I’ve been working on the idea of Unhurried things with Antony Quinn. I posted the other day about Unhurried Conversations. (There are now MeetUps for Cambridge Walthamstow the rest of London and Torquay, Australia.)
And we’ve been working on quite a few other Unhurried ideas…at our own pace. And chatting last night, I realised my current swimming training is a great example of unhurried.
I’ve started lessons in total immersion swimming. It’s an approach which rethinks much of the standard thinking on how to propel a human being through water. Instead of focussing on strength and power, it aims to shape the body to be as aquadynamic as possible.
In my first lesson, the trainer filmed my default freestyle. Watching back was funny. In my brain, my legs were working hard to drive me up and down the pool. But in the playback, I could see that my imagined propulsion was more like flailing, and most of the time my legs were dangling down, more like an anchor than any kind of propellor. So there was a lot of effort for not much result.
The drills in training aim to gradually rewire muscle memory so that I can glide much more effectively. Shape and balance come to the fore. Like yoga in the water. Developing the new approach takes time and attention and reflects much of the value of an unhurried approach – more satisfaction and much less turbulence.
