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Learning to float can be a daunting tasks for many novice swimmers. If you are just starting out or tried it out before and got discouraged because you couldn’t get passed the floating stage, perhaps the following piece of advice will help you to get over the initial learning curve.

Keeping your arms at the surface or out of the water causes your butt and legs to sink

Whatever the reason may be, whether you are afraid of falling due to the weightlessness feeling in the water or you are afraid of hitting your head on the bottom of the pool or just the thought of tipping over to your back scares you, without learning to float you cannot continue and enjoy swimming. Learning to float is an absolute necessity in a good learn to swim program, so do not try to skip this step. The more time you spend on learning to float and the better you will get at this will determine your next progress.

From my previous head and body position posts, you already know that your eyes need to be pointing towards the bottom of the pool and you need to stretch your body into a nice straight line at the surface of the water. However, as simple as this sounds, it is still very difficult for many to get to the relaxed long position. So let me give you a few tips which will ease your transition from standing up to floating, thus setting you up for success.

1) Eliminate any unnecessary movement

How you start your exercise determines in many cases how well you can do the exercise, so let’s focus on what to do with your body before you actually get into the floating position. The main point here is that you need to be flush with the water and ease yourself into the float instead of starting your float from high up and falling into it. Imagine the following, take a tennis ball and drop it into the swimming pool while standing on a chair on the side of the pool. Chances are the tennis ball, driven by gravity, will hit the water and get submerged and then pop back up to surface and then again gets submerged a little less and pop back up to surface. The tennis ball will do this few times until it reaches a calm floating state. Now, instead of dropping the ball from the standing on a chair position, bend down to the pool’s edge and nicely place the tennis ball onto the water. Because you were gentle, there is no bopping in and out of the water, the tennis ball just nicely floats without any distractions. Similar concept applies to anything you do in swimming, especially when you are just starting out to learn to float. If you start too high, you will more than likely be sinking and coming back to surface and sinking again, so it is important to eliminate this extra movements from the start. So, next time you are practicing your floats, assuming you are in a shallower water where you can stand up, squat down (bend your knees), so your shoulders are flush with the water. I don’t mean, bending forward, just get yourself lower into the water, so your distance from the surface of the water is smaller (like with the tennis ball). The only thing that is sticking out of the water is your head. Your body is still vertical, just lower in the water due to your knee bend.

Keep those hands under water.

2) Start below the water

When you are nicely submerged up to your neck in the water, you are basically in a good position to get started. When you first learn to float, you should have your arms extended forward (no elbows bending here please ), so you add more weight to the front of your body which in turn will make it easier for your legs to float. However, this is where many novices run into trouble as they try to stretch very tensely with their arms forward like they’d be reaching for apples. This causes their body to be rigid and more importantly their arms stick out of the water when they float. So, extend your arms forward and relax them. You can pretend there is a ledge 1/2 foot (~15cm) below the water and you want to rest your palms on that ledge. Let the water support the arms and relax your neck and shoulders. At no point in time should your fingers or hands break the surface of the water, otherwise, you will start slowly sinking.

3) Get into the position before you start

Let’s recap, you are close to the surface with your shoulders below the water, your arms are extended forward, yet relaxed and they are below the surface of the water. The only thing that remains is to take a breath, put your face in the water, so your eyes are looking at the bottom of the pool and your entire head is below the water. At this stage you are ready to give yourself a little gentle push from the bottom of the pool or from the side of the pool and you can float. Note: if you want to blow bubbles, feel free to do so, but I’d suggest to try both variations, with blowing bubbles and without as some folks do not float very well and when they start blowing bubbles, they are getting rid off their floating ability even more . However, don’t be afraid, most of you will float very well as your lungs will keep you at the surface.

Applying downward pressure on the arms and upper body.

As mentioned above, the major issue here is that your arms should never ever break the surface of the water as it is with majority of novices which try to float. Another way to think about it is that your arms and your body do not actually form a true straight line, you are pushing your arms a bit down when you float. This is very bad analogy in terms of our history, but it could work in this sense. Do you remember Hitler’s straight arm greeting which was used by Nazis during WWII? If so, then just move the arm from that position another foot (~30cm) up towards the sky and you will have the right position for your arms. Maybe a bit less gloomy analogy is to pretend you are laying on your stomach on a bench (as if you are floating). The bench is about a 1/2 foot (~15cm) high off the ground. Your chin is right at the edge of the bench, eyes looking down and your arms are extended forward and your fingers/palms are touching the ground somewhere in front of the bench as opposed to being a straight line extensions of the bench itself.

Have fun with it and remember, patience and gentle movements are very important when learning to float. You can get more tips to improve your swimming by joining our growing Swimator Facebook community or following us on Twitter @360swim.

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What is the first thing you say to a little girl when you meet her, when your friend’s daughter comes over to play, when you see her at church or at a restaurant?

GaGa Sisterhood

Everyone has seen those lists of Ten Hot Toys that run this time of year. My recommendation–ignore them! These qualities of a good toy will help you create your own list.

GaGa Sisterhood

That got your attention didn’t it? Well, now that you are here, let me reveal the well guarded secret how you can get your own Fastskin3 from Speedo totally free.

Fastskin3 Swimmer Models (sponsorship=slavery)

What is Fastskin3?

It is a supposedly revolutionary swimming equipment composed from 3 parts of swim gear: swimming cap, goggles and a jammer suit for men and shorty suit for women. Not much innovation there in terms of type of equipment, is it? However, the main idea here is that by wearing the Fastskin3 equipment you eliminate or streamline certain contours of your body to make yourself more efficient in the water, therefore become faster swimmers. Sounds good so far?

Well, don’t go celebrating an efficient swimming stroke just yet . I have nothing against Speedo and am a great fan of people who try to promote swimming or bring swimming to the next level, which obviously Speedo’s Fastskin3 racing system is doing, however, I just can’t help and be critical in response to the video Speedo put out as an introduction to the Fastskin3 swim wear. It just seems that swimming is becoming more about technology than about the swimmer him/herself which makes the sport exciting (at least for me). However, who can argue with our society if this is what it takes to keeps people interested in the sport. Without interest, any sport is as good as dead, so introducing a new technology is unfortunately a necessity in today’s world.

If I watch and listen to the Fastskin3 video (watch it below), I can’t help but wonder what the hell they are talking about half the time. Perhaps this was their marketing approach to provide a video full of terms 99% of people on the planet do not understand and confuse trustworthy swimmers into thinking that by purchasing the Fastskin3 equipment they will become faster. Sure, we can’t stop technology from entering our daily lives and we definitely cannot stop progress as that is a natural way of things. However, we can still wonder and question it can’t we? Let’s breakdown the Fastskin3 swim gear and see what we can get out of it for free.

Fastskin3 Swimming Cap

Speedo indicates that the swimming cap was designed with 3d global head scan. Hmm, unless they are going to custom scan everyone’s head, how does that help you, since everyone’s head and neck are different. They also indicate that the cap features IQ fit profile. I can’t even begin to understand what that is. Does that mean if you have certain IQ it works better for you? And don’t even get me started on the Speedo hair management system which goes below the cap. It totally resembles a very old school Lycra swimming cap, nothing more and nothing less. However, I can see how it helps to keep your hair out of the way and smooths out the contours of the head. Finally, the Fastskin3 cap is designed to fill the curve in the shape of your neck, to make the back of your neck more streamlined. From the video, I fail to see this feature, but let’s take their word for it.

So, how can you get the Fastskin3 swimming cap for free? Well, the cap helps to streamline your body, so let’s focus on how you can achieve the same result with your head without a cap. No matter what slick and fancy bleeding edge swimming cap material you have on your head, you will not swim faster unless you fix up your head position. I discussed the high head position problem on this blog on many occasions, so next time you are working on your head position with nice and tall body line and flat neck, just imagine you have the Fastskin3 cap on your head and perhaps this visualization will help you get the right streamline effect. So in a way you will use the new Fastskin3 cap technology to your benefit without actually spending a dime. If you really would like to get even closer to the Fastskin3 streamline efficiency, you can opt into wearing two swimming caps. One latex and another silicone over top of it. Beware though, this will increase your head’s buoyancy a little, so you will have to push your head down with a bit more effort, so get used to it before you race in it.

Fastskin3 Goggles

The goggles just look plain bizarre for my taste, but let’s say we give them a futuristic chance. Again and IQ fit type of stuff with 3D seal. Can you imagine something else than 3D seal? How would a 2D seal work? . The Fastskin3 goggles are advertised to improve contours of swimmers head. Ok, I can see how that would make some very small efficiency difference if the goggles were smoother, but then again, everyone’s eye socket sizes are different, so not one size fits all solution here I am afraid. The next thing is the advertised hydroscopic lense with 180 degree field of vision. First, humans don’t even have 180 degree field of vision and I am not so sure how something like that would help you in the swimming pool anyway. I’ve never heard anybody complain about needing more field of vision in the pool. In open water swimming, there it is a bit of different story and that is why those full goggle masks are quite popular. Speedo also says the Fastskin3 goggles have secure and confident fit. I say, any goggles have secure and confident fit if they are under a swimming cap, they match the swimmer’s face and the swimmer feels good about them.

Put goggle strap under your swimming cap

So, how can you get the Fastskin3 goggles for free? Well, make sure you buy goggles which are comfortable and not too large on your face. When wearing a swimming cap, put the goggle strap under the cap, so they are more secure. Then if you can, move the edges of your cap over the goggles, so the goggles and the cap create more of a smoother contour. That said, however, no goggles will make you swim faster if you do not fix your stroke. So instead of buying the newest of the newest swim goggles, why not concentrating on improving your head position during breathing. Keep your head low, make sure you blow out bubbles before you breathe, so your breath is brisk and try to maintain one goggle in/one goggle out of the water position. Another way to describe it, if you breathe during freestyle, push the top of the head into the water, so it will feel like you are swimming down the hill. This is an unusual feeling that many of use need to get used to before it becomes natural. The SwimSmooth guys explain it very well in their Clean Up your Stroke DVD set.

Fastskin3 Suit

Speedo is definitely onto something when they say their Fastskin3 suit is a network of bonded seems and panels. In fact, majority of newer swimming suits are just that. The Speedo Fastskin3 suit is uniquely zoned and graduated body compression system, it offers precision support and greater stability in the water. Ok, now this makes sense, the more you compress your body the more streamlined you will be in the water, right? However, what is precision support and how can you get greater stability with a swimming suit in the water? What you will get is your butt and thighs not flopping around while you swim, thus reducing a bit of a drag, which is a good thing of course, but unless it is a flotation device you will not get any extra support nor will you feel more stable. And we all know what happened to the full body suits, last time swimming companies tried to change the swimming rules. Speedo also claims that the suit enhances the speed of starts and turns which I actually believe, as your body is in the highest speed during the start or turn activity and it is fully submerged under water, so any small extra wiggle will slow you down.

So, how can you get the Fastskin3 suit for free? How about improving your core body muscle strength in order to be able to hold better streamlined position when your feet and arms are forcing your body in all the directions. Also, what about not swimming on your stomach during freestyle, but practice a proper body roll, so your body glides better. Finally, improving your freestyle kick efficiency by making sure your kick is small and compact as if you were kicking in a bucket and paying close attention to what your legs do when you take a breath. Do they go into scissor like motion? If it is a yes, then just keeping your feet in line with your body instead of doing a scissor kick trumps any drag reduction by utilizing a Fastskin3 suit or any suit as a matter of fact.

Speedo is a pioneer, but not for everyone

I don’t doubt that Speedo has done a great job on their research when producing the Fastskin3 cap, Fastskin3 goggles and the Fastskin3 suit and the claimed 16.6 passive drag reduction, 11% improved oxygen economy, 5.2% active drag reduction is probably true. However, this only applies to the top of the crop Olympic swimmers such as Ryan Lochte, Michael Phelps, Jessica Hardy, Rebecca Soni, Ian Thorpe or Sun Yang. It is not an accident they mention the following sentence “the world’s fastest racing system combined with the world’s fastest swimmers”. Without the world’s fastest swimmers, it is just another ordinary cap, goggle and suit combination, so don’t be fooled by marketing and swim smarter instead of more expensive. On the other hand their marketing probably works well since I spend the time writing this article .

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See more swimming related articles at blog.swimator.com. If you happen to have a site or a blog of your own, please consider placing a link to blog.swimator.com.

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Most kids don’t like their teeth brushed. Not my 8 and 4-year old granddaughters. They love it when I brush their teeth, because I play a game called Name That Toonth!

GaGa Sisterhood

There is a fundamental difference between actually performing bilateral breathing and the ability to perform bilateral breathing in freestyle. Many beginner swimmers get confused with the terms they read on miscellaneous swimming blogs and learn to swim sites. They often read about bilateral breathing and automatically assume that they have to breathe to both sides all the time. By all the time, I mean breathing every 3rd arm stroke, so the rhythm would be: breathe to the right, stroke, stroke, stroke, breathe to the left. Then they are all confused why swimming has suddenly become very hard for them and they are breathless when they reach the end of the swimming pool. Finally, they resort to reading more about bilateral breathing and wondering how come it is not helping their swimming. It actually made their swimming harder. If you fall into this category, read carefully the following advice.

Do you have the ability to breathe bilaterally?

The key concept to understand is that bilateral breathing is just a term used to describe a motion in swimming where a swimmer breathes to both sides. That does not necessarily mean that to swim properly you need to rhythmically breathe to both sides though. What it means that you should know how to breathe to both sides aka bilaterally, but there is time and place where the actual rhythmical bilateral breathing is needed.

Like it or not, our bodies have two sides and if we heavily strengthen one side by repeating a certain activity our bodies will evolve, sort of speak, and adapt to that particular activity. The adaptation usually comes in terms of strengthening or stretching muscles. Unfortunately, majority of us are either right handed or left handed and only few are ambidextrous. My guess is that if you do a bicep flex to show off your muscles, your leading arm will probably have a bigger bulge. Or next time you are in your bathroom, try cleaning your teeth with your weaker hand. You will see how difficult it is. Swimming on the other hand, requires a certain level of ambidexterity and here we are back at the bilateral breathing problem. If a swimmer only knows how to breathe to one side, it could create a whole lot of problems such as, not having the same body roll to both sides, not swimming in a straight direction in the open water, imbalance in important neck muscles or you might permanently end up with a Popeye like mouth grimace (and many more). So, learning to breathe to both sides has also a health benefit as well as swimming benefit.

Make a Popeye mouth to breathe

Also, imagine you are swimming in a race or in the ocean and you only can breathe to your right side. Now, what if there is a swimmer with very strong kick and splashy kick to your right side or there are huge waves coming from the right. What will you do then? Take the beating and keep breathing water instead of air and potentially choke your way back to the finish line or to the beach? If you can’t breathe to the other side, then that is probably what you will do, but if you can, then you just switch your breathing to the left and you are set and water choke free.

So as you can see, breathing bilaterally has a lot of benefits, however, back to the initial point I was making. Bilateral breathing does not only refer to breathing rhythmically to both sides, it most importantly refers to the ability to breathe to both sides. You need to understand that your body needs oxygen. While you can strengthen your lungs and make your oxygen consumption more efficient. The more oxygen you have the better you can perform. Therefore, the more breaths you can take during your swim, be it 100 meters (yards) or 1500 meters (yards), the better off you are in terms of not feeling out of breath. Therefore, if you set yourself up to rhythmically breathe every 3rd stroke, which means you breathe once to the left and once to the right and so on. This means, you are not getting oxygen for three strokes and this is where most beginner swimmers go wrong. Even though it is only 3 strokes between breaths and it might feel ok for the first length of the pool after a little while you start feeling the lack of oxygen. You might as well quit swimming and join the extreme apnea divers if you get high on lack of oxygen . It would be much more beneficial if you breathe every other stroke, where you only have one stroke without breathing and you breathe only to one side at a time. Sounds much better doesn’t it?

Keep a good body line when breathing

You might be now wondering, well, how is that bilateral breathing if I only breathe to one side all the time. Easy answer. You will not breathe to one side all the time. You can try breathing to the left half the pool length and then breathing to the right the other half or 20 strokes to the left and 20 strokes to the right etc. This way you will make sure your body gets enough oxygen and it stays healthy. Note of warning here though, the assumption I was making here is that you are able to breathe properly and every time you take your face out of the water to breathe you do not slow down. In other words, your breathing technique is not causing drag problems in your swimming. If you feel that this breathing every stroke is not for you, why not change it up a little where you can breathe two times to the right and then two times to the left with the three strokes between. This is still much much better in terms of oxygen intake than breathing every third stroke at all times.

If you think you have the freestyle bilateral breathing ability down to 100% perfection, you can test your breathing skills by breathing every stroke. This means you breathe with every arm stroke and maintain the true rhythm of bilateral breathing. In other words, the rhythm is breathe right, breathe left, breathe right, breathe left . This is an advanced skill and you might feel quite dizzy if you try to do this for too long with too high of a stroke rate frequency. However, it is a great test of how well and efficiently you can breathe without sacrificing your freestyle streamline. If you can do this well without zigzagging all over the place, it comes in very very handy during your freestyle swimming races or swim workouts as you will get so much more oxygen than anybody else. If you think I am crazy, think again. This is a true pro skill which is used by the best of the best in the world.

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See more swimming related articles at blog.swimator.com. If you happen to have a site or a blog of your own, please consider placing a link to blog.swimator.com.

Swimator Blog

Here are some silly Thanksgiving songs adapted from familiar children’s tunes to sing at your family Thanksgiving dinner – guaranteed to bring smiles to all ages.

GaGa Sisterhood

Swimator Blog
November 24, 2011
Final rating: 5.0

The Swim Smooth’s Clean Up Your Stroke DVD set is not your usual learn to swim program on DVDs. It is more of a series of short hints and tips addressing a few important aspects of an efficient freestyle stroke. The DVD is split up into a few logical sections: Breathing, Head Position, Leg Kick, Body Roll, Recovery, Hand Entry, Catch and Pull, Visualization. Paul Newsome, an accredited level II triathlon coach who coaches triathletes in Western Australia, will breakdown each of the parts of the Freestyle stroke into a few drills, so you can concentrate on one part at a time and don’t get all tangled up with trying to swim the full stroke while also trying to fix a problem.

Swim Smooth’s Clean Up Your Stroke DVD set

Breathing – Get the oxygen in

Breathing is the essence of any sport’s activity and swimming is not any different. Actually, a good breathing technique in swimming is even more crucial than anywhere else since we are a bit tied to a certain rhythm and cannot take a breath whenever we want. The first part of the Clean Up Your Stroke DVD explains the importance of bubbles and the usefulness of bilateral breathing as well as shows you some drills to make your breathing a bliss. If you want to know what bubble bubble breath stands for or what a very useful isometric exercise is, just get Swim Smooth’s DVD set and you will find out .

Head Position – Say no to neck pains

Your head position is one of the key factors which determines how efficiently your body moves through the water, so it is very pertinent to get this right. Paul describes the pros and cons of the two schools of thoughts regarding your head position in the water. The old school, water at your hair line vs. the new school with eyes at the bottom of the pool and water going over your head. Which one is better for you? I am a fan of the new school of thought, so if you are starting out your learn to swim endeavor, this is the way to go. Ones you become more advanced and go into open water or triathlons, then it is time to play around with your head position, depending on the water conditions and your body floating ability.

Leg Kick – Turn on the motors

Strong legs is one of the key spice ingredients in swimming. Without a good kick, you can forget it. Even though you should not kick very fast at all times when you swim, your entire learning to swim career revolves around drills which require a good kick for a good balance of your body. In the Leg Kick section, Paul discusses the proper way to streamline (or torpedo as they call it down under) and the drills that can help you with keeping your body in an arrow like body shape for as long as possible. He also shows you the right way to kick with a very simple yet effective drill as well as explains when you should utilize fins in your workouts to maximize their purpose for kick improvement.

Paul Newsome working with his swimmers

Body Roll – Rollin’, rollin’, rollin’

The importance of body roll was discussed on Swimator Blog many times and it is a key concept in swimming. Without a proper body roll, you will struggle to breath, you might suffer from shoulder injuries and you also will never reach your full potential in your swimming. Paul shows you an unarguable fact which proves that rolling your body is better than swimming flat. Then he explains and performs a few effective drills which will help you get the right balance and body roll in the water. For example, the 616 or 323 freestyle drill which helps you with improving your body roll and subsequently with bilateral breathing.

Recovery – Relax and enjoy

Recovery is the motion your arm/hand performs out of the water. This is what most of us see when we watch a swimmer in the pool or in the Olympics. However, instead of just aesthetic part of the stroke, the way a swimmer performs arm recovery determines how effective the swimmers stroke can be under the water. In the Recovery section of the DVD, you will be introduced to Alexander Popov drill which made the Russian swimming tsar the beautifully graceful swimmer as he was. Paul will also show you the difference between high elbow and straight arm recovery and how they affect your stroke.

Hand Entry – Don’t over think it

How you enter your hand into the water usually determines how well you can grab onto water and push yourself through the water at the later part of the stroke. Fingers first, flat hand, crossing over or thumb first? Those are just a few concepts Paul addresses in the Swim Smooth’s DVD section called Hand Entry. Furthermore, if you suffer from shoulder impingement, perhaps Paul’s Spearfish drill for hand entry practice could just be the thing to get you rid off the pain.

Paul Newsome explaining the importance of a high catch

Catch and Pull – Go forward

“To S pull shape or not to S pull shape, that is the question ”. If you ever wondered, how your hand/arm should move through the water during freestyle, wonder no more. Don’t be stuck in the 80′s and forget about S pull shape. Pull straight through and maximize your swimming force. In the Catch and Pull part of the DVD, Paul Newsome explains why the S pull shape is an old school thought and why it is inefficient. He than goes on to explain what sculling is and how mixing cold and warm water in your bath tub could actually be an important motion in learning the under water pullthrough in swimming (btw, this is one of the best analogies to explain a concept in swimming I have heard in a long time). Finally, Paul talks about the time and place for using paddles and pullbuoys, which goes hand in hand in what I am preaching on the Swimator Blog, trying to get all the triathletes to start swimming smarter and not just following what they see in other inexperienced swimmers as triathletes.

Visualization – Smooth swimming is priceless

Some of us like to learn by reading, some by listening, some by watching. We all are different, however, no matter what your learning style is, if you combine two or three of these learning styles together, you will be more likely to succeed. In swimming or any sports, seeing someone perform the particular motion and trying to mimic this motion is priceless. In the last Visualization section of the DVD, Bill Kirby, a 2000 Sydney Olympic gold medalist from an Australian relay team will swim for you for a few minutes, so you can visualize his lean and smooth stroke next time you are in the pool. Give it a shot, it could just do wonders for you.

Clean up your Freestyle stroke

Bonus, who does not like bonus?

There are a few extras included as a bonus in the DVD. You can learn how to improve your stroke rate with the revolutionary Metronome device, how to write your own swimming workouts, what is the equipment that should definitely be part of your swim gear bag and more. An important Open Water Skills section is also included. It is loaded with tips on wetsuit purchases and specific open water swimming drills. Even though swimming is done in the water, to be a good and healthy swimmer, you need to have some core strength and good flexibility. In the last extra section, Paul will guide you through some important stretches to improve flexibility and some dryland exercises to help you gain the right swimming muscles strengthen. The third and last DVD included in the package contains a full 8 week program for you, so you have some initial guidance in and out of the pool to get you started on your way to perfect freestyle stroke.

Finally, if you really want to see Paul Newsome in his sexy blue swim suit , you should definitely get his DVD set. If this does not entice you, how about a great English and Australian accent guiding you through your swimming stroke correction drills .

Summary: Pros and Cons

So, there you have it. The Swim Smooth’s Clean Up Your Stroke DVD set is a very nice resource for swimmers who are looking to improve their freestyle stroke or just overall swimming fitness. All the different sections have a nice guidance from Paul as well as a few example swimmers in the water with a commentary and text to explain what you should be focusing on and what you should avoid. Each section also has some examples of how not to do it which in my opinion is priceless comparison for the visual learners out there. In a way, listening to Paul is like having a coach on the pool deck tell you exactly what you should be doing.

I’d say that the Clean Up Your Stroke DVD is targeted towards swimmers who have already acquired some basic skills and are now looking to make their swimming more efficient and streamlined. The breakdown of the DVD into meaningful parts of the freestyle stroke brings a quite logical view on what an improving swimmer should focus on. I would not recommend this DVD to true novice swimmers who are just getting accustomed to the feeling of their bodies in the water as the concepts, yet not advanced, are a bit tough to apply to your swimming if you struggle with some basic body and head positions. I’d mainly recommend this DVD to all the folks who can already swim up and down the pool a little and are feeling frustrated that they are not really improving anymore or just don’t know where to go next with their improvements.

Remember, focus on one thing at a time and if you start feeling like all is going to hell, then stop, refocus and try again. Otherwise you are just waisting your time.

Final rating: 5.0

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See more swimming related articles at blog.swimator.com. If you happen to have a site or a blog of your own, please consider placing a link to blog.swimator.com.

Swimator Blog

Eileen Meier founded Grandoodlez to help grandparents and grandkids stay connected by creating talking books, cards, doodlez, videos, and photos online.

GaGa Sisterhood

Open water swimming is supposedly one of the fastest growing sports around the globe. I am not sure where I heard this statement, but it is probably not true, however, the fact is that open water swimming and triathlon are becoming very popular. If nothing else, just the simple fact that there is a market for enjoyable open water swimming holidays all around the globe is a good indication that the sport is gaining traction. And justly enough, 70% of our planet’s surface is covered by water, so it would only make sense we’d discover it sooner or later .

Rostislav Vitek – Capri-Napoli Grand Prix winner

With the increasing open water swimming popularity, however, also comes quite a big challenge for open water event organizers and for swimmers themselves. The open water events organizers struggle to make sure that swimming events are safe as well as many swimmers have hard time understanding that swimming in open water is not the same as swimming in the pool. New swimming skills and understanding the environment are required in order to fully enjoy our mother nature’s outdoor liquid wonders.

I’ve sat down to discuss some open water training tips with one of my friends from my younger years in the Czech Republic, who has gone through the difficult transition from wall to wall pool swimming to a very successful world wide open water swimming career. Meet Rostislav Vitek (Rosta), a 2008 Beijing Olympic participant, English channel swimmer, multiple Czech record holder in open water races and one of the world’s top open water swimmers. In fact, Rosta is an extreme marathon swimmer as he loves participating in events, such as the Argentinian 57km swim from Santa Fe to Rio Corondo. He has won the event on a few occasions. Just to bring his achievements into a bit more perspective, he swam the 4th fastest English Channel Swim time (7:16,25) in the history of the La Manche crossings. Now that is a credential list any swimmer would be proud of.

Anyway, enough of the bragging, let’s get down to business and talk about what you are interested in as a beginner open water swimmers and what you can do to help yourselves with the swimming pool to open water transition. I asked Rosta a few questions:

Swimator Blog: What would be the first tip to give to someone who is just starting out or thinking about joining in the open water and triathlon frenzy?

Rosta: At the beginning you need to swim a lot in open water. I know this sounds simple, but going just for a swim in your local lake or pond instead of being in the pool makes a huge difference. Spend some time in open water before going to your races, so you get accustomed to the different environmental conditions (wind, water temp, rain, waves etc.) as well as reliance on yourself and not the swimming pool walls. Usually, what conditions you swim in at your home open water hole, you will be comfortable in swimming in a race. Just to give you some perspective, I spent three years plowing the open waters back and forth before I felt comfortable enough during my races and I started to understand the open water environment. After that I could migrate more back into the pool and only use my races as my open water swims. However, to leave out practicing in open water, you would need to go to a race almost every week, so this is not for everyone.

Rosta keeping his swimming rhythm in the ocean

Swimator Blog: So what sort of things should a person do in open water? Obviously, not just mindlessly swim as fast as possible.

Rosta: For sure, open water swimming has a lot of nuances that the pool swimmers don’t know much about. For example, sighting. Sighting is the process of raising your head out of the water to look where you are going during your swim. The idea is quite easy to understand, however, the hard part is to figure out how often to sight and what to look for. You can practice different sighting intervals until you figure out what is a good one for you, so it does not necessarily slow you down and make you more tired. One way to do this is to count your strokes in between your sightings, so for example, you can sight every 50 strokes to begin with and see if you can keep a straight line. With sighting also comes the experience to know what to look for. The common mistake is to look for a floating buoy or something on the water, however, this does not work. You need to pick some large object (house, tree, TV tower etc.) in the distance in the direction you are swimming (before you begin a race) and then just quickly look for that object during your sighting while swimming. There are many more things you need to think about and consider while in the open water, for example, how to breath, how fast to move the arms, when to eat etc.

Swimator Blog: That’s a good advice. Should you have any tactics during a race or how does the racing in open water differ from the swimming pool racing?

Rosta: Well, in the swimming pool, it is just you in the lane with nobody around, so you have to rely on your speed. In open water, it is not so much about who the fastest person is, but about who is the smartest tactician. Obviously, you do have to swim fast to be with the best, however, you don’t have to do it alone. In open water races, and this is very hard to get used to coming from the swimming pool, you should attempt to swim in a pack of swimmers, so you can utilize drafting. If you swim alone and employ the same tactic as in swimming in the pool, you will be doomed. Just pick a group of swimmers that have a similar or a bit faster speed than you and stay inside the pack. It is the same principle as in cycling. So, you need to sometime conserve your energy by letting someone else do the work, instead of letting your competitiveness get the better of you. However, in shorter triathlon races, this is a bit different. For triathletes, your race tactic will depend on how long the swimming part is and on how good of a swimmer you are. Either you will just fight to survive the swim, in this case, you should heavily invest in improving your swimming technique or you will cruise to the end of the swimming leg with plenty of juice left to continue with the race. While swimming in a triathlon, you do need to keep in mind that there is still biking and running left afterwards, so not much sprinting is done at the end of the swim here for most triathletes. Instead the focus on fast swim to bike transition is in sight.

Sunny destination for outdoor swimming workout

Swimator Blog: Ok, the drafting makes sense. Very hard to get used to coming from the pool though . It needs a lot of practice. You mentioned that for someone starting out in the open water sport, swimming in the open water should be the main aspect of their training. Do you recommend leaving out swimming pool altogether?

Rosta: No not at all. For beginner open water swimmers, the importance of swimming in the open body of water is not necessarily for energy draining workout purposes, but for getting familiar with the environment and learning the different tactics and techniques such as sighting, drafting, recovering, right arm movements etc. However, you can still get great preparation workouts in the swimming pool. Preferably in 50 meter swimming pools as it better mimics the open water scenario.

Swimator Blog: What type of workouts should you do in the pool then?

Rosta: Well, this fully depends on how skilled of a swimmer you are, but you should definitely focus on your swimming technique, so your stroke is efficient. Some technique work should be part of every workout no matter how advanced of a swimmer you are. Then you can simulate open water race conditions by for example swimming series of 50s. 4x6x50 or 4x20x50 (depending on your skill ability) and every set of 50s is on a bit faster interval while maintaining the same speed. So the first set of 6×50 is on let’s say 1:00 interval, second 6×50 on 55 seconds etc. You need to maintain the same time for every 50 even with the lower interval. This simulates how your body gets more tired during the race and also the sprint towards the end of the race to the finish line as that is where most of the races are won or lost since drafting tactics are used. It is something called the “endurance speed”.

Swimator Blog: Would you recommend to use some swimming gear for the open water swimmers or triathletes?

Rosta: If I’d really have to choose, I am a big fan of technique oriented swimming gear, so my number one recommendation would be the front snorkel. This tool is great for getting your body aligned and keeping you in the rhythm while also improving your lung power. As far as other swimming gear products currently popular among triathletes and open water swimmers such as paddles and fins, these are not necessary. I would not recommend using these unless you already are a pretty good swimmer as this type of gear can cause more harm than benefit with a bad technique. You are much better off doing some technique work.

These were just some introductory tips from Rosta about how to get started with open water swimming. If you have any specific questions you’d like to ask Rosta, please feel free to put them in the comments as this is a unique opportunity to gain inside knowledge on open water swimming from one of the best open water swimmers in the world.

I will bring more insights from Rosta’s vast open water experience in future open water posts, so stay tuned and don’t forget to join our growing Swimator Facebook community or follow us on Twitter @360swim.

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