Pool Open Water Swimming

timsroot

I've recently been named the open water chair for my LMSC. One of the things I want to do, and fairly soon (~2 weeks away) is a pool open water training session. While I'm sure this is less than what a lot of people here would be interested in, but in Louisiana, we have a lot more triathletes than marathon swimmers. I have a few ideas, and help from a former triathlete to help me on deck. I will do more research this weekend, but haven't had much time to do any yet.

Do you guys have any good ideas for drills, or good videos that I can watch? I'd like to cover a lot of things mostly related to swimming in a pack, and traffic around turn buoys.

Thanks for any help you guys can provide.

IronMike

Might not have time for it, but Steve Munatones' OW book has a bunch of drills. Sadly, I've not done a POW session yet, but I'd love to do one. Good luck, and video it so we can see!

rxleakem

I have seen on the masters website where teams have set the pool to swim a larger circle swim (4 or 6 lanes) for a time period.

My masters team is mostly triathletes, and one Saturday we used a two lane circle to work on starts and not buoy turns: 8 person start, sprint the length of the pool and swim around a kickboard that was weighted down in the deep end. Lots of bumping, simulating race start and turns.

Munatones

You can check http://www.poolopenwater.com for more information. I have been running POW events in Greece, Cayman Islands, Japan and throughout the United States for years. We have used POW (Pool Open Water) with the U.S. National Open Water Swimming Team since 2005. You can also see photos at http://openwaterswimming.com/pool-open-water-pow/. If you have more questions, please email me offline.

heart

A neat trick I made up, which my coach has now adopted for his workout with triathletes: Swim with your eyes closed whenever your head is in the water. Forces you to sight even when you're in the pool. (open them when you're near the wall, of course.)

dpm50

I do this sometimes--but when it's crowded and there are lane mates, it can get a little too interesting.

heart said:
A neat trick I made up, which my coach has now adopted for his workout with triathletes: Swim with your eyes closed whenever your head is in the water. Forces you to sight even when you're in the pool. (open them when you're near the wall, of course.)

JenA

For white water action, you can get the entire team to line both sides of a lane holding flutter boards. They could then put the flutter boards half in the water along the long edge, and push the water across the lane, back and forth, really quickly. An entire team doing this will create some frothy white water. One swimmer swims through the gauntlet, takes a place in line, and everyone passes their flutterboard down by one, so the just-swam swimmer now has a flutterboard, and someone at the 'start' doesn't. They then swim through the gauntlet, and the whole thing repeats.

timsroot

JenA said:
For white water action, you can get the entire team to line both sides of a lane holding flutter boards. They could then put the flutter boards half in the water along the long edge, and push the water across the lane, back and forth, really quickly. An entire team doing this will create some frothy white water. One swimmer swims through the gauntlet, takes a place in line, and everyone passes their flutterboard down by one, so the just-swam swimmer now has a flutterboard, and someone at the 'start' doesn't. They then swim through the gauntlet, and the whole thing repeats.

Alternatively, and I've only done this once, go swim laps at a gym while there is a water aerobics class working out.

Kevin_in_MD

Out of all the things we do in our triathlete's swim class, the one thing I hear the most about is the three or four times a year we work on sighting technique. You didn't mention it in your list of things.

Send a link to a video of someone doing it reasonably well, I also give them a number of strokes after which to sight. If you leave it open, they'll always assume a higher number and go off course more than they need to. Having someone there to demo on race day and a few laps of practice, triathletes seem to really appreciate.

JSwim

We had a couple Masters practices last winter where the University baseball team showed up and shared the pool. Most of them water jogged, and set up a powerful current. It was kinda fun. My stroke count was 3-4 higher/25m one way than the other.

JBirrrd

Not really a drill but something I really enjoy for my long LCM pool swims. This will only work if your group has access to the entire pool. I am extremely fortunate in that this particular pool is under utilized so after everyone from my team has gone to work, I get 2 more hours to swim during the public lap swim time. Rarely is there anyone else swimming with me. Take out the lane lines (This pool has none, so lucky me). Swim up and back each lane, starting in lane 1, flip and repeat in each lane up to lane 8. Double back for an easy mile. I repeat until the lifeguards kick me out. I could see a group of swimmers doing this. No you won't run into anyone if everyone follows the black lines. Takes the monotony out of pool swimming for me b/c I feel like I have a destination.

swimmer25k

JBirrrd said:
Not really a drill but something I really enjoy for my long LCM pool swims. This will only work if your group has access to the entire pool. I am extremely fortunate in that this particular pool is under utilized so after everyone from my team has gone to work, I get 2 more hours to swim during the public lap swim time. Rarely is there anyone else swimming with me. Take out the lane lines (This pool has none, so lucky me). Swim up and back each lane, starting in lane 1, flip and repeat in each lane up to lane 8. Double back for an easy mile. I repeat until the lifeguards kick me out. I could see a group of swimmers doing this. No you won't run into anyone if everyone follows the black lines. Takes the monotony out of pool swimming for me b/c I feel like I have a destination.

What's shakin JBrrrrr? The swim your describing is called a "snake". It's also a fun way to swim an IM. When I was coaching kids and had the space to do it, I would have each lane designated as a different stroke, drill, easy, fast, kick, etc. and called it the "Jungle Set". When I swam/coached at the ISHOF in Ft Lauderdale we sometimes had two 50 meter pools and a diving well to do our jungle sets. They ended with a jump off the diving tower.

IronMike

When I was coaching triathletes, we'd occasionally take the lane line out (we had 2 LCM lanes at our disposal) and do our workout. At one point, after describing sighting, I'd jump out into the deep end, sit on a board, and be the "far buoy." I'd move around so that I wasn't always in the same location, so that they'd have to sight to find me.

tortuga

Bridget

timsroot said:

JenA said:
For white water action, you can get the entire team to line both sides of a lane holding flutter boards.

Alternatively, and I've only done this once, go swim laps at a gym while there is a water aerobics class working out.

These are both cool ideas-- and as an aqua aerobics instructor, I'm all for helping swimmers and group fitness people share the pool and share the joy. If it were me, I'd be happy to structure my class to allow for a "lane" down the middle of a class (given the right size class and space availability). I have some serious power moves for my classes that really churn the water.

I've done triathlon/mass group start prep with my pool stroke tech classes when there has been an interested core in the group-- we swam 4-5 in a lane in 25 yard sets-- all at once. This is good in a few ways: getting used to swimming in a crowd, and getting used to "pulling your punches" when you contact another swimmer-- these are not strangers you will never see again. Kindness is always a component of good sportsmanship. Any swimmer in a massive group start should be considerate of others. Shaving a few seconds or minutes off a long swim is not worth hurting anyone, so getting in the habit of swimmer awareness is a good thing.

MoCo

My coach usually throws in some OWS prep into my warmups in the spring just to remind me of some of those skills - 25 as tread water start to sprint/25 easy; 25 easy/turn without touching the wall/25 sprint; 25 heads-up sprint/25 easy

IronMike

Judjohns said:
I was in LA recently and was at Santa Monica beach. I live in Texas and am totally landlocked but I’d like to do an OW swim sometime. I tried to swim in the water at Santa Monica and it was so cold I could not stay in more than a couple minutes. Are OW swimmers allowed to wear wet suits? What conditions do OW swims normally take place in weatherwise? Im 58 years old and swim short distances now, about 1.5 to 2 miles per day 4-5 days a week.

Hello @Judjohns

This thread is probably not the appropriate place for your question. There are other threads where wetsuits come up. This thread is about doing OW training in a pool. Here's some suggestions:

New FINA rules on wetsuits

What is marathon swimming

The wetsuit thread