Put in a km on the graveyard shift last night - 10-11pm. I had hastily cobbled together some bullet point tips from the internet, printed them and put them in a plastic wallet to leave poolside:
- Water level between eyebrows and hairline (that's theoretical hairline for me - my actual hairline is somewhere at the back of my head)
- Look forward and downward
- Shoulder out of water as arm exits
- Hips rotate slightly, under surface
- Body roll – on a skewer, 45 degrees
- 3 kicks per arm
- Kick from hips
- Arm entry between centreline of head and shoulderline
- Thumb enters first
- Elbow exits first
- Hand sweep underwater back in towards centreline
- Breathe with body roll, don’t lift the head – Popeye
- Continuous exhalation
- Bilateral breathing
- Count strokes – efficiency
I didn't have time (or memory) to put all of these into practice, but "thumb entry first" seemed to make a difference. I also realised that as I was always running out of breath, maybe I should try breathing more often. So I cut down from breathing on three strokes to two, but with an extra stroke every ten or so to keep me changing side.
I also tried counting strokes towards the end, and found I was pretty consistently putting in 26 for the 25 m - with a bit of a glide as well. A guy in the next (better) lane looked pretty smooth, and he was putting in around 20 off a bigger glide, which was encouraging. It strikes me that this is a very good measurement of efficiency, and
this article (googled just now) agrees. And it looks like I've got a long way to go: "at 6-foot-plus, taking 21 strokes under any circumstances is no different than wildly spinning your pedals in a low gear while cycling down a hill".
What I talk about when I talk about swimming
