Escaping a swimming plateau
I’ve been swimming weekly for almost 2 months now, because I was (am) a poor swimmer and want to improve. The main things that were holding me back are common issues – it was hard to keep my legs up, and I couldn’t breathe comfortably.
In addition to reading and watching YouTube videos, I reached out to a college friend who was able to give me great tips. I feel like I finally figured out the right way to do things, and hopefully I can start building muscle memory to make it more natural.
Horizontal body
For keeping my body horizontal and my legs up, I was already trying to keep my head and chest down in the water, and it was working all right. The missing piece was how I held my lower body. I had to focus more on making my legs long behind me. It seems like longer legs would increase downward force as my feet get farther from the fulcrum at my chest, but I was wrong. Maybe it’s decreased drag that’s working for me? Not sure.
Also, regarding proper tension in my core. For me it was less flexing my abs, and more holding my hips as though I was pressing my lower back against a wall. That plus tightening my glutes helped to keep my legs long and straight.
Breathing position
I knew all the things I had to do to breathe well, and I think it was my low legs that were holding me back. Once my legs stayed high, it was much easier to reach air with my mouth. One surprising thing was that it’s easier to reach air with a low head and high chin (basically upside down) than by lifting your entire head. But it makes sense, since your mouth is on the bottom of your face. Putting your head upside down makes your mouth higher. So keep your ear and the top of your head in the water, and reach up with your mouth through the chin. After a few times, I could feel what it was like to reach up with my mouth while keeping my head down.
Breathing technique
And the breathing itself! This was driving me crazy because apparently I’m very conscious of my breathing patterns and I couldn’t find many people addressing my questions. The situation was that I was doing my best to breathe “well”, whatever that means, but I was getting exhausted. The literature says that 9 times out of 10 that means you’re not exhaling enough and the CO2 is triggering alarms, so I kept diligently blowing out air and it didn’t seem to help. I couldn’t tell if I was breathing in too much, breathing out not enough, breathing out too much, or what.
Bobbing exercises solved it for me. I had initially written them off because I am able to exhale underwater without issue, but what they taught me is that I don’t need to exchange much air to keep my body going. My breathing until then was cycling too much air, and I was essentially hyperventilating through each stroke.
I realized something obvious – that the amount I exhale and the amount I inhale needs to be the same. Otherwise I’d either run out of air or explode. So then the only two variables I have to work with are,
- How much air I exhale/inhale each time
- How often I exhale/inhale
Everybody probably has a their own balance that feels best. I tried breathing every two strokes, which means that each breath doesn’t need to exchange a lot of air. In fact, it must not exchange too much air. And once I figured that out, it worked! I eventually want to move towards taking bigger breaths more infrequently, but for now I’m happy that I was finally started to swim more comfortably.
Finished Triangle Strategy
Got it a few years ago and did not finish, but I recently picked it up again and went through two play-throughs to see all the endings. The golden ending would have been annoying to grind everybody’s level up, so I just put the difficulty to Very Easy and breezed through. I know this would have been extremely satisfying to clear on a high difficulty, but it’s not what I was in the mood for.
Overall I was impressed by the game, and especially with its story. The choices were difficult, the consequences felt real, and the scope was huge. The endings were excellent, too. Each ending corresponds to one goal (value, even) you choose to prioritize over others, and the conclusion shows you successfully achieving that goal. But, there is always the undertone of whatever you sacrificed to get there so that you can’t be completely satisfied. The golden ending ties all those loose strings together so that you can have the best of all worlds, and I thought it was very well sculpted.