Swimming In The Right Training Zones

TriDot Podcast Episode 334

Swimming In The Right Training Zones

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Andrew Harley: Welcome to the TriDot Podcast. This is episode three in a series we've been doing where we've had coaches come on and try to help us stay in our training zones when we're training. A few weeks ago we learned how to do this in our run workouts, and last week we learned how to do this in our bike workouts. This week we have Coach Brandy Ramirez, the TriDot Pool School Director, and Coach Matt Davies from Precision Coaching here to help us stay in the right zones in our swim training. Coach Matt, Coach Brandy, good to see you two. How are you?

Brandy Ramirez: It's good to be here. Thanks for having us.

Matt Davies: Really good. Really pleased to be back on the pod as well, mate. So yeah, can't wait for today.

Andrew Harley: Want to give you, Coach Matt, in particular a shout out. It’s 2:30 in the morning there in Bali, where you're recording with us. So thanks for staying up past your bedtime to teach us a few things today. I'm Andrew the Average Triathlete, Voice of the People and Captain of the Middle of the Pack. As always, we're going to start off with our warm-up question, settle in for our main set conversation, and then wind things down by asking our coaches a question from the audience on the Cool Down. Lots of good stuff. Let's get to it.

Announcer: This is the TriDot Podcast, the triathlon show that brings you world class coaching with every conversation. Let's get started with today's warm-up.

Andrew Harley: Coach Matt, Coach Brandy, for our warm-up question today, I want to know. What was a time you accidentally lost or damaged a piece of your triathlon equipment? Coach Matt, what is this answer for you?

Matt Davies: So I really had to scratch my head on this one. Normally I'm pretty good, but the one thing that always gets me -- and I forget it wherever I go, and I do travel an awful lot around the world -- is the charger cable for my Garmin watch. I am absolutely terrible at remembering it. I've left it in more countries than most people have visited. So yeah, no matter where I go, I always get there and realize that I don't have my charging cable for the watch.

Andrew Harley: So do you buy a new one? Do you borrow from somebody local that you know, or what's the solution when you do this?

Matt Davies: Beg, steal, borrow. Depending on how far flung the country you're in, then sometimes they look at you like you're mad. The worst one was an ultramarathon I did in an island that I didn't even know existed called Sao Tome off the west coast of Africa. Funnily enough, there weren't too many shops selling Garmin charger cables out there. So I did the whole thing unrecorded. So clearly it wasn't on Strava, so it never happened.

Andrew Harley: That's the rule. That is the rule. Coach Brandy, of all of your triathlon gear -- lots of stuff here -- what have you damaged, broken, lost, accidentally or intentionally?

Brandy Ramirez: Yeah, so mine was recently. It was last year at Oceanside. I didn't race, but I was there for TriDot in Activation and went for a ride. So my Garmin computer currently is not attached to my bike. I have not fixed where the Garmin computer will sit on my bike, so it usually goes in the zippy pocket of my QR. I knew that I had taken it out to stop it and just tossed everything into the back of the van that I was using at the time. Got home, could not find this Garmin computer anywhere. I had accepted that it was gone. I was going to have to buy a new one. It was all the things. And just recently, I was cleaning out my closet -- pulled out everything out of the back -- and I found it inside a shoe. Not the shoe that I took. So note to self, your Garmin computer is too valuable to just leave it loose anywhere. You need to give it a home, so you don't lose it.

Andrew Harley: Brandy, I am notorious for misplacing things in my family. I'm just that slight ADD; I so easily put things somewhere and then forget. And so I, when I lose something, it drives my wife nuts because I'm like, “It's going to turn up.” In my life history, 99% of the time, if I can't find something, it turns up within a week or two -- and it's always like that. It's always an occasion where it is somewhere where it absolutely should not be by the laws of physics, but it turns up. And yeah, I'm glad that happened for you. Had you bought a replacement before you found it?

Brandy Ramirez: I was this close to buying another one. I was like, “For Christmas I'm going to bite the bullet and just buy another computer.” I reached out to my athlete who was with me at the time; we have the same stuff. Vanessa, our Vanessa, was there. I was like, “Did anybody accidentally get an extra Garmin computer when you guys got home?” But no, found it right before I ordered a new one.

Andrew Harley: Alright, very good. Because that's what happens to most people, right, you finally buy a replacement for something you lost, and then it turns up. That's how it works. This answer for me -- I know I've lost stuff. I'm sure I've broken stuff. But the one that came to mind-- before I flew to 70.3 Greece a number of years ago -- it was the week prior -- I ran over one of my Louis Garneau cycling shoes in the driveway. I'm sure I'd just gone for a ride, and gotten home, and had taken my bike gear off in the driveway or whatever. And so the shoe was behind my car, and I backed over it -- and it wasn't this one; this one's in totally good shape. But it was the pair that I had before this model, and it like, to Louis Garneau's credit, the shoe was fine. It was totally fine. It was usable. It wasn't snapped. It wasn't crushed. The only thing that had happened to it was this gap right here -- where the fabric meets the underside plate of the shoe -- it was coming off, but not to where it was unusable. And so I just kind of rolled the dice. I'm like, “Well, I don't have time to go to the store and find my size and get the exact one in. So I'm just going to go to Greece with this shoe. I'm going to hope that it hangs on for a 56-mile bike ride.” And it did. Yay! And then soon after, I bought this pair and replaced them. But that's my answer here. I ran over a pair of cycling shoes -- or a single cycling shoe -- with my car, and it held up okay long enough to do one more race. We're going to throw this question out to our audience. I want to know from you. Of all of the triathlon gear, equipment, tech that you have, what is something you have broken and/or lost? Comment below if you're watching us on YouTube or Spotify. Find us on the TriDot social media channels, and let us know there as well. Can't wait to hear what your stories are for this one.

Announcer: Let’s go.

Andrew Harley: On to our main set, where I'm excited for us to learn from Coach Matt and Coach Brandy. How -- when we jump in that pool, jump in that open water -- how can we stay in the right training zones when we're executing a swim workout? We're going to start high level here, and what I want to know is: when we're doing our swim sessions, why is it important to be in the right zone in the first place? Coach Brandy?

Brandy Ramirez: It’s so important because you need to try to build your endurance, your efficiency, and your speed. And so you can't just get in that pool and just -- one speed every time. Whether it's going super, super slow or going all out all the time, it's not efficient for you, and you need to learn how to get into a better zone. So you create that efficiency, you create that endurance. Also, you need to know when to turn it up a little bit, right? So you need to know when you can bump up into a harder zone and then kick it back into a Zone 3. So basically, it's just creating a path for you on race day to feel that zone on your swim.

Andrew Harley: Coach Matt, anything to add on? Why is it important to get these zones right in the first place?

Matt Davies: I'm going to have this all pardoned because Brandy's going to go first and nail all of the important points--

Andrew Harley: We'll bounce it back and forth, brother. We'll bounce it back and forth, I promise.

Matt Davies: I think the key for me is the bit when it comes to race day. So we can all use the pool clock, we can all use the watch, we can all get right eventually in the pool. I think the swim is harder than the bike and the run to learn your zones and learn what it feels like. But come race day, when there's 500 people going either side of you, and you're panicking, and there's thumbs coming up over here -- you're not looking at that watch. You need to know exactly what it feels like to swim at the pace that you've set out and planned to swim for race day. So make all the mistakes during training. Get a feel for what does Zone 3 and Zone 4 feel like, and then, come race day, you're not over reliant on that tech that we very easily get very over-reliant on when we're training.

Andrew Harley: Very, very good point. That kind of bleeds into what my next question was, and it might be a similar answer for you, Matt, from what you just said. I'm curious, as you are working with your athletes -- particularly when you get a new athlete, and you're learning their training habits, and trying to help them dial this in for themselves for the first time -- what mistakes do you see athletes make most often when it comes to swimming in the right zone? Matt, for you, is it seeing them go a little too hard on race day, or is it a different answer here?

Matt Davies: Yes, it’s basically along those lines. I think when people first start using the TriDot platform, and they start chasing those unicorns, and pegacorns, and all of the high scores on their sessions, the swim is always the one that people struggle with the most to get the high scores. And that does equate to race day. If you haven't nailed it, it is going out and either swimming way too hard or way too slow, and not really knowing that. That sums it up for me.

Andrew Harley: Coach Brandy, biggest mistakes your athletes make when it comes to staying in their zones on the swim?

Brandy Ramirez: I absolutely agree with Matt. The biggest mistake, especially in the beginning, is not taking the time to try to feel for a Zone 2, a Zone 3, a Zone 4. Most athletes -- when they're new to the sport -- they're either all out 100 percent or they're gassed, and now they're super, super slow. So the biggest mistake is not slowing down and trying to find a different speed in that water.

Andrew Harley: Yeah. Really good. And I've heard coaches on the podcast in the past talk about how -- I'm sharing this because it was kind of a revelation for me a number of years ago in my own swimming. We have, on our bike, different gears that we can shift, right? If you hit a hill, and you needed to be a little bit easier, you can shift down into an easier gear -- or shift up into an easier gear, rather. It's kind of like that, right? We need to, in the pool, develop different gears where -- with the same form -- you can swim easy in Zone 2, you can swim hard in Zone 4 and 5, but your form doesn't change. Just the amount of effort you're putting forth changes. And it took me a long time to really develop that skill, which I know we're going to talk a little bit more throughout this episode. I think the biggest mistakes I made in my swimming early on, until I kind of learned better, was not letting my Zone 2 be easy enough. I mean, we know across all three sports Zone 2 needs to be Zone 2. We need to stay in Zone 2. It needs to feel easy. It was easy to back off my running. It's easy to back off my cycling. But for me, as soon as I backed off my swim speed, my legs start to sink. Even though I'm swimming slower, I'm still fighting the water. So it took me a while to work with the water and let it be easy. And once I got the Zone 2 stuff truly being in Zone 2, and truly feeling easy, those different gears started becoming a little more natural. But we'll get into that in a little bit. I'm curious, Brandy, I'll have you answer this one. The last two weeks on the show, we've talked about running and we've talked about cycling -- and for both of those sports, depending on what your TriDot workout is for the day, your zones might be set by heart rate. The whole workout is just, “Hey, pay attention to your heart rate.” It might be, on the bike, a power zone where you're following a certain wattage, or it might be a pace zone or for our swim workouts. And TriDot -- it is always by pace. There is no power, there is no heart rate. Why is this the case in our swim workouts?

Brandy Ramirez: One, you can't really determine power in your swim, right? There's no smart watch or anything yet that can determine your power in your swim. So pace is huge for us because -- while your heart rate is important, and a lot of us do have watches now that can pull your heart rate -- how do you manage your heart rate while you're swimming? You're not going to stop every couple yards and be like, “Where's my heart rate? Where's my heart rate?” So learning--

Andrew Harley: When we're running, you can stop and walk when you're running, right? Let that heart rate lower. In the pool, you got to keep swimming.

Brandy Ramirez: You got to keep swimming. That's why we really base everything off of pace, because that is what you are doing when you are in your swim. Whether it's in the pool or race day, it's all based on your pace. And so learning that feel that we were talking about -- your Zone 1, your Zone 2, obviously your Zone 3 is your ‘race pace’ on race day -- learning that pace, and that feel of that pace, is something that we have to work at. And here's why: when you become a runner -- you started as a child where you're crawling, then you're standing, then you're walking -- you've already got this feel for what it is to run. You know how to run. You know how to move the body. Same thing when it comes to cycling. A lot of us are fortunate, and when we're kids, we get on a bike. So we're cycling when we're children; we know how that feels. We know where our balance is. We know how to control it. A lot of people, especially triathletes, when it comes to the swim, it's not something they've been doing since they were kids. It's something that they took on -- either to take on because they're new to the sport and they have to learn it so that they can get through race day, or if you're lucky enough, you were a swimmer at some point in time. But you have to work a little bit harder for your swim. So being in the water and learning that pace -- learning what it feels like to push yourself to a Zone 3, to push yourself to a Zone 4, to understand that pace -- is so key. And that's why we do pace training in any of our swims.

Andrew Harley: Yep. And it's all pace. I have never -- I have the Garmin watch that has heart rate, and I don't even have it set to show me the heart rate when I'm in this pool. I have no earthly idea what my heart rate is doing in any of those sessions. Never have, and probably never will. And that's, at the moment, okay. Matt, I'll kick this one over to you. So we know we're going off of a pace zone. TriDot saying, “Okay, be in Zone 2 for the next two minutes. Here's what that range is.” How is TriDot determining for each athlete what those zones should be?

Matt Davies: So just like the bike and the run, the zones are set during test week. So every four weeks when you're out of race season -- races kind of play around with the rhythm of when test week falls -- but in a normal training block, then test week comes around. We do our CSS tests in the pool, effectively a 400- and 200-meter time trial, and they work out what we call our Critical Swim Speed. And then every zone is based off what that looks like. So if you're following your TriDot workouts, and you're diligently doing your swims and not missing them, then over a period of time, your CSS test results are likely to improve. And as they improve, then your zones will move with that. It's exactly the same as when we go out and we do our 5k run test. Your 5k time gets better, so therefore, your Zone 2, Zone 3, Zone 4 paces is all move up a notch or two -- exactly the same in the swim. So all determined by getting in that pool, and doing your test, and doing it well.

Andrew Harley: There's the joke amongst TriDot athletes -- I've seen this in the Facebook groups. I've seen this on social media, the TriDot Community Hub, talking with athletes at the races. There's always this like, whenever an athlete goes on social and is celebrating, “Oh my gosh, I bumped the Dot. I just knocked my 5K out of the park. I just knocked my CSS swim test out of the park. My dot went up two points, three points, one point.” Everybody in the comments is always like, “Yay! Good for you! Enjoy those new zones. Have a good time in your next workout.” Because it's a fun feeling, and you're excited about it, and you go to the pool for your next swim workout, and you look at what your zones are, and you're like, “Oh, no, what have I done? This looks impossible.” And for me -- I don't know about you guys -- for me, the run zones get a little faster, and it's like, “Okay, I can adjust to this.” It's not scary. On the bike, the power zones get a little more aggressive. “Okay, I got to hold more power. I got it. Let me do this.” But the swim -- when I see my new swim zones and they get faster, I feel like, “I can't do this. This is going to be impossible.” And you adjust to it. But for me, it takes longer to adjust to those new zones in the pool than it does on the run and the bike. Is that true for you guys as well, or is that just an Andrew Harley isolated experience?

Matt Davies: No, I think it's absolutely true. And it comes back to what we covered in question one and two -- we're not just adjusting to harder workouts at higher paces. 90% of us are still not naturally swimmers, so we're also having to completely readjust the brain and the mindset of what does it feel like swimming at these new zones again? So we go back to the drawing board, and we revert a little bit more. The kicker is when you obviously nail test week, and all three go up, and every single workout that you've got for the next three weeks are all absolutely impossible. But obviously, we all want to see progress. But yeah, when you nail all three tests, as one of my athletes did last week, you then wake up on Monday morning and look at every single session for the week and think, “Oh my god, what have I done to myself?”

Andrew Harley: So the trick is -- the real smart athletes improve in one sport at a time and let the other two just stay the same. We don't want to get too good across all three; that'd be nuts.

Brandy Ramirez: I'm the opposite of you, Andrew. When my run goes up, I'm like, “Oh, Lord, help me. How am I supposed to hit those zones?” But the swim, I'm just like -- so, yeah, I've been out of practice a long time for my swim. I live in a very small town, and so there's only one indoor pool -- which closed from June to December 15th. So I've maybe had four opportunities to get into the pool, and I race Little Elm in four weeks. So for me, I'm like, “Yes. Can I please get some speed back? Can I please get some speed back? Because right now I am uncharacteristically slow.” So I wouldn't mind.

Andrew Harley: I cannot wait to see how it goes for you in Little Elm. I'll be there cheering you on, Brandy. It's 20 minutes from my house -- 23 minutes from my house.

Brandy Ramirez: It’s not going to be pretty.

Andrew Harley: I'll be rooting you on from dry land, there in Little Elm. Brandy, when athletes go to the pool -- Matt mentioned we can look at the pace clock. We've acknowledged we can look at our Garmin watches. There's also now a couple companies doing the smart goggles that have the heads-up display, where you can see your data in the goggles. Talk to us about the options here. Does it matter what we go with? Is one of these options better than the other, when it comes to having the data we need -- the information in front of us -- to staying in our zones while we're swimming? Or is it just kind of dealer's choice, whatever works for you? What would you say to athletes about how you know what equipment to buy to see your data while you're working out?

Brandy Ramirez: There are some really good options. Obviously, our Garmin Watch is going to collect a lot of our data for us, including our HR and whatnot. But again, while you're swimming, this is not an opportunity to have your watch beeping at you because you're out of your zone. I don't know anybody whose watch is going to beep and they're going to stop mid stroke and take a glance at what it says. So definitely your Garmin will collect all of this data, you can wear an HR monitor -- but those are devices that are going to give you data after the fact, not during. For me, I do own a pair of FORM goggles. I do love the FORM goggles. It is right in your face, and you are getting instant information. So that's a really good one, if you want to use it. You can upload your workouts from TriDot into your FORM goggles, so it is going to help you stay on target during your swim. Now, you have to learn to see past the data, which can be slightly hard for some people. It was for me in the beginning, especially with those flip turns as I'm coming into the wall and the data's here. So it does take a bit of time to adjust to it. But I do love the FORM goggles, especially for outdoors. Like, you're outdoors and you're following the line of the water, it helps you with that. It helps you with the way that your head is tilted. So that's really great data that you can have right at that moment through a pair of FORM goggles.

Andrew Harley: Yep, I have the FORM goggles as well, and they are pretty cool. And it is a slight adjustment, but once you adjust-- until they came out, you just had to go off a feel, and just hope you were staying at the right pace all the way down the length of the pool. You could glance at your watch during that flip turn or that wall turn -- glance at the pace clock during that flip turn or wall turn -- and kind of see, “Okay, how long did that length take me?” And then you're doing math every single length of the pool to make sure you're staying on the right pace. And without the FORM goggles, that's what you have to do. The FORM goggles take that out of the equation. You can see your pace in real time, so obviously that helps you stay in your zones that much better. Because you can see your pace in real time all the way through your workout. But Coach Matt, you said you're a wall clock guy, yeah? For athletes out there who either budget-wise aren't going to get FORM, maybe just tech-learning-curve-wise, they're not interested in FORM goggles. They like their normal goggles. What advice do you have for athletes that are looking at their watch, or looking at the clock, to have each length of the pool be the right speed, the right time?

Matt Davies: Yeah, it goes back to what we chatted about at the top, about learning that feel. So I love all the tech. Hey, we’re triathletes. We love pouring over the numbers, right? But I make it kind of mandatory for all my athletes at least once a month -- I like it if they do it once a week, but at least once a month -- they ditch all tech on at least one swim, one run, one bike, and go out and try and do it by feel. It's good to have it recorded to know afterwards, “Was I in the right zones?” Obviously, as you can tell from the many, many wrinkles on my face, I grew up in an age where we had a bit of paper stuck to our water bottle at the end of the lane with the swim set written out and the wall clock -- it just helps with that learning of feel. The data is amazing. Obviously, we're here talking about very, very data driven training with TriDot, but there's no substitute for knowing that deep down in your body -- What does it feel like when I'm absolutely caning it in? What does it feel like when I've knocked it back? So yes. I go, once a month, off the wall clock, doing the mental maths. I mean look -- following that black line can be a little bit tedious sometimes, right? So having the mental maths, having the stuff to calculate and work out as you go, kind of gives you a little bit of a distraction as well. So for me, it's going old school.

Andrew Harley: Not a bad point, not a bad point. I had my coach tell me one time -- and I like reminding athletes of this, as well -- in a TriDot swim workout, we have that warm-up period. And depending on what your workout is, there's always going to be a couple drills in there for you to do that are form based and get your arms moving. There's going to be-- some of it's Zone 2, sometimes there's room to pick up the pace a little bit in that warm-up and really get the systems ready, get the systems firing, before you get to the main set. My coach would always remind me, that's the perfect time to get a feel again -- in this session, in this pool -- what each of those speeds feel like. You're in your warm-up, so you're not neck deep in the workout yet, out of breath, really gunning it -- but really dial in that feel at the beginning of every single session. Don't take it for granted that, “I had it down last time I was in the pool.” It's a new day. Sometimes it's a new pool. It's a new body of water. So in my warmup -- even if I didn't have anything, Zone 3, 4, 5 in my swim warm-up for a TriDot workout -- I'll usually throw in just a 25-down-25-back, where I ‘change gears’, so to speak, down and back, and make sure I hit each of those paces -- look at the clock, see if I was staying in the right zone. I make that part of my swim workout, or warm-up, to dial in ‘how it feels today in this pool’, so to speak. Anyway, I want to go through -- this conversation, it's so different. When I sat down to write the questions for this one, it's so different from the run and bike, because in the run and bike, like we've talked about, you can see the data in real time. You can program your watch, or your bike computer, to beep at you in real time to keep you in the right zone. And often we can't do that in the pool; we're going off a feel. We got to know that feel. We got to learn that feel. And so this conversation is a little bit different. So what I want to do, is just go through the zones. I want to talk about Zone 2, when it's easy, Zone 3 and 4, where we're working a little bit but not a lot-a-bit, and Zone 5 and 6, where we are working hard. I want to work our way up the zones and just hear from you guys. What would you tell an athlete to be focused on in each of those zones? What would you tell an athlete each of those zones should be feel like in the water? What should we do in our form, or in our mental game, to hold the right intervals all the way through in those zones? So let's start with Zone 2, where we're swimming slow to slowish. How can an athlete hold Zone 2 but keep their form correct, keep their form spot on? Keep it easy, breezy, beautiful, CoverGirl. Coach Brandy?

Brandy Ramirez: Yeah. Easy, breezy, beautiful, CoverGirl. I love that. So definitely in those slower zones, especially Zone 2, you do want to be focused so much on that form, stretching out, the way that you're breathing. I still tell my athletes that I like them breathing unilaterally -- and that's unilaterally on each set. If you're going down the pool, and you push off, and you're only breathing to the left, when you get to the end and you push off, now I only want you breathing to the right. Create balance in the neck muscles. So you're breathing unilaterally, different on each time, each lap, coming back and forth. This is teaching you to bilaterally breathe if you need to, because you don't know what swim course you're going to be swimming when you go out to race. For me, focus on that. Your breath is always going to tell you what zone you are in. So it should be slow, it should be rhythmatic. It should be like your heartbeat, especially in a Zone 2 where it's just *breath*, *breath*. Just slow. This easy dance that you're doing with the water, stretching out every single time, and keeping this slow, steady kick behind you. That's a really great way to stay relaxed and stay nice and slow in a Zone 2 for me.

Andrew Harley: Coach Matt, what do you tell your athletes to focus on to keep the Zone 2, Zone 2, and not go too hard, not work too hard?

Matt Davies: So I try and get my athletes to visualize what they look like. So imagine they're kind of hovering above or walking down the side of the pool and looking at themselves. We've all gone to pool school. We all know those swimmers who are just sickeningly good at swimming and they look like they’re swimming at--

Andrew Harley: They’re so annoying. So annoying, those swimmers.

Matt Davies: People like Brandy, right? People who just get in the pool and just look like they're not even trying, and they're actually banging out sub one-minute hundreds just for fun. They get out the pool, and they're not even breathing hard. So there's one thing all of those people have in common, and they just look so effortless. So particularly when you're in Zone 2, I try to get my athletes to just try and visualize, “What do I actually look like if I was watching myself swim?” If you've got any cues that you're working on -- any tips if you've been to pool school, or if you've been to any other form of kind of swim coaching -- try and use Zone 2 to really focus on the one thing that you're working on right now, whether that be stretching out, whether that be head position, whatever it is. Because the effort levels are lower, you should have a bit more mental capacity to think about that, thinking, “How smoothly can I swim for the time I'm in this zone?”

Andrew Harley: Yeah, it definitely helped me nail my Zone 3, 4, 5 stuff when I let Zone 2 stay easy and be easy. And it's interesting. When we do Zone 2 work in the run, for example, we can watch our heart rate and we can tell when at a certain pace -- I might think 8-minute miles is my Zone 2 pace, but if my heart rate's in Zone 4, that's not my heart rate pace. Since we're doing pace in the pool, there was a lot of times for me, early on in my TriDot journey, where I would be swimming my Zone 2 pace in the pool. But I would be working pretty hard because my form was deteriorating, I was fighting the water, and my pace was slow, but my effort was high. And if I was measuring my heart rate, I guarantee you it was higher than it should have been. And so then you do your Zone 2 stuff -- you're in theory going easy, but I wasn't. I was working hard for that Zone 2 pace. And then I get deeper into the workout, I'm supposed to jump up to Zone 3 and Zone 4, but I don't have the gas. Because I used all my gas trying to hold Zone 2 with my poor form. So something that really helped me early in my TriDot journey was actually using some pool toys to stay in Zone 2. And so just what you said, Coach Matt, if I knew, “Okay, I'm really focused on my hand entry, and my catch, and that motion, that rhythm,” I would put a pool buoy between my legs so that I just took that out of the equation. Or sometimes I would just use a pool buoy or fins anyway because it would float my hips; it would keep me in better form. It would let the Zone 2 stay Zone 2, so that when I was deeper into the workout without those pool toys, I was able to hit the zones I was supposed to be hitting because I had Zone 2 remain easier. Because I had some help in Zone 2 being easier. Now, I know Brandy's going to say this, but I'll say it. That is a temporary solution. We don't want to become overly reliant on pool toys, or swim aids, or crutches. But if you're in a place where you are learning swim form and you're having a hard time -- that was my problem. I could not stay in Zone 2 because I did not have the proper form to support Zone 2. I needed a pool buoy to help me stay in Zone 2. You need to wean yourself off of that, and you need to get the proper form so that you can do Zone 2 without those tools. But that's something that helped me. So I know you're both chomping at the bit. I'll go Brandy and then Matt. What would you say to athletes about using things like that, or maybe augmenting their workout a little bit to stay in Zone 2? Or they should stay in Zone 2 before the form is ready to support it, if that makes sense?

Brandy Ramirez: Just a couple of things. So one that you can do is you can have somebody videotape you. There are so many different places where you can upload a video of yourself -- even in the TriDot forums -- where you can upload a video of yourself and get some critique. How can I improve my form? Usually your hips, for example, is based off of your head, right? So your head not being in the right position -- and I'm going to hate my myself later -- but one thing that a lot of people try to tell you is the chin to the chest. Your chin's supposed to be to your chest; it's really not. Your chin is not supposed to be down to your chest. Because then you create drag with your head because it drops too low, and so now you're dragging in the water. I'm going to hate myself because of this. What you should be doing is pulling your chin in and back. It elongates the spine. For every one inch that your head is out of position, your hips are going to sink by three. It's a 1 to 3 ratio, okay. So if your hips are really dragging, your head is not in the right place. I hate myself because I created double chin for everybody to see. But in the water, it's not going to feel as weird or strange. I would want you to go in front of the mirror and learn to just pull your chin back. Because when you pull your chin back, it brings the head into alignment in the spine, lifting your hips up to the surface of the water. So that Zone 2--

Andrew Harley: I’m like doing it in my chair right now.

Brandy Ramirez: I know, everybody's going to do that. That Zone 2 is such a golden opportunity to really work on your form because you're supposed to be slow intentionally. So now we can think about the body position in the water. How do I perfect my body position in this water at this pace? And one of them is learn to pull that chin back, really stretch out. The kicks that you're doing are what's going to be propelling you across the water, right, in a Zone 2. So kick, and pull the chin back, and really stretch the body out to your form.

Andrew Harley: Matt, anything to add there?

Matt Davies: No, I saw the twitch in the corner of Brandy's eye when you started talking about pool bouys, and I couldn't help but laugh.

Andrew Harley: Don't use them. Don't use them. Set them on fire. Sell them on eBay.

Brandy Ramirez: If you use it for just a short time, okay. But don't let it become something that you're constantly, “I have to go to this.” I have to go to this to create your form. You want to create your form on your own for your body position in the water.

Andrew Harley: Yeah. So if you can't swim an easy pace with an easy effort, there's something in your form preventing that, and we need to address that -- which I totally understand. I'm going to move us on to Zone 3 and Zone 4. I've grouped these two together. They are different zones -- obviously, different zones -- but they to me, in my TriDot experience, they're placed in workouts in a very similar fashion. A lot of times it's in ladders, or it's in workouts where you've got a lot of Zone 4 and just ten seconds off in between all your Zone 4s. These to me are two different zones that, in TriDot swim workouts, you're holding a lot with very little break. In practice, holding Zone 3 and holding Zone 4 -- for me at least -- is very similar. Just, obviously, Zone 4 is a little bit -- takes more work than Zone 3. So when an athlete has a lot of Zone 3 or Zone 4 in their workout in the pool, once we've acquired that feel of what that zone feels like, what advice do you have for athletes on keeping at that effort down and back, down and back, down and back? Coach Matt?

Matt Davies: All the zones we should still be maintaining the same form. We've covered that already. But, certainly when we get to Zone 5 and Zone 6, everything goes out the window, and we start to look like a washing machine. And we start to flail around like we're having some type of--

Andrew Harley: Which is why I've kept 3 and 4 together, and we're going to do Zone 5 and 6 in just a moment.

Matt Davies: Exactly. So what I'm going to say is 3 and 4, we should still be swimming at a pace where we can still be thinking a little bit about that form and a little bit about any of those cues and clues that we're working on in our swim form. When we get to 5 and 6, I'm going to say the same thing -- that we still should be trying to swim with the same form. But we all know that at that point, it is like we're having some form of episode in the pool, and it tends to go out the window. But in 3 and 4, we should still be pushing hard, obviously. Heart rate should be going up. Breathing should be getting a little bit more clipped, but we should still be able to have enough mental capacity, at least, to be thinking about those form cues and working on that form at the same time. Albeit, getting tired and starting to pray for the wall to come at the end of each set. But hard enough that you can feel the increase in exertion, but still enough capacity to be thinking about what the body looks like, and what the form looks like, as you're going up and down.

Andrew Harley: Yeah, very good way to put it. I find, for me, whether it's Zone 3 or Zone 4, the first interval, or two, or three, feels pretty comfortable because of what you just said. You're at a pace -- even in Zone 4 -- where you're working pretty hard, but not so hard that that form has to go anywhere. It's getting deeper into those sets where you start breathing heavier, the arms start feeling heavier, the wall seems farther away no matter how long you've been swimming. So, yeah, totally agree. Coach Brandy, anything you would add here on what you tell your athletes when it comes to staying in these zones, swimming in these 2 zones?

Brandy Ramirez: Yeah. So your swim, obviously, you have the physicality of it. And if you're new to swimming, or if it's not something you've been doing your whole life, you do have to work at it a little bit harder. So one thing that is huge about the swim -- and I don't think people talk about it enough -- is the mental aspect of it. You're alone. You're in this water. You are by yourself. It's not like when you're out for a run, and you've got your music in, and you kind of just get lost in your music.

Andrew Harley: You can't breathe just whenever you want to. You have to work for breath.

Brandy Ramirez: You can’t breathe whenever you want to. I mean, technically, hopefully, you learn to breathe every time to one side, and then you feel more in control. But a lot of it is, how do you keep yourself mentally engaged in that swim -- in that Zone 3, in that Zone 4? When you're on your bike, there's cars, you could see the world, right? When you're in your run, you're like, “Oh, it's a pretty tree.” Look at the flower, the birds, whatever. But in that swim, it comes down to your mental capability, and that's really what you should be focusing on. Find a mantra. Find a way to break down that Zone 3, break down that Zone 4. And again, in those paces, you have a range, right? So let's just say your Zone 3 -- let's just pick a number. Let's just say it's a 1:30 to a 1:41, right? So you want to start off at that 1:30. You want to start off at that slower pace -- and let's just say you're doing a 200 -- and so you're going to slowly keep that pace for the first couple 25s, the first couple 50s, and then pick it up just a little bit. But mentally stay engaged. Where am I? How do I feel? Am I stretching out? Okay, I've done a 100. I've only got a 100 left. I've only got 4 laps. Start to break it down. I'm down to 3 laps. Do I feel good? Can I push a little harder? You have to stay engaged mentally in your swim to stay in those zones. The second that you're just like, “Squirrel!” and your brain just goes somewhere else, that's when it becomes a little harder for you because you're like, “Wait, what number was I on? How much further do I have to go?” And we start to mentally break down. So mental game in your swim is key in those longer sessions, the harder sessions, that you have to execute.

Andrew Harley: Yeah, I really like that, Brandy. I think I usually aim for the middle of my zones because admittedly -- I mean, just by math -- that usually helps me get a slightly higher TrainX score. Because there is some wiggle room on either side if I unintentionally speed up a little bit, or unintentionally slow down a little bit, I'm probably still in the right zone, mathematically. So my training score ends up being higher. But that just gives me one number to hit, right? And that gives me a lot of room to just have every length feel the same, to check out a little bit in some of those long-- I mean, sometimes you get Zone 3 and Zone 4 for four- or five-minute intervals, right? So I love that concept of, okay, play with the speed a little bit -- in the zone, staying in the right zone -- but play with the speed a little bit. One, what you're talking about is a good habit anyway. It's reinforcing that negative split habit that we want to shoot for on race day. But it's also giving yourself a game to play to stay engaged through those intervals. That's really interesting. Matt, anything else? Anything else to add to Zone 3 and 4?

Matt Davies: No, I love it. I love the mental side, Brandy, because yes, many of us are not natural born swimmers. Yes, going out for a run, there's so much to distract you. There's so much to keep on it. But following that black line up and down can get a little tedious. So I love the idea of starting at the lower end of the zone and gradually picking up the pace as you go. I think that's something I'm going to share with all my athletes, for sure.

Brandy Ramirez: And just a lot of that mental prep and positivity to yourself. I mean, that's one thing that -- I have athletes who are just like, “I don't like swimming. I'm scared of the swim.” I mean, I literally tell my athletes, when you get in the pool, the first thing that you say is you do a sink down and you say, “Hello, old friend.” I literally am building that bond between my athletes and that water. Because you don't want to get in like, “Oh god, I got to swim today.” All the negativity. And so I tell my athletes who are just not natural swimmers, “Every time you get in, I just want you to, ‘Hello, old friend.’ And just open your eyes, and just look out to the water, and then just push yourself up.” It is this mental emotional connection that you really need to have with that water. The positivity has to be there as well. If you're doing a 400 assessment, I count backwards because it's easier for me to go: eight, seven, six, five. And then as I start to get closer to one, I start to pick up that pace. I start to get more excited. But I'm constantly telling myself, “I feel good. I got this. I got two more. Yeah, let's get this done. We're home.” It's just that constant mental-emotional buildup. Learn to have that in the water, and your swims will become so much different for you.

Andrew Harley: So Zone 5 and Zone 6. Matt already prefaced this so perfectly, and this is, again, why I grouped these two together. When you get these two zones in the pool, you are going for it. You're going for it. You're usually not doing this for longer than a pool length or two, right? So whereas when we get Zone 3 and Zone 4 prescribed, we can have those for minutes at a time. Zone 5 and Zone 6 are usually shorter burst efforts in the water -- and you'll have a lot of them, but they're shorter burst efforts. When your athletes have Zone 5 or they're told, “Go all out. Go all out.” Coach Brandy, what do you tell them to do? How do you tell them to nail these particular zones?

Brandy Ramirez: Definitely form does not go out the window. So Matt was a hundred percent correct. I do not want you hitting a Zone 5 and 6. And your form is just crap. Absolutely no way. So you hold that form. That's so key. But a lot of it is your breath, right? That breath is so vital. And here's the fun part. When you hit a Zone 5 and a Zone 6, that's when you don't want to breathe as often, right? Every other time, I want you breathing every time to the one side or to the opposite side. But this is sprinting. My kids were sprinters on swim team growing up. And this is like, “How long can you hold your breath before you have to take one?” Because you're doing everything. You're going all out. This means hold your form, push yourself as hard as you can. Have that mental capacity. Keep telling yourself, “I got it, I got it, I got it. It's only a 25,” or “It's only a 50,” right? Just keep pushing yourself and be that mental cheerleader for sure.

Andrew Harley: Is it better -- for our athletes listening, we're obviously -- we reinforced a couple times in a couple different zones, and a couple places of the conversation, that preserving your form, doing the form right, sounds a little more important than nailing the zones even. It's not worth swimming a sprint in Zone 5 or 6 if you're losing your form. It's not doing you any good. Would you rather, as a Coach, see a 60, 70, 75 TrainX score over a 90, but your athlete reports in the comments like, “Hey, yeah, I really focused on my form all the way through.” Or would you rather them, quote, unquote, ‘nail the session’? Matt?

Brandy Ramirez: No, form.

Matt Davies: Form. Form every single time with the swim. Because the speed will come. Swim improvements tend to be a little bit more sporadic. You'll have long periods where you feel like you're stagnating, and then you'll suddenly have jumps when everything just clicks. And that only comes from maintaining form. With the run and the bike, we tend to be a bit more linear in the way that we improve. If we're sticking to the workouts, and we're sticking to what we're doing, then we just see small improvement after small improvement as the body physiologically is changing. With the swim, people can get really frustrated because the harder they try, the more the form goes out the window. And, a bit like you were saying, you actually start getting slower. And you're like, “What's going on?” Form every time for me, always, absolutely, without doubt. Form is the key. And then you'll find that those eureka moments, when everything just clicks -- and one day you stop and look up at that wall clock -- because you're not looking at your watch or your FORM goggles, at least if you're working with me, you're not -- and you just look up and you're like, “Holy-” -- I was gonna swear. “Holy-something,” like—

Andrew Harley: Holy mackerel!

Matt Davies: That's the one. That's exactly what I was thinking. You look up, and you just think, “That didn't even feel that hard.” You've suddenly found that gear, and you found the feel of the water, and you've suddenly jumped on up. But that doesn't come when you just go in there and thrash. If anything, you find that you're going slower.

Andrew Harley: Now, Brandi, that's something that we hear from pool school athletes all the time, right? Is that they come in, and they've recorded their 100 pace before pool school. They go through the motions of all the pre-homework that they get before pool school. They have the two days with you coaches on deck. And at the end of pool school, not only are they clocking a faster 100, but they're looking at you guys and saying, “That felt easier than the 100 I had coming in.” Right?

Brandy Ramirez: Exactly. If you work on that form, and you correct your form, you're going to have a more efficient swim. You're going to feel better about yourself. Your heart rate is going to be lower because you're swimming more efficiently. So form is key to every single thing. The improvements at pool school, that's exactly what it's from. It's not from going faster; it's from improving your form, which creates you being faster. So if you want to get faster, you have to focus on that form. It's key. If you go to your sessions, and you're practicing form in the slower zones, but then when you hit those higher zones, you revert back to your old form -- you're not going to improve because you're constantly going to revert back to that old form. So if you have a poor form to start with, and you're working on it, to improve it, you have to create that muscle memory. That means continuing it over any zone that you're hitting. That form is key.

Andrew Harley: Now, Matt, something that's unique to swim workouts as opposed to running, bike workouts -- all workouts have harder intervals and then rests, and harder intervals and then rests. In our running and our biking, that ‘rest’ is most often at a jog or at a slower bike effort -- sometimes you might walk during a run workout. But in swimming, we are given a certain amount of time that we are to remain on the wall -- not swimming -- in between our intervals. Now, depending on your workout, you can be given minutes at a time. Particularly, if you have a CSS test, you're told sit there for ten minutes before you do your next interval. But usually it's 10-seconds, 20 seconds, sometimes 30, 40 seconds -- depending on the interval, depending on the athlete, depending on the workout. But in that time that we're on the wall recovering, gearing up for that next interval, what do you tell an athlete to focus on and to do to improve our odds of nailing the upcoming interval? Or do you just chill out? Am I overthinking it here? Talk to me.

Matt Davies: Maybe we should have more 10-second, 20-second, 30-second intervals where we just completely stop biking and running. That would be nice.

Andrew Harley: Sounds good.

Matt Davies: Basically, it very much varies athlete by athlete. If there's an athlete that's particularly working on a certain thing in their form -- one thing that we do at pool school, once people have started to pick up whatever the improvement we've got them working on, we ask them to count how many times throughout the length when you've got it wrong. Because that's that conscious competency model, where we start off being completely blissfully unaware that we're utterly useless. Then at pool school, we start to show them how bad they are, and they become aware of how useless they are. Then we try and fix it and get them doing it right, but very aware that they're doing it right. They're really having to consciously think about it, and eventually, they spit out at the other end, where they're completely unaware that they're now doing it correctly. So if you've got athletes that are in between stage two and three, and they're really working on something specifically, then that 10-, 20-second break, just think through that last length. How many times did I breathe correctly? How many times did I actually find that pocket of air when I went for a breath? How many times did my hand entry drift back over and be coming in in the middle? So just trying to rethink through the length. The time goes pretty quickly when it's only 10 seconds. If you're swimming at harder paces, 10 seconds goes pretty quick, right? So we haven't got a lot of time. If you're working on a particular part of your form, just check in and think, “Did I nail it that length? What do I need to do differently?” And 10 seconds goes like that, so that's probably all the time you've got.

Andrew Harley: I'm so bad, Matt, at cheating about that. If it's just me in the pool, and there's no one else around, and there's no TriDot buddies working out with me, I'm so bad at -- you got your Garmin watch in swim mode. So you click the button to kick it to the rest break, and it's showing you the time of your rest break. It comes up to ten seconds, and I've got to go back into Zone 4 again for another 200, and I'm not ready. I'm not in the least bit ready. I will negotiate with myself. “Just take five more seconds; just take ten more seconds.” When you're there with a buddy -- or you put your FORM Goggles on, and you've pushed the workout to your goggles. That's part of, honestly, a benefit for me for the FORM Goggles -- that I need that accountability of -- the FORM Goggles are not going to pause. It's going to kick me into the next interval, so I got to go. That's an important thing, when we talk about how TriDot designs training. The exact amount of seconds you have on the wall is the amount for a reason. If you're like me, and you negotiate a slightly longer rest period for yourself for reasons X, Y and Z, you are cheapening the quality of what that workout should be for yourself. So don't do that. Don't be like me. Be more disciplined than me. Be like Matt. Brandy, something we haven't talked about -- before we move on to our last question of the main set -- I want to talk about pool length for a second. Little trivia fact -- I'll go and say this little trivia fact. If you don't know this about TriDot -- and you've been using it for a while -- the way we program training, what really matters is the amount of time you're spending in a particular zone. For a pool workout, you are being prescribed 200 meters at this pace, 100 meters at this pace, 50 meters at this pace. It doesn't matter to TriDot that you went 50 meters, or 100 meters, or 200 meters. What matters to TriDot is that you spent a certain amount of time in that zone. And so it's calculating, “Oh, we want Andrew to be at this pace for two minutes. He's got to swim 100 meters to do that.” So it's actually giving you distance to keep you in the right zone for a certain amount of time. Slight trivia aside, just saying that in case somebody out there finds it interesting. But, Brandy, for our athletes, some of them, their pool down the road might be 25 yards. It might be 25 meters. It might be 33 meters. It might be 15 meters. What do people need to do to make sure they're letting TriDot know this is the length of my pool, so that they can get these intervals right?

Brandy Ramirez: So one thing that you could do in your watch, obviously, is change the distance of your pool. So that's huge. When you change the distance of your pool in your watch, the calculations will come into TriDot the way that they're supposed to. Your watch is going to start calculating you at a 33-yard pool, or a 15-yard pool. So that's massively important -- to make sure that you're using the right equipment, and that you understand the equipment and putting the information in correctly. And then you have to break it down. It becomes math, right? You're supposed to be doing 50 yards, or 100 yards; you have to convert that math and do that for yourself. I do want to jump back though, real quick, to what you guys were talking about with the 10-second intervals and the time on the wall. What is so key for me and my athletes with that break on the wall is that you're using that break the way that you should be. For me, that ten seconds is a recovery, right? So when you come into that ten seconds, I want you taking deep breaths and exhaling, not just sucking the air in. Because when you inhale, you shoot your heart rate up higher. When you're holding your breath, your heart rate is going to skyrocket. So what I want my athletes to do is completely exhale the lungs and bring that HR back down. That is a recovery moment that you're supposed to be doing in that 10-second rest. And where it becomes so important on race day is, when you are so much faster now, you want to pass somebody. So let's say you, Andrew, for example, you're faster in your swim, and you're wanting to pass the person in front of you. You don't want to keep--

Andrew Harley: I'm going to pass Matt. I’m going to pass Matt Davies.

Brandy Ramirez: You guys are in that position where you guys keep hitting each other.

Andrew Harley: I've been riding his feet, I'm on his feet, and he's slowing me down. I got a buoy coming up I want to get around.

Brandy Ramirez: And so what you need to do, is you need to teach the body to accelerate and recover. And that's what that moment in the wall is. You've just done this hard lap, and now you have a 10-second recovery. You're training your heart, you're training your body, to recover in that ten seconds. And so if you're cheating on that wall, Andrew, your body is going to need a little bit more time in that recovery, right? And you don't want to do that.

Andrew Harley: Then I can't pass Matt. Then I can't pass Matt.

Brandy Ramirez: You can’t pass Matt. You're going to try and your body's going to be like, “No.” Or you do pass him, and then your body doesn't recover enough, so then Matt passes you again. So then you have this back and forth in the water, and you don't want that. It's so important that you do follow that recovery. And when you come into that wall, you allow the body to recover. You exhale; you bring the heart rate back down. You get the body ready to be explosive again off the wall and finish those intervals. So please, don't be an Andrew, and don't cheat yourself at five seconds, or whatever it might be. Teach the body to recover the way that it is supposed to be recovering, so that you can get back into that efficiency and to be able to hit those zones a little bit harder.

Andrew Harley: Matt's going to pass me back. He's going to drop me, and I'm going to get taken to the depths of the sea by an octopus, and it's race over. Race is over.

Matt Davies: I'm going to save it till the run, mate. I'll run you down.

Andrew Harley: One thing, Brandy -- fantastic Brandy, really good point there, that I'm glad we got to -- 56 minutes into the conversation, for the people that are still hanging out with us. But let's talk about breath for just a moment, before we move on to the cool down, because I've seen athletes ask this quite a bit over the years in different forums. Some people are bilateral breathers, and they'll breathe every three strokes -- so they're evenly doing both sides. Some athletes want the maximum amount of oxygen at each zone, so no matter what, they're breathing every stroke to their preferred side, or vice versa. Some athletes don't want to break up their rhythm as often, and so they'll go four strokes, five strokes, six strokes in between breaths. Is this a personal preference thing, or is there a physiological benefit to getting more oxygen in certain zones? What do you guys think about -- is there a point in playing with how often we're breathing based on what training zone we're in? Who wants to jump in on this one?

Brandy Ramirez: I'll jump in on that. There's a huge benefit to this. There's a lot to this question, Andrew, so I love this question. So definitely -- we are endurance athletes, right? We're swimming a 1.2, or a 2.4. We're swimming longer distances, so having the endurance means making sure the body is recovering and we have enough breath. For me, I'm so keen on, like I said in the beginning, when you push off on the left, I'm going to breathe to the left. At the wall, I'm going to come back, I'm going to breathe on the right. This teaches me to be able to breathe to either side, and there's a few reasons why I want that. I want my athletes breathing to the same side every time when it comes to race day. Now, not every racecourse is a left-sided breathing course. So if you're only breathing to the left side, and it's a right-sided breathing course -- meaning look at your course, pull up that map on IRONMAN, and follow the arrows. Whichever way you're turning, that is the course you're breathing to. So if it's a left-sided breathing course -- meaning you're making a left-hand turn on race day, every day, that's a left-handed breathing course. You want to be able to breathe to the left. You want to be able to do it every time. Oxygen in the body lowers the heart rate, makes you more efficient, rather than holding your breath for every third. Okay? Especially for people who are new to swimming, because you're a little bit nervous -- you're getting in that water, your HR is already a little bit elevated. You need to learn to exhale completely, bring the HR down, bring yourself so that you're centered -- so that you start off nice and slow -- and you can pick that pace up as you go. Now, if you are breathing to the course map -- so breathing to the left, if you're making left-handed turns -- you don't have to be on that inside lane. You can be a little bit out, which is where I personally like to swim. And I'm a strong swimmer -- I'm a SoCal girl, I'm a surfer -- but I like to swim a little bit away from that inside lane. And guess what I'm going to do? I'm going to cheat a little, because I'm going to spot off of all the other swimmers that are over here, right? So there's so many different things to it. If you pull up that course map, and you're making nothing but right handed turns, it's a right-handed breathing course. So now when you get into the water, you want to be breathing to the right. So don't handicap yourself by only being able to breathe to one side, because if you're breathing to the opposite side on race day, it's going to help push you off-course if you're not swimming in a straight line. So there's so much to that breath. There's so many avenues, so many angles. Your breath is life. It is key to your swim. And definitely, it can also help you know what zone you're in. How much air are you trying to get? That typically tells you how hard you are swimming.

Andrew Harley: Wow, yeah. Are you desperate for that air or are you comfortable?

Brandy Ramirez: You can cross-train with that. So when you're running, turn your AirPods off -- or whatever music you're listening to. If you're pushing in a Zone 4, what does your breathing feel like and sound like? Get used to those as they work in synchronicity with each other. And now, when you're in the water, what does your breath feel like and sound like when you're pushing in a Zone 3 and a Zone 4? It's a good way to kind of know where you're at and to know your body.

Andrew Harley: Yeah. So in our training sessions, you would be a proponent of breathing as often as you can. Coach Matt, anything to add?

Matt Davies: Mix it up a little bit, because -- come race day when the madness is happening, and you are getting battered by bodies left, right, and center, and goggles kicked off your face, and the rest of it -- there will be times when you go for a breath. If you are metronomically in the pool, where, “I only ever breathe every three strokes, alternate sides,” whatever it is you do -- come race day, something will happen. Something will throw you off your normal rhythm. If you're not down with that, you can panic and go into it. If you're a particularly strong swimmer, you can go into that panic mode really, really quickly. So if you go to catch a breath, and a wave slaps you in the face and you just don't get there -- any of these little things can throw non-, or weaker, swimmers off, so get used to, “What does it feel like if I go five strokes, or seven strokes, or nine strokes -- for a few lengths -- when I'm not breathing?” Because there will be times on race day when it doesn't go to plan, quite. So making sure that you've done a bit of variety in your swimming, as well. Breathe just to one side. Breathe just to the other side. Breathe both sides. Do mix it up during training. The more you do that during your training, the less it's going to come and bite you on the backside when you get to race day.

Brandy Ramirez: And to that as well, if you can get two or three people to share a lane with you -- kind of create that open water, feel that wave. There's plenty of times where you are going to have somebody -- they're going to throw water in your mouth, and if you can simulate that in a pool, where you're safe, and you just -- you take it, and you blow it out, and you keep calm, and you just keep swimming -- it's going to be so beneficial come race day.

[Transition Sound Effect]

Andrew Harley: On to the Cool Down of today's show where I'm going to ask our coaches a question from the audience. This question comes from Diana, and she says, “The community center I swim at has lap lanes indoors and lap lanes outdoors.” Good for you Diana. What a treat. She said, “I know for bike and run workouts, I should tell TriDot when I train inside instead of outside, and vice versa. But what about the swim? Does TriDot need to know when I choose to swim outside?” Coach Brandy?

Brandy Ramirez: I say yes, absolutely. We do need to know when you swim outside. So if you can change that, absolutely change it. The outside temperature, here for me in Arizona -- I'm in a gym; it's going to be 80 degrees inside the gym. If I'm outside, it's going to be 120. Those are important variables that we need to know about, the platform needs to know about, for your data.

Announcer: Thanks for listening to the TriDot Podcast. Help us out by leaving a rating and review on your listening platform of choice. For more opportunities to learn from our coaches, check out our YouTube channel and follow @TriDotTraining on social. Ready to train with us? Head to tridot.com and get started for free. Until next time. Happy training

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