Does anyone here use intervals.icu for swimming?

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I’m mostly a swimmer. I’m also fat and out of shape. I’m swimming for fitness, not for any kind of competition.

I do, however, want to avoid burn-out and doing too much. I am 50 years old.

My “form” started out veeeeery negative. It’s now not quite so negative, but today, for example, it’s 161%. There’s a big mush of words between “fresh” and “optimal” on my fitness curve, so I’m not really sure what it’s supposed to look like in there.

I have played around with putting planned swim sessions into the calendar, and I’m just not sure what a fat person who is trying to get into better cardiovascular shape should be doing. I’ve been swimming most days of the week, increasing my distance and speed, and now I can sustain a pace for 2.5 km that I could not have managed 2 weeks ago, with rest.

Anyhow, all this might be too vague for someone to help me with, but I figured I’d try.

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First things first. Welcome to Intervals.icu!
Also congratulations to starting, or energising, your journey in health and fitness.

If I understand correctly, your question is about how to use Intervals.icu to aid you while using swimming as you primary activity. It’s not really a question about whether Intervals.icu can help, because it certainly can. There are many multi-sport athletes who use this platform and who participate in this forum, and swimming is one of our activities.

You ask some good starting questions. Let’s try to unpack it a bit.

  1. 50yo out of shape and wants to improve fitness and body composition.
  2. Form, as it relates to the Fitness page, is a seemingly simple idea but it sometimes trips people up. The main thing right now is not to put too much emphasis on what the numbers are for Form or Fitness, nor what Training Zone the graph is reflecting. It takes time to build up some data. Get to know yourself more by recording subjective metrics. Reflect upon how you feel and then make some tweaks to various settings. Let’s not get deep into the weeds just yet.
  3. Regarding what sessions are appropriate for a beginner swimmer, that’s a platform independent question. There may be swim coaches here at Intervals.icu who can help you. There are many websites offering information, some of them provide coaching services. My favourite is Brenton at https://effortlessswimming.com/. He focuses on technique but I’ll bet he can help guide you with suggestions for actual sessions.
  4. You state from the outset, and it’s very clear, that you’re motivated to improve your fitness. There is a lot of training information in this forum. You can work your way through it if you feel moved to do so. There’s one very important aspect; It applies to all athletes but most especially the beginner—take your time. This is a life-long journey. Don’t be in a rush. You’ll just burn out. Those of us who have been coaching for a while have seen this countless times.

It’s going to take time to build a foundation. There are people out there pushing hacks to shortcut the initial time but don’t buy into it. The price is heavy: quitting or injury or both. The initial three months are important for establishing habits. Keep it fun. Keep it slow, really friggin slow. After that it’s going to take two years to create a really solid base. I don’t mean that to be discouraging. I’m just laying it out for clarity. If it sounds a bit disheartening I can tell you that if you buy into the slow and steady path you will start reaping rewards that surprise you. You’ve already seen that in your ability to sustain a longer pace. There will be plateaus; it’s ok, that’s part of it. Commit to slow and steady. Maintain consistency with easy stuff. Try to leave a session stoked to come back to the next one.

Swimming most days is fine but listen very carefully to your body. You want to stay healthy. You say that your Form is already at 161% and that you’ve seen dramatic improvement in the water. That may be an indication that you’re loading a bit too fast with duration and frequency. I recommend adding walking to your weekly routine. It is bar none the absolute best activity and highly underappreciated. Cross training as a way to change the load on the body and add in more time moving is helpful.

In all cases, start with short durations. Be consistent. A few minutes often is best. 5 days with 5, 10, 15, or 20 minutes is better than 3 days of 30 or 45 minutes.

Yeehaw! :clap::+1:

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Thank you! I will read this a few times until it settles into my brain. I appreciate the time you put in to answering me!

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Ok, I need to update some information. I mis-stated the form as 161%, when it’s actually -161%.

As far as building sessions, I think I’m ok with swimming daily, mostly 45-50 minutes or so (1 - 1.5 km), then a longer swim (around 2.5 km or so) on one day. I’m not a beginner at swimming, but I am coming back to it after a hiatus. That is, I typically swim like a fish and find it easy, except for the being out of shape part. And I absolutely love swimming, so I pretty much always feel like I could keep going, if only they’d let me stay in the pool longer. :slight_smile:

I do skip days when I feel too tired or otherwise don’t feel well. I am a migraineur, so if I’m having a day where I don’t feel safe, then I skip, definitely. However, it seems that being active is helping with my migraines, so that’s a positive.

When I first re-started swimming at the beginning of the month, I was swimming too fast. I have finally found my swim-all-day pace by using a tempo trainer, and plan on increasing that pace gradually, a couple of hundredths of a second every week or two. I’m fine with swimming 2.5 km max distance, for now, but I don’t think I should swim that far every day.

I do walk a few times a week, too. I’m waiting on a new helmet to arrive so I can start riding my bike again, too. I like riding my bike about as much as I like swimming.

It is a bit disappointing that it will take two years to build a foundation. I think the last time I tried exercise, I went too hard for too long on my bike, and caused myself to burn out. It was fun, but in retrospect, it was too much all at once, so I do see where you’re coming from, and will keep it in mind to go slowly.

Thanks again for your reply! I’m sorry I was a bit misleading with omitting the negative in front of the 161. I should proofread better!

Edit: “tenths” to “hundredths”

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Thanks for the updated info.
Yes, very low (negative) Form. That was my understanding of what you meant. The reason is that the systems only sees a small amount of data. It thinks you’ve gone from a standing start to lots of load in a short time, which is kind of what you’ve done. This is normal to see even if the person is fit. The reason is that the system has no previous data on which to base trends. It’s why I said to kind of ignore the Form and Fitness values for the time being and just gather data—slowly. We can adjust as that data is collected. It’s also why I suggested that you start recording subjective information—Wellness Data. That will help inform you/us when making adjustments to the settings so that the graphs work for you.

It’s nice to know that you’re not entirely new to swimming and that you know about “all day pace”. I would, however, suggest that 45-50 minutes on most days of the week may be a bit ambitious for the first three months. With that said, 1-1.5 km seems ok and probably means that you’re not swimming the entire 45-50 minutes but are taking some pauses. Again, go slowly. The soft tissues in your body need time to adjust.

Combing walking and riding are excellent. It’s all about moving often and doing so slowly. Since fat loss is a big part of your goals it’s important that you keep everything aerobic. If we were in the same town I’d do some low intensity tests with you to help determine your aerobic range. In short, when you notice your breathing change—when you have to open your mouth and the sound of your breathing changes—that’s your aerobic ‘ceiling’. As soon as you go any harder than that your body is no longer burning fat maximally. For some people that happens when they get up off the couch. For others is ambling slowly. For others it’s a brisk walk. Etc, etc. It’s very, very important to stay in this aerobic range 100% of the time for the first few months to a year. As soon as you go above that range you’re undoing the metabolic changes we’re trying to achieve.

Yes, two years to build the foundation. You will see changes during this time. It’s not like you have to wait a year or two before things start change. The point is that this is a long-term investment in yourself. :hugs:

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hi :slight_smile:
First of all I’m not a swimmer but will try to give you some basic rules. They should be similiar to any training.
-what metrics do you use? cycling is easiest to track and monitor while we use a machine (a bike) to ride and can measure the powerr we put in and compare that power with other metrics like hr. When swimming you should use hr at least and monitor your pace (pace you control, not sure about hr)
-the form graph is derrived from the fitness value and fatigue value. Fitness value is your tss (1h at your ftp is 100 tss points) average from last 42-60 days and fatigue same but from last 7 days. You just started so fatigue is high and fitness low so the value of you form(fitness-fatigue) comes as a negative value and means you are not adapted to the load you are putting in. But:
-do you measure your hr during workouts?
-are the hr zones set correctly (they are used to measure your tss and are crucial to measure fitness)
-the graphs work more or less only when you put correct data in and still are just to plan you training over longer periods of time and not to monitor your body. You look mostly on the ramp rate graph showing the rate of rising your load and you try to keep it low and steady.
-“i do skip days when i feel too tired” you sound like a pro already :wink: you feelings are most important and not a single graph can change chat. 3 weeks on, 1 week of (much lower load,1/2 of normal tss) is a good habit or plan. Important notice to remember: all adaptations of your body take place when you rest not when you train! Lack of rest works against you and without it your body will. find a way to force a rest throug a injury or tiredness or as you said migreaine. Resting is good :wink:

As for very simple training periodisation:
-start with easy swim and increase time of the training not intensity. You want to adapt all your body to the training load and intensity will come as last. Just have some fun. You are doing now much more then for past years so take it easy and slowly adapt your body. With proper base it is very easy to build some speed on top of it. All good trainig plans used by proffessional athletes starts with proper base building. Usually you incorporate intensity when you want to futher improve/rise your fitness and slow swim/rides are not enough (are not pushing your form into low negative to force adaptation).
You said you are fat, so slow easy tempo (z2) will improve you fat oxidation, another benefit. At the same time being fat is partly the lack of training but much more lack of
healthy eating habbits (at the end you can be untrained and skinny) You started regular training and ofc you will get leaner (you are burning much more calories then you eat) but without changing your habits, at some point you will need to fuel your training to swim faster and longer and it should be done correctly with healthy foods. Now is the time to read about that and slowly incorporate to avoid the risk of underfueling and being stressed by stopped improvements or stressedby not losing enough kgs when still swimming a lot (part of the overtraining is not sufficient fueling your body leading to tiredness, lower mood ons and you said you want to avoid that waht is a good idea ofc) Healthy eating habits can futher improve your migraines (make them dissapear) improve overall mood and life happines (as stupid as it sounds, food is crucial) And again ( as with training) slower loosing weight is better.

ps. positive 161 would be imposible i think :wink:

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Thank you!

I was taking breaks to begin with, but am not currently. Today, for example, I swam continuously for 41 minutes for a distance of 1.5 km. I made the deliberate decision to stop there, even though I felt I could have gone longer and further. My heart rate was in zone 3 for two thirds of the time, and zone 4 for the rest, according to Garmin Connect. I will have to upload this workout to Intervals.icu to see what zones it puts me in.

I think that if I continue to take advantage of the pool while it is available to me through the end of July, that will be good for me. I will not have access to a pool for much of the rest of the year, unfortunately.

I also have plantar fasciitis in my right foot, so walking too much can aggravate that for days. I can’t wait until I get my new helmet and can start riding my bike, again! I plan on riding alone, so I can go as slowly as I want. I will gather the heart rate, cadence, and speed data, though!

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Thank you! I will re-read this more carefully this afternoon when I return home and answer your questions as best I can.

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Yes, it’s good practice to stop before it’s too late. Be hungry for the next session.

Zones are configurable in Settings. Heart rate (HR) zones are sport independent. This means that for every sport you’ll have a different maximum HR (HRmax) and different HR zones. Don’t put too much stock in it right now. Just keep that breathing quiet.

Ok, swim while you can without overdoing it. Slowly bring up the quantity of walking and riding. Keep everything easy.

PF is a “posterior chain” issue. This means from the tips of your toes, under your feet, up your calves and back of your legs, up your back and neck, and finally over the top of your head to your face. That entire “chain” of fascia is tight. Stretching can help. I recommend trying to find an Eldoa instructor and/or CHEK practitioner in your area. If there isn’t one then I can give you a reference to my online Eldoa instructor. She’s bomber!

:+1: Gather the data. Don’t focus on speed just yet. :wink: We want to get your body used to moving and improve your energy system metabolics first and foremost.

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I am using pace, mainly, and RPE, but tracking heart rate to see what that is at my RPE. My current RPE is “could do this for hours,” bilateral breathing every third stroke, no rests, continuous laps until I’m finished.

Thanks!

I am recording HR, but I don’t look at it while I swim. It’s too much of a PITA to twist my wrist around to see the HR while I’m swimming, and there isn’t a lot of time to see what that is in the small amount of time I can look during a stroke. However, my rate of perceived exertion is that I could swim for hours, if I wanted to. It often starts out feeling like “ugh, this is going slowly and I’m not feeling it” mentally, but after about 500-700 meters, I get into the groove and can zone out. It’s never a problem physically, just mentally. Once I get past the mental hump, I’m good to go.

I have absolutely no idea whether my zones are set correctly. My Garmin seems to think that I’m in a higher zone than the default zones in Intervals.icu are set. My RPE seems to agree more with the Intervals.icu zones than the Garmin zones in that I don’t feel like I’m in zone 3, but more like zone 2. That said, Intervals.icu has been saying I’m more or less in zone 1. I think my max HR is set more or less correctly, or at least as close as estimates can get me, at the moment.

Yes, I’ve also started tracking my food with Cronometer. So far, I’ve started eating more fruits and veggies, and have really cut most of the sweets and fast food out. I do have trouble eating enough, some days, but other days I make up for it, but not by going overboard.

I’m down 6.8 pounds from the beginning of the year, and 2.8 of that is since 4 June, so I’m not losing fast, but I am losing.

I am aware that this is a parallel battle: exercise for fitness and food for weight loss. The exercise is helping keep me motivated on the food front, though, so that is a bonus.

Thanks for your reply!

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Blockquote
My current RPE is “could do this for hours,” bilateral breathing every third stroke, no rests, continuous laps until I’m finished.

Sounds good. You just have to build solid base. After that you can add some faster/harder trainings but like 1-2x a week while maintaing slow steady paced trainings on the other days. As said earlier, slow steady burns fat, you want that :wink:

Blockquote
I think my max HR is set more or less correctly, or at least as close as estimates can get me, at the moment.

It is not that easy to set your max hr correctly. Actually you have to be in a pretty good shape and in a specific mental state (like a race close to finish, beating a personal record or smth similar) to get your hr close to max. Most of the time your brain will force you somehow to stop swimming and pushing harder before your hr gets even close to your max. But RPE is more important right now. And as you record your hr and know your pace you can set a small test for yourself (same distance and pace) and repeat it once a month just to compare your hr and see if your form is improving=avg hr is lovering. (check hr decoupling too). So you can then rise your pace a little to rise your load and still be in the same hr zone

Blockquote
So far, I’ve started eating more fruits and veggies, and have really cut most of the sweets and fast food out. I do have trouble eating enough, some days, but other days I make up for it, but not by going overboard.

A clever idea would be to create some basic swim workouts using intervals.icu workout creator and populate with them your calendar, like two months into the future or so. Firstofall you will see your future fitness (more or less, just to compare it with your rpe still treating your rpe as a higher priority data). But most importantly you will see your planned kjs for next day and for example if you plan much longer swim, you can prepare by eating a little more previous day and a bigger breakfest that day and so on. Or if you plan a harder swimm you can eat more carbs.

Stand one day in front of a mirror and take a photo of yourself. You will thank me later;) You will lose some weight but at the same time you will gain some muscles and your weight can stagnate for a while. It is good to have a photo of your body to compare and it’s much more motivating after couple of months then any number of kgs lost.
Losing weight is much more about not gaining it back after first huge succes (during an injury, tougher time and so on, shit happens in life sometimes) :wink: So if you cut sweets and fast food it is good to replace it with something healthy and something you really like just as a reward kind off and a new habit which will stick with you and make you happy. And trust me this new habit and a positive attitude is more important then kgs .For example instead of sweets you can make a very healthy fruity shake to regenerate your body after a workout. Just try to look at a positive side of life and what healthy you gain not what you have to cut. Losing weight is taxing for your body so you have to track your mood and take care of it by a positive stimulus.
With Cronometer rules are exactly as with a fitness chart: it just helps to track, but compare results with your mood and kgs and change calorie intake accordingly. You don’t want to go overboard but at the same time huge hunger can lead to overeating. Weekly calories average is a good measure to check. With regular training and some simple healthy habits you will lose weight anyway and a bigger problem will be to fuel your trainings then to cut calories.

Blockquote
exercise for fitness and food for weight loss

both for your better, healthier and much longer life :wink:

ps. check intermitent fasting online/yt, their explanation of insulin and how it works helps a lot even if you don’t plan to fast, you can add simple habit to eat last meal sooner and and breakfast later if you like.

ps2. it’s not a battle just a new healthier and much more happy way of living :wink:

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Hi everybody,
and in specific David, that is investing quite a lot of time and energy in this beautiful piece of software…

one question, that would benefit a lot the “people who are using intervals.icu” also for swimming.
A swimming workout is quite different from other sports (but I assume there can be some needs that can be migrated also to other sports), for example, if it’s a “Pool swim” there are 4 main “styles” and some special kind (like “Kick”, or “Drill”, of “Individual Medley”, or “Stroke” if you do a mixed stokes set)…
And the pool length defines (usually) the sets, like 4x100m Butterfly, 2x50m Backstroke, 4x200m Kick… Usually you group these intervals (as in other sports) in groups (such as “Warmup”, “Main set”, “Technique”, “Cooldown”,…).

Only when the intervals are defined, then it make sense to analyse the Pace or PR (doesn’t make sense to define the PR or the Season Record without styles… a “Drill” can be using fins thus being abnormally “fast”, and I usually go faster in Freestyle but I want to see where I have PR for Breaststroke).

…so, I know that this would include some things that are quite “swim-specific”, but… it could be incredibly useful.

Can be possible to ask you to think about this feature? Maybe in such a way that it can be cross-sports (like, people using 2-3 types of bikes in the same training - I think quite rare! or people who define some specific drills, such as running with weights, and would like to have these drills included in the same activity, but still being able to have statistics for the drill only, or for everything except when I was using the Drill#7)…
I can help a bit with the IT-requirements or brainstorm the ideas, but at the moment (even it I’m an IT person) I don’t have so much time to help the development itself…

I know it’s not a small request, but your software is amazing, and I was checking the API to play a bit with it, or the JS extensions, but it seems that such change is a bit more architectural, and I’m unsure that I can simply achieve this with an extension.

…what do you think?

thank you!
an amazing weekend

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Tx. So basically sub-types for all or parts of an activity with impact on pace curves and so on. That is quite a tricky thing to do but I can see why you would want it for swimming. For cycling normally a whole activity would be on one bike (e.g. TT vs road) and you can use tags or gear to filter power curves etc…

I would probably need to add support for several pace curves per activity with different curves using different parts. Then also support for filtering pace in that way. It is do-able but a lot of work!

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Is this something that could tie in with a reworking of the /intervals screen? I was thinking of how I could use an interval field with the name of the stroke as a filter on the pace screen. But it would really need to be on the interval level. Having the ability to make custom graphs on the intervals screen such that one could build a pace chart from intervals of a given length/time and other filterable values would be very cool, and could hopefully apply to all other sport types.

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I’m really curious about what this would look like. The current compare tab just doesn’t cut it for seeing improvement over time. For example, For the past two months each of my swims has consisted of 2-6x 20 minute intervals with 1 minute RI’s. Prior to starting this method and again today, I did a 1000m TT test to find CSS. It would be nice to see curves for how the 20’ intervals changed over time, and, as time goes on, to see curves for a series of 1000m TT tests.
:+1: