r/Swimming

Swimming is widely considered harder than running because of the water resistance and breathing restrictions, so it would make sense for me to be decent at running due to my swimming ability. However, this is not the case. Would this be due to me just not knowing how to pace myself/knowing the proper breathing techniques while running? Let me know what you guys think and if you can relate.

I have absolutely no idea why, but livin' la vida loca sends me into overdrive. My fastest lap of any swim happens when that song comes on. It's not the fastest song on my playlist or even the only Ricky Martin song, but it's the only one that can drop my 100 yd pace by a solid 15 seconds when I'm running on empty.

Does anyone else experience this? What song/songs?

As a 28-year-old man with an extreme fear of swimming, I finally decided to put an end to it and signed up for 8 hours of one-on-one swimming lessons. My instructor has 5-star reviews; everyone seems satisfied, reporting significant progress after 8 hours, and there isn't a single negative comment. The pool we use is a very comfortable indoor hotel pool, 150 cm deep, and used by very few people. we have lessons twice a week for 2 hours each, and the 6th lesson is already over. I only have 2 lessons left, yet I am still lagging far behind.

• Lesson 1: We successfully practiced blowing bubbles in the water, the "dead man's float," and treading water vertically by keeping the head up and pulling the legs upward.
• Lesson 2: I successfully practiced kicking while holding the edge and using a kickboard. I also managed to push off the wall with my feet and cover a short distance unsupported while kicking. We tried arm strokes (freestyle), but I wasn't successful.
• Lesson 3: I spent the whole week thinking about swimming and watching videos so much that I couldn't even do what I had mastered in the first lesson—not even the dead man's float. I went home feeling very disappointed.
• Lesson 4: After a bad start, the instructor suggested trying the breaststroke with the head above water, thinking it might be easier for me to feel comfortable. I successfully performed the breaststroke kick with a kickboard.
• Lesson 5: We repeated the kicking drills from Lesson 2. I tried the breaststroke kick without support, but since I lacked the courage to lie horizontally enough in the water, I couldn't do it as properly as I did with the kickboard. We tried the arms without the legs; it was adequate, but I could never synchronize the arms and legs.
• Lesson 6: This was a repeat of Lesson 5, practicing the same movements.

I am genuinely worried that I will never be able to learn how to swim. I knew I had a fear of water, but now I’m starting to feel incompetent as well. I live in a seaside town. I plan to practice everything I've learned in the sea; I hope the extra buoyancy of saltwater will help me improve further. I need any advice from people who have gone through this or from instructors. Thank you for your time.

Basically ~ a week ago I saw someone post of someone who wanted to do weight training to help strengthen their swim and someone answered to do full body workout focusing on the shoulder back core and glutes mainly.

I understand why shoulder back and core are a priority but not for the glutes. Can someone explain what training the glutes add/do to your swim ??

Hi all, first post and I'm sure this would have been asked before but I'm just starting to get into swimming as my main cardio work out, I much prefer it to other options.

My front crawl needs work, I'm okay with my arms and breathing but I can't seem to get my legs right. I feel like I'm more kicking the water away like a bicycle motion if that makes ANY SENSE.

I keep seeing people say you need to kick from the hips but I just can't seem to visualise the motion and make myself do it. Any tips to help my brain and muscles connect better and get used to the motion?

For context, I'm swimming in a 25m gym pool which has limited resources in terms of kickboards etc so I'm just kind of winging it. I'm doing around 1500m per session currently but want to increase once I get a more smooth motion down, thanks!

Hello! My 5 year old has recently started at Foss Swim School (a chain of swim schools) and is showing real potential. They focus a lot on building blocks for learning stroke, turns, and proper breathing techniques. I swam competitively for a few years, but my heart wasn’t in it. My son LOVES IT and I really want to support him if he chooses to take it competitively.

He’s in group lessons now, but will start 1:1 lessons in a few weeks. I’m looking for any recommendations on how to foster his love for the sport and support him if we choose to pursue a competition team. There’s a team nearby that isn’t open until the child is 6 (so we have a few more months) but I’m seriously considering signing him up once he’s eligible.

Any tips, thoughts, advice yall may have is welcome and appreciated!

I'm trying to learn butterfly, watching youtube videos and reading articles from USMS. Would love some feedback.

Here's where I'm at:

I've been experimenting with hand entry and pull technique. I tried the keyhole pull with flat hand entry and my buoyancy felt better. I went to pool today and tried thumbs-first entry and pulling more directly toward my belly button (kind of a V or centre pull with no outsweep) and the pull itself feels way stronger, so I'm sticking with that for now.

The issues I know I have:

- Arms are moving too fast. I think I'm just trying to stay afloat rather than actually swimming with rhythm.

- Breathing kills my momentum. if I don't breathe I move forward much better, but obviously that's not sustainable. do i breathe when i start to pull or when i start to recover?

- Undulation and kick are a mess. I'm doing some kind of kick but I honestly don't know if my timing is right or if I'm even getting two kicks per cycle. or if i am forgetting to kick and undulate sometimes. As far as i am aware, in isolation i can do undulation drills. but when I combine it with pull/recovery and breathing there is no sync.

- Not sure if I'm exhaling underwater. Probably not consistently, which I know is a big deal.

- Should my knees and feet touch each other?

Despite all that I can complete 25m, and I feel like 50m might be within reach if I can sort out the timing and rhythm. I keep reading that butterfly is all about rhythm and I totally believe it. I just haven't found it yet.

What clicked for you when you were learning fly? Any cues that helped with the two-kick timing or breathing? Would really appreciate any advice

This is my fourth week of diving in this skill (pun intended), but sometimes im like not able to float myself, breathing techniques that i have learnt past these days goes brrr !!!!
Coach constantly reminds to “relax the body” but this is what i guess i am not able to do most of the time ans hence other things fall apart too!!!

Any help from fellow learners and pro people would be appreciated!!!

I'm planning in adding Swimming to my weekly exercise routine. For context, I run twice a week (5km easy and 10km+ long run), I also do 10k steps for 5 days when I'm not running, 2 days for strength straining and 1 day for Pilates.

How long should I swim for or what would be the ideal lap to do for starters? I enjoy doing freestyle and backstrokes.

I'm genuinely curious about all of you, if you're willing to spend a few minutes answering these questions

1. how old are you?

2. why do you swim?

3. how often do you swim?

4. what does your typical swim time/day look like?

.

.

For me...

1. 41

2. I swim for my health, mental and physical. I had high blood pressure after my 2nd child was born and wanted to get my body back into some kind of shape.

3. 3-4 days/week, 30 min to 1 hour each time

4. I do sets of this (2-3x)

- 300 m front crawl with front snorkel

- 100 m back stroke

- 100 m breast stroke

The second time I do this set, I add flippers and hand paddles

When I'm done with those, I do 100 m fly kick with the snorkel, and then another 100 cool down.

How about you? What does your swim week look like?

I am not trying to get or give any product advice, just curious how much you all do?

For me it's 30mins of fly non stop

Luckily we got fins and it was in short course

It was for missing the interval twice

My two toddlers are enrolled in swim lessons. So far they’ve had two lessons. I didn’t like the lesson we had recently.

Firstly, the instructor put them underwater several times without warning. I guess I would expect “we’re going to blow bubbles like we practiced but we will do it underwater this time. We’re going to do it in 3-2-1” or something of that nature.

Secondly, she kept giving my daughter (3) instructions on how to place her legs while on her back. The directions were sub par and my daughter was trying to follow them (put your toes underwater, so she bent her legs and had her feet as far underwater as possible). The instructor was getting frustrated. Then my daughter was holding onto her shirt while still working on the back float. The instructor was saying “no ma’am” and pulling the shirt out of my daughter’s hands. Obviously my daughter felt unsafe and insecure. I would expect “I’ve got you, you’re safe. Try to let go of my shirt and float”.

I called in today to speak with this instructor directly but now I’m thinking perhaps I should call the owner of the company. The first lesson this instructor gave was really good. This second experience was disappointing. I watched both of my toddlers walk into their lessons full of excitement, only to leave noticeably less happy afterward.

Kept it simpler and more like something you’d naturally type:

I almost drowned when I was younger. I lost consciousness and got brought back with CPR by a marine. Ever since then I’ve had a fear of water.

I’m trying to get back into swimming now because I’m tired of being scared of it.

I tried swimming today and I feel like I can’t breathe properly. I use my arms like I’m trying to survive instead of actually swimming and gliding. My legs feel heavy too.

The weird thing is I’m not unathletic. I run, I lift, I road bike. I can push myself physically. But swimming just feels different.

I don’t have the money for a coach right now but I still want to learn. I just want to beat this dumb fear out of me and finally learn how to swim properly.

There’s nothing else to it. I’ve read the general tips today. Maybe I just have to keep swimming? Like loads of it? Just volume my way out of this fear?

A while ago I posted here asking for advice on how not to get so tired while swimming. I got some good tips, but I still felt exhausted and couldn’t understand why. Today I finally figured it out: the problem wasn’t my technique or breathing, but the fact that I was kicking way too hard and wasting a lot of energy.

Since I’m a cyclist, I have strong legs and was unconsciously using an overly powerful kick. A friend pointed out that I was kicking excessively, so I tried swimming with a pull buoy and barely kicking at all, relying mostly on my arms. The difference was amazing: I went from struggling to swim 50 meters continuously to being able to swim almost nonstop for a long time.

Now I’m trying to learn the two-beat kick, but it’s hard to relax because I’m so used to a strong continuous kick. I also have one question: how exactly should the two-beat kick be coordinated with the arm stroke? Some videos say the kick should match the opposite arm, others say the same side. And when should the kick happen, during the pull/push, before it, or after it?

Thanks a lot for your help!

Edit: very good tips here. Thank you all.

I used to have swimming lessons on the highest level at my local swimming pool, and when I changed schools it started to be a big detour and I slowly stopped going at all, I dropped swimming at 17.

Now I'm at my big girl job, living in a new place, and the local swimming place is 2 min away from home, so I decided I need to start going again bcs my work is extremely sedentary and I miss it, honestly.

The first 100meters went fine, but then I started feeling extremely out of breath and I had to stop on each 25 m that I did- my resistance was on the floor. I still pushed through, and I ended up doing 600m.

After taking a shower and sitting on the bench, I started to hyperventilate and seeing everything black. A few people noticed and they came to help me lie down and gave me sugar and told me I should've eaten more before (I ate an yoghurt).

Now I still feel like crap (mentally because I could've prevented this, and physically because my whole body is still sore) but next week I will take it slower, and eat something better. Any tips are welcome 😄

How many days are enough to learn swimming if I am planning to give 1 hour daily for 3 days a week. I have no background in swimming. I just did some basic floating 5 6 years back. Currently 22. Feel this is a great skill to have

I’m typically a runner / HIIT person, but have recently started swimming 3x a week for 30-60mins as my cardio due to a bakers cyst… I just started this new routine this week so I’m looking for tips and beginner friendly workouts in the pool. I took swim lessons as a kid and grew up with a pool but that’s the extent of my knowledge.

I plan to swim 3x a week and strength train opposite days with 1-2 full days of rest. I’ve seen “before and afters” from swimming and am getting myself excited about my new workout, but I’d love more details from the actual community!

I have long hair and would love to maintain its integrity. What products do you use aside from a swim cap?

I did an hour today and was ravenous all night afterward— is this typical??!

Is lane sharing frowned upon?

Can you advanced ppl tell who the beginners are? 🤣

Tell me everything!! I’m excited to be here!

It’s coming up to winter in my country and since most pools are outdoors near me, I want to find something else that scratches the itch. I’m hoping to get into something that’s represented at the olympics so I can get invested in competitive too. I have access to ice rinks and I can skate so I am leaning toward speed skating but hoping to find something I can stick to.