Swimming
I got a swim membership in May 2026, hopefully I will maintain the habit. This is a running log of my thoughts and progress.
Starting point
I have always been a poor swimmer. In college, some friends taught me the basics, but I didn’t swim at all in the 15 years after that.
Day 1: 5/22
I can swim 25m, but it was tough.
In my head, I think I imagined the water to have more resistance. In reality, it was very easy to flop around and I had to make an effort to keep my body straight.
Breathing is probably my main obstacle now. When running, I generally keep a rhythm of slowly breathing in and slowly breathing out, but that obviously doesn’t work in the water. I’ve been told that being buoyant is important, so I should make an effort to keep air in my lungs.
Practically, this means holding my breath for a pretty long time, quickly exhaling as I push my arm back, and quickly inhaling as my arm goes above my head. Opinions vary on this, but it makes sense to me and I think I’ll try it next time.
There are lots of small things about my form that I can feel are wrong, but I’ll just have to work through them one by one.
Day 2: 5/29
I felt like I made some progress.
Swimming 25m is still not easy, but it felt better than the previous week.
Breathing exercises feel like they are doing good. I settled into a rhythm of holding my breath for one stroke, exhaling during the second stroke, and inhaling at the end of the third stroke. Expelling all of my air during a single stroke was too hard.
I focused mainly on keeping my breathing correct, and rotating my body along with each stroke for streamlining. Other things that tended to slip that will come with time are:
- Kicking too hard when I get uncomfortable
- Arm not entering the water at a good angle. Probably need to keep my elbow higher so my fingertips enter first.
- Keeping my head down even more, to keep my legs up. I was told it should feel like I’m watching my belly button.
One thing I realized I think, is that there probably isn’t a magic form that will suddenly make swimming effortless. It’s still a physically taxing activity, and it will make me tired. I was emboldened by Tim Ferriss saying that after learning the Total Immersion technique he suddenly was able to swim long distances, feeling better after leaving the pool than getting in. But he had the body already. He just needed to learn how to use it. I don’t have the body, so this will be hard work for a while.
One more thing I want to try to keep in mind next time (even though there is still a lot) is to keep my arms closer to my body as I stroke. That is supposed to maximize my thrust, by keeping energy from being expelled to the sides. I think that especially when I breathe, my arms open up and I lose a lot of momentum, which then makes me more uncomfortable.