Engaging your brain whilst swimming

One of the things I love about swimming is the ‘brain re-set’. It’s allowing your mind to wonder and drift off. It’s very easily done and beneficial in lots of ways. BUT…you shouldn’t be doing this all of the time. If you enjoy a challenging sea swim, like the odd race, want to improve…go faster and further…then you need to learn to engage your brain whilst swimming. Particularly in a race scenario, there shouldn’t be any points where you stop thinking about what you’re doing.

My old swim coaching used to say ‘‘if you want to get good at fighting, get in a fight!’’. If you want to be a swimmer that can adapt to the conditions and swim to a race plan and/or adapt that race plan mid-race, you need to practice engaging with your brain in training. No good trying it in the middle of a race. You also need to be able to think clearly when you start to get tired…which takes practice.

During either a pool or open water swim there will and should be times where you adapt your stroke technique, stroke rate, kick rate, breathing, sighting (when and where you sight), head and leg position, draft someone… This all needs to be practiced fairly regularly.

Technique - if you swim in the open water, swim with hand paddles for swimrun/Otillo events etc you need to think about the chop. Swimming directly into decent sized chop can be tricky, as it can catch the back of your hands and disrupt your rhythm and stroke. You should practice swimming with straighter arms and giving your hands increased clearance of the water. This also goes for your breathing and which side to breath on. You always want the chop hitting the back of your head.

Kick - whilst your leg kick is far less important in the open water, it’s still useful. Putting in a little ‘kick’ at the end of a race or to stop someone drafting can be a very useful tool. Conserving your kick rate when you start to get tired can also conserve valuable oxygen. Getting your legs a little higher in the water and promoting a quick flutter kick when you’re swimming with the chop can also be a good tactic. These all require practice and they require some thought whilst you swim.

Breathing - reading the conditions and knowing whlich side to breath to, waiting to be at the peak of the swell rather than the trough before you breath can also be a great tactic…that needs thought.

The difference between an average and good performance and an average and good swimmers very often doesn’t come from all those muscles you’ve been training in the pool and gym!

The ability to look back and evaluate a swim and make adjustments before the next is also a key factor in improving performance.

Open water swimmers first aid course

We’ve been offering water safety, swim planning and rip current awareness courses for a few years now and they’ve been really well received. So, we’ve added this course to a half day of training, which also includes :

• First aid training

• CPR

• intro to using a defib

• Choking (adult, child and baby)

• towing techniques

• short practical in sheltered, shallow water

• We also spend a lot of time looking at hypothermia

• heart attacks / cardiac problems and other medical conditions…

Group swimming has never been more popular and we’ve specifically looked at issues that might crop up with swimming in groups. So, we’ve included :

• towing techniques, in case you have to tow someone to the shore. As an individual or as a group

• Choking, specifically including child and baby…as lots of swimmers are parents and grandparents

• There are a number of ‘mature’ swimmers in the water, so we’ve focused on conditions like fainting, heart issues (attacks, angina…), using defibs...

• Swimming year round is popular so we’ve included hypothermia, cold water shock, after drop etc.

• Pro-actively planning a swim and looking at the conditions.

The training is available through our website, with individual places and private group booking options.

Polurrian Swimming

Polurrian Beach is a real stunner on the Lizard Peninsula. It has limited parking or you park up at Poldhu and walk a good mile on the coast path. Whilst this might put some people off, it ensures the beach is never that busy.

Now, the beach can pick up swell. So you have been warned. Typically, not a lot of swell over the summer months and at the time of writing, it is lifeguarded over the 6 peak weeks of the summer. You’d generally want to avoid swell or wind of any strength from the west. I’d also be very careful swimming there, particularly near the headlands on an outgoing tide, particularly a spring tide.

Selection of safe Swimming Guides

If you’re looking for swim-spiration for the 2022 summer here it is! I’ve selected a few safe swimming guides.

OUR TOP 5 ONE-OFF SWIMS

These aren’t necessarily the best swimming locations that we’ve experienced. They’re the moments when the conditions were perfect and all those little, random elements aligned and we got it perfectly right.

1. PORTHCURNO : I didn’t swim this one but covered the water safety. We turned up and swam at 9am a few years ago. The BBC had loads of vehicles in the car park for the filming of Poldark and we must have missed all of the action by about an hour. On the beach there was a very light off shore breeze. The sun was out and it was warm. There were nudists on the beach next door, kit off already it was that warm! The water was crystal clear and as we approached the 1km mark an opera singer started warming up at the Minnack Theatre. Her voice was carried across the water by the wind. This is a swim that has stayed with me for a long time and I doubt I’ll forget.

2. MOTHER IVEY’S BAY : during one of our Charity swims we swam at Mother Ivey’s Bay early in the morning. We’d already completed 2 swims and the sky was clear, so it was freezing! Despite being the middle of summer there was frost on the ground and our feet hurt walking down to the first swims. However, by the time we got to Mother Ivey’s it had warmed up. The sun was in the sky and the water was stunning. Pan flat, there were shafts of light piercing through the water and stretching down to the sea bed. Not a sole to be seen anywhere and perfect quiet. Mother Ivey’s remains one of my favourite north coast swims.

3. ST JUST-IN-ROSELAND POOL / HARBOUR : having been told about it on more than one occasion this was the first time that I swam in the tidal pool, at St Just-in-Roseland. We sailed and moored up fairly close, before rowing to a nearby beach. We then walked along the coastal path to the pool. As it was a glorious sunny day, I walked the coastal path in my swimming trunks. At the start of the swim is a beautiful old church and I got some curious…and some horrified looks from Sunday morning church goers as I walked past the church….at the exact time most exited the Sunday morning service. Lovely swim, phenomenal surrounds and landscape that surrounds this particular route. You need to swim in the pool on a Spring high tide or you’ll run aground!

4. NANJIZAL & THE SONG OF THE SEA : the walk to Nanjizal alone is worth the effort. ‘The Song of the Sea’ is the famous crack in the rock, just in front of the famous rock pool. Last year we walked down and swam through the crack. Breathtaking rock feature and stunning to swim through. There’s a real mix of excitement, fear and beautiful landscape and views when you do a swim like this.

5. LAMORNA TO MOUSEHOLE : a swim on our wish list for some time. I love Lamorna. It can get seaweed stuck in the cove and isn’t always ideal but when you get it right you have tranquil, beautifully clear water, an abundance of sea life… This swim started quite bumpy. The sea was full of jellyfish but they were all fairly deep….so I thought. Until I realised they weren’t really deep, just really small! Any ‘Father Ted’ fans out there might remember the scene with the cows! This was another swim with elements of excitement, beauty, slight fear and fatigue (I wasn’t that fit at the time) all rolled into one. I loved approaching Mousehole from the west, something I hadn’t done before. Incredible seascape the whole way along. Great swim.