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Swimming Lesson #53

It’s been a while since I went swimming – apart from a quick trip to our friends’ pool on Sunday with the girls, I haven’t been swimming since March. I was late leaving the office for my lesson today, so I sprang out of the car and into the pool ten minutes late, and just did a bit of freestyle.
Today we worked on smoothing things up. The main points were to concentrate on relaxing my hands more, and to think about the arms acting in concert. Up to now, I’ve been very much moving like a robot – arm sweeps back, arm sweeps forward, other arm sweeps back, sweeps forward, and so on. What I should have been doing is spear one hand into the water and stretch it forward, as I pull back with the other hand. That makes it easier to turn the body more and stay more streamlined.

Combining this with concentrating on keeping my chin down and my head straight, and having my shoulders rotate around my neck rather than turning my head with each stroke, meant I was suddenly more efficient. Everything felt easier and I was doing 6 or even 8 strokes without pausing for a breath. To finish the session, I did two lengths (40 metres) with only five seconds rest between them.

Now, the deterioration (29.5 to 47.0 seconds between the penultimate and final lengths) wasn’t great, but again, operating far in excess of where I once was. Which is nice.

I floated for a bit, and tried to remember these key things, and then I went to get a taxi home. And then I got a message from my wife to say her phone had gone missing, which led to an exciting 45 minutes of rushing around to retrieve it. Find My Device is a godsend and I’m so glad we configured it after the last phone went missing, over a year ago.

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