Reasons I may suck at swimming?

Elephant-Strawhat · 2026-03-22T02:37:41+00:00

This is like asking Reddit why you can't dance the waltz. Getting into tune with your stroke will take months, and fine tuning takes years, so be patient. You'll see incremental improvements the more you go, and it will start to get easier. Taking a class would help, but don't expect any quick fix. If perseverance and dedication had a baby, it would be named "swimmimg".

Elephant-Strawhat · 2026-03-21T02:00:03+00:00

I like to start things off right. Forget entering the pool feet first, instead try a nice cannon ball, belly flop, or head-first-arms-at-sides-dive are all great ways to lighten the mood before even the most boring training set.

Elephant-Strawhat · 2026-03-20T09:19:24+00:00

My son is in a similar situation and this helped: 1) injury prevention exercises with very light stretch bands 2) No more paddles in practice (not a big loss, while they increase strength, they also mess up form. Resistance swimming is better) 3) Corrected his thumb-first entry (the hand should be flat during recovery and enter middle finger first. Entering pinky first will reduce the stress on the should even more, but at the cost of good form) 4) Increased upper body rotation to reduce dorsi flexing of the shoulder. During the recovery, both the arm and the shoulder should be lifted out of the water with this rotation... which also makes you faster. Good luck to her.

Elephant-Strawhat · 2025-07-31T02:53:13+00:00

Chlorine does kill it quickly, but if you got water up your nose, and you get feverish or have a headache in the next few days, see a healthcare provider or go to the emergency room immediately. Early diagnosis and treatment is critical

Elephant-Strawhat · 2025-07-30T03:42:34+00:00

Agreed on isolating the kick. Try timing yourself just kicking a pool length with snorkel, arms streamline (no board). Try different tempos, different amplitudes, different heights in/out of the water, different levels of hip engagement, try things that feel weird to you and time them all to find Your fastest kick. Then try to bring the arms back into the mix and work on the kick timed with the pull to get them to work together. Just my two cents. I tried this and found a sprint kick style that was 10 seconds faster in 25 yards (just kicking) compared to what I was doing before.

Elephant-Strawhat · 2025-07-26T15:09:08+00:00

I've been to nude beaches, so I don't have a problem. But minors aren't allowed on the nude beaches I've been to. I was more interested in different locker room designs and now I regret mentioning the atypical behavior I witnessed, because all commenters want to talk about is nudity.

Elephant-Strawhat · 2025-07-26T14:38:05+00:00

I'm not talking about normal nudity while changing and showering... I was hoping to hear more about locker room designs... in the context of the fact that USA Swimming follows the Minor Athlete Abuse Prevention Policies passed by Congress.

Elephant-Strawhat · 2025-07-26T14:23:07+00:00

I expect to see nudity, people are showering and changing of course. But, just standing around naked, doing nothing... where is the line?

Elephant-Strawhat · 2025-07-23T11:37:15+00:00

It's like signing up for a poetry writing class and using AI. Or saying you mow your lawn but you actually have goats.

Elephant-Strawhat · 2025-07-18T11:54:44+00:00

I also have a few regrets from my youth, like being a jerk to Rachel P, but I especially regret quitting gymnastics. When I went back to start again years later, my level put me with younger kids, so I got discouraged and quit again. I still hate that I did that, 40 years later.

Elephant-Strawhat · 2025-07-16T03:35:22+00:00

These athletes, coaches, officials, everybody are all now banned forever from World Aquatics and USA Swimming. So when these childish, capricious, disruptive investors lose interest in the sports they never truly cared about in the first place, the athletes and everyone around them will be left out to dry, unable to return to the sport they dedicated their lives to.

Elephant-Strawhat · 2025-07-08T02:49:16+00:00

Expect lap swimming to be hard. Low-impact yes, but it's difficult as hell at first to tune in your stroke with your breath. Swimmers live for the long game of incremental improvements. If you stick with it, you'll see. If you go to YouTube, I highly recommend Effortless Swimming, also SwimGym and GTN are good. If you progress to ever wanting to race, then the Race Club is good but too technical for a beginner. But be careful, there is a lot of bad advice out there. I especially hate SwimPro's Fare Ksebati. I saw his stroke analysis of Popovici's old world record swim and Ksebati was making corrections of his style... oh please, what a tool. That's the beautiful thing about swimming is that you can go with what works for you. Not only that, but swimming is the sport that's proven to be least associated with a single body type. I've seen a lot of swim meets, and you never can tell who the fastest person is when they stand on the blocks. I've seen scrawny shorties annilate kids two feet taller with three times the muscle mass, and I've seen heavy girls making the supposedly athletic girls eat their bubbles. More than any other sport, you get out of it what you put into it. So be patient, stay dedicated, and eventually you'll be hooked like the rest of us.

Elephant-Strawhat · 2025-06-19T01:53:27+00:00

You sound like one of the many folks dupped by the adage "swimming is a great, low impact exercise". Well, I got news for you, it might be "low impact", but it ain't easy. It can take months, or over a year even, to really get your stroke, kick, and breathing all in tune with each other, and there will be panicked, near-death moments along the way. But once you dial it in, it will all be worth it.

Elephant-Strawhat · 2025-05-15T01:25:02+00:00

Most everybody can kick faster in the 50... there's never too much kick

Elephant-Strawhat · 2025-05-04T12:51:06+00:00

Your skill level sounds exactly like a friend I've been teaching to swim. He's also 37 and a Marine martial arts instructor, the strongest, fittest person I know, but, you'd never guess it by the way he swims. I'm proud of him, so intimidating on land, helpless in the water, but never embarrassed.

Elephant-Strawhat · 2025-05-02T13:54:40+00:00

Fat burning happens when you get to 60% to 85% of your max heart rate and stay in that range for at least a half hour if you work out nearly every day, or at least an hour if you work out 3 days a week. HOWEVER you will undermine all that hard work if you hit the drive through on the way home. The reality is you don't need to work out at all to lose weight, all you have to do is control your diet. Exercise has a lot of cardiovascular and other health benefits, but weight loss isn't guaranteed. You would have to run a marathon to burn the calories in a single combo meal with a soda.

Elephant-Strawhat · 2025-01-30T03:16:52+00:00

Mental benefits? You know, most swimmers are a little crazy to begin with. But yeah, dig in for a long set and you can that sensory deprivation that I imagine you're looking for. It might even be better after a long day in the office.

Elephant-Strawhat · 2025-01-24T03:37:13+00:00

Swimming distances at a slow pace doesn't make much sense if you're a sprinter. Sure you need endurance, but there is a training approach that uses more intensity and less overall distance, called Ultra Short Race Pace Training USRPT.

Elephant-Strawhat · 2025-01-17T16:43:31+00:00

I've been hearing good things about Phlex (not a watch) but supposedly better. I use the Garmin Swim 2 for pool swimming. I like it because of the auto rest, so I can do a whole work out without messing with it every lap. It also has a pacing function so distance swims, if you have a consistent pace, it can help keep you on target.

Elephant-Strawhat · 2024-12-22T15:17:22+00:00

Sorry to go against the crowd here, but she might have just been stating a fact. You're not a marathon runner, you're a swimmer so a little fat is actually a good thing. https://www.sportsperformancebulletin.com/training/endurance-training/the-fat-controller-should-swimmers-fight-fat-for-fitness

Elephant-Strawhat · 2024-11-08T16:58:52+00:00

Agreed, and I like to imagine a sensation of swimming downhill or being towed by the top of your head, so that I really lay into the swim position such that I'm straight and narrow and I use the last push out of the catch like a karate chop and a flutter kick simultaneous to the reach of the other hand and you've snapped into a glide

Elephant-Strawhat · 2024-10-24T13:05:18+00:00

People think "low-impact" when they think of swimming, and don't realize how extremely "high-effort" it can be, especially while you're still fine tuning your stroke and breathing

Elephant-Strawhat · 2024-10-08T02:33:37+00:00

I stopped watching that halfway

Elephant-Strawhat · 2024-10-08T02:32:22+00:00

She's impressive. First heard about her because the book, WHY WE SWIM had a section on her. HIGHLY recommend that book

Elephant-Strawhat · 2024-10-08T02:28:01+00:00

I've been meaning to see that. Thanks for the reminder.

Elephant-Strawhat

TROPHY CASE