Day 5: Different thought

Today I only got in about 30 minutes of concentrated drilling because the day worked out a bit differently than anticipated.

I swam from 6 - about 7 while E'llee and Cate played and visited me while I was swimming.

I really worked at the beginning to try to regain that buoyancy feeling in my lungs again. I felt like it was starting to sink in.

The other thing I noticed is that I think that if I do it too much I end up burying my head and figured out that I think my whole body is kind of "tipped" backward in the water.

I have pretty heavy legs compared to my torso so I think I swim a bit like a tree in that my stockier, woodier parts are lower and my more top is much more streamlined. I'm kind of the opposite of most swimmers who tend to be V shaped starting at their shoulders whereas I am kind of <> shaped. I know I have weight to lose but generally speaking this is my shape.

So instead of hanging my head so much today to the point of burying it. I thought about slightly intentionally elevating my top hip. This brought my hip a little higer in the water and like maybe I had a little bit of a "crook" in my body but I don't think I really did. I think perhaps I have a bit of an arch in my back instead and this may be taking some of that out of it.

What I noticed when I did this was that I felt a bit more hip drive propulsion I think because my hip was higher.

The other thing I thought about was keeping a really steep angle on my recovery. I tried to rotate more than I am used to and found I over-rotated sometimes but that generally speaking I don't think I have been rotating enough.

I was easily doing 14 SPL and I think I was even at a 12 at a very leisurely pace.

I talked to Cate a bit about what I was doing and told her what I have been trying to do and that I think I have really started imprinting a new stroke. I'm sure I could return back to my old stroke still but I think I'm on the way to a new stroke.

I did do 2 lengths which I should not have done but couldn't resist the temptation. I won't do that again for at least a little while.

There were several other people swimming at the same time as I and I noticed that one guy had a very similar stroke count to my old stroke. He was doing about 19 SPL. I would occasionally push off after him and found myself catching him on the 25 doing 14 SPL instead of my usual 19 or so.

I remember that pre-workshop I was really shooting for 17 SPL on 1.3, or 20 beats per length on 1.3 which is about 26 seconds per length. THis was a bit of a stretch after I had gone a couple lengths. We'll see what happens in another few weeks. I really feel like I'm headed somewhere.