swim improvement?/lack of resourses

Given your circumstances, I would have a friend or spouse use a digital camera to take some short movies of you swimming during your workout. Then compare these to videos of good swimmers, or the Mr. Smooth animated guy someone posted here the other day.

At least that will give you some idea of where you can improve.

A lot of it just takes time, especially if you don't have other people to work out with.

So you always have to drive an hour to swim? Or where do you usually swim? If you have a pool to swim in, maybe there are other people at the pool (lifeguard) who can help you out with pointers?

If there is someone faster than me in the pool, I am never shy about saying hello, and if they are responsive, I will ask for tips. They usually were just dying to tell me what is wrong with my stroke, but were too polite to volunteer the information.


If your nearest pool is an hour away, maybe you just cannot get enough swimming in to improve quickly. It takes a lot of time to master swimming. It's much more difficult to learn as an adult than running.

Thank-you!  What a great idea about making short movies.  I swim at the local college most of the time.  The hours are wierd.  Open from noon-3 p.m. M-F.  The pool closes whenever the school is closed, so no holiday, fall break, spring break, summer break hours.  There is generally one lifeguard, and sometimes the lifeguard is doing homework, or texting, or sleeping....one time no joke the lifeguard was making out.  I am usually the only person there.  Sometimes there is a man that only does elementary backstroke.  I do drive to the other center that is an hour away, when this pool is closed.  I would love to have access to a masters program or even find other people who share my interest.

jami 

First, great job learning to swim & racing in a year!

Your logs indicate that you swim a couple times a week.  I understand your frustration, but if you want to improve your swimming faster, you will need to spend more time in the pool.  You're training a set of muscles that you don't normally use everyday, so the more time you spend using them, the stronger you'll become and the faster you'll swim.

The movies/pictures is a great idea for stroke mechanics and will help you determine which drills are needed to help in this area.

The fins & kickboard are tools to help improve your kick & as a beginning swimmer you should do some kick sets to get your legs in shape, but remember that in triathlons your goal is (usually) to kick less and let your arms do the work so you have more energy left for the bike & run.

You've most likely read all this elsewhere, but I started typing, so I'm just going to leave it here...

The pool buoy is a great tool for keeping your legs up so you can focus on your arm mechanics. 

You can also:

1) count your number of strokes taken during each length of the pool and try to reduce that number by focusing on extending your hands as they enter the water and

2) putting some extra effort into pulling your hands through the water.

3) incorporate some interval training into your workouts every day.  It doesn't have to be a lot and mix up the distances and number of repeats so you don't get bored.  Start with something like 6x25's for a few days & try to beat the times you did the day before.

4) do some weight training for your arms.  lat pulls, tricep extensions stuff that will increase your upper body strength.

Good Luck & let us know how it goes!

Dan

Edited by oldntrin 2009-09-18 10:07 AM

Most Local colleges that have pools also have classes. You can see about registering to take a beginner swimming class at the college. You would have to pay for the credits but you might get much better coaching that way for an entire semester? just a thought. You could also look into the Total Immersion series. Some people hate it, some love it. I am somewhere in between but it helped me get faster (I am still not fast though ) Good Luck!

Top Three Swim Drills
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUULNJEdKU8

This is a great video on swimming mechanics. It is probably best to get better mechanis down first rather than trying strength training/isolation drills.

I posted a similar question recently, and got some good feedback about resources (web sites and a few books) here.

Keep plugging away at it!

congrats on your first season of tri's!

the suggestion of having someone film you swimming is probably one of the best routes you can go.  this will show you exactly what you are doing in the pool and then you can compare that you swimming clips you can find online.

there are tons of drills out there for swimming.  however, you will want to take a look at your stroke first to determine which drills will really help you improve your swimming technique.

a few things you can do outside of the pool (for those days you just can't get there or its closed, etc.).  these are great dryland tools. http://www.swimoutlet.com/product_p/15909.htm  not only will you improve your upper body strength, you will get to see exactly how you are pulling through the water.  i would suggest setting up somewhere close to a mirror so you can actually watch your stroke technique.  working on core and hip flexor exercises, as well as ankle flexibility will also add to additional speed in the pool.

Wow, thanks so much everybody.  Great posts!  I went to the pool today, and unfortunately exercized my jaws more than my body.  Yes, I am a talker.   But I did try the single arm drill and the catch-up drill, and the closed fist drill.  Afterward I certainly felt "better." I think I just need to swim more and do drills at the beginning.  I am going to try to focus more on swimming this winter-well, along with marathon training.

Thanks again,

jami