The Full Circle Podcast

Strategies for Getting Faster in Open Water Swimming

• Full Circle Endurance • Episode 85

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A lot of multisport athletes who train for events that involve open water swimming leave a lot on the table in terms of speed and execution potential, and a lot of this stems from the fact that they are not training specifically enough for open water swimming in their swim workouts.  Learning how to appropriately leverage your swimming workouts can help you unlock the ability to execute open water swims better and to be faster on race day.




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Hello, and welcome to the Full Circle Podcast, your source for insights into the science and art of endurance sports training and racing. I'm your host, coach Laura Henry. The swim. In the world of triathlon and in the larger worlds of multi sport and open water swimming, the open water swim is simultaneously the source of anxiety and joy. In multi sport and especially in triathlon, the swim leg is often referred to as the great equalizer.

While a triathlon or a multi sport event cannot be won on the swim, it certainly can be lost on the swim. When I say win and lose, I do actually mean actually winning and actually losing in some circumstances. But for the majority of athletes, win and lose are relative terms about the athlete having the best race they can for themselves regardless of their outcome and ranking when compared against other athletes in the same race. You cannot have your best race only because of the swim leg of a multi sport event, but you can definitely set yourself up to have one of your worst if you don't manage this portion of the race well. A lot of multi sport athletes who train for events that involve open water swimming leave a lot on the table in terms of speed and execution potential, and a lot of this stems from the fact that they are not training specifically enough for open water swimming in their swim workouts.

Learning how to appropriately leverage your swimming workouts can help you unlock the ability to execute open water swims better and to be faster on race day. For the benefit of anyone listening who isn't familiar with open water swimming, open water swimming is swimming in an outdoor live body of water, such as a lake, a reservoir, an ocean, or a river. Conversely, pools, whether they are indoors or outdoors, are created controlled environments. They're man made. Many athletes don't regularly train in or even have access to open water places to swim.

And as a result, most athletes need to utilize pools for a majority of their training even if their event has an open water swim as part of it. One of the most perplexing things that I've encountered as a coach and as an athlete is that people think that the traditional pool swimming methods of training are appropriate and most beneficial for athletes training for open water events because a pool is used to train for events that have open water swims. This has been confusing to me because training to swim pool swimming events is entirely different from triathlons or endurance events that take place in open water. It's like saying that cyclocross training is appropriate for Ironman athletes because you train on a bicycle for both events or that running track events is sufficient and appropriate training experience for someone seeking to do a triathlon that has a hilly half marathon. We would never say that.

There are certainly similarities between pool swimming and open water swimming just like there are similarities between cross cycling and Ironman cycling and similarities between track running and hilly endurance running. The core discipline or thing that we're doing in each of these is the same, cycling, running, swimming. However, the specifics of each of these are very different, and it's the specifics that we need to pay attention to. In a best case scenario, neglecting to account for specifics leaves a lot on the table. In a worst case scenario, failing to train for the specifics of your event will result in you failing to successfully complete your race.

No matter whether an athlete has a strong swimming background dating back to their youth or whether they started swimming as an adult, which is referred to as adult onset swimming, in so many instances, triathlon and multi sport swimming sets are written and structured based off of pool swimming events training sets. And this has remained true for decades at this point. My observation has been that this works, and it gets people results. And this is because it does teach people how to swim and it does build aerobic endurance. In short, it does get the job done, but that's where it stops in a lot of cases.

My humble opinion is that triathletes or open water swimming athletes really should be doing different types of workouts than these traditional workouts if they want to truly optimize their swimming in their specific events. All of this being said, most triathlon coaches plan for swimming sets that resemble pool swimming sets or pool swimming events because that's how we were taught, and it's the most common method deployed by a majority of coaches. To deviate from this too far would be alarming and a cause for concern for athletes and or it would make athletes not trust and or even hire a coach that was programming so differently from a majority of other coaches and a coach who is asking them to do something very different from what their peers in the sport are doing. However, in order to give themselves the best chance at having their best open water swim, athletes really should consider modifying how they train in the pool in order to maximize their open water specific skills. There are several main differences that are in play in open water swimming that are not in play in the pool.

There isn't a black line to follow in open water swimming. There isn't a wall in open water swimming. And related to that, you don't have anything to rest against when you're in open water. Also related to that, you don't stop for prolonged periods of time in open water swimming. And finally, also related to this, you don't take your goggles off every a hundred to 500 meters in open water.

Also in open water, the temperature is more variable even within the same swim. The air temperature can vary even within the same swim. And there are many other swimmers present during an open water swim event. Most of us have heard the old adage, practice like you play. When it comes to open water swimming, unfortunately, very few people practice like they will be playing.

One of the most profound differences between the pool and open water is that there aren't any lane lines or black lines painted at the bottom of the water present in open water swimming. In a pool, the lane lines and the black lines on the bottom of the pool help guide you and keep you swimming straight. If we're being honest, you really don't have to do much work at all to swim mostly straight when you're swimming in a pool. The lane lines floating on the surface of the water will keep you in check, and the black lines help guide you. Additionally, those lane lines serve as physical boundaries between you and other swimmers, which keeps you effectively insulated from other swimmers and their impact on the water around you as the lane lines buffer the chop that is generated by other athletes in the pool.

All of these things that I just talked about are vastly different from the conditions of open water swimming. When you are open water swimming, siting is necessary. Sighting is looking up from your swimming stroke to identify your surroundings, to be aware of hazards, and to guide the direction that you are swimming in. Sighting is what keeps you swimming in a straight line and it's what keeps you separated from other swimmers. The technique of sighting is absolutely critical to open water swimming for both safety and efficiency.

Sighting enables you to understand what is going on around you, including where other swimmers are, what obstacles may be in your way, and what changing conditions you may be headed into. If you keep your head down without ever looking around you, you are at high risk of crashing into obstacles and or going off course. Additionally, you can spend months or even years in the pool improving your swim speed, but it will be all for naught if you are zigzagging through the water and swimming more distance than you need to or if you are slowing down every time you need to check to make sure you are on course. Both of these things cost you time and energy. Proficient open water swimmers are able to sight without disrupting their body position or stroke rhythm while they are swimming.

Part of how to accomplish this is to sight often, approximately every four to six strokes. Over the course of a long course open water swimming event, this will mean that you are sighting hundreds of times. Sighting tends to slow swimmers down when they haven't practiced it enough and or when they haven't developed a sighting pattern that doesn't disrupt their stroke, and the fact that it does slow them down is one reason that athletes give for not sighting frequently. However, as anyone who has cited too infrequently can tell you, not citing enough will send you off course and that will cost you much, much, much more time than citing frequently will. Like almost all things, the more you cite, the more proficient you become at it.

Practice makes perfect, or so they say. While you may never have a perfect swim stroke because I maintain that there probably isn't such a thing, you can certainly practice enough to have a comfortable and confident swim stroke that includes the ability to sight frequently. Perhaps surprisingly to some swimmers, it is possible to practice sighting in a pool. Instead of using the black lines at the bottom of the pool or the lane lines to guide you, place a water bottle, a pool buoy, or another similarly easy to see item on the deck of each side of the pool and use that object to practice your sighting skills. You can also choose a stationary and clearly visible object on the walls of the pool space such as a clock or a banner to practice sighting off of.

The most important aspect of the object you use to practice sighting with is that it must be stationary. After all, sighting off of something that moves and trying to follow it defeats the entire purpose of trying to swim in a steady straight line. It should also be noted that keeping your goggles on continuously throughout your training swim also helps with this. In open water, you will never take your goggles off unless you absolutely have to. So it's good to practice this, keeping your goggles on, in your training swims even if those training swims are taking place in a pool.

There are two main siting techniques that are utilized by multi sport open water swimmers, lifting your head and following your arm. In the lifting your head technique, you are lifting your head slightly up above the surface of the water every time you want to sit, which enables you to get a visual on what is currently ahead of you. If you use the following your arm technique, you are rolling your head and eyes forward in sync with your arm as it exits the water and then enters the water again. This technique allows you a peek of what is coming up in front of you when your head rotates forward. There are pros and cons to both techniques and everyone does have their own preferred method.

That being said, I've learned over the years to encourage athletes to choose the technique that feels best and most natural to them. One athlete might do really well with the lifting your head technique while another athlete might swear by the following your arm technique. Either one is perfectly fine. The most important thing about sighting is that you are able to do it comfortably and consistently, and whichever technique allows you to do that is the best one for you. For athletes who have a strong swimming background or a competitive swimming background, my advice to reduce or, gasp of shock, eliminate your push off the wall probably sounds like blasphemy.

After all, pushing off of the wall is an important part of the strategy for pool swimming competitions, and thus, it becomes an important part of pool swimming training. The propulsion that you get from pushing off of the wall is important in terms of your overall speed since everyone else you are competing against will be using the wall to generate extra propulsion too if you are training for pool swimming events. Beyond the practical reasons why pool swimmers deploy this strategy, while it may be harder for athletes to admit, the extra boost in speed and therefore the faster times that athletes get from pushing off the wall stokes the egos of swimmers everywhere, and relinquishing this for slower times may be very difficult for swimmers to handle. However, if you are training for triathlon, multi sport, or open water swimming events, there are not any walls in open water. Additionally, you rarely have the option to stop and rest on any sort of fixture or platform.

As a result, if you get accustomed to the propulsion that the wall provides, you'll be both a weaker and slower swimmer in open water than what your pool swimming times show. When you are tasked with the specificity of swimming completely under your own power without the assistance of any outside tools, such as a wall, and without the ability to stop and rest, You will be at a significant disadvantage if you haven't trained for that specificity. There are a few tactics that you can deploy to train for this. Don't flip turn and turn back at the tile T at the bottom of the pool. If you choose not to flip turn, you can start and stop at each length of the pool of your set at the wall and then cover the full distance of the pool in each length of your set.

When swimming in a pool, a length is the distance from one end of the pool to the other. A lap is two lengths or one round trip from one end of the pool to the other and then back again to the starting point. A set refers to the total distance of a given amount of swimming, and a set is comprised of one or more lengths or laps. If you really love flip turning and you know who you are, you can still do it and train for the specificity of open water swimming by turning around the black tile t at the bottom of the pool, which is before the wall. By turning at this point, you'll still have enough room to flip turn, but you're turning soon enough to avoid being able to use the wall for propulsion, and thus you'll have to use your own power to get going again.

No matter which method you choose, be sure to kick to use your legs to help your propulsion. A lot of triathletes and open water swimmers are lazy when it comes to kicking. There are several reasons for this. Dependency on the propulsion from the wall is one and assistance from the buoyancy given by wet suits worn in open water is another. It's not necessary to overkick, but consistently kicking is definitely an asset in open water swimming.

Developing the ability to do so is really useful, and this is especially true for open water swims that do not allow wetsuits. If the pool where you train has a deep end, it can be implemented as a tool for open water practice. An inability to touch the bottom is a hallmark feature of many, if not most, open water swims. Starting your pool swim sets from the deep end can be a nice way to practice this specificity and to get used to it. You can also include sets in your workout that quote unquote start from zero.

To do sets like these, you start swimming, stop in the middle of the lane, tread water for five to ten seconds, and then resume swimming. This is helpful to practice since it's what you will need to do if you don't sight well and if you lose track of the course or a buoy. Additionally, sets like these require that you use your own power to get moving, and thus they help you practice that consistent kick to get yourself going. As I mentioned, many athletes, experienced swimmers, and adult onset swimmers train using pool swimming techniques that do not translate effectively over to open water swimming. As many of the athletes who I've coached on deck in swimming know, I detest the cue glide for swimming when I am coaching triathletes or open water swimmers.

And this is because glide is a passive term versus an active phrase that indicates an action that you take such as reach and pull, and because you cannot glide through open water the same way that you can in a tranquil, calm pool. Open water has currents, waves, chop, living creatures, living plant life, and more. Successfully navigating open water requires active movement, not passive, and it's important to develop a swim stroke that can help you navigate this environment successfully. An open water swim stroke is typically shorter. It has a higher cadence, and it has the ability to adapt to a variety of conditions.

By shorter, I mean that your hand enters the water a bit sooner than it would if you were swimming in a controlled environment such as a pool. As a result of this shorter hand entry, your cadence, which refers to the number of strokes you take per minute, should be and usually is higher in open water. Finally, you aren't necessarily going for exact precision on each and every stroke. Rather, you should be seeking to have the ability to adapt to changing conditions such as stronger currents, bigger chop, or more crowded swimming environments. There are several drills that you can practice in your pool swims to help develop such an adaptable open water swim stroke.

The muscles on the back of the neck are weak and underused for a lot of athletes. The Tarzan drill, which tasks you with swimming freestyle with your head held up completely out of the water, not only helps strengthen these muscles, but it also helps athletes become comfortable with lifting their heads up out of the water, which is necessary for sighting, especially for the lift your head sighting technique that I referred to earlier. You may need to swim with your head out of the water in open water if you are having difficulty locating a buoy or something to sight off of, if you have a lot of feet in your face or you aren't counting other obstructions as you swim, and or if the water is very cold or your face is too cold. The position of the Tarzan drill is not streamlined and it creates a lot of drag. It's important to practice what this feels like and how you can quote unquote right yourself from this non streamline position back into a more streamlined position.

As a result of its position, the Tarzan drill is very fatiguing, but doing it frequently will build fatigue resistance, which is the name of the game in endurance sports. Many athletes think that this drill cannot be done for sets longer than 25 meters or yards. I challenge that idea and ask everyone to consider water polo players. These guys swim with their heads out of the water all of the time and they don't get completely fatigued within thirty seconds. Like anything else, the skill taught by the Tarzan drill is a skill that can be trained and you can build endurance for it.

The fingertip drag drill requires swimmers to drag their fingers along the surface of the water without losing contact with the water during the recovery phase of the freestyle swim stroke. In order to execute this well, an athlete must have a high elbow during this phase and a high elbow is an important aspect of an adaptable open water swim stroke because waves and chop necessitate higher elbows in order to get over them and to make continuous forward progress through them. In addition, the fingertip drag drill focuses on keeping the arm and the fingers relaxed. Staying relaxed is always important, but it's especially important to practice for open water swimming because a lot of swimmers tend to get anxious and or tense in open water. Practicing staying relaxed in training increases the odds that you can remain relaxed in a race or a stressful setting.

When athletes tell me that they are having trouble breathing when they are swimming, it is often because they are not completely emptying their lungs when they exhale. If you do not completely empty your lungs when you exhale, you have less room for new air in your lungs. If you keep doing this, repeatedly short changing yourself breath after breath, you can start to hyperventilate and feel like you're unable to breathe. Not good. To do this drill fully exhaling properly, keep your face relaxed in the water and fully empty your lungs while your face is in the water before you rotate to take another breath.

You should be able to see lots and lots of bubbles if you exhale if you are doing this drill correctly. The hypoxic breathing drill extends the number of strokes in between breaths and it builds on the skills that are trained in the fully exhaling drill. An example of this drill is completing a continuous 100 set comprised of 20 fives with different breathing patterns every 25 such as 25 breathing every three strokes, 25 breathing every five strokes, 25 breathing every seven strokes, 25 breathing every nine strokes. Out of all of the drills that I write for athletes as part of a swimming workout, this one is probably the one that athletes complain the most about. A lot of the feedback I get on it has to do with the fact that athletes have a hard time successfully completing it.

A lot of the time, the main reason that athletes cannot do it is that they are not fully emptying their lungs and, thus, they have to take a breath prematurely before it's planned. Additionally, they start to feel panicked when their lungs are close to empty or when they are empty and thus will take a breath prematurely. If you do this drill and find that you are feeling at it and especially if you are feeling it at the five stroke level, it's a sign that you would benefit from including it more frequently in your training. When things are hard, that generally indicates that you need to do more of them to get better at it. It is very, very possible, in fact, probable, that you will find yourself in a situation in open water where you have to go longer without breathing than you planned.

Someone could push you underwater. You could get caught up in a mass of people swimming, especially around buoys. A wave could crash into you at the exact time you plan on breathing. Water conditions may necessitate you having longer intervals between your breaths and more. Open water swimming can feel a lot less intimidating if you can hold your breath for a longer period of time or if you know you can go many strokes before needing to take a breath.

I don't subscribe to the idea that everyone needs to bilateral breathe every time they swim, but I do think it's really important that athletes have the ability to breathe on both sides of their body. Bilateral breathing is a breathing technique in swimming where you alternate which side you are breathing on every time you take a breath. So, for instance, breathe on to the right, swim a couple strokes, breathe to the left, swim another couple strokes, breathe to the right. While bilateral breathing can help create a balanced stroke, it actually can also slow some athletes down, especially if they get too caught up with being too precise about it. Again, there's no such thing as a perfect stroke, especially in open water swimming.

Instead, athletes should seek to learn to breathe proficiently on both sides of their body. Almost all athletes have a side that they prefer to breathe on, but there are many different circumstances that can make it difficult, if not impossible, to breathe on a given side in open water conditions. Chop, wind, and other swimmers all may create a situation that necessitates breathing on your non preferred side. As such, it's to your benefit to practice breathing on both sides throughout your training swim workouts so you know you have the ability to do so well on each side. If you do not practice this, it will not only cause you anxiety if you end up having to breathe on your non preferred side in a race, it will slow you down.

Practice breathing on each side frequently so it doesn't become a stressor for you if you find yourself unable to breathe on your preferred side come race day. There are some situations that may arise during an open water swim that may necessitate flipping over to your back. Getting a mouthful of water or feeling anxious or scared are just a couple of them. Practicing kicking on your back not only reinforces good body alignment in the water, but it also helps you develop comfort and familiarity with this position. So it can become a go to of sorts when if you need it to or when you feel anxious or scared.

To do this drill, flip onto your back and extend your arms above your head, letting your hands rest gently on top of each other. Squeeze your glutes to bring your hips and legs as close to the surface of the water as possible. While maintaining those squeezed glutes, kick your legs in a steady, consistent manner. Obstacles can abound in a living body of water and in races, and thus, the ability to be able to be comfortable swimming around other people in such a body of water is essential. In training, you can prepare for this both by leveraging the lane lines and swimming with others.

Most pool swimmers and swimmers period will seek to avoid hitting the lane lines. However, athletes training for open water swimming can incorporate sets where they are intentionally and deliberately hitting the lane lines with their heads, with their hands, with their arms, with their bodies, and with their legs. Doing so is a great way to practice what it is like to have other things in the water even if you are alone in the water, in the pool, and you don't have other people or real world obstacles to train with. There are several instances where having a training buddy or swimming with others in the pool can help you prepare well for open water swimming. One such example is circle swimming which is a method of swimming that enables three or more people to share a lane in a pool while swimming and where swimmers swim in either a clockwise or a counterclockwise direction within the lane.

Circle swimming is not everyone's favorite method of swimming, but the reasons why people dislike it are exactly what makes it helpful in preparation for open water swimming. You need to put up with people who swim at different paces from you and who may not have a clue in the world about what they are doing. This situation, people swimming at different paces than you and people being clueless, happens in races all the time. Additionally, you need to swim in close proximity to other people when you are circle swimming, which is something that you also need to do in open water. Even if you're not circle swimming, you can share a lane with several people, maybe two other swimmers in a normal size swim lane, and go back and forth in the lane while having to navigate around those other people.

You can practice starting together and thus get a feel of what a crowded swim start feels like in open water. Additionally, you can practice drafting when you swim with others in the same lane, and drafting is a strategy where one swimmer falls closely behind another swimmer to save energy and to reduce drag. Drafting can reduce your energy expenditure by up to 30%. That's not insignificant. So it's a very good skill to refine and executing it well can make you faster while outputting less energy.

You can swim on one side of a person or on the feet of another swimmer to practice what it feels like to draft in each of those positions. And then by switching positions, by becoming the person being drafted off of, you can also get used to what it feels like to have someone who is drafting off of you. Getting used to what it is like to be around other people is really important as you don't want this to startle you or slow you down more than it needs to come race day. By practicing hitting other people while swimming, having other people hit you while you are swimming, kicking other people while swimming, and having other people kick you, you will build your confidence when you are in a chaotic swimming situation. Thus, you'll be less startled when, not if, this happens to you on race day and you'll be more likely to be able to carry on without it significantly adversely impacting your swim or your race.

Since a majority of athletes train in a pool, a majority of this episode has focused on strategies to improve one's strength and speed in open water while using a pool for training. That being said, the best way to get better at a given thing is to do the thing. In this case, where an athlete is training for an event that has an open water swim, this means practicing swimming in open water. If you have access to open water and or the ability to train in open water, it's a great idea to include this as a regular part of your training. Precisely because it takes place in a living body of water, open water swimming tends to generate feelings of fear and anxiety in athletes.

Repeated practice swimming in open water, AKA breeding familiarity, can help subdue these feelings by making you more comfortable in this environment. Additionally, counting strokes not only helps you dial in on a consistent rhythm and therefore a consistent stroke, but it can also help distract your mind. While you are swimming in open water, you should practice sighting off of fixed, easily identifiable objects such as houses or distinct trees. I don't recommend choosing boats as objects to sight off of since they can move even if they are docked when you begin swimming or when you see them for the first time. There's a reason why smooth is fast is such a popular quip.

It's true. If you can develop a smooth swim stroke, you give yourself your best chance to have your fastest swim. A smooth swim stroke is born out of practice and out of confidence, and this is why it's so important to consider the specific demands of your event and to replicate those demands frequently throughout all of your training. All too often, triathletes and open water swimmers throw in a session or two of open water swimming close to their goal event, almost like an afterthought. For the best chance of having a strong, fast swim on race day, you need to practice like you intend to play.

By practicing race day specific skills and by developing an open water specific swim stroke. By doing these things consistently throughout all of your training, both in the pool and in open water, you will unlock your potential and your best chance of having that confident fast swim you've been dreaming of. That was another episode of the Full Circle Podcast. Expressed on the Full Circle Podcast are those of the individual. As always, we love to hear from you, and we value your feedback.

Please send us an email at podcast@fullcircleendurance.com or visit us at fullcircleendurance.com/podcast. To find training plans, see what other coaching services we offer, or to join our community, please visit fullcircleendurance.com. I'm coach Laura Henry. Thanks for listening.

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