Strategies for Getting Faster in Open Water Swimming - Coach Tip Tuesday

The swim.  In the world of triathlon and in the larger worlds of multisport and open water swimming, the open water swim is simultaneously the source of anxiety and joy.  In multisport, and especially in triathlon, the swim leg is often referred to as “The Great Equalizer.”  While a triathlon or multisport 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 multisport 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 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.

What is Open Water Swimming?

For the benefit of anyone who isn’t familiar with open water swimming, open water swimming is swimming in an outdoor “live” body of water, such as a lake, reservoir,  ocean, or river.  Conversely, pools (whether they are indoors or outdoors) are created, controlled environments.  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.

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 in open water.  A helpful comparison that you can use to think about this would be this: that cyclocross training is appropriate for IRONMAN athletes because you train on a bicycle for both events.  Another comparison is that running track events is sufficient and appropriate training experience for someone seeking to do a triathlon that has a hilly half marathon.

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/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 (referred to as an adult-onset swimmer), in so many instances, triathlon and multisport swimming sets are written and structured based off of pool swimming events training sets, and this has remained the true for decades at this point.  My observation has been that this works and 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 endurance 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 for pool swimming events because that’s how we were taught and it is 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 would make athletes not trust and/or hire a coach that was programming so differently from a majority of other coaches and who was 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
  
  • Related: You don't have anything to rest against in open water swimming
  • Related: You don’t stop for prolonged period of time in open water swimming
• The water temperature is more variable, even within the same swim
• The air temperature can vary, even within the same swim
• There are many other swimmers present during an open water swim

Practice Sighting to Swim Straight

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.  Additionally, those lane lines serve as physical boundaries between you and other swimmers, which keeps you effectively insulated from other swimmers.  Both of these things are vastly different from the conditions of open water swimming.

Why Sighting is Important in Open Water Swimming

When you are open water swimming, sighting 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 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 zig-zagging 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.

How to Practice Sighting

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 4-6 strokes.  Over the course of a long-course open water swimming event, this will mean that you are sighting hundreds of times.  However, as anyone who has sighted too infrequently can tell you: Not sighting enough will send you off-course and cost you much, much more time than sighting frequently will.

Like almost all things, the more you sight, the more proficient you become at it.  Practice makes perfect, or so they say.  While you may never have a “perfect” swim stroke (I maintain that there probably isn’t such a thing as a perfect swim stroke), 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, pull buoy, or other similarly easy-to-see item on the deck of each side of the pool and use that object to practice sighting.  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 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.)

There are two main sighting techniques that are utilized by multisport 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 sight, 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 again.  This technique allows you a “peek” of what is coming when your head rotates forward.

There are pros and cons to both techniques, and everyone has their 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.

Don’t Rely on the Wall in Swim Training

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 of 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.  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 they get from pushing off of the wall stokes the egos of swimmers everywhere, and relinquishing this for slower times may be very difficult for swimmers to handle.

However, 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.  When you are tasked with the specificity of swimming completely under your own power without the assistance of any outside tools 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 you can deploy to train for this:

• Don’t flip turn
• Turn at the black tile ‘T’ at the bottom of the pool

If you choose not to flip turn, you can start and stop each length of your set at the wall and 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 another.  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, you can still do it and train for the specificity of open water by turning around at the black tile ‘T’ at the bottom of the pool.  By turning at this point, you’ll still be able to have enough room to flip turn, but you’re turning soon enough to avoid being able to use the wall, and thus you’ll have to use your own power to get going again.

No matter which method you choose, be sure to use your legs to help your propulsion.  A lot of triathletes and open water swimmers are lazy kickers.  There are several reasons for this; dependency of the propulsion from the wall is one, and assistance from the buoyancy given by wetsuits worn in open water is another.  It’s not necessary to over kick, 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 open water swims.  Starting your pool swim sets from the deep end can be a nice way to practice the specificity of and get used to this.  You can also include sets in your workouts that “Start from Zero”.  To do sets like these, you start swimming, stop in the middle of the lane, tread water for 5-10 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 you to use your own power to get moving, and thus help you practice a consistent kick to get going.

How to Develop an Open Water-Specific Swim Stroke

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.  This is because “glide” is a passive term (versus an active phrase that indicates an action you can take such as “reach and pull”) and because you cannot “glide” through open water the same way you can in a tranquil, calm pool.  Open water has currents, waves, chop, living creatures, living plant life, and more.  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-specific swim stroke is typically shorter, has a higher cadence, and 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 like 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 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 a more crowded swimming environment.

There are several drills that you can practice in your pool swims to help develop such an adaptable open water swim stroke:

Tarzan Drill

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 and completely out of the water, not only helps strengthen them, but also helps athletes become comfortable with lifting their heads up out of the water, which is necessary for sighting (and especially for the “Lift Your Head” sighting technique referred to earlier).  You may also 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 are encountering other obstructions as you swim, and/or if the water is very cold and your face is too cold.

The position of the Tarzan Drill isn’t streamlined and creates a lot of drag.  It’s important to practice what this feels like and how you can “right” yourself from this non-streamlined position.  As a result of this 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 by asking everyone to consider water polo players, who swim with their heads out of the water all of the time and don’t get completely fatigued within 30 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.

Fingertip Drag Drill

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 open 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 is 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 stressful setting.

Fully Exhaling Drill

When athletes tell me that they are having trouble breathing while 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 in your lungs for new air.  If you keep doing this - repeatedly shortchanging yourself breath after breath - you can start to hyperventilate and feel like you’re unable to breathe.  

To do Fully Exhaling Drill 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 as you exhale if you are doing this drill correctly.

Hypoxic Breathing/Going Longer Without Breathing

The Hypoxic Breathing Drill extends the number of strokes in between breaths and it builds on the skills trained in the Fully Exhaling Drill.  An example of this drill is completing a continuous 100 set comprised of 25s with different breathing patterns every 25:

• 25 breathing every 3 strokes
• 25 breathing every 5 strokes
• 25 breathing every 7 strokes
• 25 breathing every 9 strokes

Out of all of the drills 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 this drill has to do with the fact that athletes have a hard time successfully completing it.  A lot of the time, the main reason athletes cannot do it is that they are not fully emptying their lungs and thus have to take a breath prematurely.  Additionally, they start to feel panicked when their lungs are close to empty or empty and will take a breath prematurely.  If you find that you are failing at this drill (and especially if you are failing it at the 5-stroke level),  it's a sign that you would benefit from including it more frequently in your training.
It is very, very possible 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 under water, you could get caught up in a mass of people swimming (especially around buoys), a wave could crash into you at the exact time that you planned on breathing, water conditions may necessitate you having longer intervals between 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.

Alternate Side Breathing

I don’t subscribe to the idea that everyone should bilateral breathe every time they swim, but I do think that it’s important that athletes have the ability to breathe on both sides.  Bilateral breathing is a breathing technique in swimming where you alternate which side you are breathing on every time you take a breath.  While this can help create a balanced stroke, it can actually slow some athletes down, especially if they get too caught up with being too precise about it.

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 that you know you have the ability to do so well on each side.  If you don’t practice, 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 on race day.

Kicking on Back

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 two of them.  Practicing kicking on your back not only reinforces a 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” when/if you need or feel anxious or scared.

To do this drill, flip onto your back and extend your arms above your hand, 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.

Get Used to Swimming with Obstacles & Others

Obstacles can abound in a living body of water and in races, 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 by both leveraging the lane lines and swimming with others.

Swimming Against the Lane Lines

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 and you don’t have other people or real-world obstacles to train with.

Swim With Others

There are several instances where having a training buddy or swimming with others in the pool can prepare you 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 while swimming and where swimmers swim in either a clockwise or a counterclockwise direction.  Circle swimming isn’t 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 than you and who may not have a clue about what they are doing.  This happens in races…all the time.  Additionally, you need to swim in close proximity to other people when 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-sized 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.  

Additionally, you can practice drafting when you swim with others in the same lane, which is a strategy where one swimmer follows closely behind another swimmer to save energy and reduce drag.  Drafting can reduce your energy expenditure by up to 30%, so it’s a very good skill to refine, as executing it well can make you faster with less energy being output.  You can swim on the side or on the feet of another swimmer to practice what it feels like to draft in each position.  By switching positions, you can also get used to what it feels like to have someone 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 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.

Practice Swimming in Open Water

Since a majority of athletes train in a pool, a majority of this article 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, that 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!).

The Bottom Line

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 confidence, which is why it’s so important to consider the specific demands of your event and to replicate these demands frequently throughout 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, you will unlock your potential and your best chance at having that confident, fast swim you’ve been dreaming of.