How To Be Comfortable In The Water

If you look at the top swimmers, Olympians or the swimmers of really good ability – they look like fish in the water. It looks like the water is their second home. Compare that to someone who is brand new, they’ll usually be tense, nervous and they’re fighting the water.

So, how do you get from being tense and nervous to feeling like the water is your second home? Well, it comes down to three things. It comes down to doing the right things.

So usually with the brand new swimmer, one of the first things you’ll do is you start kicking on your back. So you might have an instructor to help you but you’ll be kicking on your back just getting used to relaxing in the water.

And that leads into our second thing is being able to relax in the water so you can breathe comfortably and you don’t feel like you’re going to swallow water. And if you can relax more in the water, then you typically float better. The way to swim faster is to stay relaxed as you get faster. If you’re tense and you’re fighting the water to try and go faster, then you’ll just burn more energy and you won’t be able to swim faster by fighting the water.

So it’s like in The Mastering Freestyle Program, some of the very first few drills that we do, they’re very basic. They’re very simple. They’re kicking on the back. They’re kicking on the side and introducing some rotation. But the reason that we start with such basic drills is that helps you become more relaxed and comfortable in the water.

The last thing is experience. There’s no shortcut to getting experienced in the water. You have to be in the pool two, three, four times a week or more. You have to be in the pool practicing these things and training because there’s no way that you can possibly get the experience without putting in the yards.

So if you’re looking to feel more comfortable in the water, then look at doing the right things. Like doing the right drills starting with the basic drills like we’ve got in The Mastering Freestyle Program.

The 2nd thing is to learn to relax. Learn to breath so that you’re comfortable. And last thing is getting the experience. So in taking the time in the pool doing the sessions every week and making sure that you’re in the water every single week doing 2, 3, 4 more sessions a week so that you can get the experience. Your body can make those connections with its nervous system in order to swim faster and learn how to swim better.

That’s it for swimming news this week, I’ll see you next week.