Is it bad to swim everyday?
 

Since I started training for my first Tri I realized that my swimming is not up to par where it used to be and it has become my weakest link. Because of this I have been swimming laps at the gym almost everyday for an hour or so. Two days a week I will also swim for an hour then either run 2-3 miles or bike 12-15 miles right afterwards. I haven't felt like I need to take a break as I haven't really been sore or anything but I don't know if this will come back and bite me later.

Am I overdoing it?

Only you can tell by the way you feel afterwards. Just like running and biking, swimming improvements come about from effort and recovery. You probably aren't going hard enough to stress yourself enough swimming - you are just doing what a friend refers to as "junk" time. But if you feel okay, you should be alright.

One problem with swimming everyday though is you eventually get tired. When you're tired, you have poor technique. Poor technique practiced over and over again results in not getting fater and perhaps even slower. I personally wouldn't swim more than three times a week and work on all three legs.

My advice is if you want swimming improvement, join a club.

As long as you take off a day per week you should be fine. A standard week of HS swimming includes 7-8 2 hour practices and two days off. During one of my water polo training camps, we had five hour practices every day for two weeks. no problems.

But are you running and biking doing that time?

No. (well I was, but most of the team was not) but my point is over-swimming is not nearly as likely to cause injury compared to say, running five hours per day for a week.

I agree with Sirious and StanSeven. Swimming in general isn't nearly as hard on the body as running or biking, depending on the person.

I think Stan's point about "junk" training has some traction. I don't know what kind of workouts you're doing but in general a 1 hour easy swim won't net you as much improvement as sets of 50s, 200s, 400s, etc.

Only you know your body. Usually it will give you signs before you really hurt something from over training.

rest is good for the body
rule #1 - do no harm

Aimlessly swimming laps will not really improve your swimming abilities. It may keep you somewhat fit but no progress will be made. Also, take a day off as it's good for the body!
I've no idea what sort of specific swim practice is beneficial for a tri but intervals are key for getting faster.
I'd appreciate it if someone would recommend some intervals for sprint and normal distance tri's.

For any cardio training proper rest and recovery is critical, and be sure to taper leading up to your event. I found especially with running that I got faster and better by taking days off and not maintaining a streak. If possible try to do some open water swimming if your tri is in the open water, a completely different experience when compared to swimming in the gym.

I gave in to overtraining this week and I paid for it yesterday.

oh yeah, it also has to do with technique. If you swim like most beginner swimmers do and pull your arms across your midline, that is a recipe for shoulder injury, but if you are swimming correctly, then you could go for quite a while without injury.

sirious94 ~ can you elaborate please. I'm a new (1 yr) swimmer

I think i did as well as i can, basically if you were to draw a line down your center then make that into a vertical (always vertical, not changing with your hips) plane, your hands should never touch that plane, unless you are in a streamline (which for triathlon would just be silly). If your hand crosses that plane, which most new swimmers, and even some good swimmers do (for instance, I catch myself sometimes when I am very tired, trying to hang with an interval), then you put extra stress on your shoulder that is not good.

trying to decide between biking to work tomorrow or swimming tomorrow morning. biking to work is a PITA but swimming is easy. am I being lazy?

Is eating everyday a bad thing? lol jk man, it really depends how big is the "stress value" of each workout in the pool. If you do 6 workouts of 100+ stress value works outs and swimming isn't your thing you will heading towards over training, but if you go 2 days of the week hard and 3 easy or 2 days hard/2 days mod /2 days easy I think you will be ok. Most important of all is during your moderate and easy days work on drills and kick, hard days do main sets that adjust according to your tri distance swim. i.e if you are training for a half iron your main set should be something like 1400 - 2500 yards of solid work. I love getting in the pool after long bike rides or runs to relax with an easy 1000-2000 yard swim mostly drills, and take and advantage of the"jets" in the pool to get massage on the big muscles.

hopes that helps a little ;-)

Thanks for all the replies everyone. I have scaled back my swimming to every other day so 3x a week and my swimming has improved drastically since I started a little over a month ago. I also did a 5K last weekend to gauge my progress with the run and could have been better. This is the training schedule I have finalized with 2 months to go before my first Sprint Triathlon.

Mon/Wed/Fri
Swim

Tues/Sat
Bike

Mon/Thurs
Run

Sundays is my off day but if I am bored I will sometimes go ride the bike for fun. Since I started training constantly for the Tri I have lost 15lbs in 1 month and I just feel better overall.