Please discuss.
You didn’t ask the question that makes more difference than anything else in the relationship of pool to open water swimming, wetsuits, or no??? Changes everything in this discussion…
not looking for the difference between pool and open water, but the difference between training for both in the pool. I realize the wetsuit is a huge difference but my local pool is 84 degrees and nobody would wear a wetsuit in it. I did the first day I owned a wetsuit, lasted 5 minutes
I’m not the best swimmer, I just train to get out and start the race, so you know where I’m coming from. I train in a 25 yard pool. and try to go about 40 minutes, no drills, just swim. I’ve done a H/I and want to do a full soon.
My only open water has been races and some long swims while in Jamaica. The biggest difference for me is dealing with the salt water. it’s nice that it makes swimming easier, I really feel that. The hard part for me is getting used to the salt in my mouth and a little in my eyes.
If your race will be in salt water, I’d suggest doing some training in salt water. If it’s fresh water, just training in a pool should be fine.
pool - lane lines, calm water, no one else in your lane when you race, no drafting - well a bit if you both hug lane lines, need to work on starts and turns.
open water - body contact, waves, sun in your eyes, drafting, turning around bouys.
training is not much different, the principles are the same, aerobic development, increase threshold speed, do some sprinting especialy in you are a FOP swimmer, learn tatics for turning bouys, moving people out of the way, drafting, sighting, get comfortable swimming in a pack bumping, learn how to and when to expend your energy to get people off your feet, learn to zig zag to drop people, basically becoming tatical in open water.
training is not much different, the principles are the same, aerobic development, increase threshold speed, do some sprinting especialy in you are a FOP swimmer, learn tatics for turning bouys, moving people out of the way, drafting, sighting, get comfortable swimming in a pack bumping, learn how to and when to expend your energy to get people off your feet, learn to zig zag to drop people, basically becoming tatical in open water.
Maybe also a focus on alternate side breathing for when the waves are slapping you in the face to your usual breathing side, or you want to time the waves and they are coming from the side opposite to you usual breathing side, or you want to keep track of (or pool-gawk a chick) someone who is to your opposite breathing side.
84 degrees is pretty warm. Are you training in a short course (25 yards or meters) or long course (50 meters) pool? It would be better to train in a long course pool, but in the U.S. they are sometimes hard to find.
If I were training somebody to swim 2.4 miles in open water, I would have them do most of their swim workouts in a pool. I would train them in a similar way as I would train my distance swimmers. That would mean a lot of pace work, IM work, and the occasional long continuous swim. For the open water swimmer, I would probably have some of the challenge sets contain longer repeats than the pool swimmer.
Someone might have mentioned this but say you are swimming a set of 200ms, throw in one faster 25m or so and then learn to settle back into your normal pace. This will help when you need to expend some energy and catch a pack to draft off of or shake one off of you and be able to settle back into a more comfortable pace.
One big difference is that most swimmers that are training to race in pools are already relatively good swimmers so do not need to spend much time as a percentage of their total workouts doing drills. Triathletes that are more or less novice swimmers can benefit a great deal from doing drills because it improves their swimming technique.
There is a big difference between training to race 50s and 100s in a pool and training to swim 2.4 miles at the start of an IM. There is a lot less of a difference between training to race the 500, 1000 and 1650 and training to swim 2.4 miles at the start of an IM.
One I major difference is that most swimmers, even distance swimmers, are going to do more speed work and swim more closer to full speed than triathletes training for an IM. What you want to avoid doing while training for an IM is doing a lot of really long, straight swims. Instead, you should be doing repeats of a variety of distances, even as short as 50s, that give you very little rest while swimming at a decent, but not all out, pace, while working your sets up to 3000 to 4000 yards in length. For example, the main set in our workout today was 64 x 50 on :50, which is a reasonably good workout to get in shape for the swimming portion of an IM as long as you are swimming the 50s at a consistent pace instead of trying to hammer them out as hard as possible.
Not really a huge difference between training for 1000/1650 or 800/1500 in the pool and 2.4 in open water when it comes to building the engine. Just make sure you’re getting in some 5K-6K practices, and that part will be fine.
The differences come in the usual sorts of tweaks you’d expect when you go from any pool racing to any open water racing- how to change up your stroke so it works better in rough conditions, how to swim in a pack, and hoe to sight the buoys and such.
not looking for the difference between pool and open water, but the difference between training for both in the pool. I realize the wetsuit is a huge difference but my local pool is 84 degrees and nobody would wear a wetsuit in it. I did the first day I owned a wetsuit, lasted 5 minutes \\\
It is still a valid question, is the 2.4 race in a wetsuit or not??? It changes what you will do in the pool. If it is a wetsuit swim, which most races are, then you should do more pulling sets. This gets your body up higher in the water, where a wetsuit might take it, and the increased stress on your arms and shoulders will help strenghten you for swimming in a full suit. I would also do more IM and butterfly sets. I have found that a lot of fly in workout, transfers to better open water and wetsuit swimming, and strenghtens the neck muscles for looking foreward. The IM sets are very good for cross training your freestyle stroke, and help break up the long sets you have to do for a 2.4m swim…Kicking is not as important in a wetsuit swim, but it is important for leg recovery from running and cycling. If it is a non wetsuit swim, then I would do as much as 20% of my total yardage doing hard kick sets, and back off on the pulling and swim more. I would also do more short interval work, to help build more speed, that will eventually transfer over to the longer race. This helps your body position in the water, where as in a wetsuit swim, it is unimportant. You achieve good body position just by putting it on…
First of all as a triathlete you have to do two other sports besides swimming…so the training in the pool can be used as non-impact training that will benefit your aerobic system and help you in the other two sports. So you may want to do yards/meters that seem above and beyond what you need to complete the 2.4 miles.
Secondly you want to not only finish the 2.4 miles, but you want to be relatively fresh after you get out of the water as well. This is different from training for swim only events where the goal is to finish the race as fast as possible, with no regard to how much it takes out of you. Having done alot of hard swim sets, especially when already fatigued, will help you with this.
Finally your race is 2.4 miles…the longest race in the pool is a 1650 I believe. The key sessions you will be doing will be alot different that what even a long distance pool swimmer would do. Main Set Examples…5 x1000 (best average); 20X200 (best average); 10X400 (best average); 4-6k long swim w first 2k bilateral, then build speed for the rest of the swim.
If your running a 5k running race…you don’t only train on the track, right? The majority of your training is on the road. Same goes for swimming in my book. If you are racing open water…most of your practice/training should also be in this element.
If your running a 5k running race…you don’t only train on the track, right? The majority of your training is on the road. Same goes for swimming in my book. If you are racing open water…most of your practice/training should also be in this element.
Many times this is not possible.
Is where I live; move to Clermont, FLA.
Training in a pool allows you to be in a controlled environment, which makes it easier to accurately measure variables such as speed (pace), distance, and distance per stroke. You could do this in open water, but it’s a little harder. If you don’t measure out a course in the water, then all you can really do are intervals based on time, which is different than intervals based on distance.
Mark
Agreed on the wetsuit thing - it makes for a big change.
I can olnly speak from the perspective of someone who was not that good a swimmer, but somehow managed to fashion consistant 57 min IM swim splits( with a wetsuit) and get out of the water close to people who would kill me in pool workouts.
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The wetsuit as noted makes big difference. In-season I would swim open water with the wetsuit on at least once a week to get me used to that position and the subtle differences in technique that are needed with the suit on.
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Drafting is huge! Banned on the bike, but allowed on the swim( seems somewhat hypocritical, but thems the rules), so you need to take EVERY advantage.
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Need to find a person, group that is swimming just that little bit faster than you can/could maintain on your own and then just hang on for dear life.
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A good way to find #3 is to start a bit harder/faster than normal, then as you start to fade a bit after about 200 - 400m just jump on the feet of someone who comes by. It was my experience that this would often be THE person for me to draft. I would then do everything that I could to hang on right to the finish.
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Note that #4 is not without it’s risks - if you blow up or miss the boat, or no one comes by then, you may have to plug on, on your own. That happened a few times and I would swim a few minutes slower.
Fleck
I swim evenly spaced white poles down at my beach. Swimming from the Clermont beach around 5 of the poles is 197 yards (close enough to 200 I think). If you swim out to any pole and back, its 106 yards (again, close enough for me to 100).
Call me a little anal, but I measured my open water course. Is this allowed?
Don’t get me wrong, I certainly believe that there is a big place for pool centric (or minded) swimming (smooth, pool form, calm etc), but I also think a lot of us triathletes seek and desire perfect pool training too much of the time and too much of a pool centric mindset leaves us inadequately prepared for open water swimming (myself included). We don’t like crowded, wavy, more than 1 per lane, people bumping us or swimming too close, kids in our lane, waves etc.
While I don’t think this stuff is a good idea for EVERY workout, I think one swim workout a week with an open water mindset will especially help the people who don’t feel in control or as comfortable when they hit the open water. Maybe some of these things can help us come closer to open water training in the pool. Choose the lane closest to the kids that are doing cannon balls off the diving board. Swim when it is busy (with other like minded triathletes if possible) so you can get used to concentrating when swimming close to and bumping into others. Don’t let that stuff bother you, focus through it. I have never had someone ask me, ‘may I swim in front of you’ or ‘may I swim over you.’ in a race. Swim in the same lane with a couple tri buddies rather than spreading out, and swim hard when you are there. Don’t rely on a hard push off the wall. There are no walls in the lake or ocean. When you come off the wall don’t swim under water for a long time. Get to the surface and swim. Sign up for Aquathons. Last season a bunch of us did the Wednesday night happy hour www.aquathonusa.com What a blast, some of the best fun I had last season. Go to open water masters workouts as much as you can. Working on form and drills in calm water is great, but also focus on maintaining form specifically in a turbulent pool. Ask the kids to see how big a cannon ball they can do. Don’t think like a pool swimmer, think like an open water swimmer. I think there is a difference and a certain amount of agressiveness that makes an open water swimmer. I don’t mean agressiveness towards others, but more towards handling turbulance, waves and feeling comfortable in that type of water. Simulate looking up and spotting a bouy once a lap. Don’t always breathe smooth with your mouth a quarter inch out of the water like you can in a calm pool. Swim a set with right side breathing, swim a set with left.
Since even a full IM swim is only about 1/3 the training distance put in by a decent high school swimmer on a daily basis, pool training like a pool racer would be perfect for IM 
Actually, rather than trying to train like someone who races 5 or 10k open water races, I think most triathletes would actually really benefit from training more like sprinters do rather than approaching the swim like it was a long bike ride. Novice swimmer need to get stronger to improve their technique and that is done most quickly and most effectively by doing shorter swim intervals at a higher intensity. So, in that sense, my advice to triathletes would be to train MORE like pool swimmers and less like open water distance swimmers.
After basic swimming skills, the biggest thing that slows triathletes down is bad navigation. The best way to swim 2.4 miles faster is to make sure you are only swimming 2.4 miles. So, if you’re serious about improving your open water swimming, you really do have to do some open water swims in training so you can work on your navigation.