Further to the diet and exercise type thread, I have recently been using the local leisure centre and have made a few observations. ANyone else have anything to add ?

Its always full of

Kids, fair enough but why do they always decide to arse about in front of me, even if they are metres away they will arse about so their end point is always in front of me.

Women swimming slowly, a sort of guided float from one end to the other (or side to side if a full length is too much) over an hour or so, there are two that swim up and down talking whilst keeping their hair do's from getting wet. They look horrified if any water splashes in their direction. They then stop for an hour to chat more.

Blokes, usually well bald, wearing goggles, Middle aged, muscley and swims like an otter on speed, dont get in their way. They specially cultivate toe nails so they are super long and lethally sharp. One guy such as this gouged me on three occasions without apologizing so I told him if he did it again I would "Bite his f**cking toe off", he just swam off and got out !

my wife challenged me as to where I got the scratches !

Then there are the ones that have obviously been told by their doctor to "get some exercise or die"

Dont most of the public look disgusting without many clothes (not that I am Charles Atlas)

Mark - join a private gym/fitness center with a pool. No kids under 16 unless accompanied by parents. Spare pool for pissing about in. I go on the way to work in the mornings (about 7ish). There are usually about 5 people in the gym and then two in the pool.

p.s. I'm not a snob or anything, but I do believe that for the vast majority of 'Public Swimming Bath' users in Belfast, this is the only bath they ever go near.

p.p.s How many people do you reckon piss in there on a daily basis?

p.p.p.s Or worse :eek: :eek:

You forgot the token chubby kid who dive bombs in the pool while his dad (who looks like RAM man and has the word "FU*K" tatooed on his face) shouts "Go on son, Nice one aaaa"

[Edited by Damaja - 1/16/2002 1:33:30 PM]

LOL at posts above

Im a lifeguard and i assure you all that is said above is true and the little kids i usually chuck out, the old women do my nut in they complain if kids get them wet! well sorry it is a swimming pool which funnily enough contains water!!

Many people go to the toilet in the pool i was luckily enough to watch a backwash (cleaning the pools water) and you can see all the nice stuff that wash off people into the pool going down the drain, NICE!

And finally the worst thing is that one of my fellow life guards had to fish no.2's out of the pool!!

I bet this has now put u all off swimming, try running maybe!!

LOL @ Mark!

I am middle aged, bald, wear goggles and swim to exercise in case I die. Luckily my local pool has lanes so that the talking ladies don't interfere with those of us who are swimming because we have to. I do however always give way to faster swimmers and expect those slower than me to have the courtesy to do the same.

It's the only form of exercise I do and I guess that I also fit into the category of not looking good in my swimming trunks. :D

:D

Swimming is my thing, but due to the reasons pointed out above, i'm very very fussy where i swim. And its not in my local 33m long public toilet... Pool etiquete is a funny old game - kind of similar to driving, everyone feels that they have right of way and everyone else should fall into line. You forgot to mention the bloke that limbers up, gets in the pool and sprints 2 lengths at incredible speed... and stops. Stretches and poses for 5 minutes, then does it again, making sure he gets in everyones way, but thats ok because he's the fastest guy in the pool (for about 20 seconds in every 5 minutes)... And dont start me on the morons who turn up with paddles on their hands and flippers on their feet - makes me want to go and get a canoe and run them down :D

Still reckon its the best form of excerise though; strength, aerobic and very low impact (i started swimming coz i kept damaging myself playing squash, rowing, running, etc).

Find somewhere decent to swim and its great

swimming for exercise- if when you swim u nearly drown then its top exercise otherwise its veryyyyyy easy to think your working hard when your not (check your pulse after a few lengths and compare that to jogging)

Tiggs

ps- backwash water is brown cause you lot are filthy!

pps- many years ago(before health and saftey got involved) me and a mate were life guarding a pool in Reading. this kid jumps in the deep end and starts to sink. i wake up my mate, he'd just had a potnoddle and had drifted off, and point out this sinker. we decide that as hes making no attempt to get to the side he must just be larking about.

anyway, 10 mins later he makes it to the shallow end, by now hes gone a bit blue and vomits all over the side! whats your problem? we ask. turns out he cant swim, thought he jumped in the shallow end but cant go sideways so he just headed for the other end :D

moral= dont swim in Reading in 1989 if im on duty ;)

tiggs - yeah, but the same can be said of almost anything. Go in to your local health club and check out the folk walking at 2mph on the running machines... whats that all about ?

I guess one of the problems of swimming is, like rowing, a good technique and rough understanding of what you're doing is essential. Whereas anyone can run 5 miles and feel shagged out - its only 6 months later that their knees and ankles collapse coz they've no technique....

NO heavy petting in the Pool!

PS My great auntie was one of the first women to swin the English Channel

jon,

swimmings tricky though, the normal guides ppl use to see how hard they are working dont apply so much (how hot do you feel, or sweating for example)

also good tech. in running will save your knees but in a pool it just means you have to go harder for the same benifit.
i used to swim with tshirts on otherwise i'd be there all day to get anything out of it.

Tiggs (swim/fittness instructor for 10 years before i realised that most people have neither the time or commitment to get themselves out of their sofa and ensure they have a chance of getting to see their kids have children- so sod em!)

edit to add that anyone who doesnt wear goggles when swimming for exercise is not exercising (just to tackle the "bloke in goggles thing")

[Edited by Tiggs - 1/16/2002 4:18:04 PM]

but folk with no technique in swimming tend to get knackered in a couple of lengths (same deal as rowing - you see people doing 5 minutes and falling off the ergo :D ) or swim at such a slow pace that its not worth their while getting off the couch.

If you know what you're doing I dont think its _that_ different to running.

And the whole "low impact" side of things is a great plus.

fair point, best to assume that you are one of only 2% of that pools swimmers who is not wasting time and sod the rest of them (not that im jadded at having spent years trying to get lazy scum to work harder;))

Tiggs

ergo- now theres a good exercise. nothing like banging in a sub 6min 2000m before breakfast :D

I thought the goggles thing was so you can check out the fit womens arses underwater.....erm or am I missing something here?

:D:D:D:D:D LOL at this thread

Justin :)

Jay m A

now there's the killer. I'm short sighted, which means (unless i'm wearing contacts, which i usually dont during the work day) that i cant see anything in the pool anyway.... :D

but as the thread started off 99% of the time you really dont want to be looking :D

tiggs - ergo's have got to be the most punishing form of excercise known to man...

Nothing makes my knees ache more that swimming breststroke :D so I have to pound up n down doing front crawl for ages... I agree with tiggs on the exercise point though...

I just want to know how some ppl in the "fast lane" can "swim" so slowly... I'm sure I would sink if I swam as slow as some of these ppl.

My sister always complained about when she went swimming.

That's me, that is! Hence I only tend to use the pool for a bit of R&R (along with the spa / sauna / steam room).

Under 6 minutes for 2k metres? Blimey! I've managed around 8 20, although I ended up with a blister on my hand. Maybe that's just my iron grip? ;) :D

getting under 6 means u have to be 6ft 6, well ard ;) and quite happy to have a 60% chance of vomiting.

Tiggs

Tiggs,

You are talking about rowing now aren't you?

My usual swim is 2,000 metres and that takes me around 38 minutes!

Just too old I guess.

:(

lol,
yes rowing, unless your names flipper

I don't think a Technicolour Yawn would go down too well at the gym, so I'll stick to being slow.

I used to manage a shift at a public leisure center and you could tell what time the kids were in by the amount of the chemicals that were put in the pool!

As for the multi coulourd yawn, and teh other things, technically you have to close the pool and let the whole water be filtered once IIRC before you can re open it (that is once some poor sod has removed most of the big bits! :eek: )

lol,

i had a mums and babes session once that resulted in 3 vomits, 4 number twos and numerous number ones!!!!

nothing a quick swirl with a broom handle wouldnt fix before the adults session 5 mins later :D:D:D:D:D:D:D

Tiggs

got to get back into this swimming thing, mainly as I need to loose some weight, cos me a bit porky at the mo, and being the USA does not help the ol figure.

going to use the local pool, would love to join the gym which has pool, and is 5 mins away from me, but it's waaaaay expensive, hence don't really want to do it.

Our local pool normally has at least half the pool roped off into lanes for those dedicated souls swimming for exercise. What pisses me off are those people who insist on swimming lengths outside the lanes and whinge at the kids for getting in their way :(.

Public pools are generally dreadful places,right up there with Macdonalds "restaurants", IKEA and motorway service stations in the pantheon of traumatic experiences; the changing rooms seem to be populated with thugs out for fights and the floors always have broken glass on them, and unless there are lanes, the idea of actually doing any proper swimming is a joke.

Someone mentioned about people on running machines who just walk for nearly an hour - I also see this frequently, they cause frustrated queues of serious exercisers and are invariably women.(Sorry girls).

Also what about the people (usually the women walkers) who shut all the windows because they are COLD, so those of us that are bothering to actualy exercise and generate body heat die of hyperthermia!!

Impact exercise isn ' t all bad - it does help maintain bone density and hence protect against osteoporosis, something that pure swimming will not do. Achieving a balance is key like everything in life.

Agree with Bin about the state of some public pools though.

Agree on the swimming speed, Planes have a stall speed where they drop from the air, I sink if I go under a certain speed, how do they do it, I am sure the avaiation industry would love to know.

zoog,

u sure?????

i was under the impression that load bearing exercise did that (ie. weights) not impact?????

not aware of any middle age woman who are told to go jogging to sort out bone density????

Tiggs

Tiggs

Anything that stresses bone structure - impacts will do this a great deal - will encourage bone density. Most middle aged women will be told to do plenty of walking or light aerobics or maybe even jogging. They don't tend to packout the weights room in my local gym though!!

(It's the fractured neck of femur that gets them, so walking etc is about the best thing and of course the HRT.)

Adrian

does anyone do reps in the pool / ergo ?

I seem to remember doing 100m reps on 2mins (IIRC), and 500m reps (x10) in 1m 50s max on the ergo, with a 30 second rest between each rep.It's easily set up on the ergo, but not in the pool?

This helps the speed endurance as well as recovery (but obviously isnt quite so hot on the pure aerobic capacity)

I always found it amazing how fast it was to recover from being completely Donald Ducked in the pool, and having 10-15 secs rest, and then starting again. Probably something to do with rest time being taken with the torso out of the water, therefore less pressure on the lungs, so a lot easier to breath.

SB