'Fitness is something that happens…..’

By Penny Wilkin and Sarah Hill

Now that many of us have managed to have a few swims and are hopefully starting to feel better in the water, our thoughts are turning to rebuilding our swim fitness.

TI founder Terry Laughlin said “Fitness is something that happens to you while you practice good technique”, so whilst it’s tempting to go all out, it is crucial to keep your discipline and focus your swim on technique. It can be daunting knowing where to start so we’ve put together some tips:

· After many weeks without swimming make sure you take it slowly; you can’t force fitness.

· It’s all about technique - remember swimming is a technical sport so keep focusing on your stroke and focal points. If the water is warm enough then definitely practice some drills, this might be tricky in the UK as the water is still quite cold so if drills aren’t possible then make sure you swim with focal points.

· Don’t try and do it all at once – avoid swimming every day or doing 3 huge swims in a week. Instead, build up gradually; maybe add 1 extra swim each week, or 10-15 minutes to your longest swim.

· Add variety and mix up your swimming week so that each session is different and has a different purpose. Maybe try a short fast swim, a long swim, an easy swim, and maybe even some Fartlek (Swedish for speedplay) going fast/easy between the buoys.

· You can break down your open water swims into a structured set in the same way you do in the pool. So set up a warm up, technique/focal points, main set or practice, ending/cool down.

· Think about where you’re swimming and break it down into sections or chunks. If say your lake is  about 400m per lap, break it roughly into 4 sections with a tree, or a rock, or buoy to swim to for each section. If you swim in a river, perhaps swim to a bridge and back and in the sea swim between the groynes or to the pier and back. This just helps to chunk it down and give you something to focus on in each section – ‘chunking’ like this makes it easier to put in the efforts.

· Use your watch so you can see how long your efforts/laps are. You can press the lap button after each section then you could try and match the time on the next effort.

· Start with short intervals of greater effort measured by time or distance or number of strokes. For example, try swimming 4 x 20 strokes = 100 strokes = 100metres = 2min (approximately). Followed by say 20 strokes super easy then build on this increasing time/distance.

· Keep some focal points in your head while you’re swimming however hard/fast

· Check in with how straight you’re swimming e.g. pick a buoy, close your eyes and do 30 strokes and see where you end up.

· If you don’t have markers or buoys then counting strokes is another way to break up a swim into sections - 20 strokes is roughly 25 metres for most people (adjust for your own stroke). So 4 x 20 = 100 metres. So you could do 20 strokes hard/60 strokes easy.

We hope these tips are useful – if you’re looking for even more structure to your swims we’ll be covering interval training in open water next time.