Swimming Stroke Front Crawl(freestyle) or Breaststroke(frogstyle)

Do whatever works for you to finish your tri with a time that you are comfortable with. Better to breaststroke and complete a tri than to not compete. That said, freestyle is much faster, so learning that will greatly improve your time. I breast stroked most of my first tri, 1/2 ironman 1.9k. I recently did a 4k pool swim freestyle in the same amount of time. But I'm really glad I did that first tri, was a great experience.

JD

Steven,

It is deffinitely best if you learn how to do freestyle and use it during a tri. It is a lot faster to use then breast stroke. There have been people here that have done breaststroke but are now working on their free style. If you are finding it hard to do freestyle people use the breaststroke to recover for a lap or two and then go back to free.

I agree with everything said here, and for me breaststroke is quite slow -- as my friend says, it's more like "treading water" for a rest than it is for swimming. Granted I do move forward, but not very efficiently or fast. Taht said, I know some who are very fast at breaststroke and use this for most of their swim.

I think you will do fine either way, and you may want to work on the freestyle for next season. And it sounds like you have "biathlons" where you are that use swimming and???? bike? run? We can't use the term biathlon anymore since the Olympic sport of Biathlon has emerged (skiing and shooting) so we went to duathlon.

Good luck, will be interested in hearing how you do.

Thanks Steven -- very interesting. And I see that  you have to qualify by time for the swim. Hoo baby! I am glad that is not the case for the triathlons I do!!

Good luck.

heres an idea...alternate freestyle and breaststroke training at the pool...start off with a ratio...say 4 laps breaststroke to 1 lap freestyle...gradually over many months turn that ratio around to 1 lap breaststroke to 4 laps freestyle WHILE ALSO increasing your duration.  count the number of 'stokes' it takes u to do both swim styles for a l lap.  ON RACE DAY u may not be able to do a freestyle the whole time.  so count off 1 lap breaststroke to 4 laps freestyle...the breaststroke will allow some needed rest time....u wont lose much time on your swim overall doing this but it will not totally tire u out by attempting all freestyle if your not comfortable.  and if your not used to open water freestyle...its harder and will take more out of u.

it worked for me...i did exactly above for about 6months - i couldnt do even 1 lap of freestyle when i started BUT could do breastroke for hours.  i gradually turned it around while incorporating breathing on both sides once i was able to be comfortable doing 4 laps of freestyle.

hope it helps...its simple but effective....u dont even have to have a perfect stroke if u cant take lessons....i just studied the better swimmers around me while i swam and learned a lot that way.

Nancy, you may be faster with the pull bouy because it is raising your legs into a more streamlined position. Drag is much more important than force for distance swimming. If your body is angled down without the bouy, it'll more than offset any kick you might be doing. I was watching a world cup swim meet last night. The guy who won the 1500 meters was kicking once per stroke, just a little flick in time with his body roll. He was taking 15 or 16 stokes per length. His time was 14:44, wow!

Steven, here's a couple of links to the TI swim site, they have some good free info there:

http://www.totalimmersion.net/

Book excerpts with some good info:

http://www.totalimmersion.net/free-books.html

video clips of some drills:

http://www.totalimmersion.net/ti-workshop-day.html

hope this helps some.

JD

Nancy, if you find that your legs are a bit low in the water, I highly reccomend Drill #3: Lengthen Your "Vessel", from the video link above. Focus on pushing your armpit down towards the bottom of the pool. It's tough at first but when you get it down it's amazing the difference it can make.

JD