Swimming 101

Swimming 101

9 beginner endurance swimming tips

I have been hesitant to speak about swimming.  I have swum my whole life and have competed in several shorter triathlons, but I have never found a proficiency in swimming that I’m happy with.  I was reminded that I had promised to give some beginner advice.

Swimming is a difficult beast for many of us runners.  It was easier for me because I have no fear of the water and grew up swimming.  I was never, however on the swim team or a competitive swimmer.

This experience can either be an advantage or a disadvantage when it comes to endurance swimming.  Form and mechanics are more important in swimming that either running or biking.  This is because the drag of the water, the resistance, is so much greater.

When learning endurance swimming from scratch it may be better to be totally new to the water.  It may be easier to learn from scratch than to unlearn years of bad form.  It’s probably a wash.

You still need the endurance that comes with drills and practice and meters in the pool.  But, with swimming you can get bigger gains by fixing major flaws in your form than just working harder.  In a sense it becomes like quicksand – the harder you struggle the more you sink.

• Patience.  Like any other endurance sport, but more so than others, you need to have a serious amount of patience as you learn the form and put in the time in the pool.  It is easy to get frustrated when you are trying very hard and drowning.  Most of the good endurance swimming programs start with drills to help you get the right body position in the water.  Be patient.  It takes a while before you are actually swimming.

The frustrating part of being patient is that you won’t be able to really work on your conditioning in the pool until you learn the proper form.  Budget this learning time up front.

Once you have the form then you can start doing the work and it becomes like any other endurance sport with distance and tempo etc.

• Head down, ass up.  One of the most difficult things for runners in the pool is learning to swim with the correct body position.  As runners we tend to have a lot of muscle and dead weight in our legs.  The dead weight becomes an anchor in the pool.  It tends to sink and drag.  That drag slows you down.

You need to learn to float with your head down and you legs up.  You do this by balancing your body on your lungs.  The way to envision it is to swim downhill.  Press down on your chest and that will raise your ass up.

• Be a yacht, not a barge.  The resistance of the water is such that long, slender boats, like yachts go faster than short, stubby boats like tugs.  You want to get your body position in the water such that it is as long and slender a profile as possible.  You do this by stretching your form to its full length.

Align your head straight with the rest of your body.  Make a straight, long line from the tip of your head to the point of your toes.  Stretch your stroke out so you glide through the water.

• Keep your head down.  When you watch beginner swimmers one thing you’ll notice right away is that they try to keep their heads way above the water.  Granted this helps you to breathe, but holding your big, fat head above the water while you swim makes some other part of your body sink.

One of the most difficult things for people to learn is how to swim with their heads almost completely under the water.  When you watch good endurance swimmers you’ll see that their heads barely break the plane of the water.  Much of this becomes possible when you learn good rotational breathing.

• If you didn’t have to breathe it would be easy.  The thing that really screws you up in swimming is the need to breathe.  This is especially regretful when you are learning.  You will be doing everything perfectly but then the need to breathe forces you to breach like a whale and break your form.

You have to be patient.  As your conditioning gets better and your form improves it gets easier to breathe and eventually, maybe after several weeks, you will find a pace.

• Get some help.  I like to get my knowledge through reading.  I very much liked the book “Total Immersion”.  That being said, I think swimming, more so than other endurance sports, lends itself to coaching, especially in the early learning phase.  There are so many moving parts in a stroke, and form is so important, that it’s not something you can just attack with effort.  Getting a pro to help you get the form right initially will expedite your progress and enjoyment.

There are lots of good triathletes out there who can help you.  Lean on them.

• You swim with your core, not your arms and legs.  The thrust that propels you through the water does not come from kicking in endurance swimming.  It also does not come from pulling with your arms.  It comes from holding the water with you hand and rotating your core for thrust.

This same rotation allows you to breath and presents a slender profile to the water.  It is this rotation of the core for propulsion that, when you finally get it, will let you know you have arrived.  This rotation is the key that unlocks the infinite dance of endurance swimming.  It’s a beautiful thing.

• You need a minimum of equipment.  You need a good suit.  You don’t have to wear a Speedo if that make you uncomfortable, but you need something that is form-fitting and doesn’t creat drag in the water.  Bike shorts are a good compromise.  Once you get in the pool, no one is going to care what you look like.

You will need a good pair of goggles.  Everyone’s face is a different shape so you’ll have to experiment with what works best for you.  I also use ear plugs and a nose clamp to keep the water out of my head.  Could I swim without these? Yeah, but I choose not to be uncomfortable. I don’t wear a swim cap, but I don’t have much hair either.

• Take some time to consider what pool you are going to use.  Is it open and accessible when you need it?  Everyone else in the world has the same schedule as you do.  Chances are the swimming lessons and aqua-robics are scheduled for the same time in the afternoon that you want to go.  As with every other sport, the best time to do your swimming is at the crack of dawn.  If you can be in the pool at 5:30 when the club opens you will be done when the great mass of humanity rolls out of bed.

Those are the things that I had to learn when I took to the pool a few years back.   I am self taught in the art and science of endurance swimming and never really took to it.  Yet even these simple things I talk about here took several minutes off my swim time and allowed me to compete and complete.