Don’t Have To Master Competition To Swim

Masters swimming clubs, known for their meets for adults of all ages, are beginning to reach out to swimmers with a less competitive goal: fitness.

“We have a whole slew of fitness swimmers who don’t want to work out with anybody. They basically want to get in and just feel good. They want to relax and de-stress, and that’s as legitimate a reason to join masters as somebody who wants to be with a team,” said Betsy Owen, a longtime masters swimmer and chairman of the U.S. Masters Swimming Fitness Committee.

Owen, 43, was never active in sports until after she had her first baby in 1981. The psychiatric social worker started swimming to lose weight and discovered the exercise also helped her right leg, injured three years earlier in a car accident.

“I was so heavy. I just wanted to die,” she recalled. “My husband encouraged me to swim. He had always been athletic, and he just knew that I’d feel better if I did.”

Now, she loves swimming.

“When I don’t swim, I get ornery,” Owen said.

Owen joined an Albany masters program in 1982 and has been competing off and on ever since.

“In the beginning, I was a really intense competitor. Now, I really just use competition as a means to keep me goal-oriented and motivated and to give me a reason to go back and forth all those laps.”

A USMS survey showed 85 per cent of masters swimmers define themselves as fitness swimmers, even though some also compete, Owen said. The organization defines fitness swimmers three ways:

Swimmers with introductory skill levels;

Highly skilled swimmers who choose not to compete;

Swimmers who sometimes compete but whose goal is fitness and health, not competition.

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