Swimming

"Funky".

That's one small step away from "snazzy".

Just ordered some new prescription goggles from goggleyed.co.uk

Bargain at ~£20 so we'll see if they're any good.

Couple of Q's: What's 'SWOLF' and should I pay attention to it?

Also, what's the deal with folks using these big hand attachments to swim with? I get how a kickboard or one of those floats that you hold between your legs is useful, but what's the purpose of something that makes you swim faster than you actually can?

Paddles will strengthen your shoulders. I don’t know if I swim faster with or without them, but I definitely get tired quicker with them.

Paddles should make you faster as bigger area. They're good when you don't want to use your legs. E.g I do swim/run events and paddles means I can save more leg muscles for the running bit, but not compromise swim speed.

SWOLF: I don't bother with it, it's not really granular enough. If you ever get to the point where this kind of stat is important then just look at distance per stroke. Garmins give you number of strokes and distance, so divide the two (and halve it again because it's only counting one arm). Anything less than 1m per stroke and you need to work on your technique (most likely) and power (secondary).

As Colm89 says, paddles are there to get your muscles used to pulling harder. Build up your shoulders/arms and then you can pull harder with each stroke, which means you either go further with each stroke or you're more efficient and use less energy to go as far as you did before with each stroke. Think of them as roughly analogous to running with weights or dragging a tyre or a mini drogue-chute or similar.

I'm at the "time in the pool" stage of getting back into swimming fitness. I don't need to do anything more than build up to being able to do ~4000m in one go non-stop (which is my own personal benchmark based on the distance swimming I tend to do). Once I get to that then I can move one of my 3 weekly sessions to focus on drills (with stuff like paddles, leg bands, focusing on improving breathing, stuff like this), and then the 3rd session a week moves to the equivalent of intervals (e.g. forcing myself to do shorter sets at faster than normal pace, with short recovery periods in-between, in order to get my speed up.)

It's not scientific, but it works for me, my ideal week becomes:

• Long Steady Distance swim (4000m in total, eventually at 1:30/100m to be 1h long, but right now it's closer to 1:50/100m)
  
• Drill specific swim (1h or various bits with generous warm up and cool down)
  
• Intervals swim (~1h long with generous warm up and cool down)
  

Cheers all, good info.

While we’re on the sharing of programs:

Monday: 200m warm up, X x 100’s off 2 mins (currently doing 15, prob up it to 18 or 20 in my next block), 200m cool down
Thursday: coached tri club session

Once the days get a bit longer, I’ll drop to one pool session a week and will be in the sea every weekday morning otherwise

Can confirm there are masters (old men) wearing these at my kids gala today.
All the others are wearing knee lengths.

Went for amanzi kit in the end, if anyone out there wants a recommendation.
Allen’s of Kingsbury sorted us out with great customer service.

I have access to a pool so feel I ought to get some training. My wife did an Art of Swimming course with Stephen Shaw and throughly recommends him. So next month I am off to do a three day course retraining me.

Currently I am v splashy and can’t maintain a front crawl stroke for more than ten breaths or so. I am hoping to get some decent technique as I guess speed and endurance will follow.

I am hoping to get some decent technique as I guess speed and endurance will follow.

Yes, but any technique falls apart very quickly if you've no endurance.

Even if you're swimming is very splashy you'd get more out of a three day course if you go into it with some endurance base. You're not going to hammer in so much dreadful technique in a month that it can't be undone pretty quickly.

I will be swimming five days a week before the course, and have a reasonable cardio vo2max base from turbo training. It’s more that I am going in looking to work on technique with low expectations about suddenly becoming a fast or endurance swimmer. I’d just like to get to the point where swimming for half an hour doesn’t sound like an impossible proposition

I took swimming lessons when I was 30. Couldn’t swim front crawl at all before that but had signed myself up for a short triathlon so had a bit of motivation.

Front crawl is all about technique, once you’ve got the breathing down, you stop worrying about taking a lungful of water and relax a bit. Makes it much easier to focus on the technique and spend less energy thrashing about. Practise makes perfect, though. I soon realised the lessons alone weren’t going to help unless I got in the pool regularly. You’ll get there.

Technique?
Endurance?
Fucks sake, you need some snazzy funky swimming trunks first.

you need some snazzy funky swimming trunks first.

They should also be swish.

Got some shorts from here last year

If you can video yourself, it could be useful to compare to youtube videos. One of the hardest things is learning how to be aware of what you are actually doing in the water.

I will be swimming five days a week before the course

Good, that's the important thing.

and have a reasonable cardio vo2max base from turbo training.

I went back to swimming a few times in my life, once after doing London-Edinburgh-London and another time after marathon training.

Both times I was fucked after no more than 400m of swimming. Second time in the pool I managed 800m. Third time 1200m. Etc, etc.

CV fitness is great, but nothing beats time in the pool doing actual swimming.

tl;dr Turbo training does fuck all for the shoulders.

If you can video yourself, it could be useful to compare to youtube videos.

Even if you can't video yourself you can do a huge amount of good by watching this video both before and after each and every swimming session:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3HhNlysFDs

Alternatively you can watch sun yang’s London 2012 1500m world record. Bad drug cheat, I know, but his form is impeccable.

I have ordered one of those front facing snorkels so I can swim and not worry about the breathing so much until I do the course. At least that way I should have the upper body resilience to not get so physically tired while learning - though am aware how mentally exhausting I find learning to be.

Just ordered some new prescription goggles from goggleyed.co.uk

Bargain at ~£20 so we'll see if they're any good.

They work perfectly, definitely recommended. Bargain!

I’ve finally got back to swimming since moving to East Ham, having a 25m pool 10 minutes walk for home. However 2020 Covid shutdown, then 2021 social distancing (one lane = one swimmer only) and pre-booking through on-line app was a nightmare and oversubscribed.

Things eased up last year, these days I swim three times a week. I keep my stroke relatively slow, just focus on breathing and improving my technique, doing the occasional one lap front crawl.

My target is to swim for one hour without a break, replacing breast stroke with more front crawl. I struggle counting laps, I guess at some point I might get a swim watch to record distances, we will see.

Glad to see this thread has loads of tips / advice :)

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(Without a swim watch, which make a huge difference...)

I struggle counting laps

Count turns, less confusing that counting actual laps.