Today I want to talk about the benefits of group training.
First everyone should agree that it is easier to push hard when training with others. It is just plain fun to measure yourself against your training buddies and those who think they are faster than you. There are other benefits as well.
In group swims, especially open water ones, it is a great time to practice sighting, swimming in a straight line and around other swimmers. It is rare in a race that you are not going to have one or more people that are going to want to swim in your way. They may be zig zagging, or just a whole bunch of swimmers heading in the same direction. I encourage you to practice pausing to let swimmers move out of your way, a few seconds can let them pass and take a lot of frustration out of your race.
Another option is to speed up so they are behind you and you can swim your pace, caution here as it can wind you and the cost in energy may not be worth the pace. In large races you may find that you have no choice other than to swim across another swimmers path, this is typical in IM races. If you can get a group to train with you, you can learn to do this with out the other swimmer even knowing you did it and it will not effect their race one bit. Again this takes practice and if you don’t do it properly you may catch an elbow or foot for your efforts.
Have fun practicing this with your swim buddies and train smart it will pay off in the long run.
Having someone there to push you makes all the difference when you are training. A little bit of competitiveness goes a long way to increasing your personal performance.
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