Triathlon Swim: To Dive or To Jump? That Isn’t The Question!

I have a triathlon coming up and the start line is a long narrow dock. It’s the only one I’ve done so far where you jump in from a raised platform (unlike the lake entries where athletes run from the shore down into the water). My brother-in-law is doing this race, as well, and it’ll be the first race both of us have twice which is cool for a lot of reasons. But this dock entry thing… how would you approach the start: Diving in or jump in feet first and then start the swim?

He and I did a test recently in a pool to find out which method is most beneficial, each having pros and each having cons. The biggest pro for diving is a smooth transition to the swim stroke. That’s a big pro, too. Like, HUGE. But with this method there’s potential for a big con: hitting the water and having your goggles knocked out of place. That’s as big of a con as I can think of! Or it could be too shallow. The drawback of jumping in feet first is a total loss of any momentum (from a jump vs. a dive). Once in the water, the swimmer must move their body into a horizontal swimming position and then begin the swim. The big pro of this feet-first entry is that it’s safe.

In our time trials, as rudimentary as they were, a dive entry was measurably faster and in discussing it, we thought it used less energy than the feet-first entry (because of having to maneuver one’s body from vertical to horizontal in the water). Sometimes in our dive tests our goggles became dislodged or water splashed in. To try avoiding that, I began to duck just before breaking the surface, using the top, rear part of my head to hit the water first and this seemed to take most, if not all, instant water pressure away from the strap of my goggles. We also tried diving in the most normal way. Mine ended up around my mouth. Not ideal!

But for this upcoming race, diving is prohibited so I’ll be jumping in. No one wants to be disqualified before even having a chance to compete!

-Out of the Wilderness