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Growing up I never went to the pool much even though there was one near my house. I am one of 8 kids(yes 8 no joke) so my parents were not real interested in dragging us all down to the pool and watching us fight each other for several hours a week.

When I was 16 my mother decided I needed to learn to swim as she had noticed that anytime my other brothers and sisters went to the pool with there friends, I would stay away.

She noticed my confidence in the pool didn’t exist and she knew I my confidence out of the pool was taking a pretty big blow.

So she signed me up for Swimming lessons, improved swimming was the aim of the lessons.

I did the lessons for about a year and boy was it embarrassing. While my mates were doing backflips off a diving board I was holding onto an old lady begging her not to let me go.

So after a year of swimming lessons I was confidant I could stay afloat.

Fast forward about 15 years and I started taking my kids to the pool.

And all my embarrassment came back when I realized I couldn’t swim much more then about fifty meters before i was huffing and puffing and looking for something to hold on to.

This was not because i was out of shape as I have been going to the gym for years but it was because I could not relax in the pool and I had no technique what so ever.

Anyway I finally got a video and book set given to me for a birthday and I followed all the basic drills in the set and every time I took my kids to the swimming pool I would spend 15 minutes myself practicing what was in the book and videos.

After about four weeks of practice (twice a week) I managed to swim 200 meters non stop.

Learning to swim has boosted my confidence a great deal and it has helped me feel more of a dad, because I was starting to think I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the kids anymore.

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Until breathing becomes routine, effective focus on other aspects of the stroke is impossible. But once you master breathing, other skills follow much more rapidly.

Lets talk about three points:
1. How to eliminate discomfort
2. How to exchanging old air for new
3. The mechanics of fitting each breath easily into your freestyle stroke.

Securing your airways

The number one source of tension for new swimmers is the very real fear that water will go up your nose or down your air way.

Keeping most of the head submerged while swimming is essential to good balance, but this brings the water perilously close to nose and mouth.

When you rotate from a nose-down balance position to a nose-up position you have difficulty completing the movement because your afraid your inhale water instead of air.

People respond to both fears the same: lifting your head abruptly so the nose and mouth will be at a “safer” distance from the surface. And the instant they do, precious balance and smoothness are lost.

Here are some simple steps that you can take to feel more secure about getting all the air you need, while minimizing your chances of inhaling water:

1. Practice breathing in a good-sized mixing bowl — at least twice the circumference of your face — filled with warm water. If you have a mirror that can fit into the bottom of the bowl, put that in too. Then try the following:

# Dip your chin into the water and leave it there while you breathe in through your mouth and out through mouth and nose. Observe how your breath ruffles the surface. Continue for 30 seconds or more until this feels almost meditative.

# Next, lightly touch your nose and lips to the surface and practice inhaling through the small space at the corners of your mouth. Play at this with a spirit of curiosity for about a minute or until you feel almost “bored” with it.

# With goggles on, lower your face into the water, keeping your mouth open but without exhaling. Notice how natural air pressure keeps water from entering your nostrils or mouth. As you lift your face, notice how you can inhale easily, even with water dripping around your mouth and nose. In this and subsequent exercises, try to inhale with the tip of your nose still touching the water.

# Repeat as above, but this time bubble gently from your nose. Trying to keep your bubbles small and quiet. The smaller and quieter they are, the longer you’ll be able to sustain one exhale, before lifting to inhale again. Repeat this but bubbling only from your mouth.

# When you can do each of the above in a calm and contained manner, advance to “rhythmic breathing.” Lower your face and bubble out for a count of four or five-one-thousand. Lift and inhale for a count of one-one-thousand. Lower and repeat. For an interesting challenge, alternate between mouth bubbles on one exhale and nose bubbles on the next. Your goal is to inhale with the tip of your nose — and perhaps even your nostrils — still in the water and your mouth barely clearing it. Repeat until you develop a relaxed and seamless rhythm.

2. Repeat the final exercise in shallow water at the pool. (Precede it with the other exercises if you wish.) Crouching with hands resting on knees or the pool gutter, dip your face for a sustained bubbling exhale (four to five one-thousands), then lift it to inhale with minimal clearance. Repeat until this feels effortless and meditative. Its calming effect will help you resume swimming with much more sense of command in breathing and everything else.

3. After a few minutes of the above, progress to bobbing. Start with shallow and brief immersion — just dipping to your hairline — and work your way to longer, deeper immersion, focusing on sustained steady bubbling. Bob up, beginning to inhale as soon as your mouth clears the water. This time don’t worry about keeping your nose at the surface, but focus on becoming comfortable getting air even as water cascades down from your head across your face. Then without pause, bob back down again.

4. Swim some easy 25-yard repeats. On these 25s, let your need for air entirely dictate the speed and rhythm of your stroke. If it helps, count off your exhales and inhales by one-thousands, as you did in the bowl. For your rest interval between 25s, take several deep, slow cleansing breaths. When you can repeat 25s, with a sufficient sense of ease that you need only three cleansing breaths before starting the next, you can progress to 50-yard repeats.

Here’s part 2

4. Finding Balance In The Water

If you didn’t grow up around a Swimming pool, being able to balance and
float in the water can seem scary at first. Immediately we
imagine ourselves sinking rapidly to the bottom because we
believe we are too heavy and there is no way we could possibly
stay on top of something that isn’t a solid.
The opposite is in fact true. We were meant to float!

The human body consists of 55-70% water and our lungs can pretty
much keep the rest of us afloat. When our lungs fill with air,
they are able to maintain us on top of the water.
Being able to manage the buoyancy of our lungs so our bodies are in the optimum
swimming position is a matter of managing a few things;
keeping a relaxed breathing pattern, making slight changes in
our head position and adjusting how much we ‘push’ our
torso down while swimming.

5. Increasing Speed

Do you ever wonder how Olympic swimmers can power
through the water with such grace and still maintain speed,
correct technique and not be tired at the end of it?

Have you sprinted for one or two laps and been completely exhausted at
the end of it but only increased your swim speed by a marginal
amount?

There is a trick to swimming really fast which nobody knows
unless they have been told it by a coach, a fellow swimmer or
they discovered one day after a really hard training session.
Swimming fast has very little to do with how strong or how fit
you are. Swimming comes done to staying relaxed as you sprint.

6. Technique

You may have experienced the confusion of trying to focus on
correcting too many things at once. Let’s face it; there is a lot to
think about. The pull, the catch, the recovery, the rotation, the
list goes on! So what is the best way to fix most technique
errors? The answer is simple, it’s by doing swimming drills. Drills done
correctly allow you to single out an aspect of your stroke, and
work on it without being distracted by the hundreds of other
elements of your stroke.

The best way to develop a good swimming technique is from the ground
up. That means by starting out with the basics such as floating
and balance in the water and then moving on to rotation,
kicking, using the arms and finally putting it all together. There
is a sequence of drills for each stroke which allow you to
gradually develop each aspect of it.

7. The Pull Phase

The pull phase of each stroke is where many swimmers get it
wrong. Rotation may be great, their kick can be strong but a
incorrect or poor pull through can be the cause of a not so nice looking
freestyle stroke. In freestyle most amateur swimmers will either pull
across their body, pull with a straight arm, pull too wide or a
combination of each.
Watch any video of an elite swimmer and you’ll see their arm
bent at the elbow, they pull close to their body and they keep
their elbow high throughout. Think of when you pull yourself
out of the pool on the pool edge. Where are your hands and
how are your arms positioned? They should be shoulder width
apart, you bend at the elbow and your body is kept close to
them. This is where you have the most strength and is where
you should be pulling in freestyle.

I hope this video helped improve your swimming.

I’ll cover three now and another four in another post.

Use these to improve swimming speed.

Here’s the first Three Problems

1. Breathing In Freestyle

Do you ever finish a swim and you’ve got water up your nose, in
your lungs and you’re still coughing up water after you’ve
gotten changed?

Freestyle breathing can be a nightmare. It’s a
regular problem and it frequently happens because of an
poor freestyle swimming technique. Sometimes swimmers have a
tough time getting the breathing just right because they are not
getting enough air in when they breathe, they don’t blow out
their air underwater, their leading arm sinks when taking a
breath, they sacrifice speed to pause for breath and they suck
in water when taking a breath.

2. Tiring Early

Have you ever felt tired during the first 5 minutes of a swimming training
session? Do you ever need to stop at the end of the 50m pool for a quick
breath? Swimming technique done poorly is hard work. It might not
be a high impact sport but it sure works your cardio like no other.

Swimming for a long period of time can seem like an
impossible task to many. Tiring quickly happens
when we have the wrong technique and try to muscle through the pool.

3. What To Do Each Workout

When was the last time you went to the swimming pool and knew exactly
what you were going to do?

Swimming is awesome fun and great
exercise, but a lot of people become frustrated because they
aren’t doing the right kind of training and swimming.
Most people who swim by themselves do just that, ‘swim’. They
have no plan, no goal or no idea how to best use their time at
the pool.

Some swimmers just enjoy the feeling of swimming
which is great, but it can be even better by setting little
goals before each session which you would like to accomplish. It
can be a certain time you do, a stroke count you’d like to achieve
or even a distance you’d like to swim. If you can find a way to
make your session have a goal you’ll see huge increases in your swimming and
enjoyment.