3 workouts to improve your endurance / speed in the swimming of an IRONMAN

The long-distance swimming segment, or popularly known as Ironman distance, it creates many doubts in the beginner triathlete when he faces the 3.800 meters for the first time.

Today we leave you 3 types of exercises so that you can include in your workouts and arrive better prepared.

Rhythm changes

It is very common that during the swim segment you can join a group and thus benefit from the joint rhythm thanks to drafting.

But not all that glitters is gold, because from time to time the group, mainly the head of the group, makes a change of pace that can leave you off the hook.

So that does not happen includes these fartlek exercises in your workouts:

Fartlek on ladder or pyramid.

Increase the distance hard and keep the distance at a comfortable pace:

Ex: 25f 25s 50f 25s 75f 25s 100f 25s 75f 25s 50f 25s 25f 25s (f = strong 85%; s = soft 60%)

Fartlek at equal distance.

The same distance strong as soft:

Ex: 600m alternating 50f 50s

Progressive / regressive.

Increase or decrease in rhythm in a series:

Ex: 600 progressive every 100m or 300 regressive every 50m

 High intensity with active recovery

Another frequent situation that you can find is the exit at high speed with a demanding maintenance of speed up to approximately 300 meters.

For this we can train short and medium series with active recovery at medium intensity:

Short series:

Ex: 4 x (100 to 85-90% + 200 to 70%) / 1 '

Middle series:

Ex: 600 doing (300 regressives of 85-70% + 300 70%)

 Rhythm control

By not having references during the swimming segment, it is necessary to work on the internalization of the swimming rhythm in the training sessions.

This can be done with little tricks like counting the number of strokes per length or creating a rhythm melody in your head that matches each stroke (one, two, one, two…).

Short sets with little rest:

Ex: 20 × 100/20 ”at 3-4 seconds faster than the target pace of the test. It is important to count the strokes

Long series without pause:

Ex: 800 or 1000m where the only objective is to internalize the stroke rate, count them and not depend on what the clock marks

If you want to know more tips for the swimming segment, we recommend the following articles:

• Swimming training to gain base in distance IRONMAN
• 3 interval training sessions for IRONMAN
• Swimming training to be consistent and train for IRONMAN distance
• Swimming workouts