Learning to swim- Part 1

Been wanting to write this post for long. Been much busy without much work. :) Anyway here it is.

In this post, I wish to just lay down the foundation for beginners.

1. Get equipped! : The fear and discomfort most people face in the pool is when the water gets in from all sort of places - ears, nose, mouth and rattles your internal sensitive nerves. So investing in protective gear to avoid this puts you in a better condition.A good eye goggle and a silicon swim cap is highly recommended. Goggle is obviously important as it protects your eyes as well as makes it easy for you open your eyes inside water- you want to be able to see where exactly you are in the pool! Swim cap, sometimes is given a skip by people(esp. guys) as they think it is a beauty tip. It is more than that as you can pull it down to cover your ears too, so you cover one more entry points of water.

2. Understand how to breathe once you are in: Its a no-brainer- we are not fish so we cant inhale inside. Still it takes a bit of control to tell your nose and mouth to think before performing a function they have doing all your life almost automatically! The simple concept is - Inhale from mouth when it is outside the water(large air in less time) and exhale from nose inside the water(less air leak in more time).

Here is a video which explains this:

Breathing Exercise

Just note this and try to stick to this rule. When you goof this up inside the pool, I bet you will know it. :)

In the next post on this topic, I will try to cover floating and basic leg movement. Feedback invited!