The art of sighting

By Keri-anne Payne

What is sighting? Well sighting, when it comes to the world of open water swimming, is the ability to see where you are going or to try and swim in as straight a line as possible.

There are many reasons why you might want to sight.

From an event perspective you might want to;

• Swim the shortest course possible
• Swim in a straight line
• Look out for the buoys

From a leisure perspective you might want to;

• Keep on track
• Safety reasons, so that you can see what's around you at all times.

The way that you sight is very dependent on you as a person and what your reason for sighting is. It's quite a personal thing but I would suggest there are four different ways that you can do this. Each way is slightly different and therefore can be specific to the reason why you might want to sight.

I would suggest having a go at all of these to see which one suits you best but keep coming back to the reason why you want to sight, is it for safety or is it for efficiency. You might already be doing one or two of these versions and that's totally fine but we can always do with learning new things.

These skills can be practiced in the swimming pool or directly in the open water. Waterpolo style

Crocodile eyes

Sight before breathing

Sight after breathing  

I have a series of videos to share with this blog from my friend Stuart Hacker at The Swimcube. These videos are part of a coaching CPD that you can do on our Straight Line Swimming website.

Water polo style.

This one does exactly what it says on the tin, swimming around 4 to 5 strokes with your head and shoulders above the water as if you are playing waterpolo. This version is used mainly for safety sighting or if the conditions are too wavy. The aim of this version and why I call it the safety site is because you can see a lot more the higher out of the water that you are. If you are swimming in the sea and there are lots of swimmers you might want to be conscious of where everyone else is or if you're somewhere and there are paddle boards or jet skis or rowers if you swim in a river.

There are many different reasons why you might want to do a safety site a lot of the coaches that I qualify use this form of sighting so they can keep an eye on all of their swimmers. Now this does take a lot of energy to do so when you do it for the first few times it might feel quite hard. You might think it's not worth doing but I would suggest that you practice it, like any skill the more you practice it the easier it becomes. This really is sometimes the only version of sighting you can do especially if it’s too wavy or something you need to keep an eye out for.

Watch this video of how to do this version

Crocodile eyes style.

Crocodile eyes is essentially just lifting your eyes or ‘glimpsin’ out of the water like a crocodile. This can be done either within or around your breathing pattern or completely separate. The main point to this version of sighting is that we limit how high the head comes out the water. The reason we do this is because the higher your head comes out the water the lower your body is which causes extra drag and ultimately makes it much harder for us. By limiting how high the head comes out the water we should limit the effect that sighting has on the overall stroke and energy levels over a long distance.

As this version leads itself more to efficient swimming, the conditions do need to be favorable to do this well. If the conditions are too wavy you might be better doing a version of the waterpolo stroke so you can actually see what it is you are looking for.

Sighting before your breath.

This version is essentially the crocodile eyes style but we are now trying to incorporate the act of sighting into our breathing cycle. We do this because when we change our body position we slow down a little so if we incorporate breathing and sighting together we limit the effect this has and can keep our rhythm.

I don’t mean lift your head forward high enough to breath, that is what the waterpolo stroke is for.

What I mean here is that we lift the eyes like a crocodile, to limit the effect on body position, just before we take a breath. Once we have ‘glimpsed’ or sighted the object we then take our natural breath. Now this is the most efficient way to sight but it is also a little technical because there is a certain amount of timing that we need to get right here.

So if you are doing 3 stroke between breaths then you would sight when you 2nd stroke is on the pull phase so that when your arm does the 3rd stroke you would go straight into your normal breathing stroke.

If you only breathe on one side this is still possible but it would be not he first stroke that you would sight and then when you do your second stroke you would go into your normal breathing pattern.

Have a watch of this video here to help explain it a little better.

Sighting after your breath.

This is essentially the same as above but ion reverse. You would breath and then on the way back into your stroke you would look forward. There is nothing wrong with this way of sighting but from watching hundreds of swimmers do this version of sighting what I see time and time again is that most swimmers lift their head too high when they look up. This is generally because you can’t see where the water level is when going from the side to looking forward. Again nothing wrong with his version it’s just to keep an eye on how high your head comes up when you look forward to minimize the effect it will have on your body position if efficient sighting is your aim.

Sighting is one of those things that a lot of people have never really thought about. So don’t be disheartened if you find any of these versions difficult or hard to do the first time because like any new skill it takes time and practice for it feel to normal.