When Lifeguards Have the Day Off

Check out this link to see what happens when illiteracy, lifeguard inadequacy and parental stupidity mix together.

Sorry, I don't have a credit. If known, please advise.

Prediction ... Breathing Liquid Air is Our Future

Expert believes that breathing liquid air is not only possible, it's been proven to work, and he believes he knows how to make it practical and has plans to do just that. Oh, by the way, the expert is a retired heart lung physician.

Check out the article by Jerome Taylor, from The Independent.

For anyone who wants to hear what smart, albeit less experienced, persons think about this topic, check out the reddit.com link with an interesting discussion of the topic.

The Zen of Water ... Be the Water

I saw this, laughed, and knew I had to post this right away ... A master (of another discipline) speaks of the zen of water.



If you are too young to know who this is, it is Bruce Lee. BL, now deceased, brought the martial arts to the consciousness of the western nations back in the early 1970's before it was all faked in the movies using CGI. The guy is an amazing athlete. If you want to see more, just go to youtube.com and see dozens of videos about him.

Yesterday's Tsunami Event in San Francisco Bay

If you were an open water swimmer in SF Bay yesterday, this is what you may have encountered. Thanks to the publisher of this clip.

Tsumani Watch Live - California Coast

Here are two sites I found that are useful for tracking the tsunami warning for the California Coast. This first one is a Live Blog: Bay Area. The second is a web cam view of Half Moon Bay shot from Sam's Chowder House. As of this posting things are pretty calm. We're praying for you guys!

If waiting and hoping for nothing to happen is too boring, here's a mini-tsunami that hit Half Moon Bay back in February, all caught on video. Watch it here. Warning, this one is a bit graphic.

Edit: For anyone who thinks I posted this out of pointlessness, check out this video what happened in Japan from the same event. Amazing and awful. Credit to SkyNews for the source.

The Importance of Lung Capacity to Swimming Well

Your lung capacity can have a huge impact on your swimming dynamics. This post discusses the hows and whys of maintaining good lung capacity while swimming and how a beginning swimmer can learn this trick with ease.

To anyone who thinks at all about swimming dynamics, this post is fairly self-evident. If you are like most casual swimmers, you probably haven't given this much thought, but it can be one of the many keys to becoming a better swimmer ... so pay attention!

My ah ha moment came in the bathtub two days ago. I was suffering from a cold and wanted to soak in a warm bath so I'm lying there trying to get as deep as I can in the shallow tub when I notice my body rising and falling with each breath. Now I don't mean my chest was rising and falling ... I was actually floating and sinking with each breath. With nothing better to do, I took deeper breaths and noticed that I could really float well if I just breathed in a bit deeper and I could maintain that float by letting out and breathing back in only sips of air (rather than the full in/out thing). I then recalled that this is how I swim. I don't take huge breaths with each stroke. Instead, I take these sips, maintaining the air in my lungs so I can keep afloat better.

I've been cognizant of the importance of lung capacity for years, but this little self-evaluation showed me just how easy it would be to demonstrate the importance of good breath control to beginning swimmers. By doing this in a tub, you can practice your breath control in a safe place.

OK, now go ahead and try it. No one is watching!

Lightening and Open Water Swimming

In case you were wondering why you've got to get out of a large body of water (e.g., lake) in a lightening storm when all that nice lightening is going to be attracted to the trees on shore, think again. Check out this picture. Thanks lohengscorner!

Edit: It appears that this has been taken down.

To "S" or Not to "S", that is the question

Should you use the "S" pull technique or not?

A locker-room regular who was trained in an elite youth swimming program and is now getting back into swimming as an adult told me today that he understands the going theory on freestyle pulling is to pull straight through rather than using the old stand-by "S" pull. I had not heard this before. I've certainly noted the differences ("s" uses only a little more than half the stroke the sequence following the "s" motion and can lead to a faster stroke down to the hip ... after the "s", while the straight pull uses the full motion of the stroke*), but am not familiar with the research.

Anyone care to enlighten the group?

* These are my observations.