Started swimming again this year in an effort to get in better shape. Haven't done it since college (I'm 43), and that was just for exercise. Did it as a kid, now my kids also swim. At any rate, I'm just doing laps right now. Usually 6 sets of 500, occasionally only 5 and occasionally 7 or 8. ~5 days a week when life doesn't get in the way (so about 15,000 yards per week). About 25% ***, 25% back, and 50% free. I have occasionally thrown some fly in there, but I just can't do it without it fatiguing me to the point where the remainder of the set is very suboptimal.
At any rate, I am wondering at what point I should start looking to transition to doing workouts, rather than just laps. There is no Masters program that will work for me, so I'd just be following the posted workouts from the forums. Should I just jump right in? Should I start from "week 1," or just hit it right in the middle? Also, should I just be looking mostly at the general workouts, of mixing it up with the IM workouts to get more strokes, or start with general and slowly work my way towards the IM stuff?
Anything y'all need to know to help guide me the right way?
A few times in my decades of swimming there have been instances wherein I had to "return" to swimming after a layoff of many weeks, or even months, due to an injury/surgery, and recovery, or...a military deployment. What works for me...to "get back into it"...when I first start going back to the pool I first just do long, slow yardage like you've been doing up to this point. At some point I will begin to break up some of the longer portions into segments/intervals...doing the same yardage, same pace...just broken into smaller segments, and on a timed interval. I feel like that helps get me back into the mentality of doing intervals and sets. After a couple of sessions like that I begin to gradually increase intensity on the smaller segments, then on the longer ones, until I feel comfortable that I've conditioned myself back into "a workout" shape.
Good luck.
Dan
A few times in my decades of swimming there have been instances wherein I had to "return" to swimming after a layoff of many weeks, or even months, due to an injury/surgery, and recovery, or...a military deployment. What works for me...to "get back into it"...when I first start going back to the pool I first just do long, slow yardage like you've been doing up to this point. At some point I will begin to break up some of the longer portions into segments/intervals...doing the same yardage, same pace...just broken into smaller segments, and on a timed interval. I feel like that helps get me back into the mentality of doing intervals and sets. After a couple of sessions like that I begin to gradually increase intensity on the smaller segments, then on the longer ones, until I feel comfortable that I've conditioned myself back into "a workout" shape.
Good luck.
Dan
