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

Alphathree congratulates on turning to the sport of swimming. Nothing works better than getting in the pool and swimming. You can read, watch videos and get on forums which do help, just remember nothing works better that pratice, pratice pratice. Since you just started here a few pointers I tell all my first timers. Keep you feet in the water while kicking, if your splashing to much your only catching air not water. Keep your kicks under the water. Are you breathing on your side yet in freestyle or moving you head side to side with your head out of the water? If so try to work on keeping your face in the water and breathing on the side while one hand is out in front catching the water and the other arm is just coming out and over, this when you will want to turn your head to breath so you don't catch water in your mouth. If you move your head side to side out of the water your just making your self tired. Also, what I do to make sure during pratice I'm getting a good solid stroke is, the hand that enters the water I make sure my thumb grazes my thigh when I pull. Remember the more splash you make the more air your catching. Catch the water instead. Good luck keep us posted.

Alphathree congratulates on turning to the sport of swimming. Nothing works better than getting in the pool and swimming. You can read, watch videos and get on forums which do help, just remember nothing works better that pratice, pratice pratice. Since you just started here a few pointers I tell all my first timers. Keep you feet in the water while kicking, if your splashing to much your only catching air not water. Keep your kicks under the water. Are you breathing on your side yet in freestyle or moving you head side to side with your head out of the water? If so try to work on keeping your face in the water and breathing on the side while one hand is out in front catching the water and the other arm is just coming out and over, this when you will want to turn your head to breath so you don't catch water in your mouth. If you move your head side to side out of the water your just making your self tired. Also, what I do to make sure during pratice I'm getting a good solid stroke is, the hand that enters the water I make sure my thumb grazes my thigh when I pull. Remember the more splash you make the more air your catching. Catch the water instead. Good luck keep us posted. Thanks for the breathing tip. I've tried twelve thousand and one methods of breathing with a kickboard and none of them work. I think no matter how I shake it, the kick board will mess me up. I might try what you say, but gliding with one arm forward, one arm back, and just breathing, then take a single stroke, and try the other side... The problem is that without the kickboard, I tend to sink too much in the water and when I turn to take a breath, my whole head is in the water.

Well, shoot, no one said anything new would be easy. Of course swimming is endurance as well as technique. I just want our friend who is having some difficulty to know she is not alone in trying to learn to swim properly. But once mastered to whatever level will give a person great confidence and will benefit the body beyond belief. I have won a thousand races and lost a thousand races, but now that I am almost 60, my health--because of swimming--is twice that of people I know. I guess my racing days are over (I live in a place where I only do a one mile ocean swim once a year. BUT, I plan on an 18 miler in about a year and a half (must be crazy). I think one of my most momentus moments was 2 years ago swimming in Half Moon Bay here in Roatan. And I was just swimming around the inlet (half-mile). I went around it several times and when I came to shore several people were standing there. Their comments were: I have never seen such a beautiful, graceful swim and so quickly. I realized that I had been swimming like I always do, but to others, it seemed magical. Of course I was proud, but I instantly remembered how I got it to be what it is. Great coaching, lots of yardage, and finally it had come full circle. I truly don't mean this to be a bragging right, it just meant so much to me that people "saw" what years and years of swimming can do for a person. Sure, I am slower now, who wouldn't be? And the most strange part of this is I am quite large now, I am not a skinny minny by any means, but the technique I learned has stayed with me. I am forever grateful for having great coaches in my early years. When I get tired, I dig deep and find that technique all over again. Swimmer for life, Donna

Breating with the kickboard can be tricky because your cann't roll, like you would breathing for freestyle. Try to bring your arms out of the water above your head, not off the the side, bending your elbows as your arm comes out. Some people prefer or favor breathing on one side over the other. I'm a left sided breather, try it both ways can choose what is comfortable for you. Again try this, if you are, lets say a left sided breather, when your right arm come out and stretched out to enter the water and make the pull, you would then sightly roll your shoulders to the right, turn your head and breathe, you should be able to start to see your left arm starting to come around, this is basicly you window of opportunity to breathe without getting a mouth full of water. Catch some air put your face back into the water and at that time your left arm should be coming over the hit the water to make the next pull. Most people I teach learning how to breathe in freestyle will, do this and say wow, that worked, it does take time to cordinate everything and that just comes with practice. Alot of people just learning also will tend to side breathe fine, but then lift there head up and look forward then, put there head in the water. Because it takes alot of practice, this is okay for now, but try to not look forward, just turn breathe, turn face back into the water. There are alot of people that can't swim or can't swim well, like my husband's friend says the most he swims is when he looses his beer off the floatee and he has to paddle to get it. Swimming is the only sport that can save your life. People shouldn't laugh but applaud you for your effort to want to learn. I walk past our workout room at the "Y" and just see it packed full of people working out, and in the pool there is just one or two of us lap swimming, I think to my self why don't they swim, it's the perfect exercise, but then I think, maybe it's because they don't know how or can't swim all that well. I applaud you keep ,up the good work!!

Well I just got my goggles... They fit VERY tightly... trying to figure out how to loosen the strap just a bit =)

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.

Your instructor may have been telling you that you had a runners kick and trying to get it accross to you the toes should point. The foot should be relaxed, ankle relaxed, kick from the hip and not let the knees lock. Don't be too hard on the instructor he or she may see things we can not see in the written word.

Your instructor may have been telling you that you had a runners kick and trying to get it accross to you the toes should point. The foot should be relaxed, ankle relaxed, kick from the hip and not let the knees lock. Don't be too hard on the instructor he or she may see things we can not see in the written word. Thanks. She's a very nice girl and a talented swimmer and a lifeguard. But the feedback I get from her is very generic. I think she learned to swim so long ago that she doesn't really know how to break down what she knows. While she has given me some basic skills in the water, I'd say you folks on this forum have contributed at least as much to my improvement over the past few weeks. Originally I probably wasn't pointing my toes very much -- but that's because I was tense and nervous. So I started forcefully pointing my toes. I think what's going on is that I was using my legs like wooden paddles rather than rubber fins... I'm really eager to try some kicking laps later today with this leg-relaxation in mind, and also the tip from someone else to point my arms ahead of me rather than at my sides when I'm not doing the strokes. I'm probably 7 and a half feet long with my arms outstretched and toes pointed... I think taking up that position in the water will feel really good and promote good body position.

Flat footed standing on the floor with both hands straight over my head I measure 8'5" when I extend one arm in the water with my toes pointed a I am probably close to 10 feet long I will have to check that.

One point about coaches, they often give you advice this is not literally true but is aimed to correct something that you are doing wrong.