Just keep swimming...

Before he left for his most recent work trip, I asked J to help me work on my swimming technique. I am by no means a great swimmer - it's been probably 15 years or so since I took a swimming class. I can do a back stroke well enough to stay moving and not sink, and I'm pretty good at floating - I have lots of buoyancy! One thing I've always had trouble with, though, is the front crawl or freestyle stroke.

The Y in our area has two pools; a large lap pool with six lanes, and a smaller pool that's mostly for water aerobics and open swimming. J has swum a few times there and like it, so since I bought a new suit we headed over. I wasn't too nervous about swimming - I used to love the water - but I was a little nervous to have him instruct me. Not because he isn't a good instructor, but rather because he swims really well. I didn't want to look too much a fool in front of my hubby! Then again, I do quite often anyway...

Ahem.

I know the principles of the front crawl; laying face-down, kicking while rotating arm movements, and somewhere in there breathing. The hard part for me is actually doing all that. We started out with some basic exercises. J grabbed a kick board and had me swim a couple lengths holding the board in front of me and practicing my kicking. Then we added on breathing while kicking - learning to turn my head while kicking. After that we added in arm strokes, all while still holding the kick board. It got very complicated! However, I kept at it, and after a few more lengths I gave it a try without the board.

I sucked an awful lot of water that evening, and had one heck of a headache the next day. But I swam 8-10 laps and played around in the pool for a while, and had lots of fun.

Yesterday I decided that I needed to keep up with my workout and so I headed back to the gym. I took my suit with the idea that if the pool had any free lanes I'd swim, otherwise I'd go upstairs and do some cardio and weight training. The pool was relatively empty, so I donned my suit, showered off, and hit the pool.

I swam for about 40 minutes and did 12.5 laps. Six back-stroke, six front crawl, and one length floating/back-stroke to the end where I'd left my towel. I didn't suck nearly as much water as the other night, and I am learning a little bit more about the whole experience; to keep kicking when I try to breathe, twisting my neck more to bring my face further out of the water to breathe, the importance of not panicking and concentrating on my efforts. While I'm by no means a great swimmer or swim very often, I think it's something I should keep up. Especially since it's helping my healthy livings/weight loss goals; I checked the scale this morning and had lost 1.4lbs!

Maybe some of that was water-weight, but I'd like to think I lost the weight because of working out in the water.