What if it was easy?
One of this week’s clients told me that she has spent her life thinking that front crawl was too hard, she’d watch other people swimming seemingly without effort and wonder how on earth they did that? How was it that when she tried she found it so stressful, her body tensed up, she couldn’t breathe, her arms wouldn’t come out of the water, It was hard work, exhausting and not at all enjoyable.
I can totally relate to how she felt; before I relearned to swim I was an OK swimmer but still spent years working really hard to swim faster, feeling like I was fighting the water – resulting in sore shoulders and a great deal of frustration. I didn’t know there was any other option.
Then 15 years ago I discovered Total Immersion and everything changed! It was literally life changing, I realised that if we take a fresh look at how swimming actually works we discover that there is an easier, better and totally logical way for anyone to learn to swim with no stress, exhaustion or injured shoulders.
Our conditioning and human survival instincts can convince us that swimming is hard and it’s sadly true that the way swimming is taught can make it difficult and stressful, reinforcing our basic instinct to struggle to not drown rather than teaching us to work with the water and swim with ease and enjoyment.
Like I did, swimmers often believe that you need to use strength and power to attempt to beat the water into submission to be able to swim well but the opposite is true. Swimming does not need to be hard, or stressful, it can in fact be easy.
The secret to great swimming is not about strength, fitness, youth or power, instead it’s about learning to work with the water, to relax, to let the water help and support you as you connect your body and shape it to streamline through the water – your aim is to be more like a sleek dolphin than a flailing human! It seems so obvious when you look at swimming with fresh eyes.
I had a huge lightbulb moment when I first realised this and discovered how swimming actually works (I still clearly remember that moment 15 years on!). It was indeed life-changing and I now have the privilege of witnessing my clients’ own lightbulb moments too.
Why on earth doesn’t everybody learn to swim this way?
I’m on a mission to help as many people as possible discover the true joy of swimming so if you’d like to know exactly how swimming works click through to my download ‘Most of what you know about swimming is wrong! – 5 swimming truths to help anyone swim better than they dreamed possible’ http://eepurl.com/gm9lKr
Happy swimming!
