Aggressive Swimmers (Page 2)

Agreed, you have to let it go, or it'll ruin your race. I'm speaking from experience.  I got into it with a swimmer one time, who pushed me down and tried to swim over me.  I shoved him off me, and he retalitated with a punch to my shoulder.  Regardless who was right, I lost.  my HR skyrocketed to 200 and it completely ruined my race.  When those things happen now, I just move and let them by. You'll forget it happened 10 seconds later and you just keep swimming your swim.

this, or start further back or to the side. this kind of advice is infinitely wiser and more useful than "kick like a mule if someone makes incidental contact with your toes" - that's what i'd expect to hear from an inexperienced, insecure beginning swimmer. not a "coach".

So in summary, contact okay. It can and does happen. A lot. Aggressive crappy swimmer contact not okay. How you handle is up to you, but be prepared to deal with the consequences of what you do.

99.99% of the time, it's unintentional and the person who is getting bumped/rubbed/kicked/swam over/etc is making much more out of it than what it actually is.  

It doesn't make sense for a complete stranger to choose you out of a crowd (during a competition no less) and start picking on you just for the sake of picking on you.

x2

Expanding on this  ^^^

There is only one answer, whether you are a fast swimmer or a slow swimmer.  Do not swim over anyone, if you are fast, and move out of the way if someone is getting aggressive with you.  As a faster swimmer that starts in later waves, I have to swim through huge packs every race.   Including at the last two races very slow swimmers swimming backstroke perpendicularly to the course.  Most races here in So Cal are in pretty murky water, many times into the sun, and I don't see the person until I am on them, at which point I veer around them.  Closely, and there will be contact, but it's very minor.

If I've touched your feet, I am sorry.  It was an accident.   There is no excuse for me to swim over you, or for you to start kicking hard "to teach me a lesson."  I am 6'2" and 210, played NCAA Div. I water polo, no one needs to teach me a lesson about getting rough in the water.  Trust me, if I wanted to, I would win that "lesson."  But I am there to race, not get aggro in the water to prove a point.  Swim venues are usually fairly large areas.  I've moved away from people getting aggressive with me, since it's simply faster than engaging in aggressive behavior.

Being a buddhist, I love this idea.  I had an issue this weekend in my race, that I will share.  

I started the race it was a TT style swim start.  I was in the last group to go.  I was probably 250m out to the first buoy, and the next thing I know I am UNDER the water, with a very large man right above me.  I had to swim underwater for a few and pop up in front of him.  He was a zigzag swimmer, who just had no idea how to sight, and was just doing his best out there.  When I came up in front of him, I could have easily kicked him in the face, he was that close, but instead just used my power to pull ahead of him so that I wouldn't make contact with him.  He didn't need anything else to contend with, he had enough going on, and I just wanted to make sure he didn't panic.  He looked like he was about to anyway, so I just yelled back "You can do it!" and kept swimming.  

The reason I got into this sport was because of the support each athlete gives one another.  I have only had one time when someone did something intentionally, but I still kept the "buddhist" approach and in the end, karma ended up handling that particular racer.  

This is a great idea in theory but most races, save for an Ironman start, go in waves. And in the ones I do, they put the fastest athletes (Males 20-40) in the last waves. So no matter how well I seed myself in my own wave, there will be 3, 4, 5  or more waves coming up behind me consisting of very fast male swimmers. I think this is the crux of what people are describing when they talk about "aggressive" swimmers.

I've gotten pretty good at anticipating when they will be approaching me, based on the number of minutes between waves. So I can try to move more to the outside. Plus I can literally hear them coming - they seem to have very loud punch-the-water-like strokes.

OK, I've only done one and can't speak of how other races are organised. In my race males were first, three waves, 3 min. apart then another 3 an hour later, but there was no distinguishing between time as far as I could tell. 

By the time I caught up to BOP of the previous wave the pack had been spread out and it wasn't that much of a problem, nothing like the chaos right at the start. Yes, I did get physical contact with these but recognise the agressive behaviour in either direction. It was accidental, it was simply impossible to see more than 100cm ahead in the water. 

I have registered for some others and they ask expected time, no idea since I haven't done that distance yet - and for the whole race. Even before this thread I considered if it would be appropriate for a fast swimmer to lie to get in the first wave?

BR, Erik

Very true.  Mostly annoying though.  I usually ignore it ...

As usual, AdventureBear is spot on.  I am actually going to 'steal' the Swim like a Buddhist mantra.

I'm going to go ahead and say that what most people have mentioned is purely incidental contact.  We all do a majority of our swimming in a pool where no one touches us.  Then we get to OWS and freak out when someone touches us.  Keep swimming and in all but the RAREST of situations, that person will be gone in 1-2 seconds.

During our OWS clinics we cover methods to evade should one get in a bad situation with another swimmer. And it's NEVER kick harder.  For one, it causes you to use too much energy and ruin your race.  Would you surge if someone is around you on the bike? 

1) if someone is constantly bumping into you from the side, we teach our athletes to roll over and the person is gone.  It's a quick maneuver and you even get an extra breath. 

The biggest thing we do is to force contact during the clinic.  This is the most fun for me.  I get to play shark.  And I can tell you when it's my job to bump, grab, interfere, it's very hard.  So if I'm trying to race, it would be almost impossible.

And for those that say your ankle was grabbed.  I have a hard time believing that.  The reason is because I actually do this, or rather try to, (because we teach how to get out of it) and it's almost impossible.  I swim up on someone, have to slow way down and then try and grab a moving object with a firm grip...good luck.

In short, as AB says, just swim.

Another vote for swim your own race.  Many times I have come up on a slower swimmer and you just can't see them until you are one their legs.  

Now a few weeks ago at the Columbia Tri, I had some guy try the pushing/aggressive routine on me.  I just slowed down a bit and started drafting him.  I tickled his toes (no grabbing or anything) every 30 sec or so to watch him kick extra hard.  It helped keep me entertained for the swim.

Obviously.

Like many other things in life, it is much easier to laugh it off then get angry and plot your revenge.  I've been swum over, punched, kicked, slapped, and even been the one doing the punching, kicking, etc.  It's just part of the race.  Once I was actually poked right in that "taint" region between the legs during the last 100 or so of a race.  I'm not exactly sure how it happend but it got my attention for sure!  Once out of the water the woman who poked me was so embarrassed she made a point to get my attention and apologize.  I laughed and told her the pleasure was all mine.  Off we went to complete the race, smiling!

To quote a hillarious favorite movie of mine, "Don't take life too seriously, you'll never make it out alive!"