# Translating Pool Speed to the Open Water | Ep 490

An episode of [Oxygenaddict Triathlon Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/951501034), 22 May 2024, 16 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/ea99f7d8/podcast/play/87026817/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2024-4-21%2F378342298-44100-2-e9bbea8349a97.mp3

In this video we talk through ways that you can swim faster in open water without necessarily having to improve your swim fitness. Many triathletes struggle to translate their pool speed and improvements into the open water. There are lots of different variables to consider when it comes to open water swimming vs pool swimming. From ensuring your wetsuit helps rather than hinders your body position in the water ... ...to your ability to sight well and swim in a straight line... ...to learning how to draft effectively off of other swimmers' feet. I also explain our top tips for drills to practice in the pool that will help get you "open water ready". Covering everything from breathing exercises to body position to maximising the power and effectiveness of your catch and pull. I'm sure after watching this video you'll feel much better equipped as you venture into the open water for the first time in a while, and will be ready to translate those hard-earned speed gains from the pool! * * * * * * * * 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! http://team.oxygenaddict.com - The most comprehensive triathlon coaching program for busy age groupers. Join the Team Oxygenaddict waiting list and be the first to find out when a space becomes available: https://team.oxygenaddict.com/waiting-list * * * * * * * * * * * * 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 use this link and the discount will be auto-applied at the checkout. * * * * * * * * * * * * Watch on youtube Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple Podcasts

## Transcript

[0:03] Hello and welcome to the Oxygenating podcast.
[0:05] We're brought to you every week by our sponsors Precision Fuel
[0:08] and hydration.com. You can personalise your
[0:11] fuelling and hydration strategy so you perform your best with
[0:14] 15% off your first order of electrolytes and carbohydrate
[0:18] fuel Decode Oxygen 20. Four at precision.
[0:21] Fuel and hydration.com Welcome to the show everybody.
[0:24] I'm your host coach Rob Wilby and.
[0:26] Every week we. Bring you an episode of this
[0:28] podcast to help motivate and inspire you for your triathlon
[0:32] goals for this season. Listen a couple of quick things
[0:35] you could do for us before we jump into today's episode.
[0:38] If you do like this episode, please consider following us on
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[0:47] That would. Really help out the growth of
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[0:55] So we'd really, really appreciate that.
[0:58] And secondly, if you're looking for help and advice with your
[1:00] triathlon training, please consider getting in touch with
[1:03] us. You can read all about what we
[1:05] offer at teamoxygenaddict.com and then you can e-mail us at
[1:08] help@oxygenaddict.com or there's a link in the show notes to book
[1:13] a call with me or one of the coaching team.
[1:15] We can discuss how we can best help you out with your triathlon
[1:19] goals for this season. In this episode of the podcast,
[1:23] I'm going to be talking about ways that you can swim faster in
[1:26] open water without necessarily having to improve your swim
[1:30] fitness to be able to do so. So this has been coming round
[1:35] for a while with some comments we've been having for our
[1:37] coached athletes that we we talked to in our coached
[1:41] athletes group who've been saying, look, my train's been
[1:44] going really, really well in the pool.
[1:46] Now it's moving time to move over to open water, and the
[1:49] swims have done an open water. They just don't seem to be, you
[1:52] know, I don't feel as though I'm getting the same kind of speed
[1:55] and open water as I was hoping for or expecting or seeing in
[1:59] the pool. And so I thought this would be a
[2:02] great topic to dive into because there are some things that you
[2:04] can do that are going to make your transition from the pool
[2:08] into open water much, much easier and allow you to access,
[2:13] if not free speed, certainly to be able to make sure that you
[2:17] feel you're maximising your ability in terms of getting the
[2:21] most speed you possibly can in open water relative to your
[2:26] training. So the first thing that I want
[2:28] to talk about here is most athletes are going to be
[2:30] swimming in wet suits in open water.
[2:32] Certainly athletes we coach mostly in the UK, certainly in
[2:36] Northern Europe and the Northern hemisphere.
[2:38] And so the the use of the wet suit is something that is by its
[2:42] very nature going to change your body position in the water.
[2:45] And that's going to change your swim gate, your swim stroke, if
[2:49] you want to call it that. And it's going to change in some
[2:52] people's cases how fast you swim, either positively or
[2:56] negatively. Now there tends to be these two
[2:58] kinds of athletes. There tends to be an athlete who
[3:02] puts a suit on and immediately is out swimming what they would
[3:05] possibly hope for in a pool. They might be swimming 2 minutes
[3:08] in the pool and they're averaging one 4500 in open
[3:12] water. These tend to be athletes who
[3:15] don't have a great body position.
[3:16] They have quite sinky legs. Um.
[3:19] Typically they're either very muscular athletes or they're
[3:22] from a running or biking background, and they don't have
[3:24] very flexible and calls. For whatever reason, they find
[3:27] it difficult to have a good body position in the water.
[3:31] But the buoyancy of a wetsuit tends to lift up the bottom the
[3:34] hips of this athlete and make them much flatter in the water,
[3:37] meaning they're much more hydrodynamic and they're going
[3:40] to travel faster for the same effort.
[3:42] So that's one kind of athlete putting a wet suit on is going
[3:45] to improve them, Unfortunately. The other kind of athlete is an
[3:49] athlete who they tend to be athletes who are very
[3:52] comfortable swimming in the pool with good body positions.
[3:55] They can sometimes find putting the wrong wet suit on or putting
[3:59] a a higher buoyancy wet suit on can actually change their body
[4:03] position in a way that they don't like.
[4:05] If they've already got really good body position or really
[4:07] good flotation around their hips and bottom, putting the wet suit
[4:11] on can actually tip them forwards and can just make them
[4:13] feel really strange in the water.
[4:15] So for those athletes, it's well worth looking into.
[4:19] Pretty much every wetsuit manufacturer makes a wetsuit
[4:23] type that's aimed at people who are pretty good swimmers.
[4:26] Or if you're like athletes with good body positions, they tend
[4:30] to have the same thickness, neoprene and the legs as they do
[4:34] in the body. Whereas most of the wetsuits out
[4:37] there tend to have thicker legs than they do in the body.
[4:41] So you want to be looking for the kind of wetsuit that's got
[4:43] similar sort of thickness legs to the rest of the body and that
[4:46] will help you feel much more comfortable in your wetsuit.
[4:50] OK, so some drills and some tips we can give you then to help you
[4:54] feel better when you get into open water.
[4:56] The first thing that's probably going to happen in open water is
[5:00] you'll experience swimming through choppy water, swimming
[5:03] through some waves. If you're swimming in a lake,
[5:06] it's most likely going to be rolling, chopped that's blown up
[5:09] by the wind. If you're swimming in the sea,
[5:11] there's every chance you're going to have long distance
[5:13] travelled, swell as well as wind chop to swim through.
[5:16] But regardless, it is not going to be the crystal clear flat
[5:21] water that you used to in a swimming pool.
[5:23] And on our training camp in in Majorca, we took some athletes
[5:27] out to swim. It looked like a relatively
[5:30] flat, calm day to the athletes from the shore.
[5:32] When we talk to them before we went out and we asked them, they
[5:34] all said, yeah, nothing really to be concerned about.
[5:37] There's a little bit of chop rolling by, but it's all fine.
[5:40] It feels very different when you're in it than it looks when
[5:43] you're standing and watching it. And so even a foot or so of of
[5:48] wind chop blowing across the water can make it really hard to
[5:51] cite things. So that's the first thing to
[5:53] think about Swimming through chop is is going to be different
[5:57] for your stroke and it's also going to be harder for you to
[6:00] cite. So the first drill I think you
[6:02] can work on as an arm turnover drill.
[6:05] And to do that I'll advise you to buy one of the little yellow
[6:08] stroke metronomes or various different companies produce them
[6:12] these days. Little beeper that can go into
[6:14] your swim hat and you can set that beeper to beep like a
[6:18] metronome in music. So you find the the natural
[6:21] cadence of your swimming. And then when you go to swim in
[6:24] open water, I'd advise you to set that beeper to be one or two
[6:28] then beeps per minute faster than you would swim in the pool.
[6:33] That increased arm turnover is going to be essential to helping
[6:36] you cut through the water and really helping you power through
[6:40] the chart. Again, the athletes who tend to
[6:42] struggle in open water when it's choppy tend to be those who tend
[6:46] towards over gliding. They think in their head.
[6:49] They are very smooth swimmer with a very long stroke and
[6:52] often quite slow arm turnover. That tends to get doubly
[6:56] punished in open water when it's a bit choppy.
[6:58] So think about doing this drill in the pool swimming with a
[7:02] little bit faster turnover than you would usually do.
[7:05] So you then have that in your arsenal, almost like as an extra
[7:08] gear when you swim in open water.
[7:10] And then even when you go to do your open water swims on the
[7:12] choppy days, consciously make use of this beeper and have it a
[7:17] couple of beeps per minute faster than you're used to, so
[7:20] that you get used to that slightly increased arm turnover.
[7:25] The next drill that you can do in a pool that's really going to
[7:28] help your swimming in open water is the fist drill.
[7:31] And it's no more complicated than a normal swim stroke.
[7:35] But instead of having your palms out flat, you're going to make a
[7:38] fist with each hand. And the effect of this is that
[7:42] it takes away the feeling of the water on the palm of your hand.
[7:46] And it means you have to learn to sense the water with your
[7:49] forearm and really be aware of where the water is.
[7:52] And typically, it means we can get more of our arm into a
[7:57] position that pulls through the water.
[7:59] If we're just swimming with our palm all the time, we tend to
[8:03] only sense the water just with the palm of our hand.
[8:07] The third thing that suggests that you practise in the pool to
[8:09] help in open water is learn to breathe just as comfortably to
[8:13] the left as you can to the right, and on a race day again
[8:16] if it's choppy, if this chop coming towards your face from
[8:19] the side that you would be most comfortable breathing towards,
[8:23] you can simply turn your head away from the chop and then that
[8:26] way you can breathe a lot more relaxed.
[8:28] But it is a skill that's going to need to be practised in order
[8:32] for you to be able to get better at it, so you can use it on a
[8:34] race day situation. The next tip I'm going to give
[8:39] you is to develop the skills of sighting in the pool so you can
[8:44] transfer them into open water. Now some of this is by necessity
[8:48] going to need to be done in open water venues so that you can use
[8:52] them on race day comfortably. But you can practise this partly
[8:55] when you're in the pool. When we're in the pool we
[8:57] practise swimming with our face in our head down.
[9:00] We don't ever look up at the end of the pool unless we've been
[9:03] told by a coach to do so. And yet when we move into open
[9:06] water, we're probably raising our head to to look where we're
[9:10] going probably every sixth stroke.
[9:13] I would say at maximum if you haven't practised this movement
[9:17] of the body of your head going up and back down again, it's no
[9:21] surprise you're going to find it really difficult come race day.
[9:24] So getting used to sighting simply by raising your head U
[9:28] and do this in the middle of a length every time you go down,
[9:31] that can be a really good thing to do in the four weeks worth of
[9:35] swims before your first race of the season.
[9:37] Just mimic that idea of of looking up.
[9:40] And one thing I sometimes do with our athletes is I put
[9:43] something on the end of the pool for them to site onto.
[9:46] So maybe it's a kick boy or a water bottle.
[9:48] It's just something so that when they look up, they have to look
[9:52] at it before they put their face back down in the water.
[9:54] We carry on swimming because again, that's part of the skill
[9:58] of sighting on race day. It's looking U finding the thing
[10:01] you're looking for with your eyes, sometimes through misty
[10:04] goggles, and then going back to swimming again.
[10:07] So the sighting skill in the pool can be started like this.
[10:11] And then when you move into outdoor swimming again, it's
[10:13] really good to get a useful idea of whether you tend to drift to
[10:18] the left or the right as you're swimming.
[10:21] If you can look at something, ideally you'll have something on
[10:26] the bank lined up behind the boy that you're swimming to get an
[10:30] idea of whether it's drifting one way or the other way
[10:34] relative to the boy that you're looking at.
[10:36] And that will give you an idea of whether you tend to drift
[10:39] left or right. Maybe even the wind or the chop
[10:42] is forcing you in One Direction. But having that idea of
[10:46] something on the shore behind the boy that's in line with it
[10:49] can be really, really useful to double check that you're
[10:52] swimming in a straight line. And again, if you're, you know,
[10:56] if there's a big tree, if there's a pile on, if you can
[10:58] see the the finished shoot in the background, even now I'm in
[11:02] France, you can sit on the Dome on the top of the the casino
[11:07] that's there. It's just swimming back in
[11:09] towards the shore, something really big on the shore.
[11:12] It's a lot easier to see than a boy.
[11:14] And although a boy can look quite big when you're standing
[11:17] on the shore, any kind of chop can easily obscure that boy from
[11:21] your view. So having something to stare at,
[11:23] even in Majorca we used the mountains in the background.
[11:26] I'm going to sit on the top of that big mountain up there.
[11:29] That's the thing I'm aiming for. And then that way, even if when
[11:32] you look U you can't quite spot the boy because of the chop, you
[11:36] still get a good idea of where you're headed for.
[11:38] From looking at the mountain, or looking at the forest, or
[11:41] looking at the village in the distance on the on the shore,
[11:44] they can all be really, really good things that can help with
[11:47] your sighting. Because at the end of the day
[11:49] you're only going to have a fast swim time if you can swim the
[11:52] course accurately. And if you're constantly
[11:54] drifting left or right, it's going to be no surprise that you
[11:57] spend. Time is a lot slower than you're
[11:59] expecting it to be, and in fact it actually is if you're
[12:02] swimming longer than the course. And the last tip that I've got
[12:06] for you today is to practise drafting behind another swimmer
[12:09] whenever you get a chance. O if you can swim with another
[12:12] swimmer in the pool or another couple of swimmers.
[12:15] Spend some of your swim sessions in the lead up to your race,
[12:19] practising swimming behind somebody on their feet.
[12:22] Practise swimming behind them on their hip.
[12:25] Practise the two swimmers, one either side on a swimmer's hip.
[12:29] See if you can get used to some of the things that you can use
[12:32] on race day, and then if you get the chance to practise these
[12:36] with your swim partners in open water as well.
[12:38] Along the way can be really, really useful.
[12:40] To go to your open water venue. Agree to meet a friend or two
[12:44] and take it in turns. Leading, drafting, following,
[12:47] sitting on the hip, just to see where you're comfortable and the
[12:50] effect it has on your swim time. And you'll find you can swim
[12:54] following a swimmer, probably swimming 15 to 20 seconds 100
[12:58] faster than you with no extra effort just by sitting behind
[13:03] them. And in an in a perfect world,
[13:07] you might not get somebody who's a faster swimmer than you towing
[13:09] you along, but you can definitely have somebody who's
[13:12] the same speed as you. You can drop in behind them and
[13:16] swim with almost no effort. You'll go no slower or faster
[13:19] than you would have done swimming on your own.
[13:21] But at the end of it, what you'll find is you get out
[13:24] feeling as though it's been a recovery swim and you're ready
[13:27] to go for the bike and the run. You've saved tonnes and tonnes
[13:29] of energy simply by letting somebody else do the work.
[13:33] And so that's something to really practise in training and
[13:36] experience. The fact if you're swimming with
[13:38] someone who's well matched swim wise, sitting on their feet is
[13:42] going to feel almost effortless. Trying to swim around them might
[13:46] feel almost impossible. It can be very, very difficult
[13:50] to get around the swimmer who's the same speed as you.
[13:53] So if you learn this in training, you'll then learn.
[13:55] Don't need to try and do this on race day.
[13:57] Just settle in, relax, sit behind the swimmer who's faster
[14:02] than you or the same speed as you, and let them do all the
[14:05] work. OK, then that brings us to the.
[14:08] End of this week's. Episode So here are some
[14:11] discount codes. And deals for you.
[14:12] Over at Precision Fuel and hydration.com, use the code
[14:15] Oxygen 24 for 15% off your first electrolyte order.
[14:20] And over at teamoxygenaddict.com, I think
[14:23] we've got the most comprehensive triathlon coaching programme.
[14:25] For busy age. Groupers, If you've enjoyed what
[14:28] you've heard today and the advice has helped you out, well,
[14:30] great stuff, I hope. That's helped put.
[14:32] Some of your fears at rest, and I know from some of the calls
[14:35] we've had, it's helping raise the right questions in the minds
[14:38] of people as to whether their current coaching relationship is
[14:42] working for them. If you're looking for a change,
[14:45] or if you're looking for high quality proven coaching for Iron
[14:48] Man or 73 Triathlon this year, you can just check out the
[14:51] details of our coaching packages on our website at
[14:54] teamoxygenaddict.com. And then if you're interested,
[14:58] there's a link in the show notes below.
[15:00] You can join our waiting list and you'll be notified if the
[15:03] slot becomes available, and at that point you'll have a chance
[15:06] to book a call with us and see if you'd be a good fit.
[15:08] For joining. The team.
[15:09] So although we don't have slots available at the moment, we'll
[15:12] make those call appointments available to people as and when.
[15:16] We do have athletes who and their coaching packages during
[15:20] the season, if and when that happens.
[15:22] So remember there's links in the show notes so you don't have to
[15:24] remember them till next week. Have a great safe training and
[15:28] racing week. I'm coach Rob Wilby and you've
[15:30] been listening to the. Oxygen addict.
[15:32] Podcast. See ya.

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