8 Open Water Swimming Skills To Practise In The Pool

You might not be lucky enough to have somewhere warm and sunny or an open water venue near to where you live but don't worry you can actually replicate a lot of your open water skills in the local pool meaning you're nice and confident and ready for race day. So we've put together some great techniques and drills that you can do that will simulate that open water environment that you can do in your next pool session. So at the start of a lot of triathlons a lot of bodies in the water together and unless you're on the front row of the grid you're likely to have someone's feet in close proximity to your face. Yeah you are and there's often nothing you could do about that but you can be prepared and it's actually quite a good thing to do to practice in training starting right behind somebody else so when it comes to race day it's not quite so much of a shock. Training water is quite a valuable skill to have especially for triathlon as often a race will have a deep water start and the organisers try and get you into the water well before sometimes up to 10 minutes so you don't want to be like frantically wasting your energy you want to try and stay nice and relaxed and focused on your race. Yeah and the general technique for this is you need to tread water by using a bit of a breaststroke leg kick or an eggbeater kick as they call it and sculling with your arms but don't fret you're generally going to have a wet suit on so you can be nice and buoyant anyway. Yeah but it's a great exercise to actually practice in the pool and you should be able to be nice and sociable you can even have a conversation whilst you're doing it. And once you've been treading water you'll start to come into a more horizontal position and start sculling with your arms and kicking with your legs as you're ready for the starters horn. Yeah this is a great activity to practice in the pool you can do it with fellow athletes all line up in a line and basically get your coach to count you down as it would be a start and it's all about accelerating straight into your stroke from this position. Now you can also replicate swimming around a turn boy by using the black tee at the bottom of a swimming pool and obviously if you can take a lane rope out it makes it even more realistic and try doing it with a few other people and then it turns into more of a race day situation. One of the most annoying things in open water swimming is when your goggles start to leak or come off you probably save more time by actually stopping and clearing them you can either do this by just stopping upright treading a bit of water clearing them and putting them back on or if you want to try and keep moving then why not flip onto your back you can do it while swimming along and then back into your stroke. Drafting on feet is probably the most effective way you're going to knock off seconds on your swim time and save energy. Yeah it's quite a fun one to practice in the pool you just need to find another swimmer similar pace or a little bit quicker and then you can practice drafting off the hips or going behind and drafting off the toes. If you're used to just doing all your training in a pool and maybe in a fairly quiet lane and when you get to race day you might get a little bit of a panic when suddenly there's loads of swimmers around you everyone's trying to get in that same small space. Yeah and the best way to replicate in the pool is to get some friends swim in a close proximity to each other but don't take it personally if you get the odd whack around the head. Some open water races finish with a pontoon exit and you can actually practice this at the end of a session when you're tired and out of breath getting it efficient means you can save quite a few seconds in a race. You okay Bucko? Yeah. Sure? So these tips will make you a lot more confident and relaxed going into your next open water swim race. Yeah if you've enjoyed this video give it a thumbs up like and remember subscribe to GTN by clicking on the globe and if you want to watch a video on other open water swimming tips just click down here and see a Mythbusters video click here.