Learning to swim

Admittedly I can already swim, but only really the breast stroke. Which is arguably the easiest stroke available, with the possible exception of doggy paddle. Swimming the crawl is something that I’ve never been good at, last time I tried I got about 10m down the pool before I had to stop and go back to breast stroke. This was until last Thursday.
I had seen Tim Ferris talking about how to swim (among other things) in his TED talk. More specifically he was making the point that teachers generally don’t break down the stoke into the simple and important bits. Later I discovered that this technique is called ‘Total immersion‘ swimming. Tim also has a blog post about it here with videos.
I’ve only done one half hour session, under my own tuition (yes that’s right, I’m teaching myself) but already I can do a few lengths quite easily. The art of breathing without slightly drowning isn’t one that I’ve perfected yet, giving me quite a few lengths that end half way across the pool with me coughing and spluttering – however I feel I’ve already made some pretty good progress. Even though I am mainly focused on getting my stroke right and breathing without water-in-lung I have completed a length or two with a surprising and satisfying head of speed.