Safety Rules for Swimming

Video Transcript

"I'm Stephen Taylor, endurance coach and fitness trainer. Here's a few safety tips for general swimming then we'll talk about triathlon. First of all, before beginning any exercise program it's a good idea to be checked out with your doctor. Make sure that your health is appropriate for fitness swimming. Next, if you're a total novice swimmer, you want to go to the swimming pool to practice swimming. Select the swimming pool that has a lifeguard or swim that pool only with another friend and stay in the shallow end initially. The important thing is don't exceed your limitations. Now, let's talk about swimming for triathlon. Triathlon usually take place in open water so you want to be prepared for this. You want to go out and do some open water swimming practice before race day of a triathlon that occurs in open water. Quite oftentimes the triathlon club or groups of triathlete will swim in open water. If this is your first time, do it with at least other people, they can supervise you or maybe even someone in a boat who can follow along. Practice swimming in a lake and learn how that's different from swimming in a pool and build your confidence for open water swimming individually before race day. Now, it's race day. You're standing in the edge of the water getting ready to start to swim. Very important point, when the gun goes off and it's your turn to start the triathlon, don't sprint at the beginning. Start very slowly and find your rhythm and your breathing rhythm first before you try to swim fast. You will be very unpleasantly surprised if you start that triathlon for the first one to two minutes swimming as fast as you can. You will very quickly run out of air and you'll be very uncomfortable and possibly even start to panic. Now, also when you're in a triathlon or open water swimming in general, in fact anytime you're swimming, the more relaxed you can stay, the safer you'll be. When you tend to tense up and get real tight and anxious, that's when it's harder to breathe, harder to float, harder to swim and harder to complete the swim leg of a triathlon."