In the swim...

[khiemtran]

One of the nice things about the local pool is that while standing by the nice warm heated indoor pool, you can look down through these big windows onto the lanes of the outdoor 50m pool. This means that after I've done my laps and I'm waiting for Liem's swim class to end, I can look out over the swim squad lanes and see how the experts do it.


There's one lady I see sometimes whose form and balance is just amazing. She's rarely the fastest, but she makes all the other swimmers look like drowning land mammals. Then there are often some very muscular guys who just seem to thrash through the water. One guy in particular looked like he was expending three times the energy he needed to, flinging his legs wide out to the side with each breath, yet he still managed to keep up a decent pace.

Last week there were two men in one of the outer lanes, probably triathletes of some sort, who made swimming look like it was the easiest thing in the world. Stroke. Stroke. Stroke. Just rock back and forth with an easy rhythm, swinging your arms as you slice through the water. Watching from above, it's easy to think it's all about the arms arcing forwards, because that's the only thing you can see. It's not obvious that the real action is all underwater, in the catch and pull. These guys must have been something amazing underneath to make it look so smooth and simple on top.

Today, the most interesting swimmer was a slightly scrawny lady, maybe middle-aged, although of course it's hard to tell. Compared to some of the others, her arms and legs seemed ridiculous thin, and her stroke weak - and yet... She wasn't the fastest, but she kept going and going and wasn't all that much slower than some of the more muscular athletic types.

Turning back around, I watch Liem in his swim class jumping from the wall and freestyling a good ten metres with his face in the water. It's taken him almost a year to get this far, but I'm thrilled at his progress.

I wonder how long it's going to be before it's him and his friends that I'm watching in the 50m pool.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

So interesting how many different styles of swimming and types of swimmer you observed. Wouldn't it be great to be like the triathletes, able to move so swift and surely without seeming to expend all that much energy.

The scrawny woman: she shows that endurance counts for something!

I definitely look like a drowning land mammal when I try to swim. That description made me laugh.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

I always feel like I'm missing something when I swim, especially when I watch the good swimmers. But I do get moments when everything just falls into balance and it feels like the water's lifting me up instead of holding me back. It's quite a odd feeling, not unlike flying. The feeling that something stronger than yourself is lifting you up and pushing you forward - just as long as you can up just the right set of movements. And then wham, as soon as the spell breaks, you're wallowing through jam again.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

I would guess the key is muscle tone, and being able to direct every part of your body deliberately. Just by timing your strokes and creating each one deliberately from start to finish you can swim a lot more efficiently than by putting too much force into them.