Too hot to swim?

This must be an outdoor pool? They can get like a bathtub late in the summer. I would be careful about doing long or especially intense workouts in warm pool water but you should not, generally, have a problem. Do you have an indoor pool option?

Yes Swimming in hot water can be very dangerous and you can die. Best to be on the conservative side. Like anything your body will adapt and you maybe be able to tolerate more and more. Give it time. If 10 mins is all you can handle now then it is still better than nothing.

Thanks. I have a 20 minute slot at an indoor every sat am if open and the beach is a 20 min drive so might try to schedule my swimming over the weekend till it cools down some. Ill ease into a little more if i can. I know its possible watching these motivators suck it up.

I would focus on drills, form work, and short repeats, take extra rest and pour water over your head as needed, make sure to hydrate a lot (with electrolyte drink). I would avoid long, continuous swims and hard repeats with minimal rest. Too-hot pools can be a problem sometimes in the tropics; for me, doing a hard workout in one appears to be a migraine trigger, so I really avoid doing hard training in one.

OTOH, if you are swimming slowly to work on aspects of technique, 90 degrees can be really nice--your muscles will be relaxed and you won't get cold! The pool at our school where the youngest kids start learning to swim is about at that temperature!

I have a pool 200 yds from my office. Since it's a therapeutic pool they keep it at 92 degrees. I can swim about 8 minutes in it and have to stop. You can get dehydrated in it really quickly. The guy who takes care of the pool said he'd leave the heat off this weekend. Hopefully it will drop to the high 70's. I'm pretty sure I could only train for a sprint triathlon with it.

That's not a pool, that's a hot tub.

I tested the water temperature today. It was "down" to 88. Hard to believe 4 degrees would make much of a difference but it seemed like a lot. I probably got about 30 seconds off of a 500 yd swim. You never know if it's just a sudden burst of enthusiasm but it sure felt better.