My adventures in swimming

I've decided that this will be the year of improving my swimming so that I can phase out high impact activities like running, and instead do biking, swimming or boot-camp style circuit workouts. To that end, I've been taking private 1/1 lessons every week for the past month. I went in knowing backstroke and breaststroke, and wanting to learn freestyle. I've been swimming twice a week - one lesson, one practice swim.

Class 1: We worked on my freestyle kick, which was propelling me backward in the water. We corrected my feet (weren't flexed) and the origin of the kick (was starting at knees instead of hips). With all that done, I managed to stay in one place instead of going backwards.

We also worked on my backstroke, where Cooper (my instructor) asked me to make my kick smaller and push down with my hands at the end of their stroke.

In my practice swim that week, I felt I got the backstroke changes he wanted me to make. Freestyle - I was stuck without motion unless I wore fins.

Class 2: We did a quick review of my backstroke and the new thing to change this week was to keep my arms really close to my head when they were going back into the water. We also learned that if I keep my arms streamlined and try to move only with my legs, my face goes under water. :)

For freestyle, we alternated drills on each side (sidestroke in preparation for breathing) and worked on doing sidestroke with my head turning in & out of the water. This was challenging in class. Everything freestyle was fins-on except for one length of kickboarding.

In my practice session, I managed to get really comfortable with putting my face in & out of the water while staying on my side. With my fins on, I was also comfortable practicing a steady stroke.

Class 3: We worked a lot more on backstroke today, keeping my pace steady, working on power in my stroke and counting strokes from the "flag line" so I don't bonk my head. The counting threw me off and my arms went haywire in the last stretch every time. I also can't keep a straight line without a visual reference, so I bonked my head on the lane dividers many a time :) However, my stroke looked good. At last!

On freestyle, we did a few more side-to-side drills and then moved to a regular swim stroke (as in, no lounging on my side). Fins on, this was effortless today. Fins off, I did a length and died! The kick is still pretty useless though.

Then we started butterfly. We did a really slow bend-unbend-bend-unbend drill designed to make me comfortable to not flailing my arms and legs. That went well. First I did it by using breast-stroke arms to breathe, and then he added in butterfly arms. He commented that my form was perfect, but I probably needed to start doing push-ups and dips to excel at butterfly :)

Class Cheating-on-instructor: I had signed up with a different swim school about a month ago, and decided to do this one class with a different instructor. I asked her to spend 10 mins on my breaststroke first. Legs were fine & just needed fine tuning. Arms needed to stroke more, and stroke more powerfully. We fixed all that and she said there was nothing more to correct. Hurrah! Then we did freestyle. She asked me to do things a little differently than Cooper (my regular instructor). I had gone into a all-hip-no-knee mode and wasn't bending them at all. We re-introduced some controlled bending while still starting with the hip. This made all the difference and I moved! She corrected my arm entry into the water and also my pace - I was gliding too long and losing momentum between arms. All that was hard to fix at once and either my arm pace or my kick pace would decay, but I felt like I could finally swim freestyle, NO fins, at least in their small 25' training pool. Now I just need to figure out if my new knee-bending technique will get Cooper's signoff.

Quick shout out to all my pushers and supporters - I wouldn't be working on my swimming without you!