I was supposed to go running this morning, however, it was raining so instead I headed for the pool.  I had a good session… 1 x 100 warm up, 1 x 1500 main swim, 2 x 100 cool down.  I am getting into my bad habit of breathing on one side.  So during the cool down I completely breathed from the other side.  I notice my feet sinking when I breathed on my left so I know I am lifting my head instead of rotating and breathing from the side.  I don’t do that when I breath from the right.  I need to continue practicing my bilateral breathing.  It is just so uncomfortable for me.

Later in the day I knocked out a shoulder workout using a combination of dumbbells and my Tower 200.  Since it is still raining this evening, I may do another swim tomorrow morning.  I hope the shoulder workout doesn’t take too much out of my swimming session.

One of the things that coaches recommend for freestyle swimmers is keeping their elbows high when bringing their arms out of the water.  I notice that it is something that I have been doing naturally.  I watch other swimmers in the pool to get some visual tips and I notice that some swimmers do not do the movement well and as a consequence they do the hand slapping the water thing.   When you see it, you can really understand why the coaches teach the technique.  Anyway, as I said, it is something that I have done naturally even though I am not a competitive swimmer.  I have a whole bunch of other problems with my freestyle stroke, but at least that is one thing I do correctly.  I came to realize that I probably bring my elbows high because I grew up surfing in very rough water.  In those days we didn’t have board leashes so when you fell off you had to swim for your board.  You swam in chop and through waves so you had to bring your elbows up high to clear the churning water.

Here is a “Total Immersion” freestroker.  This is one of my favorite freestyle videos.  This person just slips through the water.