Act like a tree! Act like a cow! Act like a tree, tree, cow, cow, cow!

Two weeks ago, I took the plunge and finally convinced myself to join a swimteam.  I joined Alexandria Masters Swimming and had my first practice, a total of 2500 yards.  Two words: Glorious!  OW!

Having been out of the water for so long, I've lost so much swimming specific muscle tone.  I've still got most of the technique, but my swimming strength and endurance is completely shot.  My left deltoid is apparently nonexistent, and after swimming freestyle for more than about a 400, it is painful trying to bring my arm out of the water on the recovery part of the stroke.  Strangely, no such problems with my right deltoid, besides an overall lack of endurance.  My kick is also pretty much useless now, too.  That's the part that has hit me the most--the kick used to be my strongest point in swimming.  Kick and turns, that's what I relied on. 

After that practice, I was in pain.  My legs were on fire, my upper back and shoulders were ridiculously sore and tight, and I hobbled around like I was 90 years old.  On the plus side, according to my scale, I had lost almost 2 pounds the next morning.

Had my second practice this morning, two weeks after the first (work got in the way, otherwise this would have happened last week).  It was about a 3000 (I lost count about halfway through the practice, but a 3000 sounds about right).  Same issues as before with my shoulders and legs, although this time I added massive calf cramping on both legs.  So not cool.  I'll weigh in tomorrow to see how I did.

Provided work cooperates, I'm going to try and start swimming four or five weekday morning practices (6:00-7:00) and two or three evening practices (8:00-9:00 or 7:30-8:30 for short course), as well as the Saturday morning practice (8:00-9:30).

My end goal is twofold.

1. Get down to my 180 pound target weight
2. Get back in competitive swimming shape and make some short course National Championship cuts for the meet in the spring

Weight matters

Over the past few years, I've tried to get back into shape.  Up through junior year at The Citadel, I was in quite good physical shape, although probably not great swimming shape.  After that summer, though, I started to gain some weight, so tried to develop new forms of exercise.  I tried running, and then hurt my left ankle, which stopped me from running more than the semesterly PT test at school.  The pool at school was out of the picture, given my class schedule, the crappy pool hours, and the horrific shape its piping and overall level of maintenance was in.

After I graduated in August 2009, I got a full time job and started taking evening classes for my MBA.  The ridiculously high level of stress that produced, and the lack of time to exercise, led me to start packing on the pounds.  Towards the end of the MBA program in fall 2010, I started running and working out during my lunch breaks at work.  That helped out a lot through this past spring, when work started ramping up.

Since stopping swimming in summer 2005, I've put on a substantial amount of weight, the majority of which has been muscle, at least until relatively recently. I weighed about 145 when I stopped swimming and was a complete beanpole.  Freshman year at The Citadel saw my weight go down as low as 135 in the fall semester, then I started packing muscle on and finished the year back at 145.  Sophomore year I started to pack on a lot of muscle and hit 165.  Junior year, more muscle and some padding, and hit between 170-175.  Senior year I stayed around 175.  The first year after graduation, when I wasn't exercising my weight went up to about 185.  The next six months, when I was running and working out, I dropped a belt size and kept my weight constant, so I presume it was muscle mass that I added.  Comparing pictures of me back in highschool and me now, I have substantially bulked up, with my chest and shoulders being a lot wider and thicker than they were back then, same with my thighs and arms.  The area between my thighs and my ribcage, though, has bulked up in a *cough, cough* less pleasing way.

Since April/May of this year, though, work, a move from Charleston to Alexandria, and a lack of a convenient workout facility like I had in Charleston at work have mostly prevented me from working out like I'd like to.  Many days, I don't get home from work until 7:00 or later, and I'm too exhausted from work by that point to workout afterwards.  So, that leads me to where I am now.  Provided my scale is working properly (with this scale, that's an iffy proposition), as of yesterday, I weighed 198.2. 

Over the last month, I've been trying to come up with an achievable workout regimen that I could implement about now.

...To be continued...

A bit of background...

Introduction: I'm Tim (duh).  24 years old.  Male.  Swam year round from when I was 6 or so until I was 18, for a total of about 13.5 years.  This is a blog to document my reentry into the wonderful world of swimming and getting into shape again.
 
During my swimming career, I swam for a variety of swim teams (I think I've got them all listed):

• Nashville Aquatic Club (NAC - Nashville)
• Houston Elite Aquatic Team (HEAT - Houston)
• Pelican Athletic Club (PAC - Mandeville, LA)
• Williamson County Aquatic Team (Water Cats - Nashville metro area)
• Caritas Swim Team (Caritas - Louisville)
• Tritons Swimming (Was originally Caritas - Louisville)

Up until I was 14 or 15, I was never really all that serious about swimming.  Around the 15/16 mark, I began to get serious and started dropping some real time in the pool.  I began to specialize in backstroke at that point, then around when I turned 17, I picked up butterfly out of the blue, too.  Really have no clue where fly came from--before then, I sucked at it in practice and meets, then all the sudden it was a lot easier to swim in practice, then at the next meet, I dropped 10 seconds in the 100 fly, and was a butterflyer after that.  Rather bizarre, now that I think about it.

Once I graduated high school and went off to college at The Citadel, I more or less stopped swimming.  I tried to swim a few times a week as a freshman, but the constraints of being a freshman at that school quickly killed that attempt.  In addition, after having lived and breathed pool water and chlorine for so long, I was getting to the point where I didn't want to have anything to do with a pool.

...Until the summer after my junior year.  I got offered an assistant swim coach job at a summer league team on one of the islands in the Charleston area.  I took it and had an absolute blast.  It drove me to get back in the water that summer, and I started swimming a short practice or two (about 45 minutes each) most weekdays, as my schedule permitted.  Once the school year began again, though, that stopped, and I remained out of the water for the next three years, until late this summer.

...To be continued...