I'm having to trawl the net for these "swimages".
Another swim today. Not so Zen at all. I've been bothering my brain with reading a book on swimming, one of the Total Immersion series on front crawl. (Yeah, yeah, freestyle, whatever...). I've been told it many times. Swimming is all about technique. But when you start to try and work on your technique the whole thing comes apart.
The main Total Immersion thing is that you need to swim long in the water, and in balance...and you need to swim with your top half down in the water so your legs come up, and you need to sway from side to side so you come up for air without turning your head...and you need to swim from your hips, not your shoulders.
So pretty soon I was just flopping about exhausted in the water with Mr Speedy trying to swim right up my arse, just to make a point I think. And the book does say there's not much point in trying to change your style because we do what we do from muscle memory rather than because its what our brain is telling us to do. So what you have to do is deconstruct your swimming and just do heaps of drills and then put the whole thing back together. I believe this is true because that's how you learn to play the piano. However, I don't have a pool to myself to practice endlessly in and last time I looked Total Immersion swim weekends were c. £800 so that won't be happening.
But in the meantime I have a DVD winging its way from America which is going to SHOW me how I should be swimming. When enthusiasm has you in its grip you shouldn't be allowed access to Amazon. So maybe that'll help. Who knows.
2 comments:
That's intriguing.
Last year before my Shoulder injury (which I am STILL getting physio for) I was trying to find a swim teacher as I am worse than useless in the pool.
A couple of hopeless teachers later I discovered the T.I. site.
If you go on the Total Immersion UK site there is a seldom used forum and I found a really helpful chap who loves TI and swims it really well. He spent an hour with me and I really learnt alot. Of course a week later I fell on my shoulder and havn't been in the pool since but have a look on there.
His name is Rob and he works at the Zoo, dressed as a Panda or something.
He would be delighted to show you a few moves me dear. He loves to help folk swim like wot the fishes do.
There is a youtube clip of him swimming with the penguins at the zoo, err on youtube.
Cheers Fraser
ps have a look at my new running club blog if you would be so kind and I hope to bump into you dashing about somewhere soon.
Thanks Fraser. I will check out the T.I. website, Rob the Panda and your new running club blog. I'm a bit worried I'm spoiling the whole thing for myself with the swimming as I was fairly happy just imagining that I was doing okay. What I really want is to swim better outside though and proper freestyle seems like the way forwards. See you out there!
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