Monday, March 26, 2012

Swimming With Dreadlocks

Ocean: Dreads are natural swimmers, especially in the ocean.  Salt water is probably the best product to use in your hair.  It helps tighten them faster, especially if you palm roll them during your swim.

Fresh Water: Lakes, streams and rivers wont do damage to your hair.  They may seem to come apart a little in their early stages.  Don't fret.  Keep palm rolling and crocheting.

Pools: Say NO to public pools.  I have been a swim teacher for over 7 years now.  Unlike natural bodies of water, pools are small confined bodies of water.  Although they are filtered, there is still a lot of traffic on a day to day basis (with public pools anyway).  Every person that goes into the pool, will leave behind small bits of whatever their body dropped off (hair, skin, saliva).  Those bodily products are floating around in the water, and if they come across your nice clean dreads, they'll get stuck in their like lint to velcro.  You can wash them, but its very unlikely that you'll be able to get all that scum out.  Wear a swim cap, you worked hard for your nice dreads.
Chlorine will damage your hair, natural or dreaded, especially if you swim on a regular basis.  Stick to salt water pools and swim caps.

Dreadren at the beach rolling his baby locks.

2 comments:

  1. This might appeal to some people - http://www.etsy.com/listing/107065227/dreadlock-swimming-cap-dread-swim-cap

    I personally swim in public pools.. I tie my dreads up into a bun on top of my head as best I can, and just swim. I'm not the type of person to put my head under water, and I rinse rinse rinse rinse when I get out.

    Salt water is such a godsend! I live 70miles from the sea, so whenever I do go to coast, I take some bottles to bottle some sea water :)

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  2. check the swim cap offered by eggheadsoques.com

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