Mini-Breakthrough in the Pool

Congratulations! Those breakthroughs are an awesome feeling. I'll share my experience not to try and 1-up you, but to encourage you and tell you to keep working. You are on the brink of many more breakthroughs. I too just started swimming 3 months ago. I couldn't swim 25 yards without feeling gassed. I bought the Total Immersion material and started learning how to swim efficiently. The next couple of months progress was slow and sometimes frustrating. A couple of weeks ago I managed to complete a 600 yard set, but it was a challenge. It didn't have that comfortable and relaxed feeling about it. Last Thursday I was doing a ladder workout (50, 100, 150, ..., 300, 400, 300, 250, 200, ...). As I finished the first 300 set, I felt good so I started right into the 400 set without resting. At the end of the 400 I still felt good so I went right into the next 300 set. I then stopped to rest not because I was exhausted, but because I was so excited that I had just completed a 1000 yard set and wasn't about to drown from exhaustion. Something had finally clicked. My balance and breathing rhythm had come together and I could just keep going and not be out of breath from the effort. Two day later I went back to the pool for another workout. My plan was to swim 2100 yards in 300 yard sets. As I finished the first set, I just kept swimming. I did the 1.2 miles in a single set. I was ecstatic when I finished. I was an endurance swimmer!!! I was one of those people I always saw at the pool that just kept going and going. I'm doing the HIM in Chattanooga in a few weeks (my first triathlon ever), and up until that point I had been stressing about the swim leg of the race. Not anymore. I got the swim leg handled. Now I can stress about pacing correctly on the bike so I don't burn out on the run...LOL. My point is...based on my own experience, it sounds like it is finally clicking for you, that your form is coming together to allow you to just keep going and going. Feels great doesn't it?!?

Way to steal my thunder hahahaha...kidding. That sounds awesome! It sounds like once you learn to get in that groove those longer sets seem to feel much like your 25m, 50m, 100m sets originally felt.

Must be a great feeling to put that much distance into one shot. That's kind of what worries me the most, not knowing if I could handle the continuous swim in a race. But I think today shows that you kind of have to just bear through an initial uncomfortable place and once you can settle in you are in it for the long haul.

Just keep swimming, looking for ways to make what you're currently doing feel even easier. Few people are strength limited in swimming when they first start out...your muscles need a "reeducation" on swimming movements.

It's fun and awesome that you felt you were in a groove swimming, but you'll also quickly tire those new muscles learning to swim, so don't push through! But you may have graduated a few weeks ahead on your zero to 1650 plan.

one of my favorite sets:
4 x 25
3 x 50
2 x 75
1 x 100

that adds up to 500 yards. Pick one thing to foucs on through that set. Repeat 3 times for 3 differnt focuses and you've got 1500 in the pool already.

Have fun

Sorry...I got caught up in sharing my own experience and didn't address the question you put out there. As for building arm strength, if you're keeping a high elbow on the pull, then the force is generated by the chest and lats. These are the muscles you want to target in your strength building effort. Shoulder strengthening would probably be good as well and will protect you from injury. Just google exercises for these target areas and get you some dumbbells and/or resistance bands. Put together a routine that takes about 30 minutes to complete and do it 2 to 3 times a week. Do 1 or 2 sets of 8-10 reps of each exercise and the weight/resistance should be enough to make those last couple of reps difficult to do. Ease into it and do some warm-up and cool-down stretching (5 min each) as part of the 30 min workout. You'll start seeing the fruits of your effort in 3 to 4 weeks.

Great to hear about not only your improvement but your enjoyment of swimming as well. Congrats!

Thanks for the responses everyone. Does it make sense to maybe get a buoy and some paddles?

I have not used either in my training.

Congratulations! Any milestone in the pool is a big one.

To the OP: great job! What do you think contributed the most to the breakthrough? You sound like me. I always have dealt more with breathing than arm issues. Would you mind detailing a little what the 0-1650 program looks like?
Thanks!

Thanks Suzanne,
Any advice on how much rest between each swim?

Not quite sure. I think a lot of it is that I train on my own and dont have someone to just tell me you "have" to swim this distance and so when I start to get a bit uncomfortable I just stop. This time I just pushed through and finally fell into a groove. I usually bilateral breathe and when I feel short of breathe I switch to every other stroke that definitely helps. I did a race about three weeks ago and the swim was 400m and I think I could have swam that continuously if it were for some people slowing me down, but that was because i was more focused on the race and just getting to the end so I could get to the bike.

Here is the program. Someone else had posted it on here recently. So i figured i would give it a whirl.

http://ruthkazez.com/swimming/ZeroTo1mile.html

Not to me.

As much as you need to accomplish the next task.

If your'e in a groove, just take 2 breaths and continue the next repeat. Rest 5 breaths between each "row". But if you're specifically working on a new skill, rest until you can do nasal breathing easily then repeat. This way you'll have plenty of oxygen going to your brain so that you can focus on skill based swimming.

Just an update, so the other day was definitely a confidence booster. Today I thought for fun let me see what I can swim without a break and then I'll just follow the set scheme of week 3 on the 0 to 1650 plan (the reason for my not following the plan exactly and going to week 2 is because I will actually be cutting back on swimming a bit due to some family time commitments coming up). So I warmed up and off I went. I felt like I settled into the same groove as the other day and just totally lost track of the laps. I ended up stopping because I felt like fatigue was causing me right arm to enter the water very flat and not with a nice high elbow (I noticed this happens a bit when I don't bilateral breathe) and the shoulder began to ache. So I ended up getting to 450m which I am happy about, but I seriously thought I had gone further hahaha.

Anyways, Suzanne, I totally get what you meant by not pushing through it because I think after I did a 200 right after that my shoulders just weren't used to doing that big of distance unrested and I was pooped. I ended up swimming about 1200m in total, but decided not to push it.

Congratulatoins. Based on what you wrote, I'd do the week 2 practice 2 times through the next few times in the pool. There is little glory in swimming a continuous long effort if your form deteriorates. By the time you are aware of your shoulder being sore, you've already been practicing poor technique.

Doing shorter repeats with short rest will have the same cardiovascular effect as doing a continuous repeat...but your smaller peripher muslces like those shoulder muscles will get recovery so they can perform the skill again. This will help condiition them and prevent the soreness (hopefully).

Here's week 2...I'd do this 2 times through for the next 3-4 sessons
WEEK two:
200 yards...rest for 12 breaths
4 x 100 yards...rest for 10 breaths between 100s
4 x 50 yards...rest for 6 breaths between 50s
4 x 25 yards...rest for 4 breaths between 25s
total: 900 yards