Continuing with our ‘Learn to Swim’ series, we have another installment for you. If you’re new to open water swimming or triathlons then watch this video before going for your first training session to get Richard’s top tips for first time open water swimmers. You can either watch the video, or we have included a full transcript of the video below if you prefer to read through our top tips.
The first thing we are going to touch on is beginner open water swimming. If you are going to enter the open water then I do advise that you look at the previous blogs we have done on learning to swim, and developing your freestyle front crawl. This is because it’s really important that you are able to swim strongly and confidently when you are in an open water environment.
When you first come down to the open water environment, the first thing you are going to need to do is to be able to acclimatise yourself when you enter that water. To do this is extremely simple, you simply enter the water, drop your shoulders under the water, and allow water into the back of your wetsuit. We advise the back of your wetsuit because this is where your spinal cord lays and that is the access to your central nervous system. So if that picks up the water first, you are going to acclimatise a lot quicker to any cold water environment.
Now we have acclimatised ourselves, we’re in the water and are going to start moving around. As it’s your first open water swim, you don’t want to be going off too far, so you are going to take it nice and easy, nice and simple. The first thing you are going to do is place your face into the water and just do your doggy paddle, as we covered in the beginner swimmer blogs earlier on in this series. Move yourself around the water, get used to it and orientate yourself because you will find that you may get a little bit seasick whilst in the open water environment. Spend this time getting used to the water, and this is your first open water swimming experience!