After your body finally gets acclimated to the colder water, you’ll be surprised at how easily you can complete a 30-minute swim. However, as we have discovered on multiple occasions, your biggest challenge will not be during the swim itself.
As strange as this seems, you will be much more at risk for developing hypothermia during the 10-20 minute period AFTER you get out of the water. This is due to a physiological phenomenon known as the “afterdrop.”
So let’s take a look at what actually happens leading up to and during the afterdrop.
When you first enter the water and begin your swim, your body reacts by constricting the peripheral blood vessels in your arms and legs. This helps prevent heat loss by consolidating your body heat into your core. And as long as you continue with your physical activity, you will easily preserve a stable temperature.
However, once you end your swim and exit the water, your body sends your blood back to the skin to “warm up.” Because your skin is very cold at this point, your blood actually gets colder and is then recirculated back to your core. In essence, your core body temperature actually decreases during this rewarming period in a phenomenon known as the “afterdrop.”
There are two keys to managing the afterdrop:
1) When you end your swim workout, get out of the water right away. Don’t dally around and expose your skin to the cold water while your heart rate begins to drop.
2) Rewarm your core – not your periphery. This means placing warm, dry layers onto your torso and head and getting some hot liquid into your stomach to warm up your core from the inside. You may have cold hands and feet, but these are secondary concerns.
After I get out of the water, I trot back to the car immediately, and my modus operandi is to get out of the wet neoprene as quickly as possible. I’ll start with my hood and gloves, and I’ll immediately place a warm cap on after I dry off my head. I’ll then remove the top part of my wetsuit and throw on a warm, long sleeve shirt or sweatshirt (or two).
Next come the booties and the rest of the wetsuit. After a quick dry off, I’ll swap out my inner swim gear for some warm sweat pants and then start layering onto my torso. By the time I’m finished, I’ll have 2-3 layers underneath my North Face parka along with a thick cap and winter gloves. Plus, I’ll already be drinking the first of many cups of hot tea from my thermos.
But even with all these post-swim preparations, you can still get a pretty mean afterdrop! I’ve had ones so intense that my jaw has locked up and I couldn’t hold a full cup of tea without spilling it all over the place due to the shivering! But, fortunately, if you do all the preparation on the front end, you can keep these experiences to a minimum as well.
Just remember, the key to it all is to keep the heat in your head and torso.
Nick and I trekked over to L1 about a half hour before sunrise. It was still dark enough to see the crescent moon, and there was a layer of fog out in the horizon that made the water crib look like an enchanted castle. We waited around for the sunrise at precisely 6:58am (which was an amazing show itself) and got geared up shortly thereafter for our first out-and-back swim to Oak Street Beach of 2012.
The water came in at a tepid 46F, so I went with my fullsuit, neoprene cap, and goggles. My hands and feet were a bit chilly throughout the swim, but the sun helped take the edge off of things. And by the time we hit the beach, I was quite acclimated to the water. In fact, after we got back, I was able to do a 1/8 mile swim sans wetsuit quite comfortably.
Bottom line, if you slept in, you missed yet another amazing morning out at the greatest swimming spot on the planet!
Note - I wrote the first draft of this post last month, and it’s a bit dated given that the lake has already started to warm up. So basically, you missed out on all the “fun” for this winter!
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When you let go of the ladder and start to wade out into the lake during the winter, the first thing you want to do is get the hell out as fast as you can. The initial gush of 32F water into your wetsuit is nothing short of overwhelming – especially if you suddenly discover there are tears in the neoprene around the more sensitive areas of your anatomy.
And this is just the beginning.
Unless you plan to backstroke, at some point you will need to get face down in the water. But you may as well be plunging your head into a vat of liquid nitrogen. The moment your face hits the water, you get an excruciating “pins and needles” sensation that triggers an immediate gasp reflex. And the sudden change in temperature disrupts the pressure in your sinuses, causing the most intense ice cream headache imaginable.
Fortunately this only lasts for about 2-3 minutes…
Believe it or not, you can actually acclimate to this experience and reach a point where this “cold shock” has a minimal impact on you. The key to achieving this is two fold – 1) proper pre-swim preparation, and 2) effectively managing the experience in the moment.
In the previous post in this series, we went into detail about point one. And I can’t emphasize enough how much easier it will be for you to swim year round in the lake if you adequately prepare accordingly. But I won’t candy coat it for you – there is no way you can completely eliminate the shock of entering and remaining in the lake under these temperature extremes.
The key, then, is to effectively manage the first few minutes of this “shock zone” so that your winter swim is an invigorating challenge that excites and inspires you versus a horrifyingly painful ordeal that you don’t care to repeat. And as we touched on in earlier posts, this involves getting your physical and emotional brains on your side.
So let’s take a look at each area.
Physical
1) Cold water priming - Ideally, you’ve already done this with a progressive cold shower about an hour before the swim start. However, if you get a late start, you may not be able to fit this in before your swim. Fortunately, there is a quick fix you can do to help take the edge off the initial immersion shock.
Take a bottle of cold water and pour it on your head, face, and neck shortly before entering the water. You can store one in your fridge and grab it on your way out to the lake. Or you can bring a large tumbler and dip it in the lake to do the same thing. In either case, you’re priming your skin temperature receptors which will immediately start acclimating your body to the colder lake temperatures.
2) Mammalian Diving Reflex – This is a very effective technique I do immediately before entering the water, usually while I’m still hanging onto the ladder. It involves holding your breath and submerging your head and neck in the water. This triggers an automatic reflex that immediately lowers your heart rate and sends a signal to your brain to start moving blood away from your periphery and towards your core (head and torso).
3) Mindful relaxation – Once in the water, you will want to pay special attention to the level of tension in your neck, shoulders, and arms. The large muscles in these areas tend to seize up immediately and stay very tense upon initial immersion. So make a conscious effort to relax these areas. Because if they stay tense, your heart rate will stay elevated and you’ll burn off a lot of energy – and energy conservation is key to swimming effectively in colder temperatures!
4) Mindful breathing – Closely related to the prior point, make a special effort to take longer and deeper breaths versus short and shallow ones. This will be difficult at first since you will probably experience a “gasp reflex” which will shorten your breath temporarily. But stay aware of your breathing during the first few minutes and transition to longer and more controlled breaths as soon as possible.
Emotional
1) Think “2-minutes” – Once you manage to get control over the physical shock of cold water immersion, your biggest challenge will be managing your emotions. Your logical brain, somehow present just a short while ago, will be conspicuously absent. Instead, you will likely be in a highly emotional “fight or flight” state where you are very susceptible to forming associations and memories.
The key here is that you want to form positive ones.
The best way to do this is to perform all the physical techniques cited above while thinking “2 minutes” over and over in your head. During this time, the discomfort on your face and head will subside, and the cold water in the wetsuit will warm up. When this happens, things will stabilize for you physically and you will actually become quite comfortable in the water.
This is the critical “breakthrough” moment.
When you reach this point, you will immediately begin forming healthy and positive associations and memories to winter swimming. And this forms the “success foundation” for practically all of your future lake swims.
So now that you’re acclimated to the frozen lake, you’ll find that you can conduct a fairly lengthy swim workout rather comfortably. As a result of all these preparations and techniques, your body is now optimized to operate efficiently and effectively in this setting. Your heat is concentrated in your core, yet you’ve created a warmer layer on most of your skin surface that you are maintaining through your relaxed physical exertion.
The only downside now is that your fingertips might start to get cold since your body heat has moved towards your core and away from your periphery. Candidly, that’s really the only current challenge we’re having right now during our winter swims. And, of course, you still have to experience and manage the dreaded afterdrop once you finish your swim!
But that’s the next (and final) piece in this series.
The one good thing about losing an hour this weekend was that we got to catch more of the sunrise on our way out to the beach. And it was a fantastic one!
Dave, Nick, Mike and I met out at Tower Beach at 7:30am. And despite the weatherman’s dire predictions for overcast skies, the lake conditions were ideal for swimming. We had clear skies, abundant sunshine, and calm waters with the lake temperature coming in at a toasty 43F!
The four of us did an out-an-back swim parallel to the shore (about 1 mile total). A slight breeze picked up at the end of our swim, but we were practically out of the water at that point. Dave and I hung out in the lake for a few more minutes without our dive hoods, and it felt great to be able to dunk my head in the water without getting a screamer of an ice cream headache. Spring is coming early this year!
I decided to take advantage of the sunny, 60F weather and went out to Lighthouse Beach for a quick dip. There is NO WAY that the lake temp is below 40F! The lake is definitely warming up. Get on out to the beach!
We got up an hour earlier this morning and headed out to MSW. However, Dave scouted out the area beforehand and deemed it to be unswimmable due to the proliferation of fishermen casting their hooks off of the south wall. So thinking quickly, we decided to check out the shoreline across the way at the infamous “Ladder X.”
Fortunately, we were able to get into the 36F lake and do a quick swim. But we decided to do shorter laps since the waves were already picking up.
Post-swim was a bit of a challenge since we had a longer walk to the parking lot. Also, my new gloves did not fare very well in the colder water (FYI, do NOT buy Pinnacle 5/4mm Merino Neo Velcro Diving Gloves if you value your fingers).
But we can now add another notch to our swim site belts with this successful outing at a new location.
Charles Cushman was born in the small southern Indiana town of Poseyville in 1896. Like many other young and enterprising Midwesterners, he felt the draw of Chicago and made it his home for a large part of his adult life. But he also had a very interesting hobby.
He took pictures. Lots of pictures. Over 14,500 to be more precise – and quite a few of our fair city and lake!
When he died in 1972, he bequeathed his entire photo collection to his alma mater, Indiana University. You can check out the entire collection – taken between 1938 to 1969 – at this link.
But here are just a few swimming and lake-related ones that he took in Chicago circa 1941 – mostly around Promontory Point. As you can see, Mr. Cushman had an appreciation for feminine pulchritude!
And my favorite, circus clown Paul Wenzel training his goose between shows!
As noted in a prior post, 80% of the challenge involved with swimming for extended periods of time in the open water involves managing our physiology and our emotions.
And of these two, managing our physiology is the key factor when swimming in the sub-40F zone.
According to Dr. Alan Steinman, former U.S. Coast Guard Surgeon General and rescue physician, there are three phases to our physiological response to cold water immersion:
1) Initial immersion and the cold-shock response (1-4 minutes) – Rapid skin cooling that causes an immediate gasp response, hyperventilation, and the inability to hold a breath. Concurrent responses included peripheral vasoconstriction and increased cardiac output, heart rate, and arterial blood pressure.
2) Short-term immersion and loss of performance (5-30 minutes) – Continued skin cooling causing compromised neuromuscular activity and loss of fine motor control.
3) Long-term immersion and the onset of hypothermia (30 minutes+) – Apathy, amnesia, and loss of consciousness followed by cardiorespiratory failure.
Obviously, we want to stay as far away from phase two and three as we possibly can.
So our goal then becomes twofold – 1) Reduce (or eliminate) immersion shock which unduly stresses our cardiovascular system, and 2) limit the skin cooling which leads to neuromuscular dysfunction.
Winter Swimming Series – Part 1: Gear Selection already discussed one way of managing this. However, for the remainder of this post, we’re going to outline some key actions and techniques you can do to further prepare yourself physically for the colder water exposure outside of just selecting your swim gear.
So here goes…
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Proper hydration involves more than just increasing your intake of water. It also means decreasing your intake of known diuretics such as alcohol and caffeine. Both of these can adversely impact your body’s ability to manage colder temperatures – even if taken the night before. So lay off the booze and double lattes before you swim!
Fuel
Get quick and easily digestible energy into your muscles as soon as you wake up because they’ll be working extra hard in the colder water. Stay away from most “sports drinks” that are nothing more than non-carbonated soda with the same crappy ingredients (i.e. high fructose corn syrup). My picks – either Cytomax or Hammer Perpetuem.
Electrolytes
These are essential to preventing muscle cramping which can take place as you exert yourself much more intensely in the colder water. My current favorite – Trace Minerals ENDURE. I mix this in with my Cytomax, and it makes a huge difference in my performance. I’ve experimented in the past with Hammer Endurolytes, and they also work well. But I prefer the liquid formulation.
Priming
The idea here is to get your body already physically attuned to exercising in the cold water about 1 hour before you even get in the lake. To minimize the immersion shock, I recommend the progressive cold shower technique.
In addition, I also try to do about 3-5 minutes of quick, short-burst full body exercises to get my body out of an anaerobic state. My favorite – burpees.
These are tips and techniques we came up with after much trial and error. They are definitely “field tested,” so feel free to try them out to better prepare yourself for an extended cold water immersion.
Dave, Mike and new Lake/Ice Monster James made it out to MSW today for a swim in the tumultuous lake. Here’s Dave’s report!
The sun was shining and the air was 29F. The water was 36F. The winds were producing a nice washing machine effect. Mr. James Hooper from Brighton, England decided the best way to fight off his jet lag from England was to join our world famous English Channel Mike and Ladder #1′s Diver Dave from Open Water Chicago, for a nice cool dip in the pool followed by some fresh pineapple from Hawaii!
With the bright sunshine it was another great day at the beach. With a little luck next weekend a few more of you will find a way to get out of bed to join us before winter ends!
Diver Dave
Ladder # 1
James, Lake Monster #163 / Ice Monster #11 (congrats!)
Here’s a quick exercise I want you to do right now. Take your right hand and make a fist. Now take your left hand and wrap it over your right one. What you’re looking at is a pretty good representation of your brain. Or rather your three brains – your physical, emotional, and logical brains.
And understanding how these three brains work is essential to your success as an open water swimmer – or your success in just about anything else for that matter.
So let’s take a quick look at each one.
Physical brain
This area encompasses your upper brainstem and is roughly analogous to your right lower arm and wrist in our model. Your physical brain (also known as your “reptilian” brain) consists of several structures that manage and regulate autonomic physical functions such as the following:
- Alertness and arousal
- Breathing and heart rate
- Blood pressure and digestion
- Body temperature and thermoregulation
- Basic survival behavior responses
Emotional brain
This area encompasses your limbic system and is roughly analogous to your right fist in our model. The emotional brain consists of several structures that regulate motivation, emotions, and memory formation, and it is instrumental in the following:
- Fear, anger, and aggression (“fight or flight” response)
- Pleasure, reward, and reinforcement
- Memory and learning
- Sensory perception and filtering
- Attentional processing
Logical brain
This area encompasses your neo-cortex and is roughly analogous to your left hand in our model. The logical brain consists of the layer of the brain often referred to as gray matter, and it is instrumental in the following:
- Logic and reasoning
- Problem solving and decision making
- Planning and foresight
- Introspection and creativity
- Performance excellence
So why is all of this important, you might ask?
Because 80% of the challenge involved with open water swimming is in effectively managing the physical and emotional parts of our brains – and NOT the logical part.
In other words, you can set detailed swimming goals and make meticulous plans for achieving them – but all of this will collapse if you can’t get your physiology and your emotions on your side.
Whenever I do a swim seminar or one-on-one coaching, this is typically the first area we cover in detail. And the reason for this is that it’s very easy for an athlete to get accustomed to having his or her logical brain in control whenever they are training in an indoor pool.
Think about it – this is a controlled and structured environment with no stressors or surprises. So you can “logically” pound out your precisely formulated workout without all the inconveniences of wind, waves, cold water, or the myriad of other niceties that manifest themselves in the messy realm of Mother Nature.
The challenge lies when you thrust this logic-based swimming “wiring” into a setting that requires much more mastery of the physical and emotional parts of your brain.
And what usually happens in this scenario is that the stress of the situation overwhelms the logical brain, and the emotional and/or physical parts take over.
So as you can see, understanding and managing the physical and emotional parts of your brain is very often the key to excellence in the open water. And as we continue with the Winter Swimming Series, we’ll re-visit this concept often.
