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Writer's pictureMark

Breaking it down... building it up


Some days just feel good and today was one of them. Thursday's can be hit or miss down the pool, today was a hit, with just two other swimmers in the lane and after the warm up I had the lane to myself.


Feeling fatigued from yesterday's three hour ride, today was an active recovery day, in other words drills! I find swimming the most challenging of the three disciplines. I'm a visual person and not being able to see myself swim means relying on feel to identify if changes in technique are having a positive result. When correcting poor technique the new and correct technique will feel wrong, as the brain is now used to wrong (poor technique) being right. Correcting poor technique therefore usually takes longer than learning something new from scratch. Patience is definitely a virtue when it comes to swimming.


The focus today was on body position (getting my legs a little higher), rotation (equal amount each side) and EVF (Early Vertical Forearm), the latter I find most challenging. It also takes discipline to ignore your pace and focus on technique & form. Anyone looking at my Strava activity would think I'd been floating on a lilo! However, looking back to this time last year I have improved, still some way to go, but I find in swimming improvements come much more slowly than cycling and running. Swimming is more about technique than just improving fitness. Practice and a lot of it makes perfect. Keep at it.

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