The first swimming workout I’ve ever tried
I’ve been watching YouTube, a lot. Particularly videos by Cody Miller, US Olympic swimmer and YouTube vlogger. He vlogs about his swim practices as a professional swimmer and I just find them incredibly fascinating. Even more so since I’ve gotten back into swimming as an adult. When I was a kid, I was on a swim team called the Orcas and at 13 I did a ‘kids’ triathlon but that’s as far as my athletic dreams made it. Since I’ve been back in the pool the last 6 month, I’ve really been working on my endurance, and am now looking to change things up a bit from the usual back and forth. I thought about joining a swim team, but in all honesty, I’m not at that skill level yet, I have to work on my endurance, and I have to work on my times.
The current goal is to be able to swim 10 x 50m at a pace of 1:20 each length and in order to get there, I’m going to have to do some swim workouts. I found this one at Aspire Channel Swim.
I had to edit the workout a little from the original in the link below because the pool where I swim is 50 meters not 25 and I didn’t want to overdo it on my first one! I basically cut each 1/2 of each set out but I left the warm-up and swim down as is. As it turns out, however, even that was not enough and until I figure out how to memorize this gargantuan workout – I forgot where I was about halfway through the first set after warm up and in addition to that – I’m not familiar yet with the various effort levels in my swimming ability and until I am, it’s hard for me to swim at a 10 or a 5. I don’t have the context.
You might be wondering how I can’t know what my effort levels are when I swim regularly! Well the fact is that when I go swimming, I generally just go back and forth at the same pace (slow) and occasionally mix up my stroke if I’m getting to sore in my arms or back etc. I haven’t really been pushing myself to go faster and so I have no idea what it feels like to swim at a 10. Well, I think I have a pretty good idea now haha. I’ve also be slapped in the face with the cardiovascular work involved in swimming at a moderate to fast pace, I mean wow! I have a new respect for professional swimmers and really appreciate how much effort and work must go into their training. I’m now on a mission to improve my cardiovascular conditioning so I can actually do the original swim workout without dying.
“No matter how slow you go, you are still lapping everybody on the couch”
Anonymous found on website https://www.swim-teach.com/swimming-quotes.html
THE SWIMMING WORKOUT
Below is the workout I ended up doing. If you’re curious what it originally looked like, I’ve put a link at the end of the workout so you can check it out.
WARM-UP: TOTAL: 8 POOL LENGTHS. (400 Meters)
– Swim 2 lengths at 5/10 (comfortable pace)
– Swim 2 lengths using a kickboard.
– Repeat 2 times.
SET 1: TOTAL: 10 LENGTHS. (500 meters)
– .5 length at 10/10 (sprint!)
– .5 length at 4/10 (slightly slower than your comfortable pace).
– 1 lengths at 9/10
– .5 length at 4/10
– 1.5 lengths at 8/10
– .5 length at 4/10
– 2 lengths at 7/10
– .5 length at 4/10
– 2.5 lengths at 6/10
– .5 length 10/10
REST – 90 seconds (if needed)
WARM DOWN: TOTAL: 4 POOL LENGTHS (200 meters)
– Swim 2 lengths 3/10
– Swim 2 lengths in different stroke (i.e slow breaststroke).
TOTAL DISTANCE SWUM: 22 POOL LENGTHS / 1100 METRES
https://www.aspirechannelswim.co.uk/blog/the-best-cardio-swimming-workout
THE AFTERMATH
I was pretty sore a couple of days after this workout, but I’ve now done it 3 times and it’s already getting easier. The next step after I can complete this, not with ease, but without gasping is to add in Set 2 and 3 from the original workout. Maybe I’ll make myself a small laminated copy to take with me to the pool.
