I like to swim for exercise, but I figure I could probably be more efficient: burn more calories and use more muscles. I looked for videos on YouTube, but they seemed to come in two varieties: explaining the basics to people who can’t swim a stroke, and advice to competitive swimmers, using a lot of technical terms that are lost on me.
So, any suggestions? (And for that matter, can anyone tell me how one is supposed to swim at the beach, with waves coming in?)
If you’re going to swim for exercise in the ocean you need to get outside the breakers and swim parallel to the shore. If you’re not a very strong swimmer, you should think twice about this.
In a pool you do laps–five each of each stroke until you feel like you’re gonna barf, then you do it some more. At least that’s how my college Swimming For Conditioning classes went. 
I swim for exercise too (in a pool). I pretty much just make sure I keep moving for 30 minutes, with a little bit of walking before and after.
Every so often I look at videos and find the same stuff you do. Interesting thread, I hope there are some tips!
You should not do open water swimming unless you are a strong and experienced swimmer. If anything goes wrong, you can get into serious danger quickly.
Swimming is an activity where you generally try to have good form to reduce the resistance you feel from the water. So being a better swimmer means you are burning fewer calories since you’re not pushing against the water as hard. Very advanced swimmers are so efficient with their form that they can push off from the wall and float all the way to the other side without hardly burning any calories. That’s good for them since they are typically trying to win races. Swim videos are more about getting a better stroke and swimming faster, which means swimming in a way which doesn’t waste calories.
That may not be your goal as a recreational swimmer. Swimming a variety of strokes will be good to exercising a wider variety of muscles. If you want to feel more resistance, wear swim suits that are more baggy and draggy in the water. The extra resistance will make it harder to pull yourself through the water.
Flippers make you go faster (fun!) but also work harder, so that’s one way to add resistance. I have also seen people holding a float of some kind between their feet. I’m not coordinated enough to do that but that would create some drag, too. Get in the water and keep moving, it’s all good.
When I had a decent health club to go to, I loved swimming for exercise. I’d do a lap (down-and-back) of one type of stroke, then change up. Crawl, breast, side (right), side (left), then back stroke, then start the series over again. As I advanced, I could go for longer session, but also improved my lap times as well as I got stronger and more coordinated. I eventually got up to a mile, but don’t recollect my best time for it.
I wasn’t striving for “competitive swimmer’s form,” but I did actively try to maintain good form on all my strokes. Flailing about in a spastic manner may have burned more calories, but I’m not so sure it was as good for my joints. At first, I had to actively work to keep using my legs, and timing/coordinating my kicks to support my arm strokes and form.
I’d say try to maintain good stroke-form, and maintain a “smooth” motion to your strokes at all times to minimize muscle and joint strain, until you build up some strength and endurance (you’ll know it when you feel it; you’ll be like, "two weeks ago, I could barely do ten laps before wearing myself out; now I’m doing 15, 20, 30 and feeling good still!’). And start off easy to warm up your muscles and joints, as well; don’t just jump in and thrash about like you’re going for the Gold at the Olympics. That also applies for post-workout, too. Decent warm-up and cool-down periods for exercise is often overlooked.
I definitely suggest mixing up the strokes. I got a repetitive motion injury from swimming freestyle only. I loved it, though. I’d swim nonstop for 45 minutes, with flipturns, no pausing- it was almost like meditating- I assume similar to a runner’s high. When I had to start mixing in other strokes it wasn’t as satisfying, but I hurt less after that.
Include Jaws on your spotify playlist
When I started swimming for exercise, the secret for me was to start off swim REALLY slowly. If I didn’t, I’d be whooped after just a couple of laps.
I preferred when I had access to a pool w/ a large clock (poor eyesight), so I could just swim for 30 minutes w/o counting laps. At the 2d pool, I had to count, and that kinda made for a different mental state.
Yeah, switch strokes - at least a portion of the time. Learn some basic etiquette as to sharing lanes and such. Another thing is to swim every 5th or 10th lap as hard as you can. Don’t just do the exact same workout each time.
Since COVID, I cancelled my membership. Place was never the cleanest - not even sure they reopened the pool.
I’m not a great swimmer as far as being efficient in the water. I can swim fine and my technique is reasonably good. But long distance and open water swims are not my thing. To make my swim workouts more efficient I use paddles to improve resistance and build shoulder and upper chest strength. I put a float between by ankles and use just my upper body. Do that twist through water technique to engage the abs as well. Reach with each stroke. When your arms are tired, throw on some fins and switch to just using your legs. Total 30 minutes of this with a few 2 minute rests in between generally does it for me.
Was in Laguna Beach in Feb. Walking along a shore trail one morning, I saw several folk (~10?) swimming in a large triangle. Wasn’t able to get a clear idea of distance, but they looked to be FAR out - I’d guess 1/2 mile. Ocean was relatively calm, but that still impressed me as some pretty extreme exercise.
I’d imagine it was these guys.
Yeah, I envy people with this kind of easy access to open water and the intestinal fortitude to swim long distances.
The real trick to swimming for exercise is overcoming the tedium. Swimming (and counting) laps is BORING. The way I keep track and distract myself at the same time is assign each lap a letter and work my way through the alphabet (A-Z is 1300 yards - if I add another A-J, that a mile). I pick a theme, like, say fruit, and while I’m swimming my first lap I think of as many fruit that start with an A and so on.
MAn - that’s a GREAT idea. Sure beats just thinking “1,1,1 …” When I swam at a pool w/ a big clock, I enjoyed just being able to let my mind wander.
Many, many years ago - I used this book (“Fitness Swimming”) to work on swimming for fitness. It was very straightforward, and helped with strength & endurance & technique (exactly like it said on the cover). It was very clear on exactly what to do - I’d go to the pool and do it. It was not technical and worked for someone like me who was comfortable swimming but was a bit sloppy and not very fast.
I’d recommend the book.
Don’t go swimming alone in open water. Bring someone with you (preferably someone in a boat. Less preferable is another swimmer or someone on shore who has the skills to get you out of the water in case of an emergency.) Or find a group that does open water swimming and join them for their workouts.
Different way to alleviate the boredom, but I’d convert the time left to seconds, and try to remember what happened that year. Like 17’ 46" to go, Battle of Hastings.
Really dropped in to say, “Be careful with the floats by the feet or ankles.” I am sure that what you use is different, but my neighbor thought it a great idea to wear flotation devices on her ankles in the pool. They clipped on, were hard to remove, and thankfully I was there to notice that she was floating face down for 2 minutes.
She’s fine now. Couldn’t get the leverage to get her face out of the water, which is important when swimming…
Nah, the only way to beat boredom is music. I’ve been using waterproof MP3 players since they became a thing. The latest one I have is this one from Underwater Audio (yes it was absolutely worth the $240) but there are more if you search Amazon for “waterproof mp3 players.” I think the same company has different offerings now.
I don’t think I could do laps w/o it.
Okay, sorry I didn’t get back earlier! Life 'n stuff.
– No ocean swimming, if it’s like that.
– filmore, I usually wear a t-shirt over a one-piece, so that should have a benefit I hadn’t thought of! (I’m sunburn-prone and don’t like to expose more skin than I have to.)
– ExTank, I know not this “crawl, side right, side left” you speak of. (I quit, or rather my mom took me out of, swimming lessons at the Y as soon as I was certified safe to be in water without a flotation device.) Your last paragraph, though, is quite helpful. I did laps today and followed your advice, and already I can see a difference: I was really propelling myself, not just crawling along!
– aceplace57, you jest, but DH and I have a friend who is mad for that film. As such, I’ve either seen it or been in the house when it was playing a staggering number of times. Recently, I was doing my usual drunken-turtle routine and thinking, “I used to hate the water.” – “I can’t imagine why.”
– Dinsdale, I can’t switch strokes, as mentioned above, but I’ll remember about intermittent effort.
– QuickSilver: What twist technique?
– Elmer, that’s brilliant! I always lose track when I count by numbers, but I bet I won’t if I count by letters!
Not worried about boredom, though. I don’t find swimming boring; that’s why I like to do it instead of jogging or aerobics. Seriously, I’ve tried aerobics, and more recently Zumba, and that’s what drives me nucking futs. It’s like school all over again: you can’t leave until someone’s finished giving orders and you’ve done every. bloody. thing. they’ve asked. Swimming is close to meditation: it’s something I do to let my mind go, not to think.
– amarinth, I just ordered that book. Thanks for the rec! Again, though, I’m not going into open water.
– Gray_Ghost: Years ago, there was an anecdote on this board about someone putting floats on their ankles when they were a kid, to the same effect. So no, I would never do that. Shudder…
Two best things I ever learned to help improve my freestyle technique and have something to focus on while swimming laps was to learn to alternate breathing on both sides of the freestyle stroke every three (or five when you get good) strokes, and to exaggerate (somewhat) the reach by twisting my torso through the water. So reach as far as you comfortably can with the right arm, twisting left so you are rolled onto your right side, then repeat by reaching with your left arm, twisting right onto your left side.
I don’t know if it’s strictly speaking the most correct technique, but I find it gives me a good upper body workout (I use paddles) that engages the abs as well.
One other thing you can consider doing is a variety of aqua workouts. Get an aqua jogging belt and jog back and forth in the lane to get a different kind of workout. You can easily control the difficulty depending on how fast you move through the water. You can also get equipment you hold in your hands to provide upper body resistance. Stuff like this can be used to give you a full body workout and you make it as hard or easy as you like:
https://www.intheswim.com/images/products/SKU1217/T3330_x.jpg