I have just started swimming and wanted to see if anyone here could give me some advice on a workout routine for adding some swimming workouts to my exercise routine.
My main form of exercise for the past 8 or so years has been running. I have run 6 marathons, with a personal best of 3 hours flat. So I have decent endurance but don't have very good speed.
I am basically just looking to add swimming to my workout routine to vary the routine and keep things interesting. I am not looking to become a particularly fast swimmer. I basically want to continue to work on my cardiovascular development and also work on toning my upper body...something that doesn't really happen when you run!
I have been swimming for a little over a week now. I can swim *** stroke pretty much non-stop without getting winded. I am currently swimming a half-mile 5 times a week, with nearly all of my swimming being the *** stroke. If I go to the crawl, I tend to get winded pretty quickly. I associate crawl with speedwork like 400s or quarter miles that I do for my running.
So with all that out of the way, my plan right now is to swim mostly *** stroke for half a mile, 5 times per week. I will throw in a little crawl to get my heart rate up and to add a little variety. Is this a reasonable workout? I'd like to work my way up to a mile for 5 times a week but I want to take my time and slowly build up my routine.
Any thoughts, suggestions, pointers or recommendations would be appreciated!
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Former Member
Thank you very much for the advice. It sounds like trying to work in more freestyle is the way to go. I think the combination of the up and down kick plus the crawl is what gives me a hard time. My legs start to get tired and my form starts to fall apart.
I'll work on doing freestyle at the start of my swims and hopefully over time that will become comfortable enough where my whole routine can switch from being predominantly breastroke to being predominantly freestyle/crawl.
I will also check with the instructors at my health club to make sure my swimming strokes are correct. When doing the breaststroke I do a frog kick and haven't had any problems so far but an ounce of prevention is always a good thing!
Thanks again.
Thank you very much for the advice. It sounds like trying to work in more freestyle is the way to go. I think the combination of the up and down kick plus the crawl is what gives me a hard time. My legs start to get tired and my form starts to fall apart.
I'll work on doing freestyle at the start of my swims and hopefully over time that will become comfortable enough where my whole routine can switch from being predominantly breastroke to being predominantly freestyle/crawl.
I will also check with the instructors at my health club to make sure my swimming strokes are correct. When doing the breaststroke I do a frog kick and haven't had any problems so far but an ounce of prevention is always a good thing!
Thanks again.
