Howdy.
I'm returning to the pool after many years away.
Since I don't have a coach, I'm attempting to get back into it on my own.
Anyone care to recommend must-have books?
Of course, I'm not going to try to collect a library or anything. So the question is, if you had to do it on your own, which books would you consider essential?
Right now I'm looking at 3 quite seriously:
Mastering Swimming
Complete Conditioning for Swimming
Breakthrough Swimming
I don't have a swimming background and started swimming five years or so ago after a knee injury curtailed my running career. I agree with and have used some of the websites such as Swim Smooth and Go swim as well as youtube. I swim with a masters group three days per week. I have found the following books by Blythe Lucero to be helpful:
The Lucero's 100 Best Swimming Drills (good photos, nice drill progression)
Technique Swim Workouts (Coach Blythe Swim Workouts 1)
Shape Up!: 100 Conditioning Workouts (Swim Workouts 2)
The first book provides a very good set of drills and progressions for ech of the four strokes as well as clear photos. The next two provide workouts for each of the four competitive strokes with a specific focal point per workout with a nice progression per stroke. The Technique Swim Workout book is more heavily technique oriented and has work outs up to 2,500 yards/meters. The second book is more conditioning oriented with workouts up to 3,500 yards/meters although it still contains progressive workouts for all four strokes. I use them to put together workouts on the day that I don't swim with our Masters group. I find that I have to supplement the workouts a little to get the yardage up, especially with the Swim Technique book. The last two books also uses/reference specific drills in from her drill book so they all tie together. I understand that she is putting together a more advanced workout book which I will buy when it comes out.
I also like Salo's Complete Conditioning for Swimming for dryland training and Hanson, Hanson, and Bernhardt's Workouts in a Binder for Swimmers, Triathletes, and Coaches for addditional workouts. The latter has distance, middle distance, and sprint freestyle workouts as well as workouts for individual strokes and IM. The workouts are typically longer distance than the Lucero books and some top out at 6000 yards/meters for the distance workouts.
I don't have a swimming background and started swimming five years or so ago after a knee injury curtailed my running career. I agree with and have used some of the websites such as Swim Smooth and Go swim as well as youtube. I swim with a masters group three days per week. I have found the following books by Blythe Lucero to be helpful:
The Lucero's 100 Best Swimming Drills (good photos, nice drill progression)
Technique Swim Workouts (Coach Blythe Swim Workouts 1)
Shape Up!: 100 Conditioning Workouts (Swim Workouts 2)
The first book provides a very good set of drills and progressions for ech of the four strokes as well as clear photos. The next two provide workouts for each of the four competitive strokes with a specific focal point per workout with a nice progression per stroke. The Technique Swim Workout book is more heavily technique oriented and has work outs up to 2,500 yards/meters. The second book is more conditioning oriented with workouts up to 3,500 yards/meters although it still contains progressive workouts for all four strokes. I use them to put together workouts on the day that I don't swim with our Masters group. I find that I have to supplement the workouts a little to get the yardage up, especially with the Swim Technique book. The last two books also uses/reference specific drills in from her drill book so they all tie together. I understand that she is putting together a more advanced workout book which I will buy when it comes out.
I also like Salo's Complete Conditioning for Swimming for dryland training and Hanson, Hanson, and Bernhardt's Workouts in a Binder for Swimmers, Triathletes, and Coaches for addditional workouts. The latter has distance, middle distance, and sprint freestyle workouts as well as workouts for individual strokes and IM. The workouts are typically longer distance than the Lucero books and some top out at 6000 yards/meters for the distance workouts.
