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What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

nytimes.com

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Re: What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

#91

Post by np_tedious »

colechristensen wrote: post #58

I have been interested in swimming for a few years but never found the place to develop the skill to the point of not drowning. I could try to swim in my apartment's tiny shallow pool which is really better for children. I could spend $200/mo at a nearby health club. I could drive to the ocean and jump in. The first just isn't big enough or deep enough to get anything done. The second is ... well I want to go swimmin…

If you can find one-on-one swimming lessons where the instructor has access to a pool already, I think that would suit your aims quite well.

Most reasonably fit adults can get to the point of "not drowning" in still water in a single half hour lesson. Two tops. Learn to float, tread, then swim, then jump in and transition to swimming.

I did this once with a 60 year old woman who was initially quite scared, and I hadn't taught in years before this so I was certainly not as good as any paid teacher.

Re: What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

#92

Post by _the_inflator »

entee wrote: post #18

Just finished swimming a race from Alcatraz to shore, it's just the best high. I do tons of endurance sports, but swimming is the most reliable in yielding that euphoric feeling. I think it's due to it being essentially forced mindfulness meditation. Though you could swim with music, I don't and that means it's just my thoughts for 30-60 min (watch the thoughts, can't do anything about them right now). I'm forced to…

Swimming is a potential deadly sport - you could drown.

With this in mind, I learned the technical aspects of swimming which forced me to focus on the here and now. If you are not focussed you make mistakes which can lead to swallowing water.

I did this in order to swim longer and faster. I finally grasped the highly meditational aspect of swimming and enjoy it.

Even though I prefer running over swimming nothing comes close to swimming in regards to meditation.

Re: What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

#93

Post by blankaccount »

kharak wrote: post #77
lm28469 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If one finds Netflix, video games, partying, and vacations enjoyable; and they spend time pursuing those after becoming financially independent & retiring early, are they missing the big picture? Each of us has to define the scope of his life, I personally have a hard time imagining that a fully developed human being will be deeply satisfied by consuming media. In French these things are called "divertissement", wh…

What else do you do every evening? For me, its working out, doing chores or Netflix, podcasts and video games. There is nothing else I could do. Too tired to learn new things and I need to recharge.

"Too tired to learn new things and I need to recharge." This is the part where optimising for happiness kicks in. I was in a similar situation and it involved investing less energy in things I was doing to open up energy to learn music. Music probably won't help my career or physical fitness, but I'm gambling that it will pay off in happiness down the line.

Re: What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

#94

Post by michaelg7x »

alimw wrote: post #66
caminante wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was surprised to learn from a friend that he needed shoulder surgery due to swimming exercise. Can you share any resources or personal thoughts for maintaining form that avoids injury?

I hope there's a good answer to this. At the moment my solution is to not do crawl.

I read a blog of someone preparing for a 24-hour swim around one of the Swiss lakes and he was explaining about how it's important to get the reach and catch right. I understood this to mean getting your body rotation, shoulder and slightly-bent, extended arm into the most mechanically advantageous position. I imagine that this minimises "difficult" stresses on the shoulder joint. I'm trying to implement this without a trainer and it seems not to be irritating my (unrelated) shoulder injury.

Re: What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

#95

Post by Existenceblinks »

rurban wrote: post #57
Existenceblinks wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many sports, each has such nice exercise stratagem. Even though swimming is my most favorite since I've been swimming for decade, cycling: the most enjoyment of scenery, 26km (how I do per day) gives you a lot of different views; mountain, river, road, smell of air along the ways. These are also good for brain. basketball: it just nicely exercises agility, muscle memory (imagine you nail it 10/10 shooting continually…

I tried most, but eventually settled with surfing and table tennis. Running broke my hips, cycling is too expensive and dangerous, and I got tired of swimming. Too boring. I only do a long distance race once a year on our river, which is fun.

Many sports are at best when we were young with friends doing the same activities. And yes, it's boring when we are adult now. Treat it as regular eating, showering, although it's more effort, it's just boringly good, sometimes it's fun. They are just activities that our body need every day, otherwise our body is vulnerable to whatever pains.

Any sport that's good for you is great. (Not a big fan of running either, but jogging in the morning is quite nice)

Re: What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

#96

Post by Retric »

Super_Jambo wrote: post #69
sunstone wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this is that the current is constant. When doing a long set I sometimes accent the arms and the legs alternately over say 200m. Well typically three lengths of arms and one length of kick dominated effort. The thing is the speed does change from one technique to other but moving the water at a constant speed over a short distance doesn't work properly. So it's cute for a little swimming but it's not…

make it a bit longer and have it vary the speed on the position of the swimmer...

Or just have the water channel narrow so the water velocity increases as you move forward.

Re: What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

#97

Post by metta2uall »

lm28469 wrote: post #15
ericmcer wrote: post #7

We are taught and continually retaught that discipline and hard work are the keys to success in life. Why would we not bring the same level of planning, anxiety and pursuit of excellence to our attempts to be happy? When you spend 40-60 hours a week trying to optimize your output at work it is difficult to not have an anxiety ridden vacation where you try to optimize your happiness. I am sure many people can relate t…

> We are taught and continually retaught that discipline and hard work are the keys to success in life. Maybe we should work on that presupposition first. If we're talking about career and material success it's probably true, but these very rarely bring true lasting happiness. You also have to look at who's telling you to "work hard" and why it's in their interest for you to do so. Imho once you go above a very low t…

Even working long hours for money can bring meaning & happiness if one donates a lot of that income to worthwhile causes that make the world a better place for everyone. Movements like Effective Altruism seek to find the most effective ways to donate. This of course does depend on what work one is doing and on not "wasting" non-work time on meaningless "entertainment"..

Re: What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

#98

Post by Existenceblinks »

Engineering-MD wrote: post #48
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Triathlons: Swimming is the sea Cycling is the air Running is the earth You learn to appreciate and respect them all. Swimming is birth: thrown into an unfamiliar environment, you struggle to find your way Cycling is youth/midlife: You have your footing, now you speed through life with ease Running is old age: slower than you were in your prime, you learn persistence as your body weakens.

I feel your analogy needs a fourth sport to complete the 4 elements. But what sport would be represented by fire? Perhaps competitive shooting (gunpowder=fire)

How about swimming in an onsen swimming pool (make one if not exist)?

I used to do a mini triathlon, it feels like hell already!

Re: What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

#99

Post by Existenceblinks »

entee wrote: post #82
caminante wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was surprised to learn from a friend that he needed shoulder surgery due to swimming exercise. Can you share any resources or personal thoughts for maintaining form that avoids injury?

Generally for freestyle you want to follow these rules to avoid shoulder injury: 1.) Don't cross the center line of your body with your arm. If you were climbing a ladder you wouldn't ever do that. Freestyle is kind of like climbing a ladder horizontally. 2.) Keep a good rotation around your center line in the upper body. This helps to use your back muscles/lats to do the big work. You want to be sore at the end of t…

Also, I think, try swimming slowest just to keep moving forward. I find it's good for finding balance.

Re: What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

#100

Post by Existenceblinks »

dpeck wrote: post #30
flocial wrote: post #8

>Ever the philosopher of the pool, Igor smiled and said, “You are all confused! Speed is not the goal; it is the result of perfect beautiful technique.” >What really mattered to Igor was excellence — the efficient stroke. Once you mastered that, he argued, speed would follow naturally. Speed was simply the welcome side effect of swimming well. >I’ve been thinking lately that there’s a lesson here that goes beyond the…

Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

Smooth is zero waste stroke :)
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