Anyone every try one of these? I recently went through a stupid travel phase the past two months quite often in towns w/o access to a pool, rural areas. In the rare event I was at a hotel with a pool it was a tiny sucker not for laps. Suddenly it dawned on me I might want to get one of those goofy lanyard/harness setups so I can at least get something going.
Anyone try one? Just hate going on stretches when I can’t get in the water for 5-6 days and want to avoid it. Thanks!
Anyone every try one of these? I recently went through a stupid travel phase the past two months quite often in towns w/o access to a pool, rural areas. In the rare event I was at a hotel with a pool it was a tiny sucker not for laps. Suddenly it dawned on me I might want to get one of those goofy lanyard/harness setups so I can at least get something going.
Anyone try one? Just hate going on stretches when I can’t get in the water for 5-6 days and want to avoid it. Thanks!
Funny you should mention it… I was in the hotel pool this morning with my swim tether having quite a reasonable swim. So long as there’s something to attach to (even a lounge chair is OK) it works pretty well. I also pack a finis timer so I can estimate ‘laps’.
I’ve got the aquasphere one that attaches to the ankles which means I can also do breaststroke quite successfully.
http://www.swim2000.com/product/aqua-sphere-stationary-swimmer/
I have a small pool in my back yard and considered getting one, but I can only imagine it making something I hate doing for more than 30 minutes even more boring. I love swimming 500 - 1000 meters, after that I get very, very bored.
I have the TYR Aquatic Resistance Belt and use it to swim in a 20 x 40 foot backyard pool. It’s great for the most part. It has a piece of latex tubing that has a nylon strap loop at one end and a carabiner at the other end. The carabiner attaches to a nylon belt covered by neoprene with a buckle for adjusting tightness. The D-ring that the carabiner is supposed to attach to broke while I was swimming (I’m not that powerful and wasn’t swimming that hard) but the nylon loop on the belt that the D-ring was held on with works just fine for clipping the carabiner to.
I swam growing up, so maybe I’m just used to being bored staring at the bottom of a pool, but I don’t find it that tedious or boring. I thought I might need to get an underwater MP3 player/earphones, but never got around to it and don’t mind it. It’s easier to motivate myself swimming with the belt than on a treadmill.
I swim a few times a week and rather than using distance to mark the workout segments I either use stroke/breath count or time. I know that 35 breaths breathing every other stroke is about equivalent to 100 yds. for me, so I basically do the same kinds of sets as in a pool, just using that stroke count as a substitute.
Measurement is the biggest challenge, both of how much (distance) and how hard (speed) you’re swimming since you’re staying pretty much in the same place. Because it’s elastic, you can use your position in the pool as a way of thinking about how hard you’re working. As you advance a foot or two farther away from where it’s anchored, you have to work progressively harder to maintain that position. It’s inexact, but you probably have a feel for what it should feel like at different intensities.
It does have one big benefit. Since you’re stationary, you don’t have the water flowing under your hips and legs as your move through the water to help keep them up. I was never a big kicker, but it wasn’t really much of a problem for me either, since my body position was fine. But swimming with the belt, at first it required concentrated effort to keep my hips and legs up in the water. This made it natural to swim with a lower head (like Gary Hall Sr. has talked about on the forum here and elsewhere) and to kick harder. Now, when I swim without the belt I have a stronger kick and even better head and hip/leg positioning than before.
It’s definitely better than not swimming at all, is a good addition to a normal swimming routine, and is a decent replacement when swimming in a real pool isn’t an option.
Ah, sweet TS:
.
one thing I don’t like about tethers is breathing is harder - you sort of breathe into a wake when you are actually going somewhere, and you don’t have that on tethers.
one thing I don’t like about tethers is breathing is harder - you sort of breathe into a wake when you are actually going somewhere, and you don’t have that on tethers.
+1. I have the aqua-sphere ankle tethers and when I use them I usually use a finis snorkel at the same time. Another benefit to the elastic tethers is that it will make you aware of dead spots in your stroke very quickly.
one thing I don’t like about tethers is breathing is harder - you sort of breathe into a wake when you are actually going somewhere, and you don’t have that on tethers.
I just tell myself it’s good practice for choppy OW swimming.
And yes, I was in the pool this morning with my Kieran Perkins powered cap on:-)
but what if the cap tears?! 