Prior to the Marlin, if I wanted to do 400m in 5:20 in open water I'd set my tempo trainer to beep at 5.20 in one ear, and my Garmin to beep at 400m on the wrist.

You can do really structured training in the open water now.

We also use a product called the Marlin which talks to you whilst you're swimming.

We have things like Garmins that track distance.

Some people do say that they like swimming in the open water but they drift off and it's not focused training.

take out the lane ropes, put in some buoys, swim closely together as a group.

If you don't have access to open water, you can do open water specific training in the pool.

Once it comes to race season, I'd recommend getting in open water at least once a week.

In the Northern hemisphere, many lakes will be frozen during winter.

Here in Perth you can swim year round in the open water, so I encourage athletes to do that.

It will depend where you are situated in the world.

You can sustain good technique and develop good pacing when working at CSS pace.

This allows you to combine technique and fitness training together.

A lot of the sessions prescribed are based on threshold pace or slightly below.

Maybe two minutes from technique, 2 minutes from training and 2 minutes from the type of open water adaptation you've got.

If you for example want a six minute improvement in an Ironman swim, don't think about taking 6 minutes from technique work alone.

The ability to draft better and position yourself in the field will be worth 3-4 minutes in an Ironman swim.

So we talked about open water, and she said she only does it when she races.We had a chat about training and again she was following all the advice I'd recommend.We looked at her stroke technically and it looked really good - so I couldn't really change it from the analysis.She came for a video analysis session, wanting to knock off 7-8 minutes of her Ironman swim time.I coached a lady who I think still holds the age group world record for the swim in Kona - Catherine Faux.I encourage everybody I coach to think about all three keys and not shy away from them.It's not effective swimming if you have a pretty stroke but can't maintain speed.I didn't discourage her from coming along and giving the CSS or Red Mist sessions a go.We did some work on the tempo of the stroke, and general tidying up.

Technically she had a reasonable stroke, she was just very slow.

We have a lady in the squad who started with a CSS pace of 2:12/100m.

A lot of people get held back by focusing just on their technique.

There is no such thing as perfect freestyle swim stroke.

I often hear people say they'll apply themselves to the right kind of training once their technique is perfect.

Applying yourself to the right kind of training.

Our philosophy has three keys to triathlon performance:.

Ability does have an impact on the sessions we prescribe.

Swim Smooth by Paul Newsome