How to improve your swim strength, stamina and speed with Swim Smooth
Swim Smooth have established themselves as a leading pioneer in swim coaching. Here are they share their essential drills, and advice to improve your swim strength, stamina and speed
KEY SWIM DRILLS
A good general goal as a triathlete over the winter is to improve your alignment and ability to swim straight in the open water. And this all starts with posture. With the advent of waterproof GPS devices, we’ve been able to track a significant number of swimmers during race season. It might surprise you that quite a number of triathletes swim between 10 and 15% too far in an open-water triathlon event, some even +20%! Working on improving this could be a major time saver for you this coming season.
DON’T BECOME A PLODDER
Believing it’s all just about long, slow base work or focusing only on honing technique with countless drills. Improving your technique and working on your endurance are very important, but this shouldn’t come at the expense of keeping your finger in with the all important threshold development work.
Threshold work isn’t about eye-balls-out sprints, but more about identifying what your current threshold or CSS (Critical Swim Speed) pace is (i.e. the speed you’d be able to maintain for 1,500m) and working diligently to improve this week-in/week-out. So, don’t become a technique hermit this winter or a slow plodder because, come the summer months, that’s all you’ll be – a slow drill master.
NEW TO TRI? REMEMBER TO BREATHE (OUT)!
Enjoy it! Seriously, though, if this is going to be your first season make sure there’s only one thing you remember before the start of the swim and that’s to breathe… out! The major thing new (and even experienced athletes) make the mistake of in their first race is setting off like the veritable ‘Bat out of hell’ while clamming up and holding onto their breath. This is recipe for disaster. Keep it simple, focus on your exhalation and follow the tips here and you won’t go far wrong: http://swimsmooth.com/breathing
Matt Baird
Editor of Cycling Plus magazine 
