Swimming Lessons

Pops is in Palm Springs swimming in one of those small outdoor pools that are tiled and beautiful and blue and empty - but weird shaped and not good for a proper session of length swimming. He is trying to get his strokes right - he was in the navy but I don't think they taught him how to swim properly. So he was asking me for swimming lessons on email earlier today (as kids we were taken every week for probably 14 years and learned to swim very well - proper breathing and everything).

Anyway I thought I would share with you:
Harriet's Theory of Swimming

• Breakstroke legs - get propulsion from the force you push your feet backwards in the water - don't do arms and legs at the same time - better to stagger the strokes so that arms pull water past the straight body rather than against your bent up legs. Also arms pull down slightly in the water so that they push water past your underbelly.


• Frontcrawl legs - small up and down kicking - not much splashing - splashing is wasting energy. Keep the feet in the water.


• Backstroke legs - like frontcrawl only upside down - again legs as straight as possible and small up and down kicking - fast but also not much splashing.


• The aim when swimming is to use the stength of the arms to pull you through the water - deeper in the water will propel you further faster than on the surface. Legs help but they mustn't hinder the arm's pulling. Like with a plane's wings the water has to move over or round your body so you need to think about the combination of arms and legs so that the legs don't get in the way of the arms motion - get it right and you get double the propulsion, get it wrong and you'll be wasting the effort of one or the other.

I suggest if you want to try this you should learn it by heart - if you take the paper to the pool it will get wet and disintegrate. Happy splashing.