My Training Diary 16/1/2019
Warm up:
200 Freestyle
100 Backstroke
100 breaststroke
Main set:
5 x 100 Freestyle on the 2:00
10 x Suicides
5 x 100 Backstroke @2:10
Cooldown:
Out of time.
I rocked up to training on time at 6 a.m Wednesday morning. Truth be told I was actually 5 minutes early and was lined up ready to get in at 5:55. I walked through the doors
and went through the ticket gate and strolled down to the far end of the 25-metre pool. Then I wrote my program up on the board. The plan for this morning was to be a bit of a hard session. I didn’t have a lot of time is had to be home a little bit after 7 so I can get to work at 8. No sooner had a finished writing the program up then I dived in and I was on my freestyle warm-up lap. My freestyle turns felt not too bad but then something weird happened.
The Unsettling
When I do a freestyle tumble turn I try and add a little bit of a twist so I can get off the wall faster. This means I push off the wall in my side. However this push off was different, when I pushed off I felt a weird sensation. Something in my head something wasn’t quite right. However, a few people I know probably thought that already. I was starting to get dizzy and this had never happened before. From then on every time I pushed off the wall I got this weird vertigo sensation. If you have never had it, then I have to say it is very unsettling. But there was no way I was going to stop this training session just because I felt a little dizzy.
Suicides
The best part of this training session that I got to do one of my favourite sets. I was really hanging out to get to was what a called “Suicides”. It’s a pretty basic drill you start out of the pool. Starting off you dive in and sprint freestyle to the other end as fast as you can. You don’t have to freestyle you could do any stroke you like. Then without any rest, you jump up out of the water over the end of the pool. Once your out, you turn around and do it again until you have done it 10 times. These are really great to build fitness and strength. Because as you push yourself out of the pool you’re using the same muscles that you use during your butterfly and freestyle pull phase. And the reason why they called suicides? Well if you haven’t figured it out it’s because you’re trying to kill yourself every single time.
When I swam in my high school 
this drill was a daily staple of our training regime however we got to have a rest. Back then every time we had to jump up out of the pool we had to wait for the last person to get out then we could go again. My Twist on it was that you don’t wait for anybody else you just go. This morning I decided to make it a little bit different. Instead of diving in I had to jump in as far as I could. This made it more awkward to start because you had no momentum and you had to work harder to get faster.
You have to Jump
Every time I jumped in I went as fast as I could. I could feel the eyes of everyone else at the pool starting to focus on what I was doing. But I’m not here for them, I’m here for me. By the time I got to the 7th and 8th my arms were on fire, my lungs were burning, but I had to keep going. It was coming back to a mindset thing and I had to keep going.
At this stage, I’m not quite sure how long it takes me to do each program. This is because each program is a little bit different. It got around 10 to 7 a.m. and because I had to start work at 8 I decided to hop out. I achieved my goal of getting the bulk of the work done the only thing I missed was the cooldown. It’s going to take me a little while to figure out how long sessions are going to take. I only have a limited amount of time up my sleeve.
The Doctor’s Office
Later on that day I sat in my doctor’s office with a smile of relief on my face. This Vertigo that was starting to annoy me a little, was merely just a little bit of fluid behind my eardrum. A couple of decongestant tablets twice a day and continually trying to blow through my nose while holding it closed would do the trick. Well, that was a load off my mind the best part is I keep going.