Swim Training

This post is for my own benefit folks so it might not be too interesting. I'm going to start keeping a record of my swimming training.

30 minutes in condo pool. Stretched shoulders at start & finish.

1. Concentrating on keeping head against leading arm i.e. ear touching shoulder. Stretching the arm forward after entry helps do this. Arm doesn't need to be horizontal and near surface - it should actually point down slightly - hand maybe 6-8" below the surface. Doing this seems to make balance better & breathing easier.
2. Kick-on-side (KOS) drills with one arm leading/one on thigh making me feel more confident re: breathing. Even at slow speed my body floats near horizontally and requires only a little rotation for mouth to be out of the water to enable breathing.
3. KOS drills with stroke encourages rotation. Good rotation seems to bring mouth into breathing position more easily. Also feels like arm stroke is stronger. Rotation should be lead by the shoulders not arms.
   
4. Must keep remembering to keep head/torso (centre of gravity) down to maintain horizontal body.
5. Push drills (elbows locked against side, head down, kicking and push for propulsion) give good sense of power/importance of the push phase of the arm movement.
6. Must work out a comfortable breathing pattern!

Towards the end of the session I did a few laps at a reasonable speed but with a slow stroke and seemingly little effort - this must be a good sign! Rotating well, remembering to "push" with arms, keeping head down/body straight and breathing in & out comfotably seems to result in fairly quick relatively affortless laps!