Could 2 yards of letting it happen be better than 20 lengths of ‘doing’ it?

Are you a good, or improving, front crawl swimmer but, when you think about it, you’re twisting your neck and gasping for air?

It may seem that this is what proper swimming is. It’s working for you because you can swim many lengths, maybe at increasingly impressive speeds. When as a learner you discovered this way of breathing, you found you were able to keep going. And now it feels normal. This “aquatic breathing” seems to give you a kind of rhythm and sometimes it even feels meditative or mindful.

But however many lengths you can do, if you’re twisting your neck and gasping for air, you are, in a way, going in the wrong direction.

Whatever you do in the water, the most important thing might be that you don’t do that.

Tips for a more healthy experience…

Slow down. Give up trying to swim faster

Find the support of the water by letting yourself sink. See how that releases your neck, opens your back and allows air to come out without you forcing it.

When you’re feeling liberated by the act of submission that is floating, giving your weight to the water, trusting it, start to add some movement, as though exploring the possibility for the first time.

See how much swimming you can do without losing the freedom you’ve found in floating or falling forward through the water in a glide. Have low expectations and be content with just a bit.

Don’t think of trying to ‘master’ the strokes, explore symmetrical movement patterns like breaststroke and asymmetrical ones like front crawl. But only with a quiet neck.

Instead of swimming with tense muscles, let everything dangle from your open back.

5 minutes of this might be better than an hour of swimming up and down. 2 yards of letting it happen might be better than 20 lengths of ‘doing’ it.