Many beginners training for a triathlon swim operate under the mistaken assumption that Masters swim teams (coached group workouts comprised of swimmers 18 years or older) are the realm of top athletes who have been spent the majority of their lives swimming competitively.

Those who work up the courage to attend a Masters workout often complain of feeling isolated. These disillusioned triathletes come away feeling that Masters workouts are no place for novices.

The truth, however, is that only 20% of those working out with a Masters team are training for a competitive triathlon swim or some other competitive swim event. The remaining 80% of participants are merely interested in improving their fitness levels.

Therefore, even if you are used to training solo and the idea of swimming with a Masters team slightly intimidates you, mull it over anyway. Both beginning and veteran triathletes can reap the benefits of Masters swimming.

Here are 10 things you should know to help you get the most out of training with a Masters team:

1.   Being on time is crucial. Show respect for the coach and your fellow athletes by arriving on time.

2.  It is okay to be a beginner. As a matter of fact, the coach and most of the other swimmers will realize it and will be eager to help out.

3.  Different groups have different goals. Know what you expect to achieve with a Masters team in advance and articulate your goals to the coach. Most coaches are agreeable to working with swimmers of all levels. If not, there is bound to be another team in your city that matches your goals more closely.

4.   Questions are your friends. Asking questions will help you learn the basics, so do not hesitate to ask them. Within the first week, you should know how to read the clock and also understand lane order.

5. Rest Up. Training for a triathlon swim is challenging, so make sure to get plenty of rest. Be courteous and move to a slower lane if you cannot keep up in your lane.

6.   Keeping a positive attitude is essential. It will make your training sessions seem less taxing.

7.   Learn to swim the proper patterns. In most pools, there is line in the center of the lane. Always staying to the right of the line allows all swimmers to share the lane comfortably.

8.  Be sociable – it’s not just for the Internet. Take the time to introduce yourself to your lane mates before beginning your workout. Remember, training for a triathlon swim takes time, and knowing your fellow swimmers will ensure a more pleasant workout experience.

9.  Refrain from being a “lane hog”. If someone touches your foot to pass, keep swimming to the right or stop at the next wall and let them. Even the best swimmers get passed at times, so do not take offense.

10.   Remember your goal. Remember, according to the website at USMS.org, the goal of the Masters swim program is to help you improve your fitness level and/or train for specific goals while promoting a healthy lifestyle through the fellowship of like minded individuals.

You would never come across the term relax in the standard triathlete bible, which says you basically train and train until you’ll be able to continue moving for anywhere from 2 hours (Sprint) to sixteen hours (Ironman). Training normally means just one thing: mile upon mile (or kilometer upon kilometer) of swimming, running, and cycling.

At first glance that method might make sense, but looked at more critically, there’s good evidence to suggest that time-consuming endurance training is much less helpful for swimming-and may even hurt your performance-than it is for biking and running. As a result, you may reduce distance off the weekly training volume you thought you would require for a creditable swim leg.

Reason one would be that the swim will come first in a triathlon. A lot of competitors are finished with the quarter-mile or half-mile swim in 20 minutes or less in a sprint triathlon. But you may not be dismounting your bike until ninety or even more tough minutes have passed, and many new triathletes will still be out there on the running course 2 hours or even more after they started.

When is a serious energy shortage most likely to develop? Obviously it’s later in the race.

So cumulative fatigue-and the need to train yourself to resist it-is clearly much greater in running and biking compared to swimming. Think also of the limited work your swimming muscles do compared to your cycling and running muscles. The swimming event is the shortest part of the 3 events, it typically lasts just one-third to one-quarter as long as the running and cycling events.

The 2nd reason to cut back on your swimming training time is the fact that swimming, when compared with running and cycling, is essentially an unnatural activity in which practice-without instruction, at least-does not make perfect.

More training distance in water is a total waste of time for most people, compared to running or cycling where mechanical efficiency is so much higher, so more training distance does make a good difference. You are more likely practicing your mistakes than refining your technique and improving your endurance when you swim increasingly more distance like you usually do in many triathlon training programs. You are not becoming a far more efficient swimmer; you are just improving at swimming inefficiently.

Triathlon swimming is about efficiency.

It is how easily you finish the swimming event and not how fast you finish it. Saving energy might be the most essential thing that you can do in the water in order to help your overall finishing time because you’ve got a lot of work before you once you’re back on land. Standing behind the starting line on race day, think about what you are about to do in the water after the gun goes off as merely a way of getting to the real race start, the bike. Triathlon swimming and triathlon swim training must be more about race management than about racing.

Here is an easy-to-remember list of tips to help improve your swimming efficiency.

Regularly count your strokes. Your best measure of efficiency is how many strokes you take getting from one end of the pool to the other. As fatigue increases and efficiency falls, your stroke count may go up by thirty percent or higher as you diligently train your nervous system to lapse into inefficiency.

Practice stroke elimination. Make efficiency, not distance or speed, your objective. Set a stroke-count target of 10 percent lesser compared to your norm. For example, if you usually take twenty-two strokes per length on endurance swims or repeats, set a new limit for yourself of just 20. Instead of how fast you can finish or how tight an interval you can manage, see how far into the swim or set you can hold that count. (Note: You should swim easier, not harder, on your lowest count; do not strain to bring it down.)

Streamline yourself with skills. Work on getting your nervous system used to efficiency-promoting skills that make you swim like a fish when you’re not counting strokes. These would take a lot of work in order to be comfortable for the reason that none of these skills comes naturally, however they produce good results.

These three skill drills will make an immediate difference:

Hang your head. Head-spine alignment is really important to efficient swimming. During training, release your head’s weight in order to find its most natural position and do not hold it up. Look directly down, not forward. Let your opponents do all the looking during the competition, and just follow the swimmers ahead of you, limiting your peeks forward to once every twenty strokes.

Lengthen your body. A longer body line allows you to swim faster and easier since it lessens drag. Concentrate on using your arms to lengthen your body line instead of pushing water back. Like sliding into a mail slot, slip your hand and forearm into the water.

Move like water. Water rewards fluent motion and penalizes rough or rushed movement. Pierce the water; slip through the smallest possible hole. Swim as silently as possible. During the race, make it your ultimate goal to be the quiet center of any pack you’re in, stroking slower and with much less splash compared to all the flailing arms around you.

Swim less, drill more. If you still find yourself not able to decrease your stroke count to a consistent twenty strokes for every twenty-five yards (about 23m) even with your best efforts, then it’s better for you to do more drills and less swimming. Your stroke inefficiencies are extremely stubborn that each lap you do makes them more permanent. The only way to break those bad human swimming behavior and build new fishlike ones is to spend more time doing drills than conventional swimming. For the following month or two, try doing a minimum of sixty percent of your distance in stroke drills and see how your stroke reacts. Drills must constitute no less than 25 % of your total workout time even when you reduce your stroke count to twenty strokes for every twenty-five yards.

You have a significant psychological advantage over a lot of triathletes who dread swimming when you’ve got a swimming background. Here are some suggestions you should keep in mind if you have gills rather than lungs:

Learn open-water skills. This suggestion goes for everyone. But if your swim background comes mainly from pool swimming, then you’ll need to experience open water. Dealing with waves and navigating a race course are skills that pool swimming could not teach you.

Focus on technique. Even veteran swimmers have to constantly develop their efficiency in the water. If you have developed bad habits, for example a lazy stroke in one arm or a flutter kick that churns up water, now is the time to improve in those areas. Remember, you’ve got to bike and run soon after a swim, therefore the more efficient you are, the better off you’ll be.

Become a land lover. Do not give all of your time and energy to training in the pool. Swimming comprises the shortest part of a triathlon. Majority of your time ought to be spent on biking and running.

You may integrate many types of exercises into your schedule, each fulfilling a unique and specific objective. You should base your mix of swim exercises on your current swimming capabilities. For instance, if you’re still learning to swim the front crawl correctly, then concentrate on technique drills. There are countless possibilities that you can do in the pool, but here are general descriptions of the three major kinds of swim exercises.

Interval training. These are sets of moderate to high intensity short swim laps, having a short, timed rest in between. In most sports, interval training is a key element to developing aerobic capacity and increasing stamina. In swimming, it can also help your technique.

Set distance or timed swims. These can be a set number of laps without stopping or a predetermined time close to whatever you might experience during a race. The primary purpose of this is to be able to build stamina, however, it’s also essential that you should use appropriate technique all throughout.

Drills. Drills must take the majority of your time spent for swimming if you are a newbie in swimming. Each drill focuses on a certain aspect of proper swimming method.

It is swimming in open water that’s feared by many triathletes, not swimming itself. Whether in a small lake, one of the Great Lakes, or the ocean, open-water swimming can make first-time triathletes very anxious.

Practice in the Pool

There are various approaches to prepare for open-water swimming in a pool. These exercises and activities consist of the following:

Sensory swimming focuses on one specific sensation (such as feeling balanced).

Stroke eliminator swims checks on your stroke efficiency.

Longer swims use greater stroke efficiency for consistency.

To have greater stroke efficiency, try these stroke exercises:

Hang your head. Head-spine alignment is vital to efficient swimming. During training, release the weight of your head to find its most natural position, don’t hold it up. Instead of looking forward, look directly down. In the event: Let your opponents do all the work of looking; just follow the swimmers before you, limiting your peeks forward to once every twenty strokes.

Lengthen your body. A longer body line enables you to swim much faster and easier because it lessens drag. Focus on making use of your arms to lengthen your body line rather than pushing water back. Slip your hand and forearm into the water as if sliding it into a mail slot.

Move like water. Water rewards smooth movement and penalizes rough or rushed movement. Pierce the water; slip through the smallest possible hole. Swim as gently as you possibly can. In the race, make it your ultimate goal to be the quiet center of any pack you’re in, stroking slower and with much less splash than all the flailing arms around you.

Train in Open Water

Do some swimming in a lake or the ocean before the actual event. It will enable you to get accustomed to the absence of convenient guides like lane lines. You’ll figure out how to navigate using on-shore landmarks. For your safety, swim together with an experienced partner or with a group, or you can have a canoe or kayak escort, or in water you know well. Keep close to shore in cold water. Hypothermia (lowered body temperature) could compromise your coordination and judgment. When the water makes you feel very cold, it is very best for you to put on a wetsuit.

Practice the same technical points you have been practicing in the pool and don’t just swim. The plan is to smoothly transition from your pool training to an open water race, so make it an open-water practice. Swim downhill, reach forward with a weightless arm, roll your hips from side to side, and so on. You can’t count laps out there? No problem. Count the number of strokes instead. Do this approach for a hundred strokes or even more. Not having walls can in fact make it easier because your rhythm is not interrupted. And you’ll find it is easier to groove your stroke.

Do not be intimidated if you’re just a novice in swimming. You just need a little courage, self-discipline as well as some good instruction to be able to learn the way to swim.

Do take a beginners’ swimming course. Do like I and several other triathletes have done-seek guidance at a local city college or adult-education course. The YMCA in your neighborhood may also offer swim courses. When you look hard enough, you will find a beginners’ class to get you started on many happy laps.

Don’t recruit a friend as an instructor. Do not make the mistake that a lot of people do – recruiting a person you already know or you believe is an excellent swimmer or claim that they’re a very good swimmer. Those reputations are in many cases inflated, and in this way you’ll hardly ever get good training. Again, the very best method is to seek professional instruction from a swim coach who conducts a class.

Do stick with it. Swimming is more technical and skill-oriented when compared with cycling and running. Learning a sequence of skills would therefore help in learning to swim the front crawl appropriately. These skills are usually taught independently and then combined gradually. Exhaling underwater, turning your head to breathe, stroking, kicking, maintaining good body position-acquiring these and other skills is a methodical and painstaking process. Be patient and also have faith within your instructor. Though the given drills might seem mundane and wear on you psychologically, practice them in the order they are given. You’ll be grateful you did afterwards.

Don’t jump the gun. There is nothing even worse than feeling discouraged. Trying a full blown lap swimming exercise when you’ve just taken one week of instruction is a certain means to discourage yourself from learning to swim. Again, swimming is a technical sport, and it normally takes time to perfect technique. Focus on practicing drills, concern yourself with lap swimming later.

Do practice by yourself. To set aside some time away from class to practice the drills learned from your last class is a more effective means to use your energy rather than trying to lap swim too early. At the time I took beginners’ swimming, I knew I would not be prepared in 6 months for my first triathlon if I only attended the twice-a-week courses without some extra effort. So when the pool was open, I set aside 3 more days during the week for practicing the drills I’ve learned from the previous class. It is also ideal to get in as much practice as close to the training as possible when you’re initially learning a new activity. You’ll learn more quickly and retain much more by doing this. If you’re serious about learning to swim, set aside a minimum of 2 or 3 sessions for every week-even if they’re 15-minute sessions-for practicing the most recent lesson by yourself.

Don’t learn negative habits. Though you may feel at a disadvantage when you are new to swimming, you’re learning to swim the front crawl appropriately. Because technique plays a huge role in swimming, bad habits abound. Just observe the masters groups swimming sessions at a local YMCA. You will see arms flailing and slapping the water in every direction, terrible flutter kicks that send spouts to the ceiling, and poor breathing habits that make you wonder whether there are enough lifeguards on deck. Even if you are not entirely new to the front crawl, concentrate on letting go of any bad habits you could have developed by learning technique through drills all over again.

The most technically demanding portion of the triathlon is the swim. Most swims take place in the open water; a lake, the ocean or a river. Although the legs contribute to  the forward propulsion, swimming is primarily an upper body sport.

Triathletes use the crawl stroke because it is the fastest stroke and it provides some rest periods during the arm recovery.  To minimize the drag created by moving through the water, the body remains as  streamlined as possible.  The forward propulsion comes from the power phase of the crawl stroke.  When the hand enters the water at the beginning of the stroke, it grabs the water then pulls the body up to the point of entry using an S-shaped maneuver.

Once the shoulder is lined up with the hand, the motion changes from a pull to a push.  As the person becomes more technically efficient, small changes take place in the overall  stroke to improve speed; the chin stays tucked, the palms face back, and the elbow is held high.  The legs mainly serve to stabilize as the swimmer rolls to take a breath or lifts her head to sight in an open water swim.

This is probably the most common of swimming injuries.  Due to the repetitive nature of swimming (the shoulder rotates around 1300 times for every 1.5km, or mile, swum in freestyle), the 17 different muscles that hold the humerus (the upper arm, from shoulder to elbow) in the shoulder socket can become inflamed.

The joint becomes unstable, and tendons become inflamed and are pinched or impinged upon, which can be chronically painful.  For swimmers who have had this complaint it can be one of the most debilitating injuries.

Treatment

As with all injuries, prevention is better than cure.  Try this four-step treatment plan:

1.  Warm-up.  Follow five to 10 minutes of gentle swimming with the exercises below.  Do two repetitions each at 10—30 seconds per rep before and after your swim workout.

2.  For the muscles underneath the shoulder.   Extend both arms overhead in the streamlined position, then from the waist lean first to the left side as far as possible, then to the right.   Feel the pull all the way down your side.

3.  For the muscles in front of the shoulder.  Extend both arms straight behind your back, fingers  interlaced and slowly, steadily, raise your arms up behind you as far as possible.

4.  The muscles in the back of the shoulder.   Extend one arm across your chest so that the shoulder is under your chin and the hand, forearm and upper arm are parallel to the ground.  Without turning your body, use your other hand to pull the arm as close to your chest as possible.  Alternate with the other arm.

Swimmer’s eye is a common complaint among swimmers who wear ill-fitting goggles or none at all.

It is often caused by chlorine irritation or anti-fogging agents used in goggles, and leaves the eyes itchy and scratchy.

Treatment

Try over-the-counter eye drops or visit a doctor for a diagnosis.   Get yourself a pair of goggles that fit properly).

A pool filled with other swimmers is a breeding ground for many forms of bacteria. Everyone has bacteria in the ear canal, but the moist, alkaline environment can cause a painful and itchy infection and inflammation in the outer ear canal which may lead to a full-blown ear infection.

In extreme cases, an entire swimming squad could pick up an infection — which is more the result of a poorly sanitized pool than individual susceptibility to ear infection. Take the matter up with the people who run the pool.

Treatment

The best form of treatment is preventive.

After every swim, shake your head to one side, then the other to rid your ears of any excess water, then use a clean towel to dry out the inside of the ear. It’s simple and effective.

You can also buy over-the-counter eardrops containing an antiseptic. If you’re prone to ear infections it’s probably wise to wear a waterproof swimcap over the ears and use the drops both before and after a swim.

Avoid earplugs, since these can trap infection inside the ear! You can prepare your own eardrops from a combination of half vinegar and half hydrogen peroxide, although this solution has a shelf life of only a week. You can also use vinegar on its own; it restores the acidity of the ear. Buy an empty glass bottle with a short, stubby nozzle, sterilize it in boiling water and use for storing the mixture.

These solutions should only be preventive measures and should not be used to treat swimmer’s ear.

In severe cases where there is some kind of discharge, it is best to consult your doctor since a serious infection can have a consequence on your health.