How to Swim Faster: The Triathlete's Guide

Every triathlete I've ever met wants to swim faster. And almost every one of them is trying to get there in one of two ways.

The first group swims more. More sessions, more meters, longer sets, a Sunday 4,000 that leaves them cooked for the long ride. The second group focuses purely on technique. Searching YouTube and Instagram for the right drill to fix their high elbow catch or their sinking legs, while skipping the basics.

Both groups mean well. Both groups are mostly wasting their time.

Here's the good news. Swimming faster as a triathlete is not mysterious, and it's not reserved for people who grew up on a swim team. It comes down to a handful of things done consistently, and most of them take less time than what you're doing now. I've coached Ironman champions and first-timers who couldn't finish a 100 without stopping, and the list is the same for both of them.

Let's go through it.

Why Am I Not Getting Faster?

Before we fix anything, let's talk about why you're stuck. In my experience it's almost always one of these:

You swim one speed. You get in, you swim at a comfortable-but-sort-of-hard pace, you get out. Every session. Every set. Your body is incredibly good at adapting to exactly what you ask of it, and you've been asking it to swim that one speed for years. So that's the speed you have.

You skip the foundations. There's a reason young swimmers spend so much time on their streamline, their kick, and their breathing patterns. Some of it may feel like a waste of time when you race open water in a wetsuit, but the foundations of swimming can't be skipped or overlooked if you want to keep improving.

You're fighting the water. Your head is up, your legs are sinking, and you're holding your breath. You're dragging half your body through the water on every stroke, and no amount of fitness fixes drag.

You're not consistent. Three swims one week, zero the next, then a heroic 5,000 to make up for it. Swimming is a feel sport. It rewards frequency more than almost anything else.

If any of those sound familiar, good. That means there's speed sitting right there waiting for you.

Step One: Stop Fighting The Water

Water is about 800 times denser than air. On the bike, aerodynamics matter. In the pool, drag is everything. So before you work on fitness, work on not dragging an anchor behind you.

Three fixes do most of the work.

Breathe out underwater. Most new triathletes hold their breath with their face in the water, then try to exhale and inhale in the split second their mouth is clear. It doesn't fit. Breathe out in a steady stream of bubbles the entire time your face is in, and the only job left when you turn is a quick breath in. I wrote a whole post on how to breathe while swimming if this is you.

Keep your head down. Your body is a seesaw. When your head comes up to look forward or to breathe, your hips and legs sink. Look at the bottom of the pool, rotate to breathe with one goggle still in the water, and your legs come up on their own.

Kick for balance, not propulsion. "I barely kick in a wetsuit, so why train it?" Because your kick isn't really your engine. It's what holds your legs up and allows your body to work as one unit. A weak kick sinks your legs and adds drag on every stroke. Even Joe Skipper, an Ironman champion, spent a six-week block working on his. Here's why kicking matters for triathletes.

Fixing your body position gives you a big, fast drop. It's the cheapest speed in the sport. But here's what most people don't realize: it's a one-time drop. Once you're not fighting the water, technique stops being where the big gains come from. Training structure takes over.

Step Two: Swim Fast To Get Fast

This is the part almost every triathlete skips.

If you want to swim faster, some of your swimming has to be fast. That sounds obvious, and yet most triathlon swim plans are built almost entirely on easy and moderate swimming. Then everyone's shocked when race pace doesn't move.

Think about it like this. Your race pace is a percentage of your top speed. If your top speed is slow, your race pace is stuck underneath it, no matter how many easy laps you swim. Raise the ceiling, and everything under it comes up too. A 1:30 per 100 race pace feels a lot easier when you can swim a 100 in 1:15 than when 1:30 is all you've got.

So build speed early in the season. Short, fast repeats with plenty of rest. 25s and 50s at a genuinely hard effort. Then, as your race gets closer, stretch that speed out into longer repeats at race pace. Speed first, then you learn to hold it. I go deeper on this in the true cost of skipping speed work.

Step Three: Use The Clock

Here's a small change that makes a huge difference: train on send-offs instead of fixed rest.

A fixed-rest set looks like this: 10 x 100 with 20 seconds rest after each one. Swim it hard or swim it lazy, you get the same 20 seconds, so there's no standard to rise to.

A send-off set looks like this: 10 x 100 leaving every 1:50. Now a faster 100 earns you more rest. You read your pace straight off the clock on every rep. And over time, you develop the most underrated skill in triathlon swimming, which is knowing your pace by feel.

That skill is what stops you from sprinting the first 400 of your race and blowing up, or cruising too easy and missing the group you should be swimming with. The clock isn't there to stress you out. It's there to teach you pace. More on that in get faster with interval training.

Step Four: Swim Less, But With Purpose

Yes, you read that right.

Most triathlon plans copy the logic of pool swimmers, who pile up easy volume because swimming is their only sport. A distance pool swimmer might do 80,000 meters a week. A typical triathlon plan, scaled down, still tells you to do 25,000 to 30,000.

You don't need that. Your aerobic base is coming from your bike and your run. What you need from the pool is speed, race pace, and skill. Here's roughly what actually gets the job done for the triathletes I coach:

• Short-course triathlete: about 5k a week
• Serious age-group triathlete: about 9k a week
• Full-distance pro: about 15k a week

My pros race faster on less than a typical age-grouper's plan. Not because volume is bad, but because every meter they swim has a job. The meters you cut aren't just time saved. They're freshness you carry into your bike and run sessions. I lay out the math in the time-crunched swim.

Step Five: Show Up Three Times A Week

Swimming is a feel sport. Your stroke, your timing, and your sense of the water all fade fast when you're away from it.

Three swims a week, every week, beats five one week and one the next. It beats the heroic Sunday swim that wipes you out. Consistency is boring, and it's also the single best predictor I've seen of who gets faster and who stays stuck. Here's why consistency beats the hero workout.

Step Six: Get Faster On Race Day Without Getting Fitter

This is where triathlon swimming stops being pool swimming. There's free speed on race day that has nothing to do with your fitness.

Draft. Swimming right behind or beside another swimmer's hip saves a meaningful amount of energy. That's energy you get to spend on the bike and run. Learn to find feet and stay on them.

Swim the first 400 with intent. The front of a triathlon swim is a sorting process. Go out a little harder than feels comfortable, get into a group that's moving, then settle into their pace. A slow start can leave you swimming alone in no-man's-land for the rest of the swim, working harder for a slower time.

Sight smarter. Every time you swim off course, you're swimming extra meters. Lift your eyes just enough to spot the buoy, then roll into your breath. Practice it in the pool by sighting a target at the end of the lane every few strokes.

Warm up. A cold body hitting cold water with a racing heart is how panic starts. Get in before the start, swim a few hard strokes, and get your breathing settled before the gun goes off.

None of these require you to be fitter. They just require you to race the swim like it's a race, not something to survive.

Do I Need A Coach?

You don't need one to finish. But you do to reach your potential.

Most triathletes have never seen their own stroke. They feel like their head is down and their kick is fine, and the video says otherwise. A good coach does three things you can't do for yourself: spots the one or two fixes that matter most, gives you structure so every session has a purpose, and keeps you consistent when life gets busy. If you're curious whether it's worth it, here's how to come out ahead by hiring a swim coach.

Your Homework

Here's one session to start with this week, straight from our Medium Distance Track.

Warm-up

• 6 x 50 @ 1:30, swim

Pre-set

• 5 x 50 @ 1:30, 25 catch-up drill, 25 swim
• 6 x 25 @ :50, odd: fast breakout (first 10m fast), even: fast finish (last 10m fast)
• 1 x 50 easy

Main set (all on 1:30)

• 8 x 50: every 4th one is max effort
• 6 x 50: every 3rd one is max effort
• 4 x 50: every 2nd one is max effort
• 2 x 50: all max effort

Warm-down

• 1 x 100 easy

That's 1,850 meters, about an hour. Notice how the main set works. The max efforts come closer and closer together, so by the end you're learning to go fast when you're already tired. That's exactly what the first 400 of a triathlon asks of you. Hit every max effort hard, watch the clock, and write down your times.

Swimming faster as a triathlete isn't about swimming more or hunting for the perfect drill. Stop fighting the water, swim some of it fast, use the clock, and show up. Do that for a season and you'll stop dreading the swim.

You'll start looking forward to it.

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