Discover your life aquatic

Key points:

• Check sessions notes after each session: Click Here
• 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:  Stroke Recovery Motion

The goal is to eliminate the most common areas of instability, wasted effort and tension at the very beginning of the stroke. These "undesireables" often come into your stroke from the very first recovery motion.  You want to keep your shoulder, arm and wrist relaxed and move it smoothly and with minimal effort to the position from which you will initiate the forward extension of the arm. But for this practice, we stop just before that extension phase.

And as always, we want to ensure that our fundamental position, the glide, is intact. Use mirrors at home and/or at work for this dryland practice!

Run through the key points one at a time.

Key points:

• Elbow at 90 degrees
• Arm wide from your body (visualize touching the water or use a reference point - wall or mirror)
• Stop before extension begins
• Maintain glide position

Pool Focus: Posture and Streamline

1. 15 minutes: Glide review

• Head alignment (relaxed neck, nose down)
• Degree of rotation (thoracic rotation)
• Arms in position (relaxed but held close to hip and thigh, front arm extended but not reaching)
• Practice mini-laps kicking in glide with those three focus points with and without fins.

2. 35 minutes: Recovery Motion in the Water

Primary fundamental in this process is to maintain glide position as you bring your arm forward in the recovery:

• Focus: Maintain elbow angle at 90 degree
• Focus: Feel your arm/wrist/hand move through the water
• Focus: Maintain relaxed arm and stop just before extending, then return to glide position.

• Round 1: In-water recovery (Water should cover your arm up to your elbow. Take it slow and emphasize balance.)
• Round 2: Out of water recovery (Water should connect with your wrist or knuckles. Spend a little less time is the end position as this is the most unstable.)
• For both rounds, try some discovery exercises where you change your glide position (ie. head, rotation, etc...) and also your recovery essentials (wider or narrower recovery, lift arms out of the water, hand vs. elbow lead, etc...)

Goals: Maintaining glide position as you discover the movements and focus points of the arm recovery.

Method: Start with big contrasts between positions. Then ask, "How do I know my current state or position?" Use big changes in state or position to discover your default or comfort preference. Investigate which unfamiliar positions yield surprising results in comfort, streamline, balance and relaxation.

3. 10 minutes: Review of head turn and Introduction to moving air out through the nose
 
Review of head turn:

• Using a noseclip or mask, aim to turn your head so that you maintain your best glide position.
• Turn your head slowly so you can see your nose, mouth and chin line up with the horizontal line of the surface of the water
• Look to clear the corner of your mouth, while keeping one eye either completely or partially submerged in the water.
• If one side feels easier, check the fundamentals of glide: head and spine alignment, degree of body rotation and arm positions.

• For comfort in the head turn to reach air, we are looking for the right balance of air pressure in the nose to keep water out.
• Experiment with different levels of pressure as you push air from the nose during your head turn. Do you need to change it at all progressively?
• Check your buoyancy. The goal is to use only the air you need to keep water from the nose as you turn. If you exhale too much, you may lose vital buoyancy needed to get air. It can vary for each person.
• Do this practice in glide but with only 1-2 exhales per breath. You may find you can only do one exhale before you need more air (inhalation) in order to keep going.
• As always, bring your focus back to your glide and head turn. Are you in the best possible breathing position?