Discover your life aquatic

Key points:

• Check sessions notes after each session: http://seahiker.com/content/sensational-freestyle-vancouver-aquatic-centre-4-week-program-may-2010
• Practice between pool sessions!
• Use them to help guide your practice by exploring what we covered in greater detail or working on things you feel you need more experience with.
• If you can't get to a pool between Tuesday and Thursday sessions, look to practice dry land drills at a minimum.
• You are looking to supply your coaches with more information on how you feel with the exercises and drills, sensations, questions and any obstacles, or successes you've experienced. Feel free to email or phone us to discuss!

Dryland:  Breathing Issues and Full Stroke Coordination

We spent most of our time going over common breathing questions in full stroke swimming (as opposed to glide or the single switch drill). We can break them down into a few key cateogies: 

• Flow: Establishing a flowing stroke with a relaxed and regular cadence or rhythm. Losing that rhythm or rushing can make breathing difficult.

• Timing: Working on getting your head in a position so that it simply follows the body's rotation to air, exchanges air and then gets back quickly (but not too sharply) into the nose down position.

• Nose: Creating pressure in your nose to keep water out and/or trickling air from the nose to help you feel that you are breathing in a more natural way. Keep attention on not exhaling too quickly so as to maintain the buoyancy you need to for a good body position in the water.

• Air Exchange: Exchanging air quickly at the surface. Beginning to exhale as your head turns (experiment to discover the right timing and force of the exhalation) and then quickly inhaling (a sharper exhalation at the last moment often makes inhaling even easier and quicker) for your breath. Key points are maintaining buoyancy and not interrupting the flow of your stroke.

• Complexity: Breathing is complex! In your practice, whether dry or in the pool, focus on one thing at a time, then go back to glide and switches without breathing to recalibrate your technique and regain your comfort and confidence. Use whatever tools necessary during breathing practice to ensure a greater chance of success (nose clips, fins, short distances, etc...)

We also talked about how to visualize the coordinated combination of rotation, extension of the arm entering the water and the moving the catching arm back to glide as one, complete and fluid motion. We went through the exercise of looking to reach a point higher on the wall with a distinct movement that has every part of the body working together.

Pool Focus: Review of glide, switch skills , full stroke rhythm and breathing exercises (breathing to one side at a time)

1. Glide and glide with breathing review. Focus on head turn and breath movement (review notes from session #5)

2. Switch and switches with a breath review. Focus on full pauses to check and adjust your position/breath (review notes from session #5.

3. Exploration of sending energy forward. Focus on best balance of timing, returning to glide efficiently, and feeling a forward surge in momentum without too much emphasis on either arm. Review notes from Tuesday.

4. Establish rhythmic switches with less and less time pausing in glide. Repeat until your strokes are fluid (3-5 max, then rest), again, without breathing yet.

5. Breathing into the stroke rhythm:

• Take 3-5 strokes and finish in glide to double check that you are in a good breathing position
• Take 3-5 strokes and finish in a breath in glide position (turn your head early on the "1-2" recovery phase and follow your body to air). Keep working on this until it is seamless.
• After getting to air consistently, focus on returning your head back down (nose down) before 1-2 more strokes. You may need to exhale more sharply and have a quick inhale to fit the breath into your stroke timing. Or, just slow down your overall stroke rhythm to fit everything in.
• Limit yourself at this point to these exercises and short distances with an emphasis on synchronization of the head with the rotation of the body. This is really, really important. And also making sure you returning to a good glide position on every stroke.

6. Full stroke with breathing practice: Breathing every two strokes (to one side only, then change sides)

Breathing to one side gives you the following benefits (whether you do it over a short distance or a full length of the pool):

• You can emphasize your stroke rhythm easily
• You can emphasize rotation into glide on BOTH sides to feel confident in your breathing position
• You get the chance to get air frequently, which can make the exercise easier (once you get used to breathing more often)
• You get many opportunities to practice an aspect of breathing (see list in dryland section above), where many people will tend to take a few too many strokes in order to seek the "perfect breath."
• You can build more confidence with full stroke swimming
• Breathing to one side (and the other) is a great open water and speed skill that will help you develop the feeling of being able to breathe whenever you want to breathe, rather than sticking to a specific pattern.

Key points:

• Keep your stroke rhythm relaxed and patient (it's easy to increase your stroke cadence too much when doing this kind of swimming)
• Focus on one point at a time.
• If you get off your game, go back to a drill to recalibrate or solve a problem you are seeing (lifting head). Drills help you simplify your practice and address issues more easily.

This whole progression serves as a great practice in of itself, if you are looking to build confidence from glide to full stroke. Or, if serves as an important warm-up to begin a full swim practice with a reminder of your attention to good posture and movements in the water.