Thread: Swimming Faster?

Hiya,
I learned how to swim in September of 2002 (taking a adult swim class at the local YMCA) and have consistently been swimming every Tuesday and Thursday since. I bought the Totally Immersion swimming video and book and feel my technique is pretty good. I can swim continually for 40 minutes (about 1300 meters, I always loose count of my laps) without feeling tired or out of breath. My issue is that I am very, very slow. I plan on doing my first triathlon at the end of July. For the past four years I have done the bike and run portion always needing to find someone to do the swimming. I was wondering should I just be comfortable with the fact that I feel great after the swim and be happy being the last one out of the water, or is there something I could start working on now to make me faster and still feel great after 1.5K swim?

I would add some sprints to your workout. Start out by doing 25 yd sprints then 50 yd sprints. Take a 5-10 second rest in between each sprint and see if that helps. If leg strenght is a concern try swimming with some fins and see if that helps.

Mike

I was in the same position only 3 months ago.

I also swim on Tuesday and Thursday, and studied Total Immersion !!!

I changed my swimming program from simply swimming 30 minutes on each day to the follwing:

Tuesday: Swim 30 minutes continuous - comfortable, but slightly pushing myself.

Thursday: Swim 10 x 100m. Swim each 100 solidly, and don't do the next 100m until fairly recovered (say, 1-2 minute rest). Remember to concentrate on your style and form while you do this.

Within 3 months, the distance covered by my 30 minutes swim on Tuesday increased from 1100m to 1500m with more or less the same effort !

Give it a go. I am sure you will see steady improvement in a couple of weeks, and get a lot of satisfaction and motivation as a result.

Good luck,
Harrow.

You say you feel comfortable and great after you come out of the water?

It sounds like you are right on track to me!

You just learned how to swim, so it will take some time to work on your speed. But that will come naturally as you get better with technique. The fact that you feel comfortable and great says a lot :) I think this is something that will take some time for you since you just learned to swim recently.