Sports (Athletes)

This ebook, An Alexander Technique Approach to Swimming, is published on this website in a PDF format. It is very detailed and practical, and it will give you the physical tools you need to take the limits off of your ability to swim with ease, power, pain-free, and with speed without wearing out your shoulders.
This ebook is also for sale on all AMAZON websites in a KINDLE format.
Located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.A. (MOVEMENT THERAPY)

So, how do we apply performing with trust on an instrument to swimming? On the guitar playing classical music accurately was a function of knowing where I was going and trusting myself to hit the mark. Is it possible to swim with reflexive precision? Yes.

What does this mean? It is possible to swim in such an effortlessly organized way that it feels as if your body is moving in such an effortless supremely coordinated way that you are going along for the ride, as if you’re being driven around in the best sports car in the world. To get to where I got on the guitar and do so in swimming, you will need to do what I did.

Tell your body what you want and trust it to create a precise, clean, and effortless swimming technique that really really feels good when you’re swimming. You do this by giving your body orders of allowance as you swim. You actually think these orders and trust the body to do them.

Examples as you swim: “My neck is free, my spine lengthening, as my head is leading my body across the pool.” “My neck is free as my shoulders are floating on my ribcage as my arms draw me across the water.” “My neck is free and my spine lengthening as my lower back is released, as my legs alternate effortlessly.” “My shoulder blades are free following my arms as I swim.” “My head is releasing away from my feet, as I my whole body lengthens as I swim at my top speed.”

Swimming in the zone is almost always never a choice for most swimmers, but it is the most desired thing for an athlete to have happen to them. It is an incredible feeling to swim in the zone, and it means you are swimming without fear of getting hurt, and you are swimming at your effortless best, whether competing or not. If you swim in a race as the other swimmers are trying to beat you, and if you have no concern for the other swimmers wanting you to lose, then you get to swim taking care of yourself, rather than sacrificing your body to beat the other swimmers. This means that your whole mind and body is taking in everything the other swimmers are doing, but you are not concerned with their intention to beat you.

You are out there totally balanced in your body and watching your body do what it needs to do to swim with grace and its ultimate speed. This means your mind is telling your body that it is 100% trusting the body to do what it needs to do to get this done. Tie this with a truly internalized swimming technique that doesn’t make you pay a physical price, and swimming in the zone becomes a conscious choice and not wishful thinking. When you can return to the zone by choice, then you get to enjoy the swim while you’re swimming for the pure joy of it, competing or not.

So, it is possible to win and take care of yourself. Winning a race is usually the ultimate expression of the ends over the means. Swimming in a race is about being the first person across the line to get the gold medal, no matter how ugly you win. But a swimming career of winning ugly leaves you with a worn out damaged body at the end of a competitive career. Would it not be an amazing gift to give to yourself, that at 90-years-old you are swimming as elegantly and painlessly as you learned to swim when you were 30 and won?