SwimmersBest Drill of the Month: Open Water Sighting

SwimSwam thanks SwimmersBest for sponsoring “Drill of the Month.”  This is a SwimSwam recurring feature that brings drills and idea submissions from various creative and innovative coaches all over the world.

April’s drill comes to us from recently-retired world champion triathlete Rebekah Keat, now a coach. Keat is the fourth-fastest female IRONMAN in history, and has more than 25 IRONMAN and half IRONMAN podiums to her name. She and wife Siri Lindley, also a former world champion triathlete, now run Team Sirius Tri Club.

Keat’s drill is for practicing open water “sighting,” which is how swimmers stay on-course during a triathlon or general open water swim.

“Basically it’s a sighting drill where you include the eyes looking up very quickly and turning head to breathe as normal without losing rhythm and incorporating sight into the breath,” Keat said. “A straighter arm works great for this, but also is great for open water with chop and waves.”

How to perform the sighting drill:

  1. Swim freestyle with a straight arm.
  2. Look up as you breathe, incorporating the breath and the sighting into one movement.
  3. Keep in mind that you are not lifting your head for a water polo-type head-up stroke. Instead, you look up quickly as you take a regular breath.

Watch the sighting technique in the video below:

ABOUT SWIMMERSBEST 

SwimmersBest is leading the way for the future of swim training equipment.  The company offers a broad range of solutions for improving stroke technique, kick technique, and breathing technique.   They provide swimmers, coaches, and teams with the tools they need to balance technique training with conditioning training.  By combining the best drills with the best tools, the SwimmersBest products give swimmers instant tactile feedback so they can adjust their technique efficiently.   The old way of having coaches constantly remind swimmers of their individual problems has proven to offer very little improvement in technique.  All SwimmersBest products are designed to constantly ‘talk to the swimmers’ so they can feel the problems and make corrections.   This unique approach means the swimmers are given negative feedback for incorrect stroke technique, which compels the swimmers to quickly correct the problem on their own. With a constant flow of new innovative product designs, SwimmersBest is a company that will continue to deliver solutions you need.

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Swimming gear news courtesy of SwimmersBest, a SwimSwam partner. 

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About Torrey Hart

Torrey Hart

Torrey is from Oakland, CA, and majored in media studies and American studies at Claremont McKenna College, where she swam distance freestyle for the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps team. Outside of SwimSwam, she has bylines at Sports Illustrated, Yahoo Sports, SB Nation, and The Student Life newspaper.

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