Why am I so rubbish at swimming?

We recently went on a swim holiday to Croatia (brilliant thing to do)

Starting from where? The Bay of Biscay can be a bit rough can’t it?

Sounds like the breathing thing is the main bit for you currently. For me the advice that helped was that if your face is in the water then you should be breathing out pretty hard, almost blowing the air out, then when it comes time to turn your head and breath in you are ready to breathe in straight away. This made the breathing in part much less of a panic, and I also found that holding my breath with my face in the water was panic inducing too, so by always being in breathe in or breathe out mode the whole thing suddenly became very calm.

Once I got that sorted I did drills which helped with different parts of it.

One drill was to swim one arm at a time, so do a full stroke with the right arm, meet at the top, then do the left arm – catch ups. This allows you to focus fully on one whole cycle at a time to lock down the form and builds some glide in – glide is calming.

Another one was dragging the tips of your fingers through the water on the return when that arm has finished the pull and comes out by your hip, this teaches you not to muscle the return as you slowly drag your relaxed fingertips through the water, again this is nice and calming. These things combined get you to that effortless look as you relax on the returns, take your time breathing and have some glide in your stroke.

The other one was swimming with closed fists, this teaches you to keep your elbows up and catch the water with your full forearm which will give you that speed and power.

After a few lengths of each drill then do some normal swimming, and don’t look at the clock but do count how many strokes it takes you to do a length, the fewer the better.

Don’t both kicking, just kind of flap your legs super gently just to help keep them up in the water, they are not what’s powering you.

As someone above mentioned, once the relaxing elements of this click you’ll instantly go from being able to do 10 lengths before fatiguing to being able to casually do KMs at a time.

Interesting thread and probably also explains why I find swimming in a buoyancy aid a total pain in the proverbial as it lifts your shoulders/chest.

Tide and wind can be a big issue as well.  Trying to swim back cross tide and cross/up wind to the beach in 20knots of breeze in full sailing kit a couple of weeks back was interesting.

I found for technique in the pool I really had to slow down a lot to lower the amount of oxygen I was using and focus on timing and not gasping for a big lungful of air (and getting a big mouthful of water) at each breath.  That seemed to help me a lot.  Don’t know if that will help others.

Some excellent stuff from Hannah.

“t’s more like looking into your armpit” (when breathing) is so excellent. In fact it’s precisely what I always remind myself when breathing to my non-dominant side – in oder to not start trying to lever my front half out the water (as that drops the rear half of your body, slows me down massively, and then makes everything else go to pot as the legs will scissor-kick to get stability etc.

Couple of other things

– POINT YOUR TOES.  (I see so many strong cyclists in my tri club who are basically dragging massive anchors by having their feet pointed downwards to the bottom of the pool – point your toes like a ballerina on point to significantly reduce drag = go faster.

Think all the time the hand is there to push the water backwards – in line with your shoulder – to get max propulsion.  Any time it is pushing down or sideways is not as effective.

make sure your hand does NOT ‘cross-over’ to the other side of your body when it enters the water and all the time it’s in the water (that just makes you fishtail… and… yep… go slower)

Make sure you’ve always got 1 of your 2  hands pulling/pushing backwards at any point- no big pauses in propulsion (do NOT try to glide for ever off each stroke – there lieth the route to sticking the brakes on every single stroke if not very careful).

When breathing, think of it as 1-eye-in-the-water, 1-eye-out.  Not throwing your head around so much that you have both eyes looking upwards (sometimes that has to change when very choppy – but for pools, 1 eye in the air only).  And breathe like popeye – what you want is to be breathing is the little dip / hollow in the water level that’s created to the side of your head when moving.

Try to think that when your hand is entering the water, finger tips lower than the wrist, wrist lower than the elbow. Then as it enters, reach forward before the ‘pull’ phase starts (that gets you to rotate your core and then get propulsion from unwinding the core as your hand/arm pulls backwards.

The great news us that if you nail the technique, you’ll be faster than most of the fitter people with their shite technique (Unless they are unfathomably fit). It’s a constant annoyance to one of my  mates (6ft 7in, feet like flippers, shovel hands, should be faster than Michael Phelps with his physique and fitness) that on anything beyond 200m I can kick his arse whilst being 5 years older, 3 stone overweight, and since Covid hopelessly unfit.

I think Hannah touched on something else… for those getting desperate to grab a breath… breathe OUT whilst your head is under the water. That way (a) the CO2 doesn’t build up in the blood stream as much (it’s the CO2 that makes us want to gasp in air, not a lack of O2). And (b) then when your head (half your head !!) does go to breathe, it’s only got to get air in – not get the old stuff out then get the new stuff in.

‘Bubble-bubble-breathe’ as my coach often describes it as (on 3 strokes per breath).

It’s extremely technical. The difference between floundering and gliding along quickly is all technique, nothing really to do with fitness. Get on YouTube and start studying, then get someone to watch you swim.

‘Bubble-bubble-breathe’

Just dont use this approach if you are sharing a bath with your other half. I bubble, she breaths.

It’s “disgusting” apparently.

Bloody prude.