Pool Swimming

This was a swim practise I'd prefer to forget. It brought out my greatest deficiency, which is being constantly out of breath.

I walked in partway through the warm-up, where instead of the planned laps, Coach had us practise flip turns in the shallow end. I'd been doing them since I was 12, but I knew that there was a different technique in use now. You're supposed to flip and pull your arms out straight in front of you, push off hard and then turn in the water. I couldn't get this right except a couple of times. I kept crashing into the bottom or going off my line. We were to incorporate the flips into the main set. Yeah right!

The main set was a blurry jumble of 200s and 100s and maybe 50s. I couldn't breathe at all with the flip turns, so I was struggling really badly. I was in my regular rope lane but could not hope to keep up with the others and got lapped a few times. I never earned any rest breaks between the sets. I was choking.

Coach asked me to be persistent with the flips, as challenging myself out of my comfort zone is the only way to improve. I told him I could handle the hypoxic drills now, but holding my breath for a few seconds while flipping was much harder. I think it's that I have the time to relax into a hypoxic length, while flip turns just disrupt my regular breathing. He told me that the next step after the killer 50s is to go right from hypoxic into a flip turn and continue, with the ultimate goal being a full 50 hypoxic. I didn't manage to try a hypoxic flip, but I'll work my way up to it.

--Distance: fucked if I knew
--Duration: 70mins