Swimming Lessons

I've never had any formal swim training. On Tuesday I met Cheryl at the pool for my first session. She took video of my stroke. The following videos show a pre and post look at my swim. I'm embarrased to say I've got a lot more work to do that I realized. We were joking about how we have this vision in our head of how we look when we swim, and we look a lot cooler in our head than in real life ...to actually see it is a little disturbing.

In this first video you will see several blatant problems with my stroke.

1. I have an extreme cross over...meaning that my arms cross the midline of my body. We all know that the shortest way to get from A to B is a straight line....well I am making an S shape which is making me extrememly inefficient. My hands should be hitting the water at 10 and 2....reather than 1 and 11 on the opposite sides. Being left handed, you will see that my right arm is much weaker giving even more of a crossover.

2. My legs/kick sucks. Look how far apart my legs are. This creates an enormous drag and eliminates almost all power from my kick. I had no idea that I swim with my legs apart.



In this second video I am making an effort to straighten out my stroke and keep my legs together. As you will see, I've still got a lot of work to do.



Hopefully, with a little work, I will soon be posting a follow-up video where I look like a guy who actually knows how to swim.

bs.