THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO Outdoor Swimming
A personal story. Growing up, our parents took my sister and I to weekly swim sessions at Dawlish Leisure Centre in Devon. Sister Lou resembled a pebble. The chlorine wasn’t for her. Then she moved to London and embraced the capital to the max. The hangovers soon outweighed the good times and she adopted a healthier lifestyle. The odd dip at Hampstead Heath Ponds grew to weekly summer swims and now stretches to all-year-round swimming both there and at Parliament Hill Lido.
Lou represents just the tip of the outdoor swimming iceberg. Research from Sport England calculates that 4.1 million of us swam in lakes, lochs, rivers and seas between November 2017 and 2018. And you can see why. “There’s no substitute to seeing the sky and nature around you when you swim, whatever the season,” Lou reasons. “Swimming throughout the year in cold water has the added benefit of relieving aches and pains. But you also enjoy a rush of adrenaline that lifts your mood. I feel like I’ve really achieved something.”
That lifting of mood is actually down to dopamine, which stimulates a feeling of euphoria and excitement. Studies show that you enjoy a greater surge of the happy hormone when exercising outdoors compared to indoors – even more so when swimmingrecommends open-water swimming as a treatment for major depressive disorders.
