Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 125 posts

Re: What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

#31

Post by Existenceblinks »

entee wrote: post #18

Just finished swimming a race from Alcatraz to shore, it's just the best high. I do tons of endurance sports, but swimming is the most reliable in yielding that euphoric feeling. I think it's due to it being essentially forced mindfulness meditation. Though you could swim with music, I don't and that means it's just my thoughts for 30-60 min (watch the thoughts, can't do anything about them right now). I'm forced to…

Many sports, each has such nice exercise stratagem. Even though swimming is my most favorite since I've been swimming for decade,

cycling: the most enjoyment of scenery, 26km (how I do per day) gives you a lot of different views; mountain, river, road, smell of air along the ways. These are also good for brain.

basketball: it just nicely exercises agility, muscle memory (imagine you nail it 10/10 shooting continually, how nice the muscle is!), reactivity, quick decision making as a team.

table tennis: it is incredible how you can control the small ball in very fast interaction, in very small area (table). Little skills you gain from this is mind-blowing to me.

I play a lot of other sports, I'm very satisfied what my body can do, and breaking current limit is also fun.

Re: What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

#32

Post by vl »

delibes wrote: post #25
hjk05 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They exist and they are very annoying compared to regular old 50m lanes. You end up having to constantly overcompensate to one side (obviously) but also you suddenly have to either burn in a constant bias to your technique (bad) or be constantly aware of the boundaries, which ruins the normal flow of pool swimming. They are fun for families and kids who only ever do one or a half round, but if you like swimming just…

How about a pool in a rotating orbital space station? Just keep swimming forwards and slightly uphill :) Just don't lose the fake G or you could be the first person to drown in space.

It’s never uphill though, while rotating “halo” looks like it bends upwards, force-wise it feels flat.

Re: What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

#33

Post by Existenceblinks »

Zenst wrote: post #21

I used to do competitive swimming but it was training that allowed you to switch off and can't beat it. Alas public swimming pool's are a chaos of noise and actions and whilst some have swim lanes, your kinda relieving gridlock and just causes more stress than I can expel.

I swim in public swimming pool regularly, crash every damn kid playing finding items under the pool with their friends.

Re: What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

#34

Post by dredmorbius »

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #27
loeber wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, clearly the solution should be a figure-eight swimming pool? Where 1/3 of the time you're going straight, 1/3 overcorrecting left, 1/3 right

No, the solution is to move the water and have the swimming equivalent of a treadmill. NB: this already actually exists, only remember seeing it in a video at some point though.

"Endless Pool".

Re: What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

#35

Post by oflannabhra »

devons wrote: post #29
hjk05 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They exist and they are very annoying compared to regular old 50m lanes. You end up having to constantly overcompensate to one side (obviously) but also you suddenly have to either burn in a constant bias to your technique (bad) or be constantly aware of the boundaries, which ruins the normal flow of pool swimming. They are fun for families and kids who only ever do one or a half round, but if you like swimming just…

Interesting - do you know if the negative effects of circular swimming pool affect fish hatcheries? (fish are forced to swim against current) If I had to guess, I'd say not as much b/c of the size of the fish.

Most fish farms force fish to swim through a current of running water. I think most are concrete “runs” that continuously pump water through. At least what I’ve seen in the US is that way. There are now many overseas fish farms.

Re: What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

#36

Post by dredmorbius »

rnikander wrote: post #16
eismcc wrote: post #14

In March I started swimming much more due to injury. Swam 250k yards in 3mo. One session was 10k in the pool. Getting past the boredom is a skill. In my experience it’s mostly a symptom of not focusing on your form. Don’t use a watch and count yourself to stay focused. Break it up with challenging blocks to force you to focus. For ex: 50yds on 1min will force you to move and then focus on recovery. I now really love…

Did you really mean to say you swam 10,000 yards in one session? At the pace you mention (50yds = 1min) that would take over 3 hours.

For competitive swimmers, 10k+ days are fairly common (or used to be), split generally between morning and evening workouts. Sets might be based closer to 1:20/100m, which drops the total time a bit, though 3h in the pool isn't unusual.

A single workout of 5-6k is pretty typical.

Re: What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

#37

Post by bjourne »

I can't read the article either. I used to go swimming often and it made me feel really good. But for me, something makes it really hard to do it regularly so it always petered out. Which is annoying, because it obviously improved my life. Non-exercise things are so much easier for me to work on and to keep on doing. Playing chess one hour per day? No problem! Swimming four times a week? Eh...

Re: What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

#38

Post by frakkingcylons »

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #27
loeber wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, clearly the solution should be a figure-eight swimming pool? Where 1/3 of the time you're going straight, 1/3 overcorrecting left, 1/3 right

No, the solution is to move the water and have the swimming equivalent of a treadmill. NB: this already actually exists, only remember seeing it in a video at some point though.

They have this at the main Google campus in MTV

Re: What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

#39

Post by proee »

I snorkel a few times a week in the ocean and the experience is always surreal. When I see marine life staring back at me through the water, the experience etches itself deep into my mind. So much so that I can pull the experience back out later in the day and play it back with great detail. This connectedness to nature has given me an incredible amount of peace and happiness.
Post reply on HN