Reddit reviews Workouts in a Binder: Swim Workouts for Triathletes

I knew how to swim but I had never thought about proper form or swimming long distances. I could swim 50 yards or maybe 100 yards but I would end up wasted and I had never tried to do any laps or anything.

To start, I took a short stroke improvement class which didn't really help much form wise, but it did get me in the pool and started me doing laps and drills. After the class ended, I attempted the zero to a mile workout and almost finished it, until I recorded myself swimming and saw how horrible my form was, so I stopped and decided I needed to work on that first before adding distance. I then borrowed Workouts in a Binder hoping all the drills would help me with that issue.

I kept looking in the meantime until I came upon the Total Immersion DVD (which I've since realized is pretty controversial among some swimmers) and that is what finally made swimming click for me. I think the single most important thing that helped me was to reduce my kick frequency to 1 kick per stroke. This really helped as I had a horrible scissor kick that was really slowing me down.

I'll try to record myself again soon so I and the community can critique my before/after swim technique.

Just like any other sport / exercise there must be phases (eg: warm up, workout, cooldown), a purpose (speed / endurance / form) and hopefully progression.

One of the best books I've found for this is Workouts In a Binder. Admittedly it is more for triathletes than general swimming but it has a very logical progression overall with some great individual workouts detailed inside.