Monday, January 3, 2011

Different Strokes 3

I was nearing my retirement when I started swimming again on a regular basis. It was  really on medical advice - intended to check, if possible, the progressive weakening of my backbone and the consequent backache I had been suffering from for the past twenty five years.

Well, there was a span of a year or so, about twenty years before, when I had used a swimming pool and helped my children learn to swim. But time had moved on and the ageing process taken its toll.  I could feel the difference this time around. I could feel the stiffness in my body and the lack of rhythm as I swam.

I persisted though. The idea of keeping myself fit was of course foremost in my mind, but I found swimming a very relaxing and in fact very soothing form of exercise. I also found new friends. Fellow swimmers, nearly my age but mostly younger and from different professions.  After a swim, we would all meet and sit at a table in the club, have a cup of tea or two and some snacks and chat for a hour or so before going off in our own ways.

I started looking forward to these adda sessions, more so after retirement when time ceased to be a constraint and could be a bit oppressive at times.

Coming back to swimming, I found the initial stiffness gone after a few months. I was swimming normally, but just having a swim for  sometime everyday was no longer satisfying enough. I needed something more, something to work towards to, to achieve.I decided it was never too late to learn and I would teach myself to improve my technique, swim better and more effortlessly.

I had no instructor at hand nor at my age, 60 plus already, I felt like going to one. Thanks to modern technology, I had other options. I turned to the Net. I searched YouTube and came across a number of videos on swimming lessons on different strokes. I screened all of them and finally selected some to download. These are excellent videos which I would recommend to any aspiring swimmer. Excellently shot from different angles, underwater or above water, sometimes in slow motion and with commentaries to explain the techniques, these videos were my instructors. I watched them for hours ( cumulatively over a period of time ) to understand the way these elite swimmers swam, their arm and leg movements, the body roll in freestyle, the double kick in butterfly and what not. And I was trying them out in water.

It is one thing to know in your  mind how it is to be done, it is quite another to do it in practice. In swimming, and may be in many other   activities where body coordination is required, driving for sure, the body has to know. The body has to absorb the knowledge.

The body finally does.




This is not a post about swimming lessons, but one thing I can not but share about swimming which I learnt a bit late in the day, though as a student of physics in my college days, I should have learnt it much earlier. It is the drag or the resistance of water which you need to reduce through streamlining the body and executing the strokes properly that gives the swimmer a greater advantage than trying to apply greater force mindlessly.

I continue my swimming, all the strokes, and feel more at ease doing them than ever before. My battle with the butterfly stroke, however, is still not over, but it seems that I am winning despite the limitations imposed by my back.

 My adda also goes on. So also the back problem. That after all is life.

PS. Could not resist the temptation of embedding aYouTube video and giving a  link to another. But there are many more for anyone interested including a two part video of Michael Phelps Butterfly with his Coach's commentary.


2 comments:

  1. Dwiju

    I am curious to know how did you improve your swimming skill by watching only the videos. I spent some time watching it and and wondered how could I improve my leg movements. This is something which I had tried to improve since I learned swimming by myself (?) over sixty five years ago and failed. The consequence of this is that I am putting on extra efforts and the energy which do not get transmitted to the body movements.I seem to be dragging my legs and thereby wasting energy.I have often thought of taking swimming lessons but could not come round to doing it.One of the reasons I get frustrated about swimming is that I don't do it properly.

    I have watched swimmming of many good swimmers at competitions and envied them for their skilll and the way they carry on effortlessly as if they are never tired.

    Dadamoni

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  2. I had one advantage. I learnt the art of breathing and leg movements- flutter kicks - quite early, when swimming at Lake. By looking at other people. You have to dissociate your leg movements from your arm movement.To do that try only to go forward with flutter kicks with arms stretched in front and the body parallel to the surface.
    I am aware that you drag your legs( and push with each one) and keep your head out of water.
    Try exhaling in water and inhaling outside by moving the head into and out of water (on one side).

    I had some basic understanding which could be improved upon by the videos.May be in another post I will provide some more tips and links to some videos which I found useful.

    As regards getting tired,never forget the age and in my case,the added disadvantage of heavy smoking. But even with such limitations, you can feel you are doing better.

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