4 Drills to Help IMPROVE Your Open Water Swimming
Author: Abbie Fish
Open Water Swimming is variable. The water temperature, environment, race, and distance can all be fluctuating factors. Even though there is so much unknown in Open Water Swimming, there are a few drills that if done correctly — will help improve your Open Water Swimming!
Let’s Dive In!
If you’re new to Open Water Swimming, welcome to a very exciting time in your life. You may chose to travel some of the world’s most exotic environments to race and see earth’s beauty in rare form. You could also be a triathlete just looking for that competitive edge on your next Ironman Swim - either way - these 4 drills will help you get better!
1.) Floating
While floating may seem extremely fundamental to you, it is often a piece that is overlooked in older swimmers. If you think about it, in a pool environment - the water is in a defined shape. In Open Water Swimming, the water is ever changing. This is part of the reason why it’s so hard to train for. One of the best ways you can improve your Open Water Swimming is by learning to float in the pool and while out in the Ocean or in a Lake. You want your body and brain to get a better feel or how to work ‘with’ the water and you do so, by letting the water ‘hold you’.
Add in the ripple effect of waves crashing and the Open Water environment moving you, it’s also a really good drill to learn about body alignment and how to keep yourself afloat in a very unstable environment. Try starting with 3x:20 seconds in the pool and 3x:10 seconds in the ocean and see how you feel. From there progress, 5-10 seconds a week until you feel extremely comfortable on the surface in both scenarios.
2.) Sight Breathing
You can’t Open Water Swim well without Sight Breathing. Sight Breathing is just a fancy word for looking forward when you swim in the Open Water to SEE where you’re going.
Sight Breathing is all about timing and making sure you pick the arm you feel most comfortable raising up on. For more information on Sight Breathing and how to get better at it, click here.
3.) Flipturns
Believe it or not, most Open Water Swimmers don’t train in the Open Water very often. You see many swimmers do most of their training in a pool to get more done and be in a safer environment.
One of the most effective ways to get in the most yardage as possible is to maximize your transitions and learn to Flipturn. See the difference a Flipturn can make in your training, below:
4.) Sculling
We talked earlier about the importance of Floating and Body Awareness - now, let’s talk about making sure we FEEL water being moved with the most important aspect of our body: Our Forearms. There are an array of different sculling drills out there, that you can use - but the goal with all of them is to FEEL pressure against your forearms, since that’s the part of the arm responsible for moving water!
Here are a couple more Sculling Drills:
Try to incorporate these 4 drills next time you hit a training session and see how you feel with them. If you’ve already achieved a good flipturn (for example), then focus on the other 3 - building yourself up to a point where you feel you’ve mastered it. We promise they will help you improve your next Open Water Swimming Race.
For more information on Open Water Swimming and Swimming Technique, visit Swim Like A Fish.
About The Author
Abbie started Swim Like A. Fish in 2019 after 25 years of success in competitive swimming and 10+ years and counting of elite swim coaching. During her swimming career, Abbie was a 6x Olympic Trial Qualifier, SEC Finalist, NCAA Qualifier, and 2x USA Junior National Champion. On top of that, Abbie started coaching as she was post-graduate training and it was a natural transition from being the one in the water - to - the one on deck.
Abbie is a University of Georgia "Double Dawg" - where she swam and graduated with her M.S. and B.S. degrees in Exercise Science. Abbie is a big swimming nerd at heart, and loves everything when it comes to stroke mechanics, underwater video, and swimming technique. Abbie's goal with Swim Like A. Fish is to help any coach or swimmer (no matter their age) get faster through stroke technique education.
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