While I’ve been trying to get into the pool at least once a week, I’ll admit that recently I’ve not been swimming proper sets, but rather, just putting my head down and doing laps. However this week, inspired by a recent episode of the Rich Roll podcast with Australian Olympic swimmer Micheal Klim, and to mark 29 weeks of pregnancy, I put together the below set.

As I can’t do backstroke at the moment (on account of my enormous belly) I’ve found myself structuring my sets around breaststroke and front crawl. I can still do fly, so I popped in a little bit for variety!

While it’s not the most inspired set in the world, I felt so good afterwards – having some structure definitely makes the metres pass more quickly and getting in the pool helped to shift a bout of nausea that had been plaguing me all day.

So if you want to swim like a very pregnant woman, the below is 2,000m and took me 45 minutes.

Warm up

200m freestyle

Main set

4 x 100m full stroke, kick, pull, full stroke (no rest between 100m)
30 seconds rest
200m breaststroke
30 seconds rest
100m breaststroke kick
30 seconds rest
4 x 25m fly (15 seconds rest between 25m sets)
400m as 200m freestyle pull, 200m freestyle full stroke
30 seconds rest
100m breaststroke drill (2 kicks to 1 pull)
200m breaststroke
30 seconds rest
100m freestyle kick
30 seconds rest

Swim down

200m freestyle

Total: 2,000m