Make A Splash!

This is the time of year to start afresh. Work out your goals and training programs to achieve them. Eliminate bad habits and surround yourself with positive motivators to get the best out of yourself. It’s the time of the year when it is still sufficiently cold to make exercising unpleasant, but since building up your fitness base is crucial, you just have to do it. You must become accustomed to being fatigued because otherwise you’re not doing enough work and therefore won’t improve. But then there’s the fine line of building slowly to prevent injuries.

So many different factors to consider and an easy time to neglect your swimming. You may normally prefer to train in the ocean and it might still be too cold; your local pool is only open in summer months; your squad hasn’t started back yet... So many barriers, not to mention excuses! I suggest setting a weekly training program and nominate which sessions are your swimming ones. You’re far more likely to stick to your program if you plan it in advance. This is even more important with swimming since it is quite time consuming due to the travel time to a training venue and completing a worthwhile session.

Remember that swimming plays many roles in your overall training program and benefits several areas other than just your swim leg, which is why you should be back into it now. First and foremost it plays a role in building up your aerobic base to give you greater all round fitness. It makes you fitter while also playing a large recovery function because it is a low impact exercise – it takes the pressure off your legs but still strengthens them. It is especially great if you have any injury niggles – maintain your fitness by swimming while your injury repairs.

So, enough on the reasons you should be swimming and more on what you should pay special attention to once you’re in the pool.

At the start of the season I find that I have to concentrate more on my technique as my feel for the water and general strength is poorer than when it has been built throughout a season. I have to focus so that I don’t start bad habits and jeopardise my end-of-season results. Yes – believe me in that it doesn’t matter how many years of swimming training and technique work you have behind you, if you don’t pay attention to technique with every new season your speed and efficiency can deteriorate very fast.

Getting back into swimming is as much of a mental challenge as a physical one. After you’ve had a break from running or riding you can go out for your first session and still feel good. Sure, you might feel tired as the session progresses but you can at least feel good at the start. Swimming, in contrast, is much tougher. If you have spent some time out of the water, even if it is just a few weeks you will find that you feel awful when you get back into it, even if you are fit from doing other exercise. You are likely to feel weak, have little control over what your arms are doing and be out of breath. The latter is because your breathing is restricted to when you turn your head to the side. Obviously if your breathing pattern is every two strokes then you are breathing quite regularly but it’s still not as freely as running for example. Especially since you have to take a quick breath and turn your head back into the water in order to take the next stroke.