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Their Least Favorite Part of Triathlon...

Friday, 24 February 2017 23:10

By WILL MURRAY | FEB. 02, 2016, teamusa.org
Their least favorite part of triathlon: how some athletes contemplate swimming in a lake, reservoir, river, bay or ocean. Just thinking about an open water swim can cause some athletes to sense shortness of breath, tightness in the chest, even sweating and tunnel vision. For others, their emotions around open water swimming run from minor dread to something just short of terror. Some athletes describe their feelings as a “panic attack.”

It doesn’t have to be this way. There are fast, easy, effective and durable techniques to help any athlete achieve comfort and enjoyment in big water. These techniques address both physical and psychological aspects of and many of them you can do by yourself in the privacy of your own mind....

There can be physical causes of these panicky feelings, such as an insufficient warm up or tight wetsuit. In “Increase Your Open Water Swim Comfort” I wrote about the mammalian diving reflex and how a cold water start without enough acclimation can precipitate panicky feelings.

Psychological aspects of swimming outside the rectangle also can precipitate panicky feelings.

Physical sensations (e.g. air hunger) may set up future psychological experiences. You might say to yourself, “The last two times I swam in open water I felt short of breath. This might happen again next time, too.” Or perhaps you had a strikingly bad swim experience, and from this one episode you learned how to fear the water. Phobias are often formed from a single shocking event.

Fortunately, there are fast, easy, effective and durable techniques for dealing with fear of open water. I will present three among my favorites, and there are many more. READ MORE