BEGINNERS’ GUIDE – SWIM STRONG! BUILD CONFIDENCE, SPEED AND OPEN-WATER SKILLS

Considering a tri but worried your swimming isn’t up to scratch? Don’t worry, we’ve got your back. Just follow our four-step plan and you’ll soon be ruling the pool

Running. Anyone can do it, right? And as for riding a bike… It’s like, well, riding a bike… But if there’s a stumbling block for many firsttime triathletes, it’s the watery bit at the start. For many, this a mix of poor ability (or no ability), fear of the unknown as they’ve never swum in open water before (and let’s be honest, there could be anything in there), or worry about the triathlon specifics such as mass starts, swimming with others and following a course.

You’re not alone, though. Statistics reveal that 20% of adults in the UK can’t swim, and of those that can, many aren’t comfortable in the water – or haven’t braved the pool since their school days.

This feature will give you the skills you need to help you relax in the water, to breath comfortably, and steadily build your front crawl up with confidence. Building a stroke up is like constructing a house – if you can set good, solid foundations early on, it will help boost your enjoyment. More than that though, it will make it easier for you to progress with speed and distance later on, because you won’t have limiters. That’s not to say that you can’t just get in and swim and improve, of course you can!

Over the next four pages, there are sessions and skills for four different levels of new (or novice) swimmer. If you’re scared of the water, start with stage one – it’s all about building confidence. Stage two gives you the opportunity to actually feel that the swimming is getting easier and that you’re in control. Stage three will help you work on changing speed – going slower/easier to go longer but more importantly going faster. And the final stage is about preparing for the open water, a whole new environment from the pool. Good luck!

STAGE 1 – BEAT YOUR NERVES

Getting comfortable in the water can be tough. It’s an alien environment. Approximately 80% of experienced triathletes would say that the swim is their worst discipline, or certainly their least favourite. So first and foremost, remember that you’re not alone. Sometimes the feeling that everyone else has things down is the part that makes it hardest to get moving – so to know that many others are in the exact same situation can really help.

There are two major parts to getting comfortable in the water: breathing and floating. If you can master both of these, or even just get comfortable, your swimming journey can very much begin in earnest!

I like to get people floating on their back to start with because you don’t have to worry about breathing, it’s one less thing to worry about. Try lying back in the water, looking up at the ceiling and pushing your bum towards the surface. Keep your arms out to the side, your legs slightly apart, and keep as still as you can. The water should support your weight, mostly if not totally, and is something you’ll need to practise in order to get comfortable with. The more you push down on the water, the less supportive it becomes; yes it might mean you rise up for a moment, but it also means you’ll come back down again! Get yourself calm and as relaxed as possible.

Part two is to get used to putting your face in the water – and potentially breathing out as well. You can do this by holding on to the side, taking a lungful of air, putting at least your mouth underwater, breathing out and then standing up straight. The more confident you

feel, the deeper under water you can go, eventually progressing to being completely underwater and breathing out at the same time.

After this, you can work on floating on your front. A dead man float is a great starting point – being completely relaxed, letting everything hang down, before lengthening your spine and neck, lifting your arms so your ears are between your biceps, engaging your core and feeling your hips start to lift towards the surface.

From here, remembering these points will help you move through the water more easily, which could be as simple as making big circles with your arms!

STAGE 2 – IMPROVE YOUR TECHNIQUE

If you’re comfortable in the water, and you have good balance, the next skills to work on are a smooth and efficient kick and then being able to control body roll and rotation. A good kick can help maintain forward body momentum, whereas a poor kick can actually contribute to added resistance; it can increase the amount of energy required to move forward. That’s not to say that you need to be kicking lots when you swim, or even that you need to do a lot of kicking in your training – just that you need to do it well. I rarely (if ever) get anyone to kick with a kick board or float – primarily because it raises your shoulders out of the water. If you felt much of a change having done the first session, hopefully that was partly down to getting your head and shoulders down on the water line, which will have naturally brought your hips up towards the surface.

The two issues that really affect people’s kick are not kicking from the hips and the ankles being too stiff and bent at 90°. If you feel like kicking makes you travel backwards, the best drill to correct this is to kick with your arms by your side and thumbs pressed into your glutes. If you can feel your bum muscles working, it means that your legs are working as they should be! If you can’t feel that tension, your knees are bending too much, and you may require a little more thought/ awareness/work. With a good kick, the arm pull becomes a lot easier.

The final thing to really be aware of is where your arms are in the water. Many athletes swing their arms around without much thought, almost in a panic or a rush to keep themselves afloat (hopefully after session one some of that panic will have reduced). The biggest cue that I can give here is to think about linking your arms and shoulders to your core – think about creating a straight line from your hip to your shoulder and on toward your hand. This will help keep your body straighter and save you energy.

STAGE 3 – START TO GET FASTER

Once you’re swimming smoothly and easily, it’s all about working on how to go faster. Speed is very much a skill that can be cultivated and worked on.

If your hips are staying high in the water and you have minimised your resistance to the water, the next thing to work on is how well you connect with the water, and create leverage. The opposite side of this is also being able to swim slower and easier, which, in the same way as with cycling and running, allows you to vary the intensity of your training and therefore go quicker at the top end.

Sculling is a perfect drill to practise building contact of the water on your hands. To get an idea of this, do it vertically. Keep your elbows at the surface and push your forearms out and in to help you tread water. You should feel two things – 1) that your forearms and palms feel resistance on the water and 2) that the harder you push on the water, the higher your shoulders sit above the surface.

Sculling teaches you to hold pressure on the water at different places. The usual practise points are out in front – entry point or position 1; with your hands under your elbows and in front of your shoulders – mid point or position 2; and with your hands by your thighs at full extension – also known as the exit-point scull. It’s all about pushing your hands out and in laterally in the same place, so there’s no backward movement of your hands, and then tilting your hands to face in the right direction to make sure that you push against the water at all times.

Using paddles and doing sprint/ speed work are the other two things that you can do to build power in the hands, shoulders and lats to generate more force under the water. Using paddles and accelerating your hands backward through the water will make you travel quicker, while doing speed work will encourage your body to get used to swimming at higher speeds in the same way that speed work on the track helps your running.

STAGE 4 – MASTER RACE SKILLS

Getting ready for open water swimming can be challenging, regardless of whether you’re experienced or new to the water. For one, there’s no line to follow. In fact, you probably won’t be able to see anything. Then there are the added issues of being bumped around and trying to turn and swim at the same time. But the good news is that you can practise these things in the pool to get as ready for it all as possible!

For sighting, practise swimming with your head up swimming down the length, then get used to lifting your head up to look forward and getting your head back down and looking downwards.

To practise accelerating, you can swim reps without touching the wall – so you have to get up to speed from a dead start each time.

To practise swimming in close proximity to others, you can swim lengths 2 or 3 abreast (if you have a lane to yourselves!). And to practise swimming in a straight line you can swim with your eyes closed (again, if you have a quiet lane!). Whatever obstacle you can think of, there’s a pool drill that you can do to acclimate before you take it outside into the cold water.

Swimming with your eyes closed is a great drill to make sure that your stroke is balanced and even. Swim a length normally, and count your strokes. The following length, repeat but with your eyes closed – and open your eyes with 2 strokes before the end. You may well find you hug one lane line, or that you bounce from side to side. This is where you can be your own detective and work out why you may be veering one way or the other – it might be your breathing action, it may be your arms pulling across under your body, for example. Do another length with your eyes open, and follow with another length of eyes-closed swimming. This isn’t a drill to make things perfect, but hopefully it will give you an awareness of your stroke and help you swim straighter without having to sight too often.

“Whatever obstacle you can think of, there’s a pool drill you can do to acclimate before you take it outside into the cold water”