It's safe to go back in the water (pool sharks only come in human form).
When things get a bit dull or a bit injury-focused in your fitness world, it’s good to get a change of pace. And what better than an infusion of refreshing wetness (swimming, that is)? The good news is that you don’t have to know how to execute a crisp flip-turn or a perfect butterfly stroke to make swimming part of your workout routine.
Which of the following sums up your swimming experience?
- You were on your neighborhood team in elementary school but haven’t swum much since.
- You know how to swim, but you were never on a team, and the outcomes of your flip-turn attempts include either head-gashes or anticlimactic missed-the-wall-again moments.
- Your parents taught you how to swim and you’ve always been comfortable in the ocean, but you haven’t swum in a pool a lot.
- You’ve never felt comfortable in the water, and you wish all bathing suits were made with built-in floaties.
If you answered 1, 2, or 3, read on.*
Here are a few helpful hints on how to get started and how to keep it interesting.
1. Get the Necessities
Luckily, you don’t need much: a suit and a pool (or warm lake or ocean).
If you’re swimming a few times a week, a chlorinated pool will eat your regular bathing suit in about two months. You might want to invest in a fitness swimsuit with a high percentage of polyester. Suits with 90% polyester (and up) will fit more snugly (give more support) and last way longer in all that chlorine.
Goggles are strongly advised. They should fit without giving you a squeeze-headache. You might have to try a few pairs to find ones you really like.
A swim cap is a good idea for people with hair. While Strawhead might be an endearing nickname if you’re 8, it isn’t particularly so once you’re out of elementary school.
2. Toys Are Fun
There are a few inexpensive objects you can get that help change-up your swim routine. They can also be useful if you have certain injuries.
- A pull buoy is good to get if you want to work on your upper-body strength. It’s also perfect if you have leg injuries and can’t exercise much using your lower body. Put the buoy between your legs (above your knees) and swim freestyle with your arms. If you’re used to doing flip-turns, you can still do them with the buoy.
If you look closely, you can see the pull buoy and the hand paddles
- Hand paddles are also a nice way to up your arm workout, and you can use them with the pull buoy to get a little more speed. They come in different sizes, and, though you might not think that getting ones that are about the same size as your hands would do anything, you’d be surprised.
These (and Lycra hand gloves) give a pretty big boost without putting undo strain on your shoulders.
- Fins can improve your kicking strength and boost ankle flexibility. These come in different sizes and materials. The same idea applies here as with the hand paddles (shorter fins add just enough extra surface area to boost your kick speed without a lot of stress on your joints, and softer material helps if you’re new to kicking with fins). Avoid really long scuba-style fins; the length and design work with slow movements, so you won’t get the same benefits as you would with short- or medium-blade fins.
- A kickboard can be a good way to switch up your swim routine. Kickboards can make your neck and shoulders sore. Starting with a small kickboard or one with less flotation helps.
- A blowup dolphin doesn’t have anything to do with a swim routine, but it always looks like a good time.
3. Prepare Mentally
Be ready to start out slowly. Even if you’re in great running, biking, hiking, or parkour shape, swimming will still probably kick your arse a bit in the beginning. Having realistic expectations will help, especially when you hop in the pool next to someone who seems to be a mako shark in disguise.
4. Fight the Freeze
While showering before you swim is good hygienic practice, it’s also helpful for other reasons. If you shower first, your skin, hair, and bathing suit will soak up the shower water, which means they’ll soak up less pool water, and you and your suit will suffer less from the chlorine. Showering first will also make it easier to hop in the pool (when you’re wet and slightly chilly out of the water, you have more incentive to just get in the pool and start swimming).
5. Observe Lane Etiquette
When there is one other person in the lane, sharing a lane means splitting the lane down the center and staying on your side. Common etiquette is to stick to the strokes you can do that will keep you on your side (refrain from doing backstroke until you’re sure you won’t drift over and head-butt your lane partner).
When there are three people in one lane, you’ll do a circle-swim (down one side, back on the other side). Stick to the right side of the black line on the bottom of the pool, and you’ll be fine.
6. Jump in: the Warm-up
OK, you’re in the water. Take your time for the first few laps (it takes your body a little while to get used to a different breathing pattern). Most lap pools will be 25 meters long.
With the workout suggestions below, 1 x 25 means one lap (one time across the pool), and 2 x 25 means two laps (one time across and one time back).
Depending on your strength level and swimming ability, your warm-up could look like 5 x 25 with plenty of breathing breaks in between, or a longer distance with a mix of different strokes (1 x 50 free, 1 x 50 back, 1 x 50 breast, and repeat).
Take it easy the first week, and don’t get pissed if progress is slow. It might take a little while to build up to a point where you can start adding variety and timing into your workout. Also, try not to swim two consecutive days in a row; give your body the time it needs to recover.
7. Think About Technique
Keep your movements smooth; try not to let your body just slop about, and try not to get overly aggro either (crank-and-spank isn’t the motto for swimming). You can learn a lot from watching good swimmers—notice how they glide through the water instead of flopping or thrashing.
The main concern is to have a good body position while you swim.
One thing that will help with good body position is keeping your core engaged. Your arm pulls and kicks should be relaxed and smooth, but your core should be strong. It’s a bit of a paradox because you’re trying to be all relaxed, fluid, and cool with the world and, at the same time, you’re trying to keep your core strong. It’s tough, but if you keep it in mind as you swim, it’ll help with all aspects of your stroke.
There are some really good Internet articles about stroke technique if you Google around a bit (see the links at the end of the article). If you have the cash, you can take a class, join a masters program in your area, or get a personal trainer to help you improve.
8. Breathe
When you’re swimming freestyle, work toward becoming comfortable with bilateral breathing (breathing on both your left and right side). A common pattern with bilateral breathing is to breathe on your right side, take two strokes, then breathe on your left side, stroke, stroke, right side, etc. This helps you with your swim technique and your body rotation (the roll of your shoulders and hips as you swim).
9. Avoid the Black-Line Blues
Swimming can get mind-numbingly boring if you aren’t switching up your routines.
These are some of the routines that are the easiest to remember and the easiest to cater to your strength level:
1. Pyramid
25, 50, 75, 100, 75, 50, 25
Or any combination like this, with brief (maybe five-breaths or so, or more if needed) breaks between each.
2. Cycle
A cycle combines the pyramid idea with multiple sets of each distance, like:
1 x 100, 2 x 75, 3 x 50, 4 x 25
or longer distances, like:
1 x 400, 2 x 300, 3 x 200, 4 x 100, 5 x 50
So in each of these, you increase the number of reps while decreasing the distance.
3. Varying Stroke
You can switch up a routine just by varying which stroke you do: 25 free, 50 back, 75 breast, 100 free, 75 breast, 50 back, 25 free.
4. Endurance
12 x 400
10 x 800
5. Fartlek
(Fartlek means ‘speed play’ in Swedish, just in case you’ve always wondered where that comes from.)
1 x 25 slow, 1 x 25 fast, 1 x 50 slow, 1 x 50 fast, 1 x 100 slow, 1 x 100 fast (and then work your way back down to make it a pyramid workout as well).
10. Experiment with Timing
Most pools will have a big clock on the wall. Once you get to a certain point, it can be fun to start to bring timing into your workout routines. With all the set-based exercises above, you can mess with the amount of time between either the laps or the sets to make it more challenging. Many swimmers start out with a set ‘break’ time between sets and slowly decrease that time throughout the routine so you get less and less break time.
10.5 Have Fun
If you have pool hints or swim stories you’d like to share, feel free to comment below.
Helpful Links:
Technique: learning the basics of each stroke and having fun:
http://www.enjoy-swimming.com/
This is a great website with tips broken down by beginner, intermediate, and advanced swim levels, along with helpful videos and pictures:
Other Workouts:
Check this page out for detailed beginner, intermediate, and advanced swim routines (scroll to the bottom to download routines):
http://www.fitnesshealth101.com/workout-routines/swimming
Check here for 50 swim workouts:
http://ruthkazez.com/50swimworkouts.html
*If you have a lot of trouble breathing when you swim, or if you’ve never felt comfortable in the water, join a class or get a swim-specific personal trainer to help you before trying to handle the water on your own.
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Tags: get back into swimming, pull buoys, swim fitness, swim routines, swim workouts, why bathingsuits come apart in chlorine