Been a long time

as pretty much the majority of us had a "break" of sorts from swimming before coming back. I was out a whole decade, and a bike crash brought me back, along with a running injury. Now I'm 29 (yikes!) and training for my first 1/2 ironman. It's great you're coming back--just do it, and you'll have so much newfound joy in your life. It's great to be a fish again, isn't it!? Yea for you!!! :D jerrycat

lol...a fish again...this is great.

Up untill approx. 5- years ago, I had not swam for 45 years. I joined a health gym. I made sure their was a swimming pool. Mind you I did not swim competilvy. But I did do A lot of swimming. But after 45 years I did still have abase for swimming. From what I gather ,you did swim as a t a younger age. That means you probly still have a good idea of how to swim. My suggestion is do nice and easy some free style untill you can do 10 to 20 laps. then from there you can up your totals and do any other strokes that you used to do . But rember if you start going real hard , take a day off. You will to recoup.:)

how did I begin my (re) training? I got into the pool and swam, making a commitment to twice per week sessions. Don't worry too much about how far/how fast you are going - easy does it at first, so you don't burn out mentally or physically. Mix up your distances - it's better to swim sets of 25, 50s, 75s or 100s rather than one long continuous swim. (Although continuous swimming has its merits, too...) After a few weeks of swimming you could start setting realistic base yardage for each practice, and work on increasing either the intensity or the yardage each month. There are lots of sample workouts on this site and others...but again, just because Coach XYZ suggests swimming 7000 yards per workout doesn't mean you have to...modify the workouts to fit your own needs. And probably the other swimmers in the club will help you out. Welcome back!

I am a new swimmer - never been on a team. The hardest part was getting in the pool the first time. It's been down hill since then.:) I have been at it for a little over a year and I am hooked. Just make a committment to get to the pool three times a week and work on getting your enurance up. Lot's of freestyle at first just for general conditioning. Mix it up - shorter and longer intervals. Eventually, you can choose to go more frequently. Once I got a base, I took the workouts here and modifed them for my needs. They are great. I will take a workout that is listed for 4500 yards in 1.5 hours and modify it for my needs. I limit myself to one hour at a time due to other committments so I will knock down the number of repeats so that I end up with 2700-3000 yards in an hour. You can do the same - just gear it to your level and ramp them up as you go. And because they mix in other strokes, kicking, pulling, etc it doesn't get monotonous - there is very little repeat. And also, push yourself a little bit. Every time I swim, I try to have a repeat somewhere in the workout that makes me think "Wow, I will have trouble keeping that interval." But that makes me push myself and I improve. Good luck!