By Erik Vance
The New York Times
I have never been a good swimmer.
I mean, I can swim. But what I do in a swimming pool is more like a battle for survival than a training – especially after the first laps. My legs are too long, my stupid is uneven and I am constantly struggling to catch a decent breath.
It’s not fun, that’s why I rarely swim for fitness. In addition, the culture of swimming is intimidating, with its caps and its glasses and rules on the division of the tracks.
But it is an excellent winter exercise, if you have access to an indoor pool. So I recently decided to become a better swimmer, with the help of my first lessons from primary school.
It turns out that you can go much better with only a few lessons. And once you have done so, you suddenly have another option for easy aerobic drive for the joints.
“This is the advantage of swimming,” said Matthew Barbini, Performance Director for USA Swimming, who came to sport after an injury to adolescence. “There is really no impact. There is no pavement involved. There is really no equipment involved. »»
Swimming lessons are remarkably useful
Even if swimming is easy for the body, exercise underwater can always feel fundamentally unnatural. It is therefore not surprising that you need more instructions as an adult to do it well.
I hired Angie Pelulus, a swimming coach in the Denver region who specializes in adult teaching, to assess my freestyle technique. She said that around half of her customers are like me – they know how to swim, but they need coaching.
So I fought in a swimming pool and quickly assessed my stroke. Unused swimmers like me can solve many of their problems in four to six lessons, she said, with some training sessions between the two. Ideally, they should be every week, so expect to be at the pool a little for a month or two.
If you don’t know how to swim at all, learning the basics can take more time, depending on your level of anxiety about water.
There is no national director body for swimming instructors. To find a good one, a recommended peluse, start with leisure centers or swimming groups for local adults. Then try the nearby university swimming teams.
But if you want to push your swimming game by yourself, here are some of the most common errors than people – including me – do in the pool.
Lesson n ° 1: Body position
My first lesson was in a 24 -foot swimming pool at the Peluse office. She quickly spotted my first mistake – very common for people who were never trained. I continued to look to the future, to the end of the swimming pool, which forced my chest and my feet downwards, causing me in the water.
I am already naturally less dynamic than most people. When I float on my back, my legs flow immediately, it doesn’t matter how much I try. This lesson was therefore particularly important for me.
How to improve: This is easy. Look straight down and keep your eyes on the midline at the bottom of the Tour route. Anyway, does not look up.
“The wall is not going to move,” said Nadine Ford, a veteran swimming coach and founder of Jahogany Mermaids in Charlotte, in North Carolina. “Remember. Let your head fall.”
Research is a surprisingly difficult habit of kicking, so plan at least one training swimming pool session where you just work to keep your head down.
Lesson n ° 2: kick
It was also obvious that I concentrated too much on my arms and not enough on my legs.
“Your kick is the most propulsive part of the stroke”, for elite swimmers at maximum speed, said Barbini, who advises athletes across the country. For the rest of us, the kicks are important to keep hips on the surface, he said, and improving it is the easiest way to increase the speed.
As I was mainly trying to shoot myself in the water with my arms, my kicks were too wide and slow. The slower kicks mean less propulsion and, once again, a tendency to flow.
How to improve: Start by swimming a trick as you do normally. Then try one where you focus on the floating legs for faster kicks and see if you can feel a difference. Peluse said to imagine that you are launching a pair of slippers – with straight legs and extensive toes.
“You want it to be large enough for you to be propulsive,” said Barbini, but “small enough for you not to create unnecessary trail”.
Each round, Peluse made me grow on the side of the pool, hands in front of me as if I dived, and go as far as I could underwater while cutting. I quickly felt how much my legs could do and I pushed myself to kick faster and more closely.
Then swim a turn using a kick – and a pair of fins, if you have them. The kick will force you to kick faster to move forward, and the fins will add speed and keep your hips. They are also difficult to use without appropriate form.
“Feel what resistance looks like,” said Ford. “Then we remove them, and I would try to make you imitate this.”
Lesson n ° 3: Arm
Peluse explained that I spent too much time with my arms below me underwater instead of having me in front of me, which bronzed my stroke.
The best way to stay afloat is to keep both arms straight in front of your head, like a diver. The more time you spend with at least one arm like that, the better.
How to improve: There is a very simple way to learn this: the catch -up exercise. Hold a kick in front of you while keeping both arms completely extended. Now start your arm, but keep a hand on the board at any time, letting go each when the next will grasp the board. It may feel bad at the beginning of having your arms for so long, but stay with that.
Lesson n ° 4: breathing
“Even if you are the best swimmer in the world, breathing will always slow you down,” said Barbini.
Add to that, I never feel like I have enough air, especially after the first round. I always turn to get my head out of the water to breathe more. The problem, I learned, concerned less at what frequency I was breathing and more on my timing.
How to improve: Mastering breathing takes work and many swimmers shine with their technique for years. But the first step is simple: inspire above the water and exhale underwater. Too many people expire while their heads are out of the water, said Peluse. Train to breathe completely – slowly and regularly – underwater rather than suddenly just before your breathing.
“It’s a slow stream,” said Ford.
I would like to say that I am now as graceful as a dolphin in the water. I am not, and I still have trouble after the first laps. But after four lessons, I can go to any swimming pool in the country, get solid training and feel like it is.
And, by a good day, I could even have a little fun doing it.
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