about swimming

1. When one swims freestyle (crawl), one is not supposed to emulate a windmill, as one always assumed, but rather, an ice skater. You shoot one arm out there, let it glide, then pull it back when the other arm, coming forward, reaches your ear.
   
2. There is a very particular method to swimming freestyle (see #1). For this reason, "freestyle" seems like a misnomer.
   
3. The everyday habit of inhaling immediately when one has finished exhaling must be broken in order to swim efficiently. This habit can be hard to break, and if one is trying to break other habits simultaneously, one can get confused and accidentally inhale water instead of air.
4. Invaluable swimming accessories: goggles and swimming cap (if one has ridiculously long hair).
5. About That Hair: There are special shampoos that allegedly take chlorine out of hair. If one puts one's hair in a ponytail, then flips the pt forward over the head, then dons the swimming cap, one's hair will stay a little drier. The hour or so that one swims while wearing the swimming cap is an ideal time to deep-condition one's hair, as the heat from one's head is trapped (this allegedly deepens the conditioning). The conditioner will also allegedly protect one's hair from the chlorine.
6. Merely useful accessories: kickboard, flippers, and swimsuit drier. The swimsuit drier is a little spinning collander in a machine. One puts in one's suit, holds the top closed, and it spins like mad for about 10 seconds. Voila, dry suit. One wishes one could stick one's head in it.
   
7. Flippers are Fabulous. One can swim very fast using them without much effort. That's not exactly the point of swimming-as-exercise, but they make it easier to concentrate on improving one's stroke, if that's what one is trying to do.
8. . . .