core swim session

[Cameron Watt - "CAM"]

DanL, that session you speak of, hmmmmm not at all useless i don't think  hint hint

when i was a swimmer semi serious(3-16) i was a sprinter, i trainined about 4-5 times a week accept for 4weeks of the xmas holidays where I would train 2 times a day. I kid you not with these times.... at 14 i went 50m freestyle 27:86 and for 100m 1:08!!! yep endurance wasn't my thing...or in my training hehehe. needless to say not many people would feel as much pain in a whole ironman to what i used to feel in the last 25m of those 100's. nothing a bag of lollies at the canteen wouldn't fix though ahahahaha.

[doc]

cam thats some drop off ,
must be a record .
al though i did train a guy who won the australian sprint 50 title angus wardell .
we conned him to turning around and doing 2 laps once at the end of our relay .
well 2wice
the first time and i kid you not , he controlled his first lap so it wouldnt hurt
he just swam 23.01 to win the 50 i know its slow but it was 1986 or7 and he was a high jumper
so he went out real slow 26  but started going backwards and at 80 m
stopped an hung on the lane rope and yelled at all his team
"you guys must be mad " swimming 2 laps " that so painful "
so he got out and they got disqualified .
2months later the guys cooked up a plan to put his name down in the team at the aussie champs
this time , they thought he wouldnt let em down .
so
they put him last , and told him  angus , its the same pain if you go out fast some times less
you just went out too slow and the lactate got you ,
"believe us " we give you a lead and you go for the 50 record
we got to win and wont hurt nearly as much "
angus sold copiers , so they convinced him
the team was on fire ,  he hit the water 2nd and angus tore down the first lap like a lunatic
all the guys were laughing
he fell for it haha ,
 i said he wont get back here he will drown, he just went thru the 25 in 9.9
did i mention this bloke was explosive
hit the wall , 23 .21  but he hit it with his feet , so was faster than his best 50
he had 10 m on the field , but then the battery started to run out .
the boys were oh he will hold on ,
well no  , he started to slow right down  but the effort was still there ,
or it looked to be 2nd then 3rd  then back to 5th  and he hit the wall like he was trying his arse out .
57.2
he rolled over like a shark that was gutted , the officials looked hard to see if he was ALRIGHT .
"I WILL BE WHEN I CATCH THOSE 3 BASTARDS , THATS THE MOST PAIN I EVER HAD IN MY LIFE "
as i said before ,
he was a high jumper  before 1 lap wonder..

[adal]

I think I solved the problem with the missing "privat lanes", as my city is not providing MOP age groupers with private lanes either 

I think for MOP swimmers crowded public pools are a big advantage as you can simulate the start and the buoy turnaround (with retired whales floating from one side of the pool to the other serving as buoys). I am still a slower swimmer, but there is no anxiety when getting kicked in the turnaround, its never worse in racing than in training.

And after a few laps of the worst butterfly you can imagine, suddenly I have a private lane, even in the most crowded public pool. Ah yes ... and paddles help in that respect as well 

[StephenBayliss]

Adal, you have the right technique there.  I must say the best I have seen at this is my dear wife.  She can clear a lane in no time with some lovely tumble turns, and some head down torpedo swimming 

I just wait a few mins till she has cleared the lane and watch as people shake thier heads and move out     

[Jocelyn Wong - "Wongstar"]

swimming HURTS and it never gets easier.  even when you get faster... 

[DanL]

Im all for swimming hurting but I think you miss a trick if you only focus on yardage.  For the ironman, especially at your end of the race you are not looking to go faster - once you have found the right draft the focus is to get to the real ironman start line - T1..

So that means the majority of your focus is on getting there using less and less energy - which is totally different from people who only swim -their focus is always to get faster.  There is only one way to swim the same distance using less energy and that is to get more efficient.  Your focus seems to be on the engine which is cool but dont you think that if you could make your stroke better you and cover the distance using less strokes that is also valuable?  To me, that doesnt mean loads of drills, it means focussing on stroke detail - are you stretching out enough, are you rotating from your hips and is your body correctly balanced - whilst you do the yards.

you dont "get swimming" by doing lots of it.  The definition of insanity is repeating the same thing and expecting a different outcome.  if you constantly repeat bad form it won't go away.  If someone said they cant get running but when you watched them they were using a Basil Fawlty walking style youd tell them to work on technique - poor form is just easier to see on dry land...  So first you have to mentally accept you can improve it - after all, it is just technique, not algebra, and then break the stroke down to fix it.


As I said though; you're the world class athlete; he's the world class coach and I'm a 30 something office manager so I know who i'd be listening too...  interesting to read your views and approach though

[DamienC]

Good point DanL, but remember too that the faster you are in the water, the easier it is to sit on someone else's feet, or to put them under pressure with a strong swim.

Like the saying goes: "You can't win a tri in the swim, but you sure as hell can lose it."

[Keith Watson]

PPP is all the breaking down of the stroke I need. Strong is efficient in the tri world...

My own opinion and personal experience of course. 

[bob]

Hi bella
They don't do public lane swimming here. Only 1 hr in the weekend. But then every lane has at least 2 retired old people swimming breast or back stroke. Very hard to swim more then 50 metres without really swimming over someone. I am never very "social" in pool swimming and I have done some swimming in crowded pools, but here is crazy. In summer there is a lake swim option, but only if temps are above 20 degrees. So sometimes everything is closed. Yes, they even close the lake here.

Also, public hours were fine when I did 18 - 20 min kilometres. Then it is hardly a problem. Now I am more like swimming 16 minutes and then you only need two retired whales to ruin the set. I proposed the swimming pool life guards to have a lane for "freestyle swimming only", and I did the same at my triathlon training group. As I think you can fill one short course lane with 6 -8 swimmers of very different levels. As long as they all swim freestyle. You only need one doing drills, breast or back stroke and the training is over. If every pool hour would have one lane for freestyle only, all problems would be solved. And it would not only improve my own swimming, also the swimming from the others, but they don't believe me. They love the drills, I don't know why .

Most weeks though I can find 1 hr to do real swim training. But I think I need about 3 real swim training hrs to really improve. But maybe I should start to terror the "retired whales". Learning to swim fast over other people who try to hit you is about what you need in triathlon swimming!

[bob]

Hi DanL

I am not a good swimmer, so I won't pretent to know a lot here. But swimming is not the first endurance sport I did where people doing drills and technique focus. I did some speed skating before, and after I stopped I still watched some of guys training and racing in that sport. I tell you one thing, the athletes who focus on technique and drills (and technically ice skating is more difficult I think then wet suit swimming) lose there form after about 2-10 mins of hard effort. I am less sure about swimming, but my few observations in swimming tell me exactly the same. In skating an athlete needs to be fit (what you call:focus on the engine) to hold form while getting fatigued. I have no reason to believe that this is different in other endurance sports. So I think improving stroke is very good, both in skating as in swimming. But with a too small engine, your beatiful stroke will fall apart way before you reach the finish, or T1.

But I am curious to read what world class coache say about this as well. As I am far from being one

[DanL]

I agree with you Bob - it doesn't matter how pretty your stroke is if you haven't got the associated fitness.  But we can safely assume Mr Bayliss has the required engine already and can maintain that with yardage - but (there's always a but with me) - i also get the impression that he has accepted the stroke he has and now focusses on hurting in the water to improve.  All i'm saying is you can get some easy wins by improving teh stroke and it's value adding way of spending a recovery session.

i really dont think going any faster matters.  the guy in front does more work and you've got 98 percent of the race to catch him.  However for two athletes with an equal bike and run split - the difference may be energy expended on the swim

[pb]

Doc,
If  you  dont  mind, could  you  expand  why  you  focus on  800  stroke  sets?
and  do  you  do  3.8k  tt  in the  pool?
Ta
peter 

[StephenBayliss]

DanL, you are missunderstanding,  If you think we don't work on technique.  It is all technique, and it is different for all of us.  And if you think we just repeat the same things if it is not working, again you missunderstand the coaching here.

And I agree with you about efficency,  it is what we are all about.  We get out the water fresher than the rest. 

I have experienced a few swim coaches, and no one understands swimming like Doc.  On this forum we are trying to help age group triathletes.  And I am afraid your posts are the exact reason most of them are confused about swimming,

[DanL]

Blimey - that's gone badly!   

Feel free to delete anything that might confuse anyone - that's the last thing I'd want to do.

Apologies.

[terrence]

took your advice to went to swim 4km but s---it happens i lost count end up 5.5 km i have to   learn to count funny thing happend after 55min i began to enjoy the feel off the water never tried this before cant wait to swim tomorrow