# Become a Faster, More Efficient Swimmer this Winter | Ep 515

An episode of [Oxygenaddict Triathlon Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/951501034), 13 Nov 2024, 22 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/ea99f7d8/podcast/play/94317448/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2024-10-12%2F389686216-44100-2-5fd3515ea3484.mp3

In this episode, the second in our winter training mini-series, we're focusing on swim training. Whether you're coached by us or a solo athlete, we'll walk you through our proven approach to winter swim training. We break down different approaches for three athlete types: competent swimmers, those aiming for podium finishes, and first-timers struggling with the swim. Learn the importance of CSS testing, the role of swim drills, and how to balance technique and endurance sessions. Follow our methodology, just as hundreds of age-group Ironman athletes do every winter, and you'll become a more confident, more efficient and all-round more capable swimmer by race season. * * * * * * * * 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 12 months 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 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. Welcome to the show, everybody.
[0:26] I'm your host, coach Rob Wilby, and every week we bring you an
[0:28] episode of this podcast to help motivate and inspire you.
[0:31] Listen, before we kick this off, there's a couple of things you
[0:33] could do for us. Please, if you like and enjoy
[0:36] this episode, please consider following us on Spotify or Apple
[0:39] Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.
[0:41] And if you're watching on YouTube, please click like and
[0:44] subscribe. It helps the growth of the show.
[0:47] It helps us get shown to more people, that helps us get more
[0:50] athletes into our coaching programme, that helps us keep
[0:52] bringing more content to you. And secondly, if you're looking
[0:55] for help and advice with your Iron Man or 70.3 training,
[0:58] please get in touch. We run our own coaching
[1:01] programme, Team Oxygen Addict. I think it is the most
[1:03] comprehensive programme for busy age groupers.
[1:07] We've helped thousands of athletes over the last 10 years
[1:10] achieve the 70.3 in Iron Man dreams and we'd love to help you
[1:12] too. So please get in touch.
[1:14] Send an e-mail to help@oxygenaddict.com or there's
[1:17] a link in the show notes to book a call with me or the team and
[1:21] we can see how we can best help you out to make next season be
[1:23] the best one ever. OK, on this episode of the show,
[1:27] we're going to be talking through our Iron Man winter
[1:30] training series and we're going to be focusing on the swim this
[1:33] week. So at the end of this episode,
[1:36] what I'm hoping you're going to have is for athletes that are
[1:39] coached by us, you can have a really great overview of our
[1:42] methodology and how we approach swimming during the winter.
[1:46] Aiming for Iron Man or 70.3 next year.
[1:48] For those of you who are not coached by us, for just
[1:51] listeners of the podcast or viewers on YouTube, I wanted to
[1:54] have a really clear idea of how you can best use your time
[1:58] during the winter to ensure that you have the swim that you want
[2:02] to have when it comes to your race day next summertime.
[2:05] And that is really the starting point that I want you to focus
[2:09] in on because there is no one-size-fits-all solution to
[2:13] the question. What kind of swim do you want to
[2:16] have at Iron Man next year? And honestly, the way you
[2:19] approach a swim training during the winter needs to be different
[2:23] and should be different depending on which of the
[2:25] categories you fall into. So let's have a little think
[2:28] through the different kinds of athlete that we have in the
[2:31] world and the different kind of approaches they're going to need
[2:34] to have to their swim training. So first up, we've got the
[2:37] athlete who's already a very competent swimmer.
[2:40] They're already happy with the kind of time they're getting out
[2:42] of the water. They may or may not enjoy
[2:46] swimming a lot. Either is fine.
[2:49] But the key thing here is that when they go to their goal race,
[2:52] they're happy with the kind of time they're going to get out of
[2:55] the water in. So often that means it's
[2:58] athletes who are in the middle of the pack or the front of the
[3:01] middle of the pack and they know that they could put more time
[3:04] into swimming, but they're not necessarily have the time to
[3:08] dedicated to doing that swim training.
[3:10] And especially they don't have the time to dedicated to doing
[3:13] it during the winter. So if that's that group of
[3:15] people, there's one approach to swim training we can have here.
[3:19] Secondly, we've got athletes who want to move up in their swim
[3:23] ability. Might be that you want to get
[3:24] onto the podium in your age group, qualify for the World
[3:27] Championships, win your age group, you dedicated yourself to
[3:32] that process of improving the swim because that's going to
[3:35] have an effect on your overall standings in the race.
[3:38] Again, totally, totally understandable and it's going to
[3:41] need time and dedication to time in the pool during the winter in
[3:45] order to help you achieve that next winter.
[3:47] And and thirdly, the third main group I thought of were athletes
[3:52] who are not from a swimming background, the perhaps first
[3:56] timers at 70.3 or Iron Man and their swim is not their
[4:00] strongest discipline. They're quite a weak swimmer and
[4:02] they're in danger of not meeting the cut off and not even being
[4:06] able to allow to go out onto the onto the bike.
[4:09] During the the event itself, I had a number of emails from
[4:13] athletes, particularly after Ironman Wales this year, where
[4:16] the conditions were were more difficult than usual.
[4:19] There was a big swell running. It was very rough in the water
[4:22] and lots of athletes who thought they were going to make the swim
[4:25] cut off, didn't make the swim cut off.
[4:27] And all of the training that they did went to waste because
[4:31] they weren't allowed to even start that bike section.
[4:35] And I think that's the most difficult category of athlete
[4:38] that you find yourself. And if you're looking at
[4:40] swimming around 2 hours, 2 hours plus in the Ironman, all it
[4:45] takes is for there to be rough water on race day or something
[4:48] untoward to happen, or there to be currents, or for you to even
[4:51] not have a very good swim. You're all of a sudden right up
[4:54] against that two hour 20 cut off and in danger of not being
[4:57] allowed to start the bike leg. Or even if you are somewhere in
[5:01] the middle to the back of the pack and you do make the swim
[5:04] cut off, you're at danger of not making the intermediate bike cut
[5:08] offs along the way. So for those athletes, we're
[5:11] going to need to take an approach that means you're going
[5:14] to improve your swimming all the way through to race day.
[5:18] And that is by necessity going to involve you dedicating more
[5:21] time to training than the athlete who's quite happy with
[5:24] where their swim is and is of no danger of meeting the cut off.
[5:28] So that's the framework I wanted to think about this in.
[5:31] It's down to an individual athlete to decide how much time
[5:35] they're willing to invest in swim training for how much
[5:38] payback they can look to get back from that.
[5:41] So we'll start with a with a blank slate.
[5:43] When I draw up a training plan for a, a standard athlete, an
[5:47] average athlete, let's say when the journal, I'll make this with
[5:50] three swims a week. And I won't expect every athlete
[5:53] to do every swim every week because it's going to depend on
[5:57] which of those categories they fall into.
[5:59] But for the athletes who are worried about making the cut
[6:02] off, for the athletes who need to improve their swims, you need
[6:06] to be aiming to do as many of the swims each week as possible.
[6:10] Because it's as simple as time spent in the water in the
[6:13] correct way is directly going to relate to the improvements that
[6:17] you're going to make. For athletes who are quite
[6:19] comfortable with their swim, who are well inside the cut off, who
[6:22] are not necessarily focused on making big gains in time where
[6:26] you don't have to be swimming three times a week, you could be
[6:28] swimming once a week. Even during the winter phase,
[6:31] you could be swimming less than once a week.
[6:33] You've had examples of groups of athletes over the years who've
[6:37] taken a chunk of time out and away from swimming during the
[6:40] winter, knowing that that swim will come back when they return
[6:43] to swimming. So I don't think it holds true
[6:46] that you have to swim three times a week.
[6:49] You don't have to swim every week, and it's OK to take a
[6:52] chunk off the swim training during the winter if you find
[6:56] yourself in that category where you're confident you've trained
[6:59] for years on the swim and you know you swim will come back.
[7:02] But in general, I would say it's a really good idea if you can
[7:05] make the time to get yourself into the water at least once a
[7:08] week to do your key swim session all the way through the winter.
[7:12] OK, let's talk about training and let's talk about how the
[7:15] training structure is going to look for the week going across
[7:18] winter. And again, this is for athletes
[7:20] aiming at 70.3 and Iron Man next season.
[7:23] So first up, what does a baseline test look like?
[7:27] Baseline test is going to tell us where are swimming's at right
[7:31] now and it's going to allow us to set a set of pace zones that
[7:34] we can then use in different parts of our swim training to
[7:38] swim at specific speeds for a specific purpose.
[7:42] So the swim test we use is the CSS test.
[7:45] It was popularised by Swim Smooth and it essentially
[7:48] involves you doing a 400 metre time trial with a short break to
[7:52] recover and then a 200 metre time trial.
[7:55] You plug the results of those two swims into an online
[7:58] calculator and it will give you your CSS pace.
[8:01] And if you like, you can think of CSS pace as similar to FTP on
[8:05] the bike or similar to threshold on the run.
[8:08] It's the pace that you could probably swim at an erase for
[8:10] about half an hour. So, so that's the kind of area
[8:14] we want to identify. And from there we can then make
[8:18] some some pretty some pretty accurate predictions about how
[8:23] fast you would swim. You're 70.3 or you're Iron Man
[8:27] if you were to do that right now with an appropriate level of
[8:30] swim training. And that'll inform us going
[8:33] forwards. It lets us know who the athletes
[8:34] are who are at danger of meeting or not making the cut off, who
[8:38] the athletes are who are happily in the middle of the pack, who
[8:41] the athletes are who are going to be at the front of the pack
[8:44] and who are going to be looking to lead the swim out in the rage
[8:46] group. So that that's going to give us
[8:49] those results. The CSS test doesn't need to be
[8:52] done more than every eight weeks.
[8:54] It was never a very popular test when I was an on deck swim
[8:57] coach. Athletes didn't traditionally
[8:59] like doing it very often. But it can, with the right
[9:03] mindset, be very rewarding. Because across an 8 week block,
[9:07] if you've dedicated yourself to swim training, it's reasonable
[9:11] to see a jump in your CSS pace or a jump in your 400 metre
[9:15] time, sometimes of as much as up to 30 seconds off your 400 metre
[9:19] time at that eight week block. And if you string a few of those
[9:22] together, then that shows you a really nice improvement across,
[9:27] you know, several blocks of eight weeks of training.
[9:29] And even if you go back, if you listen to our age group
[9:32] interview with Alan from Iron Man Wales from a couple of weeks
[9:36] back, as I'm recording this now, he's got a great story now of
[9:40] how his swim progressed from a 10 minute 400 metre swimmer down
[9:44] close to a 7 minute 400 metre swimmer across a year's worth of
[9:48] training. So again, it's someone who's at
[9:50] danger of not making the cut off all the way down to someone
[9:53] who's comfortably in the middle of the pack and was very
[9:55] comfortable swimming in the rough water of Ironman whales.
[9:58] So it does go to show what's possible for someone who was a
[10:01] complete beginner to swimming, to progress to being a very
[10:05] comfortable and confident Iron Man swimmer across a year's
[10:08] worth of training. But Alan was willing to put the
[10:11] time and the effort in to do that.
[10:13] So if you're willing to do that and put the time and effort in,
[10:16] there's every reason to think with the right coaching and the
[10:19] right training plan, you can make those kind of improvements
[10:21] as well. OK, so we'll get our CSS test
[10:26] done at the start of the block. We won't think about the test
[10:29] again for another 8 weeks until the end of the block.
[10:31] We'll then move forwards into our training plan.
[10:34] So let's talk about the training principles that are going to
[10:37] underpin your training plan for all athletes.
[10:41] There are two things that are going to determine how fast you
[10:43] go in the water. The 1st is how well you can
[10:46] apply force to the water and the second is how much drag you're
[10:50] creating with your particular body shape.
[10:52] Some people have a better body shape in the water than others.
[10:57] Think of it as the analogy of being like boats in the water.
[11:00] Some people are barges. Some people are sleek speed
[11:03] boats. Some of that's genetic.
[11:05] Some people can just move through the water better than
[11:08] others. Some people naturally have a
[11:10] better grip on the water than other people.
[11:13] But if you want to improve swimming, you want to improve
[11:16] one or both of those two things. How you're applying force to the
[11:20] water and the shape that your body is in creating or
[11:25] minimising the drag that you're producing through the water.
[11:28] And that's it. They're the two principles to
[11:30] play with. So our training principles are
[11:32] going to be about increasing the amount of force you apply to the
[11:35] water and making you more streamlined and reducing the
[11:39] amount of drag you're producing as you swim through the water.
[11:42] So how are we going to go about this?
[11:45] We're going to go about it with specific swim drills now within
[11:48] the team. We've got a group of 6 to 8 swim
[11:52] drills that I took originally from my training courses, from
[11:55] various things I've done over the years, from swim smooth
[11:58] courses, from observing other coaches.
[12:01] There are literally thousands of swim drills out there.
[12:04] As anyone will know who's been to swim swim classes, I've
[12:08] whittled those down to about 8 that I use that I think are the
[12:12] most effective and make the biggest changes to an athlete's
[12:17] either force production or drag minimisation in the shortest
[12:22] possible time. We we get athletes to cycle
[12:28] through these drills and take note of how they feel and how
[12:33] they are affecting the swim progress that you're making.
[12:36] Now. This is where online coaching is
[12:38] different to coaching people on deck.
[12:41] Standing on deck, I could immediately see an athlete after
[12:45] I don't know how many years of coaching on deck and how many
[12:48] thousands of hours coaching swimming.
[12:50] It became very quick to see that there are a limited number of
[12:55] stroke floors that are either preventing someone applying
[12:58] force to the water or they're making them produce an awful lot
[13:02] of drag behind them in the water.
[13:04] And once you know what those floors are and you know what the
[13:07] drills are to fix them, it is a really simple task of saying to
[13:11] the athlete go away and practise this drill for the next couple
[13:14] of weeks. This is then going to reduce the
[13:16] drag you're making or increase the force producing.
[13:19] You'll be going faster for the same effort through the water.
[13:22] It's not as easy to do that online, but it can still be
[13:25] done. So stage one for our athletes is
[13:28] we'll get athletes to cycle through all these drills knowing
[13:31] that the progression of them is going to make overall
[13:33] improvements. The second thing we can do is we
[13:35] can have a look at videos of athletes.
[13:37] Our athletes can send us video clips.
[13:38] And it's very quick for me then to see which one of these drills
[13:42] is the one that they want to be focusing on for the next couple
[13:44] of weeks on what's going to move them through a plateau.
[13:48] So my advice to you is if you're not coached by us, get yourself
[13:51] to a good club where there's a good swim coach who can see your
[13:54] swimming and who can give you those drills that are going to
[13:57] be able to improve the thing that you need to improve
[14:00] specifically. After we've worked on those
[14:03] specific drills, the next thing we're going to talk about is the
[14:06] actual swim fitness intervals we're going to do.
[14:09] We're going to do a series of interval training at specific
[14:12] paces relative to your CSS that are going to be the right
[14:16] balance of improving your fitness without leaving you too
[14:19] tired afterwards. So you can still do your bike
[14:21] training and your run training. And some of those are going to
[14:25] be at your CSS pace. Some of them are going to be
[14:28] short and much harder than CSS pace.
[14:30] Because what we found over the years is swimming really hard
[14:33] for half a length or a full length is actually a really good
[14:37] drill in and of itself. It's not done because we want
[14:41] you to practise sprinting. It's done because when you move
[14:44] your body quickly through the water, when you do a 12 1/2
[14:47] metre Sprint or a 25 metre Sprint, you have to learn how to
[14:51] grip onto the water really hard. That in itself is a form of
[14:54] drill. So that's going to be the mix of
[14:56] the training principles we're going to, we're going to use.
[14:59] Essentially, it comes down to those two things, applying force
[15:02] to the water more effectively or or drills that are going to
[15:07] minimise the amount of drag that you create going through the
[15:10] water. OK, let's move on to talk about
[15:13] examples of the specific training sessions that we're
[15:16] going to be looking at. So first up, our main key swim
[15:21] of the week during winter is going to be a combination of
[15:23] technique focused, so working on those drills and CSS based sets
[15:29] so you get some practise swimming at threshold.
[15:32] The intervals don't have to be massively long, 50 metres or 100
[15:35] metres, but they are going to help you.
[15:37] Once you're focused on the technique for the first half of
[15:40] your session, they're going to help you improve your overall
[15:42] swim fitness. We're going to have another
[15:44] session of the week that might be entirely technique focused.
[15:48] So it might just be focusing on those drills.
[15:50] And typically what I'll do there is have an athlete do the drill
[15:53] for either half a length or a full length and then swim out
[15:57] the rest of the length or do a full length of drill and swim
[16:01] back for full length. So that's a real technique based
[16:04] session without any particular focus on hard intervals or
[16:08] fitness training. But we go back to first
[16:11] principles. The key things here are applying
[16:13] force to the water and reducing the amount of drag.
[16:16] The technique session is fantastic for that.
[16:19] The third session we'll talk about is your recovery swim.
[16:23] So I'm a really big fan of athletes using recovery swim on
[16:26] their recovery day as long as you are competent enough swimmer
[16:30] that that session doesn't leave you more tired than when you
[16:33] started. So typically for the the front
[16:36] half of a triathlon race, if you're getting out of the water
[16:40] in the front half of the field, you're a fit enough swimmer that
[16:43] you can do a recovery swim and it won't affect you negatively.
[16:47] If you're in the back half of the field or you're chasing the
[16:50] cut off, the recovery swim is probably going to leave you more
[16:53] tired than if you hadn't done it anyway.
[16:56] So if you need to prioritise recovery, you're best off not
[16:59] doing that recovery swim. And the last form of the swim
[17:03] session that we might do is an endurance swim.
[17:05] We'll introduce these more towards the back end of winter
[17:08] and as we move into as we move into the main part of the Seas
[17:11] and the endurance swim will become the main, most important
[17:15] key swim of the week. But we will do some of this
[17:17] during the winter time. So the endurance swim isn't a
[17:20] continuous unbroken swim. We tend to approach it that will
[17:24] swim for 100 metres and take a three to five second break
[17:28] before swimming another 100 metres.
[17:30] And the idea is that that micro break helps your muscles recover
[17:34] and it helps you to be able to swim with really good form and
[17:37] really good technique. For most age group athletes,
[17:41] you're not fit enough yet at this point in the season that a
[17:44] continuous swim is going to do anything other than embed poor
[17:47] technique. So that three to five second
[17:50] break every 100 metres is really, really important to
[17:53] allow you to recover to make sure you're practising good
[17:55] technique. OK, so key session at this time
[17:59] of year in the winter is the combined CSS and technique swim.
[18:03] So it'll typically look like a 5050 split of technique based
[18:08] drills work. And then the other half of the
[18:10] session will be intervals at or around CSS pace.
[18:14] So we're getting half the session learning how to apply
[18:17] force to the water and minimise drag, half the session
[18:20] practising that in a real world, real world swim training set,
[18:25] whilst also trying to swim at your CSS pace.
[18:29] The supporting sessions during this phase are going to be the
[18:32] technique session, the endurance session or the recovery session.
[18:36] And if you only swim once during this phase, it's going to be
[18:39] that combined technique and CSS session.
[18:43] So to wrap this up, the key things to consider, I think with
[18:48] your swim training for the winter are all wrapped up in
[18:51] that first question, How much do you want to and need to improve
[18:55] your swimming during the winter? Because the more you want to and
[18:59] need to improve the swim, the more time you're going to have
[19:02] to dedicate and commit to the swim training.
[19:05] There's going to be a batch of you there who are happy with
[19:08] your swim, for whom the swim is nowhere near as important,
[19:11] especially during the winter phase, as putting your training
[19:15] time and effort into the things that are really going to make a
[19:17] big difference to your overall time next year, IE your two key
[19:22] bike sessions and your key run. So it's really worth considering
[19:26] where you are. You're front of the pack, middle
[19:28] of the pack, back of the pack. Do you want to improve or are
[19:31] you happy with where you are? One last thing to consider is
[19:36] improving your swim fitness is also going to reduce the amount
[19:41] of impact that the swim has on your race.
[19:43] And this is the reason I'd encourage these people who are
[19:46] back of the park or chasing the cut off swimmers to really spend
[19:50] some time focusing on working on your swim this winter.
[19:53] Because the fitter you get in the swim, it's going to have a
[19:56] double positive effect. You'll be out of the water
[19:59] faster so you won't be as tired. But also when you swim fit, the
[20:03] swim doesn't take as much out of you for the bike and the run.
[20:06] So this is double payback there for you.
[20:09] So I hope this has been helpful for you.
[20:11] I hope it's given you some some real good overview into how we
[20:14] approach swim training during winter and how different
[20:18] athletes from different backgrounds can adjust their
[20:21] approach to winter swimming to make it work for them.
[20:24] All right, I hope you enjoyed that episode of the show.
[20:26] To wrap this up, here are some discount codes and deals for you
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[21:14] I think we've got the most comprehensive triathlon coaching
[21:16] programme for busy age groupers. Please check us out.
[21:20] There's a link in the show notes to book a call with us.
[21:23] We can have a chat about you, find out all about your
[21:26] background and what you want to achieve and I'm really confident
[21:28] we can help you get where you want to be.
[21:31] Dead easy link in the show notes or under this video here.
[21:34] You can book straight to our calendar and we can have a chat
[21:37] here. We can best help you out.
[21:39] So remember links in the show notes so you don't have to
[21:42] remember them until next week.

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