Been swimming for about 3 months (always 'swam' but never any real extended period for fitness until now). Started bilateral breathing about 2 months ago, basically natural to me now. Also began lessons about 1.5 months ago (instructor is WSI and nationally ranked member of local college team).
At beginning, 25m of crawl was killing me. Took close to 2 months to get comfortable with 50m. Can now almost do 75m comfortably (in all cases, a break of about 15-20 seconds is all I need to continue).
Based upon instructor's comments:
- definitely exhaling in water
- stroke is OK, but head position is too high out of water (not tucked down enough)
- kick is lousy-- too fast and shallow, also tend to shift to a scissor kick as I get tired
This morning during a lesson, he asked me to freestyle 6 laps and after 4 I was blown-- took a 10 second breather before starting 5th lap and all semblance of technique was gone-- same for 6th lap.
While I am making some progress, it seems that each additional (continuous) lap is taking a month-- is this normal? I am probably spending a bit too much time recovering at the wall during my workouts, but not all THAT long.
What seems to happen is I begin to have trouble breathing-- at beginning I'm nice and relaxed, nice shallow relaxed breath, slow exhale in water (was exhaling through mouth, instructor told me to switch to nose, and am doing so now). At about 50m, breathing becomes deeper and less relaxed; by 67m, am sucking in air and beginning to gasp; when I put my head back into the water, I feel like I'm holding my breath and have no air (must be what drowning feels like). At that point it's just a matter of time before I'm done-- can barely get to 100m.
Your responses will probably be to post video, and I probably will, but in the meantime, here's what's REALLY puzzling me: I've been searching the forum for similar tales of woe, and I'll often find something along the lines of: "I was unable to swim more than 50/100/?? meters; then I found out I wasn't exhaling. Once I began to exhale in the water, my continuous distance went from 100m to 1800m in one day."
Is this kind of scenario realistic? I walk 3 miles a day, and upon occasion will simply continue and do 7 or 8 miles-- there's little extra effort in going further. Is is the same here?-- should you in theory be able to just continue? I was speaking to a relative who says he swims 32 lengths per day, and could go further except for the boredom factor-- that's the way it is with walking/hiking for me, but I don't see that happening with swimming my crawl.
Thanks,
Gerald
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Former Member
My next goals are getting a below 20 stroke count per 25m (I'm somewhere between 22 and 25), and reducing my time. I'm currently doing 50m in just about 1:00 and know that there's a long way to go. I still find it amazing that my stroke is SOOO inefficient that an average Masters swimmer is about half my time.
Thanks for all the advice.
-- Gerald
Well, my story is in some way very similar with some marked differences.
For 2 years when I was 9-10 I learned to swim, but not until Sept 07 I came back to a pool, with all my strokes to rebuild from the ground.
The first few weeks I can't go more that 25m at time with plenty of rest, except breaststroke.
with the "Dream" to outrun anybody I focused to a good form, a great catch/pull studying the great ones, and stopping everytime I feel that my stroke started to fall apart too much, instead to swim "garbage meters".
After 4 months (2x/week) of training I can easily outran anybody on my group on fast 25s, by 4-5 secs at least, I was the only "rookies" of my group, on the pull set I was only average, but I was the best kickers, my arm was very weak to swim, tiring pretty fast so nobody expected me to be the top "spinters", I go wall-to-wall on free in about 18s.
The key difference was DPS, I was in low 20s 22-23 on average, with no underwater only the push off, glide and breakout, the others around 30 or more.
I was slipping less, kicking help too to archive a better position in water and to add something to the speed.
Jumping a today, I've improved my techinque but my endurance still sucks, I can do a 100m free barely with open turn and 1-2 secs rest on the open turn on the last 2, but my form decreased steady.
When I'm fresh relaxed after the push off I can do a 25m with 19 strokes without esitation or glide, I feel that I've still margin to go lower because the final part of my pull is still a working in progress, and overall it can be improved all around, I'd not surprise if next season I can lower again to 16-17.
I agree with you that snorkel is a fantastic toy, a must-have.
using it I've improved my balance in a short time, it help me to reduce the slippage of my left arm (my right arm is my power arm) and improve my left breathing.
Using a pull-bouy I can swim with modest form nearly forever just like you have found.
I'm not relaxed and my kick is not smooth and controlled but a little too erratic and disconected from my stroke, so I burn too much energy too fast, slowing down is hard to me for now... it's so no natural, I'm working to fix it, maybe a day I'll swim a 400m smooth with costant technique, but for now that day is years away...
My next goals are getting a below 20 stroke count per 25m (I'm somewhere between 22 and 25), and reducing my time. I'm currently doing 50m in just about 1:00 and know that there's a long way to go. I still find it amazing that my stroke is SOOO inefficient that an average Masters swimmer is about half my time.
Thanks for all the advice.
-- Gerald
Well, my story is in some way very similar with some marked differences.
For 2 years when I was 9-10 I learned to swim, but not until Sept 07 I came back to a pool, with all my strokes to rebuild from the ground.
The first few weeks I can't go more that 25m at time with plenty of rest, except breaststroke.
with the "Dream" to outrun anybody I focused to a good form, a great catch/pull studying the great ones, and stopping everytime I feel that my stroke started to fall apart too much, instead to swim "garbage meters".
After 4 months (2x/week) of training I can easily outran anybody on my group on fast 25s, by 4-5 secs at least, I was the only "rookies" of my group, on the pull set I was only average, but I was the best kickers, my arm was very weak to swim, tiring pretty fast so nobody expected me to be the top "spinters", I go wall-to-wall on free in about 18s.
The key difference was DPS, I was in low 20s 22-23 on average, with no underwater only the push off, glide and breakout, the others around 30 or more.
I was slipping less, kicking help too to archive a better position in water and to add something to the speed.
Jumping a today, I've improved my techinque but my endurance still sucks, I can do a 100m free barely with open turn and 1-2 secs rest on the open turn on the last 2, but my form decreased steady.
When I'm fresh relaxed after the push off I can do a 25m with 19 strokes without esitation or glide, I feel that I've still margin to go lower because the final part of my pull is still a working in progress, and overall it can be improved all around, I'd not surprise if next season I can lower again to 16-17.
I agree with you that snorkel is a fantastic toy, a must-have.
using it I've improved my balance in a short time, it help me to reduce the slippage of my left arm (my right arm is my power arm) and improve my left breathing.
Using a pull-bouy I can swim with modest form nearly forever just like you have found.
I'm not relaxed and my kick is not smooth and controlled but a little too erratic and disconected from my stroke, so I burn too much energy too fast, slowing down is hard to me for now... it's so no natural, I'm working to fix it, maybe a day I'll swim a 400m smooth with costant technique, but for now that day is years away...
