Fitness swimming

I am a fitness swimmer turned competitive swimmer, so I am familiar with both mindsets, and understand why USMS doesn't appeal to most fitness swimmers. First, imagine that you are an adult who has never in your life been on a baseball team. You've tossed a ball around with your friends, or done some practice batting, or perhaps even played some softball in gym class or at summer camps, but you've never played a game of real baseball. And now imagine that somebody approaches you with the idea of joining an amateur adult baseball team in your area. You know that some of the players on the team are retired professional baseball players (usually minor league players), and that many others played on college or high school teams. But your friend assures you that the team is open to anyone, and that even though the team has real games with other amateur teams, participation in the games is optional, and you're free to just join the team and work out with them for fitness purposes. Does what I've just described sound appealing to you? If not, why not? This is more or less the way USMS sounded when it was first described to me, and if the analogy fails, it's because it would be hard to do any kind of baseball workout alone, whereas you can certainly swim alone. So how did I end up joining USMS? My first exposure to competitive swimming had come when I was in my late 20s. I had been doing volunteer youth work, and several of the kids I worked with were on their high school swim team. So I had gone to see some of their meets. I thought the meets were pretty cool! In fact, if I had still been a kid, I might have seriously considered becoming involved in competitive swimming. But I was not a kid, and I assumed that swimmers reached their peak in their late teens or early 20s and that I was already over the hill. Still, when my doctor told me several years later that I needed to get more aerobic-type exercise, swimming seemed like the natural sport to pursue. But I paid no attention to speed. My goal was just to see how far I could swim non-stop. It was pretty discouraging at first. I had gotten a membership at the same pool where the swim meets had taken place, and was expecting to swim up and down the lanes just like I'd seen the kids do, so it was a bit of a shock when I discovered that I had to stop every 25 yards to rest! But I was able to gradually increase the distance I could go without stopping, until eventually I could do nearly a mile non-stop. But at that point, I encountered a problem: I had been swimming for a half hour 3 times per week. I would just jump in the pool and swim whatever intervals I was doing for the entire half hour (I didn't know how to do butterfly or breaststroke, so I'd just do freestyle with some occasional backstroke for variety). So at first, I'd do as many 25s as I could fit into a half hour. Then I upped it to 50s. Then 75s. And so on. But as I approached a mile, my workouts started running over a half hour because it took me that long to swim that distance one time. So I decided to work on speed for awhile. My goal certainly wasn't to race - I just wanted to be able to swim longer distances without having my workouts take too long. But once I started paying attention to speed, it became addictive. For several months, I was knocking about 1% off my 800m time every week. Then I hit a plateau, and began looking for a way around it. I bought a lap timer. I went to a stroke clinic on flip turns. In my first year, I cut my 800m time by about 25%. And by that time, I was seriously thinking about racing. I finally joined USMS when I thought I was ready to start racing. Now, I get the impression that some people aren't going to like what I just said, because they have it in their heads that USMS should be reaching out to people who have no interest in ever racing. But facts are facts: I had no interest in joining USMS until I became interested in racing. And if I ever stopped racing (which I have no desire to do) I would probably have no interest in being a member of USMS. Of course, if you've waded through my story, you also know something else that is very important: When I started, I had no plans to race. So the mere fact that many fitness swimmers currently have no interest in racing doesn't mean that they aren't USMS material - it just means that getting them to join USMS may entail changing their attitudes toward racing. As others have noted, most fitness swimmers have a very different attitude toward participating in swim meets than most fitness runners have toward participating in races. Everyone knows that the vast majority of the people who participate in marathons aren't going to be particularly good runners. But most fitness swimmers don't believe the same thing about swimmers who participate in USMS swim meets. So what can be done to attract fitness swimmers? Well, I can only tell you what I believe could have been done to attract me. I should warn you, though, that it may be a bit different from what you are accustomed to in USMS. The question is: Do you consider it important to reach out to fitness swimmers, or not? 1) Offer training at team practices, not just workouts. I think you will find that most fitness swimmers have little interest in going to organized workouts. But there is a tremendous interest in learning things. If USMS practices become known as places where you can learn how to do freestyle flip turns, or backstroke flip turns, or butterfly, or breaststroke, or how to go off a starting block, or how to do a backstroke start, I think you will find that there will be a lot of fitness swimmers who will be interested in coming. In fact, once you've gained their confidence, you might even be able to convince them that it could be valuable to get some training in things they already "know", like freestyle, or backstroke, or open turns. 2) Benchmark how swimmers are doing. Have practices where you start to put together the things that swimmers are learning. Have them, e.g., go off the starting blocks and swim the length of the pool using whatever stroke you've been teaching them, time each of them, and tell them how they did. After you've covered turns for that stroke, have them go off the blocks and swim up and back while timing each of them. These aren't races. There are no prizes. The goal is just to give each swimmer feedback on how he or she is progressing. 3) Use relays to spice up your practices. To consolidate what you've been teaching, divide your whole team into relay squads that are matched based on speed and experience, and have the squads race each other, just for fun. If you're doing freestyle, use the best swimmers as the anchors. You're essentially setting up races where the rookies are racing other rookies and the experienced swimmers are racing other experienced swimmers, and where every swimmer's performance is important to the squad's overall performance. I think you'll find that this approach will attract a lot of fitness swimmers to USMS, and that in the end, many of them will have been bitten by the competitive swimming bug (or, if you want to phrase it differently, they will have realized that swim meets can be for fitness swimmers, too)!

I am a fitness swimmer turned competitive swimmer, so I am familiar with both mindsets, and understand why USMS doesn't appeal to most fitness swimmers. First, imagine that you are an adult who has never in your life been on a baseball team. You've tossed a ball around with your friends, or done some practice batting, or perhaps even played some softball in gym class or at summer camps, but you've never played a game of real baseball. And now imagine that somebody approaches you with the idea of joining an amateur adult baseball team in your area. You know that some of the players on the team are retired professional baseball players (usually minor league players), and that many others played on college or high school teams. But your friend assures you that the team is open to anyone, and that even though the team has real games with other amateur teams, participation in the games is optional, and you're free to just join the team and work out with them for fitness purposes. Does what I've just described sound appealing to you? If not, why not? This is more or less the way USMS sounded when it was first described to me, and if the analogy fails, it's because it would be hard to do any kind of baseball workout alone, whereas you can certainly swim alone. So how did I end up joining USMS? My first exposure to competitive swimming had come when I was in my late 20s. I had been doing volunteer youth work, and several of the kids I worked with were on their high school swim team. So I had gone to see some of their meets. I thought the meets were pretty cool! In fact, if I had still been a kid, I might have seriously considered becoming involved in competitive swimming. But I was not a kid, and I assumed that swimmers reached their peak in their late teens or early 20s and that I was already over the hill. Still, when my doctor told me several years later that I needed to get more aerobic-type exercise, swimming seemed like the natural sport to pursue. But I paid no attention to speed. My goal was just to see how far I could swim non-stop. It was pretty discouraging at first. I had gotten a membership at the same pool where the swim meets had taken place, and was expecting to swim up and down the lanes just like I'd seen the kids do, so it was a bit of a shock when I discovered that I had to stop every 25 yards to rest! But I was able to gradually increase the distance I could go without stopping, until eventually I could do nearly a mile non-stop. But at that point, I encountered a problem: I had been swimming for a half hour 3 times per week. I would just jump in the pool and swim whatever intervals I was doing for the entire half hour (I didn't know how to do butterfly or breaststroke, so I'd just do freestyle with some occasional backstroke for variety). So at first, I'd do as many 25s as I could fit into a half hour. Then I upped it to 50s. Then 75s. And so on. But as I approached a mile, my workouts started running over a half hour because it took me that long to swim that distance one time. So I decided to work on speed for awhile. My goal certainly wasn't to race - I just wanted to be able to swim longer distances without having my workouts take too long. But once I started paying attention to speed, it became addictive. For several months, I was knocking about 1% off my 800m time every week. Then I hit a plateau, and began looking for a way around it. I bought a lap timer. I went to a stroke clinic on flip turns. In my first year, I cut my 800m time by about 25%. And by that time, I was seriously thinking about racing. I finally joined USMS when I thought I was ready to start racing. Now, I get the impression that some people aren't going to like what I just said, because they have it in their heads that USMS should be reaching out to people who have no interest in ever racing. But facts are facts: I had no interest in joining USMS until I became interested in racing. And if I ever stopped racing (which I have no desire to do) I would probably have no interest in being a member of USMS. Of course, if you've waded through my story, you also know something else that is very important: When I started, I had no plans to race. So the mere fact that many fitness swimmers currently have no interest in racing doesn't mean that they aren't USMS material - it just means that getting them to join USMS may entail changing their attitudes toward racing. As others have noted, most fitness swimmers have a very different attitude toward participating in swim meets than most fitness runners have toward participating in races. Everyone knows that the vast majority of the people who participate in marathons aren't going to be particularly good runners. But most fitness swimmers don't believe the same thing about swimmers who participate in USMS swim meets. So what can be done to attract fitness swimmers? Well, I can only tell you what I believe could have been done to attract me. I should warn you, though, that it may be a bit different from what you are accustomed to in USMS. The question is: Do you consider it important to reach out to fitness swimmers, or not? 1) Offer training at team practices, not just workouts. I think you will find that most fitness swimmers have little interest in going to organized workouts. But there is a tremendous interest in learning things. If USMS practices become known as places where you can learn how to do freestyle flip turns, or backstroke flip turns, or butterfly, or breaststroke, or how to go off a starting block, or how to do a backstroke start, I think you will find that there will be a lot of fitness swimmers who will be interested in coming. In fact, once you've gained their confidence, you might even be able to convince them that it could be valuable to get some training in things they already "know", like freestyle, or backstroke, or open turns. 2) Benchmark how swimmers are doing. Have practices where you start to put together the things that swimmers are learning. Have them, e.g., go off the starting blocks and swim the length of the pool using whatever stroke you've been teaching them, time each of them, and tell them how they did. After you've covered turns for that stroke, have them go off the blocks and swim up and back while timing each of them. These aren't races. There are no prizes. The goal is just to give each swimmer feedback on how he or she is progressing. 3) Use relays to spice up your practices. To consolidate what you've been teaching, divide your whole team into relay squads that are matched based on speed and experience, and have the squads race each other, just for fun. If you're doing freestyle, use the best swimmers as the anchors. You're essentially setting up races where the rookies are racing other rookies and the experienced swimmers are racing other experienced swimmers, and where every swimmer's performance is important to the squad's overall performance. I think you'll find that this approach will attract a lot of fitness swimmers to USMS, and that in the end, many of them will have been bitten by the competitive swimming bug (or, if you want to phrase it differently, they will have realized that swim meets can be for fitness swimmers, too)!