I think swimming is consuming my life and I've been doing it for less than 3 weeks

Congratulations on acquiring an entirely healthy obsession. I hope this becomes for you what they call a virtuous addiction. I've been swimming obsessed for 40 years now, ever since joining my HS team in 1966. I had failed to make the cut for the undistinguished team at my Catholic grammar school two years earlier and only made the HS team because it was the first year and they took everyone with a pulse. But I got the fever and haven't been cured since. If you have my earliest book, while its focus is nominally freestyle, it's really about how human bodies behave in the water and how to use that information to minimize the impediments -- poor support, high resistance and little traction -- and maximize the advantages -- near weightlessness and fluid dynamics. The balance and alignment drills will apply reasonably well to the backstroke you're already swimming, and you can use that or Freestyle as your laboratory for exploring those questions yourself. Here are a few ideas you can apply to any stroke: 1) Get all the air you need, when you need it. Unless you do, you'll be too distracted to focus on anything else. 2) Focus on head spine alignment - especially when breathing. 3) Shape your body to fit through a smaller "hole" in the water. Drag is the greatest limiting factor in swimming. 4) When thinking about your arms, give more attention to lengthening your body than to pushing water back. 5) When thinking about your legs, let them be relatively relaxed and passive. To the extent you make kicking a conscious activity, focus on keeping your legs inside the "shadow" of your body. 6) If you're looking for an all-encompassing mantra you couldn't do much better than "Move like Water." A simple way to do so is to minimize bubbles, noise and splash at whatever speed. 7) Stay passionate. Others may offer different advice, but this is the best and most succinct I have for you. Thanks a lot. With respect to kicking, I have to "think" about keeping my legs straight otherwise I start kicking from the knees... but I have a feeling that all that thinking causes me to tense up my legs more than necessary. I know my ankles should be floppy and the movement should come from the hips. If those two things were true, should I just let my knees do what they do, or should I focus on keeping them semi-locked? EDIT: Incidentally, I have the revised (2004?) edition of "Total Immersion." EDIT #2: In watching some videos, I think most swimmers seem to be driving from the hips and relaxing the entire leg. This makes sense to me and when I practice it on dry land in my chair, it feels better than the slight knee-locking I was doing. My instructor told me to lock my knees and point my toes -- meaning my ankles and knees are "tight" -- well, that worked horribly for me. And as I experiment with my kicking drills more and more, the single determining factor of how fast I move is not how fast I kick or how much I point my toes or lock my knees, it is how relaxed I am and how much I drive from the hips.

Congratulations on acquiring an entirely healthy obsession. I hope this becomes for you what they call a virtuous addiction. I've been swimming obsessed for 40 years now, ever since joining my HS team in 1966. I had failed to make the cut for the undistinguished team at my Catholic grammar school two years earlier and only made the HS team because it was the first year and they took everyone with a pulse. But I got the fever and haven't been cured since. If you have my earliest book, while its focus is nominally freestyle, it's really about how human bodies behave in the water and how to use that information to minimize the impediments -- poor support, high resistance and little traction -- and maximize the advantages -- near weightlessness and fluid dynamics. The balance and alignment drills will apply reasonably well to the backstroke you're already swimming, and you can use that or Freestyle as your laboratory for exploring those questions yourself. Here are a few ideas you can apply to any stroke: 1) Get all the air you need, when you need it. Unless you do, you'll be too distracted to focus on anything else. 2) Focus on head spine alignment - especially when breathing. 3) Shape your body to fit through a smaller "hole" in the water. Drag is the greatest limiting factor in swimming. 4) When thinking about your arms, give more attention to lengthening your body than to pushing water back. 5) When thinking about your legs, let them be relatively relaxed and passive. To the extent you make kicking a conscious activity, focus on keeping your legs inside the "shadow" of your body. 6) If you're looking for an all-encompassing mantra you couldn't do much better than "Move like Water." A simple way to do so is to minimize bubbles, noise and splash at whatever speed. 7) Stay passionate. Others may offer different advice, but this is the best and most succinct I have for you. Thanks a lot. With respect to kicking, I have to "think" about keeping my legs straight otherwise I start kicking from the knees... but I have a feeling that all that thinking causes me to tense up my legs more than necessary. I know my ankles should be floppy and the movement should come from the hips. If those two things were true, should I just let my knees do what they do, or should I focus on keeping them semi-locked? EDIT: Incidentally, I have the revised (2004?) edition of "Total Immersion." EDIT #2: In watching some videos, I think most swimmers seem to be driving from the hips and relaxing the entire leg. This makes sense to me and when I practice it on dry land in my chair, it feels better than the slight knee-locking I was doing. My instructor told me to lock my knees and point my toes -- meaning my ankles and knees are "tight" -- well, that worked horribly for me. And as I experiment with my kicking drills more and more, the single determining factor of how fast I move is not how fast I kick or how much I point my toes or lock my knees, it is how relaxed I am and how much I drive from the hips.