Turning Point
"This is nuts." After many attempts, frustration turned into anger and disbelief. What am I doing wrong? How is it possible that, after having completed other much more strenuous activities, I still could not swim freestyle strokes for more than 50 meters? That's just one single bloody lap!
After several practices without getting any improvement, at the brink of giving up, I turned to the basic exercises demonstrated in the Total Immersion video.
There's a reason why I skipped these exercises in the beginning: they looked pretty plain and boring. Instead of swimming, you repeat some very basic movements, like floating in the water, rotating your body, positioning your hands and doing some hand switching.
But once I got into it, it became an amazing experience. The moment I experienced what it meant to turn my body with the least effort, and noticed how it simply glide through the water with ease, time seemed to have stopped for a moment. Frustration was replaced by joy, and now each movement becomes an achievement in and by itself.
There's something very zen-like about it.
