Highlights this week:
- How To Train For Open Water– So you have an open water event coming up, but you’re not sure how to train for it. There’s three types of workouts I use for open water training. Aerobic, anaerobic and speed.Aerobic workouts are when you are training at 65-85% of your maximum heart rate. A minimum of 15 minutes at this heart rate is needed to get the benefit. This builds your aerobic base fitness, the foundation of your distance swimming.Anaerobic workoutsare trained at 85% or more of your maximum heart rate. Training at this heart produces lactate and throughout the set you’ll feel your muscles becoming heavier and fatigue setting in. It’s also known as threshold training, and it trains your body to remove lactate faster so you can hold a faster pace for longer.Speed workouts usually combine the two training zones mentioned above. We combine both aerobic pace swimming, and fast swimming to practice speed that’s needed occasionally in open water swims. A set might look like 150m medium pace, 10 seconds rest and then 50m fast, repeated 4-10 times.
This is what Effortless Swimming Workouts is based on so it’s an easy way to cover all three types of workouts without spending hours coming up with sets. You can get ES workouts here.
- There’s No Substitute For Doing The Work – When your times haven’t improved or speed isn’t where you want, look back at your last few weeks of training. Have you done the work? Without consistent training, it’s very difficult to get better. There’s no substitute for doing the work.
- Daily Workouts – Last week we posted a new workout each day on our Facebook page. Congratulations to those who finished. If you’re tired of the same old workouts, you get 12 new workouts every month with Effortless Swimming Workouts.
- How To Mix Your Own Recovery Drink – I personally mix 30-50g of protein powder with water after each session. You can also mix a Sustagen or Milo with milk or water and add eggs, bananas and wheatgerm. There’s endless possibilities you can mix, keep it healthy and high in protein and you can’t wrong!
- Improving Technique Without A Coach – You don’t need someone looking over you to get better technique. With the right knowledge you can improve on your own. It all happens through self awareness with the right drills. This week I caught up with a swimmer (Hi David!) who’s been through the Mastering Freestyle program on his own. His stroke was smooth, efficient and much better than before he started. Don’t let having no coach stop you from getting better.
If you’d like me to go into more detail on the types of open water training sets, let me know in the comments.
If doing open water events every weekend is it better to train in open water or in the pool?
Thanks for all these updates! I watch and listen to them over and over again .. it helps to watch what is the right technique and what is not!
I usually do my swims in the local lake as I have no pool in the summer. School pool is not open yet. I swam my usual 120 {or so} yards across the bay warming up in 1:55, faster than ever by about 10 seconds. {I haven’t started part 3 of the lessons yet, trying to make sure I get the drills down as I go instead of just doing them all at once.} However, as I started doing them at a harder effort my pace rapidly dropped off to about 2:20. If I swam easier I went a bit faster, a couple of seconds. I don’t really feel that my form is falling apart as I speed up but it must be. What are your thoughts?
Bruce
Both can be useful. Pool swimming is best for fitness because you can track times and do proper sets. Open water is good for practicing swimming in rough conditions.
Hi Bruce,
Great question. It’s usually because you’re kicking too hard that you slow down. Back off the kick a bit and try it. Let me know how you go.