So you’ve typed “swimming near me” into the search bar, determined to add a new aquatic aspect to your fitness routine (or get back in the water after a long break), but then…. You never actually go to the pool.
PS some people just need to know a little more about how lap pools work. You can jump to the end to read about this.
Table of Contents
- The Problem:
- Why is it so hard to get (back) into the swimming pool?
- How to overcome the inherent barriers to swimming
- A simple swimming workout to get you back in the pool
- Conclusion:
The Problem:
- You WANT to swim, but you just can’t seem to get to the pool
There’s a couple of reasons this happens. This post will tell you exactly what’s going on, give you strategies to overcome common barriers, and provide an simple workout routine to ease you back into the water.
Swimming is an absolutely awesome way to get some healthy movement in your day. If you’ve reached this post, you probably already know this, but just in case, we’ll touch on a few of the benefits below.
Swimming is low impact because the buoyancy of the water reduces impact on joints. This makes it a great option for people recovering from an injury or folks who just want to preserve their joint health long-term. If there’s a history of arthritis in your family, swimming could help protect you while also keeping you mobile.
Muscle strengthening is another benefit. Water provides multi-directional resistance, which helps strengthen all of your muscles.
Swimming provides improved flexibility, too. Water allows for a wider range of motion under safer conditions, which promotes mobility and flexibility.
Because of the gentle resistance, water-based workouts improve your heart and lung-capacity, which can help with endurance in other sports and burns calories, promoting healthy weight maintenance.
Swimming also reduces the risk of overheating while you exercise because the water helps to dissipate the heat from your body. (So it’s a great option for pregnant people).
Water also helps with enhanced circulation because of the pressure on your body. This one’s great because it means even just sitting in a therapy pool or hot tub makes you healthier.
Finally, water is a natural element, which means every time you hop in the pool, you’re actually getting a little closer to nature. The main benefit of this is stress reduction. Being in water has a calming effect on the body and mind, reducing stress and promoting relaxation.
Overall, water-based exercise offers a holistic approach to fitness that is safe and accessible for almost everyone.
Why is it so hard to get (back) into the swimming pool?
So if there are so many benefits, why is it so hard to get back in the water???
One of the reasons that starting at a gym or getting in the water can be difficult is because it’s a relatively big change in environment, and as human beings, we tend to avoid big changes.
In fact, small changes are much more effective. You can read more about why this is true here.
This is why, later on in this post, we’ll discuss how to break down your re-entry to the water so that you’re using small adjustments instead of one big change.
There are a few other reasons swimming can be a difficult thing to add to any routine.
Logistics:
Finding a pool, scheduling time for sessions, and dealing with gear and locker rooms can present logistical challenges that discourage some people from getting to the pool.
Psychological barriers:
This is honestly the biggest barrier to swimming. It’s easy to be intimidated by water, especially if you’ve been out of it for a while. It’s also easy to be intimated by the full-body nature of a water workout.
Some of us worry that we won’t have the endurance or strength to workout the way we want to. Some of us don’t want to be seen in a bathing suit or changing in a locker room. Some of us are worried that other swimmers will watch our workout and laugh.
All of these are valid concerns BUT there are ways around or through all of them.
How to overcome the inherent barriers to swimming
Overcoming logistical barriers
Let’s start with logistics. First, try to find a pool that’s close to where you live or work. This makes it easier to actually get there. When you’ve identified a pool in a good location, check their available lap swim times.
Some pools are open for lap swim from 7am-8pm. Others only have windows of time where you can swim laps. Even if you plan on water walking instead of lap swimming, you’ll need this info because the water walking hours will be the same as the lap swimming hours. If the hours don’t work for you, go back to step one.
Next, you’ll need to check cost. Lap swim is normally cheap and can be paid with a day pass, a punch card, or a monthly membership. I recommend starting with a day pass and then investing in longer-form payment when you feel confident and like you can be consistent.
The YMCA is normally a popular place to swim and you can just get a day pass for the pool at most Y facilities. You don’t need to pay for a membership.
Average cost of a day pass: $6-10
Logistically speak, the only other thing you need at this point is gear. This is where a lot of people get stuck because there are a lot of gear options for swimmers.
Really, gear boils down to a few things: a swimsuit, goggles, a water bottle, a towel, soap, conditioner, and deodorant, and fresh underwear.
You can also add a swim cap if you want and I recommend a comb if you have longer hair.
Throw it all in a bag and you’re good to go.
Swimsuits
There’s a fair amount that can go into choosing a swimsuit if you need get a new one, but really, it’s not that big of a deal. Try to choose something you like the look of and the fit. It should be snug, but not restrictive.
Unless your regularly swimming at sprint speeds with rapid flip-turns, you don’t need a technical suit or even a lap swimsuit, though I’d recommend something with a little more security than a bikini.
One-piece suits are great for lap swim and water walking, but some people are long from hip to shoulder and don’t like how one-pieces fit.
You can also get swim shorts and wear a sports bra for a top, though the chlorine might wear your bra out a little faster than normal.
A final option is to wear swimshorts and a rashguard. Really, wear what’s comfortable for you. No one cares what you’re wearing, I promise. So, wear coverage that makes you happy, wear a style that makes you feel secure.
Start with budget swimwear and when you get a better idea of what you like, you can buy something fancier. Swim Outlet is my favorite place to buy sturdier swim gear, but you can normally get some functional swimshorts from Target.
Swimsuits can range from $25 (sales)- $120.
Other Gear
What about goggles and a swim cap? Honestly, any medium-quality goggles will do the trick. It’s worth buying shaded goggles if you’re going to be at an outdoor pool in the summer. You absolutely do not need to drop a ton of money on goggles.
The only exception to this is if you are absolutely blind and need prescription goggles.
In general aim for something in the $10-20 range.
As for a swim cap, this is totally personal preference for non-competitive swimmers. I like swim caps because they keep my hair from getting tangled in my goggles, but some people hate them.
If you find that your hair is bugging you in the water, give a cap a try, but don’t feel like it’s required equipment. There are silicone caps and rubber ones. I like silicone, but that’s just me.
They’re usually $10
Total cost for gear: $40-$150
Overcoming psychological barriers
These are a little tougher than gear because we often ignore them or pretend they don’t exist. And it’s hard to deal with something unless you admit it’s there.
Let’s take them one at a time.
Fear of water
Dealing with a fear of water is difficult, but doable. Remember, that your fear, anxiety, or discomfort is totally valid and is a natural response to a foreign environment.
Some people just have a strong response to water the same way some people have a strong response to blood. There’s nothing wrong with you and you have nothing to be ashamed of.
And you can still enjoy the pool and the benefits of aquatic workouts.
First and foremost, try to identify what makes you uncomfortable. Is it the idea of being in the water at all? Is it being in deep water? If it’s depth, are you concerned about water over your head or up to your chest or even just past your knees (my father in law can’t swim and won’t get in water deeper than his hips).
Once you have an idea of what’s causing the stress response, you can come up with ways to get your toes wet and then, when you’re ready, get maybe get your knees/hips/shoulders wet.
I do recommend that you don’t push yourself to quickly outside of your comfort zone in the water. Build your confidence and trust in yourself and the water over time. Just being in the water offers benefits, so don’t panic if you aren’t getting a full workout in.
A great option is to start with aquatic stretching in a therapy pool or the shallow end of the lap pool, water walking, or hot tub therapy. The goal at first isn’t necessarily to work out, but to get a little more comfortable with being submerged and to get familiar with the physics of the water itself.
Water walking is a great place to start, depending on your comfort level.
If you want to start with a swimming workout, start with stroke styles that allow you to bring your face out of the water or keep your face out of the water. These include breast stroke and back stroke.
You also don’t have to go all the way to the end of the lane. You can choose a slow lane (the one closest to the water walking lane), and then just swim to the end of the shallow area and back.
Concern about the full body nature of swimming
It’s true that swimming can be strenuous but with a low risk of injury. When you do freestyle (front crawl), you’re moving your body in new and unusual ways, but don’t let the full-body nature of swimming keep you out of the water.
You can always modify your swimming workout so that it isn’t full-body. For example, you can use a kick board to focus on just your legs, or you can use a pull buoy to focus on just your upper body.
You can also choose a gentler form of exercise like water walking.
Long story short, you can scale your pool workouts to fit your boy and fitness level.
If you have a shoulder injury, don’t start with butterfly stroke. If you have an ankle, knee or foot injury, kick off gently from the wall.
Don’t be afraid to get started and then slowly increase the difficulty of your workout until you find what you’re comfortable with.
Discomfort with locker rooms and swimsuits
This was definitely my biggest issue when getting back in the water. I have a hard time accepting my own body sometimes, so jumping back into the pool felt overwhelming when I started swimming again in law school.
Two things helped me through this.
The first thing was focusing on my goal. I was living a sedentary life and I was incredibly stressed (again, law school). I watched classmates turn to alcohol, drugs, or even self-harm as a coping mechanism for school and knew that wasn’t what I wanted.
And I love water and knew that swimming has oodles of benefits.
I focused on the benefits and my goal to live a healthy life, and used that tunnel vision to plow through my own self-consciousness.
I’m not saying you should ignore your feelings about your body or any insecurities you might have, but writing down why you want to be in the water and visualizing that when the locker rooms make you balk can help you move beyond this barrier.
The second thing (and I didn’t learn this until I actually got to the pool) is that literally no one cared what I was doing. There were old people and young people, fit people and folks with injuries, and they were all focused on themselves.
Nobody cared if stripped down totally naked or if I changed in the shower.
Everyone has different comfort levels with modesty and I’ve never once, in 7 years of consistent swim practice spread across 16 different pools and multiple states and countries, encountered another person who cared at all what I was doing in a locker room.
No one has given me strange looks. No one has ever commented on what I was wearing, what my body looked like, or whether I changed in front of others or in the privacy of a stall. No one cared if I showered in my bathing suit or buck naked.
Other swimmers and water exercisers tend to be incredibly supportive and friendly, and they’re all there for the same reasons as you.
The only time I’ve ever had another swimmer comment about what I was wearing, it was to ask me where I bought my swimsuit because she liked the colors.
As a group, swimmers tend to be pretty open about bodies and understanding of others. It’s the least judgmental place I’ve ever worked out, honestly.
Uncertainty about how other swimmers will perceive us
This was my second biggest concern when I got back into swimming.
I was worried that my workout would be too short and other swimmers would judge me.
I was worried that my workout would be too easy and other swimmers would judge me.
I was worried that my technique wouldn’t be good enough and other swimmers would judge me.
In short, I was worried that other swimmers would judge me.
Fortunately, that never actually happened. Even when I was sharing a lane with a former Olympic Butterflyer, he never once noticed what I was doing because he was so focused on his own thing (thanks Colin).
The only time anyone is paying any attention to what you’re doing is when they’re trying to match workout levels so they can pick a lane.
Even then, the dream for most people is to have an entire lane to themselves without having to share, so if they can, other swimmers will avoid being involved in your workout at all.
A lot of people like swimming because of the isolation and self-focus that it provides. They like the comfort of being in the water and thinking only about the water and themselves.
I LOVE the silence that happens when my face is in the water and all I have to do is follow the long, black line from one end of the pool to the other.
A simple swimming workout to get you back in the pool
How do lap pools work?
Lap pools are swimming pools divided into lanes by lane lines. A standard pool is either going to be 25 meters or 25 yards from one end to the other. An olympic pool is 50 meters from one end to the other.
Distance in a lap pool is measured in lengths and laps. A length is when you swim from one end to the other. A lap is when you swim from one end to the other AND BACK. Most swimmers measure distance in laps.
There are two types of lanes: water walking lanes and lap swim lanes. For walkers, how you use the lane is a bit of free for all. Some people walk, some use water weights. It’s a lawless land.
For lap swim lanes, it gets a little more complicated. Some pools designated lap lanes by speed. Slow, medium, and fast, with the lanes closest to the water walking lanes as the slow lanes.
There is NO SHAME in using a slow lane. Some folks just want to chill on a given day. There is NO SHAME in using a fast lane. Some people like sprints. Whatever. Pick the lane that fits your ability and workout for that day.
You also want to see how many people are in that lane already.
If there are one or two people in the lane, they’ll pick a side and stick to it while they’re swimming. This is called splitting. Someone might ask you if they can “split” with you. That means they stay on their side and you stay on yours.
If there are three or more swimmers, they’ll circle swim instead of splitting the lane. If you look straight down at the pool from above, the swimmers move in a counter-clockwise pattern.
This kind of swimming can be a bit intimidating for people who don’t do it very often, so you might want to pick a different lane or chill in the hot tub until a lane opens up. If you feel up for it though, jump right in!
A workout for when you just want to get in the pool
If you just want a plan so you get back in the water, start with water walking instead of swimming.
Warm up:
- Walk in place in the water, gradually increasing the pace to warm up your muscles.
- Perform arm circles, forward and backward to loosen your shoulders.
- Do some gentle and dynamic (moving) stretches of your legs, arms, and torso
Main workout:
- Walk forward through the water to the end of the shallow area and back to the wall, maintaining good posture. The goal here is to keep tension in your core from your lower core to your ribs.
- After a few minutes, add variations such as high knees, side steps, and backward walking. Just keeping moving laterally through the water. Try five laps (wall to end of the shallow section and back to the wall) of each variation. You can then repeat if you want more of a workout.
- Incorporate arm movements by pushing the water with your palms as you walk to engage your upper body muscles. You can also hold a kick board vertically in the water and push it forward as you walk to add even more resistance. The deeper the water, the greater the resistance. The greater your speed, the greater the effort and the more strenuous the workout will be.
Cool down
- Gradually slow your pace and transition from higher speeds to low-speed walking. Then transition to just walking in place.
- Finish with some static stretches at the wall for your calves, quads and hamstrings, arms and shoulders, and back.
- Remember to breathe deeply as you stretch.
Don’t forget that you sweat in the water so you need to drink water. Heat after the pool (sauna or hot tub) can also keep your muscles from aching.
A workout for when you want an easy lap swim, based on a 25 meter/yard pool
This workout is for people who are comfortable with their basic swimming technique but aren’t used to creating their own sets (lap swimming workouts). I recommend you feel relatively comfortable with at least one stroke (like freestyle or breast stroke or back stroke). For this workout 1 lap = 50 meters.
Start with a warm up:
- Do a few laps of easy swimming, focusing on breathing and getting warmed up in the water
- If you know multiple strokes, try a lap or two of each.
Main Set:
- Swim 4-8 laps of freestyle. Focus on your technique, pacing, and breathing. If you need a rest period between each lap or length that’s ok, but try to keep it below 1 minute.
- Follow with 2-4 laps of backstroke if you know this one. If you aren’t confident with back stroke or have a shoulder injury, try doing 2-4 laps with a kick board and focus on your kicking pattern.
- If you’re comfortable with breaststroke, add 2-4 laps here with a focus on keeping a narrow kick and spending as much time as possible in the glide under the water.
- Finish strong with 4-8 laps of mixed strokes or of freestyle at a higher pace than what you started with.
Cool Down:
- Swim easily for 5-10 minutes, focusing on long strokes and controlled breathing.
- Gradually decrease pace and intensity
- Stretch at the wall, focusing on shoulders, backs, hips, and legs
Tips: try to identify what questions you have about form and look up answers later. If something hurts, slow down or stop. It’s ok to rest in between laps! Breathing is key. Finding a steady breathing pattern will help you keep swimming forever.
A workout for dry-land athletes who want to add a more difficult lap swim routine, based on a 25 meter/yard pool
This intermediate to advanced lap swimming workout is designed to challenge your endurance, speed, and technique. For this workout 1 lap = 50 meters. Feel free to make modifications as necessary!
Warm up:
- 200 meters (4 laps) of easy freestyle swimming
- 100 meters (2 laps) of backstroke
- 100 meters (2 laps) of breaststroke
- 100 meters (2 laps) of kicking drills (free style, dolphin kick, and breaststroke kick)
Main Set:
- Swim 10X100 meters freestyle (20 laps). If necessary, rest every 100 meters for 15-20 seconds
- Follow with a 10X50 meters (10 laps) of sprint freestyle. Only swim as fast as you can while maintaining proper technique. Rest for 20-30 seconds between each 50.
- 25 meters of freestyle, 25 meters of breaststroke, 25 meters of backstroke. Then repeat. If you want, you can also add 25 meters of butterfly.
- Swim 4X200 meters (4 laps) freestyle pull using a pull buoy. Focus on upper body strength and technique. Rest for 30-45 seconds between each interval.
Cool Down:
- Swim easy for 200-300 meters (4-6 laps), alternating between freestyle and backstroke.
- Incorporate 100 meters (2 laps) of kicking drills without a kickboard, focusing ankle flexibility and maintaining a steady, easy rhythm.
- Finish with 100 meters (2 laps) of easy freestyle swimming, gradually slowing your pace.
- Stretch at the wall in the water, focusing on your shoulders, back, hips, and legs.
Tips: focus on maintaining proper technique and form throughout your swimming workout and pay attention to your breathing pattern. Make sure you push yourself during the main set, but listen to your body and adjust the intervals, strokes, or distances as needed to maintain quality swimming. If you start to get bored or have tighter time constraints, feel free to alternate between different strokes, distances, and intensities.
Conclusion:
You’ve decided to get in (or back) in the swimming pool. Yay! Aquatic exercise offers us so many benefits including working your entire body, alleviating stress, and improving flexibility and mobility at a low risk of injury.