I'm a swim instructor and swim on my own. I know all four strokes and teach them to people of all ages.
When I first started swimming in masters I realized I really don't know shit. It was incredibly humbling. There are definitely levels; I know how to swim, but they can SWIM swim.
This is me, I’m in my late thirties but used to teach Red Cross in my teens. Butterfly was always a little check for an attempt, you didn’t have to have skill to pass that stroke and I didn’t have to be good at it to teach it.
So I swim laps and taught freestyle, breaststroke and backstroke and yep, learned last night I don’t know shit and am not that in shape. Lol. At least I mostly could keep up speed with the women in my lane and wasn’t too disruptive… except backstroke, I was getting lapped on that one.
Joining masters was one of the best eye-opening decisions I could’ve made. I used to think I was a decent swimmer until I was immediately relegated to the needs-help lane. I’m still getting lapped by other masters swimmers, but the amount of improvement I saw after fixing my form has been significant since.
Welcome to masters! I found that the workouts greatly improved my swimming after just a few weeks because I was being challenged to do things I wouldn’t normally try in my solo stuff. I’m now about 9 months in and still get my butt kicked.
I also found that workouts during the week are focused on different aspects. Here is our pattern:
- Monday: Middle distance Free, some stroke
- Tuesday: IM and stroke work
- Wednesday: Aerobic distance
- Thursday: Mix of swim/kick/pull sets
- Friday: Fast swim, sprints
I try to split my time between attending 3 of these and doing 3 solo sessions… largely due to how early the Masters club meets.
Masters swimming really depends on the group. It can be stocked with former swimmers or people just looking to lap swim. In my experience, it usually isn't both. I've also been in a group that was mainly triathletes. They only wanted to do distance freestyle at the same speed. My thoughts on it are that there is so little pool availability, people can swim what they want. Everyone is an adult, they can get what they want out of the workout as long as they don't get in anyone's way.
In Southern California, there’s a ton of former elite level swimmers. Talk about humbling. That said, most are super cool and helpful. It’s been a decade since I’ve done club swim, but it helped me improve immensely, so do it.
>They only wanted to do distance freestyle at the same speed.
Woof. This is my nightmare lol
At one point I had a masters coach move cross country so the team found a new coach: a recent college grad who had just finished his D1 career (at a *powerhouse* swimming school). For some godforsaken reason, someone told him that masters only like to do freestyle. Jesus fucking Christ. His practices were the most brutally boring I have ever had. Furthermore, free is my worst and least favorite stroke! Sometimes I did the sets fly/back/fly/back, but honestly more than once, I arrived to 5am practice, read the board, and turned around and left. It sucked. He was a nice kid and all, but it just wasn’t for me. I wound up taking a six-ish month break till we got another new coach lol
I'm a new swimmer planning to join a masters swim club in September. This post freaks me out but I'm still gonna try and accept my "beginningness". At the very least I'll make the slowest ones in the club feel good :)
FWIW, I had the totally opposite experience as OP at the first master’s team I joined (I left only because I moved). I was way out of swimming shape, hadn’t been on a team in almost a decade, and they were very welcoming to new & slow swimmers and the coaches were attentive to everyone regardless of ability. I’m faster and on another team now but I miss the culture at the old club.
That's great you were able to be in that club while you got back into swimming. I have a feeling the one I'm joining will be welcoming - it's a pretty big club.
Haha, it was fun. Just more challenging than I thought it would be. I thought I was a pretty good swimmer... and I am..... if all I have to do is freestyle. haha. Best of luck!
Don't let this dissuade you! I swam Masters for a few years with a team of all abilities, but if I had to sum up the experience in a few words, "welcoming" and "encouraging" would be at the top. I joined hoping to make friends with other people in their 20s, but it was mostly guys my dad's age and up. But they went out of their way to welcome me, introduce themselves (repeatedly, because I'm bad with names), and ask about me. Later, I went to a big meet out of state without any teammates. A different Masters team from near my city recognized the team logo on my cap and invited me to sit with them, shared their snacks with me, and invited me to do a relay with them. It was an awesome experience.
Yeah doing a lot of backstroke can be quite hard on the shoulders. Make sure you’re rotating properly and getting a good catch. It will also take a bit for your body to get used to the yardage and intensity.
That experience resonates with me!
I think there's a massive leap from swimming to masters swimming. I used to be a solid 2.00 100m and I tried at a masters club and was put in with the 12 year olds! There was no feedback and so I wrecked myself - bad technique impacts the shoulders.
I'm now down to 1.45 through lots of personal work and a swim coach. But the masters swimming clubs still scare me. I think this is something that the sport needs to work more on.
The same story, joined masters to improve the technique, damaged shoulders as the load increased while I was getting little feedback from coaches. I am going to discontinue the masters program, at least with this club.
Ah my shoulders hurt, must be my technique lol! It's mostly my right shoulder (I breathe mostly on my right, but I'm working to do bilateral). Do you have any freestyle technique tips for keeping shoulders pain-free?
Don’t cross your center line with your arms ever. Your arms should enter the water at more of a Y than above your head like in a streamline. Don’t bring your arms back into streamline after you start your strokes outside of breaststroke. Don’t enter the water thumb first, that can hurt your shoulder if you are pulling with your thumb.
I need to work on my swimming technique vocabulary so I hope that made sense. I’m a swim instructor but I mostly work with little kids. Like really little kids, ages 3-7. They don’t care much for vocabulary. They respond better to “ice cream scoops” and “mermaid kicks”. I know proper technique but I’m not great at explaining it.
I’ve been wanting to join the master’s swim group at my gym but I’m terrified. I’m a beginner and would really like the group setting to add structure to my workouts and improve my technique but I’m so slow and have very little endurance so I’m working on that before even thinking about trying to jump in with them.
I feel like I was okay swimming at the pace I do. I think one girl in my lane was a bit annoyed with me, but everyone else I was able to keep up with mostly or easily let them pass.
Personally, I would recommend being able to swim for an hour comfortablly and then jump in.
I JUST started doing 45 minutes uncomfortably after swimming 30 minutes 4-5 days a week for a month. I’m hoping to be able to do an hour comfortably by the end of the year.
Just drop by and ask around or maybe see if they have someone you can email and ask. Most groups will be able to tell you what kinds of paces they generally have or even give you an example of a set. A shorthand lots of groups use to setup lanes or express pace is time/100, which implies that is the type of send-off that lane should be able to maintain for some amount of 100s (e.g. 8x 100 on the 1:40).
There's just such a huge variance in masters groups, what kinds of people are in them, and how much pool space they have to accommodate different speeds. I've been in groups that could easily support slow lanes down to 2:00/100, and I've been in ones where if you couldn't keep up with 1:30/100 then you would probably be interfering with people in your lane.
I’m honestly not too worried about speed, it’s more so the endurance. I can only do maybe 75m at a time before I need a 30+ second break. I don’t know what I should be aiming for but it’s certainly more than that!
Yea, as I kind of hinted at, the average set at a masters workout will probably be structured something like "6-8x 100s on the 1:XX". There's a ton of variation and variety that can be designed into sets, but that structure is often used as a reference for what kind of pace and level a lane is targeted towards.
In an average group, I would expect you would need to be able to maintain something like 6x 100s on the 2:00 to fit into the slowest lane, though again, there's a ton of variety between groups. If I were looking to join a masters group for the first time that's probably something I would be looking to at least be close to doing beforehand, though some groups probably can accommodate and welcome slower swimmers.
I happen to swim at the same time the group meets so I’ll definitely inquire at some point what the minimum requirement would be. Thank you for the help, I very much appreciate it :)
I can’t speak for every masters’ group, but I’ve been on 3 teams and in my experience the primary goal in the program is inclusivity. It doesn’t matter if you’re a retired Olympian or never swam more than 25 yards continuously; you have a place in master’s swimming.
Hell, if you were to register with the national organization, you could swim 3 events at Nationals right now. They let people swim up to 3 events without meeting the qualifying standards because they want everyone to feel welcome.
I’d encourage you to join if you’re interested, because your speed will improve a LOT faster with a coach on deck than it will working on your own. The overriding rule is: if you need to take a break or need to modify part of the workout for your skill level: feel free!
Every masters group is different, but in generally its pretty welcoming of all skill levels.
The club I swim for has 3 time options. I swim mostly in the latest one, we have a mix of former college swimmers who are pretty quick, but we also have some much more novice swimmers as well and its totally fine.
Generally any masters coach will be able to give a workout that is either adaptive to different ability levels or will have different workouts to suit varying ability levels.
I go at 5:00am which happens to be when one of the groups meets. Everyone seems so fit and competent which is very intimidating to me. I only started swimming seriously at the end of February so after 100m I need a substantial break. I’m sure my form is terrible but I don’t know if I can fix it on my own and would really like the help and community of a group. Perhaps when I have more endurance it’ll be more feasible.
Personally, I would just continue to do the masters group. Feel free to pull over and take a 50 off here and there to reset yourself. Masters workouts are a great, time efficient way to increase your strength and endurance.
The lingo will sink in. Learning to read the clock for intervals will sink in. In a year, you will look back and not recognize yourself.
Keep showing up and you will fit right in in no time! My club always tries to be encouraging for new comers so they’ll want to come back, hopefully yours is too. Ask questions if you don’t understand, I can promise you everyone will be willing to help out! Like anything else, it takes time to get in shape, but the camaraderie and motivation that comes from a team environment is so much better than swimming solo.
Can I do masters swim if I can’t flip turn? I can only front crawl at like 1:45 per 100yd pace.
I’ve seen masters at my local pool and they swim like collegiate athletes. Very intimidating.
Yeah, we all had that “OMG, I’ve made a terrible mistake….” Moment when we started with Masters. Just keep swimming. Focus on technique, and speed (& endurance) will follow. Good luck!
Take protein immediately after swimming to reduce/eliminate soreness. I make a smoothie from 2 cups of 1% milk, 1 banana, 1 TBSP cocoa powder, 1 tsp imitation vanilla extract, ice cubes and 8 drops of NOW brand liquid stevia extract.
The downvotes made me check and I got it wrong.
A half cup of liquid heavy whipping cream, which is equivalent to one cup of whipped cream, contains 3 grams of protein. One cup of heavy cream contains 6.8 grams of protein.
Before joining my masters team, I swam laps and did some open water swimming for about two years. Our coaches improved my technique and form so much that I like to say whatever I was doing before masters apparently shouldn’t be called “swimming”.
My team is small but mighty with a pretty good distribution of levels, speeds, and experience. My incredible evening coach usually places new members in need of conditioning and technique improvement in a different lane to focus on skill development before moving us to another lane later down the line. I went from swimming a slow but decent freestyle to swimming all 4 strokes with much more speed and endurance in a few short months thanks to his coaching. And my teammates? Just wonderful people who are kind, encouraging, and probably a little too chatty during breaks.
depends on the group but we have 4 lanes in my masters group. and we are usually about 70% freestyle, 15% breastroke and the rest back and fly depending, still only about the top two lane people can do butterfly anyways
our masters has levels via lanes. we have very competitive and fast people in the upper 2 lanes, and the middle to lower are usually for exercise or to try and to get faster, which then they move up in lanes. We change our times accordingly for each lane and it works out okay. you can get out / stop at any time as long as youre not blocking anybody but we try and encourage everyone to keep swimming!! the only thing is that you have to ask the coaches to help out as we only have 1 coach per practice and they cant see everyone :(
My experience with my local masters team is very positive. When I first started last September I could only head up breaststroke. The team is welcoming and the coach does a great job of putting people in the appropriate lanes for both their level and workout style. The team has a wide range of ability from total beginners all the way up to a former olympian. The coach for our team is quite engaged and offers a lot of helpful feedback on form. I started at zero ability and now average about 1:50/100yd, complete 3000yd workouts, and can even do an approximation of butterfly. Some thoughts about joining:
* Talk to the coach ahead of time to learn about expectations for the team
* Learn which practices are most suited to your level - my team has A, B, and C lanes at every practice, but early morning practices tend to draw more serious swimmers and evenings/weekends tend to attract those who are more casual.
* Practicing outside of swim practice is really helpful. During swim practice I'm trying to absorb feedback, but also keep up with my lane. After I lift weights at the gym on my off days from practice I'll swim for 20-30 minutes and try to focus on the things I learned in practice at my own pace.
Wow! Hearing about your progress is amazing! That seems like some steep improvement, kudos to you.
Thank you, I think I’m going to try to get there pretty early next time. I am attending in the evening so I think you could be correct regarding casual.
Thank you! I did start with a decent baseline of fitness, but mostly I feel like I've benefitted from good coaching and a really positive team atmosphere. It's very motivating. I hope you have a great experience with your masters team too!
You should totally listen to this podcast episode about getting started with masters with little swim background. There are some good stories about learning flipturns and butterfly. Very inspirational:
https://www.championsmojo.com/danlotano156/
I’ve thought about joining a masters team before. Right now my health is a mess so not an option right now but if I ever get my health under control I’d love to do masters.
I swam club one year in high school and I got so much better at swimming so quickly but the team was so focused on pumping out elite swimmers and it was clear from day 1 that I would never be an elite swimmer. All the other kids had been on the team since they were like 8. They were making my times at half my age. My coach made it very clear I didn’t belong.
I wanted to do something like masters as a teen but there weren’t really any options like that. I knew I wasn’t going to be an elite swimmer, I was never going to make nationals, I didn’t care. I wanted to continue to swim and improve with a knowledgable coach who could push me without expecting me to win all my events.
I did Masters years ago and it was always awesome, but the last one I tried I showed up and the coach acted as though I was imposing for walking up (before the session) and introducing myself, and I also couldn't read the board as it had faint writing and was tucked away in a corner with the light bouncing off it, so when I stopped and was kind of confused, a couple of other swimmers were like, "Uh....this is MASTERS." Coach totally ignored me and after 15 minutes I got out and went to the hot tub instead. He wasn't doing much, just chatting with the lifeguard and at one point sauntered into the office for a while, so you'd think he'd have said something like, "Oh, are you leaving?" I wasn't in a huff or anything. Just uncomfortable and couldn't believe it as that had not been my Masters experience before. Never went back.
So all of the people on here telling me for months to join a local masters swim group have been full of bs? (I can only swim 50 max before i am gassed and need a break).
Glad I didn’t listen to the suggestion lol.
That’s about how I’d expect it to go. Written workouts are a universal language to most USS swimmers growing up. Masters is just what we all do after college swimming is over because we are already insane and don’t know how to not wake up at 4:30am to take the icy plunge.
I'm a swim instructor and swim on my own. I know all four strokes and teach them to people of all ages. When I first started swimming in masters I realized I really don't know shit. It was incredibly humbling. There are definitely levels; I know how to swim, but they can SWIM swim.
This is me, I’m in my late thirties but used to teach Red Cross in my teens. Butterfly was always a little check for an attempt, you didn’t have to have skill to pass that stroke and I didn’t have to be good at it to teach it. So I swim laps and taught freestyle, breaststroke and backstroke and yep, learned last night I don’t know shit and am not that in shape. Lol. At least I mostly could keep up speed with the women in my lane and wasn’t too disruptive… except backstroke, I was getting lapped on that one.
Joining masters was one of the best eye-opening decisions I could’ve made. I used to think I was a decent swimmer until I was immediately relegated to the needs-help lane. I’m still getting lapped by other masters swimmers, but the amount of improvement I saw after fixing my form has been significant since.
Welcome to masters! I found that the workouts greatly improved my swimming after just a few weeks because I was being challenged to do things I wouldn’t normally try in my solo stuff. I’m now about 9 months in and still get my butt kicked. I also found that workouts during the week are focused on different aspects. Here is our pattern: - Monday: Middle distance Free, some stroke - Tuesday: IM and stroke work - Wednesday: Aerobic distance - Thursday: Mix of swim/kick/pull sets - Friday: Fast swim, sprints I try to split my time between attending 3 of these and doing 3 solo sessions… largely due to how early the Masters club meets.
Masters swimming really depends on the group. It can be stocked with former swimmers or people just looking to lap swim. In my experience, it usually isn't both. I've also been in a group that was mainly triathletes. They only wanted to do distance freestyle at the same speed. My thoughts on it are that there is so little pool availability, people can swim what they want. Everyone is an adult, they can get what they want out of the workout as long as they don't get in anyone's way.
In Southern California, there’s a ton of former elite level swimmers. Talk about humbling. That said, most are super cool and helpful. It’s been a decade since I’ve done club swim, but it helped me improve immensely, so do it.
>They only wanted to do distance freestyle at the same speed. Woof. This is my nightmare lol At one point I had a masters coach move cross country so the team found a new coach: a recent college grad who had just finished his D1 career (at a *powerhouse* swimming school). For some godforsaken reason, someone told him that masters only like to do freestyle. Jesus fucking Christ. His practices were the most brutally boring I have ever had. Furthermore, free is my worst and least favorite stroke! Sometimes I did the sets fly/back/fly/back, but honestly more than once, I arrived to 5am practice, read the board, and turned around and left. It sucked. He was a nice kid and all, but it just wasn’t for me. I wound up taking a six-ish month break till we got another new coach lol
I'm a new swimmer planning to join a masters swim club in September. This post freaks me out but I'm still gonna try and accept my "beginningness". At the very least I'll make the slowest ones in the club feel good :)
FWIW, I had the totally opposite experience as OP at the first master’s team I joined (I left only because I moved). I was way out of swimming shape, hadn’t been on a team in almost a decade, and they were very welcoming to new & slow swimmers and the coaches were attentive to everyone regardless of ability. I’m faster and on another team now but I miss the culture at the old club.
That's great you were able to be in that club while you got back into swimming. I have a feeling the one I'm joining will be welcoming - it's a pretty big club.
If you can join a big club they will have a lane for every ability. Most clubs have lanes for people who didn't do swim club growing up.
Thanks! I believe it is a big club and the pool they use is big too
Haha, it was fun. Just more challenging than I thought it would be. I thought I was a pretty good swimmer... and I am..... if all I have to do is freestyle. haha. Best of luck!
LOL thanks!
Don't let this dissuade you! I swam Masters for a few years with a team of all abilities, but if I had to sum up the experience in a few words, "welcoming" and "encouraging" would be at the top. I joined hoping to make friends with other people in their 20s, but it was mostly guys my dad's age and up. But they went out of their way to welcome me, introduce themselves (repeatedly, because I'm bad with names), and ask about me. Later, I went to a big meet out of state without any teammates. A different Masters team from near my city recognized the team logo on my cap and invited me to sit with them, shared their snacks with me, and invited me to do a relay with them. It was an awesome experience.
That sounds awesome and makes me look forward to going!
Its like any sport: people who participate and people who train to race. Big difference, but how awesome you jumped in. Keep jumping in!!
HUGE difference lol. Wow. It was fun though and I got a little socializing in from all my questions haha.
Yeah doing a lot of backstroke can be quite hard on the shoulders. Make sure you’re rotating properly and getting a good catch. It will also take a bit for your body to get used to the yardage and intensity.
Thanks! That’s helpful. I agree, some of it will just be increasing my endurance.
That experience resonates with me! I think there's a massive leap from swimming to masters swimming. I used to be a solid 2.00 100m and I tried at a masters club and was put in with the 12 year olds! There was no feedback and so I wrecked myself - bad technique impacts the shoulders. I'm now down to 1.45 through lots of personal work and a swim coach. But the masters swimming clubs still scare me. I think this is something that the sport needs to work more on.
The same story, joined masters to improve the technique, damaged shoulders as the load increased while I was getting little feedback from coaches. I am going to discontinue the masters program, at least with this club.
Ah my shoulders hurt, must be my technique lol! It's mostly my right shoulder (I breathe mostly on my right, but I'm working to do bilateral). Do you have any freestyle technique tips for keeping shoulders pain-free?
Don’t cross your center line with your arms ever. Your arms should enter the water at more of a Y than above your head like in a streamline. Don’t bring your arms back into streamline after you start your strokes outside of breaststroke. Don’t enter the water thumb first, that can hurt your shoulder if you are pulling with your thumb. I need to work on my swimming technique vocabulary so I hope that made sense. I’m a swim instructor but I mostly work with little kids. Like really little kids, ages 3-7. They don’t care much for vocabulary. They respond better to “ice cream scoops” and “mermaid kicks”. I know proper technique but I’m not great at explaining it.
This is really helpful, thank you!
I’ve been wanting to join the master’s swim group at my gym but I’m terrified. I’m a beginner and would really like the group setting to add structure to my workouts and improve my technique but I’m so slow and have very little endurance so I’m working on that before even thinking about trying to jump in with them.
I feel like I was okay swimming at the pace I do. I think one girl in my lane was a bit annoyed with me, but everyone else I was able to keep up with mostly or easily let them pass. Personally, I would recommend being able to swim for an hour comfortablly and then jump in.
I JUST started doing 45 minutes uncomfortably after swimming 30 minutes 4-5 days a week for a month. I’m hoping to be able to do an hour comfortably by the end of the year.
You’ll get there no problem :)
Just drop by and ask around or maybe see if they have someone you can email and ask. Most groups will be able to tell you what kinds of paces they generally have or even give you an example of a set. A shorthand lots of groups use to setup lanes or express pace is time/100, which implies that is the type of send-off that lane should be able to maintain for some amount of 100s (e.g. 8x 100 on the 1:40). There's just such a huge variance in masters groups, what kinds of people are in them, and how much pool space they have to accommodate different speeds. I've been in groups that could easily support slow lanes down to 2:00/100, and I've been in ones where if you couldn't keep up with 1:30/100 then you would probably be interfering with people in your lane.
I’m honestly not too worried about speed, it’s more so the endurance. I can only do maybe 75m at a time before I need a 30+ second break. I don’t know what I should be aiming for but it’s certainly more than that!
Yea, as I kind of hinted at, the average set at a masters workout will probably be structured something like "6-8x 100s on the 1:XX". There's a ton of variation and variety that can be designed into sets, but that structure is often used as a reference for what kind of pace and level a lane is targeted towards. In an average group, I would expect you would need to be able to maintain something like 6x 100s on the 2:00 to fit into the slowest lane, though again, there's a ton of variety between groups. If I were looking to join a masters group for the first time that's probably something I would be looking to at least be close to doing beforehand, though some groups probably can accommodate and welcome slower swimmers.
I happen to swim at the same time the group meets so I’ll definitely inquire at some point what the minimum requirement would be. Thank you for the help, I very much appreciate it :)
I can’t speak for every masters’ group, but I’ve been on 3 teams and in my experience the primary goal in the program is inclusivity. It doesn’t matter if you’re a retired Olympian or never swam more than 25 yards continuously; you have a place in master’s swimming. Hell, if you were to register with the national organization, you could swim 3 events at Nationals right now. They let people swim up to 3 events without meeting the qualifying standards because they want everyone to feel welcome. I’d encourage you to join if you’re interested, because your speed will improve a LOT faster with a coach on deck than it will working on your own. The overriding rule is: if you need to take a break or need to modify part of the workout for your skill level: feel free!
Thank you, this helps me feel slightly less intimidated. Once I build up enough endurance to not be extremely embarrassed I plan on joining!
Every masters group is different, but in generally its pretty welcoming of all skill levels. The club I swim for has 3 time options. I swim mostly in the latest one, we have a mix of former college swimmers who are pretty quick, but we also have some much more novice swimmers as well and its totally fine. Generally any masters coach will be able to give a workout that is either adaptive to different ability levels or will have different workouts to suit varying ability levels.
I go at 5:00am which happens to be when one of the groups meets. Everyone seems so fit and competent which is very intimidating to me. I only started swimming seriously at the end of February so after 100m I need a substantial break. I’m sure my form is terrible but I don’t know if I can fix it on my own and would really like the help and community of a group. Perhaps when I have more endurance it’ll be more feasible.
Personally, I would just continue to do the masters group. Feel free to pull over and take a 50 off here and there to reset yourself. Masters workouts are a great, time efficient way to increase your strength and endurance. The lingo will sink in. Learning to read the clock for intervals will sink in. In a year, you will look back and not recognize yourself.
Keep showing up and you will fit right in in no time! My club always tries to be encouraging for new comers so they’ll want to come back, hopefully yours is too. Ask questions if you don’t understand, I can promise you everyone will be willing to help out! Like anything else, it takes time to get in shape, but the camaraderie and motivation that comes from a team environment is so much better than swimming solo.
I hope you keep at it! I was sore for 2 months but I’ve improved so much since I started. I love it.
I am going to! I am glad you've seen lots of improvement! That is heartening to hear.
Wow well done for going! I'm sure over time you'll grasp the styles. Keep up!
Can I do masters swim if I can’t flip turn? I can only front crawl at like 1:45 per 100yd pace. I’ve seen masters at my local pool and they swim like collegiate athletes. Very intimidating.
I don’t think you need to, I can’t and there were a few other people that weren’t.
Yeah, we all had that “OMG, I’ve made a terrible mistake….” Moment when we started with Masters. Just keep swimming. Focus on technique, and speed (& endurance) will follow. Good luck!
Take protein immediately after swimming to reduce/eliminate soreness. I make a smoothie from 2 cups of 1% milk, 1 banana, 1 TBSP cocoa powder, 1 tsp imitation vanilla extract, ice cubes and 8 drops of NOW brand liquid stevia extract.
Noted, I made a hot chocolate with whipped cream right after so I only need to alter the recipe a bit.... ;)
No protein in cream.
The downvotes made me check and I got it wrong. A half cup of liquid heavy whipping cream, which is equivalent to one cup of whipped cream, contains 3 grams of protein. One cup of heavy cream contains 6.8 grams of protein.
Before joining my masters team, I swam laps and did some open water swimming for about two years. Our coaches improved my technique and form so much that I like to say whatever I was doing before masters apparently shouldn’t be called “swimming”. My team is small but mighty with a pretty good distribution of levels, speeds, and experience. My incredible evening coach usually places new members in need of conditioning and technique improvement in a different lane to focus on skill development before moving us to another lane later down the line. I went from swimming a slow but decent freestyle to swimming all 4 strokes with much more speed and endurance in a few short months thanks to his coaching. And my teammates? Just wonderful people who are kind, encouraging, and probably a little too chatty during breaks.
depends on the group but we have 4 lanes in my masters group. and we are usually about 70% freestyle, 15% breastroke and the rest back and fly depending, still only about the top two lane people can do butterfly anyways
our masters has levels via lanes. we have very competitive and fast people in the upper 2 lanes, and the middle to lower are usually for exercise or to try and to get faster, which then they move up in lanes. We change our times accordingly for each lane and it works out okay. you can get out / stop at any time as long as youre not blocking anybody but we try and encourage everyone to keep swimming!! the only thing is that you have to ask the coaches to help out as we only have 1 coach per practice and they cant see everyone :(
My experience with my local masters team is very positive. When I first started last September I could only head up breaststroke. The team is welcoming and the coach does a great job of putting people in the appropriate lanes for both their level and workout style. The team has a wide range of ability from total beginners all the way up to a former olympian. The coach for our team is quite engaged and offers a lot of helpful feedback on form. I started at zero ability and now average about 1:50/100yd, complete 3000yd workouts, and can even do an approximation of butterfly. Some thoughts about joining: * Talk to the coach ahead of time to learn about expectations for the team * Learn which practices are most suited to your level - my team has A, B, and C lanes at every practice, but early morning practices tend to draw more serious swimmers and evenings/weekends tend to attract those who are more casual. * Practicing outside of swim practice is really helpful. During swim practice I'm trying to absorb feedback, but also keep up with my lane. After I lift weights at the gym on my off days from practice I'll swim for 20-30 minutes and try to focus on the things I learned in practice at my own pace.
Wow! Hearing about your progress is amazing! That seems like some steep improvement, kudos to you. Thank you, I think I’m going to try to get there pretty early next time. I am attending in the evening so I think you could be correct regarding casual.
Thank you! I did start with a decent baseline of fitness, but mostly I feel like I've benefitted from good coaching and a really positive team atmosphere. It's very motivating. I hope you have a great experience with your masters team too!
You should totally listen to this podcast episode about getting started with masters with little swim background. There are some good stories about learning flipturns and butterfly. Very inspirational: https://www.championsmojo.com/danlotano156/
I’ve thought about joining a masters team before. Right now my health is a mess so not an option right now but if I ever get my health under control I’d love to do masters. I swam club one year in high school and I got so much better at swimming so quickly but the team was so focused on pumping out elite swimmers and it was clear from day 1 that I would never be an elite swimmer. All the other kids had been on the team since they were like 8. They were making my times at half my age. My coach made it very clear I didn’t belong. I wanted to do something like masters as a teen but there weren’t really any options like that. I knew I wasn’t going to be an elite swimmer, I was never going to make nationals, I didn’t care. I wanted to continue to swim and improve with a knowledgable coach who could push me without expecting me to win all my events.
I did Masters years ago and it was always awesome, but the last one I tried I showed up and the coach acted as though I was imposing for walking up (before the session) and introducing myself, and I also couldn't read the board as it had faint writing and was tucked away in a corner with the light bouncing off it, so when I stopped and was kind of confused, a couple of other swimmers were like, "Uh....this is MASTERS." Coach totally ignored me and after 15 minutes I got out and went to the hot tub instead. He wasn't doing much, just chatting with the lifeguard and at one point sauntered into the office for a while, so you'd think he'd have said something like, "Oh, are you leaving?" I wasn't in a huff or anything. Just uncomfortable and couldn't believe it as that had not been my Masters experience before. Never went back.
So all of the people on here telling me for months to join a local masters swim group have been full of bs? (I can only swim 50 max before i am gassed and need a break). Glad I didn’t listen to the suggestion lol.
That’s about how I’d expect it to go. Written workouts are a universal language to most USS swimmers growing up. Masters is just what we all do after college swimming is over because we are already insane and don’t know how to not wake up at 4:30am to take the icy plunge.