Tweak Breaststroke or work on Crawl?

Unfortunately breaststroke in the middle of 2700 other folks (or even 50 folks) swimming in close proximity gets someone kicked in the face and someone else kicked in the ribs. So people generally learn the crawl so as to swim in close proximity without clobbering each other quite as much. I also prefer the breaststroke, but have had to learn to be competent in the crawl, which I learned at age 40. It an be done, get a coach if possible, it will be worth your time. You will get it eventually.

If you have to, and you don't care about the time, you can swim wide and stay away from folks in a smaller race. In a larger race that might not be possible or practical.

Thanks. I thought about the kick concern, well actually read about it. I assumed I would start at the back of the pack anyway regardless of how I swim it, so I dont get in the way of those truely competing to win. I'm doing this for the challenge and for fun with a few friends. Raising a few dollars for charity in the process. I have no visions of winning but I want tonput my best foot forward.

Ive seen video of the start of this race in past years, and with the exception of a handful of competitive guys up front, the start really didnt look too crazy, but still at around 80 people it is a good sized group. Im certainly not looking to kick someone in the face.

Im going to keep at it, but man it hasn't clicked for me at all. Its quite humbling actually.

As someone who was kicked in the head at IM Wisconsin by a breaststroker, please learn to swim the using the front crawl. The kick broke one lens of my goggles and I got a black eye. Made for a long day afterwards.

It will come along. The first 2 weeks in the pool are the worst, then it slowly gets better. A coach will help alot.

Welcome to BT

Keep working on your front crawl. It's not like your breaststroke is going to fall apart, so come race day you can always default to it when necessary. As the others said ... start at the back and very wide. 

As a surfer, you might want to do head-up front crawl around turn buoys (and turn way to the outside). There will be bunching there.

I also attached an easy swim workout that may help you make the connection between breast and free.

http://www.swimsmooth.com is an amazing resource (especially for people just starting out). 

Final thought: heart rate isn't a useful metric for swimming. Get your front crawl in a bit more order, don't worry about effort levels / HR for now.

Good luck with your training and race

 

* 1st photo appears in Sheila Taormina, Swim Speed Strokes

Edited by IndoIronYanti 2017-05-28 8:26 AM










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Do nothing but freestyle between now and the race. You can always fall back to breast stroke if it falls apart during the race. Trying to bike and run off a breast swim sounds like a dreadful idea.

Thanks everyone. I worked on the crawl as everyone suggested. It eventually started to click. Had the race over the weekend. Not only was I able to complete the entire swim doing the crawl, but I did it in a better time than any of my pool times (thanks to adrenaline and switching from my surfing board shorts to a proper suit).

That's awesome!

If you don't mind me asking, what did your training plan for swimming look like? I just had my first sprint a couple of weeks ago and only had 4 weeks to prep. I realize really quickly that my breaststroke was much stronger than freestyle and ended up swimming breaststroke the entire 750 m. It sucked immensely. So now I'm working on freestyle for my next event in 11 weeks, and will take any good advice you have and be incredibly grateful.

Well done! Congrats!

Get in the pool and swim. A lot.
I've always said I was a confident swimmer which meant I could freestyle with above average form for 50 meters, and then find a way not to drown as I lazily breaststroked, dog paddled, or whatever I needed to do for a little bit until I could do another 50 meters. As I got a little more fit, I could pretty easily do 300-500 meters maybe of a pretty rattled freestyle before having to 'take a break' simply by willing myself to do it. But that's all I ever could do. I was also never afraid of drowning. I still carried enough body fat that I floated pretty well

And then I signed up for a 70.3 and followed a plan. It wasn't the particulars of the plan that made me better. I didn't really follow them in terms of "sets" and "drills". It was getting in the pool 3 times a week. Thinking about what I was doing in relation to any video I had watched, any thread I had read, any article I had read (which was really not all that much).

That's the beauty of swimming. You get way better at doing it by simply doing it...even without massive detailed effort. Probably moreso than just about any other pursuit I've ever tried....be it music, fitness, intellectual pursuits. I fully acknowledge this won't make you a fast swimmer. But a slow, confident freestyler is faster than an average breaststroker.

I don't know if "drills" and such would have helped me much. I'll leave that up to the better minds than me. Sometimes, I think you have to learn to crawl (pun intended) before you can SWIM. I don't think you will "lock in" bad form. I find myself making regular changes with ease to form as I learn more about it and have started doing the "drills" and specific efforts with varying sets and such.

Frankly I think 90% of the initial battle is learning to deal with the "boredom" of just going back and forth and not really seeing anything but a black line on the bottom of the pool. The other 10% is simply sorting out breathing. You can easily get that far in 11 weeks. Hit the pool 3 times a week and within probably a month, you're probably feeling like you can freestyle indefinitely, albeit slowly. Then you've got something to work with if you want

I dealt with the boredom in that learning phase by trying to learn flip turns. Not to start that whole thing again, though. A little mild panic every 20-25 seconds at the possibility of conking my back on the bottom of the pool or filling my nose with water added a little excitement to the drudgery.

Ya gotta get in the pool. A lot.

Edited by jhaack39 2017-07-26 11:10 AM

Okay - so let me try to read between the lines here. I'm getting the sense that you're telling me to go to the pool more -_-

I guess I can squeeze an extra pool day into my schedule. I probably should.

I have to say, though, that I'm not finding it boring since I do follow a plan with drills and intervals. The drills have helped immensely and I can now breathe bilaterally - I'm not as efficient on the right side, but I'm getting there. I celebrate the little victories.

Anyway, I'm just suckiest at swimming, which is why it's not much fun. And which is why I'm so exited that today is bike day and the weather is amazing!!

Ayup. Get in the pool. Of course, if that comes at the expense of other parts of your training....I don't know enough to say if that trade off is worth it. It might not be in terms of upcoming races. I would think if you're having success with drills and such already....you'll probably be further down the road than the way I did it.
The good news is, you won't be training all the time.
Once you have a window (winter and early spring is when I did a lot of my work....had to switch gyms to one with a pool, "community center pools" had too many restrictions on when I could/couldn't swim laps)....then add in the extra swimming.

While it doesn't happen overnight....you can go from 0 to 30 in swimming a lot faster than you can go from 30 to 60 on the bike/run.

Thanks!

Thanks!!

Plan??? what plan. ha-ha. I really didn't have a sound "plan". I was persuaded to do this by a friend as it was for charity. I really didn't know what I was getting into.

I basically took an intermediate class that was offered by the YMCA; once a week for 45m, maybe 8 weeks in total. I also swam on my own twice a week. Total swim training 3 months. I took a two week vacation during that time, but it was at the beach so I swam in the ocean a few times, and surfed a fair bit also.

The class was very helpful as there were only 3 of us in there, all friends in the same boat training for the same thing. Lots of one on one instruction. The instructor had loads of experience. She just swam around Key West....for the 5th time. I've never seen someone seemingly so naturally buoyant in the water, kind of weird. Anyway, she would have us do lots of drills, some of which we questioned how in the world they were going to help us, and she give us a training sheet each week. I did all the drills in class, and a little bit in my weekly swims, but mostly in my weekly swims I just tried to swim further distances via front crawl. I would swim, gas out, take a break for a min or so, then swim some more. I would also throw in a 500m consecutive breast stroke virtually every swim, figuring it couldn't hurt. besides, i was usually pretty discouraged at my front crawl training, and doing a longer swim at the end just made me feel better.

It took forever for the crawl to click. 2/3 of the way into my training I was doing maybe 100-150m tops, but once it clicked, it was like someone flipped a switch. I was kind of panicking about my lack of progress given how close the race was, so I decided my goal for the next week was to get in a consecutive swim of 250 meters. I went in, hit my goal of 250m, and just kept going to 350m. Then the next swim later that week, I pressed all the way to 500m, and just like that, I could swim 500m via front crawl for each swim thereafter. My last swim before the race (2 days out) I was so nervous, I decided to try and push beyond 500m. I ended up doing 1000m, but I threw in 200m of breast stroke (between 700m-900m).


Although I have no swimming background, I've surfed for decades. Somehow I expected that surfing experience to magically make learning the front crawl easy. It didn't do that, but I'm sure it gave me an advantage in terms of paddle strength....and in hindsight it definitely gave me comfort in the open water.

Looking back, I think what made the crawl finally click for me, was figuring out a breathing rhythm and a kick that worked. I breath every stroke, but I almost delay or time my exhale...hard to explain, but it keeps me from "over breathing". For the longest time I was getting winded so quickly, but I'm in good shape, it didn't make sense to me. the output shouldn't have made me so winded. I think it was mostly because the timing of my breathing was just out of whack. I wasn't breathing enough, or at the right time, or was breathing too much etc... In the breast stroke, the breathing is very natural so it's almost out of the equation. I really think that was probably the main issue I had in learning the crawl. I also only kick twice per stroke. regular kicking was making me winded and the instructor told me you get more "bang for your buck" out of your arms, and a "two count" kick is fine. She showed me i wasn't losing much when i ditched my kicks, so that's what I started doing. At first without the kick my legs tended to sink, but then I figured out how to kind of snap my hips twice and it works; my legs stay up, but the muscles aren't doing much so they aren't using up my oxygen. That said, I am now able to increase the kick and get less winded, so I imagine if I kept swimming my kick might change.

My form is probably terrible. I believe I look the worst out of the three of us that trained, but I'm the fastest over a distance. I now realize there's a heck of a lot of technique in swimming. If I was to continue in triathlon, it's definitely where I would focus my energy. That and maybe I would give my $100 craigslist steed some shiny new cables :-)


Edited by pkovo 2017-07-27 12:56 PM