Smart Swimming - Swim Better, Live Better

Good swimming is a skill that is completely against our instincts.

But usually we follow our instincts and traditional teaching just follows. You are told everything about pulling and kicking. This kind of advice will not make you a better swimmer.

Such swimming advice is about making you better at treading water. You work pretty hard but you’re not going anywhere.

To swim well, we need to do practically everything the other way around than our instincts tell us - to lie down on the water, relax, submerge our head, calm our arm and leg movements.

Many swimmers and coaches are unaware of the absolutely crucial fact:

Yes, I mean it. I understand that it is clear to everyone that swimming takes place in water. But water is very different from the air we are constantly moving in and through:

All this causes uncertainty and sometimes panic. That's why I always first focus on making swimmers feel safe and comfortable in the water. To gradually learn to relax and find out how their body behaves naturally in water. To experience lightness and buoyancy in the water. Some of them for the very first time, even though they have been swimming for years.

Comfort and confidence in the water is the foundation which my entire swimming education system is built on. Skills that are easy to master and that will completely change your swimming.

Since water is so dense, drag (water resistance) is very limiting factor. Fish and aquatic mammals have perfect htdrodynamic position. We, humans, have to learn this skill.

We minimize drag by acquiring streamlined body posture. That means shaping yourself into horizontal and hydrodynamic position. If you don't know what I mean, think of bullet trains, submarines, airplanes. Extend your head, limbs, and torso into a long, sleek bodyshape.

Your shape changes during stroking and breathing, that is natural. Strive to stay in this shape as much as possible. What also helps to hold proper body posture is to be silent. Don’t create waves, minimize splash, bubbles, turbulence, and churning.

After (and only after) you are comfortable in the water and know ho to be horizontal and hydrodynamic, focus on propulsion. Maybe surprisingly, it is not your arms and legs that propels you forward but your core.

In traditional teaching, the arms and legs do all the work, while the torso is dragged along. We do just the oposite - start in the center and use weight shifts in the hips to create an impuls to propel you forward.

If you master this skill, you can efficiently use your core, your powerhouse. The term powerhouse comes from Pilates and refers to a group of muscles; abdominals (upper an lower), lower back, buttocks and the hip. According to Joseph Pilates, the powerhouse is the centre of the body and when strengthened it offers a solid foundation for any movement. That's exactly what we want to do while swimming. The arms and legs are extentions from this powerhouse.

Did you know that the average swimmer uses only 3% of his energy to move forward?

This means that there is a huge room for improvement. So my goal in every pool session is to improve my swimming – not to complete a certain number of meters or raise your heart rate or any of the traditional goals. I suggest you have

Before each swimming practice, take a moment and think what you can improve. Choose how you can achieve it, and how you’ll know that you improved. Afterward, review your swimming, what you have learned, and how you feel.

This path will be of continuous improvement. But you will enjoy your swimming more than ever. You wiil find deep satisfaction, purpose and fulfilment.

Most adult swimmers gave up on improvement of their swimming. They swim for year but the struggle, dissatisfaction and frustration remains the same. They have resigned to follow the black line. It is boring but at least it is good for their health.

But we can do better. With focused, deliberate practice, we can master the complex art of swimming.

The key is to be curious about how good swimming works. This complex, compound, challenging, counterintuitive, exacting skill. In other words, know why, not only what.

However, it is not about perfection. It’s about the process, about lifelong learning, about persevering.

While reading this page, you might checked your email inbox, answered a couple of instant messages, commented on friend's post, liked this beautiful kittens playing with each other followed by 8 ways you totally know you are a coffee addict.

This is how we live: one constant, never-ending stream of bite-sized, meaningless content that you are not really interested in, but for some reason it is impossible not to pay attention to. We loose our ability to focus, concentrate, deep work.

That's why I love water - it offers a unique opportunity: distractionless environment. As soon as I plunge into water and submerge my head, I am just with myself. I can feel my body, listen to my breathing and go with the rhytm of the swim.

Whatever happens in my life, however turbulant it can be, I find balance, peace and connection with my center in water. For me, the swimming is the essence of calm, meditation and relaxation.