Category Archives: Swimming

I know that I have vowed to be better about my spending this month, but Travis and I found a deal we couldn’t pass up.  We live across the street from a Sam’s Club with a gas station, and when I saw the Living Social deal flash through my email, I was more than intrigued.  The deal is a year membership with a $20 gift card and $20 in food vouchers.  A membership is normally about $80.  I jumped on the deal.  If you’re interested, check this out!

I promise, that’s the main purchase for me this month.  In the meantime, I’ll just browse Amazon and pretend to shop.  Add things to my wishlist, maybe haha.

I did stumble upon a product the other day that made me reminiscent of my hardcore swimming days.  I sent it to some of my former high school teammates to remind them of some of the crazy products we used to help us swim more efficiently.  Definitely brought back some awesome and some terrible memories haha.

Since many of you are non-swimmers, you may not have any idea.  But just check out some of these strange products I’ve used over the past 17ish years.

FINIS Hydro Hip – these fins are worn around your waist and create resistance as your body rolls from side to side. Works on building efficiency and distance per stroke (DPS as we called it!).

FINIS Tec Toc – my least favorite thing EVER.  This is also worn at your hips and would tick if you were correctly rotating your body.  Body belts constantly rode up to my chest and never stayed where they were supposed to. Also effective for stroke rhythm and pace.

FINIS Tempo Trainer – this is similar to the Tec Toc belt but it is worn on your goggles and can be programmed to the tempo in which you wish to take your strokes.  Mine was of course purple.  I actually still have it but haven’t used it in years.

FINIS Swim Parachute – this is of the few things that has legitimately brought me to tears at swimming.  I once sobbed the entire way through a set of 25s with my parachute.  You wear a parachute strapped to your hips and swim with it following behind you.  It is miserable.  I would push off of the wall and be fine until the parachute caught the water. Definitely causes resistance.  But it bothered me when I would kick the strap; I hated things touching my feet while I swam.

FINIS Swimmer’s Snorkel – this is one of the few products that I enjoyed.  Too bad they make pink ones now!! You could breath whenever you wanted to! And I was good at flip-turning with the snorkel which was nice.  Some of my teammates could NOT figure it out.  The snorkel allows you to focus on technique instead of breath while swimming. My snorkel was since thrown away because it was falling apart after about 10 years.  Look at how nasty it was:

Speedo Pulling Ankle Lock – as if I didn’t hate pulling without the locks, something about locking your ankles together made it worse.   At least with these around your ankles, it was harder for my pull buoy to fall out.  And those who were kicker cheaters while pulling couldn’t fake it.

Sneakers – yes, we used to have to swim with sneakers on.  Think running with soggy feet it bad, try swimming! Better yet, try SWIMMING WITH SNEAKERS AND A PARACHUTE. Cue the tears!

Cups of water – back in the aqua club days, we would have to swim with cups of water on our foreheads while we did backstroke to make sure that our heads were back far enough in the water.

We also would do T-shirt relays where you would have to swim with the XXL shirt, take it off, give it to your teammate, and race the others.  And we considered that fun.

Oh, the good old days! Now I’m lucky if I even get in the water.

Have you ever used a strange product to work out?

Any swimmers use any of these?