Pure and simple, I joined the YMCA for the availability of the pool. I had been a member of two different gyms prior to this and although I liked both, I felt that swimming was the key thing that I needed to train for my favorite sport, cross-country skiing. While I have been a swimmer since my teen years, I actually only knew two strokes. I picked up a side stroke from reading my father's Blue Jacket manual from his WWII Navy years and I had a truly wimpy breast stroke. When I attempted freestyle swimming, I was only good for about a half dozen strokes before I would sink like a rock.
The YMCA in Kewanee, where I worked several years, ago came to my rescue. Since I was staying over on Wednesday evenings and since they listed a swimming class that evening I signed up. It turned out that I was the only student and the teacher was a college girl younger than my daughter. We worked for several months and I learned both the freestyle and a "non-wimpy" breast stroke. At first I could only go half a length in their 25 meter pool and I worked up to almost a lap before we finished. An old dog of 60 did indeed learn a new trick.
Now several years later I am still learning and I swim 1/3 of a mile almost every day. I can go further and have swam close to a mile in one outing, but I have to admit that I get bored with longer distances. The advantages of lap swimming are huge however and have indeed helped me ski faster, especially in one surprising way. With swimming there is almost no risk of injury so you can do it everyday. It is a total body exercise that helps your coordination and it is something you can tinker with, i.e. by changing your stroke or leg kick or position in the water. The surprising way it helped me in cross-country skiing was in breathing. I had been gasping for air sometimes when I skied and sometimes under I intensity I would forget to breathe. When you do lap swimming with a freestyle stroke you have to learn to breathe in and breathe out (underwater by the way) smoothly. When I carried this over to my cross-country ski stroke, all of a sudden I was less tired and, as a result, faster.
The pool at our YMCA is admittedly small and all four lanes are often full, sometimes with two in each lane. There have been additional hours added however and this has allowed a lot more swimmers the opportunity to lap swim. There are some wonderful swimmers at the YMCA here who often give me tips that have helped me improve and it is an activity that is life-long as several lap swimmers are well older than me. Swimming is a learning curve and there is always room for improvement, but since I learned at age 60, it obviously isn't impossible. It is clearly an activity that benefits from practice and that practice leads to increased endurance as well. The intensity level of the activity is moderate to high. Unless you are using a resting stroke, it takes a lot of effort to get from one end of the pool to the other. And fun? Well lap swimming is a tad boring, but when I am skate-skiing up a hill this winter and not gasping for breath, all those hours in the pool will be well worth it. Let's call it delayed gratification.
Next: Core exercise class: or how to get a 6-pack other than at Herman's.
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