All I Know About Swimming - Part 1

Many people are taught to swim as children. Most of these people grow up and can still swim. They swim on holidays or at a local pool or when taking their kids swimming.

This swimming is the swimming that is a useful life skill. It allows adults and children to be safe around water and not to drown when in water.

This swimming is very different to swimming competitively in an attempt to swim faster against other swimmers in an event, or against yourself in a long distance swim such as a 10k or channel swim.

Technically more skilful than golf

Swimming is a technical sport. In many ways swimming is one of the most technically skilful sports there is.

If you look at golf, a sport that is widely considered to be technically difficult, an average hole is done within 5 shots. This means that a skilful golfer has to refine their body movements in an attempt to perfectly and consistently repeat the same skilful pattern of swings, around 90 times per game.

To swim perfectly and consistently, there is an even greater number of core muscles, arm and shoulder muscles, neck and head muscles and body posture issues in play than in golf. In addition, you're moving far more than a light club and small ball for a brief moment, you're propelling your whole body weight through a dense liquid that is pushing back against you.

Once you have a perfect stroke, something which takes years, it needs to be repeated far more than 90 times in all but the very shortest events. Plus it needs to be repeated consistently when fatigued. An almost impossible feat.

I think it is this level of skill and the patient years of practice that makes swimming an attractive sport. You need to be obsessional. It's not a boastful or showy sport. Swimmers are not big famous names, nor are they paid a fortune. Swimmers just apply themselves to the daily grind.

Lakes and Mountains

Another bunch of things that I love about swimming is the this. The locations. Yes, sometimes local swimming pools are not appealing, but on the whole, for every bad pool you can find a nice pool to swim in (or really nice pools).

Then you can get get out of the pool and find a lake, or a river, or the sea, or a tarn nestled in beautiful countryside. Swimming can take you to places that inspire you, that touch your heart and soul. Places that on your death bed you would wish you had visited.

As a swimmer, you have visited these places and swam in these places. Whether it's the challenge of ice water swimming in a frozen sea in Finland, the endurance swims like the English Channel, swimming in iconic locations such as Lake Windermere or from Alcatraz to San Francisco, or in warm locations like the bath like temperature of the sea in Dubai.

Take Lessons

Because it is technical and because it requires practice, I would always recommend to an adult wanting to become better swimmers to find a good coach.

This is an investment of time and money but one which will pay off. Much like an amateur golfer with a poor stroke, practice may make marginal changes to improve the stroke but essentially you are practicing and repeating the poor stroke.

A coach can bring an immediate external eye to the stroke and work on the areas of greatest impact. I would predict that for most adult swimmers taking lessons will immediately find their swimming stroke feeling worse after a lesson with a good swimming coach and that is because they will be swimming properly, but swimming in a way which is new. One they had never done before. Practicing this good stroke over and over again to learn the new good habits will transform their swimming and bring technique, power, speed and pleasure to their swimming along with a reduced risk of injury.

The Stroke

That’s Part 1. In Part 2, I will discuss the stroke.