Considering what is happening at the moment, lots of swimmers are considering training more (or starting to train) in open water. Here are some tips from Fabrizio Antonelli, Gregorio Paltrinieri’s coach.
What are the most important technical aspects of long-distance swimming?
What fundamentals do you need to master and train?
From the viewpoint of technique, freestyle is the preferred stroke due to the simple fact that it is less energy consuming to swim freestyle at any given speed compared to other strokes, so you need to focus on your freestyle swim stroke.
As regards any adjustments compared to swimming in the pool, I think the most interesting thing is how to adapt our swim stroke to the conditions we encounter.
This is a key factor both for top-level swimmers and amateurs taking to the open waters for the first time, because the weather/water conditions can change at any moment: this means you have to work hard on your proprioceptive skills so you can master and control your swim stroke properly both in terms of making “technical adjustments” to strengthen or lengthen your stroke and from a coordination viewpoint. That is because it can be useful to be able to adapt your stroke to the sea/open water conditions in which you are racing or…
 in open water. Here are some tips from Fabrizio Antonelli, Gregorio Paltrinieri’s coach.){kind=link}