Hair Care Regimen for Swimmers

Since the summer is here and I've been getting tons of emails asking me about swimming and hair care I figured I should give you guys a sample hair care regimen for swimmers. Here is something you might not know about me, I was a swimmer as a child for my town, in high school and I did a short stint as a diver in college. The one thing that always boggled my mind about swimming was not my hair, instead it was why the swim season is in the winter! I digress, anyway, back to hair care and swimming.

Whether your hair is relaxed or natural the most important thing about swimming and taking care of your hair is you must get the chlorine or salt water out of your hair. All this jazz about pre-rinsing or putting conditioner on your hair before you swim is fine if that's what you want to do, but the bottom line is that your hair will get wet and chlorine will get in there so make sure you get it out! With that being said, you do not need to shampoo it out. A nice co-wash or plain old water rinse will get it out, I just prefer (by 100x) to co-wash.

What I use to co-wash: VO5 Moisture Milk Conditioner

During the summer when I'm swimming a lot, I do not change up the number of times I wash my hair with shampoo. I stick to washing my hair once a week with shampoo. Usually, I try to use a shampoo without SLS or I just use my Shikakai Shampoo Bar. My rule is that I do not shampoo my hair more than once a week, even if I'm not swimming and it's just hot and I feel like my scalp needs refreshing before the 1 week mark, I just co-wash.

Since I tend to live in the pool when it's hot, I like to step up my conditioning regimen. Instead of deep conditioning just once a week, I try my hardest to deep condition twice a week. Plus, whenever I swim if I co-wash I treat that as my shampoo, meaning I use a separate conditioner after I co-wash. My choice is almost always an "instant" conditioner, instead of a deep treatment type of conditioner. I only use a deep treatment conditioner twice a week.

Styling is the biggest issue I face. For the most part I just put a little extra conditioner on my ends and then put my hair into a low bun, especially if I know I'll be swimming the very next day. If not, I might do something relatively easy that requires no heat like two strand twists. I stay away from heat styling because there really is no point for me, why bother with that when we all know too much heat causes damage? The easiest thing to do is air dry, if you have issues with air drying click that link and read my tips for air drying.

Do you have more tips? Leave them in the comments section.