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

[rampling.livejournal.com]

When I swim, I do the crawl for most of my swimming exercise. Ever since I took a community college class and improved my crawl stroke, I believe it made swimming a lot more fun (I'd never have used the word "fun" before that), and the stroke itself more comfy and even relaxing and smooth. I remember back in my swim meet days (I was NOT a swimmer, I was a springboard diver!) the swimmers always swam crawl even for the distance events. I think that's because they'd use a relaxing smooth efficient gliding stroke that they could keep up for a long time. I quite recommend learning a stroke like that, if you can.

Oh yeah, and for the eyes underwater thing, those little swim goggles are quite the thing. My eyes would never sting when I used them.

(And I see I made my other stroke comment on the wrong post! That's what I get for trying to catch up quickly on LJ.)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

The movement through the water is fun enough already, I suppose -- the annoyances are water temperature (great at my Y!), other swimmers, schedule, all the effing WALKING required, and so forth. I think my crazy stroke really isn't too awful in terms of enjoyment. But I know I should learn better technique anyway. I don't want to compete, I don't need speed or endurance, but I do need to avoid injury.