Ok, so ive been working my ass off, trying to become a swimmer. done countless laps in the pool and felt like I had gotten faster and stronger. I dont have a lot of access to open water. Today i did an International length tri, and was veering so hard to the left, that i had to raise my head every 10 strokes to make sure i wasnt heading 90 degree’s the wrong way. Needless to say it was a horrible swim both time and frustration wise…any advice on drills or things to think about to swim straight?
I’ll let you in on a secret.
Most folks up at the front of the race sight every six to ten strokes.
You need to work on your sighting technique and make it fit into your normal swim stroke as much as possible. Then you can work on swimmign straighter.
Have a friend with a video camera tape you, and make sure they get a good long clip of you from head on. If you’re seriously veering to one side, chances are you’re got a problem with one arm crossing over the middle line, or you’ve got an odd wiggle on the catch on one side and not the other.
Video would give you a clearer idea whether you’ve got one of those easily fixable kinds of problems.
And as Kevin said, practice sighting every 6-10 strokes for a part of a pool workout. There’s a knack to getting your head up to do that without dropping your hips that takes some time to figure out.
ok…thanks for the advice…that was the problem…whenever i would lift my head to site, my legs would sink like rocks and id have to paddle to get my balance
.
Yep, I try to sight every 10 stokes or so. You need to practice not raising you head totally out of the water to look or yes, your legs
will sink. Sighting for open water swimming is another of those skills you have to work on.
Dav
I’d second the video suggestion. When you’re alone in a lane, swimming with your eyes closed often helps clear up issues with pulling to one side as you can tell quickly as you’ll hit the lane line. This can be a nice way to check progress as you work on your technique as you can regularly check and see how far down the lane you can get down the length of the pool without hitting the lines.