Starting swimming, any advice?

Flukester said:
Wonko and myself are using Garmin Swim Worldwide watches. (snip)
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Thanks. The girlfriend has asked me about the Speedo Misfit Shine but to be honest I think it looks butt-ugly and I'm not entirely sure what the face actually does/shows you! Certainly doesn't appear to show any numbers.. :confused:

Anyone used the Shine series? I'm tempted for the Garmin but worried it looks a little bulky. I've got skinny girly wrists :p
 
Scam said:
Thanks. The girlfriend has asked me about the Speedo Misfit Shine but to be honest I think it looks butt-ugly and I'm not entirely sure what the face actually does/shows you! Certainly doesn't appear to show any numbers.. :confused:

Anyone used the Shine series? I'm tempted for the Garmin but worried it looks a little bulky. I've got skinny girly wrists :p
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I have skinny wrists, Garmin is a pretty small watch :)
 
Weigh in day. 15 weeks since swimming, now swimming 8 odd miles a week over 4 days.

26.2lb loss.. 14st 9.0lb to 12st 10.8lb
Fat 29.2% to 20.7%
Met age 59 to 39
Visceral fat beer belly 12 to 8
BMI 28.3 to 24.7
XL t-shirts to M
38 to 34 jeans

I am officially half man half fish
 
Little update from me.

Not feeling positive about swimming at all right now. I'm slow and inefficient and I cannot improve despite trying various drills, going to the pool often and seeking advice from friends who can swim. Basically, without a wetsuit or buoyancy shorts, I am useless!

I've got a coaching session on the 13th with a coach from 'Swim for Tri' so I hope that will help.

I think my problem is poor body position in the water due to sinky legs which in turn creates a lot of drag meaning I'm slow and get knackered quickly!

Whilst poor technique is probably the main factor, I don't think my natural buoyancy is helped by being short with heavy quads and low body fat.
 
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Hi Shamrock, I'd be interested to hear what you get out of the coaching session.
I'm sure I'm not the most educated on this but sinky legs is mostly about balance and the top half of your body being too high in the water - there's a page on the swimsmooth site that might be worth a look http://www.swimsmooth.com/swimming-balance.html. Another 'head too high' one might be swimming without enough body roll if it makes you lift your head to breathe.
If you've already got the legs for it, what about practising breaststroke as well? Probably not a popular choice with other swimmers in a tri though!
 
I'll report back. I hope I get a lot out of it but I fear it might just be a taster. I expect they'll try to get me back for more sessions but at £45 for 30mins I don't know if I can afford that.:eek:

I've read that for body types like mine you need to really force your head down to keep the rear end higher. I tried it this morning and it did seem to help but then I struggle with the breathing aspect. Since my head is deeper than I'm used to, turning it to breath resulted in many gulps of pool water.:o
 
OK thanks. But £45, ouch!
I've tried different head positions and do better with head down too, and the reason I mentioned body roll above is that I found I needed to positively do this more to get a reliable breath without turning my head so much. Apart from anything else, it means you can turn your head a bit extra to get a breath even if you hit a wave.
 
Flukester said:
I have skinny wrists, Garmin is a pretty small watch :)
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Say whaaa? We saw one in a glass case at John Lewis the other day and it was flippin' huge!? Unfortunately there was no staff around to let me try on..

For those that use Swimovate, have they tried the MyPoolMate online stats stuff? Can you share them on a page like you did with the Garmin link? :confused:
 
Do any of you use an MP3 player at all? I keep considering buying a cheapish one from amazon as I find myself getting bored on longer swims and feel some music would help considerably but am unsure on how well they work.
 
Got another 90x25=2250 yards, 1.1 mile in 1H6M
About 3.minutes faster than last week and a new PR.breaking 1hr doesn't seem too unrealistic in the short term
 
On target for my 5k in 6 weeks :)

Distance 4050 metres
Total Time 1hr 30min
Swim Time 1hr 25min
Calories 1,212 kcal
Ave Pace 126.3s/100m
Ave DPS 2.23m/str
Stroke Rate 21/min
Rest % 3%

Rest% is above zero due to a young lady who was swimming particularly fast that I was making sure not get in the way of so had to keep pausing to let her past, for some reason the last 1500 or so meters were faster, not sure if it was due to nearing the finish or the fact that she was there making me swim a little harder :D
 
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Dano said:
Do any of you use an MP3 player at all? I keep considering buying a cheapish one from amazon as I find myself getting bored on longer swims and feel some music would help considerably but am unsure on how well they work.
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I've not seen anyone using one to ask, but I have wondered how loud the music would have to be to hear it properly. Might not be so good for your hearing long term.

Dano said:
On target for my 5k in 6 weeks :)
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Well done :) I did a fairly lazy 4k yesterday - I had a cold last week so trying to get back into the usual routine again. I wonder how accurate the calories calculation is - I know weight has an effect but my garmin says 978 for the same distance.
 
So I had my Swim for Tri coaching session today. The coach said the main points I need to work on are my kick and lack of shoulder rotation. Specifically, I need to keep my feet closer together and break the surface more with my heels. For the rotation I should work on having my chin resting on my shoulder.

I'm sure there are more things wrong but in such a short session those are the two things that stood out to her!

Here are a couple of vids my friend took, firstly in a swim skin, then in my wetsuit.


 
I really need to work on my kicking, keep finding myself pretty much just dragging my legs and doing all the work with my arms but I just cannot seem to get a decent rhythm going with my legs :(
 
It looks like your head is too deep in the water. This is forcing water to flow over your head and back, forcing your entire body further down in the water which is probably why you're struggling with shoulder rotation. Both shoulders in the water = more resistance. Just look look up a little more (not straight ahead, though. It takes a surprising amount of energy to keep your head tilted up).

The second video is better, but that's probably down to the buoyancy of the wetsuit.

I had a good swim this morning. Not really done much since before christmas but managed to do 4km non-stop in 66 mins today :). Not my fastest but at least my stamina is coming back! chuffed as I had a terrible session on Wednesday.
 
wonko said:
I did a fairly lazy 4k yesterday - I had a cold last week so trying to get back into the usual routine again. I wonder how accurate the calories calculation is - I know weight has an effect but my garmin says 978 for the same distance.
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Endomondo tells me 740 kcals for my 4k swim today. I think it's wildly inaccurate though because it bases it on time rather than effort, so I could have done a lazy 3k in the same time and it'd tell me the same calories. Are there any green light HRM watches that work underwater yet?
 
Interesting, I always thought my head was too high! People kept saying it's like a see-saw and if your head is too high your legs sink. I was having trouble breathing anyway when I pushed my head down further.

I've ordered some fins so hopefully when I'm using those I can not worry about my kick and isolate my stroke to work on shoulder rotation.

Jealous of all you people swimming far and fast. I can bike 100 miles or run a half marathon no problem... swimming for 200m without stopping and without a wetsuit is too much.:(
 
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