Chuck Finley wrote:
Triathletes love to buy crap to make themselves faster. Fact is, 10-20% of a swim workout should include pool toys, max. It's better to do drills and focus in technique without aids. Pull bands, paddles and buoys are more to help with conditioning than technique. At least, that's how most swimmers use them.
You need to re-read Brett's post. "Conditioning" is really all that matters (for triathlon). Conditioning *IS* technique, at least in the context of what we are actually discussing - which is open water swimming for the sport of triathlon. Though certain elements of it seem to carry over the sport of open water swimming in general, perhaps due to the incredible distance and non-ideal conditions encountered. It's precisely because bands, paddles and buoys are conditioning tools that they are of value. At least, that is assuming that you actually used conditioning to mean fitness/strength/endurance/whatever-synonym-you-want.
Simply put, it doesn't matter too much "how swimmer's use them." As numerous swimmers on this board have pointed out, it's not about being fast in the pool. It's about being moderately quick (a 48min IM swim is ~1:16/100m pace; that is not "fast" in the strict swimmer sense of the word) in open water. As was pointed out several times in the DPS/SR thread, certain elements of that continue to elude you. Rather than being so convinced of your own correctness, why not consider that the coachES (it's more than just Sutton) who advocate this approach have produced many of the most successful triathletes of the past 20 years. And that many of the most successful triathletes from the decade prior to that, when coaches didn't really exist yet, also employed this approach.
Anything Brett Sutton writes is worth reading once. When it's something that Joel Filliol, Dave Scott, and countless others ALSO embrace, it's worth reading several times.
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