I just had a meet and was unhappy with my 50 times...about a second slower than two months ago in both events (free and ***). I swam regularly (2200-3000 three or four times a week), including for the two weeks just prior to the meet, but before that, I took an entire week off (actually, 9 days) for a ski trip to Colorado. Could such a layoff have affected my times all that much, given that I am only swimming sprints?
I'm bringing this thread back up because I'm afraid I've lost my swimming mojo. It's been almost two years since my shoulder surgery and I'm just at the point where I can swim pain-free, but find I just don't feel like getting all my gear together and slogging over to the gym. I get up with good intentions and by the time I've staggered out of bed I'm like, I'll go do something else that doesn't involve getting wet.
Part of me would love to swim again like I did before all this, but it'll take a while before I can swim long and hard and consecutively enough where it's an actual good workout. I think that's what's holding me back, knowing I have a long road ahead just to get to a reasonable fitness level. So if anyone has any advice, I'd love to hear it.
The best advice I ever heard about overcoming a lack of motivation is to say to yourself "just go swim 500 yards. If you don't want to keep going after that, leave." I've said that to myself dozens of times. Only once did I end up leaving after 500. Many of my most productive workouts started as a "just go swim 500" day.
My personal experience, after my latest several-month-layoff, is that it's easier to rebuild your sprint speed first, then start working on endurance. The first 2 weeks back are going to be a challenge, no matter what. But, if you do lots of hard (100 race effort) 25's on medium rest, you can get to about 90% of your maximum sprint speed potential in another 4-6 weeks. The confidence I got from seeing my sprint speeds getting close to my pre-layoff benchmarks in ~25 workouts gave me the strength to tackle the harder task of getting my 400/500 and 1500/1650 speed back.
I'm bringing this thread back up because I'm afraid I've lost my swimming mojo. It's been almost two years since my shoulder surgery and I'm just at the point where I can swim pain-free, but find I just don't feel like getting all my gear together and slogging over to the gym. I get up with good intentions and by the time I've staggered out of bed I'm like, I'll go do something else that doesn't involve getting wet.
Part of me would love to swim again like I did before all this, but it'll take a while before I can swim long and hard and consecutively enough where it's an actual good workout. I think that's what's holding me back, knowing I have a long road ahead just to get to a reasonable fitness level. So if anyone has any advice, I'd love to hear it.
The best advice I ever heard about overcoming a lack of motivation is to say to yourself "just go swim 500 yards. If you don't want to keep going after that, leave." I've said that to myself dozens of times. Only once did I end up leaving after 500. Many of my most productive workouts started as a "just go swim 500" day.
My personal experience, after my latest several-month-layoff, is that it's easier to rebuild your sprint speed first, then start working on endurance. The first 2 weeks back are going to be a challenge, no matter what. But, if you do lots of hard (100 race effort) 25's on medium rest, you can get to about 90% of your maximum sprint speed potential in another 4-6 weeks. The confidence I got from seeing my sprint speeds getting close to my pre-layoff benchmarks in ~25 workouts gave me the strength to tackle the harder task of getting my 400/500 and 1500/1650 speed back.
