# Knock 10-15 Minutes Off Your IRONMAN Swim With These 2 Drills | Ep 517

An episode of [Oxygenaddict Triathlon Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/951501034), 26 Nov 2024, 19 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/ea99f7d8/podcast/play/94980683/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2024-10-26%2F390502490-44100-2-e85359d2c67ec.mp3

TEAM OXYGENADDICT BLACK FRIDAY 2024 OFFER: Save £200 on an annual membership to Team Oxygenaddict! Book an application call before the end of November 2024 to qualify: https://team.oxygenaddict.com/consultation-call/ * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * In this episode, we deep dive into two critical swim drills that can significantly improve age group triathletes' swim times, often leading to a reduction in Ironman swim times by 10+ minutes. The first drill focuses on increasing propulsion by teaching you to develop a greater, more powerful catch. Essentially enabling you to move significantly further through the water with each stroke. The second drill emphasizes the importance of body rotation and how this, rather than the arms alone, are the key to greater efficiency and power in the water * * * * * * * * SPONSORS * * * * * * * * 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 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 another episode of the Oxygen Addict
[0:07] Triathlon Podcast. We're brought to you every week
[0:09] by our sponsors, Precision Fuel and hydration.com.
[0:12] You can personalise your fueling and hydration strategy so you
[0:15] perform your best with 15% off your first order of electrolytes
[0:19] and carbohydrate fuel with the code OXYGEN 24 at
[0:22] precisionfuelandhydration.com. On this episode of the show I
[0:26] want to talk about two ways that you can work towards knocking 10
[0:30] minutes off your Iron Man swim time.
[0:33] It's the two key drills that I see can make the biggest
[0:36] difference to age group triathletes across the board.
[0:40] Before we jump into today's session, I just want to give you
[0:43] some heads up. It's Black Friday this week and
[0:46] a team oxygen addict. We've got a Black Friday deal on
[0:48] that's pretty mind blowing. It's £200 off the annual
[0:52] membership fee for annual coaching.
[0:54] So if you think about getting coaching for next year, all you
[0:57] have to do is go into the show notes here, click the link and
[1:00] book call with us. If you can book your call by
[1:03] Friday of this week, even if you end up having the call next
[1:07] week, we'll honour the discount code.
[1:09] That's £200 off the cost of a price of annual membership of
[1:13] coaching with us. So can't say fairer than that.
[1:17] The link's in the description, all the stuff's on the website
[1:20] about our coaching packages. We can talk you through all of
[1:22] that on the call. But if you've been sitting on
[1:24] the fence and wondering about getting coaching for next year,
[1:27] you won't get a better offer than this this year, certainly.
[1:31] OK, let's jump right into this week's show then.
[1:34] So there are two things that I usually see age group
[1:40] triathletes doing in the water that are holding them back from
[1:44] being the swimmers that they can be.
[1:46] The first thing to accept here is with athletes who've come
[1:49] from a running background or a cycling background, it's usually
[1:53] not your fitness that's holding you back and it's usually not
[1:55] your fitness that's the reason you can't swim as well as you
[1:58] think you should be able to. So if you're a good runner or a
[2:01] good cyclist, you get in the pool and you just can't keep up
[2:05] with people who look like they're much more out of shape
[2:07] than you. There's usually 2 reasons for
[2:10] this. The first one is you're not
[2:12] gripping the water. The second reason is you just
[2:16] haven't got the timing in your stroke.
[2:18] You just haven't got the fluid timing that the swimmers have.
[2:21] And the good news is there are two very easy to apply drills
[2:26] that can make a massive, massive difference.
[2:29] And if you use a headline figure in this video today, knock 10
[2:32] minutes off your Iron Man swim. It is a bit click baity.
[2:36] But I'm not going to apologise for that because I was the head
[2:39] coach of a triathlon club. I stood on pool deck every week
[2:42] for close to 10 years and I saw swimmers regularly make massive
[2:47] jumps forward in their swimming performance when something
[2:50] clicked for them. It isn't a linear progression,
[2:52] it isn't something where you get one or two seconds faster per
[2:56] 100 metres per week like might happen in running or cycling.
[3:00] What happens is something will click, you'll do a drill and
[3:03] it'll change your stroke and immediately you can be faster.
[3:08] So in order to be 10 minutes faster over an Iron Man swim,
[3:11] you're going to need to be 15 seconds per hundred faster.
[3:14] Now, 15 seconds per 100 sounds like a massive, massive amount.
[3:18] And it is. I'm not going to lie to you.
[3:19] It's a big amount. But it's not the same as saying
[3:22] you need to find an extra 30 watts on the bike or you need to
[3:25] go 15 seconds faster per 400 on the track.
[3:28] In running, they are big jumps that are not going to happen in
[3:31] one session. I have seen this happen dozens
[3:35] and dozens and dozens of times with athletes when something
[3:38] clicks, all of a sudden they can access the fitness they've
[3:41] already got. They can apply force to the
[3:43] water in a way they couldn't before, they reduce drag in the
[3:46] way they couldn't before. And the result is you can make a
[3:49] massive step forward in your swimming immediately and within
[3:53] a session. You can leave swimming 1015
[3:55] seconds per hundred faster just in one session.
[3:58] Now, like I said, I know it sounds click baity, but I'm not
[4:01] going to apologise for that because I really want to grab
[4:03] people's attention. You can make these massive
[4:06] differences, but you just have to approach it correctly.
[4:09] So what are these two drills that I've been talking about and
[4:12] what are these two stroke floors?
[4:14] So the first stroke floor we said was you're not applying
[4:18] your force to the water. You're not able to use the
[4:21] fitness that you've got to turn that into propulsion through the
[4:25] water and reduce the drag that you've got enough that you can
[4:28] produce speed through the water. So the first drill is directly
[4:33] targeting how much force you can produce going through the water.
[4:37] That's all it's aimed at. It's not going to change your
[4:39] body position in the water. It's not going to reduce your
[4:41] drag. It's just going to let you pull
[4:44] harder against the water and produce more force.
[4:46] And it's a very, very simple drill.
[4:48] All I'm going to have you do is I'm going to have you take your
[4:51] open palms that you would usually swim with, and we're
[4:54] going to close them up and we're going to wrap the thumbs under
[4:56] and make a fist with them. And you're going to try and swim
[4:59] a length with your arms like this.
[5:02] So just normal front crawl stroke, just as you usually
[5:04] would do. But instead of having the palms
[5:06] open, we're going to have them closed into a fist.
[5:09] Now the thing that this is going to do is it's going to take away
[5:13] your ability to feel the water in the centre of your palm.
[5:17] Now, kids who swam as kids, they develop water sensors all over
[5:21] their body, all over their forearms, their arms, their
[5:24] shoulders, their chest, their entire body's got thousands of
[5:27] water sensors that's giving them feedback about how hard they're
[5:30] pulling, whether they're producing drag, what the body
[5:33] position is like. And if you've learnt to swim as
[5:35] an adult or you don't swim very much, you haven't got thousands
[5:38] of sensors like this, you've perhaps only got 2 and they're
[5:41] usually just going to be in the centre of your palms.
[5:44] So if you take those away, all of a sudden you're consciously
[5:47] going to have to learn to connect with more parts of your
[5:49] body and learn to feel the water in different places.
[5:53] Now, if we were to look at a swimmer underwater, what we'd
[5:57] usually see, she's going to slide myself back here.
[6:01] What we'd usually see is our hand goes into the water right
[6:04] in front of our stroke. And if we're a good swimmer,
[6:07] we'll have fingertips here below the wrist, we'll have wrist
[6:09] below the elbow. That's the position we're going
[6:12] to set up our catch from. Now, if we were looking at Lucy
[6:14] Charles Barkley, as she goes into her catch and pulls
[6:18] through, what you're going to see is that entire forearm ends
[6:23] up almost vertical. And that is the length of paddle
[6:27] that a good swimmer is going to have to pull through.
[6:30] Now, I can already start to feel this in my shoulder.
[6:32] If you try and copy me as I'm doing this, you'll see we end up
[6:35] in what feels like quite an unnatural position.
[6:38] Our elbow is quite high under the water, higher than the
[6:41] wrist, wrist higher than the fingertips.
[6:44] And as we go to catch and pull, we can then access all of this
[6:48] forearm. Now, for most adult swimmers or
[6:51] adults who learn to swim, and what we find is this actually
[6:56] feels difficult. And because it feels difficult,
[6:59] we don't like to do it. We want to make it feel easier.
[7:02] So our elbow will drop. That's immediately taking the
[7:05] pressure off my shoulder. It feels better.
[7:07] And lots of swimmers we'll see under the water pull through in
[7:10] this kind of motion. So the arm will go in, it'll go
[7:13] down, and we'll pull through like this.
[7:16] And again, if you saw a video of that and you're not Transfrim
[7:18] cups, you might think there's not a lot wrong with it.
[7:21] But actually the whole fact that we're not engaging, then the
[7:25] back muscles that can pull mean we're not going to get power
[7:28] into the water. And even with some athletes,
[7:30] what we see is the handle go in and the elbow will really drop
[7:34] and they'll pull back through the water in this kind of
[7:36] position. The more that slides back
[7:40] through the water, the faster you can slide it back.
[7:43] So the better it's going to feel and the worse it's going to be.
[7:46] So that's one of my takeaways here.
[7:48] It's to remember that if it feels hard when you make these
[7:51] changes, that's probably a really good thing.
[7:54] And if it feels easy, that's probably not a good thing.
[7:58] If you can keep the elbow high under the water, what you're
[8:02] going to find is you can then access your grip onto the water
[8:06] and you can then pull against that water because you've got
[8:09] all of this length of forearm of fingertips to pull against.
[8:12] OK, I'm going to slide this over.
[8:14] We're going to have a look on YouTube at a swim video of of a
[8:18] really good example of some underwater positioning here.
[8:21] So press play on this, This is a really good swimmer.
[8:27] And to give you some context, he'll be swimming about 420 per
[8:32] 400 metres here. What we'll see under the water.
[8:35] There we go. There's that position we talked
[8:37] about, fingertips lower than wrist, wrist lower than elbow.
[8:40] And as he goes into the catch and pull through position, we
[8:43] can see we've got this entire forearm all the way down to the
[8:49] fingertips to pull against. Again, it comes over this way
[8:53] and we're locked into this position before we even try and
[8:57] pull through. So that's an example of what a
[9:01] really good swimmer will look like under the water.
[9:04] As I said, most of us wouldn't look nothing like that.
[9:06] Our arms will be going through straight or we'll even be
[9:09] slipping backwards with our elbows.
[9:11] In order to initiate this drill into training, all I'd suggest
[9:14] doing is initially 25 metres of fist drill, 25 metres swimming
[9:19] back and focus on trying to hold on to the feeling of using your
[9:24] forearm as a paddle that you felt when you were doing the
[9:27] first drill as you're swimming back down the pool.
[9:30] So 25 metres of fist feel for how the water feels on your
[9:34] forearm, 25 metres of full stroke on the way back feel
[9:38] again, try to keep the feeling of that water being caught on
[9:41] your forearm and using all of that as a paddle and that will
[9:44] really move your swimming forwards in terms of producing
[9:48] propulsion through the water. Now this drill tends to be best
[9:52] for athletes who are are not particularly strong or are
[9:56] lacking a little bit of strength.
[9:58] Athletes whose personalities are perhaps a little bit shy or a
[10:01] little bit timid. They tend to be swimming the
[10:04] same sort of way as the personality, be a little bit shy
[10:06] and timid and not apply force to the water.
[10:09] So if you're a smaller athlete, a less powerful athlete, if
[10:13] you're an athlete who perhaps lacks a little bit of
[10:16] self-confidence or isn't very outgoing, the chances are this
[10:20] drill will work really well for you in terms of helping you
[10:24] start produce more power onto the water.
[10:27] OK, second drill we're going to talk about.
[10:30] This drill is entirely about teaching you to swim with your
[10:35] entire torso rather than just swimming with your arms.
[10:39] And I think the way we were taught to swim as kids at school
[10:43] has got a lot to answer for here.
[10:44] I watch my son being taught to swim on pool deck, and the
[10:47] swimming teacher was a very nice person, but used to do very,
[10:51] very poor demonstrations to the kids of how to swim from crawl
[10:54] because they would stand in front of the kids and they would
[10:56] do this. And the kids would then go and
[10:59] copy them and swim exactly like this.
[11:01] Their body would be flat in the water.
[11:02] There'd be no rotation at the shoulders, there'd be no
[11:05] rotation at the hips. They would just use their arms.
[11:08] So the kids would copy what they saw.
[11:10] And most of us had the same experience, perhaps didn't have
[11:13] very skilled teachers. And so we thought that it was
[11:16] our arms moving through the water.
[11:18] That's the thing that moves us through.
[11:19] And it's not the thing that moves us through.
[11:21] The water is a rotation of our hips, our shoulders, and our arm
[11:27] is just an extension of this at the end that we can use to lever
[11:30] against and snap against to twist our body through the
[11:34] water. So the second drill we're going
[11:37] to talk about is the 011 fall drill, or sometimes you'll hear
[11:42] it called the waltz drill or sometimes you'll hear it called
[11:45] the unco drill. We're going to break swimming
[11:47] down. We're going to practise swimming
[11:49] with one arm, we're going to practise swimming with the other
[11:52] arm, and we're also going to practise swimming with no arms
[11:55] at all. And that's where we're going to
[11:57] join this video. So if we have a look at our
[12:01] athlete again here, this is what really good swimmers look like.
[12:07] If you ask them to swim a length, just kicking without
[12:11] using their arms. They don't lie flat in the
[12:13] water. They twist their body from side
[12:16] to side and we can see we've got a greater than 45° rotation out
[12:21] almost all the way through to 90°, a really massive rotation.
[12:26] The hips go, the shoulders follow, and it's initiated the
[12:31] entire, the entirety of the stroke is initiated by the kick
[12:35] producing A twist at the hips, the hips leading the shoulders
[12:39] and taking them with. And if we see our good lane one
[12:42] swimmers do this drill, this is how they look.
[12:45] If we ask the majority of club swimmers to do this drill, they
[12:49] end up kicking with their feet and their legs.
[12:52] They're very, very flat in the water and they find it
[12:54] impossible to turn their heads to breathe because the shoulders
[12:58] and the body are in the way. You can see with the swimmer
[13:00] here, it's actually really, really easy for the swimmer to
[13:03] just turn and get breath because the shoulders are already going
[13:06] there each time with them as they do it.
[13:09] So that's the first thing to practise.
[13:11] Now initially, I'm not going to lie to you here, this is going
[13:16] to be a very, very difficult drill.
[13:19] It's hard to swim with no arms to swim rotating.
[13:23] It's very, very hard. So if you need to use fins, do,
[13:25] that's fine. If you need to just do half a
[13:28] length initially or even quarter of a length initially with a big
[13:32] push and glide off the wall, that's fine as well.
[13:34] But you need to find what happens as you kick.
[13:37] Can you find a way to use the kick to initiate that twist in
[13:41] your body? Lots of people can't do that
[13:44] when they start. You can see in our swimmers
[13:46] example there the kick was twisting at the hips.
[13:49] The hips were taking the shoulders with them and that's
[13:52] how our spimmer ended up looking.
[13:55] I'll I'll take us back over to YouTube and have another look at
[13:57] this here. If we skip forward again to the
[14:00] point we were at before when we looked at in fact, let's have a
[14:04] look just here. This would be a good example for
[14:06] you. Once we introduce one arm into
[14:08] the swimming. The swim has got a little bit
[14:12] more to pull against at this point, but what you can see is,
[14:17] so I'll just move this backwards again a little bit.
[14:21] Nothing has massively changed in the swimmer's stroke.
[14:27] We've still got that rotation at the at the hips.
[14:30] We've still got that rotation of the chest.
[14:33] The entire hips and shoulders are moving together.
[14:36] And if we remove that arm that's now helping to swim.
[14:40] If we remove this, put it back at the swimmer's waist, they
[14:43] would still be swimming the same way.
[14:45] There would still be that kick initiated hip snap.
[14:48] There would still be the shoulders following through the
[14:51] hips. So this is the second part of
[14:54] the drill. You're going to introduce one
[14:56] arm into the swimming. You'll notice our swimmer here
[14:59] is still breathing bilaterally. I don't think you need to worry
[15:02] about which side you breathe on during this part of the drill,
[15:05] which either side you can get oxygen.
[15:07] And as you're doing this is absolutely fine.
[15:09] But we want to be focusing on trying to get our shoulder out
[15:13] of the water on the opposite side to the arm that's pulling
[15:17] through. So again, here you'll see this
[15:20] shoulder all the way up out of the water as the other arm comes
[15:25] through. And then if we scroll through to
[15:27] the end, we'll see how this looks.
[15:29] It's a full stroke when we introduce both arms together and
[15:32] you can see we've still got this rotation at the shoulders.
[15:35] Look how low the shoulder is. Look how high that shoulder goes
[15:39] and how low this one is. We've got an entire rotation at
[15:43] the hips that's leading our swimmer through to rotate at the
[15:47] shoulders and the arms are really the end of the kinetic
[15:51] chain that are helping pull the swimmer through the water.
[15:55] The majority of the twist in the hip snap here is happening
[15:59] initiated at the feet. And that's the key here.
[16:03] We want one arm extended, the other hip up in the air, and
[16:08] then as that hip snaps down, the opposite hand pulls back through
[16:11] the water. And that's what's ultimately
[16:13] going to produce the speed and the power that's going to help
[16:17] you swim much, much faster. As a as an aside, this is a
[16:20] swimmer who would swim about about four minutes, 20 per per
[16:27] 400. So a very, very good front of
[16:30] pack swimmer at age group level, possibly even swimming with the
[16:35] pro pro packs when the swimmer was at the very, very best.
[16:38] So again, that drill is difficult.
[16:42] You're going to need some clear space and you're going to need a
[16:44] lane to yourself in order to practise that.
[16:46] But even if you just do a big push and glide off the wall,
[16:49] both hands down by your side and you try to initiate that hip
[16:53] snap and the shoulders moving through as you swim for a couple
[16:57] of strokes off the wall, that will really help put some power
[17:00] into your stroke. And if you combine that drill
[17:03] with the first drill, putting the early vertical forearm power
[17:07] into your stroke, you've absolutely got a winner there
[17:10] for your overall swim stroke. OK.
[17:12] So again, use these two drills in the warm up of every, every
[17:19] swim that you do. I would advise doing sets of 6
[17:24] or 8 or 10 where you do 25 metres of a drill, 25 metres
[17:28] swim back and commit to doing them every time you swim.
[17:32] They are really, really going to make a difference.
[17:34] These are the things that will make the difference, that make
[17:37] you make a jump of 15 seconds below 100 and help you knock
[17:41] that 10 minutes off your Iron Man.
[17:42] Swim time, as importantly as just swimming is, swim fitness
[17:47] is important. There's no getting away from
[17:48] that. But the mechanics of your swim
[17:52] are even more important. And if you can learn to access
[17:56] the rhythm in the swim that we saw there in the swimmer at the
[17:59] end and tie it to the power of the early vertical forearm,
[18:03] you're essentially cutting invisible parachutes off the
[18:06] back of your swim stroke that are currently holding you back.
[18:09] And you'll be able to make massive, massive gains forward.
[18:12] All right, so before we wrap this up, I hope that's helped
[18:14] you go away to the pool and try it.
[18:17] If you're looking for coaching for next year, remember if you
[18:19] book a call with us this week before the 29th of November, you
[18:23] can have £200 off the price at an annual membership.
[18:27] Team Oxygen added coaching so massive, massive saving for you
[18:31] if you're interested. I think it's a total no brainer
[18:34] and if not, I hope this video has helped your swimming improve
[18:37] for next year as well. And a shout out to our sponsors
[18:39] Precision Fuel and Hydration. If you use the code Oxygen 24
[18:43] you'll get 15% off your first order over at
[18:45] precisionfuelandhydration.com. Hope this video has helped guys.
[18:49] We'll see you again soon. Cheers.

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