Hi all,
I've been faithfully going to practice 6x week for the past last year without missing but for the occasional work event/meeting keeping me away. I'd say about two weeks ago, after having a few months of making some good improvement in my times, I just started to feel bad in the water in general. I didn't feel like I was progressing at all. I felt like getting through practice was all I could do. I'm not ill or anything.
Now for the past week except for Monday, I've ignored all three of my alarm clocks and have not come to practice despite a fully packed bag ready to go.
I guess I'm just a bit burned out. I feel guilty for missing and know that every day that I'm out of the water I will have a even more painful return swim, but that’s just not been enough to get me out of bed.
Any suggestions for beating burn out?
After college I didn't want to swim at all. Took about a 4 year break. I made a couple comebacks to the sport since then, each time I started hot n heavy on practice 5-6 days a week, got a lot of my speed back and was competing, then after about 9 months in each time i just found i lost interest for it altogether for another year or two. I finally started back up this past december with a 2-3 time per week swimming program and a goal to just do it to enjoy it rather than as a structured training regimen. I don't think i've ever enjoyed swimming so much. No burnout so far, not even close to what I felt after 6 months of swimming in the other "comeback" attempts i made, and my speed is right on par with what it was swimming 5-6 days a week but I'm only doing 2-3000 yards 2-3 times a week with better quality rather than quantity.
Try dropping the frequency down to 2-3 days a week for a month or two. Even experiment with different types of practices. Tone down the yardage and up the quality for a while. Then use the extra time you would've been in the pool to get into something else that you enjoy . I personally like my time with video games :applaud: but i'm just a big kid yet at 31 :D
This is very interesting to me. I have been thinking of bumping up my # of workouts per week. And I've seen the advice on this board from time to time that if you want to swim faster, swim more often. But maybe that's not true? Maybe some of us would suffer psychological burnout if we swam too often, not to mention that our old muscles might not fully recover? Maybe we're better off doing non-swimming activities some days? I'd love to hear others thoughts on this.
After college I didn't want to swim at all. Took about a 4 year break. I made a couple comebacks to the sport since then, each time I started hot n heavy on practice 5-6 days a week, got a lot of my speed back and was competing, then after about 9 months in each time i just found i lost interest for it altogether for another year or two. I finally started back up this past december with a 2-3 time per week swimming program and a goal to just do it to enjoy it rather than as a structured training regimen. I don't think i've ever enjoyed swimming so much. No burnout so far, not even close to what I felt after 6 months of swimming in the other "comeback" attempts i made, and my speed is right on par with what it was swimming 5-6 days a week but I'm only doing 2-3000 yards 2-3 times a week with better quality rather than quantity.
Try dropping the frequency down to 2-3 days a week for a month or two. Even experiment with different types of practices. Tone down the yardage and up the quality for a while. Then use the extra time you would've been in the pool to get into something else that you enjoy . I personally like my time with video games :applaud: but i'm just a big kid yet at 31 :D
This is very interesting to me. I have been thinking of bumping up my # of workouts per week. And I've seen the advice on this board from time to time that if you want to swim faster, swim more often. But maybe that's not true? Maybe some of us would suffer psychological burnout if we swam too often, not to mention that our old muscles might not fully recover? Maybe we're better off doing non-swimming activities some days? I'd love to hear others thoughts on this.
