Learning to Swim

Rifter

Hi, Ive revently taken up swimming lessons, before this I could just about swim to save my life, i.e. I could do 1x25m length freestyle but I would be gasping by the end and would have to rest about 30s before I could go again.

Since Ive started my lessons Ive gone backwards.... I cant even manage 1 length of a pool now!!

Im struggling with everything and its becoming frustrating.

Im struggling with the breathing.
My kicking.
And my stroke.
And the putting it all together

Are there any drills I could/should be doing to improve faster.

scarepanda

i started swimming a couple of months ago, started in the second level as could do the basics, but very badly.

are you struggling now because the instructor is stripping back your technique and teaching you the correct way from scratch? Even though i could do things badly at first, i found that i went backwards for a few weeks as well. there were days where id forget to breath and end up drinking half the pool and not being able to make it from side to side.

im no expert by any means, but iv found it helpful to concentrate on one thing at a time. So, say on the front crawl, concentrate on the technique first, then looking down, then breathing etc. Get one thing right, concentrate on the next thing while also making sure to do the first thing as correct as i can, then working to perfect both together before adding the next thing. iv found it awful hard to remember everything together when nothing was right. at least concentrating on one thing at a time, it starts to become more natural so happens automatically when concentrating on the next thing if that makes sense.

Rifter

scarepanda wrote: »

are you struggling now because the instructor is stripping back your technique and teaching you the correct way from scratch? .

Yes thats basically exactly whats happened!! I managed to do 4x20m broken lengths this week though so that is progress!!

scarepanda

In my experience, with a bit of regular practice on your own it all starts to come together fairly quickly once you've gotten the basics right.

We're in the second week for level 3 and our new instructor is giving us drills to practice and perfect techniques which strip everything back and it's a P.I.A at the time coz I find them harder (like breathing every stroke to encourage rotation) but they do help when you get back to doing the normal stroke.