Spring is a time of renewal and new beginnings. Nature can’t resist the pull of rebirth as each day fills with new colors and longer, brighter days. Thanks to an unfortunate toenail injury in December, I stopped running and I switched to swimming. My approach to swimming was to use a Feldenkraisian approach, where a previously learned, familiar movement pattern is revisited using only my kinesthetic sense as my movement guide.
Although I’ve been swimming for decades, I had to adopt a beginner’s mind. Why? Because my body had changed from running for the past 4+ years. I hadn’t been in a pool since COVID-19, and each pool has a unique character and feel. My new goal was to move as the water allowed instead of fighting my way through it. Swimming is a whole body tactile experience because swimmers must use their non-visual senses to approximate their body position.
Physical Aspects to Consider
In the world of swimming, people are either “floaters” or “sinkers”. Unfortunately, I belong to the latter group. Biomechanically, sinkers have to work harder to keep their legs closer to the surface to stay afloat. To do this, they must push their chest down and, they must kick continuously – motionless sinking legs create drag. Using the eyes to look at the bottom of the pool keeps the head and chest down. I was surprised how interesting the bottom of the pool looked!
Maintaining a decent speed creates an “air pocket” to breathe in without having to lift or over-rotate the head or body to clear the surface. Despite continuously kicking, the timing of a leg/foot to kick is critical because it balances the catch phase of the opposite arm stroke, in the crawl or freestyle stroke, to keep the body more or less horizontally level. My objective measure for swimming efficiently was time per given distance.
To start, I used closed cell EVA foam fins which give buoyancy to my legs and don’t impede my ankles from flexing and extending. The fins are a great tool to sense where the legs/feet would be if I were a floater. By not having to worry about my legs sinking, I focused on my arm stroke technique and played with coordinating my arm strokes with the rotation of my pelvis to time my kicks.
Deep Water Jogging Identifies Your Power Source
Deep water jogging, forwards and backwards, with a water belt gave me a sense of how I use the counter rotation of my shoulder girdle and pelvis to generate the power in my spine to move forward. It allowed me to see if I use the diagonal lines that cross my torso symmetrically, from one shoulder to the opposite hip. This is the contralateral pattern humans use to crawl, walk, skate, swim (backstroke or crawl), or run efficiently on land.
Unlike water, moving on land is extremely forgiving, a contralateral or ipsilateral pattern will do. In deep water, where the feet are not touching the bottom of the pool, using an ipsilateral pattern is a great way to expend energy and not move at all! This is because the power of the spine is not used, and the movement of the arms and legs do not generate enough power to move the body forward or backward.
Keep Your Spine in Line
Buoyancy in the water gives an additional degree of freedom to the spine that can interfere with one’s ability to maintain a streamlined horizontal body position. By using the water’s resistance in water jogging, I played around with the verticality of my spine, my central axis. Leaning forward or backward strains the lower back or reduces speed, respectively. I translated my sensation or felt sense to maintain the vertical integrity of my central axis which helped to maintain a streamline horizontal position.
Surprisingly, as my swimming became more efficient, I noticed the fins hindered my progress and explored where I felt the discomfort or disconnect. By then, I had a good feel of the water and could readily readjust my body position and biomechanics and stopped using them. If I felt I was working too hard or the workload was unbalanced, i.e., my arms were working harder than my legs, I stopped because pushing through would be counterproductive. On the days when everything feels right, the sensation of effortlessly spiraling through the water, letting the water support me and not causing a ripple, is as close to gliding through air as I imagine it feels like.