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How Triathletes Should Use Masters Swimming to Improve Swim Times
For triathletes coming from cycling or running backgrounds, swimming can be a major hurdle. Masters Swimming helps triathletes improve their times through expert on-deck coaching, structured interval workouts, social accountability, time efficiency, and open-water skill training like drafting and sighting.
Pool Training for Open Water Swimming: Skills that Actually Transfer
While open water training is ideal, the pool is an excellent place to build crucial skills for open water success. Swimmers can master stroke efficiency, sighting, straight-line swimming, drafting, and nutrition strategies in a controlled, repeatable environment.
Swimming vs Running for Weight Loss
Both running and swimming offer excellent health benefits and aid in weight loss. While running burns calories faster as a high-impact exercise, swimming provides a low-impact, full-body alternative. Ultimately, consistency and personal enjoyment determine the most effective routine.
Swimming for Weight Loss: Here Is What Actually Works
Swimming supports long-term weight loss when combined with consistency and a calorie-deficit diet. Boosting intensity with HIIT, preserving muscle mass through resistance, and managing post-swim hunger are scientifically backed strategies to build a sustainable, healthy routine.
How to Set Swim Goals That Actually Improve Your Fitness
This article guides Masters swimmers on shifting from competitive, time-focused targets to fitness-oriented goals. By tracking personal metrics with a simple swim log and setting process-oriented, SMART goals, swimmers can build a sustainable routine and achieve long-term health improvements.
Does Swimming Make You More Attractive? Fitness, Confidence, and Social Benefits
Swimming does more than sculpt a toned, attractive physique with broad shoulders and lean muscles. Its deepest benefits lie beneath the surface, boosting cardiovascular health, confidence, mental well-being, and social connections for a happier, healthier, and more vibrant life.
Is Masters Swimming Good for Triathletes? Pros, Cons, and Training Tips
This article explores how Masters swimming helps triathletes improve their weakest discipline. By weighing pros like coaching and structured workouts against cons like excessive sprint focus, it offers practical tips to balance pool technique with open water training.
Open Water Swim Training Plan: How to Train Year-Round in the Pool
When access to open water is limited, swimmers can successfully train in a pool. By practicing sighting, drafting, making dead-stop turns, and building aerobic strength, pool workouts can be tailored to replicate dynamic open-water race conditions.
Masters Swimming Training Plan for Former Competitive Swimmers
Returning to competitive swimming as an adult through U.S. Masters Swimming offers excellent health benefits, structured coaching, and an age-grouped competitive community. Former swimmers hold a major advantage because their muscle memory, stroke fundamentals, and familiarity with pool culture (such as pace clocks and workout lingo) make the transition much smoother, even after decades away.
How to Do a Great Backstroke Pull
Mastering the backstroke pull is essential for generating upper-body speed. This guide details how to execute a proper pull, from a pinky-first entry and a bent-arm "hook" setup to a powerful straight-back push and efficient finish, complemented by targeted technique drills.
6 Ways to Swim Fast as You Get Older
Although aging naturally declines cardiovascular fitness and muscle mass, older swimmers can maintain or even improve their speed. By implementing six key strategies: strength training, technique adjustments, high-intensity intervals, proactive injury management, proper recovery, and modern gear, athletes can flatten the performance curve.
The Sound of Swimming
Emmy-nominated composer and Masters swimmer Chad Cannon uses the pool as a vital mental escape to recharge his creativity. Swimming has not only improved his musical endurance and physical strength but also provided a supportive community and inspired his latest artistic projects.
Food for Thought
What you eat directly impacts athletic performance. This article explains how specific nutrients such as omega-3s, folate, selenium, polyphenols, vitamin B12, and nitrates boost brain health, improving a swimmer's coordination, reaction time, focus, and mood regulation while highlighting the critical role of proper hydration.
Free Diving With Jacques Francis
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Volunteer Profile: Sue Jensen
New England Masters Swim Club member Sue Jensen helps bring high-quality meets to her area by being the New England LMSC Officials Committee chair. Her biggest passion, though, is helping adults learn to swim.
Why Rest Alone Won’t Heal Your Injury
Resting removes the pain of a swim injury temporarily, but it doesn't address the underlying cause. Strength and mobility training and focusing on your technique are needed for long-term success in injury prevention.
Make-Ahead Protein Breakfast Burritos
Make-ahead protein breakfast burritos are perfect for when you’re running out the door or need a hearty breakfast after a morning swim.
The Wolf in the Pool
Lupus is one of more than 100 identified autoimmune disorders that occur when the body’s immune system becomes dysregulated and begins to attack itself. A lupus diagnosis, however, doesn’t have to mean giving up swimming, indeed swimming can help relieve some symptoms of lupus.
What Mental Performance Coaches Wish You Knew
You look around at the meet and you’re pretty sure everyone else is seriously fit, feeling confident, and ready to go for it. And you’re totally not. Big secret: Most everyone else has some worries and other mental gymnastics going on too. Here’s what mental performance coaches want you to know the next time you step up to the blocks.
Night Lights
If your open water swimming adventures start before the sun rises or continue after dusk, you should use glow sticks or waterproof lights as a commonsense safety measure. By lighting up, you make yourself visible to other waterway users as well as your swimming partners, which can keep you safer in open water.
