Hi,
I'm an 18 year old looking to compete on a local club team. I have never swam or played any sports before, and I have been training since mid-August. At first, I could barely swim 25 m and now I'm doing 50s. I have a personal trainer who's working with me, and the coach has watched me before. He told me that I need to work on endurance, because I can't repeatedly do 50s or even 100s with short rest. How long do you all think it would take if I trained extremely hard to do this? What do I need to do to make this happen? Thanks for the help
JAA,
Like Orca said...as such a newcomer to any kind of activity requiring some degree of endurance...you need to work on/increase your endurance. For new want-to-be runners there is a program called the Couch to 5k program (C25K). It's a simple training program that gradually gets non-runners (couch potatoes) to running a non-stop 5k (3.1 miles) over a nine week period. As a 40+ year running I never used it. BUT, it gets rave reviews by those who do complete it. But that's for runners. For swimmers, I came across a similar program. Again, I've been swimming for more than 40 years and never tried it. But look at it an give it a try -- ruthkazez.com/.../ZeroTo1mile.html
The bottom line is that it just takes time and dedication to achieve endurance in any activity. When trying to do too much too soon (TMTS) you're inviting injury. Good luck and keep us apprised of your training.
Edited to add that...after looking more closely at this plan, and your own current abilities...I think that you may need to adjust it a bit to fit your needs -- it calls for swimming repeat 100s at the very beginning, but you're still working up to that. Nevertheless...it looks like a good plan to get you where you want to be for inclusion on the team.
Dan
JAA,
Like Orca said...as such a newcomer to any kind of activity requiring some degree of endurance...you need to work on/increase your endurance. For new want-to-be runners there is a program called the Couch to 5k program (C25K). It's a simple training program that gradually gets non-runners (couch potatoes) to running a non-stop 5k (3.1 miles) over a nine week period. As a 40+ year running I never used it. BUT, it gets rave reviews by those who do complete it. But that's for runners. For swimmers, I came across a similar program. Again, I've been swimming for more than 40 years and never tried it. But look at it an give it a try -- ruthkazez.com/.../ZeroTo1mile.html
The bottom line is that it just takes time and dedication to achieve endurance in any activity. When trying to do too much too soon (TMTS) you're inviting injury. Good luck and keep us apprised of your training.
Edited to add that...after looking more closely at this plan, and your own current abilities...I think that you may need to adjust it a bit to fit your needs -- it calls for swimming repeat 100s at the very beginning, but you're still working up to that. Nevertheless...it looks like a good plan to get you where you want to be for inclusion on the team.
Dan
