Season 2 – Cycle 4: Week 8 Workouts 

The SwimFaster program offers triathlon swim workouts designed to help you improve your technique, build your swim fitness and grow your confidence in the water. It is a free online comprehensive swim program for triathletes that runs year round from November – October. Swim faster, gain confidence and join the community. 

Talking with a lot of Age Group Triathletes I realized that what’s out there isn’t cutting it. You need more than just a collection of random “Kick-Pull-Drill-Swim” sets to keep you stimulated and guarantee progress.

So I set out to create a quality triathlon swim workout program that was a little different from anything else you can get for free online.

• The SwimFaster Program follows a clear progression through a season (November-October).
• It caters specifically to the technique, fitness and confidence challenges faced by Age Group Triathletes.
• It will give you the foundation you need to be a successful swimmer, specifically for triathlon.

My aim here is to offer free triathlon swim workouts that are better than most other coaches paid programs.

So this completely free to you. All you need to do is register your email address.

After registering you will get access to a triathlon swim workout that are designed and structured specifically for triathletes looking to get faster while becoming more efficient.

The SwimFaster Program runs through 4 distinct cycles through the year. Each cycle has a specific focus that we’re targeting. Looking to turn a weakness into a strength, to fix a hole in your swimming ability and to help turn you into a faster swimmer specifically for triathlon.

I will post three new triathlon swim workouts each week of the cycle on a Sunday. The workouts are designed to take you about an hour to complete, it may be a little shorter or a little longer depending on your current speed. If it’s taking you a lot longer than an hour to get through, you may want to think about scaling the distances or repeats down and then building up as you begin to get faster.

In an ideal world you’d be able to get all three workouts done each week. If you’re able to do that you will dramatically increase your chances of seeing massive improvements as you move through the cycles.

If you’re unable to get three sessions in a week, the sessions are written in order of priority – if you can only do one session a week, session 1 is the one. If you can do two, it’s session 1 + 2.

Warm Up – Your warm ups are designed to get you wet, loose and comfortable in the water. They should warm up your muscles and elevate your heart rate a little bit before you get into the meat of the workout.

In our program the warm ups consist of easy swimming, some fast sprinting and some breathing work.

The warm up is one place in this program that I offer you some flexibility.

Your written warm up in each session is the recommended minimum amount of swimming you need to do. But, if you have the time you may extend the warm up by increasing the distances I’ve written for that day.

Skill & Drills – Swimming can be complicated. There are a lot of moving parts… Your breathing is limited. There are so many things to think about when you envision that “perfect stroke”. It can be really overwhelming to try to get everything right all the time.

This is why we do drills.

Each session you will be given a drill that aligns with the core focus of that cycle. Slow everything down and do the drill right. If you need help on how to do your drills correctly, click HERE.

Main Set – I like to think of the Skills and Drills set as the architectural piece of your workout. It’s the piece where we craft and design your stroke to be efficient and fast.

The main set is the building and testing piece.

The main sets of each workout will focus on building your swimming engine and teaching you to maintain good form when fatigued.

Cool Down – We’ll finish each session with a warm down.

The warm down is designed to loosen you up and stretch you out after a tough session. It will help you flush your body, reduce your heart rate, relax and set you up for success in your next session.

You should emphasize great technique during your warm down. The stroke you use here is what your body will remember doing last when you leave the pool. The better your stroke ends today, the better it will start next session!

I’d love to see your data and feedback after each session. When you complete a workout, post your times and feedback on what you felt/experienced/noticed in the session in the comments section of the workout. You can type you repeat times in, take a screen shot of your Garmin data or take a photograph of scribble times written on a piece of paper. Whatever you do, I’d love to see how you’re getting on.

I’ll use the data you post to help me create an even better program – so you’ll ultimately be winning by sharing your experiences! There will be guys and girls that post up impressive times and there will be newbies who just scrape by, I’d like to hear from all of you.

The comments section will be a no judgment zone (I will make sure of this! Trolls be warned!!).  Come as you are, post what you do and let’s support each other as we work towards the goal of becoming better swimmers.

Here are the answers to some of the most common questions I get asked about the SwimFaster Program…