Magic Bullet...
Advert for (Freestyle) Swimming
The other day I was sitting at the computer when I heard the coffee percolating. On standing, I winced in lew of the pain or at least niggle, about to beset me. Due to ageing and (over) training, for years now, there has always been something. Yet, as I stood, nothing. Ascending the stairs in the mornings now is a breeze. It had become a nightmare. Clump! Clump! Clump! The pharmacist had informed me it was down to arthritis and there was nothing I could do about it. Allied to all this, picking anything off the floor had become a long, slow and somewhat humiliating process. Of late though, I’ve been tempted to drop things, just to see how easily I can retrieve them. All this, along with better mental/emotional health, is down to one thing- swimming. If you detect an evangelical tone in this post, it’s due to my desire to spread the word.
So, come join me on Mick Mahoney’s Half-arsed Freestyle Swimming Odessy…
Like any worthwhile sport, swimming is technical. My obsession is the Front-Crawl or, as it’s generally referred to on YouTube ‘Freestyle’. I spend an inordinate amount of time listening to Aussies. Primarily this one. From YouTube’s ‘Effortless Swimming’.
He’s right, turning your head early can throw you off your entire stroke but as I’ve discovered, so can about nine million other details. I’d not presume to give anyone swimming lessons but for those interested in getting started… The most important aspect is breathing. Without that, not only will you fail to advance in your swimming, you may drown. As that would entail closing the pool for a few hours, your demise would be viewed in the much same manner as those who jump in front of Tube trains during rush hour. You know, without a great deal of sympathy. The eclectic mix of elderly eccentrics and young, walking Speedo adverts, who’ve booked for 11 am, would not be happy. So, breathing’s the first thing you’ve got to get sorted. The standard one breath in, on every third stroke ensures ‘bilateral breathing’ and that means or, is at least meant to mean, that you develop a ‘symmetrical stroke’ with equal power on both sides. The problem is that everyone breathes better on one side than the other. Try as you might, it’s nigh-on impossible to replicate what you do on your good side, on your ‘bad’ one. Ultimately, you’ve just got to learn to swim with it. A new school advocates breathing every second stroke, but you’ve got to ‘pick a wall’ and stick with it up and down the pool. This means you’ll still be breathing to the left and the right…
They reckon the two-stroke method is beneficial when sprinting. I tried it recently and almost drowned. Experimenting with a second methodology before mastering the first, may have been unwise. Ideally, you ought to have one goggle submerged as you turn to breathe and it works but like much in Freestyle, it’s counter-intuitive and will initially entail shipping water. The trick is to avoid swallowing any but if you do, try to make sure it’s in the shallow end, as you’ll be coughing. Possibly, quite a lot…
High Elbow Catch…
The high-elbow catch is akin to a Ben Sherman in 1969, you’ve simply got to have one. ‘The Catch’ is where, once your hand’s entered the water (fingertips first!), just before you begin pulling it back, to propel yourself forward. One’s natural inclination is to pull with a straight arm. That though, is verboten. Unless you’re a sprinter. They can do whatever works for them. The rest of us are subject to the tyranny of the high-elbow catch, high-elbow recovery, and hip rotation. 4-beat/6-beat kicks… It’s endless.
As I’m an obsessive, and don’t have much else to do, I spend a lot of time in the water. As a result, I’ve largely got the breathing down but as I do, some other aspect will malfunction. Very occasionally it’ll all work in perfect unison but that moment is oh-so fleeting. Once it’s gone, I’ll desperately attempt to recreate it but man, that smooth, effortless freestyle is, for a latecomer to the game- elusive. It’s also, quite addictive.
Each pool is different, with its own set of rules and dare I say it, its own culture. While I primarily swim at The Oasis (indoor) pool, I have a backup at the Tottenham Court Rd YMCA. Going there for the first time a few weeks ago caused some consternation. The thought of new… everything was nerve-wracking. There’s a beautiful Lido near where I work in London Fields but the concept of learning the runnings and getting a swim in, before work, is too much.
Swimmers…
You get ‘Swim Teams’ and all that, I saw one lot at the Y but generally speaking, swimmers appear to be rather a solitary bunch. At the Oasis there’s a group of about a dozen old boys who turn up on the regs to do very little swimming but a great deal of chatting. The ones that chat the most, swim the least. They have little regard for the boundaries of the English Class System as right swells and ne’er-do-wells seem to be having a high old time of it. Aside from them, the rest of the communal changing area is deadly silent. The Oasis used to have a reputation for attracting Friends of Dorothy I don’t know if it’s the booking system installed post-COVID but something seems to have deterred them of late. They never bothered me to be honest. The issue back then wasn’t the openly Gay but rather, the down-low variety, those gentlemen were creepy.
You might want to avoid the pre-office hour zealots, maniacally getting their lengths in before work. They spend half an hour at war with the water and anyone infringing on their right to fight it. Water is a great conductor of electricity and it’s pretty good when it comes to hostility. As a result, as keen as I am, I’d rather forgo a swim than enter the water with any of that mob in it. They’re a fucking drag.
Lanes
Indoor and outdoor pools at The Oasis, have three lanes. Slow, Medium and Fast. My son swims at the Gospel Oak Lido, I think they’ve got about six. I’m a middle-lane kind of guy and on a good day can swim there without difficulty. The problem arises when you get slow coaches. Generally speaking, these fall into two categories. Those who’ve been forced into the middle due to people in the slow lane, floating rather than swimming. As they’ve paid their money, they’re entitled to float. You know when a slow laner has been pushed across because, on reaching the end of their length, they’ll offer to let you go in front of them. Pool etiquette and in truth, common decency dictates as much but, the second type of lane jumper, is a different matter altogether.
These are simply belligerent fuckers who, when confronted about bringing things to a standstill will counter with “I’ve been swimming here for forty years!” What relevance that has only they will know. If the lane’s relatively empty overtaking them’s not an issue but if it’s crowded, you’re liable to swim directly into somebody coming the other way and, as you’re the one out of position then, you’re the one in the wrong. If you’re swimming correctly you won’t see them coming, as your eyes are on the pool’s floor. If they’re not, your head’s in the wrong position and that… throws everything. I swear, your chin’s a few centimetres out of position, your whole shtick’s out of whack.
You only want to overtake anyone if it doesn’t involve speeding up. If you have to make an effort, don’t do it because it’s an exhausting process. Overtaking somebody in a landrace means passing the width of their body. In the pool, it’s the length and, if they’re 6’3, that’s a lot of length. Plus, they naturally start speeding up themselves and the next thing you know, you’re in a race. You’ll need to be able to sustain that speed, for maybe half of the following length. After that, they’ll give up the ghost - hopefully.
An outline of a decade-long journey I undertook, to arrive, back in the same place.
Way Back…
My then-fiance had taken up swimming and was keen for me to join her. According She claims it took me three trips to the pool before I’d ventured into the water. I’d sunbathe but I wouldn’t swim. I’d not exercised for about five years and those five years, came in my mid-fifties and unbeknownst to me, one’s physical deterioration at that age, is fucking turbo-charged. It’s about the only thing that is.
I was in a right old state, grossly overweight and suffering from a myriad of mysterious injuries. My (left) knee, for instance, would give way for no apparent reason and leave me seriously hobbling, for about a week. I was working part-time, as a ‘Concierge’ on Roman Rd and vividly recall feeling, when standing and limping to hand a resident his parcel, like an old soldier with a war wound. I should be so lucky. At least there’d have been some honour in that. The only war I’d been in, was with myself and I’d lost that one- comprehensively and, without any honour whatsoever…
I eventually got in the water. The outdoor at The Oasis is twenty-seven and a half meters. I did twenty lengths. This sounds alright but it was breast-stroke and, it was in the ‘Slow Lane’ which, I can assure you, is very slow indeed. That lane became my home for the next couple of months. After a while, I ventured into the middle one and a while into that, I tried a length of Front-Crawl and almost managed it, almost. We’d swim for 45 mins and I’d be forever trying to beat my last length count. Eventually, I began working in more lengths of Front-Crawl until I was doing one of each. Then, I began using the gym at The Oasis. Viewing swimming as some sort of ‘remedial’ exercise was my first mistake and, as stated, it took me ten years to rectify that one.
The Oasis gym is run by a company called BETTER which means it’s effectively a council establishment and as such, not much to write home about. Needless to say, that wasn’t good enough for me and I moved on, to Jubilee Hall, in Covent Garden.
I’d frequented the gym in the early eighties and it had changed- a lot. The main reason I’d gone was, aside from getting into a dispute with a Personal Trainer at The Oasis, Jubilee Hall had a large array of free weights and, most importantly, a bag. I then got a half-decent job which enabled me to upgrade, by moving to the Holborn Gymbox. I stayed there for six or seven years. During this, there were periods of obsessing over different forms of training. Kettlebells loomed large. As did ‘The Bag’, barbell squats and ‘Trap-bar’ deadlifts. These would always be interspersed with the treadmill/cross-trainer. Every visit, regardless of what I was doing, was intense.
For those who might, quite justifiably, doubt the intensity. Here’s an example. I’d do Trap-bar deadlifts between once and twice a week. It was dependent on my current obsession and, what day the last session had fallen on… I’d start with a red (25kg) plate on each side. Five reps. Add a couple of white ones- five kg, another five reps. Take the fives off, and add two greens - ten kg. Five reps. Greens off, yellow on. Yellow equates to fifteen kg. Five reps. Yellow off- blue on. Blue are twenty kg. Five reps. Blue off, another red on… This process would be repeated until there were six reds and two whites on the bar. Five reps and while the 180kg ( bar’s 25kg) isn’t earth-shattering, the sheer volume of reps, which comes to ninety-five, is fairly excessive. Plus, on a good day, I’d throw a few more sets in as I stripped the weights off. I was doing this as little as three months ago, at the age of sixty-five. Think it fair to call that intense. No?
During this time, there were brief sojourns of swimming. We used to stay in a village I labelled ‘Little Smugington’. The nearest town was a place called Thame. They had a municipal sports centre that had a pool. So, now and again I’d have five days on the spin of swimming and despite always feeling great after, I always went back to Gymbox on my return. Despite, due to my age, not being charged for swimming at The Oasis… I was paying so much at Gymbox that I couldn’t afford, not to utilise it…
Then it happened… Again.
I’d been on the Elliptical machine (Cross-trainer) attempting to get my five K down. It hovered at around half an hour. On a good day slightly under. Bad one, slightly over. The level was usually set at 14. Occasionally one under or one over but fourteen was about right in terms of resistance and being able to at least attempt to go fast. Oh, I didn’t use the handlebars and I’d often reverse from forward to backward- without touching those bars. Why? Core engagement. That’s why. Anyway, I’d done well, I can’t give you the exact time as I stopped logging stuff a while back, due to FitBit.
Right, so, having done fine. I decided I needed a ‘cool-down’. This wasn’t something I normally bothered with but… During my ‘walk’ on the treadmill I started obsessing about getting the time for my kilometre down and, that’s when it happened. I did my knee in. Left knee- of course. For some reason, it’s usually the left that goes on most guys. It was injured but I mean, I could walk. I switched my focus back to Kettlebells. During the first session back, I did two hundred swings with a 32KG bell. During the week I’d do Clean & (push) Press or ‘Snatches’. These were done with a 24 KG. Had I not been interrupted, that would have gone up to a 28 bell. Folks, this wasn’t my first Kettlebell rodeo. By the third week, I’d worked up to three hundred and fifty swings, sets of twenty-five, with that 32kg bell. The C&P and Snatch numbers were rising but I was having to strap my knee and guess what, I kept compounding that injury.
It got to the point where I could barely walk and post-training, I’d have to get into bed and rest, to ensure getting into work. It went on, to varying degrees, for three months. During this, Gymbox informed me that my fees were going up. Meanwhile, my hours had gone down. It was, in truth, untenable. Gymbox, who are a bunch of corporate cunts, told me I had to let them know I was leaving before the 20th of the month. It wasn’t a straightforward procedure either. Involving online forms, emails and a load of other bollocks. Anyway, I did it, only to discover they’d be taking another month off me. Having told everyone I was leaving, I had to go back in. If that was, I wanted to see anything of the £81 I’d been jacked into giving them and naturally, I did.
So, I’m currently swimming five times a week and last week, notched up ten miles. I’m not particularly good and my body’s not particularly suited for the sport. Tall people with long limbs though, certainly are. Then again, they tend to be suited for most sports… bastards. OK, for anyone reading this who might be looking to enhance their f lives, I implore you to get in that water and give swimming a chance. It’s been an absolute game-changer for me and hey, I’m just carrying the message here brother.
Swim On & Peace out!
