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Swimming Intro + Workout
by
Priscilla
I honestly don’t remember
learning how to swim. This is partly because I am the fourth of four
children and partly because my mother was a PE major who taught all of us
from the time we were born I guess. Some of my earliest childhood memories
are from being on the bottom of the pool looking up (I really liked being
underwater when I was very small) or jumping off the diving board and
swimming to the wall. I was definitely less than five at the time because my
family was still in Germany and we didn’t return to the States until I was
five. Anyway, though I have always swum, and always enjoyed swimming, I
have not always enjoyed working out nor have I always competed. I swam
age group in Texas back in what seems like the dark ages now before there
were pace clocks or goggles or even styrofoam kickboards. The ones my team
used were made out of wood and being waterlogged all of the time made them
very heavy and rather splintery. I stopped swimming at the age of 15 because
there weren’t any college scholarships for women in those pre-Title IX days
although I did end up swimming for my college team mostly because they were
so pitiful it was easy to feel sorry for them. The workouts, that were
coached by the lacrosse coach, consisted mostly of just swimming with no
rhyme or reason and certainly no stroke instruction. In those pre-hair dryer
days I would walk back to my dorm in the winter weather and have frozen hair
by the time I got there.
Several years past by and I still swam recreationally and usually daily, but
when I was about to turn 45 I thought it might be fun to compete again. I
had a vague idea that I wanted to be in the US Masters Swimming Top Ten
although I sure didn’t know what that would entail. I had seen a Masters
team swimming at my local pool so I came to workout one day. What an eye
opener. Stuff I used to take for granted, like being able to swim
backstroke, seemed to have disappeared and to make Top Ten I would have to
be faster than I was at my peak thirty years before. Nevertheless, six
months later I swam in my first Masters Nationals and I placed in all of the
events I swam with my highest finish a second. I was faster at 45 than I had
been at 15 in every stroke but backstroke (somehow that has never returned),
and I made Top Ten in the United States that year in all four strokes. I
also held the state record for Utah in every single event in my age group
from the 50 free all the way to the 400 Individual Medley. Now that I am 53
I am sort of used to being in the Top Ten in the United States although one
year I made Top Ten in every single short course meters freestyle event and
that was pretty special. Being in the Top Ten in the world is still a huge
rush for me though. Now I am one of the coaches of the local team and I
actually enjoy workout.
So what does all of that have to do with your swimming? I am not
going to promise the moon but I want everyone to understand that goal
setting, dedication, and work can bring results. The first piece of advice
that I have for anyone thinking about competing in a triathlon where
swimming is not your best event and may not be something you do well at all
is join a team. While it is possible to achieve results by swimming alone,
those results will be longer coming and harder to reach. Team swimming with
a coach provides camaraderie (a great incentive for days when you don’t feel
like working out), technique instruction (a necessary component even for an
experienced swimmer), and varied workouts (absolutely essential for
maintaining focus and developing strength). If there are absolutely no
masters teams in your area, find out if you can swim with a local high
school team. At the very least find a professional coach to help you out, to
evaluate your stroke and to give you workouts to do on your own with
interval times appropriate to your level. And when you swim with a team,
don’t insist on only swimming freestyle. Although you may never compete in a
stroke other than freestyle, learning how to do all four strokes and
practicing them in workout will boost your strength and endurance much
faster than swimming freestyle on its own.
What can I help you with in this column? I plan to provide pointers
that are fairly universal, workouts that can help you on days when you can’t
swim with a team, and ideas for developing greater strength with activities
that are water based but aren’t swimming. I also have many triathlete
friends as a resource for questions about swimming in triathlon races as
those are very different from pool swims.
So look
for me once a month and try this workout out:
Warm
Up 500 yards or meters
Kick
4 x 100 yards or meters going hard then easy by 25. Take 15 seconds rest
after each 100.
Swim
6 x 100 with #1,3,6 as hard as you can go and 2,4,5 nice and easy. Take 15
seconds rest after the easy ones and 30 seconds rest after the hard ones.
Swim
an easy 200 working on nice long strokes.
Swim
6 x 50 with #1,3,6 as hard as you can go and 2,4,5 nice and easy. Take 15
seconds rest after the easy ones and 30 seconds after the hard ones.
Swim
an easy 200 working on nice long strokes.
Swim
6 x 25 with #1,3,6 as hard as you can go and 2,4,5 nice and easy. Take 15
seconds rest after the easy ones and 30 seconds after the hard ones.
Swim
an easy 200 working on nice long strokes
There
you go. That’s about a mile and a half and you should feel tired but good.
Have
fun,
Priscilla Kawakami
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