A Light Focus / Brad's Run Across America
When you're trying to improve your freestyle stroke it's natural to concentrate really hard on what you are doing. Sometimes heavy concentration isn't the best way to improve. It tends to make your movements robotic and often shuts out your natural feel for the water.
Here's something to try: When you swim, experiment a little and try a 'light focus' instead. Treat your swimming laps like a game and relax as if it's for fun and it doesn't really matter*. Take a few slow deep breaths before you start a lap, notice the pool environment around you and just enjoy being there. Start swimming at a steady pace as if on auto pilot and lightly monitor what you are doing as if out of curiosity.
Introduce a small change or adjustment to your stroke and see how it feels, does it feel better or worse? Be lightly aware of the knock on effect this has on other parts of your stroke or timing. Very often you’ll discover something about your stroke which will really help your swimming.
When we watch elite swimmers they look very fluid and relaxed in the water. Remember, it's not just their stroke that is relaxed and unforced but their minds too.
Also this month, a special mention for a good friend of Swim Smooth, Brad Hosking, who's undertaking some huge feats of endurance over the next few months to raise money for the Princess Margaret Hospital here in Perth. A local fire-fighter, Brad's running the entire half marathon at next weekend's Busselton Half Ironman in fire-fighting gear, including face mask. Incidentally the mask will be fed with an air mixture, not pure oxygen as this would be considered performance enhancing!
Then, commencing on the 16th August, Brad's joining up with 18 other Aussie fire-fighters to complete an epic 26 day, 7392km charity run across America. To be joined by countless American firefighters, the team will run from Los Angeles, through Las Vega, Arizona, Albuquerque, Oklahoma, Houston, Memphis, Charlottesville, Washington, Balimore and Pennyslvania before arriving at Ground Zero on September 11th. The run is being held in memory of the emergency workers who lost their lives on September 11th 2001 and to raise awareness of the role that emergency workers play within our socities during events such as the Victorian Fires of 2009 and the Californian Wildfires of 2008.
You can find out more about the events and Brad's fund-raising here. Please give generously to his Everyday Hero donation page.
Swim Smooth!
Here's something to try: When you swim, experiment a little and try a 'light focus' instead. Treat your swimming laps like a game and relax as if it's for fun and it doesn't really matter*. Take a few slow deep breaths before you start a lap, notice the pool environment around you and just enjoy being there. Start swimming at a steady pace as if on auto pilot and lightly monitor what you are doing as if out of curiosity.
Introduce a small change or adjustment to your stroke and see how it feels, does it feel better or worse? Be lightly aware of the knock on effect this has on other parts of your stroke or timing. Very often you’ll discover something about your stroke which will really help your swimming.
When we watch elite swimmers they look very fluid and relaxed in the water. Remember, it's not just their stroke that is relaxed and unforced but their minds too.
*actually, swimming is fun and it doesn't really matter!
----------Also this month, a special mention for a good friend of Swim Smooth, Brad Hosking, who's undertaking some huge feats of endurance over the next few months to raise money for the Princess Margaret Hospital here in Perth. A local fire-fighter, Brad's running the entire half marathon at next weekend's Busselton Half Ironman in fire-fighting gear, including face mask. Incidentally the mask will be fed with an air mixture, not pure oxygen as this would be considered performance enhancing!
Then, commencing on the 16th August, Brad's joining up with 18 other Aussie fire-fighters to complete an epic 26 day, 7392km charity run across America. To be joined by countless American firefighters, the team will run from Los Angeles, through Las Vega, Arizona, Albuquerque, Oklahoma, Houston, Memphis, Charlottesville, Washington, Balimore and Pennyslvania before arriving at Ground Zero on September 11th. The run is being held in memory of the emergency workers who lost their lives on September 11th 2001 and to raise awareness of the role that emergency workers play within our socities during events such as the Victorian Fires of 2009 and the Californian Wildfires of 2008.
You can find out more about the events and Brad's fund-raising here. Please give generously to his Everyday Hero donation page.
Swim Smooth!