I took myself for a swim today, part of my 'easing back into exercise' program, and had a couple of revelations. 

I'm by no means a great swimmer.  I learned to swim with any degree of proficiency as part of my first few outings as a triathlete in 2005, and was lucky enough to get some coaching from a guy named Clay Evans, an Olympic silver medalist who now runs a very popular master's swimming program here in Southern California. 

Clay taught our class of budding triathletes the basics of the crawl, but he also taught us how to structure a swimming workout.  At the time, I was prepping to race distances from a quarter-mile to a full mile, and before I started training with Clay's group, would just swim lap after lap, vaguely trying to improve on my previous workout's record. 

According to Clay, that's not the way to learn to swim better.  Clay handed all his charges a sheaf of pages with some standard workouts on them, and though they all varied in difficulty, length, and complexity, they all followed a basic pattern:  drills that built technique alternated with drills that built strength and stamina. 

Example:  you'd do a few laps with your hands in fists--which teaches you to use your whole arm efficiently--and then you'd do a few 100-meter repeats on the 2:00, trying to go faster and faster each time. The first drill emphasized and built on one particular aspect of your stroke; the next one put it into practice.  The first one forced you to slow down and think, the next one forced you to speed up and get out of your head.

The ldea was that in a race, the two different approaches--the one which taught you to swim well, the other to swim hard--ultimately would blend, giving you a technically sound stroke that was also strong and enduring.

(Not a strong swimmer:  These guys could use some help.)

Even when you're not doing drills--like the fist drill, or the catch-up drill, or the shoulder-touch drill (all will be familiar to my readers with gills)--your focus tends to vacillate between perfect form and paddling with all your might.  The clock, which most good swimmers watch carefully at least once or twice a lap, gives immediate feedback:  how was that lap?  And that one?  And that one?  I've never been a golfer, but I imagine that's what keeps those guys coming back to the driving range:  trying one technique or mental trick after another and seeing what kind of results they get. 

You would think that your lap times would get slower as the workout progresses, but, in my case, anyway, they usually get faster, because I'm 'rebuilding' my technique each workout and also warming up the right muscles so I can give my all in those last few laps.  Inevitably, the best laps come when you combine effort and form, and for me, that comes at the end of the session.

Technical precision in any athletic endeavor is, of course, supremely important.  To go back to the sport about which I am by choice, hopelessly ignorant, I'm told that more and more golfers actually take video of their swing to by analyzed and critiqued by the pros. 

But you can't discount raw effort, either.  I was talking to a Feldenkrais practitioner recently who works with top athletes to improve their form, and he said, "If you want to run a marathon in 2:10, it's going to hurt, I don't care how much awareness training, bodywork and Feldenkrais training you do." 

When I was learning the martial arts, I used to meet up with fellow classmates now and then and just go crazy, throwing everything we learned in class into one big mishmash of flailing arms and legs, punch, kicking and blocking, making up our own techniques, doing our best to mimic the teacher's.  Form often went out the window, but we learned to work hard, blend everything, and get out of our heads.  When I was training as an actor, sometimes I'd have weeks to prepare a role before I had to perform it; sometimes I've have hours.  Both the slow-and-steady approach and the throw-it-against-the-wall-and-see-what sticks options had value in the two disciplines and taught me a lot.

Something to ponder.

This guy has another quick workout option that sounds like a killer.  Bring a bucket.