Relationship Pull-Ups to Swim Performance (Page 2)

Yes, I am dragging my lower half.

When I kick I tire out really fast and my upper legs get tired (so I reduce kick to a minimum).

I focus on keeping my head as low as possible and try the "swim downhill" feeling...

But it seems that swimming more is definitely a must do

Why does time go down so much when doing sets?

It is much easier to work form (and speed) in a pool.  You are able to count strokes, watch the clock, etc. to get regular feedback about what you are doing.

If you get 20-30min of 'quality' work done, it will be better than an hour of 'mindlessly' playing wall-tag or meandering in an OWS.  50min of water time is plenty to do so (though if lap swim is an hour, I'm not sure I can see why you can't be ready to go on the deck at the top of the hour and get out only when time expires).  Warm up for 10-15min.  Do your 20-30min of 'work'.  Cool down and hop out.

Maybe look for other pool options, too?

More swimming = good

But I can also pretty much guarantee that, at your current speed, a modest amount of coaching (combined with more swimming) will allow for a pretty noticable improvement in a relatively short amount of time.  Likely doing a good bit of what was referred to above which is forcing you to overcome extra drag.

- 3min set, 2 min rest = 50min pool time - 30min swimming, 20min resting

Too much rest for most of your swimming.

Coaching (and appropriate practice) will probably allow you to go from 3:00 to about 2:40 over 2-3 months if you're practicing 3x/week, probably an 40-50 minutes per practice.  (My limited experience and a few others I've seen).

When you start getting to 2:00/100Y, the improvement slows.

I personally don't see myself likely to EVER getting to 1:00/100Y, especially given how much time I'm prepared to dedicate to swimming.  I've just gotten to the point in the last few months where I've been able to swim consistently 3x/week, and it's only been VERY recent where I swim over 2000Y per workout (around 40-45 minutes).  With that kind of effort and training, I've been able to go from about 1:55/100Y to 1:42/100Y over the last year.  Not that great of an improvement, but still an improvement (especially given that I average less than 15K yards per MONTH).  I will try to swim closer to 20K yards per month over the next 6 months and I'll be happy if I can get my longer distance speed to about 1:35/100Y and my all out to under 1:25. Part of this plan is to get a solid coaching session in that period, including some video analysis.

However, I know that I will still get more gains working on my bike/run so I'm just letting the swim slowly develop and it will not be a planned focus area for me (as I have limited time).

I'm assuming these are 100s you are doing, or  125s? What is your RPE for these sets? 2 minutes is a lot of rest. Have you worked on faster turnovers to get you moving quicker, that would help get your legs a little more streamlined if you are not kicking.

In 10seconds I can't even get my paddles/flippers, etc. on/off or catch my breath, haha

I remember a study done many years ago that found ZERO correlation to how fast someone swam and how many pull ups they could do. Maybe for someone doing a 50m sprint it might be different. Technique is going to be #1 for any age group swimmer who swims slower than say 25 minutes for a 1500m, or 1:00 for an IM swim.

Indirect relationship, and also mostly a supplemental relationship.

You have the most to gain from technique improvements.  Sure, when you have great technique, a little more strength can increase your speed, but for most triathletes, this isn't a concern.  You'll build some of that strength just by doing laps on your own.  If you de-emphasize the swim training in your offseason, that is a great time to work on building a little more strength, but don't count on it making a large increase in your swim speed.  In fact, you are far better off working endurance than pure strength.  Work on increasing the number of pullups rather than moving up to weighted pullups.

As for the pullup itself, just like swimming, it is an exercise that can be improved by technique.  I struggle with pullups mightily, but when I use the best of form, I can definitely do more than I can with bad form.  You'll find some swimmers doing pullups partially because of the stretching you can do while hanging.  Myself, I used to hang from a pull up bar to stretch out quite often.

But, as others have said, success in one does not predict success in the other.  However, it may make it minimally easier to improve.

One other thing I wanted to address that I read somewhere in this thread:  Improving from a 3:00/100 to a 2:00/100 is one thing, but improving from a 2:00/100 to a 1:00/100 is something else completely.  Keep in mind that swimming is just like biking and running in that, the faster you go, the harder the improvements will be to come by!  When you break 1:30/100s, you'll be happy to get to 1:25/100s, and that will take some time.  When you break 1:10/100, you'll be looking for 1:09/100 rather than 1:05/100.  At those speeds, improvements start to come down to very little things, especially over the course of 500 or more. 

Here are some good strengthening tips from an article on active...(note: I'm not affiliated with active, I just liked this article...)

http://www.active.com/triathlon/Articles/5-Exercises-to-Strengthen-Your-Swim.htm

Perhaps it's time to just work on swimming and forget about paddles and flippers for most of your workout?  I've noticed I got faster when I ditched the flippers.  I still use paddles but only do about 5x100 with them and spend the rest of the time without any 'gadgets'.

That are 4,500 yards! Seems way too much for a normal training session.

Also doing 50 yards in 1:20 seems pretty slow, that is a bit slower than I currently swim. So how would that  help?

You 'leave' the wall every 1:20.  So, if it takes you 1:10, then you get :10 rest.  Swim harder, get more rest. 

Edit:  A version of this that I do is 20-30 x 50 with :10 rest, but odds are hard and evens are easy.  So I end up leaving on ~:55 for the hard and ~1:10 for the easy.  So same interval rest, but I also have an easy 50 before going hard again.

I think he was providing suggestions on the main set of about 1500 yds (not do all of them at once).

A swim workout is usually structured as:

Warm-up/Drill-Set (if you want)/Main Set/Cooldown

If your main set is 30x50, then that's 1500yds.  You'll probably warm-up around 500 and then cool down for around 200 so total will be around 2200yds.

50 yds on 1:20 includes the rest.  Basically, you "Go" every 1:20 - so if it takes you 1min to do 50 yds, then you get 20s of rest.  If it took you 1:10, then you'll get 10 sec of rest.

I see,

guess this is pretty much what I did yesterday, but due to my speed I just had to keep going and no rest, LOL.

I will need to see how I can track that easily using my Garmin Swim...

I'm a 1:45/100m half IM swimmer steady pace, should have been able to hold the pace for the IM swim as well, but got off course).  I can do 0 pull ups and about 8 boy push ups.  My upper body strenght is crap with the exception of my triceps.

I think he has given you three workouts, each of 1500 yds/meters.

The 1:20 refers to the length of the interval, meaning swim time plus rest time. So if you swim 50 yards in one minute, you'll have 20 seconds to rest. Or if you swim 50 yards in 1:10, you'll only have 10 seconds to rest.

The swim times and intervals you are citing indicate that your swim technique has lots of room to improve, unless you are swimming sidestroke or breaststroke.  In any event, you would gain a great deal by taking private swimming lesssons or taking a weekend class with Total Immersion or some other vendor.

IMHO, you would help yourself a lot if you kicked only enough to keep your feet near the top of the pool. Rather than swim 400, 200 or even 50 yards, you'd do well to a series of swim 25's - slowly, so you aren't out of breath - then resting maybe 5-10 seconds before swimming back. Don't sprint; swim slow enough that you aren't totally exhausted when you finish the 25. When you swim these 25's, you should concentrate on form, namely:

1 - stroke - make sure your forearm moves to a vertical position, bent at the elbow, just after your arm has entered the water. You are creating an oar that pulls your body through the water. In a perfect world, your upper arm will be parallel with the surface of the water while your lower arm is perpendicular to the surface of the water. That of course implies a 90-degree bend at the elbow.

2 - body position - rather than dip your head (which creates drag if your head gets too low), concentrate on getting your hips high. Ideally, your fanny should be far enough up that you can feel air on your butt with every stroke. You'll have to experiment a bit with where your head, chest, etc. need to be positioned. I can't give you too much advice on said balancing, because it really depends on your body type. Often, I'll note, this means you need an arch in your lower back.

3 - kicking - kick just enough to keep your legs from sinking. For long distance swimming, one kick for each stroke you take should be sufficient. Make sure your feet are pointed parallel to the water, not down at the bottom of the pool. That alone creates significant drag.

As others have noted, good training should get you to 2:00 per hundred pretty quickly, assuming you are in decent condition. Getting to 1:30-1:45 or so requires a lot more time in the pool, but you can get there if you are in good shape. Progress after that is harder still.

For the record, I taught myself to swim eight years ago and swim 100-yard intervals at 1:35, meaning I swim 100 yards in about 1:25-1:30 and get about 5-10 seconds rest. And I can do two pullups, maybe three on a good day.