Realistic expectations for improving swim time?

One on one coaching.  3 or 4 lessons that way and I saw a :10 improvement in my pool times in workouts.

Since last year when I did my lessons I've dropped my 1,000 yard TT time 3 times so it was just under 17 on my last one.  And this year I have swam LESS than I did last year by almost 100k yards.

Edited by Daremo 2008-12-11 9:31 AM

You can run almost entirely trash miles 5 days a week and get a lot faster on the run.
You can bike almost entirely trash miles 5 days a week and get a lot faster on the bike.

Once you get decent in swimming, about 2 minute 100s or so, the primary way to get faster is get a swimming coach and work on form and technique. I'm right about where you are for time and either I need to speed up my stroke quite a bit or find those pesky little speed killers in my stroke or accept that I'm going to swim about 1:50/100s.

VERY achievable.  Get that coaching and try to swim with those faster than you if possible (Masters would be good).

As above, have someone take a look at and work on your stroke, but at the end of the day you need yardage. Bad swimmers hate to hear this b/c it's boring. 20-25k per week would be reasonable if you plan to swim that many times per week. Don't get too caught up in the "You need tons of technique work" talk. Yes you need to be aware of your form and work on improving it everyday, but you need volume just as much so you can get strong/fast enough to perform the strokes correctly. I get a kick out of people who show up at the pool and do TI drills for 90% of the workout, then revert back to a horrible stroke for a 300 of regular swimming and get out.

Take a lesson from pure swimmers. There is usually at least 1 set per workout that has some sort of stroke work element to it. After that they get after it and rack up some serious pool time.


If you are swimming 20-25k consistantly through the winter, I don't think there is any reason you shouldn't be sub 1:40 and probably closer to 1:30 per hundred come spring.




Edited by tjfry 2008-12-11 10:14 AM

Definately get into Masters, to swim faster you want to be practicing faster, almost every lap I swim someone is pushing me going into the wall. I noticed a huge change in my endurance and pull strength when I swam 4 days a week, it was awesome while it lasted! Continue to work on your stroke count, 15 or 16 would be good. It appears you have a pretty good knowledge of stroke mechanics, refering to what to do and not to do. Adding more volume and frequency might get you below 1:40, 4 days would be the minimum for such improvement, to average 1:40 would mean the first 1000 would be allot of sub 1:40 assuming you are racing a 1/2.

Rick - would you mind sharing (PM is fine) the name of the one on one coach you got? We had a thread about this in the MD forum a while back and there were no names offered up.

as someone who never swam before three years ago, i feel you. i came into triathlon struggling to get through 50yrds. 5 months later (after instruction on only 5 of the first 10 swims or so), i made it through my first half in 37 min, not widly slow, but WAY behind the fast guys and girls. two years later i am pretty much short course only, and am swimming around 22 min for 1500m. most of this from swimming harder more often (i am a very visual learner, and do much better watching others than from having it told to me so a lotof this i picked up from watching much better swimmers).

get some help now, and again in a few months to see where things have gone. if you are fast in the other two, and swimming 40 min now (not that slow), then most of it is a swim specifc fitness and tech thing, you are in shape to do it, you just need to work on the swimming. swim more, and get a bit of help (this doesnt have to be a formal lesson, find someone at your pool that may be willing to give you a bit of help for a few min). swim often, and swim hard, and times will come down.

the biggest drop after i started swimmng came when i went from my normal 2-4 1500yrd swims a week, to swimming 4-5 times around 3-4k.

good luck, if you put in the work the results will come fast.

Coming from a pure swimming background I tend to look at things a little different than most here. What amuses me most are the folks who show up at the pool day in and day out and waste 30-60 minutes doing nothing but 50s or 25s of drill work for the entire workout. Then they have the audacity to log that as a workout that they think gave them some sort of benefit or advantage for race day.

With that being said, I do agree that stroke mechanics are a critical component to success in swimming.

A few things to consider:
1. Are your workouts designed properly for your goal race?
2. Are you spending your entire workout working on stroke mechanics and drills? If so, it’s probably a safe bet that if you did this once every two weeks it would be too much. As I said you should always be thinking about your mechanics and stroke work.
3. Are you working on proper body position and mechanics when you are not drilling? When you are swimming your main sets, or harder sets? This is probably more important than those 25s of golf swim or catch up drill….
4. When you look yourself in the mirror do you really think 3 works a week is going to cut it when you don’t come from this type of background? Probably not. You need to be at the pool 4-6 times per week to see the kind of gains you are speaking of.
5. Are your workouts designed around proper send off times for you current fitness? Do you use the lap clock or similar at the pool? If you don’t even know where the pace clock is then your not getting the most of your time in the pool. This is a critical part to properly designing your workouts.

Volume is important but a properly designed workout that utilized that volume is probably more important. I also agree that you should be swimming in the ball park of 15-25K per week if you are hitting 4-6 swims a week and looking for the results you want to see.

Good luck.

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Glad to hear your using the clock. And your yardage seems to be a great start. Shoot me a PM and I can give you a good resource.

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I completely agree with Fred. Volume should be increased very slowly. You don't just jump from 5K a week to 25K a week. There is only one expected result here and it probably has to do with your rotator cuff...

Look I have been swimming for over 25 years. I am doing about 12k-20k per week now and this for me is just about maintenance and keeping things in tact. Its very light from a volume perspective. When I am training fully for a race I do the bare minimum of swimming for ME.

If you don't have a swimming background you need to figure out what's important to you in the long run. Is swimming 6 time a week important today so that in 2-3 years your swimming 1:10 per hundred or are you not in the sport for the long haul? If anyone is looking for instant gratification with regards to swimming fitness and realistic expectations they to do a reality check. Most top swimmers in this sport have been doing it for a very very very long time. You need to start focusing on consistency, and a long term plan that develops swim fitness over YEARS not months. ...and with that balances the other two disciplines...

That's where I am. I swam as a kid and just got back in the pool again this year. I figure 1:50/100 this year, 1:45/100 next year and we'll see where we need to go from there