Swimming Guides - OpenWaterHQ

How Long Can Water Sit in a Pool Without Chlorine?

A pool requires constant maintenance in order for the water to be safe to swim in. However, let’s be honest: ...

Is It Safe to Swim in a Pool Without Chlorine?

Chlorine is the most popular water sanitizing chemical that makes swimming pools safe to swim in, but also causes some ...

How Much Baking Soda to Raise Pool pH?

The pH level is a measure of how acidic or alkaline your pool water is. The pH scale ranges from ...

Is Alkalinity Increaser the Same as Baking Soda?

Maintaining your pool water’s alkalinity at a certain range is important because it acts as a buffer to prevent sudden ...

Too Much Baking Soda in Pool – What to Do About It

Being a pool owner can sometimes feel like being a chemist. You have to mix many chemicals with your pool ...

How Long to Wait After Adding Baking Soda to Pool?

Maintaining a pool requires you to meticulously monitor the water chemistry and make adjustments as needed. It sometimes feels like ...

Will Adding Baking Soda Lower Chlorine Level in Pool?

If you have an excess amount of chlorine in your pool due to adding the wrong amount or type of ...

Pool Losing 1 Inch of Water a Day: Is This Normal?

It is normal for a pool to lose water over time due to evaporation, so there’s nothing wrong with having ...

How Often Do You Add Water to Your Pool?

You don’t need to be an expert to know that if your pool is losing an inch of water or ...

Can Board Shorts Be Used for Swimming?

There are lots of reasons to love wearing boardshorts. Originally, they were made for surfers, and they offer different valuable ...

Open water swimming is pretty self-explanatory; it is simply swimming in any outdoor bodies of water including the open ocean, lakes, and even rivers. You can do it casually or competitively, such as in triathlons.

At the highest level, you can compete in prestigious competitions such as the FINA World Aquatics Championships, the FINA 10 km Marathon Swimming World Cup, and even at the Olympic Games. It is a discipline acknowledged across the world, as there are official events worldwide.

Wearing a wetsuit is highly recommended due to the risks involved with open water swimming. In competition, wetsuits are either permitted or restricted based on the distance of the swim and the water temperature.

In this section, we have compiled a list of all our guides related to open water swimming.