Zurich - Swimming Lessons

A Clip from My Swimming Video!

When I spent the month of May in Egypt, I was swimming about 1.5km most days, stretching to 2km at the weekends. I’d hoped that this endurance training would make it easier when I got back to Opfikon and I’d be speeding along for my usual 1.3km. However, to my great disappointment, my swimming speed had decreased while I was away.

Over a few sessions, I gradually returned to my former speed, but I concluded that I was getting faster not because my technique was improving but because I was putting in more effort. I really wanted to swim faster because I was swimming better, not because I was constantly racing with myself.

I’ve watched tons of videos online of swimming drills and I started to do them myself. However, I found it really difficult to work out what I was doing wrong or what I should focus on most to improve. Moreover, even when I did the drills I watched online, I was never entirely sure if I was doing them correctly. I felt I’d reached a plateau and the more I tried to improve, the more confused I got.

So, I decided to take some swimming lessons. I’d been thinking about doing this for a while, but had always been a bit nervous about it. I think in my head I’d got having lessons a bit mixed up with having a training practice. I didn’t really want to have someone forcing me to swim faster than I really felt comfortable with and I didn’t want to have to say that I just couldn’t do it. In the end, I rationalized that I was paying for it and no-one could force me to do something I didn’t want to do.

As it turned out, my fears were unfounded. I’d also been a bit concerned that it would be a young guy in his 20s with high expectations that my energy levels could match his when I’m thirty years older. However, it wasn’t someone in their 20s, and if anything, on my first lesson, I was a bit surprised at how long a break he gave me between lengths.

Anyway, I’m learning loads and he’s videoing me so that I can see for myself what it is I’m doing in the water. The most astonishing thing for me was being told that I don’t look down in the water, when I could have sworn that I was doing this perfectly well. However, once he said it, I could understand what he meant. Another eye-opener was that I use my left leg only 25% of the time when I’m kicking. I also have problems extending my arms. Yes, there’s a lot to improve (that wasn’t such a surprise)!

I’m also understanding that just swimming distance alone isn’t the best way to improve. It’s better to have rests and to do drills that help you swim a good stroke (your stroke will deteriorate as you tire, so then you’re just practicing a bad swimming style). I’ve put this into practice; I’m now resting after each length; of course my speed is faster (because I’m less tired), but that feels a bit of a cheat, since my wish is to swim even long distances faster (and with better technique). However, despite all the rests in between laps, I’ve been exhausted after my practice sessions and my arms have been aching, so I guess it’s doing something. I just need to be able to keep that speed up consistently, so I’ll go back to incorporating the occasional distance swim, I think.

I know my speed will go down again when I do swim further, but I need to have some confidence now that I can still do distance and that I'm not relying too much on all those rests! Incidentally, I’ve found a great calculator that tells you how much time you will need to swim, eg, 1km without rest, if you input the time it takes when you swim, eg, just 100m in one go. The calculator doesn’t just take the speed at 100m and multiply it; instead it decreases the speed incrementally using a formula to allow for the fact that you will tire. It was pretty accurate for me when I compared my "fast" 400m swim in my last lesson with my "steady" 1km that I'd done just the day before.

He’s warned me not to expect miracles (swimming takes a lot of practice), but it’s so enlightening that just the learning is reward enough. Here’s his website for anyone in the Opfikon/Ruemlang area who may be interested: www.besser-schwimmen.ch