These Swimming Workouts Will Make Your Time in the Water More Challenging

Once your swimming abilities and overall water confidence reach a decent level, you may find little ways to make swimming more challenging (but still safe). Adding clothing and calisthenics are two such ways to make your swim workouts more difficult. Depending on your future goals, you may see workouts such as these in military swimming and scuba diving programs:

Start as many swim workouts of the week with the test as a warm-up. Most fitness tests in the military require a 500-yard or 500-meter (or some 1,500-meter) swims. The goal is to spend 10 minutes or less working on your test distance or at least a portion of it to practice the pace. This approach helps in learning the goal pace and improving endurance. If you are having an easy time with the swim, but need work on your treading, then do the five- to 10-minute tread (no hands) as a form of “vertical swimming” warm-up.

Warm up with a 500-meter swim or 10-minute tread: One day during a fitness test that matters whether you enter a competitive training program, practice that testing event as a warm-up. You can honestly say, “This is my warm-up,” and remove a significant amount of PT anxiety from that event.

Swim Workout No. 1

Swim with a long-sleeved shirt or uniform blouse. This is a freestyle/crawl stroke workout. While most military swims utilize the sidestroke or breaststroke, the freestyle stroke with a long-sleeve shirt workout offers more of a conditioning workout for both the upper body and lungs. You can challenge yourself even more by resting with treading or bottom bouncing for one minute (no hands) and by skip breathing during the freestyle swim (breathe every 5-8 strokes):

Repeat 10 times.

Swim Workout No. 2

You can add calisthenics of your choice to the workout above. In place of the “rest with tread minute, do a few calisthenics between 100-meter sets. Some options are the following, depending on the pool rules and nearby equipment:

Repeat 10 times.

• Swim 100 meters freestyle at 5-8 strokes per breath with long-sleeve shirt on
• Pullouts 10 (pull torso out of the pool deck — like a muscle-up on the pool’s edge — deep end)
• Push-ups 20
• Flutter kicks 20 (with mask filled with water)
• Bear crawls around the pool deck

*Pick two of the above or get creative and add your ideas to the Swim PT Workout.

Throughout military rescue swimming training and scuba diving schools, you will see long hours in the pool performing a variety of skills. These include calisthenics on the pool deck, fast swimming and endless treading in clothes, underwater swimming, knot tying, lifesaving and many other water confidence skills.

Practicing these in safe environments (never alone) is recommended to improve essential water confidence and competence. You want to have the techniques, conditioning and event strategies well-developed long before entering your military training program.

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