The Complete Guide to Triathlon Swimming
Everything you need to nail the swim portion of your next triathlon

Triathlon Swimming 101: The Fundamentals

If you're new to swimming or returning after many years away from the water, your first goal shouldn't be speed, but simply finding your stroke and learning to be more comfortable in the water.

How to Start Training for a Triathlon Swim

There are a few ways you can get started. The first is to book a swimming lesson with a local swimming instructor or coach, preferably one who has experience working with adult learners or preparing athletes for triathlons. This person can orient you to the water, review your technique, and help you correct any deficiencies in your stroke.

If you're an adult-onset swimmer, spending some time with a knowledgeable coach who has experience working with adults learning to swim is even more critical in getting you off on the right foot.

And if you've avoided swimming or have a fear of the water, that can make starting out much more difficult. But instructors who are skilled in working with fearful adults can help you move beyond whatever is holding you back and help you quickly get up to speed in swimming.

How Fast Do I Need to Be?

Some triathlons have cut-off times for the swim, so you must be able to meet those if you want to finish a particular race. But generally speaking, it's OK to be a slow swimmer, and there's no universal measure of "fast enough" for triathlon.

This is great because for many athletes, the thrill of triathlon comes from completion, not winning. So don't despair if it takes you 3 or 4 minutes to swim 100 meters — you may still be able to make the cut-off time. (Be sure to check with event organizers before signing up to ensure you'll be able to meet their cut-off to finish the swim.)

It's worth noting, however, that the faster a swimmer you can become, the less time you'll spend on the swim portion of the race so you can get back on dry land to compete in the bike and run portions sooner.

And more important than speed is efficiency. If you can master open water efficiency, that will not only make you faster but will also help you preserve energy for the latter portions of the race.

How Much Stamina Do I Need for a Triathlon Swim?

If you're new to swimming and triathlon, you may want to wait until you can comfortably swim several hundred meters without stopping before signing up for an event. Whether it takes you 30 minutes to complete 500 meters or you can do it in 10 minutes, the point is that you need the stamina to just keep going for as long as the race will take.

After all, in open water, it's more difficult to stop and catch your breath than it is every 25 yards or 50 meters in the pool.

Common Triathlon Swim Training Mistakes

Working with a coach in a one-on-one setting or through a local Masters group can help you address common mistakes, which typically include:

• Racking up garbage yardage. Simply swimming longer or more isn't the best way to efficiently use your time in the pool. Instead, be  by following a structured plan with  at your level of experience. Incorporate drills and other strokes to prevent injury and develop all the muscles you need to be a stronger, faster swimmer.
• Avoiding coach feedback. Another common mistake is plowing ahead without ever getting feedback from a coach. Watching videos online can help you learn how to swim better, but there's no replacing working with someone directly who can watch your stroke and give you corrective feedback in real time. Bonus points if the coach can also provide you with video analysis of your stroke.
• Not taking the swim portion seriously. It's true that the swim is typically the shortest portion by time in any triathlon, but improving your swim has an outsized impact on improving your overall performance. It's also worth noting that the swim portion is where the bulk of triathlon deaths occur — upwards of 70% or more deaths occur when the athlete is in the water. Educate yourself on the risks and prepare accordingly.

The Best Freestyle Technique for Triathletes

Most triathletes rely primarily on freestyle in competition because it's the most efficient stroke for covering long distances. As you develop your swim technique, focus on the following key elements:

How Often Should Triathletes Breathe?

Learn to breathe bilaterally (to both sides). Many triathletes aim to breathe every third stroke to balance out their technique and rhythm. But breathing bilaterally also helps you be more agile on the course and allows you to swim around competitors or jockey for a more advantageous position on a turn buoy.

If there's wind, chop, or strong sunlight coming from one side, you can simply breathe to the other side to avoid it. Or if you have a kayaker or support boat alongside you and the pilot wants you in a particular place so they can see you, being able to breathe bilaterally makes staying with them much simpler.

Some coaches recommend using a 3-2 pattern where you alternate breathing every third and every second stroke on a five-stroke cycle to get more air in. Others say stick with every three or five strokes to maintain a nice balance from side to side. Practice with it and figure out what feels right for you.

No matter which specific pattern you land on, when breathing, be sure to continuously exhale when your face is in the water, as this makes it easier to take a quick sip of air when you turn your head to breathe. Avoid holding your breath and then gasping for as much air as possible at each breath; small sips and steady exhaling is the way to go when swimming longer distances in open water.

Should Triathletes Kick While Swimming?

Many newer swimmers think they have to produce a big, strong kick all the time to be a good swimmer. But employing a heavy, 6-beat, sprinting-style kick can be exhausting and can backfire in open water, where a lighter, easier kick helps preserve leg strength and energy for the bike and run portions of the race.

In training, work on improving your ankle flexibility and body position, so that your legs are at the surface and your ankles are floppy. This helps your feet grab more water as you kick. Your kick should originate from your hips and should be synced to your hip and shoulder rotation. Keeping a strong core and long body line will help you get the most efficiency out of each leg movement.

Keep your knees straight but not locked and keep your kick light and tight. Don't sink your legs or make big, splashy, scissor movements with them, as that wastes energy without providing much additional propulsion.

What Triathletes Should Focus on During Their Catch and Arm Recovery

The catch — that's the moment when your hand and forearm grip the water at the front of your stroke and begin  your hand back toward your hip — provides the bulk of your propulsion. But this doesn't mean that all your power is coming from your arms or hands.

Indeed, the best freestylers derive much of their power by connecting the catch to their hip movement to thrust the body forward while pulling their hand back. It's difficult to explain in writing, but a good Masters coach can walk you through what it means to sync hip and shoulder rotation and connect your core to your catch. All of these actions improve efficiency and can make you a faster swimmer with more stamina.

Although your catch is the engine of your stroke, recovery is an important moment when you can relax your arm muscles and conserve energy. Keep your shoulders down away from your ears and relaxed as you bring the arm up and over the water so you'll have more energy to power your next stroke.

What Triathletes Should Know About Their Body Position While Swimming

Good body position starts with your head. When you put your face in, the waterline should be at your hairline. Your eyes should be looking down and slightly forward. You don't want to hyper-extend your back and look forward too much, as this can put a lot of strain on your neck, shoulders, and upper back.

Keep your body line long and sleek — think streamline at all times — and keep your hips high in the water. Your legs should be relaxed and straight, but not locked, and you want your feet to gently break the surface as you kick. Keeping your body in a stable position at the top of the water will help you preserve energy for longer swimming and the rest of the race.

And keep in mind that if you're going to be wearing a wetsuit in open water, this can completely alter your body position. All that neoprene makes your feet and hips more buoyant, which can bring them closer to the surface. If you already have good body position in the pool without a wetsuit, this can cause your back to hyper-extend, which can become uncomfortable over many meters or miles.

The best way to adjust to wearing a wetsuit is to simply practice with it as much as possible. In time, you'll learn how to adjust your body position to account for the added buoyancy a wetsuit offers.

Most Efficient Freestyle for Different Conditions

The type of freestyle stroke you use can also vary depending on where and how you're swimming. Many open water swimmers use a distinctly different stroke from what pool swimmers employ because open water swimmers are looking to adjust for chop, wind, waves, and other challenges that simply don't exist in the pool.

This means you'll need to experiment with what feels right for the conditions on any given day. The best way to do that is to practice in all sorts of conditions. Although you don't want to go out in unsafe conditions, getting out on breezy days and learning to combat changing tides or currents can help you become a much more confident and stronger open water swimmer.

In smooth conditions, stretch out and capitalize on the glide phase of the stroke. On choppier days, shorten your stroke to increase turnover and prevent the waves from stealing your pull. Again, learning to breathe bilaterally is important for adjusting your stroke for the conditions and staying comfortable no matter what Mother Nature throws at you.

How to Train for the Triathlon Swim (Pool Workouts That Actually Work)

When it comes to the specifics of developing a training plan, you're likely best served by talking with a Masters coach who works with triathletes to develop a plan. But if you're working on your own, here are some basic guidelines for how to train for a triathlon swim.

Triathlon Swim Distances by Race Type

First, let's unpack the standard distances for triathlon. Here's what you're looking at in terms of total distance for some of the most popular triathlon formats.

How to Get Faster in the Triathlon Swim

Swimming is an especially challenging discipline because it's so technique-dependent. This means that the harder you work — i.e., the more you try to muscle your way through the water — the slower you may get.

This seemingly paradoxical situation can be frustrating for people more accustomed to land-based sports. Learning to refine technique takes a lot of time, patience, and often the input of a skilled coach.

Often, the best swimmers are those who got started much earlier in life; it can be difficult (but not impossible!) to become a truly great swimmer if you're coming to the discipline later in life.

All that said, there are some things you can work on that will significantly improve your swim time no matter when you arrive in the sport or what your innate strengths are.

Fitness vs. Technique

Naturally, being fitter can translate to getting faster to some degree, but because technique is such an important piece of the puzzle, swimmers with lower levels of cardiovascular fitness can still keep up with fitter swimmers who don't have highly refined technique. Because drag can slow you down drastically, develop good body position and technique to speed up your swim while helping prevent injury.

Stroke Rate vs. Stroke Length

How many strokes you take per minute is an important consideration in open water swimming. Distance per stroke is also important — the farther you can travel with each stroke, the fewer strokes you'll have to take over the span of the race, which can help with wear-and-tear on your shoulders over time.

What's more, simply increasing your stroke rate without maintaining distance per stroke will burn more energy without increasing how quickly you're swimming. So you want to dial in on the most efficient stroke at a comfortably sustainable turnover rate for your body.

This number will vary for each athlete but typically ranges between 50 and 70 strokes per minute. Taller swimmers with long limbs may have a slower stroke rate and shorter swimmers may have a higher turnover, but there's no hard-and-fast rule.

Why Should Triathletes Reduce Drag?

Also called fluid resistance, drag is the mechanical force that opposes an object's motion through a gas or liquid. For a swimmer, drag can take a number of forms, from a bulky swimsuit that gaps and collects excess water to feet that ride too low in the water, effectively slamming the brakes on your forward progress.

Because water is nearly 800 times denser than air, even minor flaws in technique can cause significant resistance. If your head is too high, your hips are too low, or your arm crosses over your centerline on your recovery, you're generating more drag than you should be, and no amount of conditioning training can erase those issues. Reducing drag means focusing on being streamlined at all times and correcting technique to make your bodyline long and lean.

Why Is Interval Training So Important for Triathletes?

Interval training is key to improving your speed and stamina as a swimmer. USMS offers many coach-written interval workouts specifically designed for triathletes, so if you're a USMS member, you can just download and go. There are also many triathlon-specific articles at usms.org that can get you started, including articles with interval-training workouts.

Essential Triathlon Swim Gear Guide

Many triathletes have a real love of the latest gear and gadgets, and the swim portion brings some significant items to add to your bag. From wetsuits to goggles, here are the tools you'll need to get faster in the swim portion of your triathlon.

Triathlon Wetsuit Rules: When Can You Wear One?

Although many triathletes prefer to wear a wetsuit when training in open water, whether you can wear it on race day depends on the water temperature.

stipulate that age-group athletes competing in national championships and World Triathlon qualifying races are prohibited from wearing a wetsuit when the water is 76.2 degrees Fahrenheit or warmer. Wetsuits become mandatory when the water is 60.6 degrees Fahrenheit or colder.

For all other races, wetsuits are prohibited when the water is 84 degrees Fahrenheit and above, and become mandatory when the water is 60.6 degrees Fahrenheit or colder.

Between 78.1 degrees Fahrenheit and 83.9 degrees Fahrenheit, wetsuits are usually allowed, but anyone who wears one is ineligible for age-group awards. Between 60.7 and 78 degrees Fahrenheit, wetsuits are permitted, meaning that there's no restriction on their use but you don't have to wear one.

Check with the organizer of the race you're considering to understand what their specific requirements are, as they may prohibit wetsuits or make their use mandatory according to a different scale.

USAT also limits the thickness of the suit to 5 millimeters or less. Thicker neoprene adds more buoyancy, which can translate to a speed advantage.

It's that added buoyancy that makes wetsuits so attractive to many triathletes, particularly those who have a limited swimming background. Adding a wetsuit can significantly improve your swim speed and make keeping a good bodyline easier.

Wetsuits, however, can be constrictive and have been associated with an elevated risk of , a potentially dangerous respiratory condition that could land you in the hospital. It happens when blood and fluid enter a person's lungs and disrupt their body's ability to pull oxygen from the air.

One key to avoiding this complication is finding a wetsuit that fits properly. A wetsuit that's too tight can increase your risk of developing SIPE. Look for a wetsuit that feels snug with no trapped air pockets and that doesn't scoop water, but allows you to breathe deeply and permits full range of motion in your arms and shoulders.

Other Types of Swimsuits for Triathlons (Swim Skins, Tech Suits)

When the water is too warm for a wetsuit, you'll likely resort to a regular textile swimsuit or tech suit, or a tri-skin. Also called a triathlon skinsuit, tri-skins are thin, sleek, non-neoprene jumpsuits that don't add buoyancy but can reduce drag and repel water better than a conventional textile swimsuit. You can wear them for the entire event without having to change, as they dry quickly and the legs can reduce chafing on the bike and run.

Swim skins are usually legal for use in nonwetsuit conditions or where full wetsuits aren't permitted because of the water temperature. But again, check with the race director to ensure whatever you're planning to wear meets the race requirements and won't disqualify you.

What Should Triathletes Know About Goggles

One of the trickier pieces of kit to find the perfect fit for is goggles. There are a wide range of types and styles on the market; some have thick foam gaskets while others have no gaskets at all; some are boxy like a scuba mask, while others are slim to reduce drag in the water.

aim to offer you a wider field of vision than conventional pool racing goggles so you can see competitors around you and farther down the course to navigate. But the key is to try a bunch of different types of goggles to find what feels comfortable for your face.

It's also important to find goggles that keep a tight seal to prevent water intrusion but that don't press too hard on the delicate skin around the eyes to cause bruising or swelling. You may have to try several different kinds until you find the right pair for you.

What Training Tools Should Triathletes Have for Swimming?

Other training tools you may want to pick up to help you get the hang of swimming faster include:

• Hand paddles, to help build upper body strength and feel for the water
• A pull buoy, to mimic the buoyancy you get from a wetsuit and isolate upper-body muscular development
• Fins, to build leg strength and support kick and body-position drills
• A center-mount snorkel, to eliminate the need to turn your head to breathe. A snorkel can help you improve your body position and reduce strain on your neck
• Buoyancy shorts, a jammer-style garment that provides buoyancy for your hips and legs
• A Tempo Trainer, a metronome device that you can sync your stroke rate to
• A tow float, to make you more visible and safer in open water
• A GPS watch, to track your distance, heart rate, and other metrics so you can track your fitness improvement over time

Open Water Skills Every Triathlete Must Learn: Sighting, Navigating, Drafting, and Pacing

Swimming in open water requires a range of skills that you don't need in a pool. From sighting and learning to swim straight so you don't add excess yardage, here are the skills you need to develop for a faster, more efficient, and safer experience in open water.

What Triathletes Should Know About Sighting

Learning to sight — briefly looking ahead to scan for hazards and to ensure you're still on track to your preferred destination — is one of the most important, foundational skills you can develop for open water. Bad sighting can add significant time and distance to any swim.

It takes some practice to get comfortable with the maneuver, but sighting consists of simply lifting your eyes above the waterline to glance ahead. The less you can raise your whole head while doing this the better; raising your head or shoulders inevitably drops your hips and feet and creates excess drag.

Some swimmers practice what's referred to as alligator eyes, in which they glance forward just after completing a breath, keeping only their eyes above the waterline briefly. This smooth, single movement can reduce how much your feet drop, but it does require practice and a good sense of timing.

How often you need to sight will depend on conditions on the day, how competitive you're hoping to be, and whether there are hazards on the course such as floating logs or boats. The more hazards you may encounter, the more often you should sight.

If you have a kayak alongside you or are swimming in a pack, you may not need to sight as often — provided you can trust that the support person or the other swimmers are on the right track.

What Should Triathletes Know About Navigating So They Can Swim Straight?

Staying on course and not meandering off the shortest path of travel is always the name of the game in open water swimming. The more you drift off the straight line, the more time and distance you add to your swim. But with no lane lines to keep you hemmed in and no black line beneath you to follow, swimming straight becomes a much more challenging endeavor.

Sighting more often can help you stay on that straight line, but so can tinkering with your technique so that you swim straight rather than pulling to one side or the other.

Most swimmers have a side they naturally drift or pull toward, and you can test this by swimming with your eyes closed in a pool or open water for about 20 strokes and checking where you started versus where you ended up. Be sure to do this with no one else swimming in your lane or around you to avoid colliding with other swimmers.

Working with a coach can help you eliminate that one-sided drift. So can sighting more often to help you course correct as you go.

What Should Triathletes Know About Drafting?

Wouldn't it be great if you could get a ride from a faster swimmer? This is the aim of drafting, which is a skill that takes a lot of practice but one that can significantly reduce the time you're in the water.

Drafting in swimming is similar to what happens in cycling — you fall in step with a faster athlete and benefit from the wake they create while cutting through the wind or water. Drafting can make you a little faster, but the real benefit comes with the energy it can save you; estimates on how much it helps vary, with one study indicating reduction of passive drag savings could exceed 20%.

To do this, you'll need to get comfortable swimming very close to another swimmer, preferably someone who is just a shade faster than you. Get as close to their feet as you can without hitting or tickling their toes with your hands as you swim, and hang out there so you're directly in their slipstream. You'll get a benefit from the wake they carve that will help propel you forward.

You can also draft off the hip of the other swimmer. Again, you need to stay close enough to stay in their wake line.

While drafting, you still need to pay attention to where you are in relation to course markers. Not all swimmers know the course or can follow a straight line, so just because you're drafting off a faster swimmer doesn't necessarily mean you're getting any real benefit. You also may need to switch drafting targets partway through the race if the swimmer slows down or to ensure you're still on the shortest line to the finish.

What Should Triathletes Know About Buoy Turns?

Many triathlon swim courses are built as an out-and-back or loop course. These often use marker buoys to serve as navigational aids and as the point where you need to turn around to head back to the start/finish.

To do a quick buoy turn, learn to execute a rudder turn — extend your right arm straight ahead and use your left arm as a rudder, sweeping it to pivot your body around the buoy without losing momentum. Practicing this in a pool or open water before race day prevents wider turns that cost time and position in a crowded field.

What Should Triathletes Know About Pacing and Strategy?

Learning to pace can be a lifelong journey for some athletes. Especially for triathletes who have come to swimming later in life, learning to hold back enough energy to complete the whole swim can take some trial and error. Learn to start conservatively so you have more energy left as you come into the finish to edge out other competitors trying to beat you to T1 (the first transition, from swim to bike).

Swimming in a big group at the beginning of a mass start event can be daunting for many swimmers, especially those newer to the sport or less comfortable in open water. If this describes how you feel about launching in a pack, make a plan to start off to the side or give the other athletes a short head start before you begin. This can help you preserve some necessary personal space so you don't feel like everyone is climbing over you in the water. It also gives you more space to work out your own preferred path to the next turn buoy without as much interference from other swimmers.

Managing Anxiety on Race Day (With Starts and Transitions)

Many triathletes feel a lot of anxiety leading up to race day, and these feelings can make everything seem scarier and more difficult than they need to be. That's not to say that panic and anxiety feelings aren't very real and a potentially huge problem for some athletes; indeed, panic can lead to drowning and although it's not common, it can and sometimes does happen at the start of a triathlon.

The best way to manage your anxiety is to do your homework and prepare for what to expect on race day. That starts with understanding what type of start you can expect and setting up your gear in the transition area in a way that eliminates decision-making in the moment.

What Are the Types of Starts for a Triathlon?

Triathlon beach starts typically take one of three forms:

• A mass start with all athletes entering the water together
• A wave start in which athletes are split into smaller groups and released into the water in succession a few minutes apart
• A rolling or self-seeded start in which athletes enter continuously in a line based on their expected pace

Some races also start in the water from knee-deep water or in deeper water requiring you to tread in place until the start signal sounds. Still others start with a dive from a floating dock.

All of these variations can cause significant anxiety, so check with the race organizers to understand which type of start you should expect, so you're not caught off guard on the morning of the race.

What Should Triathletes Know About Their Entry Into the Water?

If you can, get into the water before the race starts and do a short warm-up so you can be fully immersed, check that your wetsuit is fitting correctly, and get acclimated to the water temperature. Getting fully immersed before the race start can also help quell anxiety and eliminate the sudden heart-rate spike and disorientation that can arise when the stress of the race, the press of other competitors, and sudden immersion in cold water combine all at once.

Just getting in and submerging your face for a moment can start the acclimation process and give you a chance to regulate your breathing before the race is officially underway.

When positioning yourself for a beach start, consider where the race buoys are and where you are in relation to other competitors. If anxiety is an issue, you may prefer to start to the side of the pack or let others start a few seconds ahead of you to give you some space to avoid bumping others.

And if anxiety strikes during the swim, know that you can always roll over on your back and simply float. Your wetsuit can help hold you up, and if you're feeling panicky, give yourself a few moments to relax and breathe. Anxiety is completely normal during a triathlon, and virtually everyone else on the course has experienced it at some point.

Remember, this is supposed to be fun, so give yourself some grace to address anxiety if and when it arises and give yourself some space to get re-centered and reoriented to your goal.

What Should Triathletes Know About Their Exit From the Water?

Exiting the water can be a dicey time for some triathletes. After a period of swimming hard while prone, returning to dry land and the full effects of gravity can cause you to stumble or fall. This can slow you down or, worse, lead to injury.

To help combat this, pick up your kick in the last 100 yards or so to wake up your legs and feet to get them ready to bear your body weight again.

As you arrive on land and begin the transition back to being a terrestrial being, give yourself a few extra seconds to find your feet. Take a moment to get oriented and check that your feet are firmly on the ground and you have a clear path forward to walk or run out of the water.

Once you've stood up, move your goggles to your forehead so you can see where you're going. You should begin unzipping your wetsuit as you walk or jog towards T1 (the first transition, going from swim to bike).

What Should Triathletes Know About Getting Their Wetsuit Off and Other Race Gear On?

There's a real art to arranging the supplies you'll need in the transition, and you should practice this part of your race just as you do the actual swim, bike, and run portions. There's lots of time to lose or gain in transition, and getting to a point where your actions are so well practiced as to be unconscious can make a difference in your overall performance.

Wetsuits can be challenging to remove, especially when you're wet, so again, practice will help you figure out the best way to do this. You may find that adding TRISLIDE or another lubricant to your ankles before you pull off the suit can help. Many triathlons also supply wetsuit strippers — volunteers at T1 who can help pull off your wetsuit all at once, inside out.

The availability of such volunteers can vary by event, but find out ahead of time if you'll have any help with your wetsuit and whether there's anything else you need to do during T1 in addition to drying off and donning your bike shoes and helmet.

If you're not wearing a tri-suit you may need to put on additional clothes before hopping on your bike. Be sure to lay these garments out so that the items that need to go on first are on top. This will eliminate having to dig into a bag or a pile to find the right item.

Many triathletes also grab a snack in transition, so be sure you have whatever nutritional aids you prefer ready to grab and go. The less time you spend looking for things you need, the faster you can get on your way to the next portion of the race.

How Masters Swimming Can Help Triathletes Improve

If you want to become a faster, stronger, smarter triathlon swimmer, you need to practice swimming more. And there's no better place to do that than with a local Masters club.

Although these groups aren't always designed specifically to support triathletes, some are. And many of the other swimmers you'll meet there and train with have done a triathlon or are training for an upcoming race themselves.

This camaraderie offers added benefits beyond simply getting in a good workout and learning some open water swimming skills. The social connection is itself a bonus, but other athletes can also share what's worked for them and potentially eliminate some trial and error from your own journey.

Why Triathletes Plateau When Training Alone

If you're going it alone with triathlon training, be forewarned that you're liable to plateau at some point. This is a common issue, especially among self-coached triathletes. But this is another place where Masters swimming and training with a group can help.

With USMS's members-only structured training plans, members-only workouts, and built-in accountability with training partners and a coach on deck, you may be able to cruise right past the point where your own skills and knowledge peter out. Take advantage of these offerings to level up with expert insight and support.

How Can Triathletes Prepare for the Different Triathlon Swim Distances?

USMS offers  for members, including options built specifically around triathlon swim distances, that break sprint-, Olympic-, IRONMAN 70.3–, and IRONMAN 140.6–distance swims into progressive weekly training blocks. This resource provides solid guidance so you can build up and train right, rather than being left on your own to guess at appropriate volume and intensity.

These plans center on building your aerobic base gradually to improve your endurance and speed. Speed work and stamina training are balanced for each workout depending on the specific race distance you're training for.

Where Can I Find Triathlon Swim Workouts?

For day-to-day sessions, USMS's Workout Library gives members a searchable database of workouts written by USMS-certified coaches, filterable by course length, distance, and set type. The library includes a dedicated triathlon category among its seven workout specialties.

Workouts can be emailed weekly, printed for the pool deck, or synced to a smartwatch through USMS's Swim.com integration, which removes the guesswork of building your own sets from scratch.

USMS also offers a range of articles, videos, and other training resources to help you develop the right training plan for your needs.

What Are the Benefits for Triathletes of a Swim Coach and Masters Club?

USMS's Club Finder tool lets you search more than 1,000 registered clubs and workout groups nationwide by location, certification, pool size, and facility type, including whether a club offers open water venues. This can be especially useful for triathletes who want race-specific practice.

Clubs displaying the USMS-certified coach designation have a coach who has completed additional Masters coaching education and passed a certification exam. Many clubs publish minimum ability requirements, such as being able to swim 500 yards continuously, so new members know what to expect before showing up.

What Should Triathletes Expect When They Start Swimming With a Masters Club?

When you arrive on deck for a Masters workout, expect to be greeted warmly and asked about your previous swimming experience and anticipated pace in the pool. If you don't know, that's OK, but the coach may ask you to work with them directly for a session or two to get you integrated in the group in the right place.

Most Masters workouts take about 60 to 90 minutes to complete and will typically include a warm-up, main set, drill or technique work, and cool-down. These workouts can be scaled to your current fitness level and training needs. Communicating with the coach from the start can help you get exactly what you need to meet your goals.

You'll likely be swimming in a lane with other people, some who will also be new to swimming and others who are lifelong water rats. Talk to the others in your lane and get to know who you're working out with — you may just end up with a whole new group of friends.

This is the less heralded joy of Masters swimming and one of the key ways it can be so enriching not just for your triathlon practice, but also for your overall well-being and life enjoyment.

How to Integrate Swimming With a Masters Club Into Your Triathlon Training

About 20% of USMS members identify as triathletes, and these athletes filter into just about every workout group across the country. This means that chances are really good someone else in your lane has done or is training for a triathlon.

Because triathlon is such a common goal for people involved with Masters Swimming, many programs and coaches tailor their workouts specifically to those needs. Some designate a certain day of the week for practicing open water swimming skills or building endurance for longer events.

When integrating swimming into your triathlon training plan, consider which group workouts you can attend in person and whether you need to supplement with additional pool or open water sessions outside of the group training times. Many triathletes attend two or three Masters workouts a week to focus on technique and interval training and add one open water session to hone their open water skills and to acclimate to colder water temps.

Be sure to balance your run and bike training and prioritize getting enough sleep and recovery time, and eat right to support all the exercise you're getting.

—ELAINE K. HOWLEY