Swimming Update

Well, made my way up to Loughborough on Saturday for my first session at Swimshack. Met Ian, my instructor\teacher, who gave a brief introduction into how things normally proceed, the setup, etc.

The setup he's got going there is pure class. Its a pretty big pool (I'd say massive, a lot bigger than I was expecting), loads of mirrors all over the place so you can see your stroke from different angles (thats if you're a good swimmer and have time to notice these things). There seems to be at least four different camera's on you at different angles at all times, with a projector in the corner, but more about that later.

So to start off with, I explained to Ian that I normally wear a nose clip while swimming as I tend to drink water through my nose. He wasn't too impressed by this and said that hopefully I wouldn't need the nose clip by the next session.

Next, he got me to try to swim. Now, I am pretty weak in a normal pool, but I couldn't seem to get the hang of this endless pool at all. Still, after thrashing around like a lunatic for a while, Ian had seen enough, he brought me down to look at the projector.

What I saw was NOT a pretty site...what I was doing didn't really resemble swimming in any way shape or form. I actually felt embarrassed. Fair play to Ian, he pretty much pointed out what I was doing wrong and was pretty re-assuring that it could all be rectified. My two main problems at the moment are breathing (pretty damn important!) and balance.

So basically the rest of the lesson focused on the first, with Ian going through the theory and introducing me to some practical drills. We also done some kicking drills and then merged the two to finally practice a drill that involved underwater breathing and kicking at the same time...doing two things at one is a killer. At that point, the lesson was stopped, for me to go and practice this stuff in my own time.

I'm pretty hopeful that this can work out. I practiced the drills tonight in the pool and seemed to be getting on better than I was on Saturday (doesn't mean that I'm doing them right though). Hopefully over the coming days, I can get the breathing to be like second nature, not needing to stop if I accidentally take some water on board. We'll see how it goes.