Swim training - to fuel or not to fuel?

During our 3.5 day train-cation in Clermont, Florida we were spoiled by swimming in NTC pool - perfect water temp, lots of open swim lanes, surrounded by swimmers/triathletes and most importantly, swimming outside! Because the pool is my happy place, I was super happy to see so much swimming on my training plan. In four swims (over 5 days), I completed 17,600 yards of following the black line and I never stopped smiling.

Two of our workouts went by extremely fast, even though they were 4000+ yards. Not always do Karel and I have the same swim workouts (or on the same days) but for camp we swam the same sets but had different cycles for the main set. Here were my two favorite swim sessions from camp:

Tuesday (4000 yards)
WU: 800 choice

Pre-set:
100 drill

3 x 50's (kick/swim)
2 x 75's open turns
100 choice
4 x 25's build

3 x 50's head up free
2 x 75's kick/swim/kick
100 choice

MS: All with paddles
18 x 100's as:
#1: on 1:20 (cycle)
#2: 1:30
#3-4: 1:20
#5: 1:30

#6-8: 1:20

#9: 1:30
#10-13: 1:20
#14: 1:30
#15-18: 1:25

CD as needed

Wednesday (5000 yards)
WU: 600 w/ buoy

MS:
9 x 100's on 1:30 @80% effort
4 x 200's w/ paddles on 2:50
7 x 100's on 1:30 @90% effort
400 w/ buoy
5 x 100's swim on 1:30 @95% effort
2 x 200's w/ paddles on 2:50

3 x 100's swim on 1:30 @best effort
200 buoy

Post set:
200 EZ

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Many triathletes and swimmers feel that fueling/hydrating during a workout isn't necessary for if you can't do it during a race/meet, why do it in training? The point of training is to change your physiology in order to maximize your athletic performance/fitness while also preparing for the race day demands. With this, it's critically important to stay consistent (and healthy), so we often do things in training that we don't do in races in order to help build strength, endurance and speed, while also improving skills and technique. Sport nutrition and nutrient timing are two important ways to help the adaption response to training. 

When I swam in High School and in College, I would rarely sip on water on deck when I swam. There were mornings when I would swim a long workout on an empty stomach and I never had a precise fueling strategy for a swim meet. While I did OK during this time in my life, I wish I knew then what I knew now, as I feel I could have adapted a lot better to swim training, while also reducing my frequent issues with muscle soreness in my back, while also feeling rundown and exhausted. 

Although my swim workouts are not as long (or intense) as when I swam in college, I still typically swim 4-5 times per week an around 60-75 minutes per swim. Although I don't consider them as exhausting as some of my run and bike sessions, I still make the effort to always eat before my workouts and use sport nutrition during my workouts. Rather than going into the specifics of how to fuel for swim training sessions (you can find detailed info about fueling your workouts in my book Essential Sports Nutrition), I'd like to share a bit about the physiology of swimming and how proper fueling can help you better adapt to your swim training, especially if you are triathlete. 

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Swimming is a strength, technical and endurance sport. In addition to the difficulty of dealing with your displaced body in water, there's a lot of resistance (or drag) when you swim. As you push against water to move forward, water pushes back to slow you down. A huge part of swim training is optimizing technique in order to forcefully thrust (or propel) yourself forward while reducing drag and optimizing buoyancy and alignment. Although technique work is important, it's only in the face of fatigue that good technique will give you a big performance boost. If your form falls apart when you get tired, your propulsive force will greatly decline and you'll become more inefficient and exhausted. Thus, an overvalued component of swimming (especially for triathletes) is being strong in the water. Simply swimming back and forth, for x-yards, is an ineffective use of your time as it relates to making significant performance improvements. You must train your different energy systems (swimming at different speeds), while keeping great technique.

Although swimming may be exhausting to many and easy for some, it should still be viewed as a strength-endurance sport. This means your training should include a mix of high-intensity efforts (to tap into the phosphagen system and anaerobic glycolysis) and endurance or lower-intensity training to improve efficacy of swimming technique while improving your aerobic pathway (VO2 max, max oxygen consumption).

Understanding the physiological demands of swim training (and outcome goals for each session) is important because as it relates to sport nutrition, you'll quickly realize that with swimming, glycogen stores in the muscles can easily become depleted. This will compromises your ability to keep good technique under fatigue and will affect your propulsive strength capacities. Consequently, this decreases the training adaption that you could be making through your swim training. Sure, you are checking off the workout but it doesn't count if you aren't making significant performance gains. By understanding the demands of your sport, you can better identify the factors that will affect your ability to adapt. Certainly nutritional strategies can help optimize your swimming performance. 

While any athlete can "get by" for a workout or two in an energy deficit state, long-term periods of being in a poor energy balance can affect hormones, metabolism, strength and power, while increasing the risk of injury, burn out and sickness. Beginning a training session with low carbohydrate availability (especially if you trained the night before an early morning workout or you are restricting carbohydrates in your diet), can increase metabolic stress during your swim workout. Again, yes you may be able to complete the workout, but without proper fueling, the stress response increases. It's also worth mentioning that when engaging in high intensity training sessions, adequate carbohydrate intake/stores can improve the health of the immune system - meaning less risk for sickness. Lastly, even though you may not feel it, you still have hydration needs while swimming. The higher the water temperature (or the warmer you feel in the water), the higher your sweat rate. Starting your sessions well hydrated and hydrating throughout your training session (often with a sport drink containing carbohydrate and sodium) can help optimizing hydration while maintaining blood glucose levels. Because most triathletes are not overly fond of swim training, a significant drop in blood glucose can turn your mood sour and raise RPE - making it easy to cut your workout short (or dislike swimming all together). 

Getting your nutrition right is key for athletic success. Don't compromise your performance and health by being extremely dedicated to your training plan and apathetic to your diet and fueling regime. 

from Trimarni Coaching and Nutrition https://ift.tt/2XnxpHY