I Think, Therefore I Swim

I’ve tried a lot of athletic pursuits.

My high school coach, Mr. Haines, would be surprised to hear it. In high school, I wasn’t what you’d call athletic. In fact, Mr. H would probably accuse me of holding out on him.

He wanted his students on teams, competitive teams. Competition scared the hell out of me then (still does, sort of, but more on that later). I took a different tack on the saying, “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” My mantra was more along the lines of, “Those who can, do; those who can’t, cheer on those who can.”

Yes, indeed, I was a cheerleader. In my 20s, I took my sense of rhythm and big mouth and became, you guessed it, an aerobics instructor. The two are really quite similar; instead of yelling encouragement as cheerleaders do, aerobics instructors get to yell DIRECTLY at the participants, which in some ways is much more satisfying.

In my 30s, I got burned out on aerobics and started swimming for fitness. I was not good. I got very tired. I must have been getting a GREAT workout because I was fighting my way from one end of the pool to the other, doing battle with every water droplet I encountered. It was ugly, and it wasn’t very fun.

I decided I wanted to do a triathlon. I found a whole new level of discomfort in the water. In addition to working way too hard, I was now very stressed out by competing in the water.

During an indoor sprint triathlon, I swear I had a panic attack during the swim leg. I blame the woman who shared my lane. In my practices, I had almost always had my own lane, or had been swimming with a friend. This woman took up a lot of space. She moved a LOT of water. She cause mini-tsunamis that went straight into my mouth when I rolled for breath.

At the end of my second length, I stood up in the pool. I damn near got out. There were spectators and I had a decision to make. Would I rather suffer the indignity of quitting, or suffer the horror of continuing with Ms. Eggbeater sharing my lane? By that time, she was several lengths ahead of me. I decided to do one more length and see how I felt.

I finished the length, stood up, and had the exact same mental conversation with myself that I had just had at the other end of the pool. Okay. Another length, then decide. I did the whole swim leg that way. Went on and finished. Lousy time, but what an accomplishment!

I had competed. I had survived a competition. I was hooked.

Since I wasn’t a natural athlete, I figured I needed to employ every edge I could find. I liked to read, so I read about triathlons. A type of swimming was mentioned: Total Immersion. My best friend’s husband had given her the Total Immersion book for Christmas. I borrowed it, rudely, before she’d gotten a chance to read it. (Amazingly, she is still my friend!)

I read it eagerly. I stopped swimming and started doing swim “drills.” I quickly recognized that I was not smart enough to think about the approximately 200,000 little nuances necessary to have a perfect stroke. Total Immersion preaches using one focal point at a time. This I could handle.

With the drills, I didn’t seem to be getting as much of a physical workout. It was a leap of faith to believe things would get better , but slowly, they did. After a couple of months of drills I started mixing whole-stroke swimming with my drills. Yes, it really took that long, but keep in mind that my poor technique was deeply ingrained. My muscles weren’t willing to surrender the bad habits I had been repeating over and over. (To this day, if I get too tired or try to swim too fast, those habits still rear their ugly heads.)

I believe the one thing that sets Total Immersion swimming apart is the emphasis on mindful swimming. It is a constant challenge, because my brain gets a little feisty sometimes and decides I should be able to think about two or three aspects of my stroke simultaneously. Soon I will realize that none of the two or three focal points are really getting the attention they deserve. I have to go back to one focal point at a time.

Humbling. However, one can also experience a mental calm not common in our busy world. Difficult to describe, this state is also addictive. “Peace like a river?” perhaps.

Swimming the Total Immersion way can heal your body, helping you develop strength and flexibility. It can help you “turn back the clock” by improving your coordination and balance. Best of all, if you practice it using the focal point method, it will drain the stress right out of you.

Check it out: totalimmersion.net

More on this later....