Learn Survival Swimming

Inexperienced people often drown because they never learned how to swim in clothes. Our lessons address this problem in a fun and entertaining way.

Swimming in clothes may be an obvious training element, but is often ignored by many swimming clubs, leaving members unprepared. This is usually one of the most popular sessions among advanced swim teams, intended for competent swimmers. If regularly practised it combines strength and stamina with variety and fun.

Most lifesaving activities and watersports involve getting wet from spray or going into the water, sometimes often, sometimes only occasionally. The point of this training is to get you familiar with your watersport clothing and lifeguard kit. These lessons should be supervised by lifeguards.

Watersports

Be it sailing, canoeing, kite surfing or adventure racing, you wouldn't do it only in swim briefs or bikini. Swimming in clothes is an essential skill for most water sports because a good soaking is often part of their appeal.

When your boat capsizes, or you fall in, or you decide to go for a spontaneous swim, voluntarily or not, you want to be prepared. While safety precautions should be taken, the nature of adventure sports recommends that you wear attire that reduces the possibility of mishap.

👉 Remember, swimming in clothes may be tough, but these skills can save lives! 👈

Into the Pool

Check that everybody in your class has at least one full set of clothing to swim in and one dry set for their way home. For hygiene reasons always shower in your training clothes before each session. Lifeguards will check for dry spots.

The teacher leads by example and demonstrates how different clothes influence your swimming ability. You'll learn how heavy wet clothes really get and how that affects your swimming skills, a key to aquatic survival. The more clothing layers you wear in the water, the harder your training gets. This adds realism, builds strength, and prepares you for an actual emergency situation.

Function and comfort are as important as rescue preparedness and familiarity. Swimming in your clothes is great fun to learn and practice before you go for any adventures in wild open water. Once you've carefully chosen your adventure kit, put it on and jump into a local swimming pool.

It may be quite a challenge to swim several lengths fully clothed, but it is healthy fun and gets you strong over time. Try a variety of outfits to gain confidence in the water. Once you're good at swimming in your adventure clothes and have achieved an adequate level of confidence, keep it up to stay fit.

Are Clothes Heavy in Water?

Not really. Clothes weigh very little in water. Throw an item of clothing into a swimming pool and notice how slowly it sinks, if at all. Pull it out of the pool and it gets heavy with all the water it soaked up. Cotton and fleece soaks up more than unlined nylon rainwear.

Don't Confuse Slow Down with Weigh Down

Many people who haven't tried swimming fully clothed, wrongly think they get pulled down by the weight of wet clothes. But that only happens when you come OUT of the water.

When you wear your clothes in the water, they just float around you. The soaked up water only displaces water which would have been there anyway. Water weighs nothing in water, so they only weigh you down by their DRY weight, minus the weight of water displaced by the fabric.

However, the water which is soaked up by the fabric, or collects inside your clothes, will slow down your movements. This makes it harder on your muscles to move you forward and thus improves training results.

Weigh and Measure Wet and Dry

This experiment will show you how clothes affect your movements and weight in the water. Although your clothes won't pull you down, they will resist your movements and give you a hard workout. One litre of water weighs one kilogram.

1. First weigh yourself without any clothes on. Write it down.

2. Next get fully dressed in jeans or sweatpants, T-shirt, a hooded sweatshirt, and possibly a pair of lightweight sports shoes and socks. The difference in weight with clothes on should be 2 or 3 kg. Write it down.

3. Now hop into the water. Stay in for a while to make sure you get everything fully soaked, so we can check the weight difference. Cotton garments soak up a lot of water.

4. As soon as you come out of the water, weigh yourself again while still shiny wet.

   The difference in weight compared to wearing no clothes should be about 4 to 8 kg, depending on your size.

   So the water in your clothes weighs between 2 and 5 kg, about 2 and 5 litres. About half of it runs off in a few minutes.

5. Now that you have an idea how much weight is involved you can start your power training.

   Do a few push-ups or sit-ups on the pool side.

   Next climb out and jump in as often as you can in one minute. This may sound trivial, but you'll soon find out that it can be quite tough.

Additional Resources

1. Tips for teaching swimming in clothes
   https://bing.com/search?q=open+water+survival+swimming+lesson+plan+fully+clothed

2. Survival Swimming Program Lesson Plans by Life Saving Victoria (LSV)
   https://lsv.com.au/toolkit/pdf/Survival-swimming-lesson-plans.pdf

3. Tips for teaching swimming in clothes LSV
   https://lsv.com.au/toolkit/pdf/Swimming_in_clothes_Teaching_tips.pdf

4. SWIM & SURVIVE – STAGE 12 Royal Life Saving WA
   https://royallifesavingwa.com.au/-/media/files/rlsswa/training/swim-teacher-lesson-plans/lswa_sns_stage12lessonplan.pdf