Swimming without the aid of gills is a royal pain in the ass. I'm struggling with breathing and stroke patterns in the water and it is frustrating me from a number of angles. Once I finally feel like I have a breathing pattern going that allows me to swim efficiently, I simply run out of air. There is a technique I'm trying to train with to increase my ability to go for more strokes without breathing - three strokes, breath; five strokes, breath; nine strokes, breath. By the end I feel like quitting. I also was trying to go five strokes, breath, but couldn't do that for more than 50 yards. I feigned taking lessons for anything sports related when I was young. I thought I was too good, or that I already had the experience necessary so that training was simply a waste of time. Between my recent business experiences and little ones I'm learning in the pool, on the sidewalk and on the bike, I'm really starting to realize that coaches are a good thing and that doing it right takes the help of a master. This is a paradigm for me. I always thought that coaches/teachers helped those who couldn't figure things out on their own (outside of mastering a difficult discipline in a short amount of time, like physics or biology), but that is so very naive that I can't believe it came from my own mind.
I wish I had learned to swim from a swimmer as a child. If I had, I wouldn't be fighting my own body in the water. Instead, I'd be able to focus on fighting or competing against those next to me.
