Habits Series Part II: 5 bad swimming habits

Welcome to the second part of our Habit Series where we will discuss some bad habits that you should be aware of if you want to make progress as a swimmer. If you want to see the first installment of the series about good swimming habits it is waiting for you here.

Poor Nutrition

It seems like the 'memo’ about hydration got to swimming community and we are fairly good at it. The weird thing is that we forget about proper fuel (food) intake sometimes. It’s weird because swimmers are famous for their appetites and still too often we hear that someone forgot snacks for the training or haven’t eaten the breakfast altogether.

We just want to say – it is impossible to perform well when you are hungry!

TURNS!

There is a simple rule with turns but it seems to be very hard to internalize and to implement: Turn with intent and you’ll avoid all the mistakes of a lazy turn!

Speed of rotation, tuck – not so tight, foot poorly placed etc. – all of this will disappear with a conscious decision about every single turn. And no – you don’t need a special 'turns workout’ to practice those as every lap you make requires one! :)

To be awesome in the pool you need those turns perfected so take advantage of every moment of the training to do it properly and with technique (and future competitions) in mind.

Don’t pull when you should kick!

One of the good habits we’ve talked about in our Good Habits article was to focus on the goal and fall in love with repetition. The same technique prevents you from cheating during your own workout. You should realize that this just delays your own progress and success as a swimmer.

A good example is pulling during the kick sets when you approach the walls. Of course, it let your legs rest a little and give you extra speed but it’ll also mean a lot of kicking meters lost during every season.  So, don’t! :)

Heads-up!

There are multiple examples of important races lost by swimmers who can’t help themselves and pick their head up just before the finish.

It is more than just a speed bump but also takes away your focus. And it’s hard to imagine something more distracting than the approaching finish during an important competition. So just put your head down and enjoy the win AFTER you win.

Trouble Pacing

We’ve left the big one for a grand finale – pacing. During hundreds of conversations we had with swimmers during the development of Swimmo we’ve realized that many swimmers when talking about the speed described it not using the times but rather phrases like 'kind of fast’, 'slower’, 'super-fast’…

That is a huge problem that is very clear watching swimmers during repeats as the technique focused sets are sometimes done at almost the same pace as the performance sets. The problem becomes even more severe with long distance swimmers that so often lose all their power to early in the race.

And we know it is just one of the hardest problems but we also know that amazing swimmers are able to do repeats with minimal differences between lap times.

That was one of the reasons why we decided to create Swimmo with one of the features literally called PaceKeeper for all of those who just can’t keep their pace at the exact right levels. PaceKeeper helps you by notifying you in real time using vibrations and visual cues that you are swimming too fast or too slow to keep the pace you’ve set as your goal.

We hope you enjoyed the second part of our Habits Series and that you will join us for the third part soon. Next time we promise not to be so serious and have a little fun talking about weird quirks of swimmers.

Kamil Market Development Expert at Swimmo

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