Dear fellow swimmers,
Last weekend I set a new personal record for 50m breaststroke while racing at the London Aquatics Centre. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t particularly impressive but I’m feeling unreasonably smug about it. Setting personal records becomes harder as you get older. But not impossible.
I share this, not to show off, but because I frequently speak with swimmers who are working towards a goal but are frustrated with their rate of progress. The fact
is, for adult swimmers, improvements can take a long time and require a lot of patience. For the last few years, until this year, I had been getting slower, and was sometimes feeling down about it. Improvement isn’t linear. It happens in occasional jumps interspersed with setbacks and frustrations.
The point, really, is to stick with the process. Over the last year, I’ve trained regularly and consistently, I’ve worked on my swimming technique and I started doing weight training. And that, in a nutshell, is the ‘secret’.
Clearly, there is more to it than that. You need to know what training to do and what good swimming technique feels like, and you have to stay inspired and motivated. And that, we hope, is where Outdoor Swimmer magazine can help. Our December issue has just gone to press and includes advice on how to improve your body position in the water,
overcoming worries about putting your face in the water and how to work your way up the bilateral breathing ladder. Get a copy delivered to your door, or find out how to read it online or via our app, here.
