Sports
Triathlon Swimming: Why Focusing Only on Volume Is a Mistake
Wanderley Santos explains why the pool is often treated as an afterthought and how pace and technique trump sheer mileage.
Many triathletes treat swimming as merely logging meters in the pool, neglecting technique and pacing. Coach Wanderley Santos breaks down how this mindset limits progress and explains why swimming should never be an afterthought in a training plan.
Within triathlon, swimming often carries the reputation of being the Achilles' heel for many athletes. It is not uncommon to see competitors make significant progress in cycling and running while remaining stagnant in the water year after year. Appearing on the Café com Tri podcast by Stemma Sports, coach Wanderley Santos pointed out that the root of this struggle often lies in how pool workouts are planned and executed.
PUBLICIDADE (GAM) — 1250x250
The myth of 'just spinning arms and logging volume'
One of the biggest conceptual mistakes in endurance sports is believing that swimming performance relies exclusively on racking up meters. Wanderley highlighted that it is still common to hear on the pool deck that good swimming boils down to kicking, pulling, and piling on mileage. When a training plan relies solely on volume, the swimmer misses out on crucial stimuli such as structured pacing sets, progressive workouts, and intensity adjustments that build sustainable race pace.
Making swimming a priority in training plans
Another obstacle pointed out by the coach is the secondary status the discipline holds when designing training programs. In many triathlon setups, the schedule begins with distributing the loads for cycling and running, leaving swimming as the final variable to be filled in. Furthermore, when a coach lacks a solid background in swimming, it becomes harder to transfer into the water the same training efficiency applied to the other two disciplines.
The impact of correcting this approach is directly reflected on the clock. According to Wanderley, athletes who shifted their focus to set quality and pace control managed to break through years of plateaus, shaving up to ten minutes off their Ironman swim times after entire seasons of seeing no meaningful gains from merely accumulating volume.
PUBLICIDADE (GAM) — 1250x250
