Please ignore my terrible form — I am a really bad swimmer. I can keep myself alive, but that’s about it.
I was super-hesitant about our getting a pool because it’s very expensive right now, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to effectively swim for exercise.
Here’s a quick 6 sec video to demonstrate use of a swim belt to hold you stationary; I’m in a 15′ by 48″ pool. A smaller pool would be fine, I think — 12′ would work, but I wouldn’t go shallower than 42″. Ours isn’t filled up all the way it could be, but about to where is recommended, and this is JUST BARELY deep enough that you could maybe do a crawl if you were careful. But if you’re doing breaststroke or butterfly or swimming on your back (as in next video), I think you’d be okay in 42″ too, if you filled the pool up more, and didn’t mind possibly splashing out and needing to top up a bit more often.
And yes, I felt sort of goofy buying the swim belt, and goofy wearing the swim belt, esp. with my bungee cord extensions to make the strap reach the porch, but hey, it works and lets me swim for exercise in my backyard which I have been craving like you wouldn’t believe, I can’t even tell you how much I’ve been wanting to do this. So I can handle a little goofy.