Open Water Navigation
The open water swim Triathlons in the UK will soon be with us and if you haven’t yet ventured into the water, don’t worry, as the following information may give you some ‘pre-dip’ advice to think about before you take the plunge.
What would you say was the most important element of open water swimming? If you said navigation, then you’d be spot on.
In a pool you have the lane lines and painted lines on the bottom of the pool to keep you swimming straight. This could lull you into thinking that you swim straight in a pool. In fact no-one swims perfectly straight in a pool. When you are in a pool you do not even notice that you are constantly correcting. In open water, the wind, currents and lack of visibility make swimming without sighting impossible.
Next time you are a spectator at an open-water event take a look at some of the participants and make note of how many of them are sighting often enough. The end result of not sighting enough could mean swimming 1800M instead of a 1500M Olympic distance course and lowering your overall finish position and time.
The solution is to learn how to swim sight and simply to sight more often. The reason most swimmers do not sight is often because that they think it slows them down or disrupts their stroke. Fair comment, but what about incorporating efficient sighting into your breathing pattern?
Look at the top swimmers in any open water race and you’ll notice that most are sighting every two or four strokes, but why? They do this because they know that the more often they sight, the straighter they will swim and they’ve found a way to sight so it doesn’t slow them down.
What most swimmers do to sight is simply lift their head and shoulders and swim a few strokes of ‘water polo stroke’ (head-up swimming). While this style is quite effective for sighting, it makes your legs and lower body sink, shortens your stroke and increases you effort, effectively it slows you down.
Efficient Sighting Technique
Practice efficient sighting at each swim session in the pool and soon you’ll feel more comfortable sighting often, which will translate to straighter swimming and faster times.
While swimming normally, start to lift your head from the neck, just enough to get the goggles above water. As soon as you get sight of what’s in front of you, immediately continue to rotate and take a breath as you lay your head down on it’s side. This way you keep your body position level and keep your strokes long by rotating.
The challenge here is to time the lifting of your head at the point when you body passes through the point of your stroke when your belly is facing parallel to the pool or lake floor. Realize you’ll probably mess up this sighting technique the first couple of times, but most will get it after a few practices.
Practicing this sighting technique is best accomplished in a pool first. Until sighting is second nature add at least one 100 meter sequence of sighting practice to the drills section of your workout and before you know it you’ll be sighting like the pro’s!
If you liked this article, why not subscribe to TrispaceRSS Feed.
Alternatively subscribehere to receive new articles by email.
