Hi! I'm Rachel Andrews, welcome to Everyday Athlete.
On this week's vlog we're gonna take a look at how to acclimatise to cold water swimming
It's a beautiful sunny day down here, in the South Coast of the UK
And I'm heading into the water at Calshot
On this video we're gonna look at 4 things:
Firstly, we're gonna look at how you get in.
Then we're gonna look at secondly, how to stay in.
Thirdly, I want to look at when you know it's time to get out.
And fourthly, we're gonna look at what to do if you over cook it.
I'll also pop in a couple of tips
about dealing with "ice cream head"
Secondly, how to stay in.
and how to maintain acclimatisation.
So number one on the list is how to get in
Initially I'm just gonna stroll in to about waist deep.
Now that I'm waist deep, I'm gonna just drop into the water,
and start my watch.
So now that I've got myself in, I'm going to wait here for a minute,
I'm just gonna drift about,
and just make sure my breathing is under control.
It might be that initially it takes longer than a minute,
so do give it the time to sort your breathing out
before you ask your body to do more than just cope with
the sudden change in temperature on getting into the water.
Ok. Once your breathing is under control, you can start swimming.
What I would say is it's probably a good idea to start off gently,
just get yourself moving because it's a bit of surprise to your armpits
when they get that cold, once you start moving!
And then you're gonna start swimming properly.
But just be gentle on yourself the first time you do this,
When you put your face in the water, it can be an almighty shock!
You could get a massive headache immediately.
My top tip for this: "ice cream head",
is to put the tip of your tongue
right on the soft bit at the back of the roof of your mouth.
You might be able to see that.
As soon as I put my face in, to start with, for the first few strokes,
that's exactly where my tongue is sitting.
Just kind of holding on there.
I don't know if it's that it takes your mind off things, I'm not sure if that;s why it works?
Or whether there's actually something that's a bit more scientific to it,
but for me, it seems to work nicely.
Give it a crack, and let me know in the comments how you get on!
Give yourself a chance to settle into it because those first 5 minutes can make you think
'well this is just way too cold, there's no chance I can stay in like this'
Give yourself a bit of a chance to warm up and go for it.
The other thing you can do is check out the other water users around you,
Which is always something that can help you stay interested
I'm lucky enough to be swimming in an area where there's plenty of activity on the water,
so that can prove a good distraction. It can keep you in a little bit longer than you really should be.
How long you can last in the water is a factor of quite a number of things:
It can be fatness, fitness,
what you had for breakfast, if you had anything at all to eat recently,
But what you got to do, rather than aiming for a particular time that you want to stay in for,
it's about listening to your body, and working out how long it's happy to stay in for.
So somethings that you can do to work out if you've been in too long
If you have a little chat to yourself, and you find yourself slurring, that is really time to get out.
Another thing is you can do a dexterity test on yourself:
just try to get your fingers and thumbs to touch, like this, which shows that actually, I'm ok at the moment.
But once they start to stiffen up or the coordination starts to be lost, that's the time to certainly be getting yourself out.
Also, if you start to shiver, 100% it's time to get out.
So, it's a really good thing if you're gonna swim,
and you're just getting use to it, is definitely to swim along the shoreline, rather than straight out.
Because if you swim straight out and you're too cold, you still have to swim back.
So, I like to swim along the shore, just to make sure I can get out if I need to.
I mentioned that shivering is a reason to get out of the water,
that's because it is your body starting to try to reheat the core.
Clinical hypothermia happens at 35 degrees C,
so one thing to watch out for when you do acclimatise
is that your body won't start to react and need to shiver until closer to 35 degrees.
So it is absolutely imperative as someone who is already acclimatised,
that you get out (hopefully) before you start to shiver
With hypothermia, three things to look for:
loss of dexterity,
and the ability to coordinate,
slurred speech and mental confusion.
Any of those signs, and we really need to be getting ourselves out and about,
back into shelter,
and dried off as quickly as possible.
You can see just here where I slightly over cooked it.
Something to be aware of, when you're deciding when to get out,
is that your body continues to cool for 20-30 minutes after you get out the water.
So it's absolutly critical that you get out of the water in time,
you get yourself dried and into shelter,
and hopefully have a warm drink.
The good thing about trying to acclimatise is that is doesn't take very many dips.
A handful of goes before you start to reap the benefit and start to see that you can stay in quite a bit longer.
And, interestingly, you only need to do that once a week to maintain it.
And even if you miss one here or ther, it won't matter
So just to recap, if you're thinking about trying to acclimatise to go open water swimming,
Just take it easy on yourself, get in gently,
take your time before you start swimming,
let your breathing regulate,
listen to your body to work out what time is good for you to stay in
And get out sooner rather than later.
I hope you've enjoyed this video, if you have,
take a look at the other videos on my channel which is Everyday Athlete Rach
there's plenty on open water swimming
and I hope to see you as a subscriber soon,
See you next time!