If you are just starting out or just returning to the pool remember to take it easy and build on each session slowly. There’s nothing worse than getting a few weeks into training and blowing out a shoulder. At my age every injury takes what feels like 100 years to get over, so I know all about it.
To help prevent injury make sure you start on land and loosen those muscles up prior to hitting the water and don’t forget to stretch afterwards.
I swam for many years as a child, in squads, of different levels and at different times of the day. There’s nothing I loath more than just trudging up and down the black line without purpose, so I always try to mix it up to keep it interesting.
To help keep you on target and keep it interesting make sure you always go to the pool with a pre written plan, there’s nothing worse than getting to the pool and just following that black line aimlessly.
Thankfully in the pool there’s a heap of ways to mix it up. If you don’t own some equipment then now is the time to investigate. If you already have some kit, then explore the possibilities and vary your sets.
Try throwing in a kick set or a set with fins on to vary your work out. Did you know that kick sets should make up a large majority of your work out if you want to get faster at swimming?
Each piece of swim equipment focuses on different parts of the stroke and body, so why not give it a go, you may be surprised at the outcome.
The last tip I’ll share with you is to vary the type of swimming you are doing. Swimming is fantastic for working out the various aerobic and anaerobic systems of the body, simply by varying your pace.
Try varying your pace and recovery phases during your sets to hit those different systems. For example an anaerobic set should be something like 10 x 100m with the first 25m swum fast followed by 75m easy and then a 5 – 10 second recovery.
Or you could go for an endurance based set could look something like 100m, then 75m, then 50m, then 25m x 4 with a short rest period of 5-10 sec in between each rep.
As mentioned above write yourself a plan before you head into the pool and you will find your sessions will become more focused and ideally achieve some outcomes. If you are ever in doubt, come and have a chat to one of our friendly coaches and they can point you in the right direction.