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]

Hmmm, I guess I disagree with you about the crawl -- I'd always heard that it's the most efficient, and expends less energy, than other strokes. And I feel that effeciency myself, after having improved my crawl stroke dramatically. I love to relax and glide while I'm doing the crawl.

Checking the web, I find, for example: Freestyle or Crawl: The fastest, most efficient, and most popular stroke. (http://www2.gsu.edu/~wwwfit/swimming.html)

That sounds weird, that they were trying to teach you the crawl at the same time you were learing to swim?! That makes no sense to me. But then I didn't learn to swim in a class. I'd think you should start with a casual version of breaststroke or dogpaddle or the like. Then later progress on to the crawl, when you're ready.

Maybe the crawl isn't everyone's favorite stroke (of course), but it does have some major benefits. My actual favorite is butterfly, but that's hard, and Really Really Really Tiring! But, ohhhh, the flying!! Just don't ask me to do more than one length of the pool with butterfly....

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I think when I learned to swim we started out with Generalized Flailing just to get used to the water. We'd bob, we'd splash, whatever. But the first actual swimming was the crawl. Maybe it wasn't a good, efficient crawl, of course! That's just the general motions we were taught: one arm pulling at a time, head rotates to the side for breaths, flutter kick.

[davidlevine]

Every single swimming class I had tried to start with the crawl. And I couldn't do it -- I kept inhaling water, and I couldn't coordinate my arms and legs. I needed a stroke that brought my head higher out of the water, like the breast stroke.

The crawl is definitely the fastest, and is the most popular because everyone teaches it. I'm not sure I agree that it's the most efficient, but it might be. But it sure is hard to learn.