Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. I got asked by one of our members earlier this week is what kind of session? How can you structure your workouts if you don’t have access to a pool but you can only swim open water? What are some drills you can do and how would you structure a workout? Well the thing about open water is there’s no reason why it can’t be similar or somewhat similar to what you do in a pool in terms of you can do specific efforts in there you can still do the same drills now obviously if it’s choppy it’s going to be a little bit harder but what I would typically do provided the water is not freezing cold and you just need to keep moving is I would do some of the primary drills that I’d normally do in the pool for a lot of the times like if I’m racing in the warm-up I’ll do some easy swimming

followed by some kick and typically some pretty hard efforts of just kicking I’ll do quite a bit of front skull as well just to warm up the shoulders and get that feel for the water and I’ll also do some drills like either the doggy scoop drill kind of like a doggy paddle drill just to work on the front end to work on the catch sometimes we’ll do that YMCA drill as well and then drills like our kickboard press down drill which is really just working on opening up the shoulders opening up the lifting the sternum and and working on the recovery because for me that’s one of the things that I need to to work on so there’s no reason why you can’t do the same or similar drills in the open water that you would do in the pool so if you do have any specific drills that are working on the things that you know are going to help make you faster you can still do those as part of your warm-up now how would you break down or structure an open water swim well what I normally do if I’m

going to swim with friends in the open water depending on the type of session look we’ll do some easy swimming it could be 500 meters a thousand meters of easy warm-up and then sometimes we’ll break it down so if we swim in a place like Alwood there’s a section there there’s two poles they’re about 200 meters apart I think it is and within that that 200 meters like we’ll often do laps as in let’s say we might do three pole to poles which would be 600 meters and we will sometimes build up one to three so we’ll start easy on the first one a little bit faster on the second and all out on the the last one you can do it that way so if you’ve got some markers out there that’s a good way to break it into different efforts and intervals and sections like that or what we will normally do is just break it into break it into stroke count stuff so if you don’t have any buoys or poles or anything to sort of indicate distance

then do it as something like 20 strokes fast 30 strokes easy that’s a real go-to that I like to use is if we’re just on a straight patch and we’re wanting to do some efforts 20 strokes fast 30 strokes easy is one that will often go to there so you can always just break it down that way and if you know right normally in a 50 meter pool okay I might take let’s say you take 40 strokes you know that’s going to be roughly equivalent to the same same thing so if you are looking to do sort of 100 meter efforts it might be like 80 strokes so you might do like four times 80 strokes where the first 80 strokes is easy second is medium third one’s solid and then the fourth one is is all out so break it down that way just keep it simple don’t overthink it I mean when we are a training look the main thing is you’re in there you’re swimming that’s the most important thing but then when you if you want to break it up and

you want to keep it interesting then that’s a good way to do it and if you’re swimming in cold water and this is something that we’re doing at the moment because the water temp is down to about 12 degrees 13 degrees starting to get pretty cold and I’ve had a few friends and a few people I know just mentioned when the water gets really cold they get quite anxious and within you know with one of the reasons for that you know the reason that we get anxious a big part of it comes down to our breathing and so when the water is cold and I and I feel like I’m starting to get cold one of the things that I always try and return to is is how am I breathing particularly how am I exhaling so when after I take a breath I’ll put my face in the water and I’ll just sort of I’ll try and hold my breath I’ll try and limit the exhale there might be a light exhale through the nose but I’ll just sort of hold my breath I’m trying to feel relaxed trying to feel

controlled and then just before I turn my head I exhale through the nose I sort of it’s a fairly assertive exhale but assertive to the point of I just want to try and mostly clear my lungs and then return to the breath what most people tend to do when they panic or they get anxious is they’ll breathe it’d be more like a gasp of air where it’s really in the upper chest try and use your your diaphragm your dome shaped muscle that’s at the base of your your lungs there so think of it like breathing low or breathing into your belly try and get a slightly deeper breath more of a controlled breath in a short shallow one when you get that then you put your face in the water and just just hold your your breath for a minute don’t exhale straight away because one of the things that will cause you to panic is a very quick exhale where you’re blowing everything out straight away then you’ll be short of air you’ll be you’ll be searching for air

immediately and it’ll just start to build upon itself so if you can follow that ideal way of breathing where you don’t exhale everything straight away just hold your breath a little bit might maybe let a little bit out of your nose and then have that more assertive exhale through the nose not the mouth then then it’s a good way to sort of keep the heart rate down and feel much more comfortable in that cold and like anything if you want to develop your you know your ability to go through things that maybe you’re that make you anxious or or that you’re afraid of it’s just progressively make it more challenging so you might just swim near the shore and that way you know okay if things get bad i can get out the shore is 10 meters away and then i can get on to dry land so just progressively work towards something that scares you or or makes you more anxious that’s the way to to overcome those those sorts of feelings

and look at i know it happens but just always returning to the breath is something that i’ve focused a lot on and doing a video on this so if you haven’t seen our youtube channel lately then have a look there there’s a video where i’m sort of talking a little bit about this and someone called Darius Dejanovic doing a little bit of work with him on it he runs breathing classes and breathing courses and that’s something i found very beneficial as well to help with that sort of thing so if you know that breathing is an issue then looking at something like some breathing classes can be a good way to approach it and i’d recommend something like dynamic breathing which is Darren’s company they run online classes and and something that i think is beneficial for for all swimmers and that’s something that we do at at clinics as well i’ve done a podcast with Darren as well which i’d recommend listening to if you haven’t heard that one already so thanks very much for listening we’ll

be back next week with another episode thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast if you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com