Being in the fortunate position of seeing so many different people continually improve their swimming I see many different styles and strokes. There are often common frustrations and successes that are shared regardless of body type and swim fitness.
I liken improving swimming to the layers of an onion. From the outside there are so many layers to get your head around and so much information to learn. Some things can seem so tricky they almost want to make you cry with frustration, just like an onion can.
The more time you spend swimming, and thinking about your stroke, the more layers you will un-peel. The more you swim the sooner the initially tricky will become natural and you can then move onto other elements of the stroke to improve even further.
Swimming with a swim coach helps you to maintain focus on your stroke and keep motivated during swim sessions when things seem hard or frustrations occur. Being kind to yourself during this time and remembering where you were can also really help with motivation.
This winter it has been fantastic to see swimmers who can already swim around the Busselton Jetty in an hour get 5-10 seconds faster per hundred just by taking time to add some technique focus to their training, to un-peel a few more layers of the onion.
I have also been fortunate enough to see people take their first steps in un-peeling their onion, to jump in the deep end (literally) and learn to understand swimming for the first time. Both groups of people and everyone in between face their own challenges and as a coach you all help me unpeel my onion and learn to explain things in many different ways. Thanks – I love it.