triathletes has convinced me that swimming for triathlon (and swimming in open water) is a significantly different sport than competitive swimming (as in age-group, high-school, college, and Masters meets). While most triathletes copy the training programs of competitive swimmers, they shouldn't. Here's why:

  • Competitive swimming is done mostly in pools; triathlon swimming is done mainly in open water.

  • Competitive swimmers have spent years gaining specialized skill and experience; more than 90 percent of triathlon swimmers are relatively unskilled and inexperienced in swimming, but still need to swim well now.

  • Competitive swimming events are primarily 200 meters or less; triathlon swimming happens mainly at distances greater than 400 meters, often much greater.

  • Competitive swimmers need to swim with intensity; triathlon swimmers need to swim effortlessly.

  • Competitive swimmers can be specialists; triathlon swimmers have to train seriously in two other sports.

  Triathlon swimming truly is a unique sport with unique challenges. This book focuses precisely on how to meet them, whether you are a first-timer seeking the confidence to tackle a long swim in open water, or an experienced competitor wanting to turn swimming into the best part of your triathlon.

  The good news is that success at swimming for triathlon is far less dependent on "swimming talent" than you might imagine, and is actually within reach of every athlete. By mastering a finite set of easily learned skills, any smart and diligent athlete can swim dramatically better. I will guide you through that process in the pages to follow. By following this special Total Immersion triathlon swimming program, you'll learn to coach yourself so effectively that, within a short time, you will:

  • Stand on shore at the beginning of any race and KNOW you can make the swim distance — and make it with ease.

  • Know that you don't have to train as long or as hard in the pool as you thought.

  • Know you really CAN master this sport that makes so many otherwise successful athletes feel unfit and uncoordinated.

  Happy laps,

  Tern' Laughlin

  New Paltz NY

  Terry,

  I just got your book, Swimming Made Easy, read it in one sitting and got so excited I dashed off to the pool. I have never spent better time in the water. The first couple of drills felt really awkward at first; I couldn't breath without using my arms to stabilize. Then the balance started to come. So I just merrily floated backwards and forwards for over an hour. For the first time in my life, I had a pretty good idea of how the body should feel in the water. At the end I just couldn't wait to start doing a bit of freestyle and was blown away. So this is what swimming is supposed to be like. Before my balance practice, I'd done 25 meters in 23 strokes and 35 seconds. Afterwards, I did it in 15 strokes and 28 seconds with much less effort. I couldn't believe it, I was just gliding and my arm movements felt as though they were almost incidental to what was going on. After one session I can imagine how much energy I'll have for the bike and run. YEAH!

  Every triathlete should experience what 77 swimming is like!! Kind Regards

  Craig Abrahamson—Sunshine Coast Australia

  The lesson: As with any learning process, you'll have ups and downs, experience moments when you wonder if you're doing the right thing, if you really have the ability to improve your swimming. But the value of swimming in an examined way is that your body is a marvelous learning machine and it WILL learn new skills whenever you focus on swimming as a learning experience, instead of as a training regimen. So just get started and trust the value of immersing yourself in a learning experience.

  Part 1

  Why Swimming Frustrates You and How You Can Achieve Fulfillment

  Our first three chapters will give you a succinct explanation of

  • Why you're not swimming as well as you'd like

  • Why no amount of fitness, strength, or training will make any real difference

  • Why swimming easier will improve your total tri-race time far more than swimming faster

  By the time you move on to Chapter 4, you'll understand what constitutes good swimming and how you can embark on the path to Mastery just by changing the shape of your "vessel."

  Chapter 1

  True Confessions: If I'm So Fit, Why Is Swimming So Hard?

  Every Saturday morning, somewhere in the USA (or Canada, the UK, Europe or Australia) 30 hopeful and somewhat apprehensive athletes, mostly triathletes and tri-wannabe's, gather in a classroom and talk about why they'd like to swim much better. It may sound like group therapy; but it's actually the orientation session of any Total Immersion weekend workshop. Some athletes confess that they can ride 60 miles or run 10 before breakfast yet gasp for breath after two laps in the pool. Others say they are tired of finding their bike standing alone when they finally stagger into the first transition—despite hour after hour of training laps in the pool.

  Their frustration is simple and incredibly widespread. What is it about swimming that reduces otherwise fit and accomplished athletes to the point of needing TI "group therapy?" Why do all those tedious hours of repeats, laborious laps with kickboards, and wearying sessions with paddles and pull buoys never seem to produce improvement or yield results that are far too modest for the time and energy invested? Time on your feet and time in the seat work for running and biking. Why not for swimming?

  The answer is that water is a completely different medium from air, and swimming is a completely unnatural activity for most land-based humans. In water, the rules are different. If you try to improve by swimming more and harder (an approach that comes naturally for cyclists or runners), you'll mainly make your "struggling skills" more permanent
. If you seek instruction, you'll find that few coaches or teachers know how to teach you the skills and awareness that really make a difference. If you join a Masters swim team, your training program will be more organized than if you swim on your own, but unless you have the great fortune to be training with a coach who is just as good at teaching as training, you'll be a fitter flailer, but still not a good swimmer. Until you become a good swimmer, you'll always limit your potential as a triathlete. That's because you need to have a certain level of efficiency to get results from all your hours of training.

  The solution is not elusive, costly, or time consuming. You can become a good enough swimmer to hugely improve your performance, potential, and fulfillment in triathlon. What it takes is a little knowledge and a willingness to practice swimming in a completely different way from how you train for the other two disciplines. Running and cycling are sports. Swimming — at least as you need to do it to be the best triathlon swimmer you can be — is an art. It's a movement art just as rigorous and exacting as gymnastics or martial arts. In order to succeed in it you need to do two things:

  1. Become your own swimming coach.

  2. Practice mindfully, patiently, and intelligently.

  This book will give you the information and guidance to do both well.

  Why Inefficient Swimming Is Limiting Your Triathlon Success

  Success in triathlon obviously depends greatly on sheer fitness. Thus, 95 percent of your energy as a triathlete is usually devoted to maximizing your aerobic potential. Because you have to squeeze in three sports around work and family, you can't waste time on unproductive efforts. Yet until you become an efficient swimmer, you cannot realize the hard-won aerobic potential your training has earned you. Poor swimming not only puts you far back in the pack before you get to your strengths but also prevents you from spending your aerobic resources wisely and optimally. If you're a poor swimmer, you lack control over how hard you work in the water.

  It's fairly simple to ration energy wisely while cycling and running. On the bike, you even have gears to help you maximize speed while minimizing effort. For a poor swimmer, there is no choice. For a large percentage of triathletes, simply making it through the swim is a survival test. If that's you, you have to flail and churn the whole time — an effort that doesn't earn you anything approximating a good swim time. It just allows you to finish wearily and far back in the pack.

  Considering how little of the overall race distance and time swimming takes up, it consumes an extravagant amount of the energy available for the entire race. If you're like the great majority of triathletes, you aren't concerned solely about how slowly you swim. You probably worry more about how bard you work to swim that slowly. The most important message I give triathletes at Total Immersion workshops is this: Your primary goal is not to swim faster. Focus first on swimming easier, and let more speed be a natural product of your increased efficiency. You will improve your overall performance far more by saving energy for the bike and run than you will by swimming faster. But, better yet, as you become an efficient swimmer, you will also swim faster.

  What It Takes to Be a Good Triathlon Swimmer

  Unless you are an elite athlete, your smartest goal on the swim leg is to exit the water with a low heart rate. The swimming leg is too short for a speedier swim, by itself, to make a significant difference in a race that usually lasts for hours. If you do work hard enough to pick up a few minutes in the swim, that effort can easily cost you many minutes back on land. Conversely, many triathletes who have taken the TI workshop have found that their newfound efficiency, while it may have shaved just a few minutes off their swim time, resulted in substantial time drops for the rest of the race, simply because they were much fresher entering the first transition.

  So your first goal as a triathlon swimmer is to gain the freedom to swim as easily as you wish — to be able to virtually float through a mile of swimming if you choose. To be able to choose how long or fast you stroke. And to be able to adjust both with the same ease with which you shift gears on your bike.

  Your starting point for accomplishing these goals is to develop four foundation skills: balance, body alignment, body rotation, and coordinated propelling movements. The key is to have a relaxed, low-drag, fluent stroke at low speeds and to maintain all of those qualities as you move through your "swimming gears" to go faster. For most triathletes, swimming speed will probably never be essential (I'll explain the exceptions in a later chapter). Swimming ease, however, is a non-negotiable skill for every triathlete. Ease means efficiency, and efficiency leads to speed. And for those of you approaching the elite level, you must learn to swim fairly fast, without exerting yourself so much that you blow up on the run. And the same fundamentals that let the beginner acquire ease also let the more advanced athlete develop efficient "gearing" for swimming faster when necessary.

  Your essential goal as a triathlete is to have more control when swimming — more ability to decide how hard to work, how much stroke length and stroke rate to use at any moment, and the skill to find the most efficient way to go faster when needed. Let's begin learning how to gain that control and why, as a triathlete, you have plenty of company in figuring out The Swimming Puzzle.

  Chapter 2

  Two-Dollar Gas: The Secret of Economy

  Whenever the price of gasoline nears $2.00 per gallon, SUVs and other gas-guzzlers lose a bit of their popularity, while car pooling and public transportation gain ground. I drive a gas-sipping Saab, but my response is to drive with a lighter foot, avoid nonessential trips, and combine errands. As a triathlete, your training time and energy are two-dollar gasoline and there's no strategic fuel reserve to lessen the cost. Triathlon is a demanding discipline. Most triathletes cannot make a full-time job of training; thus, economy is the smartest success strategy of all.

  By economy I mean: (1) efficient use of your limited training time and (2) efficient use of your body so that your available energy goes into forward motion and not struggle. If you take to heart the lessons of this book, you'll need to spend less time in the pool.. .and will accomplish more than in your current program. If you get excited about shaving minutes off your bike time with an expensive set of wheels, think how you'll feel if you spend almost nothing to learn how to swim with such ease that you might cut an hour or more from your total Ironman time (as has happened to more than one Total Immersion alum).

  Your constant goal as a multi-sport athlete is to develop the capacity to go farther and faster and, more important (because most triathletes are in their 30s or older), the capability to do both without breaking down. Faster race times are the motivation for training. Therefore you need to be rigorous in spending your precious training time wisely so that it brings clear benefits to race time. Training simply to prove that you can endure prodigious workloads would make sense if places were awarded to those with the most impressive logbook. But most triathletes have job and family responsibilities, and the best training program is one that produces the fastest race times with the least time and effort. And, as you'll learn, training intelligently is even more critical in swimming than in the other two disciplines.

  Economy

  In the physiology lab, economy is measured by how much oxygen you use while exercising, because oxygen consumption is the best indicator of how much muscle fuel you burn to go a given distance at a given speed. In the pool or on the road, heart rate is the most practical marker for economy because it helps trained athletes develop an acute sense of how hard they are working at any given moment. If a competitive swimmer spends fewer heartbeats (i.e., consumes less oxygen or fuel) to do the same work — let's say, to swim 100 meters in 1 minute, 20 seconds—she has two choices for how to use the energy surplus she's created. Sprinters can swim the distance faster, perhaps improving their 100-meter time to 1 minute and 15 seconds. Longer-distance swimmers can choose to maintain the same speed for longer, swimming 200 meters in 2 minutes, 40 seconds, or 400 meters in 5 minutes, 20 seconds. And perhaps
ultimately 1500 meters in 20 minutes. Tri-swimmers have a third option — for most the smartest one — to save much of that surplus for cycling and/or running.

  The longer the race, the more important economy becomes. When swimming a short distance — 50 to 100 meters — you could conceivably muscle your way through it. But there is no sprint distance in tri-swimming. Even a "sprint" triathlon starts with a 400-meter swim, which is a long way to be wasting energy. And the 2.4-mile Ironman swim is 250 percent farther than any Olympic swimming event. The opportunity to waste energy—to misspend heartbeats you badly need to bike 112 miles and run a marathon — is astronomical. And as we have heard countless times from TI workshop alumni who have chosen to apply most of what they learned from us to swimming easier, rather than faster while their times for the swim leg have indeed improved markedly, their race splits in cycling and running have also improved dramatically, because they "save heartbeats" in the water for use on land.

  From a tri-swimming perspective, in this book I'll show you how to

  1. Drive with a lighter foot (swim with a lower HR and energy cost).

  2. Avoid unnecessary trips (get more benefit from fewer and easier swim-training laps).

  3. Acquire a "smart" car (retool your stroke for efficiency).

  The effect of all three will be to turn the "cost of fuel" — your time and energy — back to those halcyon days of 30-cent gas.

  Chapter 3

  How to Start Swimming Better Immediately

  Perhaps you didn't start out thinking "I'd like to be a swimmer," but as soon as you mailed your first triathlon entry, swimming became a necessary evil. Or as most triathletes perceive it: "something I have to endure in order to do the two other sports I find much easier and more satisfying." And you probably began by applying what you had learned from cycling or running: mileage equals improvement. You may even have seen some modest progress in the beginning. But if you're like 98 percent of triathletes I've met, you soon reached a state one described as "Terminal mediocrity: no matter how much I swim, I never get any better." There's a logical reason for that. Unlike running or cycling, which you probably did reasonably well from age 7, with little instruction or "practice," swimming well requires lots of both. Thousands of athletes who can run or bike long distances with ease, find themselves exhausted after a few laps of swimming. They know they're in shape, but swimming seems to require its own special kind of fitness. So they do yet more laps, hoping it will come. But if you're an unskilled swimmer, all those laps do is make your "struggling skills" more enduring. No matter how many laps you do, you'll never have enough fitness to compensate for the energy you waste.