Drive

A couple weeks ago my son was moved out of the faster lane and into a slower lane during swim practice. He was told it was because he was taking too many breaths and not because he was going too slow. I waited till after practice to verify with him that I'd heard correctly (yeah I was sitting right behind the lane, where he'd dropped his junk into a plastic chair which is way more comfortable than the bleachers). The demotion didn't seem to phase him, but it sure got under my skin.

Later, I did express my concerns with the coach in a carefully worded note, and encouraged her to focus more on helping with streamline breathing instead of decreasing the number of breaths per lap... I couldn't be mad at her specifically, because it's quite common for swim coaches to encourage swimmers to build up this sort of endurance and often taking breath is a bit disruptive to the streamline and flow of the stroke. However, given that my son was already having issues with fatigue mid-practice and he has a hereditary anemia, my feelings were quite strong in that I never wanted him to try and decrease his breathing, but to work on making his respirations mid-lap as efficient and streamline as possible.

In college I was incredibly fortunate to have a coach who thoughtfully worked to help his swimmers to improve their techniques instead of over emphasizing rigorous workouts. My brief career as a high school swimmer ended because the coach was overzealous in his insistence of working hard for hours on end. He demanded we practice before and after school, and succeeded in driving me to burn out. A few years later, finding the drive to swim again, I was so fortunate that quite the opposite in college the coaching was much more balanced and my times and race results were far better. While I didn't know then that I had hereditary spherocytosis, I quickly learned that when I didn't breath enough, I would have symptoms of hypoxia and my body let me know I had to breath more. Instead of breathing less, I learned to breath better. There's a moment in the freestyle stroke, when you're lifting your arm over your head, when the water will dip down, and allow you to slurp a breath of air with just the slightest turn of your head. As long as you're swimming in smooth water, you can breath as much as you need to without loosing any momentum at all.

As you can imagine I get rather engrossed and nostalgic with rather strong views on how things ought to be when it comes to swimming. Given that it took almost 12 years for my son to learn to swim across the pool without touching the bottom, I'm always amazed to see him swimming. What I've noticed though, is that while he seems to look forward to swim more than anything else that he does in his daily life tasks, (that is to say he isn't overly excited about it, but gets ready and attends swim with hardly any effort on our part to get him ready) I don't think he's got quite the same drive I had when I swam. It's not bad, it's just different and I have to work hard to keep that in mind!

When I watch him swim I can see potential... or I feel a desire to see him swim in the way I did. I liked to race, and I liked to win, and I usually swam pretty hard all the time. It was one thing I was pretty good at... intuitively. I never had a swim lesson, and was able to join a swim team when I was in junior high and prove I belonged in the faster lanes (not always the fastest, but never the slow lane). There's something exhilarating about swimming... for me the black line on the bottom of the pool is kind of like the black lined figure circles I'd spend countless hours tracing at the roller rink. Back and forth, around and around...over and over again. Rhythmic, methodic, stroke perfection and stylized cylindrical balance with unwavering edges... perhaps it was my therapy. Something about these activities helped me develop into who I am today.

Personally, of all the things we do, I think swimming has been the best therapy for my son this year. Swim teams around here was shockingly expensive, so that's why we haven't been able to pursue more than he's doing now. I see the most progress and the most promising results from his time in the pool. If I had my way I'd divert all the money being spent on speech therapy and invest it into more swimming opportunities.