Advice on lane swimming&how to build endurance/fitness

Sergio

Hi guys,

Im new to these boards,only found out they existed recently.
Im swimming for alongtime,since i was very young on and off.im 28 now and i suppose i need to start looking after myself&my health/fitness and want to get fit and lose the pot belly:D
After a visit to the doctors recently i was told i had slighty high blood pressure so i need to start swimming more regulary.
I swam with a club when i was a child and had a brief stint with the cork masters recently but i couldnt commit because of the shifts that i work in my job:(

Anyway im looking for some advice on how to improve my fitness in lane swimming instead of just swimming up&down aimlessly.
thanks for the advice in advance

P.s remember im only a begginer so take it easy on me;)

AngryHippie

start with what you can do at a push, If you can still swim a 200m (8 lengths) frontcrawl, then thats where you start. Do one of those as a warm up, get your breath back, do a few gentle stretches and then do one flat out. Time it. Use that as your base time, From then on you can structure all of your frontcrawl sets on that basis. Your aim will be to hold 75% of that 200m pace for all of the distances you cover, When that gets too easy (4-5 weeks) then you do another 200m timed swim and adjust accordingly.
Remember the progress will seem fast at first and will get less and less noticeable for a few weeks and will take a little jump again so don't get impatient, Give it 6 months and you will see the difference.
The same can be done for the other 3 strokes, do one per session for the next 4 and you can build nice varied sets, you can get away with a 50m Butterfly time.
after the first few weeks you should increase your warm-up time up to the 10-15 minute scale as your muscles will adjust quite fast (in my experience)

Clseeper

If it's just for your fitness then start out quite easy. The ideal aerobic training zone is only after ~20 minutes so you don't want to be in bits before you even reach that. The swimming from a younger age should stand to you. It's still quite vague what level you swam at? Where you in a club or just learnt to swim? If you were in competitive club and understand AngryHippie's post then it's a good starting point. You can get back to us for more varied sets when you get up to speed. Also the advice goes for the shorter distances as-well.

I'd try the masters again. From what I've found they're very flexible. Even if you can't make it for two weeks at a time. I know my own club here in Dublin let you just pay per session you do. That way I can train myself in the weeks I can't make their sessions. I find it a much better motivator to have the social side and also to be training with other people who will push you.

For the belly, there's no such thing as targeted fat loss so it'll just be all round cardio for you
Having said that, toning can really help definition when you get to the lower body fat percentages. That means a good bit of butterfly kick.