Hello and welcome back! This is blog 2 in the short series on what to do for your open water/triathlon swim. In this blog we are going to go into detail in certain areas which have been proven to improve swim performance. If you have read the first blog in this series (Blog 1), this blog assumes you have completed your first open water/triathlon swim and are looking to improve your swim time.
Let us “dive” back in!
You may have been swimming for the last few months and noticed that no matter how much effort you have put into your sessions, you are just unable to improve your swim time. I am going to talk to you about planning your swim sessions to prevent any plateaus in your training and to keep reducing that swim time.
If you have not read the first blog than we need to go back and look at the point of “Develop a Plan”. In this point I briefly mention 4 questions you should ask yourself when beginning your swim training. This post will expand these points with some scientific rationale thrown in.
Step 1 – Use the SMART principle to plan.
The SMART principle is a step by step guideline to help you with your goals. Each letter has a particular job which are as follows:
S- Specific. This point is to make your goal as specific as possible (for example I want my 1km swim time to be 12 minutes or I want to improve my Triathlon swim time by 1 minute for my next event). The more specific the better.
M- Measurable. This point is to make sure you can accurately measure your goal. This will be easy as you are comparing the distance you swim to the clock.
A- Attainable. This is potentially the most important point. If you have set an improvement of your swim time of 1 minute but have given yourself 4 weeks to do so, it is more than likely not going to happen. Make sure you have given yourself enough to achieve your goal.
R- Realistic. After stating how many months you can train for, how many sessions a week you can do and an honest assessment of your current ability, is your goal a realistic one?
T- Time. Do you have enough time to do it? How many months do you have to get it done?
Now that you have used these steps to make your plan, how can we make sure you overcome a plateau in your training?
A plateau is very simply when improvements in your training no longer occur. It does not mean you will perform poorly just you no longer have improved performance. For example, if we assume your training is taking the pattern of swimming moderate distance for intervals (i.e. 10X200m) and your training time is not improving, you could use the following ways to continue your improvements:
- Using equipment such as fins and hand paddles during your swim sessions.
- Reducing the interval distance (150m instead of 200m)
- Increasing the amount of rest between intervals (2 minutes instead of 1)
- Reducing the overall volume of your training (instead of doing 10X200m do 5X200m instead)
These suggestions are an easy way of improving your swim times if you are tracking the distance swam each session, total distance swam each week and how many weeks you have been training for. If you know all of these, doing the above suggestions are small enough changes to overcome our “Training Plateau”.
However, if you do end up doing these things and there is still no improvement in your swim time, it would be a good idea for you to include a “rest week” into your training plan. A rest week does not mean you must take the full week off, However, you can do any 1 of the following to help you recover but also continue your swimming:
- Reduce the intensity of your training sessions for 1-2 weeks.
- Reduce the volume of your training sessions down for 1-2 weeks.
- Keep intensity of sessions the same but reduce the number of sessions for 1-2 weeks.
- Include Kick sets into your training week. These keep the intensity high but will fatigue your legs quickly but will only need a short recovery time.
If you have tried all of these and you have not noticed any improvement in your swim training, then I would advise you to find a Swim Coach as mentioned in the previous blog. At the very least they will look at how you have been swimming and I would advise you to give them as many details about your training sessions and training plan as possible. The more information the coach is able to have the more accurate the help they will be able to give you.
I hope this post helps and if you want any further information on training plateaus or information on training plans,
you can contact me at coachmulvihill@outlook.ie or through Instagram at coach_mulvihill
Thank you for reading this and I hope it was helpful.
A
Alpha Sports Coaching 