Swim and Survive Sequence

This survival swimming sequence combines many essential skills into one fun exercise and is also a good warm up training or fun activity for your swimming class. You may not have time to change into your swimwear in an emergency, hence you practice in clothes and get fit. Dressed in swimwear, long pants, long-sleeved shirt and jumper, socks and shoes (optional), practice often the following sequence:

Enter shallow water in a safe manner, feet first. Don't dive in.

This simulates entry into unknown water. You may not know what is underwater, so be careful. Slide in slowly, feel the ground with your feet. Stand up in the shallow water.

Water Walk

From the shallow end walk four widths of the pool in a meandering pattern, progressing to neck-deep water. Then swim to the deep end. Notice how waterlogged clothes will slow your movements, but not pull you down. Water weighs nothing in water. Wet clothes only get heavy when you come out.

You can make this more interesting by putting benches along the pool floor. Make sure you use benches with rubber feet that don't scratch the tiles or slide on the pool floor.

Confidence Check

Try to sit on the bottom of the pool. You may find this quite a tricky. The air in your lungs and any air pockets in your clothes will give you a lift.

Next try it with a waterproofed rucksack. Since this is not possible, you gain confidence in the buoyancy capabilities of your waterproofed rucksack.

Jump in and Climb out for 1 Minute

See how often you can jump into deep water and climb out again within 1 minute. Make sure you stand up fully before you jump in again.

This may be tough for some swimmers. You may think this should be easy, but it certainly pushes you a fair bit.

Dive in and swim 10 metres underwater to simulate an escape form a sinking boat surrounded by oil. Swim a further 40 metres as if escaping from danger.

Swimming underwater fully clothed may be somewhat of a challenge you should prepare for in a supervised pool. Many people drown because they have never learned this.

Float, survival scull or tread water for 5 minutes. Wave occasionally as if signalling for help. Inflate your clothes for buoyancy.

In a rescue situation you should stay in one place if possible, so that rescue teams can find you faster. Keep your group together.

Swim 200 metres with different strokes, change every 50 metres.

Sometimes you may have to swim a distance to save yourself. Switch to a different swimming stroke every 50 meters for optimum cross training. You may find front crawl almost as slow as breaststroke when fully clothed. Upgrade to 400 meters after a while.

Perform a throw rescue using a weighted rope over a distance of 10 metres.

A time limit of 1 minute shall apply, commencing with an uncoiled and untangled rope lying at the feet of the rescuer and ending when the swimmer has grasped it.

Wade to and pull to safety a partner by using a towel or item of clothing as an aid.

The point of towing someone with an aid is to avoid direct contact for safety reasons. You don't want to be grabbed by a scared casualty.

Fit a lifevest (PFD) correctly while treading water. Swim 100 metres using survival strokes. Climb out of the water whilst wearing the lifevest.

Learn how to use a lifevest. You may not have the time in a real emergency situation. It keeps your face out of the water. A person floating with nose and mouth below the waterline has a harder time getting air than one whose face is kept out of the water.

 Reader Comment: More Muscle Strength

We run the survival swimming sequence about once a week in our swimming team. It is our most popular training because it is great fun and builds a lot of muscle strength if done regularly. We ask swimmers to wear at least a t-shirt and shorts so it kind of mimics having some workout clothing on. Most wear more kit to train at a higher level.

Training Tip: Write down your weekly training results. Add more clothing layers over time. Compare notes. You should see improvements.


Pierre Jeanneau, Quebec, Canada