- Swimming training is unfortunately often thought
to be rather boring and dull, and I guess it's
easy to understand why, it's fairly repetitive,
it's not as social, or maybe not as easy to explore
as you can when you're cycling and running,
but it needn't be the case.
There are plenty of ways in which you can make
your swimming training more interesting
and more fun.
So, today I'm out in Fuerteventura at the Playitas resort
and I'm going to be bringing you a number of ways
in which you can make your training more exciting
and more fun.
(upbeat music)
(electronic tones)
Routine is great, but swimming in the same pool
on every single swim can start to get rather boring
and make your swimming training less fun.
One way of changing this though,
is by swimming in a different pool.
Not necessarily for every single swim,
but every once in a while.
You'll be amazed by how different this feels
and how much more interesting it can make your training
by being in a different environment.
(Mellow music)
Music can really help to make your swimming more fun,
even if it's just playing on poolside.
Being able to hear some of your favorite tunes
when you get in at the end of each rep
can really help to get you through your workout
and if you're really enjoying that,
then why not invest in some means
of listening to that underwater?
Maybe a personal player, so you can listen to that
through some headphones, or one of those speakers
that you can place underwater so you and your mates
can all groove away to the music.
A way to make your hard sets more fun
and more interesting is actually
by using the space around the pool
as well as the water itself.
You could try doing 100 or 200 meter efforts
or reps broken up by some land-based exercises
outside of the pool, such as press-ups, sit-ups, squats,
whatever you like.
So, for example, you could be doing 10 lots
of 100 meters, getting out between each
of the 100 meter reps and doing 10 press-ups,
10 sit-ups, 10 squats, or you could just quite simply
just get out, go around the block, dive back in,
or get out, touch the wall outside the pool
and then dive back in.
That's actually a really good way of bringing in
some specificity into it for those triathletes out there
that need to get skilled at doing exercises
directly after swimming,
but before you do do that, just make sure it's okay
to do so with the pool that you're doing it in
and do make sure that you don't run on poolside.
You could also include some open water skills
into your swimming, which a really good
and natural way of incorporating some hard efforts
into your training.
Try this one for example,
in a group, set off in reverse order in terms of speed,
so the fastest swimmer will go at the back
and the aim is to be the first to the wall,
to the end of that rep, whether that's 100 meters,
200 meters, whatever you like.
Now, obviously you can do this in a pair
or you can do it in threes, or better,
do it as a group and on that note,
let's now talk through some of the benefits
to group swimming.
(mellow music)
See, swimming in a group is a sure-fire way
to making your swimming more enjoyable and more fun,
and to help pass the time more quickly
as apposed to swimming on your own.
Also, by swimming in a group,
it will hopefully distract you from the effort,
or the intensity that you're trying to exert,
because instead, you're trying to keep up
with other swimmers or you're pacing yourselves
upon other swimmers and their pace.
Now, if you do have a coach on poolside,
that's fantastic, that can also be a real big help
and benefit to you, but if you don't,
then why not taking turns to be the coach?
Maybe every few weeks one of you will be the coach
on poolside, or if you need to, coach 'em in the water.
All right, but how about including some dead turns
into your swimming?
Now, a dead turn is simply when you go into the wall
to do a tumble turn, flip turn, or even a touch turn,
but you don't touch the wall, or don't push off of the wall.
So, this is a really good way of just naturally
adding some intensity and some hard work into your swimming.
See, by doing that you then obviously don't get
the acceleration off of the wall,
so you've got to kick really hard, pull really hard
to get that back up.
Also, it's quite specific for those triathletes out there,
because well, in the open water we don't get to stop
or push off of the wall, get a recovery,
so then we can just practice that continual swimming
and on that note, why not also throw in swim sighting
as we would in the open waters,
we're trying to see where we're going,
just every so often, or every other length,
maybe just do a little bit of sight seeing
every few strokes.
Playing with toys is never fun, right?
Yeah, said no one ever.
We all enjoy playing with toys,
so why not bring that into the swimming world too?
We've got things like fins, paddles, kickboards,
pool buoys, elastic bands, sponges, you name it
and why not start trying them out
using some new toys in the swimming pool,
or just changing up a little bit,
using some larger paddles, or fins for sprint efforts?
Just whatever you do, if you are using anything new
or larger paddles for instance,
don't do too much too soon,
just build up very gradually.
And also just be sure to make sure
that you are allowed to use those toys
in your local swimming pool.
Okay, this one might seem fairly odd,
but it can genuinely make our swimming workouts more fun,
because most of us out there are type two athletes
and we just enjoy a bit of suffering.
Yeah, start including some IM and some other
strokes into your workouts.
Even if you are a triathlete and my think,
why do I need to do that?
Well, actually it can really help increase
your strength and actually your efficiency as a swimmer
and not to mention, it's also just quite a fun challenge.
Why not see how many hundreds of IM you can do,
or see how far you can get swimming butterfly?
(mellow music)
Well, now for my final and favorite tip,
it's the dive downs.
Now, essentially you just swim along,
dive down to the bottom of the pool,
touch with your hands and then push off of your feet quickly
and carry on swimming.
Or of you like, you can do a number of dive downs
in quick succession, so dive down, touch the ground,
as you come up, go straight into some butterfly arms
and then straight back down again,
essentially a big dolphin dive
that you might see in a triathlon.
Just do a few of them in quick succession
and then carry on swimming.
Personally I find that it's a great way of breaking up
some of those long efforts
and just keep that swimming a little bot more interesting.
Well, hopefully that's given you some inspiration
for your swim workouts to make your swimming
a little bot more fun.
If you've got any other ideas that you utilize,
or do in your own training, then drop them
in the comments section below so we can have a little gander
and maybe share with the rest of the world out there.
I hope that you've enjoyed this video.
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