Concept2 Forum

I am looking to try swimming for cross training on days that I don't erg. Does anyone have any suggestions for good swimming workouts?

Backseat coxswain wrote:I am looking to try swimming for cross training on days that I don't erg. Does anyone have any suggestions for good swimming workouts?

Just continues work, stay aerobic and get your blood flowing, everything fancy does not make it better. Make it long enough.

Its a great combination when used with the Erg as it gives you hip rotation where as the Erg is a back and fourth motion.

Got to get back to it myself, I was doing once a week in the 50m pool for 65 minutes non stop. I cannot really swim to save myself so it was 60 lengths on my back with no arms just driving with the legs wearing fins. Other swimmers tend not to like you in the pool doing this for some reason so I stuck to the medium pace lane. The fast lane was a pain, everything is a race and you get people who are doing just a few lengths try and overtake you.

As far as the style, most people do the crawl because it's the fastest style (as if covering the most distance in the pool was the objective).
However, from the rowing perspective, it's a poor choice.
In crawl arms and legs work in a asymmetrical manner, with no rest breaks in the stroke cycle.
Crawl is a good style to complement kayaking, because kayaking motion is also asymmetrical and lacks the rest phase.
However, in rowing, the motion is symmetrical, and the cycle consists of work phase and recovery phase.
Therefore, look for swimming style that matches that.
I assume butterfly is not an option - most people can't master it technically, and butterfly is very, very hard physically.
The classic breastroke is look down upon as the "easy" style (even though it's not)
Backstroke is similar to crawl, except not as fast and efficient.
IMHO, the very best style for long distance swimming that matches rowing well is breastroke arm motion, and butterfly leg motion.
This style has a work phase and a recovery phase (just like rowing), has a technical 'glide' phase (you must be very streamlined) and butterfly legs are more powerful and feel more natural than the 'frog-like' leg movement in classic breastroke.
Also, the intensity is easily adjusted by increasing the stroke force and frequency. You can swim easily for mile and miles, or you can power through short sprints.

backstroke with fins gives your legs some serious loading. Try walking normally after 60 lengths.

Without fins then freestyle would be your best choice, unfortunately swimming requires a lot of technique and I find the restricted narrow window for breathing a real problem, I'm an O2 hog so backstroke removes any problems getting enough air.

Rowing is 65% legs anyway, my arms or specifically hands get used to run down the lane ropes so to ensure there are no high speed head ons !

You can get aerobic fitness out of swimming. Your swim workout will not be effective if you have bad technique. If you are not a swimmer its very hard to get the technique down however you can compensate for that by using small short training fins. You get enormous propulsion out of those.
I use those now instead of regular fins on ocean vacations: much more compact, same propulsion (with faster more swim like kick).

Once you have the power from the fins you can work on the stroke.
Recommended viewing: youtube, Sun Yang, Park Tae-hwan.

I'm a rower turned triathlete/runner still do a little rowing.
Swimming is fantastic cardio and very very humbling, it's expanded
my cardio and helped with other sports mainly because your
Muscles get to recover from the muscle damage/recovery from
the other sports while swimming.
I would go freestyle, lots of intervals with very short breaks if you
Want to learn how to swim fast. Like 10 x 100m 15 sec breaks.
Incorporate swim drills as your warm up to improve technique.
If you want to do longer intervals alternate with 4 x 500, but throw in a fast 50
or 100 in between each 500 and work on your speed.
I got some coaching lessons off my kids swim coach who has coached
Olympic medalists and was suprised to find if you have basic sound technique
It's mostly about catching the water effectively and upping your tempo
and hammering the short fast intervals!!
Anyone that thinks they are fit from running, rowing or whatever will be
Completely humbled hitting the pool for the first few weeks, your cardio
From other sports goes no where!!
Or you could just swim slowly for an hour and enjoy it lol, depends what your goals are

What's a reasonable cardio translation from rowing to swimming speeds? E.g. Should I equate a 5k erg time to a 1000m swim?

1 k freestyle = 5 k erg time was close, for me, both took me about 20 minutes a few years ago.

My swim workout used to be a mile (1,800 yards) of butterfly in about 42 minutes. More recently I cut that back to 600 yards fly. When I first started on the Model D 5 days ago, I'd go 30 minutes, 6,000m and change on the rower, then do 300 yards of fly, first as 50s broken up with 25 back, today a 200 and 100. I don't worry much about pace - I'm very low-tech, and with fly it's going to be a good workout no matter what. Planning to work back up to 600 yards in the coming weeks.

Is there a masters swim team near your residence? You can look them up at www.usms.org.

I do swim quite often, especially when I can't row; if you swim "freestyle", you're not developing anything in particular, but you're working out with your entire body (muscles, heart and respiratory system) at the same time. It's not directed at anything, but rather quite redistributed all over your body and that's why it's the only non-rowing sport I ended up doing for more than a couple months