Hi, so I know that I am a couple weeks late with an update on getting back into swimming, and I sincerely apologize for that. So instead of just giving an update for this past week, I am going to be giving an update for every week that I missed since my last post.
On the week of March 25th, I had began tapering. For those of you who do not know what tapering is, tapering is when you don’t do intense workouts, rather just swimming to make sure you don’t lose your speed from all your training. I was tapering for a swim meet called Nationals, which is a swim meet for all the college club swim teams in the United States. This year, it was held at Ohio State University from March 29th to March 31st, and this was super exciting because I had never gone so far before for a swim meet. At this meet, there were 120 colleges that participated, and I got to see a lot of my friends from back home who were also doing college club swimming at their schools.
On the week of April 1st, I did not get in the pool because I was on spring break and at home. And unfortunately for me, I no longer had a gym membership and could not get into the pool. But I did do some of the dryland and core workouts, as well as stretching, that I had mentioned in previous updates. But I also added some running to my workouts because cardio is still one of the best workouts you can do, and you don’t need a gym membership to do it, as you can run anywhere, even in place.
On the week of April 8th, I was back at school and was trying to get back into the pool as much as possible. My friend, and the University of Delaware Club Swim President, Aiden Meese best said it: “The only way you’re going to get better is to swim everyday. It doesn’t have to be a hard workout, just get in the pool.” I agree with him because you’re at least working your muscles.
I had once heard this rule of thumb from Coach Aaron, my club swim coach on Occoquan Swimming (OCCS). He said that however long you are out of the pool, let’s use one week for example, it takes double to get back to where you were, which would be two weeks in this example. And so that is why I agree with my friend Aiden when he said that to get better, you just have to get in the pool everyday and do at least a little swimming everyday.
The week of April 14th was the second week back in the pool since my week break of swimming during spring break, and that meant if I wanted to get back to where I was, I had to show up everyday, no matter what. This was extremely hard this particular week because I had two exams to study for. The solution I came up with is to still go to practice, but not stay for the whole time. I stayed for the first 30 minutes, and during those thirty minutes, I pushed myself harder than I could so that I knew I was still getting a good workout in even though I was swimming for less time.
Today is Sunday, April 21st, and I can conclusively say that Coach Aaron’s general rule of thumb is pretty accurate as I am near my old speed and endurance, and the only reason I am not completely back is probably because I was unable to swim during the weekends due to pool closure (again, 😑).
So I think that the take away message for this post should be that no matter what, you should try and get in the pool everyday, even if it is a short time, because if you don’t, it’ll just take longer to get back into good swimming condition, and that just means more work, which is not good.
Getting Back in the Pool 