Learning to love the pool

There are plenty of benefits to pool swimming, but learning to love it can be a challenge, says Simon Griffiths

We have readers who will never step foot in a swimming pool, especially an indoor one. They can’t bear to be contained or regulated. They can’t stand the smell. The chlorinated water dries out their hair and makes their skin itch.

We have readers who thought swimming was an awful activity until they discovered the joy of immersing themselves in natural water.

Some of you may have been pool swimmers until you discovered open water and never wanted to go back inside. And yet others of you are seasonal, returning to pools as the days grow shorter and the temperature cools.

Strange as it may seem for the founder of a magazine about outdoor swimming, I lean the other way. Winter or summer, I do the majority of my swimming in an indoor pool.

That’s not to say I don’t love outdoor swimming. I do, and I swim outdoors several times a week. Summer social swims, swimming adventures, open water challenges and winter plunges are a big part of my swimming life.

But I don’t train in open water. Obviously, you can, and many people do, but I find it more practical and effective to do my swimming training in the pool.

I appreciate there are several factors working in my favour here. For a start, I’m lucky to have access to pools that support and are conducive to lane swimming and training – I’m well aware not everyone has this luxury.

Then, I have a great group of people to train with and belong to a strong masters swimming club. This makes a massive difference. It helps with commitment, session planning and space in the water. Being with other people, and doing the same session at the same time, simply makes swimming much easier and more fun. Plus, there’s the attraction of coffee and chat afterwards. It’s a completely different experience to trying to follow a training session on your own in a lane crowded with swimmers of diverse speeds.

Third, I genuinely enjoy the metronomic experience of swimming in a pool, counting lengths and tracking my speed on the pace clock. I like to mix my strokes and practise skills such as starts, turns and underwater dolphin, which is easier in the pool than outside. And I believe pool training makes me a stronger open water swimmer.

I could try to sell you pool swimming on its very real benefits: the consistent environment, the ability to measure and track progress, the reliability of distance swum and time taken, for example. But practical arguments only get you so far. If you want to gain the benefits of pool swimming, you need to love it – not rationally, but emotionally.

As with many things in life, a love of swimming pools may not arise and survive without effort. It may need to be nurtured or even coaxed into existence. In my experience, the biggest factor is other people. If you’re struggling to enjoy pool swimming but want to access its benefits, here are a some suggestions you could try.

• Find an accountability partner – perhaps a remote coach or someone you know will be there at the same time as you.
• Find people to train with. Sometimes easier said than done but a good place to start is the pool itself. If you see someone swimming at a similar speed to you, strike up a conversation. Ask if they would like to share your training session or if you could join theirs, for example.
• Join a masters swimming club or a triathlon club. They may not always offer the exact training you want but it’s probably better to complete a sub-par session with other people than to battle with an idealised session alone.