El Niño shifts huge amounts of heat around the Pacific Ocean, and that heat changes weather patterns across the planet. What it will not do is tell you whether the water at your local beach …

Picture yourself stepping out into freezing Icelandic air, then sinking into water that sits at a steady 37 to 39°C. Steam rolls across black lava rock, the surface glows a strange milky blue, and your …

Swimming is one of the few workouts where your usual earbuds are useless. Water blocks sound, tugs at anything sitting in your ear canal, and, crucially, kills the wireless signal your phone relies on. That …

You do not need a chef, a nutritionist, or a 6,000-calorie shopping list to swim well. If you train two to five times a week at a local club, fit lengths in before work, or …

Treading water means staying upright in deep water with your head above the surface, using small arm and leg movements to hold your position without touching the bottom. It is one of the most useful …

You have moved past the stage where finishing a length feels like an achievement. Now you can swim continuously, breathe on both sides and hold a decent rhythm, but the sessions have started to feel …

If you have ever hit the 1,200m mark of a 1,500m set and felt your legs turn to concrete, you already know what running low on fuel feels like. Complex carbohydrates are the answer to …

Dryland training is the work you do outside the water to swim faster inside it. It covers strength, power, core control and mobility, and it fills the gaps that laps alone will never close. If …

Signing up for your first adult swimming lesson can feel strange. Perhaps you never learned as a child, or a bad experience at a school pool put you off for years. Maybe you can splash …

Bouncing across a floating obstacle course, slipping off a giant inflatable slide and climbing back on for another go is one of the most fun ways to spend a warm British afternoon. Outdoor inflatable aqua …

A swim meet can stretch from a 7am warm-up to a 6pm relay, and the swimmers who finish strong are almost always the ones who ate little and often all day. The best snacks for …

Cold water hits harder than most people expect. The UK's lakes, rivers and coastline rarely climb above 17°C even in August, and on a grey morning in a Yorkshire reservoir you can be looking at …

Swimming in open water in Britain is one of the simplest joys going, and it is also one of the easiest activities to get wrong. Cold water, moving rivers, hidden drop-offs and tides can turn …