I've been so fired up by watching the Olympics that now I visit the pool twice a week rather than twice a month. Today I was inspired to seriously overexert myself. It was my attempt at being a better swimmer, although definitely not an Olympic swimmer by any means.
First of all, the Phelpsian inspiration for me is the turn. His amazing dolphin kick motivated me to pull my own out of the closet (back from the days where I swam butterfly so disastrously). The conclusion: the dolphin kick is stupendously fast and brings me halfway across the pool. Unfortunately, being forced to hold my breath for so long and consequently depriving my muscles of oxygen makes the rest of the lap pretty painful. I could barely swim anything longer than 100M after implementing this new turn. Still, it's pretty cool to go so far underwater (and to feel other swimmers staring at you).
This kick is so gorgeous when you see the underwater cams at races. Swimmers seriously look dolphin-like when they execute it. I don't think I've gotten the fluidity down yet (one hour of swimming probably isn't sufficient), but some turns definitely felt better than others. At the beginning, I was having trouble surfacing because my knees were too bent and my hands weren't sufficiently pointed upwards. Also, I couldn't gauge exactly when to switch to flutter kick and how to transition. Next time, I'll probably not try to go so far on my turns but I'll try to do them better, a bit more in the hips and less in the knees.
After watching numerous swimming clips on youtube (I learn so much from youtube), I realized that my breastroke was somewhat wrong. After pulling, I don't bring my hands back up in a V shape. I also don't think that my pulls are deep enough, but that's something to work on for another day. This was terribly awkward when I tried to fix it. It felt completely wrong the first few times and my thumbs wouldn't behave themselves. Seriously, they tried to detach themselves from the rest of my hand. It did get better, but I still don't think I'm doing it completely correctly. And I'll never know. I'll work on it next time some more.
Something that caught my attention was watching the back-breast turn in the 200IM duing the Olympics. I had to pause and rewind it several times because everyone seemed to be flipping (except for the guy who went old school and lost about three seconds by touching the wall and kicking off). Not only that, I couldn't tell what kind of turn it was. Since turns from backstroke to breastroke were illegal when I was younger, I first thought it was a weird back flip. After some research, I realized it was like a 360 degree sideways spin. After trying twice, I gave up. It's probably like when I tried to do a flip turn for the first time. I'll probably have to spend quite a bit of time contorting and twisting at the wall until I get it.
The stroke that I can't swim is butterfly. I have some not-so-good memories in high school of being asked to swim the 100M butterfly. I was lucky if I could still feel my arms by the beginning of the fourth lap. Lactic acid build-up became a main staple of my vocabulary. The problem is that I never figured out how to do the butterfly properly. I could never get the two kicks in for each stroke or the undulating motion right. It looks so beautiful when done correctly, but I'm sure that my stroke looks pretty ugly. I think I have enough upper-body strength to swim butterfly well if I just get the technique down. Maybe I can ask the lifeguard for some help.
One of my regrets is doing swim team on and off when I was younger. That and not doing an organized sport for the last six years. Inertia is so strong when you sit on your butt all day for years and years at a stretch. At least swimming motivates me much more than the treadmill. I'm pretty hopeless at running (like many of the Olympic swimmers). Unfortunately, that doesn't exactly imply that I'm good at swimming. Still, it's fun to be a recreational swimmer. The other day, another swimmer and I drove out a slower swimmer during circle swimming. It is bad because the slow swimmer was there first, but it's very hard to circle swim in a 25M pool when you have three people swimming at completely different speeds. I'm definitely more motivated to swim now and I'm trying to improve my technique as well. Who knows, I might even learn butterfly one day.
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