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What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

nytimes.com

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Re: What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

#81

Post by pimmen »

The only thing that sucks with loving swimming is that the free market has a hard time reacting to the fluctuations in demand. If I want to open a gym I’ll buy a big garage or something, buy a lot of equipment and hire some PTs. If I want to open up a facility for swimming there’s a hell of a lot more up front costs in building a pool and recruiting life guards and swimming instructors.

In this heat wave over Europe I’ve been forced to lakes and oceans to get my laps, but it is a bit more challenging to get that to work.

Re: What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

#82

Post by entee »

caminante wrote: post #50
SkyMarshal wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Swimming is the lowest impact on your body too. Anything involving running includes frequent jolts to ankles/knees/hips/lower back. Cycling on standard bicycles concentrates pressure on your genitals and the nerve-dense region areas around them, and puts some pressure on the lower back. Swimming can cause unique injuries to shoulders if your form isn't right, but otherwise is very smooth and low-impact.

I was surprised to learn from a friend that he needed shoulder surgery due to swimming exercise. Can you share any resources or personal thoughts for maintaining form that avoids injury?

Generally for freestyle you want to follow these rules to avoid shoulder injury:

1.) Don't cross the center line of your body with your arm. If you were climbing a ladder you wouldn't ever do that. Freestyle is kind of like climbing a ladder horizontally.

2.) Keep a good rotation around your center line in the upper body. This helps to use your back muscles/lats to do the big work. You want to be sore at the end of the workout in your lats, core and maybe chest. Not your shoulders.

3.) Don't over-extend your arm in reach. Many people end up pushing down on the water they initiate their stroke, this is wasted work and also shoulder strain. You want to as quickly as possible have your hand pulling parallel to your body, which usually means a high, wide elbow in the catch.

This is a course I've been meaning to try but haven't. It purports to reduce shoulder injuries:

https://www.swimsmooth.com

This is the current view on how to initiate your pull:

https://www.triswimcoach.com/high-elbow-catch/

Re: What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

#83

Post by askvictor »

colechristensen wrote: post #58

I have been interested in swimming for a few years but never found the place to develop the skill to the point of not drowning. I could try to swim in my apartment's tiny shallow pool which is really better for children. I could spend $200/mo at a nearby health club. I could drive to the ocean and jump in. The first just isn't big enough or deep enough to get anything done. The second is ... well I want to go swimmin…

After you've gotten some swimming lessons (check out the books and technique made by Terry Laughlin - swimming made easy might be a good start), then find an open water swimming club that takes on beginners (try meetup or facebook). Might not be for you, but you also might not know until you've tried it.

Re: What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

#84

Post by safanycom »

plumeria wrote: post #79
tsbinz wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably saw it in person as well, it's called a river :) In Zurich there's multiple places where you can swim in the Limmat, and it takes quite some effort to stay in place - one example is https://images.app.goo.gl/qTASdR51yDTiCk299 (of course you could go without the installation but this allows people to use it that would be afraid of getting carried away ...)

Is there something like this in Berlin?

Could be some settings at the new Wellenwerk that achieve this

Re: What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

#86

Post by tangue »

entee wrote: post #82
caminante wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was surprised to learn from a friend that he needed shoulder surgery due to swimming exercise. Can you share any resources or personal thoughts for maintaining form that avoids injury?

Generally for freestyle you want to follow these rules to avoid shoulder injury: 1.) Don't cross the center line of your body with your arm. If you were climbing a ladder you wouldn't ever do that. Freestyle is kind of like climbing a ladder horizontally. 2.) Keep a good rotation around your center line in the upper body. This helps to use your back muscles/lats to do the big work. You want to be sore at the end of t…

+ avoid swim paddles. In my club most injuries were due to swim paddles.

Re: What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

#87

Post by duncanawoods »

entee wrote: post #82
caminante wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was surprised to learn from a friend that he needed shoulder surgery due to swimming exercise. Can you share any resources or personal thoughts for maintaining form that avoids injury?

Generally for freestyle you want to follow these rules to avoid shoulder injury: 1.) Don't cross the center line of your body with your arm. If you were climbing a ladder you wouldn't ever do that. Freestyle is kind of like climbing a ladder horizontally. 2.) Keep a good rotation around your center line in the upper body. This helps to use your back muscles/lats to do the big work. You want to be sore at the end of t…

> Don't cross the center line of your body with your arm. If you were climbing a ladder you wouldn't ever do that

Hmm, that doesn't sound quite right to me. I claim no knowledge especially in swimming technique so this is just for curious discussion and you can put me right - as a weightlifter, the most natural and least impinged arm motion for me is a diagonal across the body whereas perpendicular swinging motions are crunchy and impinged.

If I climb a ladder, I'm propelling myself with my legs and only holding on with my arms by pulling my chest to the ladder so that seems like a bad analogy. Incidentally, if you ever want to feel like your forearms might split out of their skin, try climbing a wind turbine ladder! I think I ended up having to finish it by hugging the ladder in my elbow creases having lost all grip strength due to forearm pump.

Re: What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

#88

Post by [deleted] »

sunstone wrote: post #67
colechristensen wrote: post #58

I have been interested in swimming for a few years but never found the place to develop the skill to the point of not drowning. I could try to swim in my apartment's tiny shallow pool which is really better for children. I could spend $200/mo at a nearby health club. I could drive to the ocean and jump in. The first just isn't big enough or deep enough to get anything done. The second is ... well I want to go swimmin…

Here's a learning process you can do on your own at your local pool, lake or ocean. The problem with learning to swim is that there are perhaps a half a dozen independent motor skills needed and it's hard to learn them all at once. This breaks it down to one skill at a time. Do all of this is shallow water, say, four feet in depth. 1) buy a mask, fins and snorkel set. 2) throw way the snorkel (not really, store it aw…

[deleted]

Re: What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

#89

Post by lm28469 »

kharak wrote: post #77
lm28469 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If one finds Netflix, video games, partying, and vacations enjoyable; and they spend time pursuing those after becoming financially independent & retiring early, are they missing the big picture? Each of us has to define the scope of his life, I personally have a hard time imagining that a fully developed human being will be deeply satisfied by consuming media. In French these things are called "divertissement", wh…

What else do you do every evening? For me, its working out, doing chores or Netflix, podcasts and video games. There is nothing else I could do. Too tired to learn new things and I need to recharge.

Meditation and writing are goods ways to both relax and learn more about yourself. Learning an instrument, drawing, painting are also a very good ways to relax while learning a skill that will follow you all your life and be productive instead of passively consuming content.

With internet we also have access to books summing up the knowledge of each era/geographic area. If you're asking yourself metaphysical questions you can be sure someone already wrote a book about it. Working out and listening to certain podcasts are solid activities too. Stretching/yoga can also help unfuck our bodies after being in a chair for 8 hours.

I don't think Netflix has the ability to make you evolve and become a better version of yourself like a good book can. Unplug and take it slow, it might feel weird at the beginning but you won't look back.

Re: What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

#90

Post by wcoenen »

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…

You measure swimming distance in yards? Aren't swimming pools usually 25 meters?
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