Swim the Total Immersion way

I am a passionate quilter turned into an enthusiastic swimmer. Quilting is a sedentary occupation and at 55 I realised that I had to get active. I started to walk and still do that every morning. At the end of 2012 when it was getting very hot in Riebeek West I decided to start swimming again. I found out that I could make use of RPC swimming pool in Riebeek West.

Some one mentioned Total Immersion swimming and I investigate the possibilities. I saw that we have a South African coach, Georgie Thomas who come to the Cape to teach. I booked a workshop with her in January 2013 and was immediately hooked. I can get bored very easily and did not know how I will pass the 6 hour workshop without being completely bored.

Swimming the Total Immersion way do not allow any boredom. It is taught with focal points. The beginning drills has one focus point at a time. As drills become more complex you focus on one aspect for a time and then focus on the next aspect. This has changed my life and swimming forever. Every moment in the swimming pool (and now in dams) is pure joy. The impact it has to be completely focused and immersed in what I am doing is something that I could only have achieved with quilting in the past.

As a child I grew up on Planet Water. In 1960 we were one of a few families with a swimming pool, one my father built himself. I was like a fish in the water. After school the pool was the only place we wanted to be. My mother took all of her 6 children for swimming lessons. When we were bigger she decided that since we was terrible in other summer sport, we needed to join a swimming club. She drove us twice a week for 30 km to Newlands in Cape Town to swim with the Dolphin club.

We also owned a holiday home at Buffalo Bay near Knysna. Although I never learned to surf with a surfboard, I was a very accomplished body surfer and I can still catch the smallest wave.

Whenever I swim I feel 12 years old again. Perhaps that is why, at 57  I can now not stay out of the water?