Steven MunatonesOpen Water Swimming

As a 3x ironman who is looking to transition into the world of marathon swimming, I was hoping this book would provide insight into training specifics. That is, what kind of training are people doing when they swim the catalina channel or the english channel? What are their weekly volume? What are their long swims? What kind of mixture between intervals and drills?Little of the above was provided.Instead, the author provided some tips on how to train for open water swimming by providing a few drills (catch-up, reverse catch-up, etc). The author talked about some of the practicalities associated with swimming in the ocean, i.e., friction, nutrition, temperature affects. The author did give a lot of advice on the tactics of open water swimming, i.e., drafting effectively. This was interesting, but I thought somewhat irrelevant to the novice swimmer which the other 75% of the book was targeted at. I mean, how many newbie swimmers are going to be sitting in the lead pack of a 10k swim, hanging onto the feet of the lead swimmer, and then shoot by them with 200 yds to go? Probably not gonna happen.So, to summarize, this this book gets three stars. It had an OK amount of info, but lacked specifics on how to really train for the marathon swims. Think this book would be good for beginners and aspiring olympians.

The book is very detailed in the descriptions and all aspects in regard to open water swimming is covered in the book. However the section about swimming technique and training, could have had a bit more illustrations or maybe even a DVD with some swimming techniques to support the text in the book. Other than that - an excellent book and a very fine inspiration...

Thanks so much for posting this book which was received in advance of the estimated time stated which was wonderful.I was given this book last year from my daughter & I loved it so much that I bought this one for a friend's birthday which was on Christmas Eve. She is an open water swimmer & found the contents extremely helpful in planning & negotiatingher swims. We would recommend this book to any swimmer/ triathlete for coaching & helpful tips as it is so comprehensive.RegardsSue Purcell

The book contains a lot of useful tips for open water swimming and I really enjoyed it.

This is a good book to learn about open water swimming. I recently began to work with triathletes and this was a great start. It had a variety of information so that I could learn about opening water swimming before we actually swam an open water swim.

great book and a must if you are going to swim in open waters...very good advice and always encouraging you to do your best

It's a good book, but don't has the training, only talk about the experince of open water swimming that is good to.

the go to source for modern open water swimming

For those with a swimming background and/or access to pool-based or open-water swim coaching, this book is great. If you're not in one of those categories, this book will still be a great source of info, but you'd need to supplement it with additional material and/or expertise from other sources.That's because the book is a little thin in its discussion of how how a swimmer can put together a sensible, interesting training programme. The book presents a few sample sets that people may swim, taken from training sessions performed by world-class swimmers, and a few sets for specific purposes. It also outlines a very rough 12-month programme for a 25K-marathon swim, showing a suggested mileage and time spent in open water, acclimatising to the cold. That's all useful, but information suggesting how the intermediate swimmer would bring some periodisation into the preparation for a season, what a typical week might look like, and how the self-coached swimmer would gradually increase distance or intensity over a series of weeks and months, is not provided.In summary, I share with various other reviewers the opinion that this is a valuable book. However, swimmers would do well to pick an additional book with suggestions for training progams, or indeed they'd need access to a coach, join a swim team, or already have a solid understanding of how you prepare for various distances.

Great book very informative

Good book, good author, very interesting comments on open water swimming.

Loads of handy tips to improve technique. good to pick up and read at any time of day. Thanks Steven.

Brilliant. Chapter by chapter detailing the knowledge and skills required for the open water swimmer. A great reference book to have. Thanks Steven