Rollin rollin rollin

Thats tough one, I always liked water immersion from babyhood. Some people don’t like anything on their body wet (my wife) Maybe swimming with some fully immersed strokes, maybe need to learn you (someone) can hold their breath a long time. How are the wet exits ? panic ? smooth ? dangeous?

One more vote in favor of goggles while learning fwiw. Once you’ve got the basics using your vision, you can just close your eyes w/ goggles still on and replicate the body movements in rapid succession.

You will want to see how your body is oriented when you’re capsized (and most likely a little anxious initially!). This is useful information while learning to roll. Goggles or swim mask will do. Don’t forego the nose clips, either, especially in fresh water.

Later on when you have successfully rolled more often, ditch the goggles. You can just close your eyes if you don’t want to have them sting from water. If using goggles allowed you to associate the right positions with the way they feel, closing the eyes will make no difference in whether or not you roll up. That’s what they did for me.

I think lack of noseclips is more distracting while learning than lack of goggles. Use them when learning, but after you succeed more often than fail, start practicing without them on. If you slowly exhale through your nostrils, that minimizes water intrusion. I used mine for most roll sessions but I also threw in some no-noseclips rolls once in a while. Once the muscle memory is solid, unintentional capsizing with neither goggles nor noseclips won’t faze you.

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My wife offered to help me practice my roll by the shallow beach of our kettle pond. She was a bit offended that I declined, wondering why she couldn’t help (with zero experience rolling for either of us.)

I just knew that it wouldn’t end well, one way or another…

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