Try these 4 sessions to become a better open water swimmer
Why work on these 4 sessions
As the next block of the training plan commences, let’s talk about why 4 sessions a week is best.
At Straight-Line Swimming we always talk about technique being first, it’s absolutely the most important thing when it comes to the open water but technique can be used within any one of the other 3 sessions, which is why it doesn’t necessarily need to sit on its own as a single focus and can be an integration with any of the sessions throughout your training.
Technique Sessions are really important for any open water swimmer because if your focus is to get faster or to swim for longer, or of course to take on an event, efficient swimming is going to be the key to getting you there especially when it comes to conserving energy. If your technique is efficient, then any element that the open water throws at you shouldn’t be too much of a challenge to face.
Focussing on Speed Sessions to increase your overall swim pace is the most efficient way to see faster results in the water by focussing on a speed spectrum (where 0 is you sat on the sofa and 10 is your biggest exertion). As we all come out of lockdown, many not having dipped a toe in the water over that period, what might feel like maximum effort is actually fairly low on the speed spectrum.
By striving to bring speed up to a 10/10 it involves pushing the body, and to actually work on speed as a focus rather than push it to one side like many do when finishing a race is the sole focus. For the team at Straight Line Swimming, it’s a key session to have regularly within the training plan, because it’s going to be the session that will hold the key overall to make you a faster swimmer.
Especially true if you’re doing any open water event of 800 metres or above, is considering Distance Sessions. A really important factor in distance swimming is the confidence that you know you can swim the length.
Let’s think about different distances throughout your training: From 1 mile right through to a 5K swim. If you can swim that distance in training the confidence that you’ll garner from being able to do that distance on event day will be exponential. So making sure that you put in the work to do the distance in training is key to success.
And the way that you can do that is by increasing the distance incrementally as you go through your weekly training… we certainly wouldn’t suggest diving into a 5K straightaway.
Not sure how to work it out for your event? Start with the event itself and work backwards, that will make a big difference. If you work up to the longer distances, and begin to work back down towards your event distance as the week of the swim approaches, the length of the event swim will feel easier than those you’ve already conquered. Thus giving you confidence to know you’ve got what it takes in the water.
The second sort of distances such as the 10K and above, you need to remain mindful that you wouldn’t want to be doing that sort of distance a week before your main event in order to conserve energy so you’d probably push up to 8 or 9K as a training distance to keep fatigue on event day at bay.
So we see slight differences when it comes to distance sessions depending on length of the swim in training but our Straight-Line Swimming coaches are always on hand to help swimmers who need assistance when planning their session. Or become a Pro Member and access our Session Planning SLS exclusive course.
The final session of the 4 within the plan is the Get Fit Session, which is focussed around your cardio fitness. Think about this session as getting fit, but also trying to hit your goal time. Like with any other fitness, it’s always motivating to have a target, even if the goal doesn’t feel at all possible.
At the beginning of your challenge, what would you like to do per hundred metres for your event? That’s your goal pace. You then use that as your starting point for your hundredths within your cardiovascular sessions and for each one hundred you have 20/30 seconds rest between each set.
The aim here is to increase only one thing at a time with the get fit session, so you either increase the number of hundreds or you change the rest. By doing so, you stand to increase the distance that you’re doing at your goal pace.
The best sessions? For us, a combination of these four sessions should prepare you to feel absolutely ready and to take on any open water challenge.
Technique
Speed
Distance
Get Fit