Heather: Have you ever dived in or simply pushed off the wall and felt your goggles
peel down your face either ending up in your mouth or around your neck? You're not alone,
it's a common problem that is far too often poorly solved by purely just tightening your
goggle straps so much that you're left with goggle indentation marks for several hours
after your session. Well, neither of those are an ideal situation, so let's tackle how to stop
our goggles falling off. [music]
The size and shape of your goggles will obviously have an effect on how well they stick to your
face and it's the overall size if it's too large and it's going to be more likely to
fall off when you make contact with the water in a dive or if you push too hard off the wall and
if you think about it, the larger the lens, the larger the surface area so it's going to be more
area for the water to exert pressure on and it's usually that top edge of the goggles that's going
to hit the water first and that's why you find your goggles actually peeling down your face.
[music] In order to fix this,
you'll need to find a goggle that is appropriate for your face shape,
it needs to obviously fit but also be comfortable and it's very much personal preference, sadly, it
isn't one-size-fits-all and it isn't necessarily the smaller, the better, it's about the shape.
[music] This is where trial and error comes in,
the more goggles you can try the more likely you are to find the perfect fit and you can get quite
a lot of benefit from trying on land so it's even new goggles that if you put them on your face,
you'll feel if there's any gaps or just how they naturally sit on your eye sockets and if
you're lucky enough to have friends with different goggles and you're swimming in a group, see if you
can experiment at the end of the session. Like we mentioned, the smaller goggle might be less likely
to fall off but it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be the better fit, sometimes a larger
goggle with a bigger seal will stay in place more and is less likely to leak, and unsurprisingly,
a goggle that doesn't leak is also more likely to stay on when you push off. With that in mind,
how do we address the leaky goggle? [music]
A good test is to place the goggles onto your face without the straps behind your head and just
sort of push them in fairly tight and then bend forwards and see if they stay on your face and
also to feel if there's a seal against your eye sockets and even partially it's a good indicator
that you'll get on well with them, and then when you do pull the straps over to complete the fit,
there shouldn't be any undue pressure towards your eyes and the nose clips shouldn't be
pressing hard into the bridge of your nose. There's also the option of goggles that are custom
made to fit your face, Magic5 for example will use an app on your phone which scans your face,
and the goggles are made bespoke to the shape of your eye socket and it
is a little bit more costly, but it's a perfect way to find that leak-free seal.
[music] Once you are happy with the fit and the
comfort of your goggles, you can leave that to the side, it's now time to address the mechanics of
the actual dive or the push off itself because no matter how well your goggles fit, if you haven't
got the right technique when it comes to the streamlining, you're still going to get a leak and
maybe even your goggles coming off altogether. Head position is key, think about tucking your
head in trying to have your chin almost touching your chest. Secondly, stretch your arms out in
front of you while gently squeezing the sides of your head and also think about keeping your hands
one on top of the other for good streamlining as you break the surface of the water. Now your
arms will act almost as a shelter to your face and therefore your goggles, meaning less force exerted
on them and as a result, they should stay put. [music]
There are a few other tricks which you can easily adapt to help your goggles stay on,
and a really basic one is wearing a swimming cap because it just gives us a slightly better surface
for your goggle strap to grip to say compared to having conditioned hair or maybe no hair at all.
Even for guys with short hair, wearing a cap will just give that extra attraction and if you are not
used to wearing a swim cap and you've got a race coming up, it's also good practice. Alternatively,
you could use a cap to hold your goggle strap in place. Put your goggles on first, then your cap
over the top and you might notice that this is where Mark and I differ if you watch our videos,
Mark wears his cap over his straps whereas I prepared to have my straps on the outside.
You could take it one step further again and double up which is quite useful in races,
you wear your nice comfortable normal silicon cap then you put your goggle strap on,
and quite often with races you get given those latex caps which aren't so nice against your hair,
you can simply put that one over the top and that will really keep your goggles perfectly secure.
Finally, it's worth considering the placement of your goggle straps. All
too often you see people wearing their straps too low and if you think about it,
your goggles tend to normally fall off down your face, therefore, you want to make sure that
you've got your goggle straps actually up high enough. Your straps should sit above your ears,
and definitely not over them. That's a good place to start. Most goggles tend to have two straps,
so we suggest placing one just below the crown of your head and then the second one about an inch or
two above, which should create a stable platform for holding the rest of the goggles
in place. [music]
A few tweaks and just a little bit of time spent fitting your goggles correctly before something
can save you a huge amount of frustration. There's nothing worse than mid-session having to
continually adjust your goggles. If you've enjoyed our tips and tweaks today, do give us a like.
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