At Home in the Sea

By Graham Hyland

I never learned to swim as a child. When I was 8 or 9 I was pushed into the deep end with no arm floats by another kid and, though I learned to swim at 15 or 16, always had a fear of water. At 17 I entered a triathlon which had a sea swim of 300 meters. A friend lent me his wetsuit and told me the wetsuit would keep me afloat, all I needed to do was move my arms. I went to the pool once or twice a week for a month, working my way up to four laps of a 25m pool.

On race day we started from a peninsula and were to swim along the shore, around some buoys, and back onto the beach. I started last to avoid the craziness of everyone dashing in. But as soon as I joined them I began to panic because I couldn’t touch the bottom and started breaststroking just to keep up. I got my bearings and then swam freestyle. At one point I discovered I was swimming the opposite direction from everyone else.

I was cold, fearful, and the canoe lifeguard kept asking me did I want to
stop, which would have been the sensible thing. But as I got closer to the beach and could stand up for a rest, I felt I could swim beside the boat for direction. It took me over 35 min to complete 300 meters, whereupon I collapsed on the beach and got a face full of sand. I eventually finished the cycle and run and decided to forego the trauma of ever swimming again.

Fourteen years later, I moved home to County Meath, Ireland and joined a fitness centre in Bettystown, just to keep fit. There I saw a Poster announcing a triathlon in Chicago. After some consideration I decided to train for the 2007 event, giving myself about 16 months to prepare.

I searched the Internet for swimming techniques and chose the Total Immersion approach because it promised I could swim for distance without fatigue. I ordered the Triathlon Swimming Made Easy book and Freestyle Made Easy DVD. After reading the first chapter and viewing the first 2 drills, I went to the pool to begin building a stroke. Fortunately, I had no ingrained bad habits to get rid of. Day in, day out I went to the pool and practiced my drills and my new stroke…I can actually call it a stroke now.

Being able to balance with little effort was liberating. In the course of six weeks and 50 hours of practice I progressed to Overswitches, swimming very little and drilling quite a lot. Soon after, with invaluable help from the TI Discussion Forum I learned to breathe smoothly. Then I began counting my strokes and paying attention to which focal points made a particular SPL feel smoother or reduced it by a stroke.

Growing more confident with my progress I decided to register for a triathlon in Dublin this September with a swim distance of 1500m. A big task for this novice swimmer, I began to drill less and swim more in order to prepare to swim whole stroke for 1500m. For three weeks I swam progressively longer distances, often by simply adding a longer swim to the middle of a “pyramid set” like the following: 40m, 80, 120, 160, 200, 240 – 240, 200, 160, 120, 80, and 40 meters, as suggested by the SL exercises in TSME. I liked the challenge of staying focused while getting up to 8, 10 and 12 laps then going faster while staying smooth as I came back down to 6, 4 and 2 laps.

During a week’s holiday in June on the Costa del Sol in Spain I swam on the beach every day. The beachfront was divided into areas for activities like kayaking, water skiing, and Jet Ski hire. The swimming area was about 300 meters. On my first day I paid little attention to my stroke as I was so concerned about colliding with other bathers and lacked the confidence to swim farther out by myself. I swam only 70 meters before I stood up, feeling a bit overwhelmed by the unfamiliarity of colder open water. I went back to the hotel pool and practiced drills.

The next day, after warming up in the hotel pool with switch drills, I went out again. Feeling moderately braver I ventured out a bit farther. I focused on connecting my hip with my hand and visualized a piece of string connecting them. As soon as my low hip started to move up I visualized that string tugging my hand to initiate the stroke, That helped connect the stroke with body movement.

I decided to sight when my right hand entered the water the 10th time, but found this was too infrequent because I was swimming to my left out to sea, so I sighted every fifth stroke. I doubled my distance from the previous day so I was happy. Over succeeding days I increased my distance each time, as well as learning that when I extended my bodyline from fingers to toes I held a straighter course. So this became my main focal point and it helped me cover 400m easily on my fourth day.

On the fifth day I realized that the intimidation of swimming in open water was gone and I could pay complete attention to what I was doing. In fact I had gained so much presence of mind, I could shift among several focal points: 10 right hand entries silent swimming, 10 hip string, 10 lengthen my bodyline. Before I realized it, I had crossed the entire 300 meter bathing area, so I swam right back the same way for a total of 600 meters without stopping. The last day I repeated the same distance but even more relaxed.

After returning from Spain, I went to the 50m Pool with the intention of doing 4 x 400 meters. After the first 400 I felt so good that I swam on without stopping to rest. It continued to feel so good that I completed the entire mile nonstop. Whenever I felt a bit ragged I would choose a focal point. These renewed my form and I never felt I was struggling.

When Sept 16 comes around I feel confident of conquering the demons from my last triathlon experience.

TI practice has had a major impact on how I view water and swimming. Instead of survival stroking, I can now think about what I’m doing and swim with complete enjoyment. Sometimes it even feels like flying. Though I began with the goal of doing a non-traumatic triathlon, I can now see myself learning for the rest of my life and am happy to say the sea is now my oyster.

Graham Hyland is a 32 yr old Home Surveyor in County Meath, Eire. Currently swimming 6-7 times a week because he really loves the learning process, Graham has two young boys and will celebrate his first anniversary of marriage to Lorraine on Sept 1.

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