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?
I'd try one or both of the following strategies:
Give yourself permission to take time off, say, two weeks. Do other things with that time. Give yourself a chance to miss swimming without feeling guilty about not being there. Sometimes time away is just what you need.
When you do go to practice, swim in a slower lane or at the end of the lane. Tell yourself you're just going to take it easy for awhile, maybe concentrate on your stroke.
Agree with the above suggestion but would add that perhaps you should look at the types of workoputs you have been doing, and perhaps mix them up a bit.
Perhaps strokes/distances you don't normally do and outlandish drills, water toys or relays to freshen up the experience.
Rachael,
The suggestions of knelson (cut back # per week) and philoswimmer (take a break) are great. Although I don't always follow this advice, here are some ideas I try to incorporate into my training:
Mix up swimming workouts with other dryland stuff: At various times I will run, do yoga, do core/Pilates, do stretch cords, do free weights, etc. I like the variety and it helps doing some of these other activities relatively consistently for times when you can't / don't want to get to the pool and for overall fitness.
Try periodization in this fashion: over a month period swim 4x, 5x, 6x, 3x per week where you steadily increase your intensity the first 3 weeks and then have an easier week of swimming.
Try mixing up the events you're training for: for example, I'm taking the next two seasons to focus exclusively on sprint events, even though I'm much better at mid-distance and distance events.
...for example, I'm taking the next two seasons to focus exclusively on sprint events, even though I'm much better at mid-distance and distance events.
Powerful is the dark side.
Powerful is the dark side.Fear not. I think the end result will just be that the first 50 of my 500 in the future is faster. Oh yeah, and I'll probably have a cool Gary Hall Jr. boxing gown to wear for the 50 at Mesa Nationals.
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
Have you competed in any meets?
I get bored with practice if I don't have a goal. I need to be preparing for a meet to get the most from my practices.
The meets are fun and show my progress.
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?
My feeling is more is better up to a point. I think you need days to recover. My opinion is five days a week is plenty. I'm sure there are those who swim seven days a week, but I'll bet even they use a couple days per week as recovery days and only swim easily. My best advice is to listen to your body and your mind. If you feel too tired or just mentally aren't into it that day, don't swim. Swimming should never be drudgery.
