Not to be glib, but this.  The only way to really re-create OW swim conditions is to OW swim.  I know people say do head up swims to site, but there is such a huge difference between sighting at something 25 yds away and hitting it on a straight line and sighting a buoy, at sea level, in swells, and chop, and other swimmers in front of you, that's 500-1000 yards away and hitting it on a straight line.  I've had friends I could destroy in the pool, and get in the ocean and they beat me.  These people have years of experience.  They can read currents.   They can adjust their sighting based on currents, they know how to draft, wnd off whom to draft.

So, really, other than doing the occasional long set--i am always amazed at how long it takes to get my "OW arms" each season to sustain a strong swim for longer than 25 yards before turning  -- really just getting in OW experience.   Swimming some longer swims does help.  Also, if you can swim with someone faster than you, and learn to draft where if you falter just a *little* bit you lose their feet, you'll be cured of the tendency to ease off....

I think Chris covered it well.  There isn't really much you can do in a pool to simulate OWS - use that time to become a better swimmer in general.  I suppose if you had someone that was just a bit faster than you, you could practice drafting off of them by parking yourself 6 inches off their feet.  In a short pool that only goes so far though.  Might be a little more useful in a 50m pool?

For those of you who have trouble swimming in a straight line, what do you do to compensate, sight more often?  What are your sighting strategies?  Do you feel like you can sight well without slowing down or throwing your rhythm off?

Bilateral breathing can help a lot of people that struggle to swim in a straight line. It also comes in handy during OWS races when the sun, or someone's feet, are preventing you from wanting to breathe to a specific side. 

I need to work on sighting without stopping my stroke rhythm. I can do it, but I'm not super-confident in it.

My advice for anyone looking to OWS better would be to seek out every opportunity to do it - clinics, races, meet-ups, or solo*. It's fun, I promise!

*don't be an idiot

Swimming OW more often really helped me with my direction and also making me aware that my left arm was crossing over (causing me to drift right).  I didn't really notice it in the pool because the black line helps you "auto-correct" before you notice it.

I also felt that I started to gain another "sense" of direction when swimming more OW.  I became able to use the swell direction, wind, and sunlight to sort of guide me without looking up as often.  I guess those are the types of things your brain starts to pick up on when you are really comfortable in the OW.  When you only swim OW once a month, your brain keeps thinking about mermaids and megladon.  

dp

The old seemingly self contradictory saw is that your form breaks down the longer you swim, so the longer you can maintain your form the longer you will be able to swim.  Even isf maintaining that form requires that you not swim long.....

We do some longer stuff, longest would be 600, during the "offseason" i.e. now, to help build a base, but that work is done at a pace effort.  In race season, **even for IM** my bread and butter workout would be 12+ x 100s at X:XX pace, holding X:XX pace, X:XX being called "tempo" or "race pace," whatever solid challengin pace you can hold so that the first 100 is the same as the last one.  I have found (IMO) that a set of hard hundreds really translates well to the HIM/IM distance. 

Again IMO only, I think that a hard set of 15 x 100s is the equivalent (or better) as a straight 1500.  Think of it as a broken 1500   I find swimming a 1500 straight at "IM pace" is much easier than 15 x 100 at X:XX pace, and all it does is teach me to swim more slowly.

Perhaps the "getting the OW arms" is as much (more?) psychological as physical.

Right, so doing those hard 15 x 100 many times in practice means that come race day when you have to swim 1500 straight, it will seem easy (as long as you don't try to hold the hard pace).  

I think longer swims have their place sometimes, something like a set of 500s is great for pacing control.  Doing a 1500 straight could be as well but if you happen to go out too hard early you are just going to blow up and spend a good portion of it floundering (or conversely, too easy and not get much training out of it).  At least if you are doing the shorter intervals you will get a bit of a chance to recover and reset your pace - you are watching the clock right?  

Hmmmm - Chris and Arend, that's definitely a different (and more intuitive - for me) way to look at it.  The "just because you don't get hurt like you would running" argument just never really settled in my mind (like I said, I do long runs after all).  This, though, makes sense.

I would think that the occasional long pool swim is still helpful - even if you $crew the pooch pacing wise.  That's how I tend to learn best - pain!    Dialing in pacing and knowing how to "feel" a certain pace is something I've spent a good amount of effort on in the run and some on the bike, and it's definitely helped come race day.

On the swim, I just go - but I think getting a better feel for pace will be helpful.

Thanks both - all this helps me get my head around my swim approach (or maybe I should hire a coach).    

Other approaches or reasons that people have for the way they structure their workouts (assuming you're not, as some here are, doing strictly pool swim competitions)?

Matt

Despite me saying I don't often go that long, even for IM swimming, if (the royal you) want one of *the best* IM workouts I have ever done, try this.  It requires concentration, focus, memory and pacing.  And it teaches you to start conservatively otherwise you are in a world of hurt (also requires a watch or good pace clock)

1000 (take your split at 800)

800 below your 800 split (take your split at 600)

600 below 600 split (take your split at 400)

400 below....

200 below....

100 below

3100 yds/meters.

The way I structured my swimming for Kona was masters class on Mon/Wed and OWS Friday.  Optional short OW swim on Sunday after my long run as more of a shake the legs out and relax swim.

I felt like the Mon/Wed sessions were much harder and where I built my fitness.  The OWS helped with my race specific pacing, sighting, etc.  I felt I needed both, but more pool time than OW time.  Where I swam OW, there are 500m pole markers, so I did use them to pace.  500 hard, 500 moderate, 500 hard, etc.  Or just 3k hard and hit the split button on my 910 to see what my pacing was like during and afterwards.

What do you mean by that? To some people that means once a week or every couple weeks. Like long run frequency, but IMO, that's been way too often. I really don't do longer continuous swims in the pool. Nowhere near the race duration and have done fine. The continuous part might help a *little* in what it feels like, but I can do well enough in that with the right interval sets. With the improved workouts, I've been so much faster that any gains a continuous swim *may* have brought are rather negligible by comparison. Even going much too easy will put me much farther ahead than before. Don't think that's something a continuous swim would fix either. 

Just posting to whine.  My HR still hasn't come down to a normal level and I'm not really working out at this point since a slow jog manages to put me into Z3.  Saw a doctor yesterday and have a nasal steroid to try and clear things up/prevent further onset of other things.  Seems to help the congestion, etc., but I just need my body to get over fighting whatever is wrong so HR goes back to normal again.  This sucks.... </whine>

I am really NOT trying to be contentious here!  I do have more questions, though.   

It sounds like what you're doing works for you (which is great, and is certainly a more common approach), and that you see the other approach as less effective because it may not have worked as well had you done that.  I did, indeed, mean a long swim every week or two…  Have you tried that approach before and had it not work?  

I haven't tried the short, intense stuff over a season, so I don't yet know how well that will work for me - but I'm trying to understand why relatively few do longer swims leading up to races while many of us approach the bike/run that way.  Part of me wonders if it's a carry over from people who are competitive pool swimmers and the workouts they know and understand, rather than tri-optimized workouts (but I just don't know).

I agree that experience is a valuable teacher, and what works for one person is something we should all pay attention to.

My question was more about the "why" of the received wisdom that long swims aren't "worth it."  I get that, for you, they haven't been necessary - and that's both of interest and value to me (and I hope to others). 

Going by my own experience, I could say that I also have done fine in race swims but by ONLY doing long, continuous swims from early May through the end of the season - no short, intense stuff at all last year.  But, I don't think that is necessarily the best way, and I'm trying to learn about why others take a different approach.

Specifically, I'm curious about combining the two approaches - something like what I do for running (a track, tempo, race pace, long run, plus one to two easy ones each week - but maybe only 4-5 swims total/wk), rather than just intervals or just long swims.

So, not trying to whack the nest here - just trying to better understand what seems to be a common practice but something for which I've not heard a great rationale in triathlon (again, not asking about why short stuff - I get that… asking why NOT longer tempo swims and even longer slow swims in CONJUNCTION with the intervals).

Thanks!

Matt

That does suck!  Good call in not pushing it while you're feeling punk, though.  Don't want it to accelerate...

As for the steroids, just note that they can also affect HR and send it up (depending on type, dose and frequency).  I'm guessing the HR was prior to the steroids, though, but just to keep in mind.

Really hope you feel better soon - no fun feeling sick and then compounding it by being bummed about missing exercise.

Matt

This is pretty close to what I'm talking about - intervals in the pool and longer efforts in open water together.  I also liked to do fartleks (I used points in the pond or ocean, as there are no markers).  I think you can get a lot of the open water skills while still doing fairly intense sets (even if they're medium to longish) rather than just long continuous swims, and OWS is a great recovery workout for me, too.

What was it about the longer swims that you thought made them less of a contributor to fitness?  Just couldn't hold form that long?  Something else about them?

Also, how did you feel coming out of the water at Kona compared to other races (and is this the same approach you used to train for other races, or a new one to you)?

OK, I'll stop asking questions for a while now.

Thanks!

Matt

Aren't you Irish? So yes, you are being contentious even when not specifically trying to do so. 

Will see what I can add, but you also didn't give anything towards my question before about how often you're doing the continuous swims. Do remember that I didn't say never do them.  They just don't need to a mainstay in the program throughout the year. James's example set I'd call more in the middle of what we're discussing as I'm thinking more like 2k or more when you're talking "long, continuous". And note what he said they were helpful for, pacing. Leading into a race you do want to have a decent feel of this. How much to do will be individual and have to factor in goals. I wasn't as concerned with perfecting it, so didn't really do them. I may do some this year as I want to try eeking out a bit more. However, the first thing that I'll want to do that for will likely be a 1500 in late June. I don't really need pacing work the next few months. Maybe a spot check in there, but nothing I'd consider regularity. Then look at building a few in through May & June. Until then, workouts will be predominantly composed of intervals from 25 to 200. There will be times that intervals of up to 500 will be included, maybe a few times a week. Not EVERYTHING will be really short. 

From what I've seen so far, the 500's tend to be more moderately paced and are between shorter faster parts of the set or as part of a ladder/pyramid. Since it's more moderate, it's not so difficult to hold form in it and does help us with concentrating longer than normal. 200's don't seem so bad after some of these.  I'm probably repeating from something earlier (late & tired to look), but the shorter intervals allow us to swim a bit harder than we would otherwise, do so with better form than we would have (and deeper into the set), and we can actually do more swimming up at that level than we would have going straight through. Also, when we do well in both pacing and timing of the intervals, while it will not feel the same, the training effect will still be there. So when we're working on threshold targeted sets, when the spacing is rather short we get a little reset to help start off swimming with better form (or at least easier to do so) while not letting our body have time to drop down to a fully recovered state. I forget the specific mechanisms that make this work, but the "feel" part recovers  faster than your body does from being at that effort level. If that makes sense? So from these workouts you can get more development and also a reasonable sense of pacing. As the event approaches, by all means do some more continuous swimming to fine tune that. Do know that I did get better when long, continuous stuff was more a part of the workouts. Not saying that's impossible or doubting anyone's improvement. But I became a lot better after learning how to construct & execute the other swim sets better and really focusing on these.

At times like this, I wish I were TJ or Shane--they reply to such questions so concisely and clearly. (I'm going to keep on overenthusiastically vomiting info until I learn to do it in a neat-package wolf fashion).

Generally speaking, intervals introduce more and different kinds of training stress than do long-moderate-continuous sessions, inducing desired adaptations more quickly and effectively. As you pointed out, in running (and to some extent cycling) you just can't do all intervals, and in any case one needs a long time and lot of miles to build up the right structures to do so in the way one would swimming short intervals. The lessened gravity, non-weight-bearing, and cooling effect of water allow much more, if not nearly all swimming to be done in intervals.

Form does have something to do with it. Training/maintaining good swim form is as much about the training the neurological firing patterns as it is the movement/strength and metabolic. And you just don't do that as well when fatigued. Because of this component (unlike running to some extent), you do have to swim fast in order to swim fast(er). You can swim faster, and better, taking short breaks in between.

While you are swimming faster than you would long-continuous, the rest isn't long enough to cause a significant shift in where and how your body is functioning on the metabolic (energy-expending) spectrum. The body still recognizes it as a long swim.

There is value in doing long continuous swims, especially (as others have stated) in OW, but this is primarily for experience and being able to maximize performance in OW conditions. In a pool, occasionally, for pacing. In terms of the average triathlete AGer, they'll need some, but not very much; for swim time limited by logistics and training the other two sports, they can maximize their improvement with short-interval repeat sets.

Doing LCS gets less relevant the more OW and race experience you have. Champ OWSers still do the vast majority of their swim training in a pool, in short-interval work, because it's the most bang for the buck, the most structured training for the most focused adaptations/performance/results. They're still putting in massive distance*, just in a way that's more beneficial.

*relative to the average AGer ... it's actually less than you might think. Paul Newsome, Swim Smooth head, won the Manhattan Island Marathon Swim on 36K/week.

Anyone read this yet?  FASTER:  Demystifying the Science of Triathlon Speed

Is work filter blocking something? I can't see.

Saw that, and it looked decent.  Just wondering if there is more in there that most of us would not have discussed in this group, or online in general on BT or ST.