Our Vision

 
 

OUR MISSION

We discover, create, and practice programs founded in knowledge and experience that actualize maximum human potential through open water sports, primarily open water swimming.

HOW WE PRACTICE OUR MISSION

We practice certain principles that guide our open water endeavors. These practices reflect the community that grows around WaveOne Open Water, not as rules, but as a purpose driven, fun, awesome life that organically flourished over the last decade.

 1.       Remain Curious - Stimulate and follow your natural curiosity. Remain childlike in your questions. Become your own experiment as you challenge your realm, the norm, and create a new world.

2.       Activate Your Unlimited Potential - Acknowledge and reject internal limiting thoughts, external behaviors and negative people that prevent growth. Discover, visualize, and rely on our inner positive resources. Use roadblocks, resistance and shortcomings as stepping stones in a process to achieve new frontiers, change and goals. Create goals that scare you.

3.       Get Discomfortable - Become comfortable with discomfort.  Discomfort is our price of admission to a meaningful life. Nothing worth achieving comes without hard work, pain, or suffering. Reap incredible benefits working through huge challenges, like the how extreme discomfort of cold-water swimming super charges your health. Comfort is an enemy to our success.

4.       Adapt - We cannot will or command a stormy ocean to be calm. Do not fight the water, it always wins. We observe, evaluate, take responsibility for our place in the current conditions and adapt to them. Convert negative perceptions into positive action.

5.       Prepare for the Worst Conditions – How we adapt and perform in situations and conditions is predicated upon how we prepare for the unexpected. Preparation is an antidote for fear. Take risks but don’t be a liability. Ultimate responsibility is yours for your processes, safety, successes, failures, and consequences. Your preparation and response determine your path.

6.       Swim Toward the Shark - Trust yourself. It’s not always easy. “Get down into your gut and let something deeper than the thought process guide you. Hold your ground and set the energy.” “Fear is a natural signal…if you don’t respect it, you can’t deal with it.” “Fear is an indicator, telling us what we need to do.” Love yourself.

7.       Nature is our best teacher - Remain open minded to accept nature’s lessons. The water treats all bodies the same. We are individuals blessed with our own divinity swimming in one ever changing ocean. Nature’s diversity strengthens our community. Although water is the ultimate example of welcoming and inclusiveness, it is also righteous and merciless in treating those over-confident and unprepared by teaching universal lessons of life and death. Scientiae cedit mare: "the sea yields to knowledge".

8.       Share your lessons and experiences - Fundamental to our mission is to educate people in healthy open water participation. Sharing your experiences can benefit someone else and yourself in unforeseen ways. Gifting authentic experience opens the door to honest transformation in others and ourselves. We share so much fun, triumph and joy, as well as the hard work that brings us the rewards.

9.       Free access to open water everywhere is a universal right - Water is a life-giving element and does not discriminate. We are not special in the water yet exclusion to it shows an abuse of power and entitlement. Our community respects the environment. We are committed to improving its condition from our activities wherever we gather. Protect its integrity and leave only wet footprints.

10.   Practice gratitude - We are guests of the water and its inhabitants. We are only a tiny drop in its vast bounty and unlimited energy. Humble acceptance of the gifts we receive creates more energy for all those we encounter. Give thanks in your own way.

Quotes:

1.        WaveOne

2.       “The size of your dreams must always exceed your current capacity to achieve them. If your dreams don’t scare you, they aren’t big enough.” -Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

3.       “Discomfort is our price of admission to a meaningful life.” - Brene Brown

“We are so successful at becoming comfortable that comfort has become an enemy to our success.” “If we always choose comfort, we never learn the deepest capabilities of our mind and body.” - Wim Hof

4.        WaveOne

5.        “Don’t be a liability” – Laird Hamilton

6.        “Get down into your gut and let something deeper than the thought process guide you. Hold your ground and set the energy.” - Kimi Werner, Fishpeople

“Fear is a natural signal…if don’t respect it, you can’t deal with it.” – Wim Hof

“Fear is an indicator telling us what to do…” - Ryan Holiday

7.       “Cold (Nature) is so merciless - but so righteous.” Wim Hof

The US Coast Guard academy's motto is “Scientiae Cedit Mare: The sea yields to knowledge".

8.        WaveOne

9.       “Our community respects the environment. We are committed to leaving no physical trace of our activities wherever we gather. We clean up after ourselves and endeavor, whenever possible, to leave such places in a better state than when we found them.” -  10 Principles of Burning Man

10.    WaveOne

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OUR COMMUNITY

What began in 2009 as a means to healthy open water swimming, quickly blossomed into a community from all walks of life curious to try open water swimming. There's a collective positive energy that unites us and empowers us to attempt new challenges and grow. Individuals jump in one day and return next week with a group of friends. We cheer each other and later are captivated by their stories of trial and triumph. 

Various groups make their open water home with us. Over the years, Special Olympics Potomac River Dolphins formed a team and compete throughout the world. Strive to Tri, Red White and Blue, DC Triathlon Club, Tri DC, Nations Capital Swim Club, High Cloud Foundation and many more groups jump in every week. In the last 10 years, Swim for the Potomac attracted hundreds of age group swimmers (and their parents) to try a 3K, 5K or 10K swim.