Seeking motivation — longer poolswims
nooravalkonen
FinlandNew Member
Summer was great. My favourite lake was incredibly warm, and I spent most of my holidays in it. I would never have guessed it, but now I really struggle with swimming in the pool. How to find motivation and grit for a 10 km session? All I can think about is how great I felt in the open water. Thanks.
Comments
It's really tough, going back to the pool after a glorious summer outside. Maybe don't start by trying to make yourself do a 10k session? I started back last night with 2.5k of drills and 100s. That was enough to break the duck and motivate me. Best of luck.
When I had a 5 hr swim that I had to do in the pool (all my paddlers were occupied, so no lake for me), I broke it into 1500 yd segments, and simulated OW feeds. I stopped at 1500 intervals, did a feed for 45 seconds, and restarted. Then, I did them as sets of 3 descents..... cruise, cruise+, and moderate.
Doing that helped me stay focused as well as motivated.
It helped that I didn't have a yardage target, and had a time one instead. So, I was looking to get through the time.
For big things, break them into smaller bits..... Eat that elephant one bite at a time.
A couple ideas for you. I agree with the downer of swimming in a pool after being outdoors in the lake. It's really hard to get excited about bouncing back and forth between the walls and going nowhere, while looking at the same scenery. So first of all, give yourself time to get over the shock/disappointment of the transition to the pool. Just swim a bunch of non-goal oriented workouts. I use this time to do drills and reconstruct my stroke to eliminate bad habits.
Second. I have a fun pool workout to do when I'm feeling unimaginative and uncreative. I swim a 500, then I swim 5x100, then I swim a 500, then back to 5x100. Do that for as many reps as you have time for. The 500 is great for pacing. The 100's are great to get you moving. Then that tends to pick up the pace on the next 500. Set whatever interval you feel like. I tend to try to have an interval that doesn't take too much rest. " Just keep swimming, just keep swimming..." This is a great set to keep you from settling into your all day pace and droning along for the entire workout.
Now for something I haven't tried, but it might be an interesting way for you to build up to a 10K in the pool. Do a variation of the above set. Maybe an 800 followed by 4x200 for example. Do as many reps as you feel like on that day. Then on another day, a 1K followed by 2x500's for as many sets as you want. Keep building sets based on the bits and pieces approach. This is one way to eat the above mentioned elephant. It keeps you engaged and breaks up the chlorinated boredom.
As I write this I'm also thinking that another approach that is kind of fun in pool workouts is to build a pyramid. The math gets tricky on these because it depends on how you want to make the steps. But you could probably make a pretty cool 10K pyramid that would be fun to do. I know you can do a half a pyramid with a 1K, 2K, 3K, 4K. But that's as far as my dumb ol' brain will take me...
Lastly, somewhere on this site are some great threads where workouts are posted. I know there is one called the Lunchtime Set. There are some others that come up in the side bar when you call up that thread. Animal Set and Average Set also have some good workouts. Have fun, enjoy the pool. It's not a permanent condition.
I'll also add that sometimes, it's distracting to watch the other people in the pool.... count how many times you pass someone..... think about how you'd correct that other swimmer's form if you could...... wonder why there are so many legs in the shallow end............ lol
tell stories..... etc.
I totally use the the other swimmers as motivation. Try and keep up with people faster than me, not take a break until the person next to me gets out etcetera. As much as I like having my own lane, having people in the pool helps with boredom in long sets a lot.
I personally find it easier mentally to just crank out a single long set where I don't pay attention to the clock/distance until the end, but that is not practical past ~2 hours and probably isn't the best approach if you are trying to optimize your training. It is too easy to get into cruise mode and not really get the benefit of the workout if you don't use something like a tempo trainer.
http://notdrowningswimming.com - open water adventures of a very ordinary swimmer
Thanks for all the great tips! 🙂
To alleviate boredom in the pool I go through movies I've seen in my head. Each character gets 100m. I usually do 1500m sets (to simulate stopping for fuel/water). Sometimes I get so involved in each movie, before I know it, I'm at a water/fuel break.
I've done poetry based workouts. For instance, a Shakespearean sonnet w a rhyme scheme of abab cdcd ef ef gg: I might do a set of
50/100/50/100 100/150/100/150
150/200....
Last couplet 2x200.
For haiku maybe nreathe on 5, breathe on 7, breathe on 5 in a set of 25s or 75s. (I'm not too great at breath control (asthma) but it does make things a little more interesting.
Just a couple thoughts for solo swims. Often I swim w my masters group which is fun and social. Our coach likes to offer themed workouts for holidays as and bdays. And we swim in a heated outdoor pool which gives us days swimming in snow and sleet. Talk about dealing w the elements!
@curly 's comments and advice above resonate with me.
I sympathize with the angst of returning to the chlorine box after summer outside - I have still not been back yet so take my advice with a pinch of salt. I swim mostly alone, but I like coached workouts, particularly to help get going again - it just leaves all the thinking and decision making about what to do to the coach and you can just go with flow. If I'm on my own, I just set very low expectations for my initial pool workouts and give myself permission to just mess around with the toys - paddles, fins, kickboards etc. Once I get to the pool, I usually do a bit more than I planned and this helps me gain some momentum in getting back into things.
I might be regarded as a heretic on this forum, but I basically don't do long swims in the pool, though I will sometimes to do longish (5k + total yardage) workouts in the pool. Essentially my focus is on technique and pace (interval sets of all sorts) in the pool, which I find more fun and interesting than longer swims.
Even for longer swim preparation, I do short rest interval reps with mostly fairly short distances working on the pace clock. I love pace variation sets: For example: 15x75m on an interval to get 5 seconds rest at easy pace. Rotate easy, medium, hard (ie time descend in sets of 3). The "hard" rep might be 5 seconds faster than the "easy" rep, which means that I would get 10 seconds rest after that rep. I don't use a watch or HR monitor, but in a set like this my HR would of course increase on the hard reps and I would hope it would decrease a little on the easy rep. During the summer I sometimes do a 3-4k pool workout at high intensity and then do an open water swim later (3-5k). This means that I'm "swimming tired" in the open water workout.
I did a 28K (10 hour) pool swim when I was deployed to Djibouti. It was painful, but it was made much better by having friends track my laps. How'd I get them to agree to that? I linked up with a charity. Friends of Africa gathered clothing and toiletries for the poor. That also gave the base's leadership and pool administration the excuse they needed to allow me an entire lane for an entire day (the pool only having 3 lanes).
While swimming, I had to cut the swim into chunks; practically, they wanted me out of the pool to eat and of course go to the bathroom. I used those opportunities to recharge my brain. The pool was only 20m long. (700 laps; 1400 flip-turns! My abs killed me the next morning.)
At the beginning I kept the chunks to 50-70 laps. As the hours dragged on, I did shorter chunks, but still at least 40. Till the last hour or so, then I only did series of 20 laps, and that broken up into free one length, back the next.
I'd done shorter in different pools. Several years ago I did 11,400 in a 25m pool. I broke that into series like 500, 1000, 1500, 2000 back down then back up. I've also done 10,000 (yards) in a pool that required 3 laps for 100 yards. That was incredibly boring, but for that one I set my watch to beep every 30 minutes. I'd finish whatever lap I was on at the beep, drink some water, then start again.
Mentally, I've spent all my long swims, open water or pool, writing stories in my head, or years ago when in grad school, I "finished" a bunch of chapters for my thesis!
Long swims in a pool can be done (assuming the logistics are covered, e.g. lifeguards know what you're doing and you don't have limits to time). You just have to get past the mental.
We're all just carbon, water, starlight, oxygen and dreams
Bravo, Mike! I think I'd struggle in an indoor pool or even an outdoor chlorinated pool for so long. I did manage 3 x 6 hour swims in the 90m sea pool this past summer, but it didn't feel so hard, because it was outside and seawater. I just split each one into 6 x 32 lengths and had a little drink from my stash on poolside on the hour.
Nice! I never thought to bring a flask!
We're all just carbon, water, starlight, oxygen and dreams