I did triathlons back in the mid-80’s — before I really learned how to swim. Doh!
I’ve written about how to swim before. There’s an essay up here at OYB somewhere. It’s gotten quite a few hits over the years.
But every summer I re-learn the special secret inside tips on how to swim really good.
Maybe I can pass them on to you.
First, use a mask and snorkel. Then, swim in shallow water so you can see the bottom and your progress.
Then swim along and see when you go fast or slow or when it’s easy or hard. The mask and snorkel really lets me relax and see what’s working. I usually look kinda down but also enjoy looking ahead and watching the bubbles off my arms and hands as they knife in and forward.
I also like using just my legs briefly now and then — then I check to see what kind of leg action actually works. It turns out that just a gentle scissor-kicking is best.
It’s neat how much glide you get when breast-stroking. But it’s sad how I stop/stall between strokes. Oh well.
What I’ve enjoyed feeling my way into with my Crawl is with the body-rocking and the extension and the timing of things.
Here’s what I do… I reach out quite a ways and try to swing and lean my shoulder into the water so it doesn’t splash. If I rotate my shoulder in a couple inches and kind of rock my torso sideways a bit then it doesn’t splash. Then I make my catch.
I get most of my pure glide as I extend my shoulder and reach a bit farther than usual, because as I’m doing that my other hand is down near my leg finishing its push.
I weave my hand thru the water in a way that seems to grab it nicely. I don’t know the science here but I just do an “S.”
I notice that it works best if I keep my hand close to my chest coming down. Then along my leg and finishing up at the thigh.
It helps me to keep my hands close to me if I do some swimming in really shallow water now and then — I try to keep good glide going without hitting the bottom.
My main goal is to stroke so that I feel water going past my thigh off of my hand as it finishes. I gotta feel the flow.
I notice with the breast-stroke that it’s fastest if I finish with an inward-moving hand-motion, so that both hands are moving towards each other to the sides of my legs as they finish. I start out sweeping wide to the side, then push back, then inward, then straight down/back, making an upside down vase shape. I can tell that gives me lots more glide as I look down and see myself moving over the sand.
Last year my brother Tim told me about adding a butterfly kick to the end of his breast-stroke for extra power. I couldn’t do it. Yesterday while swimming with mask and snorkel I finally got it! I don’t really know what changed, but I did notice that I started my frog-kick early as I was sweeping my hands outward. As my hands curved in to push straight back I found that I had plenty of extra time to toss in the butterfly kick — and got some added push from it! There’s a nifty hump of water going by at that moment that my butterfly could hump over and get some purchase on. Cool!
A fun thing in the crawl is that I rock my hips in a timing where my hand finishes as my hip rocks upward, letting me lift the hand easily out of the water. I finish with my hand near the surface, in other words. Also, my leg is moving upward at that moment — so my hand-finish and leg-kick are timed together. That feels good. As icing on the cake, since my hand is finishing high, near the surface, I feel like I have a nice dry, bent elbow rising clear from the water, without drag.
The relational action of my 2 hands in the crawl feels fun, too. It’s such that I feel like I’m making vertical spans, like I’m reaching up and down a measuring tape. I’m reaching high and pushing low at the same time. It’s a great feel!
Another good thing about using a snorkel is that I can relax into a good, sustainable breathing level. If I’m working too hard I can hear it right away.
When I swim easy but nicely then the sand flows away below me at a nice pace. If I go harder the sand doesn’t speed up very much — it’s not worth it. If I kick hard in either frog or scissor, it doesn’t help much — so I just keep it easy and it works.
Great stuff!
Here’s a nifty grand finale. I’ve been hanging out with some folks up here who do a lot of biking and swimming. This summer it’s been more swimming. It’s Mediterranean blue water around here, folks, after all. White sand. (Pretty much — light tan works for me.) So after a bike ride we chatted a bit at a beach. They all put up umbrellas like they’d done it before. Then they got into the water and swam away. Like out of sight. When they swim, they go for a tour. It was really something. I had to get back to the fair. Now that’s some water fun!
