Swimming

Swimming is where most triathletes spend the least confident hours of training — and where a relatively small amount of technique work can pay off disproportionately.

This section focuses on freestyle, since it's the stroke virtually every triathlete uses for the swim leg, with breaststroke covered separately as your safety net.

Technique Before Distance

It's tempting to think swim fitness is about how far you can go — but for most beginners, the bigger limiter is technique, not lung capacity.

Freestyle is the stroke of choice in triathlon because it's the fastest and most efficient way to cover open water while still allowing you to breathe and sight comfortably as you go.

A few fundamentals make an outsized difference:

• Body position matters more than arm strength. Aim to stay flat in the water, with your legs riding high rather than dragging. A streamlined position reduces drag far more than a stronger kick ever will.
• Smooth hand entry beats a big reach. Your hand should enter the water gently, roughly in line with your head. Reaching too far forward can actually create drag rather than extra distance.
• Relaxed arms, not stiff ones. Tension wastes energy that should be going into moving you forward.

Breathing — The Skill Nobody Teaches Properly

Breathing is often where beginners lose the most energy, simply through poor timing rather than lack of fitness.

The two most common patterns are:

• Breathing every 2 strokes — unilateral. Always breathing to the same side gives you more frequent oxygen, which can be useful when working harder or holding a stronger pace.
• Breathing every 3 strokes — bilateral. Alternating sides can help keep your stroke balanced and gives you visibility on both sides of your body. That's genuinely useful in open water, where waves, sun glare or other swimmers can come from either direction.

Most coaches recommend practising both rather than locking into one pattern permanently.

A simple drill is to alternate breathing every 3 strokes for one length, then every 5 strokes. This helps develop both breathing control and comfort with less frequent breaths.

Sighting — The Skill That Replaces Lane Lines

Open water has no black line on the bottom of the pool to follow. That means sighting — lifting your eyes just above the waterline every few strokes to check your direction — is a skill in its own right, not an afterthought.

Done well, it barely interrupts your stroke. Done poorly, it slows you down and throws off your rhythm.

This is worth practising specifically in training rather than discovering it for the first time on race day.

Building Endurance the Right Way

Endurance in swimming comes from consistency, not occasional long sessions.

A simple, sustainable structure for beginners is:

• 2–3 swims per week, mixing technique-focused sessions with steady endurance swims.
• Short, repeated intervals, such as 100–200m repeats, to build stamina and form together rather than swimming continuously until exhausted.
• One technique-focused session each week dedicated to drills such as bilateral breathing, sighting and stroke technique.

Technique work compounds over weeks in a way that raw distance alone doesn't.

Pacing for Race Day

The swim leg is not the place to empty the tank.

It's the first of three disciplines, and how you pace it directly affects how you feel getting onto the bike.

Aim for a steady, sustainable effort rather than a fast start, and keep your kick relatively light.

A big, powerful kick burns energy your legs will want later, for comparatively little extra speed in the water.

When You're Tired: Breaststroke as a Fallback

Here's something rarely said clearly enough: you are allowed to switch strokes mid-swim.

If you're fatigued, disoriented or just need a moment to steady your breathing, breaststroke is a completely legitimate way to recover.

It's slower, but it lets you:

• Sight more easily, since your head is naturally higher out of the water.
• Catch your breath without breaking your rhythm entirely.
• Reset mentally if the swim start feels chaotic or crowded.

Plenty of first-timers use it deliberately for exactly these reasons. Some finish their entire first open-water swim using a mix of freestyle and breaststroke.

It counts exactly the same as a swim done entirely in front crawl.

Knowing this in advance — that it's a strategy, not a failure — removes a surprising amount of pressure before you even get in the water.