Of The Four Hour Body Part II

I've been practising my total immersion style swimming this week as advised by Ferris in "The Four Hour Body". It's going slowly but well. This week I've been concentrating on my breathing. He advises that you breathe out in the water before taking a slug full of air as you rotate your head around. This I'm doing and breathing out through my nose which for some reason I find much easier. It is also a practise that creates far fewer bubbles than exhaling through your mouth allowing you to see where you're going which is no bad thing either.

At the end of my 40 lengths I stopped and asked the guy in the lane next to me (a fine swimmer and triathlete) whether he had ever heard of "total immersion swimming".He said he had and that his friend swears by it. As we talked I noticed an odd shape behind his right ear under his swimming cap. Upon inquiry he promptly produced what he said was a "wetometer" which can be set to click at a rate you want your arms to enter the water. He said you can also get a gadget to count the laps for you as you do them which works by adding one lap each time it detects you've changed direction.

It's a complicated process swimming nowadays. It's changed a bit since the day I first got in a pool with goggles that flooded with water the moment you put them underwater.