Water is the most abundant compound on the planet, covering about seventy percent of the earth’s surface. Wikipedia
You can’t hide in the water.
I get a sense of a personality when I watch someone swim. I don’t know if the way you are in the water translates into the way you are in life but I think it must be true to some extent.
Some of the children I teach are reckless and daredevil, throwing themselves into the water and just trusting I will be there to catch them. Some of them are cautious and fearful, refusing to do anything I ask until they are sure it is safe. Some are not very co-ordinated and struggle with moving themselves through the water, some are natural movers and are like little seals from the first moment. Some are shy and don’t say anything above a whisper, others would shout excitedly through the whole lesson if I didn’t occasionally ask them to let me get a word in.
The adults are more hidden, but still you can get a sense of a person in the water although its not always something you can put into words.
Front crawl
One of the most common requests I get is from people who can swim but can’t swim front crawl, or think they can’t. In fact front crawl is an easy, relaxing and calming stroke if done proplerly. I often see people, I am afraid to say, especially men, swimming a wild thrashing kind of front crawl. They are using a lot of energy, making a lot of splash, but not travelling very fast. Or they may be able to travel fast for a short while and then collapse exhausted at the end of a length. This is inefficient and unnecessary.
As with all swimming strokes the key is to let the water do most of the work. First of all you must find a good balance in the water. A gentle leg kick is all you need. In fact it is perfectly possible to swim a reasonable front crawl without kicking your legs at all. You should kick from the hips, not the knees and the kick should be gentle, a flutter rather than a big scissor kick.
Look straight down at floor of the pool, keep your neck long.
As you reach forward with each stroke let your body rotate keeping the head still.
Feel the glide on each stroke, listen to the water.
Roll out to breathe, letting your head turn to the side. Don’t lift the head. Imagine you are breathing from your core. Get the feeling of turning your lungs to the air, not your head.
Try to make sure your left arm stays on the left side of your body, and the right arm stays on the right side. Don’t let your arms cross over in front of you.
Breathe out gently under the water so that you are ready to breathe in as you turn.
Keep the stroke slow, steady and relaxed. As your stroke becomes more efficient you will get faster.
Feel the rhythm of the stroke. Sing to yourself if it helps.
Swimming and ballet. Transferable skills?
2nd position en pointe, executed by Gelsey Kirkland, in the Firebird. Image from Britanica Online Encyclopedia. Credit Martha Swope
These are two of my passions and I am fascinated by the parallels and similarities between them. Olympic swimming champion Liam Tancock, believes that the poise ballet gives you is important for a swimmer as are the core strength and strong ankles that ballet dancers need. He took weekly ballet lessons of part of his swimming training.
In a TV interview he also pointed out that ballet dancers must place their limbs and their hands and feet with great precision. They need to be mindfully aware of the precise, yet moving positions of their bodies at all times. This kind of awareness is important to elite swimmers where winning or losing can be a matter of hundredths of a second.
I taught one man who had been in the British Army for many years but for some reason had never really learned to swim.
‘Have you ever done ballet?’ I asked him.
We were about to practice some breastroke leg actions and that can be a little bit like standing at the barre in second position. He looked at me quizzically and said, politely, that no, ballet had not been part of his military training.
Despite his lack of dance training he did well and learned to swim a length of the pool. But it got me thinking that if people learn something unusual, something way out of their normal sphere of influence, well, who knows what the result might be.
Ana Teresa Fernandez
I find the work of this artist fascinating. I need to find out more, but for now click to see some of her work.
Ablution by Ana Teresa Fernandez
Did flying evolve from swimming?
When a fish swims it uses two forces. It uses its back fins to create propulsive lift forces and its paddling pectoral fins to create drag to propel forward. An efficient human swimmer also uses both lift and drag. Until recently it was thought that insects rely on lift and redirected lift to fly. But now researchers at Cornell University say they also use drag. This means that in evolutionary terms the transistion from swimming to flying may have been much more straightforward than previously thought.
All flying things whether natuaral or man made create a lift force in order to fly. Lift force occurs when you move an object fast enough throuh any media where the shape of the object creates a difference in speed of the media above and below the object, thus creating a difference in pressure, which causes lift. An insect flaps its wings until it has created enough lift to overcome gravity. In order to move in a particuar direction a part of the lift force is applied to the direction of movement. Until recently it was thought that insects did not use drag to fly only lift. In other words it was thought that insects did not use their wings to paddle through the air like a swimmer paddling through water.
However scientists at Cornell University have recently discovered that some insects do in fact use their front wings to paddle their way through the air, just like a swimmer paddling through water. This paddling creates only drag force and no lift.
I am not completely sure of the physics behind it but I think that when I am working to improve a swimmer’s stroke I am trying to get them to feel ways of using less drag and more lift. I am quite certain that swimming is the closest thing to flying that we can experience and it this research does seem to suggest that flying could have evolved directly from swimming.
Swim slowly to swim fast – like Alexander Popov
I often tell my pupils, mainly the children, that if you want to be able to swim fast, you have to learn to swim slowly. In other words it is not about thrashing madly through the water, it is about developing a smooth efficient stroke so that you cut down water resistance and maintain a strong streamlined stroke. There is great pleasure and satisfaction to be found in perfecting the stroke, listening to the water and finding a relaxed and sustainable pace.
With this in mind I was delighted to read about the swimming technique of Alexander Popov, the Russian swimming champion. Popov became the world’s fastest and most efficient human swimmer partly through learning to be like a fish. What I mean by this is that he seems to have worked on ways of gliding through the water, creatively finding ways to cut down the water resistance. I believe when you are swimming you have to read the water and adapt your body to the response you feel from the water. In this way you can use the water to help you.
Popov’s stroke is long and relaxed. He stretches his arms forward to achieve a long glide and he looks straight down at the bottom of the pool. Although he swims fast scientists estimate that his power output is at least 25 % lower than most of those he races.
Apparently Popov does most of his most important training at slow speeds. The emphasis is on getting the stroke just right, not on swimming as fast as possible. This is what I call mindful swimming.
Neither swim nor read. Neque natare, neque literas
This was an Ancient Greek proverb, referred to by Plato, signifying a person who had learned nothing useful at all in childhood and was therefore ignorant!
Pondlife by Al Alvarez
This book has now arrived and I am reading, and loving it. It is the story of his almost daily swims at the ponds on Hampstead Heath. It is also the story of his battle with the process of aging. It makes me want to do more outdoor swimming. I do swim in the lake in Sweden every day in the summer when we are there but I need to find somewhere here to swim outdoors, and not in a pool. As Alvarez says
‘Its good for the soul as well as the body and its cheaper than psychoanalyisis.’
The water is holding you
I sometimes ask the children I teach.
‘What is the most important thing about swimming lessons?’
And they give me all sorts of answers like ‘kicking’, ‘floating,’and other things.
But I say ‘No. Fun. That is the most important thing.’ And they look at me in amazement.
I am always in the water with them which is quite necessary as the pool where I teach is too deep for most of them to stand up and so I have to really keep an eye on them. Some of them have floats but some are quite good at swimming without. Some of them have started off very frightened of the water and I have to spend quite a lot of time un-teaching them, i.e letting them understand that they can absolutely trust me not to make them do anything they don’t want to or that will frighten them.
Some of the adults I teach are good swimmers who may want some help with technique and some are just as terrified as the children but added to that they are embarrassed and sometimes almost ashamed that they can’t swim. Every non swimmer seems to go through more or less the same stages whatever their age. Most are uncertain about putting their faces in the water and they also find it hard to stretch out and believe the water will hold them. They want to keep their heads out of the water, their knees curled up underneath them and their feet near the floor of the pool. For non-swimmers floating on their backs seems to be the most terrifying thing and it is a lovely stage when you can get the little children to stretch out their arms and legs and trust the water to hold them lying on their backs like little stars.The realisation that they can float without me holding them is often very touching and delightful.
I say to the adults you feel you have to hold on to the water but actually the water is holding you.
Photo of stars on the water by Deborah Brasket from her blog Living on the edge of the wild
mindful swimming 