FORM Fundamentals: How to Stay Consistent with Swimming
You made it to the final week of FORM Fundamentals! First of all, congrats—we see you working hard in the pool. Now, let’s finish it off with a bang and keep the good momentum going.
Now that you've swum your way through the three fundamentals (body position, breathing, and kicking), we're sharing how you can stay consistent with your swimming exercises to keep progressing. Focus on the skills you learned from the last few weeks and swim the Baseline Test Set again to see how far you've come.
Staying Consistent is Key for Swimming
To continue improving your swim, the work you started with FORM Fundamentals never really ends. Now that you’ve set a strong foundation, it’s important to come back to what you learned in the last few weeks. Consistent progress in swimming exercises comes from practice, patience, and repetition. To make swimming more comfortable, effortless, and efficient, focus on your fundamental skills as you swim from week to week.
Remember these key points as you swim this week’s test set and continue on your swim journey.
1. Set small goals
Focus on the key points we outlined during FORM Fundamentals. Don’t overwhelm yourself and try to work on everything at the same time—keep it simple.
2. Focus on one skill
Pick one skill to work on for each workout. This will make it easier to improve specific parts of your stroke during your workouts and reinforce those skills.
3. Track your progress
Swim and retest the same set (like the Baseline Test Set) to see where you’ve improved—we recommend every 1-2 months, depending on how often you swim. A few things to pay attention to are your time, strokes per length, and comfort level in the water. Are you faster than last time? Are you taking fewer strokes? Are you feeling more comfortable and effortless while you swim?
This is where the FORM Smart Swim Goggles can help you see your progress over time. Swim stats like time, pace, stroke rate, and more are tracked by the goggles and sent to the FORM Swim App. You can easily analyze your workouts and measure yourself over time.
Consistency Tips From FORM Pro Athletes
No matter what skill level you’re at or where you are in your swim journey, staying consistent can be tough. But, like most things, once you find your groove it gets easier to make a routine and keep going! Read below to hear how three of our FORM Pro Athletes stay consistent with their swimming.
When I was working full time, sometimes the hardest part of getting to the pool was getting there! To stay consistent and keep a swimming routine, my top three tips are:
1. Find a swim buddy to help you stay accountable
2. Communicate with your co-workers to let them know you’re taking a swim break for your physical and mental health
3. Pick an event to train for—it gives you a reason to keep coming back
Then pick some times and jump in!
To stay consistent, it’s important to be mindful of how I am feeling and prioritizing recovery when that’s needed. Getting into the water regularly is more important than an occasional hero session!
My number one consistency tip is to get to the pool first thing in the morning if you can. It’s the best way to make sure swimming happens! As the day goes on, we get busy and things pop up, which makes it easy to say we can’t go to the pool. It’s super satisfying to check the swim off first thing before anything else gets in the way.
This Week’s Workout
This is it, your last official workout of FORM Fundamentals. It should look familiar because you swam through it at the beginning. You’ll do a retest, compare your 50m freestyle times, and celebrate how much you’ve progressed. Don’t forget to swim as fast as you can for all four 50m fast efforts and remember your times. You’ve got this!
Check out the test set below, jump in, and swim!
Baseline Test Set (Total: 800m)
Before you begin your FORM Fundamentals journey, swim this test set to know where you’re starting from. After completing the weekly FORM Fundamentals workouts, revisit and swim this test set to see how you’ve progressed.
Warmup Set
2 x 50m freestyle easy on 15s rest
30s rest
Pre Set
2 x 50m freestyle moderate on 20s rest
Rest for 30s
1 x 50m freestyle easy
Rest for 30s
1 x 50m freestyle strong on 20s rest
Rest for 30s
1 x 50m freestyle easy
Rest for 30s
1 x 50m freestyle fast
60s rest
Main Set
4 x 50m freestyle fast on 45s rest
45s rest
Warm Down Set
4 x 50m choice easy on 20s rest (choose any stroke)
FORM swimmers with a membership can upload this workout to their goggles from the FORM Fundamentals collection in the FORM Swim App. You can print out the workout if you don’t have a FORM membership or goggles. For a detailed breakdown of different efforts, read our article on understanding FORM’s Effort Levels.
We hope you enjoyed swimming through FORM Fundamentals with us! Remember, swimming is a technical sport that takes patience and repetition. Consistency is key when you want to keep improving in the pool. Make sure you come back to these fundamentals to help you stay consistent and continue to build a strong swimming foundation.
