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Triathlon Open Water - Fran Crippen Open Water

Important Note to the Viewer

LESSONS: 39 VIDEOS

Introduction

Introduction

2-time National Champion in the pool 800 meter freestyle 4-time National Champion in open water 5K and 10K 2006 Pan Pac Silver Medalist @ 10K 2007 Pan Am Games Gold Medalist @ 10K 2009 World Championships Bronze Medalist @ 10K

How to Get the Most From this Video

How to Get the Most From this Video

What I love about open-water racing is that it’s not always the fastest swimmer who succeeds...but the smartest swimmer -- the one with the most skills. If you can learn some basic skills, like how to stay on course... ...how to conserve energy by drafting and using an efficient stroke... ...and how to turn at the buoys... ...you’ll be able to excel at open-water swimming, and a whole new world will open for you. As a kid, I spent my summers at the Jersey Shore, so swimming in open water is very familiar to me. I know that’s not true for a lot of swimmers, but once you conquer that initial fear and get out there and start swimming, it’s not much different from swimming in the pool. Being comfortable in open water requires an efficient stroke and some basic skills. In Part 1 of this video, I’ll share with you the four most important things I think about when I swim freestyle. These are the four technical points that work for me -- and that I hope will work for you. I learned these focus points from some of the best coaches and teachers in swimming, including Dick Shoulberg of Germantown Academy, Mark Bernardino at the University of Virginia, and Bill Rose at the Mission Viejo Nadadores. As you watch the video, remember that I didn’t learn these techniques overnight. I’ve spent thousands of hours perfecting each one, and I’m still learning. Every time I go the pool I work on technique... so that I don’t have to worry about it when I race. When I’m racing in open water, I don’t think about technique. By race day, technique should be automatic -- it should be on cruise control. I just want to be able to race and have 100% focus on racing and my position. In Part 2 of this video, I’ll share with you the six most important skills you need, to feel confident in open water. These are things like sighting, drafting, and holding your own in a pack. When you try these focus points and skills for yourself, it’s best not to think about all of them at the same time -- or try to practice all the skills in one session. Try to focus on one specific thing each day. If you do this every day...if you take care of your technique and skills in practice...you’ll be ready to enjoy your first open-water experience... ...or you’ll be ready to just get out there and race and lose yourself in the excitement and freedom of open-water swimming. OK. Thanks for joining me. Let’s go to the pool and look at the four key focus points that work for me in freestyle.

Freestyle Technique - Stay Long, Smooth, and Efficient

Freestyle Technique - Stay Long, Smooth, and Efficient

Once I get into position in a race, I want to stay long, smooth, and efficient, so staying long is something I work on every day at the pool. For me, staying long means really stretching and gliding out front with my hand. Some people call this a front-quadrant-type stroke -- keeping one hand out in the “front quadrant” -- and it’s something I work on all the time. The better I can get at staying long out front, the more efficient my stroke will be. Staying long starts with a clean hand entry. I enter with my fingertips first and then extend forward. I enter with the hand straight above or just off my shoulder. When I place my hand in the water, I keep the fingers just a little bit open and I keep them kind of relaxed, which helps me get a good pull. I extend forward first and keep the hand up near the surface. On every stroke, I’m gliding with the hand out in front. Staying long like this important in open water. First of all, it saves energy. Second, it makes you more accurate and efficient when you sight (and we’ll cover sighting in Part 2 of the video). And third, it helps you get a better draft off the person in front of you. Here’s another angle where you can see how I place my hand in the water and then extend forward with the hand near the surface. Notice how I glide with one arm extended, getting maximum distance per stroke. My favorite drill for staying long is to wear paddles, but hold them at the top of the paddle. This lets me extend my hand forward and lets me send my hand down and keep my elbow up high, which is what we’ll talk about in the next chapter.

Freestyle Technique - Keep Your Elbow Near the Surface

Freestyle Technique - Keep Your Elbow Near the Surface

Keeping my elbows near the surface is something I work on every day. In this clip, focus just on my elbows. Notice how they stay up near the surface as I extend, catch, and pull. This is something I learned from watching the world’s greatest freestylers -- guys like Ian Thorpe, Grant Hackett, Larsen Jensen, and Erik Vendt. They all swim with their elbows right up near the surface or just an inch below. Swimming with a high elbow lets me pull with as big a surface area as possible and helps me get maximum power from every stroke. I’m better at keeping my left elbow up than my right elbow, so I have to work harder on my right side -- to keep that elbow near the surface. I work on this constantly in the pool. To help focus on a high elbow, I think about extending my fingertips forward...keeping my elbow in place...and then bringing my hand underneath my elbow. Here you can see it from another angle -- I keep the elbow in place, right near the surface, then bring the hand underneath the elbow. I’m creating a pulling surface that extends from my fingertips all the way to my elbow. Keeping the elbow near the surface is a hard technique to master, so you might need some drills. One good drill is single-arm freestyle. Keep your right arm by your side and swim with just the left arm -- breathing toward the nonworking arm. Pause out front for about 3 counts and then start the pull. On the next length, switch arms and focus on keeping the right arm out front -- with the elbow up high -- for 3 counts before starting the pull. Here’s another good drill, called reverse catch-up. Instead of catching up out front, you catch up with your hands at your sides. This enables you to swim one arm at a time, and makes you really focus on getting your hands out front, with elbows near the surface. Another good drill is to swim with paddles, but hold them at the top. This also keeps your stroke long, which we talked about in the last chapter. And if you’re still having trouble keeping your elbow near the surface, try holding a kickboard out front while you swim. If you’re holding the board, you’re automatically swimming catch-up and keeping the elbows up near the surface in order to hold the board.

Freestyle Technique - Kick from the Hip Flexors

Freestyle Technique - Kick from the Hip Flexors

It doesn’t matter whether you use a 2-beat, 4-beat, 6-beat, or even a crossover kick (like I’m using here). The one constant is that you should kick from your hip flexors -- the muscles at the TOP of your legs -- and not from your knees. When I kick, I try to use a whole-leg motion and I try to rotate my hips as I swim. When I’m swimming at aerobic pace, I use a crossover kick. It’s not a typical kick, and I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it, but it works for me because it helps keep my hips up and helps me rotate my hips. Here’s another angle where you can see the crossover kick -- my feet cross over with each stroke. I use this kick when I’m in drafting mode and when I need to maintain proper body position. When I switch gears and go into anaerobic and threshold swimming, my feet go to a normal 6-beat kick, which means that I take three kicks for every armstroke. I train both the crossover and the 6-beat kick in practice. But I make sure that every time I’m swimming at threshold pace or above, I’m using a 6-beat kick. This is how I train for having good closing speed at the end of a race or when I’m trying to break away or respond to a breakaway. In this last clip, I’ll start with a crossover kick and switch to a 6-beat kick in the middle of the length. This is a great drill to help build your kick and to help you learn to switch gears in the middle of a race. Start with whatever kick you use for aerobic swimming, and then switch to a 6-beat kick at the end of the length. One more word about the kick is: Don’t give up. Lots of swimmers get discouraged when they can’t kick fast on a board. Stretching your hip flexors might help, and here’s an example of one exercise you could try. Try kicking from the hip flexors -- from the top of the leg. And use the whole leg instead of kicking just from the knee.

Skills for Open Water - Starts

Skills for Open Water - Starts

Some open-water races will start from in the water... ...others may start from a pier or from a boat... ...and some will start from the beach or shore. The one thing you can count on is that it will be crowded. There’s going to be flying arms and legs and you may get hit or you may hit someone else. It’s going to happen and it doesn’t mean the other person is mean or doesn’t like you. It’s just racing. At the start -- and even during the swim -- everyone is jockeying around. If you can keep your head and not blow up if you get nudged or pushed around, you’ll be able to hold your ground and protect your space. At a race with lots of people, my advice is to either get out in front (and you have to train for this by training distance and speed)... ...or start in the back or at the side. If you start in the middle and you don’t sprint out front, you can get caught in the pack and you’ll waste a lot of energy fighting for space and maybe getting run over. If you’re doing a run into the water, like in a beach start, it’s important to work on getting your ankles out of the water and swing them outside your knees. The idea is to run over the water instead of through it. Once the water gets too deep, and you can’t get your feet out of the water, then you do dolphin dives. You need to check the bottom before the race to make sure this will be safe (no rocks or glass or anything that could hurt you). If the bottom is solid, it’s usually faster to dolphin dive than it is to run or swim. With dolphin dives, you’re just jumping over the water. It’s a combination of a butterfly armstroke...a forward dive to get your hands on the bottom...and then a breaststroke pulldown until your hands are at your sides. Then you bring up your feet and get ready for another dive. You want to start dolphin diving when the water is above your knees and around your thighs. If waves are coming in, you should start diving through the waves and not try to run through them. In an ocean setting with lots of surf or waves, I try to dive right through the middle of the wave. Once the bottom begins to slope away, you take a last push with your feet and start to swim. If there are still some waves or you’re having trouble with the break, you just try to swim through. In a race that goes parallel to the shore, you want to get out past the break so the waves aren’t crashing into you on every stroke. Even if this takes you a little beyond the most direct line to the next buoy, it’s worth it. Dolphin dives take practice. If you have a shallow pool you can practice them there... ...but most often you just have to get out to a beach or lake and practice. Most of my races are 5K or 10K and these tend to have an in-water start. To train for these at the pool, I like to push off the wall and scull in place for 5 or 10 seconds with my hips near the surface. I add a light kick with my legs behind me and then switch to an all-out kick or swim for a 25 or 50. This takes you from being still… to taking off at race pace. If your game plan is to try to get out in front at the start of a race, you have to train for that opening speed in the pool. One set that I do is rounds of 4-by-100. On the first 100, the first 25 is all-out fast... On the second 100, the first 50 is fast. On the third 100, the first 75 is fast. And on the fourth 100, the whole thing is fast. This is a great set for working on your opening speed.

Skills for Open Water - Sighting

Skills for Open Water - Sighting

I don’t think there’s a clear-cut way... or 100% right way... to sight in open water. Here’s how I do it and it’s worked well for me. And I make a point to practice this on my own for a few minutes at every practice, usually during warmup or warmdown. I sight with my left hand extended forward. As my left hand enters the water, I lift just my eyes to get a sight. All I want to do is get my eyes up. A lot of swimmers want to have their whole face out of the water -- like this. This causes your legs to sink and can be a huge energy drain over the course of a race. All you need to do is get your eyes out of the water. And you want to do this with as little head movement as possible. Notice that I keep my chin tucked and my neck pretty much straight, even as I sight. You can also see that I keep my lead hand up near the surface when I sight. Even when my eyes are above the waterline, my hand is still up there near the surface. This allows me to turn my head, catch a normal breath, and then start a normal pull -- just like in the pool. Here it is again. Left hand enters, extends, and stays near the surface as the eyes come up. I’m not breathing just yet. I turn my head and get my breath HERE...to the side... just like I would in the pool. Then I get my head back down as my lead hand starts to pull and my body starts to rotate. As much as possible, I want a sighting stroke to be the same as a normal stroke in the pool. I don’t want to change my head position or body position when I sight. When I come up to sight, I’m looking for the next turn buoy, to know that I’m in line and swimming straight. I don’t take a set number of strokes between sights. It all depends on the race and the conditions. In heavy chop I might sight every 3 to 5 strokes. If I’m drafting behind someone and I know they’re sighting, I might swim several hundred meters between sights. One way to test how straight you swim is to swim with your eyes closed. Just close your eyes and swim 50 strokes and see if you can swim straight. If you know that you always go a little to the right or left, you can factor that into your race-day sighting. You can also use landmarks to help you swim straight. On the day before a race or during warmup, I usually scope out a landmark or big building on shore, just in case the buoys aren’t big enough to see because of chop or waves. But generally when I sight, I’m looking for the next buoy and setting up my turn, which is the subject of the next chapter.

Skills for Open Water - Turns

Skills for Open Water - Turns

Turns are a great time to make a move, push your pace, and try to break away from the pack. But there’s more to working the turn than simply getting around the buoy. To set up a great turn, you need to start far in advance -- sometimes as much as five hundred to a thousand meters from the buoy. The key is to set up your position so you have the inside track. Sometimes this isn’t possible, but if you can position yourself on the inside edge of the pack, and then hold that position and not get push around by other swimmers, you’ll swim less yardage and gain valuable seconds over the rest of the pack. In a race, I swim right at the buoy, while at the same time I’m trying to be on the inside edge of the pack. As I come to the buoy -- and let’s say I have to turn on my right shoulder -- I try to hit the buoy with my right shoulder. Then, I leave my right arm extended and take a couple of strokes with my left arm. I swim only with my left arm as I’m turning to my right side. I can’t swim with my right arm because it’s literally right ON the buoy. If I have to turn on my left shoulder, I hit the buoy with my left shoulder, leave my left arm extended, and swim only with my right arm. Sometimes, you can even try to dive under the buoy a little bit. As long as you turn on the correct side of the buoy, you’re OK. If you’re not on the inside edge, you should still single-arm the turn. And you should still try to get really close to the buoy. This gets physical, and you have to keep your bearings because you don’t want to get hit. For a fast turn, it’s important to swim through the turn. Keep swimming. Once your shoulder hits the buoy, start swimming immediately with one arm and then start swimming with both arms as soon as you make the turn. You want to start swimming a normal stroke as soon as possible. Some swimmers take it kind of easy around the turn. They pause and don’t continue their stroke. If you have a small buoy and something to anchor it with, you can practice turns in a pool or in open water. Start by going single file, getting your shoulder right on the buoy and swimming with one arm around the turn. Then go two at a time, with each swimmer learning how to battle for the inside position. Swim through the turn and keep going. Then try it with four or more swimmers approaching the buoy as a pack. This can be a lot of fun and will build your confidence and skill for an actual race.

Skills for Open Water - Drafting

Skills for Open Water - Drafting

The most important thing to know about drafting is that you definitely want to do it. If you can stay right behind another swimmer, you’re using about 30% less energy than when you’re swimming on your own, and that can be a huge advantage in a long race or in a triathlon. You get the most powerful draft when you’re directly behind another swimmer...and the best place to be is right on their feet. The farther back you are, the less draft you’ll get, but if you’re directly behind someone, you can feel the effect from up to 10 meters away. When I’m drafting right at someone’s feet, I try to keep my stroke the same as in the pool -- nice and long. I don’t try to avoid their feet, but sometimes I’ll send my hand a little to the side so I’m not constantly hitting them. When I’m drafting, and if I trust the person in front of me and know he’s sighting, I’m not going to sight. I want to keep a normal stroke with normal breathing, and not waste energy by lifting my eyes. When it’s time to make a move and pass someone, you’ve got to go with it and go all the way through. It takes energy to pass someone, so if you’re going to use energy, you want it to equal results. You want to make sure you complete the pass. You don’t want to go half way and then think, nah...I’ll just drop back. When you pass, you want to put a couple of feet between you and the other swimmer. As you pass, you’ll still get some drafting effect when you’re at their knees. But when you get to their hip, you’re no longer drafting and you’re actually slowing each other down. The worst place to swim is right at someone’s hip. So when you pass, go a little bit wide and make sure you get past them. If you don’t, you’re better off getting behind them so you get the draft. The best place to practice drafting is in open water. But if you have a 50-meter pool, you can practice leap-frog swimming. Several people swim in one lane and the person in the back sprints up to the front. Do one length at a time and take turns being at the back.

Skills for Open Water - Reading the Pack

Skills for Open Water - Reading the Pack

In open-water swimming, you have to be totally 100% involved in what you’re doing...every minute...second...moment. If you lose focus or don’t know what’s going on around you, you can look up and you’ll have lost the pack or you’ll be swimming off course or you might be 20 yards behind your group. And it can happen early. People are always looking to make breaks and get out in front and you need to be conscious of where you are at every moment. You need to make decisions right away -- are you going to stay back with the pack or are you going to go with the person who’s breaking away. If you’re zoned out and not involved in the race or what’s going on around you, you can miss an opportunity or -- worse -- you can start to panic or feel overwhelmed. The best way to stay aware is to use bilateral breathing. The most common pattern is to breathe every 3 strokes. But you can use any pattern -- like breathing twice to the left and then twice to the right. When you’re ready to increase the pace, you can go back to breathing on your more comfortable side...but when you’re trying to stay focused and aware, bilateral breathing is the way to go. In a race, knowing how to read the pack can give you a real edge. If the pack looks like this – with the leaders swimming side by side – the pace will usually be slow. This is a typical pack for early in the race, when no one wants to take the lead. In this situation, and if it’s early in the race, the best place to be is at the back of the pack. This is where you’ll get the greatest benefit – drafting off everyone in front of you. The next best position is in the middle rows – but on the outside. The position you want to avoid is being right in the middle of the center rows. In the middle, you’ve got people on both sides slowing you down. And from this position it’s hard to make a move if someone breaks away. As the race progresses, you might see a pack that looks like this. One swimmer is leading and is doing most of the work. Not the greatest place to be in the early or middle part of a race. The two swimmers right behind the leader are in great position. They’re getting a draft off the leader and will be able to make a move…or counter a move…if someone breaks away. The least favorable place to be is in the center of the pack. It will be very physical in here, because you’re surrounded by swimmers. A better position is in the middle rows of the pack, but on the outside. And, better still, is to be in the back of the pack, where you get a great draft off everyone breaking the water in front of you. It’s good to be back here at the beginning or middle of a race, but after mid-race, people will start to swim faster and to move up, so you have to stay aware if you’re drafting at the back. In a short race – and this is typical of most triathlons – you may see a pack that looks like this. It’s called a “spread pack” and it indicates that the pace is fast. The lead position is good for late in the race, but bad for early in the race. The position right behind the leader is great. It lets you draft, save energy, and be in position to make a move at the finish. The next two swimmers might lose a little ground by swimming right next to each other, but they’re in good position to get a draft off the leaders and they’ll have the ability to counter any moves – or to make a move themselves. Being farther back and in the center of the pack is the least desirable position. It can get physical in there, and you run the risk of getting boxed in. If you’re back in the pack, try moving to the outside, just far enough to get out of the washing machine but not far enough that you lose the draft from the swimmers in front. If you’re swimming solo at the very back of the back, the drafting is great but you risk being unable to counter a move by the leaders. Here’s another fast pack, and this is typical for late in a race. The leader is in great position for the finish, but needs to be confident he can finish strong and hold off any challengers. The next swimmer is in great position – conserving energy – and will have the ability to pass at the end if he has something left. The third swimmer is also in good position. The fourth swimmer is getting a great draft, but has to make a really big move to pass. The next two swimmers…and the swimmers in “wing” position in the next-to-last row -- are in OK shape for drafting, but need to start moving up if they want to stay with the leaders. The swimmer in the middle at the rear of the back is getting a super draft, but could get boxed in if he wants to move up. Great draft, but it’s going to cost him at the finish. Every race will be different, so the thing to remember is that you need to stay aware of what’s happening around you. If you can learn to “read the pack” and know where the best positions are…at each point in the race…you’ll gain a huge advantage over your competitors.