HElp Center

One of the biggest challenges for adult triathletes tends to be the swim. Even for people who are comfortable in the water, who perhaps grew up near lakes or the ocean, freestyle swimming in open water during a race can be extremely difficult.

The easiest way to improve your comfort, confidence, and speed in the water is by performing swim drills. Fortunately, there are swim drills in each and every swim workout in the MOTTIV app!

As long as you're using the swim tools (aka toys) we assign, and doing the drills as written, you can expect to see a slow but steady improvement in your swimming.

But, there are folks looking for quite a bit more help with their swim. There are a couple of other recommendations we have:

DO A TARGETED SWIM DRILL PROGRAM

If you're looking for a more targeted approach to improvement, we do have a book with a comprehensive swim drill program to help you get comfortable and confident in the water. (The program is best done in the off-season but can be started at any time, and done alongside a training plan.) You can find our book Triathlon Swimming Foundations here.

GET A SWIM ANALYSIS FROM AN ENDURANCE SPORTS EXPERT

Although you'll find many swim coaches at your local pool, they're not going to be the best bet for adult endurance athletes who swim in open water in their triathlons or other races. That's because many of these coaches only know how to coach people who have been speed swimming forever.  That's not a knock on those coaches -- it's just that they won't have the specialized expertise needed to help adults who race in open water.

For example, a pool swimming coach may instruct you to improve your "high elbow catch". But most adult swimmers don't have the body flexibility to even do that, plus it's not a relevant skill for open water swimming.

That's why we recommend a swim analysis with an expert in endurance sport swimming, Brenton Ford with Effortless Swimming. Although the service may seem costly to some, Brenton can look at the way your body is moving in the water to determine where you can improve within your own natural range of motion.