How many of you swim on your own and have had success stories? Masters PB's or better, perhaps? What difficulties do you face on your own?
I have often heard people give the advice to join a team, stating that the friendly competition is good motivation. Is it possible to be motivated enough whilst training by yourself and really excel?
Parents
Former Member
You don't have to but it helps! It can be very hard to maintain your motivation and pace when you're in the pool by yourself. Sometimes I'm really good at it and sometimes I completely lack focus. However when I work with a group I'm almost always "on."
When I started swimming masters (after a 10 year break from the pool), I spent about a year working out totally by myself and I managed to drop time and get faster the whole time. I had set a major goal of catching up to my 100 fly time from high school and after probably about 7-8 months I did it. I think the main reason that I was able to progress rapidly and consistently is that I went to as many meets as I could to get a good reading of where I was at and what I was doing right and wrong in my swims. It was also fun and kept my motivation levels up.
After SCY Nationals in May I started to do 2 workouts a week with a group of masters. At first it was really hard to adjust to working out with people, and to keep up with them! But now I love it and I credit the time spent with my workout group for most of the big improvements I've had recently in some of my times. I've found it valuable to the point that I'm looking to replace my other workouts that I'm still doing solo with group or team workouts.
Either way I think you can be successful as long as you put the effort into it, but I can almost guarantee you'll get better faster if you workout with others.
You don't have to but it helps! It can be very hard to maintain your motivation and pace when you're in the pool by yourself. Sometimes I'm really good at it and sometimes I completely lack focus. However when I work with a group I'm almost always "on."
When I started swimming masters (after a 10 year break from the pool), I spent about a year working out totally by myself and I managed to drop time and get faster the whole time. I had set a major goal of catching up to my 100 fly time from high school and after probably about 7-8 months I did it. I think the main reason that I was able to progress rapidly and consistently is that I went to as many meets as I could to get a good reading of where I was at and what I was doing right and wrong in my swims. It was also fun and kept my motivation levels up.
After SCY Nationals in May I started to do 2 workouts a week with a group of masters. At first it was really hard to adjust to working out with people, and to keep up with them! But now I love it and I credit the time spent with my workout group for most of the big improvements I've had recently in some of my times. I've found it valuable to the point that I'm looking to replace my other workouts that I'm still doing solo with group or team workouts.
Either way I think you can be successful as long as you put the effort into it, but I can almost guarantee you'll get better faster if you workout with others.
