Drills
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RV posted 28 weeks ago.
Right now I am doing mostly drills - Will be increasing the distance for straight sets over the next month, then through June will have one swim session a week that is primarily focused on drills to continue to work on position and propulsion.
I've posted this here before, but what the heck, one more time.
This e-book has drills and explanations on how to do the drills as well as some embedded video demonstrating them. It also discusses what the purpose of the drills are etc.
The drills in this e-book are the ones referenced in my IM training plan that I am following. I am seeing improvements.
The Swim e-book is available free from Endurance Nation -
http://www.endurancenation.us/blog/2008/free-endurance-nation-swim-clini...
RV
It takes a long time to get good. - Scott Molina
Slow is smooth; smooth is fast. - Rich Strauss
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TriOnLife posted 28 weeks ago.
Drills are important and doing some fast interval work is very important but it isn't true that doing more yards won't make you faster. It will. It's just that if you don't do fast interval work it will take a lot longer to get faster.
The drills are good because swimming is much more sensitive to form than running is.
I swim with a masters team and I would say we spend about 30% of our time doing drills and about 40% doing fast swimming and 30% just putting in the yards. We almost always have to do some descending in there, though.
- A 21st Century Mom who is tri-ing to get better instead of just getting older
www.breakingthetape.com/21stcenturymom
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cayman posted 27 weeks ago.
Workouts, drills and sets, add a little structure to pool time and break up the monotony of just laps. Good comments above--working towards getting faster-- and another site below for a look see:
SP sets up workouts for you based on info that you enter, perceived swim level--print it out and head for the pool.
Yeah, I agree, would be nice if it were more like running.
john
Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.
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M posted 27 weeks ago.
I'm going to go out on a limb and not support the idea that drills are the answer. Some swear by them, some swear by avoiding them. I come from more of a swimming background than anything else, and yes, we did do drills in practices, and yes, we got faster, although I tend to think the drills were more useful as "active recovery" mixed in with interval sets than for their merit on their own. I think it's the interval work and just putting in the time that really makes you faster.
However, if you really need to work on stroke mechanics, drills may be helpful, but only, as with a master's or similar group, if there's someone to watch and correct you. And even then, I always wonder how much transfer there is from the drill to the regular old stroke. Since the drill part is taken out of context from the rest of it, it may not incorporate itself into the stroke. So you may get really good at the catchup drill, but putting it all together you may not see benefits. I just don't know.
My approach with working on technique is to swim more or less normally, but to spend maybe every other length concentrating on one aspect of the stroke, like keeping my elbow high in the catch, pushing all the way through the stroke at the end, or whatever. That way it all stays in context and is more likely to transfer to normal swimming along. And simply putting in the time in the pool helps. When I broke my foot, I did a lot of swimming with no kick, and I know that my stroke efficiency improved just from having done so much of it without the help of kick (I also read a few articles about strokes). So maybe using a buoy is the best thing if you want to pick and choose (local pools are also most likely to have these hanging around for people to use). Also, I never do kick-only sets, mainly because I look at my swim workouts as a bit of a respite for my legs in the midst of riding and running (again, I think a swimming background helps here--and I have a lot of ground to make up elsewhere!).
Just an alternate view...disregard if it muddies the waters too much!!
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TriOnLife posted 27 weeks ago.
I kind of agree with M's perspective on drills but if you have very bad stroke mechanics things like the catch up drill can really help.
One other thing I forgot about was how helpful it is to play 'golf'. The reference to golf has to do with lowering your total score per lap which consists of a combination of stroke count and time.
Start by counting your strokes during a normal lap. Work on lowering your stroke count by pulling yourself further through the water per stroke. More pull, more glide, fewer strokes. This is where some drill work might help. Then work on decreasing your speed while maintaining your lowered stroke count. It's really hard but does a lot to improve your stroke efficiency and ultimately make you faster.
- A 21st Century Mom who is tri-ing to get better instead of just getting older
www.breakingthetape.com/21stcenturymom
I was worried that I wasn't spending enough time in the water to improve the swim leg of my olympic distance triathlons this year, so I asked a coach. He told me "Getting faster has little to do with yards but a lot to do with speed drills and work." So my question is, how much time do you spend doing drills vs freestyle swimming?
I looked up a few worksouts, and it's all kickboard, pull, paddles, pull bouye, stationary rope, kick set, side kick, pull ahead. etc... I don't even know what those are! Are you only supposed to swim during the warmup and cooldown? If I swim 1,000m in a workout, about 200m of that is drills, and the rest is alternating swimming frestyle slow and fast.
Why can't swimming be more like running? Run hard, rest, repeat = get faster.