Sighting in Open water

Many of the issues around drifting off line in open water swimming are caused by how you swim, what is important is that you always enter the water in line with your shoulder. As soon as you start to enter with a wide stroke or crossover the centre line of the body, you will have a tendency to drift offline. Practice and make sure your coach is helping you with the correct hand entry position.
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One of the most difficult and important things to do in open water swimming, so what are the tricks to keep on track.

• Sighting and breathing in the same action means you rush the sighting element, so separate the actions and focus on the sighting alone.
• Sighting is a three stroke action, firstly take a look at where you need to go, looking for a landmark or buoy you are heading for, the second is about adjusting your angle toward the direction you want to go. Then lastly check, have you made the right adjustment and are now going in the right direction.
• Lifting your head to sight means your legs are likely to drop, slowing you down, make sure you add some extra kick to maintain forward motion and to keep those legs high in the water.
• If the water is choppy, try and ensure you sight at the top of a wave, you should be able to feel yourself rising on the wave, use this to then sight when at the top of the wave,
• Lifting yourself out of the water to sigh, can be helped by entering your hand flat, rather than entering fingers first. This flat hand entry and subsequent push down will help left you out of the water.
• If the water is calm, minimise your head lift so you keep yourself as streamlined as is possible, lifting so just your eyes are out of the water only.
• Make sure you practice head up swimming, even in the pool you can site during a training session, just to get used to the action in a controlled environment.
• Remember the more you sight and / or the higher you have to lift yourself to site, the more of a chance there is that you will slow down as your feet drop. Only site as often as you need to, as you get better at keeping straight you can reduce the number of times you site.
• As you get better at sighting you can include a breath in the sighting cycle, I wouldn’t advise this until you are relaxed with your sighting. When you do this ensure you sight first then turn your head to the side to breath. Never breath then site.
•  When choosing something to sight on and a direction to swim, always choose the largest target as it will be easier to see, especially when choppy.