Swimming for fitness (part 3). Dive in!

Ah prescription swimming goggles . Co.uk.

They have some at £16 when i looked. You can contact them with your prescription and they can advise. They can telll you the "next best thing" for "good enough " swimming which is what i ahd for a while so i wasnt blind.

I dont think contacts in the pool is a good idea... (horror stories about chlorine ans contacts sticking to eyes).

Wow thats fast Tiz!

Well done WeeSpike on the 1k! Ive only been swimming (again) a few months and found my stamina has really increased .

I have amazing prescription goggles that have been lifechangong. Quite literally... im +/- whatever it is 10 with astigmatism and was scared of not seeing people in lanes. Actually seeing bubbles underwater from the first time was trippy!!

Anyway specsavers etc do off the shelf goggles at + whole numbers for i think 30/40 pounds but my prescription is so weird. Mine cost about 120 I think but when i realised id be swimming 3 x a week its been worth it in my case. Ill go find the website.

Did 1km for the first time yesterday (1km 250m) so so chuffed!

Does anyone have any goggle recommendations please? I'm very shortsighted so currently swimming in my glasses but I need to switch to contacts and goggles because I think it's seriously affecting my 'form' (is that the word?) as I'm trying not to wash my glasses off!

I'm also thinking of getting a kickboard if there's anything special about them I should know?

Just reporting a swim yesterday. I have had to lower my goal to one swim a week for the time being. That's OK though.

Trying to do some longer sessions in preparation for the 2.5k swim in July. I did 3k yesterday and today in just under an hour. Aiming for less than 50 mins for the 2.5k so that seems to be on track.

Welcome cumberlover I found doing some drills with a float out front useful for practicing F.C. breathing. You tube effortless swimming has some good videos which helped me.

Didn’t want to go but got in the pool last night as DD was training and the lane was empty so had nothing to lose and had gd non-stop 45mins swim mostly FC. My body needed it I think even if my mind didn’t want to initially do it

I do aqua as well Cumberlover
Got up this morning early for the first time and did 72. Wish i had realised as i would have done extra 8 for 2k.

Hi all, can I join you please? Just been reading the thread and found some helpful info. I've always enjoyed swimming but had quite a gap if a few years as wasn't easy to get to a pool. I joined a local uni pool at the beginning of the year anc have been trying to go twice a week, first thing on my way to work. I do 1k in 30 mins swimming alternate lengths crawl and breast stroke. I slacked of a bit around Easter but getting back to it. I'm trying to loose weight and get fitter, plus I live swimming. I also try and get to thework gym a couple of lunch times and do a yoga and Pilates class each week. So if I can keep it all up I should get some good results! Hopefully being in here will help with motivation. I have to leave the house at 6.10am to fit the swim in so sometimes it's hard!

I'd like to speed up and improve my technique and was interested to read about bilateral breathing. Are there any good tips or web resources I could check out about this? Thanks.

You can turn off the notification.

Oops I so thought I was replying on the weight loss thread. embarrassed look.

Ooh bruffin I'll have to look into it.
I don't think I want to know about texts etc but I do want to be encouraged to move and would like to track exercise/sleep/heart rate!

I think my blood pressure is highish so I'm going to track that at the free doctors machjne with the hope that exercise and food will bring that down which hopefully will be another set of figures to watch go down and objectively say my health is improving.

Until I can afford/decide on a tracker though last night I set hourly vibrating alarms on my phone so I do at least get a reminder to move. I read somewhere at least 100 steps in every hour. At least 4000 steps a day even on a rest day and aiming for at 7500 plus most of the time.

My ray does the nudge as well. Also flashes and vibrates when i get emails, texts or phone calls.

Flowery I wish mine did - I've read about it before and I'd love That!

How do you see how many steps yo uve done/heart rate etc? On your phone?

I'd really love the nudge if I've been inactive for an hour as I have potential artery disease and should keep moving!

i have to tell the ray that i am about to swim by tapping it 3 times

Does anyone’s pool do swim tag? It’s amazing! Counts your lengths and gives you a breakdown after your swim of distance, lengths, calories burnt, strokes and speed! And you can compete against others in time trials and see other swimmers progress to. If anyone is on and would like to follow ( or maybe you all already do this - I haven’t read through whole thread) then pm me as my swim tage user name is my name and I don’t want to put myself!

My fitbit auto recognises swimming of 15 minutes of more. Doesn't count if lengths if you're only kicking so sounds similar to the misfit ray.

I'd heard mixed reviews of the swim tracking online so I'd held off but with the voucher I won it was only 20 pounds so thought it was worth a try and so far it's been really accurate for me. It's counted lengths when i've been swimming front crawl, backcrawl and breaststroke. I've not tested it on fly yet as lanes have been busy this week.

Ive got a misfit ray
it counts lengths unless you are not using your arms, although you can wear it on your ankle. I have had it 18 months and its pretty accurate with lengths. I did the 5k swimathon last year and it was accurate over the 200 lengths.

Ah thanks I've seen people wearing swimhats and I wondered if it kept hair dry!

I've wondered about some sort of fitbit/soemthing but I know nothing about them or their differences.

Do you tell it you're swimmi mg? I'm impressed it counts lengths

I've heard people say that a swimming hat keeps your hair dry but that's never been my experience. I don't wear one as my head gets too hot if I do.

I won a 30 pound Argos voucher in the week so treated myself to a fitbit flex2 which does some rudimentary swim tracking - i.e. counts lengths. Worn it for 3 sessions so far and only dropped one length out of the 264 I've swum so that's not too bad.

Scared: I just wear a hat to keep my hair out my eyes as i’m Trying to grow out a fringe and clips seem useless in water! I also like a hat because it helps my earphones stay in better
Bruffin: I like loud music! Old stuff mostly like the jam, queen, dusty springfield, elvis and so on. Makes a swim much easier.

Flowerypig
I love my mp3 for swimming. What music do you listen to?
At the moment i have a mix of Musical Theatre, Mike and the Mechanics, Ed Sheeran, Ragnbone Man, Script and Kenny Rogers, Sam Smith, a bit of a mix, but thankfully my finis duo has shuffle which my old one didnt. Definitely swim a lot farther with music than without

If anyone is interested in what I was banging on about above with regards to elbow pain, my coach has done a great blog post on the subject:

www.feelforthewater.com/search?updated-max=2018-02-16T08:32:00Z&max-results=300&start=10&by-date=false&m=1

Well done flowery! I usually do 50 lengths but haven't pushed for more. I might aim for that in a few months!

I don't wear a swim hat - does it keep your hair dry? In which case I might be tempted by one.

Good morning!

Managed a long ( for me) swim last night and managed to get from my usual 50 up to 60! Next week I want to crack 64- that’s a mile, isn’t it? Dug my old swimming mp3 out and found it really helped. Need to buy a new swim hat though as my old one had started to get all slack!
🌸🐷

No unfortunately, it was to a very annoying poster on another thread, but was very polite considering