workout advice

[Schneed10]

I was on my college swim team, we had a strict routine. Swimming itself is an interesting exercise just because it's cardio and resistance training all in one. Think about it, every direction you move a body part meets the resistance of water.

This may not be practical because it's not that easy to get to a pool, and you won't be working out 20 hours a week, but the basics were every afternoon we'd swim for 3 hours, focusing on various things each day. On Monday and Wednesday mornings, we'd swim for 60 minutes (mostly sprinting) and do about 30 minutes of ab work. On Tuesday and Thursday mornings, we'd ride exercise bikes for 10 minutes, and then start lifting weights for 60 minutes or so. The weight was kept low and we did a lot of reps, all free weights (helps increase and test range of motion).

Fridays was just a 3 hour swim practice. Saturday morning was usually an organized team activity, like mandatory ultimate frisbee or something with the coach yelling at us not to be lazy.

Doing all that, we were darn cut, but never real jacked. Which is what we were going for, we were swimmers.

But if you can get to a pool to swim for 30 minutes and then do 30 minutes of weights right afterwards, I've found that to be a real good way of staying in shape.