This page will be a collection of articles that are all part of swim efficiency. If you have any questions, you can contact me here
Articles
Active: The Importance of Kicking While Swimming
Active: An Argument for High Intensity, Low Volume Swim Training for Triathletes
Active: How to Perfect Your Swim Tempo
Slowtwitch: Magnolia Swim Camp
SwimSwam: The Cost of the Kona Swim
SwimSwam: The Myth of Triathlon Swimming: Swimming is Swimming
Magnolia Masters Lane Etiquette
Television Interviews
Podcast and Podcast Interviews
Sample Workouts
Magnolia Masters / Easy Speed Pro Triathlete Swim Camp 2022
Day 5 Wednesday January 13, 2022
Thursday was all about getting to a great workout on Friday. I wanted to continue to drive improvements in their stroke, increase their awareness in the water and how they were moving, but also work on some of the subtle changes that can be made in each workout that over time can add up to significant gains. Awareness becomes key. A simple place to begin to become aware in a workout is with the breath. When you are doing a set and your respiration starts to change as you get more fatigued, ask yourself how are you breathing? When you are close to not being able to make repeats any longer the breath will be short and shallow from your chest. If you become aware of that during the set and when you are on the wall between intervals intentionally shift your breath down to your belly, you’ll be able to squeeze out a few more repeats. A couple things will happen when you practice that enough. First, you will have increased your awareness and your ability to stay present. Second, you’ll get in a couple more repeats at a higher effort level than before with better technique. Lastly, you’ll be setting yourself up to carrying that focused and present state (if you are focused and present you are relaxed) into your repeats which can then yield interesting things.
AM Practice
Warm up
500 swim with fins
400 kick with fins
300 pull
4×100 des 1-4 @ 1:25/1:30/1:40
1600
Lead up (they were still looking a little tired, so we dialed back the intensity and went a little longer with work on their stroke, but still tried to grab some fitness)
8×25 kick with Aquavolo Drag Sox (3 fast / 1 easy) @ 20 seconds rest (this is all about finding the kick that moves you forward. Kick from the hip, toes pointed, fast feet close to the surface with big toes grazing one another)
1×100 build x 25 no gear @ 30 seconds rest
4×50 swim with Aquavolo Sensory Mitts (25 fast / 25 easy & 25 easy / 25 fast) @ 20 seconds rest (focusing on getting a lot of pressure on the hands from the second they enter the water and making a connection to the core)
1×100 build x 25 no gear @ 30 seconds rest
(x2)
Break between rounds
2800
Main set
4×125 swim descend 1-4 @ 1:50/1:55/2:05
4×125 swim ascend 1-4 @ 1:50/1:55/2:05
3800
Warm down
Choice
For the afternoon practice I would need to decide how much I would think I could get out of the to still set them up for a solid practice on Friday. I knew Friday would be the hardest practice all week and where I hoped they could put together everything we worked on for the week. They looked better in the water in the afternoon than they did in the morning. That’s not unusual. Swimmers, in a prelim/finals meet, usually swim a lot better in the evening finals portion of the meet. You also typically need less warm up.
PM Practice
Warm up
500 swim with fins
400 kick with fins
300 pull
4×75 descend 1-4 @ 1:05/1:10/1:15
1500
Main set (I decided to try to push a little more speed and intensity, but give them a break between rounds to work on their stroke and then sharpen up for the next round. The rest to work ratio was 6:1. With all the them one of the more common issues is being able to really go fast. And for the swim and swimming in open water, it revolves around being comfortable with being uncomfortable in the water. For this, I wanted them to push way past their limits)
6×25 kick with Brick (2f/1e) @ 40
6×25 swim with Aquavolo Sensory Mitts (2f/1e) @ 35
3×50 sprint @ 3:30
(x2)
Break 1 minute between rounds
2400
Warm down
Choice
Thursday Total: 6,200 yards
Camp Total: 24,700 yards
This turned out to be a good swim pretty much across the board. The fastest swims were in the 26-27 second range with the slowest being in the 34-35 second range. Some of them realized that what they thought of in the past as hard swimming wasn’t in fact hard swimming. More than anything else, I hope these camps can give the athletes a better insight into how the front pack of swimmers in triathlon trained at one point in time. If you don’t come through swimming culture and don’t have any exposure to it, the level of intensity and consistency needed to swim well is difficult to grasp. The other thing we are trying to do here is not dissimilar to why triathletes should be in the weight room. Everyone is made up of different amounts of slow and fast twitch fiber. As an endurance athlete, you want to recruit of much of the slow and fast as possible to make the movement. In the weight room, it’s a lot easier to force that recruitment to happen. The brain can only make the movement well if it’s made it frequently before. The same goes for sprinting in the pool. The speed of racing other athletes forces recruitment of everything (physiologically, mentally, emotionally, etc) to go faster.
About an hour after we finished, we did another Focusband session. They were starting to get more comfortable with what we were doing and why. The Focusband can also give athletes interesting insights into how their brains are operating under different levels of stress.
Jocelyn was starving when we started the session and she struggled to get where she had been with it the day before. This gave her the understanding of how important fueling into and out of workouts can be for the adaptation you want to make during the day. It’s one thing to understand that on an intellectual level and it’s something else to see it in black and white with experience. If you believe that the brain and body are tightly intertwined and the brain is the primary focus of training, then if the brain doesn’t or can’t make an adaptation to the training neither does the body. Again, the most precious commodity and endurance athlete has is attention.
For the session, I walked them through one of the tricks that you can do with your sight to kick your brain into a “flow” state or as near as you can get in that moment. Then we also practiced some more techniques to focus and be present which means you are relaxed.
Day 4 Wednesday January 12, 2022
We were at 15,000+ yards when they came in for practice and that was just from the first two days. This is where I’m really watching fatigue and seeing what we might be able to accomplish. Can I get another “bite” at the apple or do we just need to try to let them recover so the next practice we can get a really great adaptation. They were looking tired and sounded tired. A number of them commented on how much their shoulders were tight. It was symmetrical so the discomfort was all good. But when they got in the water, they all rode fairly low even with fins on.
On a Wednesday, three days into the camp with a scheduled afternoon off, I would have liked to have done a sprint set. We would have them deal with the discomfort they were feeling in their shoulders, push through it a little and then help them focus on maintaining their stroke while being fatigue. At that point, when you are fatigued, struggling to keep the corrections in your stroke and you then hold those corrections while maintaining pace that’s the point when a significant adaptation in your stroke will occur. It actually occurs a little later in the day when you get some sleep or non sleep deep rest like meditation. But that’s the point where the neurons responsible for that movement are marked for change. If you want some interesting discussion on the latest neuroscience put into layman’s terms, check out the Huberman Lab Podcast. He has a great podcast on adult neuroplasticity (adult learning) that every coach and athlete should be familiar with.
Given the fact that most of them looked like U-Boat commanders in the water, I thought it was best to give them a straight up recovery session. No constraints, no hards intervals and no cues. It’s usually better if I get as far away from the deck as possible. The one thing you find out as a coach is you can have an impact on the stress level of an athlete in the water. If I’m constantly walking around, very engaged in the practice it ups the stress levels of the athletes. For most athletes, this will make them perform better. For some, if the overall stress becomes too much, they might not have their best day. As the coach, I’m trying to balance all of that with each individual athlete to help them achieve their best practice for the day.
Warm up
400 swim with fins
400 kick with fins
400 pull
4×100 descend 1-4 @ 1:25/1:30/1:40
1600
Main set
1×800 swim/kick with fins (alternate 100k/100s) @ 30 seconds rest
8×75 pull @ 1:10/1:15
12×25 swim (2 fast / 2 easy) @ 30
3300
Warm down
Choice
The practice was scheduled for 90 minutes, but we finished around an hour. We didn’t have any one on one or focusband sessions scheduled for that day, so my advice was to get as much rest between now and the next workout on Thursday morning as possible.
Day 3 Tuesday January 11, 2022
I knew the second day could tell me a lot about whether we were doing too much too soon and how they were adapting to the fatigue generated in the first couple of days. I had them arrive on Sunday without any workouts scheduled for that day since travel will always have an impact on their stress levels. My experience working with triathletes and particularly the experience gained from working with professionals who would travel a lot showed that the day after travel was usually not great and that the stress levels were fairly high. With this camp, we’d have to blow through that. They did well the first day and better than expectations, but eventually everyone pays the butcher’s bill.
The yardage total at this point from the previous day was sitting right at 8000 yards. It’s not a lot when considered in a swimming context for a day, but for a lot them they had never seen that much swimming in a day even though it was spread out over two workouts. The other aspect that needed to be taken into account was the technical demands of the stroke that I was pressuring them to maintain while going hard. All of that adds up to a lot of stress, both physical and mental, and higher levels of stress than they were used to experiencing in a swim workout. Most of them swim alone and very rarely swim in groups. The other dimension that needs to be considered is the group dynamic and the higher levels of effort that can be achieved in a team workout setting.
Through the course of the workout, I was modifying what we were going to do as I watched them swim and as the times came in from different efforts. I cut back on some of the intensity and shortened the total distance we went at this workout.
Here was the morning practice:
Warm up
500 swim with fins
400 kick with fins
300 pull
8×50 descend 1-4; 5-8 @ 50/1:00 (dialing in the group on their intervals)
1600
Lead up (The brain likes variety and novelty. Coupled with the cues given for this set, athletes reported at the end that they felt like they had “new” hands. The best way I can describe it is it feels like you have paddles on your hands after you take off the mitts. It’s very easy to “grab” the water. And that’s what we are trying to drive more than anything else is a “feeling.” The brain, nervous system and body are wired to respond faster and more efficiently to feelings than to thoughts.)
4×75 pull with Aquavolo Sensory Mitts (build x 25) @ 15 seconds rest
4×75 swim with Aquavolo Sensory Mitts (build x 25) @ 15 seconds rest
4×75 pull with Aquavolo Sensory Mitts (build x 25) @ 15 seconds rest
2500
Main set (I had originally wanted to do 3 rounds of 3x200s descend and that’s what we stuck with, but I had also written a 200 at the end of each round that was at a 95%+ effort. I decided to knock it down to the 3 rounds of the 3x200s descends and then 1×100 at the completion of the full set.
3×200 swim descend 1-3 @ 2:50/3:05/3:15
(x3)
Break between rounds
1×100 for time
4300
100 Time Trial Results
Chris 1:00
Jon 59
Jocelyn 1:06
Matt 1:02
Dominic 1:10
Klodian 1:12
Lizzie 1:15
Alysha 1:22
Some of the athletes had some fairly impressive results from this swim and some were showing signs of fatigue from the first day. The times also start to show who could benefit from more “front end speed” and who could benefit from more “endurance” biased swimming based on the usual dynamics of the open water pro field tactics.
For the afternoon practice, I was going to take a hard look at how they were swimming in the water since a lot of them were showing significant signs of fatigue from the morning swim. We did a shorter warm up and they were all looking a little lower in the water even compared to this morning. I finally settled on longer “lead up” set where we could lower the intensity a bit but drive some improvements in the stroke and then we would do a short and fast hold pace set with a lot of rest relative to the work load. I would be able to correct their strokes with cues while they were swimming and then they could get a lot of instant feedback from the pace clock on whether the changes were having an impact.
Warm up
400 swim with fins
300 kick with fins
300 pull
4×100 descend 1-4 @ 1:25/1:35/1:40
1400
Lead up (For this set, we used the Brick to force a lot of core engagement while recruiting another muscle group. The fins further put pressure on the core to engage and short fins allowed the kick to happen in a more natural manner and tempo.)
3×50 kick with FikeSwim Brick + Short fins @ 15 second rest
1×100 swim easy with or without fins
(x2)
Break between rounds
1900
Main set
40×25 swim @ hold pace
2900
Jocelyn hold 15 @ 35
Chris hold 13 @ 35
Jon hold 14 @ 35
Matt hold 14 @ 35
Klodian hold 16 @ 35
Dominic hold 15 @ 35
Lizzie hold 17 @ 35
Alysha hold 17 @ 35
Everyone made their paces that were set for them and we were able to make some solid corrections to strokes while they were swimming fast.
Warm down
Choice
Tuesday Total: 7,200 yards
Weekly Total: 15,200 yards
Something I didn’t touch on from yesterday’s post was the work we started to do with the Focusband. We were scheduled to do a Focusband session every day except Wednesday, but I had a conflict come up at the last minute and we had to cancel the Tuesday evening session. The Focusband is a wearable EEG that gives real time feedback on your brain waves and you can wear it while you are exercising. It’s neuro-feedback. Think of it as a power meter for your brain. The second session was focused on the impact of making connections between the brain and different parts of the body. The brain (the driver) can only execute as efficient of a movement of the body (the car) as there is a connection and feel for how everything is connected. The more we direct our brains to make those connections through mindfulness exercises and focused practiced of those movements the more efficient that movement can become. The efficiency can occur both in a real world physiological aspect and in the brain’s perception of the difficulty of making that movement. For example, below is the heart rate profile of one of the early athletes I worked with on this program. He was the USATF 100 mile trail champion for 2 years in a row and I crewed for him at Badwater a few years ago. This is from a marathon he ran and went ≈ 2:32. You can see that his average heart was 121 and it started out where you expect and then dropped dramatically. We had seen this pattern in workout after workout leading into the race when we applied the different aspects of the focusband work.
Day 2 Monday January 10, 2022
(Full Disclosure: Aquavolo and Fike Swim are both sponsors of the camp. They provide the gear for all the athletes in attendance, but this is the same gear I recommend to all the athletes I coach on the team. I do not receive any compensation for their sponsorship other than the gear provided to the athletes for the camp.)
This year the morning practice would start at 8am instead of the usual 7am. 7am is easier for me since the master team I coach finishes practice at 7am. In the past, some of the pros wanted to start a little later. 7am is considered by some an “ungodly” hour so you want to listen to athlete feedback. All of them seemed to like it, but with the schedule of the day it made for a much more chaotic day for the coach. I need to go back to previous camps to see if there was any impact in performance by starting a little later.
The first practice of camp is always interesting. You’re getting a feel for who everyone is and how the group dynamic will shape up. This camp, with it only being a week, meant we weren’t going to gently ramp up the training it was going to be on a fairly sharp incline. With that constraint, I’ve got to be very tuned in to what the athletes are doing, how they are recovering and any little detail that can help me figure out where the group is in terms of stress. If the most valuable commodity that an endurance athlete has is attention and the three things that are most likely to hijack that attention are a threat, a bad mood or stress, then I’ve got to be paying very close attention to the level of fatigue or stress. Movement in and out of the water tells a lot of the story. But so does talking and listening to the athletes when they walk in and while they are getting ready. Simple interactions like these tell a lot more than data alone ever can.
I had talked to everyone that was coming, but this was the first year in a while where first time pros were the majority in attendance. We had 3 returning and 5 first timers. I had a feeling it was going to be a good group and the banter on the deck was already light and casual. For the first workout, I wanted to get a solid warm up and set them up for success. Then do a longer “lead up” set where we could use some of the gear that a majority of them had never used before which would give us the opportunity to do a solid main set. To get the training response that we were all here to get, I knew I would need to thread the needle on how much and what we did. With the gear we are using and how I’m structuring the program, it generates a lot of stress both physically and mentally. If you aren’t used to those levels of focus and intensity, the brain and body can quickly lose the ability to adapt.
This was the first workout of the camp:
AM Practice
Warm up
400 swim with fins
400 kick with fins
400 pull
4×100 descend 1-4 @ 1:30/1:35/1:45 (This was my initial guesstimate for everyone in attendance. I assigned each athlete their own interval and these were three different ones for the group).
1600
I usually like to look at what everyone goes on the third descend. It’s usually about an 85-90% effort. This can give me a good idea of where they are with their fitness and technique and where to set a reasonable “hold pace” set.
Jocelyn 1:13
Chris 1:04
Jon 1:07
Matt 1:08
Dominic 1:15
Klodian 1:14
Lizzie 1:16
Alysha 1:18
Lead up (For sets like this, I usually like to use rest intervals instead of intervals. “Constraints” can come in many forms in a practice. The rest interval can give an athlete the room to figure out what the adaptation needs to be for the movement. Also, the cues before the use of each piece of equipment are very important. Appropriate cues at the right time can help the athlete understand the movement and executed it in a productive way. Poor cueing can lead to a lot of confusion and frustration)
4×50 swim/kick (alternate 25k/25s & 25s/25k) @ 15 seconds rest
4×50 swim/kick (alternate 25k w/Brick/25s & 25s/25k w/Brick) @ 15 seconds rest
4×50 swim/kick (alternate 25k/25s w/Aquavolo mitts & 25s w/Aquavolo mitts / 25k) @ 15 seconds rest
4×50 swim (1xbuildx12.5, 1xEasy, 1xFast, 1xEasy) @ 20 seconds rest (application of above with cues)
2400
Main set (It was a traditional ladder. I wanted it to be challenging, but not too challenging. The athletes needed to have the space to incorporate the feeling of the stroke after the use of the gear. The shorter distance repeats with a fair amount of rest allowed them to work on technique, pacing and get the distance and repetition they need to drive improvements for their events.)
4×25 swim @ 20/25
4×50 swim @ 45/50
4×75 swim @ 1:05/1:10/1:15/1:20
4×100 swim @ 1:20/1:25/1:30/1:40
4×125 swim @ 2:00/2:05/2:15/2:25
4×100 swim @ 1:20/1:25/1:30/1:40
4×75 swim @ 1:05/1:10/1:15/1:20
4×50 swim @ 45/50
4×25 swim @ 20/25
4900
Warm down
Choice
After we finished up, I had about 40 minutes to get over to the Endless Pool for some one on one work. I had three of them scheduled from 10:30am – 12pm and it would be 30 minute sessions per athlete. All the sessions went well and were having another practice at 2pm – 3pm. The analysis of the first four sessions are already posted on the Swim Easy Speed Youtube channel.
The afternoon practice let me evaluate how they handled the volume and level of intensity from the morning. This was a shorter practice, but I wanted to get in a little bit higher level of intensity. Typically, you need less warm up in the afternoon than in the morning, so I would have a little more room to play with for the main set. I figured we would do our first “hold pace” set or race pace set of the camp this afternoon. This is early than I like to do it, but with the shortened camp, I didn’t feel like I had much of a choice.
PM Practice
Warm up
400 swim with fins
300 kick with fins
300 pull
4×75 descend 1-4 @ 1:05/1:10/1:15/1:20
1300
Lead up (The main focus here is forcing a “high elbow catch” and holding a straight line down the middle of the body)
12×25 swim with Aquavolo Drag Sox + paddles (3 fast / 1 easy) @ 20 seconds rest
1600
Main set (The set was 1500 of fast pacing and a lot of focus on technique. If you begin to fall off pace then the athlete needs to figure out why. It is continual feedback from the clock on whether the technique changes being made are efficient or not all the while you are building a lot of fitness. In the end, technique and fitness can’t be separated from one another. They don’t exist independent of each other. The pace usually dictates the technique and we want to make it where that becomes the default movement and speed for the athlete. The fitness will come along with it.)
30×50 swim @ hold pace
Jocelyn hold 34 (33) @ 55
Chris hold 30 (29/30) @ 50
Jon hold 31 (30) @ 50
Matt hold 32 (32) @ 50
Klodian hold 34 (35) @ 55
Dominic hold 35 (34/35) @ 55
Lizzie hold 36 (37/38) @ 1:00
Alysha hold 36 (38) @ 1:00
3100
All in all it was a good first day. I had a lot of interactions and coaching moments with all of the athletes to try to help them better understand the mindset and approach to training to swim faster with more efficiency. The good thing is everyone was “bought in” on the approach and some were already starting to show some signs of big improvements to come.
Day 1
Sunday January 9, 2022
Every camp I try to change up the itinerary a little and add in some new ideas to what we are doing. This year, for a variety of reasons, the camp is only one week. We’ll swim a lot between the start and finish, but that doesn’t leave a lot of time for the athletes to understand the program. I’ve always found it works well to unveil the ideas and what we are trying to accomplish slowly and drive home certain points as the opportunities arise during the training and interactions with the athletes. Good coaching is a dialogue between athlete and coach more than anything else.
This year I decided, since the camp was short, to have an introductory meeting where I could review the training philosophy, discuss what the week would look like and why and then everyone could introduce themselves. The one thing a coach can influence and that can impact the training and athletes significantly is the culture of the program. For everyone who comes to the camp or is interested I spend a good amount of time talking to them over the phone before they arrive. I’m looking to create a specific culture that will drive a lot of the performance gains.
The big change in the way I view training evolved over the last decade. I, like many coaches, viewed endurance training through a fairly narrow lens. The training should primarily target the energy systems necessary to the race. The first insight that precipitated change was the initial move from coaching swimmers to coaching triathletes full time. I was able to step outside what was a widely accepted approach to training. The swim community generally views swim training in two broad camps: volume or race pace training. Volume based training started in swimming in the early to mid 1970s. The first programs with a race paced approach got going in the early 1980s. Both systems however emphasized the importance of the the energy systems of a swimmer and the primary determinant of success.
When I started to work with triathletes I knew that a “volume” approach wouldn’t be the most efficient way to train. So I began developing a coherent, efficient approach to race pace training for triathletes. With athletes who didn’t come from a swim background and limited training time, fitness was going to be more important than technique. I was hopeful that the race paced approach would drive efficiency and improve technique and it did. But I felt we could find additional ways to improve technique without sacrificing gains in fitness. I found some interesting “constraint-led” inspired gear from Aquavolo and Fike Swim. We are able to drive improvements in technique while at the same time working on fitness. A lot of the gear is very hard to use.
At the same time, I witnessed a number of professional triathletes I worked with who raced and trained a large amount which led to difficulties in improving in the swim. I talked with other experienced coaches in other sports and they were seeing the same types of neuromuscular fatigue in their athletes when viewed through a skill based lens.
Nick Winkleman wrote an interesting book, The Language of Coaching. His book is a great summary and application of the research over the past few decades particularly around teaching motor muscle movements. When we start to really look at swimming or triathlon success in those disciplines is learning a skill of how to race faster and more efficiently. A component of that skill is dependent on training the energy systems that we are all familiar with, but an even larger component is the efficiency of the movement, perception of the effort, our mood, our ability to deal with emotions under stress and our ability to focus and be present. Winkleman comes up with an analogy that shows the limits of the predominant mindset around training.
The CAR is to the human BODY as the DRIVER is to the human BRAIN.
You can build up the biggest engine in the world, but if you haven’t trained the driver with the skills required to handle it – you’ll get left at the start line. The brain then should be the primary focus of training. When looked through this lens, the training changes subtly and also significantly. Amishi Jha is a leading neuroscientist who has done some of the best research over the last decade on attention and its impact on peak performance. In her book, Peak Mind she describes the most limited resource for an athlete in their training is attention because attention is the “driver of the brain and what allows it to adapt.”
After we talked for a while about the program, I introduced all of them to the Focusband. It’s a wearable EEG that gives real time feedback on your brain wave states. A lot of the research points on peak performance involves regular and consistent “mindfulness” programs. Over the last 5+ years I’ve developed an integrated mindfulness program for endurance athletes. We went through the first session.
Training would start the next morning at 8am.
Magnolia Masters Pro Triathlete Swim Camp 2020
Day 7
Sunday January 12, 2020
This is a complete day off from swimming. It’s important to take a complete day off from training. The brain and the body can’t go all the time and you can’t expect an adaption from the training if you don’t give your brain/body to rest and grow. With some of the time constraints of the camp, we’ve got to fudge a little on that general rule, but on a regular basis it should be one of the more important things you do in your training. Take the time off to rest and grow.
The Focusband work has been at the center of my coaching work for the past 5 years. I met the Focusband guys at a baseball pitching workshop put on by Tom House. The Focusband originally started out as an aid for golfers. It’s a wearable EEG that allows you to move and get feedback on what your brain is doing. When they showed it to me for the first time I knew what they were getting at. In swimming, it’s called Easy Speed. When i competed coaches would talk about Easy Speed all the time. Easy Speed is when you swim really fast, but it feels effortless. Coaches talked about it all the time, but no one could tell you how to train for it or how to get to it. But when you felt it you knew exactly what it was and you wanted to get back to it as soon as possible. in my swimming career, I felt it a handful of times in practices and once in a meet. After 5 years, working with about 10 athletes, I’ve figured out you can train for it and with enough work you can access it on a consistent basis. The “it” being Easy Speed or more commonly known as a “flow state.” There are a few programs out there that are well done that try to allow an athlete to supplement training with additional work that focuses on training the brain. The best ones out there are MAC (Mindfulness Acceptance, Committment), mPEAK (Mindful Performance Enhancement, Awareness and Knowledge) and MSPE (Mindful Sports Performance Enhancement). I’ve interviewed a couple of the people involved with developing these programs on my podcast – Coffee, Beer, Coaching and Dogs. You can find those interviews here.
The big draw back I see with most of these programs is they are “bolt-ons” to a training program. The work that needs to be done is how do you as the coach integrate this training into an existing training program. As a coach, when you start to look at peak performance, if you aren’t placing the training of the brain at the center of that training then you are missing out on a lot of performance gains. You are not singualrly training a “biological machine” concerned solely about aerobic capacity, anaerobic capacity, mitochondrial density, etc. The hub of peak performance in sport is the brain. It is where the majority of the skill you are training as an endurance athlete resides. When you look at endurance training from this perspective current training regimes are akin to taking a dance class to become an architect.
The typically results I see when you integrate this type of training into your endurance training is drops of about 15% of your HR at same pace, Watts, etc. There are also improvements of sleep, proprioception and then benefits from all those that accrue over time.
So we went through about a 90 minute session of meditating and talking about the meditation. That’s where it starts. The gateway to a “flow state” is through meditation. There are a lot of different “drills” that can get at specific aspects of performance gains and there are different types of meditation that can better address specific performance gains. There is a lot of work that still needs to be and I am hopeful coaches over the next 30 years will take up this challenge to continue to push the sport forward.
Conclusion
The second looks a lot the first week. I won’t go into detail about what we did. It is basically the first week just a little harder and a little more yardage. Every year everyone that comes to the camp gets faster from the first day to the last. This year we had some big drops in time. The biggest was Alysha with about 11 seconds per 100 on a hold pace set. She had never really been able to hold below 1:30/100 when she got to the camp and on the last Friday she was able to hold 100s on 1:19. Lizzie also had an impressive improvement. By the end of the camp she was holding faster (1:15/100) than her fastest 100 time (1:17) ever. On the overall, Lizzie dropped about 8-9 seconds/100.
I did some podcast interviews with some of the athletes in attendance and you can hear what they had to say here.
Interviews with Ginger Howell, Lizzie Nyitray and Alysha Krall
I appreciate everyone checking out the work we did over the course of the camp and if anyone has any questions, I am always happy to answer them if I can.
Tim
Day 6
Saturday January 11, 2020
This is the one practice a week with the team. We swim out at the Magnolia High School Pool and it’s a 14 lane competition pool. We are lucky to have access to it and we swam for 90 minutes. We had a good turn out from the team with the campers and there are quite a few members of the team who can push some of the pros in attendance. I’ll emphasize this point again, if you want to get faster swim with people who are faster than you. The design of the workout doesn’t matter at that point. It’s all about swimming faster and being pushed. Your brain/body will naturally find efficiencies. Like always I would wait until part way through the warm up to decide on what we would swim for the morning. Typically, I’ll either write another hard, hold pace set or more of an aerobic set driven by interval instead of pace. This workout would be the latter. Fortunately, with all the people in the pool, I had assistant coach Max on deck to help.
AM Workout
Warm up
500 swim with fins
300 kick with fins
300 pull
4 x 100 des 1-4 @ 1:30/1:35/1:40/1:50/2:00/2:10/2:20
1500
Lead up
8 x 75 swim/kick w/Aquavolo Sensory mitts (25k/50s with mitts) des 1-4; 5-8 @ 1:30/1:35/1:40/1;50/2:00
2100
Main set
5 x [4 x 125 swim @ 1:55/2:05/2:10/2:15/2:30/2:40/3:00]
– 1st rd swim des 1-4
– 2nd rd pull
– 3rd rd swim ASCEND 1-4
– 4th rd pull
– 5th rd 1 fast / 1 easy
4500
Assistant Coach Max
All in all we had a solid week of swimming. The total yardage, which a lot of times isn’t that telling of anything but I know everyone likes to know, was north of 30k. The group was looking a little tired, but tomorrow would be a complete rest day. I would put on an optional focusband session and do some one on one individual lessons. I’ll talk more about the Focusband in the next post, but it’s something I’ve been working on with athletes for the last 5 years and is cool stuff.
Swim with Mitts and Kick
Day 5
Friday January 10, 2020
Friday is typically the hardest day of the week. It’s usually the day where I’m trying to press speed, endurance and efficiency. We work 100s, 125s or 75s on Fridays. Again, we would have a long warm up and do a lead up set to continue to warm up and get the stroke in the best possible feel before the main set. As I’ve mentioned before, warm up is important. In many ways, it’s as important as the main set. And the more fatigue you are carrying the longer the warm up should be. I went a little lighter on the lead up set today. We used the Sensory Mitts to try to promote feel for the water. The great thing about the Sensory Mitts is they slightly diminish the feel for the water. I give the athletes a cue to try to get as much pressure on their hands as they can. There are multiple ways in the stroke to increase the pressure on the hands and I let the athletes know all the different ways that it can be done. Swimming happens in a dynamic environment, even in a pool. There isn’t one perfect swim stroke that you are trying to learn. It’s a range of movement that the brain and the body have to become efficient at making. The gear we use is an efficient way to promote this learning, but it takes a lot of time in the water.
The other aspect that is a focus of the day is the idea of “technique under load.” The best way to change a movement pattern is to push right to edge of your ability, fail, make a correction and get back to it. This is part of the very simple design behind USRPT and race pace training. During the main, I’ll have a stopwatch on each athlete, time a repeat, watch the repeat and think about what they can do to improve. When they finish the repeat, I’ll give them their time and talk to them about a correction in their stroke to make. I’ll time the next repeat and see if we had an impact.
AM Workout
Warm Up
600 swim with fins
300 kick with fins
300 pull
8 x 50 descend 1-4; 5-8 @ 50/55/1:00
1600
Lead up
20 x 25 swim with Sensory Mitts (2f/2e) @ 35
2100
Main Set (The typical instruction is that if they miss a hold pace, then they should sit out the next 100. If they miss two, then they should do the remainder easy. Since this was the first really hard day, those instructions were a little more flexible.)
25 x 100 swim @ hold pace
Matthew 1:05
Jocelyn 1:11
Patrick 1:10
Blake 1:08 (1:09)
Ginger 1:18 (1:17)
Lizzie 1:22 (1:20)
Aubrey 1:25
Alysha 1:26 (1:25)
4600
Warm Down
Choice
The time listed was the pace I gave them to hold at the start of the set. The interval for most of them gave them about 20 seconds rest. The time in parentheses is the time they actually went. All in all considering the intensity of the first week this first workout for a Friday was solid. I told everyone they need to go home, get some food and rest and be ready to go again at 1pm.
The main goal at the start of the workout was to see where everyone was in terms of fatigue. They mostly looked a little tired, but I knew the workout would only be an hour so most of it would be warm up. I decided to go a little heavier on the “constraint led” work. We used the Drag Sox for some kick which would put a lot of pressure on them aerobically and then right after we’d go into some 25s swim with drag sox. The pull from the drag sox at the feet makes getting into a high elbow catch (EVF) a lot easier. This is what you want to promote right before the main set.
For the main set, I wanted to work a little more speed and less endurance. There is always a trade off when you want to get a lot of endurance you end up giving up speed. For the dynamics of the pro swim in a triathlon you need to work on both. And in many ways speed become more important since if you aren’t in the front group at the start of the race, you aren’t going to be there at the end no matter how much “endurance” training you’ve done.
PM Workout
Warm Up
400 swim with fins
300 kick with fins
300 pull
4 x 75 descend 1-4 @ 1:10/1:15
1300
Lead Up
4 x 25 kick with Drag Sox (3f/1e) @ 55
4 x 25 swim with Drag Sox (3f/1e) @ 40
1500
Main set
16 x 50 swim @ hold pace
4 x 25 kick with The Brick @ 40
Break
8 x 50 swim @ hold pace
2800
Jocelyn 34
Patrick 33
Blake 31
Ginger 36
Lizzie 38
Lenny 40
Aubrey 40
Alysha 40
Warm down
Choice
Day 4
Thursday January 9, 2020
Thursday has typically been a recovery day and after a day off the main emphasis is just a consistent, aerobic workout. We’ll do a little work on technique but nothing too intense. This workout is all about getting everything back from the day and the previous days of hard work and setting them up for success on Friday. Friday are usually a lot of hard repeats above their threshold and we see how long they can hold it, hold it together and make corrections to their stroke while they are fatigued.
I wait to write the workout until I’ve had a chance to see everyone during the warm up. This morning the majority of them looked fairly tired. That sometimes happens after a day off and I also knew that some of them were putting in some substantive training on the bike and the run. This is the biggest mistake I see triathletes make who want to improve on the swim. They stack up too much fatigue from the bike and run and don’t give themselves any room to improve on the swim. If you need to make an improvement in your swim to be competitive then the swim needs to be your priority. In other words, the bike and run won’t be a priority.
AM Workout
Warm up
500 swim with fins
300 kick with fins
300 pull
4 x 100 descend 1-4 @ 1:30/1:35/1:40
1500
Lead up (This is a great “drill” to get at core engagement while recruiting another muscle group. The short fins allow for a natural cadence on the kick. Lifting the Brick, the Brick is a 6 pound kick board that is neutrally buoyant, from the core and not the shoulder puts a lot of pressure on the core to engage and the snorkel helps to keep a line right down the middle of the body. We alternate 25 left and 25 right).
16 x 25 one arm swim with the Brick + short fins + snorkel @ 40
1900
Main set
4 x 25 swim @ 20/25
4 x 50 swim @ 45/50
4 x 75 swim @ 1:05/1:10/1:15
4 x 100 swim @ 1:25/1:30/1:35
4 x 125 swim @ 1:50/1:55/2:00
4 x 125 swim @ 1:50/1:55/2:00
4 x 100 swim @ 1:25/1:30/1:35
4 x 75 swim @ 1:05/1:10/1:15
4 x 50 swim @ 45/50
4 x 25 swim @ 20/25
4900
Warm Down
Choice
I knew at the end of this workout that we wouldn’t be swimming much for the afternoon swim. They made it through the day, but there was some ragged swimming. And most of the time you’ve got to get through the raggedness to have some really great workouts, but considering how much we had done at the start of the week they were going to need any easy, easy swim in the afternoon.
For the afternoon, I kept the swimming to less than 50 minutes. The workout was not more than a basic “meet warm-up” and something to keep the feel for the water. The whole point was to set them up for a great swim on the Friday workouts. They were all thankful for the easy swimming. For this workout and all the recovery practices. I make myself scare on the deck. I don’t offer any stroke corrections and I try to keep a distance from the edge of the pool. You want the athletes to feel as relaxed as possible and let go of some of the tension.
PM Workout
Warm up
400 swim with fins
300 kick with fins
200 pull
4 x 100 descend 1-4 @ 1:30/1:40
1300
Main set
2 x 400 kick/swim w/fins (alternate 100k/100s) @ 20 seconds rest interval
8 x 50 pull @ 50
8 x 25 swim (1 fast / 1 easy) @ 35
2700
Warm down
Choice
Day 3
Wednesday January 8, 2020
This is traditionally a day off. I do offer an optional workout at night with the team but this year the camp coincided with a “Senior” meet for the High School team, so I wasn’t able to offer an optional swim on Wednesday.
Putting on the camp every year is a fairly big undertaking. I rent 25 hours of additional pool space. I want to ensure that all the athletes coming in get the best possible experience and learn as much as possible while they are here. We had three gear sponsors – Aquavolo, Like Swim(The Brick Kickboard) and the Laguna Fin Company, provide their equipment to all the athletes in attendance. In all the athletes received about $200 in new swim gear. The local triathlon community steps up and the athletes get a homestay while they are here. We always have a team get together to thank everyone in the community. This year we had around 50 people from the local triathlon community enjoy a beer and some pizza with all the other athletes and pros in town. A good example of the openness and generosity of the triathlon community here was when we couldn’t offer the Wednesday night optional practice and a local coach, Dana Lyons – Finish Strong Racing, stepped up and offered lane space with their Wednesday practice. The success of this camp every year is from the strength and support of this community and I’m always grateful for it.
Day 2 – Tuesday January 7, 2020
The second day into the camp I’m usually looking to get in a decent workout. At this point, especially if they haven’t been here before, I’m paying a lot of attention to how they are moving in the water compared with the day before. I’m also trying to get a sense of how everyone is feeling and have they got over the travel. A good indicator of how they are doing is to look at the descend set we do at the end of warm up. This morning we did 8 x 50 descend 1-4; 5-8 @ 50 or 55. If an athlete struggles with this set and has a tough time controlling their pace or lacks a sense of feel for pace then there is probably some lingering fatigue.
I made sure to do a long warm up. In my experience and with the experience I’ve gained working with an EEG, it takes a minimum of 15-20 minutes for the brain and the body to warm up and “sync.” So if you want to get the most out of the main set do a long warm up.
AM Workout
Warm Up ( I always recommend using fins for the warm up. They are great for taking pressure off the shoulders when you first get in the water. They immediately put you in the right body position and if you want to adjust your stroke it’s easy to do with the extra speed and lift.)
600 swim with fins
300 kick with fins
300 pull
8 x 50 descend 1-4; 5-8 @ 50/55/1:00
1600
Lead Up (When we are going to do a hard, race paced set this is an important set to make the warm up a little longer and then to set the stage from a technique perspective to ensure we’ll have them ready to ingrain even more efficient technique. The other added bonus is swimming with drag sox and paddles is hard. The build is another layer of complexity that can really help to drive efficiency.
6 x 100 swim with Aquavolo Drag Sox + paddles + snorkel (build x 25) @ 1:40/1:55
2200
Main Set (Over the years as I’ve worked with race pace training and in particular USRPT influenced sets, I’ve tweaked how we do them to find the best way to make them work. USRPT in its conception is constructed around the science and seems to be lacking in any real world application. I’ve noticed that triathlon seems to place a lot of weight on the science and less weight on the application and what experienced coaches are doing. There tends to be a fairly big gap sometimes between what works in the lab and what coaches can make work with athletes in practice sessions to find performance gains for race day. The set below is a piece of what I’ve found works based on my experience of coaching 12 workouts a week and how that has worked with a couple hundred athletes over the past few years. The great thing about 25s is that you have these short fast reps over and over where you can see how little changes to the stroke impact your speed on the pace clock. The rest also gives you enough time to maintain that great stroke technique for longer and longer periods of time.)
40 x 25 swim @ hold pace
Break
100 Easy Swim
4 x 50 swim with Sensory Mitts (alternate build x 12.5 and easy) @ 1:05
20 x 25 swim @ hold pace
Here were the pace I gave to each athlete at the start
Matthew 13
Jocelyn 15
Patrick 14
Blake 13
Ginger 15
Lizzie 17
Aubrey 17
Alysha 18
4050
Warm Down
Choice
For the afternoon workout, I knew we would be taking Wednesday off so I had a little more flexibility in what we could do. I wanted something that would be very hard, way above threshold and that would challenge them on multiple fronts from technique to speed to maintaining focus when there are huge distractions (discomfort from going fast). A lot of the direction my coaching has gone over the past 5 years is how the brain learns and that it sits at the hub of “peak performance.” Yes, the “metabolics” and how a coach trains the body of an athlete for a race is important. But the paradigm for endurance coaches for the last 75 years has been the athlete is a “biologic machine” and that everything from the neck down is the most important thing for success on race day. It isn’t. The more athletes I work with, the more I work with athletes on looking at their EEGs and integrating that information into their workouts the more I’ve realized the brain is what we are training. If you accept the simple idea that the brain and the body are tightly intertwined, then if the brain doesn’t make an adaptation to the training then neither does the body.
The second workout would only be an hour, but it was in the afternoon so we wouldn’t need as much warm up as we did in the morning. We still did roughly 30+ minutes of warm up. It’s important, especially when you want to get everything out of the main set.
PM Workout
Warm Up
400 swim with fins
300 kick with fins
300 pull
4 x 75 descend 1-4 @ 1:10/1:20
1300
Lead Up
8 x 25 swim with Sensory Mitts (3 fast / 1 easy) @ 35
1500
Main Set
8 x 50 sprint (all out) @ 3:30
1900
Warm Down
At least 500 or until the heart rate comes down
This set was hard for a lot of the athletes for a number of reasons. It requires a lot of endurance as well as speed and efficiency and focus. With other highly motivated athletes in the water, all of whom are competitive with one another, it can put a lot of pressure on athletes to find success. The one thing you learn when you swim is that it may be predominantly an individual sport, but the best way to find success is as a team. I’m typically looking for athletes to blow up on a set like this and realize that it’s ok to fail. The only pathway to success is through failure.
If anyone has any questions, please let me know.
Day 1 – Monday January 6, 2020
This is the 5th year for the Magnolia Masters Pro Camp. I started this camp for the first time back in 2015, we had an off year in 2017 and got it back up and running in 2018. When I came up with the idea for a swim focused professional triathlete camp I had the intention of giving triathletes without swim backgrounds a glimpse as to how swimmers routinely train. This might give the athletes an idea that improving their swim was possible and there was a pathway forward if they wanted to become more competitive as a professional triathlete. Over the years as I’ve worked with more and more triathletes and thought about ways to make the training more efficient the camps become a great lab for the implementation of the program I’ve developed.
One of the bigger changes to the program over the past few years has been the introduction of some “constraints” during sets. This has been my solution to how to drive fitness and technique at the same time, since triathletes are limited on time in the water. There have been some great “gear” companies that have started over the last 5 years and they are producing some innovative equipment that can allow a coach to drive technique and fitness at the same time in a set. Magnolia Masters has been using this gear on the team for about 3 years now. We are lucky to have Aquavolo, Fike Swim (Brick Kickboard) and the Laguna Fin Company as sponsors for the camp. They all make terrific product that I’ve found can accelerate the learning curve for improving technique and fitness in the water. I’ll discuss more about that over the next few days. For today, we used the Aquavolo gear in a couple of the sets. Each piece of the gear can really get at a very specific part of the stroke and allow you to swim hard.
This year we have a good group of athletes. Some of them are veterans of the camp and this year we have some solid rookies. The list includes Aubrey Aldy, Blake Becker, Patrick Brady, Justin Daerr, Ginger Howell, Alysha Krall, Jocelyn McCauley, Lizzie Nyitray, Laura Mathews and Mathew Perches. A good chunk of the group arrived on Sunday and we started off fairly easy this morning and this afternoon. Below is the workout we did this morning. I was taking notes on the different athletes – their times on different sets and a general evaluation of where the initial improvements of their strokes would come from. A lot of these athletes I was seeing in the water for the first time. If you look at enough athletes moving in the water you can pick up a lot about the athlete. Everyone has a different stroke and the stroke can tell a story. I had a pro this summer who came to the Woodlands before Kona to train. I’ve seen him in the pool a fair amount over the last few years, so I got to know what his stroke looked like and what it looked like when he was swimming well. He showed up to a practice with the team and when he got out he asked me how his stroke looked. I said that compared to what he usually looked like it appeared that he had a hip injury – the recovery part of his stroke was very different than normal. He paused for a second, put his hand over his hip and said quietly that from his hip down to his knee was all jacked up.
AM Workout
Warm up
400 swim with fins
400 kick with fins
400 pull
4 x 100 descend 1-4 @ 1:30/1:35/1:40
1600
Lead Up (I wanted to drive the connection between the kick and pull and then develop a little more feel for the water with the Aquavolo Sensory Mitts)
8 x 75 kick/swim (25k/50s with Aquavolo Sensory Mitts) @ 1:25/1:35
2200
Main Set
10 x 50 swim @ 45/50
1 x 200 kick @ 20 seconds rest
8 x 75 pull @ 1:10/1:15/1:20
1 x 200 kick @ 15 seconds rest
6 x 100 swim @ 1:30/1:40/1:50
4300
Warm down
Choice
(Aubrey Aldy with the Aquavolo VoloBlades)
PM Workout
Warm up
400 swim with fins
300 kick with fins
300 pull
8 x 50 descend 1-4; 5-8 @ 50/55
1400
Main set (This set was all about taking it one stroke at a time, learning from trying to get the feel for the water in the 25s with the gear and then applying it to the swim that would follow. And trying to develop a lot of focus)
4 x 25 swim with Sensory Mitts @ 35
4 x 100 swim @ 1:30/1:40
4 x 25 swim with Aqauvolo Drag Sox + Paddles + Snorkel @ 40
4 x 75 swim @ 1:10/1:15
4 x 25 kick with Drag Sox @ 50
4 x 50 swim @ 45/50
4 x 25 swim with Sensory Mitts @ 35
4 x 25 swim @ 30
2800
Warm down
Choice
(Alysha waiting for the next repeat)
All in all a good start to the camp and a good lead in for the hard work that will come tomorrow. Tuesday we’ll up the intensity and the number of repeats. We’ll shift the focus to a more race pace/USRPT influenced approach to the training.
The last coaching session of the day was with Alysha and Lizzie. I did a couple one on one video stroke analysis sessions with them. We focused on one specific aspect of their stroke that they could improve and then could work on in the practices for the next week. In general what we worked on was forcing a lot of engagement up and down the “kinetic chain.”
As always, if anyone has any questions please feel free to contact me.
***************************************************
Magnolia Masters Pro Triathlete Swim Camp 2019
Day 2 – Tuesday January 8, 2019
We started out the first practice at 7am. We planned on swimming until 8:30am. I usually don’t have a specific goal yardage in mind when I’m writing a workout and I don’t write the workout until I’ve watched how they look in warm up. The day before I watched everyone swim and made notes of what I thought their paces would be at various distances. For today, I knew we would swim 25s and a lot of them. 25s are a good place to start. They are short, you can do a lot of them and see how small changes to the stroke can impact the time on the clock. The workout for this morning was based on a USRPT (Ultra-Short Race Pace Training) set which I modified. USRPT is a good framework and idea to start with, but it tends to be a little too clinical without enough variety. What I mean by that is it was designed by an exercise scientist, Brent Rushall, based on the his review of the literature. There’s nothing wrong with the science, but it tends to take the person out of the equation. The big mistake that a lot of coaches make is to treat an athlete as if they are a “biological machine” and solely focus on training the metabolic pathways (aerobic capacity, anaerobic capacity, etc). The art of coaching is taking the knowledge available and incorporate it into a program that helps an athlete achieve performance increases on race day. It doesn’t need to be too complex. It’s not about chasing a little fitness line up and to the right. it’s about the results on race day.
Here is what we did on Tuesday morning:
Warm up
400 swim with fins
400 kick with fins
400 pull
4×100 descend 1-4 @ 1:25/1:30
1600
Lead up (For this set we used Aquavolo’s Drag Sox and Sensory Mitts. They are great pieces of equipment that can drive important changes to the stroke quickly and efficiently. This has been one of the bigger changes we’ve made to the program over the last couple of years. I’m always pushing to finds ways to make the program more effective at getting triathletes better in the swim. We have never done any drill work since I found out a while ago with triathletes it wasn’t an effective use of time. However, with the constraints-led use of Drag Sox and Sensory Mitts we can continue to work on fitness in the water and technique.)
8×75 swim/kick (25k/50s) descend 1-4; 5-8
1-4 25 kick/50 swim w/mitts @ 1:30
5-8 25 kick w/drag sox / 50 swim w/drag sox @ 1:50
2200
Main Set(Matthew 13 (13.5); Jocelyn 14 (15.1); Rick 15 (15.9); Laura 15 (15.3);Patrick 15 (14.9))
The times listed for each athlete are what I assigned to them at the start of the set and then what they actually held.
20 x 25 swim @ hold pace
100 easy
3×100 build x 25 w/mitts @ 1:40
20 x 25 swim @ hold pace
3100
Warm down
The afternoon practice was only an hour. We did decent warm up for an hour workout. The more fatigue an athlete carries the longer the warm up will be. in my experience, triathletes generally don’t warm-up enough. They feel time crunched to get in as many yards as possible so they swim 500 and get the main set going. The minimum an athlete needs to get the brain and the body synced up is 15-20 minutes. If you are jumping right into the main set after 500, all you are doing is wasting some of the adaptation you could be making. You’ll spend the first quarter of your main set warming up.
For the afternoon workout, I still wanted to go hard but I wanted a little variety in the set. A few of the athletes here at the camp, I have coached for a while or they’ve been to a previous camp. The last thing you want to do is get too stale with the workouts. The brain likes variety and enjoys new challenges. The good thing about being an athlete in a sport and then a coach for a long time is there isn’t a good workout that i haven’t done or coached or seen. I heard a well known swim coach say one time that there aren’t any new workouts. Every single quality practice has been written or given by a good coach at one point in time.
Warm Up
400 swim with fins
300 kick with fins
300 pull
4 x 75 descend 1-4 @ 1:10/1:20
1300
Lead Up
8 x 25 swim with sensory mitts (3 fast / 1 easy) @ 35
1500
Main Set
1 x 200 sprint @ 4:00
4 x 50 pace (85% effort) with drag sox + paddles + snorkel @ 1:00
Break 1 min
1 x 200 sprint @ 4:00
4 x 50 pace (85% effort) with drag sox + paddles + snorkel @ 1:00
Break 1 min
1 x 200 sprint
2500
Warm Down
Choice
200s
Patrick 2:13; 2:19; 2:19
Jocelyn 2:12; 2:11; 2:11
Laura 2:24; 2:22; 2:20
Aubrey 2:38; 2:40; 2:48
In the evening Patrick and I worked on some one on one video stroke analysis. You can see the analysis here and what we worked on for him to practice in the upcoming workouts. There is one big misconception within the triathlon community that should be addressed. I am a big believer in the importance and efficacy of one on one video analysis with a qualified coach. I’ve done lessons like this for years with highly trained (athletes swimming 10 workouts a workout averaging 4 hours a day) swimmers. A one on one video analysis session can have a big impact on performance and efficiency. The issue is that training and technique don’t exist independent of one another. You can do all the one on one video analysis sessions you want, but if you don’t consistently get in the water and work hard to practice that technique you won’t see much improvement. It’s about practicing that focused movement over and over again and building up the strength and conditioning specific to the water to swim faster and more efficiently.
Day 1 – Monday January 7, 2019
This is the fourth year of the Magnolia Masters pro triathlete camp. I started this camp in 2015 as a way to focus a lot of the pro triathletes I worked with on the swim and give them an idea of how to improve their swim. Swimming is the odd bird of the three disciplines of triathlon and many of the pro triathletes I’ve worked with haven’t been exposed to a focused, effective swim program. The biggest goal of the camp over the years, since we only swim for 2 weeks and I know we can’t make any lasting changes or miraculous improvements, is that the athletes get a glimpse of the work and focus to improve in the swim over the long term.
This year we’ll have nine athletes in with a good majority of them in for the full two weeks. A lot of the athletes have attended the camp in the past and it’s always good to have them back. And this is one of the main objectives when I put this camp together. The mix of athletes is critical to all of their success. As a swimmer you learn quickly that while the sport is largely individual in nature, the only way to be successful is with a strong and supportive team. Your teammates are the ones who will push you to achieve performance gains you wouldn’t have been able to get alone. The culture of the team that develops is paramount to the success of the camp and the individual athletes in it. This is the best piece of advice I can give to any triathlete. If you want to make significant gains in the swim, find a team to swim with.
Our first workout was Monday morning at six. A lot of the athletes for the camp arrived the day before so they swam the workout with the team and we swam an hour. I wanted to keep it aerobic and let them recover, but keep them moving. Here was the first workout we did for Monday:
Warm up (Warm up is important. I’ve been working a lot with a handful of athletes with a wearable EEG and from the brain/body perspective it takes about 15 minutes minimum for the brain and the body to sync up. If you think skipping warm-up is a good idea to get in more distance to train aerobically, remember this – if the brain doesn’t make an adaptation neither does the body. The brain and body are tightly intertwined.)
400 swim with fins
300 kick with fins
300 pull
4×100 descend 1-4 @ 1:30 (we used an interval everyone could make with enough rest and the ability to descend)
1400
Lead Up (This is a set to continue to refine the stroke for the main set or highlight something to focus on for the main set.)
4×25 kick (3 fast / 1 easy) @ 35
4×50 pull (alternate 25 fast / 25 easy & 25 easy / 25 fast) @ 50
1700
Main Set (I wanted this to be a steady, consistent and a dense workout)
12×150 swim @ 2:05
Alternate 6 swim; 6 pull
3500
In the afternoon, they came back and we did a lot of kicking. I’ve found over the years that kicking can really help triathletes flush their legs. It works better than just about anything I’ve seen. Also, most of the best distance programs in the United States kick about 20% of their total volume. The workout again was steady and consistent. We went a little longer than in the morning and totaled about 7200 for the day. Tuesday would be the first day of a 1.5 hour practice and I would be upping the intensity and the volume for the day.
Here’s a video of the team swimming all together on the first day.
March 28, 2016
I recently was interviewed for a podcast for Endurance Sports Coaching. We talked about my views on training the swim for sprint through long course triathletes. You can find that podcast here: Endurance Sports Coaching. As always if anyone has any questions, please feel free to contact me.
Magnolia Masters Pro triathlete Swim Camp 2016
Day 19 – January 22, 2017 (Friday)
This was the official end of the camp. A couple of them would be here to swim with the team for a few more days, but the extra pool space and double workouts were winding down. I knew from comments from some of them that I would be cutting back the workouts for Friday by a lot. We would start the “taper” portion of the camp a little earlier than expected. In swimming, with regards to the taper, distance swimmers tend to need the least amount of taper. Within a USRPT format the theory goes that you need even less.
The morning workout we went a normal warm-up and then 15×100 swim @ hold pace. Everyone was doing well. They worked hard and went faster than they had the previous week. It’s always rewarding to see. In the afternoon, I cut it back even further and we swam 6×100 swim @ hold pace for the main set. It was slightly faster than the morning, which isn’t unusual for an afternoon workout.
After the practice I invited them all out for coffee and cupcakes. Some of them got adventurous in their cupcake choices.
Yes, that’s bacon…
We talked about the camp, how we could make improvements for next year and what they liked about this year. Talking over coffee and coaching is usually where the best opportunities to coach occur. That night I enjoyed a couple nice glasses of wine and rested up.
For next year, I’ll open up the camp to a few more age groupers that want to attend each week. So anyone that is interested, please feel free to contact me and put your name on the list. Also, the experiment with coaching another coach during the camp went well. Any coach that is interested in attending the camp as an on-deck coach please let me know. I’m going to limit it to one coach per week, but you’ll learn a lot.
These camps could not happen without the help of our sponsors and home stay families. I want to thank Sterling Ridge Orthopaedics (www.facebook.com/srosm), Klean Athlete (www.facebook.com/kleanathlete), Gold’s Gym of the Woodlands (https://www.facebook.com/Golds-Gym-Woodlands-Magnolia-178527142202701/) and Alternative Health Center of the Woodlands (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Alternative-Health-Center-of-The-Woodlands/120059144287). These sponsors provided financial support as well generously provided their services to the pros. Please go on their facebook pages and give them some likes and kudos.
Big thanks to all of the home stay families that invited the pros into their homes for January. I want to thank Richard and Denise Plant, Greg and Maureen Gibbons, Dana and Deb Lyons, Zach and Wendy Miller, the Noyes Family and Camp Floyd.
Until next January…
Tim
Day 18 – January 21, 2017 (Thursday)
I told them all to come to swim at the noon practice so they could get some sleep. They all needed it. The weather wasn’t going to cooperate at noon. I was watching the radar on my phone and sure enough about 30 minutes into practice we had to get out. They were able to get in the warm-up and a little of the main set, so we got in about 2000 yards. That’s more than enough for a recovery practice.
Watching them in the water, I knew the last day (Friday) would be light. Then it would be the taper coming off the work we had done for the next week. A lot of them would be racing either Dubai 70.3 or Panama 70.3, so we’d get a good look at how all the training worked.
Swimming with the Team…
In sync…
Day 17 – January 20, 2016 (Wednesday)
All of them had the day off from swimming, but we would have a get together at night at the local Whole Foods to thank everyone in the community for welcoming the pros to town and helping out. The community in the Woodlands area is incredibly supportive of the pro triathletes that come to town and we wouldn’t be able to put these camps together without their support. It gives the pros a chance to meet and thank everyone that makes these camps possible in a fun and relaxed environment.
As always it’s great to see everyone together having fun. We had about 60 people in total and shared some food and drink. After talking with all the pros, it was apparent that I needed to let them sleep in and we would only have an easy recovery practice for the next day. I told them that they could swim at the noon practice and enjoy an easy morning.
Day 16 – January 19, 2016 (Tuesday)
I look at Tuesday as the day to set up the athletes for a successful Friday. The one thing you want to do as a coach is let the structure of the program drive improvement on a weekly basis. Then you don’t have to think as much about the big picture and can really focus on the day to day/moment to moment coaching opportunities. And in triathlon the idea of “periodization” is somewhat irrelevant given that triathletes don’t swim enough to begin with. The gains in swimming are very small and incremental over a long period of time. As a coach, you need a lot of patience and focus. As I mentioned before, the improvements in mechanics and then efficiency only happen at speed when you get tired. That’s when and where the big gains occur.
The nice thing about this program is the team is a good size. We have 12 workouts a week on a regular basis and some days as many as 3 workout options in a day. From a coaching point of view, I get to “experiment” and see how athletes react from workout to workout and tweak the workouts as the day goes along. The team has some fast age groupers and a lot of hard working, dedicated age group athletes. They are rewarding to work with. For the pros, this means that I can test out new ideas and refine the workouts so they are getting the most out of them. It’s fun to see how the addition or subtraction of sets as small as 4x25s can have on the outcome of a whole workout.
Coming into the morning practice I didn’t really know what we would do. I knew they were tired. I was tired. For me, don’t think the lack of sleep, exercise and all-carb diet for the previous three weeks helped much. I finally settled on that the morning workout would be more “endurance” focused. I noticed some of them struggled with speed in the morning. we started with a long warm up and then a lead up set of some kicking and swimming. The main set was 50×50@ hold pace. Not exactly a terrific set to hear from the coach, but not much of a choice for an Ironman Pro Triathlete. Sometimes you’ve got to grind out some ridiculous work. There are always smarter ways to train, but there aren’t any shortcuts.
The first couple repeats of the 50s, I thought it would be a long morning. I was a little concerned that I had over-reached with their hold paces and what I wanted them to go for 2500 yards. But it just appeared that they needed a little more warm-up. We did about 2100 yards of warm-up coming into the main set. With all the kicking you could argue that it was about a 2500 yard equivalent. Everyone was solid. There were two of them that struggled more than the others, but talking with them it sounds like it was some fatigue from the bike/run. I paid particular attention to everyone’s tempo for the set, especially as we got further into it. Here’s one of the mistakes I see triathletes make and some of the bad wisdom about swimming: tempo in the swim is not one size fits all. For a 50 free, yeah, everyone is going to be about exactly the same. At the Olympic level, it’s about .9 in the 50 free. For distance swimming and open water swimming, the range of tempos to be successful is a lot wider. A good example is the difference in tempo between the Olympic 10k gold and silver medalists from London. Ous Mellouli, 10k Gold medal winner, had a stroke tempo of about 1.7 (70SPM). While Thomas Lurz, 10k silver medal winner, stroke tempo was around 1.2 (100SPM). Stroke tempo is impacted by a lot of factors including height, mechanics, experience, genetics and conditions in the water. So be careful about a coach that tells you that you should have a high tempo stroke. You probably don’t.
Tuesday workout – AM
Warm up
400 swim w/fins
400 kick w/fins
400 pull
4 x 75 descend 1-4 @ 1:05/1:10/1:15
1500
Lead up
6 x 100 swim/kick (50k/50s) @ 2:00
2100
Main set
50 x 50 swim @ hold pace
4600
Warm down
12 x 25 swim easy @ 15 seconds rest
The afternoon practice was good. I decided that since the morning went well we would focus on more speed and better mechanics at speed in the afternoon. Even though it was the afternoon I chose to do a longer warm-up since they looked like they needed it this morning. For the lead up set, we did some swim with some fast 25s within a 75. The main set I broke into two pieces and went 2x20x25 swim @ hold pace. They did great. They were faster than the previous week and were building on the technique improvements we had focused on. The results showed.
Tuesday workout – PM
Warm up
400 swim w/fins
400 kick w/fins
400 pull
8 x 50 descend 1-4 @ 50
1600
Lead up
6 x 75 swim @ 1:20
[ – 25 fast / 50 easy
– 25 easy / 25 fast / 25 easy
– 50 easy / 25 fast ]
(x2)
2050
Main set
2 x 20 x 25 swim @ hold pace
Break 1 min between rounds
3050
Warm down
300 choice
Day 15 – January 18, 2016 (Monday)
This was the start of the third and final week of the camp. Time flies. After a complete day off from swimming and through two weeks of fairly hard, intense swimming I knew they wouldn’t look sharp. So we would push some yardage at a lower intensity and pace. I wanted to do a main set that was a little kick and a little swim. The lead up would be some solid, consistent swimming to hopefully get them going. By the end of the lead up set we were 2500 yards into the practice. The main set was some 50s descend followed by some 25s kick that were effectively “active recovery” and then some 50s ascend. The descend-ascend combination can be good at times to get the athletes to focus on pace and to control pace with a lot of precision. It’s important that the athlete learn about pace and internalize it. There are no gizmos to give you objective feedback in the middle of an open water swim. Pace has got to be done by feel.
This would be the last workout for Aubrey since his flight was leaving that afternoon. It was nice to have a coach that wanted to learn about what we do and I think I will continue the program of having a couple coaches that want to come down during the camp to learn on-deck. I had fun and I think Aubrey learned a lot.
Monday workout – AM
Warm up
400 swim w/fins
400 kick w/fins
400 pull
4 x 100 des 1-4 @ 1:25/1:30/1:40
1600
Lead up
6 x 150 swim @ 1:55/2:10/2:25
2500
Main set
4 x 50 descend 1-4 @ 45/50
4 x 25 kick @ 40
4 x 50 ascend 1-4 @ 45/50
(x5)
Break 1 min after 3rd round.
5000
Warm down
12 x 25 swim easy @ 15 seconds rest
The afternoon practice would be more of the same. Again, the slower swimmers were showing fatigue more at this point than the faster swimmers. I wasn’t overly concerned, but I was watchful. You want to push, but you don’t want it to be too much.
I shortened the warm-up and changed up the descends to 75s. Then we went right into the main set. I wanted some intensity, but I was also looking to get in some yardage. I did resurrected another “old school” swim set. We did some 300s hard, but with fins and small paddles. The paddles had to be small enough where they didn’t drastically alter your stroke or your tempo. For a lot of them swimming that meant the dark blue stroke maker paddles or no paddles at all. Then we went into 4×100 on a tighter interval. We did the set 4x and took a one minute break after the second round. The point of the fins with paddles and swimming fast is it forces the athlete to tighten the core and maintain a tighter alignment through the center-line. And with the increased speed, you can feel where some of the “bright” points are in your stroke that cause drag.
Monday workout – PM
Warm up
400 swim w/fins
300 kick w/fins
300 pull
4 x 75 descend 1-4 @ 1:05/1:10/1:15
1200
Main set
1 x 300 swim w/fins and paddles @ 4:15
4 x 100 swim @ 1:15/1:20/1:30
(x4)
Break 1 min after 2nd round
4000
Warm down
300 choice
Pro Kickboard…
Day 14 – January 17, 2016 (Sunday)
Two of the pros, Sue and Lauren, left on Saturday afternoon and it’s always tough to see them go. They were both beginning to make a lot of progress in the water, but unfortunately, reality intrudes and you can only put your life on hold to train for so long. Kids, significant others, jobs and such have a way of pulling you back even as a pro. My biggest hope from these camps is that the athletes that come here get a better idea of how they need to train to make improvements in their swimming. From my experience, there is a disturbing gap in knowledge about how to train effectively for the swim within the triathlon community with a lot of bad information that has become gospel among triathlon coaches. One of the worst is the use of big paddles by triathletes and there are a whole host of issues that develop from the use of paddles and especially over-sized paddles.
From what I’ve seen with triathletes that don’t have a swim background who use big paddles from onset of their training, it tends to be a disaster. It’s great at the beginning, because they get a huge amount of feel and feedback from the paddle on their hand. When they get overused the triathlete actually gets de-sensitized to the “feel” for the water when they don’t have paddles on. This makes finding an efficient stroke difficult. The second big issue is that triathletes typically don’t have the conditioning to support a big paddle on a pull. It usually takes swimmers the better part of a decade, if ever, to develop the stroke mechanics and strength to use a large paddle. Lastly, I’ve never seen a triathlete have a tempo faster than about 2 seconds to complete a stroke cycle with big paddles. If they are going faster then they are significantly increasing the likelihood of a shoulder injury. As mentioned before most of the fastest swimmers in Ironman triathlon are swimming with a tempo of about 1.5-1.6. And the range of fast efficiency is about 1.2-1.8. Here’s a video of some triathletes swimming with paddles that are too large for their stroke mechanics and conditioning. Pay particular attention to the pull pattern of the swimmer on the left of the screen and his left hand as he pulls through the water. Notice in the slow motion portion of the video how the paddle moves slightly back and forth through the water. That’s the shoulder not being able to deal with the load. The other one is the last swimmer on the right side of the screen that comes into the frame towards the end of the video. You can see a whole host of issues that happen with the use of the large paddles.
For this Sunday, I worked with Matt. Matt has come a long way since I started coaching him over 2 years ago. He’s got a good series of videos up from the different times we have filmed his stroke and you can see the progression. Right now, we are working on slowing down his stroke tempo. His tempo while he was training by himself had gotten up to as fast as 1.0-1.1, which is too fast to be efficient. The second issue is he carries his hips/feet too low adding too much drag to his stroke and in turn causes him to finish too soon. It’s also impacting the catch at the front of the stroke, but you’ve got to focus on one thing at a time. So we filmed, did some analysis of the stroke from the different angles then did a few drills to address those issues and we were done. Getting better at swimming is a long, slow process. But he continues to improve and we have a clear road map forward. Here’s the initial film of him swimming from Sunday:
Day 13 – January 16, 2016 (Saturday)
The Saturday practice is typically a more “orthodox” swim workout. I give the athletes a mental break from the demands of a USRPT set with specific hold paces and typically control the workout through adjustment of the interval rather than a specific “hold pace.” I incorporated the idea from USRPT of shorter distance repeats, but everything else is “old school” swim workouts.
The warm-up was a normal 1500 with some 75s descend. Variety is the spice of life. The lead up set was a mixture of swimming and kicking. The swim portion was more active recovery with a focus generating some speed and control from the kicking.
The main set was long. For the faster swimmers in the pool, we hit 6000 yards for 1.5 hours. While they were tired they got through the set and made it happen. At the end of the set we did a 100 for time. All of them had dropped significant time off their 100 from before the camp. The importance for the pros of having a fast 100 is two fold. First, they need to have that speed to have a chance to make the first pack and respond to any surges during the race. Second, the faster they can go in the 100 is usually a good indication that their mechanics and body position are more efficient.
At the wall…
Yep, it’s early…
Sunrise…
Saturday workout
Warm up
400 swim w/fins
400 kick w/fins
400 pull
4×75 descend 1-4 @ 1:05/1:10/1:15
1500
Lead up
3x [3×50 kick @ 1:00 des 1-3 & 1×50 swim @ 1:00]
2100
Main set
4×150 swim @ 2:00/2:15/2:30
6×100 swim @ 1:25/1:35/1:45
3×150 swim @ 2:00/2:15/2:30
5×100 swim @ 1:20/1:30/1:40
2×150 swim @ 2:00/2:15/2:30
4×100 swim @ 1:15/1:25/1:35
1×150 swim @ 2:00/2:15/2:30
3×100 swim @ 1:10/1:20/1:30
Break
1×100 swim for time
6000
Day 12 – January 15, 2016 (Friday)
Friday was here, so all the work we put in would or could be seen. I’m not a big fan of “test sets.” But every coach and athlete needs a goal for what they want to accomplish with every workout they do. The way that the weekly program is structured tends to focus everything on Friday and build on the work we’ve done during the week. Within swimming the 100 tends to be the base distance to analyze an event. Hence, we do a lot of 100s influenced by some of the ideas from USRPT.
Sometimes as a coach, you need to confound expectations. They expected to do about 25×100 swim @ hold pace, so I decided that we would do 30×75 swim @ hold pace. One of the more important aspects of coaching an athlete is you want to keep them engaged. With some athletes it’s easier than with others.
In swimming, or in the development of any complex skill set, if you want to improve, you have to stay engaged and mentally present. Over-training the bike and run or over-racing play key roles in hindering your ability to stay mentally engaged/present. Those two factors will greatly impact your potential to improve in the water and, more importantly, your long-term viability as an athlete. When you plan out a championship season it’s better to have smaller incremental goals over a three to five year horizon. Longevity, discipline and patience win the big races. Do you want to be the tortoise or the hare in your training and racing?
All in a line…
Friday workout – AM
Warm up
400 swim w/fins
400 kick w/fins
400 pull
8×50 descend 1-4; 5-8 @ 50
1600
Lead up
6 x 100 kick/swim (50k/50s) @ 2:05
2200
Main set
30×75 swim @ hold pace
4450
Warm down
12×25 swim easy @ 15 seconds rest
For Friday afternoon I expected them to be ready to go. The practice was only an hour and they wanted to continue the strong results from this morning. They were faster from the previous Friday by multiple seconds a 100. The warm up was a little shorter, but needed to be long-ish given that we were at the end of the second week. They looked good in the water and didn’t display too much fatigue. For the lead up set, I figured we needed “short and snappy” to get them ready for the main set. My goal for the main set was to focus on pushing the speed on the 100 a little faster than normal. I broke the main set up into 3 sections that would be manageable to hold at a harder effort.
I don’t think we could have gotten any more out of them – for those that were in the pool that day you know what I mean. And no pun intended. As a coach, it’s important to know when to press an athlete to make sure that you get the best possible effort on an important workout. For one of the athletes in the water, I pressed, the athlete gave it their all and we couldn’t have gotten anything else out of them. From a coach’s point of view, when an athlete digs extra deep and it is their absolute best effort, it’s fun to watch.
Finishing the stroke…
Friday workout – PM
Warm up
400 swim w/fins
400 kick w/fins
400 pull
8×50 des 1-4; 5-8 @ 50
1400
Lead up
12×25 swim (2 fast / 1 easy) @ 45
1700
Main set
3x [5×100 swim @ hold pace]
Break 1 min between rounds
3200
Warm down
300 choice easy
Day 11 – January 14, 2016 (Thursday)
As expected, they looked like shit when they got in the water. There were two standouts that looked better than everyone else, but it wasn’t anything to write home about. Honestly, at this point, I hadn’t been following the overall yardage we were doing. I knew how long the main sets were each day. That tends to be the most important metric to follow in terms of yardage. And then the most important metric is observational – how do they look in the water? How are they moving? Are they flat and low in the water or fluid and high on the water? When you can see and understand that, then the questions of how many yards and how hard all fall into place.
I just wanted them to get in the water and move. We did a light warm-up and then for the main set I want it to be consistent, steady with a tiny bit of intensity, but nothing extraordinary.
Live It To Believe It…
Monk always gets the best photos…
Thursday Workout – AM
Warm-up
400 swim w/fins
300 kick w/fins
200 pull
4 x 100 descend 1-4 @ 1:30/1:40
1300
Main set
2×400 swim w/fins (alt 50k/50s) @ 30 seconds rest
16×25 pull (1 fast / 3 easy) @ 40
6×75 des 1-3; asc 4-6 @ 1:10/1:15
2950
The second practice of the day would be another recovery practice. We’d get in 6000 yards for the day, but they would be a very easy 6000. The afternoon practice was a recovery swim that my club coach used to give. He called it the Alamo 3.0.
Thursday workout – PM
Warm up
400 swim w/fins
400 kick w/fins
400 drill choice w/fins
400 pull
12 x 50 choice @ 1:05
8 x 100 descend 1-4; descend 5-8 @ 1:25/1:30/1:40
3000
Day 10 – January 13, 2016 (Wednesday)
This was a day off. Not an optional day to swim – a day off. All of them needed it and I didn’t hear too many complaints. I know from experience that the next day, especially the first practice won’t be great, but everyone need to rest. Rest is the only way to execute those great workouts on a consistent basis that lead to long-term gains. This is probably one of the more difficult concepts to get across to triathletes that want to improve right away and now. Improvement in swimming is a slow, methodical and highly disciplined process. There are no short cuts.
Later in the evening all of us met up for a dinner where the campers got together in a relaxed and social way with a lack of wet hair. We had fun, but I couldn’t get anyone to partake of the “boozy” milk shakes. There’s always next year.
Day 9 – January 12, 2016 (Tuesday)
Swimmers usually build up to double workouts over a 5-10 year period. Doubles get introduced to younger swimmers in small doses. Most times they start with only a couple doubles a week and then with more frequency over the summertime. Then it’s dialed back. During this multi-year period they improve their stroke mechanics, strength and conditioning in the water and on land and around high school doubles are introduced on a regular basis. At this point they are prepared to handle the volume and intensity.
As I mentioned before the swim is the most sensitive to fatigue that is being generated from triathlon training. Typically, in the second week, the athletes that are the slowest (less efficient mechanics) will start to show the most fatigue. This camp is no different. All of them show signs of fatigue, but the slowest are becoming more uneven in their swims and times. It’s always one of the metrics that you want to be looking at after every swim. What did they go? How did they do compared to the previous day/week? The great thing about swimming in a pool and the pace clock is that it is reproducible and “clinical.” The pace clock has a sample rate of once every second or at 60 hertz. For all the fancy gadgets and gizmos that triathletes use there isn’t one more accurate than a pace clock with the precise distance of a pool.
Started off with a long-ish Warm-up set. Then into a Lead-up set with some short, fast kicking followed by an easy recovery swim. We went through two rounds of the Lead-up set. Then into the main set of 2000 yards @ hold pace. I broke the set up today into 40×50 @ hold pace. The same rules applied – miss one, sit out next. Miss two, go remainder easy. Everyone made the “hold pace” that I set. Two held 1 second faster than my estimate. One of the athletes was having some issues with variability in his stroke tempo. He’s had a tendency over the past 6 months to “tempo up” the stroke too high. I’m trying to get him to dial the tempo in to about 1.4-1.5 per stroke cycle. And what you want to see is a constant, consistent stroke tempo. Grant it, in open water conditions you want to have the ability to “tempo up” and “tempo down,” but that usually happens on it’s own when you have control over your tempo. Most new swimmers when they are fatigued tend to naturally
“tempo up” the stroke. In practice, you have to the discipline to then focus on technique and hold the water. Don’t let it slip.
The Pace Clock…
Liz mid-stroke…
Tuesday afternoon bow wake…
Tuesday Workout AM
Warm-up
400 swim w/fins
400 kick w/fins
400 pull
4×100 descend 1-4 @ 1:25/1:30/1:40
1600
Lead-up
8×25 kick (2 fast / 1 easy) @ 40
2×100 swim easy @ 1:45
(x2)
2400
Main set
40×50 swim @ hold pace
4400
Warm down
12×25 swim easy @ 15 seconds rest
I thought the afternoon would be tough. They looked tired at the end of the morning practice and there is only about 6 hours between the morning and afternoon swims. A lot of them are getting ready for either Panama 70.3 or Dubai 70.3, so I knew – unfortunately, they wouldn’t be getting a lot of rest between the workouts.
I thought for a lot of the day about how much I could reasonably hope to get out of them in the afternoon. I knew we would be off from swimming for Wednesday so I could try to push a little more speed this afternoon. In the end, the afternoon practice went wildly better than expected.
All of them were beat when they got in the water. There was only one of them that didn’t look “flat” swimming. After the warm-up we did a larger than usual Lead-up set for the afternoon of some 75s swim/kick. They got a little better. I had initially wanted to swim 4x10x25 @ hold pace, but based on what I saw I cut it back to 3x10x25 @ hold pace. I knew I would have to pull out some of the “old tricks,” so I prefaced the set by telling them I had set their hold paces so they probably wouldn’t make all of repeats. They would have to sit on the wall. How do you think that turned out with a group of type-As in the pool? None of them would quit. They did great. All of them made their hold paces which were set a second faster than last week. Then they wanted to know what was their reward. I told them they got tomorrow off and proved me wrong.
Tuesday Workout – PM
Warm-up
500 swim w/fins
300 kick w/fins
200 pull
8×50 descend 1-4; 5-8 @ 50
1400
Lead-up
6×75 swim/kick (25k/50s) des 1-3; 4-6 @ 1:20
1850
Main set
3 x [10×25 swim @ hold pace]
Break 1 min between rounds
2600
Warm down
300 choice
Day 8 – January 11, 2016 (Monday)
I was curious to see how everyone looked after the first week as we rolled into the second. I knew we would need a long warm-up and with Sunday being off for most of them we would need to swim a more “dense” set. When I talk about “density” for a workout, I’m describing a set where the focus is a more traditional, orthodox approach to swim training. We are trying to get as many yards as reasonable in the time allotted. I’ve tweaked that approach, added some influence from USRPT in terms of how we get that density, but I try to stay around a 100 yard repeat.
Most of them looked fairly beat up. I gave them a long warm up. Then we did a long kick set with fins on a tight-ish interval. My goal was to get them to really push up their heart rate and try to get some more ankle flexibility. Fins can help a lot with both those goals. After the kick set we did a little easy swimming. When you swim an extended kick set before a main set you usually want to do a little easy swimming to get the stroke back. After that we went into a fairly dense set of 40×50 swim @ 40 for the fastest lane. It just kept everyone swimming, steadily consistently and aerobically. For a couple of them it wasn’t until about 400 yards into the main set that they looked warmed-up. So a little more than 3000 yards before they were on their strokes. This isn’t a surprise given how much we’ve been doing, but a good observation to keep in mind for triathletes when doing warm-up. 500 yards of warm-up doesn’t really make the cut even when you’re fresh.
Tim Monk from Klean Athlete pushing the pace and training like a pro…
Jocelyn and Monk swimming hard…
Liz and Jocelyn at the wall…
Lauren grinding out a tough set…
Monday Workout AM
Warm-up
400 swim w/fins
400 kick w/fins
400 pull
4 x 100 des 1-4 @ 1:25/1:30/1:40
1600
Kick set
12 x 100 kick w/fins @ 1:30
2800
100 easy swim
Main set
40 x 50 swim @ 40/45/50
4800
Warm down
12 x 25 swim easy @ 15 seconds rest
The afternoon practice was something of a mystery and while they were swimming I was still deciding on what to do. I watched them closely on the warm up and tried to get a feel for how they felt in the water. Everyone was quiet and there weren’t any quick jokes on the deck. The warm-up was around 1400 and on the descend set everyone was off a little and seemed flat. I initially wrote a set of 5 x [4 x 125 des 1 -4 @ 1:45/1:55/2:05] and changed it to 6 x [4 x 75 des 1-4 @ 1:05/1:10/1:15]. They didn’t look great and the goal was to have fantastic workouts on Tuesday. So I cut back significantly. All of them appreciated it.
Monday Workout PM
Warm-up
400 swim w/fins
300 kick w/fins
300 pull
8 x 50 des 1-4; 5-8 @ 50
1400
Main set
6 x [4 x 75 descend 1-4 @ 1:05/1:10/1:15]
Break 1 min after 3rd round
3200
Warm down
300 choice easy
Day 7 – January 10, 2016 (Sunday)
This is an optional swim day and the day when I work with a couple athletes one on one. We film and a do a stroke analysis. I will have this post up shortly, but need to finish the video. Stay tuned…
Day 6 – January 9, 2016 (Saturday)
The Saturday morning practice for the team is the only practice during the week that is one and a half hours. For the pros that are in for the camp, Saturday is one of five one and a half hours practices and the 9th practice in a week. At this point, I’m trying to get the last little bit of swimming for the week out of them and I don’t want it to be as mentally taxing as Friday. The Saturday workout tends to be a more traditionally “dense” swim practice, but influenced by some of the ideas of USRPT. I try not to do any repeats much over 100 yards. Everyone did well, but they were tired.
Saturday Workout
Warm-up
400 swim w/fins
400 kick w/fins
400 pull
4 x 100 des 1-4 @ 1:25/1:30/1:40
1600
Kick set
20 x 25 kick (3 fast / 1 easy) @ 40/45
2100
Main set
4 x 25 swim @ 20/25
4 x 50 swim @ 40/45/50
4 x 75 swim @ 1:00/1:10/1:15
4 x 100 swim @ 1:20/1:30/1:40
4 x 125 swim @ 1:40/1:50
4 x 100 swim @ 1:20/1:30/1:40
4 x 75 swim @ 1:00/1:10/1:15
4 x 50 swim @ 40/45/50
4 x 25 swim @ 20/25
4600
Day 5 – January 8, 2016 (Friday)
The week flew by and we were set up to swim hard on Friday morning. We started out with a normal warm-up and then into 4×75 des 1-4 @ 1:05/1:10/1:15. 50s typically work better at the end of a warm-up for truly getting warmed-up for the main set, but variety is the spice of life. I don’t always use them. They were looking good, but a little ragged. I hoped the Lead Up set would be enough to get them ready for the main set. We did some 50s of kick/swim and descended by rounds of 4. It was right at 2100 yards in all before the main set. Not a lot in regards to warm-up, but not bad either. They were all looking ready. I was debating back and forth about how many 100s to swim and finally settled on 16×100 @ hold pace. I based their individual hold pace time off where the previous workouts came out. I take a lot of notes during the workouts and then based on my own experience of how much I think I can get out of them on any given day. The set went great. I only had one athlete that didn’t make their hold pace and she was off by a lot. I cut her off fairly early when it looked like this was not going to turn around. I’d rather cut it short, rest up and try to come back later in the day to have a successful set. In the end, the only way to swim faster is to swim faster. If you can’t swim fast on any given workout it’s better to bag it and not ingrain that slower swimming into your muscle memory. She and I discussed it and she said she had done some new workouts for the bike/run this week and it was just too much. It happens. The good news was that everyone else swam great and they were faster than where we started at the beginning of the week. Most had improved by 2-3 seconds/100 from when they arrived to upwards of 4-5/100. I was happy with the gains.
Friday Workout – AM
Warm-up
400 swim w/fins
400 kick w/fins
400 pull
4 x 75 descend 1-4 @ 1:05/1:10/1:15
1500
Lead up
12 x 50 kick/swim (alt 25k/25s & 25s/25k) des 1-4; 5-8…@ 1:00
2100
Main set
16 x 100 swim @ hold pace
3700
Warm down
12 x 25 swim easy @ 15 seconds rest
For the afternoon workout, I knew it could be hit or miss. A lot would be dependent on how much they rested up between this workout and the one in the morning. When the workout came around, they all looked tired. Some more than others. I decided to press and see where the chips would fall. They all responded. We did a shorter warm-up, then some fast 25s and right into the main set. I dialed back a little on the distance. We went 8×100 instead of 10×100 @ hold pace, but I dropped all of their hold pace times from the morning. All of them went faster from their morning swims. It felt great to see the progress. They were excited.
Swimming 100s…
Friday Workout – PM
Warm-up
400 swim w/fins
300 kick w/fins
300 pull
8 x 50 des 1-4; 5-8 @ 50
1400
Lead up
16 x 25 swim (2 fast / 2 easy) @ 40
1800
Main set
8 x 100 swim @ hold pace
2600
Warm down
6 x 50 swim easy (2 free / 1 x 25f/25bk) @ 15 seconds rest
Since it was the end of a great week, I invited anyone that wanted to come out for a big pretzel or beer or both at Whole Foods. I got a couple takers. We had a good time and closed out the week well.
Big Pretzel…
Lone Pint Brewery (local to Magnolia) – Tornado Shark
Caitlin, Liz and Jocelyn…
Day 4 – January 7, 2016 (Thursday)
Thursday is usually more “active” recovery oriented, especially when we are swimming doubles. Since we only started on Monday and Wednesday was off completely, I decided to try to swim them a little harder than a normal Thursday.
The warm up was fairly standard of 1600 yards which included a set of descend 100s. There are some benefits to a standard warm-up. The athletes know what to expect, they can spend time thinking about getting the movement of the stroke correct and not worry about what exactly they had to do for warm-up. The other benefit is you are training their bodies to warm-up with a specific set each time. It’s a good way to gauge if they are completely warmed-up or if they might need a little more. The other thing I like to do is have them use fins for the warm-up. There are a few benefits to fin use at the start of the workout. First, it takes pressure off of shoulders that might be a little fatigued. Second, it allows the athlete to focus on the correct body position and they can play around with their technique with the added speed from the fins.
The Lead Up set was a combination of kick and swim, except it was a little more explicitly broken out into 4×25 kick and then 4×50 swim and to repeat that whole set 3 times. By the time we got to the main set we had already done 2500 yards. They looked ready to go.
For the main set we did 20×75 at hold pace, again, a USRPT inspired set. I moved the yardage for the main set today up from 1000 to 1600. It’s a fairly large jump for a week, but nothing that they couldn’t handle. I make sure to monitor what everyone is doing in the water closely when we start to ramp up. My primary responsibility as a coach is to not hurt anyone. When I coach age groupers that is what is at the forefront of my mind – always. With the pros it’s a little different. They are racing for their livelihood and their competition is usually training and racing right up to the line of getting injured. As a coach, you need to balance those competing goals and it can be difficult. Although, as I go down this road with pro triathletes and my ideas of training and racing have evolved, I’m reevaluating how much swim training we can actually do when coupled with the load generated from the bike and run and still get gains in the swim. Everyone did well in the main set. All of them beat the hold paces I had set. And each of them had a very specific stroke issue to work on while going fast. The issues ranged from one athlete needing to change a left arm pull pattern to another needing to stop a left arm crossover to another needing to engage their core more and thinking about an over-rotation on their right side with their hips compared to the left. I have never seen a perfect stroke. There is always room for improvement.
Swimming 75s hard…
Post workout – all smiles (Lauren, Liz and Jocelyn)
Thursday Workout AM
Warm-up
400 swim w/fins
400 kick w/fins
400 pull
4 x 100 descend 1-4 @ 1:25/1:30/1:40
1600
Lead up
4 x 25 kick (1 fast / 1 easy) @ 40
4 x 50 swim @ 50
(x3)
Break 1 min after 2nd round
2500
Main set
20 x 75 swim @ hold pace
4100
Warm down
12 x 25 swim easy (2 free / 1 back) @ 15 seconds rest
By Thursday afternoon, I knew that they would be tired and they looked it when they got in the water. I wanted to “bridge” to the hard workouts that I was planning for Friday so we went a very recovery oriented set. They all finished up in about 45 minutes and were able to get them home to get some rest for the quality work they needed to do for Friday.
Day 3 – January 6, 2016 (Wednesday)
Traditionally within most swim programs Wednesday is a day off or a half-day of workouts. I structured the camp as Wednesday being an off day with an optional easy swim at night if they wanted to get in. This Wednesday there was a high school swim meet at the pool, so everyone got a mandatory day off.
For me that meant I got a day off too. Sort of. I wrote some of this post, reviewed videos that I had already taken during the week of athletes and then wrote some in a coaching journal. As a coach it’s a good habit to write down impressions of a workout and where you think you can do a better job then go back to review those thoughts.
But on the fun side, I did get to train my dog. Coaching never stops…
Day 2 – January 5, 2016 (Tuesday)
The first of the trash talking officially started at 7:37am this morning. It’s always a good sign when the group becomes comfortable enough with one another to engage in a little fun banter. It was a great zinger that silenced a usual big time trash talker. With the scheduling snafu behind us this was going to be the first day of double swims. The initial week my plan is to ease them into the workload since some of them hadn’t ever done doubles before and the others hadn’t done doubles since last year. The first morning practice went well. Again, in the morning, we had a long warm up. All in it was around 2500 yards. An AM swim always requires a longer warm up. Typically, later in the day you can get away with about 30-40% less and that is all dependent on the amount of fatigue the athlete is carrying, how they are looking in the water and where they are in the season. Experienced observation of your athletes in the workout is fundamental. I don’t write the workout we’ll do that day until I’ve watched the athletes in the water through warm-up.
After the initial warm up set, we did a kick set. Again a skill that is drastically down played in the triathlon community but essential to efficient swimming. Then we did what I would consider to be more of a “neural” activation set. For today it was some 75s that were kick/swim and we went 25 kick/50 swim. I’ve found it a good way to get the kick and pull coordinated and a good thing to do when we want to be ready to do well in a hard fast set.
The main set was a USRPT inspired set. We swam 40×25 on an interval of 35 seconds, which gave the majority of them about 20 seconds rest. The hold pace, depending on the athlete, was between 13-17 seconds. The pacing then works out to anywhere from :52/100 to sub 1:10/100. For instance, Matt held 13 seconds per 25 for 1000 yards. For the main set, he trained his kinetic chain to swim at that faster velocity for 1000 yards in this workout. This is the idea that seems to elude some in the triathlon community. I recently heard a podcast from some coaches who clearly didn’t understand the idea behind USRPT. I’m writing an article to explain how to successfully implement a USRPT format within a triathlon training plan, some of the benefits and an explanation of the differences between traditional triathlon approaches/understanding of swim training and USRPT. In short, the main difference is that “it ain’t about zones.”
Matt Swimming Fast
Liz giving Matt a little grief…
Tuesday AM Workout
Warm up
400 swim w/fins
400 kick w/fins
400 pull
4×100 des 1-4 @ 1:25/1:30/1:40
1600
Lead up / Kick set
6 x 100 kick no fins @ 2:05/2:15
&
4 x 75 kick/swim (25k/50s) @ 1:20/1:30
2500
Main set (miss one, rest next two. Miss two, go remainder easy)
40 x 25 swim @ hold pace
3500
Warm down
12×25 swim easy (3 free / 1 back) @ 15 seconds rest
The afternoon practice always comes around sooner than you’d like when you’re the swimmer and feeling the morning workout. The majority of them looked pretty solid through the warm-up and we needed less than the morning. We then jumped into some 25s fast to get everything primed for the main set and then the main set was 20×50 swim @ hold pace. Again, a USRPT inspired set. I had the data from the morning on what they could hold for 25s for 1000 and now we’d see what they could do for a 1000 with 50s. This is a good way to judge the efficiency of their stroke. If they can’t hold double what they went in the morning plus 4 seconds then their stroke mechanics need some serious work.
One of the benefits of swimming sets with clear hold paces, where the athlete is involved and engaged in managing their own workout is to allow the coach to coach the mechanics. I’m not as focused on keeping athletes on track in a complex set or tracking their interval. I can intensely watch each athlete and the movement they are making in the water, giving slight corrections to stroke mechanics and then instantly seeing if those corrections impact their speed in the water. If it does then we do it over and over again at the higher velocity and training load. We are training technique under load which, in my experience, is the most efficient way to improve in the water.
Synchronized swimming…
Tuesday PM workout
Warm up
300 swim w/fins
300 kick w/fins
300 pull
4×75 descend 1-4 @ 1:05/1:10/1:15
1200
Lead up
12×25 swim (2 fast / 1 easy) @ 40
1500
Main set
20×50 swim @ hold pace
2500
Warm down
12×25 swim easy (3 free / 1 back) @ 15 seconds rest
Day 1 – January 4, 2016 (Monday)
The second year of the pro camp is here. The year went quick and now it’s time to focus on the swim for some pro triathletes. For 2016, there are 9 pros and 4 age groupers. I opened up the camp to some age groupers this year that were interested in getting better and who I thought could add something to the mix. Like last year, my goal is to keep the group under 15 athletes in the water. This smaller size tends to create a better group dynamic. One of the team traditions is a New Years Eve Party at the Balsdorfs. Bryan and Jennifer, local age group athletes, buy a “shot block” every year and anyone that comes in early usually becomes a victim.
(B)Alsdorf prepping for the NYE activities
First victims of the night…
The first day we had a bit of a scheduling snafu with the Parks and Rec department. The kids that swim on the local USA Swimming club team were still out of school and on their Christmas break and we accidentally got doubled booked. We couldn’t swim at the scheduled 7am time so I took everyone out for a cup of coffee. It ended up working out better and gave the group a chance to get to know one another in a relaxed and informal way.
The afternoon workout was for 2pm – 3pm and we were all good for that one. We’ve got a couple of the pros that will trickle in over the next few days and a pro, Aubrey Aldy, that I used to coach that is developing his own team. He’ll be on the deck with me for a couple days to see how we do things on the team from the on-deck point of view. I’m looking forward to sharing what I know with another coach in the triathlon community.
The afternoon workout was a warm-up of around 1600 yards. Warm-up in my experience is the most underrated piece of the workout in the triathlon community. I’ve seen a lot of swim workouts written for triathletes with 400-600 yards of warm-up and then right into the main set. I know triathletes are usually pressed for time, but if you don’t want to waste part of the main set warming up then do more than 600 yards. In my experience, depending on the amount of fatigue that an athlete is carrying, it takes around 1500 yards for most athletes to get warmed up. For athletes that are carrying a lot of fatigue, which is all too common for triathletes, I’ve seen it take as long as 2500 yards to get warmed up and ready to go.
Initial thoughts are that we have a good group. The dynamics have already shaped up in the direction where you want it to go. Everyone is relaxed and having a good time, but when we need to get the work done they are focused. I look forward to see how the next couple weeks develop. Trying to guess when the first of the trash talking starts…
First swim of the camp…
Workout Day 1
Warm-up
400 swim w/fins
400 kick w/fins
400 pull no paddles
4×100 descend 1-4 @ 1:25/1:30/1:40
1600
Main set
12/14/16×150 swim @ 2:05(1:25)/2:15(1:30)/2:30(1:40)
4000/3700/3400
Magnolia Masters Pro-triathlete Swim Camp 2015
Day 21 – January 23, 2015 (Friday)
These workouts have been the pinnacle of the week. Everything was about setting up the week to give them the best possible results for the two workouts on Friday. Mornings are typically not when you will be the fastest in the water. There was a recently published study that gets at this point (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25631930?dopt=Abstract) Not a big surprise for swim coaches, but always good to see it validated by science.
The first practice of the day was fairly typical. Longer warm up with a Lead-Up set that included some kicking and swimming. The main set was two set of 100s more focused on 400 pacing. Everyone was swimming solid, some better than others, some as best as they had been since the start of the camp. I could tell that we would have a good noon practice once everyone got some more rest. This was a primer.
The noon practice was a shortened Warm-Up and a very brief Lead-Up set that included some sprint 25s to get everything going. For the fastest group, I took the risk of cutting their rest interval by 5 seconds. We were static for the majority of the camp in terms of the interval for this group. All of them had improved in their pace since the start, but this would be a big jump up. I cut the interval and then cut about 1 second off each of their hold paces from this morning. The pacing was more focused on the 200 distance. Everyone nailed. Some of them drop multiple seconds off their pacing and had huge breakthroughs. Practices like this are thrilling to watch.
Here is quick video of two of the fastest swimmers at the camp and two of the fastest swimmers in Ironman from an underwater point of view. You can see that neither stroke is perfect, everyone has room for improvement, but it shouldn’t stop you from swimming hard and going faster. You can’t practice perfect technique slowly all the time and expect to improve.
Friday Underwater View 100s
Friday Side View of 100 Set
Day 20 – January 22, 2015 (Thursday)
Again, we would swim once on Thursday and it was all about getting them ready for Friday. As I mentioned before, Thursday is a “bridge” workout to Friday or “active recovery.” One of the most important things in swimming is to keep the “feel” for the water and when coaches say “feel” they are referring to the ability of the swimmer to “catch” and hold as much water as possible through the stroke. This is the reason in swimming that consistency can trump volume.
The workout was all about getting them to do some relaxed, easy but continuous movement. To make it interesting we threw in some kicking and pace changes to the set. Here’s a short video from the afternoon practice:
Day 19 – January 21, 2015 (Wednesday)
Wednesday morning they would get to sleep in and then we could focus on going fast at the night practice.
I ran into Liz at the pool when I was getting in a swim and she said she knew the set we would swim tonight. At that point in the day, I hadn’t given any thought to what the workout would be. When she said it, I knew the set she had in mind. It’s a good set to do on a sprint night. You get to see a lot as a coach from the set and it can be very helpful in developing athletes outside of just physical training.
The other cool thing we would do was the Torrent E-Rack arrived and it was ready to go. This was a “toy” that we purchased that is a “power meter” for the water. You can test a swimmer on all sorts of aspects of their stroke from power in watts to velocity to seeing how efficient is their stroke. It’s a powerful tool and we will be using it a lot in the coming months to get even more out of the training we do. Here is a quick video of Liz being tested on the Rack.
Liz Being Tested
The warm-up was important for the main set since we needed to be able to go from the first repeat. We came in a little under 2000 yards for the warm-up with a Lead-Up set that was more a “bridge” to the main set than a true Lead-Up set. The main set was 5×100 sprint @ 6:00. Yes, each repeat would have a 6-minute interval. But each repeat would also be an all out effort.
These sets are traditionally referred to as “Lactate Sets.” If you can’t taste “battery acid” on your tongue by the end then you didn’t work the set hard enough. This set will test you physically (both anaerobic and aerobic capacity and stroke efficiency) mentally (do you have the mental discipline to keep the stroke together at failure) and will test your drive (how much do you want it.) So from a coach’s point of view, it’s a great snapshot into an athlete and where they are in their training.
They are not fun sets to do, but they are fun sets to coach. You get to see great athletes going fast in the water. Here is a short video of some of them going fast:
Day 18 – January 20, 2015 (Tuesday)
As part of the dialing back for this week, we would only swim once on Tuesday. Since we wanted to get the most out of the workout, I also let them sleep in and swim at the noon practice.
Warm-up was solid. A couple of them were looking a little ragged, but today was not a day to back off. Occasionally, you have to push them to drive into the wall and see if they can get through it. The mental skill set that is needed to improve and compete on an elite is difficult to acquire. Not impossible, but it is a day-to-day, workout-by-workout, stroke-by-stroke development. There are no short cuts.
The main set was 2000 yards consisting of 8x25s and then 4x75s. These would all be at “hold pace” on very precise intervals. Doesn’t look like a big deal. 25s are easy and 75s are shorter than 100s. But when you hold a sub 44 min Ironman pace for 2000 yards, it adds up. Again, we worked on the speed to push as much efficiency into the stroke as possible. A couple of them are topping out on what we can do in terms of pushing efficiency into the stroke with the training. They will need more intense stroke analysis and correction to continue to improve. Even the fastest swimmers in the water don’t have perfect strokes, so there is always room for improvement.
I get a lot of calls from age group triathletes that want stroke analysis. They are convinced that the only thing holding them back from swimming greatness and triathlon glory is their swim technique. They tell me that they already have “great engines” and if they can finally understand the stroke it will all come together.
The first question I always ask is how often they are swimming, what is their pace per 100 and how much they yardage they swim in a week. The typical response is 2-3 times a week, mostly north of 2:00/100 yards and usually under 10k a week. At that level of training, it is your technique holding you back but it’s also your level of fitness. They don’t have the fitness and conditioning in the water at that point to get to the more efficient technique. And this is an important point for most triathletes to understand: you cannot separate out technique from training. They go hand in hand and build upon one another. For stroke analysis to work to significantly change the stroke takes 10-12 weeks of filming once a week all the while implementing a very structured and targeted amount of swim training. So for someone swimming slower than 2:00/100 or really slower than 1:30/100 you don’t need stroke analysis lessons. You need a good program with an experienced swim coach holding you accountable to swimming faster with better technique. Save some money, go to the pool and swim hard with focus on your stroke and the pace clock.
Day 17 – January 19, 2015 (Monday)
The start of the third week would be a gradual reduction in the amount of swimming. We switched to only 2 doubles a week (Monday and Friday) and the practices would be an hour. The goal of the day remained the same. The workouts revolved around density. How much yardage, with some sub goals in mind, could we fit in an hour. The main set was mostly repeats of 50s, 75s and 100s. Some of them were on a fairly tight interval that placed it a little faster than 1:10/100. The final yardage was north of 4k.
One of the great things about this community is all of the talent that is located here. And it’s not just athletic, coaching and rehab related. We had the privilege of Ruddock Visuals coming out to shoot some professional photos and videos of the camp. Payton is a triathlete himself and a former swimmer. He and his wife, Sam, really understand the endurance athlete and know how to capture them on film. They also provided all of the campers with one-on-one photo shoots for their websites and collateral material. They were a great resource and I can’t thank Payton and Sam enough for offering their services. You can see their fantastic work here: http://www.ruddockvisuals.com/sport-portfolio.html
This would also be the morning when the next camper would leave us. Justin had the last practice with the team that morning. He was a professional and pleasure to coach. He added greatly to the practices and I know everyone benefited from him here. I’m excited to see how his season goes this year.
Here were some photos from the morning:
Monday Morning Workout
Ruddock Visuals Setting Up
More of the Photo Shoot
The night practice started with some stroke analysis of Aubrey. He got back into town after a week home and we decided to take a look at his stroke. Here is an initial video. Aubrey has a very big run background and he shows what I typically see in runners when they swim. The thing about swimming is that everyone has a unique stroke. No one moves the same in the water. There are always slight variations. However, when there is an underlying structural issue or injury the movement becomes identical. You rarely see identical movements in swimming. A good example for triathletes is someone that has broken their collarbone, a common triathlete injury, the movement of the shoulder on the broken side becomes identical for everyone. For those with big run backgrounds I tend to see some common movements. Aubrey shows some of those movements. There tends to be a dropping of the hips, a disconnection between the hips and shoulders and not a great “feel” for the catch at the top of the stroke with a high/wide reaching recovery. While they are difficult issues to overcome in swimming, they are not impossible. They just take a little more work. Sorry runners.
The evening practice was right back at it. We got in almost the same amount of yardage as the morning and again focused on some tight interval work. They were looking good and it was the finish to a solid Monday.
For Tuesday, I decided to let them sleep in and we would swim at the noon workout. The concentration would be on 25 through 75 speed, so I wanted them to be ready to go since we would only swim once on Tuesday.
Day 16 – January 18, 2015 (Sunday)
Again, this was a day off for everyone to rest and recover. The idea of a day off as a former swimmer was a given. We used to swim 11 practices, 2 times a day on most days and swim as much as most runners training for a marathon run in a week. Everyone needs a day off. If for nothing else, than to get a mental break from all of the training.
I’ve been fairly perplexed by the large number of triathletes that think they perform better without taking any days off. I can tell you from my experience and being involved with triathletes for over 5 years now that a day off benefits training. As I mentioned before, the swim shows cumulative fatigue the soonest of the three sports. To this day, all the triathletes that I have worked with that never took days off always show a lot of cumulative fatigue during the season, which hinders their workouts. The ones that take one day off a week are able to produce more consistent results on a week over week basis.
Here’s a picture from their day off and my day to swim. The weather was perfect and the water was great.
Day 15 – January 17, 2015 (Saturday)
The normal Saturday practice for the team is usually a very hard workout. For them, it is the only 1.5 hour swim we get in all week. I tell most people that if you are training for an Ironman the Saturday practice and the 1.5 hour workout is the most important practice I coach all week.
For the pros, we were swimming around 2.5 hours a day spread out over two practices a day so Saturday morphed into me seeing what else I could get out of them. This Saturday was no different.
We started out with a standard warm-up and some descend 100s at the end of the warm-up. No one was really looking that great. Some were looking downright horrible. I knew the workout would need modification from what I originally envisioned. One of the athletes was so “cooked” I told him to get out, go home and get back in bed.
We did do a lot of kicking. The Kick Set before the Main Set was 1000 yards of kicking at a fairly intense pace. They all hate kicking, but in the end it will pay huge dividends in their stroke efficiency and their ability to do swim better in tougher conditions (e.g. Kona on a rough day).
The main set was a mix of some pace change 200s and tight interval 50s. I wanted something they could get through, not be too stressed and that was mentally engaging. All in all it was an uneventful workout. We got in the swimming we needed and kept it low key. As a coach or as an athlete, you’ve got to know when to back off and when to push. Here’s a photo of some of them relaxing after the end of practice.
Texas over the past couple of years has seen an explosion in microbreweries and some of them are making some great beer. The Woodlands and Magnolia area now have 4 microbreweries within 20 minutes. Most of the triathletes had a long-ish bike ride to do, so we decided to meet up around 2pm for the “tour” at Lone Pint in Magnolia. They make terrific beer and it was a good way to close out a hard week of training.
Day 14 – January 16, 2015 (Friday)
I like Friday workouts. We get to see if the work we have done during the week is paying off or if we need to go back to the drawing board. I didn’t plan on backing off that morning. I was confident the added rest would give them the bump they needed for a great practice. We put in a lot of volume leading up to today, so they would need a longer warm-up. We warmed up for about 25 minutes. The Lead Up set was some kicking and swimming with a controlled pace change to get them ready for the main set.
When we got to the main set, I watched closely to see how everyone looked and I thought everyone looked good. I knew the set of 100s we would do would have to be long-ish, but I wanted to try to “tease” a little more speed out of them. Each round of 100s consisted of 4 repeats done on a very exact pace with a very precise amount of rest. I had the numbers they went from the previous Friday and based their “hold pace” off those plus what I had seen them doing in the practice that morning and during the week. Once I got their “hold paces” written down, I knew if they could accomplish it they would have all improved a minimum of 2 seconds a hundred to a maximum of between 4-5 seconds a hundred. That wouldn’t be a bad week. But it would be a long 45 minute set with a lot of work on all of our parts.
To make gains in swimming it helps to be on a team. These types of sets can’t be done alone. No one can take this much pounding, keep coming back day after day without the help of team mates who will support and push you. It is mentally crushing to do it alone. I’ve figured that with the folks I coach remotely we give up about 5-10% of what we could achieve if they swam on the team on a regular basis. But even by giving up 5-10% we can still get the triathletes I work with very competitive.
This always surprises me that we are able to give up that much and still be competitive. There was a pro triathlete that came in before Kona this past season. She qualified to race at Kona and heard that this area would be a great prep with the conditions similar to Kona in terms of heat, humidity and wind. She came out to work with the team and was skeptical of what we were doing at first, but she quickly improved. It’s always a thrill as a coach to work with exceptional athletes and her adaptation to what we were doing was rapid. In the end, with 4 weeks of training here, she improved her time on the swim at Kona by about 5 minutes. She’s been a pro for well over 10 years and worked with all the big “swim gurus” within the sport, but plateaued in swimming.
Since I began working with triathletes, saw how the triathlon community trained and thought about swimming, spoke or corresponded with a lot of the big coaches within the triathlon world, talked with a lot of pros about their training and how they are coached, I’ve said for a while that the swim within Ironman is not very competitive and there is a more effective way to train. There is a lot of “low hanging fruit” in the swim even at the pro level.
As a coach in a set like this you need to stay relaxed and supportive at the beginning. Encouraging everyone to get through it. The first couple rounds of 100s are a time to get splits, focus on strokes and see who will have a good day and who won’t. Here’s a video from the morning:
The first couple of rounds went well. All of them made their “hold paces” and they looked good. I made a few minor stroke corrections as the sets went on and reminded them what to focus on as they tired. The 4th and 5th rounds would be the most difficult. For some of them as we extended beyond where they had been trained in terms of the length of the main set, it would be tough to stay on the “hold pace.” When I look at a workout, I am not terribly concerned with the total amount of yardage. It’s usually a secondary or tertiary metric. I am more concerned with the length and intensity of the main set. The training that we do is largely about “time under load,” pace and the adaptations the body makes to that stress.
When it comes to the 4th and 5th rounds as a coach that’s when I’m the most engaged and on them to get it done. We take one repeat at a time and one 25 at a time. It’s about pushing mentally and physically past where you have been before and doing it over and over again for as long as possible while maintaining the “hold pace.” I will do whatever I can as the coach to get the swimmers in the water to achieve their goals. That means talking to them when need be in between repeats. Giving them ideas on what to focus on in their stroke or how to mentally attack the set. And shouting at them while in the water to go faster. In the end, everyone made it and everyone improved from last week. Some of the swimmers improved by as much as 4 seconds per 100 from the previous Friday.
Like last Friday, the second workout of the day would be a quick turn around. We would be back at the pool at noon so there wouldn’t be a lot of opportunity to rest before the next workout. A handful of us went out for coffee and had a good time. I’ve found that some of the best coaching gets done over a cup of coffee after a hard workout.
The second workout of the day was similar to the first, except we swim for an hour. I knew we wouldn’t need as much warm-up and I knew that they would probably be a little faster in the afternoon. While we tried to tease some speed out of the morning, I wanted to try to apply that speed over a longer period of time to see if they could sustain it. The main set was about 1000 yards less than in the morning, but it was one straight set of 100s. On this application if they missed a “hold pace” by one second, they would need to sit one out and then get back on track. You can imagine with competitive, pro triathletes no one wanted to sit out. All of them nailed the set, did better than the morning and a few even got faster. It was a great day of training.
After the Friday afternoon practice we enjoyed our usual post workout lunch with a couple recovery beverages. A good group showed up and there were about 12 of us that made it to the Kitchen. Justin wanted to interview me for a podcast for Endurance Corner (www.endurancecorner.com) so we left early. The pod cast will go up some time this week. We talked about the training we do at Magnolia Masters and some of my views on the swim in triathlon.
Bonus Video – Quick Peek Underwater
Day 13 – January 15, 2015 (Thursday)
After the excursion to the Golden Retriever, I decided to give the pros the morning off. Thursday is a recovery day. In actuality, it’s a bridge to getting in a stellar workout on Friday. I’m not concerned about what we are swimming on a recovery day. I want it to be mentally engaging, but relaxed. The stress level of the athlete should be taken down a notch and they should just be staying in the water to keep the “feel.” Consistency trumps volume.
We ended up swimming on a perfect Thursday afternoon at the outdoor Creekwood pool. The sun was out. The water was warm and the weather was finally starting to turn around. Friday was supposed to be in the upper 60s, but it was still in the low 50s, but the sun was out.
Cody looked ragged and I pulled him from practice. He needed the rest. While in Texas low 50s is considered cold, in true Canadian form, he kept his shirt off and laid down on the deck to soak up some sunshine.
Everyone else finished up the set, got out and prepared for the hard workouts tomorrow. I was hopeful the added rest and only one, easy workout on Thursday would set them up well for work we needed to get done on Friday.
Day 12 – January 14, 2015 (Wednesday – Steak Night!)
This Wednesday we wouldn’t swim until the evening at the Magnolia pool. Everyone appreciated the rest and having the majority of the day off. For those that had been here since the start, the fatigue was beginning to show. I was being hyper-vigilante about monitoring everyone’s times and how they looked in the water.
For the morning and afternoon, I tried to catch up on these posts, swam myself and prepared for the evening workout. Since we would swim at night, we would be back to sprints and Steak Night. This tradition started a couple years ago with one of the race directors I know who used to be a pro triathlete and swam on the team. He ran in college and has a similar view of training that I do in regards to age group triathlete. When we started Steak Night we wanted to convince all of the age groupers on the team that it was ok to have some fun after a hard workout. You don’t have to stick to a rigidly strict diet all of the time. One of the big benefits of doing all of this exercise is you can have that brownie or cake or extra helping or beer/wine at the end of the week and your pants still fit.
The first Wednesday when we tried to convince everyone that they should go out to the local pub was after an exceptionally hard workout with a lot of sprints. I told them that their heart rates had gotten so high that they probably wouldn’t get to sleep until past midnight since we finished practice around 8:30pm. No one believed me so the first official Steak Night was a bust. The next Wednesday came around and we swam hard again, I asked if anyone was going out and we got a bunch takers. When we got to the pub they all told me that they hadn’t been able to get to sleep after sprinting so hard. From then on Steak Night has been a tradition. We now find ourselves at the Golden Retriever Pub on Wednesday nights enjoying the 10oz rib-eye special with two sides and some great local beers. It’s good fun.
The workout that night started out with a stroke analysis of Justin. I’ve never coached Justin before and I didn’t want to radically change his stroke. He has what I call the “Boulder” stroke. It’s a style of Free that I’ve seen a lot of elite level triathletes use and from various Facebook and Instagram accounts that I follow from Boulder seems to be widely taught and applied in Boulder. As far as I’ve been able to figure out it was a stroke style taught by one coach that then taught it to a couple of other coaches and it’s spread from there.
For Justin, what I had noticed when I first saw him swim was that there wasn’t a lot of connection between the core and his catch or his hips. Also, for this stroke style to be effective the swimmer has to employ a very high turnover. The majority of the stroke is in the “front quadrant” so you give up some power and speed, but you are able to have a much higher tempo which can be beneficial in some open water conditions. Justin initially had a tempo of about 1.7 (tempo is the time it takes for the swimmer to complete one stroke cycle or in this case 1.7 seconds). He probably needed it to be closer to 1.3-1.4.
USA Swimming did a great analysis of the top 8 of US Olympic Trials in 2012 and what their tempos were from the 50m Free through the 1500m Free. You can find it here. The interesting thing to note is that in the shorter events the variation of tempo was very limited to make it to the Top 8 while in the 1500m there was a much wider gap for those in the final heat.
The other problem that I mentioned at the beginning was the lack of connective-ness in his stroke between his core and catch. This is important to understand for those that want to “tempo up” their strokes. If you don’t have a rock solid catch with a highly developed “feel” for the water and you tempo up, you’ll just “slip” a lot more water without getting faster. Typically, I look to develop a really great stroke and then, if need be, tempo up. You can see the videos of Justin before and after we had done the analysis and some drill work here:
Justin Stroke Analysis
Justin After
The workout went great. We did a long warm up followed by the main set which was around 800 yards. The majority of the set was rest. We had 50s sprint on a 3 minute interval. We sprinted with fins for the first 50 of each round and then took the fins off, sprinted again and tried to replicate the feel and body position without fins. It’s always an interesting feel and you can learn a lot about what great body position in the water feels like. Here’s a video of some of the sprinting we did:
Sprinting
After the practice we had about 10-12 that ventured down to the Golden Retriever for Steak Night. It was great. Good fun. Everyone enjoyed each other’s company and we heard some great stories.
Day 11 – January 13, 2015 (Tuesday)
“Let’s f*&kin’ die or do something…” – coach to anonymous triathlete
Tuesday was going to be all about pushing speed and efficiency into the stroke. So it meant we would be swimming 50s and 25s at a hold pace on a relatively short rest interval. The design of the “hold pace” sets is very specific with exact amounts of rest and a very precise pace to hold. The pace clock reigns supreme. No watches. I understand that triathletes like their watches and data and ability to upload data to their coach, but in the pool you don’t need a watch. The watch can be a distraction and hindrance to your focus. The pace clock is the best tool that you have at a workout. If you focus on the pace clock, pay attention to the times you are swimming, get to know your pacing to the second, continue to focus to improve your stroke, you will get faster and more efficient in the water.
Warm-up was a little longer than usual. I wanted them to be ready to go started the main set. When you don’t have a lot of time in the water and the goal of the set is quality swimming, you don’t want to skimp on the warm up. Do the preparation to swim fast. Also, as the cumulative fatigue builds up it will take a little longer to get warmed up. Again, for the Lead Up set we got in some good kicking while trying to coordinate the kick with the swim. By this point most of them were ready to go.
The main set was a combination of 25s to get some of the speed and efficiency up and then right into a longer set of 50s at a hard “hold pace.” We repeated the set 4 times. It totaled around 2000 yards. I gave everyone some ambitious paces based on what I had seen in the warm-up. Everyone did well. One of the athletes was having a tough time when we got to the 3rd and 4th rounds. For the volume we have done and the level of intensity her mechanics aren’t quite there yet to handle it. But she has improved quickly since she got here. John got faster as the set went along, which is always fun to see and the majority of the group was sub 30 on the 50s.
The idea for this camp came from my own time training as an athlete. I was lucky to have been in great team environments and understand the value of the fantastic work that can get done when great athletes are put in the right environment. Below is a video from the morning practice of the IM Chattanooga Champion swimming right next to the IM Boulder Champion and neither of them wanting to give an inch during the entire 2000 yards. They both pushed each other faster than they would have gone alone.
Great Environment
The night practice started with a stroke session with Cody. I’ve been working with Cody for a year this month and we’ve made a lot of improvements and there is a large well of untapped potential remaining. For Cody, we needed to work on his left side and try to balance out the stroke. When he gets tired he tends to swing the left arm out which he then has to correct for on the pull. We also worked on getting more connection between his core and catch. You can see the initial film of his stroke here:
Cody Front View
Cody Front View Underwater
The practice was solid. Everyone was tired. I had benched one of the athletes. She was dragging and needed the rest. We were looking for a lot of speed and so we did a lot of 25s at “hold pace.” Liz had a break through practice. She held some sub 15 second 25s for the first time. She’s getting a lot stronger in the water and has held up well with all of the volume and intensity. She wouldn’t have been able to do this camp a couple years ago.
The one thing we did talk about was the importance of the details, especially in sprinting. The first swimmer to reach the 100m in Kona was at roughly 1:10/100m and that was with an open water start, so we need to account for the first 10-15 meters were not at 1:10 pace so safe to assume sub 1:10 for part of that first 100m. At that speed they are moving at between 1.4 and 1.8 meters a second. During the practice, when we swam 25s, one of the athletes consistently lagged another by between .25 and .5 seconds on each repeat. It’s an almost imperceptible amount of time, but in swimming it counts. Surprisingly, in an Ironman swim it counts too. .5 seconds per 25 over a 100m equated to 2 seconds slower per 100. So by the time the first place male reaches the first buoy, you are already behind by 2 seconds off the pace or as much as 3.6 meters behind or two body lengths. You’ve been dropped. So for those of you racing at an elite level, the Ironman swim is not a distance swim it’s a sprint.
The quotation of the day was in reference to a swimmer in the morning session that I knew could go faster. I’m always checking times. Pace clock is king. He had a hard bike workout the day before, but that’s not an excuse. He had been hovering around the hold pace I gave him and was starting to retreat a little with each round. I could tell it wasn’t physical fatigue as much as mental. I stepped on him a little for the last round, told him he needed to get his arse in gear or just die and be done with it. He focused, swam faster, held it and finished out the set. Everyone has bad days. Everyone gets mentally fatigued. The difference between the top 10 athlete and the athlete at the top of the podium is how you respond on those days. Are you able to give that little extra when pressed? It’s not necessarily the most talented athlete that wins the race; it’s the most committed.
Day 10 – January 12, 2015 (Monday)
Monday morning arrived quickly and the weather has been unseasonably cold for Texas, actually, cold and wet. The water has been a consistent 80 at the outdoor pool. On the videos I’m posting on social media (Instagram and Facebook) you can see the steam coming off the water. So for the swimmers it’s good.
We got back into it with a workout designed to get in as much yardage as possible while promoting stroke efficiency. Again, we kicked for about 20% of the total volume of the workout. For triathletes or competitive swimmers, I can’t stress enough the importance of an efficient kick. The idea within the tri-community that you can be efficient and competitive without a kick is odd. The closest analogy would be to try to teach someone to run with their arms strapped to their sides. Good luck with that.
I understand the idea of wanting to coach someone with a pull buoy all the time. It’s easy for the beginning swimmer. I’ve found a lot more success with letting a beginning swimmer use fins for the majority of a workout. There are a number of benefits that, in my experience, outweigh the use of pull buoy all the time. First, you will get the extra lift from the fins that put you in the correct body position so you can replicate good body position over and over again in practice. Second, you get to work the posterior chain (the kick) at the same time you are pulling. Getting the coordination down between the kick and pull is essential for efficient swimming. And the coordination between the arms and legs is the same in swimming as it is in running. Third, it allows you to swim an entire workout and get the needed cardio-vascular benefits. Lastly, it takes pressure off your shoulders, prevents injuries and allows you to play around with the best ways to leverage the water with your pull.
After the Lead Up set of kicking and swimming, the main set was a solid 3000 yards. It was fairly aerobic and built to some tight interval 50s in the last 500 of the set. The total for the 1.5 hour swim was just under 6000 yards.
The evening practice started with a stroke analysis session with Matt. I’ve been working with Matt for about one and a half years now. He’s made incredible progress in that period of time. He lives in Iowa, but has made extended trips down to Texas to work with the team. He has a solid stroke. There are always ways to make it better, but he has a good “feel” for the water and has built up an efficient “kinetic chain.” The main emphasis for the night was on getting a little more connection between his core and his catch at the top of the stroke. Here is a video when we first started and one after discussion of the video/his stroke and some drill work:
The second practice, again, was all about density of yardage. We got in some solid swimming and everyone was looking good. The faster group put in just under 10k for the day.
Day 9 – January 11, 2015 (Sunday)
Rest. The day off was much needed for everyone. I swam myself. It was the first opportunity since this camp started. I ran into Balazs at the gym and then I had lunch with Matt. We discussed his upcoming season and how some of the training would look post swim camp.
Day 8 – January 10, 2015 (Saturday)
This would be the last swim workout of the week. This was a team workout at the Magnolia High School and we had a great turnout. There were about 25 people in the pool. We have ability levels from fitness swimmers and folks training for the their first sprint triathlon with no swim backgrounds to top level age groupers and pros. It’s always fun and challenging to get a wide range of athletes in the workouts.
The cool thing about the Woodlands area is that there are so many great athletes to train around. I have an open door policy when it comes to coaches or athletes wanting to get in the workouts. For the coaches, if there is a coach that wants to see what we are doing I’ll let them come onto the deck to observe. Same goes for any of the local triathetes that want to jump into the water to see how the team trains. I had a number of people that found out about the pro camp early on that wanted to swim and I made that accommodation. Tim Monk is an ex-college swimmer and local competitive triathlete. He works for Klean Athlete and is a big supporter in this community of triathletes and triathlon. He spent the first 8 days swimming the morning workouts with the pros. He had a great time at his “fantasy pro camp” and kept Liz honest in her lane. He also improved a lot over the past week. Grace Benes is another local triathlete that was a college swimmer. She’s very talented and always great to have in the pool. For the Saturday workout, TJ Fry – owner of Swim Shops of the Southwest and one of the coaches for South Coast Endurance decided he would give it a go. TJ swam in college and was a pro triathlete for a number of years. He hadn’t been in the water for a couple months, so it was an interesting experience for TJ towards the end of the 1.5 hour practice. It’s a real benefit to the program to have this many great athletes that drop in to practices. I can’t explain how much it adds to the workouts. You can see the end of practice here:
I don’t write the workouts before practice. I generally have an idea of what I want to do based on the day of the week and where we are in the season, but I want to see what the athletes look like in the water before I commit to anything. There is no substitute for seeing the athlete in the water on a daily basis.
During warm-up, they looked tired. Everyone was a little ragged. I would normally have backed off and kept the workout a little more “aerobic” and slightly easier. I decided to press. I wanted to get a good idea of where everyone was and how they were handling the volume. In general, everyone did well. But at the same point, we were at the edge and had gotten everything out of them during the week that we could. The wheels were falling off some of the wagons.
After practice on Saturday we usually head out for a cup of coffee and a treat. This Saturday was no different. It was great to see the team hanging out and enjoying each others company. We put in a lot of hard work.
Day 7 – January 9, 2015 (Friday)
The alarm came much too early for swim camp today, but it’s the price you pay for a fun night. Everyone was dragging a little and it turned out to be a cold morning. I had warned them all that Friday was going to be a lot of hard work, both physically and mentally. The thing about swimming is that the training is different than biking and running. All of them are physically and mentally demanding in their own right, but with swimming you have to be present. And if you want to make improvements, you have to be present for every stroke. In a tough program, maintaining the level of mental discipline needed day after day and practice after practice is a another skill set that needs to be cultivated. Swimming well becomes much more a mental struggle than a physical one. There is no tuning out and mindlessly getting in yardage.
We did the warm up (around 1400 yards), then a Lead Up set (around 600 yards) of a combination of kicking and swimming. I wanted them to get coordinated between the kick and stroke. It’s all about efficiency. Then we swam the main set (around 3000 yards) which was again a “hold pace” set. The hold paces were faster than race pace. For the faster swimmers they were holding a sub 43 minute Ironman pace. It was good to see and Cody probably had his best swim ever. When I first started working with him a year ago his all out best time in the 100 was a 1:05 and he held 1:05 pace or better for the 3000 yard set.
You can see a couple videos here of two of the fastest swimmers in Ironman, John and Balazs, going at it during the main set:
The second practice of the day would be a noon practice again, so a quick turn around with not a lot of rest. The morning pro practice finishes at 8:30am and then they need to be back to the pool by noon. Fortunately, the second practice is only an hour.
For the noon practice, we did a set that was similar to the morning, but with a different emphasis. Again, it was a hold pace and the best part about it was everyone swam faster at the noon practice compared to the morning. John was holding the fastest pace at 1:01/100. He was on the US National Open Water Team for 25k and swam in a couple world championships, so it’s nice to have that type of experience in the pool. It pushes everyone.
We closed out the noon practice and everyone was looking to get some rest. We had one more day to go to finish up the first week and all of the campers were feeling the work they put in.
Day 6 – January 8, 2015 (Thursday)
“How is it that everyone likes you around here?” – anonymous pro triathlete
This was the first workout where we had everyone in the pool together. By this point for those that started on the January 3rd, we were up to around 25K through the first 5 days with one of those days off. The intensity was high along with the volume. Some of the athletes were starting to show the wear and tear. The group of swimmers that paced sub 1:20/100 were the most ragged. I was watching them and looking to cut back on their volume and intensity a little more than the rest of the group. For this camp, the way I look at Thursday is that it is simply acting as a “bridge” from the very high intensity work of Wednesday to get us to another very high intensity set on Friday. I call it a recovery day, I think the campers swimming 8,500 between two workouts might call it something else, but the work load and intensity are dialed back. The workouts were generally aerobic with some pace change.
Instead of running another workout at night, we came back to swim with the team at the noon workout. Thursday evening we planned a get together for all the pros to meet the community. The one thing that can’t be stressed enough is how supportive and passionate the Woodlands community is about triathlon and triathletes. This camp would not have happened without that support.
For the afternoon practice, I benched a couple of them from the sub 1:20 pace group. One of them tried to convince me that she was ok and could handle it, but I knew it was just triathlete wishful thinking and wanting to get in another workout whether it was good for her or not. And especially with these workouts centered around recovery and getting ready for tomorrow it was more important to get her some rest than more time in the water. In swimming, these are the main elements I think about with training: rest and consistency. Consistency will trump volume. You’ll experience greater success in the water 5 times a week for 30 minutes than 3 times a week for an hour. We are trying to keep that “feel” for the water and then have enough rest and recovery to get in some fast swimming on those key weekly workouts.
The quotation at the start of this post came from one of the swimmers I pulled when she needed rest more than she needed additional time in the water. Again, she wasn’t too happy with me and after I “convinced” her to get her arse out of the water she looked me straight in the face and uttered the above quotation. She was dead serious, I thought it was great. Remember Thursday was all about getting prepared to have a great day on Friday.
The pro get together was scheduled for 6:00pm and some local sponsors were going to bring in their equipment to show off to the community and to the pros. We had Bicycle Speed Shop, Riivo Custom Cycling Shows and Atomic Performance Coatings as well as representatives from Klean Athlete, Gold’s Gym and Sterling Ridge Orthopaedics. We are big at supporting local sponsors and local businesses, so it was great to have everyone in attendance. The night turned out to be a big success. We had over 75 people from almost every triathlon club or team in the area show up to eat, drink and joke around. It was perfect.
Special thanks to David Tilbury-Davis from Physfarm for working with the Blue Mug Café and sponsoring the food for the evening. David has been an enormous help in bringing all of this together for the camp. Here is a quick video at the end of the night:
Day 5 – January 7, 2015 (Wednesday)
Traditionally in swimming when you hit the middle of the week you get a half day of rest. In other words, we would only have one workout on Wednesday. There was a high school swim meet at the Magnolia Pool so we would swim at the Creekwood Pool on Wednesday morning and then everyone would get some much needed rest.
On the team, Wednesdays are usually “Steak Night.” We sprint at the practice at a very high intensity and then head down to the local pub for a 10oz rib-eye special with two sides and some good local beer. Since we swam in the morning, we didn’t get the steak or beer after workout, but kept the sprinting. The main set was 2 rounds of broken 100s with an easy 100 and then a 100 for time. I was looking for them to hold their fastest possible pace through the whole set. The interval for each 100 was 4 minutes. When I give similar sets to this one to triathletes for the first time they always question whether 4 minutes is a typo. Don’t be afraid to swim very hard and take a lot of rest and repeat. If you haven’t done it before you’ll get a nice bump in speed and efficiency from the workout.
I got a good video of two of the swimmers at the camp, Justin and Balazs, swimming a 100 broken at the 50. They held some good speed. You can see it here:
Everyone swam well. There were a few 100 PRs that morning including the female pro that was annoyed with me the day before for benching her at the evening practice. There is a reason for rest. She set a new 100 PR by 2 seconds, which brought her 2 seconds closer to making the front pack. She is a talented runner and cyclist and like Matt when she makes that front pack in the swim will be tough to beat.
During the afternoon everyone enjoyed their day off, caught up on some rest, emails and calories and a few got in a ride or a run. We had three of the athletes in the camp go to Sterling Ridge Orthopaedic and Sports Medicine for some range of motion testing. We are going to do some interesting stuff with the range of motion information, but more on that later. Sterling Ridge is a fantastic support to the team and the triathlon community of the Woodlands. They extended to any of the pros while they are here free physical therapy treatments as well as use of their Alter G Treadmill. They are a fantastic organization to work with and an asset to the community.
At night, the majority of us got together for some dinner at the Black Walnut Café. We had a good evening and prepped for Thursday. The last of the campers arrived and so the whole group would be swimming together for the first time in the morning.
Day 4 – January 6, 2015
I knew this would be a tough day for most of them. At this point, we put in around 15,000 yards within the first 3 days. From a swim point a view, it isn’t a lot of yardage, but for most triathletes it’s more than they normally swim. On top of that the workouts have been geared more towards intensity than volume.
The morning practice was designed around a “hold pace” for short distance efforts. I’ve been experimenting with the team for the past 15 months with USRPT and have trained it myself for a little longer. Within swimming, there are two general ways to get swim efficiency. You can either swim a lot of volume, most programs for distance swimmers are more than 85K a week or you can swim shorter distances at very high intensities. When I started Magnolia Masters to coach triathletes about 4.5 years ago, I knew we would not have the time to pursue a volume style program. The only real option was to have very high intensity workouts with an emphasis on technique and pushing technique into the stroke at every possible opportunity. You can do drill work all you want, but if you aren’t working to apply that technique “under load” in a workout you will not see any improvement. The big gains in stroke efficiency occur when you are fatigued and you have the mental discipline to hold technique together. Technique and training do not exist independent of one another.
The athletes in the sub 1:20 pace group were the first to show some real fatigue in the water from the work we were putting in. I knew that I would “bench” some of them for the evening practice. My whole goal past Tuesday morning was to set everyone up for their best possible swim for the next day. Wednesday morning would be a very high intensity swim.
Tuesday night started out with another stroke analysis session. This athlete recently took her pro card and wants to race on the ITU circuit. I have coached her remotely for a little over 6 months. This is the second time, other than some videos she has sent me, that I have seen her in the water. Her stroke and the issues that we need to overcome are not dissimilar to the athlete from the previous night. Again, there is a lack of core engagement. There are minor range of motion issues that we need to work through and her stroke mechanics are similar to other athletes with large running backgrounds. One of the big things that came out of this session was when we did some one arm drills. She is left handed, but her right side is stronger and when she tried to swim left arm only her rotation along the long axis was non-existent. She was very weak on that side. It’s something we will address with the other core engagement/kinetic chain issues going forward. You can see some of the video here:
One of the last pros for the camp arrived in the late afternoon and showed up to the evening swim. He grabbed an early flight out of Denver, but lives in Boulder so it was an early morning and a long day of traveling. I told him it would be best to get him in the water, go about 2k and then get some rest. The main set was a series of 50s on hold pace. We ended up swimming around 1500 yards for the main set. The fastest group was holding a sub 1:00/100 pace for the 1500. It was a tough set and good to see. I did end up benching one of the pros after the morning swim. She had been showing a lot of fatigue in the morning, the pace clock does not lie, and I wanted her to be fresh for the Wednesday morning swim. She wasn’t exactly thrilled with me about that call, but stayed tuned to see what happened in the morning swim.
Day 3 – January 5, 2015 (Monday)
“There is MAGIC in a unified send off.” –Aaron “Jussi” Thomas
With all of the pros in town, I rented extra pool space for the morning practice. The team swims at 6am – 7am most mornings and I got some additional time from 7am – 8:30am. This morning was bitterly cold, so I got to freeze my arse off for 2.5 hours instead of the normal 1 hour each morning. But it was worth it. The extra 30 minutes of swimming allowed us to get in almost 6000 yards of swimming and a fair amount of kicking. 1.5 hours is almost a full swim workout.
We had three main groups, a sub 1:05 pace group, a sub 1:15 pace group and a sub 1:20 pace group, that formed this morning. Balazs, Cody and Matt were all the same lane beating up one another. Again, this workout was all about “density” of yardage. The second group was comprised of Liz and Tim. Then the third group had Ruth, Caitlin and Aubrey in it.
Most of these athletes I coach remotely and I’m fairly conservative in the work we do. If I’m not on the deck watching, I’m reluctant to press too hard. With pro athletes the competition trains right at the edge of injury, but I give myself a bigger buffer zone working remotely. When I’m on deck and can see them in the water every day, correct small stroke imperfections and watch how they are responding to training loads I’m more comfortable getting closer to that edge.
During the day most of the pros went home and got some rest. A few did some small rides or runs and a couple endured 12 whole minutes of a yoga session.
The evening practice was tough. I started the night with a stroke analysis session with one of the pros. These are 30 minute sessions where we film the stroke from above and below the water, look at it on the computer, break it down and then get back into the water to do some targeted drills to address any issues in the stroke. This athlete’s biggest issue on the swim was the underdevelopment of a “kinectic chain.” In the first video you can see that there isn’t a great deal of connection between the shoulders and the hips through the core and there isn’t a lot of core engagement at the top of the stroke at the start of the catch. One of the drills we did was to put her on a stretch cord with fins and do some 20m sprints. You can see in the second video that there is a lot more engagement through the core happening. We’ll keep working on it.
Pro Stroke Analysis Video 1
Stretch Cord Drill Video 2
For the workout, we put in almost 4000 yards in less than an hour and the main set was a lot of tight interval 100s. Cody and Matt were going on an interval that was faster than what their pace per 100 was when we started working together. They felt great.
The quotation at the top is from a local age grouper that drops in a bit of wisdom on some of the videos I post on social media. This time it was from an Instagram post (you can see it here) the other morning. There is a brief section in the video when everyone leaves precisely at the same time in the middle of a set when there were 4 different groups with distinct intervals swimming. When you see that happen, you know the team is forming and you’ll be able to produce some solid results.
While swimming and triathlon are both individual sports, the best way to achieve great results is on a team and a team with a very particular culture. It needs to be focused, disciplined, supportive, honest, fun and genuine. As the coach, this is something that I cultivate on a very exacting basis. All the pros that are attending this camp have very clear cut goals as to why they are here, why they are pro triathletes and are very driven to achieve those goals. When you assemble a group like that in a very precise environment magic can happen.
Day 2 – January 4. 2015 (Sunday)
Today is an off day from swimming. Two different groups went out for rides this morning. There were a few that wanted to get an early start since they were getting bike fits later this afternoon. The weather was slightly uncooperative with low 40s and a lot of wind this morning. Later in the week it is supposed to heat up.
Tomorrow will be a big day of swimming. We’ll swim twice. Once in the morning at the Creekwood pool from 7am – 8:30am and then at the Magnolia Pool from 7:30pm – 8:30pm. Again, the focus will be on the “density” in the workout with a little bit of pace change throughout.
Day 1 – January 3. 2015 (Saturday)
“The Best Part of Swim Camp is the Long Run.” – anonymous pro-triathlete
The campers arrived Friday and some got in the water at the morning practice with the team and some opted for the noon workout. That was the unofficial start of the camp and I’m glad it was the unofficial start. Everyone swam like shit. I think it was a combination of the travel, holidays and maybe a little too many shot blocks of Unicom (thank you Balazs) from the Balsdorf’s New Years Eve party…but I’m glad it was not the start.
Identities have been obscured to protect the guilty...
The pros that arrived for the start settled in with their home stays. The Woodlands is a fantastic community for triathletes, pro or age grouper. There are great places to train and the community is very supportive for anyone pursuing their goals in the sport. Ten pros are attending the camp, 7 are from out of town and the community came together and all of them have home-stays for the duration of their training here. I can’t thank the families enough that offered up their homes for these athletes.
The first official practice was this morning. We swam for 1.5 hours at the Magnolia High School Pool, which is a first class facility. See below.
The normal Saturday practice for the team is all about “density.” From my point of view as a swim coach, it is a very traditional swim workout. On a top level view, we want to get as many yards into the 1.5 hours as possible – about 5500 yards this morning. For this workout, being the first, I dialed back so I could see where they were in terms of their fitness and conditioning in the water. It was a mixed bag, but I know that all of them will be faster by the time they leave and have a better understanding of their stroke and how to train efficiently for the swim.
Of the seven pros that were in the water this morning, I coach six of them in the swim. Four of those I work with remotely and the other two live in The Woodlands and swim with the team on a regular basis. As a coach, you can always accomplish more when you see your athletes in the water for every workout. We are going to get a lot done at this camp. Four days a week we’ll swim twice a day for 2.5 hours total, then one day a week for an hour, another day for 1.5 hours and then a day off.
The title of this post came from one of the pros as we enjoyed some coffee after practice this morning. I am hopeful by the end of the training here I can title a post the “Best Part of Swim Camp is the Swim Camp.”
Stay tuned. I’ll write a daily update about the camp and how everyone is progressing.