Fundamentally there should be no change in technique from the pool to open water. You may have to make adjustments, such as a slightly shorter, quicker or longer stroke, due to chop and swells, other people and drafting.

Training for open water is hard if you don't swim open water. A 50m LC pool is you best pool option.

I have a long stroke and i lift my head to breath and sight when my hand is entering the water. If you swim fairly straight you don't need to check where your going every 3-8 strokes. More like every 1-2 min. you can also use trees, the shoreline, boats, bouys, other swimmers, the sun and other landmarks to help guide you so you do not have to keep lifting your head.

The other option is to raise your head a bit when your not breathing so you can see where your going.

Good practice for open water sighting is to engage in a friendly game of water polo now and then or swim some heads up 25's.

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

Played polo last night - half court though. We try to play 2x week. My polo sprint stroke seems very different than my (pathetic) almost catch up lap stroke. In my case, I think I just lake the long term endurance to hold form for 1000 meters or more.

Water polo make swimming in a pack much less intense.

Anyone near Indianapolis interested in playing Water Polo? Please send me a pm if you are interested.

David K

you know what, I don't totally agree with the previous post. I prefer to change my stroke depending on whether I am racing in a pool or in the ow. In a pool I am more interested in keeping my head up and my body position high, I am also swimming faster than Ow. In OW, especially tris, I kick less, drop the head for a more efficient but not as fast body position, and stretch out more, but I don't reach as hard. Also, I use my legs more for balance in OW, in a pool it more about propulsion. Sighting is a personal issue. I don't have to breathe to sight, but that's another topic.

I love OW, and have done some good long swims (2x5mi) and prefer that over pool swimming, though my flipturns are so good I'm most competetive in a pool. That and there's no OW IM. Damn.

Personnally, I don't use a different stroke in open water (unless necessary based on conditions). However, since you are a swimming a long distance, your strke will be the one you use on long continuous pool swims rather than sprints. I would suggest also learning how to change your stroke in traffic so you can manuver. Your water polo will be great practice for this.

I consider myself a pretty good open water navigator. My belief is that most people have trouble navigating for 2 reasons.

First, they do not study the course and landmarks well enough in advance to be able to use them during the swim. If you are limited to just relying solely on the bouys, you are bound for trouble. The key is having a total mental picture of everything, the shore, all landmarks, the angle of the sun, ect so you can use all of these to stay on track. It can be very hard to find a bouy. But it is a lot easier if you know the course is 10 degrees left of the sun or that the course back home is just to the left of the red cottage. This allows you to navigate by taking a series of quick looks to zero in on the next bouy verses one long scan to see it. If you don't see it right away, find a landmark, then get back to swimming and adjust where your look next accordingly. The key to finding a bouy is knowing where to look and you can't do that if you don't know what the other visual clues you see mean.

If you have a good landmark or other navigational aid, you may not even need to see the bouys. This summer I did a 1/2 IM which had a straight pont to point swim and I only lifted my head 10 times. Twice I came within 5 feet of swimming right into a bouy before I saw it. I doubt more than 20% of the competitors figured out that the whole swim could be done just by keeping the sun line over the outside corner of your right eye. NOTE: Every triathlon starts early in the morning and if there are no clouds, the sun will be your best navigational tool. The rising sun leaves a nice long reflection line you can see with your eyes under water. If you are on course and the sun is in your eyes when you lift your head, that is a GOOD thing. Put your head down and follow the reflection.

The second big mistake I see people making is they do not know their "angle of drift." No one swims straight but most people swim crooked in a fairly consistant way. You need to know if you tend to the right or left and roughly what your off course angle will be after X strokes. This is basically impossible to practice in a pool so you'll have to guage this either in open water practice or during a race. Again, navigating is all about knowing where to look so you narrow the angle of water you have to scan. The straighter you swim, the less often you have to look.