People love to ramble on about which stroke in swimming is the hardest. You will hear of the pain that comes from the high energy stroke that is freestyle, how hard it is to breath while swimming this stroke, and the legs that cramp from the constant kicking. In breaststroke you hear all the complaints about the problems with kicking and the difficulty in finding a solid efficient rhythm. When people get to butterfly, all you will hear are the moans about how hard it is. “I can’t pull hard enough”, “It hurts my shoulders”, or “I can’t find my rhythm”. Sure I suppose these are all valid complaints, but swimming is all about swimming. Bringing together all your muscles to work all at once is something that does require a lot of coordination, but all it takes is a little practice.

When I taught private lessons that is one thing I could not stress enough to the eager parents who wanted their children to swim. The more often they swim, I told them, the more they will remember the next time they come in. Someone who swims once a week is likely to forget everything that they learned, so when I have to teach them again I’m starting over again. If someone swam with me 3 times a week, I spend 1 day re-teaching what they forgot from last week, and the next 2 days I can teach them new things.

Well, back to the photo. Here this girl is beginning her backstroke race. Unlike all other strokes, this one is swum on your back. I would assume that’s quite obvious by the name, but just in case. Many people have difficulty with backstroke, partly due to the fact that you don’t see where you are swimming. This becomes more apparent at outdoor pools where all you have is sky to look at. Without reference, swimmers tend to stray from the center of their lane like a drunk driver in a rainstorm dodging bullets. It’s pretty ugly. More often than not I have struck my hand on a lane line before correcting my stroke. After many bruised and bleeding hands I learned two valuable lessons from my coach.

1. Find a frame of reference. This can be a pole, a tree, or anything stationary.

2. Keep your head straight. This is important. Although you MUST rotate your shoulders in order to swim backstroke correctly, you do not want your head to move at all.

Well I could only think of 2 lessons, but backstroke is a difficult stroke. In fact, swimming in general is difficult for anybody to master, so don’t be discouraged when you can’t break a 20 in the 50 free. As with anything in life, practice will be the thing that makes the difference. Well, that and a good coach.

-Jonathan Stember
Private Instructor

Introduction

What goes on at a swim meet is truly miraculous. While there may be hundreds of swimmers at a given meet, there are only a dozen or two meet officials. Who are these people, and why do they matter? Many meet officials began their journey as the proud parents of a swimmer or two within their family.

It makes a lot of sense for them, seeing as they have to go to swim meets already. These stroke and turn officials first have to learn all the rules of the US Swimming organization which will cover starts, turns, and finishes. Many a time these parents find themselves in the uncomfortable spot of disqualifying their own child as they watch him or her swim. As a former swimmer I can still remember the dread and heart dropping feeling when I saw an official raise that one ominous hand, a sure sign that someone did something illegal. As a direct recipient of the yellow slip, I remember the overwhelming sadness as I would finish a race that I felt was great, only to climb out of the water and see an official waiting by the starting block, holding out in his or her hand the little yellow slip of paper. A feeling of numbness would wash over me as the official would explain what I did wrong. Friends would try to comfort me, telling me how it was still a good race and that I got a good time. My coach would roll his eyes and say that the official was on the opposing swim team and was out to get me, being the faster swimmer. But how did this all begin? How did I become the swimmer I was, and how was I so naturally talented? Well, let’s find out.

How I got my feet wet

Swimming for me began after I had my first asthma attack at 10 years old. It was a remarkably strong attack, as I found myself mostly unable to breath. In this instance it was more than slight wheezing. Air was simply not entering my lungs in a capacity to keep me functioning for long. My mom quickly rushed me to ER at South San Francisco’s Kaiser where they attempted to force me to inhale Ventolin. The wheezing got bad enough that I wasn’t able to actually inhale any amount of the airborne particles. At this point in time the doctors decided to strap me down and more forcibly get the medicine into my system. After forcing me to inhale several times the doctors were eventually able to get the drugs into my system, however, so much of it was in me that I was becoming nauseous. After that I collapsed and vomited quite a bit.

Recommending swimming and singing to my Mom, the doctors stated that this would be a good way to strengthen my lungs in order to lessen the impact of asthma in my life. This is where it begins. My mom took me to Giamonna pool in Daly City to try out for the Daly City Dolphin’s summer Pre-competition program. I failed spectacularly. After being rejected by the swim team my mom sent me out to a private coach who taught me and 11 other home school kids how to swim at Orange Pool. During this time I could not overcome my fear of diving in the water. Each time I dove, I had the nasty habit of pulling my knees to my chest, so afraid of belly-flopping I was. Through this coach I learned the basics of freestyle, backstroke, and a sorry attempt at breastroke. I discovered that breaststroke was something which I was completely and utterly a failure. As for backstroke, I hated not being able to see where I was going, and would often panic, flipping back to my face in order to swim freestyle. As time went on, most of the home schoolers began joining swim teams. The Kim’s to DCD, the Aker’s to SSF, and soon, Jason Chen and myself to the Daly City Dolphins.

Now for the worst three words in history:

To be continued…

Most people think that when someone says they are going to shoot a swim meet, that all the images appearing on screen would be wet, wild, and full of people swimming. Although for the most part that is true, I was able to take the time to explore the premises during a lull in the meet. What is interesting about Coronado is that everywhere you go, there are people riding their bikes all across town. These aren’t mountain bikes or street cruisers, instead  95% of the bikes I saw were beach cruisers.

When I showed up at the meet, I was confronted with a long row of bikes parked up against the fence, their bright colors reflecting the hot San Diego sun. Flowing streamers, colorful baskets, and shiny bells accented each of these bicycles in their own unique way. I felt as if I was attending  a bike show, although I was really here for a swim meet.

Moral of the story? Get a bike. Ride around. Enjoy the view. Shoot some photos.

I recently had the privledge of attending the San Diego Imperial Junior Olympics down in Coronado. My purpose there was to scout out the meet and take a few shots of the swimmers there. Unfortunately I did not get to bring the lens I wanted to try out, but I made do with Joe’s 35-135mm. Here’s a swimmer doing the 200 breastroke, making his first turn.