# TEN Swim Mistakes That Could Ruin Your Ironman - and how to avoid them | Ep 541

An episode of [Oxygenaddict Triathlon Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/951501034), 28 May 2025, 23 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/ea99f7d8/podcast/play/103086806/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2025-4-23%2F7f8258b2-d9f3-bf95-9921-d688a8ba9474.m4a

In this episode of the Oxygenaddict Triathlon Podcast, Coach Rob discusses ten common swim mistakes that can ruin your Ironman performance and how to avoid them. Topics including: Avoiding continuous long swims early in training... The importance of open water practice... Properly following structured swim sessions... Practicing open water skills... Managing panic triggers... Getting used to your wetsuit... Overcoming the fear of deep water... ...and much more. The episode is packed with practical tips and advice to help you swim efficiently and confidently on race day. * * * * * * * * 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. 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. * * * * * * * * * * * * Watch on youtube Listen on Spotify Listen 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 Triathlon Coaching, and every
[0:21] week we'll bring you an episode of this podcast to help educate,
[0:24] motivate and inspire you. On this week's episode, I'm
[0:27] going to be talking about 10 swim mistakes that could
[0:30] potentially ruin your Iron Man and crucially, how to avoid
[0:33] them. Before we get started though,
[0:35] there's two quick things you could do to help us.
[0:37] Please, if you like and enjoy this episode, please consider
[0:40] following us on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
[0:43] Something like 80% of our audience don't actually follow
[0:46] us on those pod, those platforms.
[0:48] And it really helps the growth of the show and helps us get
[0:50] shown to new potential listeners, which in turn helps
[0:53] me bring this podcast out for free every week.
[0:56] And also, if you're looking for help training for your first
[0:58] time on a 70.3, check out our coaching memberships over at
[1:02] teamoxygenatic.com. I think we've got the most
[1:05] comprehensive triathlon coaching programme specifically designed
[1:08] for busy age groupers. If you're interested in
[1:10] coaching, there's a link in the show notes to book a membership.
[1:13] Call with me and see if you'd be a good fit for joining the team.
[1:16] Drop us a note there. Book straight through to my
[1:18] calendar. We can have a good chat and work
[1:20] out where you're at and crucially, how we might be able
[1:22] to help you out. Right, Let's get started on
[1:26] these mistakes and what you can do to fix them.
[1:29] Making all your long swims continuous.
[1:32] Now, this is something that athletes who come to us for
[1:35] coaching, they're often really confused by.
[1:37] It seems to make sense that what you should do, preparing for a
[1:40] long continuous swim is all of your swim should be long and
[1:44] continuous, and you should build up your ability to swim a long
[1:48] continuous swim. But what we find is while that's
[1:52] important in the later part of your training plan, in the early
[1:55] part of your training plan, most people struggle with the fact
[1:59] that as they get tired and as they fatigue, their form falls
[2:03] apart. And what ends up happening if
[2:05] you try to do a really long continuous win before you're
[2:07] conditioned for it is you end up embedding the stroke flaws.
[2:12] As your stroke falls apart, you embed that into your stroke and
[2:16] you practise the incorrect technique.
[2:18] And the old adage says practise makes permanent.
[2:22] That's very true in this case. Practise does not make perfect,
[2:26] practise makes permanent. And So what we want to do is we
[2:29] want to practise as many perfect strokes as we can.
[2:32] So in the earlier days of your training plan, what I'm going to
[2:35] advise is instead of say, trying to swim 1000 metres all in one
[2:40] go, break that up into 10 by 100 metres with a short rest.
[2:43] It only needs to be 3 to 5 seconds between each hundred.
[2:47] But those little micro recoveries allow the muscles in
[2:50] your shoulders, your neck, your back to recover, meaning that
[2:53] your technique won't fall apart. And as I've said, most beginners
[2:57] find that if they track their pace per 100 across A-1000 metre
[3:02] swim, they gradually get slower. If they break that thousand
[3:05] metre swim up into 10 by 100, they find they can keep coming
[3:09] in on the same pace per 100 for each of those hundreds.
[3:13] That means you're practising correct technique and and
[3:16] swimming, especially in the early days is much more about in
[3:20] your head thinking about practising perfect technique,
[3:23] just like thinking you would practise a a tennis stroke or
[3:26] practise a golf swing. It's a technique based sport as
[3:30] much as it's a fitness based sport.
[3:32] So in the early days make those swims broken up.
[3:35] And then as you progress towards your Iron Man race day, you can
[3:38] start to introduce longer intervals of 500 metres to 1000
[3:42] metres. And eventually you can start
[3:44] doing really long continuous swims, but they only need to be
[3:47] in the last four weeks before your Iron Man.
[3:50] Up until that point, those micro brakes are going to ensure that
[3:54] you're building up your fitness and most importantly, your
[3:57] ability to hold your technique together in the correct way.
[4:01] Skipping open water practise. Now this is a really tough one
[4:05] for athletes who are racing early season, especially if
[4:08] you're in the UK. If you're racing in an early
[4:10] season 9 man, it might be that open water is just too cold to
[4:14] swim in in the early part of the season, but open water practise
[4:18] is really essential for you to get to the point where you'll
[4:21] feel confident in open water when you go to race day.
[4:25] Now, that sounds obvious, but you'd be really surprised the
[4:28] number of athletes who come to us for whom it is really
[4:32] difficult to get into open water because of the barriers of
[4:35] temperature, say, or even sometimes because of the
[4:38] barriers to physically getting to a lake or an ocean that they
[4:41] can swim in. This is the challenge.
[4:44] You have to set yourself way ahead of time.
[4:46] If you know you're going to be swimming in open water, you need
[4:49] to make a plan to get the training sessions done in open
[4:52] water every week. I would suggest for eight weeks
[4:55] in the lead U to race day. That might mean that you plan
[4:59] which race you enter so that you have that eight week window to
[5:03] practise an open water in the lead up to race day.
[5:06] If your swim is going to be in the ocean, if you're swimming
[5:09] say Iron Man whales, there's a good chance you're going to be
[5:11] facing open water conditions there with at the very least
[5:15] some chop and possibly rolling swell on the water.
[5:18] You're going to have to figure out how to get to the ocean if
[5:21] you don't live near it, how to safely practise in the ocean.
[5:25] And I would advise not just going in on your own, finding
[5:28] some managed open water swim venues you can go to, where
[5:31] there are lifeguards, where there's possibly open water
[5:33] coaching. Practise this ahead of time and
[5:36] make a plan so that you're not getting to two weeks, 3 weeks, 4
[5:40] weeks before I'm on race day and suddenly realising you've never
[5:43] swum in the ocean, you've never swum in salty water, you've
[5:46] never swum in any kind of open water before.
[5:49] So skipping the open water practise is a big mistake we see
[5:53] a lot of of first timers make. Not necessarily because they
[5:58] don't understand the importance of it, but because of the
[6:00] difficult barriers that are thrown up in front of them and
[6:03] they haven't found a way to overcome those barriers.
[6:06] Not following structured swim sessions.
[6:09] Now what I mean by that is we hear from some athletes who come
[6:13] to us for coaching, they just go to the pool and they just swim.
[6:17] They don't really know what the session is going to be before
[6:19] they get in the water. And because of that, it's not so
[6:23] much a problem on an individual day by day basis, but if each
[6:28] one of those swims two or three times a week for 16/18/20 weeks
[6:33] is unplanned, you're not really planning for success there.
[6:37] Similarly, athletes who go and they swim at club sessions that
[6:41] might be coached by different coaches on different days,
[6:45] they're making an assumption that the the coach knows what
[6:49] events they're going to be doing, which can sometimes be
[6:51] correct but often can't be. And they also make the the
[6:55] assumption that a series of club swims is going to be planned in
[6:59] a way that's going to lead you to an event.
[7:02] And that's often not the case as well.
[7:04] Often club swims are kind of stand alone club swims.
[7:08] They're not aimed to build towards a certain event.
[7:11] So it's really worth your time if you're in that position.
[7:13] If you're an uncoached athlete going to a Tri club swim, talk
[7:17] to the coach about the purpose of the swim, explain what event
[7:21] you're aiming for and ask whether the swims that you're
[7:23] turning up for are actually appropriate for the kind of
[7:26] swims that you want to do. I've seen lots of cases where
[7:30] athletes have turned up assuming that a Tri club swim is aimed at
[7:34] a swimmer like them. And actually the club coach
[7:37] might not even be a triathlete. They'll definitely be a a
[7:40] qualified swim coach, but it might be a very swim squad
[7:44] oriented type swim that might involve a lot of short, hard
[7:47] sprints that just might not be relevant to you.
[7:50] So make sure you're following a set of structured swim sessions
[7:55] that are leading you progressively to the event that
[7:58] you're going to do. It's no problem for athletes
[8:00] that are coached by coaches who know where you're going to.
[8:03] They've got an overall plan taking you to your event.
[8:06] But if that's not you, you need to do something ahead of time to
[8:09] make sure that the swim sets that you're doing are going to
[8:12] help you get you where you want to be.
[8:17] Failing to practise skills in open water.
[8:21] So even if athletes are getting into open water, a mistake I see
[8:24] people making is them getting in and just going for a swim.
[8:28] The reality of a race being in open water is there are some
[8:32] skills that you're going to need that will make a big difference
[8:35] to how long the swim takes. It's not just about the swim
[8:39] fitness. So we need to talk about your
[8:41] ability to sight accurately, we need to talk about your ability
[8:45] to swim in a straight line accurately and open water.
[8:48] And we need to talk about your ability to use the other
[8:51] swimmers around you to your advantage to draught off
[8:54] possibly as well. So those three skills are really
[8:57] important, they are practicable in a pool as well, but you have
[9:03] to also be able to do this in open water.
[9:06] You have to be able to practise swimming in a straight line
[9:08] between two boys. And a great way to do this is to
[9:11] have the GPS on your watch track how you swim and look at the
[9:15] trace afterwards. Another way is to have a
[9:18] partner, a friend, a training partner on the beach watching
[9:21] you trying to swim in a straight line between two places.
[9:25] And often what you'll find is just the movement of the
[9:30] currents in the water or the wind blowing across the water
[9:33] means although it feels like you're swimming in a straight
[9:36] line between two points, you might actually be drifting in
[9:39] one way or the other. Now, the good, effective open
[9:42] water swimmers have skills available to them that they can
[9:46] constantly check as they're swimming.
[9:48] Is the boy I'm swimming to lined up with something in the
[9:51] background? Maybe you can see some trees on
[9:54] the shore. Maybe you can see a mountain on
[9:56] the shore in the background. Learn the skills of lining up
[10:01] the boy you're swimming with with something else behind it,
[10:04] and that'll help you see whether you're swimming in a straight
[10:06] line. But definitely get into the open
[10:08] water, not just with the idea of practising the actual swimming
[10:13] itself, but with the idea of practising the skills that are
[10:18] going to help you swim in a straight line and keep track of
[10:23] where you're going with sighting on race day, starting the race
[10:28] too hard. So this is entirely focused on
[10:32] your race day performance, but you can practise this in
[10:35] training as well. Almost every athlete and
[10:38] probably every first timer makes the mistake of going off much
[10:42] harder than they mean to and much harder than they realise
[10:45] they're doing. When the gun goes on race day,
[10:48] everyone's excited, you're surrounded by people, there's
[10:50] adrenaline, there's crowds, it's really hard to calm yourself
[10:55] down enough to swim at a nice relaxed pace.
[10:58] You're also not getting any feedback because it's really
[11:01] hard when you're in open water, can't really look at your watch
[11:05] and get any accurate feedback about how fast you're swimming.
[11:08] So you have to be very tuned in over those 1st 203 hundred
[11:11] metres into making sure you're consciously slowing yourself
[11:16] down because it's possible to swim really fast without
[11:19] realising it for the 1st 200 metres and then find that you're
[11:22] really, really out of breath. And then it takes you time to
[11:25] recover in the water. People who struggle with panic,
[11:29] often it's it's down to swimming much too fast as you set off.
[11:33] So learn the skills of really starting to swim easily and well
[11:37] within your ability so that you don't go off way too hard and
[11:41] blow your race to pieces before you've even started.
[11:46] OK, this is a great point for a shout out to our sponsors
[11:48] Precision Fuel and Hydration. You can use the free fuel and
[11:51] hydration planning tool to receive a personalised strategy
[11:54] for your next race. The planner helps you understand
[11:56] your own carbohydrate, electrolyte and fluid needs and
[12:00] you can also book a free one to one video consultation with
[12:03] PFNH's Athlete Support team. Ignoring open water panic
[12:07] triggers until race day. So it is really, really common
[12:12] for people to panic when they get into open water.
[12:15] I would say probably 20% of the athletes that come to us to
[12:18] coaching experience genuine panic and terror when they're in
[12:22] the open water. They're fine swimming in the
[12:24] pool, but something happens when they get into open water and
[12:28] they don't know what it is. This can happen to athletes no
[12:31] matter how strong or weak a swimmer they are.
[12:33] It's even happened to an athlete I've coached who is a
[12:36] professional level athlete. The panic triggers that can
[12:39] happen in open water are very real and can be really
[12:42] debilitating. Now the good news with this is
[12:47] it can be dealt with and the panic usually stems from
[12:50] unfamiliarity with being in the environment of the open water.
[12:54] So the answer really is you need to expose yourself gradually to
[12:57] open water and you need to get used to the idea of being in the
[13:02] open water in an environment where you feel really safe.
[13:05] So my advice to you here is to go to managed open water venue,
[13:09] go to one that's got lifeguards watching over people, go with a
[13:12] swim buddy, go with a training partner, go where people are
[13:16] watching out for you and initially swim in the area of
[13:20] the water where you feel really confident.
[13:23] So for some people that might be swimming at a beach with really
[13:26] clear, calm water on holiday and only swimming in water that
[13:30] you're confident you can stand up in, that might be a way that
[13:33] you find if your fears are being in deep water, learning that
[13:38] you're really confident in the shallow water to start with and
[13:41] then progressing is a great way to start with that.
[13:45] Another common trigger for panic and for anxiety is if the water
[13:50] is really dark and murky and often we find this in races in
[13:53] the UK, unfortunately. We've seen videos online of what
[13:56] look like beautiful outdoor swims get to the race venue and
[14:01] it's not unusual for the water to be so dark and murky that you
[14:04] actually can't see your hand in front of your face as you put it
[14:07] into the water. Now the only way through this
[14:10] kind of anxiety is to get used to it.
[14:13] It's to train in an environment like this where you are actually
[14:17] safe. Again, staying close to the
[14:18] shore if you need to, swimming with a buddy, having someone
[14:21] watching over you and kind of watching what your mind does in
[14:26] this situation, watching the phase that come up.
[14:29] And then if you need to stop and stand up and come out of the
[14:31] water for a bit and think yourself through what's going
[14:34] on. Often athletes report that what
[14:38] happens with this is that voice in the head that panics is going
[14:42] to get quieter over time and it's gradually going to reduce
[14:45] over time. But there's no question that the
[14:49] panic usually stems from unfamiliarity.
[14:52] And you can do a lot to help yourself by getting into this
[14:55] environment in training, experiencing small amounts of
[14:58] the environment where you feel safe and you can remove yourself
[15:01] really quickly and then being able to re expose yourself to
[15:05] it. And usually we find athletes,
[15:08] they'll go through a period of a couple of swims, but very
[15:11] quickly they can get to grips with the thoughts that are in
[15:14] their head that are causing this panic.
[15:16] They can get through it and they can find that they're actually
[15:20] becoming a really confident swimmer that doesn't experience
[15:23] these panic triggers. But the key is actually making
[15:26] sure you do this in training so that you're not experiencing it
[15:30] for the first time on race day. Not getting your wetsuit ready
[15:33] to swim in before you actually start to swim.
[15:36] Now what do I mean by this? Most first timers assume that
[15:40] the wet suits job is you put it on dry and it's going to stop
[15:44] the water getting in and getting onto your body and that that's
[15:47] its purpose. Now that's not actually its
[15:50] purpose. What you need to do is you need
[15:51] to get the wet suit really wet and get water down the inside of
[15:55] it. What will then happen is,
[15:56] firstly, it will fit you much better and secondly, your body
[15:59] will warm up. A very thin layer of water traps
[16:02] in the neoprene and that in itself is the thing that's going
[16:06] to keep you warm. So the way to go about this is
[16:08] to go into the water to pull the neck of the suit forwards, bend
[16:13] down so you're in waist deep water, bend down, pull the neck
[16:17] of the suit forwards. Scoop the water into the front
[16:19] of the soup, into the front of the suit.
[16:22] Stand up and squeegee that water down the front of your chest.
[16:26] Do the same so it goes down both arms.
[16:28] Walk back out of the water and squeegee that water down.
[16:32] The first thing you're going to find is your suit will fit you
[16:35] much, much better. It become much more pliable and
[16:37] it will it'll feel like it slides around on your skin and
[16:40] you can get it into the nooks and crannies of your elbows in
[16:43] the backs of your knees. Be much easier to fit.
[16:46] But most importantly here, once you've done that and come out of
[16:50] the water and you've squeegeed the suit into place, as you go
[16:53] back into the water, now it will be sealed against your body,
[16:57] almost vacuum sealed against you, and it won't let any more
[17:00] water into the suit. If you find after this that it
[17:03] does, it's a clue that your suit isn't very well fitting and
[17:06] you're going to need to sort that out.
[17:07] But for the majority of people with a well fitting suit, when
[17:10] you've done that, what you'll find is the suit then fits you
[17:14] really well. No cold water seeps in.
[17:17] You don't have that horrible experience of cold water seeping
[17:20] down the neck or seeping in through some of the seams and it
[17:23] will, it will fit you really, really well.
[17:25] But that's a common misconception that first timers
[17:28] don't know that you need to do that to get your suit ready for
[17:31] race day. You might have to take a bottle
[17:33] of water with you down to the swim start if you're not allowed
[17:36] into the water before actually getting in.
[17:38] And it can be a good idea to practise this in training at
[17:41] your venue using A2 litre bottle of water to actually pour it
[17:44] down your suit and get the suit to fit you.
[17:47] So you're used to how that's going to happen on race day,
[17:52] worrying too much about being slower in open water.
[17:56] So it's really common, especially in the first few
[17:59] swims in open water that athletes go to training, that
[18:03] they look at their watch afterwards and the pace is 1520,
[18:06] maybe 30 seconds per hundred slower than what they would swim
[18:10] in the pool. So it's quite usual for that to
[18:13] be the case. And there are a few reasons for
[18:15] this. Firstly, there's perhaps error
[18:18] in the GPS measuring how fast you're actually swimming.
[18:21] There's perhaps error in how long around the boys it's it's
[18:25] quite common for an open water venue will advertise it as a 500
[18:29] metre loop, but it could be anywhere between 350 and 700
[18:33] metres in reality. So don't pay too much attention
[18:36] to timing yourself around the loop and thinking that's how
[18:39] it's going. GPS can be notoriously
[18:41] unreliable in water, so there's that aspect to it as well.
[18:45] But then there's also the other aspects of just getting used to
[18:48] swimming in open water, getting used to swimming in the suit,
[18:51] getting used to sighting, working out whether you are
[18:54] actually swimming directly between the boys and whether
[18:56] that's contributing to your slower pace in open water.
[19:00] So don't worry what the number is in open water when you
[19:03] analyse it afterwards. Just know that these are the
[19:05] reasons for it and over time over 3 or 4 open water swims
[19:09] that will normalise and you'll get to the point where you will
[19:13] actually be able to get a good handle on how fast you're
[19:15] swimming in open water. Even on race day it's not
[19:19] uncommon for the swim to be a hundred 150 metres long or
[19:23] short, so you can't pay too much attention to what your actual
[19:26] race time is. It's much better to look at the
[19:29] times of the other swimmers around you that you know and try
[19:32] and make a judgement how well you've swim relative to them as
[19:36] well as looking at your overall race time.
[19:39] Skipping endurance swims in open water.
[19:43] So this is a real common one, especially for athletes in the
[19:46] UK. Especially if you're preparing
[19:48] for an early season race, it can be really hard to get into open
[19:52] water because the temperature can be really low because it can
[19:55] be a long distance to the venue because there might not be
[19:58] venues close to you. I would strongly advise you to
[20:01] get 8 swims of. Your endurance swim done in open
[20:07] water in the lead up to your big race of the year.
[20:10] So that means taking what would be your endurance swim off your
[20:13] training plan and transferring it into open water.
[20:16] Now it might be that you need to adjust the the actual set that
[20:21] you would be swimming, but try and make it as much like the the
[20:25] set you've got on your training plan as possible.
[20:29] I've talked previously about how we break up the early endurance
[20:32] swims into 100 metres and how you need to take a little break
[20:36] to recover. If you're doing this in open
[20:38] water, what you could do perhaps is swim from boy to boy, take
[20:41] that 3 to 5 second break, then swim from boy to boy again.
[20:45] And over time, build that up so you swim to two boys, so you
[20:49] swim to three boys. So you swim one complete lap and
[20:52] have a little break And gradually build that over your
[20:55] eight weeks until you're getting to the point where you're
[20:58] confident you're completing your full swim as a continuous swim.
[21:02] But you've built up to that over a period of 6 to 8 weeks.
[21:06] I'd love to see an athlete do the full distance of their
[21:08] target race continuously, twice in open water before race day.
[21:14] That's what I advise you work towards and letting fear of deep
[21:18] water hold you back. Now again, we've, we've talked
[21:22] before about the fear of being in open water, the fear of deep
[21:25] water and murky water. Even if the water's really
[21:28] clear, if you swim out to sea or you swim out into a lake, you'll
[21:32] get to the point where you can no longer see the bottom.
[21:34] And this can be a cause of real concern and real anxiety for
[21:37] people. So the way to go here is to
[21:39] acclimate yourself to it gradually.
[21:41] It's to go in training and to swim gradually out of your depth
[21:45] to the point where you can't see the bottom anymore and then swim
[21:47] back again and then swim back out to that point.
[21:50] Spend some time there and see how your mind reacts.
[21:53] Some athletes are not bothered by this at all.
[21:56] Some athletes find it really disconcerting and you need to
[21:59] learn what works for you here. But gradually desensitising
[22:03] yourself to this across time is the way forward and you'll find
[22:06] that your mind adapts really, really quickly.
[22:10] OK, to wrap up this week's podcast, here are some discount
[22:12] codes and deals for you. Over at Precision Fuel and
[22:15] hydration.com, you can use the code Oxygen Fuel 25 for 15% off
[22:20] your first electrolyte order. And over at
[22:22] teamoxygenaddict.com, I think we've got the most comprehensive
[22:25] triathlon coaching programme specifically designed for busy
[22:28] age groupers. If you're looking for coaching
[22:31] for Iron Man or 70.3 Triathlon this year, please get in touch.
[22:34] There's a link in the show notes to book a membership call with
[22:37] me and see if you'd be a good fit for joining the team.
[22:40] So remember, there's links in the show notes so you don't have
[22:43] to remember them. And until next week, have a
[22:45] great safe training and racing week.
[22:47] I'm coach Rob Wilby and you've been listening to the Oxygen
[22:50] Addict Triathlon Podcast.

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