Swimming Beginner - Advice Required

While I maybe 20 years your junior, I did just start swiming in June. I have always had solid cardio, but swimming has always been tough for me. Before dedicating myself to improving on the swim, I would be very short of breath after a 50. My previous swim experience would entail swimming 1 lap breaststroke 1 lap freestyle and so on for about an hour. My advice would be: don't do this!

In June I signed up for a HIM and realized that my swim would have to improve leaps and bounds in order to be able to be able to finish. I went from barely being able to swim a 100, to being able to swim the 1.2 miles very comfortabley.

I did so by swimming freestyle exclusively, and swimming 3+ times a week. The first few sessions were very frustrating, it was embarassing having to stop and take a break every lap or so, knowing the lifeguards were wondering if they were going to have to pull me out. After about two weeks of forcing myself to swim freestyle exclusively, I had improved so much that I could swim (slowly) for about 45 minutes to an hour. I firmly believe that if you dedicate yourself to improving on the technique and swiming one stroke exclusively your body will home in on efficiency. As your stroke gets more and more efficient distance/time becomes exponentially easier. To clarify, I swam as much freestyle as I could, when I could go no further I rested until I could go again then repeated ad nauseum.

I would highly recommend talking to someone who knows how to swim, as watching some youtube videos on technique (that is if you can't spring for a coach). Technique has come for me in bursts. At first it was figuring out how to breathe on both sides, next it was where my arms should be in relation to each other at any given time, after that came kicking. Now I'm working on my upper body rotation and how that works with kicking--if I ever figure this out I'm sure I'll find something else that needs work.

It takes a lot of hard work to ingrain a movement into muscle memory. My college coach said 10,000 repetitions before a motion becomes natural/subconcious. If you put in the hours you will improve; focus on tackling one thing at a time and don't deviate from it until it's correct (i.e. feels easy/natural/smooth). One thing that has taken literally years for me to grasp is that when training, you should constantly be thinking about form and technique--this sounds obvious but for me it was not. Learning to recognize how you are moving and what you are doing right/wrong is a huge component of improvement and takes a collosal amount of self awareness.

Best of luck to you! I hope this helps, I'm not an expert by any means but was in your shoes just a few months ago.

Take.lessons!

Technique is very important, and you'll be better learning good technique up front rather than trying to break bad technique later.  Group lessons are usually pretty reasonable and will give you a chance to practice with someone who can see what you're doing right and wrong. 

Beyond lessons, my usual advice to struggling novice swimmers is s-l-o-w-d-o-w-n and relax.  If you're gassed after 4x20, you're probably trying too hard.  Think of swimming like you would running.  If you went out the first day and tried to run a 6-minute-mile, you'd be gassed...and frustrated...What if you went out and walked a mile?  Easy!  So treat swimming like you're taking a walk in the park, not like you're running 100-yard-dashes. 

Stick to short sets (2x20 or 4x20) where you can hold your form for the whole set.  Take a break and do it again.  Trying to swim 8x20 where the first 2 are "good" and the last 6 "splashing and thrashing" builds bad technique. 

What worked for me was personal lessons, 6 weeks, 30 minutes 1 per week and then youtube and self coaching.  Also, watching other good swimmers and seeing how their form is different then mine.  I think the key to learning to swim is how you learn to swim.  There are tons of information out there on how you should swim: form, stroke, breathing, etc.  However, learning to swim is not like riding a bike or running, you can't just jump into the final form and assume everything will fall into place.  You really need to look at it as learning how babies go from flipping on their back, lifing their upper body, to trying to stand, to taking one step, to taking two steps, to taking three steps with support, to taking four steps without support, to walking to end of hall way, to running two feet and falling, to running to end of hall way, to not running in the streets...lol.   I think the problem people have is they jump in a pool and expect to go full swimming mode right off and get frustrated at why its hard, why can't they swim, what am I doing wrong..etc.  I recommend set a side 8-12 weeks of going from very basics to advantace skills, with 3 x a week sessions at only 20 minutes.  Look at this as sharp focus sessions vs endurance building.  After 8-12 weeks and you learn the proper form, the you can focus on endurance / other skills like the S-curve stroke thing, flip turns, etc.  Also, if you jump in full force and try to learn too much too soon, you are probably learning the wrong form and your body is remembering the bad form.  In the beggining, its all about patience..not fitness...  But what is great is that after the 8-12 weeks or so, and you graduate into the endurance stage, you don't think about form as much, unless you get tired and try to maintain form.  I personally think this type of learning overall is critical because in OWS, at least in some of the lakes I swam, you basically swimming by feel only...too dark to see your stroke moments.  Tips; drill cards with only one or two form skills per session..e.g. 8 laps just focusing on breathing, 8 laps just focusing on head down..then done or do another stroke for cross training.  If you feel any time you are tired..stop take a break. Its better to take a few minutes break per lap then trying to focus the laps..you are building muscle memory not fitness. Lastly, it helps to have another set of eyes: coach,wife, son/daughter, to tell you if you are doing x right...hey is my hand entering at the  right angle.  What is cool is when you see the break throughs happen in swimming..the end of the lane comes at you allot faster, bottom of pool goes by faster, or you can keep up with the guy next to you.  In OWS, you can't see the break throughs and don't really realize how fast or slow you are going, except when you swim with someone else.  Last tip, when learning to swim freestyle, focus on a SLOW "glide through the water with belly button towards wall and taking very few strokes".  This will address body rotation, breathing issues, hand entry issue, pull issues, expanding the lungs issues.  Very slow speed is better until you get the feel.

I take great exception to this notion you can advance to "advance" skills in 8-12 weeks or that you can develop any type of endurance swimming 20 minutes 3 X /week.  No one can become advanced like this, unless your definition of advanced is vastly different from the rest of the world. I will agree that 8-12 weeks of drills can improve water ability and comfort, but that's really about it.  From there you can begin a program to get you to advanced.  Most advanced swimmers go 3-5X/week for 80+ minutes.