One of the most valued assets for a sportsperson, especially a swimmer, is good stamina & endurance.
Stamina can make or break your training as a swimmer. This is true especially for marathon swimming, where success depends upon swimming fast for an extended period.
Increasing stamina & endurance step-by-step can help you build confidence to tackle any sport, whether it may be swimming or running. But the big question is, how can you increase stamina & endurance while swimming?
Here are a few ways you can increase stamina to spend a longer time in the pool:
- Perfect Your Swimming Technique
As with any sort of exercise, nothing is more important than good technique when you’re swimming. Swimming one or two laps with the correct swimming technique can outweigh the benefits of doing ten laps with a haphazard form.
Having the correct swimming technique will mean that you can train effectively, build endurance without getting easily fatigued and minimise injury risk.
When you’re trying to focus on your form, focus on bigger technique aspects like your body position, kicking form, back technique, pulling, and so on.
- Incorporate Intense Training Workouts On Dry Land
Why is it important to incorporate high-intensity workouts like CrossFit into your routine to increase stamina for swimming?
Incorporating a workout that helps you better use different muscle groups can help you power your strokes and increase propulsion in the water.
By using CrossFit machine to work on your arms, back, core, and legs outside the pool, you’re strengthening these muscle groups and building stamina to help you swim without getting exhausted too quickly.
Consistent training will also help you spend a long time in the pool.
- Work Your Way Up
As a novice, you might only be able to do a few laps around the pool. If you push yourself too hard, there’s an increased chance of burnout and injury.
The right way to build stamina is to stay consistent and push your boundaries only very slightly at each turn.
First, focus on perfecting your form so that it can help you save energy and minimise the risk of injury.
Once you know you’re swimming with good form, increase your reps slowly every day or swim at a faster speed.
Building swimming stamina is about putting in hours in the pool and using these hours wisely.
- Swim In Intervals
Interval training is a simple yet effective training technique to improve your stamina. You can either start by decreasing the intervals for a specific swim set.
For example, if you can complete 10 laps of 100 in 2 minutes, bring the time down to 1 minute 45 seconds. Once that is achieved, aim for doing the same in 1 minute 30 seconds.
Alternatively, you can also aim at lowering the intervals in your resting times gradually, depending on what you’re comfortable with.
- Optimise Your Recovery
As important as training right is for building stamina in the pool, you also need to focus on your recovery to help you train better.
This includes taking full rest days to give your muscles a chance to recover after putting in intense training in the pool and for CrossFit.
Another essential aspect of training right is making sure you’re eating the right food that can help you sustain heavy workouts.
The last and most crucial recovery aspect is proper sleep. During periods of hard training, aim to get at least 8 hours of sleep so your muscles can recover for the next day!
Increasing stamina is a vital part of being a good swimmer, whether you’re doing it as a sport or just recreationally. Building up decent swimming stamina will not only increase your performance, but you’ll be able to enjoy your favourite sport for a long time without feeling exhausted.
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Author Bio:
Sancket Kamdar, a certified weightlifting coach, and a successful entrepreneur founded SF HealthTech with a single goal in mind – to bring high quality, international standard fitness equipment to help fitness enthusiasts and athletes reach the next level of fitness. When he’s not working on new equipment ideas and designs, he loves to create educational content about health, fitness, nutrition, and wellness.
