I am 74 and have taken up freestyle swimming this year, originally as part of Triathlon training (I completed 2 sprints this year), but find I love the sport of swimming in its own right. I am up to 100 meters in 3 minutes, but I still struggle with breathing as it puts me at times off track with my high elbow pull, rotation, flutter kick, etc. After swimming 100 meters I am breathing really hard and have to stop. I feel confident it will all come together as I swim more. I am convinced that to learn to swim you have to swim! I view YouTube frequently and I have many books on improving swimming technique.
Here is the issue I battle. Yesterday is just one example. A tallish thin girl, no obvious bulk in her musculature, was swimming freestyle, lap after lap, conceivably like she could swim forever I truly believe, at twice my best speed for 100 meters. As a male, I am certain I have greater muscular strength in my arms, back and legs than she, yet she can easily outdo me in her ability to swim.
What allows a swimmer to have so much endurance? She flowed in the water like she owned it, so I'm sure she has been practicing and swimming for years. Yet, I thought endurance required muscular strength in addition to good technique?
Baffled, jealous, but in great admiration of persons who swim so naturally and so beautifully.
Swimming can provide incredible fitness and and feeling of well-being and energy if you can sustain it. If you can manage to swim three times a week and spend 20 minutes or more for a few months, you will find a great spring in your step.
But sustaining it is the key. For me, that means whenever I start swimming after a break, my first task is to develop my patience. I swim in a university pool. If I get antsy at people swimming faster than me, that doesn't help me become fit.
One summer, I had taken a year or so break. It seemed every time I went swimming there was this woman in the next lane swimming faster than me, farther than me. She was 7 or 8 months pregnant. Very visible. "Swimming for two." In my mind I called her "Moby Mama", or "The Great White Mom."
I consoled myself with the idea that I was buffing up pretty well, but my best friend, who could NOT get in the pool without trying to swim faster than any of his neighbors was getting flabby.
At the end of a lake race once, I got to hug the guest of honor, Janet Evans. She was (and probably still is) a slender little person. Big hands, sure, but slight in body. In her prime, she could have swum in rather tight circles about the 70-75 year old master's 1500 M world champion. And maybe not even get winded.
Technique is important, so lessons can help. I'm sure you -and me too- could swim faster and farther with less energy.
But the important thing is to be comfortable with a sustained swimming program. And alas, for those of us over 50, that usually means accepting with equanimity those skinny little snot punks that can outswim us.
Swimming can provide incredible fitness and and feeling of well-being and energy if you can sustain it. If you can manage to swim three times a week and spend 20 minutes or more for a few months, you will find a great spring in your step.
But sustaining it is the key. For me, that means whenever I start swimming after a break, my first task is to develop my patience. I swim in a university pool. If I get antsy at people swimming faster than me, that doesn't help me become fit.
One summer, I had taken a year or so break. It seemed every time I went swimming there was this woman in the next lane swimming faster than me, farther than me. She was 7 or 8 months pregnant. Very visible. "Swimming for two." In my mind I called her "Moby Mama", or "The Great White Mom."
I consoled myself with the idea that I was buffing up pretty well, but my best friend, who could NOT get in the pool without trying to swim faster than any of his neighbors was getting flabby.
At the end of a lake race once, I got to hug the guest of honor, Janet Evans. She was (and probably still is) a slender little person. Big hands, sure, but slight in body. In her prime, she could have swum in rather tight circles about the 70-75 year old master's 1500 M world champion. And maybe not even get winded.
Technique is important, so lessons can help. I'm sure you -and me too- could swim faster and farther with less energy.
But the important thing is to be comfortable with a sustained swimming program. And alas, for those of us over 50, that usually means accepting with equanimity those skinny little snot punks that can outswim us.
