Swimming

[SyZ]

I see lots of posts on bikes for good reason ... does anybody swim?

I have access to a (mainly) private pool where I currently am, and try to go daily or semi-daily starting a few weeks ago. I don't really do anything other than a few laps with one stroke, then swap it up, then stretches, then more laps, etc. For maybe 45 minutes at a time. It's great because I'm not sweating since I'm in the water, and afterwards I immediately get a shower and am breathing heavily and can feel the burn.

But, I don't know how good / useful this exercise really is. Sure, an hour of competitive swimming like what Michael Phelps does can burn 600 calories, but I doubt I'm that high. And if I just ran instead, I wouldn't risk swimming head first into the side of the pool ... again.

[2Birds1Stone]

Swimming is incredible exercise.

I just learned how to swim in October. Been doing a USMS group swim every Monday night after work at a local college.

I went from barely being able to do one full lap in October to 2500 yards in a 1 hour session recently....actually gearing up for the pool in an hour.

Happy swimming!

[nereo]

I swim - and I've pretty much swam my entire life.

It's one of the 'best' exercises out there (low impact, high caloric burn, full body).
Also - just a correction; people sweat when they swim.  They just don't realize it.

[marty998]

Swam as a kid... gave it up when I was 12 when everyone else starting becoming competitive and I was...well... still a floundering duck.

Started again last September... can get through 20 laps. Still not very quick but thats not the point.

Sunday afternoon swims in a virtually empty pool down at the local gym are wonderful.

[patchyfacialhair]

On and off now that I'm an adult. Swam competitively and played water polo in high school.

Seeing this thread makes me realize I'm in an "off" time. I'm going swimming tonight to rectify that. Gym has a 25 meter pool.

It's one of the most rewarding exercises, in my opinion. Sure, it feels good to lift, or ride a bike, but nothing feels better than crushing a few thousand yards in the water then feeling completely rejuvenated. Your muscles will be sore, but your joints have zero pain.

[WildJager]

I used to swim all the time as a kid (literally, ever day in the summer and then I would have swimming practice).  Now a days I mostly swim just to hang out with my dog when the weather is nice.  I bike a lot more now just because it's convenient as a mode of transport, not necessarily because I do it for exercise.  Now if I could swim to work...  *images of flapping my arms flying through the air to get to where I'm going comes to mind*

Joking aside, it's a great way to exercise and can also be a lot of fun for everyone.  I never really enjoyed swimming laps for the sake of getting in shape, but bodies of water allow for a large variety of games.  Sharks and minnows comes to mind as one of my favorites.  And water resistance really does help build muscle without the harsh effects of joint fatigue from running, etc, as we get older.

[Fred2004]

I haven't swam in a while, but my brother does...it tends to get boring for me, kind of like running (I prefer cycling...can also be monotonous).  He uses some kind of in water headset to listen to music and doesn't do interval training, but swims for an hour or 1.5 hr straight (google "total immersion" swimming).

I started climbing about 5 years ago...my exercise of choice!  Though I have a bad shoulder (need surgery on torn labrum in left, right shoulder just clicks and pops (from swimming as kid))

PS: if you do PT in military, the Navy lets you substitute swimming for running.  Not sure what times are for "excellent" or whatever the rating is, but I think 500M in 7 minutes...which isn't world record pace, but definitely not loafing.  Which is much easier (if you can swim) than the run (it's like under 6 minute pace for same "excellent"...I'm not a runner)

[mm1970]

I swim! 

Backstory: in my late 30's I started running (again), and decided to run half marathons.  Did two, plus a few other long races, got injured (piroformis), cut back my distance, took up triathlons (but sprint ones), went through physical therapy.

Still had the issue with piriformis and sciatica, quit running.  Started up again the following year to train for the tri again, except using Vibrams.  Fixed the piriformis! But gave my achilles tendonitis.

Anyway, stopped running again.  At that point I started doing swimming and spin classes.  Early morning is really the only time I can work out, at 5:30 am.  So I go to the pool 2x a week at 5:30 am.  I feel like I:
1.  Get a good workout, though I'm slow
2.  It's not hard on my body, though I have to be careful of my left shoulder
3.  I can lose myself in my thoughts, hard to do with a FT job and 2 kids.  (I swam all through 2nd pregnancy).

I love it. It's awesome. 

[Splashncash]

I see lots of posts on bikes for good reason ... does anybody swim?

Yes, yes, yes!!  I love it (hence my user name).  I mix my swimming with running and biking.  When possible, I love to do open water swims (think 1-3 miles in open ocean).

But, I don't know how good / useful this exercise really is. Sure, an hour of competitive swimming like what Michael Phelps does can burn 600 calories, but I doubt I'm that high. And if I just ran instead, I wouldn't risk swimming head first into the side of the pool ... again.

As others have mentioned, it really is great exercise.  It is so much easier on most of your joints and the water resistance is a good muscle builder. 

Why are you swimming into the side of the pool?  Are you using goggles?  Or are you swimming so fast you can't stop?

[Hotstreak]

I also swim regularly.  I find it a great exercise and easy on the joints.  Since my other main activities are walking, running, and hiking, it's nice to do something where I don't have to use my legs as much (and at least use different muscles!).

Why are you swimming into the side of the pool?  Are you using goggles?  Or are you swimming so fast you can't stop?

Not to speak for OP, but accidents happen.  People ride their bikes in to ditches, run in to obstacles while running, etc.  Backstroke can be dangerous is you aren't paying close attention and the pool staff removes the flags, for instance, or you can hit your heel pretty hard while performing a flip turn.

[big_slacker]

I like riding my bike to the pool to swim, then ride back. :)

I learned to swim in my 20's for a tri. I suck at it, such a technique sport, I feel like I work a lot harder than people with good form. I'm fit, but every fat dude in the pool smokes me, lol!

[nereo]

Why are you swimming into the side of the pool?  Are you using goggles?  Or are you swimming so fast you can't stop?

Not to speak for OP, but accidents happen.  People ride their bikes in to ditches, run in to obstacles while running, etc.  Backstroke can be dangerous is you aren't paying close attention and the pool staff removes the flags, for instance, or you can hit your heel pretty hard while performing a flip turn.

Ok... I swam competitively for 18 years and have coached swimming for a decade.  Accidents occasionally happen but excluding the very competitive, 6x/week type swimmers* accidents and injuries are incredibly rare. The most common are jammed/sprained fingers - usually caused by hitting the lane rope when you're not paying attention. Occasionally someone miscounts in backstroke and thwacks their head, but it's rare and the vast majority of people spend so much time looking back that this is uncommon.

Injuries are way more common in running, cycling, soccer, basketball, baseball, racketball, or almost any other aerobic sport.

*very competitive swimmers can suffer from repetative stress injury (RSI) - but you are only in danger of that if you start swimming 5+ days a week for 1hr+ each day at a high intensity.

[Frankies Girl]

I like riding my bike to the pool to swim, then ride back. :)

This!


The husband and I practically live at the pool when it's open. And now that he is FIREd as well, it's going to be even more true this summer. LOVE riding our bikes there and back too. (it's just under 2 miles round trip so really easy ride)

And we're not swimming laps constantly; we swim around, play with diving sticks or play catch, go off the diving board, practice strokes and do underwater races and stuff just like the kids do. Guess what? It STILL great exercise and one of the few ways to feel like you're playing without being boring and still work just about every part of your body too. I got sleek, amazing looking muscles in my arms and upper body from last summer's swimming/goofing around in the pool, and I look forward to trimming down/building muscle even more this year. :)

[misshathaway]

I swim every weekday morning at the gym. It replaced daily running for me when I got a torn meniscus some 15 years ago. It took forever to heal. I still run on weekends. 2 days a week of running doesn't seem to trigger any problems. I do the elliptical after swimming at the gym so I'm not sure how much swimming contributes to my fitness. I do it for the endorphins. It took me awhile to get the same feeling I get from running.

I started it b/c I had had a previous injury within a few months of the meniscus. My primary care physician happened to have been a competitive swimmer and just kept at it through life. She told me that and then said "Why don't you try swimming? You can't hurt yourself doing that"

-I- can. Once I got some kind of shoulder problem that kept me out of the pool for a week. However, that has been the only problem so far in 15 years.

[deadlymonkey]

Swimming is great, and won't hurt you knees like running can.  Only issue I ever had with swimming is that it can be boring.  Invest in a GOOD set of waterproof earphones and music player so you can listen to music while swimming.  It makes the swim fly by.  This is what product that should not cheap out on because lower prices models can stop working mid swim ( if even a little water gets in the earphone you will stop hearing the music).  Bone conducting speakers work better but not everyone likes them.

[hudsoncat]

I like riding my bike to the pool to swim, then ride back. :)

This!

The husband and I practically live at the pool when it's open. And now that he is FIREd as well, it's going to be even more true this summer. LOVE riding our bikes there and back too. (it's just under 2 miles round trip so really easy ride)

DH and I too! Our trip is a little farther (4 miles each way), but we started to ride our bikes to gym to swim regularly last summer. Took a biking break over winter (not sure I'm that dedicated) but have started back into it. Some people seem very confused that we ride our bikes to the gym to workout. Very car centered town.

My swimming has been called "barely controlled drowning," but I'm getting better. :) The addition of swimming (and biking) have really helped my running too as a nice bonus. And I enjoy it a lot more than I would have expected. I am the worst at counting laps though. I always lose count somewhere in the teens.

[GuitarStv]

Swimming makes for excellent cross training.  It's less jarring on the joints, and gives your muscles and heart a great workout.

[oldladystache]

I do my swimming in a really relaxed way. 15 or 20 minutes of very slow laps, then 15 or 20 minutes in the hot tub. I get a little exercise, a little stretching, and finish feeling refreshed.

It helps that I'm a 2 minute walk from our community's pool.

[nereo]

My swimming has been called "barely controlled drowning," but I'm getting better. :) The addition of swimming (and biking) have really helped my running too as a nice bonus. And I enjoy it a lot more than I would have expected. I am the worst at counting laps though. I always lose count somewhere in the teens.

Coaching tip: Unless you love swimming continuously for 30+ minutes (some do), don't.  Instead use interval training. For example, instead of swimming 1000 yards continuously, try 2 x 200, 4 x 100 and 4 x 50, with each set getting slightly faster than the last.  For most casual swimmers I would say stick with sets that have 200 yards as the longest distance.  Very occasionally go to 300 or 400 or (alternatively) do a timed 6, 8 or 10 minute swim trying to go as far as you can in that time period.

I was a long-distance swimmer, and I *always* lost track of what lap I was on anytime we went higher than about 400 yards (sometimes after 200 if I was distracted).  That's why all distance events come with a dedicated counter (person who counts the laps and puts the lap number underwater on a big plastic device which is also called a counter)- even in the olympics!

[mbl]

I swim 3 times a week.   About 35-40 minutes continuous swimming.
It works for me.

No pain anymore as when I was doing aerobics and biking.

You don't see many elderly people at competitions that include running or biking.
But, at the Masters swimming meets, you see plenty of people over 70. It's quite remarkable.

[Inaya]

I'd love to! Except there don't seem to be any pools nearby except for the REALLY posh health clubs. And one gym that's notorious for items being stolen from lockers.

[nereo]

I'd love to! Except there don't seem to be any pools nearby except for the REALLY posh health clubs. And one gym that's notorious for items being stolen from lockers.

Can you not lock your locker?  or does do thieves cut the locks off?
we had one pool that our team practiced at that had similar problems - we just brought all of our stuff out on deck behind our coach.  Not as useful when you are swimming by yourself though.

[Inaya]

I'd love to! Except there don't seem to be any pools nearby except for the REALLY posh health clubs. And one gym that's notorious for items being stolen from lockers.

Can you not lock your locker?  or does do thieves cut the locks off?
we had one pool that our team practiced at that had similar problems - we just brought all of our stuff out on deck behind our coach.  Not as useful when you are swimming by yourself though.

People would dress like employees and just cut the locks off. And the management didn't seem to care. Gym has tons of bad reviews for bad customer service, broken equipment, hygiene issues, instructors not showing up, etc., so I'd probably avoid it either way.

[mbl]

I'd love to! Except there don't seem to be any pools nearby except for the REALLY posh health clubs. And one gym that's notorious for items being stolen from lockers.

Can you not lock your locker?  or does do thieves cut the locks off?
we had one pool that our team practiced at that had similar problems - we just brought all of our stuff out on deck behind our coach.  Not as useful when you are swimming by yourself though.

I swim at a local high school.   They have early morning hours.
Maybe you can find a local high school or college that will allow you to swim there?
Usually they're reasonably priced.

[BTDretire]

I just finished up a full year of swimming at our local community college. The classes
run 4 days a week. I was using the open swim from 5am to 6am. I'm 61 with a back issue and found a little shoulder pain with swimming, but about 20 laps in I forget about it. I swim 1 continuous mile daily (4 days) and use a mask and snorkle. Then about another 20 minutes with foot floaties on to stretch my back. I've been doing the floaties for 8 weeks, the first 6 weeks it really helped with back pain, then, I think when I got everything loosened up, my pain moved to the spine and I'm worse. I'm in a 2 week layoff between semesters, when I start again I'm going to lay off the floaties!

 I like what swimming does for me physically, I don't like hearing the alarm at 4:25am.
  I'm retiring at the end of this year, then I can attend a more reasonable swim time.
I'll also be able to ride my bike to the pool.

[Inaya]

I'd love to! Except there don't seem to be any pools nearby except for the REALLY posh health clubs. And one gym that's notorious for items being stolen from lockers.

Can you not lock your locker?  or does do thieves cut the locks off?
we had one pool that our team practiced at that had similar problems - we just brought all of our stuff out on deck behind our coach.  Not as useful when you are swimming by yourself though.

I swim at a local high school.   They have early morning hours.
Maybe you can find a local high school or college that will allow you to swim there?
Usually they're reasonably priced.

Nothing at all. One of the few downsides of being smack in the middle of downtown. The only places with pools are health clubs or hotels. On the plus side, they haven't had to empty the sewers into the lake this year (yet), so I might actually be willing to swim in the lake--if it gets warm enough.

[big_slacker]

I'd love to! Except there don't seem to be any pools nearby except for the REALLY posh health clubs. And one gym that's notorious for items being stolen from lockers.

Can you just put everything in a bag and have it on the deck next to your lane? Would be a pretty bold thief to take that.

That's a crap situation, but I'd just not take anything valuable. All you really need is ID, a towel and your clothes.

[humbleMouse]

Swimming grosses me out so much.  I can't get in a public chlorine pool.  Feels like I just took a chemical bath in other people's filth. 

[nereo]

Swimming grosses me out so much.  I can't get in a public chlorine pool.  Feels like I just took a chemical bath in other people's filth.

That pretty much describes every large municipality's water system. The water that's coming out of your tap and shower was filtered, treated with chemicals and recycled from someone else. Many of our crops are fertilized with what settles out of water treatment plants (hint: it's pooh!).
Lakes and the open ocean are microbial hot-spots.  A single mL (about large a drop) of coastal seawater can have 1,000 protozoans, 1,000,000 bacteria and 10,000,000 viruses.  And that would be for a fairly "clean" area of ocean.

[calimom]

I LOVE swimming, it puts me in my happy zone. When life and my schedule cooperate, I will go 4 times a week. I bartered my way into a fairly nice fitness center using my small business's services so I don't pay for what would be a hefty member fee for my kids and myself. There is something totally Zen about zooming back and forth, it is like my brain turns off and then turns on a different way. When my kids were younger, I had an arrangement with another mom where we'd each watch each other's kids in the family pool and then take turns doing laps; it worked out great. My son is on the swim team for his jr. high, and although he trains at the school, we enjoy swimming together.

Once in awhile, after my lap swim, I'll join the aqua aerobics class that takes place in another pool. I'm often the youngest by a couple of decades, but that is an incredible workout!

My aunt and uncle have an old-school California style pool in their backyard, cement coping, 10 feet deep with a diving board. When it's 100 degrees, as it often gets for days on end where we live, there's no better place.

[RosieTR]

Swimming is one non-negotiable non-mustachian thing I do. I have been swimming since I was 8, so >30 years, and I dream about swimming if I don't do it IRL. Like, sleep dreaming not daydreaming (although that, too). I belong to a Master's group and do 3x per week at 5:30a. Very occasionally an open water swim in a beautiful nearby lake though they are all usually fairly chilly!
Swimming is great exercise but watch the shoulders! If you have shoulder problems you probably have a stroke problem, so get your stroke analyzed asap to try to nip that before it requires surgery. It doesn't have to be a big deal. Even someone with a waterproof camera or case for a phone/tablet can take video of you so you can see how you're swimming. The correct stroke can be found on youtube vids of major competitions such as Olympics or world championships. Personally I try to pay attention to how I feel and make adjustments to end any small tweakiness in the shoulder, and knock wood-30 years without issues. If I get a weird knot then I'll get a massage but that's as likely from work or sleeping wrong as swimming.

[merci001]

Love to swim! I go the the Y about 3x per week. Have been off for a few weeks due to recent surgery. Can't wait to get back to it when I get the all clear-hopefully in a couple of weeks.   I swim strictly for exercise and my own enjoyment. I will admit, it is a little harder to get myself to the pool in the dead of winter, but once I'm in the water, it's all good. I've known how to swim forever, but prior to my surgery took some private lessons to try to improve my stroke technique and learn how to do bilateral breathing as a means to better avoid shoulder injuries. Will likely sign up for a few more lessons once I can get back into the pool.