Swimming

I probably meant to write this a while back, but got a little distracted. Basically, I'm learning to swim. Despite at least 4 years of swimming lessons in national school, I never even learned how to float...all I ever remember doing at those lessons was going over and back across the pool with a float!

So, around about Sept last year, I decided that enough was enough and that I was going to learn how to swim. I signed up for 13 weeks of beginners classes in Reading and attended diligently. I was even moved up to the improvers class after about 3 weeks (that just meant that I wasn't afraid of putting my head in the water!). So, that was going fine and dandy until I got a job in Cambridge...had to give up the lessons and move. At this stage I'd gotten to going about 4 x 3 strokes before almost choking (each breath worse than the previous).

So when I moved up to Cambridge, checked out the story with lessons in the local pool. They seem to do things different here, you basically pay for classes monthly by direct debit, and it looked like it was a lot more expensive than in Reading. So I decided to try to learn myself.

I'd heard from a few different places about a system called Total Immersion, which to boil it down to its simpliest, is basically 12 progressive drills to practice repeatedly. By drill 12, you should be "swimming like a fish". All well and good. Ordered the book from Amazon and decided to give it a go.

First drill is basically floating on your back, with gentle kicking. This was a skill I'd never mastered before, and after a few days of struggling, it just came and I was up and down the pool on my back.

Anyhow, to cut a long story short, progress went well and I'm currently on drills 8-9. I've probably hit a little bit of a hurdle, probably more from the boredom of repeating the drills or from skipping through some of the drills too fast and not becoming proficient enough. I'm thinking of getting a one2one lesson with a Total Immersion tutor to hopefully kick start the process again or alternatively just going back to normal swimming lessons. I like the Total Immersion system, so at the moment, I'd say I'll try to stick with that. Trouble is, there are no tutors nearby, but for the sake of one or two lessons, I'd probably be willing to go out of my way for some guidance.