In open water, you're not just racing against the clock—you're battling waves, currents, environmental factors and other swimmers that make maintaining technique more challenging. Adding strength training can help you by:
Improving Stroke Efficiency: Strengthening key muscle groups, like the core and lats, helps you maintain an efficient stroke balance, reducing energy expenditure over long distances.
Building Endurance: Muscular endurance allows you to sustain a higher level of effort for longer periods, essential for longer open water events and triathlon swims.
Enhancing Stability and Body Positioning: A strong core and good posture are essential to stay streamlined in turbulent water, reducing drag and ensuring you maintain speed.
Increasing Power for Strong Starts and Finishes: You need explosive bursts of speed at the start and during turns around buoys to keep in clear water, or at the end of a race. Building power through strength training can improve these aspects of your race.
If you would like my best advice on how to best tackle the start of an open water event, check out our post on how to start an open water race.
Key Areas of Focus in Strength Training for Open Water Swimmers
To excel in open water swimming, you must focus on four primary areas in your strength training routine:
Core Stability and Rotational Strength
Upper Body Power
Leg Power and Endurance
Full-Body Stability and Muscular Endurance
1. Core Stability and Rotational Strength
A strong core is crucial for maintaining an efficient stroke in open water, especially when battling waves or currents. The rotation of your torso drives much of your swimming power, so exercises that focus on core strength and rotational movement are critical.
Russian Twists: This exercise strengthens your obliques, which are essential for body rotation during freestyle swimming. Sitting with your feet off the ground, hold a weight or medicine ball and twist your torso from side to side, aiming for maximal rotation. This is one of my favourite exercises for swimming to help you control your body rotation
Planks (and Variations): Planking is simple but highly effective for core stability, crucial for maintaining body position in rough waters. Start in a standard plank position,
ensuring your body forms a straight line from shoulders to ankles. You can also add variations like side planks to target obliques or incorporate leg lifts to further engage your core.
Hanging Leg Raises: This exercise engages the lower core and helps you develop the strength needed to maintain a long, high body position.
2. Upper Body Power for Efficient Strokes
Open water swimming requires strong arms, shoulders, and back muscles to pull efficiently through the water. Building power in these muscle groups will help increase your stroke length, reduce fatigue, and conserve energy over long distances.
Pull-ups and Lat Pulldowns: These exercises target the lats, the main muscles used during the pulling phase of your stroke. Pull-ups mimic the movement pattern of swimming and build strength in your upper back. In my opinion, having strong and efficient lats is the most important for being able to maintain high speeds when battling the elements in open water.
Push-ups: These build strength in the pectorals, shoulders, and triceps—all key muscles for swimmers. You can also add weight to standard push-ups helps target these muscles more, enhancing both power and endurance.
Dumbbell Rows: Single-arm rows target your lats, shoulders, and core, all essential for powerful strokes in open water. Ensure you use proper form, keeping your back flat and engaging your core.
3. Leg Power and Endurance for Speed and Control
Leg strength is vital maintaining a high body position in the water and being able to change gear when required. Since open water races often require bursts of speed, particularly at the start or finish, developing leg power is crucial. I know many long distance swimmers and triathletes struggle to change their speed in the water. For many, leg kick is the best way to do that.
Squats and Lunges: Squats target the quadriceps, glutes, and hamstrings, all of which contribute to explosive leg power which aids rapid changes in speed needed for racing at the start, and into turn buoys. Include variations like slow eccentric squats or pause squats to build control and strength.
Mountain Climbers: This dynamic, full-body exercise improves both leg strength and cardiovascular endurance. It mimics the explosive leg drive needed to rapidly increase your speed.
Box Jumps: Exercises like box jumps and squat jumps build explosive power. Incorporate them into your training to enhance your ability to accelerate quickly during races.
4. Full-Body Stability and Muscular Endurance
In open water, maintaining stability and endurance over long distances is just as important as raw power. Your muscles need to be able to perform at a high level for an extended period without fatiguing. The best way to do this is with a stable body position, that doesn't break over time.
Plank to Push-ups: This exercise builds core strength while also engaging your shoulders and arms. Start in a plank position and alternate between a plank and push-up.
Medicine Ball Slams: These engage your core, arms, and shoulders while also providing an element of explosive movement, which is useful for finishes or bursts of speed. This is one of my favourite exercises, especially after dealing with a busy lane in the pool!
High-repetition Bench Press: Incorporate endurance work into your upper body training by doing low weight, high rep sets of bench press.
Crafting Your Strength Training Routine
For open water swimmers, a well-rounded strength training plan should be integrated into your weekly routine. Here’s an example workout routine you can use:
Day 1 (Core Focus):
Russian Twists: 4 sets of 30 reps
Planks: 4 sets of 60 seconds
Hanging Leg Raises: 4 sets of 12
Day 2 (Upper Body Strength):
Pull-ups: 4 sets of 8 reps
Push-ups: 4 sets of 10 reps
Dumbbell Rows: 4 sets of 12 reps per side
Day 3 (Leg Power and Endurance):
Squats or Lunges: 4 sets of 10 reps
Mountain Climbers: 4 sets of 30 seconds
Box Jumps: 4 sets of 8 reps
Day 4 (Endurance and Stability):
Plank to Push-ups: 3 sets of 10 reps
Medicine Ball Slams: 4 sets of 10 reps
High-rep Bench Press: 4 sets of 20 reps
How Strength Training Transforms Your Open Water Swimming Performance
Strength training is not just a supplement to your open water swimming; it’s a key element that can dramatically improve your performance.
By building core stability, upper body strength, leg power, and muscular endurance, you’ll be better equipped to tackle long distances, maintain efficient technique, and power through unpredictable conditions.
Integrate these exercises into your routine, and over time, you’ll notice gains in speed, endurance, and overall swimming efficiency.
Whether you’re training for a triathlon, a marathon swim, or just aiming to improve your swimming ability, strength training will give you the edge you need to conquer the open water.
If you would like to know how to optimally build a swim session, check out our post on
How to Plan A Swim Session
Or find a professionally built Swimming Training Plan or for your next Open Water Event
About the Author:
Chris Searle is a Level 3 Qualified British Swimming Coach and a Level 2 British Triathlon Coach, also holding various running and cycling coaching qualifications.
With over 14 years of experience coaching athletes of all levels, Chris has developed British Champions in swimming and guided triathletes to podium finishes on the world stage.
You can read more about Chris's coaching journey on the About page.
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