Screwed Up Swimming

Basta fights change. More than anyone I know. Or at least that I know well enough to how they feel about change.

He fights me every step of the way with his swimming. He didn't want to try bilateral breathing when I first started coaching him. "It screws me up," he said. I told him to give it a try, just to see. Sure enough, his body turned into a corkscrew and he was all over the water. He coughed and sputtered at the end of one length. He told me he'd never get it, didn't want to try, and didn't see why he should bother, anyway.

I told him that being able to breathe on either side is an advantage to a triathlete who finds themselves in an event where the waves are breaking hard on one side, the wind is blowing, or even if the sun is shining bright. If you can only breathe on one side you might spend the whole swim sucking in water or being blinded, whereas a more versatile athlete has options.

That worked, and he agreed to try it again. After maybe 3 lengths he had it figured out. At least to the point to where he wasn't struggling and it wasn't throwing off everything else about his swim. Now, these many months later, he bilateral breathes easily and routinely.

Pretty much same story with rolling his body. He was doing it on one side, not the other. I told him he had to roll evenly on both sides. He insisted he was and wasn't going to change anything. "Rolling more the other way screws me up," he said. It took a video of him to convince him he was really doing what I said he was doing. Then he started to exaggerate the side that wasn't rolling. Sometimes he exaggerated it so much that he rolled over onto his back, snorted water up his nose, thrashed his legs about to right himself, and came up sputtering. "I told you this screws me up!" Yep. All my fault, too. I told him to persevere, and soon enough he did. He rolls evenly now.

Our latest technique improvement is the high arm catch. He's still entering the water across his center line, though his glide and pull is much better. Today I told him to concentrate on making his hand entry in line with his shoulder. "I am doing that!" he said.

"No, you're not. I'm standing here 3 feet away, watching your every stroke and I assure you, you're not. You're entering more in line with your opposite ear. Focus on entering in line with your shoulder."

He did that for a lap, and he looked like a wreck. "That's screwing me up!" he said. "I can't focus on that and do everything else right, too. "

"I know. Focus on your hand entering the water in line with your shoulder. Today, nothing else matters."

"But what about my rolling? My pull? My glide? My legs?"

"Think about nothing but your hand entering the water in line with your shoulder. You swim well as it is now and your body will do all those other things naturally. Today -- focus on your hand in line with your shoulder. "

So he did. He was still corkscrewing and whipping his legs for the next lap, but his hand entry was better. No more Swimmer's Shoulder for him. Within a couple of laps his body was back to normal and the hand entry was still good. Hooray.

There is so much to swimming. You can work and work on this and that and there will still be something to improve. Overall, I think he's getting faster. He certainly looks better. We need to do another 20 lap test one of these first days to see for sure just how much faster he is.