Swimming

^^ waaaay expensive. good luck if you do it.
Ive got 2 weeks to get to the point of rinsing 1k (40 lengths) out tumble turning every lap, and finish it without any oxygen deficit.
better get training then...

got any tumble turning tips?

i used to be adept as a kid but not so much these days. tried it a few times on returning to swimming a few years back but found i was erratic and liable to bang elbows or kick off into the bottom or into the adjascent lane. i tend not to do it in training out of fear that i'll cause a pile up. plus in interval training i'm often so on the limit that the thought of that extra couple second without breathing will make me explode. must force myself to default to it rather than saving it for leisurely distance swims.

any good tips for consistant turns?

i need to start swimming again.. i used to cycle over to parliament hill lido, when it was free 08.00 - 09.00 it used to be a 60m pool before it was overhauled 2005/06. great for triathlon training.. water was freezing, could only manage 40 mins, no wet suit only a tri suit but 2 swimming caps (gods knows why).. then cycle to camden for a huge cooked breakfast before work.. twice a week

btw - i could never tumble turn.

keep your stroke up on approach to end, you can be reaching towards the wall, and have fingers of one hand not far off, break it down into three parts,
forward flip,
twist,
push off the wall,

Im still getting it smooth, but you need to do it shallow, and try not to blow out all your air, keep breath steady as you do it,

(EDIT just watched the vids on this thread--some proper good shit technique there!

spent an hour at queen mother pool just cruising at about 60% (starting to think about this 5k in april) and doing tumble turns. 9 out of 10 seem to be going smoothly now. it's just the odd one that i forget to hold enough breath for go too deep and have to come up at too sharp and angle and ruin all my mometum. just practice i guess. getting there slowly.

as it was pretty quiet (even at 5:45) did 4x100 medley sprints to finish off. fun little session.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtP8xgzm6do

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJeENNNK5Iw&feature=fvw

Having not swam since my schooldays I have been swimming 4 times in the last 2 weeks after a gap of well over 20 years. Jesus it's hard work. I can see an improvement each session but the 750metres I am building up to for a tri in June seems a lifetime away at the moment - it does get easier right?

everything gets easier with practice.
even stuff you dont want to do.
swim well young jedi.

What's the pool in Balham leisure centre like, anybody know? I want a decent local pool that isn't too busy so I can paddle about without too many people shouting "thar she blows" jokes at me.

There's a new Virgin Active in Streatham that does memberships starting from £54pm which is quite reasonable for VA, but still on the expensive side and it'd mean I'd need to cycle along Streatham High Road to get there and back which I hate hate hate.

The Balham place is more reasonably-priced even though their brochure looks like a recruitment doc for some weird cult. The 'kinetika journey'? Any other recommendations in the area?

don't know that one i'm afraid bothwell. i can't bring myself to pay for a virgin or any other gym membership. give it a go and let us know.

am going to miss thursday training this week so going to try and get some extra sessions in at queen mother and possibly london fields too if i can get away frm work early though. must get a wetsuit and get out into paliamnet hill and hampstead heath ponds soon too.

here's the backstroke session from last week. i recomend it if you want something to make you feel like you've been beaten up.

1x800 alternating front and back (warm up)
8x25 fly sprints on 1min
5x100 backstroke on 2 mins
50 easy
5x100 backstroke on 2 mins
50 easy
5x100 backstroke on 2 mins
8x50 frontcrawl kick
4x75 medley relay pull drills

Woah... that looks tough Dooks. Want to get to that point within the next two months.
I'm back in the pool after nearly 5 months out. Even 800m total for me at the moment is hard work. Slowly, slowly...

Jack Lalanne died recently. He performed what was probably the most incredible swimming feats in history.

1x800 alternating front and back (warm up)

Thats not a warm up.

Jack Lalanne died recently.

Sheeeit,
he only reached 96, what chance do the rest of have.
RIP

Recently got back into my swimming routine. Cannot believe i used to do it 4x a week.
Dooks id say get some Parliment Hill Lido time in before the summer swimmers begin to emerge.

If you are dopping the pace then I think you are doing something wrong.

Isnt the whole point of interval training to get a certain amount of work done in a specific amount of time? If you slow down, you are clearly not going to finish your laps or whatever within the interval time. If you were able to slow things down midway to catch your breath, then you would also be dropping your intensity, again the very point of high-intensity-interval-training.

I follow this guide for intervals in the pool

http://effectivewaterfitness.com/swimming-interval-training/

The idea is to get to a state where you think you are about to die :P

faster. deeper.

better.
stronger.

With running / cycling, I can get into a state where I want to die quite easily, but safe in the knowledge that my lungs might burst and my chest explode, but I can't do that in the pool without significant drowning risk - My stroke rate can't keep up with my need to breathe faster and deeper.

What intervals are you trying to do? Try starting from a low base; say one fast length every six or eight and increase the frequency of the fast lengths as you get more comfortable.

seriously tiswas, i think mike and dfp have it. your intervals need to be fixed in time other wise they're not really intervals. they need to be achievable though so perhaps make them shorter?

look at any of the masters sets i've posted recently. the last one i put up was 5x100 backstroke on 2 minutes. so probably working at about 70 or 80%. we completed the100m in 1:50, had 10 seconds rest and off again. repeat five times then a 50m "easy" to recover and repeat the whole process three times. if i started to lag by the second or third set of i found i was getting 5 or less seconds rest so i had to push harder to get ahead enough to have a breather. obviously it gets tougher and tougher as you get more and more tired but that's the beauty of it. you have to push and push just to get back in time to get that precious recovery time. also the beauty of training with other people; you can't lag behind because you'll disrupt everyone else... or at least suffer the indignity of of slipping back down the order or even going down a lane.

having said that, i've done plenty where of sets where it's obvious that try as we might, we're (collective decision in the lane usually) going to be missing the time or swimming contually though the recovery time so we need to adjust the target a little bit. no-one can sprint at 100% for set after set. i think it's about finding your limit and pushing at it. if you try to exceed it by too much straight away you're setting yourself up to fail... and yep possibly drown. which isn't good.

this 100 metres thing is actually pretty important.
if you can work on getting good consistant times, after doing an event with a KM swim,
you can easily work out what you did per 100 m by dividing the time by ten.
then see if you have rinsed it or not.

We're using "Cruise Intervals" at the training I go to. It's fairly new to me but essentially we did a 1500m TT which was put through some maths to give us each our cruise interval. This is then used to set Swim Intervals we do at sessions now. Cruise Interval is then re-measured again... although I've missed this to date.

Obviously helps to have coaches who know what this is all aboot and how it works...

go easy with cruising on here mate, you never know.

Lol. I think there's a bit of Scientology behind this training method...

found this while at my folks on sunday. that's me aged about 11 or 12 coming in a distant second in lane 5. i have an extensive collection of silver medals from this period. always with the second. i was clearly the buzz aldrin of WGSC juniors.

EDIT: just realised that by posting that pic i probably now qualify for a place on the sex offenders register.

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