Solo Swimmers

No. I have a spreadsheet of my own design. My log books precede availability of home computers and networks by a couple decades. I originally kept the sheets in binders. A few years ago, I used the Log-a-run website because a group I belonged to was doing it as a motivator. I was sort-of the king of the pushups list, doing upwards of 4000 per month. The year I turned 65 I managed to do 500 pushups, run a half-marathon and swim 1 mile. Not all at once mind you. The group was cardiac athletes, all of whom have had a heart procedure at some point. I have an artificial aortic valve. 10690 That's A LOT of pushups, Sumo! :applaud: Hey, whatever works for you for logging your workouts; keep on doin' it! I'm the same way with keeping a budget. All through college and until home computers, I kept it on notebook paper with columns drawn in. I finally progressed to using an Excel spreadsheet- whoa, high-tech! That's as far as I got, and I still just use Excel rather than a fancier program!

I'll second Elaine's point about swimming off events. Not only in-season, but even at Nationals... Yes to both! I find that training all four strokes on a daily basis prevents repetitive stress injuries, so when a hip or shoulder starts bothering me with one stroke, I change things up by switching to another. Fly has become my go-to stroke when my hips have had enough of the other three strokes. My hips love the kick motion of fly, so 200 fly has become that "off" event for me. (My shoulders do NOT like sprint fly!). I am way slower than my competition at Nationals, but I have stopped worrying about being a human meet delay (with apologies to the rest of you)! :blush:

nice idea for a thread elaine ! … i retired and moved to savannah 6-7 yrs ago Thanks, Jack! You moved to Savannah 6-7 years ago, and you still haven't switched to Georgia Masters (GAJA)? :nono: Consider this a formal invitation to join our team; we would love to have you! :agree: Have you met Donna Hooe yet? She is one of the coaches with the Savannah Masters team and our Coaches Chair for Georgia Masters. Check us out at http://www.georgiamasters.org :banana: I do like this thread as well. In addition to the challenge of not being able to evaluate my stroke, I recognize two other challenges I face as a solo trainer: 1. Mixing up work outs to keep it interesting 2. Mixing up work outs to train better I swim most of the year for fitness and train for open water swims usually competing in late May to late September. My typical distance for competition is 5K so a few years ago, I'd mainly been training with longer aerobic sets and then noticed I wasn't really improving. I've since added a sprintish workout every other week and a threshold set or two each week and noticed improvement. I'll be checking back here for more ideas. Thanks, Coyote! Welcome to you all of you other solo swimmers to the thread! :welcome: Thanks for your input, everybody! :applaud:

Another solo swimmer checking in. Coached masters workouts just never jived with me. Most of the time the written sets simply didn't align with my goals, and appeared to be catered to people looking to just "exercise" as opposed to those wanting to train for a specific goal. And I understand this. You can't really tailor workouts to suit the individual needs of everyone on the team, especially if you have lots of members with disparate goals. So I do my own thing now. One thing I do miss though is the feedback I got from the deck.

Elaine, I train by myself most of the time, because I don't like the Masters workouts. While I wholeheartedly agree with counting strokes on every lap, I do some things a little opposite what people here might suggest. Primarily, I don't vary my workouts that much. I have a limited number of sets that I go through regularly. While doing this, I keep track of my times, check my heart rate often and generally note how I feel. These things keep my mind active during the workout and also give me constant updates on my progress. I wouldn't recommend it for everyone, but it seems to be working for me. :welcome: Thanks for the tips, Ron! I also check my heart rate regularly and feel it's great feedback in determining if I am over-training or not. If my heart rate becomes elevated beyond the norm, I ease up the next day-- especially if I feel wiped out after my swim. I, too, have some workouts I repeat regularly; however, I often have to revise on the fly (no pun intended!) if a body part starts acting up. :bitching: hey elaine... i do know donna and a few others that swim with GAJA and have directed a few folks in there direction but i still swim with my team out of Niagara LSMC the BUMS ... but thanks for the offer Ohhh, ok. :sad: I'll let you off the hook. ;) Say hello to Donna for me! Hi Elaine! I swim on a masters team, but my work schedule doesn't allow me to swim with them all of the time. I would estimate that I swim solo 50% of the time. I swim 4 times per week total. For me, this is a great way to swim because I have unique challenges based on whether I'm on my own or swimming with my team. Swimming with the team forces me to stay with intervals set for me, not by me, & pushes me through nasty sets that I probably wouldn't make myself go thru on my own. There is the incentive to keep up with (or lead) my lane mates & swim faster just because I'm so competitive. I really push myself when I'm swimming with a group. When solo, I drop it down a notch, paying more attention to technique, and doing a lot of kicking, pulling & drills. I make sure I get plenty of rest unless I'm doing an interval set of some sort. I also tailor my workouts towards upcoming events. For instance, I have a sprint pentathlon coming up, so I'm doing lots of stroke-work, drilling, & of course 50s. I wouldn't be able to do this sort of workout with my group & that would be very frustrating for me.... Yes I agree to swim on your own requires an easily-accessible pool where you can swim like a swimmer & not have to navigate thru noodlers & lap swimmers. I finally found a pool that works well for me in this regard; at most I'm splitting the lane with one other person. You have a sprint pentathlon coming up? It wouldn't just happen to be the one at the Steve Lundquist Aquatic Center in Georgia would it? If so, I'll see you there; I'm doing the Ironman! :banana: Meanwhile, you bring up some great points about the differences between swimming with a team or alone. It's great that you have both options and can mix it up! :agree:

I was asked about my 15 wk cycles. The number is arbitrary, one year there was 15 wk between Summers Nats and my SCM taper meet,I had a good SCM meet,so I thought 15 wk was a good length.I can cut it down to 12 wk when necessary, I already have trouble pushing the intensity to 15 wk,so I don't go beyond that. All parts of this are arbitrary and change based on how I feel,but it is based on my philosophy of what is important to swim competitively. First,the most important thing is consistency,that is more than just showing up to swim,it means listening to your body, if something is injured,rest it if I feel a little sick,cut back the intensity so I don't get a lot sick. Second, working on technique will give conditioning,vice versa is not necessarily true. Third, the best way to swim race pace at meets is to swim lots of race pace in practice. So the first 2-3 week of the cycle I do mostly drills and relatively slow swims working on getting my stroke in a groove.Then I start adding in race pace sets. When I was doing mostly HIT I was adding them in relatively slowly(100 yd one week then 200 yd the next etc.) but since I am doing more USRPT I find I can add a whole set in since the sets are self limiting. By week 6-7 it is all race pace,as long as I am feeling good.I swim 4 days/wk and try to lift 2 days/wk. I generally lift on swim days after swimming. At 67 I need recovery days(at 30 I needed recovery days too though.) I do a 3 wk taper of swimming about the same amount but making every other swim a recovery swim(cutting the number of race pace swims in half) for 2 wk and the last week I warm up do 100-200 pace work and cool down.

I return to swimming about 3 months ago. I started swimming again in my apartment pool. About 6 weeks ago started to go to the recreation pool for lap swimming. I swim from 200 to 2,000 yards. All four strokes including butterfly.

My most important tip as a solo swimmer is to make friends with the regulars at the pool. The person sculling and stopping every 25 yards lane 6 might turn out to be your best cheerleader. They might not know what you're supposed to be doing or what something is supposed to look like but the fact that they might be paying attention will encourage you to be your best. When they say, "you looked so fast today", you want to be able to be proud of it and say, "thanks". You'll feel lousy about the compliment if you were just messing around. They'll look for you to be there and want to know what happened if you aren't. A team mate doesn't have to be on a team with you or doing remotely the same kind of work out to be able to support each other. Another tip is to use a watch and track your times, at least on important main sets. Being able to see if you're dropping your average by a few tenths in the long term and to know what your target times should be is a big part of ensuring you're working hard enough.

Great tips, 'Tall2! You brought up some really good points. Making friends at the pool makes g to the pool so much more enjoyable! It always makes me feel good to return on a Monday after a meet and have my pool buddies ask how I did. We encourage each other, and it makes us both feel better. In one case, there is a woman with MS who uses a Fitbit to keep track of her steps in the pool. When she reaches 3000 (her goal each session), she always lets me know. She appreciates the "Congratulations!" from me, and I get a kick out of her enthusiasm when she asks me about my meets. As for using a watch, I'm addicted to mine. One time when the battery died, I felt devastated! Replacing the battery became the first thing on my "To Do" list when I left the pool! I use mine for keeping track of ALL intervals as well as monitoring my heart rate, and I have become somewhat obsessed. (I also check my resting heart rate in the evenings to see how I am recuperating from the morning workout. Today, I ran through my ironman pentathlon races in our 84 degree pool, so my resting heart rate is elevated to 58 from the normal 49 or 50. This indicates to me I should make tomorrow a recovery and drill day.) Thanks for the great post, 'Tall2! :agree:

Arrived at the fitness center pool today. Two lanes had just one occupant. One was snorkel guy, the other was walrus lady. I tried to get snorkel guy's attention first but he would not look up and acknowledge anyone. Besides, the way he swam, arms and legs akimbo, it would have been rather difficult to share the lane. So I asked walrus lady who was doing some sort of side stroke if she'd share the lane. "Do you splash a lot?" "I'm not a strong swimmer, so I don't want to get splashed and get water in my mouth." I promised not to splash her and got in. I went slowly, so I don't think I splashed a lot.