AIBU to ask if you shower before swimming....

[jewel1968]

I have been having a conversation with someone in the Local Authority about cleanliness in swimming pools and the number of people who don't shower before swimming. Even a shower without soap can remove significant quantities of dirt and grime which means less chemicals are needed in pool water.

We talked about the challenges in trying to nudge people to shower and I promised to explore this with virtual friends. So a few questions:

• do you shower before swimming?
• if you don't can you share why?
• what would persuade you to shower before swimming?
• how would you react if the pool staff told you to shower?
• how effective do you think posters are in communicating the need for showers?

Any other thoughts welcome.....

Also based abroad here. Here you MUST shower beforehand

Basically similar rules to scandivanian poster above. All enforced by lifeguards with a Miss Trunchbull attitude if you dare forget.

What makes it easy:
1)Showers are warm and en route to pool, so theres no route into the pool without walking through the large shower room (about 20 showers dotted about)

2. theres and extra foot wash bit after you have to walk through. its the width of the corridor and about 2m long so no hoping over option.

3)lots of places to hang towels

4)room temp around the pool is kept warm so its not cold walking around it wet.

Gawd, the ‘foot bath’ sheep dip reminds me of school days swimming. Are there still places with them?

No as I don't like a hot shower before getting into cool pool but I would do if it was enforced.

I think it's grim to go swimming without any sort of headcovering. Don't want to swim.on a pool that is full of other people's hair.

You should go on a field trip to Iceland or Denmark or (probably) any Scandinavian country.

They have changing room inspectors who make sure you wash naked with soap. All shoes have a designated area outside the changing area. The pool environment is so much cleaner and more pleasurable as a result. However , try that in London and you'd get your shoes stolen and so many arguments, it's a shame.

If i'm honest, i have never really thought of this much, and wouldn't go out of my way to shower before swimming. I recently did a baby swimming course at a 'nice' pool and nobody showered before swimming there either.

As Pp have mentioned, having to walk through the showers to get to the pool, and there being towel hooks is helpful.

Signs explaining why it is important.

Enforcing it at school swimming lessons, usually held at public baths. Would make it normal.

Wow. Thanks everyone. I have lots of ideas now to share. Really interesting to hear other approaches in other countries. I will report back. From my research even a shower with no soap removes 80% of dirt and grime.

zipityflippity I was going to post that when I was on holiday in Denmark the summer the lifeguard made me go back and shower again as I had just washed my body and they wanted me to wash my hair again more throughly. There were very detailed instructions about how to shower before entering the pool that I had missed the first time due to chasing after toddler DD!

I do if the showers are close to the pool and genuinely warm. Lots of places you have a longish walk to the pool and you get freezing really fast on the way. After I've been in the pool I'm really warm from swimming so don't feel the cold as much. I have to say it's normally still a very brief shower though, I think if there were more showers and they had doors I'd be more likely to wash properly.

Another one who has been to Denmark. I paid at the entrance and watched as everyone picked up a large bath towel and a pre-soaped sponge before they went into the changing room. Everyone stripped off, took their sponge into the shower, showered and put on cozzies before entering the pool area. An attendant kept an eye on everyone and quietly but firmly explained to anyone who hadn't showered that it was compulsory (lots of Brits at this particular pool). Lots of posters on the walls explaining why it was so important.

In Germany recently. At the complex, the showers were inside the pool area. People stripped off in the hanging rooms, wrapped their towels around themselves, then showered in full view of everyone else before putting their swimwear on and getting into the pool. Reverse performance after swimming - swimwear off, shower, towel around and into the changing room.

Yes every time. Swimming tends to be a holiday activity for me.

Yes I do. People’s perfume and products affect my breathing when they enter the pool.

Look up the Bristol Lido facebook posts - they ran a campaign ‘shower naked before you swim’ with the reasons why.

Just tried to capture an image of the posters up in our swimming pool changing rooms. Hope I can dump it here.

In the foreground you should see the poster highlighting the areas to be washed. In the background there is an image showing that you need to wash with swim cozzie off. There is also an image of a gun being held and the caption 'here you should not have your hands up, but your bathing costume down' - an illusion to the saying 'hands up, or trousers down'.

I took the image off of a 3D tour on the internet, I haven't been whipping my camera out in the showerS

Our local pool has a shower on the way through to the pool so I always have a rinse under it on the way in. It is normally bloody freezing though!

I don't normally shower before swimming. If there are showers by the pool I will but I don't normally at my pool.

This is because I just didn't think I needed to! I shower in the morning and so I always just assumed I was clean. Plus I find swimming pool showers really disgusting.

What would make me do it:
Clean showers (and I mean very clean)

Warm showers poolside

Signs telling me to

I probably wouldn't go swimming if I had to shower communally naked before hand tbh.

I will shower from now on!

To be fair if there had been a sign I would have done it despite my reservations about the gross showers.

Oh yes, its naked showers here also.
You can also only use the saunas, steam rooms, jacuzzi and outdoor heated pools naked. Costumes only allowed in main swimming length pool and 'fun' pools ie slides, baby pool

I do see the logic of banning costumes but I don't think I'm brave enough to ditch mine

You get used to it SnuggyBuggy , now I only feel uncomfortable if I spot someone I know in the changing rooms. Most of the time I walk around in a short-sited haze stark bollock naked and think nothing of it. Of course, this is in the single-sex changing rooms. And when everyone else is starkers it is awkward to be the odd one out doing to towel dance

the towel dance

StrawberryTraveller Is that all mixed sex nakedness?

At our (LA run pool) the showers aren’t that warm or that convenient. Even though it’s a new(ish) pool, only a few years old and built on the site of the previous pool, the showers are those push-button ones that usually stay on for the grand total of 20 seconds. If I was on my own (usually take DN) I’d just dry off and wouldn’t bother with a shower till I got home.

To answer your question:

I’ll have already had a shower that morning and I don’t believe I’ll get massively dirty in 4/5 hours sat at home. If there were more showers that were a) warm, b) actually ran water for a time I choose (I take longer as I have lots of thick hair that takes forever to get properly wet, if shower stayed on I’d be done in half the time it currently takes me). Heat the pool and area around it better, like pp said, you get into a warm(ish) shower then walk out into cold air and get into cold water, I won’t be taking DN again (she does have lessons with school and privately) until the weather gets better. If pool staff asked, of course I would - genuinely didn’t realise about moisturiser etc. I’d focus posters on pointing out how oils/moisturiser/make up can affect the water.

I don’t always as I go first thing in the morning and have showered at home. I don’t wear makeup or hair product to the pool.
I would if I went later in the day.