Swimming Articles

Olympic Swimming
Olympic swimming in a triathlon? Swimming is one of the hardest sports that a triathlete can do. But for some triathletes, swimming can lag behind in terms of their technique.

Swim
If you’ve only swam in indoor pools up until now, you must schedule some open-water training before the day of your big event.

Swimming Suits
If your suit retains water, you’re going to find blisters on your feet by the five mile mark. If you’re going to be swimming in cold water, consider getting a wet suit of some kind.

Swim Suits
The most important reason to get a wet suit is that it will help to keep you warm while you swim. A wet suit can also help you stay buoyant.

Water Sports
Swimmers need to take their swim sessions out to open water and get used to moving straight without having a red line keeping them in place. Without this experience, swimmers tend to go all over the place come race time. 

Swimming Technique
Before you decide that you swim well enough, consider this. Studies show that you can swim up to 50% faster if you improve your technique.

Swim Cap
Your swim cap is mandatory wear during a triathlon mostly for safety and identification reasons. You will be much more visible it the water with your cap on. The race management team will supply you with one with your packet if it is required to be worn.

Swim Mask
Want to know how to check a mask’s fit? Place a mask on your face, but don’t wrap the strap around the back of your head. Let the strap sit on top of the mask or your head. Without strapping the mask on, breathe in and lift your hand away from the mask. It should stay in place. If it doesn’t, then the mask isn’t a good fit for your face.

Swimming Goggles
If you need glasses or contacts, consider buying goggles with corrective lenses. You can get them but give yourself enough time before any racing dates so that you’ll get them in time.

How to Swim
Besides your time spent in a pool training, make sure you get some open-water time as part of your training. This is because the open water poses its own challenges that you can’t simulate in a pool setting. 

Swim Goggles
You’re not limited to wearing goggles. Many triathletes wear swim masks when they’re training and racing. They feel that the masks afford them even better visibility than goggles would. If you normally wear glasses or contacts, look into getting your goggles with vision corrected lenses.

Swim Fins
If you do decide to use your fins as a part of your open-water training, use these pointers. Put your fins on before you get in the water. It’s all too easy to lose them in the surf.

Learning to Swim
Learn to bilateral breathe as your train. Triathletes say that by learning how to breath bilaterally, they’ll able to keep a better eye on buoys that point them in the right direction. By keeping an eye on where you’re supposed to go, you’re able to reduce time and energy constantly moving yourself back on track.

Competitive Swimming
The extra training will help strengthen your muscles. The cross-training will enhance your cardiovascular system. So don’t limit yourself to swimming; you’ll find that the cross training for triathlons will really benefit your swim performance as well.

Swim Lessons
Because we swim in water, when we have poor technique, we can’t often feel it or see it. There aren’t mirrors to help us focus on posture the way weigh lifting rooms often provide. We often don’t have the sore muscles or injuries that you might get when you use poor technique with running or cycling.

Swimming Techniques
When triathletes think about their bike event, they usually do everything they can to reduce their drag co-efficiency. That’s because they know that for every little thing that can cut down on their drag, they can reap a reward of seconds shaved off of their time. But when they jump in the pool for their training, they don’t consider how their swimming techniques could help them reduce their drag co-efficiency in the water.

Swim Strokes
Many triathletes confuse power with effectiveness. Case in point: swim strokes. When you compare a triathlete’s form with that of an Olympic swimmer, you’ll see that the triathlete will often look like a fish out of water.

Swim Caps
Another thing we’ve done to keep triathlons safer is to move the swim event to the first event instead of the last even of the competition. This way if you’re cycling or running and you have to stop due to exhaustion, you just stop.

Speedo Swim Suits
With the second evolution of the Speedo Fast-Skin II comes even more performance enhancement for the swimmer who puts one on. The Speedo Aqualab produced results indicating that male swimmers wearing this swim suit could have up to 4% less drag in the water. Women swimmers wearing this swim suit have up to 3% less drag in the water.

Triathlon Wetsuits
Triathlon wetsuits are designed to be taken off quickly when triathletes are rushing from their transition from swimming to cycling. While you can continue in your swim suit to the cycling and running events, you are not going to want to keep you wetsuit on.

Ironman Swimsuit
Speedo’s Fast Skin II swimsuit looks more like a body suit than a swim suit. Since the triathlon event first started in the Olympics in 2000, this suit has been part of an ongoing controversy.

Swim Team
You can meet your swim limitations head on by joining a swim team. Not all swim teams are about competition where all the swimmers have to be Olympic hopefuls. You can find a team out there that meets more like a club. They might even have a couple of clinics or training programs that target triathletes.

Swim Meet
Train with other swimmers or get a personal swim coach. You’ll be surprised at all the tips you’ll pick up just through osmosis. Okay, that was a pun and don’t take it literally. But seriously, many swim clubs welcome runners into their folds; they even offer clinics for triathlons.