Bad Workout??? Help

You might not be giving your body enough recovery time. Take your pulse when you first wake up in the morning before getting out of bed. Then get up and get moving and as you are ready to leave the house, take it again. If you HR before you get out of bed is not significantly lower than your other measured HR, there is a very good chance you are overdoing it. Example, my typical resting HR when I first wake up is 40-45, when I leave the house, it's around 70.

Hi Moody. I've noticed when I try to swim more than 5X per week I have crappy swims. If I swim 4 or 5 times all goes very well. I am 55 yrs. old and usually swim 3-4K per workout. You might try mixing up your warm-up a little bit. Try 200'sX 4 (swim, pull, kick, IM), or if you really want to do it all free try breaking it up (25/50/25/75/25/100/25/75/25/50/25). If I'm really super stressed out and tired I agree to let myself do an easy 800/1,000 with open turns. The little extra bite of O2 on the turns makes a ton of difference. On the workout part I do proper turns but sometimes giving yourself a little break can pay off in the parts that count.

Thanks for the tips! I'm definitely going to take my pulse tomorrow morning. It's good to know that it just may be that I'm not recovering enough. I get discouraged, when I work hard and it seems that I go backwards. I'll let you know how it goes.

How much have you ramped up from what you were doing before? If you made a big change, it might have been too much. But if you made a small change, the tiredness may just be your body adjusting, and it might be worth fighting through it to get to the other side.

You might not be giving your body enough recovery time. Take your pulse when you first wake up in the morning before getting out of bed. Then get up and get moving and as you are ready to leave the house, take it again. If you HR before you get out of bed is not significantly lower than your other measured HR, there is a very good chance you are overdoing it. Example, my typical resting HR when I first wake up is 40-45, when I leave the house, it's around 70.This is an excellent method. Not only does it ler you know if you need more rest, it will let you know if your getting ill too. One thig however you need to know your bpm when you ARE fully rested and feeling great as a standard

Did the pool temp change? That can make a huge difference.

I second the idea that you may have ramped up too quickly, or are not getting enough rest between workouts. Back in May when I had LC opportunity, I made sure I swam at the weekends as well as Tues/Thurs and would swim 4.5k or so each time. However, the weekend I swam Sunday 11am-12.30, then Tuesday 9.30am - 11, I felt shattered on the Tuesday, and all I could think of was that I had not had a full 48 hours between the start of each workout. Pretty pathetic when you think about it really! Still I carried on and stretched it out a bit, and then was fine on the Thursday's workout. Hope you start feeling better soon :D

I think you all may be right. I did check my pulse, and there was not a lot of difference. I haven't necessarily increased my swimming, but I have started an intense dryland course. It consists of circuit training with weights, cardio, and running. I'm now doing that 3 days a week, and swimming 4 days a week. I've also been swimming doubles on Tuesdays to kill time between work and my online college class. So, I really think that I've increased too much too fast. I did take a recovery day on Sunday and swam a really short set before my drylands today. The swim felt much better. Maybe I just need a recovery day every other day to start. Thanks so much for all of your input! You guys are the best!

The only thing I can figure is I've ramped up my exercise routine the past 3 weeks. For the past 2 weeks, I've worked out/swam 6 days a week. Maybe, I just crashed this week. Here's hoping for a better week next week. Now I have to decide whether tomorrow is a workout day or not? Anyone have any experience with this kind of thing? This has happened to me too. It's always been when I've increased either my yardage or the intensity of my practices. When this happens, it seems to come about very suddenly. I normally swim 3,000 yards per day. Last summer, when I was training for a long distance event, I started adding a few more yards to my daily practice, plus one longer swim each week. I felt great doing the extra yardage, but within a couple of weeks, I was exhausted, and my performance was suffering. I took a few days off, started being RELIGIOUS about drinking my recovery drink (chocolate milk) as soon as I got out of the pool, and got way more conservative about increasing my yardage. I also kept my repeats shorter on most days. I don't think the amount of training you're doing is a problem--just that you've increased it too fast. I haven't taken a day off swimming in the past 7 weeks. Daily swimming seems to work great for me (plus, I have to wash my hair anyway). The suggestion to monitor your heart rate is also a good one. Here's a little more information on that: www.cyclingtipsblog.com/.../

I think you all may be right. I did check my pulse, and there was not a lot of difference. I haven't necessarily increased my swimming, but I have started an intense dryland course. It consists of circuit training with weights, cardio, and running. I'm now doing that 3 days a week, and swimming 4 days a week. I've also been swimming doubles on Tuesdays to kill time between work and my online college class. So, I really think that I've increased too much too fast. I did take a recovery day on Sunday and swam a really short set before my drylands today. The swim felt much better. Maybe I just need a recovery day every other day to start. Thanks so much for all of your input! You guys are the best! IMO it's because of weights. About 2 weeks ago I did some weight lifting and couldn't swim for 1 week - swimming technique was completely ruined. You should increase intensity gradually especially if it's a dry land course.