20 yard pool

I too sometimes can only workout in the 20 yard pool. I have found that if I wear a drag suit, I add a couple of strokes per length. While the drag suit is not quite the same as swimming in a 25 yard pool, it at least doesn’t feel like I am constantly turning. The more drag the better. You may also want to do more kick sets. Also, this is a great opportunity to work on turns – take advantage of it.

Why not find a better pool and coached workout? Go to www.swimnem.org and you'll find a listing of workouts in your area. Springfield College has a good program and it's not far from you.

I also have trained in a short pool-15 yards or 20 yards for the past three years in a health club. I started last month once a week at a 25 yard pool and continue to do 2 or 3 times in the shorter pool as well. Like they stated before work on kick and do 5 laps for 100 and do both 60's and 40's for speed. Also, in the shorter pool you can try to do harder strokes like butterly more since its their are more turns. At first the 25 yard pool seemed long. Good Luck.

The few times that I have had to swim in pools that are short (one was a very peculiar 18 yards in length), I did some warm-up, then did some intensive 20 yard (or 18 yard, whatever the case might be) sprints.

I swam in 20-yard pools some time ago when I was a better swimmer, but I remember them well: crowded, dark, rough water, hazardous walls, bad water and bad air and a chronic sinus condition, and worst of all - I never got a chance to breath. I put 20-yard pools and kidney-shaped pools in the same category - inventions from hell designed to discourage swimming as an exercise. If you can do it best of luck, but my advice is to work out somewhere else.

Well, in our neck of the woods, we have only two pools, and both are 4 (narrow) lane 20 metre pools. The nearest 25 metre pool is an expensive ferry trip away...yet our club has managed to produce several nationally ranked masters swimmers. The overall advice: when given lemons...make lemonaide. Advice given in the last post was good. As well, practice half lengths (real length distance) with turns at sprint speed, especially in backstroke. Given the extra number of turns a workout in a short pool entails, capitalize on your turns. Ditto for starts. It is hard to get into the feel of a long stoke when you hit the wall so often, so extra stroke drill may help, as may resistance sets (pulling a partner, bungee cords, etc.) You will have to mentally challenge yourself to make every stroke long and powerful. As for the turbulence - what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. A race in a calm pool will be soooo easy! If you can, talk the pool management into buying decent wave reducing lane ropes, and/or increasing the water depth so it is level with the deck. Good luck; I sympathize with your pool predicament.

I swam for a summer league team that had a 20yd pool when I was a kid. The drag suits definitely helped and I tended to have better turns than my competition. Work on those. I found that by the time I was 15 and swimming 100s rather than 50s that workouts involving sprinting 120s (6 laps) really helped my 100 times when we had away meets.

I've been adapting the daily workouts for a 20 m pool that I have access to while on travel. As long as your not a distance person, its not too difficult to just "pretend" its a 25 and your really fast :) I tend to drop sets that are longer that 300's because I tend to get dizzy and have trouble counting. for stoke, IM or drill work where swims are broken into 25 - I use the pretend its a 25 rule. Otherwise, I hit the regular disatance and adjust the number of intervals to wind up at the end of the pool that has the clock.