Swimming Lessons

I had an educational experience in the pool at the gym the other night.
At a distant location of Gold’s Gym, I went through my normal workout and when I finished, I had a choice: elliptical or pool? I looked over at the cardio side of the gym and there were scores of sweating bodies that just looked like they had received the groovy news they were being audited by the IRS. I looked over at the pool, and there was not a soul to be found.
So in five minutes, I walked into the steam room for a little vasodilation (hot/cold treatment) and when I walked out, there were two other people swimming. Luckily, there are three lanes: Fast, Medium and Slow. They had been very gracious to let me have the “slow” lane so I could anonymously suck rocks while making lengths and laps.
I took 2 laps (4 lengths) in about 5 minutes with the least stressful technique of breaststroke, and thought I would spice things up a bit and perform my own medley with some freestyle. After one lap of an all-out effort, I immediately became exhausted and my heart was pounding about 1,000 mph. I have done my research, and swimming burns about 5 times more calories than running on a treadmill in an average 3o minutes to an hour. Swimming for an hour? I can’t imagine RUNNING for that long!
As I was about to take off for my sixth length, my leg was grabbed underwater, and I shot up and looked around. The girl next to me smiled and said, “Is that your inhaler?” I replied with an affirmation, and she asked very nicely if she could have a puff. She took two, actually. I asked her how many laps she had swam, and she said 10 laps. So mystery girl and her boyfriend were gracious enough to give me some serious pointers on how to improve my time and exercise while in the pool. Aquawoman had blown away my time and I asked how many laps she planned on swimming. “5,000 yards!” Okeysillydillydokey-o! Just to give you an idea of how far 5,000 yards really is, one length of the pool is 25 yards. That’s 100 laps. I guess it takes her 90 minutes to complete that. And she does this 3 times a week!
When else would I have an opportunity to receive some serious instruction from an asthmatic about increasing lungpower? I humbled myself and asked what she does to help her meet that goal. I guess I opened Pandora’s Box with this one. In about five minutes, she gave me some serious constructive criticism in my technique, my breathing, and she broke it down so I could understand it so well. She followed that up by saying that I potentially have a swimmer’s body, and that I move very well in the water for not having disciplined lessons in the last 20 years.
What I need to change: I need to expel about 80% of my air before I take another breath. I also need to rotate my hips so that I glide on top of the water. At an instant I realized how effortless it is for me to kick my legs in the process when I move my deep hip rotators (I get to be an Anatomy snob here, ha!) And she also told me to slooooooooow down and focus on the breathing aspect, and the endurance aspect and gave me a good game plan for every time I get in the pool. Basically, I should try and swim 4 laps in freestyle, then follow that up with 1 lap of breaststroke, then rest about 90 seconds. Take a puff, go another 4 freestyle then 1 in b-stroke. She has done this for the past 6 months, and her lungpower has increased tenfold.

I went back today and jumped in the pool and was able to do 25 laps. This isn’t bad, considering I had just completed Day 1 of my FC routine. And now, yes, I’m quite destroyed. But I’m so happy to be seeing progress with a fine New Year’s Resolution.