# Mastering the IRONMAN Swim (Even If You're Terrified) | Ep 525

An episode of [Oxygenaddict Triathlon Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/951501034), 29 Jan 2025, 31 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/ea99f7d8/podcast/play/97698777/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2025-0-28%2F5f0efebd-9b72-932f-5686-f9ca6ae39087.m4a

On this week's Oxygenaddict Triathlon Podcast, Coach Rob is talking through mastering the Ironman swim with valuable tips for beginners, nervous athletes, as well as experienced triathletes looking to improve their swim. Rob addresses common fears, the importance of technique over distance, and the most effective training methods, including essential skills like proper breathing, body alignment, and swim drills. Whether you're aiming for a 70.3 or a full Ironman, this episode is packed with practical advice to help you perform to the best of your swim ability in your race. * * * * * * * * SPONSORS * * * * * * * * Like what you heard in this show? Join hundreds of other age group triathletes making the most of their limited training time, training with Team OxygenAddict! http://team.oxygenaddict.com - The most comprehensive triathlon coaching program for busy age groupers. Book an application call to see if you'd be a good fit for Team Oxygenaddict for the coming season here: https://team.oxygenaddict.com/consultation-call/ * * * * * * * * * * * * precisionfuelandhydration.com Precision Fuel & Hydration help athletes personalise their hydration and fuelling strategies for training and racing. Use the free Fuel & Hydration Planner to get a personalised race nutrition plan for your next event. And then book a free 20-minute video consultation with a member of the PF&H Athlete Support Team to refine your strategy. Listeners get 15% off their first order of fuel and electrolytes with Precision Fuel & Hydration. Simply use the code OXYGENADDICT2025 at precisionfuelandhydration.com, or click this link and the discount will be auto-applied at the checkout. * * * * * * * * * * * * Watch on youtube Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple Podcasts

## Transcript

[0:03] Hello, and welcome to the Oxygen Addict podcast.
[0:06] We're brought to you every week by our sponsors, Precision Fuel
[0:08] and hydration.com. You can get 15% off your first
[0:12] order with the code Oxygen Addict 2025.
[0:16] Welcome to the show, everybody. I'm your host, Coach Wilby, and
[0:19] every week for bringing you an episode of this podcast to help
[0:21] motivate and inspire you. On this week's episode, I'm
[0:25] bringing you a special edition about mastering the Iron Man
[0:27] swim. I've had tonnes of contact this
[0:30] last week from people either through YouTube, through the
[0:33] podcast, through Instagram, over e-mail, often from an athletic
[0:37] background, from from running or from cycling.
[0:40] They want to go forward and do a 70.3 or an Iron Man this year
[0:43] and it's the swim that's terrifying them.
[0:45] And the message that I really want to get across to people
[0:47] this week is if you are a relatively fit person who's
[0:51] active and swim and runs and bikes already, there is no
[0:55] reason you can't get yourself into shape to be able to
[0:57] complete a 1.9 or a 3.8 K swim this year.
[1:01] And essentially, if that's your dream to complete an Iron Man,
[1:04] then there's absolutely every reason to think that you can do
[1:07] it. So I've got some tips today that
[1:09] are going to help get you there. So first up, two things you can
[1:13] do to help us. Firstly, if you like this
[1:15] episode, please consider following us on Spotify or Apple
[1:19] Podcasts. If you're looking for help and
[1:22] advice with your training, please get in touch with us.
[1:24] There's a link in the show notes to book a membership call with
[1:27] Team Oxygen Addict. We've currently got a special
[1:30] offer of the season long membership on.
[1:32] It's a massive saving compared to our pay monthly price.
[1:36] If you get in contact, have a membership call with us.
[1:38] We'll talk you through all the pricings and options there.
[1:40] But if you're thinking about getting support with your
[1:42] training and your racing for this coming season, there's
[1:44] never been a better time. So let's go on and let's talk
[1:48] about swimming then. So first up, who's this episode
[1:52] aimed at? It's aimed at beginners or
[1:54] relatively new to swimming adults who are nervous about the
[1:59] swim or athletes who are more experienced who might have done
[2:03] triathlons at Sprint or Olympic distance already.
[2:06] But they're doing the first Iron Man and they're nervous about
[2:09] the jump in distance and how that's going to affect them.
[2:13] So I've got a whole bunch of tips there for you that I think
[2:15] are going to help you out. So the first thing I want to
[2:18] consider is it's the old idea of training smart versus training
[2:21] heart versus training hard. Excuse me?
[2:25] In swimming, the thing to embed in your brain is, is the
[2:29] importance of good technique before just adding distance and
[2:33] trying to swim longer. And the way that we're going to
[2:36] get you better and improve your technique is by doing specific
[2:40] swim drills that are aimed at improving whatever stroke floors
[2:44] you currently have. A great analogy for this is if
[2:48] you go to a lake in the summertime and you see a variety
[2:50] of different boats, you've got some boats that are speed boats
[2:54] and that can absolutely zoom through the water.
[2:57] You've got some boats that might be built like a barge or that
[3:00] might be short, fat little tubby boats that don't go quickly
[3:04] through the water because they have to move more water out of
[3:07] the way. You are the boat, and drills are
[3:11] going to improve the shape of your boat.
[3:13] All of us are swimmers. We start off as a barge and the
[3:16] drills help gradually shape the shape of our boat to get it more
[3:21] and more hydrodynamic so we're more efficient at moving through
[3:24] the water. It doesn't come naturally to
[3:26] anybody but it comes more naturally to some people than
[3:29] others and I remember my old swim coach at university saying
[3:32] years ago, we just don't know why some people can grip the
[3:35] water better than other people but they just can.
[3:38] He used an example of one of the lads who's with us who was a
[3:40] fantastic swimmer who would just zoom up and down the pool.
[3:44] He didn't look particularly athletic but he was a county
[3:47] level swimmer and you can imagine he was swimming around a
[3:49] minute for 100 metres. So he was a fantastic swimmer
[3:53] despite not being built traditionally like an athlete.
[3:57] And, and our lecturer said to us, we don't know why some
[4:00] people can swim faster than others.
[4:02] They can just grip the water better.
[4:03] And I think we do know why some people can swim better than
[4:07] others. The reason is that athlete had
[4:09] spent 10 to 14 hours a week since he was seven years old
[4:13] swimming up and down and getting black line fever and learning to
[4:16] grip the water. He'd done hundreds and hundreds
[4:19] and hundreds of hours of swim drills that I hadn't done.
[4:22] And he had earned the right to be a faster swimmer than me.
[4:26] So the correct drills are going to be the thing that improve
[4:29] your swimming much, much more than just getting in the water
[4:34] and trying to swim and doing endless lengths.
[4:36] So the key thing I want you taking away in your head here is
[4:39] we want you to get fit as a byproduct of practising good
[4:42] technique, rather than thinking getting in and swimming is going
[4:46] to make me a better swimmer. It's tempting to think that if
[4:49] you've been running off from a cycling background, because in
[4:52] those two sports just doing more of it will make you faster.
[4:56] In swimming it just isn't the case, unfortunately.
[4:58] I've seen examples of people who've got in and just swarm and
[5:01] if they haven't got very effective technique, often all
[5:04] they're doing is they're embedding really poor technique
[5:07] into their body and practising it hundreds and thousands of
[5:09] times. Guess what?
[5:11] With a skill based sport it isn't going to make you any
[5:14] better. It's like the analogy of going
[5:16] down to a driving range and swinging a Golf Club badly and
[5:19] never getting any lessons. You're not going to expect to
[5:21] get any better if nobody ever shows you the reason that you're
[5:24] doing the thing wrong and what it actually is that you're doing
[5:28] wrong. So the skill based sport of
[5:30] swimming is exactly the same. You have to expect that you have
[5:34] to spend some time practising good technique in order to
[5:38] improve your technique, and swim drills are the way that we're
[5:41] going to embed the good technique into our body.
[5:44] As a younger swimmer, I didn't understand this.
[5:46] I didn't understand what the purpose of drills was and
[5:48] looking back, I don't think I've got particularly effective
[5:51] coaching. We were simply told to do this
[5:53] thing, do this drill, off you go, do 25 metres of it and come
[5:57] back again. There was no real explanation of
[6:00] doing this particular drill will address this particular stroke
[6:04] floor. It will help either change your
[6:06] body position or it'll help change your catch, or it'll help
[6:09] you apply more force to the water.
[6:11] I think often we need to understand the reason why we're
[6:14] doing these things now. We're lucky that there's so much
[6:17] information out there these days.
[6:19] You can go to our YouTube channel.
[6:20] I've got loads of examples of swim drill videos on there that
[6:24] will explain what the drill is for, how to do the drill and
[6:27] what it's aimed to improve. So all of those things are out
[6:31] there these days, but you have to accept that you'll get fit as
[6:34] a byproduct of practising good technique.
[6:37] And that technique based sessions are really important.
[6:40] They're not just a waste of your time.
[6:42] They are the thing that's going to change your body position and
[6:45] your grip on the water. And they are going to be the
[6:47] things that then allow you as your, as your fitness improves,
[6:51] to apply that fitness to the water in a way that allows you
[6:54] to go faster. Now, the way we're actually
[6:57] going to do drills is we're going to use the half and half
[7:00] idea. We're either going to swim half
[7:02] a length of drill and swim out the rest of the length, or we're
[7:06] going to swim 25 metres of drill and 25 metres back.
[7:09] So, so if you think break the 50 into half and half.
[7:12] And the idea here is you're doing a drill for a specific
[7:15] reason. It's addressing a specific thing
[7:18] in your stroke and you're clear in your head what that thing in
[7:21] your stroke is that you're trying to improve.
[7:23] If you're not clear on this before you do it, I really think
[7:26] there's no point in you doing the drill to start with.
[7:29] O Be clear on what it is you're trying to change.
[7:32] Do the half as the drill and the second-half.
[7:35] You want to be trying to hold onto the feeling of the thing
[7:38] that the drill is addressing. So if you're, for example, doing
[7:41] the first drill and you're swimming with your fists closed.
[7:45] And the reason for that is to take away the feel of the water
[7:48] on your hands so that you have to use your forearms in the
[7:51] catch when you open your palms again.
[7:54] It's tempting to think, oh great, my hands are back, I can
[7:58] now grip the water again. But what I'd encourage you to do
[8:01] is concentrate on feeling the water on your forearm, just like
[8:05] you did when you were swimming without your hands a second ago
[8:08] with with your fists closed. Learn to embed that technique
[8:12] and learn what that thing that you're changing feels like so
[8:16] you can embed that as you go back to your full stroke.
[8:19] So the idea there is it's hold on to the feeling of the things
[8:23] that the drill was practising. Any journey fans in the 70s will
[8:27] will love that reference there. OK, moving on to the next part
[8:31] of our training smart versus training hard.
[8:34] It's what does an actual swim session look like?
[8:38] We're going to have 4 main kinds of swim sessions.
[8:41] They're going to be the. It's a way to break this down, I
[8:44] think, into a system that allows you to understand how to improve
[8:47] your swimming. Our four kinds of swim sessions
[8:50] are going to be a technique session, an endurance session, a
[8:53] recovery session or a threshold interval session.
[8:58] And those four sessions, pretty much they cover all of the bases
[9:03] that you're going to need to improve your swimming, but each
[9:06] of them needs using at the right time and it needs applying in
[9:09] the right way. So let's go through them one by
[9:11] one. A technique session is one
[9:13] that's primarily going to be used to practise the drills that
[9:17] will improve your body position in the water and improve your
[9:21] catch and your feel of the water.
[9:24] So it's repeating that the half and half idea we've just
[9:28] mentioned of doing a drill and then hold on to the the thing
[9:32] that has changed in your feeling for the water as you go back to
[9:36] swimming normally. Typically we'll do an awful lot
[9:40] of this work during the winter time and really focus on trying
[9:44] to improve your your swim technique and your application
[9:47] of force to the water so that as we move into the season, we can
[9:50] then do more of the fitness set type swimming.
[9:53] The next type of swim set, we call them CSS sets within Team
[9:57] Oxygen Addicts. It's a threshold swim set or if
[10:00] you like, it's a fitness improving set.
[10:02] It doesn't necessarily have to be just about swimming at or
[10:06] about CSS pace, but it's a pace that's really useful for 70.3
[10:12] and Iron Man distance swimmers. If you think of it like this,
[10:15] it's about the pace that you would swim for a 30 minute time
[10:18] trial and we'll then break that up into intervals.
[10:21] So you're swimming, you're getting yourself tired and out
[10:24] of breath, you're recovering and you're doing the same again.
[10:26] So it's a traditional fitness improvement set.
[10:29] Those of you from a running or recycling background, you'll be
[10:31] very familiar with the the sort of the threshold interval set.
[10:35] The third kind of session is going to be an endurance based
[10:38] session. And the idea of that's going to
[10:39] be to improve your endurance as a swimmer, to extend the
[10:43] distance that you can swim for whilst reducing the amount of
[10:46] fatigue that you feel as a cyclist or a runner.
[10:49] You might go out and do a long slow Sunday run.
[10:52] You might go out and do a long Sunday club ride.
[10:54] It's going to be slightly different in swimming because in
[10:58] running and in cycling we'll go and do a long continuous run.
[11:03] Actually, having said that, less so these days with running
[11:05] because we'll we'll tend to break those up into a 911 walk.
[11:08] But we'll come to that in a different episode.
[11:11] With swimming, I think it's really important that you don't
[11:13] just try and swim a continuous distance without without
[11:17] stopping, certainly not in the early days of your swim journey.
[11:20] What we'll have you do is we'll have you do repeated hundreds
[11:24] and we'll come to those in a minute.
[11:26] So your endurance swim set is mainly aimed around improving
[11:30] your endurance and extending the distance you can swim without
[11:32] fatigue. And the fourth kind of swim set
[11:35] we'll have you do is recovery swim.
[11:38] Now the recovery swim is less about the swimming itself and
[11:42] more about the effect it has on you as a triathlete.
[11:45] It's about starting the week with a session that helps absorb
[11:49] and embed all of the training that you've done the week
[11:52] before. And it's like a free massage for
[11:54] your body. So it's a very gentle swim.
[11:56] We don't want you working hard at all during this swim.
[11:59] And honestly, for some swimmers, particularly for new to swim
[12:04] swimmers and for those who are not very strong swimmers yet,
[12:07] recovery swims are not really possible.
[12:09] It isn't really there isn't really an option that you've got
[12:12] to be able to do a swim and feel more recovered at the end of it.
[12:16] And if you can't feel more recovered at the end of the
[12:18] swim, then you shouldn't be doing a recovery swim, you
[12:20] should simply be having a rest day.
[12:22] For those of you who are a little bit more adept at
[12:24] swimming, the recovery session can be really useful because you
[12:27] can practise good technique whilst flushing your muscles
[12:31] with with blood clearing away the waste products from the
[12:34] week, leaving you really set up and well to go ready to go for
[12:37] the rest of the sessions, for the rest of the week.
[12:40] OK. And the Third Point I want to
[12:43] make here about training smart versus training hard is we're
[12:47] really going to work on the idea of building endurance
[12:49] efficiently. And what I mean by that is I've
[12:52] touched on it already, when we do a long cycle ride, we do a
[12:56] long continuous bike ride. That's a great way to build up
[12:59] our endurance if we try. And we do a long continuous
[13:03] endurance swim, particularly early season, particularly early
[13:07] on in our swim, in our swim journey.
[13:10] We don't have the skills yet. We don't have the swim technique
[13:15] embedded enough yet. And we don't have enough
[13:16] endurance to be able to do that without our technique
[13:19] deteriorating. And effectively, all we're doing
[13:22] on a long swim is embedding poor technique.
[13:25] So I'm going to encourage you to do is break this up into
[13:28] repeated hundreds. You only need to take a very
[13:30] short break after the 100 metres, maybe 5 seconds or long
[13:34] enough to just take 3 deep yoga breaths.
[13:38] And again, we're not trying to swim hard during this.
[13:40] It's a, it's a steady endurance swim.
[13:43] So we're not taking the rest because we need recovery.
[13:46] We're taking the break here to let our, our little, our little
[13:51] swim muscles, if you like, the smaller muscles in our shoulders
[13:54] and our chest and our back, those that are going to fatigue
[13:57] really quickly, we're going to give them the chance to recover
[14:00] and then we're going to go again.
[14:01] So, so we shouldn't get very out of breath.
[14:04] We shouldn't be working really hard, but the micro break we'll
[14:08] take in this swim allows those swim muscles to recover enough
[14:12] so that we can practise good technique and our technique
[14:15] doesn't deteriorate. So a really good marker of this
[14:18] is if you did try to do a continuous swim and you looked
[14:22] at your splits afterwards, typically in a really good well
[14:26] conditioned swimmer, they're able to swim hundreds and each
[14:30] 100 is a very, very similar time, if not exactly the same
[14:33] time as the 100 before. If you see your times are
[14:37] deteriorating every hundred and you're getting slower, it's a
[14:40] really good sign that you'd benefit from taking that small
[14:42] micro break, taking three yoga breaths, letting the small
[14:46] muscles in the shoulders in the back recover and then going
[14:48] again. So again, the guiding principle
[14:51] here, we want to embed really good technique rather than
[14:55] trying to train for fitness and without realising it and bedding
[14:58] poor technique. So the next big tip I've got
[15:04] here for you is we want to work on essential skills before we
[15:08] work on distance. So first thing to think about
[15:11] here, key breathing techniques. If you are new to swimming,
[15:17] you're going to feel as though breathing is really obvious, and
[15:20] you're going to quickly find out that breathing in water isn't
[15:23] obvious at all. It's really easy to breathe as a
[15:26] runner. It's really easy to breathe as a
[15:28] cyclist because you can breathe as often as you need in
[15:32] swimming, especially if you're starting to swim at a level that
[15:34] taxes you. What you'll find is sometimes
[15:39] the way that you need to breathe is actually slowing down your
[15:42] swimming, and sometimes the fact that you're perhaps breathing
[15:45] more often than you maybe need to for the effort level is going
[15:49] to hold you back as well. So it's very easy to get this
[15:54] wrong in swimming. The first thing that you need to
[15:57] practise as a beginner swimmer is actually learning to breathe
[16:01] out into the water. And the best way to do this is
[16:04] in the shallow end of the pool on a quiet day is to do
[16:07] something called sink downs, which is where you just simply
[16:10] stand up up to your waist in water, take a deep breath and
[16:13] then you go to sink down into the water.
[16:15] So bend your knees, sink yourself down and blow all the
[16:19] air out of your lungs. So gradually you're going to
[16:21] sink down and you're going to sink underneath the water and
[16:24] then you're going to use your feet, push yourself back up,
[16:26] take another breath and do that again.
[16:28] We do it in the shallow end of the pool so that obviously we're
[16:31] never out of our depth and we're never going to worry that we're
[16:34] not going to be able to stand back up again.
[16:36] But this is a really good way to practise the very fundamental
[16:39] part of breathing in the water, which is making sure we can
[16:42] actually blow our breath out into the water so that as we
[16:46] turn our head to the side to breathe, our lungs are empty and
[16:50] ready to accept the air. Sounds really obvious.
[16:53] And in fact, I've, I've talked to athletes on pool deck before
[16:57] who felt as I was being a little bit patronising with them.
[17:01] But then they found as they tried to swim, what they're
[17:03] actually doing was they were turning their head to the side.
[17:06] They were trying to quickly blow all the air out of their lungs
[17:10] and breathe back in again in one turn of the head.
[17:13] And you can manage that for 25 metres, maybe, maybe 50 metres
[17:18] before you become absolutely exhausted.
[17:21] So if you're a good runner or biker and you're new to swimming
[17:25] and you're finding that you're really exhausted and out of
[17:27] breath really quickly, an incorrect breathing pattern is
[17:31] almost certainly going to be to blame here.
[17:34] And all I mean by this is you haven't yet practised the
[17:37] technique of blowing all of your air out into the water so that
[17:41] you're ready to breathe in as you turn your head to the side
[17:43] and your mouth is clear of the water.
[17:46] So that's the first thing to practise those sink down drills.
[17:50] If you're if you're confident you are now breathing out into
[17:53] the water and turning your head to breathe in, we can move on to
[17:55] the next stage. So the next stage of the
[17:58] breathing is for me to underline to you the importance of both
[18:05] bilateral breathing, which means being able to breathe on both
[18:08] sides and the importance of being able to regulate breathing
[18:12] so that you don't breathe every stroke on one side, you breathe
[18:16] every other stroke on one side. So essentially we're talking
[18:21] about breathing every third stroke or every 4th, 4th stroke
[18:25] instead of every stroke on the same side.
[18:29] And why that's important is in swimming pace is often limited
[18:33] and or dictated by how often we breathe.
[18:36] And for those of you going on to do 70.3 or Iron Man distant
[18:41] swims, it can be very hard to judge how fast you're swimming
[18:46] when the gun goes off and, and you start swimming.
[18:49] And often, and I'm going to say often, but I mean almost
[18:53] everybody, almost all the time goes too hard right from the
[18:56] start as the gun goes off and finds that they are, I don't
[19:00] know, 200 metres in, 300 metres in and they're absolutely out of
[19:04] breath, totally gassed and, but can't find a way to slow down
[19:08] and regain the breath because again, it's not as easy as it
[19:10] would be when running or when cycling.
[19:14] So if we've got the option and we've practised in the pool,
[19:17] bilateral breathing, which is essentially breathing every
[19:20] third stroke or every other stroke, breathing.
[19:23] So breathing every fourth stroke, breathing on the same
[19:27] side each time. But every fourth stroke, we've
[19:30] then got the choice of breathing at a rate that suits a slower
[19:35] swimming pace. And so we're essentially
[19:38] choosing our swimming pace and limiting our swimming pace by
[19:42] how often we breathe. And if we practise doing this.
[19:45] I, I, for example, used to find, and I know it's different for
[19:48] everybody. I used to find that at the Iron
[19:50] Man distance, I would breathe every fourth stroke and that
[19:53] would be about the right breathing rhythm to suit the
[19:57] pace that I needed to swim at, to be able to swim confidently
[20:01] and at a pace that didn't deteriorate across the whole
[20:04] swim. At 70.3 distance, I could
[20:06] breathe bilaterally. So every third stroke because
[20:10] it's obviously half the distance.
[20:12] I found that breathing every third stroke, I could sustain a
[20:16] pace that was just a bit too fast for me to be able to swim
[20:18] the entire Iron Man swim at that pace.
[20:21] So I would choose to breathe every fourth stroke at the Iron
[20:23] Man distance. So again, this is something that
[20:26] might not be obvious to swimmers when we get started because I
[20:29] think we we're in the impression that we should breathe as often
[20:32] as we can. And often what happens with that
[20:34] is we're breathing more frequently than we need to.
[20:37] If we're breathing every stroke, we're clearing out all of the
[20:40] carbon dioxide from our body. We're essentially forcing
[20:42] ourselves into hyperventilating. And that can lead us to feel
[20:47] really out of breath and often times dizzy and like things are
[20:50] going badly wrong or it might be a panic attack feeling.
[20:53] Often this is all under our control.
[20:55] OK, so the skills of breathing are really important ones to
[20:59] practise once you're comfortable breathing out into the water.
[21:03] Now then let's talk about proper body position and alignment in
[21:08] the water and how to stop sinking legs.
[21:12] I think this is a really essential skill to practise.
[21:15] So if you find that you're swimming and your legs are
[21:17] sinking, a really common or a common but incorrect way to
[21:24] think is my legs are sinking because I'm not kicking enough,
[21:28] so I should kick harder and this will raise my legs.
[21:31] What's usually happening here is our athlete is usually keeping
[21:36] too much air in their lungs for too long.
[21:40] And if you think of your body from a side on view, your lungs
[21:44] are entirely in the front half of your body.
[21:46] So if you're, if you've got a huge amount of air held in your
[21:49] lungs, the front half of your body is really floaty.
[21:52] The back half of your body isn't really floaty.
[21:54] So it's natural in beginners that our legs are going to sink
[21:57] a little bit because we've got all of that air stuck there in
[22:01] our lungs. So learning the correct
[22:03] breathing techniques and learning to completely blow the
[22:06] air out of our lungs, that's the first thing that can really
[22:08] help. The second thing that can really
[22:10] help sinking legs is actually head position.
[22:14] If you are lifting your head up at the front, if you think of
[22:17] your body as a kind of counterweight, and again, if you
[22:20] imagine viewing your body from the side, if you lift your head
[22:23] up at the front, what's going to happen at the back of our body?
[22:27] Well, there has to be a counter movement.
[22:29] And the counter movement is that the back, the back of our body,
[22:32] our legs are going to sink down into the water.
[22:35] So if you're someone who is lifting their head too much, or
[22:38] maybe you're lifting your head at the front to breathe, or
[22:40] maybe even you've got your head tilted too far forwards.
[22:44] What we often find is if we correct that by bringing the
[22:47] head down a little bit and looking more down towards the
[22:52] bottom of the pool, that subtle shift of the head position can
[22:56] be something that cannot so subtly shift the legs position
[22:59] much higher up in the water. So a good tip here is that you
[23:03] should be feeling as though the water is breaking somewhere
[23:05] between the top of your forehead, where your forehead
[23:08] meets your hairline and the crown of your head.
[23:11] So that's where you should feel the waterline on your head
[23:14] rather than it being just above your goggles.
[23:17] So again, if you feel you're struggling with sinking legs,
[23:20] changing your head position is something that can really alter
[23:24] how your body aligns in the water.
[23:27] And if we can stop those legs from sinking, we can make you
[23:29] more horizontal in the water, you're immediately going to be
[23:32] faster. It's the same analogy familiar.
[23:34] If we make the boat float better in the water, if we make it more
[23:37] hydrodynamic, it's going to go faster for the same power.
[23:41] You've got the same amount of power with major more
[23:43] hydrodynamic. If you're able to shift your
[23:47] head down in the water bit and lean forwards onto your body a
[23:50] little bit more, that's going to bring your legs up.
[23:53] Now, a good question that gets asked here by a lot of beginners
[23:56] who have this problem is should I use a pull boy?
[23:58] Should I swim with a pull boy, which is the the big floaty
[24:02] float that goes between your legs?
[24:04] That'll lift the back end of my stroke up and help me.
[24:07] So different coaches have different opinions on this.
[24:11] I have no problem at all with people using a pull boy.
[24:14] I think it's a great tool, but we'll remember we're using it in
[24:17] a way that we discussed drills earlier.
[24:19] We're using it to realign our body, so we learn what our body
[24:23] feels like when it's better aligned and then when we take
[24:26] the pull boy away, we do the next length to try and hold the
[24:30] position that we had before. So it's not about using a pull
[24:33] boy to fix a problem, it's about using a pull boy to highlight
[24:37] the problem and then helping us fix it.
[24:39] So I'd advise doing 25 metres with the pull boy, take it out,
[24:43] put it on the edge, swim back again to the start and then swim
[24:48] back to the pull boy, put it back in, swim back and try and
[24:51] hold on to the feeling that you had.
[24:53] So it's all about learning to try and hold on to the feelings
[24:57] that you've got by using the drill or using the pool toys to
[25:00] help correct a problem that you might be experiencing.
[25:05] Again, it's really common for people to say, well look, this
[25:07] is all going to be different on race day anyway because I'm
[25:09] going to be using a wet suit and I'm going to float much better
[25:12] in a wet suit anyway. My body will be in much better
[25:14] alignment in a wet suit. So do I really need to work on
[25:18] improving my alignment? My answer to you is yes.
[25:22] I think the more you can improve your alignment in a pool without
[25:25] a wet suit, the less work the wet suit's going to have to do
[25:28] on race day. And ultimately the more you can
[25:31] swim as a streamlined swimmer, the faster you're going to be
[25:34] going for the same amount of power.
[25:37] So I really think there was a massive, massive pay off in
[25:41] learning to correct your body position.
[25:43] The most important of which is you're learning how your body
[25:47] feels in the water and you're learning to try and change how
[25:49] your body feels in the water. And that's the number one key
[25:52] thing that really good swimmers have that beginner swimmers
[25:55] don't have. They've got a really excellent
[25:57] feel for the water and they can feel what their arm, their
[26:00] shoulder, their back, their hips, their waist, their legs,
[26:04] their shins. They can feel what they're doing
[26:06] in the water and whether they're producing propulsion or drag.
[26:09] We as beginner swimmers need to learn to do that as well.
[26:14] So that's covered today, essential skills that you need
[26:17] to have before you start trying to add distance onto your swim.
[26:21] And it's covered the basic points of why we think you
[26:24] should train smart versus training hard.
[26:27] The idea of embedding good technique and essentially
[26:30] getting fit as a by product of practising good technique rather
[26:34] than trying to train yourself fit and hoping your technique
[26:38] will improve as a by product. We've had examples of the
[26:40] different kinds of swim sessions that you'll use here.
[26:43] And the the main takeaway I want you to have from this is if you
[26:49] are a person of good fitness in swimming and, or cycling and
[26:54] sorry, and, and running and or cycling and swimming is the one
[26:58] thing that's holding you back from thinking, could I be a
[27:00] person who could do an Iron Man distance?
[27:03] Well, yes you can. We've literally coached
[27:06] thousands of people at this point who've come to us either
[27:08] unable to swim or very poor swimmers who've made big changes
[27:13] and who have committed to a process and who maybe haven't
[27:18] had success before but have tried doing things in a slightly
[27:21] different way and found that applying themselves in this way,
[27:24] the idea of technique before endurance, has really had a
[27:28] positive effect on them. You already fit, you're already
[27:31] able to bike or you are already able to run well.
[27:36] So aerobic fitness isn't the challenge for you.
[27:38] It's simply learning to apply that fitness to the water and
[27:42] you haven't got those skills yet.
[27:43] And the simple answer to that is spend some time learning the
[27:46] skills and it will come, but just don't let it hold you back.
[27:50] I was in the position, let's see, 22 years ago of really
[27:54] wanting to do a half Iron Man and an Iron Man and just not
[27:59] having the confidence as a swimmer.
[28:01] I, I felt I could do it as a cyclist or as a runner, but I
[28:05] just didn't know anybody who swam, didn't have any kind of
[28:08] network around me, didn't have any way of learning.
[28:09] The Internet wasn't even really a thing back then in the early
[28:12] 2000s. So it's very hard to find that
[28:16] information. And it was a thing that stood in
[28:18] my way for years. I encourage you to not allow it
[28:22] to be a thing that stands in your way.
[28:24] If the dream is to do a 70.3 or an Iron Man and it's the only
[28:27] thing that's standing in your way or find a way to address it,
[28:31] Hundreds and thousands of people before you, just coached by us,
[28:35] have done that. So you are capable of doing it.
[28:38] If you need some help and advice and guidance, please get in
[28:40] touch. There's a link in the show
[28:43] notes. There's also
[28:44] help@oxygenaddict.com. You can drop us a line.
[28:47] We're more than happy. You know, commitment free to to
[28:50] give you some free advice about how you best to get yourself
[28:53] started. And I'd encourage you if you are
[28:56] thinking about taking that step onto a 70.3 and Iron Man journey
[28:59] this year and you're interested in getting some professional
[29:02] coaching help, just get in contact with us.
[29:05] And I think we've got the most comprehensive triathlon coaching
[29:08] programme specifically designed for busy age groupers who want
[29:11] to do 70.3 at Iman. I'm not just saying that.
[29:14] I really think we've worked out a system that we've proven with
[29:17] thousands of people it's worked and I think it can work for
[29:20] athletes just like you as well. We've currently got a special
[29:23] offer on our season long memberships.
[29:25] It's a massive saving against our pay monthly rate and it's
[29:28] even a saving relative to our our annual membership rate,
[29:32] which is already a good deal compared to our monthly rate.
[29:35] So if you're interested, there's a link in the show notes to book
[29:37] a membership call, see if you'd be a good fit and let's see how
[29:40] we can help you out. So before we wrap this up,
[29:43] remember you can also get 15% off your first order of
[29:47] electrolyte and carbohydrate fuel at
[29:49] precisionfuelandhydration.com using the code Oxygen Addict
[29:53] 2025. If you're interested in looking
[29:58] into fueling and hydration for triathlon, I really don't think
[30:01] there's a better company to go to than PF and H.
[30:04] If you go to their website, you can use their tool online to get
[30:08] a personalised hydration strategy.
[30:10] It'll help you understand your own carbohydrate, your
[30:12] electrolyte, and your fluid needs.
[30:15] For the people who've given us feedback on this, it's been a
[30:17] total game changer. If you're just going out for a
[30:20] ride or a run and just randomly drinking some electrolytes or
[30:23] water or just eating when you're hungry, it can be a massive game
[30:28] changer to know what you're actually supposed to be doing.
[30:30] And I honestly think at this point, fuelling your Iron Man
[30:33] correctly is as important as training for your Iron Man
[30:36] correctly. It's as important as that.
[30:38] So really check them out over at precisionfuelandhydration.com.
[30:43] All right then. So remember there's links in the
[30:45] show notes so you don't have to remember them until next week.
[30:48] I hope you have a great safe training and racing week.
[30:51] I'm coach Rob Wilby and you've been listening to the Oxygenetic
[30:54] Podcast.

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