Hi guys,

I am 29 years old, and I recently watched an episode of Scrubs where JD wanted to complete a triathlon before he turns 30.
Now I also want to complete a triathlon, but I am really not a great swimmer.
I think the running part and the cycling part should be feasible, but I’m scared of the swimming:D.
Do any one of you know how to train properly for a triathlon?
I’m thankful for any help 🙂

What sort of triathlon? Pool swim, open water, or sea? I actually preferred the open water stuff and never considered myself a swimmer

Join a club and take some swimming lessons. If you really want to do it alone (bad idea; join a club!) hit Youtube, there are loads of triathlon channels with decent advice on them.

But really: join a club. Most of them accept beginners and are (IME) pretty friendly.

The swimming part should be at a pool. I think that’s better for me because I would be scared of getting a cramp at open water :O

Okay thanks for the advice mogrim:)
I never thought of joining a club before, but maybe it is the right decision:)
I’ll definitely check out some youtube channels thanks:D

Full Olympic Tri or sprint Tri?

I think there’s something called “Go Tri” which are entry events, and a lot of tri clubs support training for them.

But definitely look for a local tri club for support and especially swim coaching. If it’s just the swim that’s the issue, see if you can get some lessons at a local pool if you don’t fancy the whole club thing.

A few friends are involved in triathlon and one used to be a kids tri coach – they do seem to be a friendly bunch at the lower, non competitive end.

Watch lots of vids of 1500m freestyle from various Olympics. Having spent over 20 years in triathlon clubs, triathlon swimmers (and swim trainers) have this strange idea that if they make their muscles and tendons ache swimming with paddles and replace an efficient two-beat or four-beat kick with a pull-bouy they’ll progress. Most just need to learn to swim efficiently and economically – me included.

I was in a similar position to you when I first got into triathlon. My local pool ran improver lessons, basically adult swimming lessons. We had a group of about 6 and each week spent an hour getting instruction on form, drills to practice, etc. It was quite generic and covered all of the strokes, but was perfect for me at that time. I would supplement with one or two one hour sessions on my own each week where I would practice what I’d learnt.

After about 2 months of that I joined a tri club and went to their swim sessions. If you are not a great swimmer at the moment I would recommend you DON’T join a club yet. Admittedly this was 15 years ago before tri got mainstream, and I stopped about 5 years ago, so perhaps they are more accommodating these days, but the club I joined was pretty full on and I wouldn’t have wanted to be learning basic form while trying to keep up with the drills we were put through.

Depending what you want to achieve, I’d highly recommend starting with a super sprint tri (400m swim, 20km bike, 5km run) or a sprint (800m swim, 20km bike, 5km, run). Once you get going, either of those are great warm up events at the start of the season.

If you opt to train on your own, include brick training so that your body can get used to going from one discipline to the next. Bike to run is particularly hard sometimes, and the easiest to train for.

Do a novice triathlon, read up on brick training, accept the swim is gonna be a struggle, and enjoy.

I’m 16st and always thought I couldn’t run, swimming was just something for holidays. I did a few sprint Tri’s a couple of years ago with the intention of doing a full Tri, training for those was easy really. Just go to the pool and swim a few times a weel, do some running 5k’s then upto 10k’s and ride your bike fast. If you know you can do the distances and more putting them together isn’t to bad. I wasn’t trying to win the thing, just not come last.

I ramped it up to get to a point where I could do a full tri, more swimming and running, bike bit is the easy bit for me, felt like I could and entered one. Then Covid came and screwed it up. I’m now fat and unfit again and need to get arse into gear.

Enter a Triathlon, you don’t have an excuse not to train then!!

Thanks for your helpful advice guys!
I really appreciate it:)
I’ll just sign up for a triathlon, then there won’t be any excuse for not attending.
Especially when money is involved.

I was in a similar situation 10 years ago, wanting to try Tri but swimming being my weak point in every sense. I went to “Masters” classes, which were essentially 45 minutes of various pyramids to increase fitness. I’m sure it made a big difference, but I didn’t feel like a “swimmer”.

Then a pal, a good swimmer, gave me a very brief technique lesson and that helped immensely. There’s way more to the technique than he taught me, but I went from struggling to swim 100m crawl to being able to swim a half mile or more.

This is the technique, I haven’t watched anything on YouTube myself.

@charlie123 I cannot recommend enough that you look for a tri club where you are. This is the perfect time to start learning swimming with them in a pool and to get ready for the race. It made a huge difference for me when I did mine.

They will also be able to give you advice on what you should be doing for training too. My memory of training from my tri days is vague, but I was running three times a week, doing crossfit four times a week and swimming at least once a week in the pool. Cycling was just stuff that happened when the weather was good.

If you are not a great swimmer at the moment I would recommend you DON’T join a club yet.

That’s not my experience with the clubs I’ve been in, they’ve both been pretty welcoming of people who aren’t that good at swimming. (They’re not going to teach you how to swim, you’ll need to be able to be able to do a couple of lengths of crawl without drowning, but beyond that there certainly wasn’t any minimum standard or similar).

But if you really aren’t that confident in the pool then normal swimming group classes at your local pool would certainly be a decent start.

Another advantage of joining a club is you’ll probably have clubmates with you on the day itself, and they can help you with all the rest of it – what kit you’ll need, where to leave it, how transitions work etc. None of it is exactly rocket science, but it’s a lot easier if you’ve got someone to explain it.

Triathlons are just sooooo 2010 daahling, it’s all about ultramarathons and open water swimming these days 😉

Join your local Tri club.

If you want to improve your swimming, get some coaching in Total Immersion or Swim Smooth.

I started in 1992. It was a mix of ex-somethings. We met the same people ski-mountaineering as down the pool or on the start line of a marathon. Our Bikes were standard roadies to start with, then I bought a Look KG196 monoblade to join the aero trend and aero bars. It was so amateurish that I got a qualification for the French national Olympic distance championships with a reasonable finish regionally.

Then it became an Olympic sport with all that implies in terms of training pharma and money. I continued with the Winter traithlons but just treated the Summer events as training. I’m pretty sure I’d take no interest in it today, there are so many other things to do. So sadly I agree with you IHN. Many a true word in jest.

I was in a similar position around 15 years ago. I’m used the Total Immersion book to re-teach myself how to swim, along with attending a couple of beginners open water sessions run by a club at a local lake.

On a general note triathlon training can be pretty time consuming, which is why I stopped. There are free training plans on the 220 Triathlon website which would be a reasonable place to start. Don’t neglect the ‘brick’ sessions – running straight off the bike will feel really odd to start with.

In spite of never doing a Triathlon myself I ended up managing\coaching a friend.

He was a great runner but a hopeless cyclist and average swimmer.

He came to me for cycling advice so I built him a tri bike and worked on his TT position whilst also taking him out riding both on and off-road to develop his skills.

He did swim training with the local triathlon club, ran with the running club and, eventually did TTs with the cycling club.

We worked really hard on his transitions. Saving a minute in transition is a lot easier than running a minute faster over 5k.

Cycling is the largest segment (time wise) of the race and also the most technical so you can improve the most in that discipline. We built up a well fitted TT bike and added aero wheels from China and a TT helmet which have a measurable advantage for reasonable cost. He was flexible enough to get into a really good aero position too.

After a couple of years he went from an average triathlete who ran well to a very strong all-round racer with a very fast bike split and won the season long regional sprint championship.

Oh – he was about the same age as the OP when he started. 29 or 30.

Then it became an Olympic sport with all that implies in terms of training pharma and money. I continued with the Winter traithlons but just treated the Summer events as training. I’m pretty sure I’d take no interest in it today, there are so many other things to do. So sadly I agree with you IHN. Many a true word in jest.

I think that’s overly harsh – at the top end it may be a lot less amateur now than it was back in 2000, but at the bottom end it’s still a welcoming sport and one I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend. I’ve done quite a few now, and I’m very much a mid-pack finisher, and I don’t recall a bad experience I could put down to other people’s attitudes or similar.

I started off with a Sprint Triathlon thinking I could handle it, before I knew it I was on the start line for Ironman Austria 🙂

Its a great sport and most clubs are really friendly a lot have loads of beginners and even people who don’t compete but like a bit of swim, bike run.

If you can do a length of a pool you would have been welcome at my clubs swim sessions.

I would say if you are reasonably fit at your age you could probably bash out a sprint Tri with a pool based swim tomorrow.

British tri seem to favour swim smooth over total immersion as a training framework.

I stopped due to the fact I never had time to do anything else when Ironman training, probably fittest I have ever been though.

I used do a lot of off road Duathlons, which were Run / Bike / Run.

I used to train for that by Cycling to Parkrun then doing a 10km ride straight from finish line and doing another 5km run after that.

Do not underestimate how weird / hard it is going straight from one discipline to the next.

Also everyone I know who did Tri’s was in a club and loved it.

Good luck, have fun and don’t faff in transition.

Triathlon is also a really good excuse to buy more stuff!

That’s not my experience with the clubs I’ve been in, they’ve both been pretty welcoming of people who aren’t that good at swimming. (They’re not going to teach you how to swim, you’ll need to be able to be able to do a couple of lengths of crawl without drowning, but beyond that there certainly wasn’t any minimum standard or similar).

That’s why I said yet. When I started I could swim two lengths but my technique was so poor I was done after that. A couple of months learning and practicing technique, while also building swimming fitness, made a huge difference. The club I joined was very welcoming, but the swim training was in a 50m pool and while I started out slower than everyone else I could at least survive a session (mostly).

Thanks for sharing your experiences guys. This really motivates me.
I’ll try my best 😀

We all have different experiences, Mogrim. I quit the club (along with the president) when it went through a bad patch at the pool with agressive swimming from some new recruits. One member was taken to hospital for stitches in a gash in his face from a paddle, I got clobbered by an errant swimmer, got out of the water and never went back – after over 20 years. Apparently things have improved, I often swim in the next line to them and haven’t seen any blood or heard any shouting matches recently. It seems to have calmed down again, as IHN noted – “Triathlons are just sooooo 2010 daahling”.

It’s a sport that does attract a particular clientel now. Check out the car park at a triathlon, it used to be Kangoos and Renault Express, now it’s Audis and SUVs. Is there a sport that’s more attractive to the monster ego “all the gear, no idea” with attitude?

In 2021, trail running and ski de rando are the go to sports in these parts. Oh and those mountain bikes that make a funny noise.

Here’s a pinch of salt to take that with .::.

I am an entirely self-taught swimmer (well, I got as far as Grade 3 in primary school – they didn’t even trust me to fetch a brick from the bottom of the pool).

In my late 20s/early 30s I had a good crack at triathlon and got down to 5m40s for 400m / 22m36s for 1500m.

Mainly taught myself via the Total Immersion book and Youtube videos.

Do not underestimate how weird / hard it is going straight from one discipline to the next.

– You trot out of the pool and find that you can’t put a jersey/tri-top/whatever on a wet torso. The velcro straps on your shoes, which were carefully opened an hour ago, are now twisted around each other. Your helmet straps have made a knot for the first time ever. You’ve never realised how much you need somebody else to help you dress properly.

– Jump on the bike, accelerate, and….judging by the cramp in your shoulders you should have spent more time getting used to the tri-bars shouldn’t you? And, a few minutes later, you realise that you should have spent some time tightening the tri-bars up properly. You manage to pull to side of the road with the bars pointing at your front wheel.

– Into transition, are you allowed to run? Trot? Sexy walk? It’s a really short final run leg so you decide you can do it in your cleatted shoes. 10m later you’re into your trainers. Your feet are still soaked and it takes 4 x longer than normal to put these on.

– the Bambi point, referred to above. Since when don’t your legs move properly after a bike ride? Maybe, when they start working, you’ll be able to overtake that bloke who passed you earlier with a basket on the front his bike..

Had it been early in the year I would have said to just find a super-sprint, do no extra training and just see if you enjoy it enough to want to do more and take it seriously. I’d honestly say most people here could do one with very little outlay for extra kit or specific training.

Absolutely get swim lessons. Swimfortri in London are great but plenty of other good coaches elsewhere and it seems easier these days to get lessons/coaching as an adult. They taught my wife to swim from scratch and she’s way better than me with decades of bad habits.

Otherwise, main thing IMO is training different disciplines together. Swim to bike isn’t so bad but bike to run is painful if you’ve not done a lot of it.

Step one tell everyone

I did this a few years ago, signed up for an olympic distance tri having not swum in a non-holiday pool for probably 20 years then had to teach myself to swim over the course of 6 months. In retrospect I shoukd have joined clubs or got lessons but I time and money poor so it was pre work swims and youtube viewing for me.

If you are really awful at swimming then a pull bouy can help get you started I found. Was nice being able to be able to “swim” for 30 mins straight away rather than having to stop every 50 metres without one. There does quickly come a time when it starts to be more of a blocker to your learning than a help so be careful of that.

Learn how to breathe, that’s the first big one. Then I used to mix up a bit of real swimming with a few drills.

Catch ups – do a full stroke with one arm while the other waits at the top of the stroke, when the first arm gets round then do the same with the other arm. This teaches you to glide a bit.

Closed fist swimming – swim normally with you hands as closed fists, this teaches you to catch better with your elbows high

Finger tips in the water, swim normally but when you bring each hand out of the water by your thigh and bring it back up to the top keep your finger tips in the water, this teaches you not to muscle the return.

If you do all your training in a pool and the tri is open water then add some time in to do some sessions in open water to get used to it, it’s very different