More Floating, Less Flailing. A more “Pilates” Way of Swimming (part 1)
So, the reasons I took up swimming:
I love Pilates and if I could I would do it all the time, but it’s (very generally speaking) not good cardio.
Seriously, though: I’ve always loved swimming and being in the water. Luckily, as a child, I had ample opportunity to spend my summer days at public pools as well as to swim in the open water (Lakes and rivers are still my favourite - the colder, the better!).
I learned the Breaststroke in a course when I was maybe 7 or 8 years old, then had to do the “laps thing” throughout school, which of course I did not like. But I also learned to kinda-sorta crawl (though I’m sure what I’ve learned is way outdated now) and wasn’t entirely bad at swimming, even speed-wise.
After high school ended, the swimming pretty much did too (except on vacations), but it came back time and again when I decided that I needed to get fit and spend some time at the pool. But even though I enjoyed the swims well enough while practicing, sadly, it never really became a hobby and I started to think that, maybe, I just wasn’t really cut out for it.
A few months ago, however, I once again decided that I do need cardio, I do like swimming and I would like to burn a few more calories - so why not make the effort to go swimming at least once a week?
At that time, I had finally arrived at a good process with my Pilates practice, and I told myself that if I was able to keep practicing Pilates and progress, surely I’d eventually make some progress with swimming as well.
So I started going to the pool again, dutifully swimming my laps for 60 minutes at a time (no more, no less). Obviously this can get a bit boring, so after a while I began trying to pay attention to how I might bring “more Pilates” into this. For example, by:
taking my time with each movement
observing what my body was doing and trying to move from my core
trying to figure out how to stay well-aligned
focusing on finding ease and flow
It was certainly interesting to observe and think about, but not enough to help me swim better. I still felt out of breath a lot of the time, and was maybe a little too exhausted after a swim.
Surely, there must be more to this? How could it be that swimming looked so effortless with some people? And how could it be that those “effortless” swimmers often needed much fewer strokes to complete their laps?
I did become more interested in the Pilates-and-Swimming thing though, seeing it not only as an ideal training combination for me (and not just for me, also check out my link collection on the subject), but something I wanted to build expertise in as a future Pilates instructor. So I began to do research and read.
Eventually it occurred to me that it might be helpful to read a book about swimming in order to begin to fully understand it. What I found were a few titles whose titles just seemed to scream Swim Faster! in some way or another, but that didn’t interest me. Eventually, I found a book by Terry Laughlin, founder of the Total Immersion method.
The ideas behind Total Immersion
The description of the book includes stuff like this:
Total Immersion will show you that it’s mindful fluid movement—not athletic ability—that will turn you into an efficient swimmer.
… practiced in the mindful spirit of yoga …
A holistic approach to becoming one with the water and to developing a swimming style that’s always comfortable
Oh wow! This wasn’t what I’d expected. But it was exactly what I needed.
The book kept its promise. I may go into it more in future posts, but to help you roughly understand what it’s about, here are some of the main principles:
First of all, you have to re-learn swimming by breaking apart all the little movement skills involved and practicing each of them separately until they become second nature.
The goal of each skill is to reduce drag as much as possible. This is what Laughlin calls “fish-like” swimming. The secrets to this are alignment, precision and efficiency.
What’s propelling you forward is NOT primarily your arms and legs, but first and foremost an integrating, rotating movement of the entire core. (Of course you must learn to use the arms and legs as well, but they’re not as important as you’d think.)
Swimming should be a practice, done mindfully and with attention. You should never struggle when swimming.
Finally, for those who want to swim to become fitter, Laughlin assures us that fitness is what happens while you’re practicing your technique. In other words, you’ll still be improving your (aerobic) fitness and cardio health for sure, even with fewer laps!
It’s also interesting to note that Laughlin starts with Freestyle (or to be precise, the crawl) and the book I read doesn’t include the other styles at all.
This seems counterintuitive at first. Surely Breaststroke must be the easiest style to learn? It quickly began to make sense, though. When done right, Freestyle really is the most efficient swimming style. It doesn’t have to be hard at all. No flailing. No huffing and puffing.
This was hard for me to believe at first, having struggled with this style for months. But almost as soon as I entered the water and starting working on the first “skill drills” (which sounds much more terrible than it is!), I began to understand.
The book recommends that once you start learning your new skills, you should no longer practice your “old” way of swimming in order to truly rewire your brain.
And as Laughlin says over and over again, you should take your time, feel into each movement, repeat it until it feels effortless, but also take plenty of breaks during which you use “yoga breaths” to recover.
I memorized the first couple of drills - which teach you about balancing your body in the water - and, arriving at the pool, didn’t even check the big clock on the wall to see when exactly my training would start and end today. I decided to practice the stuff, practice some more, maybe do a few extra laps in Breaststroke (not resetting that one yet, after all), and go home when I felt satisfied and not overly tired.
And that’s what I did. I played around with my alignment and balance, not strictly drill-by-drill the entire time, but reminding myself go back to the "lessons”. I practiced finding my “buoy”, lying on my back kicking the water only gently, and even swimming a few meters lying on my side (the balance “sweet spot”). All the while I was breathing fully, unhurriedly, and it felt so different already!
Eventually, while doing a bit of Breaststroke again and experimenting with rolling my head sideways to breathe (which was just a little idea I came up with), my body even ended up gliding into the rotated position for Freestyle. I added my arms and changed the kick, and did a few meters in what may already pass as Freestyle - without dying! What an amazing feeling! After just a few drills, my body was already learning to steer me in the right direction.
And the best thing: Time just flew, and when the pool got too crowded I left - but not feeling bad about not having completed my training today, but with an actual feeling of accomplishment and improvement.
No, seriously. I just feel really inspired by this! Finding this book, the link I’ve been missing between Pilates and Swimming, is super-exciting. Maybe that’s a bit nerdy. But I’m really into connections and I love learning about them, which I surely will continue doing.
I also like that I get to discover and learn a set of movement skills. Learning skills (in this case movement skills) is hard. Re-learning is even harder. But that’s essentially what Pilates is about. Teaching without being able to emphasize with the person you’re teaching probably won’t be as good, and I never want to forget that.
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