Training for the Triathlon Swim

"So the triathlon begins with a swim, so we'll start our training sessions with swimming. Anywhere from five to eight hundred yards of warm up is adequate split amongst swimming, kicking and pulling. At least once a week, if not two or three times a week, following the warm up, you should spend some time with drills. Swimming, perhaps more than any other discipline is a technique oriented sport and in a triathlon it is all about proficiency. We say that you can't win the race in the swim, you can only lose a race in the swim. So having an efficient stroke, having good body position counts for a lot and that allows you to save energy for the other two legs. So that's where drills can help you do. Emphasize different pieces of the stroke and different parts of it and train those elements. So the first drills that we'll talk about are rotation drills and there's three basic rotation drills that you should do and the first is just kicking on your side. The second is kicking on your side, taking a stroke and not breathing until your head, or more accurately, your entire body has rotated out of the water. Swimmers have a tendency to turn their head to breathe and that's inaccurate, you should turn your body. You know you're doing it wrong when you really scuff your neck up on your wet suit in the swim, you should be rotating your entire body. So to build that skill this is the drill we do. You rotate the whole body and don't take the stroke to breathe until you get to that side. And the third drill is called the "three four flip flop". You do three strokes of front crawl and then rotate onto your back for four strokes. And by having a different number, you keep rotating to a different side and that helps develop some comfort with the rotation that's necessary to have a smooth efficient stroke. "Front crawl" is really a misnomer. You should be getting off your belly as fast and efficiently as possible and you should be on your side as much as possible. And the rotation is the modern way to look at the freestyle stroke. The other drills we need to talk about are two-stroke drills that are real simple and can make a big difference. The first one helps you get your elbow up and that's the "finger dragger". And the other helps you emphasize your forearm and your rotation and using your lats for pulling and that's swimming with your fists."