August 24th, 2010 | 
Author: I have an open-ocean, 500 yard swim to complete at the end of May to become qualified to be a Surf Instructor. I have a little over a month to train for this. I am in good shape, but have never swam close to 500 yards! The only swimming I do is recreational in the pool or ocean. I am going to go to the local gym to swim laps and hopefully work my way up. Will it benefit me to stop my strength-training at the gym during this month to focus solely on swimming? I’m not sure how far I can swim right now without stopping, but I bet it might be 50 yards max. I’ll need to get my endurance up asap. Any tips or advice on how to make this possible would be greatly appreciated! Thank you so much.
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Trust me, its not that much. The 500 is an appraised event for swimmers. What you have to focus on is improving your stamina, and ability to swim long distances.
Swim long, hard sets. Swim some 100s on 1:30. Do these until you can’t do them any more. Take a break and start doing 200s on 3:00. Notice I doubled the time as well as the length. This will keep you paced. Again do these until failure. Move to 300s, then 400s. Finally, when you reach 500, swim for your life because you will be tirreed.
Just to let you know, a 100 is four laps. A 500 is 20.
first of all if you ddont want a swimmer to shooot u dont say front crawl eve agn.its called freestyle not front crawl
contrary to the first answer, i would not say “swim until failure”. this will not work in your training. i would balance the weight lifting with the swimming, and not quit the lifiting all together. but just remeber- the more you swim, the better you will get. the 500 is all about pace. 200′s are a good thing to work on, and if your 500 isnt about time, i would just start with 5 of them on a solid strong pace. set how many you are going to do, and before you swim say, “im going to do 6 within a half an hour.” set goals. work your way up to the 500. and make sure you swim it multiple times before the actuall test, so you know what to expect. running can help increase your endurance, but actually swimming the event is the best way to quickly help you out in this situation. good luck!
just do what you were talkin about, get into a lap pool, and keep it going, try to break through the wall of pain which your gonna hit
I use to be a pretty decent swimmer but then I slacked off for a few years, but now I’ve gotten back into it over the last month.
When I first got into the pool to try and get back into lap swimming I was getting really tired, puffed out and desperately needing a break from just doing 50m freestyle.
I then tried swimming without stopping by doing 50m freestyle then 50m breaststoke then 50m freestyle again alternating between the two strokes. I found that breaststroke allowed me too catch my breath inbewteen freestyle. Try doin this for a few sessions then increase it to 100m freestyle alternating with 50m breaststroke. Add 50m of freestyle each session. After a few seesions will have built the endurance to swim way more yards of freestyle then you ever thought you could!
Another technique that helped me was lying to motivate myself. For example, I would tell myself that I’d only be swimming 250m but once I reached that I wouldn’t stop but instead told myself I could do a few more laps of it and before I knew it I was able to reach 500m without stopping.
I was able to swim only 50m max to an excess of 500m without the need to stop in just over a month. Endurance in swimming can build fast. 3 sessions a week is enough to do it.
By the sounds of it if you’re training to be a surf instructor and are in good shape you should easily be able to swim more than 500m without stopping within a month! I’d focus more on swimming than getting carried away with strength training in the gym. Gd luck!
500 is tough for most. you need to train at least a few times a week by only swimming.strength training is okay, but by being in an actual pool will help you more. Most pools are 25yrds so if you do 20 laps there it will get you to 500. but you don’t have to do 20 laps every time you go. work up to it. try starting with 4 laps then move on. Also when training make sure you find a good pace for yourself because when swimming long-distance that is key. Good luck!
get into the pool several times a week. You will need to do a swim practice to build up stamina. Pace yourself. Talk with the guard on duty or the swim coach if available to give you some mini sets to do based upon your ability level.
ex.
12×25′s 15 sec rest
2 laps EZ
12×25′s kick on a board 10 sec rest
2 laps EZ
4×50′s up free back backstroke 15 sec rest
2 laps EZ
plan to be in the pool for at least 45 minutes and build up to 1 hour
when you can swim steady a bit you want to do ladders
1 lap rest, 2 laps rest, 3, laps rest, 4 laps rest, and back down
kick set should be in each practice
It will be easier to get up the endurance without the strength training