Triathlon swimming made easy

by Terry Laughlin

  2. You can fit them in, but you feel a bit ragged or hurried, trying to take that many strokes on the 50 or 25.

  3. You find yourself, without any noticeable increase in effort, able to simply swim faster as your distance decreases.

  This is a particularly valuable exercise. If you succeed and #3 happens, you've just learned how to hold your SL consistent (constant spl of 18 spl) yet increase your SR (i.e., you swam faster with constant SL; if V increases, then SR must have increased.)

  SL Exercise #6

  Swim 4 rounds of 4 x 25 (16 total laps).

  Take the lowest and highest spl from Exercise #1 and in each round, swim 1 x 25 at each count. If your count for 25 was 15 spl and you took 72 strokes (18 spl) on the 100, swim the four rounds in these counts:

  1st Round: 15-16-17-18

  2nd Round: 18-17-16-15

  3rd Round: 15-16-17-18

  4th Round: 18-17-16-15

  On the first two rounds, simply focus on calibrating your SL. See how finely and accurately you can adjust your stroke and timing to hit the wall in exactly the prescribed count, with no end-of-lap adjusting. You'll discover that the puzzle of subtracting strokes (2nd and 4th Rounds) is entirely different from that of adding strokes (1st and 3rd Rounds). If you were reasonably adept at calibrating and adjusting your SL on the first two rounds, then see if you can swim a bit faster on the third and fourth. If not, then your task is just to calibrate better on the final two rounds.

  SL Builders

  The SL exercises have allowed you to begin learning your strokecount range and how distance or speed may affect it. The next step in Effective Training is to apply that knowledge in sets that combine aerobic and neuromuscular training. The aerobic effects come from swimming longer sets. The neuromuscular training — the more beneficial effect — will teach you to maintain a longer stroke for a longer duration, which is precisely how to be successful when you swim an actual race. SL Builders give you an organized way to develop that capacity. Here's how they make you a better swimmer:

  1. They systematically increase your SL and gradually lower your strokecount range.

  2. They help you practice keeping your SL consistent as you increase distance or speed, or decrease your rest intervals. This gives you a type of control characteristic of the world's best swimmers.

  Our starting point is a 600-yard set, slightly longer than the quartermile swim that is common in sprint triathlons but long enough to test your ability to maintain SL for a medium distance. For purposes of illustration, I'll use an "N" of 16 spl, but in doing the sets, choose your own N, based on your experiences from SL exercises. And note that any N you choose doesn't mean that you need to swim that stroke count on every length. The N will be the average spl for the distance you swim. For 50 in 32 strokes, you might go 15+17. For 75 in 48 strokes, you might go 15+16+17. For 100 in 64 strokes: 15+16+16+17. And so on.

  Start Here:

  What: Swim 12 x 50 (12 repeats of 50 yards). Rest for at least 5 yoga breaths between swims.

  How: Swimming with attention (but not attempting perfection), count your strokes for the first 50. Your only goal is to not exceed that count (i.e., 32 in our example) on #s 2 through 12. That may be easy enough for the first few repeats but, at some point, you may take your 32nd stroke a few yards from the wall. If so, roll to your Sweet Spot and kick easily the rest of the way. Now you're on notice: // will take discipline to hold your SL. You'll have to focus on how you spend each stroke. Before long, you'll naturally start employing strategies for making your target count. You'll realize that to complete 50 yards in 32 strokes, you probably should do the first 25 in 15...and perhaps that you need to pass the mid-pool marker in 6 strokes to finish the first 25 in 15. This kind of hyper-alertness is a big step toward developing SL vigilance.

  Benefit: In conventional workouts, where you race the pace clock or other swimmers, you'd probably take more and shorter strokes as you strain to keep up or make intervals — not a good signal to send your nervous system. SL Builders teach you to maintain consistent SL, even as you tire, and to block out distractions that would normally cause you to lose efficiency.

  The Next Step

  The first few times you attempt this set, don't be surprised if you have to ease off a bit in mid-set to avoid increasing your stroke count. Don't let that faze you! Speed isn't the immediate goal; developing the discipline to hold a slightly challenging SL is. Let's say you've been swimming for years with an average stroke count of 20 spl but are now diligently working at holding 16 spl. Until your nervous system adapts to the new SL, it's entirely normal to sacrifice a little SR and V (from the formula V = SL x SR) to do so. Whenever I've established a new PR for my 100-yard stroke count, I have to swim super slowly to achieve it, but I always rebuild that speed steadily over a few weeks. You'll do the same. So here are the steps in mastering your Level 1 Stroke Builder.

  1. Do this set once or twice a week. At first, just get used to completing 600 yards in 50-yard increments @ 32 strokes (or whatever target count you choose) with no regard for speed.

  2. As the new SL begins to feel a bit more natural (this means your neuromuscular system is adapting), you'll find you can maintain a more consistent speed, maybe even go a bit faster on the last two or three repeats. This means your body is figuring out how to keep SL and SR consistent for an extended set of swims. This is a hugely important skill of successful distance swimming!

  3. As you become comfortable swimming with your new, improved SL, you can make the set a bit more challenging in several ways:

  • Increase the duration. Add a few repeats, perhaps up to 16 reps.

  • Decrease your rest interval. If you've been resting for 5 breaths between swims, see if you can swim the last few reps just as well on a 4-breath rest. When that seems easy, extend that rest interval earlier into the set. Then try a 3-breath rest in the same way.

  • Swim just a bit faster on the last few reps, and then a few more. Always add speed bit-by-bit from the end of the set. This will develop the habit of getting stronger, rather than slower, as you go.

  • Don't try, just yet, to reduce your spl or N. Instead, take the time to make this new, improved SL a no-brainer, almost boring in its ease. When that happens, you're ready for Step 3 and that is...

  Swim 8 X 75 on a 5-breath rest interval, all at 48 or fewer strokes.

  This is a 600-yard set, the same as our initial SL Builder set, but with only 8 breaks for rest, rather than 12. You're moving incrementally closer to swimming 600 straight. The goal is to continue maintaining the original N of 16 spl (or the target count you chose.) The same rules apply as for the 50s. First learn to complete the set without exceeding 48 strokes per 75.. .then to complete the set at consistent speed/effort.. .then to reduce your rest interval by one breath, then two.. .then to swim the last few reps just a bit stronger.. .then to add reps, up to about 12 x 75. And so on. There's no hard and fast rule for how to make the set more challenging. You have three variables: how many reps, how fast, how much rest. You decide how to add difficulty; just continue to take an organized approach.

  You will follow this process in gradually moving toward a long swim done without rest in the spl that, at first, was challenging to maintain on 50-yard repeats. The steps you can follow are fairly straightforward: 6 to 12 x 100, 4 to 8 x 150, 3 to 6 x 200, 2 to 4 x 300 and finally a straight swim of 600 to 1200 yards, all of it at 16 spl. When you reach the end of the process (and don't rush it; give yourself several weeks), it should be a breeze to swim a significant distance in a consistent, efficient SL and at a consistent speed, perhaps even picking up a bit of speed at the end.

  When you achieve that, and only then, it's time to choose a new, lower spl and start the process all over again, with a set of 12 to 16 repeats of 50 yards. After successfully completing your first cycle of this disciplined, orderly, distance-building progression, you may find yourself able to move through the steps at the new stroke count more smoothly. Most important, you have tak
en yourself out of the frustrating cycle of pointless lap marathons that accomplish nothing good for your swimming. And you're ready to add some other skills and challenges to your Effective Training, most importantly the ability to "shift gears" while swimming.

  How Fast?

  In the SL-Builder sets, we added speed as one of our goals for the first time. That can be a bit of a distraction to a swimmer who should be working mainly on increasing efficiency. Speed is a relative term. I've mentioned several times that the smartest thing you can do to improve your total race time is to swim easier, not faster. Faster times should virtually always be a natural product of greater efficiency. Practicing efficiency is the smartest way to make speed happen — the kind of speed that's easy to maintain for long distances with little effort.

  One of the best ways to make speed happen is to avoid timing yourself. At least in the beginning. I've recommended that you ignore the pace clock in setting rest intervals. Well keep ignoring it — and that cherished sports watch on your wrist — as you aim to add a little speed to your repeats. Here's a radical idea: instead of checking your watch, just/ee/ your speed. As an athlete who has done a fair amount of various kinds of training, you should have a well-calibrated internal speedometer. You may not know the exact speed, but you can tell relative speed by feel.

  On the SL-Builder sets and on other sets in Chapter 15, whenever I mention adding speed as one of your goals, see if you can do that strictly by feel, at least a few times, before you refer to pace clock or sports watch for confirmation, or an exact measure of how much faster you may have gotten. There are at least two benefits to doing so:

  1. Better focus. For inexperienced swimmers, the pace clock can be a serious distraction, a source of pressure that can break down the focus and discipline needed to allow new habits of efficiency and fluency to develop.

  2. Better self-knowledge. There are no pace clocks along the route — and it's pretty hard to check your watch — when you swim the races you're training for. Doing descending sets strictly by feel, on a regular basis, is a good way to help you develop your internal pace clock.

  Later, after you've begun to use the pace clock a bit more regularly and have begun to add times to your stroke-count data base, make it a regular practice to "guess" your time for a repeat as you're finishing, before you look at the clock. A successful distance swimmer can predict his or her repeat time within a very close margin and then swim that time almost on command. Or.. .adjust her prediction as she swims, based on how she feels. Learning to swim without the clock and then to use it judiciously will help you develop the "clock-in-the-head" knack yourself.

  Chapter 15

  Gears: You Learn the Easiest Way to Swim Faster

  If you took a track cycle out on a hilly road course — without a set of gears to help you go up and down economically — your thighs would be toast in no time. If you drove your car in only one gear, you'd burn out your engine in a hurry.. .and limit your speed dramatically. And yet, virtually every swimmer has only one "gear" for swimming — mainly because they swim most of the time in such a narrow range of SI/SR combinations that their nervous system is not adaptable to anything else. This is true even for many competitive swimmers. Accomplished distance swimmers feel disorganized if they try to sprint, because their nervous systems practice swimming movements only at a Stroke Rate between 60 and 80 strokes per minute, while sprinting happens at upwards of 100 strokes per minute. This chapter will guide you through practice that will give you a set of swimming gears good for any triathlon. They'll allow you to adjust a race plan, to discover the easiest way to swim at the speeds you choose, and to make training more interesting and fun as they give you an unusually complete skill set.

  Up to this point, drills and mindful swimming, in the Learning and Practice modes, have given you the balance and coordination to find your optimal Stroke Length. SL Exercises and SL Builders have helped you to begin refining the best range of stroke counts (spl) for practice, and to systematically increase your SL. The next level of Effective Training is similar to a piano student playing hours of simple notes, chords, and scales until he becomes so deft in striking the right keys that his playing moves from conscious to unconscious competence. These exercises will first teach you to "play" SL and stroke counts as easily as a pianist playing scales and then help you use your developing gears to learn how to build speed almost effortlessly.

  Develop Your Swimming "Gears"

  In all these set examples, I will use, for purpose of illustration, an N of 16 spl. You must find and choose your own N. Sometimes that may change from day to day, depending on how fatigued you may be from other training. Remember: your N is usually an average. On a 75-yard repeat, an N of 16 means you aim for 48 total strokes, which might be 15+16+17.

  First Gear: Simple Gear Changing

  Swim 4 rounds of 5 x 25. Rest for 3 to 5 yoga breaths or bobs between swims.

  We did a set like this in the SL Exercises, but we'll repeat it as a tuneup, as a piano student might warm up by playing scales. Using an N of 16, we'll start at N-2 (14 spl), then swim at N-l (15 spl), then at N, then N+l (17 spl), then N+2 (18 spl) on the first round, reverse that order on the second round, then repeat those two rounds.

  In other words, the set looks like this:

  1st Round: @ 14-15-16-17-18

  2nd Round: @ 18-17-16-15-14

  3rd Round: @ 14-15-16-17-18

  4th Round: @ 18-17-16-15-14

  The first two rounds are a test of how well you can calibrate your SL. See how finely and accurately you can adjust your stroke and timing to hit the wall in exactly the prescribed count, with no end-of-lap adjusting. The puzzle of subtracting strokes (2nd Round) will turn out to be a completely different task than that of adding strokes (1st Round). The second puzzle is how to be smooth and seamless at both ends of the scale. Can you swim the lowest stroke count without losing rhythm, without a looong pushoff? Can you swim the highest stroke count without getting choppy or rushed?

  On the first two rounds, your learning curve may be steep. But the final two rounds are for applying what you learned solving those puzzles earlier in the set. Calibrate better and be more fluent from the lowest to the highest stroke count. If you pass both tests and want to add one more challenge, do the scale, up and down, one more time and see how fast you can swim at each stroke count. What's the fastest 25 you can swim @ 14 strokes — and at every other count as you move up the scale and back down again? When putting more emphasis on speed, do two things: (1) Just/ee/ it, don't time it and (2) take as much rest as you want between swims. But most of all, have/im with these puzzles.

  Second Gear: Intermediate Gear Changing

  To continue our piano-playing analogy for "playing" Stroke Length, we'll take the SL just practiced with 25-yard repeats and put together some "chords" with 50s and 75s, to heighten our ability to calibrate SL and change it "on the fly." This will develop a capacity for adaptability that improves your skill set and also serves as a rehearsal for changing speeds efficiently in a race.

  Swim 2 or more rounds of 4 x 50 with the following stroke counts (or your own chosen spl combinations):

  1st 50: 14+15

  2nd 50: 15+16

  3rd 50: 16+17

  4th 50: 17+18

  Don't time your 50s when you first practice this set. You first task is to calibrate your SL, to get comfortable with hitting the prescribed count on each length. The second step is to stay smooth and fluent at every stroke count. Do as many rounds as you want, as long as it feels good and remains interesting to do it, until you have developed a keen feel for changing SL on the fly. For rest intervals, take as many yoga breaths as you need to feel ready to nail the target stroke counts on the next swim. Allow a bit of extra recovery between rounds by doing 100 to 200 yards of your favorite drills. (When you become truly effortless on this, you won't need any extra rest between rounds.) Once you're in a "flow state" on these — and this may take a week or more of 50-yard practice — move u
p to 75-yard repeats as shown below.

  Swim 2 or more rounds of 3 x 75 with stroke counts sequenced as follows:

  1st 75: 14+15+16

  2nd 75: 15+16+17

  3rd 75: 16+17+18

  Solve this new puzzle in the same way you previously solved the 50yard puzzle. Your goal is to continue mindfully, patiently, purposefully repeating sets like these in practice until you can practically do them in your sleep and smoothly hit any stroke count in your range at will.. .and feel controlled and fluent at all combinations.

  Finally, if you find all of this almost boringly easy to do, here's a challenge that is guaranteed to put your SL adaptability to a severe test. Do the 50s or 75s in reverse order. In other words, like this:

  1st 75: 18+17+16

  2nd 75:17+16+15

  3rd 75: 16+15+14

  Good luck on this one. You'll need it, but if you can do this successfully, you're ready for promotion to the Life Master level of using your swimming gears.

  Third Gear: Advanced Gear Changing

  The exercises above have given you an introductory course in how to use your gears, so you can move somewhat adeptly around your stroke-count range. If you've done these successfully, you're ready to use your gears on a "hilly course," by which I mean changing repeat distances and more frequent gear changes. These sets will help you maximize what you can do in combining SL and SR in all kinds of sets from silent and super slow to racing speeds, and will teach you to use lower counts at slower speeds to "set you up" for greater efficiency at higher speeds. For races, this will specifically prepare you to start at a relaxed pace, to find your most efficient "groove" for a pace you can sustain effortlessly at any distance, and then, if you choose, to efficiently speed up, perhaps to leapfrog from a slower-moving pack to a faster one, or to accelerate briefly to pass another swimmer.