Swim Better Weekly - One small change to make swimming easier.

Hi there, Mark here. Hope all is well with you.

Welcome to this week’s Swim Better Weekly - one small change to make swimming easier.

The problem

You push off and straight away your head fills with instructions. Kick from the hips. Reach with your arms. Breathe out. Turn your head, but not too far...

By the end of the length you’re tired and a bit frustrated, and you can’t honestly say any of it got better. It can start to feel like you’re just not getting it.

Why it happens

You’re not doing anything wrong. You’re just asking your brain to do too much at once. Every stroke is made up of a handful of parts: your body position, legs, arms, breathing and the timing that joins them together. If you try to think about all of them at once, none of them gets the attention it needs.

Your body learns best one change at a time. Give one part your full attention and it improves quickly. Very often the other parts start to settle down with it.

Try this in the pool

Pick the one part of your stroke that’s holding you back the most: the thing that usually makes you stop or struggle first.

1. Spend a few minutes practising only that part. If it’s your legs, kick while holding a float. If it’s your breathing, blow bubbles at the wall.
2. Then swim two slow, easy lengths (or widths) thinking only about that one part. Let everything else look after itself.
3. Afterwards, notice how that part felt. Was it smoother, calmer, easier? That’s your progress.

Practise this for around five minutes before trying it during a short, easy swim.

A quick safety reminder: never swim or practise alone. Use a supervised pool and stay within a depth that feels safe for your current ability. If you’re nervous or unable to swim independently, practise with a qualified swimming teacher or another responsible person close by.

Watch out for…

Judging your practice by how fast or how far you swam. While you focus on one part, the rest of your stroke may feel clumsy and you’ll probably be slower. That’s completely normal. Ask yourself just one question: did the part I chose feel a little better?

Remember

One length, one focus.

Want more help?

If you’d like a ready-made exercise for whichever part you choose, that’s exactly why I wrote The Swimming Strokes Book. Each stroke is broken down into its parts, so you can go straight to the one that needs work.

The Swimming Strokes Book contains 82 easy exercises covering body position, legs, arms, breathing and timing for all four basic strokes, with coaching tips and common mistakes to avoid.

See you next week,

Mark
Swim Teach

P.S. Hit reply and tell me which part you’re choosing to work on this week. I read every reply, and I’m happy to suggest an exercise for it.