Getting the balance right between fitness gains and skill improvement can be tricky, but luckily swim coach Andrew Sheaff has the strategies you need to achieve both at the same time…
Swimming can be really challenging because you have to be physically fit and possess tremendous technical skill. The problem is that working really hard to develop your fitness can lead to poor skills, and focusing exclusively on your skills can lead to a loss of fitness.
It’s a really tough balancing act that’s hard to get right. However, by using some specific strategies designed to solve this specific problem, you can definitely accomplish both at the same time.
Use reminders
The simplest strategy is to include skill reminders in between hard repetitions, or a series of hard repetitions. For instance, you could perform three rounds of 4 x 100m freestyle, and in between round four, you’d perform 4 x 25m of Paddle Cap Freestyle.
By using this strategy, you’re ensuring that you’re continually getting technical reinforcement between hard repetitions. Even if your skills fall apart a little bit during the 100s, you can get them back on track during the 25s.
Without the reminders, you might find that your skills continually get worse and worse over the course of a set. Instead, you can use the drill work to help you refocus on what really matters, helping you keep your skills in check.
Perform drill/swim repetitions
Another way to accomplish the same objective is to perform repetitions where drills are included in the repetitions themselves. For instance, you could perform 10 x 100m where the first 25m is Underwater Recovery and the remaining 75m is performed at a strong effort.
Or you could perform 10 x 200m alternating 25m Stroke and Roll with 25m fast swim.
In both cases, you’re getting technical reminders throughout the set, helping you focus on the key skills when you’re pushing the effort during the swim portions.
And because you’re getting constant reminders, it’s much less likely that you’ll experience any sort of technical decay over the course of the set. That way you can train hard while knowing you’ll be able to swim well.
Find your sweet spot
How much drill work should you include? As much as necessary and as little as possible. You want to be able to perform as much hard swimming as you can, but you don’t want to let your skills fall apart.
You’re better off including too much drilling at first to ensure that you can maintain the appropriate skills as much as possible. Once you’re confident in your ability to do so, slowly decrease the amount of drill work while increasing the amount of swimming.
As long as you’re maintaining your skills, keep pushing it. However, if you notice that your skills are falling a part to some extent, take a step back to ensure you stay on track.
Top image credit: Jan Hetfleisch/Getty Images for Ironman