3 Tips To A Faster Swim
Photo Credit: Helen Cogan Photography
Swimming fast for triathlon or open water doesn’t need to be a huge complicated process. In fact there are only 3 main elements to help you become a better swimmer. The best part is, you can start making progress today! Here are my 3 high level tips to help you become a faster and more well rounded swimmer!
Find A Coach and Learn Decent Technique!
This is probably the most difficult of the 3 tips but it is also essential to becoming a better swimmer. You can spend a lifetime fine tuning technique but to become a good swimmer you really only need to learn the fundamentals and become solid in them. This means having a solid kick, body position and pull. This can be learned in a matter of months depending on how much time you put in. It is next to impossible to do this through YouTube videos or to teach yourself. Check out USMS and find a coach in your area to help you learn the fundamentals!
Commit
Swimming is all about time in the water! In order to really become a better swimmer, then you have to commit to that goal! This means that you get to the pool or open water to practice no matter how you feel about the sport! The more you are in the water the faster you become a better swimmer. It takes time to develop a comfort level in the water. It also takes time to develop a solid feel for the water. Committing to swimming is not going to train 1 or even 2 times per week. Committing is going 3-5 times per week. Don’t wait either! If you are new to the sport, you need to give yourself a solid 6 months of training to become a decent swimmer for your first triathlon! If you commit to swim training and learning the proper skills, then you will be well on your way to becoming a faster swimmer and triathlete!
If you are a triathlete, you might fall into the trap that so many others do. That trap is telling yourself you don’t need to train the swim that much because it is the smallest portion of the race. That couldn’t be further from the truth though. If you are an inefficient swimmer or struggle with it, you can destroy your entire race because you are so tired getting out of the water. This will deplete your energy and you will have a terrible bike and run. All those hours spent on the bike and run will be wasted because you didn’t give the swim the love it needed! Do yourself a favor and commit, whether you like swimming or not!
Learn To Love Swimming
Many new triathletes and swimmers actually hate the sport. It is difficult and they feel like they are not making progress. They begin to dread every swim and it becomes a downward spiral until you quit and just become a duathlete! Once you embrace the swim and celebrate each little win, you will start to love swimming. When this happens, you will start seeing your progress speed up faster and faster. You may need to fake it until you make it for a while but eventually that faking it will turn into genuine enjoyment. You need to learn to love this sport because that love will get you through bad training days and you will finally be able to reach your full potential in the water!
Following these three tips is sure to put you on the path to success. Not following them will ensure that you never reach your full potential on the swim which means you will never be as fast as you could be on the race course if you are a triathlete. There is no magic pill when it comes to swimming fast but these three tips are the closest thing to it!
We hope you found these tips helpful! If you have any tips that have helped you become the beast of a swimmer you are, then please drop them in the comments to help others just like you!