Swimming lesson #4 & #5

Will keep this as a brief reportage on what we did during the lessons in case anyone wants to repeat the sessions (30 mins duration, but increase repetition and add in a warm up / cool down and you're easily an hour plus)

All distances in metres - can be converted into lengths (30m)

Lesson #3

• 60 - catch up's to warm up
• 240 - 1 length sprinting, 1 length recovering (x4)
• 120 - with hand paddles and legs crossed. By doing the latter your legs sink like a stone and you are trying to swim standing up. Not pretty. The idea is to encourage you to lift your shoulders out of the water even more. If you sink completely, then simply uncross your legs for a couple of strokes
• 60 - normal kicks - holding float sideways (to provide resistance) out in front, head in water breathing when required
• 60 - side kicks - with lower arm outstretched and top arm resting on thigh. The key is to not let the outstretched arm sink. Take a normal stroke every 5 seconds or so and switch sides.
• 120 - high elbows/no legs - keeping elbows as highest part of arm but with forearms / hands relaxed
• 240 - 1on/1off to finish (as before)
• I finished this session with 1km steady to finish. 

Lesson #4

As a pre-cursor to this I'd swum just under 3km on Monday evening (1 hour) and as soon as I did my first warm up length (Weds early morning) I realised that I hadn't recovered fully - arms and shoulders were still feeling quite stiff and sore ("swimmer's shoulder" muscle running down outside of armpit, can't remember proper name, in particular). What I learnt: give yourself at least 2 days between harder sessions for each discipline. This is certainly the case with the running.

As a result of this we concentrated on the legs and trunk....!

• 300 warm up
• 60 kicks with float in front providing resistance
• 60 side kicks (as above)
• 120 hand paddles/crossed legs (as above)
• 120 float between ankles - this is to encourage you to engage your tummy muscles. This was really useful as I find I start to snake through the water when I get tired and don't use my tummy muscles to stabilise myself
• 60 normal - felt much 'straighter'
• 60 to finish with 10 secs standing kicks (against wall with head in water) followed by sprint, 40 secs rest, repeat
• 1 km to finish - arms felt much better after the exercises although pretty tired towards the end