O2 in H2O - part 2

I feel a tad silly even writing this but I must be true to the experience so I will.

Today I put my face in a big bowl of water with a small mirror in the bottom and practised breathing to the side per the instructions in the O2 in H2O DVD. There I said it!

The exercises I did were:

Exercise 1: I put my face close to the water facing the bottom of the bowl without touching it, breathed in through my mouth and out through my nose and watched the water ripple.  

Exercise 2: I put my chin only in the water, breathed in through the mouth and out through my nose and watched the water ripple.   I gradually lowered my mouth and nose closer to the water so that part of my nose and part of my top and bottom lip were in the water and then later so that my whole open mouth was in the water.

The point of Exercises 2 is to start feel how little space above the water is needed to actually breathe in.  Kind of cool actually.

Exercise 3: I breathed in through my mouth, submerged my face, bubbled out through my nose and came up for air. I repeated this, turning (trying not to lift) my face to the side, each time leaving a smaller gap between my mouth and the water so that at one point the side of my mouth was in the water.

In the DVD Terry keeps his mouth open when it is in the water but only breathes out with his nose. While I managed to do that, I know that I used to always close my mouth when it was under water. I don’t think there is a right or wrong but obviously if your mouth is closed you need to factor in a second to open and then close it again when out of the water.

Unfortunately though, something I noticed as I did Exercise 3 was that I was feeling panicked.  L  My breathing wasn’t smooth or comfortable, bubbling out of my nose felt very unnatural and I felt out of breath.  I guess the anxiety around putting my face in the water is still there.

These exercises need to be practised in the pool next but in the meantime I will give the bowl another go tomorrow.  And maybe again after I post this too.

Aquamillie

O2 in H2O - part 1

I had my first viewing of O2 in H2O today.  

It runs for about 55 minutes and spends time on both side breathing (ie: for freestyle) and forward breathing (ie: for breast stroke and butterfly). 

I am going to have to watch it a few more times to absorb everything and then a few more times as I try the exercises but rather than write an essay on everything in the DVD I thought I would post about it progressively.

This first post is an overview of the key skills of breathing.  There are two.  First relates to head spine alignment, the second to breathing with your body.

Head spine alignment

I have learnt that to keep my body buoyant it needs to be balanced and in alignment from my head along my spine to my toes.  If my head is too high up out of the water my hips, bum and legs drop causing drag.  Not so strangely enough, the body also needs to maintain this alignment when I turn breathe . 

In the DVD Terry Laughlin puts it this way:

“Visualise a laser beam coming from the top centre of your head, that laser beam should always point forward and never up”.

Yep, check I get that.

Breathing with your body

Or "rolling to the air".

According to the DVD, the best way to keep head spine alignment when breathing is to:

“... minimise independent movement of your head as much as possible by bringing your mouth to the air with body movement not by lifting or turning your head. In freestyle that means rotating your torso as if you mean to breathe with your belly button. Your head should go along for the ride.”

This means I need to use my belly and hips (ie: use big muscles) to lead and roll my body to allow me to bring my mouth out of the water instead of lifting and craning my head and neck (ie:  don’t use little muscles to turn my whole body).  Guilty as charged when it comes to neck craning! I even recall coming home from lessons with a sore neck because of all said craning.

While this all makes absolute sense, I tried it out on dry land to be sure I got it.  Face down on my bed, right arm out in front past my ear, left pointing to my toes -  see what happens when you just turn your head to the left as opposed to using your belly and hip to rotate.


So put simply, when turning to breathe, keep your head as close to the water as possible and roll your body around to get air rather than lifting your head and neck out of the water.   Yep I get the drift - in theory.


As an aside – the DVD shows lots of underwater images of Terry swimming.  One thing I noticed is that when we swims he is constantly rolling from side to side.  Almost as if his spine is an axis on which he is smoothing tilting one way and then the other.  He never goes so far as to have his shoulders stacked vertically though. Hmmm, interesting.

It's time...

It’s well and truly time to get back into the water. 

To re-motivate myself, I refreshed myself on my journey so far by reading each of my blog posts.  After having done this a few things struck me:

     1.       I have had less 5 hours of instruction

2.       I have only had about 5 hours of practise

3.       I had unrealistic expectations

I should probably also add a fourth:  too much thinking, not enough doing – how unlike me!

In some of my recent posts I talked about a swim method I had come across and wanted to try called Total Immersion. Unfortunately for me though, instruction in the Total Immersion method is no longer available near me, so I am going to have to settle for some self instruction.  (As an aside I haven’t ruled out paying for private lessons but want to try building some core skills first).

I got onto good old eBay last night and bought two of the Total Immersion DVDs.

The first one is called Happy Laps. It contains 8 beginner lessons and drills focusing on being comfortable, balanced and weightless in the water.

The second one is called O2 in H2O. It is a self help course on swimming and efficient breathing.  Sounds interesting.

More info on the DVDs and the plan from here on when they arrive.