swimming lessons

If you read the blog about the Tadpole round and my somewhat abortive attempt to swim the length of Coniston, you might be aware that swimming has begun to take a bit of a place in my training. This is partially because Lynne has got into Open Water Swimming and I figured that it should be something I should be better at.

I bought a wetsuit and started thrashing around, could just about keep up with some friends who were swimming in the same place as us, and off I went. It is pretty obvious from videos of us swimming that my stroke is woefully inefficient and I'm expending massive amounts of energy to go at the same speed (or slower) than my friends. Not too much of a problem when we're just messing around in local water, but when it comes to- for example- swimming the length of Coniston, there is a big difference.

Having failed to get to the end of Coniston water, and being a lot slower than everyone else despite working twice as hard, I figured it was about time to get some lessons. I was taught to swim as a child, but it didn't really focus on Crawl at all. I could just about do it and not drown, but everything we looked at was Side-stroke- the favourite stroke for lifesaving in the British lifesaving syllabus.

My freestyle stroke was built on what I could remember from being taught about 3 decades ago. It was probably suboptimal to say the least. In the car on the way back from Coniston I sent an email to a swim coach I had been recommended by a friend. Dave Quartermain.

The lesson was in Nuffield health centre in the middle of Manchester and the general premise of the lesson was that I was going to swim a few lengths, I'd get videoed for 2 of them and then Dave was going to critically analyze my stroke.
Otherwise known as "take it apart bit by bit until there is nothing left".

That is pretty much what happened. Too many strokes per length, scrappy hand entry, total lack of anything resembling a catch, no follow through, no body roll, elbows dropping in the water, head position wrong... you name it, I was probably doing it wrong. At least I was in the water... that much was correct.

To be honest, this was what I was hoping for. A list of everything I was doing wrong, video evidence to show exactly what Dave was seeing, and a list of drills and ideas that I could go away and practice to start making things a bit more right.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not expecting to become a world class swimmer in a couple of weeks, nor am I expecting this to be easy, but I needed a focussed, specific session to work on what was going wrong and why I was so ridiculously inefficient in the water.
Dave Delivered.

As it is, I now have a monthly pass at the local pool and am going and just drilling. Had I just gone and got a pass and hammered my way up and down the pool for a few months, not a lot would have changed- seeing Dave was pretty much the best thing I could have done to become more efficient. I hope that I'm doing the stuff he told me to do... I'm far more efficient a swimmer than I ever have been, so something must be going right. Drills will continue for the next month or so and then we'll have another session to see just how much I'm actually getting wrong.

Having thought that swimming was boring (to be honest, I still kind of think it is)- at least I now have the added interest of trying to be more efficient. The amount of things to think about on each stroke is quite incredible... with time it should become more effective and more natural- but right now, I'm wavering between being consciously incompetent and consciously (nearly) competent. It's an interesting challenge.