Swimming to Workout My Chest and Stomach

I want to use swimming to work out my chest and stomach. I am 32, male, 180 cm, and I weigh 84 Kg. I was taught swimming when I was 3 years old. Now, I go to the pool 3 times a week, I do 40 lengths (around 25 mins), and I swim (9 freestyle + 1 breaststroke) X 4. The question is there a better way to exercise myself? If I do (15 breaststroke + 15 freestyle + 15 backstroke) X 1 is better? Any other combination? My main objective is to work out my chest and stomach.

From your information, it looks like you work hard in the swimming pool. I presume you are asking this question because you feel you are not getting the best from your swimming workout or not seeing the desired results.

Keep It Varied And Challenging

The key to getting the best out of regular exercise is variation, and the biggest mistake most people make is doing the same exercise regime for too long. The result is that the workout is no longer a challenge; the body is not tested or taken out of its comfort zone, leading to an exercise plateau and a lack of results.

Note that this applies to exercise in general and not just to swimming. Swimming, as you probably know, is one of the best all-round types of exercise as it works for all muscle groups and the cardiovascular system.

Get Out Of Your Comfort Zone

As far as your specific workout goes, it is completely individual. In other words, there is no right or wrong combination of strokes or number of lengths as long as you are varying your workout and taking yourself out of your comfort zone. Only then will you see a difference in your results.

However, you may want to consider trying the following to add some variation to your swimming:

Think about the speed at which you swim and how often you vary that speed. You could stay with your regular freestyle x9 and breaststroke x1 but do every other freestyle length at maximum speed.

You could even swim your 40 lengths alternating freestyle and breaststroke but do every freestyle length at maximum speed and use the breaststroke length as recovery, known as interval training.

If you constantly swim at the same speed, your swimming stamina and overall fitness level will remain the same.

You could vary your sessions throughout your week by swimming one constant speed session, one interval training session and one session using as many different combinations of swimming strokes as you can.

Pick A Swimming Stroke And Challenge Your Body

Click on a stroke for more information

Front Crawl Stroke

Breaststroke 

Backstroke

Butterfly Swimming Stroke

The possibilities of combinations are endless, but the main key is to push your boundaries and testing your body is not every session as your body needs to recover too.

Swim Butterfly To Fine-Tune That Six Pack

You mentioned your chest and stomach as areas you are working on. Your chest muscles will get worked regardless of which stroke you swim, but your stomach muscles will get a workout like they have never had if you swim butterfly stroke.

It is not usually swum recreationally as it is a very demanding swimming stroke, but one thing is for sure, if it is your weakness, it will take you out of your comfort zone and finely tune your six-pack like never before!

Learn Butterfly Stroke Today

For a basic guide to learning and improving butterfly swimming stroke with some clear and easy-to-follow exercises, download ‘How To Swim Butterfly’. Click here for an instant preview.

Use the exercises in my guide book to help target your chest and stomach muscules.  Practice the undulating body movement exercises on your front and on your back and your stomach muscles will know about it. 

Add in the arm exercises and your chest, shoulder and back muscles will get a huge power workout. 

Download your copy of my book by clicking here. 

Lost Sense Of Smell After Swimming

I had a question about my lost sense of smell after swimming for a long time.

I enjoy swimming as much as possible, and for some reason, I seem to enjoy going from a backward lying float into pulling myself underwater while still being face up. Of course, as soon as I do this, my nose fills with water and slightly stings. Is there any danger to doing this quite often when in a pool?

I'm asking because I noticed that whenever I do this after I come out of the pool, it takes several hours for my nose to regain the full sense of smell again. Am I burning out my sense of smell by doing this?

First and foremost, you are not burning away your sense of smell. The human sense of smell is controlled by synapsis in the brain, and although it is possible to lose one's sense of smell, once it is lost, it usually does not return.

The loss of sense of smell that you are experiencing is most likely due to water entering your nasal cavity and causing a blockage. That blockage prevents odours from entering typically into the nasal passage and, therefore, not allowing the brain to process them. After a time, the water and the blockage clear and your sense of smell returns to normal.

Have you ever tried preventing the water from entering your nose in the first place? Especially as you enjoy submerging from a supine position in the water, and it is causing you some discomfort!

Depending on how long you spend submerged in this position, you will need to breathe again at some point. Try exhaling through your nose as you resurface. This will expel any water from your nose and potentially reduce or even prevent blockages from occurring.

Failing that, a good old-fashioned nose clip will do the job of preventing water from entering your nose in the first place.

I hope you find this information helpful, and I wish you every success with your swimming.

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