OUR BIGGEST HURDLE

We attract swimmers from far and wide. We’ve had clients from Scotland (taking advantage of Cornwall Airport, Newquay), Manchester, swimmers from Holland, a lady from south Australia…all over the place. As well as accommodating people from various areas of the country and the world, we also accommodate swimmers of varying abilities, experience and speeds. This is also where one of our major hurdles lies.

On a fairly frequent basis we receive emails and phone calls from clients that have booked and are looking to book, regarding the anxiety they are experiencing over swimming in the sea and their suitability to the activity they have booked. This year we have introduced a ‘slow swimming’ holiday and it’s booked up 2-3 times faster than our standard holidays…and I’ll be shocked if half the people that attend the ‘slow swimming’ holiday aren’t perfectly suited to the ‘standard’ version of our swimming holidays.

So…firstly, we’re not really concerned about the pace that people swim. What we are interested in is whether or not you can swim the distances set out in the holiday/event description. What we’ll also point out is that there is no requirement to complete all of the swims over the course of the holiday/event day. Provided you let us know prior to swim starting, there’s obviously no problem with you sitting a swim out. What we’re are also happy to do is put on a shorter distance swim immediately after the scheduled swim finishes. We adopt a very flexible approach.

Secondly, we base all of our swims on the days conditions. So we never approach a swim day (unless it’s a one-off private booking), with a set swim location or series of swim locations. That way, you swim in the safest conditions possible…for both your own safety and enjoyment and there’s no pressure on us to hold a swim in questionable conditions!

Third and final point, as I’ve already mentioned, we approach all of our activities in a flexible manner. If for example, we had a couple of slower swimmers in the group, we simply split up our water safety team and one of the team would hang back.

If you have any questions regarding swim holidays or swimming events feel free to get in touch.

SUMMER SEASON TRAINING GOALS / OBJECTIVES

Now that the ‘new year’s resolution’ crowd is starting to thin out a bit and hopefully the lanes are less crowded, I thought I’d write a little piece on your current training (probably mainly pool based). At this stage of the year you should be looking at the summer season and figuring out exactly what you’d like to achieve, setting goals and basing your training around those objectives.

I’ll mention the usual bits about setting realistic goals…but what I would like to focus on is making sure that all of your training has a point. It’s far too easy to get into the pool and simply swim up and down, or blindly follow someone else’s training programmes that aren’t necessarily designed to suit your needs. You also need to do is listen to your body. If you’ve hammered out a leg session in the gym or been on a hard run, doing a leg session/set in the pool the very next day probably isn’t advisable. So try and be flexible. I obviously write my weekly session (through the newsletter) but I find it incredibly difficult because I’m writing a session that isn’t specifically designed for an individual. As such, I generally write a session that has bits of everything and try my best to mix up the objective of each session. These sessions are perfect for general swimming fitness but might not suit you…if you’re training specifically for a sprint event or marathon swim. I also regularly mention the fact that my session should be adapted and altered to suit you, your fitness levels, ability and needs. Hopefully when completing these sessions or reading them you look at the structure and sets and start to get a better idea of how to write your own sessions and create your own imaginative sets.

GOALS : Look at your seasons goals and figure out what you need to achieve through your training. If you’re training for an Otillo get the hand paddles out and regularly use them in the pool (along with a appropriate weights programme), on occasion swim more than once a day… If you’re signed up for a few open water events and want to do well, keep in mind that a lot of your open water training will be lower intensity open water swims (during the summer) so make sure you still swim in the pool and hammer out some shorter, high intensity sets and swims. Most swimmer don’t get a lot of drill work done in open water, so if there’s a flaw you need to work on do it in the pool now….

SESSIONS : Like I’ve already mentioned, start to write your own sessions designed for you. Your sessions should follow a basic structure ie.

WARM UP – MAIN SET – KICK/TECHNIQUE – SPRINT WORK – KICK/TECHNIQUE – SWIM DOWN

…but you can throw in a second main set, extra this-and-that. You may need to change up the session if you swim in public session and it’s busy. Always have a Plan B. Keep this in mind.

Don’t simply turn up to the pool and swim “whatever”. Every session should serve a purpose and have an objective. Put some thought into your session.

BOREDOM : My business partner Jo used to hate pool training. Said it was boring. When we started up our training squad and following structured sessions, within 2 weeks he was loving swimming in the pool. If you get really bored in the pool you’re simply not training correctly!

COMPANY – swim with friends, meet people of a similar ability/speed, join a masters group…swimming by yourself can get boring, there’s no competitive element to the training, no social factor. If you’re swimming at a different speed to friends simply handicap the training. Get the ‘fast one’ to wear drag shorts/pair of old shorts (slow them down), or get them to breath every 5 during the session. If you use your imagination, it can be done.  

USE THE CLOCK! – always use the clock when swimming in the pool. Use it for rest periods and take your times. You can even use if to take your pulse (6 secs x 10). Nothing better to get you moving, control your rest periods, make training more of a challenge and chart your progress.

TRAINING AIDS : Use them. Some are great for correcting technique (check out Finis products), some are great for getting you to work harder and longer, some are great for keeping you going when you’re exhausted. Add these aids into a session when you look to write one.

FEAR : There’s no better motivator than fear…as I discovered training for a 40km Otillo a few years ago, my first endurance event, at the age of 36. I’ve never completed as many sessions or trained as hard as I did for that event. Go Big! Enter an event you know will really push the boundaries and slightly scares you.

For all the pool haters out there this is one of the main reasons it’s good to stay in the pool, use the clock and break down the session into sets – even for a limited time whilst you swim the summer season in open water. Let’s say you swim 1km in open water at a 2 minutes per 100m pace…so 20 minutes to complete the 1000m. 2 minutes being your comfortable, go-to pace. Most of the time whilst swimming in open water you’ll use that pace (lower intensity-distance pace). Working reasonably hard, whilst still being comfortable. You’ll swim that pace all summer season long. The problem is that eventually that’s the only pace you can swim. You get fitter but not faster. You get to a race and when you try and shift through the gears and speed up, your body isn’t used to it and you’ll eventually drop back to the safety of the ‘go-to’ speed. Now let’s say all winter you’ve been swimming 10 x 100m (so 1km) going off 2.10, aiming to come in on 1.45-1.50 with around 20 secs rest. Over the winter your body will get used to swimming at this pace. So when it comes to the summer, whilst you’ll struggle to swim at 1.45-50 pace (without that 20 second rest interval) you should still be able to comfortably hold a 1.53-1.55 pace. Thus getting faster and improving your general distance speed, as well as fitness. Plus, if you do a few of those 100s (towards the end of the set) at a faster pace, your body is also used to speeding up and if you need to ‘kick’ at the end of a race, you have the training under your belt to do so.

Also, worth pointing out that you should regularly change up the rest intervals and the times for set distances that you ‘go-off’. In the example above, if you start to get comfortable with swimming the 100s off of 2.10 either increase the number of hundreds (ie. 12 x 100) or reduce the time (ie. swimming off 2.05), or eventually both (ie. 12 x 100 off of 2.05).

Straight Line Swimming

The second some of us get out of the pool, into the open water and no longer have a thick black line to follow we struggle. There is a definite art to swimming ‘fairly’ straight. We’ll try our best in the following few points to get you on the right path.

• BREATHE BOTH WAYS. If you were to breathe to your left every time, when your head comes up to breathe you roll your body that extra few inches. This means that you extend your right arm forward that extra inch or two. If you’re right handed you’re extending your dominant hand forward an extra inch or two. Doesn’t sound like much but that extra inch or two over and over again starts to make a difference and you generally start to via to the right. It’s like rowing a boat with one oar that’s slightly longer than the other.

• SIGHTING : You’ve probably read a million and one articles about sighting. I won’t bore you further…other than to say, you don’t have to sight forward. I had a recent discussion with a swimmer about swimming into the sun. You can sight to the side, and use the beach or river bank provided it’s relatively straight. You can also use the depth your swimming in to a certain extent - provided you know the water and know the consistency of the bank / sea bed.

• RUDDER SWIMMING (AKA THE ‘HEAD RUDDER’). I tend to drift the opposite way to the way I breath. To counter this I breath every 2 for 3 cycles, then every 3 for 1 cycle and every 2 again for 3 cycles…and repeat. This keeps me straight. Experiment a little with your breathing and see if it has an influence.

• SIGHTING FREQUENCY. Everyone is different. Again, experiment a little and see what works for you.

• DRAFTING. Draft off of someone’s feet and you don’t have to sight. Just make sure they’re swimming in a straight line!

Best of luck.