Now if only I could swim "right"

[cjsmith]

I have developed a weird style that has arms from, oh, the breaststroke or the butterfly or something, and a scissor-kick from the sidestroke. My head bobs on every stroke; at the high point I breathe, and even at the low point my eyes are usually still out of the water. (That last is very handy for me. I veer if I'm not looking.) I'm bothered by the asymmetry of the scissor-kick, but not enough that I spend time doing it the opposite way.

I have almost completely forgotten how to do the basic crawl. I can flutter-kick, and I am comfortable doing that when I am on a kickboard, but the flutter-kick doesn't go well with what my arms want to do. The arm and head motion of the crawl feels very wrong to me, and besides, it puts water in my ears. I am convinced this is the main purpose of the crawl. :-)

Comments

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

In comments to my previous post, aliceinfinland echoed that sentiment: her classes didn't teach other strokes until the student could master the crawl, which was frustrating.

I'm torn between working for speed so that I can stay out of the lane with the nearly-stationary people and working for endurance so that I can get a better cardio workout. Speed = learn crawl. Endurance = don't. Then there's "am I slowly injuring myself with my weird style" (learn crawl!) and "how long do I want to spend of a morning anyway?" (learn crawl! get tired faster!)

So many options, so low a priority! :-)