Hey, solo swimmers! :wave: Welcome to the thread for all of us who train solo. Whether you train on your own due to a lack of a Masters team in your area (or for any other reason), this is our virtual locker room. Please post training tips that you think would be helpful, or anything else you would like to share with the rest of us. Have a rant? Go ahead and vent here! :rantonoff:
I'll start with a tip:
The most frustrating thing for me training solo is not having a coach on deck to evaluate my stroke and keep me on track, so I bought a waterproof camera and enlisted the help of my husband to periodically shoot video of all four strokes. Shooting underwater video became a knee/back buster, so I bought a camera mount and attached it to PVC pipe, so my husband could stand up straight to shoot underwater video. The camera gets dunked underwater, and he twists the pipe to pan the camera as I swim by.
Today, I bought a 2-pack of 12-inch "Gear Tie" reusable rubber twist ties (available at Home Depot), so I can tie the PVC pipe to the pool ladder (located in the corner of the pool) and shoot video myself. (If I angle the camera just right and keep it on wide angle, I can video me coming and going.)
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After each video session, I upload the videos to my desktop computer and compare my stroke to my favorite Go Swim stroke videos to see what I'm doing well (or not). I also post them on the Forums for feedback.
Ok, solo swimmers, what's your tip?
I have no tips, still too much of a newbie, but I have to swim alone because I could not find a local team. I'm hoping to find one in fall or winter. I go to a fitness center with a 4 lane, 25y pool and I have yet to find a good time to go. I suspect it will get better after kids are back in school since one or two lanes are always taken for swim lessons. There is no set schedule for that. The teachers make themselves available at whatever time parents choose, so I can't say 11 or 12 or 1 is a good time. Until September, that is. For the summer I joined a local Triathlon club which has Tuesday night open water sessions, so I can get out and do a mile or so at least one day a week with a friendly group.
I'm retired, so I go to the pool during working hours and mostly it's other old-timers then too. Those people are not competitive masters and not cross-training for other sports and several are not even what I would term fitness swimmers. Judging by their movements, they are probably rehabbing from serious age-related illnesses. A couple are what I call snorkel guys. They are wide-body 70-80-somethings who wear a swim belt, snorkel, mask and flippers. They will not share a lane since they insist on staying dead center in the lane and the way they flail their arms one wouldn't want to join them anyway. Then there are the floaters, a couple people who do not have any discernible stroke, they more or less tread water, sculling about 10 yards a minute. Often one lane will be taken by 2 or 3 elderly women doing their own style of water aerobics instead of laps, even though there is a larger activity pool just 8 feet away. The big pool is salt water, the lap pool is not, so that's their reason for taking up a lane.
I have no tips, still too much of a newbie, but I have to swim alone because I could not find a local team. I'm hoping to find one in fall or winter. I go to a fitness center with a 4 lane, 25y pool and I have yet to find a good time to go. I suspect it will get better after kids are back in school since one or two lanes are always taken for swim lessons. There is no set schedule for that. The teachers make themselves available at whatever time parents choose, so I can't say 11 or 12 or 1 is a good time. Until September, that is. For the summer I joined a local Triathlon club which has Tuesday night open water sessions, so I can get out and do a mile or so at least one day a week with a friendly group.
I'm retired, so I go to the pool during working hours and mostly it's other old-timers then too. Those people are not competitive masters and not cross-training for other sports and several are not even what I would term fitness swimmers. Judging by their movements, they are probably rehabbing from serious age-related illnesses. A couple are what I call snorkel guys. They are wide-body 70-80-somethings who wear a swim belt, snorkel, mask and flippers. They will not share a lane since they insist on staying dead center in the lane and the way they flail their arms one wouldn't want to join them anyway. Then there are the floaters, a couple people who do not have any discernible stroke, they more or less tread water, sculling about 10 yards a minute. Often one lane will be taken by 2 or 3 elderly women doing their own style of water aerobics instead of laps, even though there is a larger activity pool just 8 feet away. The big pool is salt water, the lap pool is not, so that's their reason for taking up a lane.
