Ocean swim training and the benefits of getting in the water

Sports broadcaster and journalist Rikki Swannell gets swimmer Laura Quilter's top tips for making the most of your ocean swim.

🕒 5 min read

From a splash in the breakers to competing in open-water events, long hot summers are made for swimming and there are multitudes of ways to reap the benefits of being in the water. But to level up from wallowing in the shallows to racing in the ocean takes a concentrated effort.

Laura Quilter represented New Zealand in the pool at the 2014 Commonwealth Games. A lifelong swimmer with a surf lifesaving background, as well as being a trained nurse working in urgent care, she's now dedicated to helping adults achieve their swimming goals.

Through her programme, Aura Move, Quilter breaks down swimmers into three categories: beginners, those who swim for health and wellbeing, and ‘performance swimmers' – people who are pursuing a specific goal, which can look different depending on what an individual wants to get out of it.

With ocean swim, masters and triathlon events in full swing around New Zealand and becoming increasingly popular year on year, Quilter advocates for a structured programme based around plenty of time in the water.

Practice makes perfect

"Spending time getting your technique right in the pool – where you've got a controlled environment and it's nice and warm – but then also spending time in the ocean is important because it is so different," she says. "Wearing a wetsuit completely changes the way that your body moves in the water – you're a lot more buoyant and some people find their kick kind of floats away into the air. Additionally, the fabric around the shoulders can make the swimming feel different."

She says a barrier to people having a go at a competitive ocean swim event or even getting in the water in the first place is that sometimes progress is slow.

"Swimming requires coordination from fingertips to toes so if you're not practicing often, it can be quite frustrating because you don't see that improvement. It's almost like an aquatic dance. You can't expect to go to a dance class once a week and then feel like you're ready to go on stage. It's something that needs to be practiced and refined in the situation."

That pre-event programme with basic overload principles – where you're getting a little faster and your technique is improving – is critical as you build towards your first race, while Quilter also advises getting in the environment, wearing the equipment you'll use and, where possible, practicing swimming in a bunch. There's nothing quite like getting a whack in the face by someone's foot at the start of a mass start swim.

Breathing and control are key

Quilter works with those competing in ocean swim events as well as triathlons. She says the principles for triathlon swim training and racing are similar, but conservation of energy is far more important in triathlons, given there's still more to come once you get out of the water.

"With the triathletes I coach, I really try to hammer home that your kick is for body position and not for propulsion. The legs use a lot of oxygen so if you're kicking really hard, it's going to make you tired and breathless and you want as much leg power as you can for the bike and run."

Being calm and in control in the water is vital and Quilter has a couple of tips for race day to help ease nerves and control the all-important breathing.

"I like to feel the ocean floor under my feet and spend time doing extended exhales because that can bring you into a calmer space and activates your parasympathetic nervous system," she says. Quilter also likes to visualise the start of a race. "What's it going to feel like when I hit that water? What's it going to feel like when I accidentally swallow a little bit of water? For those first 20 strokes or so, all I'm focusing on is my breathing, especially the exhale, because what happens is people get really tense, they hold their breath, carbon dioxide shoots up and you feel awful."

Fuel up

Given we were all told as kids never to go swimming on a full stomach, Quilter says fueling up before training or a race is very much about personal preference and may take trial and error. When she was racing at the highest level, she could quite happily have a bowl of oats or peanut butter on toast while others couldn't tolerate anything.

"Electrolytes are really important because often in swimming you can't see the sweat pouring off you," she says. "The pools are regularly 27 degrees and if you're working hard, you're losing a lot of your electrolytes so I think being aware of that is important."

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Be in the moment

The combination of working as a nurse and as a coach through Aura Move, while also competing in ocean swim events herself, has given Quilter a unique perspective on training techniques and how to help amateurs achieve their swimming goals. Even in the heat of racing, she'll always encourage people to flip onto their backs for a brief spell and simply enjoy the surroundings and being in the ocean.

"It's one of the rare activities where you actually can't hyperventilate because when you're in the water you've got to control your breathing. Even though it can be stressful in the beginning and it's completely normal to feel massive fatigue, as you get more confident the mental benefits are huge – you're controlling the breathing, you don't have a lot of music going on and it's almost a quiet space to work on yourself and be more aware of your body and what's happening in your mind."