My swimming is on the improve.

My swimming has really surprised me in the past few weeks. Previously, I have laboured through the water with sagging hips and a poor kick. My arm turn-over slow and inefficient, and the endurance in my shoulders seemingly well below par.

In the four seasons I have been racing triathlon, I have failed to make an impact in the swim and found myself well behind the leaders in my age-group out of the water. This must change! I have big aspirations to qualify for the age-group 70.3 World Championships this season and I have just 10 weeks left to prepare for the Shepparton Ironman 70.3. In 2 attempts at this race during 2011 and 2012, I have lost about 9mins to the leaders after the swim. This is a result of lazy training and not enough focus given to this part of the race.

In the past, I have done far too much swim training with pool aids like, a pull-buoy, fins and paddles. I hardly spent any time just swimming unassisted and working on the technique which I will need specifically during a race. Then, when I tried to swim without pool aids I found it highly fatiguing and I didn’t push myself, taking too much rest between efforts. I, also, never swam more than twice a week. All in all, I didn’t try hard enough to improve that area of my race.

Well, how things have changed. I will now be swimming 3 times, racking up about 11km, during 3 and a half hours in the water per week. A large portion of this time will be spent swimming without aid and working hard over varying length intervals.

I am very confident in my ability to push myself far more than I used to from now on. This confidence comes from simply pushing harder in my last few sessions and seeing what I am capable of. From those sessions I already feel I have improved my swimming ability. I feel stronger in my technique and I’m sitting higher in the water. I am sure I will be making significant improvements in my swim time this year.

My next 4-week training program cycle will be focussed on building power. For my swimming, this will mean repeats. My 3 weekly sessions will look like this:-

Ø  Monday, long strength session (5km) – 1km warm up with a mixture of freestyle, backstroke and breaststroke. Then 4 sets of 1km consisting of: 400m freestyle with pull-buoy at 90%, 400m freestyle with paddles at 90%, 100m backstroke at 90% and 100m breaststroke recovery. The only alteration I will make to this is in the 3^rd week of the cycle when I will do a 1km time trial, which I am hoping to complete in approximately 15 minutes, before doing just 3 sets of the above 1km set.

Ø  Wednesday, fast session (3km) – 600m warm up. 400m working on Butterfly. Then, 16 x 100m at 100% effort. First 4 starting every 2:00mins, then 4 starting every 1:50mins, 4 starting every 1:45mins and finally, 4 starting every 1:40mins. Cool-down with a mixture of light kicking and freestyle with the pull-buoy for 400m.

Ø  Friday, continuous efforts (3km) – 500m warm up. Then, 10 x 200m freestyle at 80% with 50m backstroke recovery.

Other training which contributes highly to progressing my swimming is my strength training. Doing a simple 30 minute upper body strength session once a week consisting of push-ups, chin-ups, shoulder exercises with dumbbells and a range of stretch cord movements, along with my 2 – 3 core sessions each week, makes a significant difference to my swimming muscles. These little, extra sessions are very important for the health of my joints, tendons and ligaments that support my muscles.

It’s amazing what difference some extra focus, endeavour and effort makes to any area of your training. You just never know what you’re capable of until you really give it a red hot go.