Freestyle - Relax and Feel

Sometimes we’re so caught up in the hard training of swimming, we forget to just experience the water.

Why do it:
We may not think about it, but our senses are constantly bombarded when we train. We HEAR the thrash of what water. We LOOK to see where we’re going. We TASTE that lovely water. We SMELL like chlorine, and we FEEL our connection with the water. Shifting the focus to FEEL can help you understand how to swim better.

How to do it:
1 – Take off your goggles and take a deep breath and close your eyes.
2 – Swim, long, smooth freestyle feeling how the water feels against your skin.
3 – How does your arm slice through the water.
4 – How do your toes interact during the kick, the recovery.

How to do it really well (the fine points):
Relax your face. When swimmers are only used to swimming with goggles on, this can initially be an uncomfortable exercise. Relax, loosen your face, feel the tension going out of your shoulders and body.

This isn’t an exercise in swimming straight. Take a peek every few strokes to make sure you’re going down the right side of the lane.

Taking off the goggles rather than just closing the eyes DOES make a difference. It forces you to feel more.

Start at the fingers, and work your way down to the toes. When something feels out of whack, when you feel too much resistance… experiment with what you need to do to fix it.