Big Guy Swim Tips

May sound weird but swim more, work on your technique by doing drills and do speed drills. Its like running you have to swim faster to be able to swim faster.

Good news is the swim we are probably more equal to others than on the bike and run. I am 330 and I am swimming 22 mins for 750m at the moment. Strength training can help too.

here is a good example of what your catch should look like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EF93rZpczaUthis might help.

other thing is to make sure you body is vertical. This will help with drag. Bigger you are the more important technique is. Nothing different between us and small guys for technique. For us it just matter more IMO.

Thanks for the input. I hit the water today and focused on keeping my elbow up on catch. I can usually feel when my feet start to sag in the water, I'm trying to work that out as well! I started off running, so my attitude has always been "push harder, go faster, etc". With swimming and cycling I need to adjust my mindset for more efficiency over pushing harder. All in good time though.

I rather come out of the water with more energy than taking a minute or 2 off my swim time. Its how we do in all 3 than just 1. I went from swimming 800 meters in 1 hour to 3.1 miles in 2 hours in little over 1 year. That is 20 minutes per half mile. They drilled the heck out of me in master swim. Took me couple years of it to finally learn to swim.

I was just about to post something like this, for me I feel like my big problem is breathing. I have been reading up on it and it seems like the major problem most have is exhaling fully in the water. I am going to spend the rest of the remainder time I have before my next sprint working on only breathing and not worry about the speed.

I feel my technique is OK and my first sprint 500m wasn't terrible @ 13ish min but I had been training in the 11:-11:30 range and my breathing went right out the freaking window once the swim began

I think that the swim is probably the discipline where size/weight matters least. Some things to focus on:
- Staying horizontal
- Relaxed breathing, as discussed above
- Making sure you're not lifting your head out of the water, and that you're breathing to the side
- Reaching out front and finishing all the way through - work on feeling your thumb brush your upper leg as it comes out of the water
- Smaller kicks, don't bring your knees up towards your torso.
- Keep your elbows high throughout your pull

Finally, many slower swimmers tend to do a "windmill" technique, where one hand is always opposite the other. In reality, you should be gliding with your hand out front after each entry, while the opposite hand is beginning it's recovery. To get this feel, I think it's helpful for many swimmers to work on "catch-up" drill (google/ youtube is probably easier than me explaining if you don't know). After a while, start letting your forward hand begin the pull a little bit before the other hand touches it and hopefully you'll keep that glide feeling.

-Matt

Not sure if this thread is still open, but I am in the same weight range as you...anywhere from 200-240 depending on the year and season.

Biggest thing you can do is learn to balance yourself in the water and reduce drag. I taught myself through the Total Immersion swimming techniques. I would watch their videos for free online and each time I went to the pool I would work on one drill at a time.

I went from 2:30/100y down to comfortably doing 2:00/100y. I can now do that pace with very little effort or training anymore. It's like when you hit that running pace where it just feels like you could run forever. Once I had that technique down then I began working more on the speed and refining the little things. Now down to a 1:45 pace.

This has taken me about 4-5 YEARS to get to that point, but I haven't been that consistent with it.

ive heard so much about this total immersion, I guess its time to officially check it out

I agree with a lot of this advice. In the swim, bigger people are just as effective as the skinnier folks.

Practice good form. It's more important than speed to begin with. Swimming is a lot like a golf swing in that sense.

I use some of the Total Immersion drills. They are meant to help you learn to sense good form - to create a memory in your nervous system that you won't stray from when you're tired and start getting sloppy. You can get the disk off Netflix. I have the book, which is good for understanding the theoretical side of what he's teaching, but it helps to have the videos, too. You can see some of his lectures on YouTube. Just do a search for Total Immersion.

The best $30 I ever spent was when a group of us had a group lesson that included videoing, above the water and under water. The coach then critiqued us while watching the video.

I have been reading the Triathlon book for TI, I forget the name. But it pairs nicely with the Youtube videos of the drills, as there is no dialog that goes with the official Youtube TI site.

It has made a huge difference in my swim and comfort in the water!
I thought I was a decent swimmer previously but attending was missing balance!

I know this thread is 6 months old, but new people getting out and starting probably wonder what is possible? Big people can swim at a good speed without difficulty, this is the one portion of the race that requires skill and efficiency over fitness. Myself 240# 1:30/100yd I started with TI then moved on to swim smooth and now start every workout with some catch drills and thats about it. When I started 4 years ago I was maybe a 2:30/100yd swimmer. It take practice and weekly consistency.

My masters swimming coach always told me "SMOOTH IS FAST. DON'T FIGHT THE WATER".

Best advice I ever got.

+1 on the Total Immersion method. I'm 6'4" 220-230 and TI was a game changer for me. My first tri was last spring and I had the least experience with swimming so I trained it the most. It ended up being my best event. TI swimming looks and feels like you're not doing much work, even when you're passing the other swimmers, which is the experience I had.

For me TI helped:

Balance - feet/legs stopped sinking
Efficiency - how to correct/streamline movements that can create resistance in the water
Breathing - the increased efficiency lowered my HR which made breathing vastly better

Biggest challenge was to relax, slow down and let the speed come from the smoothness of it all. It worked surpisingly well for me.

Edited by trimbolim 2015-02-10 10:46 AM