As a former collegiate swimmer and top Olympic Distance pro triathlete, I frequently get asked by frustrated triathletes “How can I get faster at swimming?”  The stories are fairly consistent – these athletes feel they put a lot of time into churning laps out in the pool – either alone or with a Masters team, or both – yet feel the reward never matches the investment of time.
 
The rub with swimming is that it can be the most time-intensive sport from a training perspective, but it also is the most time-intensive from an investment perspective.  Very few of us has a pool in our yards or a flume in our basement, so to work out we generally have to drive to the pool and at some of the worst hours of the day – either at 0-dark-30 in the wee hours of the morning or after work in the evening when all we want to do is go home and start relaxing.
 
Triathletes who are top swimmers typically swam from an early age through high school and even through college.  As a pure swimmer from age 5 – 21, I can tell you that as early as age 6, I was swimming twice a day in the summers, 6 days a week.  And, in high school, the double workouts extended another 3 months into the high school season.  Some ghastly workouts I can recall are things like 10x200m butterfly at age 11; countless 5km straight for time; 10x400IM in college; you get the picture.  During weeks of double sessions, we would consistently put in 70-100km per week.  In other words, as much as many runners.  All this volume led to unparalleled cardiovascular fitness and stroke efficiencies that 10km per week across 3 swim workouts simply cannot touch.  Swimmers’ strokes rarely breakdown the way triathletes’ strokes will because pure swimmers can handle a lot more volume and load whereas triathletes will tend to tighten up and their technique will fall apart due to the onset of fatigue and lactate build up.
 
So, while I could tell you that putting more time in the pool can be a surefire way to improve, that’s not what I’m going to say here.  Instead, let’s answer the REAL question being asked by triathletes frustrated with their lack of swim progress, which is this:  “How can I get faster at swimming without putting any more pool time?”
 
One nearly guaranteed way is to take your distance sets of 2,000-4,000 yards or meters and break them up into smaller increments.  Rather than doing, say, 5x400 at Ironman target pace, complete 20x100 or 40x50.  By shortening up the length of the reps, you will better preserve your technique and hold your stroke longer.  This helps you practice better form for longer, creating positive muscle memory.  With reps of shorter length comes shorter rest intervals, so there is little negative impact to the cardiovascular benefits that are typically reserved for the super long workouts or straight swims.  Now, long reps have their place, too.  I’m not suggesting you never do them.  But, think of them as strength sessions best used in the Winter.  For the above example of 5x400, put the pull buoy between your legs and paddles on your hands to create more load on the upper body.  Focus on the stroke and technique rather than speed – save that for when your rep length shortens and you need to be more metronomic with both your stroke and speed.
 
The workout needs to be at least 45 minutes in length without extended breaks to elicit a nice cardiovascular boost.  Even better, the main set needs to be this long.  Not of every workout, but certainly of your key workouts and at least once per week.  Twice would be better, especially in your final run-up to your key race(s).
 
Another way is to remain focused when you’re in the pool.  It never ceases to amaze me just how inefficiently Masters workouts are generally run.  There is so much time wasted standing at the side of the pool, or socializing before jumping in to start a workout, or during kick sets, and so on.  Directly out of college, I coached high school girls and boys swimming for 3 years.  I broke my teams into various squads based on skill, stroke specialty, and distance vs middle distance vs sprint depending on what the focus was for the day’s workout.  I calculated sets so that each group would end its set at almost precisely the same time as every other group so that we could move forward through the workout together and minimize all the wasted time.  It worked to great effect. 
 
Making the above adjustments will most definitely pay dividends in your swim training without making you train any longer or more frequently.  By being more focused, you will get more out of the time you do put into the pool and, I reckon, you will swim faster come your 2017 key races.
 
Happy Training,
Coach Nate

The standard way of FTP testing and establishing power training zones needs to be tweaked.  Here I'll explain why and offer up some more innovative and "real world" examples of an FTP test and associated training zones.

Nearly all runners have heard the “rule” – boost your weekly mileage by 10% in order to gradually and safely get to your target training volume.  To me, like the ‘3 hard week/1 easy week’ training cycle, this is simply a mindless, generic way to increase volume.  Rather than being based on science or an individual runner’s own circumstances, it relies on being easy for the masses to follow.  After all, how hard is it to take your current volume and multiply it by 1.1 in order to determine what you should do next week? 
 
Rather than just running 10 percent more every week, there’s a better way. And to determine that better way, it’s important to understand a few things first. 

First, forget the concept of ‘mileage’ 
That’s right.  The body does not understand the concept of mileage.  The two things it does understand are duration and intensity – how long you are running and how hard you are running.  Think about it.  Running 3 miles up a steep mountain could take an hour and you may have to kill yourself to get to the top in that hour.  On the flip side, running 3 miles down a gradual descent may take you fewer than 20 minutes.  So, does the body know you ran 3 miles?  No.  It knows you ran an hour hard or that you glided along for 20 minutes. 
 
Your Typical Volume 
In order to determine what your baseline is, you first need to understand what your typical volume across your many weeks of running.  How many hours:minutes do you typically run in a week?  An easy way to do this is to take a year or two’s worth of weeks, add them together and average them.  This is your foundational baseline of weekly volume, and is a great place to start for building up your volume. 

As you increase your weekly volume, shoot for 5-20% a week.  The range accounts for multiple factors such as:  are you below your baseline volume and working back up toward it (in which case you can ramp up more aggressively); are you at or above your baseline and continuing to increase volume (in which case you may want to slow the progression down a little to avoid hammering the legs too much too soon); are you running mostly aerobically or are you starting to add some race-specific intensity (in which case volume could plateau or even reduce to account for the increase in intensity); and so on. 
 
Insert Occasional Adaptation Weeks 
Simply, an adaptation week is one that is a repeat of the previous week’s training – the types of workouts, the duration of the workouts and the overall volume for the week. Adaptation weeks do not stall progress.  Rather, they reinforce the progress made to that point.  And, if the adaptation week goes well, then you’re ready for the next boost in volume the following week. 
  
Adaptations are not critical every step of the way.  If you think of your training cycle, the second-to-last “hard” week could be an adaptation week before the final “hard” week is another boost heading into the “easy” recovery week. 

When It’s Time to Recover 
The most challenging things for runners to do, especially Masters runners, is to hit the brakes on training when it is progressing so well and insert that ever-critical recovery week. Periodically during your training cycle, the overall mileage and workout intensity should dip to allow the body an opportunity to recover and adapt. 

Recovery weeks, as with recovery days, are money.  This is when true progress occurs.  The body needs to be able to lick its wounds, absorb the training, process it and, in the end, make you bigger/faster/stronger.  Recovery weeks are typically 50-70% of full training volume and intervals are typically reduced by 50-70%.  The key is to do just enough to stay tuned up but not enough to continue breaking yourself down.  If your long run is typically 2 hours, then shorten it to 60-75 minutes.  If you ran 4 miles of intervals at the track last week, then shorten that to 1.5-2 miles in the recovery week.  And so on. 
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Mileage decreases during a recovery week should be about 10-25 percent depending on how hard you’re training, your experience level and past susceptibility to running injuries. The key is to no wait until your legs are sore and you can barely get out of bed in the morning to insert a recovery week.  It’s better to leave some intense training “on the table” and insert a recovery week before you feel you really need it.  You’ll know you’ve hit it about perfectly when you get to the Friday of the recovery week and you’re starting to get excited for the following Monday (which begins the next hard cycle).  If you hit the weekend of the recovery week and you’re still feeling the malaise of training hard, then you waited too long to recover.  Likewise, if you hit Tuesday of the recovery week and you’re already feeling stellar then you have not produced enough load from which to recover.  Typically, with a well-balanced program, a recovery week can occur every 5th or 6th week. 

So, there you have it.  As you look toward your upcoming goals – maybe you’re running your first half-marathon, or you're preparing for Boston next April, or your first ultramarathon, for example – by following the above tips, you can probably progress more intelligently, methodically and quickly so you hit the start line with a higher level of confidence. ​

Happy Training, 
Coach Nate 

​Marketing is a powerful thing and can make us believe just about anything.  It is important to understand the truth as well as the hype around race wheels so you can make an educated purchase and not just throw your money away.