Introduction To Open Water Swimming - Level 1 Swim England Workshop

Your first step into the world of open water & triathlon Swimming working to achieve your Swim England Level 1 Open Water Certificate (and shiny badge, we all like a shiny badge.......right)

We are proud to offer our fully coached Introduction sessions for the 2026 season and are confident that our introduction sessions are unrivalled in their content and delivery. Our coaches will be with you in / on the water at all times, you will receive pre-session materials to prepare you for your first swim. After the session we will send online resources and support to assist your swimming further and continue your development. All our materials and methods are constantly reviewed for best practice and skills and safety relevance.

The Details
This Level 1 workshop will swim your way to your Swim England Level 1 certificate in Open Water Swimming and provide you with the skills and confidence to take to the water by yourself, tackle your first Open Water or Triathlon event, or just educate and improve the swim of the non competitive swimmer looking for that new and exciting challenge. 

This workshop is around 1.5 hours in duration, actual water time will vary depending on the water temperature at the time of the session.

This session will cover

• Safety / Session brief, including venue specific safety
• Putting on your wetsuit - making the dark art of getting rubber on your body as simple as 1-2-3-4
• Safe Entry / Exit of the water
• Acclimatisation and breathing control
• Self Rescue & Emergency actions
• Basic Sighting Action for front crawl swimmers
• Group Swimming Familiarisation
• 200m Test Swim (part of the Level 1 Certificate sign off process)
• The Syllabus of the Swim England Level 1 Certificate in Open Water Swimming. This is ONLY passed if the swimmer completes all of the content in the course, including online questions (link sent nearer the course date)

You will need

To participate all swimmers will need to be aged 18 or over and bring with them:

• Aged 18 or over (sessions for 11-17 year olds are available on a 1-to-1 basis)
• To be able to swim at lease 200m of any stroke (note; most of the skills based work in this session is front crawl based)
• A Swimsuit
• A Wetsuit (triathlon/swimming suit NOT a tri suit) – optional on SWS coaches written approval in temperatures over 20 degrees plus but recommended for these sessions due to the stop start nature of skills development.
• Goggles
• Bright coloured swim cap (or two), We have these if you do not have one already.
• Swimming gloves and booties are optional, generally not needed for most swimmers once the water temperature is over 15 degrees.
  
• Towel or Changing Robe. We recommend the Ddipp robes, save 10% using our special discount code SWSWIM-10
• A swimming tow float, such as the Swim Secure Tow Float / Dry Bag Range. Don't worry if you don't have your own, we can loan you one for your session or they are available from us to purchase at a discounted rate (5% off). Contact us before the session to arrange purchase.
  
• A drink, hot or cold depending on the weather. Get an exclusive 15% discount from our friends at Precision Fuel and hydration

Want to develop further?

After your Level 1 course we can also offer individual based coaching in our open water 1-to-1 sessions. Book through your booking account as we would love to take your swimming to the next level.

SOUTH WEST SWIM SQUAD EXCLUSIVE!!
Race Skills Development Workshop Session

This session is ONLY available to our club squad swimmers that swim with us under a 5 or 10 session squad membership, please do not book this session if you are not a member of our SWS Squads as your place will be removed and you will not be able to swim.

An exclusive early season open water skills session for squad swimmers. Join us at lake86 for a bespoke squad workshop where we will work with you on those essential open water racing skills;
- Sighting
- Turns
- Group Swimming / Drafting
We may even throw in some hard work for you, it cant all be skills and rainbows after all.

Book now to reserve your place on this squad special, special pricing and limited places apply to this session. If it is oversubscribed we may host an additional session and split each by lane / speed order.

These sessions can only run if we get at least 4 swimmers per session.

We have two dates:
SATURDAY MAY 16th at 10am - This session is for swimmers who swim in lanes with a paces of 2:00 per 100m or faster.

SATURDAY MAY 23rd at 12 noon- This session is for swimmers who swim in lanes with a paces of less than 2:00 per 100m.

please ensure you book the correct session for your swim speed, if in doubt please contact me before booking.

*Important: Cancellation period for this special workshop is the same as our squad policy; 36 hours before the start time of the session. As this is (potentially) a one off session any early cancellations will transfer into 2x normal squad sessions on your account, please advise if you early cancel so we can activiate this. Late cancellations will mean the session fee is lost as per our standard T&C's

SOUTH WEST SWIM SQUAD EXCLUSIVE!!
Race Skills Development Workshop Session

This session is ONLY available to our club squad swimmers that swim with us under a 5 or 10 session squad membership, please do not book this session if you are not a member of our SWS Squads as your place will be removed and you will not be able to swim.

An exclusive early season open water skills session for squad swimmers. Join us at lake86 for a bespoke squad workshop where we will work with you on those essential open water racing skills;
- Sighting
- Turns
- Group Swimming / Drafting
We may even throw in some hard work for you, it cant all be skills and rainbows after all.

Book now to reserve your place on this squad special, special pricing and limited places apply to this session. If it is oversubscribed we may host an additional session and split each by lane / speed order.

These sessions can only run if we get at least 4 swimmers per session.

We have two dates:
SATURDAY MAY 16th at 10am - This session is for swimmers who swim in lanes with a paces of 2:00 per 100m or faster.

SATURDAY MAY 23rd at 12 noon- This session is for swimmers who swim in lanes with a paces of less than 2:00 per 100m.

please ensure you book the correct session for your swim speed, if in doubt please contact me before booking.

*Important: Cancellation period for this special workshop is the same as our squad policy; 36 hours before the start time of the session. As this is (potentially) a one off session any early cancellations will transfer into 2x normal squad sessions on your account, please advise if you early cancel so we can activiate this. Late cancellations will mean the session fee is lost as per our standard T&C's

Private Group Booking / Bespoke Session 
Please do not book onto this session unless you have been given the direct date, session time and / or link by South West Swim, your swim / tri club, organisation or organiser.

Checks will be made and any accidental bookings by those not entitled to be on this session will be cancelled without question. Any refunds given will be MINIUS 15% of the total fee paid, this will be to cover our transaction costs and time.

If you would like to organise a private event for your club, team or business with us then please contact us via email at swim@southwestswim.co.uk and we can tailor a session for your club.