Swimming: Assessing skills and setting goals

From its inception, the Man of Merit blog has focused on my fulfilling the requirements of the hiking merit badge, since hiking has been my exercise of choice for the past year of my fit life journey. I have decided, though, that since I am still working toward completing the capstone of the hiking merit badge - completing a 20-mile hike in one day - I should up the ante on my fitness pursuits by taking on another goal. As such, starting today, I will begin working toward the swimming merit badge as well.

How could I not go for the swimming merit badge with access to this?

As many of you know, I am an adult who, upon turning 40 last year, took up the goal of spending the next 10 years trying to accomplish my dream of completing the requirements for the Boy Scouts Eagle Scouts rank. I dropped out of scouts when I was younger because I had low self-esteem and felt I couldn't keep up with the other boys. Now that I have the confidence, I may not officially be able to earn the Eagle Scout rank but I'm sure as hell going to benefit from the experience I missed out on all those years ago.

Achieving the Boy Scouts of America Eagle Scout rank requires that scouts earn a total of 21 merit badges. Ten of these are considered core requirements, and among the 10, only nine are mandated. For one, scouts are given a choice among three options - hiking, swimming and cycling. So I will probably plan on taking up the cycling merit badge once I have lost a bit more weight, too.

While I have wanted to add swimming to my fitness routine for a while, it just wasn't convenient. But I recently moved to the sunny and hot desert region of the Coachella Valley in Southern California, and the community where I live in has a pool that's perfect for taking on this new challenge. So here I go!

My friend Dan will help me with the requirements of this merit badge that require two people. He recently gave me a swimming lesson that helped me improve my breathing while doing the crawl stroke, and he said he'd be glad to help me further my swimming goals.

The requirements of the swimming merit badge can be found on the Boy Scouts of America web site. I already know I can do many of the requirements and will get with Dan soon to check these off my list. Meanwhile, I will begin with requirement five - the strokes - since these are the fundamentals that I still may need a little work on. Here is what is stated in requirement five of the BSA swimming merit badge:

Swimming: Req. 5. Swim continuously for 150 yards using the following strokes in good form and in a strong manner: front crawl or trudgen for 25 yards, back crawl for 25 yards, sidestroke for 25 yards, breaststroke for 25 yards, and elementary backstroke for 50 yards.

For the past week I have been swimming a little over 150 yards each day of both the front crawl as well as the breaststroke, so I'm good with these. The elementary backstroke and sidestroke I know are easy for me, so this will not be a problem. But the back crawl might pose some difficulty for me, so I think I'll head out to the pool in a little bit to practice this.

Based on the size of the pool I have access to - which is approximately 50-feet long in the center lane - I will plan on doing the following to complete this requirement by swimming the following continuous progression:

1. Front crawl - two lengths
2. Back crawl - two lengths
3. Sidestroke - two lengths
4. Breaststroke - two lengths
5. Elementary backstroke - three lengths

For the first four of these strokes I will actually be swimming 33 yards instead of 25 because of the length of the pool. This is good, I figure, since I am older than the typical scout who would be doing this and possibly in greater need of the extended aerobic exercise! Plus, some of the other requirements of the swimming merit badge include lifesaving and survival skills, for which I will need to be in better shape than I currently am in.

As always, I appreciate all my followers for reading, commenting and sharing my blog with others. This blog is my way of tracking my progress and creating accountability for myself as I pursue my goals. You're a big part of that! Thanks!