Anybody out there doing all of their swim training in open water? I’m thinking about ditching the pool. I hate the pool. I am so over the black line. I’ve swam my whole life so for me speed improvements come with consistency, which I can maintain with 3x OWS per week. I’m just wondering what I’m giving up by not being in the pool. I’m also wondering how to monitor gains/losses in speeds when the current is such a variable. Any OWS fishies out there who can school me on how to keep up my speed when giving up the pace clock?
You would probably be giving up the monitoring of gains/losses of speed, as you say. But if you hate the pool and enjoy the open water, then it is probably worth the switch. On the other hand if you think that you are someone who can’t swim hard without the constant structure or feedback from the pace clock then you might find the open water makes you swim slower. You could try to just do intervals by time and not worry about distances anymore. I say go for it.
I would imagine it would give up all structure to workouts. It would encourage long distance swims at certain paces all the time, but you’re not getting the 10-20x200’s leaving on 2:50 anymore.
I’m exactly the same. Three 2500-3k sessions a week pretty much sets me up
I haven’t gone all OW but you can certainly challenge yourself and keep speed up. - i.e. Warm up to the jetty, 30 second sprints, or hard to the pier, hard/easy strokes as 10/10/20/10/30/10/20/10/10/10 etc. ins and out fast to the buoy.
You’ll know at your next race whether you did enough hard work. 
I would imagine it would give up all structure to workouts. It would encourage long distance swims at certain paces all the time, but you’re not getting the 10-20x200’s leaving on 2:50 anymore.
I wouldn’t say all structure but certainly no pace clock which is the root of all pool structure.
I do all OWS in the summer for variety and simplicity (closer to home). You’re right, I can’t do 10x200m anymore but instead I would do 10 x which varied. I tried to do it with a watch, but ultimately it’s easier to do it by counting in your head. I’d also cheat with my rest and go when I felt like it. It’s not as effective training, not as scientific but I enjoyed it more.
The results may not be the same, but if you have fun you’ll get more satisfaction from it.
Exactly. Its more of what you want out of it. You’ll end up better if you enjoy OWS and go out and do it, rather then never go to the pool.
Me personally I always found that whenever I was OWS unless I had something specific to do (like swim to this exact point) my mind would just wonder. I couldn’t do time based stuff because I would be looking at my watch too much. I liked the pool because I could always catch the clock on a flip turn every 50. But I’m a little nutty and really enjoyed running on the track 
I have had some good swim gains when training for SwimRun with all OWS. All of the swims were in race kit which included paddles, pullbouy, and shoes. The increase in swim strength helped my “regular” swimming. As others have mentioned, you can still do intervals, but need to change up the format. It also can help swimming in a straight line in open water. An under appreciated skill in Tri swim gains.
I’ve gone in the opposite direction.
The only time I’ve swam open water this year is for races.
The downside would be that is it nearly impossible to do quality structured intervals in open water. Totally giving up the the precisely measured lane length and the pace clock is akin to throwing out your power meter and “just riding your bike.” You can do fine going that route, but you are leaving some potential gains on the table.
That being said, if highly structured intervals are not the focus of your training anyway, and they may not be if you just don’t care or, you have enough of a swim background at this point you can do fine just going by feel. So if you enjoy open water swimming, go for it!
The straight line is a goal for me. Yesterday I was following somebody’s bubbles and I couldn’t believe how zigzag it was. I think I’m already swimming straighter after just a couple of weeks of all OWS.
I also want to learn to read the currents better and not get stuck swimming in place. Where do I shift my sight line to when a current is pulling me left? What’s the most efficient way through the current? There has to be something other than just powering through it… maybe.
My stroke is also completely different in OWS so I want to work on that as well.
I’ve just started to ditch the pool this summer and swim in our local lake that has nicely placed buoy markers from a tri the run there each year. I need a set target to swim to. It’s so much more enjoyable (on a nice day). One thing no one has mentioned is the inherent risk in OWS if you are heading out by yourself. In a pool you are much safer. Do you guys swim open water alone and feel safe enough?
I do think about that stuff. It tends to make me swim less distance than I would in a pool scenario.
Do you guys swim open water alone and feel safe enough?
You mean, do I think about the lady who was killed by a shark at the buoy line in 2003 as I stare down into the blackness? Or the kid who was killed by a jet ski as I cross a boating lane? Nope. Never. Or at least I try not to think about it! That is some freaky shit man.
Well… I wear a neon yellow pinnie for visibility (it turns out that other folks like to sight off of me) and when I swim alone I drag my floaty along. I’ve been swimming my whole life, was a lifeguard once upon a time, and have done quite a bit of open water swimming. So, yes. I feel as safe as it it going to get. I actually think it is safer than riding my bike outside… so, there’s that.
I also find that I’ll swim much further in open water. For instance, yesterday I went ~4,000 yds from shore, along the buoy line, to the end of the pier, to the next pier, back to the first pier, and then to shore. In the pool I would have done my main set and probably stopped at 3,000 yds. When I am with a group there is inevitably somebody faster than me that I must chase down so I get challenged. And then, of course, there is getting stuck in a current and swimming nowhere. Gotta up my kicking game to get out of that or I’ll be there all day.
I like the lake swimming because it feels safer (no sharks, big chop, or insane currents), but I don’t like the muck and grit. I like the ocean because of visibility and limitless swimming, but I don’t like sand or sharks. Or seals. Or jellies. Or kelp. Or whales (yes, really). So… yeah. The pool is pretty safe. But safe is BORING.
I’ve always been an MOP swimmer, and it sounds like you’re way better, so our situations are likely quite different. That being said, my best IM swim happened after a few months of 95% OWS. Volume was way down, intensity was way down, structure was way down, but all of those were outweighed by the specificity of OWS vs. the pool.
Depending on how you set up your open water swims, you can keep some structure. For me, I swim in a lake that’s 500m across (Dock to dock). First buoy is 150m, second buoy is 250m, and the third is 400m. Based off of that I can somewhat structure my swim training.
IMO, there’s no substitute for the pool for technique work but there’s also no substitute for open water swimming for OWS fitness and specific skills. At the aforementioned lake there are often high-school kids that can absolutely smoke me in a pool but out in the lake I can hang with them and often outswim them. Plenty of other people here on ST have had similar experiences too fyi.
I swim in the sea all year - the only pool where we live is just 13yds long and open very restricted times.
It gets challenging over the winter once the temperature fals below 50degrees and you start to need gloves, socks, extra neoprene vest …
I find adding 200 repeats between marks on one side of the bay enough to keep sufficient speed for longer distances.
For intervals in ows count strokes, ie 100 stroke intervals etc
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Anybody out there doing all of their swim training in open water? I’m thinking about ditching the pool. I hate the pool. I am so over the black line. I’ve swam my whole life so for me speed improvements come with consistency, which I can maintain with 3x OWS per week. I’m just wondering what I’m giving up by not being in the pool. I’m also wondering how to monitor gains/losses in speeds when the current is such a variable. Any OWS fishies out there who can school me on how to keep up my speed when giving up the pace clock?
Where are you getting out of the water as it stands?
I quit the pool last year myself. Only swimming ow this year hasn’t hurt too much so far. My interval now is how many laps I do around the local small lake. Before I started doing this, I will get out of the water as either first or second in my wave typically. Now, get out of the water as either first or second in my wave typically.
I find that doing four laps at just under a mile each is a lot less boring than doing 160 laps at the pool and my time for 1.2 is still under 24 min.
I swim in a lake that’s 500m across (Dock to dock).
Do you flip turn? (sorry, couldn’t resist… hehe)
Where are you getting out of the water as it stands?
That’s just it. Not much. Sure, I could do more intervals and get my pace down a few more seconds/100, but why? I’d have to log so much more time and get back into doing 5x per week and I’m just not wanting to put 20,000 yards in per week to get there. Yet, I feel like there are huge gains to be had in OWS. For context, in school I was clocking a 0:55 100y race and doing 100s on the 1:15. As a fat old lady I’m racing at 1:13 and can hold a 1:20 10x100. Since I’ve burned out on keeping that up my race speed has dropped to 1:17 and 1:30 interval. Yet in OWS the speed wasn’t translating to closer to FOP out of the swim.
Honestly, I’ll shave more time off by focusing on my run than on my swim, so why bother getting in top swim shape?
I guess I probably won’t do as much butterfly in the ocean…
I swim in the sea all year - the only pool where we live is just 13yds long and open very restricted times.
It gets challenging over the winter once the temperature fals below 50degrees and you start to need gloves, socks, extra neoprene vest …
When do you consider it too cold? My ocean is usually 56 - 61 and I’m in either my zoot or xterra, neo cap with silicon cap on top and pool goggles. When it gets colder I switch to large goggles to get more face covered. I don’t know that my ocean gets down below 52. I surf year-round so I know the cold cycles and have been fine in my 3/5 with an undershirt + hoodie, booties and gloves. Do you wear surf booties and gloves? My surf gloves are stupid thick. Like marshmallow thick.