tips and tricks for a good swim

[Deb R]

I had something happen while swimming last weekend that resulted in a sore and swollen knee. Maybe someone has a helpful tip to keep it from happening again.

When I came out of my boat, the current pushed my knees in a bent position behind me (like kneeling) and kept them there. I wasn't able to immediately straighten them out to get into the proper swimming position. While they were still bent, my knee either just twisted or hit a rock and twisted. Hurts like hades now, and I suspect a slight cartilage tear.

I've never had this problem before with a swim. What's the fastest way to get your legs straightened out and in front of you when a pretty strong current is keeping them back?

Deb

[hans-olo]

roll over on your back. even if it means swimming the rapid blind. I've never heard of a butt entrapment.

[sbroam]

I have no tips for a good swim, I don't think I have ever had one, at least not when starting from my boat...

[ezwater]

Ideally, you want to go through a series of conscious steps as if you were perfecting your wet exit in a lake. Problems may come when, during your wet exit process, you and your boat wash over rocks, ledges, or into cross-currents. Or, you may have to wet exit when you are pressed under your boat, against a rock or log.

Because of my height, big feet, and crooked legs, I expect problems getting out of boats. But I have had far fewer problems in my C-1s than in my kayaks. One thing I suggest, in your C-1, is that you keep both hands on the boat, probably grasping the cockpit rim or some other positive assist to grasp, while you shift your butt out, slide your knees forward, and then snake your feet out. Just because you are smaller than me (I assume that to be the case), don't assume you can just swim out. Keep your hands on the boat and control the process until you have your feet out.

[Detonator Function]

It seems like you were already out of your boat when you hurt your knee.

When (if, ideally) I swim, I'm on my back and I always keep my toes above the water. I control my direction with my arms and my speed with my legs. I guess being on your back give you pretty good control, but I think you just were in a weird situation. Hopefully your knee will heal well and it won't happen again.

[squeakyknee]

Simple..Don't Swim!!

[msims]

I swam a pretty gnarly CIV rapid... I actually found the same problem When I dropped over the ledge into the hole, cuz i was out of my boat the current seemed to suck my legs down pretty hard... pretty freeky.

I tried to at least get up into a cannon-ball- until I was out of the gnarl, and could actually get my bawd to respond without the current doing what it wanted to... again - this probably lasted a few seconds, then i was able to focus on getting the feet up as i floated downstream, about 10 feet under the surface.

...It's amazing how quiet the downstream water from a hole is, esp 10 feet under river-level...

I don't know if the cannonball thing worked, but I think at that point banging a knee might be a little better than getting a foot stuck...

squeaky/others have the 'right' answer though...

[madmike]

Assuming you treat this yourself, use the acronym R.I.C.E.

Rest it
Ice it
use a Compression bandage, or brace
Elevate your knee.

Also liberal doses of a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory (Ibuprofen) will help.

Is the kneecap displaced?

[Heidi]

Hi all

Deb, If I'm getting the picture correctly you were head-first on your stomach, knees bent, unknowns - paddle, boat and river features.

For head-first I use a technique taught in lifesaving employed as a quick draw-up in direction to avoid engaging a struggling drowning victim or to descend quickly.

Drop elbows to your side or down, with your hands roughly level with your shoulders and do a quick backward scull while simultaneously drawing knees to stomach in a tuck (the abdominal muscles are the center of power in this move and the tuck should drop the weight to change body orientation) and then shoot your legs out front, along with as many backward sculls as it takes. Slightly bent knees are good, they provide better shock absorbtion. Important thing is to get the feet to the surface.

In addition to the physical mechanics the best mental tool is to think and say to yourself, "get your feet up". That goes for rescuers too. The swimmer may be in a panicked state of mind, you can cue them it might help to orient them, feet up is essential and in most cases takes precedence before anything else, of course, again every situation will have it's own parameters.

River Features. If the swim is into a drop, you want to be feet first in a tight tuck. If the swim is into a strainer you want to be head first ready to aggressively hoist yourself up out of the water over the strainer or as a high possible. If you are trying to cross an eddy line from strong current learn and practice the barrel roll. These are all techniques that are covered in any comprehensive Swift Water Rescue (SWR) training. An invaluable training.

Paddle in hand poses other challenges, but same mechanics work. Gunwale in hand, work your way to whatever end is stern. Again this is all situational and best practice depends on many different factors. I can hear Charlie Walbridge saying, it's just gear do whatever it takes to get to an eddy, out of the water, avoid the hazards etc., the best way may mean that you need to let go of the gear. The shear weight of a capsized boat or loose ropes and that it can become a strainer real quick makes it another potential hazard to deal with while swimming, get behind or away from it if you can't control it.

Charlie always brings the point home with a pointed story. My recollection of the details may be a bit fuzzy, but the ideas resonate. A woman was swimming with her brand new boat, rescuers had a line to her, but she let wouldn't let go of the boat instead she let go of the line and was swept into an undercut and drowned. Man died presumably from taking a head shot from his boat that was following him through a rapid. (A properly fitting helmet with good coverage and superior impact foam gives better odds, but may not be a match against all that ramming weight.) Woman was dragged through a rapid with a painter wrapped round her throat, moral of that story secure those painters or don't have them, remember once they are deployed they are another potential hazard.

Self-rescue. My preferred mode is to work my way to the end of the boat with paddle in the same hand that is grabbing the gunwale maybe doing short side strokes to set ferry angle. I like to get to the painter, paddle in the same hand as painter (painter never wrapped around the hand), and give the boat some distance from me so I can see what's coming and increase my options. Then I'm set up to side stroke to the first best eddy, to shore, abandon ship or...

After every swim I evaluate what led up to it, what could be improved in my paddling technique, self-rescue, what might be the scenario if I was attempting to assist a swimmer in the same situation... Questions like where was my focus, how was my read of the features, line, angle... but at the end point it's usually poor brace mechanics or failure to slip in a quick righting pry that determine if I'm over. Since my roll is not yet muscle memory and because I'm mentally well-conditioned to come out of my boat I swim unless the conditions are just right.

Now that the waters are warming, my current goals are to give more focused practice time to perfect brace mechanics and to embedding the roll.

Good paddling everyone. ~ Heidi

[Deb R]

First of all, thanks for the replies.

My boat was an OC1 (Ocoee), and the rapid was (to anyone familiar with it) House Rock rapid on the Middle Swift in NH. A rapid I should have been able to make at that nice low level, and it still ticks me off, but I digress...

I went over the first drop with a bad approach, hit a rock and flew out of my boat, facing downstream but more verticle in the current, legs pushed back and bent up behind me. I had my paddle, but decided to let the boat go without me. My first thought besides, "Oh large steaming pile of dog doo," (no I didn't really write that) was to change my position to get feet in front and be on my back. I probably needed a more aggressive tuck of my knees to my stomach at that point, which I'll try if I face the same situation again. I'm thinking that instead of tucking into a ball, my problem was that I was trying to push out against the current with more leg surface (knee to thigh) and it was naturally working against me. Lucky for me, I had jokingly picked out my swimming eddy before trying the rapid, and sure enough, I got into it very quickly. It was a brief swim, but I'm still paying for it.

I think whatever I did to my knee is probably minor, and ice will help. I was planning a bike ride Saturday, but I just may have to bow out of that--whatever was I thinking when I agreed to it in the first place?

SYOTR,
Deb

[ohioboater]

A lot of the replies above, though helpful on general self rescue, do not address the actual dynamics you were asking about. I know because I have experienced them more than once:

- out of boat, facing downstream, floating on back, usually in a pushy wavetrain
- Some sort of current effect keeps pulling your feet downward, in spite of various kick strokes and hand sculling in an attempt to get them to break the surface
- Once you finally do get them to the surface, no problem, but getting them there is tough.

The three places I've felt this effect were: River's End on the Yough, Cheat Canyon in the (I think) nameless waves/holes on river left below Colisuem but before you get to Pete Morgan, and the stuff between Dimple and Swimmer's on the Yough. All three involved pushy water with a depth of probably 5 to 10 feet (but with occasional shallower rocks). So maybe it's caused by the fact that water closer to the river bottom moves slower than at the surface. If your legs get mired in that slower water, you're having to fight the current's effect on your upper body to get them up.

The advice to draw knees up to your stomach and then do a quick kick out and scull with the hands is one I've not tried - perhaps that's the trick. In my last swim, I was trying to tread my legs up to the surface - sort of alternating frog kick and bicycle kick. That didn't work, and I had the misfortune to be on the returning kick phase when a shallow rock came by - still have the scar on my shinbone from that one.

I also have wondered if flipping briefly onto one's stomach and doing an aggressive front crawl sprint, just long enough to get the feet up to the surface, would work.

[ezwater]

Clearly I misunderstood the situation, but two issues have come up here. One is Deb's, what to do when you are in an awkward and vulnerable position and you want to be at the surface, feet downstream (or in some other functional position). One answer is to draw your limbs up into a ball, and then get your body and limbs where you want them.

The second issue is that, when supine at the surface, feet downstream, your feet and legs may tend to subside below the surface, making you vulnerable to leg banging or entrapment (as I will discuss below). Usually the current flows fastest at the surface (with many exceptions), so there certainly will be a tendency for the legs to subside. One suggestion I have is to fold the legs a little, let your butt subside a bit, so that the flotation of your torso helps keep the legs up. Footwear with flotation helps also.

Back in 1981, we were on a class 1-2 trip on the Broad River, near Athens, GA. My wife and daughter were on Lunch Rock with a large crowd, eating. My son and I were tandem body surfing a chute where *thousands* body surf every year. So, with my son in my lap, both lying back, feet extended at the surface, I released my hold on the rocks and let the water in the chute take us down, something we had done many times before.

Suddenly I felt my left leg slammed, grasped as if by a trap. Quickly I realized that my left leg was caught between two NW pointing rock slabs, while the current forced my body so hard forward that I could hardly move. I succeeded in getting one hand above the surface of the water to summon help, but wondered if I might drown before anyone realized what happened and acted to free me.

After what can't have been more than a minute, however, my left knee apparently hyperextended or let go in some way (not as a result of the efforts I was trying to make), and I was swimming free. The leg was never the same after that, though no major structures were damaged....just the usual medial meniscus.

What happened was that, in spite of my efforts to keep my feet high, the water in the chute was accelerating my shoulders and back, and it was almost unavoidable for my legs and feet to drop into the slower water closer to the bottom. And the entire SE is covered with rock slabs tilting up toward the NW, a result of the Appalachian orogenies long ago.

So current differential *obviously* has the potential to put your legs where you don't want them to be. Swimming does have to be an active process, constantly checking what it happening and correcting as we go along.

[stefi]

I've had a swim, where I was head downstream in the river, and turned first on my back, before turning my feet downstream. What seemed to be a big mistake. I hit some rock on my back (just below the life jacket). With the result that it kind of paralized me for a moment because it hit my backbone (and two weeks of pain at every step). So, whenever I'm heading downstream, I prefer to hit my knees than my backbone.
I've already tried out what to do in shallow water, when the current is too strong to stand up. It's really hard to keep your backside high enough.

[Kelly-Rand]

There is no such thing as a good swim on a WW river. I've had a lot of swims and getting banged up is the price you pay when you do. The most important thing is to get yourself on the surface as fast as possible. The Water behind most features, ledges and holes is moving fastest down stream below the surface, the surface water is trying to fill the void behind the feature. That's what creates the play wave and rooster tails down stream. If you are caught in that subsurface water you are going to be dragged down under (flush drowning), so you want to do all that is possible once you are out of the boat to get to the surface. Rocks are where they are and if you are in their path you are gong to hurt. The advice above is good in what to do to get yourself to the surface. Once there you need to get oriented and hopefully know which way to swim to the nearest eddy unless there are others at your assistance who are better situated to give you direction and rescue.
A few weeks ago I had a spill, but before I was out of the boat I had already been banged on the back of the neck and arms and once I was out I was banged on the hip and shins before I was in calmer water and could swim towards an eddy.
From what I read of your account I think you did exactly as you should have, you had a plan if you spilled and except for banging your knee you got there. Class III and IV are rated as they are because there are consequences once you leave your boat.

Jim

[fez]

River classification of difficulty as experienced while swimming

Found this here: http://www.shivaoutdoors.com/boathouse/ ... cation.php

Class I: Easy Fast moving water with riffles and small waves. Swimming is pleasant, shore easily reached. A nice break from paddling. Almost all gear and equipment is recovered. Boat is just slightly scratched.

Class II: Novice Straightforward rapids with wide, clear channels which are evident without scouting. Swimming to eddies requires moderate effort. Climbing out of river may involve slippery rocks and shrub induced lacerations. Paddles travel great distance downstream requiring lengthy walk. Something unimportant is missing. Boat hits submerged rock leaving visible dent on frame or new gash in plastic.

Class III: Intermediate Rapids with moderate, irregular waves which may be difficult to avoid. Water is swallowed. Legs are ground repeatedly against sharp, pointy rocks. Several eddies are missed while swimming. Difficult decision to stay with boat results in moment of terror when swimmer realizes they are downstream of boat. Paddle is re circulated in small hole way upstream. All personal possessions are removed from boat and floated in different directions. Paddling partners run along river bank shouting helpful instructions. Boat is munched against large boulder hard enough to leave series of deep gouges. Sunglasses fall off.

Class IV: Advanced Water is generally lots colder that Class III. Intense, powerful but predictable rapids requiring precise swimming in turbulent water. Swimming may require 'must' moves above dangerous hazards. 'Must' moves are downgraded to 'strongly recommended' after they are missed. Sensation of disbelief experienced while about to swim large drops. Frantic swimming towards shore is alternated with frantic swimming away from shore to avoid strainers. Rocks are clung to with death grip. Paddle is completely forgotten. One shoe is removed. Hydraulic pressure permanently removes waterproof box with all the really important stuff. Paddle partners running along stream look genuinely concerned while lofting throw ropes 20 feet behind swimmer. Paddle partners stare slack-jawed and point in amazement at boat which is finally pinned by major feature. Climbing up river bank involves inverted tree. One of those spring loaded pins that attaches watch to wristband is missing. Contact lenses are moved to rear of eyeballs.

Class V: Expert The water in this rapid is usually under 42 degrees f. Most gear is destroyed on rocks within minutes if not seconds. If the boat survives, it is need of about three days of repair. There is no swimming, only frantic movements to keep from becoming one with the rocks and to get a breath from time to time. Terror and panic sets in as you realize your paddle partners don't have a chance in hades of reaching you. You come to a true understanding of the terms may tagging and pin balling. That hole that looked like nothing when scouted, has a hydraulic that holds you under the water until your lungs are close to bursting. You come out only to realize you still have 75% of the rapid left to swim. Swim to the eddy? What #%^&*#* eddy!? This rapid usually lasts a mile or more. Hydraulic pressure within the first few seconds, removes everything that can come off your body. This includes gloves, shoes, neoprene socks, sunglasses, hats, and clothing. The rocks take care of your fingers, toes, and ears. That $900.00 dry suit, well it might hold up to the rocks. Your paddle is trash. If there is a strainer, well, just hope it is old and rotten so it breaks. Paddle Partners on shore are frantically trying to run and keep up with you. Their horror is reflected in their faces as they stare at how you are being tossed around! They are hoping to remember how to do CPR. They also really hope the cooler with the beer is still intact. They are going to need a cold one by the time you get out! Climbing out of this happens after the rapid is over. You will probably need the help of a backboard, cervical collar and Z-rig. Even though you have broken bones, lacerations, puncture wounds, missing digits & ears, and a concussion, you won't feel much because you will have severe hypothermia. Enjoy your time in the hospital, with the time you take recovering you won't get another vacation for 3 years.

Class VI: World Class Not recommended for swimming.