Masters Swimming
My wife and I are moving to St Petersburg, FL in 2 weeks. We will be moving to the downtown area and unfortunately the nearest gym is 7 miles away, and out of the direction for work for both of us. They do have a great aquatic center close by, but to be able to swim in the early morning hours we would have to join the Masters swimming. I didn't realize until today when I called that US Masters Swimming is a national organization. We are both self taught swimmers, never had coaching, but have been swimming for the past 5 years. We're MOP swimmers. This whole masters thing where we pretty much would have to follow their workouts ( the coach is a level 5 US swimming coach, so I am sure these swims are great), swim in a lane with 8 or so other people is pretty intimidating. I spoke with the coach today and she told me it is for swimmers of all levels and they have different lanes going at slower, medium and faster paces.
Do others have experience with Masters swimming? If so, I would love to hear about your experience and feedback if we should consider this. It is also more expensive than our current gym, but (likely) our best option.
Comments
My 'masters swim' is M-W-F, 5-7am. Crowded is if you have to share a lane. There is no order to the lanes, you just take an empty one and do your own thing. The lifeguard watches. No stroke correction. The plus side is that it is about 5 minutes from my house. Speaking of USMS, consider signing up for Hurricane Man OWS 2.4 mile swim the first weekend of May. I'll be doing it for my 5th time this year.
With that said, I also have to mention that not all masters team is equal. I do travel a lot on work and have swam with a lot of different masters swim team. I would say that 90% of the masters swim team are good. The other extreme side of that is I have gone to cities where the masters workout is written out on a board on the pool deck by the coach and they walk away. There is nobody to watch you swim.
I usually look up local masters swim location in each city through the USMS website. I would suggest giving it try. Most places are pretty organize. The lanes have anywhere from 2-4 swimmers and go from slowest to fastest. The coach on deck usually guides you the correct lane if you tell them your pace.
As a heads up- if you've never swam with "real" swimmers before, be forewarned that the language they use to describe sets is a little different than anything else (including the way workouts are described inside EN). When they say 6x100 on 2:15, they mean you are LEAVING the wall every 2:15 (not finishing the 100 on 2:15). So the faster you do the 100, the more rest you get. And when they say "descend" they mean "get faster".
Finally- have fun in St Pete. My folks live there and I hear there is a great local Tri group that does open water swims at least once a week.
Also, definitely try it out before committing. If you can't try it for a few workouts, at least, then I wouldn't commit. That's just me.
The coach was helpful though.
Masters can be good, as others have said.
One benefit is that once you jump into the lane, you're pretty much guaranteed to get in the prescribed workout/volume, vs swimming solo where it's possible for your Internal Monologue to offer arguments for ending a workout early for many reasons. This is the problem I often have.
However, your best use of that Masters coach would be to book some one-on-one sessions with him/her if that's possible, in addition to the workouts.
During Masters I get a chance to push myself harder than I would on my own. It seems every time I am away, due to circumstances, I need some fine tuning upon my return. I don't notice it swimming all alone but coach picks it out within the first half of the work out and corrects it.
I blame chlorine for eroding my brain and getting me into the mess I am in today, training for an IM.
masters is like any team training situation - highly variable as to how social/competitive/coached it is. All USA Masters really means is that you're registered with USA swimming so you get their insurance (and are eligible to compete). I hope the situation there is a good one.
Just like people like riding/running with friends, same with swimming. One minor word of caution...if you get super-committed to the swimming via a masters program, you can put so much physical effort into it that it will take away from your ability to do some other workouts. I'm not saying this to tell you not to do it by any means...just monitor what you're doing and how you're feeling and whether that 4th or 5th swim is worth it to you.
PROS: Less likely to take longer rests between intervals and it usually is a tough workout. If it is too tough, you just hang on to the end of the pool while the others keep swimming and then jump back in when ready.
CONS: Pride can make you (make me at least at the beginning) push it harder than you might otherwise requiring longer recovery period that can affect the quality of other workouts. Now when the swim is not the main workout of the day, I swim with a pull buoy--huge difference that requires less recovery. You swim the workout that the coach says. If you'd rather do a long, endurance workout and they are doing speed intervals, you swim speed intervals. If you want to work on technique--probably not going to happen. Technique work usually happens at a slower pace. Not a lot of swim "instruction" here by the coach. If you have poor technique, you are just producing muscle memory for poor technique. That's why I took lessons first in order to have good technique then joined Masters to produce muscle memory.
All that said, I will continue with the Masters and use the pull buoy when needed. I have to really watch out for swimming "too hard" and then requiring additional recovery time. Good luck!
To piggyback on what Bob said:
I used to dabble a bit with Master coaching Back in the Day. I can tell you that when the attendance gets >~10 swimmers, it's nearly impossible to give quality technique instruction to anyone. This is especially true in LCM vs SCY venues (ie, swimmers spend 50% less time at the end of the pool where the coach is located) and sessions that are populated by a large percentage of triathletes vs pure masters swimmers.
That is, masters workouts with lots of vet swimmers can largely be coached on auto pilot. I could rattle off a super complex workout in swimmer-speak and they just get it and go. However, a large population of adult-onset/triathlete swimmers = more time explaining what the next workout means and likely more people that need technique help = less help available to any one swimmer.
Thanks for all the feedback. I will try it out before I commit and start paying monthly fees. Just like everything else, it seems there are pros and cons and I will have to see if it works for us.