One of my biggest reasons for taking up swimming is that it's kind of an all-in-one exercise: you get some cardio, and because of the resistance of the water you get some strength training too. You can get better cardio through running, and you can get better strength training by weight lifting, but it's hard to find a single exercise that combines the two quite so well. And so, even though swimming is time-inefficient in some ways (because of changing and travel, I have to commit at least 75 minutes for a 40-minute swim), in other ways it is very efficient (strength and cardio simultaneously: two workouts in one).
14 months or so later, my upper arms and my core are stronger than they've ever been before. I even have muscles! Girly muscles, sure, but they are definitely there, my biceps, triceps, and the muscles across the wings of my back.
Bu my legs haven't seemed to strengthen quite as fast, so I was contemplating some targeted strength training, just a few minutes at the beginning or end of my workouts. Maybe some squats, or resistance bands? A week ago I stopped in at the fitness desk in the Y to pick up a brochure for personal training, and the fitness director asked if I had any questions.
"Well, I swim, but I've been wanting to increase my leg strength, so…"
He asked a few directed questions. How often did I swim? What strokes? Did I do flip turns? (No, not really, I have a sort of made-up underwater turn) But do I push off with my legs against the wall at the end of my turns?
"Yes—"
"And how far do you glide after you push off? Do you glide out as far as the backstroke rope?"
"Five yards? I — I don't know if I do or not! I've never noticed!"
"Well!" he said, smiling. "Next time, find out. Try to push off so you glide out as far as you possibly can. You should be able to glide out at least as far as the rope. Then come back and let me know how you did. You shouldn't have to add separate strength training."
"No charge?"
"No charge."
I wrote down his suggestions on a Post-it note and stuck it to my YMCA picture ID.
A few days later I tried it. I could push off to nearly five yards at the beginning of the workout, but the glide distance got shorter and shorter as the workout progressed. (One annoying habit I'll have to break: Every time I pushed off hard, with a little grunt of effort, I involuntarily squinched up my eyes, broke the seal under my goggles, and got an eyeful of pool water.)
I worked hard at it anyway, all my focus throughout the workout on pushing off. And when I finished my cooldown, emerged from the water, and picked up my stopwatch I discovered something amazing: I'd shaved nearly seven minutes off my workout. Instead of 46 minutes, I'd finished the same distance in a little more than 39 minutes.
This is something I hadn't been able to do in months of generally "trying to go faster."
A lot of times we think that if we focus on just one thing, "all the rest of it" is going to fall apart. This didn't happen here: I focused on one thing, and apparently I improved generally.
I mused about it on the way home.
I can certainly remember a few days when I announced, e.g., "I am going to focus on LAUNDRY today" and by 5 pm, though the clothes were all clean and hanging in the closets, I was knee-deep in clutter, hungry children, and unfinished schoolwork.
What's different here?
Even though I had been focusing on one little improvement — pushing HARD off the wall — I, of course, didn't stop all the rest of the "work" in my workout. I still had to trundle from one end of the pool to the other, executing all the other tasks on my list. I would guess that a lot of the time I wasn't working very hard on things like my breaststroke timing or slicing my hand at the right angle into the water, but I can't be sure because I wasn't thinking about any of those things at all. I guess you could say that I "went through the motions" in all the other parts of my workout. What's next on the list? Swim a paced 200-yard front crawl? OK — check. The only thing I have to think about is the pushoffs.
Focusing on one thing does not have to mean "I'm just going to do this one thing and ignore the rest of my work." It can mean "I am going to put this thing at the top of my priority list." It can mean "I am not going to waste mental energy on anything but this one thing." It can mean "In everything else today I will just go through the motions; on this one thing I will lavish my full attention."
Maybe "my full intention" is a better phrase.
I wonder if I can import this insight into other areas of my life. Focus on one thing at a time, perhaps in short bursts, but keep swimming all along.
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