I’m a lifelong swimmer. Very comfortable in the pool, open water, and large surf. Lots of experience being pushed to the limits with different coaches, hard sets and competition throughout the years.
Anyway, this morning I was doing a very easy workout. I was finishing up an easy kick set and was a couple yards from the wall when I got a little head rush. Next thing I know I “wake up” seeing black and am hearing a gargling sound. I come to with feeling a little spaced out - kind of a where am I sensation. I wasn’t choking on any water so I imagine I was only out for a very short time.
I was always taught to watch for this when I used to coach and in lifeguard training. I was really caught off guard by this as I didn’t see it coming. I swam an easy 50 after to make sure I was still alive, haha.
Just curious if anyone else has ever had this happen.
This was not a shallow water black out. You have to dive down and actually stay down for a bit to get one on the way up when blood goes back into the lungs and pulls out oxygen from the brain not leaving enough in there and triggering the black out. Unless you are freediving or spearing very unlikely to get it.
You can experience it going horizontally in the water doing i.e. “hypoxic” sets. I’ve seen it happen, and a couple years back a collegiate swimmer on break was doing sets in his local pool and passed away.
Although OP doesn’t sound like he was doing hypoxic sets unless the kicking was underwater ie dolphin
sorry, misspoke, re-reading and see that you heard of it. Just hadn’t experienced it. First time I ever saw it was before I was really a swimmer, it was pretty scary to see
Agreed. Sounds like syncope without prodrome. Syncope aka fainting can happen for a lot of reasons, many benign but lack of prodrome is concerning. And given the setting, the outcome could have been bad. If you were in my ER, I’d recommend outpatient monitor and no unsupervised swimming until follow up with primary to discuss the results. And that’s also what I would do for myself. Opinions may vary.
Edit: On re-read I noticed “a little head rush†which is reassuring. What I don’t like is that you were doing an activity well within your wheelhouse and without any special features.
No problem. USA Swimming use to call it “shallow water blackout,” but has since changed the terminology. They call it “hypoxic blackout.” It would happen from doing a lot of hard, hypoxic sets in practice. Typically, breath hold or no breather sets in a workout. The athlete would lose consciousness in shallow water. His description of an “easy kick set” didn’t seem to fit the description.
Thanks, so in general parlance sorta the same thing but as it applies to swimmers doing hypoxic sets. I am not a free diver, but a scuba diver, and know it is an issue there with increased hyperventilation etc
Interesting though, re the reporting. There was that college swimmer home on break that died in a pool doing hypoxic sets, probably thought it was fairly easy or routine. Does hypoxic blackout only occur during (self described) hard sets? I was never very good at them, could do 1 or 2 lengths pretty easy but more than that, got pretty “hard”. But not hard as in 10 x 50 s fast hard, if that makes sense