Over the course of the last two months, I have been swimming at a lake nearby where the water temperature has varied between 5-10 Celsius. There are two approaches I have used so far. One involved going for a run at sunrise before cycling to the lake. This has worked until recently but I did not find the time to practice visualisation meditation. In fact, I did not even have time for breakfast.

The second approach which involves swimming at sunset is what I shall describe here:

1. Meditate before you swim. Try to visualise the entire swimming process during the meditation session. If you will swim for 10 minutes, meditate for 10 minutes.

2. Do a bit of stretching and warm up on the lake front. It is especially important to get your breathing under control as advised by Wim Hof.

3. Gently apply the breaststroke for the first two minutes in the water. And pay attention to the beauty of your surroundings as you do this. This will help you get over the cold shock.

4. Now, you’re ready to swim. Try, as much as possible to swim in a straight line. Focus on your technique as you count every fifth stroke.

5. The math is simple. In total, you will have to swim $$10 \cdot N$$ strokes. If each stroke covers a meter, then after ten counts you will have travelled a hundred meters.

So far this approach has allowed me to swim more than 200 metres. But, the ultimate goal is to swim more than 1 km before February 2022.

For that I will probably need to refine my approach to training.