New To Swimming

Hi, I'm an 18 year old guy who is interested in swimming competitively. I've never been on a team sport before and I've been training now for about 3 or so weeks. At first, I could barely swim 75 m without being exhausted, but now my practices average between 500-600 m per day. However, I still can't swim more than 50 m continuously and my endurance isn't too good. What kind of workouts should I be doing while swimming to improve well enough to be on a team? How many meters should I be swimming a day? Thanks for the help While some masters teams are very competitive, most also have places for beginners, for "developmental" swimmers. Talk to the coach or visit a practice to see how they run their program. Don't worry about not being good enough. The most important things are being consistent with your training and developing good stroke technique. Believe me, you'll improve a lot faster as part of a masters program than swimming on your own. If they see you are making the effort, then your masters teammates will be the most supportive group you can find. I've been lucky to have some excellent coaches, but some of the best advice & tips I've gotten have come from my teammates in the water with me. Our coach makes out a daily workout that is about 3500 yards, with the understanding that the newer or less skilled swimmers may not be able to complete the entire workout as written. That's okay. Most folks (myself included) struggle to keep up at first, and you may have to take some extra breaks when you're first starting out. But if you stick with it and you're consistent with your training, then you'll start to see improvement in your skills & endurance. Just be patient, it takes time & effort. And old rule of thumb is that you should be swimming at least three times per week or more if you want to see significant improvement. Our team has an IM-based philosophy, so even though we mostly swim freestyle, we also work the other three strokes into our workouts on a regular basis. A typical workout starts with 600-1000 yards of warm-up & drills, then goes into stroke sets of 500-1000 yards. Some days we work on endurance sets, and some days on speed. Coach usually mixes it up so we aren't doing the same thing every day. Hope this helps. Good luck! Mark

Hi, I'm an 18 year old guy who is interested in swimming competitively. I've never been on a team sport before and I've been training now for about 3 or so weeks. At first, I could barely swim 75 m without being exhausted, but now my practices average between 500-600 m per day. However, I still can't swim more than 50 m continuously and my endurance isn't too good. What kind of workouts should I be doing while swimming to improve well enough to be on a team? How many meters should I be swimming a day? Thanks for the help While some masters teams are very competitive, most also have places for beginners, for "developmental" swimmers. Talk to the coach or visit a practice to see how they run their program. Don't worry about not being good enough. The most important things are being consistent with your training and developing good stroke technique. Believe me, you'll improve a lot faster as part of a masters program than swimming on your own. If they see you are making the effort, then your masters teammates will be the most supportive group you can find. I've been lucky to have some excellent coaches, but some of the best advice & tips I've gotten have come from my teammates in the water with me. Our coach makes out a daily workout that is about 3500 yards, with the understanding that the newer or less skilled swimmers may not be able to complete the entire workout as written. That's okay. Most folks (myself included) struggle to keep up at first, and you may have to take some extra breaks when you're first starting out. But if you stick with it and you're consistent with your training, then you'll start to see improvement in your skills & endurance. Just be patient, it takes time & effort. And old rule of thumb is that you should be swimming at least three times per week or more if you want to see significant improvement. Our team has an IM-based philosophy, so even though we mostly swim freestyle, we also work the other three strokes into our workouts on a regular basis. A typical workout starts with 600-1000 yards of warm-up & drills, then goes into stroke sets of 500-1000 yards. Some days we work on endurance sets, and some days on speed. Coach usually mixes it up so we aren't doing the same thing every day. Hope this helps. Good luck! Mark