i am surprised there isn't a swimming forum, maybe that's because i am a swimmer. you'd think that it would be a good topic of discussion considering the whole speedo thing. and under the hot topic forum, swimming talk has one of the largest response groups. neways, i thought it was wierd there wasn't one dedicated for us. i am assuming there are more gay swimmers out there, duh. i have been swimming year round since i was 4, and i am now into my 4th year of swimming for a D1 college where i am a team captain. i came out this past summer and am out to everyone, including my team. well, let's see if anyone likes to talk swimming...

[ July 07, 2005, 04:24 PM: Message edited by: m1 ]

Swimmer, at the insistence of some of my running buddies, I started swimming with a class about 3 weeks ago. Though I know how to swim, I've never swam for distance or exercise as such.

I'm amazed how difficult the breathing has been. I have plenty of oxygen, the physical part isn't hard, it's just the anxiety of KNOWING I have to breath. Luckily, the guy running the class is working with all of us, but I'm still a little frustrated.

Any advice?

it's interesting hearing where you are coming from because i have been doing this for so long at it seems to be so routine for me.

i think you just need to relax. get comfortable with turning your head to breath. just think of it as a simple movement form pint A to B instead of this huge problem.

when your head is down in the water, im assuming this is freestyle, try to blow out your air slowly under the waters surface instead of blowing out and getting a big breath in when you turn your head up to breath. this will help you to be able to get more air instead of wasting your time with your head held sideways blowing out air. just think, why would you need to blow out air above water.

also if you find it is difficult to hold your breath for long periods of time, try to blow out all your air completely before you leave the wall. this will remove most of your bad oxygen in your lungs that is just sitting there and will replace it with good air that you can use.

i don't know if you guys are doing no breather work where you take no breath for a lap of swimming, or a lap underwater of kicking. if you are please be careful when doing this. people have been known to pass out and die. when i was in high school, there was a swimmer at a near by high school who had died doing this alone at a pool. we do no breather stuff all the time in practice. just this morning actually, part of our set was to do 4 100's free. and you can only breath once each lap. i only made the last 3. it is very tough. when you are holding your breath it is best to remain calm and focused. also the less effort you are applying with your body to swim, the longer you can hold your breath. you may think this sounds wierd because why would you want to put less effort into you swimming, but it helps to make an efficient stroke which is very important in swimming.

i hope this helps, and if i can help with anything else as far as stroke technique or anything, just let me know. its cool you are doing cross training. this summer i started running and found it helped my kick a lot. have a good one.

Swimmer, thanks for the advice. I'm trying to do a good job of exhaling in the water and starting to turn my head as my are passes my face. Relaxing is the key. We were doing pulls with hand paddles and knee buoys and that's help me slow down and concentrate on swimming down hill and keep my big butt up on top. It was much easier.

I guess it will just come with practice.

I don't know how to swim and I desperately want to know how. However, I am embarrassed to join a class and feel helpless.

What can I do?

Welcome swimmer22...I too am a lifelong swimmer. I learned to swim at four, swam through college (at Texas 20 years ago) and continue to swim Master's off and on. It's a great sport. The best in my opinion. It's a life-long sport, with little chance of injury and great conditioning. I'm biased, of course, but I think swimmers have the best looking bodies. wink

Allen - don't be embarrassed to learn to swim. Look for adult "learn to swim" classes through your Parks and Recreation department. They're usually very inexpensive and there will be others there just like you. Learning through a class is the best and quickest way to learn to swim.

Agree with swimmer. Or go down to your local YMCA,( its fun to play at the YMCA!!) and get comfortable in the water, and just splash around and experiment. Then when you do get comfortable enough you can sign up for their classes. Go for it!

[ October 14, 2004, 08:15 AM: Message edited by: puckman1 ]

allen-
please don't be embarrassed to try out the sport of swimming. there are sooo many others just like you. people tell me all the time that they never learned how to swim properly. i have seen a number of different masters groups practice here at school and back home, and there are a bunch of different levels of swimmers. no one cares how fast you are when you are at the pool. i totally agree with swimmer and think you should join a class. you may think you are alone, but you are not at all. maybe you can even find a friend, a cute friend for that matter, to join you in this process so you don't feel so alone. i also agree with swimmer that swimmers have the best bodies. that should be a good enough motivation for you to get started. i can't believe i have less than 5 more months of my swimming career. kidna worried what will happen to my bod, o well life goes on.

To follow up on the encouragement for newbies to the pool, I'd like to add that it's never too late to come back. I swam competitively in HS and would have in college, (middle distance free) but had an appendectomy the third day of practice my freshman year and was out that year. I didn't even get into a pool to work out again until five years later, after I'd been in the Navy, where, ironically, I never swam much either. I was able to get back into some semblance of shape, though, by gradually lengthening my workouts to 12-1500m at least every other day, which is where I am now. I had another break in '95, when I was involved in a pretty bad bike accident, but I came back from that within a year too.

I also swam with a gay team in SF during the mid-80s, which boosted my yardage, and have kept my US Master's Swimming registration current, which allows me to drop in on other teams' workouts when I travel.

We have a certified instruction/triathlete that is going to have a six-week training camp for beginning swimmers (people who know how to swim, just not for distance or training). I've heard some good things out of this. Would it be worth the $125 for two days a week for the six weeks?

Allen, don't be embarrassed. I look like a gasping fool in there with two former Auburn swimmers two lanes over. When you see them swim, it's absolutely beautiful and I want to get to that point. It's all good and EVERYBODY in there is encouraging and they want to see you do well. Go for it and you'll be surprised.

you should see if you can talk with the certified instructer before hand and ask him about all of your concers to see if it is something that fits what you are looking for. i can't really tell you what to do because I don't know the situation. it may be worth your time and effort. remember, it is very difficult to learn how to swim properly if you don't have someone that knows the sport of swimming giving you pointers.

Well, since you know I did bang up my knee and it is getting colder here. I thought maybe swimming would help get my knee in better shape (while I still ride my bike when I can) this winter.

swimming is a great way to keep in shape while having an injury. you can get in a good workout with swimming and not use your knee that much, where as with running, you can forget that all together.

i hear ya on the cold factor. this week our pool has been so friggin cold, it takes about 20 minutes of continuous swimming for my body to finally become normal. and i am working out really hard too. the worst is jumping in at 6 in the morning knowing it is gonna be freazing. barf!

Swimmer-
My bf and I just got back from the IGLA championships in Ft. Lauderdale, over 900 swimmers/divers/water polo players. It was an amazing event and so much fun. There were many representatives there from CA, which city do you live?

Comrades:

I am a swimmer. I got a paradox for you to think about!

Why is swimming a WINTER sport? Logic would tell us that swimming should be a warm weather sport - like spring (with baseball). Swimming teams in high schools are popular in Northern states (Midwest and Northeast USA) while high schools in Southern states rarely have swimming teams and swimming pools. California high schools do have swimming sports, but do Texas? probably not.

Yet with all the snow and cold weather up North, how come swimming s a winter sport? And at the same time, how come Southern high schools don't have swimming pools? their winters are much warmer!

I have tried to find an answer to this riddle!

Mikestead

well here in california, swimming is a year round sport, and any dedicated swimmer i know swim's year round. in the winter and during the school year is short course yards. high schools and colleges compete at this time and in this type of pool. when that is over it is time for summer where long course meters is swum. this is where club swimming takes place, but every swimmer that is serious about competing does this during the summer as well. swimming is a sport where you have to give it your all, all year round or else you wont be your best. we are naturally land people, so it is very easy for us to forget the feeling of the water and have to relearn it all over again. this is why we train so much also. morning and night. i talk to some of my other friends who compete in different sports here at college, volleyball, field hockey, water polo, and they think it is crazy how much we swim. i am not sure about others areas though, i thought it was teh same everywhere in the US, but it's just more popular over here i guess.

I just recently got back into swimming. I was a natural swimmer, the only sport I was a natural in. My swimming dreams were dashed when my narrow-minded father wouldn't let me join the swim team in High School because he wanted me to wash dishes in his restaurant and become a real man. Years later, after back surgery, I have rediscovered my love for swimming. Eventually, would like to compete in Masters swimming.

SwimmerNYC, you are not alone! My Dad gave me that same line the Summer after my freshman year of college, when I could've been a lifeguard again, and I had to work straight midnights in a friggin' steel mill instead! But payback came soon enough when the economy went south and all the Summer hires got laid off! Though I ended up making less than I would have as a guard, I still carry bragging rights for who had the better job plan that year - and am not at all shy about asserting them every time he tries to lay that line on his grandkids!

BTW, although this was discussed in a similar swimmers thread over a year ago, when I swam in HS, our team - and most others in our Northern Rust Belt city - practiced nude and suited up only for meets! ~~((~~

about the swimming nude thing. my college does not do that, although i have heard of a few other colleges that practice that way like once a week. are there a lot of other guys out there that are on teams that practice nude? i have never been a part of a team that has done this, they have also all been coed teams so i think some people would have issues.

It's great to be in San Francisco, where you can see two world-class aquatics teams at Cal and Stanford.
But, man, Stanford needs to dump those awful black water polo suits and return to the cardinal ones! Either that or compete nude, of course!
wink

Comrades:

I have heard stories about high school swimming classes swimming in the nude in the 1950's. The YMCAs used to allow nude swimming till about 1965. In comprtitive swimming, high school teams had nude practices regularly.

However I could not find any documentation on these stories. Of course, no official would say that on paper back then!

Since these days were sexually repressive - compared th the sexual revolution of the late 1960's, it is a mystery how public institutions allowed nude swimming - high schools, colleges and the Ys. Swimming trunks were not that a big expense back then!

Swimming trunks were rather baggy back then - I think that speedos were invented in the 1960's. If swimming nude was faster without these baggy trunks, what was the point of fast practice times when you had to suit up for meets?

I hope that some older Outsporters can share their stories of these nude swim classes and practices.

Mikestead

I find this fascinating, and for many of the reasons already noted. I personally would have had a tough time training in the nude, especially during puberty when even a ride on the school bus gave me a big boner. Once during swimming practice, when we were practicing our butterfly kicks holding onto to a kick board, not only did I get hard, but I actually ejaculated. I was in the 8th grade. I was so stupid that I feared the sperm would actually swim in the pool and penetrate one of the female swimmers and get her pregnant. I was such an idiot.

The only justification for the practice I ever heard was that it was to ensure cleanliness in the pool and avoid clogging the filter with fabric. This was during the late 50s thru the late 60's. (I graduated HS in '70.) For some reason, when my HS got its new addition and brand "spanking" new 25 yd. pool to replace the old glass-brick enclosed 20 yd. one, everyone automatically started practicing with suits and the happy custom seemed to, like so many chlorinated spermies, die. However, during the nude phase, women and girls ALWAYS swam with suits issued them by the pool staff.

Think back on some of those Thomas Eakins paintings of the late 1800s, showing nude scenes at the ole swimmin' hole. Maybe it was the way to do things back then, just moved indoors. In all, a quaint custom from a simpler time, now almost forgotten. frown

:confused:

What are you talking about, gmginsfo??

Anyway, I am wondering is it possible to have your medical insurance pay for swim class for a part of your physical therapy? I'm getting an MRI done on my knee and possible scoping too. Ick. My doctor thinks swimming will be a benefit to helping my knee recover.

Just wondering if it is a feasible idea.

My friends I still do that when it's warm and when we can get together at the same time on trips back home back to Tennessee. We did it all thru high school and then during out scattered years in college (thru the 90s).

The water polo team might be into baggy swim attire, but Stanford swimmer Andy Grant is doing his best to go the nekkid route.
The Link

Bobby:

Since you live in Austin, have you heard of the nude beach in Hippie Hollow? What do you think of it?

Mikestead

Mikestead,
Yes, I have been to Hippy Hollow and wasn't really impressed. Plus, there are always pervs hiding out, too. It doesn't compare to the swimming holes and the lake back home in Tennessee. I still think it's funny that Hippy Hollow is a city-funded nude beach.

Go to the bottom of this page, IGLA. There are some fun pics from the IGLA event in Ft. Lauderdale. The Pink Flamingo competition was a hoot!

Comrades:

I am 52 years old and I have been swimming with the Chicago Smelts for five years. I have been swimming in Lane One (the slowest lane) and I have not been making progress when I swam regularly. Sometimes Lane One is too crowded so I swim in Lane Two, which is too fast for me.

After swimming regularly for three years, I am not making progress. The coach said something about having not enough core strength. Are there ways to measure core strength?

As an example, I cannot do more than three push ups and I cannot do more than two chin ups. I can swim 50 yards in 37 seconds (so you can see how slow I am!)

Yet before I joined the gay swim team, I used to swim alone for four years and I could swim 1500 yards non stop in 45 minutes to 50 minutes.

Since I joined the gay swim team five years ago, the workouts have been much more intense but brief - up to 200 yards.

I have not swam regularly for two years because of shoulder and back pain and I would like to get back to routine, but first, how does one develop core strength?

Mikestead

mikestead-

let me try to take a stab at this core strength thing. first of all, u can do exercises out of the pool that will make your core stronger. do abs, back, chest, and lats. you are probably saying duh, but if those areas are not fit, it will be hard to put your body in the right position when u are swimming. think about your core when u swim. i bet when u swim, u think u need to pull your arms down for a pull and u do so by using mostly all of your shoulders to take the pull. try to think about your core as you are swimming, and when u are pulling, think about your lats specifically instead of your shoulders. most swimmers, especially female swimmers, tend to use there shoulders more while they are neglecting thier lats, a large muscle where they can get a lot of power. this can also help prevent shoulder injury.

also u may not have your head in the right position, its hard for me to say because i havent seen u swim, but try to press your chest lower in the water and your head will follow. make sure u don't press with your head though. you press down by using your stomach and back muscles. doing this will help rise your legs up so that you become more horizontal and steamlined, creating less drag. so as your head and chest goes down, your legs go up. this also applies with backstroke, and pretty much all beginning swimmers don't put their head low enough in the water because of water getting in their mouth or whatever. when your head is higher in the water, your legs go down and you sink. you need to use your back and stomach to push your shoulders and head lower. this can be frustrating to push your head lower as water goes in your mouth and u choke. it helps though. i pretty much almost submerge my head as much as i can to the point where my lips are above the water, even though water goes over my face during every recovery pull. i learned to breath only at certain times of my stroke so i don't choke on the splash of the water. sometiems i still choke though ocassionally, especially when i am sprinting and water is flying everywhere.

swimming technique is soooo hard to try to explain over a message board. there is so much to it and everything is connected. but there is 2 tips in the direction of thinking about using your core. let me know how it goes.

i also don't think that swimming 200 yards a workout will get you very far. i am hoping u ment 2000 yards.

love this pool. swam there at nationals a few summers back. fellas, if u like humidity, go there mid august.

Mikestead, I'm 52 too and suggest you might want to increase your overall aerobic endurance by cycling and walking briskly on days you don't swim; these are also good for strengthening your core. So is stretching and some ab/back work before and/or after you work out. Is your diet good and are you eating at the right times so you have have workout energy? A banana or energy bar makes a big difference 1/2 an hour before getting into the pool. Good luck!

ISHOF IS a great pool - even over a FL Labor Day weekend. Talk about HOT!

[ October 21, 2004, 12:19 PM: Message edited by: gmginsfo ]

Shifting, if I may, the focus of this "Swimming Forum (thread)," swimming22: as the season starts up, do you have any predictions for who's going to be doing what in the NCAA water this post-Olympic year? And what do you think about World Cups? Did you watch any of the Short Course Champs? Any favorite swimmers out there for you?

This is my first post here on Outsports. I learned to swim young but never was on a team for college or high school. Swimming has always been fun and easy for me (Not that I am fast or competitive in my abilities). Just a few years ago for a lark I tried to teach myself to do the butterfly and for someone without either coach or lessons on that stroke I do ok. Is there any online source on how the body should be positioned for strokes like butterfly or freestyle? I would like to improve my form.

I have been swimming lots since last November. I just recently started trying to do long distances. 1+mile without stopping. Yesterday after reading some postings from here and on the IGLA website I finally did my first 3 mile workout(Yes I did stop 3 times 10 laps, pause and stretch, 20 laps pause, 40 laps pause and then 30 laps). I actually did 100 laps to make it a round number. It took about 1 hour 40 minutes and today I feel pretty good. Any suggestions on fun or interesting workouts for distances swimming?

Also, I think I know the answer to this but isn't swimming an exercise that is slow on the fat burning and trimming down of a body? (perhaps relative to running) I guess I should join a masters group here to have some kind of structured workout......I would like to lower my body fat.

Happy to have any input

Thanks in advance

i do not have any predictions of what will be happening with the elite swimmers this year. i don't follow it as much as all my other swimmers friends do. i just focus on my own thing, but i do find it entertaining watching swimmers like aaron piersol and catlin sandeno because i grew up with them competing against them. some of my best friends dated them and i would see them all the time. so it is really bizarr watching arron get interviewed and all the attention. i remember when we used to be the same speed, then he just took off all the sudden. even swimmers like jason lezac, amanda beard, and all the other california swimmers i am so used to seeing all the time at the meets. it is cool to watch it in that sense bc it's kinda like i know where they are coming from. it's so close to home watching these big meets. i don't have any predictions though. sorry. but i do know of a rumor of a certain male olympic swimmer that may have hooked up with a few other guys, and it doesn't surprise me because of the way i remember him looking at me. but im not saying anything. have a great day fells.

Does anyone know of any chlorine-free indoor pools in Minneapolis that are open to the public? Thanks.

Erik:

I don't think it is possible to find a chlorine free indoor pool anywhere in the USA! The reason for chlorine is to kill germs and bacteria from different swimmers. Water itself is a great place for bacteria to flourish and multiply!

If you are allergic to chlorine, I am afraid you are limited to open water swims in lakes and rivers during summertime. That's a short season especially in Minneapolis!

Mikestead

I heard the U of Iowa switched to some alternative technology to lower the chlorine content and keep their swimmers healthy. I used to live down Ioway. I didn't get a chance to go for a dip though when last I lived amongst the tall corn.
What's that movie set in a religious school were the boys had to strip down and go for a swim in the buff. I saw it on Saturday afternoon telly, organized skinny-dipping.
We wore Speedos or Arena in my day. Some more serious would wear baggies for practice to increase drag. Naked, well you got that in the showers anyway. One fellow had a really hard time one practice It was likely hormones though. He had a girlfriend (one word).
Overtraining five hours a day killed my libido and grade point average. Yeah and my tolerance for the lovely toxin chlorine.

Ah, the lovely U. Iowa swimming pool! Who could forget life saving class there? I still owe thanks to my handsome freshman life saving buddy, Bob Novak, for the most enjoyable gym class I ever attended. At that time, it was the most male/male touching I'd ever experienced.
For the final exam, this 127-lb string bean had to rescue the coach, who was 6'3", 210 lbs., a chest the size of Rhode Island and a tiny waist for the red Speedos he always wore. I got him off the bottom of the pool, and used the cross-chest carry (My arm could barely reach across that massive expanse of pectoral muscle!) to get him to the pool's edge. There I somehow managed to get him out of the water, though I was exhausted. He gave me an "A," and I went to the showers and promptly threw up!
I suspect the cause was more sexual tension than muscular exertion. wink

Going Dutch on the memories... I think the Novak on my team was Curt if I remember. He was noted for talking to the female coach while inadvertantly hanging out of his baggies. Instances like these made high school tolerable.
I wish I remembered more about Bob's acid trips during pool time. Yeah, I had some really hot team mates and I definitely noticed. I had some cute girls show up at meets to cheer me on in race briefs. Then talk to me in school. Positive attention is good regardless of gender. I was too busy for any kind of relationship. The term "fag" was very overused in my high school. It created a lot of anxiety for a lot of us. Swimming was an oasis from that. You were who you were and swam fast. College was just recreational participation cuz I was so burnt out. Glad you had some memorable pool time there also. It can be a very cool town at times.

OK swimmer22, I won't ask for specifics ... BUT at least this: did he swim for the American team or some one else's? : ) (and maybe this: does he train in the US?)

NCAA's - Auburn Tigers two time defending National Champions in Men's and Women's. They should have another strong team but did lose a few seniors.

Hmmm, Aubie ... you wouldn't be wearing blue and orange colored glasses would ya?

he trains and swims in the US. but don't get all excited. one of my good friends, a female, kinda dated him for a few months. so it is probably just rumors. but when i found this information out, it did explain the weird staring and eye contact he would give me at meets. i should have got on that earlier. i wouldn't be surprised if he was, if not, oh well. there are plenty of other fish out in the sea, just not that many that medal at the olympics.

Heheh ... sw22: rest assured, excited is not where I'm going with this ... but I do love a puzzle. So your language suggests to me that the medal he won was for another country and not the US. Ah well ... if you didn't get this medalist, maybe there's another waiting out there for ya. Good luck in the water ... and out. wink

no, he did win a medal or 2 for the US.

well ... i suppose that rules out the South Africans ... hmmmmm .....

swimmer22: I meant to post this Friday, but got lost in the ozone ... so instead of wishing you luck over the weekend (I'm assuming you competed), I'll hope that you had a successful weekend with your team in the water. And offer good wishes for the upcoming weekend.

To those that missed out on purchasing a Chicago Gay Games swimming/diving/polo t-shirt in Ft. Lauderdale (the good sizes sold out quickly!)....here's another chance.

t-shirts

The shirts really are very attractive.