Swimming Lesson #8


Today, breaststroke again. I think this is a vote of confidence in my freestyle, or an admission that while it’s scrappy, there’s more benefit to be had from.improving other strokes right now.

Today we started with kicking, which I got immediately, and then it turned out that was lucky coincidence and we spent half an hour trying to restore my beginner’s luck.

The thing that I’m really struggling with is that you kick back with your heels in a big circle, then pull both your feet back in as you glide forward, and then kick again. So it’s a stomp rather than a flick, and I’d keep forgetting and try to point my toes, and if you do that you don’t go forward at all, and then sometimes I’d stamp rather than point, and inexplicably I would make forward progress.

This is not to completely describe the multitude of incompetencies I displayed. There was the time I started off without breathing out, and slowly but surely descended to the bottom of the pool. I suppose that’s a good demonstration of bouyancy.

I didn’t drink much of the pool, but I also really didn’t get the hang of breathing. With freestyle I feel I’ve got more than half a chance of getting more air than water into my lungs when I need to. With breaststroke I forget to exhale underwater, and it’s only when the horrible sounds of things creaking in my sinuses distract me do I realise I need to come to the surface.

It’s not exactly amphibian grace with which I move, I’m trying to say.

However, once I tried putting the breaststroke and the kick together, we made some forward movement. If I could just get from one end of the pool to the other without needing to breathe in, this could actually be a calmer and easier thing than freestyle. Until then, there’s going to be quite a bit more gasping and spluttering.

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