IM Training - Subsituting OWS for Pool Workouts

I very rarely swim open water. twice a month, but then again I've been swimming a long time.
Honestly your better off doing some HARD stuff in the pool than open water. If you do want to log some OW time, then do a 20 Minute warm up, 5+ Rounds of 20 Strokes fast 20 easy, long easy swimming doesn't really help anyone. Just a myth of sorts that triathletes need to do long slow open water swimming.

Go 5*200 Strong Effort on :15 Rest, that IMO is much more beneficial that long straight swims. But Yes long swims have their place. Just shouldn't be weekly (again just my .02 as a swim coach)

Exactly the kind of info I was looking for.  Thank You.  I don't have a swimming background, so in my simple mind, I was thinking the more ows, the better.

Thanks,

Any more thoughts?

Chris

For me open water swims are beneficial for number of reasons. First my pool swim ability/pace and ows ability/pace are different. Practice ows helps me do better in ows in races as I get practice, sighting, swimming straight and adjust to swimming with my wetsuit. Plus I like ows way more than pool swims and I do this for fun.

Since you have long sets why not do them in local pond or lake?

Most of the summer I may do 1 maybe 2 pool swims a week and the rest I do in open water.

I'm a BOPer swimmer if that makes a difference.



Edited by KathyG 2010-05-30 4:09 PM

I am contemplating this same question. There is a group that has invited me to their OWS, and it's really fun. We do break it up into sections, which I could do as intervals.

The water is so much nicer on my skin and hair versus the pool, and it's so much more fun to swim in a beautiful quarry at sunrise with the fishies swimming around under me, instead of battling it out at the pool to get into a lane at 6:01 a.m. because there are only 4 skinny lanes and usually 5 people wanting to swim.

It's been really nice doing the OWS, but I'm pretty certain that I shouldn't be doing them exclusively.
My plan right now is to go to the pool once a week to do a hard speed workout. But I really don't want to. The quarry is so pretty, and I don't have to think about flip turns.

I think hard pool workouts are great for swimmers who are competing in the pool. But we are competing in open water, and I don't think it hurts to do OWS if it's available and convenient for you. As a bonus, my group usually runs after, so I get a better workout. And get to use my tri clothes and get used to all my gear (wetsuit, etc) which I would never take in the pool because of how the chlorine tears up my nice tri racing stuff.

I have been doing OWS in my pond for a month now.  My training program calls for 3 swims a week also.  I have been swimming one of those in open water each week.  It is fun and I can get a mile loop.  It is really helping me with my sighting.  I started focusing on this after the swim smooth blog talked about how much time we loose due to not swimming in a straight line in OWS.  You can work all summer on knocking off 5 seconds on your100  time  only to loose minutes due to poor sighting in the race.

It sounds like you would only be subbing 2 OWS for pool swims which would leave 2 other pool swims for your speedy work.  I think this sounds like a great plan.  You can do your long swims or techniques on the OWS days and drill/interval up a storm on your pool days. : )

I do agree with the 2nd poster that pool intervals help you get faster than long endurance swims, but I think that the endurance swims certainly have their place, especially if you can practice sighting.