Swimming - a beginners guide

tbeat

hi ive an opportunity to nip to the pool most days durning work for a hour. am not a strong swimmer, but i was just wondering how good is it for weight loss and can it compliment training to improve cycling strength etc??

Harry B

It's good for exercising muscles you wouldn't usually use and good for core muscles you would use but it's sooooooo tedious. You really need to do length after length of pusing yourself pretty hard to get any weight loss.

Vivid

Cross training is never a problem.

The amount of exercise you do has no effect on weight loss its only affected by calories in to calories out.

chriskempton

As a triathlete, I find the balance between the different sports a really good thing. If you only ever do one sport, you adapt to that really well, but become a bit, well, unbalanced (physically, I mean). Swimming is a good all round upper body exercise that fits well into the day (I swim on lunch breaks once or twice a week). It would be beneficial for your cycling by improving your core strength, making you more solid on the bike.

Swimming's not, however, the best weight loss exercise - the fact that it's not weight bearing means it's lower in kcal/hour than running or cycling. OTOH, it's great for avoiding injuries and is quite a soothing way to work out once you've got a reasonable technique together.

tbeat

thanks for the reponse folks, i went today for the first time, and my upper body ache's. its something i thought would be my best choice as my time at the sports centre is quite short. i agree it can be a bit boring. a lot of mental strenght required!

heavymental

I find it quite meditative to be honest. In a rhythm and just ploughing up and down. Ok, its not that exciting but once you're actually in the pool its ok. Try mixing it up. I start off with a challenge to see how far I can go underwater. I then do lengths where I might do 3 or 4 strokes on the surface then dive to the bottom. Do sets of hard effort and easier recovery lengths. Structure it like a gym session. See how many lengths you can do in 10 minutes and try and beat it each week.

Its good exercise. Non weight bearing so no pressure on joints and sometimes you get to see nice girls not wearing much. :oops:

bornagainbiker

Ploughing up and down the lengths doing the same old stoke is not only boring but not as good for you as alternating your strokes, it really is worth getting someone to assess your stokes and see if they can be improved.

The best thing to do is to have a quick chat with the more experienced swimmers in the swimming lane if like me they will only be too pleased to pass on any good gen.

You need to make a game of it to relieve the boredom. Do sets of 100m with 20secs rest between each 100m (time yourself with the BIG speedo clocks at the ends of the pool)

try and keep up with a slightly better swimmer.

Do 2 lengths free 1 breast 2 back 1 breast 2 free etc or try a pyramid ( 1 length 30 secs rest, 2 lengths 30 secs rest up to 4 then come back down 321 ) you dont have to go at breakneck speed just concentrate on your stroke+breathing you'll improve your pace and stamina.

Cheers

cougie

Add a couple of sessions of running at lunch hour - that will burn the calories quicker than swimming and give you a good cardio workout. Start off gently though.

Mettan

I got back in the pool recently (as a way into Triathlon next year) and found my bike fitness had little or no positive effect on my swim fitness (with regular swimming, it comes on quickly though, and getting back into "breathing out under water" - that's the key to it all really) - Also, again, personally I haven't found my swim fitness to carry over to the bike - not sure why, but in my case it hasn't done much in either direction. Having said that though, I'd certainly keep the swimming and biking going, but don't expect substantial gains in either direction (All IMHO of course).

heavymental

Octopush is supposed to be a good pool based game for fitness btw. Look out for a club near you.

MIsterGoof

Coming from a swimming background (had to retire due to injury :shock: )

There is defuinatly some good advice here

Get some advice on your technique (poor technique will give you injurys), swimming is 90% technique
Find a club or open club sessions if you want to improve quickly
Keep the sessions fresh by not doing the same things all the time, but have 1 or 2 things that you do regularly so you can see your own improvement
Set yourself achievable targets
Warm up
warm down (if you've been pushing it)
Enjoy it

And 1 don;t do
DO not wear a watch, I've had too many cuts on my arrms from Triathlets flailing arms and on one occasions 10minutes after I asked the guy to take it off.

Mettan
we used to refer to something called Water Fit, no matter how fit you are, getting back into the water of some time off always HURT, let alone those damn elephants jumping on your shoulders 25m from the end of a race.

ddraver

can you get in a club - Mine in Llandudno is 120 for the year (which runs sessions three times a week, although i only go twice) where the pool costs about 3 quid to get in anyway

its humiliating being K'd up the A by a loads of 12 year old girls but we do 2 hr sessions and cover about 4km each one, with various drills/stroke work/HR work etc

JGS

cougie wrote:

Add a couple of sessions of running at lunch hour - that will burn the calories quicker than swimming and give you a good cardio workout. Start off gently though.

Running is fairly bad for losing weight if you are quite overweight to start with. It'll trash your knees and joints and leave you worse off than if you did some Swimming or Cycling combined. However if you're not too overweight running can be a wonderful thing.

As for swimming, it may not lose lots of calories per hour, but it helps build muscles you don't normally use a lot, and more muscle mass increases the amount of calories you will naturally burn in a day. This will help a gradual weight loss overall and help with the bike as it strengthens the core as most people say. The cardio fitness you gain will also help you move into other activities without that "oh my god I can't breathe and feel like I am about to die!" feeling. Try looking for their "short length" or "adult improvers" classes, they generally focus on people new to swimming and there are usually a few lifeguards on hand to give a bit of advice too.

About 7 years ago I was 19 stone (I'm 6' 2" so I didn't look like Rick Waller). I started off swimming and cycling regularly. As I increased my fitness and lost weight I started going to the gym and using the rowing machines and cross trainers. Only when I got down to 14 stone did I start running. This is because I had knee problems anyway and my doctor warned me that if I tried running at 19 stone I'd probably end up not walking ever again, and he also mentioned that this advice is universal although possibly not as serious.

Ieuanllan

I can only reiterate the bits about getting people to look at your technique, it's incredible what a difference a few pointers will make.

The main one with most people's front crawl is: Look at the bottom of the pool - if you're looking ahead, your head will be sticking up and your torso will droop down causing loads of drag. So look at the bottom, get your body as near parallel with the waters' surface as you can manage, and feel the glide begin!

Fitness wise, I find that my general endurance is fairly transferable between swimming, biking and running - if I've been concentrating more on one, my fitness for the others doesn't seem to diminish at least.

JGS

Ieuanllan wrote:

The main one with most people's front crawl is: Look at the bottom of the pool - if you're looking ahead, your head will be sticking up and your torso will droop down causing loads of drag.

On the subject of tips here's a couple for breaststroke / freestyle: Your head should only move enough to put no more than your nose in the water and bring your mouth out. Bobbing up and down will adjust your body position and slow you down. If you're doing it properly the crown of your hair should not even get wet. Those people you see bobbing up and down are wasting effort and trying to look cool. Also when you kick out and have your arms in front of you, glide a bit before moving your arms back. This is because resetting your position to take another stroke slows you down, so a hard kick and a bit of glide means you will go faster for less effort and build stronger muscles.

Mettan

Not for the Wave-style breastroke though - for that you do want to lunge forward and down slightly to go into recovery (less drag underwater for the glide) - obviously, you don't want to overly bob up and down in the wave style (try and keep forward momentum rather than wasted energy going vertically) - the outsweep, insweep and lunge should all be done quickly (and fluidly) to set up your whip kick (to get the most out of your Glide). Obviously, totally different to the Crawl.

JGS

Mettan wrote:

Not for the Wave-style breastroke though

Indeed this is true, but since this is a beginners thread I wouldn't reccomend trying that before you have a good normal stroke.