How to make the most of open water swim sessions.
Often triathletes reach for the open water early season to get ready for their first race. Initially, this dive in may be more about braving the cold than anything that can resemble a decent training session. For time-starved athletes, there may be a questionable benefit of a short swim with travel and preparation/changing time) included. Read on to find out how to make the most of the open water swim sessions.
For many triathletes, the aim should be to ensure the session’s focus is crystal-clear. These early sessions are about ensuring the athlete is comfortable in the environment. This may be a refreshing reminder in late spring that the water is indeed still wet and cold! But knowing how cold is cold before your first race may limit the impact of cold shock on you and enable better performance. For many athletes, this could be the difference between finishing a race or not.
Nevertheless, how much further can a few sessions take you for cold shock preparation compared to the hour or 90 minutes you could be spending actually swimming? Many age groupers start the open water season and do it as part of their training plan every week, but without using that time effectively. They jump in, have a chat (it is nice to see others), swim a couple of loops, get out, have a coffee. If they allocated the same time to the pool, they probably would have swum further and more intensively. If deliberate practise is about improving every arm stroke as many times as you can improving it each time, more strokes will make you faster! So what is the point of that open water session?
The real question is, what do you need to improve? With many triathletes finding the swim the most challenging discipline, they miss an opportunity to get better if they are not deliberately practising something at each session.
As mentioned above, the inclusion of open water swimming is really for two reasons. Either environmental 'normalisation' or open water swimming skills. A session may also then include other physiological impacts of training (which is excellent!), but that is not usually the main focus of the session.
Environmental Training.
Environmental training may be simply getting used to being cold and wet. However, it can also include confidence-building in the open water, deep water, a lake or the sea. Environmental training can also mean getting used to the style of open water you will be racing in. If you are used to flat lakes, then suddenly finding yourself in some ocean swell could be challenging. In the same way, quickly getting out past the breakers in a beach start could be a considerable advantage in a swim (as can body surfing back in again!).
Environmental training starts with confidence and then builds into becoming more fish-like in the open water environment. In many instances, the way to improve your environmental training is by 'goofing' around in the open water environment and not doing as much as what would be classified as open water swimming. E.g. Can you find the weeds and get used to swimming over them? What about identifying where the surf and rips are? How about building your confidence in swimming in various (safe) open water locations, so you are familiar with many different types and aren't concerned by swimming somewhere new (like in a race). All these approaches mean you are more confident in the environment. That confidence will enable your mental load to shift from worrying about the open water to getting around the course as quickly as possible. A good example of how this can shift is if you consider yourself at the top of a 10m diving platform. The first few times people are up there, they are probably more focussed on the height, not galling off, holding onto a rail, not looking down etc. If I asked you to bounce a ball and count how many times you could bounce it (like a basketball) or do a football keepie-uppie, these worries or concerns would limit your total number. As you become more comfortable on the platform, you will be able to do a similar number of bounces to the number you can do on the ground. The same experience works in open water. Become comfortable swimming in the open water, the faster you will be able to swim.
Open Water Skills (Some can also be done in a pool).
Open water skills need to be learned and then rehearsed and practiced. In the same way, as you may approach doing drills or transition skills. This doesn't mean it can be done slowly or easily (in fact, some of these can be brutally tough sessions), but it means that the skills are the session's focus. Here is a list of a few things to work on.
Open Water Entry
Exit (including Wetsuit removal)
Sighting
Drafting
Group Skills and comfort swimming around others
Turning around buoy skills
Moving around a group skills
Pace judgement without a clock on the wall.
You need to find a set of swimming buddies for many of these skills and force an environment like the one you will race in (lots of swimmers around you all the time.). E.g. swimming around a buoy may be easy on your own, but what happens if there are ten swimmers all together trying to take the fastest line. Similarly, getting into the water from a beach start may be easy on your own, but what happens if you want to hold the draft off a group and not get dropped!
These skills are all very important for the competitive triathlete or open water swimmer. But is rarely the focus of the open water swim sessions. Usually works best in tiny loops so lots of skills can be practised at once and with other people. This is unlike most swimming venues triathletes use to train in.
Where does that leave my other open water swims?
From the above information, it may be thought that there is no place for long, steady, continuous swims. In reality, there certainly are some gains to be had. But make them long and continuous! If your loop is 800m long, then a long continuous swim may be three loops as one, not one loop and a chat three times over. That style of session can be done in the swimming pool, probably with a more deliberate pace and arguably more helpful. It is unusual to do a "recovery" or a leisurely swim like we do for cycling or even running. (because of the time required to get to a pool or open water location). However, steady-state swims can do precisely that, but make them long enough! You wouldn’t go for a recovery bike ride and stop every 15 minutes?
For most age group triathletes, time is precious. If you need a longer steady swim, then make it part of your training and actually hit that session correctly (non-stop), but the chances are you don't need it every week. Equally, if you find yourself heading down for a couple of laps and a chat, recognise where that sits on the training-exercise continuum. Especially if this takes the place of one of your regular swims throughout the week. Quite often, athletes actually lose swim fitness over the summer because they end up practising slow, steady swimming and swim slower than perhaps they could!
Ultimately, as a triathlon swimmer, we need to train for precisely that: triathlon swimming. That means working on all aspects of the triathlon swim, including the environment, the skills required, and the physiological style sessions as well. However, if an athlete was strapped for time, I wouldn’t recommend long slow swims for triathletes. Get them in the water, training on their limiters and make them faster.
Philip is the founder of Tri Training Harder LLP. He’s a British Triathlon Level 3 coach, and has been coaching for over a decade and is involved with mentoring and developing other coaches.
Philip has have coached athletes to European and World AG wins, elite racing, many Kona qualifications, IRONMAN podiums and AG wins.
Alongside the conventional development through many CPD courses, he has also been fortunate enough to work alongside experts in the fields of Physiotherapy, Strength and Conditioning, Nutrition, Psychology, Biomechanics, Sports Medicine. Putting this knowledge into practice he has worked with thousands of athletes to various degrees, from training camps in Portugal and around Europe, clinics in the UK and online coaching.
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