Linnea's commitment is driven by hunger, friendship and love of swimming
Most of you recognises her as one Power Woman’s most frequently photographed athletes. Our photos of the Swedish swimmer Linnea Lindberg often attract a lot of attention. "Finally a female swimmer showing swimwear!" - is a comment we often get on ads with Linnea, which makes us so happy. But Linnea is not just a swimmer, so this is our attempt to give you a chance to get to know Linnea the person a little better.
Linnea swims for the Swedish swimming club Neptun
Linnea is 25 years old and swims for the Stockholm club Neptun. Her main swimming event is breaststroke, with a preference for the short distances. She’s born and raised in Stockholm, but her dual citizenship has meant that she spent a large part of her childhood in Australia as her mother comes from Melbourne (Linnea's father comes from Alingsås ☺).
Swimming has been with her all her life, but Linnea started to focus on swimming during junior high school. In 2015, she moved to the United States to study and swim at Washington State University, a division 1 school in the tough Pac-12 Conference. In 2019, Linnea took a degree in psychology and moved home to Stockholm, where she now lives with her boyfriend.
Swimming is a big part of Linnea's everyday life. In addition to her own full-time training, she works as the operations manager for the beginners classes at club Neptun, and as a swimming coach. She also works for the Swedish Swimming Association and as a freelance photographer when the opportunity arises.
The club is an important support for Linnea as it is a balancing act to get the schedule for training and work to go together and also to have a social life. However, Linnea has gained experience of this balancing act during her 4 years in the USA where 20 hours of training/week would work with full-time studies.
Practicing a sport at a high level and making everyday life come together is a challenge, but everything goes with good planning and structure.
"The challenge of getting everyday life together may be difficult, but the big challenge is to keep the body and soul healthy," says Linnea. "It is stressful to train and work at the same time, but it is a process and in the end you find routines that work. Both for physical and mental health.
"It is important to find a routine that works for each individual. The routine and training plan that works best for me may not be what works best for someone else. Everyone's situation and conditions are different and, moreover, everyday life changes. The training plan I ran a year ago may not suit as well now, and there is a difference between how it looks for an 18-year-old and for a 25-year-old," continues Linnea.
The SC bronze medal in breaststroke came after a tough period
One of the achievements Linnea is most proud of is the first individual SM medal in 2019. Linnea had then just returned home from the USA after a really tough final year in the USA where she struggled with both training and studies to the point that she was ready to ignore everything and travel home to Sweden. She came to the competition after a fun and successful training camp in Turkey.
"Coming back after graduation and being able to swim home the SC bronze medal made it feel like I got my "payment" for all the hard work and that I didn't actually go home in the middle of all the tough stuff", says Linnea
Linnea also expresses pride and gratitude for continuing to practice the sport she loves. She
has seen many teammates quit over the past few years so she takes pride in continuing to develop in her swimming. Her driving forces are, among other things, the hunger to develop in swimming, as a person and in life. Another driving force is the joy of swimming. Thinking it's fun is what keeps her going. Swimming requires an enormous number of training hours and a lot of things like diet, rehab, strength training must be taken care of properly. You have to choose some and prioritize, but the joy makes it worth it. The last driving force Linnea mentions is the people around her. The teammates in Sweden and in the USA, opponents who push her but are also her friends, coaches with whom you build great relationships and all the wonderful people who work with Power Woman! I have encountered and am surrounded by such incredibly nice people. People I might never have met if it weren't for the sport.
The photos of Linnea often get positive comments so we asked Linnea for her own thoughts on how female athletes are portrayed.
"I think it's important to have a variety of different bodies, ages and looks on SoMe. When it comes to swimsuits, it feels more authentic if it's a real swimmer who's modeling, for example," says Linnea.
I think it's important to promote healthy and diverse bodies on social media. I'm glad I get to be a part of Power Woman who really has a healthy variety in the models they work with.”
And finally, we of course want to know which qualities Linnea thinks distinguish a Power Woman.
A Power Woman is strong, determined, positive and humble. A Power Woman is not afraid to choose her own path.
Linnea Lindberg