Disclaimer: I don’t have any affiliation with any of the brands mentioned in this post, and get no money from them.
I have never been fond of sports. I don’t like running (I’ll only run if I’m chased), and I don’t really enjoy team sports or competing against other people. I have tried to go to the gym at a few different times, even managed to go regularly for a year, but I never really liked it either. And after not seeing any tangible results, I just stopped. The only sports I really enjoy are individual and in nature, like skiing, surfing or kayaking, but I only get to do them a few times a year.
Ok, this is the real reason...
Something I did do regularly when I was a child / teenager was swimming. I was a member of the local swimming club, and I swam quite a lot. It was not really my passion, but my parents had one rule: you have to do at least one sport regularly - the choice of sport is yours. Swimming was the one I disliked the least that was accessible. But after starting university, I stopped swimming regularly. There was just no time. Since then, I have not done any kind of regular sport.
Until now, this has been OK. My metabolism is good, I don’t have any health issues, and I’m not overweight. But with age, comes the aches! After many years hunched in front of a computer, I have started developing back and neck issues. The time had finally come to change something and move my lazy ass, before I ended up with herniated disks and chronic pain.
It’s well known that swimming is one of the best sports for the back and neck. I also like that you don’t sweat (the only sport where you end up cleaner than you started!), and that it’s whole-body and low-impact, so there’s a low chance of injury (with the right technique - take care of that rotator cuff!). So I decided to give it another try, after so many years.
The stupid reason that made swimming a habit
You would think that pain relief would be enough of a motivator, but what really got me back to swimming was… gadgets!
While checking for swimming goggles, I saw that now there are models with heads-up displays and on-board computers that count your laps, time, distance and more, like Form, Finis or Holoswim.
I definitely wanted to try this. Cyberpunk swimming! But I was undecided on which ones to buy - they are not cheap after all. Luckily, Holoswim was having a promotional challenge: swim 1km per week for 6 weeks after buying the goggles, and get your money back.
I'm going to WIN WIN WIN WIN these!
It was this challenge that pushed me to swim regularly. By the time the 6 weeks were over, I had completed the challenge and got the money back, which was nice - but the nicest thing was that now, I was actually looking forward to swimming! It had become a habit.
There was still something missing though. The main problem I have with swimming is that it’s monotonous and shall we say… boring? Doing lap after lap, looking at the bottom of the pool, is not exactly thrilling.
Audiobooks to the rescue
The solution for this, in my case, was audiobooks. Now I could do two things at the same time: exercising and learning! Sometimes I even extend the swimming session just because the book is at a very interesting part, and I don’t want to stop listening :).
After researching waterproof headphones, I found that there are models that are specifically designed for swimming.
I tried a few, first these ones that attach to the goggle strap - but found them a bit of a hassle to set up every time I went swimming, with the mess of cables getting tangled up.
Not the easiest thing to set up
I then tried bone conduction, which seemed promising, but in the end the volume and audio quality were just not good enough for understanding audiobooks while swimming, even when using earplugs. I think for music they would be OK, although they were also not that comfortable when under a swimming cap.
Wish I was as happy as her
I finally found the model that worked best for me - the Tayogo W16, in-ear, but with no attachment to the goggles, and short cables.
I found these the most comfortable: you can put them hanging from your neck, and surprisingly they don’t slide out when swimming. And most importantly, the audio quality and volume are great both above and below water - plus being in-ear, they double up as earplugs (surfer’s/swimmer’s ear is no joke)
Finally! Easy to set up and comfy.
Something annoying of the W16 is that you can’t easily choose what to play, as there is no display. You can only skip tracks or play randomly. So if you just drop a big MP3 file on it with the whole audiobook, and by mistake press the next or previous button, it will switch to another file, then when you go back to the one you wanted, it will start again from the beginning! This is terrible if you are already an hour into the book. You can do fast-forward, but it’s very slow and hard to know when to stop.
The solution is to split the audiobook into multiple smaller files, so if you accidentally press the buttons, you can go back to the right file and only have to re-listen to the last 5 minutes.
I do this so often that in the end I made an utility for it - just drop an audio file, choose the chunk length, and it will be split and saved as MP3 files with the right numbering for the W16.
https://github.com/tomups/audiosplitter
It will also normalize the audio, so the volume will be maximized. This helps a lot with quieter audiobooks - you really want all the volume you can get when underwater.
For getting audiobooks into MP3 format, I highly recommend Libation - it can convert your Audible audiobooks into DRM-free audio files.
Just keep swimming
My inspector gadget swimming gear
I’m really happy I started swimming again. I could not turn my neck to the left more than 45 degrees without pain. After 6 months of swimming 3 times a week for 45 minutes, I now have full mobility with no pain. My lower back pain is also mostly gone, as well as shoulder pain. I also feel stronger, and have even lost some weight.
And now that summer is here, I started doing open-water swimming in the sea and lakes too - I like it much more than in the indoor pool. Even joined some open water swimming events!
Me after finishing the Vlissingse Zeezwemrace
Swimming next to those big ships was scary.
I hope to keep swimming until I can’t. Luckily it’s a sport that you can generally do well into old age, unlike running. There is a guy at my local swimming pool that is over 80 years old, and I see him very often. Goals!
UPDATE - more gadgets and longer-term experience
Because of open water swimming, I have also recently gotten a Garmin sports watch, a Forerunner 255. It’s quite good at tracking swimming distance with the GPS, something the goggles don’t do (they only tell distance when in a pool, by counting laps). The heart rate monitor is also OK, although not super exact when in the water.
The Holoswim goggles were supposed to connect to it via Bluetooth so you could see the distance while swimming without looking at the watch, but unfortunately it doesn’t work reliably - I only managed to connect them once, and shortly after the connection broke and I could not make it work again. Their support service said they are aware of the issue, so hopefully this will be fixed in the future. Other than that, I’m quite happy with them. I especially like that they don’t need any kind of subscription unlike the Form goggles.
About the Tayogo W16 headphones, after 3 months using them 3 times a week, they were unfortunately starting to have some issues. At times it would say “No files detected” when turning it on, even if the files had not changed since the last time it worked. I had to turn it off and on a few times until it finally detected the files. It also sometimes went to the very first track instead of going to the next one when pressing the “next” button, which is very irritating when in the middle of an audiobook. I contacted support and they recommended updating the firmware, which luckily resolved the issues! It also got rid of the annoying “NEXT” and “PREVIOUS” voice cues that would play whenever you skipped a track, slowing down track selection. Much better now!
The firmware and update software for the W16 is not available on the website, they only send it via email on request, so I have made it available here just in case, as I really recommend everyone to update as soon as possible.