Overcoming Adult Onset Swimming

The first obstacle to overcome is the fact that many triathletes are in-fact "adult onset swimmers."  That by itself creates a number of problems.  Not the least of which is adults tend to want to overlook the fundamentals, feeling they are stupid or a waste of time.  For example, simply putting your face in the water, without goggles, and blowing bubbles.  Adults LAUGH when I suggest they do that.  Yet, that is an absolute fundamental - exhaling underwater - that many triathletes fail to do properly which often leads to poor technique.  Losing goggles happens, but because adults don't spend time learning how to swim without goggles, they are quickly at a disadvantage when their goggles break or are lost - leading to poor form in the water.  Another example is learning how to float.  Again, I get laughed at when I recommend it.  One of the leading causes of triathletes swimming slowly is dropping their legs - however, if they had learned how to float properly, they would have learned how to keep their legs up which may well have transferred to proper leg position while swimming.  Another missed opportunity by not learning fundamentals.

Next up - adult onset swimmers that are competing in triathlon are sometimes impatient.  They want speed NOW!  Consequently, they often go out and try to beat the water into submission.  However, swimming is a technique driven sport and to excel you need to perfect your technique.  Then there is the dichotomy of having to learn proper technique while building swim fitness based on proper technique - that is hard to do and it takes time.  Time that impatient triathletes don't want to invest.  Technique and fitness are two sides of the same coin.  You need one to truly have the other.  You can go out and swim hundreds of thousands of yards, but if your technique is bad, you likely wasted your time.  You can have the greatest technique in the history of swimming, but if you have no swim fitness, you will have no power in your stroke and will be slow.

Finally there is the simple fact that an adult onset swimmer is behind in yardage as compared to someone who swam as a youth.  I began swimming when I was 11-years old.  By the time I was 13, I was putting in 10-15,000 meters per day, 7-days a week - that works out to something like 90,000 meters per week.  I swam with that kind of volume until I was in my mid-twenties.  The second day I got back in the water after 20-years with absolutely NO swimming, I swam a 100 time trial in 1:05.  Far slower than the 0:49.4 I swam when I was 24 but still pretty fast by triathlete standards.  That was ingrained technique from swimming over 350,000 meters per month for nearly 10-years.  Adult onset swimmers don't have those yards in the bank and that is a huge obstacle to overcome.

Now, to answer your question on how to bridge the gap.  First you need to develop proper form.  At 1:25/100 you pretty clearly have some technique flaws that are holding you back.  The best way to improve is having eyes on deck in the form of a very good coach/instructor.  If that isn't possible than video analysis and feedback from a qualified coach is a viable alternative that will produce results, not as quickly as eyes on deck, but quantifiable results nonetheless.  After you improve your technique you need to put in the yards.  I am not talking about the 5-10,000 yards per week I hear triathletes brag about.  If you want to get fast, you need to build to at least 2.5-3.0 times the race swim distance 4-5 times per week.  So, for an Olympic triathlon that works out to ~ 4-5,000 yards 4-5 times per week - meaning 16,000-25,000 yards per week - MINIMUM.

Finally, I regularly hear, "The swim is only ~10% of the race so I don't want to spend more than 10% of my training time swimming."  The problem is, while you can't win a triathlon in the water, you can certainly lose it there by becoming anaerobic during the swim.  Limiting your swim training to a ridiculously low volume all but guarantees you will quickly be anaerobic during the swim.  Putting in more time and additional volume will allow you to improve your threshold swim pace, making you faster, and allow you to come out of the water, having stayed aerobic in the water, with a correspondingly low heart rate.  Not only would you have begun to bridge the gap in the water, but you would also be fresher out of the water and better prepared for the remainder of the race.

Triathletes do WAY to many drills.  Unless you have a QUALIFIED coach or instructor prescribing a drill AND that person can clearly identify a specific problem the drill is going to improve and how the prescribed drill is going to improve it, you will be better served with additional volume.  To begin doing drills because that is what everyone else does is a flawed approach.  You will be FAR better served getting a pair of paddles and an ankle band, learning to use the paddles properly, and doing pull sessions once a week.  (NO, paddles are NOT for strength.  They were originally developed as a stroke technique tool.  I know that because my swimming coach back in the day is the gentleman that holds (held?) the patent on swimming paddles).

Excellent post!

The leaders came out of the water at 50:50 last October in Kona.  That works out to ~ 1:12/100 yards.  Those boys were likely swimming at their swim threshold pace and were aerobic during the entire swim

As to how long a workout would take, using them as an example, the would likely be swimming 100 intervals with a send-off in the neighborhood of 1:15 - 1:30 (Depending upon time of year and where they are in a training cycle. I don't know any of them personally so speculating based on experience).  At a 1:30 send-off a  5,000 yard workout that consisted of 50 x 100 would take 75-minutes.  Yes, I have done workouts like that and had athletes I work with do workouts like that.  You can adjust that send-off interval to your pace using the formula [(STP + 3) w/10" rest].  STP = swim threshold pace.

I am one of the minority that favors swimming only freestyle.  Freestyle is the fastest and most efficient stroke so likely the one you will be swimming in a triathlon.  There are those that argue swimming the other strokes helps you develop your freestyle.  Unfortunately it doesn't work that way.  If you want to be fast swimming freestyle you need to swim freestyle.  When you get done with that, swim some more freestyle.  And when you think you have swum enough freestyle, swim some more freestyle.  THEN you will begin to get fast swimming freestyle. If you want to get fast swimming an individual medley, then yes, you need to swim the other strokes. That said, you should spend enough time swimming your "go-to safety stroke" so that you are proficient.  I recommend backstroke as you can breathe as much as you want which is generally the reason a triathlete goes to their safety stroke - they can't breathe.

In case you didn't make it to the "fundamentals" page on my website - http://triathlonswimcoach.com/index.php/en/resources/stroke-technique/31-novice/77-freestyle-from-the-beginning

Most of the master's programs I have encountered are basically a group of people that get in the water together and swim.  MAYBE someone is writing a workout for them.  Rarely is there a qualified coach on deck offering technique improvement suggestions.  I have seen a couple of programs that had quality coaching, but those are the exception, not the rule.

If you can find a master's program that has a qualified coach on deck, who is willing to offer technique instruction, writes quality workouts and understands triathlon, you will have found gold.  Sadly those programs are few and far between.

The benefit of swimming with a masters program, even a poor one, is having other people in the water with you.  You can often watch the better swimmers and learn from watching them.  Also, swimming with faster swimmers will help motivate you.  Be careful however that you are not swimming faster than your ideal training pace.  Most masters programs are training swimmers for swim meets.  You are training for a triathlon.  Swimmers, for all but the longer distances, need to improve their anaerobic swimming capability.  You need to improve your threshold pace.  Those are conflicting goals and are trained for differently.  Not saying some VO2 MAX swim sets in which you are fully anaerobic won't be beneficial, just that that type of training should not be your primary training method.

I have had the opposite experience.

As a junior AGer, my summer club coach was the head lifeguard (an elementary school teacher on summer break), who had no competitive swimming background. He was good at giving rousing pre-meet prep talks, but couldn't coach stroke technique.  Most of what I learned was from watching the better swimmers on the team and trying to emulate them.  Any one-on-one instruction came from older swimmers who were willing to give us pointers on technique. 

Our high school coaches had to be full-time teachers at our school. Our swim coach was a business teacher, who coached both swimming and golf.  At least he knew how to play golf, but his major contribution to the swim team was taking attendance at practice (for which.he received a $2000 annual stipend).

I've always tried to be a student of swimming (I've had a copy of Doc Councilman's The Science of Swimming since it first came out), but never got the instruction or feedback to develop good technique.  

Fast forward fifty years and I've now got a masters coach, not only with Olympic experience, but who is a committed & passionate masters coach and stroke technician.  Working with my coach, I've pretty much torn down and rebuilt my stroke in the last year.  So even though I have something of a swimming background, in some ways I feel like an AOS.   FWIW, I'm swimming faster now at 62 than I did as a teenager.

To Scott's comments, I do think my current masters situation is the exception rather than the rule, and I do feel very fortunate.  

Mark