Swimming performance and mild anemia

As a fellow anemic trying-hard-to-improve-my-swimming-speed, my advice is to do what you can to bring your numbers into normal range. You can workout and compete without doing that, but your endurance will suffer. And you'll be more tired (even exhausted) than you need to be. I agree with SolarEnergy: even if you're only slightly anemic, it can make a difference to your swimming. On the flip side, my many years experiment being an average adult who didn't workout much or hard, showed me that being slightly (not extremely) anemic doesn't make much difference in day to day life. There is even research to suggest that it increases longevity. Here's my background, in case it helps: I accidentally discovered I was anemic when I was a teen and many years into competitive swimming. It's hard to tell how much of my plateau at the time was that or just long term over training. Probably a combination. I know Jim's theory wasn't my cause because 30+ years later I have consistently returned to anemic or borderline anemic if I stop taking iron for a while. (Even with a relatively high iron diet and low physical activity - ie getting horribly out of shape didn't fix it.) Other than that I've always been really healthy. My theory now is that my anemia a genetic quirk, because it appears that one of my kids is the same way.

As a fellow anemic trying-hard-to-improve-my-swimming-speed, my advice is to do what you can to bring your numbers into normal range. You can workout and compete without doing that, but your endurance will suffer. And you'll be more tired (even exhausted) than you need to be. I agree with SolarEnergy: even if you're only slightly anemic, it can make a difference to your swimming. On the flip side, my many years experiment being an average adult who didn't workout much or hard, showed me that being slightly (not extremely) anemic doesn't make much difference in day to day life. There is even research to suggest that it increases longevity. Here's my background, in case it helps: I accidentally discovered I was anemic when I was a teen and many years into competitive swimming. It's hard to tell how much of my plateau at the time was that or just long term over training. Probably a combination. I know Jim's theory wasn't my cause because 30+ years later I have consistently returned to anemic or borderline anemic if I stop taking iron for a while. (Even with a relatively high iron diet and low physical activity - ie getting horribly out of shape didn't fix it.) Other than that I've always been really healthy. My theory now is that my anemia a genetic quirk, because it appears that one of my kids is the same way.