SWIMMING
Learning To Swim
Hey! This is my first blog post about my experiences learning how to swim.
I took some swimming lessons when I was young(around 5 or 6 years old) but only took a few so I never learned how to swim when I was young. Last year I completed a 100 mile bike ride and two marathons and that piqued my interest in learning how to swim with the eventual idea of doing a triathlon or even a half or full ironman event.
In November and December of 2017 I took swimming lessons offered through my employer Cerner at their gym in coordination with the YMCA. The lessons were great and introduced me to several basic swimming strokes (breaststroke, backstroke, sidestroke, elementary backstroke, and freestyle). During those swimming lessons the only stroke I couldn’t complete for the length of the pool was freestyle. I was able to have decent form for 3 or 4 strokes but didn’t get the breathing down.
After those swimming lessons were completed I happened to hear about a swimming instructor Terry Laughlin. I had bought the kindle version of Tim Ferriss’s book Tribe of Mentors [1] and one of the dedications Tim makes at the beginning of the book is to Laughlin. Ferriss also has a tribute to Laughlin on his blog [2], and I think has done a podcast with him. Ferriss also talked at TED about how he learned how to swim [3].
Hearing about Terry Laughlin led me to his swimming instructional company called Total Immersion Swimming [4]. I was convinced to give Total Immersion swimming a try, so bought a TI DVD [5] and book [6]. The first few chapters of the book are pretty awesome and give me the confidence that if I try this approach it will make be a good swimmer.
Ok, that’s all for this post. I just wanted to introduced my swimming history and the current resources that I’m using to learn how to swim.
Also, you might notice that my Amazon links are using Amazon Smile. I often forget to use Amazon Smile and I think it’s a great way to make a small contribution to a great charity of your choice.
[2] [https://tim.blog/2017/10/29/terry-laughlin/]
[3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AQA-ofcdrU]
[4] [http://www.totalimmersion.net/]