400yrd swim

[HammerNoMore]

jepuskar once bubbled...
Ok, your swimming along...turn your head and take a breath and put your face back in the water. Now what is done with that inhalation? Are you exhaling it out underwater or do you exhale it out 3 strokes later?

Exhale into the water. When doing it properly you'll barely have time to inhale while your face is out of the water .

BTW, I wouldn't worry about cross breathing at this point. Cross breathing is really only usefull for distance and open water swimmers. (400M is not really considered distance swimming). Your working hard at it at this point, take all the air you can get. If you're right handed it will be easer to breath on the right and you can get air every other stroke instead of every 3rd. No need to add hypoxic training to your other concerns .

James

P.S. You might see if your LDS will let you "cheat" by doing the swim in a wetsuit. The extra bouyancy of a wetsuit will do wonders with your body positioning, as long as you don't get too hot.

 

[HammerNoMore]

Al Mialkovsky once bubbled...
I'm not sure if they allow you to do a push off the walls of the pool or not but I'm a heck of a glider after the pushoff.

I'm sure they do allow you to push off the walls. My body/muscle memory would have serious problems aproaching the wall and not doing a flip turn .

James

 

[jepuskar]

I appreciate the help, but some of you can really kick a brother while he is down.

Kat has a 3 month old with no arms or legs that can swim 10,000 meters in 20 minutes

Yes I can push off the walls of the pool..I knew this and did it my first time.

Some of you can swim 400 yards on one breath hold while doing somersaults.

ut:

Really though..thanks for the help.

 

[HammerNoMore]

jepuskar once bubbled...
Yes I can push off the walls of the pool..I knew this and did it my first time.

Uhm, yes, I guess I was answering Al's question there, not yours....

James

 

[mer]

Couple of hints for you: After a few years as a water safety instructor, here are some of my favorite hints for adult swimmers.

1. If you can use any stroke to do your 400 yds, I would suggest work on swimming on your back. The easiest stroke is probably elementary backstroke since both your left and right do the same thing at the same time. It's like the breast stroke, but on your back.

2. Work on your floating, both on your front and back. Very important survival tech. Once you get floating down, work on gliding after pushing off the wall or taking a single stroke.

3. To practice breathing for front crawl, try some breathing drills with a kickboard. Hold the kickboard in front of you with your left arm, right arm by side and doing the flutter kick. Work on rolling your head to your right side, just enough so that your mouth, but not your left check, breaks the water. Breathe in, roll back to look at the bottom of the pool, then exhale slowly with face in water. (Tip: exhaling through mouth and nose helps keep water out of the nose.) Just like SCUBA, breathing for most swimming is continuous.

4. Work on learning many strokes. Aim for side, crawl, backstroke, elementary backstroke, and breaststroke. If your schedule doesn't allow for joining a masters group, consider taking lessons from an instructor. One on one or small group attention could really help you improve your technique. Technique is the best was to combat fatigue. And of course, to get that technique you have to practice.

Sounds like you have a good attitude and approach towards things. Keep working on it, you're well on your way.

 

[Big-t-2538]

jepuskar once bubbled...

Here is a newbie swimming question...

Ok, your swimming along...turn your head and take a breath and put your face back in the water. Now what is done with that inhalation? Are you exhaling it out underwater or do you exhale it out 3 strokes later?

While I am sure that slowly exhaling is probably a little easier, probably 99.999% of all swimmers just exhale during their third or "nth" stroke that they are breathing on.

 

[Victoria]

Breath in on your third stroke and out (well most of it) while you are doing the three strokes... try not to think about the breathing too much...

What James pointed out is very true, it is all about technique.. once you get that right you could probably swim for ever... well maybe...

Jepuskar... if u are ever in the UK, I start my swimming teacher training in October, and would be happy to give u a few free lessons on technique!

Cant quite see how a book acn teach you how to swim guys.. but hey, im happy to be proved wrong!

 

[CBulla]

If your doing the swim in a pool your likely to start getting the rebound waves from the pool wall colliding with the new waves you are making.. this just plain makes it tough to practice technique and rythm if your trying to build your base fundamentals. I've found a good technique for doing laps in a pool where time is a partial factor is to do the length down in crawl, the length back on your back. In crawl, your primary propulsion is from your arms digging and pulling while your legs provide a little boost.. but on your back your legs can dig in and your arms do little work. In a sense you can kind of rest in this position as well since you can get some good deep breating done.

As you work out with this technique, you'll get to the point where you'll toss in more crawl full laps than you would have at the begining since your aerobic stamina is building and your building better lung capacity. You'll notice that by trying to do one lenth underwater and see how you feel at the end (if you make it) then try it a few weeks later after working out like this and see how far you go. If you don't smoke you'll see a huge difference.

 

[HammerNoMore]

Victoria once bubbled...
Cant quite see how a book acn teach you how to swim guys.. but hey, im happy to be proved wrong!

The TI book won't make you competative and I wouldn't recomend it to someone who is already a good swimmer, but I've seen it do wonders for people who need to learn the basic skills.

It breaks them down into individual drills designed to build muscle memory so that when you go back to your regualar stroke you do it better.

You're right that fine tuning requires some coaching but if you've never read it and are going to become a coach, I highly recomend you do so. At the very least you'll have picked up some new coaching tools.

James

 

[HammerNoMore]

CBulla once bubbled...
If your doing the swim in a pool your likely to start getting the rebound waves from the pool wall colliding with the new waves you are making..

In your backyard pool yes. Any pool designed for lap swimming (i.e. pool's with lane lines) this will be reduced to the point of hardly being noticable. Lane lines are desgined to dampen waves.

James