Lesson #5 – Goodbye kick board

Lesson #5 today and almost at the half way mark.  Two of us in the lesson today again. I was definitely spoiled being on my own for the first few weeks. J

The lesson started off as usual with 2 laps of kick boarding. This was followed by a number of laps on the kick board and breathing to the side. I was trying to breathe calmly and comfortably and managed to get past half way before stopping.  I have to practise keeping my left ear in the water and avoid lifting my head up when I turn to the right to breathe. When i don't do that I get a bit of water in my mouth but more importantly it tends to cause my body to fall out of balance, drags on my legs and slows me down.   On a side note I love the sensation of my body bouncing up and floating on the water when my face is in the water and my body is in balance.

The third thing we practised was kick boarding, breathing to the side and incorporating the arms. Again I could get about half way down the pool but I was finding that I wasn’t breathing as calmly and comfortably and felt like I was breathing in too late, taking too much of a deep breath in but still running out whilst underwater. I need to work on all this some more.

With about 10 minutes to go Jackie said she wanted to try me without the kick board. Me excited!!! I was actually going to try to swim! We did some out of water arm motions so I could (try to) understand when to breathe in, when to put my head in and what each of the arms are supposed to be doing. This swimming business requires quite some coordination!

When I tried this I could do 2 breaths into the water before stopping. I was already puffed but I wasn’t getting the breath in early enough and I was dipping my left arm before my face was in the water.  This was far too early and was causing my left side to drop.  In turn this meant my body was falling out of balance and sinking and so of course I wasn’t able to rotate to take a breath in and keep going. I was also gulping a bit of water. 

None of this fazed me though because in 5 weeks I have gone from not being able to put my head in the water at all to now attempting to actually swim. I am pretty pleased with that!