Paul Arden | Sunday, 27 October 2024
Ashly and I are off to Kuala Lumpur for a few days this week. The reason is for some swim coaching. Ashly is training for the Ironman 70.3 next year and currently can’t swim the front crawl (and only learned to do some breast stroke a few years ago), and I want to improve my Ironman swim considerably and get that down to a relaxed and comfortable 1hr15.
It’s interesting that the greatest deterrent for someone entering triathlon is the swim. Swimming I see being very similar to flycasting in very many ways, the most similar being that they are both highly technical activities. I think it’s fair to say, that for almost everyone to perform at their highest potential in any sport they need coaching, but in both of these particular activities it’s incredibly difficult to get to even to a proficient level without it.
I have learned very much about swimming from YouTube. There are a few excellent channels in this regards. Like flycasting coaching however, there are certainly swim coaches who are considerably out of date when it comes to sports coaching methods. My Board discussions with Vince, Mark, Phil and John, as well as the biomechanics and sports coaching books they recommended, has made me analytical of coach’s teaching methods in other sports too. I think this is a good thing. It helps me be better in my own coaching field anyway.
Another benefit of acquiring coaching is one that I’m sure my flycasting students experience too, namely if I’m forking out money for, in this case a series of 4 lessons spread out over four months, then I will be training 3-5 times/week… otherwise it’s money thrown away!! I’m certainly not going to improve in just 4x1hr lessons and so this gets me into the water swimming with the snakehead almost daily. What fun!!
I still haven’t worked out how to respond to what happens if I swim into a set of babies with their parents. I have nightmares about this actually. Meeting a woman who has a friend who was attacked by a giant snakehead while swimming hasn’t inspired me either. Still, she survived, so maybe I should focus on that good news!
Here is an old article on swimming with waders:
https://www.sexyloops.com/articles/killerwader.shtml
Incidentally if you can’t swim then I thoroughly recommend learning. We spend so much time on, in and around the water, it just makes sense. Losing your fly box is the least of your worries.
Hope you’re having a great weekend!
Cheers, Paul