As a leading awarding organisation that trains hundreds of professional open water swimming coaches every year, STA has created best practice guidance for swimmers and coaches in follow-up to the Government announcing that outdoor swimming will be permitted – while maintaining social distancing – in England from Wednesday 13th May 2020.

The guidance sets out STA’s safety advice on open water swimming at this time, and provides recommendations in line with COVID-19 rules for both swimmers and professional open water swimming coaches.

Kaylë Brightwell, Head of Qualification Development, says:

“With this guidance, we are aiming to provide a balanced, realistic and common sense approach to the Prime Minister announcing this week that people can participate in open water swimming. I think we all agree under the circumstances that open water swimming in unsupervised waters is currently unsafe, and more so for non-swimmers and non-open water swimmers which the guidance stresses. However, the reality is, is that the Prime Minister has publicly said that people in England can partake in open water swimming, so as a national governing body for swimming we have to address this too and stress, that if people choose to, they do it in the safest way possible with a professional open water swimming coach – and to help coaches in these unusual circumstances we have set out the recommendations to follow in line with COVID-19 rules and best practice.”

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