When I was 12 years old, my mom faced me with a very difficult question: "Do you want to swim or play baseball? You don't have time to do both anymore, so you have to pick one." Every time I watch a baseball game and see how much downtime there is makes me sometimes regret my decision (I know true baseball fans will hate me for saying that). Nonetheless, my entire upbringing was heavily revolved around swimming. Even my high school art projects were swimming related (don't believe me? Here's part of my photography collage montage).
I was far from an athletic kid. I was equally bad at swimming and baseball at this age, so my parents were not too hopeful for either. In fact, I have a very vivid memory of a 2-day swim meet in 2006 (still age 12), where I literally got disqualified from all my races. Either I did the wrong stroke, I did an illegal turn, or just simply chose not to finish. My mom was so mad, and it didn't help that other moms were coming up to her and saying "maybe you should look into other sports for Erik." But my mom never gave up on me and always responded "no, he's good I swear, he just doesn't get it yet." That car ride home, she (pretty harshly) told me that these are races and I have to start trying harder in the races. Apparently, to this I responded, "oh this is a race? I thought it was just for fun!"
After that day, I started taking swimming a little more seriously. When I thought it was all just for fun before, I began to realize that there was a lot more to it. There's hard work and goals, defeat and victory. By the end of that 2006 Summer season I had won the regional championship (which actually isn't that big of a deal) and came in 9th in the state. I remember that season was the first time I set a goal in swimming, or in anything for that matter. I wanted, more than anything, to swim for the Connecticut Zone Team. Basically they took the fastest swimmers in each age group (I was 11-12 year olds) in the state and have the compete on a team together against other states. Unfortunately I missed the qualifying time by 0.19 seconds in the 100 meter freestyle (but going into my final race I was 11 seconds away! So I couldn't complain with my improvement).
As time went on, I took the sport more and more seriously. I eventually made the Zone team when I was 14, started going to national championships at age 15, and was even state champion at age 18 with one of the top times at the national meet (proudest race of my life, still have the medal).
Okay, so you got my backstory about swimming, but the purpose of this post wasn't to brag about my accomplishments (well maybe subtly it was). I want to go into a few reasons why swimming is so amazing as a workout and as a sport in general.
Hardwork and Reaching Goals
I have talked about how I learned about handwork in a few of my other posts, especially talking about how I believe World of Warcraft (WoW) taught me the meaning of handwork. Well, believe it or not, while I was extremely into WoW, I was also extremely into swimming. Both activities taught me the meaning of handwork. While World of Warcraft was more of an immediate satisfaction (although a raid could take hours to obtain that satisfaction), swimming involved months, or even years of handwork to achieve your goals. And there is no quitting if you want to reach your goals in swimming. You literally need to be in the pool 6 days a week (sometimes multiple times in a day) to be competitive. It is a huge time commitment that only the truly dedicated can afford.
Unbreakable friendships
Once you are a serious swimmer, you are training 9 or 10 times a week (especially in college). And these practices are no joke. They are actually Hell most of the time. Its a lot like running except instead of just using your legs, you're using your whole body. And instead of being able to breath, you aren't allowed to. And instead of being able to run away from your coach, he is always right over you, watching, telling you to go harder. Needless to say, the only way to get through these tough times is know that you're not alone. Having friends beside you when going through this not only makes it better, but makes it enjoyable. There's time to crack jokes between sets, build friendly rivalries in practice, and just look across the pool and not feel alone. And after practice, no one in the world could possible understand what you had just gone through. The only people that truly get you are the people that just did it with you. My closest friends to this day are the ones I went through Hell with.
Awesome Memories
As I said before, the greatest race of my life is when I won the state championship. Not only was that the greatest race of my life, but it was also one of the greatest moments of my life. I was definitely not expected to win that race, and I dropped a whole second in the 50 meter freestyle (which is a lot of time in swimming) because I worked hard and perfected my technique I had practiced so rigorously. So many of my other best memories are moments in swimming, and I know a lot of my friends can say the same thing.
Both a Team Sport and Individual Sport
I have talked so much about how you set goals for yourself and work hard to achieve them. But a big part of the sport I haven't yet mentioned is the team aspect. Swim meets are scored so that there is a winning team and losing team. The team is often depending on individuals to kick butt in a race, but the people that usually do the best are the people that compete for the team, not for themselves. And the most fun part of swimming is the relays. All of the greatest swims of all time have been on relays because that's when people are truly swimming for their friends, not just for themselves. When you have a team depending on you, you can do anything. Just check out Jason Lezak saving the day for his team USA companions in this race from the 2008 olympics. Seriously, watch it.
Although my friends refer to me now as a "swammer" since I have retired from the sport upon graduating from college, I still like to get in now and then. Its a fantastic full body workout that has even led to the well-deserved term "swim-bod." Swimming is a truly amazing sport for so many reasons, and I owe a lot of who I am today to the sport and the people I met through it.