Quote:
Originally Posted by Ashartus
I remember passing red, then moving up to maroon, the instructor sending me back down to red and failing red. The next year I just skipped up to blue and passed.
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I kept failing maroon as well. I think I failed 3 or 4 times. I quit when they changed to the number system.
My issue was always that my knees weren't close enough and/or parallel on the kicks when doing the breast stroke. I did well on everything else except for that damn breast stroke kick.
I seem to recall the instructors kept saying they weren't sure how I was still gliding reasonably well when my knee positions were all wonky when I did the kick for breast stroke. I never figured out what I did wrong. I didn't like breast stroke anyways, but apparently it's the best option for endurance/survival in open water situations? Since I was faster than most other kids in the class due to repeating, the instructors tested the higher level swimming types on me. They tried dolphin kicks, butterfly and side stroke while we waited for the other kids + when they got tired of me not doing well with breast stroke. They told me I'd pass those without issue at the next level, but breast stroke I wasn't passable.
Years later, I told someone who was a lifeguard/swimming lessons instructor during the numbers system. He said after the first few years of the number system, as long as you could do extra laps, even if how you were swimming looked wonky, you'd pass. He said they made notes if your positioning looked weird, but they were only failing people for that type of thing if you took the lifeguard classes.
Made sense to me.
So I asked him to look at what was wrong with my kick and he was speechless and refused to comment on it. I still don't know what's wrong with my breast stroke kick.
Swimming is an amazing cardio though. A few years ago, I decided to do it more as a good recovery activity between sports and working out. You watch these old guys slowly go back and forth on the lanes and you think, "Pfft. I can outdo that." I could, but 2-4 lanes later vs 1 for the old guy, I'm dying and panting and out of breath and the dude slowly turns around for his 10th lane or whatever insane marathon practice swim he had decided on.