Putting together an open-water workout

Training in open water shouldn’t be just out and back. Just like in the pool, a better workout can be had by building fundamentals, pacing, sprints, and drills into your swim. Here is an example one-hour swim that focuses on many race-specific skills, followed by an explanation of some open-water strategies.

00:00- Suited up and ready, get your group together for a mass start. Do three sprint/strong runs in until you are past running depth. When you get to this point, run back out the same way.

00:02- Same thing, but go into deeper water and try out dolphining until too deep. Three in and outs

00:05- Do a quick warm-up of 60 strokes out and 60 strokes back. Return to shore

00:10-  Try out your full race beginning. Start in a group, run, dolphin, and set your pace for your first 100 strokes. After this, group back together.

00:15- Drills- try out 50 stroke sets of drills for open water. When done with 50 strokes, relax and move into another drill.

Blind swim- swim with eyes closed to see how off course your swim may take you. Swimmers make corrections in the pool that more often than not use a stroke fault to correct a stroke fault. For example, overreaching the middle on one side is balanced by doing the same on the other.

Blind with blind sighting- same as above, but with sighting to see how off course your stroke goes with head actions that pull out of a normal stroke.

Drag fingers- high elbows but figuring out how low you can keep your hands depending on the chop conditions

TI Drills- just as useful in the lake or ocean as in the pool.

00:30-00:45- Pacing- Use stroke counts to establish pacing. Using previous pool totals without push-offs, you should get rough estimates of how many strokes it takes to get 50m. Use these estimates to do gradually longer pacing distances on short rest intervals (treading or floating in a wetsuit is rest). A good goal for shorter distances is to have your pacing total start out at 1/3 of your total race distance and gradually increase this to about a full race distance per workout. Don’t forget to use buoys or a pretend curve in the course while pacing.

00:45-00:55- 50 or 100 stroke sprints on :30 rest/recovery. Make your way back towards the start at this point.

00:55-01:00- Strong into the finish, but pump the legs in order to get ready for the transition. Finish all the way into a quick strip of your wetsuit on shore, and have your basics ready to practice putting shoes on when wet. Don’t be afraid to try out different starting points in the same lake: boat ramps, grassy, rocky, or sandy shores, or even a dock for the entry.