masters swimming in los angeles - SCAQ vs WH2O
after doing some “masters swimming”— which, I learned, means nothing more than swimming for adults— with SCAQ (Southern California Aquatics) for a while, and then checking out WH2O (the West Hollywood Aquatics swim team) last night, I thought I’d write a little note about the differences.
now, keep in mind, I wasn’t a high school or college swimmer. I’ve never really had swim lessons (except for some brief one-on-one coaching last summer) and I’ve never swum with a team before… in fact, I barely know what I’m doing ;-) which is part of why I’m writing this.
I swam with SCAQ for about a year… they have tons of events, including intensive “clinics” and lots of regular workouts… so I attended one of their workouts 3x/week for a while.
a “workout” means that everyone flops into the pool and a coach “on deck” gives you routines to complete. you go into a lane in the pool that matches your skill level (which more or less translates into how fast you can swim*)… so at the Culver City pool, for example, where I had some great SCAQ workouts, there were about 10 lanes devoted to the team. I was usually in lane 1 or 2, which are the slowest and second-slowest, respectively. (you should’ve seen some of the Phelpsian swimmers over in the far lanes! wow!) usually I’d share the lane with 3 or 4 other swimmers, and the coach would come over and tell us the workout.
WH2O is pretty much exactly the same, but I noticed four significant differences:
1. WH2O practices at the West Hollywood pool, which is quite small; everyone last night was spread across 6 lanes. as a result, there weren’t as many “distinctions” in swimming skill levels— I was in the slowest lane, as expected, but was also probably the worst swimmer in that lane… so I had to let folks pass me, I sat out a few laps (changing those 100 meter swims to 75 meter swims!), and just generally did not enjoy being the worst swimmer in the entire pool. ;-) there were also 6 of us in that slow lane, which is just a lot, no matter how fast or slow you’re doing. clearly a bigger pool would make things more comfortable for everyone. I know they’re workin’ on it.
2. at SCAQ, folks often used fins to help practice speeds and ankle flexibility (yeah, ankle flexibility is a real thing with swimming… who knew?!). at WH2O, I never saw fins, once. so I wasn’t about to strap mine on. I’m sure part of the reason for this is the crowded lanes— with six of us circling closely behind one another, there’d likely be a lot of unintended fin-in-face action.
3. WH2O assumes you can handle all the basic swim strokes. when they called for us to swim a 100 meter medley (25 butterfly, 25 backstroke, 25 breaststroke, 25 crawl), it was assumed that I knew the strokes. guess what? I don’t ;-) I’m getting some one-on-one coaching to learn them, but it made things a little difficult in the workouts since I felt like the only person in the entire pool who wasn’t doing a butterfly or a breaststroke. at SCAQ, down in the slowest lanes, we stuck to freestyle and the occasional back and breast strokes. It was never assumed you knew how to do anything besides freestyle, however.
4. finally, and this may have just been because I was already feeling crappy that I was last: I was surprised that the folks weren’t more friendly. I felt like us rank beginners in the slowest lane at the SCAQ workouts were more social (maybe because we were less sure of our skills, or the outcome of the workout?) and supportive of each other. what I mean by that is, at SCAQ, I was swimming with straight women, straight guys, and gay guys (and maybe some gay women, too, for all I know). I never felt competitive with anyone there, and I know we were extremely supportive of each other. last night at WH2O, I never heard anyone say “nice job” or “come on, you can do it, one more lap” or “wow, you really pushed yourself on that, didn’t you?” or anything. I’m not saying that’s required or that I’m all butt-hurt that everyone in my lane wasn’t best buddies on my first workout… but I did notice that difference.
(and not to over-analyze things, but I wonder if some of that is that weird gay male internalized homophobia, to say nothing of just general guys-having-testosterone-and-being-competitive-ness? it’s sort of like that moment when you walk into the gay Starbucks and everybody looks up from their lattes for 5 seconds and passes judgment. ;-) I’m only half-joking here; if you’re a gay man, I’ll bet you know exactly what I’m talking about… it gets into a whole thing about how guys won’t necessarily be friendly with each other, or show weakness, especially gay men who were punished during formative childhood and teenage years for showing feminine traits, etc., etc. um, yeah, like I said, not to over-analyze! lol.)
anyhow. in re-reading this, it sounds like I’m a little down on WH2O, and I’m definitely not. I get that it’s different than SCAQ (after all, that’s why I wrote this whole thing in the first place, to help illuminate those differences) and that’s fine. I liked seeing my pal Nate there (he’s really good!), and I think my friend Matt also swims with WH2O, so I’m hoping to see him there as well. the only changes I’d suggest to WH2O are to try to find a bigger pool, and include a simple FAQ/what-to-expect on the web site (saying things like “workouts include all four major strokes; if you don’t know them, that’s okay” or “if you don’t know them, please come back when you do”).
I think I’m going to start swimming with WH2O twice a week, so I can work on my endurance. they’re just going to have to tolerate me not doing a butterfly or breaststroke for a while. :-) and I’ll write an update to this post after a few months, too.
now if I can just figure out how to magically double the number of lanes, so I can be in the extra-extra-extra-slow lane, where I’d swim backwards and end up completely energized after an hour!
* there’s not always a one-to-one correlation between speed and swimming ability. compared with others around my skill level, I’m fast but I have terrible endurance, so I tend to start strong but exhaust myself quickly.
