Swimming Workouts

[cakewalk]

i'm looking to get into swimming as a replacement for running in terms of fitness and exercise.

some of my athletic history, i've been really active throughout my life, participating in many different teams, soccer every year of my life and since i can remember, flag football in middleschool, and track 4 years of highschool. i have relatively no experience swimming, but i know how (to swim).

since college i've deteriorated a bit and i'm looking to swimming for my workout. basically i want to swim 6 times a week

what are some good workouts a beginning swimmer can do?

[Skittles]

swimming is a great way to get/stay in shape.

"knowing" how to swim is a somewhat vague term. if you could be a bit more specific about your skillset i could be more helpful.

obviously any amount of swimming is a good thing. the best gains are from continued exercise, and in swimming this means flipturns. obv you can touch and turn around but that is inefficient and not as good a workout. in addition technique is very important in terms of seeing improvement in your times/conditioning. spinning your arms and kicking your feet real fast isnt going to do anything for you. hence if you provided more info that would be better.

as you become a better and better swimmer, i would recommend increasing variety in strokes and distances. having a pace clock really helps too, so you can know how you are doing.

swimming is a very interval based sport. ideally you should be doing aerobic work taking 10-15 seconds rest per 100 yards. here's a basic workout of 2000 yards (80 laps)

400 loosen up, mix up strokes

200 kick

4x100 free on 10-15 rest (i.e. if you can average 1:45, do them on 2 min)

1 min rest

4x 50 on 10 rest, faster pace than above

1 min rest

4x 25 on 5 rest, all-out

100 easy recovery

2x200 with a pull buoy on 20 rest, focus on technique. best gains in technique are when you are tired. if you can hold technique together now, gains will be rapid.

200 cool down.

shower/stretch

this workout assumes you can do free only, obv more twists can be added.

i've been swimming for about 18 yrs, incl 4 yrs D1, so i have a lot of knowledge on the topic.

feel free to pm or post questions

[cakewalk]

when i was little my mom always signed me up for swimming lessons at various country clubs around my city. i know how to swim and am fairly competent in my athletic abilities.

i was wondering if i would be able to use a stop(wrist) watch to time myself as opposed to a big clock outside the water?

does maximizing swimming's effectiveness lie in knowing various different swimming-strokes?

what do i do if "all out" is just me flailing uncontrollably"

should i look and see if my school offers swimming workout classes?

basically what i planned to do was bike to the gym (5 minutes at most), stretch, run around the track, stretch, jump in the pool, swim around till im tired and can't take it anymore, get out, stretch, go home and repeat the next day.

[big D]

WTF, you have two of the same thread... I'll paste my reply from the other one even though a lot of it was already covered by skittles.

I swam competitively for 13 years so I can answer specific questions if you have them. One important thing I would point out is that just swimming laps isn't going to achieve a whole lot. You need to get your heart rate up... I see a lot of people doing laps at the pool that aren't competitive swimmers that are just swimming back and forth. This won't accomplish much and you need to focus and really exert yourself. The difference between swimming and other forms of exercise is you're never FORCED to swim hard. When you go running and you go up a hill, you're gonna get your heart rate up no matter what. In swimming its always possible to go easy. I don't know how good/bad you are right now so adjust the yardages I write as you see fit.

As a general guideline, with swimming its good to cover all of your bases in one workout unlike weight lifting where you might have an arms day or whatever. A good workout would be to start with a general warm up (2-300 yds), more directed warm up to get your heart rate up a little (6x50), then a medium intensity medium distance set (8x100), a longer distance set (5x200), some stroke drills (8x50) to work on your technique and recover a bit, and finish with some all out sprints (8x25, alternate sprint 25 and easy 25), then 200yd warm down. This is 3400 yards I think, so its probably more than where you should be starting, but it can be a goal for you to work towards. Just trim it down so it suits your ability and the amount of time you plan to swim. A good swimmer's workout might be something like 5-6000 yards done over 1 1/2 to 2 hours.

On the sets you should figure out an interval that gives you sufficient rest to do the entire set at a similar speed so you can stay on the interval. On 100s choose an interval so you get maybe 15-20 seconds rest, 200s take ~30. Its much better to work with intervals instead of taking a specific amount of rest because it forces you to swim at a certain speed and is a good way to notice your progress as you are able to do sets at progressively shorter intervals as you improve.

Heart rate varies person to person so I won't give a rec there, but you should figure out where you want to be for the different types of sets and be taking your pulse between intervals to make sure you don't go too hard or too easy. Just take it for 6 seconds on your neck and multiply by 10, its close enough for what you need to know during a workout.

Also, if you want to look like you know what you're doing, purchase a "drag suit" and a speedo. Regular swim trunks are not for swimmers, and speedos are too skimpy for working out. Swim shops and maybe some other places have baggy suits for wearing over a speedo for exactly this purpose. If you're going to wear trunks at least get some without pockets as the pockets catch water and really drag a lot.

[Grey]

[ QUOTE ]
In swimming its always possible to go easy.

[/ QUOTE ]This is why I swim up waterfalls..

[cakewalk]

hopefully a mod can lock the other one


how do i measure distances in a lap pool ?

[turnipmonster]

your pool is probably either 25 or 50 meters long.

[Assani Fisher]

I need advice on this topic too. I've always known how to swim, but I probably have horrible technique.

I'm in decent shape now, but I still can't swim more than 5 or 6 laps without being dead tired and having to stop. I'm 99% sure that it has nothing to do with my conditioning, as even when I was in great shape for college basketball I still couldn't swim far.

I realize that this is a very general question, but are there any pointers for having better technique and being able to swim for longer distances? All I really want is a good workout; I don't care about making good time or becoming a great swimmer. And I mean, I guess I'm already getting that since I feel fatigued so quickly. But I just think I must be missing out on something.

[cakewalk]

what happens if i like swim hard as i can for 2 links, then swim 2 easy, then 2 hard, then 2 easy etc and so on?

[CharlieDontSurf]

I used to do something similar in HS/college.

simply swim as fast as you possibly can(i.e your racing for the gold medal) one length of the pool and then swim a SLOW steady backstroke back. repeat this process over and over till you can't do anymore freestyle sprints. Now switch to breast stroke for the sprints.

If you are new to swimming/working out you'll probably be able to do like 3 or 4 of these before u just give up.