Swimtastic

Got in the pool again today, it was awesome.  I swam 500 yards non-stop breast-stroke at a reasonable pace, not too crazy, not too lazy.  I had to pause because another swimmer needed to double up in my lane, but then I kept going.  It felt good to be able to swim that far in one go at something other than a snail's pace.  Once I stopped for a bit, I decided to start working on my stroke for awhile.  My leg action is kinda messy yet, and way too wide.  I'm not retracting my legs well, and that's slowing me down a good bit.  So, I worked on that for a bit, and that actually seemed to help a good bit.

I paused for a breather, and noticed a lady two lanes over swimming breast stroke very well.  Looking at what she was doing, I could see that her stroke pulled her higher out of the water, then she seemed to drop down and glide very effectively under.  I realized that like anything else, every action has an equal and opposite reaction.  Pulling higher inherently caused her to drop down lower, and thus swim faster.  The motion of pulling up created a natural gravitational potential which then pulled the body down harder and more quickly into the glide position.  I gave it a go, and it did seem to be more effective, though of course, more work.

I've also realized that I'm arching my back too much pulling out of the water, and after a few laps, my back starts to hurt.  When I pull up arching my back less, I get better form, and swim faster.  It also means I don't have a killer back-ache after about 4 laps.  I guess doing so means I'm not creating a situation where I'm creating poor glide by having my hips almost level, and my head upright, causing a shape that is not very slippery, I'm imagining kind of a right angle bend between my thighs and my shoulders.  I guess it also means I keep better forward motion between glide parts, instead of using the pull to just lift my head up, I'm using it to direct my torso into a rising line, and therefore still moving forward instead of snaking my back which seems like a good idea, but is resulting in me coming to almost a dead stop.

Overall, I'm guessing I did at least 20 laps, so not too shabby.