Open water - making the most of it!
When the weather and the water start properly warming up, many of you will have been already swimming in the open water regularly; some may just be starting to think about it!
Whatever your goals and intentions, there are lots of way to make the most of your lake, sea or river swims.
Mental health benefits
We all have different ways of relieving stress and escaping from to-do lists and deadlines. For many, being in the water is very cleansing (literally and metaphorically!) – being outdoors in the water can be even more so. You’re immersed in nature, the colder temperature of the water really stimulates your senses, and you have to pay attention to where you’re going! Some things you can do to make the most of this:
Use your breath – make sure you’re exhaling in the water, try breathing out through your nose as that can be really calming.
Allow yourself to breathe more often that you might in the pool, if that’s what your body needs – it’s very common to feel like that because of constrictions of a wetsuit, and the colder water.
Take your time – what’s the rush?
Enjoy a bit of wildlife spotting for a change! Remember, you’re in their habitat so respect that.
Pause for breaks, just as you would in the pool. You’ll still get plenty of fitness benefits.
Do some floating, on your back – just enjoy the sky and watching the clouds and birds!
Try taking your wetsuit off in the water at the end of your swim; feel the water on your skin directly and how different the experience is.
Try letting go of your expectations regarding pace and distance sometimes, and enjoy “just swimming”. Yes, that’s ok. Maybe even take off the watch, shock horror?!
Open water skills
Whilst we can practise a range of open water skills in the pool, there’s no real substitute for the real thing. Even if you just do this for leisure and don’t intend to race, there are lots of things you can practise to make that experience more pleasurable. Of course if you do race, then you definitely should practise these things!
Sighting! Yes, it’s obvious, but lots of people don’t do it often enough because it’s not easy for them, so they swim off course, get disorientated, and swim far longer than the race distance!
Check out my YouTube videoe for help with your sighting: https://youtu.be/KkO6Ip5VCoA
Sight often, don’t try and breathe as you look forwards, just lift your head/eyes, not your whole chest (tilt your neck instead), use landmarks on the horizon and act on what you see!
Practise breathing to both sides – weather, water conditions, other swimmers etc, mean you might need to in a race.
Buoy turns – doesn’t need to be anything fancy, but commit to your line (don’t get trapped very close), sight often leading up to it, and swim continuously with a little stronger pace round the turns – don’t stop during a turn, or you’ll get swallowed up!
Drafting & overtaking – try going with a friend, swapping the lead, practising swimming on the hip not just on feet (breathing towards the lead swimmer).
Starts – practise deep water starts, getting horizontal, and starting from a standstill.
In general, the sooner you can get in the water at the start of the season, the more comfortable you’ll be when race day arrives, and you will be at a huge advantage over those people who are shivering and struggling in 18° water if you’ve been in since it was 13°!
Racing and fitness
It’s easy to get stuck into a habit of churning out long easy continuous laps every time you hit the open water. The problem with that is, come race day and it’s a shock to the system; your body is only used to swimming slow and easy in that environment and may not like the alternative! You can change things up to work on swim fitness, pacing and also just keep things interesting.
Use your warm up to focus on skills (see above)
Try a “fartlek” style session (that means “speed play”), using the buoys, or even other swimmers, as markers – changing pace from one marker to the next, for differing lengths of time.
Count strokes and try different options:
A pyramid: 10 strokes easy, 10 strokes fast, 10 strokes easy, 20 strokes fast, repeating all the way up to 40 or 50 strokes fast (you get the picture – go back down the other side)
Simple intervals: 30 strokes race pace, 8 strokes easy recovery (even try backstroke), repeat.
An easy warm up lap, a faster middle lap (or two or three), and an easy cool down lap.
Try a race simulation start from “cold” – practise your race day dryland warm up, get in and float about for a couple of minutes, then practise starting at your race pace, working out how fast you can (or can’t!) go at the start without blowing up!
Progression swims e.g. swim easy to the first buoy, build the pace to the next, and again, all the way round so you’re finishing at max pace. Take a break and repeat! Great practise for pacing yourself in a race.
And of course, practise getting your wetsuit OFF quickly! It can really help to “gulp” water into your wetsuit just before you get out, by pulling the neck open and letting a load of water in (this also helps flush out any residual … warm water ahem!)
As always, above all, have fun and stay safe. For starting up and practising race skills, I’d definitely recommend swimming at a managed venue; there are loads in our area; I coach at H2O Open Water Swim Centre, the site of the Reading Triathlon and the birthplace of my triathlon club Tri2O.
And why not join a club, and buddy up with other members and swim together? Just like riding in a group, you definitely push yourself more and go further than you might on your own, and you might just have more fun.
