Open Water Swim Training Plan: How to Train Year-Round in the Pool

Open water swimmers know training in the conditions you’ll find on event day is the best possible training. This means if you’re preparing for an ocean swim, it’s best if you can get into the ocean several times a week.

But for many people, getting to their preferred open water training location is simply not possible. Perhaps you’re in a landlocked state or you live too far from an open waterway to make it accessible regularly. Plus, during the winter months, it may not be feasible to swim in open water at all, given that your local swimming hole could be frozen over or simply too cold to log much meaningful training time. 

This means that many open water swimmers must train for their adventures in a swimming pool. And although pool swimming is fundamentally different from open water, there are ways to make it more directly applicable when training for the challenge you’ve set for yourself. 

Here’s how to use the pool for open water success:

• Build your aerobic base. Particularly in the offseason, the pool is a terrific place to work on improving your aerobic base and building up your training volume for long races in the summer. 

• Incorporate speed work. Although most open water swims cover long distances and many swimmers default to training long, slow distance sets, it’s still important that you continue working on speed training and pace development. You never know when you’ll need to tap into a reserve of faster swimming to pass a competitor or pick up the pace to get out of the way of an oncoming boat or tide change. All of this can be accomplished with speed work sets and drills in the pool. 

• Practice sighting. Sighting can be a challenging skill for some swimmers to perfect, but it’s key to staying on course and swimming the most direct path possible in open water. When training in the pool, add sighting during some of your laps to keep that skill strong.  

• Train without walls. Reduce your push off the wall when starting and turning to make your pool swim harder and more similar to open water. Start from a dead stop without pushing off at all on some sets to train for in-water race starts. 

• Work on buoy turns. Set a kickboard or other piece of equipment somewhere in the pool and use it as an anchor point for practicing buoy turns. 

• Take out the lane lines. If your coach or facility is amenable, you can make the pool “bigger” by taking out the lane lines and swimming circles without touching any of the walls. 

• Scrum and draft. Swim with your lanemates in a tight pack to get the feel of an open water swim start and get more comfortable drafting off other swimmers. 

• Vary your stroke and breathing patterns. Water conditions in a pool are usually flat and calm, but that’s seldom the case in open water. Still, you can vary your stroke and breathing patterns in the pool to help approximate what it feels like to respond to dynamic conditions in open water. 

• Add dryland training. Adding strength and resistance training can make your body stronger, which can translate into more endurance in open water and also balance muscle development to help prevent injuries. 

• Maximize your pool time. Make every pool session count by arriving ready, focused, and prepared for the workout ahead. Your open water self will thank your pool self for planning ahead and getting you ready for race day.