Swimming Frustration

As noted in my weekly review, I am very frustrated with my swimming.  I just don’t feel as though I’m making any progress and I know I have a huge issue with sinking legs.

So for the last couple days, I’ve been trying the Total Immersion skills and even those are going badly.  I would try and slow down but instead of floating, I would often end up at the bottom of the pool.

I tried some deadman floats as I’ve seen on YouTube and with those, my legs never float at the surface.  I just have very heavy or dense legs.  I just feel like I need help, but I can’t afford to pay for private lessons

In doing a lot of reading and watching a lot of videos, the advice I’m getting to try and fix my sinking legs is all over the place and in many cases, the advice is contradictory.  Here are some examples:

The arm in front should be on the surface of the water The arm in front should be pointed downward to act like trim tabs
You should be relaxed when swimming You need to engage you glutes and back muscles and keep your knees straight
You need to developer a strong kick to keep your legs up You should be kicking very little

There seem to be only a few things that don’t seem to be in dispute:

  • You need to be rotating your body
  • When turning to breath, don’t lift your head out of the water

I decided to try some floaty pants (neoprene shorts).  They will arrive tomorrow.  At this stage, I don’t care if this is a crutch and I’m quite happy to swim in them permanently.  After all, the only triathlons I plan to do, Ironman 70.3 FL and Ironman AZ are always both wetsuit legal.