Open water: sighting and pool drills
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What Swim England says
The English governing body describes sighting as looking ahead to find a landmark and check course. A three-step drill: breathe normally but, instead of turning the head to the side, lift it forward, take a breath and look; repeat about every two strokes; then increase the strokes with the head in the water and reduce the looks.1 In choppy water one can use a "water polo" style: six strokes with the head in the water, then four with the head forward, later eight and two. With the head up the hips drop and the stroke shortens; the advice is to offset it with a slightly faster leg kick.1
Another page of the same source notes that the more you lift your head the more energy you use and the more drag you create, and that ideally you should not need to sight more than once every 10 strokes or so; if more often, it points to working on stroke balance.2 It also suggests "head up front crawl" in the pool, lifting the face every 6-8 strokes toward a fixed point at the end of the lane.3
What a drag study says
A pool study of ten regional-level swimmers measured passive drag by towing them underwater at three speeds. With the head down or aligned to the body, mean drag was 4-5.2% lower than head-up (10.4-10.9% with arms above the head).4 The test covers passive underwater gliding, not swimming with sighting: it explains the direction of the effect, not how much looking ahead costs in a race.
Teaching example, not a plan
The points above can be tried in the pool, safely, with one of the drills Swim England describes, watching only the feel: does the head go back down quickly? do the hips stay high? There is no set number, distance or pace to follow. Before going into open water see Open water and safety.
What we know and what we do not
We know what governing-body guidance recommends and the direction of the head effect on passive drag. We have not read studies showing these drills improve navigation or race time, nor studies in amateurs.
How we reviewed it
Document review of three Swim England pages and one passive-drag study.
Limits. Non-experimental guidance; the study covers passive gliding in the pool, 10 swimmers; no study on amateurs or race times.
Sources
- Swim England. How to practise open water sighting. swimming.org (page read, governing-body guidance)
- Swim England. Straight line swimming in open water. swimming.org (excerpts)
- Swim England. Top tips for preparing for open water swimming in the pool. swimming.org (excerpts)
- Cortesi, Gatta. Effect of the Swimmer's Head Position on Passive Drag. Journal of Human Kinetics, 2015. PubMed Central (abstract and excerpts)
Sources rechecked on 28 October 2026.