How to make swimming interesting?

juddlyness
juddlyness Posts: 1 Member
edited December 2024 in Food and Nutrition
My favourite way to exercise is to swim, but I mostly front crawl or freestyle. Do any expert swimmers have any tips for making a regular swim more interesting, or any decent goals or targets to keep motivation up? Advice very much appreciated! :-)

Replies

  • snowflake954
    snowflake954 Posts: 8,399 Member
    I swim for 45 min to a hour and time flies. You need to change things up. Watch what the other swimmers are doing. I do 15-20 min freestlye, 10 min breaststroke, 5 min flutter kick with a board, then 5 min backwards flutter kick, 5 min breaststroke kick forward, 5 min backwards, then depending on time, butterfly legs and breaststroke arms--because I love it. I could do a lot more if I had the time, but I like to do an hour of acquagym too. Internet has a lot of workouts if you want structure.
  • sarabushby
    sarabushby Posts: 784 Member
    I’m sure someone asked this before, you could try searching for the post to view replies which included
    - Pyramid swim
    - Drills ... so many options....
    - kick, pull, swim repeats
    - Hypoxic training - try to breathe every 3 strokes for one length then 5 then 7 then 9, repeat 4 x with a break between each of the sets. Or aim to swim a length with as few breaths as possible
    - Sprints
    - 100m reps or 200s or 400s
    - Establish your CSS pace and do CSS workouts (see swimsmooth.com if you’re not sure what this is)
    - Attend a masters session or triathlon training session

    Follow a training plan eg for a 5k swim or a 10k swim or use a triathlon plan and just do the swim sets from that. Choose sprint, Olympic, half iron or full iron depending on your ability & available time. You’ll find a tonne of free ones online.

    There is a website that posts every day a new swim set but I’m afraid I can’t remember it, I’m sure if you google enough you can find it.

    Drills include:
    Sculling - type 1, 2 and 3
    Single arm swimming
    Kick on side / superman
    Trickle
    Catch up
    Shoulder tap
    Zip
    Popov
    Broken arrow
    Hip, shoulder, head touch
    Unco
    Sea Anchor
    Water polo swim

    If you google you’ll find videos to demo all these
  • Diatonic12
    Diatonic12 Posts: 32,344 Member
    I use this, only 1 square inch of all things interesting and exciting. You'll forget that you're actually exercising.

    35809-9325-1A-zoomin.jpg.
  • echmain3
    echmain3 Posts: 231 Member
    Add a shark to the water?

This discussion has been closed.