“I’m struggling to get my face in the water when swimming at my local lake, and I would love some advice! In a pool or lido, front crawl is my preferred stroke and I feel relaxed in the water and don’t seem to have any problems with bilateral breathing. However, when I get into open water – usually my local swimming lake, occasionally the sea – I switch to breaststroke. Partly, I treat it as a different experience and I like keeping my head above the water to catch up with friends and take in everything around me as I swim, but I would like to be able to swim crawl outdoors as I’d like to train for events next year. I don’t have any particular fears about deep water, but nevertheless when I put my face in the water, I instantly feel anxious and my breathing feels more urgent; I feel out of breath within a few strokes. It’s worse in cold water. Do you have any tips to help me feel more relaxed and enjoy swimming front crawl in open water, please?”
This is an interesting one, and a more common issue than you imagine. There are all sorts of reasons why people have difficulty putting their face in the water for open water front crawl swimming. I struggle when the water is below around 10 degrees because it hurts my cheekbones, teeth and the back of my head, whereas some people are less bothered by this. Our editor, Ella, told me that putting her face in the water was something she also had to work on: “I had the exact same problem when I first started event swimming. I used to close my eyes when my face was down in the water because I didn’t want to see something looking back at me. I would open them to breathe and sight, that was it. It helped me massively,” she says.