Take My Breath Away

When I first walked on deck the day I started coaching, people thought I belonged in the pool. They weren’t wrong of course; I was only a few years older than the swimmers I would be coaching. As I took nerve-wracking strides to greet swimmers and parents with a facade of confidence I’d been growing since forever, I performed a mindless act that I somehow engrained in my mind. Though this act is part of innate abilities most people are unable to defy, but I’ve also been self-reliant. I held my breath. Completely unintentionally mind you. It’s something that simply happens to me, more than it probably should. I walk over to my group of swimmers to be, and attempt to say something, anything. But of course I’ve been walking without breathing for the past thirty seconds so my lungs seize up on me. A fit of delirium passes over quietly as I stumble and fall straight into a life guard stand, which prevents me from breaking my nose the first day on the job. Though I can’t tell who is around me, I feel their stares strike my soul, but not as much as the laughter, which shuts my brain off to nothing but one thing—just lay here and die. No one even knows you. Unfortunately I wasn’t dying, just acting at a younger age of maturity than the swimmers around me. So, I regretfully got up and presented myself as their next coach. I ignored their stares of denial or shock or profound hilarity. Then I gave them the easiest practice they had ever had, even when they were just learning to swim. A four hundred warm up with twelve seventy-fives afterwards, and a single 100 free for time before a 100 easy. (Click on this to see a picture of a pool with dimensions.) Somehow 1600 yards, less than a mile when they were used to doing three or more, lasted an hour and a half. I offered my pleasantries after practice with a decision to myself to become a great coach, which involved me conquering the plague affecting me since I was little, holding my breath. Ergo, much to my swimmer’s demise and turmoil, I gave them a no breathing set a couple days later. Maybe it was a week. Lack of Oxygen seems to be breaking my memory.

For a restricted breathing set I’ll usually do 20 X 25 free or dolphin kick with fins (link to picture of fins. Okay, here's the real one.), which means they’ll do one lap no breathing then take a short break before doing that again 19 more times, for a total of 20. By now, whenever I tell my swimmers to get fins on, their grunting begins. They know better than to think the next set will be fun. They complain of course, but most will do the entire set breathing on no more than three or four of the twenty-fives. However, I’ve had several swimmers, all fast in their distinctive races, break down from simply hearing the set. No breathers differentiate good swimmers from great ones. But not for the reason you would expect. For my swimmers, no breathing sets are more of a mental workout than a physical one. I know all of them are strong enough to make the set, but all of them don’t know they are that strong. Of those swimmers that have shed many tears, it stemmed from a lack of confidence in their own abilities as a swimmer. Such a thought should have had no place in their mind to begin with, but it’s a human instinct to let doubt creep in. In these cases, I would pull them out of the water and say how I only want them to try, to make as many as they can and breathe if they need to. I’m not in the profession of drowning people. Though when I said that, they would just look stunned like they truly believed they would die from one of my workouts. Again, a simple loss of faith, for whatever reason. As these swimmers progressed with me, and through the set, they began to accomplish more and more twenty-fives without having to come up for air. Not only could I see their happiness directly on their faces, I could see their belief in themselves expand to harder sets, where they would then push themselves more. For if they can make a set without breathing, they can definitely make a set with air. This is why I continue to use no breathers; it builds a kind of confidence they must obtain from themselves, something they can’t gain by seeing a time drop or hearing a congratulations. Though, I’ll never admit this to any of them.

It’s funny how fickle people can be, especially when proposed with a situation that truly tests their mental strength. But it’s only through these tests that people advance into the persons they want to be. Though my swimmers may not yet know who that is, my job is to guide them into that natural progression. During all of this, they still manage to make me laugh hysterically and say or do something insightful. Sometimes, they even take my breath away.