My wife and I went to the pool yesterday. We took my GoPro with us, and filmed ourselves swimming.  We wanted to see ourselves swimming, and to understand our swim technique.

I have to say that it was a huge eye-opener.  It is one thing to think about your swim stroke while swimming. It is quite another to see it on a computer screen.  I was somewhat shocked by what I saw.

Having worked quite hard at swimming these past few years, I have gotten quite a bit faster. I have often wondered however, how really fast swimmers are able to go so much faster than me.  Having now seen my swim technique, I fully understand why.  I have so many flaws in my stroke.  I can see several of the flaws in the photograph above, and this was one of the better freeze frames from the video!

It is quite daunting to realize how flawed my swim technique is.  It is also really exciting to know, that if I can fix the flaws, then I should be able to swim so much faster.  More importantly, I can see why I get fatigued while swimming.  I am not streamlined in the water and the drag on my body requires energy to overcome.

It is probably going to take months of work, but I have set myself an aggressive target for improvement.  Next week, I will do a series of benchmark tests with my current stroke. Then I will set to work on getting even better.