Learn to ocean swim clinic

During the summer we run clinics in Sydney (Bondi & Manly), Wollongong, Newcastle, Gold Coast (Palm Beach), and the Sunshine Coast (Noosa).

We look to take our clinics on tour throughout Australia in the summer, so if you’d like us to visit you, and you think there’d be plenty of interest, please contact us.

We’ll start off with an ocean awareness session will completely transform how you look at the ocean – including popular myth-busting & 3D sand formation sessions – and it will change how you approach your ocean swimming from that moment on.

We spend our water time establishing the core ocean swimming techniques for sighting and efficiently and effectively diving under waves while swimming.

You will learn how to use the ocean to your advantage and be aware of how to to make smart decisions when navigating in and out of the surf zone.

The highlight of the clinic is a tie between the rip current swimming experience – where you’ll get to swim in a rip current and learn how ocean swimmers use them to their advantage – and the body surfing session at the end.

Participants in this clinic leave looking at the ocean in a completely different way, have a heap of ocean swimming tricks up their sleeve and appreciate what it takes to be an ocean swimmer.

This clinic isn’t about going for an ocean swim, its focus is on developing your techniques. You will need to be able to swim out about 100m offshore, and then tread water/float in-between practising skills that will last for 45-60 minutes. Then you’ll need to swim back to shore.

So, there aren’t any long swims, you won’t be swimming in and out of the surf (that’s the Negotiating The Surf clinic), and there’ll be plenty of rests as you watch demonstrations from your instructor.

The short answer to that is no. You just won’t get enough out of the water-based technique session, as all the techniques taught are built off a freestyle base. We have had people participate and only do breaststroke, and some of them have really enjoyed it.

We would suggest you focus on developing your freestyle stroke with a coach in a pool environment, and if you’d like to learn beach safety and basic confidence, sign up for our Ocean confidence clinic.

No. We require you to learn the techniques we teach with us, so that we know you’re ready and prepared for the Negotiating The Surf clinic. Other than a quick skills refresh, we won’t be teaching the foundation techniques in the NTS clinic.

When it comes to ocean awareness, it is often a case of ‘you don’t know what you don’t know’. We guarantee you will learn things you didn’t know previously, and we will bring everything you do know into a clearer picture of how to get the most out of your knowledge from an ocean swimmers point of view.

When it comes to the ocean swimming skills, your actual swimming skills will definitely help, but the focus is on learning techniques, and not doing lots of ocean swimming. So if you’re a great swimmer, we’d expect you to be able to pick up the techniques faster, and perform them better than others, but you still need to master the core techniques.

We are also very good at spotting great swimmers, and we will help you get even more out of your technique session by having you move onto advanced skills, or we’ll tweak them down to the last 1% of efficiency.

The last clinic of the season is usually towards the end of February, although we do run clinics in March if the weather is nice and there is demand that meets the minimum numbers required.

We suggest if you’re looking to get your training in this season that you do the earliest clinic possible so you don’t miss out.

This is the perfect confidence builder for your first ocean swim, triathlon or open water swim.

It’s also the best place to start if you:

• don’t want to feel anxious and/or scared of the ocean anymore
• want to feel in control when you’re swimming at the beach
• don’t want to feel like you’re battling the waves every time you swim
• don’t really know how the ocean works, or you need your knowledge reaffirmed.

The minimum age is 13-years-old.

Children 10-12 years may attend with a participating parent if they are competent swimmers and are currently in a coached swim squad (i.e. they swim laps).

Only one child per parent.

We believe we have a firm but fair cancellation policy for our clinics that reflects the nature of running a business that has a very limited season in which to operate and that is delivered in a highly volatile ocean environment.

This policy has been in place for more than 10-years, and in part, is the reason why OceanFit is still able to offer our popular clinics.

You should read our Terms & Conditions before you book your clinic, in particular, the sections under ‘Booking conditions’.

Please note:

1. There are no cancellations (refunds) or transfers offered within 7-days of a clinic for any reason.
2. Should a clinic be cancelled due to unsafe or unteachable conditions (out of our control), no refunds are given and clinics are postponed to another date or booking given in credit.

We no longer have a specific COVID cancellation policy.

You should read our Terms & Conditions before you book your clinic, in particular, section 15 under ‘Booking conditions’.

Please note, there are no cancellations or transfers offered within 7-days of a clinic for any reason, including COVID.