I am storming for a simple 10 laps every other day where I get bored - beyond that number. Unlike run or bike - I have a constant change of scenery to occupy my mind. I see finis has some underwater mp3 header gear, does anyone use them? Any similar products out there? What do you do to bang out 20+ laps?
I’m pretty mentally hard-core and can HTFU with the best of them, but now having swam in quite a range of places, I definitely agree that if you’re to have any real success with swimming, you have to have access to a pool that doesn’t depress the heck out of you and might even get you excited to show up.
There was one pool in a gym I joined last year with a totally, completely empty 4-lane 25yd pool. Clean, but it was in the basement of a dingy building, with dim lights. Felt like I was swimming in the pool of the Shining. I found that despite the convenience of always having 4 friggin’ lanes all to myself, I hated swimming there. I could only last 2 weeks before I started feeling psycho and depressed. This is coming from someone who can run 20+ miles on a TM and ride 3 hours on a trainer without any DVD or music.
My two current pools share common features: outdoors (I live in Norcal, so winter outdoors is totally doable), and fairly well populated by ‘real’ swimmers, meaning that odds are high than when I go to swim, there will be people both faster and slower than me to either race or pace against. I’d do masters, but my wife has claimed the early morning hours so no masters for me (gotta watch the toddler.) As a result, I’ve become so much of a better swimmer, and it’s been quite enjoyable, as opposed to my first year in that dingy pool where I really tried to work as hard as possible, but felt completely uninspired and depressed.
My single biggest pool motivator is the people near my pace. I’ll still crank through workouts hard without anyone there, but it’s great that my current pool has a good number of folks I can race or pace with.
How about just putting in the yards so you can get faster. You need to train your mind as well as your body and if you need to rely on music playing or watching the scenery, you’ll never develope the mental toughness that longer races require.
Horse-hooey.
Races provide plenty of stimulus / motivation by themselves. being around other competitors, the challenge of the day, people cheering etc. Training? Not so much…
If I’m not very focused on a particular drill or something and am just swimming to get the distance in for fitness I will usually let my mind wonder to different things going on in my life: problems at work that I need to solve, ideas of projects to work on, what is on the inside of a black hole, etc. etc.
Like others mentioned the whole key to pool workouts are structure. Just going for a half hour straight would just kill me. Try a 5 min warm up then do sets like 10x 100 yards trying to keep the same split on all of them. Or better yet swim 2-5 sec faster each one of them. Or do 50s or 250s on the clock. Be sure to write splits down then 5 years from now you can compare sets. There are hundreds of sets you can do. But always have a plan, or your workout will suffer and you get bored. Tell you the truth ocean swimming to me is more boring than a hard pool workout.
Best motivation for me is when the grandma in the lane next to me is swimming faster than I am…but at my pool I often swim alone for the entire time (not a complaint by the way).
I use my swimp3 player from finis when swimming long, slow sets in the pool. I absolutely love mine and my only suggestion would be to get ear plugs or else the sound induction theory doesn’t work that great IMHO. That is when I need a little something extra to keep me from losing my mind in the pool. If I’m doing some harder, short sets, I find that the clock is motivation enough for me. I definitely do not come from a swimming background, but I feel the music helped me increase the amount I swam to get to a point where I’m more comfortable in the water (not always on the verge of drowning). Now that I’m at the point I’m at, the music isn’t as important, but when the IM training program says to swim 2x1500 m at a “slow, easy pace”, I would likely need professional help without my music.
I don’t have a problem being motivated to swim outside…
x2. I’m always watching out for the cudda and mentally reminding the sharks of our agreement (they stick to their side of the reef and I stick to mine). I come out of the water emotionally exhausted.
To get faster and be motivated you have to show up with a plan…this pertains to biking and running also. Research sets, and start incorporating a structure with specific sets into your workout. Get a dozen or so staples and rotate them around. For example, this morning I did a 400 w/u, a pyramid that went from 50 to 250 by 50 @ 50s/50m basis, and back down. 2x100 IM @2:30, 2x100 kick @2;30 , 2x50 hard @ 1:30/50m - 2400M in less than an hour.
Also, sometimes it is healthy to take a 6 or 8 week break.
My observations on this lead me to believe it’s more of a temperament thing. I do all my riding indoors on a Revolution sans weekend rides and absolutely love it. I catch up on DVR programs, no phone or email bugging me. Same for swimming. Actually swimming I love for the never ending challenge of little tweaks in technique…always so fun to ‘unlock another nugget’ of the freestyle stroke.
Maybe just try to look at it differently? It’s your time away from life’s distractions?
Defo have a session planned fully before you start otherwise I find myself just coasting through. Haven’t tried an mo3 play but that might work too, in the same that time on a turbo is SO tedious without music.
Ultimately though, my main motivation is to make sure I do my IM swim faster than my last!
