Over the years I've become claustrophobic, and not in the cute, "Oh, she doesn't want to go into that cave," sort of way. No, I have nightmares about a crazy guy entering my house and my only way of escape is following my boys through this terrifyingly tight attic space complete with twists and turns. I push my oldest son through the final crevice and I cannot for the life of me figure out how to contort my body enough to fit. Every time, I wake a hot sweaty mess thinking, "Damn, if my life ever depends on contortionist flexibility and tight corridors, I'm screwed!"
Claustrophobia transcends itself in the water. There is no tighter space with a higher risk of suffocation than drowning! No, I didn't know this right away. I thought my funny side breath was caused by tight muscles, inexperience, and general dork-fishery. For some reason I drop my driving arm every time I take a quick bite of air, there is nothing I can do to convince that propeller to stay put. I decided a few weeks ago it was time to learn how to breathe on both sides. Perhaps that would fix my form and provide a more fluid breathing pattern. I did some research on maintaining proper form while breathing in the crawl stroke and the experiment I found was enlightening.
Try this: go to your local pool to where the water is about shoulder length deep. Take a deep breath and sink into the water, expelling your air slowly out of your mouth so that by the time your butt hits the bottom you have absolutely no air left in your lungs. Not one little ounce of air can remain but your mouth needs to stay wide open. Then, completely out of oxygen, sit there for a count of 2. Sounds simple right? Nope, it is death defying, terrifying, pure panic inducing, craziness! Holy crap it scared the junk out of me! The goal is to perform the same exercise multiple times at the beginning of every trip to the pool until you can work your way to the deep end. A 9-12 foot depth is ideal.
While I haven't worked my way past 6 feet deep, I've improved tremendously. And I've realized the fear of holding my mouth open under water when I am almost out of breath is terrifying. The problem is, tensing up in a panic makes me sink. The more natural and relaxed my body remains, the better it floats, the better it glides. It also takes half the effort. Obviously when I run out of breath and my mouth remains open, gulping for air, while still under the surface, that is a major mistake in my stroke. Something went hopelessly wrong. It doesn't happen often, but the fear of the possibility is enough to mess with my head position in the water. Instead of turning my head slightly to reach the surface, I jerked my head, twisted my shoulders, and dropped my legs. That's ineffective, and slightly embarrassing when observed second-hand.
I know it is a stupid exercise, but I took it to heart because I wanted to find out exactly what was holding me back. Clearly it was fear. Since I've identified my fears, addressed them, and focused on relaxing, I've improved my form tremendously, and learned to flip turn! I completed a continuous 2.4K today swimming the crawl stroke with flip turns at every end. What other fears are holding me back and what other weird experiments can I perform to seek them out?
~Roadburner
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