Arctile: Q and A

- full name, age, position at Reebok Sports Club

My name is Slava Feniov, I am 32 years old and I am a Swimming PT at Reebok Sports Club.

- If you're a complete beginner, what's the best way to get into swimming?

If you are a non swimmer the best way to get in to the swimming would be to have lessons with a professional coach. Try not to "invent the wheel" as it were, because there many some specific ways of teaching and you do not need to make your life harder by following something that may or may not work for you. Further to this, I would not advise the use of youtube videos as well, not to say that there aren't any good videos/tutorials available, but there are much more "inventors" of their own ways of teaching. So again, they may be good or bad but regardless it may not work for you individually.

In my opinion, the coach should come from a PRO background to know everything about what they are teaching. 

-Do you need any specific kit? Are goggles a must?

You do not need any specific kit to start swimming. However, it is advisable that goggles are worn if you want to learn the correct swimming strokes from the first steps, because you need to have your head in a water to keep your body in a streamlined position. Specifically, the higher you lift your head out of the water, the lower you're your legs drop, thus increasing resistance from the water, slowing yourself down and making your swim even harder.

Depending on the coach, you might need floats to have some buoyancy support for beginners, but they might give you a false feeling of progress, insofar taking you away from your 'natural' buoyancy in the water.

At Reebok, to ensure confidence and encourage natural buoyancy we will get into the water to give hand to hand support for the swimmer. Furthermore,  the Reebok pool is ideal for beginners as it's 1.2m depth all the way, which means you can stand up at any time you need.

- What are the easiest and most tricky strokes to master?

Firstly, there are much more than the commonly known 4 main strokes: Front crawl (f/c), Backstroke, Breaststroke and Butterfly (sometimes known among swimmers as FLY).

Most of the people have heard Free style. But I would correct them, by saying that it's not a stroke, but a swimming style. This is where you can combine some elements from different strokes. For example after the dive from the starting blocks or after tumble turns you are doing a few butterfly (dolphin)  kicks and then you are starting to swim f/c.

The additional strokes not normally seen in major swimming competitions would be: Lifesaving side stroke and backstroke, Combat Swimmer stroke (css), Old English Stroke etc

In my opinion, f/c and backstroke are most easiest strokes to learn due to their streamlined body position, best flotation and easier breathing.

Most people say at the easiest is breaststroke, but biomechanicly it's really hard to turn out your feet as you need to push the water with the side of your foot. Certainly, the most physically hard stroke would be butterfly.

- What support is available to improve technique? Does Reebok offer any personal training for swimming?

At Reebok we provide all kind of lessons which will help you to improve your swimming such as: Learn and/or improve yourstroke, triathlon, open water, lifesaving, snorkelling and fin swimming.

It is such an expression between swimmers that if you want to swim well in one stroke, you should try to swim well in all otherstrokes as well, this is because your body is adapting to what you are doing and will be picking up the best from each stroke.

- What fitness benefits does swimming provide? Will these be instant?

I guess that most of the people have heard that swimming is the best Cardiovascular (CV) work out. During swimming you are using all of your body's muscles. Arms and legs to propel yourself through the water, core to keep you body balanced and to stay straight to decrease resistance. You exercise your heart to pump more blood through all your body and not just to the separate parts in greater amounts. Thus giving your body more oxygen which helps your body do better in general. You can control intensity and nearly is all the time heightened due to need for air. A tough workout is Hypoxic Swimming, which is swimming fast without the ability to intake air. These workouts are always increasing your lung capacity, adapting your muscles to use less oxygen and increase your VO2Max.

And I would say the most important that it's the best injury free sport.

- How often would you recommend a swimming session as part of a fitness routine?

It depends on your goals and your training program. It should be discussed with a coach on an individual basis.

Otherwise if it's just for the overall workout, you should use swimming as much as you can.

Please let me know if you need anything else

Slava Feniov