There are a lot of reasons swimming is not the world most popular form of cardio.\u00a0 It’s expensive (hell, I got a part time job at a gym just so I could use the facilities instead of having to pay out of pocket for them!), it’s time-consuming (you won’t get a good swim in for under an hour, what with the getting to the gym, changing, showering, etc.), and it’s difficult.<\/p>\n
Yes, difficult.\u00a0\u00a0 If you come to me bragging about how your father tossed you in the water when you were five and now you’re like a fish, I’ll laugh at you.\u00a0 You probably don’t have the technique down to swim laps comfortably or effectively.<\/p>\n
That last seems to be the biggest sticking point.\u00a0 I’m trying to think of cardio that’s more technique-based than swimming and frankly I can’t!\u00a0 Though I’m sure a Helpful Reader will point one out.<\/p>\n
No-one would say that I’m a poor <\/em>swimmer – prolly not even those Total Immersion<\/a> folks.\u00a0 But there are still techniques I don’t have down, even averaging three miles a week.<\/p>\n I’ve decided I’m spending the summer becoming fluid with bilateral breathing.\u00a0 When doing the crawl[1]<\/a> I usually breathe on every fourth stroke.\u00a0 That’s always breathing to the right for me.\u00a0 It’s lousy technique.\u00a0 And it occurs to me that if I’m swimming a mile a week[2]<\/a> with bad technique, then I’m practicing bad swimming.<\/p>\n So now I’m forcing myself to breathe every third stroke and switch sides every single time.\u00a0 I’m clumsy as hell in the water right now and feeling like a dork for waiting as long as I have to force myself to use proper technique.\u00a0 As a martial artist, I should know better.<\/p>\n Martial artists are usually cautioned in one way or another not to train their non-dominant side to be stupid.\u00a0\u00a0 You’re constantly drilling so you can lead equally well with your dominant or non-dominant limbs.<\/p>\n When I go to Virginia Beach this summer, I want to try to swim from the pier at 14th<\/sup> Street down to Rudee Inlet[3]<\/a>.\u00a0 Open water swimmers really should be good a bi-lateral breathing so they can compensate comfortably for surf conditions, current and that sort of thing.<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> I break up my laps with three different strokes to use different muscle groups and try to avoid a rotator cuff injury.<\/p>\n
[1]<\/a> The stroke isn’t freestyle, it’s the crawl. Most people use that stroke in freestyle events because you want to use the fastest stroke possible in said event, and the crawl is fast<\/em>.<\/p>\n