(water splashing)
- Whoa, that was a bit of a bear.
That was 4200 meters in an hour 30 on the nose.
How much do you need to swim to get faster?
That's what we're gonna talk about today.
(upbeat music)
Alright, Trainiacs, so last night,
I met a Trainiac here locally, solid guy, say Kevin.
Sorry if I got that wrong.
I got a thing with names.
If you ever pick up on me being like, "Hey, man."
It's because I am really good with numbers,
names for some reason, not good at.
And we talked about how much he's swimming
and he was like, "You know, I know that you say
you should swim three times, but I live out of town,
I can't swim at all."
I was like, "You know, whatever you can swim, you can swim."
And it then got me thinking, alright, how much
do people need to swim to actually see improvements?
Let's get into that.
So what we've got here is I created a graph
where on the x-axis we have the number of swims per week.
Every dash is another swim per week,
so starting at one, going all the way up to 14,
which is what you see Olympic swimmers do,
high performance kids are doing that.
And on the y-axis we have speed gains.
Now, none of this is like, scientific, but this is general,
sort of approach and guidelines to swimming.
Some people might be well beyond this,
some people might be well below this,
but these are really good rules of thumb
to understand how much swimming you need to do
to get speed gains.
So this isn't how fast you can get,
this is how much you can make yourself faster.
So this is you against you.
This is the difference in how much faster
you can make yourself.
And what we've got here is I'm gonna map out two things.
As a beginner, you're pretty spoiled.
So starting from zero, basically you're not
gonna get any faster, you're not gonna get any slower,
so you're gonna get faster really quickly,
basically going from zero swims all the way up
to two or three and then what I'd say is
you'll probably start dipping down
and actually making yourself slower.
If you don't have a swim background,
past about two, three, four swims a week,
you're not doing yourself any favors,
because you only need just a small little bit of stimulus
to make yourself faster and beyond that,
you body isn't adapted enough to have
more than three, four swims a week,
so you end up doing essentially damage.
You're over-training yourself,
but it just takes a little bit of stimulus.
We're talking like one, two, three swims a week
and you're gonna get a lot faster.
At this level, what I would recommend
is going to TriathlonTaren.com/swimdrillprogram,
and this is a really intentional series of drills
that I've put together that are all free.
I think like 6000 people have gone through it.
I would start with that, because it's gonna give you
the foundation of how to progress
into what we're gonna get into now, which is intermediate.
And this is where a lot of people find themselves stuck.
At this level, if you're swimming zero times per week
or even one time per week, I would actually say
that you're probably going to get slower as a triathlete,
because the running aspect of being a triathlete
is very corrosive on our body.
That pounding, it compresses our body, it's very catabolic
so it eats away at our muscles, whereas with swimming,
we need to be long, we need to be limber,
so we're not nearly as good a swimmer
than just pure swimmers, frankly because we run.
At about two times a week, there's a crossover,
and that tends to be the minimum dose just for maintenance,
just maintaining the speed that maybe
you built up as a beginner here.
At three swims a week, you start having the potential
for getting a little bit faster, however,
if you're only swimming three times a week,
those three times a week, like me,
they have to be really purposeful.
So just going and swimming three times a week,
doing multiple 400 meter or yard repeats
or doing 1000 continuous or 1500 continuous
and just swimming a whole bunch of drills
and then a whole bunch of steady state
to try to build up your endurance,
you're not really gonna make yourself faster.
You're just gonna kinda work yourself into this groove
of that standard speed, so you might actually, at three,
start leveling off and going into maintenance.
So if you are swimming three times a week,
you have to be really intentional.
I'm swimming three times a week,
that's why I've started subscribing
to the Tower 26 workouts, because they are
very key, very intentional.
At four times a week, you start getting a fair bit faster.
That's a really key tipping point that I found
about five years ago when I did
the first marathon swim we'd ever done.
I started swimming four times a week.
I didn't really change a whole lot with my swimming.
I didn't change my technique.
I just started swimming more and I went from
about a 13 high, like a 13:50,
14 minute sprint distance swimmer,
all the way down to about an 11:30 in a matter of months,
because that increased frequency
and not having any more than one day
in between swims throughout the week,
it really ingrains that muscle memory
and that familiarity with the water.
You can feel it really well, so at that point,
at four swims a week and five swims a week,
you really start improving.
Now, when you start getting to elite level swimming
and you're swimming six, seven,
upwards of 12, 14 times a week, ends up trailing off.
So you might still be getting faster,
but you have to work more and more and more and more
as an elite swimmer just to get
that little bit of extra speed.
So that's why you'll see a heck of a lot of pro triathletes,
a heck of a lot of really elite amateurs,
swimming somewhere in that range
of four to (heavy breathing).
So that's why you'll see a lot of really elite amateurs,
some pros swimming somewhere in that
four to six times per week, 'cause it's a really good return
on your investment as far as time spent with getting faster.
So now here's the thing, what if you're
a guy like Kevin yesterday that he can't swim?
Don't worry about it.
That's the thing about triathlon.
I think that everyone is maybe misinterpreting
when I say you really have to swim three times a week.
I don't mean you have to swim three times a week
or you must swim three times a week,
or four, five, six times a week.
It's just that you need to understand where
zero swims a week fits into life and your expectations,
where three, four, five swims a week
fits into your expectations and if you can't do it,
don't worry about it.
Like if you literally can't do it, you can't do it.
I'm not gonna judge.
Why the hell would I judge that?
I'm just here to tell you where that fits in.
You swim as much as you can.
The more you swim, the faster you'll get,
but we'll still be pals if you're only swimming
zero, one, two times a week.
You're still my Trainiacs, damn it.
So, there you go, Trainiacs.
That is all for today.
We are airing out the garage right now.
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hit that subscribe button below.
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Also, check out the Triathlon Taren Podcast.
It is the most reviewed triathlon podcast in the world.
Later.
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