The Zen of Freestyle Swimming
A life lesson at the hands of my tireless teacher
The water doesn’t know you’re there. You, the gasping, thrashing bag of bones and muscle and blood and sinew.
Just minutes ago, you launched off the wall, flush with oxygen and confidence. Your heart fluttered in excitement as you felt the glide in between freestyle strokes, made possible when your muscles are still strong and synchronized, and your form is just right.
A hundred, two hundred meters down, your breaths become just a little sharper, more desperate; your neck tenses upward instinctively, as if to get you closer to precious air. Your arms and legs, no longer forming the streamlined vessel they had a minute ago, fall almost imperceptibly out of sync with each other. You lose the glide.
Your heart now beats faster, harder, as much from hypoxia as from frustration. Your form frays further, and you work harder to keep the pace. Your lungs and arms and legs threaten to quit. You think about quitting.
But before you quit, remember the lesson the water taught you. Push on the water, and it will push back in the opposite direction. No more, no less; it’s really not personal. If you deliver each kick and stroke like Michael Phelps, then you will move like him. If you act like a drowning monkey, well, you’ll move like one of those. The water is utterly agnostic, and never gets tired. You’re the wild card.
So, straighten your back, firm up your legs. Stretch out your feet. Slip your arm into the water, gently, feeling the bit of water pressure on your fingertips. Tense exactly the muscles you need and only when you need them, and relax the rest, including that neck. Your brain will tell you you’re doing something wrong, that you should be taking all this more seriously to go faster. Override it. Let your forearm pivot down with the current, without ever pushing downward towards the earth. Then, explosively shove the water backward with your arm, as your opposite leg transmits a whiplike ripple of power from your hip to your toes, and your other arm slips quietly into the water. Glide.
Repeat, a thousand more times.
Don’t hate the water. Don’t get angry at it if you’re slow. Accept and feel its behavior, its flow, its responses to your every action. Its sole job is to push back precisely how you pushed on it. Your job is to deliver the perfect movements, packaged in the perfect form. Move accordingly.
