Improving Your Swim...

I was not a good swimmer by any stretch when I did my first triathlon back in 2005. It was a sprint distance race, meaning it wasn't very long but it was long enough to realize that swimming was my worst discipline. It took me over 12 minutes to complete an estimated 500 meter swim, which is a little longer than a quarter of a mile.

After that event, I began a process that continues to this day and every time I go swim I still focus on getting better. There is an awareness to swimming that you need to develop over time and we do some pretty strange things underwater. You can't see what you're doing until you get an unbiased opinion from a video camera.

Based on my own swim experiences, my top recommendations for improvement are:

1) Get an under & over water video of you swimming and have it reviewed by an experienced coach.

2) While swimming, only focus on 1 or 2 changes, at most, at a time while.

3) Play with your hand entry timing to see if that simple change will make an immediate impact.

4) It's okay to only breathe to 1 side.

5) Keep your hands underneath their own side of the body underwater.

6) Swim with a pull buoy! They are great tools to simulate wetsuit swimming.

7) Try finding a rhythm in your swim, so that you can hold it while swimming harder.

8) Try swimming 'wider' in order to achieve a higher cadence. This will also help your open water skills.

9) Your goal should be to keep your body straight and stiff.

10) Keep one goggle in the water while breathing in order to stay in alignment.

11) Don't just swim continuously for an hour. You get a lot more benefit by breaking up your time and swimming hard on short intervals.


Like most triathletes, we didn't have the benefit of lap swimming from an early age but we can still maximize our time in the water and make gradual improvements over time.

Good luck!

-Dave