Swimming: How does it fit into your conditioning?

[Diomedes]

I had surgery on my ACL a while back and during recovery did quite a bit of swimming. I continued for maybe a year and thought it was great for my conditioning. Never was a perfectionist for form or anything, just went out and did it.

Anyways, been thinking of getting back into it with a more structured swim/workout plan.

My questions are: How many of you use swimming in addition to the other types of conditioning you do?

How are your swimming workouts structured? -slow laps? -balls to the wall? -which strokes? -do you bother with proper form? -etc.

[Dan's Knuckles]

I love swimming, it's awesome cardio as it involves virtually every major muscle group in the body. It's great to do for cross training if you need a break from running, or in addition to running. I personally would not replace running altogether with swimming, because while swimming is low impact and it may save your joints now, it won't help your bones in the future like running can, that's just my oppinion.
Form is really important because if you use poor form then you risk injury, especially to your shoulders.
You can do anything with swimming that you can do with running or biking. You can do sprint intervals, you can do distance, depends on your cardio needs.

[heritagemma]

low impact is a great change of pace from running. when a body part is hurting, i fall back on swimming for conditioning.

[younggunz]

great.. I tread water to help my shoulders when they hurt from boxing/lifting..

[Dan's Knuckles]

Originally Posted by younggunz

great.. I tread water to help my shoulders when they hurt from boxing/lifting..

If you don't use your arms, you can't hurt them. If your shoulders are hurt try aqua jogging, it's running in water, it sucks, it's tough to stay affloat if you don't have some type of floatation device, but it's great conditioning.

[younggunz]

Originally Posted by Dan's Knuckles

If you don't use your arms, you can't hurt them. If your shoulders are hurt try aqua jogging, it's running in water, it sucks, it's tough to stay affloat if you don't have some type of floatation device, but it's great conditioning.

na, only use my arms to tread, as to condition my rotator cuff and ac joints at multiple angles with no downforce...

[EE6_TBOIO_MATb]

Hey,
was injured for 1,5 months until like 3 weeks ago, so I started to swim.

It's a great workout in every aspect.

I also believe in the breathing enhancement (? sorry, my english isn't the best) that u get from swimming.

I trained a bit of apnea as well each time I went to the pool, and believe it or not, I believe that it helped my cardio : I have more endurance in rolling, now.
It may be some placebo effect, though, but I doubt so.
Maybe Dan's Knuckles, who is pretty knowledgeable, could give us his opinion.

[Ian Coe]

When I used to be a swimmer our main working sets used to be 100's with a minute rest. We used to do 12 sets. Other times we'd do sprints or 200's (for 5-6 sets) with 2 min off.

I used to be a fat boy when I swam, but the first time I ran ever with the school I managed to get into 3rd place (out of 160).
Then I stopped due to illness, never got back into it. Now....I'm bloody allergic to chlorine.

Long story short though, swimming is good

[ChopSteak]

Been swimming my whole life, and I think the most relevant benefit of swimming to this forum is it's improvement in punching stamina.

[Chris Guillen]

i run one day and swim the next day preparing for a fight , swimming hard for long periods of time is close to fighting because it uses every muscle in your body .