Choosing priorities during the off-season

What should triathlon swim training look like in the off-season? Big volume, lots of technique work, high intensity focus, controlled threshold progressions, or something else entirely? Scientific Triathlon coaches Mikael Eriksson and Jack Hutchens discuss best practices for what to focus on in your swimming during the base training period.

HIGHLIGHTS AND KEY TOPICS: 

• When, why and how to work on your swim technique, and how to actually improve it
• What types of swim workouts should you do in the base training phase?
• How important is volume in swimming for age-group triathletes?
• Which swim toys are useful and recommended at this time of year?
• Strength training and mobility work
• Preparing for open water swimming in the pool
• Listener questions

DETAILED EPISODE SHOWNOTES: 

• We have detailed shownotes for all of our episodes. The shownotes are basically the podcast episode in written form, that you can read in 5-10 minutes. They are not transcriptions, but they are also not just surface-level overviews. They provide detailed insights and timestamps for each episode, and are great especially for later review, after you've already listened to an episode. 
• The shownotes for today's episode can be found at www.scientifictriathlon.com/base2/

LINKS AND RESOURCES: 

• Jack's coaching profile and Instagram
• Triathlon Base Training Series 1 – How to train smarter in winter to race faster in summer - the first episode of this base training series

WHAT SHOULD I LISTEN TO NEXT?

If you enjoyed this episode, I think you'll love the following episodes:

• Swim Types and Fault Fixers with Swim Smooth’s Paul Newsome | EP#188 - a classic episode, introduction to swim archetypes
• Paul Newsome | EP#389 - round 2 with Paul
• Technique improvement and swim training for triathletes with Brenton Ford | EP#320 - the most well-known swim coach in triathlon (thanks to an incredible Youtube-channel) shares his wisdom on swimming
• Triathlon swim training with Russ Barber | EP#310 - Russ has worked with some of the best swimmers and triathlon swimmers in the UK, including Olympic gold medalists Georgia Taylor-Brown and Jess Learmonth and is a wealth of knowledge

You can find our full episode archives here, where you can filter for categories such as Training, Racing, Science & Physiology, Swimming, Cycling, Running etc.

You can also find separate archives for specific series of episodes I've done, specifically Q&A episodes, TTS Thursday episodes, and Beginner Tips episodes. 

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