Lifting besides just swimming:
Have you tried lifting as a swimmer? Well the truth is most likely no. The reason is because you haven't been taught properly as a swimmer on how to improve a lot more than just swimming to get better. Weight lifting is a very important part of training in order to swim the best. I weight trained my senior year in high school and it allowed me to do better in swimming because it build muscle that is needed in order to swim better.
Why you need to lift:
As a swimmer we all need to be weight lifting. I weight lifted three times a week. Weight lifting helps build those important muscles that you need to swim. The more muscle strength you have the better you will do at swimming. Also lifting can help with that muscle you want to grow to look better overall.
Advantage of lifting:
The advantages of lifting while you are in swim season is great. Lifting while your in swim season will help in the long run. For me it helped me improve my strength in stroke. When I was at the end of the swim season I could see that lifting helped me improve my times by at least 8-9 seconds which is a huge improvement in one swim season. Lifting also help me reach the state level which is a big honor to be in as a swimmer. In other words weight lifting is one of the best things you can do as a swimmer to help improve how you perform as a swimmer.
What foods are good or bad:
Do you know if your eating right as a swimmer? As a swimmer you got to eat what's good for you. Eating junk food like pizza, nachos, or cake is not a wise idea to eat as a swimmer. Swimming you use a lot of energy and burn a lot of calories. In the pool you sweet a lot which you might not think so but you do. Good foods to eat are pasta, fruit, and vegetables. The reason pasta is a good food to eat while being a swimmer is because its loaded with carbs. As a swimmer you want tons of carbs so you can have a great amount of energy to swim.
Junk Food:
Eating junk food and swimming does not work well together. Yes you get this boost of energy but to be honest it doesn't in the water. When you eat junk food and swim it actually tires you out more than not eating and swimming. Junk food can cause cramps in the water like in ur side or even on ur leg. A cramp is a sudden tension of a muscle. Getting a cramp really sucks when your swimming because you have to get to the closest end to get out. From my experience it is one of the longest pain you can experience as a swimmer.
Healthy Food:
Healthy food as a swimmer is very important. What I did as a swimmer is stay away from junk food during the week. Yes you can have some junk food but it needs to be near 95% healthy food. In most sports pasta is that one food you want to stay away from because it causes cramps, but in swimming it is considered a good food because you burn a lot of calories and fat that pasta is a great way to restore those lost calories and get the energy you need for the sport. When I swam everyday before a swim meet my team and I would have pasta dinners so we would have the energy for our races the next day.
How to know if your eating right:
To tell if your eating right is by closely watching to see how you perform in the water after what you ate. If your eating right you can tell because you can feel energized and ready to swim. If your not eating right you wake up tired, cant swim without needing a break to rest, or even you level of alertness in the water. Eating right can help with how you perform as a swimmer and how well you can help your team. My experience and knowledge at eating right has helped me become one of the best swimmers I can be for my team.
Strokes
There are four main strokes in swimming. As a swimmer I swim all of the strokes. The strokes are freestyle, back stroke, breast stroke, and butterfly. Every stroke has its own difficulty like freestyle is the easiest to do because everyone swims that way and butterfly is the hardest because it takes your whole body and a lot of energy. Many people like me have gotten use to the other strokes and found them a lot easier because they have practiced and mastered the stroke.
Breast Stroke
My favorite stroke to do is breast stroke. You might not know what breast stroke is. Breast stroke is a short stroke which means u do short pulls in the water than reaching out to take a stroke. to do breast stroke you got to do a frog kick with a pull that looks like ur shooting ur hands in front then pull the water behind you. You might not get breast stroke down right away because it is one of the hardest to learn but once you do its an easy stroke to do.
Freestyle
Free style is the most simple and easiest stroke to do as a beginner. When you first learn how to swim as a child you truly learn how to swim freestyle. Freestyle is a long stroke which means that your using your whole body length to swim. Many people who start out swimming freestyle swim with their head up and it kind of looks like doggy paddle. when you learn how to swim freestyle correctly you have ur head in the water and your reaching out like you want the $100 bill that is being pulled in front of you. Freestyle is an easy stroke to master and get good at.
Back Stroke
Back Stroke is another long stroke. Instead of swimming on your stomach like freestyle you swim on your back. With this stroke it is like a upside down freestyle but ur doing more of a windmill swing with your arms. The stroke is pretty simple to do like freestyle but it takes a little more effort to stay afloat than freestyle.
Butterfly
Butterfly is the hardest stroke to do. It falls in the category of a short stroke but you use your whole body. To swim butterfly you got to do a dolphin kick which is keeping ur feet together and swim like a mermaid and bringing your arms out of the water from your sides to the front. The arm motion is like your flying but it is a very hard and energy consuming motion to do. I can do butterfly but I can only do it for a short amount of time.
My name is Austin Dukes and I'm a swimmer. I have graduated high school and I was a swimmer. As a swimmer I have heard everything about how swimming isn't hard or how swimming isn't important as a school sport. Many people who did other sports like basketball and soccer have said swimming is dumb and isn't hard to do. This blog is to tell you that actually swimming is a very hard sport to do than any other sport.
The skills you have to have for swimming in order to be a good swimmer needs to be high. There are many skills that are needed for swimming like endurance and strength. With Endurance you need to be able to hold a speed for the time of the race. Endurance will help in the long run in swimming. It takes a lot of time and effort to build your endurance as a swimmer.
The different strokes in swimming can be easy for some and be hard for others. For me I can do all the strokes well because I practice a lot and have built my endurance and strength to help with them. There are four main strokes, Freestyle, back stroke, fly, and breast stroke. As a swimmer who competes competitively I have to be able to do all four strokes. Free style is the easiest to do because everyone does it when they learn to swim. I find free style to be easy but breast stroke to be my best.
The truth between swimming and other sports is that swimming is one of the hardest sports to do. People have said swimming isn't hard and that anyone can excel at it. The truth is that you have to work hard in order to do good. it takes years to excel at swimming and to perfect it. it has taken me six years to get to where I am as a state swimmer. I'm not saying swimming is the only hard sport but people don't understand how hard it is to be a swimmer. You have to hold your breath and swim even when your muscles are tired. As an example of how hard it can be a friend of mine joined my swim team and he played soccer. After the first practice he said how hard it is to swim than it is to play soccer because of all the different skill and types of work we have to do to be a successful swimmer.
Wanting to inform you on how hard it is to be a swimmer than just having this image that swimming is easy is something I want to show you because there are many people who believe it is a easy and useless sport in school even though it is one of the sports that will bring great reputation to your school.
