Adapting Your Expectations from Pool to Open Water

Pools are, by their design, controlled environments. The temperature and chemistry is tightly regulated. The length is fixed. The lanes are marked out. The number of people might also be limited. We get used to the consistency and predictability of this environment. We might even become surprisingly finicky when those minor conditions change even a slight amount – regular pool swimmers notice!

However, open water in a natural setting is wild water. It is not subject to our controls. When practicing in open water, there can be a great deal of variation in the conditions from day to day, in addition to any changes in your own person. When those conditions change, your expectation need to change also.

So, one way of setting up better expectations for the day is to use the first minutes in the water to run some measurements on those conditions and come up with a plan for how to use those daily numbers to set some improvement goals for your practice this day.

For example, you come to the sea and find the wind is blowing to the west and that means you will have a head-on wind-driven current while you swim to the first point, a side current while swimming to the next, and a tail-current pushing you as you come back to the starting point. You cannot easily compare stroke counts or performance between the three sides of this route, but the first time around you can count strokes and set some expectations for improvement unique to each side of that route.

Or, let’s say you come to the sea and there are waves today, but you normally don’t swim with waves. They may be stressful and straining on the body, more than you are used to. You can adjust your practice plan to remove the agenda that requires smooth water and pick up the task to work on a skill you need for improving your competence and confidence in wavy water.

Rather than set a certain time requirement to swim the route in wavy conditions, you simply set the goal of achieving the distance peacefully, at any pace required by those conditions. And in achieving that, you will in fact leave the water a better swimmer than the one who entered – one with more experience, more skill, more confidence.

And that is a successful practice that takes into account the realities of each unique day.