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Comment by alexfoo | Hacker News Reader

Technique buys you so much more speed and/or efficiency in swimming compared to cycling or running. Those that lack good technique will thrash themselves into a tired mess in order to keep up with the others on the swim.

Some swim coaching, and subsequent drills in your usual training, would soon get you on your way to enjoying the swim part of a triathlon and stop it being horrendous.

The cheap and less effective method is simply watching/studying this video every time before you go to the pool: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3HhNlysFDs and then watching it afterwards and thinking about your own stroke.

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One thing I noticed in the video you included: when the shot is following him from behind I noticed that Van Hazel's head is completely stationary, no lateral or up-down movement. Amazing!

Also notice how far his shoulders rotate. I see lots of people mainly moving their arms instead of rotating their entire torsos.

Thats been a big thing for me to learn - if you want to be able to breath without taking long pauses, your whole torso needs to move, and it creates a very natural motion to pop your head left or right to breathe a pocket of air

Another bonus to rolling -- it is initiated with your core, so it uses large powerful muscles. Once the roll is initiated you can feed your kick and your pull with that momentum. You end up using more powerful muscles to feed your stroke, so you can pull harder without wearing out your arms.

A few years ago, I did a swim workshop taught by Dan Bullock from Swim for Tri (https://www.swimfortri.co.uk). His technique is optimized for long distance open-water swimming and emphasizes smooth, energy efficient motion.

Watching him swim with literally no splash on arm entry was amazing. And torso rotation far further than

Most of my previous swimming was for water polo: short, sharp sprints, mostly head-up freestyle, focus on power and claiming space, often jostling with your opponent. Exactly the opposite of Van Hazel and Dan Bullock's focus on perfect technique.

>>Technique buys you so much more speed and/or efficiency in swimming compared to cycling or running.

I know this isn’t the topic, but the exact same thing applies to rock-climbing. After a certain point, sheer strength won’t help you if you don’t have sufficiently good technique.

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