I went to Delnor Health and Wellness Center in Geneva yesterday and had my swim stroke evaluated by TrainingBible Coach Carla Hastert. She is also one of the Masters Swim instructors there at Delnor.  I have been having trouble gaining any endurance and being able to keep from being exhausted after 75+ yds. This summer is really when I first learned how to swim laps. I have known how to “swim” since I was four or five but I have never done any laps for training or any other purpose for that matter. My learning this summer consisted of watching DVDs and reading the book on Total Immersion swimming by Terry Laughlin. I did the drills in the pool and they definitely helped get my stroke refined enough to get across the pool fast enough with the proper amount of strokes but I just don’t have any endurance yet. Once we met by the pool Carla had me do a few laps to gauge my level of weekness and check to see how bad I really was. Luckily my stroke isn’t too bad with the exception of my kicking. I need to get some fins to practice a few hundred yards of kicks. Hopefully that can help out my endurance a tad. I know my legs won’t drag as much as they are now and hopefully that will strengthen them up to give me a little more speed or endurance. Either one would be fine with me. I also need to do some zipper drills to keep my arm tighter to my body while I am bringing it forward. That should help to give my shoulder a little less work to do. Afterwards we spent quite a bit of time talking about my plans and goals for the coming year and how I was planning my year. She helped me out so much with clearing up the confusion in my head not just with swimming but also with the vast amount of knowledge and experience that she is willing to share. I think that all of TrainingBible coaches I have met are extremely qualified and the best part is that they are all local to the Chicago area and suburbs. They have all been very open with their experiences and more than willing to share their knowledge and I couldn’t have asked for nicer people to learn from. While we were there her coach, Adam Zucco, happened to show up to do some laps. Only a few thousand yards/meters. Yikes. But I can’t wait to be able to do that. I know some day I will be sick of doing them but right now I crave it. So I am off to the gym to get back to work.

You can read my previous post here regarding the seminar that I met Carla at where she spoke about the fundamentals of swimming and actually made me the offer coming down for the evaluation.