Why am I such a slow swimmer?

Are you swimming intervals during your workout or are you taking the "one long assault" approach to swim training?

Make sure you are swimming intervals. This should bring your times down.

Also, I like to do no-breathing swim drills - start at 4 x 25 yards, freestyle with no breathing, 1 minute rest in between. Work your way down to a 15 second rest while maintaining no breathing and increasing your sets to 10 x 25 yards. When you get to this point, start doing 50 yard no-breathing drills. You'd be surprised how fast you can swim when you don't allow yourself a breath.

BTW, if you are swimming on your own and don't intend to join a Masters team, the US Masters Swimming website has a ton of workouts that you can copy and adapt to your needs. It's a great website with plenty of training articles, too.

Good luck and happy laps!

Yes. Swim 25 yards without taking a breath.

I swam last week with a gal who just started swimming a month ago (she is a runner so she does have fitness points). We did the no breathing drills - 6x25. She said she didn't think she could go the whole length without a breath so, instead, she took only 1 breath. She did 4x25 with just 1 breath per lap then 1x25 where she took 2 breaths and the final lap she took just 1 breath. If she keeps it up, she'll be doing the drills without a breath in no time. We rested 60 seconds between 25 yards.

She also went from swimming very slowly to keeping up with me on the drills. You swim very fast when you don't allow yourself to breathe.

BTW, to put this in perspective: Can you hold your breath for 1 minute? Because we swam 25 yards in 23-25 seconds. See? It's a whole lot easier than you think.

Start off easy. Try doing 4x25 while taking just 2 breaths, with a 60 second rest in between 25yds. When these become easy, drop to 1 breath and increase reps. When these become easy, drop to 0 breaths and increase reps. When you are doing 10x25 no breathing and it's a cinch, start doing 4x50 without breathing.

Benefits: same benefits as doing any intervals - will make you a faster swimmer when combined with other intervals and a good workout plan. The other benefit - one which I think most triathletes can benefit from - it will help you with lung control and train your brain that you won't die if you don't breathe in the next 25 seconds and your lungs really will not burst!  Which also helps with that panicky feeling some swimmers get - especially during a mass swim start. I think it makes for a more confident swimmer, altogether.

This thread is getting jacked because of the interesting approach Renee has put out there ......

My question this is, if you end up swimming super fast because you're about to suffocate, what does that do for your form??  We see so much emphasis on form work and the importance of technique but when this intriguing idea is put out there it immediately has me questioning it?  If you are beating the crap out of the water because you want to finish your length so that you can take a breath I'm not sure how much that can benefit you.

Now of course I'm not anywhere near qualified to discuss swimming with my slow azz times, but I am in the same boat of how to get faster?  I do not have a problem with endurance, but I do with maintaining a faster pace for any distance.  I can do sub 2:00 for a 200, but that's about it right now.  But I can 2:10 all day long.

:shrugs:

Interesting how an OP with very little information about the swimmer's current technique and current training regimen has transformed into how many no breath drills she should be doing. 

Frankly, I find this type of thread to be a huge drawback of BT.  How is the beginner to know if the advice he/she is getting is sound?  Yes, there is a "terms of use" disclaimer for BT but how does someone know the qualifications of a poster (unless they have certifications listed in their signature line)?  I am not saying that any particular post is not genuinely meant to be helpful, but I think there is the potential for a lot of confusion and mis-information to abound on BT.   And, since I'm a crappy swimmer I won't even begin to think I know the answer to the OP.

The use of intervals versus steady efforts in swim training was discussed before: http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/discussion/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=57879&start=1

Ok, so I want to get faster than my 2:00/100m average time, so I'm thinking of a weekly workout plan that looks like this:

Mondays: LSD (no breaks, just the full length swim)

Tuesdays: focus on breathing (increasing the number of strokes per breath)

Thursdays: focus on speed (using intervals of 50-100m, work on just swimming faster, while still maintaining good form).

Saturdays: LSD

Would a weekly workout plan like this be sufficient for a newbie who hopes to get their 100m times to 1:30?

From what I've read, and from my limited success at getting faster while I was swimming last year, doing continuous swims does little for your speed compared to doing LSD runs/rides.  To get faster in the pool do shorter distances on short rest concentrating on really good form and technique for those short intervals.

Last year I typically only swam twice a week.  The Weds. swim evolved over my training into the "speed" day and I would do a 500 warm up, 5 x 100's on 2:30, 5 x 50's with :15 rest intervals and then 10 x 25's with only a :10 rest interval.  The idea for me was to push each set harder so that by the time I was doing my 25's I was trying to go all out each time.  After a month of those workouts I saw my times drop significantly more than they did by just concentrating on longer sets.  It was really eye opening!

This year I'm using one of the swim-workouts-in-a-binder from Gale Bernhardt and have just been going page to page doing whatever workout is in it and right now it is all "endurance" sets.

1. I think some of you didn't read my post and missed the whole "when combined with other intervals and a good workout plan" part.
2. It's not a silver bullet. It's just one tool (drill) of many that you should have in your toolbox.
3. I have found that my form always tightens up when I do these drills. I swim more efficiently, not less efficiently. Your mileage may vary.
4. It's something I learned to do when I was 7. Every coach I've had had us do these drills, including the Masters coach I swam with a year ago.
5. I am not a teacher of the sport; I am a doer (see 3 above) and am recommending something that has always been a part of my swim workouts. Therefore, I cannot point you to the literature on this technique. I never studied swim; I just did what my coach told me to do.
6. The biggest benefit to doing these extremely simple 25 yard drills is the mental advantage of teaching you not to freak out if you don't breathe every 3 strokes. For some people, that is a big hurdle. Hurdle, meet solution.

And I highly recommend the US Masters Swimming website if you are going to go it alone on designing your swim training. Great workout plans, even for beginners.

Another vote for masters.

It's impossible for anyone to tell you why you think you're slow just from reading your post.  We can assume that your endurance is in order since you can swim a mile, therefore there must be some foorm issues (there usually are).   While doing sets and intervals and even some breathing exercises (although I question whether they will improve speed other than improving generally your aerobic capacity, but I'm not a coach so what do I know) will ultimately help you, if all you are doing is cementing bad form you will not be doing yourself any favors.

I am sure there is probably more than one masters group in your area.  Barring that, spend a few bucks and hire a coach for two sessions.

The reason why some athletes fail to realize gains with a particular training focus or approach is because of the lack of understanding as to how or when to apply it.
I believe Mike Ricci has and article (or maybe it s on Gordo’s website) in which it is suggested that an athlete swimming over 1:30 min per 100Yd will get better results by working on improving swimming form and technique. Once and athlete reach that barrier the focus can swim to focus a bit more on developing swimming speed through speed intervals. That doesn’t necessarily means that a swimmer with poor form should swim exclusively drills (like TI approach which IMO is incomplete) or all sessions should be slow, but certainly the bulk of every session would be towards improving balance, stroke mechanics, kick breath sequence, etc.

Someone swimming 2x a week for 1000 Yd will benefit a lot more by adding a couple of 1000 Yd sessions a week with technique focus. An athlete swimming 3x week for 2000 Yd will benefit by adding an extra session and swimming around 2400 Yd a session. The more time spend in the water the faster the improvements because we get to develop the “feel” for the water. On top of this if you meet with a coach at least one a month or you swim with a master class, you’ll have more info to work with.  I know that time is sometimes the biggest limiter factor for many, but if you don’t invest some time in the water, THEN expect and accept to swim slow.

A way to overcome the time limiter is by doing periods focusing in any give sport (in this case swimming) in which that sport will take the front row in terms of sport and the other two will remain in a maintenance stage. (i.e. swim 5-6x a week, bike 1-2x a week, run 3-4 a week) Once you realize noticeable gains in that sport then you can reduce the frequency and increase it in the other sports (i.e. swim 3x week, bike 3x a week, run 4-5x week) you can have a single sport focus every other week, for a whole month or for a bigger period like winter time (that’s what I’ll be doing with my own training. I’ll work on run/swim focus until March/April building as: swim 5-6x week, run 6 x week, bike 2x week)

Finally, there are times in which technique will take a second term for different reasons but the main one I face with some of the athletes a I coach is time until the A race. Last year one of my guys who rocked IMLP had a no so good swimming technique so we work towards improving for a few months. But we got to a point in which we had to take what we had (due to the lack of time) and work on improving his endurance to make sure he could complete the distance comfortable and be ready for the bike and run. (he had a great race btw).

Anyway, to the OP and as I mentioned before, focus on improving your swimming technique 1^st and foremost in particular based on the info you provided…