I went to my first swim lesson today. The class is designed for triathlete to learn to swim freestyle. The class was small. There were five of us and I was the youngest. The others were in their 30s and 40s. The coach asked us to swim 400 m for warmup. Ha, he gotta be in kidding. I can barely swim one lap (50 m).
We spent the night doing breathing exercise. That's not too bad. When he get us all line up and start doing back kick, well I see where my problem lies. Maybe swim skill is determine by how old you are. B/c I then I can use my young age as an excuse for sucking :).
From the get go, everyone was much faster than me. I must have an invisble anchor or something b/c I kept on sinking. By the last half, I am special enough to use fins to keep up with the class (no I wasn't able to keep up).
Kelvin and I spent 40 min after the class to see what's wrong. It turned out my ankle was the culprit. It was too stiff. I did some vertical kick and gradually get myself to kicking on my back. The coach said there was an improvement. Now I know what drills I need to do. That and see if I can upgrade my ankle to one that is more fleixble.
Vertical kick, kicking on your back. Wait, didn't I read that from tri books and other tri websites.....hmmm...maybe instead of reading and start doing the drills my swimming will improve. Yeah, I am slow. :)
6 comments:
Vertical kicking helped me too! Glad you were able to get some professional advice. :)
Well, the good news is that sinking means that you have low body fat. :-)
Hey, thats where I have been working too.
Give it a week and you'll be a lot better off. I made big improvement in a short time.
Swimming 400m would be impossible for me too Cliff.
I'm slow too, so don't let it worry you. You only have to be fast enough to make the cutoff time.
I'm a little envious you were able to use flippers. I get foot cramps when I use them. :-(
Hi Cliff - thanks for the comment on my blog.
By the way, if you can do breastroke I'm impressed because honestly I look like a tortured frog trying to do it and going backwards in the process!
Keep perservering with the swimming - you will get the hang of it.
Hey Cliff, that is great progress. Keep going!
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