# TEN Proven Swim Tips for IRONMAN First-timers | Ep 530

An episode of [Oxygenaddict Triathlon Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/951501034), 12 Mar 2025, 31 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/ea99f7d8/podcast/play/99628754/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2025-2-10%2Fb8cb8375-0f64-b329-bcda-42a8f51e8104.m4a

This week, Coach Rob is helping new triathletes overcome common swimming challenges, covering ten essential practical tips specifically aimed at athletes entering a 70.3 or Ironman triathlon who may not be confident swimmers or are new to the sport. Including: Drills to improve swimming skills, address initial fears, and build endurance... How to break swim practice into manageable segments... Using video analysis for improvement... The importance of consistency in swim training... How to stay calm & keep faith in the proven process... Using tools like a pull buoy or buoyancy shorts to aid initial training * * * * * * * * 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 click this link and the discount will be auto-applied at the checkout. * * * * * * * * * * * * Watch on youtube Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple Podcasts

## Transcript

[0:04] Hello, and welcome to the Oxygen Addict Triathlon Podcast.
[0:07] We're brought to you every week by our sponsors Precision Fuel
[0:10] and hydration.com. You can get 15% off your first
[0:13] order with the code Oxygen Fuel 25.
[0:16] Welcome to the show everybody. I'm your host coach Rob Wilby
[0:19] from team oxygen addicts and every week we bring you an
[0:21] episode of this podcast to help motivate and inspire you on your
[0:24] triathlon journey. On this week's episode, I've got
[0:27] an entire episode dedicated to helping out people who are new
[0:31] to swimming. So I've had a bunch of people
[0:34] join our team recently who wants to do either a 70.3 and in some
[0:37] cases nine man who are completely new to swimming.
[0:41] And it's a story we're hearing more and more in emails that are
[0:44] coming in to people. Maybe they're from a swimming or
[0:46] a running background already. Sorry, from a a biking or a
[0:49] running background already. They've never done any swimming.
[0:52] So they're already fit. But the swim is the thing that
[0:56] terrifies them. And the general theme of the
[0:57] questions is just where do I start?
[1:00] How do I go about it? So I've put a whole episode
[1:02] together for you today. If you're one of our coached
[1:05] athletes who is in this position already, I hope there's a tonne
[1:08] of information for here. I'm going to talk about
[1:10] resources that you can go to that we've got in our private
[1:13] athlete community for people who are not coached by us.
[1:17] I'll talk about the resources still, these are all available
[1:19] and out there, a lot of them, they're on our YouTube channel,
[1:22] swim drills, things like that. So you will be able to find them
[1:24] all still. It's not like a closed system,
[1:27] but I want you, if you're not coached by us, to have a, a
[1:30] window into how we do things inside team oxygen addict.
[1:34] And if as you're listening, you, you think, well, you know, this
[1:37] sounds great. I could do some of this help
[1:39] myself. We'd love to hear from you.
[1:40] Just get in touch. There's a link in the show notes
[1:42] to book a call and we'll have a chat to see how we might be able
[1:45] to best help you out as a coached athlete.
[1:47] Now, before we kick things off, there's two quick things that
[1:50] you could do that would really help us out.
[1:52] If you like this episode, please consider following us or liking
[1:56] us on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. And also if you've been watching
[1:59] long on YouTube. One thing we've realised
[2:01] recently, we're really trying hard to grow our YouTube
[2:03] channel, mainly because it helps us reach more athletes.
[2:06] It'll help us grow our coaching company as well as a byproduct.
[2:09] But there's tonnes of really bad advice out there and we're
[2:12] trying to get the good advice out there to athletes.
[2:15] So if you do watch on YouTube, if you could consider hitting
[2:18] subscribe there. The people who are subscribers
[2:21] who watch our videos, especially in the 1st 6 to 12 hours, the
[2:25] videos released seem to really help the video get shown to
[2:29] loads of people out there. It's like the number of your
[2:31] subscribers who watch it work as almost like an accelerant within
[2:36] the YouTube algorithm. And you should be says, hey,
[2:39] tonnes of the people who are subscribed to watching this,
[2:41] they must like it. Great.
[2:42] Let's put it out there to the general public and vice versa as
[2:46] well. So we've had some videos that
[2:47] have done really, really well. The surprise doesn't have tonnes
[2:50] of views, some just kind of disappear after six hours.
[2:54] And it's because it's been explained to us YouTube stop
[2:57] showing the video to people essentially.
[2:59] So if you could consider doing that, that would be brilliant.
[3:03] All right, let's jump right in then to our episode about
[3:06] helping you learn to swim. So divided this up into 10 tips
[3:11] to kind of make it manageable and to make it into bite sized
[3:15] chunks that you can take away. So the first tip here is and
[3:20] remember this is this is specifically aimed to athletes
[3:22] who've entered the 70.3 or an Ironman and they are either not
[3:26] very good or not very competent swimmers yet or in some cases
[3:30] who can't swim at all. So my first tip to you is this,
[3:34] don't worry if you can't swim 400 metres yet or 200 metres
[3:38] even yet. We've had instances where
[3:41] athletes have joined us, we've given them our CSS test to do so
[3:44] we can get some, some test levels in and the athletes come
[3:47] back to us and said, look, not only can I not swim 400 without
[3:51] stopping yet, I can't swim 200 yet without stopping.
[3:54] So I want to say to you, that's OK, don't worry that you can't
[3:58] do that yet. You don't need to do that yet.
[4:01] And, and it's to put your mindset at ease and think you've
[4:05] got, you know, in most cases, we're talking 6 to 9 months to
[4:09] get to the point where you can swim 1900 metres or 3.8 K.
[4:14] You don't need to be able to swim that distance now.
[4:17] You don't even need to be able to swim 200 metres of front wall
[4:20] just now. You've got the time to learn how
[4:22] to do that. As long as you're willing to put
[4:24] the the effort and the training time into it, you can learn to
[4:28] do that within a six to nine month period, absolutely no
[4:31] problem. But you have to approach it the
[4:34] right way and you have to be willing to do the work
[4:37] consistently week in, week out, all the way through.
[4:41] So it's not going to be about committing to it for the first
[4:43] two or three sessions. It's going to be about
[4:45] committing to two or three sessions a week all the way
[4:48] through to the point where you are comfortable and confident
[4:50] swimmer. So just to bring that back
[4:53] again, keep your swimming in the day.
[4:56] Look for those small improvements that you've made in
[4:58] this one session. Keep a little diary, if I was
[5:01] you, of how things are going because we'll forget how hard
[5:04] things were last session the week before.
[5:07] It's good to read back on this. I encourage our athletes to keep
[5:10] little notes in Training Peaks to actually keep them in the
[5:12] session. You don't need to write War and
[5:14] Peace, but just a few little comments about how things were.
[5:18] And often it's surprising when you look back and you realise,
[5:21] you know, I really, I struggled to swim 50 metres, 100 metres
[5:25] this time last week and now I'm doing 200 metres.
[5:29] It's really great to be able to look back on that.
[5:31] So tip #2 you're going to break down every swim that you do
[5:36] initially into 25 metre chunks. If your swim set has got 4 by
[5:42] 100 on with a minute's recovery, you're going to break each of
[5:46] those hundreds down into 25 metres.
[5:49] You're going to swim the 25 with as good form as you can manage
[5:53] at the moment. Then you're going to take a
[5:55] break at the wall, you're going to take a rest.
[5:57] Now in some cases, if you're very new to swimming, you might
[5:59] find that swimming is absolutely exhausting.
[6:02] And I'll come to talking about breathing patterns later.
[6:05] I've got tonnes of videos out there and podcasts about the
[6:08] effect of breathing and how even though we can feel that we're
[6:11] out of breath isn't necessarily that we're tired.
[6:14] It's just an incorrect breathing pattern in swimming.
[6:16] Because breathing with with water around you is obviously
[6:19] very different to breathing when you're running or when you're
[6:22] cycling. So you're going to break every
[6:24] Rep down to 25 metres and you're going to take a break after
[6:27] every 25 metres. It might be that that break only
[6:30] needs to be 5 seconds, might be that it needs to be 30 seconds.
[6:33] But you need to be able to be starting the next 25 feeling
[6:36] relatively relaxed without any feelings of panic.
[6:40] We ideally don't want you feeling like you're working
[6:42] really hard and you're seriously out of breath.
[6:44] And that's going to do 2 things. Firstly, it's going to allow you
[6:47] to stay calm and to stay relaxed.
[6:49] When you're calm and relaxed, you're going to make better
[6:51] progress faster. That's the first thing it's
[6:54] going to do. The second thing that this is
[6:56] going to do is it's going to mean that every length that you
[6:58] swim is focused on embedding good technique rather than
[7:02] getting more tired and practising poor technique as you
[7:06] go along. And I don't mind in the early
[7:08] days if your your swim set that you've got in front of you has
[7:12] got, I don't know, let's say it's got 500 metres on.
[7:15] I don't care if you're only getting through 200 or 300
[7:19] metres of it, as long as you're getting in the water, you know,
[7:23] ideally 3 * a week. So you're swimming every other
[7:25] day pretty much. You're going to make progress.
[7:28] You don't have to kill yourself in, in terms of intensity.
[7:32] You just have to get in and practise swimming and feeling
[7:36] relaxed in the water. So that's tip #2 break every
[7:39] swim down into 25 metre chunks and then stay relaxed as you're
[7:43] doing it. Now tip number three is talking
[7:47] about swim drills. Athletes who are from a running
[7:50] or a cycling background, they often haven't got any context
[7:53] for doing drills at all. They often will only have ridden
[7:57] their bike or ridden on the the turbo trainer and intervals
[8:02] involved going harder or easier. They'll have just gone out for a
[8:05] run. They might have been to
[8:06] organised club session and there might have been some drills
[8:09] included in a warm up, but often people don't really understand
[8:12] why they're doing those and often it isn't explained very
[8:15] well. So let's go over what the
[8:17] purpose of a drill is in swimming.
[8:19] It's to breakdown part of the swim stroke.
[8:22] So breakdown part of the skill elements of it and isolate that
[8:26] skill element so that when you go back to swimming full stroke,
[8:31] you've got an idea of how that skill element feels and how to
[8:35] embed it into your stroke. So I'll give you an example
[8:38] here. If we use something that we'll
[8:40] call the fist drill, if you just make your open palm into a fist
[8:44] as if you're about to hit something, and then you open it
[8:47] back up again and you look at your open palm and then you
[8:50] close it back into a fist again, you can immediately see, even
[8:53] without trying the fist drill. If I asked you to swim down the
[8:56] pool with two fists instead of two open palms, the size of that
[9:01] paddle has been massively reduced.
[9:03] And the effect it's going to have on you is you're not going
[9:05] to be able to feel the water very well on your palm, if at
[9:09] all. So it's going to do 2 things.
[9:11] It's going to make you much more aware of how the water feels on
[9:14] your forearm, and it's going to make you realise that you can
[9:17] use your entire forearm as a paddle as well as just your
[9:20] hand. And if you now look again at the
[9:22] size of that palm against the size of your forearm, you'll
[9:26] notice that the palm is probably from palm to fingertips.
[9:31] It's probably half the length of your forearm.
[9:34] So if you're only swimming using your palm as a paddle, rather
[9:38] than using from your elbow to the tip as your finger as a
[9:40] paddle, you can immediately see that your paddle is 1/3 of the
[9:45] size that it could be. And more paddle means more to
[9:48] pull against means essentially you're going to be able to get
[9:52] more distance through the water with each stroke.
[9:55] So learning to use your forearm as a paddle as well as just your
[9:59] palm can be really, really valuable.
[10:01] But it's counter intuitive. If I was to say to you, you
[10:04] know, go and try this and, and please do go and try the fist
[10:07] drill in the water. It feels horrible when you first
[10:09] get in the water because the thing that you know, IE how
[10:13] water feels on your palm, that gets taken away completely.
[10:17] So swimming the fist drill the first time feels absolutely
[10:21] horrible and awful and slow and uncoordinated.
[10:24] But quite quickly you learn that what you've got to do is kind of
[10:28] keep your elbow up towards the surface of the water, kind of
[10:31] leverage your fist down towards the bottom of the pool, kind of
[10:35] try and pull against the area of forearm.
[10:37] And then when you go back to swimming front crawl, you'll
[10:41] find that that started to feel a little bit more natural and
[10:44] you'll notice that you can try and keep that feeling of your
[10:48] forearm pulling against the water in your full stroke.
[10:52] Then you go back to swimming with the fist again and slowly
[10:55] it starts to get embedded how it feels swimming the fist drill.
[10:59] You learn that you can make progress and after a a
[11:03] relatively short period of time, you'll find you can actually
[11:06] swim the fist drill feeling almost as comfortable and
[11:09] confident as you can swimming normal funk crawl.
[11:11] It's going to take a little while to practise the fist drill
[11:14] to get to that point, but my more experienced swimmers, there
[11:17] won't be a massive drop off in speed between them swimming fist
[11:20] drill and them swimming their normal stroke.
[11:23] And that's because in the normal stroke they've learned to get
[11:25] that early vertical forearm to get that forearm as part of
[11:29] their paddle. So taking the relatively small,
[11:32] you know, fingers away from the palm doesn't have a massive
[11:35] effect on how much they can pull with.
[11:38] So the drills that we will give to athletes within the training
[11:43] plans, we've got about 6:00 or 8:00 that we rotate through.
[11:46] Each one is there for a specific reason.
[11:50] Each one is going to make, frankly, it's going to make
[11:52] swimming feel horrible in a different way.
[11:54] And then when you go back to swimming normally, you'll feel
[11:57] normal again. And then when you go back to
[11:59] swimming the drill, it'll feel awful again.
[12:01] And the whole point of this is the thing that feels awful when
[12:05] the first time you do it gradually feels less awful the
[12:08] more times you try it. And it's because your body gets
[12:11] used to it and you start to learn the sensation of, for
[12:15] example, pulling with your entire forearm instead of just
[12:18] pulling with your hand. OK, but the key to accept with
[12:22] swimming is you can't think your way to being a better swimmer.
[12:26] If you see video of yourself and you see that, for example, you
[12:30] might be a really common stroke flaw is people whose legs spread
[12:35] wide apart when they go to breathe and they know that
[12:40] they're doing this. They can't necessarily feel
[12:43] they're doing it, but when they see it on video, they know that
[12:45] they're doing it. But when they think about it and
[12:47] try and correct it, it doesn't correct it.
[12:50] They might think to themselves, well, my legs are spreading
[12:53] apart. There must be something to do
[12:55] with my kick. I should try to kick harder or I
[12:57] should try to do some kick drills that'll correct it.
[12:59] It doesn't correct it. And, and honestly, the reason
[13:02] for that is what's actually for those of you who do have the
[13:05] stroke floor, the reason that 99% of the time people's legs
[13:09] spread apart as they go to breathe is actually that the
[13:12] hand out in front of the stroke is crossing over the centre
[13:15] line. The body is going off balance
[13:17] and the legs spread apart to give you the balance that you
[13:19] need to stop you rolling all the way over onto your back.
[13:22] So the way to correct that is actually to stop that hand
[13:25] crossing over the centre line at the front that stops the legs
[13:29] doing that entirely at the back straight away.
[13:32] So the fix isn't necessarily the thing that you think it is, and
[13:35] it definitely isn't to think about fixing the the problem.
[13:40] The drills and practising the drills will embeds those new, if
[13:44] you like those sort of motor movements, they'll embed that
[13:48] into your stroke. And as you embed the correct
[13:50] things, the the flaws that created as a by product of these
[13:56] things that you need to fix, they will go away naturally on
[13:59] their own. So for our athletes, we've got
[14:02] the six or eight drills. We'll give you different ones in
[14:05] different swim sets for you to try.
[14:07] Expect them to feel terrible and awful when you first try them.
[14:10] Stick with them and know that over time they're going to
[14:13] create the kind of changes that you're going to need.
[14:19] Now I'm going to I'm going to talk through some drills at this
[14:21] point that I think are going to be really useful for the
[14:23] beginner swimmer. I've got 5 written down on my
[14:26] list here. The first is sink downs.
[14:29] You can go and Google this if you don't know what it is.
[14:31] It's essentially being in the shallow end of the pool and
[14:34] practising blowing all of the air out of your lungs.
[14:38] And as the air goes out of your lungs, your body will sink down
[14:40] to the bottom of the pool. You'll then put your feet on the
[14:43] bottom. You'll push yourself back to the
[14:44] surface, reset, do that again. That's why it's important to do
[14:48] this in the shallow end. You want to be doing it
[14:50] essentially in an area where you know you're not afraid of
[14:52] sinking down. If you try in the deep end, it
[14:55] can cause some anxiety and occasionally some panic in
[14:58] people. So the sink down drill is a
[15:00] great one for learning the sensation of blowing all of the
[15:04] air out of your lungs all in one go, how that feels, blowing air
[15:08] out actually into the water and then learning that your body
[15:12] loses buoyancy as you do that. Now the reason it's important to
[15:16] blow air out into the water is that a really common flow with
[15:19] beginner swimmers is they turn their head to breathe.
[15:22] They haven't blown air out into the water.
[15:25] And so as their face turns sideways and and sort of lifts
[15:30] out of the water, they'll try to really quickly blow out and then
[15:34] breathe in at the same time as their faces turn toward the
[15:37] wall. Now, obviously that's not what
[15:41] we want. What we want is you doing a
[15:42] long, smooth exhalation through both your nose and mouth
[15:45] together into the water as your face is in the water.
[15:49] And then as you turn your head to breathe, you can just inhale
[15:52] and use all that time when your mouth is out of the water to
[15:55] breathe in through your mouth. The next drill I would encourage
[15:58] you to try is the bubble bubble breathe drill.
[16:01] This simply involves saying the word bubble bubble and then
[16:06] turning your head to breathe. It's really good for people who
[16:09] are struggling to breathe out underwater because that the
[16:12] saying of a word and as you say, bubble, obviously air will be
[16:16] expelled from your lungs. At the same time.
[16:18] The saying of the word is a really good cue that it takes
[16:23] your mind away from the fact you're meant to be blowing air
[16:24] out. Essentially your mind gets
[16:26] tricked into saying a word and air comes out as a byproduct.
[16:30] So that's a great one for people who are struggling to breathe.
[16:34] The third one I would have somebody do is the pushing glide
[16:37] drill. And you'll have, you've done
[16:38] this when you were a kid, probably in swimming lessons at
[16:40] school. No matter how good or bad your
[16:43] experience of school swimming lessons was, the pushing glide
[16:46] was one that we got taught quite a lot.
[16:48] And that essentially means as you're setting off on every
[16:51] length, you want to get as much free speed off the wall as you
[16:54] can. So you're going to push with
[16:55] both feet against the wall, you're going to push your arms
[16:58] out in front of you. You're going to make yourself
[17:00] long and straight like an arrow. Ideally, put one hand on top of
[17:04] the other, pressure biceps against your ears, make yourself
[17:07] long and smooth and push and glide off the wall and try and
[17:11] get 5 or 6 metres down the pool without taking a stroke.
[17:15] And the reason that this is important and interestingly, not
[17:19] everybody agrees with this and there are some triathlon coaches
[17:23] out there who advocate swimming without touching the wall at
[17:26] all. I just don't agree with that.
[17:28] And I'm not going to argue with people.
[17:30] They've got their opinions about what they want to do.
[17:32] But this is how I'm going to coach swimming.
[17:34] The push and glide is the point in each length when you are
[17:37] going to be going the fastest. So it's a great chance for your
[17:41] body to learn the sensation of water moving over you really
[17:45] quickly. Added to that, because you're
[17:47] moving really quickly as you break out into your first
[17:50] stroke, if you turn your head to breathe because you're going
[17:54] quickly, there's going to be more of a bow wave there to
[17:57] breathe into then there will be at the point when you're usually
[18:00] swimming, especially for a beginner swimmer.
[18:02] So the big pushing glide off the wall and then the first stroke
[18:06] you take, turn your head as your hand comes down past your face
[18:12] and you'll find it's a little bit easier to breathe.
[18:14] There's going to be a bit more of a pocket of air there next to
[18:17] your head. The next one I've already talked
[18:19] about is the fist drill. You can go and have a look at
[18:21] that on YouTube. It's a great way for learning to
[18:25] get your body to grip against the water and have something
[18:27] really solid to pull against and to keep your elbow really high
[18:31] underneath the water. Basically use your entire
[18:34] forearm and palm as a paddle. And the last drill I'd have
[18:38] people doing here that's really useful.
[18:41] And I'll add this in, in the the sort of the later sessions.
[18:43] We won't have a couple of weeks for swimming under our belt
[18:45] before we try. This is either the six 5-6 or
[18:49] the 636 drill. Now this involves essentially
[18:53] balancing on your side, doing 6 kicks, doing either three or
[18:58] five strokes, and then balancing on the other side with your lead
[19:02] arm extended and doing 5 or 6 kicks.
[19:05] You can use little fins to do this with, but the aim of it,
[19:08] it's not a kick drill. It's not even really a breathing
[19:11] drill. It's a learning to balance on
[19:13] your side with your body turned 45 to 60° to the horizontal
[19:19] because that's the position we want you to be in A lot of the
[19:22] time. We want you to be twisted 45 to
[19:25] 60° one way or the other. So there's a list of all the
[19:28] drills, our athletes who are coached by Team Oxygen Addict,
[19:32] you can go to our private athlete community under Swim
[19:35] Resources. We've got links to all of those
[19:37] videos there. There's links to the videos from
[19:40] each of your swim sessions in Training Peaks as well.
[19:42] You can click through to them if you're not sure how to do them.
[19:45] And there's descriptions of how to do them all and the purpose
[19:48] of them within our private athlete community as well.
[19:52] So I'd encourage going away and looking at all of those things.
[19:56] OK, tip #4 really simple on this one.
[19:59] A pool boy and or buoyancy shorts will help you in the
[20:03] short term feel more comfortable in the water.
[20:05] Now I don't think it's a long term fix.
[20:08] I don't want athletes to learn to become reliant on it.
[20:11] But often in the early days of learning to swim, having a pool
[20:14] boy, which is like a float that goes between your legs can be
[20:17] really, really valuable because it lifts your bum up.
[20:20] It essentially gives you a bit more float and it makes swimming
[20:22] feel a little bit easier. Buoyancy shorts are essentially
[20:26] just like swimming trunks. But they're made of neoprene,
[20:28] which again have a bit of buoyancy in.
[20:30] So they're not quite as buoyant as a poor boy, but they're
[20:33] obviously you feel a lot more like you're swimming when you're
[20:36] wearing them than you do when you're trying to squeeze out a
[20:38] float between your legs. And the reason I like both of
[20:41] these options for beginner swimmers is it's going to give
[20:44] you that sensation of being a little bit more floaty.
[20:47] Now, as we get further into your training plan, we'll gradually
[20:50] remove these. We'll have you do some lengths
[20:53] with them and some lengths without them, and eventually
[20:55] we'll move to the point where you can do all your swimming
[20:57] without needing them. I'm not a big fan of people
[21:00] using them all the time just because I think the more you can
[21:05] be aware of your body position in the water and the more you
[21:08] can learn to correct it, the better that's going to be for
[21:11] you as a long term swimmer. So those things are really
[21:13] useful in the early days. Tip #5 is expect swimming to be
[21:19] considerably more tiring than you might think it's going to be
[21:23] in the early days. So 15 or 20 minutes of swimming
[21:27] in the early days, focusing on the things that you need to do,
[21:30] it might not even feel as though you've done very much by actual
[21:33] way of exercise, but expect to feel quite tired afterwards.
[21:38] You get an unusual, initially unusual, all over body tiredness
[21:43] after swimming and you'll sleep really well after it.
[21:47] So expect it to be tiring more so than you'd feel after a
[21:51] comparable 20 minute effort on the bike or 20 minute effort of
[21:56] running, for example. I'm just going to interject here
[21:59] for a quick word for our sponsors over at Precision Fuel
[22:02] and Hydration. If you are looking to get into
[22:06] your first 70.3 RMN this year, what you're going to find is
[22:10] that planning and practising, taking in the right amount of
[22:13] carbohydrates, electrolytes and fluid is going to be as
[22:17] important to your training as getting the training done and as
[22:21] important to your race day success as having got the
[22:24] training done. Iron Man especially is an energy
[22:27] limited event and to a certain extent an electrolyte limited
[22:31] event and fluid limited event much more so than it is a
[22:35] fitness limited event. And what I mean by that is you
[22:38] can do a half marathon just on the fuel that you had for
[22:41] breakfast. You can mostly, most of you can
[22:43] do a marathon just on the fuel you had for breakfast.
[22:45] You don't really need to take a gel when you step up to half
[22:48] Iron Man. When you step up to full Iron
[22:50] Man, you have to get used to fueling the correct amount per
[22:54] hour of each of those three things I've talked about.
[22:57] A precision fuel and hydration. Have a fuel and hydration
[23:00] planning tool on their website. It's free to use.
[23:03] You end up with a personalised strategy for training and then
[23:06] for your race. It helps you understand your own
[23:08] carbohydrate, electrolytes and fluid needs.
[23:12] And therefore you can have a little plan that says right.
[23:14] This week I'm going to try taking 30 grammes of
[23:17] carbohydrates an hour, then 40 grammes of carbohydrates an
[23:20] hour. I'm going to have 1000
[23:21] milligrammes of sodium in my water bottle this week.
[23:24] I'm going to try 500 milligrammes of fluid per hour.
[23:28] And you can practise these over time.
[23:30] It's trainable over time so you can learn to take in more
[23:34] energy, to digest more energy to digest and take in more fluid
[23:39] across time, which is obviously going to be beneficial,
[23:42] especially if you're racing on a hot day.
[23:43] You can even book a free 1 to one video consultation with
[23:47] Precision Fuel and Hydrations Athlete Support team links in
[23:50] the show notes to go straight through.
[23:52] And remember, if you do go on to make a purchase, you can, you
[23:54] can use the code Oxygen Addict 2025.
[23:57] That'll get you 15% off your first order.
[24:00] All right, tip number six, get a swim video analysis done.
[24:05] Now you don't have to necessarily go and have a
[24:08] professional one done and pay hundreds of pounds just getting
[24:11] a friend or one of the lifeguards at the pool.
[24:13] I'm going to be clear here and get permission to take a video
[24:18] clip. If you're swimming at the pool
[24:19] you'll need to ask either the lifeguard or the managers
[24:21] permission. Usually you'll find that pools
[24:23] are totally fine with this. Usually they'll say the
[24:26] lifeguard can do it for you and all you need is 25 metres filmed
[24:30] on your own phone if you swimming for you to look at
[24:32] afterwards and you can see what's going on with your
[24:36] stroke. You can then send it into your
[24:38] coaches to have a look at to get some feedback on what's going on
[24:40] with your stroke. So our athletes, those little
[24:42] short video clips are really useful for us to get a really
[24:45] quick overview of how you're swimming and for us to give you
[24:48] pointers on which drill we want you to do next.
[24:50] For those of you who don't have access to us, my advice is to go
[24:53] and find a swim club or a Tri club.
[24:56] Most Tri clubs in the UK, all coaches have got to be British
[24:59] triathlon trained. They're good at doing swim
[25:02] analysis at a basic level, they're good at giving you
[25:04] feedback at a basic level. They might even be able to film
[25:07] you with your own phone so you can see what you're doing and
[25:09] get a little bit of analysis there.
[25:11] But I think seeing yourself on video can be really revealing.
[25:15] It'll show you what you're doing because most of the time you
[25:18] know, you'll know what a good swimmer looks like.
[25:20] And you can compare yourself to that and think, I didn't realise
[25:23] I was raising my head like that, or I didn't realise that my legs
[25:28] were kicking out of the water behind me, you know, with my
[25:30] feet coming up. Some of the floors are really,
[25:33] really obvious. Tip #7 You're going to need to
[25:39] commit to 2 and ideally 3 swim sessions weekly initially.
[25:44] They don't have to be long. They don't have to be an hour
[25:46] each initially. If you got in 3 * 15 minutes,
[25:49] that's better than doing one session of 45 minutes because
[25:52] it's frequency of time in the water that's going to help you
[25:55] improve. We're going to focus on
[25:57] technique in your swimming rather than swimming for fitness
[26:00] or swimming hard. Your fitness is going to
[26:03] increase as a byproduct of practising good technique.
[26:06] If you try and swim hard in the early days, you're just going to
[26:09] embed more technique into your swim stroke.
[26:12] So again, we go back, we break everything down into 25 metre
[26:15] repeats. After each 25 metre repeat we're
[26:18] going to have a rest. Ideally the next 25 is going to
[26:21] be some kind of prescribed drill that's going to help you
[26:24] improve. Tip #8 Your endurance is going
[26:29] to build through doing repeated short steady intervals, not by
[26:35] doing continuous swims. So it's different here to
[26:38] running and cycling. You're not going to go out and
[26:40] do a a steady state long swim like you would do a steady state
[26:44] long bike ride at the weekend. We're going to build you up to
[26:47] the point where you can ideally do repeated 50s or repeated
[26:52] hundreds on a short recovery and that's going to be how your
[26:56] endurance is going to build. So again, give yourself
[26:58] permission here. You don't have to think to
[27:00] yourself all the time. I'm never going to be able to
[27:02] swim 1900 metres without stopping.
[27:04] You don't need to do that right now.
[27:06] Frankly, you don't need to do it until a couple of weeks before
[27:08] race day. Your endurance will be building
[27:11] as a byproduct of embedding the good technique as you train.
[27:15] Every swim session you do is going to be helping improve your
[27:17] endurance. The key thing is to work on
[27:20] improving your technique and know that fitness is improving
[27:23] as a byproduct. Tip #9 is let's have you try
[27:28] bilateral breathing from the beginning.
[27:31] That simply means we want you to be able to breathe on both
[27:33] sides. It's going to have two effects
[27:35] #1 is going to even out your stroke.
[27:38] So it's going to take away any potential one sided stroke flaws
[27:41] #2 It means on race day, you've got the choice to breathe on
[27:44] either side and feel equally comfortable.
[27:47] If, for example, there are waves and chop on the water blowing in
[27:51] from One Direction, if the sun is rising on one side of you
[27:54] from One Direction. If you need to look around you
[27:56] and get a sense of where the swimmers are, that's really,
[28:00] really good if you can breathe bilaterally.
[28:02] So it's well worth starting to learn that right from your first
[28:05] session. And tip #10 and I think this is
[28:08] the most important one to leave you with is keep the faith, keep
[28:13] your swimming training in the day.
[28:15] Keep your little diary about how you felt and what you did.
[28:17] So you'll see that you've got a record overtime if you're
[28:20] improving. But you don't have to be able to
[28:23] swim the race day distance right now, today, in week 1.
[28:27] You just have to do the little swim set in front of you today.
[28:31] And you just have to keep a record that shows to yourself
[28:33] and to your brain that you are making progress.
[28:36] If you commit to doing those two to three or ideally 3 swims a
[28:40] week, you will inevitably make progress.
[28:43] There's no question. It's guaranteed you'll improve
[28:45] across time. And eventually those 20 fives
[28:49] are going to turn into 50s and the 50s will turn into hundreds
[28:52] and the hundreds will turn into 10 by 115, by 120, by 100.
[28:57] All of that endurance and fitness will come as a byproduct
[29:01] of you practising good technique in the early days.
[29:04] So keep the faith, don't worry, commit to the process and that
[29:09] will get you there in the end. So our athletes that we coach,
[29:13] if this has raised issues for you and you want to talk
[29:15] anything through, you want to get a short video clip made and
[29:17] send it through to us, contact us via your private coaching
[29:20] area in our athlete community app.
[29:22] The athletes who are not coached by us.
[29:24] I hope this has given you a really solid foundation here for
[29:27] how you can go from where you are right now as as basically a
[29:31] a new to swimmer or a non swimmer and see a road map there
[29:35] to how you can improve across 6 to 9 months and be able to do a
[29:38] 70.3 or even Iron Man by the end of this season.
[29:42] Hope it's really helped you all. If it has again I'd really
[29:45] appreciate it if you hit subscribe on Apple podcasts or
[29:49] Spotify or even if you go to YouTube and subscribe there.
[29:53] Really helps us out. If you watch the video on the
[29:55] day it comes out, it helps YouTube show it to more people.
[29:58] So to wrap things up, here are some discount codes and deals
[30:01] for you over at precisionfuelandhydration.com.
[30:03] You can use the code Oxygen Addict 2025 for 15% of your
[30:07] first electrolyte order. And if you're interested in
[30:10] finding out about more about being coached by us, head over
[30:13] to teamoxygenate.com. I think we've got the most
[30:16] comprehensive triathlon coaching programme specifically designed
[30:19] for busy age groupers. If you're looking for coaching
[30:22] frame on a 70.3 triathlon this year, we've currently got a
[30:26] special offer on of a season long membership at a massive
[30:30] saving compared to our monthly coaching price and it's even a
[30:33] massive saving compared to our usual annual coaching deal.
[30:37] So it's the best deal we've ever done.
[30:39] There's you know, I'm not just saying this, there isn't a
[30:42] better time to sign up from a financial point of view if
[30:45] you're looking to get coaching for this year.
[30:46] So there's a link in the show notes, Click that and you can
[30:49] book a call with me or one of our team.
[30:51] We'll have a chat through with you about you and how we can
[30:54] best help you out and we'll see if you'd be a good fit for
[30:56] working with us. So remember guys, there's links
[30:58] in the show notes so you don't have to remember them.
[31:01] Until next week. Have a great safe training and
[31:03] racing week. I'm coach Rob Wilby and you've
[31:06] been listening to the Oxygen Addict Triathlon podcast.
[31:09] See ya.

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