My Top Swimming Fitness Tips

Follow some of my tips below to improve your swimming fitness in and out of the pool.

• Set yourself a challenge.
  

Whether it be to enter a swimming event in the pool or open water, set yourself a target that you want to train for. The Great Swims are a great event to enter, with a range of distances. Most New Year resolutions are broken by the end of January, so make sure your goal is challenging but realistic.

• For a week, make a note of what you eat.

At the end of the week, look to swap in one healthier ingredient for the next time you cook that dish.

• Try out some new equipment this year.

Using training equipment is a vital part of my training and it is great to focus and isolate certain parts of the body. Hand paddles are great to strengthen shoulders, whereas fins are good for strengthening your kick.

• Plan for the week ahead.

Make sure you know what session you are going to be doing before heading to the pool. By having a clear goal for each session, you know exactly what you are going to do and it makes it easy to go ahead and do it.

• Increase your load each week.

Start by increasing your distance in your session and then once you are used to the distance, start to increase your effort each week.

• Check your heart rate!

If you have access to a heart rate monitor, look at working in heart rate zones. Vary each session and work through the different zones.