Day 21: YAHOO!!!

I was thinking about not swimming today because yesterday just didn't feel right. But never lose hope! I felt something today and "got" something I hadn't before.

Today I felt what it means to active streamline. It's a hard thing to describe. I'll tell you though it makes you want to swim naked so that you can feel that water just streaming by your body while you glide effortlessly. Seriously!

I felt it in the front hand just leisurely hanging out in front. The rotation of the shoulders being just enough. The "falling" hip rotating slightly more than the shoulders. The hip feeling the rush of water going by it from the pull that feels like you are not even really pulling but hanging onto the water.

I'll tell you it was an AWESOME feeling. I couldn't always reproduce it. I found if I put too much energy into any one part it fell apart. If I tried to overreach, not roll with the breath I would lose it. That was frustrating but that feeling is what crack must be like. It is addictive. You want that feeling back.

Some of the things I learned, rather than just had a body sensation, is that when I breathe to my left I get a sinking feeling. If I think about continuing my forward extension on my breathing stroke that really helps. I think it also means I am breathing just a little bit earlier because I'm following my hip/shoulder back.

The other thing is that I felt my head relaxing almost automatically. When it wasn't I could feel things falling apart. So I knew where to put my focus immediately.

One thing I did notice is that it is so much easier to relax my head when I am in a pool that stays pretty much the same depth. I find it harder to make sure my head is in the right position when the depth changes from shallow to deep.

I too have a tendency to have my head bob around and get sent off track. I'm pretty sure if I ever had a whole pool to swim in and closed my eyes that I could start in one corner of the pool and at the end of the length be several lanes over. In a pool I can correct this very quickly but in open water it causes me to swim off course.

I find that things tend to happen in a chain reaction. Each thing linked to the next thing in the chain. This is how I think my stroke is effected when I move my head around instead of having it "released" between my shoulders.

When I follow my stroking arm with my head my lower hip tends to drop causing my recovering arm to swing wider to counter balance the dropping hip. The wider swing then causes me to cross over a bit too far sending me "off track" and therefore pull the right.

To correct this I have been focussing on the basics. I think about releasing my head. During the TI workshop I took, the instructor said, your nose should be like you are taking a "stealth sniff" of your armpit. But be careful with this that you don't actually have your head/nose lean into your armpit.

The really cool thing is that since I've started doing the TI drills I notice people watching me swim. NEVER, and I mean NEVER before has anyone stopped to watch me swim. Maybe I'm being too vain, maybe I had a big hole in my suit but I don't think so. One of the swimmers even asked me for stroke advice. It's interesting hearing people's perceptions about what they think the important things are about swimming. They concentrate on the pull and the kick when really the body position is so much more important.

The other really cool thing is that I know I have it right and feel "fishlike" when it feels so comfortable that I feel like I could breathe in the water like a fish. It is just so easy and relaxed that I don't even notice that I am needing to struggle to get air.

Yahoo!!! I'm so excited!