Swimming is a funny sport.
Why is that?
Well, there are two elements to swimming – fitness and technique. To improve at a rapid rate, you need to be doing workouts that are continually improving both of those aspects. If you’re only working on one aspect and not the other, you’ll only improve at a slow rate. Or not at all.
To improve at a rapid rate, it’s important to identify which sessions give you the most benefit. To help you along, I’ve devised a swim-workout priority list that grades the usefulness of the various types of swims you might do.
Number one on the list is the most effective workout and the best use of your time. It goes all the way down to number six, which is the least effective use of your time (although it’s still better than nothing). Use this list to determine how time-effectively you’re currently training.
Swim Workout Usefulness Scale
(Where 1 is the most useful and 6 is the least useful)
- Coached pool swim, in a lane with other similar-level swimmers and occasional video analysis.
- Coached pool swim in a lane with other similar-level swimmers but no video analysis.
- Group pool swim, following a structured pre-planned workout, but with no poolside coach.
- Group pool swim, making up the session as you go along and no coach.
- Solo pool swim with a structured pre-planned workout to follow.
- Solo pool swim, making up the session as you go along.
Which one of these sessions do you do most often? The higher up the list you are, the more you’ll improve in a short space of time. In fact, you’d make more progress from three coached swims per week than you would from four or five unplanned solo swims per week. It’s that big a deal.
Coached group swim sessions offer several major benefits. You’ll experience higher motivation to swim further and faster because of the people around you, the structure of the workout and the coach’s encouragement. You’ll also get technique pointers from the coach, enabling you to gradually iron out any flaws in your stroke. And last but not least, you’ll enjoy the social interaction which will keep you coming back for more.
At the other end of the “usefulness scale” we have unplanned solo pool swims. These sessions aren’t terrible – they can help maintain your swim fitness to a degree. But with nothing to push you and little variation in your training pace, your performances will soon plateau. Training on your own isn’t great for your technique either.
There’s a saying in swimming: “Perfect practice makes perfect”. Meaning that swimming with bad habits won’t make you a faster swimmer, it will simply serve to reinforce those bad habits. So if you want to improve your swim speed in less time, think carefully about the types of workouts you do and prioritise any coached group swims available locally.
Getting Better Organised
Let’s face it, swimming involves quite a lot of messing around. There’s packing your kit, defrosting your car windscreen, driving, parking, standing in a queue to pay, getting changed and showering. That’s at least 25-minutes wasted and you haven’t even got yourself wet yet.
Anything you can do to shave off a few minutes is worthwhile, especially when you add it up over a period of months and years. I know a professional triathlete who moved from a 5th-floor apartment that was 20 minutes from his local pool, to a ground-floor flat just 5 minutes from the pool. Purely to save himself time and energy going swimming each day. It’s an extreme example, but it illustrates the importance of logistics when you’re already leading a busy life.
