Effects of Swimming

Depends on the stroke and type of training you are intending to do Lisa. Generally speaking freestyle swim training will slowly develop shoulder muscles (deltoids and trapezoids) chest muscles (pecs), arm muscles (triceps) and upper back muscles (lats). These effects will be more pronounced if you introduce swim aids such as hand paddles into your routine but without swim aids you should start noticing these muscle groups becoming firmer and stronger over the months of training without necessarily looking bigger.

While muscle is developing do not be too concerned about getting bulky as the training itself will burn fat - assuming at least mid level intensity - and this will contribute to a developing leanness at the same time. If you put some focus on kick training, and depending on whether you are doing any form of leg-based cross training you may see improvement in muscle definition in quads and calves, although minimal compared to upper body development.

Swimming is an excellent whole-body workout and most swimmers who train a number of times a week slowly develop and very strong lean frame with stronger muscles in all the right places without ever looking 'muscley' or developed, and notice their body fat % figures drop consistently as the months tick by. To claim all the benefits you will need to work up to a consistent weekly plan that sees you in the pool 3 times for an hour a pop, and alternating the type of workout you do between endurance sets (long steady even-paced), aerobic sets (interval repeats off set times), and anaerobic sessions (speed work, all-out sprint sessions) - however your goals in swimming will most likely dictate the training mix that will suit you best.

As a solo exercise swimming gets much more valuable if you can socialise it by training with others - joining a swimming group, a swim masters club, a triathlon club, will get you into the habit of swimming with others and the 'drag' effect of keeping up to a high level of swimming will see big results coming along quickly (first 3 months).

Once I was up to swim 2km in a session I stared using swimsmooth.com's methods (I bought the book). At this stage you could do worse than check out their CSS swimming. I still try and do a weekly CSS session of 4x100m, 1 x200, 4 x 100, 1 x 300, 4 x 100, 1x 400 20 sec rest between each (hopefully you have a pool clock or stop watch).
I also have taken part in (and hope to take part in again) group coached sessions. It is really easy to drop intensity when I swim on my own. Having a coach drive me on has helped my swim fitness and his work on my technique is the real source of any improvement in speed.
You will find that building endurance isnt as simple as swimming non stop, you can do that in a race. You need to do sessions on technique on speed and on endurance.
One thing I havent yet tried is joining a Masters club and taking part in their sessions.
Also check out the Triathlon forum's training logs, Kurt Godel in particular has been on a swimming odyssey of late and details his sessions (you will need a bag of toys though)
Finally if you are swimming for more than just fitness and you find the pool is corroding your soul get into the sea or a lake now and again, even in winter - loneswimmer . com will tell you the how, where and why of OW swimming.
PS I cant post links

You should decide what each swim session is about in advance. Ideally I like to get 3 sessions a week in - one technique based, one speed based and one endurance session.

The technique session is drill heavy. The speed session is fast 100's and 200's mostly. The endurance session is longer sets or one long continuous swim.

You can do a decent set in an hour. If you only have 30-45mins for a session then I'd use these ones for speed. A favourite 40min speed based session of mine is 400m warm up / (100 x 4) x 4 with a minutes rest after each 400, with the 100's done off a faster interval in each set so by the last set of 100's you're struggling to hit the times. Total 2,000m.

You can also find swim sets in the online triathlon forums such as slowtwitch.com and tritalk.com

Pm1e wrote: »

Is Glenalbyn back open yeah?

Nope, closed indefinitely due to serious structural defects in the roof. Shame, 33m beats 25m even if it had got very grotty. Come on DLRCoCo; refurb please!