- For the vast majority of us,
taking part in a triathlon means
that we will be swimming in an open water environment,
which is significantly different
to swimming up and down in a swimming pool.
Now, with that change in environment,
there's a need to slightly alter
our swimming style and our stroke,
but why is that and how?
Well, today I'm going to be exploring
the components of a triathlon-specific swim stroke
and explaining how you can adapt your own swimming stroke
so that you can better cope with
that open water environment in your next triathlon.
(gentle music)
Now, the first thing you might notice
with a triathlon swim stroke is
well, it can look quite awful.
I mean, take Mark's swim stroke;
by his own admission, he windmills his arms along
like nobody's business
and in comparison to a regular swimmer's stroke,
this contrast is, well, quite stark indeed
and this doesn't necessarily mean
the triathlete is a bad swimmer, not at all,
it just means that they're swimming
in different environments.
When we're swimming in a mass start in a triathlon,
swimmers are all really close together,
shoulder to shoulder, on each other's hips,
and in real tangled close proximity,
and this doesn't bode well for having
a lovely, beautiful pool-based swim stroke
with a nice low arm recovery over the top of the water.
Arms can clatter, you can even catch waves
or choppy water with that arm,
so it's much more suitable to have a straight arm recovery
when you're swimming in a triathlon-type environment.
Now, that being said, this isn't something
that I would suggest you just go away and try and learn,
because an awful lot of pool swimmers
have learned how to have that nice low arm carriage
with their swim stroke from the outset
and then they learn to adapt into this pool stroke later on.
(gentle music)
This moves us nicely onto arm rate.
Now, if you watch triathletes swim,
you might notice they've got a very high cadence
and this is entirely different to what you might see
if you're used to watching swimming on the TV
with a nice long relaxed stroke,
and this difference is down to the disruption
of the water and the environment
that the athletes are swimming in.
Coupled with the fact that you can bump into other swimmers,
you can find your stroke suddenly becoming dud,
for want of a better word,
and what we mean by a dud stroke is
when you put your arm in the water to take your stroke,
nothing happens, or you lose propulsion completely;
a, because the water's really bubbly and turbulent,
or as I said, you might have got bumped by another swimmer,
whereas if you've got a long sort of
traditional pool stroke,
this can really affect your stroke
much more if you get bumped,
because there's an awful long time
until that next swimming stroke coming along
and that's where the high turnover
of a triathlon-based stroke can be much more
applicable to the open water,
because it doesn't take long for that next stroke to come in
and then bang, you can get your propulsion
from your stroke and keep moving forward.
Now this doesn't mean that I'm just suggesting
that you throw good technique out of the window;
no, of course, get those fundamentals
of a proper pool stroke sorted first,
but by being able to adapt that stroke
to heighten your turnover and get your cadence up,
that means that you'll be more equipped for the open water.
(gentle music)
Another area that is less obvious is with our breathing.
Now, given the nature of open water swimming
and the fact that we've often got athletes
round about us all the time,
it is really useful to be able to breathe
as easily as you can to both sides.
If we're in a pool environment like this,
well, we generally refer to this as bilateral breathing,
but if you do watch a triathlon swim stroke,
you'll see that athlete very often
repeatedly just breathing to the one side,
and I was very guilty of this when I raced.
I would generally always breathe to my right side
and this is something that athletes do predominantly
because you could be swimming alongside another athlete
to the side of you that you don't want to breathe to,
but also you might find in an open water environment
that you've got waves or chop coming in
from one particular side,
so you want to be able to breathe away
from that too and cope with it
and finally, because it's the open water and outside,
there might be glare coming off of the sun.
(gentle music)
Now, that's me talked a fair bit about the upper body,
but what about the lower body and our kick?
Well, you might well have observed
when you're watching triathletes swim
that they have got quite a low kick rate
and this is actually not something that is specific
just to triathlon, we see it in long-distance
open water swimming as well,
and in fact, if we look at pool-based swimming,
if you see the sprinters swim,
they very much have a high eight-beat leg kick
and this is not the same as a long-distance swimmer,
who's going to have more of what we call
a two-beat flutter kick.
The reason for this is you're starting
to preserve energy as the distances move on
and the kick moves away from being more of a propulsion
to being about stability for your stroke.
We as triathletes are thinking about a half-Ironman
or an Ironman, a 3.8K, as a long-distance,
but in swimmers, well, they can swim up to 10K,
so I guess you've got to take that into account.
But let's not forget that we do have a bike and a run
to come and we do need to be able to preserve our energy.
And finally, we also are swimming in a wetsuit,
so that is able to lift our legs up
and make it that bit easier
to not rely upon our legs quite as much.
(gentle music)
Now, a fairly obvious but necessary change
that you will see in a triathlon swim stroke
is the ability of an athlete to sight.
Now, this is really quite important in the open water
because unlike in the pool, we don't have a black line
along the floor to follow
and what we need to be able to do
is see where we're going; our target;
which is usually the buoy that we're having to swim around
and that means we're just going to have to lift our head up
a fraction out of the water to see that target.
Now, not only do we need to be able to see that target
or the buoy that we're swimming towards,
but we also need to be aware of other swimmers
who are round about us;
a, because we don't necessarily want to bump into them,
but b, because we want to be able to draft off of them
and get on their feet, so being able to sight
is a really useful skill that triathletes
need to be able to master and incorporate into their stroke.
(gentle music)
Which leads me nicely onto my final point which is drafting.
If you've come from a regular swimming background,
the notion of swimming close beside somebody
or even sitting right on their feet
can, well, quite honestly seem criminal
because we're quite used to leaving regular time gaps
when we're swimming sets in the pool.
However, this is something that you really can't avoid
in a mass swim start environment
and in actual fact, there's quite a benefit to be had
from sitting on somebody's hips
or directly behind, touching their feet
and if you can get close enough,
the wake that somebody creates
that comes off of their hip
is something you can in effect ride along from
and get a benefit of, or alternatively,
you can literally sit directly behind a swimmer
who is in front and tap their feet with your fingertips
and essentially, this acts like drafting on a bike;
you're sitting in their slipstream,
for want of a better example.
And both of these examples can help you swim
at the same speed but for considerably less effort,
or indeed, you can try to latch onto somebody
who's swimming quite a bit faster than you
and try and keep up with their pace,
which is going to be easier than you would have managed
trying to do that on your own.
Well there you go, there is clearly a handful
of quite big differences that we can notice
in a triathlete's stroke and hopefully,
now you can get a grasp and understand
why it is that they do that.
But as I said already, I would advise
getting the fundamentals right
with a regular swimming pool stroke
and then over time, you can start to adapt that
to be able to be more familiar
with the triathlon environment.
Hopefully you've enjoyed this video,
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Find the globe onscreen to get all the other videos
on the channel and if you want to see
a video that Mark and Heather did
where they compare open water swimming stoke
to a pool stroke, you can find that here,
and another video about top five swimming skills
well, you can find that here.