Getting Started #1 – What Am I Supposed to Do With All This Time?

Hi, it's me, The Skeptic again. I've figured out something about Coach Ziggy. He's one of what I call the Religiously Efficient. For him, cutting the junk out of a training week isn't just a means to an end. The efficiency is the point.

He actually likes this stuff. Hand this guy an extra ten hours a week and he wouldn't fill them with more swimming. He'd find a way to get the same results in three sessions and still make it home for dinner every night with his family.

But for the rest of us, who mostly just want to stop drowning and go a little faster, let's skip the philosophy and talk about the practical side. Specifically, let's talk about what you actually get when you stop grinding 20,000 pointless meters a week.

Because here's the thing nobody tells you about swimming less. The time and energy don't just vanish. They pile up. And that pile is worth a fortune, if you know where to put it.

Your Hours Are Little Employees

Think of every training hour like a little employee. It works for you, but only if you put it somewhere useful. Grind out slow junk yardage and you've got a whole staff of them standing around the shallow end eating donuts, producing nothing. You paid for the hour, you got the fatigue, and you got almost no fitness back.

So when Coach Ziggy cuts your swim from five or six exhausting sessions down to three sharp ones, he isn't taking anything away from you. He's laying off the employees who weren't doing anything and handing you their hours and their energy back, to redeploy wherever they'll work hardest.

And just like money, there's a smart order to put them to work in.

Where To Send The Hours You Get Back

For most time-crunched triathletes, in order:

1. Strength training. This is the highest-interest account there is, and it's the first thing that gets dropped when swimming eats your week. Two short lifting sessions make you more powerful and, more importantly, far more durable everywhere. It's the single best insurance policy against the injuries that end seasons. Fund this first.
2. Quality on the bike and run. Not more volume, better volume. The hours you claw back from the pool let you show up to your key bike and run sessions actually fresh, so you can hit the paces that matter instead of dragging through them half-cooked from a morning of junk swimming. Same schedule, more in the tank, better sessions.
3. Mobility and injury prevention. The unglamorous work nobody has time for, right up until they're hurt and have nothing but time. Fifteen minutes of mobility a few times a week keeps you healthy, and a healthy athlete who trains consistently beats a talented one who's always broken. This is your safety margin.
4. Actual recovery. Sleep. Sitting on the couch. Being a functional human for your family. Recovery isn't the absence of training, it's when the training becomes fitness. Bank some here and everything above works better.
5. Last resort: a little more swimming, but only the right kind. If you truly have hours left over and you're already crushing everything above, sure, add another swim. But make it a sharp one with a purpose, not more slow meters. Idle employees back in the donut lounge is exactly what we just fixed.

What The Freed-up Time Is Actually Worth

Here's the part that should get your attention. This isn't a small pile.

Cut your swim volume in half and you're not saving a few minutes. You're reclaiming several hours a week, plus, and this is the bigger one, the energy those hours cost you. That's a strength habit you could never fit before. That's bike and run sessions that finally go the way they're drawn up. That's staying healthy through a whole season instead of limping into your A race.

Put a number on it. Say Coach Ziggy hands you back four hours and a big chunk of weekly energy. Spend it the way I laid out above and you don't just get a better swim. You get a stronger, more durable, better-rested triathlete across all three sports. That is a return no amount of extra swimming could ever buy you, because extra swimming was the thing draining the account in the first place.

So there it is. Swimming less was never about the swim. It's about everything the swim was quietly stealing from the rest of your training.

And that, grudgingly, is the whole idea in a sentence: get faster everywhere by wasting your time and energy nowhere.

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