Swim Lesson

This is a few weeks later than I had hoped I’d be writing this post but the flooding in the area closed the pool where we were to have the lessons. Genine was out back of the college running a track workout with Maija right before the lesson. I was already in the pool warming up and still no sign of Genine. Hmmm. Fortunately the coach ran over a few minutes long with the student ahead of us. She got there and certainly didn’t miss out on anything.

Because it’s been months since the last lesson he starts out by just watching me swim 100. At the end of that 100 he’s got 3 things for me:
Hands are too close in front of me, not crossing over but close.
Not enough depth at the catch.
And the ever present funky kick on my left side.

Depth at the catch is an easy fix for me, that’s just a matter of me not being confident in where that catch needs to be.

Keeping the hands wide. Part of this is thinking about where to place your hands in the water when going for the catch but there is a component of the recovery stroke that was involved as well.

So I’m lying on my side on the deck, one arm out in front beneath me. The other is practicing the recovery portion of the stroke. By doing this it becomes obvious that I draw my elbow and hand too closely to my body. Once I adjust my arm travel to the correct path, it’s actually much less effort muscularly.
When I switch to my other side to get the feel for it with my left arm, we see just how bad my recovery stroke is on this side. It actually would likely cause me to over rotate. At which point I say, that would probably explain my funky kick on this side. He agreed, I was throwing my balance off so badly that I would attempt to correct my position with an exaggerated kick. Fantastic! Once I adjust this I’m going to get 2 or 3 fixes for the price of one.

Back into the water to swim a couple laps. I’m surprised to find that I’ve got a pretty good feel for the recovery stroke. Meaning I was able to feel when I was doing it properly. Hopefully I can keep that feeling around for a bit so I can work this thing out.

My final question to him is what I feel is likely the missing piece of the puzzle for me. I mention to him my overused left elbow/bicep and the fact that I don’t feel that I swim using my lats at all. We discuss how being wider at the catch will likely solve some of that but that it sounds like we need to take a closer look at what my arm does at the start of the pull. I actually think my left arm may be cheating and my right might not be so bad.
We really didn’t have time left to address this beyond deciding that one arm drills with the other arm held tight against the body is a good drill to focus on the start of the pull and I should switch every 4 or so to compare left to right.

Lastly we discussed race season, which he obviously takes very seriously because he was concerned that we are starting too late. Our homework is to time a 500m race and have those results for him next week. From that we will create goals to give our workouts a bit more direction.

I’m not sure if Genine will have time to write a post any time soon or not, so I’ll throw this little bit out there because it’s fun.
Early on in the lesson, I was finishing some of the swims well ahead of Genine. Coach looks at me and says. “She looks really strong”. I said “No doubt about that, she can out sprint me on a 25m”. He gave a surprised look, Genine gets to the wall and the lesson moves on.
Towards the end of the lesson, he says, “It’s time for a 25yd sprint, I’ve got to see you beat him”. Genine stepped up to the challenge and beat me to the wall. He tells me to shorten up my stroke and swim like a sprinter for the next one. She still beats me, improving her time over the first one. Fun stuff.

My favorite comment of the night: “if you are swimming in the proper position, it should feel like you are gliding as if you are skating”