I am struggling between trying to fix my stroke and building swim fitness. I know my stroke needs a lot of work, and I have started to work with an instructor one on one. Whenever I swim masters I try to keep up with the workout and my stroke ends up going down the drain halfway through. I am getting faster every few weeks because I am swimming much more regularly, but my stroke still has major flaws. When I swim on my own, I am doing drills, 25s, 50s and an occasional 100, but I stop and rest if my form starts to fall apart. Is it possible to fix technique and build fitness at the same time? I am finding it very frustrating trying to correct errors while still swimming masters. Stopping masters is not an option, because swimming with a group has led me to major improvements in my swim times. I am swimming harder, with more yardage, than I ever could on my own.
Maybe the answer is to just shorten the intervals in the masters workouts until I can hold good form for longer sets?
Is it possible to fix technique and build fitness at the same time?
yes. I think I’ve mentioned this to you before, but I’ll reiterate because it is really important. Maintaining technique is really important, and being conscious of maintaining technique, but part of improving technique is struggling to maintain it when you’re tired. I don’t care how good you are, everyone’s form deteriorates as they fatigue. Everyone’s. What separates the Olympians from the rest of us is that when their form breaks down, it isn’t as noticeable, because they’ve put in a ton of hours training to maintain that form when they’re fatigued.
So to answer your question, sometimes you should stop when your form breaks down, but other times you should push through. It depends on your goals for the workout and where you are in the learning curve. It is my belief that you get almost as much benefit of knowing the correct form and just trying to maintain it as you get from actually maintaining it.
For example, I’m struggling with form at the moment now as well, as I’ve always been a lousy breaststroker and I’m trying to improve it. So at this phase of the game, there are a lot of things that I’m just not doing right and have to really think about. It doesn’t make sense for me to work on breaststroke as I’m fatigued, because I’m still learning what it feels like to do it correctly. Once I get that down, then it’ll be time to work in tough intervals to try and maintain form under race conditions.
It is very frustrating knowing I am making errors but can’t correct it. Last night I started at the back of the slow lane deliberately to try and slow down my pace to work on form. I still ended up on the feet of the guy in front of me and had to slow down to give him enough room, which then messed me up. If I lead the slow group, I tend to swim too fast and let my competitive nature get in the way feeling like I have to make the interval time. For instance, I know I can swim a sub 1:35 100 at the end of a hard workout if I really push hard, but I look like a maniac just fighting the water, very little rotation, head lift, crossover, every mistake you can think of.
Yes, you definitely do build fitness while working only on technique. It’s not going to be as much fitness as, say, doing hard sets & big volume, but since you’re not a fish already, it will likely be higher yield to do less volume/intensity and focus more on fixing stroke errors.
You can and should consider with the masters group. Even if you’re not using perfect technique, the added fitness will still allow you to hold better form for longer in the future.
If you just try to swim ‘perfectly’ all the time, and thus stop the moment it starts to hurt and your form starts to deterioriate, you wont’ improve much at all. Even the fish-fast swimmers have to hammer it even to the point of early form breakdown, to maintain that speed. Obviously, if you’re so tired you’re totaly sloppy, it’s probably time to call it quits, but honestly, I haven’t seen too many swimmers push it that hard for so long.
How many guys are in the slow lane? If you have the room, you can always leave 10s after the guy in front.
another idea is to break it down so you are swimming “perfectly” for 25, then just swim for the next 25.
or, let yourself make every mistake except for one. i.e, just think about keeping your head down, OR not crossing over, OR high elbow. Don’t concentrate on all of those things at once, just one thing at a time. Eventually it’ll become more natural and you’ll have to think about it less and less.
Lastly, this might take a while. Be patient, and don’t expect overnight miracles.
I would second everything that JasoninHalifax posted, especially the emphasis on being patient.
The one area that I would highlight is that you can’t separate technique from training. They are linked and there are no short cuts in swimming. You have to work very hard both mentally and physically and the progress at times can be frustratingly slow. The biggest myth that has been perpetrated on the tri-community by some of the well marketed swim programs is that you can learn to swim competitively by doing some drills, working on body position and that swimming is 70% technique and 30% training. When you are first starting out, if you want to be a competent swimmer, it’s a lot of hard training with a focus on technique while swimming hard. You need a coach on deck watching you swim who can shape your stroke during many, many hard training sessions. If you are consistent (4-5x a week) for 18-24 months, you will be a competitive triathlon swimmer and learn to enjoy swimming.
I would second everything that JasoninHalifax posted, especially the emphasis on being patient.
The one area that I would highlight is that you can’t separate technique from training. They are linked and there are no short cuts in swimming. You have to work very hard both mentally and physically and the progress at times can be frustratingly slow. The biggest myth that has been perpetrated on the tri-community by some of the well marketed swim programs is that you can learn to swim competitively by doing some drills, working on body position and that swimming is 70% technique and 30% training. When you are first starting out, if you want to be a competent swimmer, it’s a lot of hard training with a focus on technique while swimming hard. You need a coach on deck watching you swim who can shape your stroke during many, many hard training sessions. If you are consistent (4-5x a week) for 18-24 months, you will be a competitive triathlon swimmer and learn to enjoy swimming.
I hope this helps.
Tim
I’ve posted it before, but Sheila Taormina (olympian athlete) who wrote the well received recent book “Swim Secrets” says swimming fast is like 80% propulsion and 20% streamlining, so big-time fitness component. (Although that 20% streamline speed gain is obviously still a big deal and worth working hard on.)
I agree with you, but just want to expand on Sheila’s point. I don’t think she is saying that fitness is synonymous with propulsion and technique is synonymous with streamlining. Propulsion has a technique component and a fitness component, as does streamlining. In freestyle, fitness isn’t quite as important for streamlining as it is in fly and breast, but it still matters.
The key takeaway is that all of this stuff matters. You can’t ignore fitness and expect to get fast on drills alone, nor can you just ignore technique and expect to get fast either. Both are important.
to qoute you "Swimming “perfect” is not easy but once you can do so at a slow pace, " The problem is technique will change at a certain pace. Can you practice to get your running technique perfect at running a 11 minute pace for when you want to run a 7 minute pace? Think the direction by a previos poster to Rapps thread based on Paulo’s tweet is spot on
The problem is technique will change at a certain pace.
Why? IMO, the only thing that should change is that you start doing it faster, with more power behind it, but the basics remain the same regardless of speed.
It does feel different at sprint speeds, but a tri swimmer is never going at a sprint speed.
You’re better off focusing on form now, then once you’ve improved it, focusing almost solely on building fitness. Ultimately, if your putting in the yards, you will be doing both. You might focus on frequency of swims (if the logistics are realistic for you) rather than duration. One often best ways to hurt your form, is to continue to swim well past the point of fatigue where your form falls apart.
You can build a lot of fitness doing even longer rest, shorter distance repeats.
Those with running backgrounds are just so focused on doing longer continuous efforts. But swimming isn’t running. You’re using much smaller muscle groups, it’s non weight bearing, and highly dependent on technique because water is so dense.
If air was as dense as water, folks would literally be spending huge amounts of time analyzing data to perfect their aero position, because it would mean almost as much as bike fitness.
I’ll put it this way. I’ve doubled my yardage the last month, and I’d still only gained 0:02/100scy off my threshold pace from a 1:22 to a 1:20. It would be a little discouraging… except that I’m fighting a running injury that’s also impacting my ability to bike, so swimming more is my only route to increase fitness. So I’m “banking yards”.
Ok let me clatify since you brought up tri swimmers. if we were talking lets say a 1:40 pac to 1:20 pace I would get that. But when we are saying 2:00 min to 1::35-40, body position changes way much unless you have incredibly strong core
But that’s exactly the thing. It shouldn’t change, so if your body position is so terrible at 2:00 per 100, then you make the changes to position, pull mechanics, etc at the slower pace. Because I can guarantee that if your slow pace is 2:00 per 100, then you are doing major things wrong at 1:35 pace as well.
I only brought up tri swimmers to say that things change at sprint speeds, which you don’t achieve in a tri. At the paces we are talking about, technique should remain the same whether swimming easy or hard.
-Scott
You hear that all the time, but it doesn’t really help a lot of people, regardless of whether they’re practicing swimming or music. If you don’t know how to swim perfectly–or even how to swim well, in my case–then perfect practice is a practical impossibility.
At best, I figure, I can only hope to correct problems over time (seeking feedback from knowledgeable swimmers where possible), getting gradually closer to proper technique.
I have been focusing on technique over the last year and as a result have made a few major changes to my stroke.
No. 1 is that my head position is lower in the water, which brings my body in much better position (i.e. reducing drag)
No. 2 is that i removed a major pause in my stroke by changing hand entry and palm angle (look up www.swimsmooth.com stuff). This has help my shoulder which would hurt when using poor technique.
My 0.02 here. When people with swim backgrounds give advice, they do know how bad (and wasteful) us non-swimmers are! We are pushing so much water with bad body position and pressing the water down in the efforts to follow the competitive swimmer’s advice of “lengthen out the stroke”.
I dropped 15 sec off of my 100 yrd time in a year (now 1:25) using much less energy than before! This is a double whammy, I swim faster and exit the water feeling much stronger for the bike.
So for non swimmer, I say focus on technique until you can swim efficently. You will know when you reach this point, because you will be able to modulate your swim speed due to better body position (i.e. you will not feel like you have to kick to keep your legs up).
So to use a little to the extreme to make my point…Movement in the water (speed going forward) has nothing to do with body position? So when a boat speeds up, how it sits in the water does not change? I myself can only swim slow with the same technique to a certain point and my body position changes. I cannot run with same form at a 7 min pace as a 11 min pace.
But hey, I guess we disagree on this one.