How to organize 3 swim workouts/wk

If your schedule limits you to three water workouts a week, you could try the following: 1) Your group workout. That will give you the speed and interval work that is more difficult to do on your own. Plus, your lane mates will naturally push you to go a little faster. 2) Yes, get a stroke coach and learn how to swim freestyle more efficiently. Make it a once weekly private lesson (or a small group of 3 or so people), and focus exclusively on technique. You'll get your conditioning in your other two workouts. This is the single most important thing you can do to improve the swim leg of a tri, and it is so counterintuitive to most triathletes because they think that if they don't feel the burn, they aren't doing anything. However, if you are not a natural swimmer, you want to learn how to swim well first, and this is done best at lower speed while you are not distracted by oxygen debt and lactic acid build up. Most important of all, ensure you are using the same good technique you learn here during your other two workouts. A lot of drills once a week will do little good if you revert to old and lousy the minute your body is stressed. 3) Just go for a long aerobic swim. Maybe you can start out by swimming freestyle continuously farther than you have before, (say 1000 yards) and try to up that personal record a little bit each week until it gets boring. If you can squeeze in a fourth workout, think about dry land flexibility exercises, such as yoga, pilates, or some other stretching routine. In particular, runners tend to have inflexible ankles that do not let them point their toes very well. This is death to an effective kick (think about little anchors digging into the water and actually causing you to go backwards a little bit, that is what kicking with your foot 90 degrees from your leg will do). You probably won't get to the point of having a strong kick, but if you can just make it effortless and save your legs for the rest of the race, that will be a big help. Good luck, Matt

If your schedule limits you to three water workouts a week, you could try the following: 1) Your group workout. That will give you the speed and interval work that is more difficult to do on your own. Plus, your lane mates will naturally push you to go a little faster. 2) Yes, get a stroke coach and learn how to swim freestyle more efficiently. Make it a once weekly private lesson (or a small group of 3 or so people), and focus exclusively on technique. You'll get your conditioning in your other two workouts. This is the single most important thing you can do to improve the swim leg of a tri, and it is so counterintuitive to most triathletes because they think that if they don't feel the burn, they aren't doing anything. However, if you are not a natural swimmer, you want to learn how to swim well first, and this is done best at lower speed while you are not distracted by oxygen debt and lactic acid build up. Most important of all, ensure you are using the same good technique you learn here during your other two workouts. A lot of drills once a week will do little good if you revert to old and lousy the minute your body is stressed. 3) Just go for a long aerobic swim. Maybe you can start out by swimming freestyle continuously farther than you have before, (say 1000 yards) and try to up that personal record a little bit each week until it gets boring. If you can squeeze in a fourth workout, think about dry land flexibility exercises, such as yoga, pilates, or some other stretching routine. In particular, runners tend to have inflexible ankles that do not let them point their toes very well. This is death to an effective kick (think about little anchors digging into the water and actually causing you to go backwards a little bit, that is what kicking with your foot 90 degrees from your leg will do). You probably won't get to the point of having a strong kick, but if you can just make it effortless and save your legs for the rest of the race, that will be a big help. Good luck, Matt