Hello !

After two months of non blogging , I log in to my blog and was surprised that my blog was actually visited by people all over the world, well , almost all . :) Well , guess thats the benefits of having a blog , kinda cool ! or kinda geeky :) I hope my blog in one way or another , is useful , informational and fun to everyone !


Visitors from North America !


Visitors from Europe ,Middle East , Africa


Visitors from Asia and Australia


Btw , here in Calgary is minus 29 degrees celcius, yes MINUS! If there is an outdoor pool , it will turn into a skating ring.


So thanks you guys for visiting ! Stay tune!

How did Paul Biedermann Improve 4 seconds in about a year time ?!

Hello ,

It is not a question where I can answer , its more like an exclamation ! If you know , Paul Biedermann recently crushed Michael Phelps in the 200m LC freestlye at the Rome World Championship, clocking 1:42:00 , breaking Phelps record set in Beijing . Phelps record was 1:42:96 .

Out of interest ,
I went to search for the 200m Beijing Clip and found Paul to be in the final as well, clocking 1:46:00 , so Paul Biedermann improves 4 seconds in just about a year ?! wtf ? Anyway, in Beijing , Paul did not wear the full suit , in Rome World Champ this year, He wore a full suit , hmmmmmmmmmm ....

Beijing 200m Olympics.

If you are interested to see how far has Paul improved , pause the video at 4:22 and you will see over the year , he has improved about 3 and a half body length for 200meters , (Paul is in lane 2 )


200m World Champ Rome (Paul Biedermann beats Phelps )
2008 World Champ (Click link to see the video )



I am very interested to see the next race between Phelps and Biedermann. Btw, these ultra fast suits will be banned next year.

cheers,
Darren

I am a handicapped butterfly

Hi ,
I thought I did pretty good butterfly, but I was wrong again ! , now I got a chance to film myself, I realised that I do swim some weird butterfly. Things that I noticed myself doing wrong :


= Quick arm Exit before I even touch my thigh
= Arm Entry creating lots of splashes, not clean entry !
= L shape wrist/palm when exiting , why am I doing that , I wonder hmm





Please let me know other mistakes as well if you spot them :)

Eric the Eel

Hi all ,

When I was taking my Singapore swimming instructor certification back in 2003/4 , the lecturer then, (think his name is Wong Sooi Kut ) told us a true story about an African guy who participated in the Sydney 2000 Olympics. Since my lecturer then happened to be the starter of that particular 100m freestyle heats , he has first hand encounter of what happened then.

The African dude, Eric Moussambani apparently just learnt how to swim 8 months prior to the Olympics and expectedly , didnt perform up to Olympic standard and my then lecturer almost wanted to stop the race , fearing that he could not even swim.

He did finished the race at the end through sheer determination and he was well received with standing ovation albeit his 100m time was 1:52 (worst in Olympic history, I guess) , which is slower than the current 200m (100m X 2 ) world record of 1:42:00

Subsequently, he was given a swimming scholarship to refine his stroke and after some years of training , he managed to do a 57 secs !, according to wikipedia :)


Moral of the story ? you got to have determination ! If Eric can do it , so can you !

Enjoy the video .

Water treading video lessons

Hi , This is my first time filming myself teaching , not in the water though , but on land. :) I will attempt to teach water treading (standing afloat in the water). Ideally , if you know how to swim breaststroke, this is very easy . (It is sort of like a vertical breaststroke ) , if you dont, suggest you learn breaststroke first. :)





points to note :

Arms sweeping in and away
Legs lift up to 90 degrees and kick downwards
practice near the edge of the pool so you can grab on the wall.
Stay vertical , dont bend your back like a prawn (I like to use the word prawn :) )


Another good and more professional version ( not mine :) )



Suggest not to try the flutter kick one , cause that is tough !

I am swimming breaststroke

Hi ,

I always wanted to film myself swimming , and since today is a saturday , I did that exactly. I did a couple of video on all my strokes and was quite disappointed with my self . I swam horribly in freestyle . My butterfly looks weird and my backstroke is kinda going left and right. The only satisfactory stroke is breaststroke, and that too needs lots of improvement.

Anyway , attached my video on my breaststroke (25m pool). I think I need to train more on my kick. I need to whip/kick downwards more ( Insweep) . My recovery is not narrow enough and I think my kick doesnt produce enough thrust. The timing of my arm pull and kick needs to be adjusted as well.

Trick your kids to teach your kids !

How to trick your kid (Age 3 - 10 ) ? :)

Submerging head into water

Many parents do struggle to get their kids head submerge into the water . So how do you do that?


I have always find this method to work .
1) get your kid to pretend to wash his/her face in the pool . Stating that while doing that , he/she is already holding her breath naturally.
2) ask him/her to hold her breath and submerge only him/her mouth in the water. If she is able to do that just a while. Quiclkly reward him/her with a high five !
3) ask her to submerge but hold her breath longer ( ask him/her to count silently in the head 1 to 5 , 1 to 10 )
4) When he/she is very comfortable. Then now you ask her to submerge her mouth and nose as well . Repeat (Step 2 and 3 )
5) Finally when she is comfortable with his/her nose being submerge, Now you may try to ask him/her to submerge his/her eyes as well ( with goggles or eyes closed ) .( REpeat Step 2 and 3)
6) now drop his/her goggles in to a shallow floorbed of the swimming pool and challenge her/him to pick it up , not forgetting to reward him/her of course !

Blowing bubbles

In the meantime, you can also teach him/her how to blow bubble .

1) Ask them whether they had try blowing bubble with a straw into their drinks . Most probably they have done it .
2) Ask them to repeat the same thing in the water with their mouth (submerging their entire body upright and the mouth only ). Quickly reward them with high five once they done it eventhough it is a small and brief bubble
3) Ask them to try to blow a longer bubble , you can challenge them yourself to see who can endure a longer period of blowing bubble ( pretend to lose to them to boost their confidence :) )

Tell me whether it works! :)