Had a similar "chest is constricted, can't breathe, going to die" panic experience in my first open water oly. Thankfully I was able to push through it but I quickly learned that I had to train for that feeling.

The most important thing was frequently (almost every workout) putting myself in that same situation in the pool. Jacking my HR up by doing deck ups and jogging in place and then diving in and immediately swimming a hard 25 or 50 and repeating was a great drill. Learned how to swim with a high HR and manage that feeling of panic. (Thanks, coach!)

Other things that helped (but not as much):
1. Fully exhaling
2. Getting my wetsuit nice and wet prior to starting
3. Trying to go slow on take out
4. Playing rugby and not minding being hit once in awhile :)

Take with a grain of salt as I am a MOP AOS...but learning to love the swim.

I haven’t done an IM branded race yet that allowed a swim warmup.

Again, if I’m allowed a swim warmup, I get in and warm up. I’ve never not finished a swim, but I’ve gotten panicky on wave and rolling States. I’ve also had wonderful swims where no warmup was allowed.

Interesting topic.

i think streaming starts help, in races that don't allow a warmup. the gold standard is a warmup area. absent that, some sort of dryland warmup, okay, i don't really have a protocol for that. i raced a streamed start last week, i find that much to my preference. i'll be interested to see what eventual safety data we get out of streamed starts once the dataset is large enough.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Congrats on the swim triumph

That is sometimes better than anything else

💪

Thanks for the article Dan. And everyone else, thanks for the tips, some good stuff in this thread.