Why Swimming Feels So Hard for Triathletes

If swimming feels harder than it should, this episode is for you.

Coach Justin breaks down the most common swim questions triathletes struggle with — from feeling exhausted after 100 yards to panicking in open water, sinking legs, breathing problems, and why so many athletes stop improving despite spending more time in the pool.

This episode is not about swimming more mindlessly. It’s about learning how to swim with better structure, better awareness, and better efficiency so you can become more confident and capable in the water without feeling like you need to be a lifelong swimmer to belong in the sport.

What You’ll Learn:

•  Why simply swimming more often doesn’t automatically make you a better swimmer 
•  The real causes behind panic, breathlessness, and fatigue in the water 
•  How strength training and body position directly impact swim performance 
•  How to structure swim workouts with purpose instead of just “getting yards in” 

Key Takeaway:

Better swimming is not primarily about grinding out more yards — it’s about developing efficiency, strength, confidence, and purposeful structure in the water. 

Timestamps:
 00:00 – Introduction + the biggest swim question triathletes ask
 01:00 – Why swimming more isn’t always the answer
 04:00 – Swim technique analysis and visual feedback
 06:00 – Strength training for better swimming
 12:00 – Why structured swim workouts matter
 14:00 – Why open water swimming feels slower
 20:00 – Breathing, panic, and oxygen control in the water
 33:00 – Do you need to be a “good swimmer” to do triathlon?
 44:00 – How to stop sinking and dropping your legs
 49:00 – Should triathletes use pull buoys, paddles, and fins?
 54:00 – How often should triathletes swim each week?
 01:03:00 – Why you feel exhausted after 100–200 yards and how to fix it

For coaching inquiries:

Coach Katie → https://fuel2run.com

Coach Justin → https://tabularasaracing.com

Podcast Email → theenduranceathletejourney@gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Welcome everyone to the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast. This is episode 90 of the podcast. I'm your host, Coach Justin. I wanted to come to you with some of the top swimming-related questions asked by triathletes. I'm going to spend some time addressing these questions, and hopefully this will help you progress along in your journey. So let's just go ahead and we're just going to dive right in. I would say the top question that I get from swimmers is how do I get better at swimming without just swimming more? This is an interesting question because part of me wants to say that in order to get better at anything, you have to do it more than you don't do it. There was a previous episode where we talked about how to improve running, and I offered the suggestion that running a minimum of four days a week would help improve performance and be able to progress your running. Three days and less, you're talking more about maintenance, and you're really not gaining very much unless you're already super new into the sport, in which case, any kind of exposure that you get to the sport, you're going to see some level of improvement. But there comes a point where you have now exhausted what I call the newbie performance gains, which is you're brand new to the sport and you're just getting off the couch. So obviously, just getting in to the sport, whether it be running or in this case, whether it be swimming, just getting into the pool itself, you're going to realize some kind of gain. You're going to find a point where now, if you could only swim from one end of the pool to the other, assuming that you're in a standard length pool, uh that's probably anywhere between 25 yards to 25 meters. When I first started in the sport, I had a hard, I just swam from one end to the other and would have to take a break when I got to the end of the pool and then make my return trip. And as I opted to swim more during the week, I found that I started to build some level of endurance. I didn't necessarily build efficiency, but you do develop some level of increased in endurance just by swimming more. Yes, if you do have poor technique, swimming more essentially just reinforces bad habits. So one of the things about swimming is that it's highly technical, it's way more technical than the other two disciplines in triathlon that would be running and cycling. But swimming, you'll find the biggest gain by increasing the efficiency of either your swim stroke or your body position in the water. And sometimes that that's going to take more than just swimming more. What it's going to require is a conscientious effort on evaluating where your hands are entering into the water, where they're coming out of the water, how they pass from front to back, what your legs are doing in this process, what's your core like, your head position, all of these things are going to influence the efficiency in which you move through the water. So one of the if I had to give a few steps on how to improve, it would be A, yeah, definitely swimming more is going to help you. But this question was really aiming at what to do besides swim more. And so some of these other things is to have your swim stroke evaluated. One of the things that I find is when an athlete, I'm working with an athlete on the pool deck, I will bring with me uh an underwater camera. And essentially it's just my iPhone that's in a waterproof case, and I record them swimming. I record their swim stroke. And then I will airdrop that video onto my iPad so it's a little bit easier to see. And then I show the swimmer what they look like. And I would say the majority of the times, they had no idea that is what they look like. They thought that they were swimming a particular way, but when I showed them the visual feedback, they really found that they were doing something completely different. So sometimes one of the best things that you can do is either find a way to record yourself or reach out to a swim coach or a triathlon coach or whatever coach that offers this type of service and have your swim stroke evaluated. That's going to be one of the biggest returns on investment that you can make when it comes to improving your swim and improving the efficiency in which you move through the water. I do have a few contacts in the industry that I would consider to be highly qualified. And so I may drop those names into the show notes, but I also do swim analysis. If there's an opportunity where you want to have your swim stroke evaluated, you're more than welcome to record your swim stroke, reach out to me, and we can set up something where I will evaluate your swim stroke and help you move forward and find some kind of efficiency gain. Outside of that, really one of the things that I find to be the most beneficial in improving your swim is actually outside of the water. And one of the things that I focused on is just getting stronger. And that's just spending some a significant portion of my training plan in the weight room. What I have found with swimmers, and especially new adult onset swimmers, is they really have a hard time engaging their lat muscles. They have poor lat engagement. So what they end up doing is they're swimming mostly with their shoulders and their biceps. And if they don't have very good forearm strength, then what I have found that can easily lead to things like golfer's elbow and tennis elbow. And so really focusing on strength in order to get proper muscle engagement and muscular endurance because it doesn't matter how efficient you are if you don't have the muscular endurance to hold form, then that form is going to break down throughout your swim session. Within a single workout, that form is going to break down. So really what you do is those later yards where you're fatigued, you're starting to swim with poor form, and that just doesn't really get you very far. Not all yards are created equal in your swim sets. What I typically will do is the way that I structure workouts is I have some of the most important sets placed earlier into the workout where the athlete feels freshest. And then I start to bring in things like pull buoys and paddles and things later into the session where the fatigue really starts to set in. But I'll talk about that as another question that is in this set that I've accumulated. So as a summary, what I would say is the three I would say there's three things that you can do to improve your swim without increasing swim volume. The first one is to have your technique evaluated by a qualified swim instructor. This does not mean that you post it on social media and and triathlon groups and say, hey, can you guys help me evaluate my swim? I don't find those to be very reliable. You get what you pay for, and you're gonna get tons of different feedbacks. Most of them are really not all that accurate, and they have no idea about your personal background, your injury history, whether you have any kind of structural limitations within your body that prevents you from having what we would call a textbook swim form. Those things matter. So if you're receiving feedback on what is a quote unquote proper and technical swim stroke, but you can't achieve that because of some kind of structural limitation, then it does you no good. What we have to do is we have to find a swim stroke that fits your body that you can execute. And hopefully what we find is that over time you'll get stronger and you'll get better, and maybe we continue to fine-tune that stroke to get you closer to a tech a technical textbook swim stroke. But what I find is that there are just some people out there that just cannot achieve that, no matter how hard they work. And there's nothing wrong with that, and it doesn't keep you from being successful. It just means that you may not swim with the best efficiency out there, but it doesn't mean that you're going to become that you're going to be a poor swimmer. So the first one is have your stroke evaluated by a professional. The second one is going to be spending some time in the weight room, just getting stronger. This doesn't mean that you're like pumping iron and things like that. You can use things that are simple as resistance bands, just some body movement to a certain extent will help improve lat engagement. If you have a TRX suspension system, sometimes those will be sufficient if you don't have access to what we would call like a standard typical weight room. That in conjunction with some resistance bands is probably good enough. But I found that having dedicated back and shoulder workouts within your training plan will help improve those muscular engagements. Because then when you get into the water, you'll start to feel these muscles engage. And then you'll start to realize, oh, this is how that's supposed to feel. And when it's when you stop feeling it and you start to feel tension in areas where you really shouldn't, like in your shoulders or in your biceps, then that should be a cue to you that your form is breaking down. So okay, I need to get back, find that proper swim stroke, and then you'll start to feel those muscles engage again. But it doesn't happen until you develop the neuropathways from the brain to the muscle to get them to engage. And most of the time that is done outside of the pool. So that's one of the things that I strongly encourage my athletes. Every single athlete that I work with has a strength component in their training plan. I have a strength component in my personal training plan. And I just found that it has a high rate of return and leads to just general increases in muscular endurance, increases in efficiency, and will get you closer to those textbook proper form mechanics that you otherwise would not be able to hold without proper muscle engagement. The third thing that I would encourage you to do as a swimmer is to stop going into the pool for each of your swim sessions and just swimming straight or just mindless swimming back and forth. To me, I've never found that to be highly successful. Will you find gains in performance over, you know, at some point in time in your journey just by simply doing that? Yeah, you do. Swimming is swimming. But if you want to come up with something that's a little bit more optimal and a little bit more focused, you say, This is what I'm trying to achieve. I'm not just trying to get from one end of the pool to the other. I want to get there in a particular way that allows me to continue to swim over and over again, to be more frequent during the week, to have more endurance, to have more efficiency. That requires purpose and focus. So I recommend that if you are self-coached, each week that you go into the pool for your swim workouts, have some kind of structure that's there. Just if you're swimming 1,500 total yards for your swim workout, then have that set up in a way to where there's a warm-up section, there's a main set section, and then there's a warm down section. And then come up with we can come up with intervals that has purposeful rest periods so that you can reset your form and shed that fatigue, and you'll be able to go into the next set a little bit fresher with better form. So that's one of the biggest things that I found to be a huge benefit to those is when they stopped going in and just swimming and swam with purpose. That in itself led to increase in performance and abilities in the water. So the next question that I have come across, and this is I guess this is number two as we progress through these. Number two, why am I so much slower in open water than in the pool? This is a common question that I come across as a coach and as an athlete myself. I know recently in my training plan, I've been getting into open water a lot more often than what I have in the past. I've actually got in my plan to where I'm in open water once a week. And my my swim pace is slower in open water. There are things that we are doing in open water that we do not have to do in a pool. The first thing is sighting. Every time you lift your head up to make sure that you're swimming straight and that you're on target, every time you pop that head up, those feet are going to drop and it's going to slow that swim cadence. You actually pause that swim stroke, and when that happens, you stop moving forward and then you have to restart again. And until you become really proficient in sighting and trying to minimize the frequency and duration in which you have to sight, your times will continue to be a little bit slower than what in the pool. We don't have to do that in the pool because we have the black line at the bottom of the pool that helps guide us. And when you come to the T right close to the wall, you know the wall is there. So whether you do open turns or flip turns, there's really no picking your head up to find out where you are. You know where the wall is at once you see that visual cue. You don't have those same visual cues when you're in open water. In my recent workouts that I've been doing, there's been no sight buoys as we move through. So if you've done a race before, there's going to be turn buoys and then there's sight buoys within a swim course. The sight ones, you can be on either side of those buoys. They're just there to make to give you a visual cue on where you are in the course. Turn buoys are exactly what they sound like. Those are most of the time, they're either triangles or they're red buoys where you have to go around the buoy in a particular direction. You cannot be on either side of it. You have to go physically go around the buoy in order to make a particular turn. So that's gonna be another source of slowness is making that turn, being able to navigate turns. There are different swim techniques that you can use to efficiently make turns, but unless you're really an experienced swimmer, chances are it might not be worth the time and effort to really master that. Got these spin moves that you make to go around a buoy. I've never really found them all to be all that important to really spend a whole lot of time practicing them. I don't you don't lose very much time, but it is a factor, especially if you have a swim course with a lot of turn buoys. Like Ironman Florida 70.3, there's a lot of turn buoys in that course because it's shaped like a giant M, because it's a fairly small lake that you're swimming in. So the accumulation of all those turns you're going to have to make is going to add some time to your swim split. So siding is definitely one of the biggest factors of being slower. The next one is if you're if you do any kind of river swimming, if you're in it, especially if this is a tidal river to where the flow of the river can change depending on what time it is and where the current is going, if it's going in or out, that that's going to affect your abilities. So swimming against the current, while it is a great workout in building strength, increasing swim cadence, and really getting that nice quick turnover with a strong pull in order to fight the current, that's going to be beneficial to you, but it is going to make you slower. A lot of times, what I find is that athletes just have a mental barrier in open water, especially if it's cloudy and it you can't really see a whole lot. Sometimes the mind kind of wanders a little bit. So I would beg to say there's a little bit of loss of focus when you're swimming in open water compared to swimming in the pool and the accumulation of all those little seconds where your attention is grabbed somewhere else or your mind is wandering a little bit, and just that sort of distraction can lead to an accumulation of lost time. So really focusing on staying present and staying focused in the water will help improve that. To me, the sighting thing is probably the biggest time crunch that you're going to get. Especially if you got choppy water, and then the longer you leave that head up so that you can probably try and see so you can try and see something, is going to mean that you're not swimming and that you're actually creating more drag as those legs and hips drop. So if you can find a way to become more efficient at sighting, that will improve your open water swimming relative to what you see in the pool. And really the only thing that can help that is just getting in open water. There are things that you can do in the pool as kind of like open water practice. You can practice sighting in the pool, but then it's going to be a little bit different once you get in open water because if you're swimming, depending on where the sun is, and sometimes if you're swimming along and you're kind of swimming into the sun, it might be a little bit hard to sight. You're trying to find people and where they are. Sometimes it's easier to sight off of people, but chances I don't really risk that a whole lot because a lot of people don't know how to swim in open water. So if I'm following them, then I'm kind of shooting myself in the foot. But I use sight buoys a lot just to make sure that I'm on track. And really, it's easy to see those because you see them when you turn to breathe, and you'll just find them there. And so when you see that they're fairly close and that you're staying on target, then you know that you're moving in the right direction. So use those opportunities to cut down on the number of times that you have to lift your head up to see forward and just rely a lot on more on the sight buoys as as you progress through the swim course. Okay, number three, how do I breathe without feeling out of breath and panicked? Again, this is I think that this has to do a lot with just the mental side of being in open water. I think sometimes just being in water in general makes people feel like they are starved for air. Like there's something that is keeping them from breathing, even though they know at any moment they can either take a breath, they can roll onto their back, they can change their swim stroke in order to get more oxygen in and reset their breathing. There is a little bit of a panic there because when you put your face down in the water, you can't breathe in. All you can do is breathe out. And I think that that's kind of triggers something in the mind that makes you think that air is a scarce commodity, or that there's a fear of running out of air. I think that the only the one significant risk when it comes to open water breathing it'd be if you have to deal with uh ocean swims and waves and things like that. That seems to be the biggest risk for that. But again, there are ways that that you can combat that. You may have to just be fine with slower swim times as you handle chop conditions like that. I know that let's see, Iron Man Florida, down in Panama City Beach, can have conditions that are a little bit challenging because that's an ocean swim. You also have Ironman Maryland, which is in the Chop Tank River, which can have chop as well. So learning how to swim and having a strategy for choppy conditions might be beneficial to you. If you have the ability to bilaterally breathe, then you do have options. What I mean by bilateral breathing is that you can breathe to either side of the swim stroke that you're comfortable with. I used to do that, but until when I started when I developed some shoulder issues and had rotator cuff surgery, I really lost the strength and power in one of my arms to allow me to breathe to that side. So I don't get the same kind of reach and pull through the water with that arm. So it really affected my ability to breathe to that side. So now I can only breathe to my to the other side. But having that ability to bilateral breathe will provide you options that if waves are coming from a particular direction, then you have the option to breathe to the other side more often so that you don't run the risk of taking a breath and having a wave come in at the same time. Really, it's going to be a mental cue that you just work through in your minds. I'm not starved for oxygen. I can always get in a breath. There's things that I can do that if I need more oxygen, then I take it. People seem to think that they can only breathe on every three to five strokes, but if you need to breathe every other stroke, then do that. That's one of the things that I work with uh athletes on is that we have to break this thing where they say that I can only breathe three on every like three to five swim strokes. And I say, I just want you to breathe whenever you feel like you need to. If that means that every two strokes and you're breathing to that same side every single time, then do that. There's nothing wrong with it. It's not that you become any less efficient if you work at it. If you're taking a breath and you're pausing that swim stroke a little bit, then yeah, there's going to be some loss of efficiency. But if you can find a way to really shorten the breath and not pause that swim stroke, you can still be just as efficient, still be just as fast breathing every other, every other stroke. So don't alter your breathing because you think that the longer you leave your face in the water, the more efficient that you're going to be. Swimming is a aerobic sport. It requires oxygen. It is not a breath-holding competition. So holding your breath because you think it's going to be more efficient is actually what's leading to this lack of breath and this feeling of panic. And it's that CO2 tolerance versus the oxygen intake is really what that boils down to. The body starts to freak out because you're holding breath and you're not doing this exchange, and that's where you get this panic feeling. But if you breathe more often, then the body gets used to it and it knows that it's not oxygen deprived. And so it starts to adjust itself. Another thing that I find when I work with swimmers is they just have a poor breathing technique, and that's one of the things that we work on during our sessions, and it's the full exhale or close to full exhale when your face is in the water. I'm not going to tell you that it has to be a controlled exhale because I find that to be not as productive. Because once you start to pick up the effort level, i.e., you start to swim harder and faster, then that breathing rate is going to have to increase because the body requires the oxygen. So trying to control that breath out is really only helpful if you're swimming very easy. This whole gliding technique that I don't subscribe to, that's where these particular coaches will say this nice controlled exhale breath. And what I found is that these athletes just don't get any faster, they don't become more efficient. They don't, they only know how to swim at one speed, and that's a fairly slow speed with a slow arm turnover. And when they get into choppy conditions or they have to fight against the current, they do not perform well because they do not have the strength nor the swim cadence to make them successful in that situation. So there's nothing wrong with breathing hard under the water. Because if you're breathing every other stroke, it's not that hard to get that next breath in. So it's not like you're going to breathe out everything and now I oh now I don't have any more oxygen. So now I've got to fight and hold my breath, whatever breath I do have left, until I can get another one. That's not true, especially if you breathe frequently. So getting close to 100% exhale while your face is in the water will be helpful because when you go to turn your head and you do that rotation to take in your breath, all you have to do is there's a little bit of an exhale and then mostly inhale. What I find is that athletes will stick their face in the water, they won't breathe out completely before they go to take another breath. They'll roll over, they have to exhale whatever air they have left in the lungs and then inhale. So what that does is it forces them to pause their swim stroke. What it does, it comes, slows them down and they sink like a rock. And you wonder, why am I having why is it hard so hard to swim? I have to feel like because you're starting over every single time you take a breath. You lose that forward momentum when you pause that swim stroke. There's very you don't gain momentum. You have a little bit of a glide left, but that slowly gets that quickly fades as you go through the water, and the friction between your body and the water will slow you down. Water is not frictionless, so gliding doesn't really move you forward because once you stop that swim stroke, the rate in which you are going forward is going to decline. That's a science fact. So it doesn't matter how streamlined you are losing momentum every time you are not taking a swim stroke, whether they be fractions of a second or millisecond, that's moot. The point is that you are slowing. So if you do not breathe correctly and you are forcing an exhale and inhale while your head is turned, you're pausing that swim stroke, and it's like you're starting over every single time you take a breath. And that's going to force you to swim harder when you have to restart that swim stroke, and then you're going to burn through more oxygen, which is why now you've started to feel more oxygen deprived because every time you take a breath, it's not efficient, and you're having to swim harder in order to get going again. So, what I have my athletes do is we breathe almost everything out. And so I'm talking like if you if let's assume that you fill your lungs to capacity, 100%. I want to exhale about 90 to 95% of what was in my lungs. That way I only have about 5 to 10% left of oxygen in my lungs when I go to turn my head and I'm in that rotation and I'm about to take a breath. I have very little that I'm about to exhale. That will keep you from feeling panicked if you do have a little bit of air left in the lungs. Now that means that you may not be able to refill those lungs 100% when it goes to taking your next breath. So what I do with my athletes is that we take small sips of air. So you fill the lungs up a little bit, and then you go back down, swim, swim, breathe, swim, breathe, swim, breathe. And so we're I'm we're breathing to the same side every single time. That's just with new swimmers, that seems to be the most comfortable thing for them until we start to purposefully work on bilateral breathing if they have that symmetry of strength and range of motion. So if you're only taking sips of air and you're filling your lungs up, let's say 50 to 75% full, to where now you can swim every you don't need to take a breath every two strokes. Maybe you can last up to four strokes. So it's swim, swim, swim, breathe. Swim, and that's that four count, and you're still breathing to the same side every single time, but you're not breathing every time that you take that swim stroke with that one hand. Bringing in a little bit less oxygen will help you exhale enough to where you're not having to exhale as much when you go to take your next breath. So one of the things that we find is that the more you fill your lungs up, the more your torso is going to float higher. And so if you're finding yourself with poor body position and your legs and hips are dropping, one of the things that I find working with athletes is that they are breathing in too much air when they go to take their breath. What I want you to do is I want you to go the next time you go swimming, and I want you to prove this to yourself. I want you to just sit in the water and then inhale completely. Fill those lungs up. You'll find that your body starts to rise up and it starts to float. Now exhale and the body will sink back down into the water. Every time you do that and you take a full breath when you're swimming, that's what's happening to the upper portion of your body, which is causing the upper part to rise up higher than the legs and the hips, and that's what's causing drag and it's slowing you down. So if we can find a way to not bring in as much oxygen, but increase the frequency in which we breathe, we can help improve our body position at the same time as improving or the feeling of breathlessness, improve our breathing technique. So those are the things that I would focus on if this is something that you've been kind of struggling with. Number four, the question is do I need to know how to swim well before starting triathlon? This is a pretty relative question because the word well in there is really relative. And I touched on this in one of the episodes of the triathlon 101 series. I dedicated a whole episode to this particular topic is do I have to be a good swimmer in order to start? My response to that question is no, you do not need to be a good swimmer in order to start doing triathlon. Do you need to be a good swimmer to progress to longer distance racing? Yes, you do. I do not encourage athletes to pursue a half Iron Man or a full Iron Man if they are not a good swimmer. Good swimmer means that they have the ability to swim the course, they are comfortable in the water, they can remain focused, and they don't get out of the water feeling actually completely beat up and exhausted. They have a level of confidence and proficiency in the water. It doesn't completely negate all of the risks of getting in the water in a swim environment like that in open water, but it does improve their chances of a successful day and completing the swim leg of the race. But there are things that you can do to just get through that leg of the race. I know when I first started in Triathlon, it took me three years to kind of swim a full swim course freestyle, the front crawl swim stroke. I could do it in a pool, but once I got into open water, there was just something that was in my brain that just switched off that wouldn't allow me to do it. I don't know what it was, but for some reason, just one day, uh I had a race and I put my face in the water and I felt comfortable, and I didn't have to rely on my fallback swim stroke. And I swam the whole route or the whole course freestyle. First time I had ever done it. There's nothing that I did that was purposeful. It just something just in my brain just clicked. And one it's just patience, man. You just got to keep at it, keep working on it. It doesn't happen overnight. I understand the frustration of not seeing improvement or not feeling successful despite finishing the swim leg. If you finish it, it's a success. Results and performance are relative. And to me, it honestly doesn't really matter all that much, especially as a coach. I really don't put a whole lot of stock in that in terms of evaluating an athlete's performance on race day. Now, if we are experienced athletes, then yeah, it does matter. But when I'm working with beginners or even intermediates, we do find other ways to measure performance success, and it's not all tied to how quickly and efficiently they finish the swim. So there are things that we walk away with on race day that we can use going forward. Hey, this was successful. This is a boost of confidence, but there are some things that we can still work on and develop. That's why this podcast is called the Endurance Athlete Journey, is because this is a process that we go through over time. This is not a destination. We never really arrive anywhere. We get there, and then our brains are immediately saying, What's next? To me, that is a strong indication that it's not a destination. This is just one step forward in the journey that we're on. So do you need to feel comfortable in the water? Yes. Do you have to have strategies that you've already thought through if certain scenarios present themselves and you're in the water? Absolutely, a hundred percent. That's one of the things that I absolutely do with every single athlete that I work with that's either a swimmer or a triathlete, and that is we establish scenarios and plans for if something goes not expected. So that way there's nothing that requires thought in the moment, it's just an execution of what that plan is. Do we use those plans every single race? No, because they may not be needed, but they're there if they are. So being proficient in one particular swim stroke is highly encouraged. And then you have what you would like to swim. So for instance, I would like to swim an entire swim course freestyle. Do I have a backup swim stroke that if something goes wrong, I can fall back on it? Yes, I do. Even though I go out with the intent of swimming a particular way, there is a backup plan. That backup plan does not include the backstroke, and it does not include a breaststroke. Those the backstroke, absolutely, I discourage every single swimmer from doing that in an in a competition environment unless you are competing in the backstroke. The reasons is because you turn over in your back, you have no idea where you're going. And chances are you have asymmetries and strength and endurance in your muscles. So chances are you start to drift over to one side, you have no control over trying to figure out where you're going, and then you just either run into people, run into other things, and it just creates a huge risk to not only you, but to the swimmers that are around you as well. So I discourage the backstroke. I do discourage the breaststroke because it is a harder swim to stroke uh a harder swim stroke to implement, especially these days where a lot of these races are all wetsuit legal. Sometimes that that breaststroke can be a little bit challenging without a wetsuit. And then you have the restriction of shoulders and lack of there is some level of lack of mobility when you put on a wetsuit. Even if it's a high quality one, there's still some level of restriction that's there, and you can't deny it. So I find that the effort that you have to put in order to swim that stroke is so much greater, and there's other strokes that we can use to offset that. I used what's called a side crawl. So go ahead and if you want to check that out, I would Google just side crawl swim stroke, and it's a lifeguarding stroke with you're in a rescue situation. You've got your victim wrapped around with one arm and you're swimming with the one that's out in front of you. That's my fallback. Uh A, it allows me to have clear line of sight onto where I'm going. I can see forward, I can keep my head out of water if I need to in order to have proper breathing as much as I need. If I'm having leaky goggles, that kind of keeps my face uh out of the water so that the goggles don't start to fill up. I've had all these different scenarios come up on race day, and that's the one stroke that I will use as a fallback. I don't like it, but sometimes it's necessary. Whatever it takes to get from point A to point B is what you have to do. And sometimes it doesn't go as planned, and it doesn't mean that you're a poor swimmer, or it doesn't mean that you're not capable, it means that you just need more practice, and sometimes there are situations that are outside of your control, and you went with whatever the scenario called for. But this idea of being good enough is a significant barrier to entry into the sport, and really what I want to encourage is just to put forth the effort to become competent swimming. Not you don't have to be good at swimming, but I do want you to be competent at it, have strategies that are in place where if things don't go well, you can implement those. And then you just learn by doing it over and over again. You get better and better as you continue to develop and work forward. So don't let this idea of, oh, I'm not a good swimmer keep you from starting because we have to we all start from somewhere, and we all start from ground zero. And if we required people to be good swimmers in order to even start, then the sport doesn't grow and you never progress as an athlete. This is one of the reasons why I don't encourage athletes to start at the set at the half Iron Man or even full Iron Man level, because those require not just competent swimmers, those require good swimmers, in my opinion, not only for your safety, but for the safety of others that are around you. And starting off at the super sprint, the sprint, or even the Olympic if you have some previous swimming experience, is what I would call was what I would recommend for new people and new athletes. It's just start there. There's less barriers to entry, shorter distance, easier to train for. It's easier to get the frequency that you need in order to become competent in the water and feel comfortable in the water. So I'll leave that there. There are things that you can do to where you don't have to be a good swimmer. I just want you to be competent. Number five, how do I? I stop sinking and keeping my legs from dropping. I picked up on this a little bit earlier in this episode where I talked about the filling up, the overfilling of the lungs. And so I'll go into some of the other things that that typically will cause this scenario to present itself. So overfilling the lungs is one. The second one is going to be your head position. Looking not straight down, but just slightly out in front, but still with your head in the down position. I'm not saying that you have to like completely have your chin tucked into your chest because that's not proper. You're going to have severely limited rotation then and you're not going to be able to breathe effectively. So looking out just slightly out in front, but still down is where you want that head position to be. Almost just probably neutral, a neutral head position. Because as I talked about earlier, every time you pick that head up to sight, it's going to drop the legs and drop the hips. It's not something that you control. The body does it on its own. So the less time that you spend looking forward, because you're in a horizontal position. So if you can see straight ahead of you, then your head is up, and your legs are going to be down. So looking down, and then when you take your breath, you're looking to the side, so you can see the side of the pool, or you can see the sight buoy that you're swimming by in open water, and that's where you want that head position because that's going to keep your hips and your legs up. The second one is the third one is going to be your core engagement. The core is the connection from the upper body to the lower body. I know that it doesn't make much sense. You're just like, oh, why do I have to have my core engaged? What I have found, and I've proven this to myself in the pool, is that if I swim with a relaxed core, I'm slower. And I can feel it, I can feel my body position being poor in the water. I can feel the drag. I can also feel it when I say, okay, now let's engage the core. I'm not like saying we're gonna tighten up that core like we're about to be punched in the stomach. That's not what I'm saying at all. I don't want to be overly tight, but I want it engaged. Then I can feel my legs and my hips rise up in the water, and I feel like I got a better body position. So working on that strong core, again, that's going to be some time that you're going to need to spend outside of the water strengthening your core, whether that be two to three little 20-minute sessions during the week, somewhere in your training plan where you just do core stuff. You're doing some crunches, you're doing some obliques, you're doing some torso rotations to work on those erector muscles, whatever it is that you want to do, planks, whatever core session that you do, I would dedicate at least two to three core sessions a week. And they're only like 15 to 20 minutes. That's all you really need. Especially if you're already doing some strength training in your plan, because when you go to lift weights, you're already engaging that core to have proper form for lifting. So you do get that core engagement and strengthening then as well. But if you don't spend a whole lot of time in the weight room, then I would say those little individual core sessions are even more important for you. It's going to improve your running capacity, your efficiency as you run. It's going to improve your cycling, and it's going to improve your swimming. So the core is the key to all three disciplines because they all three use them. Yes, you're sitting when you're cycling. Yes, you are sitting on the bike. And so it's not the same thing as running upright where a strong core will improve your posture. But what I find is that athletes who tend to be a little bit older, and we're not talking like old athletes, this could be anybody in their mid-30s and higher who have back issues. If you're getting off the bike and your back is tight, the reason is because your core was not engaged during the bike. And so it relaxed it and it put it into position long enough to where now it's tightened up and stiffened up. So if you were to work on core engagement, it would improve the feeling that you're going to get coming off of the bike. It's going to help your position in the water, the way that your body's positioned, and it's going to help your running economy and efficiency as well. And it's going to allow you to be consistent and durable. So I would say that those are the main things that are going to help keep your legs and hips from dropping. I don't find that kicking a whole lot is going to improve it. There is some slight improvement by having at least a two to three beat kick, maybe, but kicking too much, like over kicking, is going to do nothing, but it's going to spike your heart rate up even higher, and it's not a good return on investment. So having a nice, easy kick will help keep those feet elevated. One of the actually let's just go into this next question. This next question is number six. Should I use swim tools like pull buoys, paddles, and fins? The re my answer to this is yes, yes, and yes. I use them almost every single swim session that I do. Unless I'm swimming in open water, then I'm just swimming. But pool sessions have fins as part of the warm-up, pull buoys and paddles, part of the warm-up and part of the main set. And I may use fins if I have a warm down as well. So yeah, these are not crutches. These don't keep you from gaining performance or durability in the water. It's not like you're going to become a weaker swimmer by using them. If anything, it becomes you, it makes you become a more aware swimmer. It will let you know if there is some kind of kink in your swim stroke or in your in the way that you're positioned in the water. What I'll do with an athlete who's swimming and they have a problem keeping those legs and hips up, I was like, here, here's a pull buoy, stick this between your crotch, shove it all the way up in there, and then now swim. And they feel what it's like to have the hips higher into the water. And then there's no kick or very little kick with that pull buoy. Now they're focused solely on the top half of their body, the swim stroke, which is where the majority of your propulsion comes from to begin with. You get very little forward movement from a kick, especially for athletes who have notoriously weak kicks to begin with, unless you are a previous swimmer, then all of your forward momentum comes from your upper body. So swimming with a pull buoy will actually help build that muscular endurance in the water that you're going to need, and it's going to help reinforce the cues in your brain on what it feels like to sit higher up in the water. Because once you remove the buoy and you start to sink, you're going to feel that difference. And you just be like, oh, this is what's going on. Now my legs and hips are sitting lower, so now I know what I need to work on. I'm going to keep my core engaged. I need to look at where my head is positioned. All these other things that we've already talked about, it will help you narrow down why your swim is struggling the way it is by using these devices. Paddles, I I love them. Especially if I have a race that's coming up that is going to be a wetsuit legal race, then I will spend a lot of my time in the water with paddles, building that upper body strength. Because once I put the wetsuit on, there is some restriction that's there. So I want to be really strong in the upper body and have that muscular endurance to get through that swim and come out of the water feeling fresh and not like I've just gone through a washing machine. So those paddles are really going to help you dial into that lat engagement. Because if you pull that paddle through the water and you don't feel your lat engaged, but you feel your shoulders engaged, then that should be the cue on what's going on. You're swimming with your shoulders and your biceps rather than your back muscles, which are bigger and stronger and more durable and will allow you to swim longer using these bigger muscles. So if you put these paddles on, you can feel that engagement. You're like, oh, that's what that's supposed to feel like. Then you take the paddles off, and you're like, do I still have that same feeling present? Yes or no? If it's a no, then you're like, okay, what am I doing in my stroke that's not engaging those lats? But I do get it with the paddle. So it's one more thing that you can use to really dial in your efficiency in the water and really tell you what is going on. So, yes, using pull buoys, paddles, and fins is absolutely a game winning decision, especially if you know that your race is going to be wetsuit legal. And if you're just not even if you're just getting started, because I'll do this with experienced athletes as well. We'll do some do a lot of these pull buoy and paddle stuff, because I just find that the athletes are just lacking in strength and durability in the water, and they can't, it doesn't matter on how fast they want to get, they won't be able to become that fast because they don't have the muscular endurance to hold form, and once the form falls apart, then everything else falls apart along with it. So working on building strength over speed will yield a higher rate of return on your investment rather than just trying to find speed all the time because the strength is where the form stays in place and will hold up. Number seven, how often should I be swimming each week? This is a loaded question because I have to honestly say it depends. For an athlete who doesn't have easy access to a pool or the water in general, then we're going to swim as much as the schedule allows you to swim. Really, I don't go less than twice a week. Even in the off season, I will swim two times a week. A lot of my restriction is not access to water, but it is the toll that it just takes on my body. Because of my shoulder issues that I have, I know that once I get uh above three days a week, then I can't swim well. And I'm more interested in making the time that I do spend in the water efficient and have a high rate of return on that investment. Because swimming four to five days a week is going to do me no good because my body can't recover and absorb it. So those extra swims that I'm trying to add in are going to be poor quality swims where I could spend that time doing something else that's going to be more productive. So for me personally, I swim twice a week if I'm training for a sprint or an Olympic, or it's the off season. What I will do is if I'm training for a 70.3 or a full, I will go up to three times a week for a 70.3. It's been a number of years since I've raced a full, and so I'm not quite sure on how many times I would swim or how many times my body would be able to hold up training for a full like that. But my swim volume in the sessions are they're not low. So I do try and make the sessions purposeful. And so I've built up myself now to where if I'm training for an Olympic, I'm I'm basically swimming 70.3 volume. My swims are like anywhere between 3,000 yards to 3,500 yards for my long swims. If I'm training for a sprint, I'll probably keep my yardage around 23 to 2500 per session. And like I said, there's two of those in the week. They are structured. We're not just going in there and just swimming mindlessly. There's stuff that we're doing, there's drills that I will do in the offseason to help reinforce those fundamentals. Even though I've been doing this for quite a while, I do still have workouts in my plan, depending on the time of year where I am working on drills and different proper muscle engagement and form checks and things like that. I think it's important. I do not think that you need to swim, have a drill in every single workout that you do. I don't think that yields a high rate of return. I think that there are particular workouts that you can dedicate that do have a drill component to them, but it does not have to be every single one of them. It's to me, it's not a valuable use of time. So I will say that I want you to swim as much as you need to swim in order to feel confident and comfortable in the water. Whether that means that you swim twice a week, then let's make those swims purposeful and successful. If that means that you can swim three times, four, five, great. Let's go for it. You're not going to be hindered by swimming more unless there is a reason on why you can't recover from swimming more. Swimming is not an impact sport, so it's not like running, so we don't have to be really cautious on volume. We do have to be cautious in terms of proper swim form and making sure that what we're doing in the water is correct because it is easy to develop overuse injuries in the water. You can develop periods of tendinitis, like I said, in your elbows and things like that. If you have poor grip strength and poor forearm strength, we can fine-tune that that stroke to make it a little bit more efficient, but then it always boils down to do I have the strength to hold form? That's the key. I can tell you what the form is all day long. If you don't have the ability to hold that form when you're tired, then it doesn't matter. You have to have that strength. Swimming more will make you stronger. Yes. Swimming more if you're swimming with poor form will make you not better. It can make you worse if you start to develop these overuse injuries. But I'm just concerned over the valuable use of time and whether we can do something else with that time and be a little bit more purposeful with it so that we can spend that time actually developing strength and things like that to where now we get into the water and it's we increase the return on that investment. So, what I will say is that if you're just swimming once a week, I would be a little bit cautious on that. I think honestly, three short sessions is way more better than one long grinding session. Is it important to have a swim in your workout, in your training plan for the week that is basically a long swim? Sure. That's what I have in my plan. My I have a long swim on the weekend where I do work on race volume kind of stuff where the intervals are longer. I'm working on muscular endurance. Then the workouts that I have during the week are shorter intervals. We're either working on, again, some kind of like muscular endurance with paddles and pole buoys, or we can spend some time doing some speed intervals, in which case we need short, compact duration intervals in order to execute that type of volume and that type of intensity. But not all your swims should be the same. Just not all your runs should be the same, and not all your bikes should be the same. Treat the swim like you do the other two components of the sport. Each one has a purpose. There is a structure that you can implement to work on a particular aspect for each session. You don't have to continue to work on that same thing every single swim, but I do encourage you to walk in to the pool deck with some with a plan and a purpose behind the workout, and it will yield a high rate of return on the time that you're spending in the water, which I find is probably the reason why athletes don't go to the pool as often as they should, and it's because they don't see the gains that they want to see, so they say, Well, I'm just going to spend this time running and biking. But remember the swim is the first thing that we do, and it sets the tone for the entire day. So if you get out of the water feeling like you've been through a washing machine, your ability to cycle to your full potential and then to run on with your full potential is going to be severely limited and hindered. So that's why it's important to really focus in on that on that swim aspect and become a strong swimmer. You don't have to be textbook, but I do want you to be, like I said, competent and strong in the water to where you're getting out and you're feeling confident going into the to the last two legs of the race. So that's what I would consider, like I said, you could do as many as your schedule allows. Number eight, why do I feel exhausted after 100 to 200 meters? I think that this really kind of boils down to either poor body position, so you have you have some technical issues that are going on in your swim, or you are overkicking and you already probably have an inefficient kick to begin with, so it's not timed well, and overkicking will just lead to elevated heart rate, which is going to ultimately to an increase in rate of perceived exertion, and that's why you feel so tired after just 100 to 200 yards. Now, there are some times when I work with an athlete where I give them a 2K swim to do, and the first 100 to 200 yards is actually the hardest, and then they say once I get past that, I start to feel I start to feel better. And so I don't know if it's just if it's a mental thing that's kind of going on where the body is trying to figure out what it is that that we're going to be doing, what's expected of it, and so it may overreact. I find this also true with runners, especially new runners who actually monitor their heart rate. They'll say, as soon as I finish my warm-up and I start to run, my heart rate spikes all the way up to 160 or 170 or whatever, but I don't, it doesn't feel like I'm putting in that kind of effort. And what it is, is the body's overreaction to it being conditioned to go to that place. So if you go out and you run the same pace and the same effort all the time, the body eventually learns and adapts to that and it says, Oh, we're running. I know that when we run, this is the blood volume that I need, this is the heart rate that I'm going to need in order to sustain this effort, and it just goes there. And it's sometimes it overreacts because if it's just supposed to be an easy run, the body doesn't know that it's supposed to be an easy run. All it knows is that it's running, and so it's trying to be preemptive. Same thing with swimming. If you go in and you swim the same rate all the time, same effort level all the time, the body adapts to that. And sometimes there's this overreaction when the swim is just getting started, and once it kind of settles in, and the body's, oh, okay, I don't need to be like this, so let's go back to baseline and let's get where it is that I'm that I definitely need to be, and it starts, and it will bring that rate of perceived exertion down, bring the heart rate down a little bit, and it becomes more sustainable. So what I suggest is maybe doing a longer warm-up and then actually putting in a little bit of an intensity in the warm up. So my warm up is 600 yards, and I'll do uh two by one hundreds with fins, then I do two by one hundreds with a pull buoy, and then I do two by one hundreds with a pull buoy. Paddles. That's my current warm-up. So 600 yards that I'm doing before I even start my main set. There's nothing wrong with swimming more of a warm-up. If anything, it helps really get the body ready to perform when it's needed and when it counts the most. So what I would suggest is maybe spending a little bit more of your workout in a warm-up type of environment effort so that the body starts to learn. Okay, this is what's going on now. I don't need to overreact. And let's say that you can do two by one hundreds with fins, and like you said, now you can go and do two by one hundreds with a pull buoy. But in those one hundreds, let's say you can do uh alternating 25s, where you'll do 25 easy, 25 moderate, and then for the next one, you'll do 25 easy, 50 moderate, 25 easy, and that's your 100. So starting to build in a little alternating intensity, and that way when it gets ready for the warm-up, you are properly warmed up, and that might help you to where you don't feel overly fatigued and exhausted just when you start to swim your main set. So being properly warmed up is going to help, along with technical efficiencies in the water. So again, having your swim stroke evaluated by a professional or somebody who knows what it is that they're doing, and not some social media group out there which has no insight into you as an athlete. That would be my advice for that kind of situation. So number nine, do I need a coach or can I figure this out on my own? Now, I will tell you that yes, I am a coach. So do I think having a coach is valuable? Yes, I do. Otherwise, I wouldn't be one. Even I had a coach when I first started. I find them to be a valuable resource. Again, swimming is more of a feedback sport. You really have a hard time evaluating your own form. So, unless you have a way to capture that video, capture the form so that you can evaluate it and whether you have the experience and the knowledge to understand what it is that you're seeing, that's another thing. It's one thing to be able to see the swim stroke. It's a whole nother thing to say, okay, is this right or is this wrong? Is this a structural limitation? So I just have to find a way around this and find a way to fine-tune it that I'll I don't necessarily need a textbook swimstroke, but I need something that's a little bit more efficient than what I currently have. Having somebody who has that experience and knowledge is helpful. Can you get a lot from YouTube? Yeah, you can. You there's tons of swimming professionals out there that will give you textbook definitions on what your stroke should be, what drills you should do. But when you watch them swim, it looks super easy because they are professionals. They do it a lot, they do have technical efficiency in the water. So when you see what they do, and now you're trying to replicate what it is that you see them do, you're having a hard time doing it because you are not a professional. You do not have technical efficiency in the water. So being able to have those cues presented to you in the moment is a lot more helpful than trying to do it after a session or after you're already out of the water and you're sitting at a desk and you're looking at a screen or whatever, and now you're trying to evaluate. I find that I get the biggest return on investment with an athlete when I'm on the pool deck with that athlete in the moment, and I record what it is that they're doing, and then I show it to them right then and there. And it's this is what we need to fix. Let's fine-tune this little piece right here, and then we implement it right then. Not we're gonna implement this next time. No, that doesn't do you any good. You have to implement it right then in the moment to really start that neuromuscular connection because if you wait, then chances are you're going to just still settle into the patterns that you're used to. So having this feedback on a quicker frequency and a loop that's right there in that moment is really helpful in terms of getting the performance gains that you're looking for. But can you do it on your own? Sure. I I would say that if you have that ability, go for it. You're blessed and consider yourself lucky. I would think that the majority of people probably aren't going to see the types of gains that they want to see if they rely on their own insights and their own research and evaluation on what it is that they're seeing. So that's just my experience. Number 10, and I think this is going to be the last one. What should I focus on during a swim workout? So I think I alluded to this and a couple of the other questions. Is I don't want us going into a workout just mindlessly swimming. I don't find that to be exceptionally helpful. In fact, what it does is it really reinforces bad habits because that once that fatigue starts to set in, the form breaks down, and then all those yards that you swam from that point on are junk yards. You've done nothing but reinforce poor form, bad habits, and it's a waste of your time and effort in the water. You could be doing something else with that time. So what I do is every single swim session has a purpose and a structure to it. I'm like I said before, you don't have to do drills every single workout, but I do think it's valuable that if you have, let's say, three workouts a week, have one of those workouts, what I call to be a technical swim, and have right after the warmup, have a section of the swim that's dedicated to drills. You don't have to do the whole, the whole workout is not drills, it's just a part of that workout, is dedicated to some fundamentals. So if I had to give you a swim plan, I would say we'll start with the long swim. So there would be one swim that would be longer than the others, either not necessarily in total volume, but maybe the intervals would be longer. And we're working on race specificity training, especially as you get deeper into the training plan. The other second workout would probably be a technical workout where we would have a warm-up, a segment of drills, and then some reinforcement of those drills with just plain swimming or swimming with a pull buoy and paddles to really drive home what it is that we were working on during the drill. The third swim would probably be something like some shorter intervals, whether we're gonna focus on some speed or some strength that's in the water. Those intervals are gonna be a little bit more on the moderate side, shorter. If we're doing speed and intensity stuff, they're definitely going to be shorter to allow for the recovery and swimming with proper form. So I can tell you right now, with my training plan that's going on right now, my I have a long swim on the weekend that is right before my long run. And uh I'm building up, I'm training for an Olympic distance triathlon right now. And I think this Sunday I'm at 1100 intervals. So I swim for 1100 yards in one set, and one of those is gonna be just straight swim, another one is gonna be swimming with a pull buoy, and then I do a little bit of shorter set with pull buoy and paddles, and I'm growing that vol those intervals up. I'm growing the volume up. And my other swim during the week is shorters, so they're five hundreds. So I'll swim a couple rounds of some five hundreds swimming in, just doing some normal swimming, and then swimming with paddles and pull buoys and things like that. Just alter, just really working on the different changes and the different muscle engagements and the tools that I need in order to get the feedback that I want and to see the adaptation that I'm interested in. Right now I'm not training for speed because my body has not been able to handle it. So, really, what I want is I want endurance over speed. So I want to be able to swim longer. Uh, I'm not too concerned on how quickly I swim. I just want to get out of the water feeling strong and fresh and ready to rock and not necessarily care all that much about how fast I was. So going in to the swim, like I said, they got to be structured. You got to have some kind of idea on what it is that you're going to do. There's a reason behind why you're doing it. And then during certain workouts, maybe work in some of these open water skills. If you don't have access to open water, then it's really going to be important to work on those drill, those key facets of your swim during your pool sessions, whether that means practicing sighting and things like that, or swimming up against the line, uh against the lane divider to really get that feel of spatial awareness, what it might be feeling like to swim next to somebody and drafting off of somebody else, whether you have the ability to join a master's team for a swim workout just to swim with other people, whether you follow their workout or not, I don't know. I'm I don't really tend a whole lot of masters swim swim classes simply because they swim differently than tri athletes do, and that's my focus. But it can be helpful in learning how to swim with others in a crowd, so you can take advantage of that as well. Especially if you're new, that'll give you some ideas on what workouts might be beneficial to you and to teach you how to implement structure. Doesn't mean that you have to replicate their exact workouts and swimming medleys and all that kind of stuff and doing kicking drills and all this. You don't necessarily have to do all that, but it kind of teaches you how to think about the structure of a workout. I think that's incredibly valuable. That's my advice on how to approach your swim workout so that there are purposeful and not just let's just go in and just get this done and check the box because I don't find that to be incredibly successful, and nor do I see athletes making gains using that method. That draws to a close this episode of the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast. Like I said, this has been episode 90, where I've brought you 10 swimming related questions that I get as a coach and what I have seen on social media as well. So I want to thank you guys for joining me. I really appreciate it. If you found this episode to be helpful, please leave a comment and leave a review. Those are greatly appreciated and do help the exposure of the podcast because we do not have sponsors, we don't have ads, we don't monetize this podcast at all. You sharing episodes with people that you think it would be helpful to, or leaving comments and reviews for episodes that you have enjoyed or that you got something out of greatly appreciated, and they really help the exposure of the podcast so that others can find us. So please subscribe on whatever platform it is that you're consuming your podcast content from. I really appreciate it. We also have the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast group that's on Facebook. It's a private group. All you gotta do is answer one simple question and agree to the group rules. We'll let you right on in. This is a community that we have been building since day one. We want to start pushing, we already push out a little bit of extra content into this group as well, but we really want to grow this community a little bit more a lot more so that we can get some good engagement with the listeners. Have you have the ability to reach out to us directly to talk about topics that you would like us to cover as well. So I hope that you will consider doing that. If you're listening to this on YouTube, please subscribe and leave a comment there as well. Those are we monitor those every single every single day. Uh I am we we do check in and we'll respond if we see a comment that's there, absolutely without a doubt. If you are looking for a coach, I am an active coach along with Coach Katie is active as well. We are taking on athletes onto our rosters. But if you're interested in improving your swim, or if you're interested in starting your triathlon journey, or you just want to get involved with endurance sports, and you're looking for someone to guide you and help you along the way, I hope that you will consider me as your coach. You can go to tabularasoracing.com. There's tons of resources that are out there for you. I have the Triathon 101 series, I have my IMA Florida 70.3 build out there as well from last year, blog articles and everything else that I've written. So there's a ton of content that's on my website. And Coach Katie has the same kind of stuff that's on her site as well. She's got articles and stuff that she releases as well. Please check that out and reach out to me if there's anything that I can do to help you along in your journey. And I'd look forward to chatting with you. And so thank you guys for listening. I've been your host, Coach Justin. I'm head coach and owner of Tabula Rasta Racing, and I will talk to you guys again later. That wraps up today's episode of the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast. Endurance sports have a way of teaching us patience, humility, and resilience. Lessons that carry far beyond the workout. Progress in endurance sports doesn't come from shortcuts, it comes from consistency, discipline, and doing the work when it's not glamorous. Wherever you are on your endurance journey, keep trusting the process and honoring the work you put in each day. If today's episode resonated, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone to help on their endurance journey. Don't forget to join the conversation on our social sites to help build and foster a community where we all learn and support one another. We'll be back with more stories and insights from Coach Justin and Katie. Until then, visit the podcast website at the endurance athlete journey.buzzsprout.com for more episodes from the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast. Have questions or comments about the podcast? Feel free to send us an email at the Endurance Athlete Journey at gmail.com. For all things coaching, visit Coach Katie at fuel the number two rumin.com and Coach Justin at taboo romster racing.com. Again, thank you for listening to the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast. And remember, Julie in the journey.