Ready, action, swim!

Back with a swimming update. My technique can use some improvements as this is just the second time that I'm seeing myself in action, but I'm definitely feeling much more confident in the water. I focussed on breathing a lot and my bilateral breathing is better than before. I do end up with water in my mouth sometimes, but I no longer panic like before. Things to work on are definitely reaching forward and gliding more and relax my head in the water. I think I'm going to buy myself one of these timers so I work on decreasing the stroke count. It feels like I do a lot of strokes in that 25m pool, but I'm not that tall either... Anyhow, feeling and seeing improvements makes me happy. Below are the two videos that the friendly lifeguard took of me on 2 consecutive lengths.

Swimming technique baseline

This week was a bit hectic and I didn't get a chance to go swimming until today. The only place with a pool that I could use early in the day was one of the Goodlife gyms where I have a corporate membership, but unfortunately it has a tiny 10m pool where you get to do a hundred of laps to bank in a 1km workout. Better than nothing, especially since it was empty, all for ME, ME, ME! I could go in zig zags and circles if I wanted to, so that was on the upside. My coach gave me a few drills to work the Total Immersion technique, all with funky names like skate, under-skate, zipper-skate - well, I did a few hundreds of those, then 500m freestyle and at the end I asked my hubbs to take a video of me so that my coach can critique me. Feel free to let me know what I do wrong as well, I am here to learn. This was only the third time that I was trying this technique, so I know I need much improvement.

What I think I need to improve is the following:
-more relaxed and smaller arm movements. This is hard because I was taught to use my hands vigorously while swimming before and this is counter intuitive for my brain
-flipping my body on the side when I breathe. I think I rotate my body too much, but because of all the skating drills where you get to breathe pretty much on your back, it's not easy to find the sweet spot.
-continue working on the bilateral breathing
-more relaxed head position in the water. I know that I still lift my head up to breathe sometimes, so I need to become less stressed about not breathing long enough, efficient enough or swallowing water.

That's about it for today. I hope to be able to go and work all this in a "real" pool next time. At least 25m wouldn't be too much to ask, right? If only time permits, because the 25m pool only has the 9-10pm window open for adult swim. Quite a shame, we need more pools!

Total Immersion

Since my shoulder is feeling so much better and I have been officially discharged by my PT, I returned to the pool to work on my swimming skills. Last week was my comeback 1K and although it did feel good, it also felt tiring. So I started looking into swim workouts on YouTube and came across the Total Immersion technique which I couldn't wait to put in practice. Last night I hit the pool for another km, but this time I paid attention to the strokes more than anything and taught my body to be patient. If there is a skill that you need to perfect with this technique, that is patience.... Gliiiiiide. Now I need to also improve my breathing because I tried pretty much everything under the sun: 2 strokes/breath, 3 strokes/breath, 4 strokes/breath. I wish I could train my lungs to hold on for 4 strokes with lesser difficulty. Definitely working towards that. For now I am planning to go once or twice to the pool in a week, I love being in the water so damn much. Curious about the Total Immersion technique? Watch below:

Doesn't he make it look easy? Fact is, once you start using this technique, your workouts will start feeling a lot easier too. A week ago, without this technique, I could only swim 50m without stopping. This time I could do 200m. 400% increase in efficiency, that's something.