Swim training tips

First of all : do not be alarmed or discouraged if you do not have a swim background! For a sprint-"multi-sport challenge", you only need to be able to hold the distance for 750m, this is largely achievable, even with very little training.

More experienced swimmers, who might want to push themselves harder over the distance, will want to be more specific with their training.  For these swimmers, target to have 1-2 workouts per week designed to build aerobic conditioning and endurance. And 1-2 swims per week to build anaerobic capacity and stroke power.  For a sprint-"multi-sport challenge", don’t hesitate to put more emphasize on the anaerobic trainings. You should aim to be able to go full blast for about 10-12mn. 

Beginners will need to work on swimming form.  Your biggest obstacle to progress is going to be your swim technique.  Proper swim technique is somewhat complicated, and is achieved through practice, practice, and more practice...  But if you are short of time, try to just do a few trainings, remembering the following tips:

• While swimming, keep your body horizontally aligned face-down and parallel to the surface of the water. This ensures your body is presenting as small a frontal area as possible to the water. Think aerodynamics!
• While swimming, your shoulders and body should roll from side to side with each stroke around an axis that points in the direction you are swimming, so that you reduce the frontal area your body is presenting to the water so that it is limited to only your head and the shoulder of the arm moving underwater.
• Visualize your hands reaching forward to catch the water and pushing past your hips to push the water.
• Visualize your hands as paddles, always vertical to the surface of the water.
• Feel most of the work in the stroke in the top muscles of your back. 

The Schiniathlon is an “open-sea swim”, in the tradition of all great "multi-sport challenge".  We therefore recommend that you have a few open-sea swim sessions before the "multi-sport challenge" – easily done in Attika, no excuse, even if the swimming pool is closed!

You are lucky enough that the water in Schinias is remarkably pure and transparent, this will avoid the panic usually associated with swimming in murky waters ! No pollution either… Meaning : you will feel more safe and less disorientated than in most other "multi-sport challenges" out there!

Training tip : for open-water swim, it’s always a better idea to swim with a partner. If you’re two, try and “draft” as much and quickly as possible : swimming in front, leading the pace - alternatively. This is a great tool to help you push yourself and play with your competitive edge !

For those of you looking for additional swim technique, more specific than here, there are a few websites to help you out there :

• Active.com Swimming
• Trifuel.com Swim