How to Workout for the Triathlon Swim

"In your swimming workouts, you should emphasize interval training. Perhaps more than in any other discipline. That's the most effective way to train in the pool. So, blocks of hundreds, two hundreds, pyramids where you build fifties, one hundred, one hundred and fifty, two hundred maybe even up to three hundred and then back down are very effective. Another effective training method, perhaps once a week or once every two weeks is to do a time trial a four hundred, five hundred or eight hundred meters timed to kind of measure progress. The basic guideline for intervals in swim training is to have between two and three work to one rest ratio. So, for example, if I could swim one hundred in one fifteen off the wall and repeat that effort, I could a group of hundreds, say eight by one hundred for a starting work out perhaps building up to as many as fifteen by one hundred on an interval of one forty five. So, I'd have a working time of about one minute, fifteen seconds and I'd have a rest period of about thirty seconds so that's about a two and half to one ratio, so that's about right. As the intervals get longer, if you're two hundreds or three hundreds, which are especially applicable if you're doing half Iron Man distance or longer, the work interval shrinks a bit."