Taking Stock
Gavin Lee
We’ve been able to swim regularly for the last few weeks. It’s a blessing with mixed feelings. I do need swimming for health and fitness, but the benefits towards mental health outweigh the physical benefits. Knowing this I try to keep a positive attitude with our new culture of swim reservations and the limited access that it entails. Mostly, we are grateful to be able to swim and to have reconnected with a swim community that we have been absent from for too long.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve managed a few short workout sets, a lot of drills and easy swimming, and a few short swim tests just to see where I’m at. I’m getting a better feel for the water and inching closer to where I once was. I’m not sure how long we’ll be able to sustain this under current circumstances. So, we’re trying to take it one day at a time.
Today I did some freestyle pulling with fins as a combination of easy swim, scull and a fast 50. I like pulling with fins because it does not provide the buoyancy of a pull buoy. This requires you to engage your core for better balance and rotation. I also kick off the walls, working on streamline and building up the kick. As soon as I breakout and start a stroke, I stop the kick and focus on the pull. Pulling with fins is also a lot of fun and a way to get the feeling of fast swimming! The fast ones were within 1 sec of where I once was… so, not too bad for a few weeks of work.
I just recently started to work in a few drills and very short swims with fins. This is a great way to ease into the rhythm of the stroke. One of the drills we call “Stone-skipper”. It’s a way to break up the stroke into two parts… the recovery phase and the pull phase with a long gentle glide in-between. It’s great for rhythm and timing. I also did a dolphin kick breaststroke. This also helps with the rhythm and timing of both breaststroke and fly.
A 50 yard sprint kick with fins is another thing I like to do to gauge where I am at. I was surprise to find that I’m within a second of my best time here as well… very happy with that! 💪🏽