Five Ways to Tune Up your Swim This Winter
If you want to swim with greater comfort, efficiency, and speed next year, we’re your huckleberry
by Molly Balfe and Chris Bagg
We get it, winter doesn’t exactly scream “time to get in the pool” to most folks. But if you’re hoping to improve your swim, there really is no better time. Your bike and run volume are likely a bit lower at this point in the year, so you have a little extra bandwidth to make improvements in the water. Swimming is highly technical and big gains can be made with a focused period of swim improvement. Take a few weeks this winter and make swimming your priority using these five approaches.
Take yourself to technique town
Work on swim-specific strength
Increase workout frequency
Practice your pool skills
Get a swim analysis!
Take Yourself to Technique Town
It can be really effective to focus on swim speed and endurance at certain points in the year. However, the faster and stronger you get, the more important it is to have proper form. If you’re being held back by technique-created drag, that will only get magnified when you’re working harder in the water. We recommend that swimmers give themselves between two and six weeks (depending on your swim level) at the beginning of every season to really work on their technique. Drop the speedier intervals for a short time and get to work on drills to address your biggest limiters. In order to do the best work, you need to have the right tools. A basic swim drill kit includes:
Fins - We recommend long-bladed fins for drill work. Their shorter counterparts may be easier to tote around, but they are designed more for speed work than technique improvement. Long-bladed fins provide more propulsion, which allows swimmers to focus on the drill and specific correction they are targeting.
Paddles - There are lots of types of paddles available and they each have a different use. We’re big fans of the Finis Agility Paddles for pull work, since they lack the wrist strap that most paddles rely on to stay attached to the swimmer’s hand. Eliminating this strap requires the swimmer to utilize proper hand entry to avoid losing their paddle in the water (don’t worry, they float). Finis also makes the Freestyler paddle, which is even less stable - in a good way! - and can be extremely helpful to reduce crossover and reinforce good technique.
Pull Buoy - These floaties are used to keep a swimmer’s hips up in the water so they can avoid propulsion from their kick. This can be helpful for some of the more technical drills, like sculling and doggy paddle. Most pools have the common foam option, which will do the trick in a pinch. For longer technique sets, though, a smoother buoy can reduce chafing and are usually much more buoyant.
Work on swim specific strength
Oh, winter! Winter, when an aspiring endurance athlete’s heart turns to heavy metal! Yes, this is your chance to lift stuff and improve your sports. Many endurance athletes are somewhat…allergic to strength training, but it is certainly true with swimming that the greater mobility and force that come with strength training can keep you moving properly and getting faster/more efficient in the water. There are three crucial areas of mobility and two of strength where swimming is concerned:
Upper back/latissimus dorsi. Ah, yes, the vanity muscle of swimming. Ever wonder why professional swimmers have so much, um, “back mass?” It’s because a) they swim a lot but also b) they do a lot of “upper body pull.” Strength movements are generally broken down into upper body pull/push and lower body pull/push. To build your lats you’ll be doing a fair bit of upper body pull: lat pulldowns, rows, and pull-ups will be your jam. Begin with a very doable three sets of 10, where the final rep should remain firmly doable. Note that with pull-ups you will very likely have to start with assisted pull-ups.
Core. Contrary to the popular saying, you certainly CAN shoot a cannon out a canoe, but good luck finding the canoe afterward. Your core need to be strong enough to withstand the very regular rotational forces of swimming. We like dying bug, medball twists, and plank variations to build your anti-rotational strength. If your core can resist rotation, that means it has enough strength to stay in place while you exert force on the water via your arms and legs.
Ankle mobility. If you can’t plantar-flex and dorsi-flex your ankles (point your toes and pull them back towards your shin, with the moving joint in question the primary ankle joint) you will ALWAYS remain on a swim plateau. Being able to point your toes without cramping is crucial to reducing drag as a swimmer. Tight ankles is probably tied for the primary cause of swimmers not making the progress that they would like to make. See here for some exercises that will help keep those ankles moving.
Shoulder and pectoralis minor mobility. In order for your shoulder to move properly, the muscles and tendons of the shoulder need to work properly, AND the pec minor needs to be strong and supple. Why the pec minor, which is on the front (anterior) side of the body? If that small muscle is tight (i.e. WEAK) it will pull your shoulders forward and your spine out of alignment. When you look at good swimmers their upper backs aren’t overly rounded, allowing them to keep their spines in alignment. Doing banded arm pull-aparts, banded arm circles, and our favorite pec minor mobilization (Yowch!) will help keep your shoulders moving the way they are supposed to move.
Thoracic spine mobility. Your body works due to an alternating series of mobile joints and stable joints. Your neck should be stable (seems correct, right?), while your shoulders should be mobile. The shoulder girdle (scapula) needs to be stable. The next “joint” down is the thoracic spine, or the seven or so vertebrae that begin around your bra strap or heart rate monitor strap and move up to the base of the neck. These vertebrae SHOULD be mobile, but given the way we treat this part of our back these joints are often frozen and can result in that rounded upper back (this condition is called “kyphosis” and it is as bad as it sounds) that will make swimming in a straight line nigh on impossible. Keep this part of your back moving with some John Travolta Peanuts (say what?).
Increase workout frequency
We often describe swim skill acquisition as being similar to learning a foreign language. If you don’t immerse yourself in it, you will never become fluent. For swimming, that means increasing the number of times that you touch the water each week. Swim is the shortest leg of most triathlons, so it often gets the least focus once athletes feel sufficiently competent. If you’re only swimming 1-2 times a week, you’re highly unlikely to see much progress. You don’t need to (and probably shouldn’t) add a significant amount of yardage, but adding a few short swim sessions each week can have a big impact on how quickly you progress. In general, adults max out on learning after about half an hour, so try supplementing your regular workouts with a few 20-30 minute technique sessions to give you more opportunities to practice skills and make technique corrections.
Practice your pool skills!
You may not need to do flip turns in the open water, but they can sure make a difference in your pool swimming. And if your pool swimming is better, then your open water swimming will be better. Why? When you deploy open turns, or skipping your flip turns, you’re basically getting a longer break between strokes than you would if you were doing a flip turn. That longer “break” is also a longer break from exerting force on the water, so your intervals will be slower. Slower intervals = suboptimal training, since you could be training with more quality than you are doing at present. So learn how to execute a proper flip turn—it can be really fun! Here are some other crucial skills that lifelong swimmers take for granted but that you should emulate:
Bilateral breathing. You’ll be more balanced and build fewer movement dysfunctions. Many triathletes have shoulder problems because they do not breathe to both sides in the pool.
Understand the pace clock. Lifelong swimmers live their pool lives inside the strange metaphysical space of the clock face, and understanding how they have made a home there can help you, too. Read this article we wrote about how to use the pace clock.
Practice your “breakouts.” What’s a breakout? That’s the portion of each 25 after you push off the wall following the flip turn, right up until you take your first breath of this new length. Add one or two dolphin kicks off the wall. Skip breathing until you take your first stroke. Again, many triathletes say “Pfft, I don’t need to learn that,” but if you begin to behave like a single-sport athlete you will improve in each of the disciplines of triathlon! Be a SWIMMER, not “a triathlete who swims.” It may seem odd but the distinction you make while talking about yourself MATTERS.
Swim some other strokes. What? This advice can sound sacrilegious, but if you can swim butterfly, backstroke, and breaststroke you will be a better, more balanced athlete. A more balanced athlete is one with greater proprioception and understanding of their body. Those two aspects of you as a swimmer can really make for some big improvements, as long as you commit.
get a swim analysis
One of the biggest limiters for most swimmers is their lack of proprioception. The water is an unfamiliar environment, and our human brains don’t do a great job of sifting through the signals that we may be in danger in order to allow us to be truly conscious of how we are moving. In our opinion, there is nothing more helpful than seeing yourself on video and having a coach walk you through your biggest technique issues. Video analyses can cut weeks or even years off your swim progression - schedule one on our website today!
Conclusion
We understand: swimming is rarely a triathlete’s first sport OR the sport they most look forward to in training. We also know that that can change, as long as the athlete puts in the work to improve. By placing an emphasis on technique this winter, you can lift your enjoyment of swimming because you will get better at it. One of the big reasons you might want to avoid the pool is probably because you don’t yet feel as competent as you’d like to be. Well, this winter, instead of continuing to bang your head against the wall of non-improvement, we urge you to a) get a swim analysis so you know what you are doing wrong, b) actually APPLY those lessons to your swimming, c) get yourself into the gym, and d) just swim a little more often! You may surprise yourself as to how much your enjoyment picks up over the winter, resulting in more efficiency and faster times next year.