Hi. :help:
Was just wondering how you handle practicing by yourself. My team only practices two times a week and that is obviously not enough time in the water to improve. At practice, we do anywhere between 3,200 and 3,800... and I usually do the same when I swim by myself (right now I'm getting in two solo practices, but I'd like to do more). Usually the USS team or High School is practicing at the same time and that sorta helps get me moving. But how do you guys motivate yourself to keep going - because weekly I am starting to ask myself - "why am I doing this"... when I'm trudging along solo. I do compete and love it... but I just get down and in the gutters once in a while. I usually get my workouts from the "workout forum" here on the site... but do you have any thoughts on how to get more motivated? I hope I don't sound desperate, but just need some feedback from those who are going thru the same thing.
Sarah:
I do pretty much the same thing as you. I can only get to my team practies 1-2 times a week during the school year. My team seems to do about 4000-4300 except on Sat. when they ratchet it up and I avoid that practice. So I swim by myself usually 3x a week. In the summer, I swim with my team more and, last summer, was in much, much better engine-building shape.
Sometimes it's hard to drag myself off to practice too. I'm actually about to. I think the meets and mini-goals keep me motivated the most. I'm already looking forward to my next meet even though it's a ways off. This forum actually helps keep me motivated. The desire to keep my vessel in reasonable shape keeps me motivated. My kids keep me motivated because they would make fun of me if I went too slow or gave in to laziness too much.
I too get a lot of ideas from this forum, especially Ande's blog since I'm a sprinter. Sometimes, I switch up my event focus to keep it interesting. Or switch up the workouts a lot. I almost never do the same thing when swimming alone. I do a lot of "serial" swimming to stave off boredom or the doldrums. I do more drills. I recently got a monofin and am obsessed with SDKs, so that it holding my interest at the moment. One day, I may decide I need to learn breaststroke, but I think that'll be late spring or so. I sometimes like swimming alone because I can work on what I feel like working on that may not be compatible with what my team is doing. But I do wish I could train with them more during the school year ... I definitely go faster with tougher intervals.
Set goals and hang in there!
Sarah:
I do pretty much the same thing as you. I can only get to my team practies 1-2 times a week during the school year. My team seems to do about 4000-4300 except on Sat. when they ratchet it up and I avoid that practice. So I swim by myself usually 3x a week. In the summer, I swim with my team more and, last summer, was in much, much better engine-building shape.
Sometimes it's hard to drag myself off to practice too. I'm actually about to. I think the meets and mini-goals keep me motivated the most. I'm already looking forward to my next meet even though it's a ways off. This forum actually helps keep me motivated. The desire to keep my vessel in reasonable shape keeps me motivated. My kids keep me motivated because they would make fun of me if I went too slow or gave in to laziness too much.
I too get a lot of ideas from this forum, especially Ande's blog since I'm a sprinter. Sometimes, I switch up my event focus to keep it interesting. Or switch up the workouts a lot. I almost never do the same thing when swimming alone. I do a lot of "serial" swimming to stave off boredom or the doldrums. I do more drills. I recently got a monofin and am obsessed with SDKs, so that it holding my interest at the moment. One day, I may decide I need to learn breaststroke, but I think that'll be late spring or so. I sometimes like swimming alone because I can work on what I feel like working on that may not be compatible with what my team is doing. But I do wish I could train with them more during the school year ... I definitely go faster with tougher intervals.
Set goals and hang in there!
