# IRONMAN Swim Training: Your Questions Answered | Ep 537

An episode of [Oxygenaddict Triathlon Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/951501034), 30 Apr 2025, 33 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/ea99f7d8/podcast/play/101264708/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2025-3-14%2F5eeacda3-d4cb-6da3-a547-bf2735ca52d8.m4a

ATTENTION First Time IRONMAN / 70.3 Athletes: 🚀 Join Team Oxygenaddict's FREE IRONMAN Accelerator webclass and learn how to dominate your first IRONMAN in as little as 6-8 hours training per week: https://team.oxygenaddict.com/ironman-accelerator * * * * * * * * In this week's episode... Coach Rob is giving advice to IRONMAN & 70.3 athletes on improving their swimming. /he answers 10 listener questions, giving insight on: Training techniques for weak swimmers... Maintaining technique in longer swims... Breathing patterns during race-paced swims... Effective swim drills to improve speed & efficiency... The importance of technique over volume... Correct use of swim aids like pull buoys and paddles... Building confidence in choppy open water conditions... Managing race-day anxiety... How to practice sighting techniques in open water. * * * * * * * * SPONSORS * * * * * * * * Like what you heard in this show? Join hundreds of other age group triathletes making the most of their limited training time, training with Team OxygenAddict - the most comprehensive triathlon coaching program for busy age groupers. Book an application call to see if you'd be a good fit for Team Oxygenaddict for the coming season here: https://team.oxygenaddict.com/consultation-call/ * * * * * * * * * * * * precisionfuelandhydration.com Precision Fuel & Hydration help athletes personalise their hydration and fuelling strategies for training and racing. Use the free Fuel & Hydration Planner to get a personalised race nutrition plan for your next event. And then book a free 20-minute video consultation with a member of the PF&H Athlete Support Team to refine your strategy. Listeners get 15% off their first order of fuel and electrolytes with Precision Fuel & Hydration. Simply click this link and the discount will be auto-applied at the checkout. * * * * * * * * * * * * Team Oxygenaddict on YouTube Team Oxygenaddict on Spotify Team Oxygenaddict on Apple Podcasts

## Transcript

[0:04] Hello and welcome to the Oxygen Addict Triathlon podcast.
[0:07] We're brought to you every week by our sponsors Precision Fuel
[0:09] and hydration.com. You can get 15% off your first
[0:13] order with the code Oxygen Fuel 25.
[0:16] Welcome to the show everybody. I'm your host coach, Rob Wilby
[0:19] from Team Oxygen Addict, and every week we'll bring you an
[0:22] episode of this podcast to help motivate and inspire you.
[0:25] On this week's episode, I'm going to be talking about
[0:28] answering 10 questions from real world athletes on improving your
[0:32] swim, specifically for Iron Man. So if the swim's the part of the
[0:37] event that you're most concerned about, I'm hoping that by the
[0:40] end of answering these 10 questions, you'll have some
[0:42] really good, actionable ideas about ways you can improve your
[0:45] swim that are going to work for you.
[0:47] Before we start though, there's two quick things you can do to
[0:49] help us. If you like this episode, please
[0:52] follow us on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
[0:54] That really helps the growth of the show.
[0:56] And secondly, if you've got a big Iron Man goal and a crazy
[1:00] schedule, our new free web class could be the thing that changes
[1:04] everything for you. We'll show you how Team Oxygen
[1:07] Addicts Iron Man Accelerator programme is enabling busy
[1:10] professionals, that's people with kids, careers and real
[1:13] lives, to average 8 hours or less of training each week and
[1:17] still cross the Iron Man finish line.
[1:19] It's not about training harder, it's often about training
[1:22] smarter. Please watch our free coaching
[1:25] webinar. The link is down there in the
[1:27] show notes. OK, first question, I'm a weaker
[1:31] swimmer. Should I just focus on doing
[1:34] more swimming and doing longer swims so I'm sure that I can
[1:37] complete the distance? This is a it's a great question.
[1:41] It's a really common one and typically it's from athletes who
[1:44] want to do an Ironman and they've come from a running or a
[1:47] or a cycling background, sports where just doing more of the
[1:51] sport has brought them success in improving at the sport.
[1:54] So the temptation is to think I'll just do the same thing in
[1:57] swimming. I'll dedicate the time to
[2:00] getting into the pool, I'll do more swimming and my swimming
[2:02] will improve. And it's often not the case for
[2:05] athletes especially. We tend to find this with highly
[2:09] motivated athletes who are very good at one of the other two
[2:11] sports. They tend to not have very much
[2:13] technique if there's not swum as a kid.
[2:16] And the challenge is the dedication that they've got to
[2:19] this and the mindset that they bring to it is fantastic.
[2:23] But it's also part of the problem because what tends to
[2:25] happen is if you're essentially practising incorrect technique
[2:31] over and over again, what you're doing with the extra training is
[2:34] you're embedding that poor technique into your stroke and
[2:38] it'll make it much more hard to fix in the long term.
[2:41] So the dedication is a good thing, but it's a challenge that
[2:45] essentially swimming is different to running and cycling
[2:48] is that it's a skill based sport more than it's an aerobic
[2:52] fitness based sport. And it's about doing the right
[2:55] body motions repeatedly so that you can do them effectively and
[3:00] efficiently. And if you're not a very good
[3:02] swimmer, just doing more swimming, it'll make you a
[3:05] slight bit better. But the thing that's really
[3:07] going to improve your swimming is the correct swim drills that
[3:10] are going to correct the things that are wrong with your stroke.
[3:13] So typically if you're already a good runner or cyclist, but
[3:17] you're not very good in the pool, maybe you've gone down to
[3:20] a tricl obsession and you've been put in the slowest lane and
[3:23] you're thinking the guys or or the women who look as fit as me
[3:26] are in lane one and two and I'm over here in lane 6.
[3:29] Typically that's just down to the fact you haven't developed
[3:34] the stroke technique yet, the balance in the water yet.
[3:37] Those are the things you need to practise more than trying to
[3:41] swim endless lengths and getting really out of breath and often
[3:45] getting really frustrated with it.
[3:47] So the approach of thinking, well I know I've got to swim 3.8
[3:52] kilometres in the, in the case of an Iron Man, so I'm just
[3:55] going to keep practising swimming.
[3:56] So I know that I can do this. It can be tempting to think that
[4:00] way, but a much better use of your time is to do specifically
[4:04] targeted drills at the stroke floors that you've got right
[4:08] now. They're holding you back.
[4:10] Typically what I say to swimmers is if you're swimming is much
[4:15] slower than your fitness would suggest, typically what's
[4:18] happening is there's something going on with your stroke.
[4:20] There's some kind of stroke floor that is acting like an
[4:24] invisible parachute that's holding you back in the water
[4:27] and it's slowing you down from swimming to your potential.
[4:30] If you can correct that, you cut the invisible parachute off and
[4:34] you'll actually start swimming to your potential.
[4:36] So it's not fitness that's the problem, it's the technique and
[4:40] the drills are the things that are going to change the way you
[4:43] swim. I'll talk a little bit later on
[4:45] about specific drills you can do, but one great thing you can
[4:48] do is find yourself a swimming club or a swimming teacher or a
[4:52] swimming coach who's experienced in this.
[4:56] Even having video analysis with this can help.
[4:58] Just a good coach seeing one length of you swimming can often
[5:02] immediately see the one thing that you need to change about
[5:06] your stroke next. It might be that you've got
[5:08] sinking legs. It might be that you're lifting
[5:10] your head to breathe. It might be that despite your
[5:13] feeling as though you're pulling really hard, there isn't
[5:15] actually any force being applied to the water.
[5:18] All of these things, the things that experienced coaches like
[5:21] myself have seen hundreds and thousands of times before,
[5:24] they're really, they're really simple to fix.
[5:27] They're not easy because you're going to have to apply time and
[5:29] effort to it, but they're simple to fix once you start doing the
[5:32] right and the correct drill to fix it.
[5:34] So no, I would say just swimming more is not the way to approach
[5:39] this. What you actually need to do is
[5:41] dedicate that time to doing repeated drills and then
[5:46] practising and bedding the changes that those drills make.
[5:51] Next question, how can I maintain my technique during
[5:55] longer endurance swims? OK, so great question.
[5:58] Leading on from that first one. As athletes start to progress up
[6:01] the swimming ladder, they start to develop the better technique,
[6:04] the better body position, the better rotation.
[6:07] They find they can do this early in the swim but then as they
[6:10] start to get tired that falls apart and typically this is
[6:14] where old school master swim workouts really fail.
[6:17] The adult onset swimmer if you go down in the set.
[6:20] I remember going down to a swim club in the early days and the
[6:23] set we were given was something like 5 by 500 metres, after a
[6:28] warm up 5 by 500 metres. My swimming wasn't to the point
[6:33] yet where the stroke would hold together for more than 100
[6:36] metres. So my first hundred was was
[6:38] really OK, it was probably 140 at this point.
[6:41] But then quickly my stroke fell apart as I got as I got tired
[6:45] and it went from 1:40 to 1:50 to 1:55 to 1:58.
[6:49] And those long swims just embedded poor technique into me.
[6:54] So instead of trying to do long repetitions or long endurance
[6:58] swims or even God forbid trying to swim 3.8 K in one go in the
[7:02] early days, a much better way to go about this is to break the
[7:07] swim up into micro breaks. So you take a three to five
[7:12] second break after 100 metres, you take a couple of deep yoga
[7:16] breaths and you go again. Now this isn't interval
[7:19] training. You're not taking the the break
[7:21] because you need to get your breath back.
[7:24] If you like, you're swimming at a speed you could easily
[7:27] maintain at an effort level, you could maintain for you know,
[7:31] 1020, thirty minutes or more. So it's not that reason that
[7:35] you're taking the break. The reason is that short break
[7:39] lets the little muscles in your shoulders, your back, your neck,
[7:42] all of those things that are small and weak and aren't
[7:46] developed yet, give them a little break.
[7:48] They get to recover and so when you go again on the next 100,
[7:52] those muscles have had a chance to recover and you can hold and
[7:56] practise good technique for all of your swim.
[7:59] So the example here, if we were doing a 2000 metre main set, the
[8:04] example I gave you before, if your technique is falling apart
[8:07] after 100 metres, the next 1900 metres of swimming is just going
[8:12] to be embedding the wrong technique.
[8:14] But think about other skill based sports like golf or
[8:16] tennis. It would be like going down to
[8:19] the golf or Tennis Club and deliberately practising the
[8:22] wrong thing for 30 or 40 minutes.
[8:25] You can see how absurd that is in the context of tennis or
[8:28] golf, and it's equally absurd in the context of swimming.
[8:31] So I'm going to get you to take that micro break.
[8:34] And even if the break needs to be longer initially, if you need
[8:36] to take 10 seconds to recover, it means that every 100 metres
[8:40] you swim, you're practising good technique and let your fitness
[8:44] develop as a byproduct of practising good technique rather
[8:48] than aiming to develop fitness and swimming more to develop the
[8:52] fitness, you've got to practise perfect technique because
[8:55] there's that old line, isn't there?
[8:56] Practise makes perfect. Now in the in the context of
[8:59] swimming, practise doesn't make perfect, perfect practise makes
[9:04] perfect. Practise just makes permanent.
[9:06] And if what you're doing is incorrect, then it's embedding
[9:09] that incorrect stroke in there full time.
[9:14] OK, next question. How should I approach my
[9:18] breathing pattern during race paced swims?
[9:21] OK, so I'm going to wind this back and we'll go away from race
[9:24] paced swims and we'll go into all swims.
[9:27] Breathing pattern is the thing that can hold back adult onset
[9:30] swimmers the most because it's obviously very different to
[9:33] biking and to running. You can only breathe in as your
[9:37] head is turned to the side and your mouth it out to the water.
[9:40] That's obvious. Something that isn't so obvious
[9:43] is you need to be breathing out into the water.
[9:46] And something we see in in beginner swimmers is they're
[9:49] turning their head to the side, but they're trying to both
[9:52] breathe out and in at the same time.
[9:54] So get used to breathing out into the water and get used to
[9:58] turning your head to the side and breathing in.
[10:00] So you can dedicate all of that time when your mouth is above
[10:02] water to breathing in. And so in order to pace your
[10:07] swim correctly, it's tempting to think, I can swim as hard as I
[10:11] like. I'll just breathe more often.
[10:14] But when we what we find is you better thinking of it the other
[10:17] way around. You better limiting the pace of
[10:19] your swim by how often you can swim and you better learning to
[10:23] breathe bilaterally. That means breathing on both
[10:26] sides alternately every third stroke.
[10:30] If you can do that, even if it means swimming and slowing down
[10:33] your swims initially, you will embed the correct stroke
[10:37] technique in there because you are going to work out any
[10:40] inefficiencies that are caused by only turning over to one
[10:44] side. Again, if we go back to the
[10:47] analogy of golf or tennis, you'd never go to a Tennis Club and
[10:51] only practise the forehand because you'd expect not to be
[10:54] very good at the backhand stroke.
[10:57] You have to practise breathing on both sides because it's going
[11:00] to even out your stroke. And even if you've swum for
[11:02] years and you can't breathe on your off side or your weaker
[11:06] side, What we often find is when athletes do go to this, it
[11:10] actually improves their swimming overall.
[11:12] It'll slow them down in the short term, but the way that
[11:16] they learn to balance their body as they turn to breathe on their
[11:19] weak side can then positively affect their breathing on their
[11:22] what was proves to their strong side and balance the stroke out.
[11:26] So I'd always advise people to learn to breathe bilaterally,
[11:29] even if it means you have to slow down a little bit
[11:32] initially. And I would say for Iron Man
[11:34] athletes, even though it's going to be difficult to swim
[11:37] bilaterally on race day if you haven't practised this, if you
[11:42] have practised it, it will become natural.
[11:45] And the fact you can then choose which side to breathe on and in
[11:48] an ideal world be as strong on both sides, it means that if the
[11:52] water's choppy on race day, you can breathe away from the chop
[11:56] on the the leg where the chop's coming in One Direction and the
[11:59] same on the leg where it's coming from the other direction.
[12:02] If the sun's rising in One Direction, you can breathe away
[12:05] from it and not have to look into the sun.
[12:07] You're very limited if you can only breathe on one side.
[12:10] So I'd always advocate learning to breathe bilaterally.
[12:15] What are the most effective swim drills to improve my stroke?
[12:20] Well, this is a really complex answer and in simple terms the
[12:25] correct answer here is the drill that's going to improve your
[12:29] particular stroke floor is the correct one for you to be doing.
[12:33] So you really need to be seen by a coach and you need to learn
[12:37] what the one thing is that's making you standing in the way
[12:40] of you improving at the moment and practise that drill first to
[12:45] minimise and reduce and eventually get rid of that
[12:48] stroke flow before moving on to the next thing.
[12:50] So I'm a big advocate of only working on one thing at once
[12:53] here. So the most effective drill is
[12:56] the one that you personally need to improve the thing you need to
[12:59] do next. But I'll talk you through a
[13:01] couple of the ones that we tend to find a really useful for
[13:03] athletes. If you're trying to improve your
[13:06] swim, it's almost, it's almost guaranteed that one of these two
[13:11] or both of these two are the problem.
[13:14] It's either going to be a body position in the water, meaning
[13:17] that your legs sink down underneath the water and you're
[13:20] essentially like a boat trying to push water out of the way.
[13:25] So body position is 1. And the other thing is applying
[13:28] force to the water. And usually that's caused
[13:31] because underneath the water, as you put your arm in and start
[13:35] the pull on the catch in new to swimming athletes, they tend to
[13:40] drop their elbow under the water and the arm slides back behind
[13:43] them. What we ideally want to see is
[13:46] from fingertip all the way to elbow, using all of this as a
[13:50] paddle. So if you're someone who needs
[13:53] to add more power to the stroke, the first drill is the best way
[13:58] to do that simply involves swimming a length with your
[14:01] hands made into a fist, rather than having your hands out like
[14:04] paddles. This will completely take away
[14:07] your sense of the feel for the water on your palm, and it'll
[14:11] mean if you're currently slipping back through the water,
[14:14] you'll feel it immediately and your body will be forced into
[14:18] levering you into this position where you start to use your
[14:21] forearm to pull against under the water.
[14:24] So really simply do one length of the fist drill and swim back
[14:27] again. Feel how it feels.
[14:30] If it feels terrible at first, that's actually good.
[14:33] That's revealing to you the thing that you need to fix in
[14:36] your stroke. So if you can then apply the
[14:39] first drill to this as you're swimming back on the length when
[14:43] you're swimming with normal technique again, yes, your hand
[14:46] comes back into it, but you've got to work on maintaining that
[14:49] feeling of pulling the water with your forearm.
[14:53] So that's the best drill for helping out some power to your
[14:55] stroke. If you're your body position is
[14:59] one of those with sinky legs at the moment, the best thing you
[15:02] can do for that is the 636 drill.
[15:05] Now this is simply where you're going to swim.
[15:07] You're going to take 6 kicks, 3 strokes and then six kicks
[15:12] again. But crucially, the six kicks are
[15:14] going to be having you kick with your body balanced on the side,
[15:18] one arm stretched out in front of you, and then you're going to
[15:22] effectively learn to be balancing as if you're pressing
[15:25] down onto a ball underneath your armpit.
[15:28] That's the way to think of it. So you can look up the 636 drill
[15:32] online and get a good a good view for how to do that.
[15:36] The key to this is it's tempting, and you often hear
[15:40] this if you've got sinky legs, people say we'll use a pull boy
[15:43] that's going to correct it. The pull boy isn't going to
[15:46] correct it. It's going to lift your bottom
[15:47] closer to the surface, but it isn't going to address the thing
[15:51] that's making your legs sink, which is that you're not leaning
[15:54] down into your armpit as you're at the front of your stroke and
[15:57] so you're not rotating fully. So the 636 drill will fix that.
[16:01] Again, it'll feel hard at first, but what you'll find is it will
[16:06] correct the floor behind all of this and therefore you'll go to
[16:10] swimming much more flat in the water and with a much better
[16:14] body position. Next question, how do I improve
[16:19] my sighting technique for open water?
[16:22] Well, you can practise this in the pool.
[16:23] This is this is a really good tip for people.
[16:26] Your technique will be different in open water because you'll
[16:29] probably have to sight every three to five strokes to make
[16:32] sure you're still going straight.
[16:34] So if you think of your traditional swimming in a pool,
[16:38] you'll probably never lift your head up to look forwards as
[16:40] you're swimming. You're always looking down at
[16:42] the black line. So as you're moving towards open
[16:45] water swim season and race season, just introduce this into
[16:49] your into your swim practise twice every length, lift your
[16:53] head so you look at something at the end of the pool.
[16:57] Now whether that's a water bottle that you've put there,
[17:00] whether that's the diving blocks that are there, it doesn't
[17:02] really matter what it is, but have something there that you're
[17:06] going to raise your head to look at and just practise looking at
[17:09] it twice every length. That's going to firstly get you
[17:12] used to the idea of how your body balance changes and how you
[17:15] stroke changes as you lift your head to sight.
[17:19] In the early days, it doesn't matter how you lift your head to
[17:21] sight, just get in the habit of doing it.
[17:23] And there were two real ways you can then go on to refine your
[17:28] technique. The first is you can lift your
[17:30] head fully up out of the water, look forwards and then turn your
[17:34] head to breathe to the side and then put your head back down
[17:37] into the water. That's the first method.
[17:40] The second method is a little bit more complex and it's called
[17:44] crocodile eyes. And what this involves doing is
[17:47] simply raising your eyes above the water level, so just your
[17:51] goggles come above the water level and then popping your head
[17:54] back down before turning to breathe at the side.
[17:59] Now the difference between these two is the crocodiles one, it's
[18:03] harder to sight initially until you get practised at doing it.
[18:06] But because you're not lifting your head all the way up out of
[18:10] the water, your legs are not going to sink down behind you.
[18:14] So it's slightly faster and it's slightly more efficient.
[18:17] But again, in the early days, you just need to get used to
[18:21] practise lifting your head in a way that you can clearly see and
[18:24] sight on something at the end of the pool as you transition over
[18:28] into open water. What you'll then find is you
[18:32] need to look at something on the shore in the background and line
[18:35] that up with the boy that you're swimming to.
[18:38] Because if you're just looking at the boy, you won't get a
[18:40] sense of whether you're moving left or right relative to that
[18:43] boy. Typically on race day the boys
[18:46] tend to be, you know, possibly 506 hundred, 800 metres apart
[18:52] sometimes. So just having the boy to look
[18:55] at isn't great. If you can line up the boy with
[18:58] something on the shore in the background, you can then keep a
[19:01] good idea of whether you're swimming in a straight line and
[19:04] that's the great thing to aim for.
[19:13] OK, at this point it's a really good point for us to give a
[19:16] shout out to our sponsors, Precision Fuel and Hydration.
[19:19] You can use their free fuel and hydration planning tool to
[19:22] receive a personalised strategy for your next race.
[19:25] O lanner hels you understand your own carbohydrate,
[19:27] electrolytes and fluid needs and you can also book a free
[19:30] Onetoone video consultation call with FNH's Athletes Support
[19:33] team. Now.
[19:34] Electrolyte balance can be really important, especially to
[19:38] swimmers if you find you're struggling with cramps in the
[19:40] water. One of the reasons people think
[19:42] we get cramp is due to not having the right electrolyte
[19:45] balance in your body. So getting the right electrolyte
[19:48] balancing can really help with this.
[19:50] Again, head over to PF and HS website.
[19:52] You've got tonnes of information around the causes of cramp and
[19:56] things that you can do to help get rid and minimise those
[19:59] feelings of cramp. But if you're a person who
[20:01] struggles with cramp in the pool.
[20:03] Either in your legs or in your feet.
[20:05] I, I feel for you. I've had it myself.
[20:07] It's horrific. And I've personally found that
[20:09] having electrolytes in my water bottle at the pool can really
[20:12] help reduce and minimise these cramps that I get.
[20:16] OK, next question. What's the best way to build
[20:18] confidence swimming in choppy or rough open water conditions?
[20:22] Well, I think the best way to think about this is the more
[20:25] experience you've got doing this in training, the more
[20:28] comfortable and confident you're going to be come race day.
[20:31] So there's no two ways around it, you're going to have to get
[20:35] yourself into the open water in order to build confidence in the
[20:38] open water. And you're going to have to try
[20:41] and schedule sometimes to go swimming in open water and
[20:44] training on days when it might not be the perfect day to go
[20:49] open water swimming. So by that, I mean, I think the
[20:52] best day to go down for your first swim of the year is when
[20:56] it's warm, when the sun's shining, when the sky is blue.
[21:00] But you're not always going to get those conditions and
[21:02] especially if you're racing in in Europe, the chances are it
[21:07] might not be that way on race day anyway.
[21:09] So although that's what our mind tells us is the perfect
[21:12] conditions to go for the open water swim, the chances are that
[21:16] on race day the water will be rough, it will be choppy, it's
[21:20] likely going to be early in the morning and there might not be a
[21:23] blue sky above you. So practising in the conditions
[21:26] that you might have to face on race day I think is really,
[21:29] really useful and confident. And one of the best experiences
[21:31] I had training for one of my races was knowing that I had to
[21:35] do a really long open water swim to prepare for the World
[21:37] Championships. It was one of those O3 distances
[21:41] where the swim was going to be 4 1/2 K rather than it, it was a a
[21:45] strange distance they used for a while.
[21:47] No, it's going to be a 4K swim actually.
[21:50] But on the day it ended up being a really long swim and we ended
[21:52] up swimming closer to 5K. But in training I'd forced
[21:56] myself to go down for a swim. I had one evening free two weeks
[21:59] out from race day and I knew that I was going to have to swim
[22:04] for at least 4K. And for whatever reason that day
[22:07] I decided I was going to throw in an extra lap of a kilometre
[22:09] and I ended up covering 5K for my longest ever swim.
[22:13] I think I was in the water for with breaks.
[22:15] It was probably close to an hour 45.
[22:19] And at the time I got out and I was, I was cold and it wasn't a
[22:22] nice night. The water was quite rough.
[22:24] It had been overcast. I remember thinking if I can, if
[22:28] I can kind of grind my way through this and force my way to
[22:31] keep on swimming laps, I'll know that I've done more than I need
[22:34] to do come race day at the World Championships because it was the
[22:38] sport of the three that I was most concerned about.
[22:41] I wasn't concerned about not making the finish of the swim,
[22:44] but it was the thing I was most concerned about and I thought if
[22:46] I've done more than I need to in terms of preparing for race day,
[22:49] at least I'll be confident on race day.
[22:51] Sure enough, come race day we had rough, choppy conditions in
[22:55] our mare but also the swim was really long.
[22:58] There was an initial triangle and then there was a swim down
[23:01] the river mouth to to get into a harbour.
[23:05] And I think, if I remember rightly, I think there was an
[23:09] hour 45 or an hour 50 on the clock when I got out of the
[23:12] water. Remember looking at my watch and
[23:14] thinking I've had the worst swim of my life to only to only cover
[23:17] 4K in an hour 40. But I felt as I was swimming OK
[23:21] relative to the people around me.
[23:23] And lo and behold, later on, I don't think there were hardly
[23:27] any age group has broke an hour that day.
[23:29] So I was miles behind the leaders of the age group race,
[23:33] but talking to other athletes in the hotel afterwards, it was a
[23:35] bunch of really confident Americans I'd spoken to
[23:38] beforehand who are much more confident than me.
[23:41] And three of the four of them hadn't made the finish of the
[23:44] swim, had been pulled out of the water because it was so long and
[23:48] because it was so rough and so choppy.
[23:50] So it made me reflect afterwards that had I not done that
[23:53] swimming training, I don't think I've had the confidence to know
[23:57] no matter how rough this water is, how dark the water is, how
[24:00] dark the sky is, I've got the confidence I can get to the end
[24:03] of it because it's not as bad as what I've faced in training.
[24:06] And I think it's worth you putting yourself through that in
[24:09] training, obviously in a safe environment.
[24:11] I've talked before about going to a managed open water
[24:14] environment where there's lifeguard cover and the safety
[24:16] and there are people around. But if you can prepare for more
[24:20] than you need to face on race day, I think that'll really help
[24:23] you build your confidence. Next question, is it better to
[24:28] train with pool boys and paddles or to focus on pure swimming?
[24:32] I'm going to break this answer down into two parts.
[24:34] Firstly, I'm going to focus on pool boys.
[24:37] A lot of people vilify the pool boy.
[24:39] I I don't. I think it's a tool that's got
[24:41] its uses. I wouldn't want an athlete to
[24:43] swim with all the time and I certainly don't prescribe to the
[24:46] idea that because you'll be swimming in a wet suit on race
[24:50] day, you can swim with a pool boy all the time.
[24:52] If you're an athlete who is helped by a pool boy, the
[24:55] temptation is to use it all the time and convince yourself that
[24:58] you're kind of replicating a wet suit, and I don't think that's
[25:02] the case. Although it gives you extra
[25:03] flotation around your hips, it doesn't give you the same
[25:06] flotation in the way that a wet suit does and it alters your
[25:09] body position in the water. Now that's what it's aimed to
[25:13] do, but it's not aimed to be there so that you can swim with
[25:16] it all the time. So use it as a tool to correct
[25:19] your body position. Swim with it for 50 metres, take
[25:22] it out and put it on the pool side and then spin for another
[25:25] 50 metres, trying to replicate how your body felt when you had
[25:29] the pull boy floating you between the legs and at the
[25:32] hips. So what you're going to have to
[25:34] learn here is you're going to have to press down on your chest
[25:36] a bit more in order to get your hips to come up behind you.
[25:39] The pull boy is not there to correct you.
[25:42] It's also not there to make swimming feel harder.
[25:44] It's not there to to make you not have a leg kick and give you
[25:47] something hard to pull against. It's there as a tool to help
[25:50] correct your body position and that's the way to approach it
[25:53] Now with paddles. I'd advise you staying away from
[25:57] paddles for all but the the most experienced top end age
[26:02] groupers. I think if you've got really
[26:04] good stroke mechanics, I think using paddles can be a help to
[26:08] you. And I think if you're from a
[26:09] swimming background and you've grown up using them, they can be
[26:12] a help to you. The danger for, I'm going to say
[26:15] the majority of age group swimmers in triathlon is if
[26:19] you've got any kind of inefficiencies in your stroke
[26:21] around your shoulders and how your hands enter the paddle is
[26:25] going to magnify that. And especially for anyone who's
[26:28] struggled with any kind of shoulder impingement or shoulder
[26:31] soreness, using paddles is a definite known.
[26:34] I'd advise you to stay away. Now, different people are going
[26:37] to have the different opinions to that.
[26:39] I encourage you in the comments, leave comments on that if you
[26:42] disagree. But what I've found over the
[26:45] years is you're better avoiding those things that you think are
[26:49] going to add strength in inverted commas if there's more
[26:53] of a chance that what they're going to do is increase the risk
[26:55] of a niggle or an injury. Next question, how do I reduce
[27:00] anxiety when I'm starting an open water race?
[27:03] So first up, if this is you, if you experience anxiety getting
[27:08] into an open water swim race, you are not alone.
[27:11] Know that from the athletes I've spoken to, probably 70 to 80% of
[27:15] people are really nervous about the fact you're doing a race in
[27:18] open water. And so don't make the assumption
[27:21] that everybody else is OK and feeling OK.
[27:24] Usually most people are feeling the same as you.
[27:27] They're feeling anxious about getting into the open water.
[27:30] So it is perfectly normal. Next thing to think about is if
[27:34] the water's relatively cool or cold.
[27:37] The cold water shock on your face can add to that feeling of
[27:40] anxiety and in some cases can trigger feelings of panic.
[27:44] It can definitely affect the way you breathe the initial few
[27:47] minutes and that can add to the feeling of anxiety.
[27:50] So whatever you do, if you possibly can, get yourself into
[27:54] the water before the race starts.
[27:57] Get used to the feeling of the cold water on your face.
[28:00] If you can't get into the water, if the organisers don't let you
[28:03] into the water before the race start and that will
[28:05] unfortunately be the case. Sometimes something you can do
[28:08] is have a bottle of cold water with you, pour it over your face
[28:12] and pour it over your head. Get used to that feeling of
[28:15] having that cold water over you and that can often take away the
[28:20] shock that happens when you get into the water.
[28:23] Something else you can do to prepare for this is in the week
[28:26] leading up to your race, you can fill your wash basin with cold
[28:29] water and you can bend down and dip your face into the cold
[28:33] water and then lift your head to breathe.
[28:36] Put your face in the water, blow out into the water.
[28:39] Get used to that feeling that often happens of your breathing
[28:43] pattern and your breathing rate gets messed about with by the
[28:45] cold water. You can, you can definitely, I'm
[28:50] going to say acclimatise to this.
[28:51] Your body's reaction will reduce over time.
[28:54] If you can do that for say 5 minutes every morning and the
[28:58] week leading up to your race, it will definitely help minimise
[29:02] the effects of that feeling of anxiety because your face and
[29:06] head are in cold water. So these things can often really
[29:10] minimise the effects of the physical effect of the cold
[29:13] water. In terms of psychologically, I
[29:16] think something you can do that will really help is to realise
[29:18] that everybody around you is probably feeling nervous as
[29:21] well. And as you're about to get into
[29:23] the water to turn to the people next to you, wish them luck and
[29:27] wish them a safe race and, and say let's keep everybody safe in
[29:30] here. That used to be a really
[29:32] interesting strategy I used with the people around me when we
[29:35] used to have mass start in water starts that there's less of
[29:39] those around these days. But there's something about
[29:42] saying that to the few people around you that it kind of
[29:44] humanises you to the people around you.
[29:46] And it reminds everybody, look, everybody's, everybody's scared.
[29:50] Everybody wants to get through this.
[29:51] Nobody wants to get punched, nobody wants to get dunked.
[29:54] And then that way everybody can sort of treat each other a bit
[29:57] more kindly going into the race. And finally, should I practise
[30:02] swimming with my wet suit during training?
[30:05] So yes, absolutely, unequivocally make sure you've
[30:08] done some swimming practise in your wet suit in the lead up to
[30:11] your race. To my athletes, I'm going to
[30:13] advocate six weeks before race day, we're going to start doing
[30:16] open water swims. They're going to be using the
[30:19] wet suit. You're going to be doing
[30:20] everything you'd be doing on race day in terms of the
[30:24] protocol of getting into the water, getting your face into
[30:27] the water, getting used to the temperature, getting out again,
[30:30] flushing your wet suit with cold water, getting out of the water,
[30:34] squeegeeing the water down the wet suit.
[30:36] All of those things that I've talked about before in previous
[30:39] shows. Make sure you get used to the
[30:41] feeling of getting that wet suit to fit and be comfortable before
[30:45] you even start to go for your swim.
[30:47] But practising the swimming in the wet suit in open water is
[30:52] absolutely critical because your stroke is going to feel very,
[30:55] very different. Some people will find they swim
[30:58] better and feel more comfortable in a wet suit.
[31:00] Some people are going to find that it interferes with their
[31:03] normal stroke and they don't feel as comfortable in a wet
[31:05] suit. But you're going to need up to
[31:07] those six sessions leading up to race day in order to feel really
[31:11] comfortable and confident in your wet suit again.
[31:14] So make sure you put the time away to do that.
[31:17] Now, if you can't get into open water at all before race day,
[31:20] it's possible that you might be able to talk to the owner of
[31:23] your local pool and they might let you use your wet suit in the
[31:26] pool to try this before race day.
[31:30] Now some people advise against this if it's your only option.
[31:33] I think it's much better than nothing.
[31:35] Just make sure you properly rinse that suit off in the
[31:37] showers afterwards to get the the chlorinated water off the
[31:40] suit. But I think in the short term
[31:42] there's a much bigger risk of not having swim in your wet suit
[31:45] in a lead up to race day than there is of the chlorinated
[31:48] water badly affecting your wet suit.
[31:51] OK, so to wrap up this episode for you, here are some discount
[31:55] codes and deals for you at Precision Fuel and
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[31:59] 25 for 15% of your first electrolyte order.
[32:03] And over at teamoxygenedit.com, I think we've got the most
[32:06] comprehensive triathlon coaching programme that's specifically
[32:09] designed for busy age groupers. And if you're looking for
[32:12] coaching Fireman or 70.3 Triathlon this year, please
[32:16] spend half an hour watch our free Iron Man Accelerator
[32:19] webinar training. We've got tonnes of information
[32:22] in there that'll help you avoid common pitfalls when you're
[32:24] training for your first Iron Man or 70.3.
[32:27] Then it'll give you a load of tips about how to train the
[32:30] right way around your busy life, a busy job, a busy family.
[32:34] If you're interested, there's links in the show notes for both
[32:36] of those, and you don't have to remember them.
[32:39] So until next week, I hope you have a great safe training and
[32:42] racing week. I'm coach Rob Wilby and you've
[32:44] been listening to the Oxygen Addict Triathlon Podcast.

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