Running a marathon, climbing a mountain or swimming the Channel all commonly feature on a list of life goals which many of us aspire to achieve but find difficult to complete. The physical undertaking of these challenges makes the achievement even greater, allowing all who triumph over Mother Nature entrance into an elite group for life.
According to ironmate.co.uk, almost twice as many people have scaled the heights of Mt. Everest than have swum the English Channel, and the charity Aspire help to make achieving this life goal more achievable through its fundraising event, the Aspire Channel Swim.
The Aspire Channel Swim is a great challenge for anyone who wants to stay fit, achieve a life goal and give something back at the same time.
With up to the minute leaderboards on www.aspirechannelswim.co.uk, you can pit yourself against your friends and all the other participants worldwide.
The challenge, which runs from September over a 12-week period, allows swimmers to cover the 22 miles of the English Channel in their local pool, working individually or as part of a group to achieve this goal. So if your New Years resolution was to swim the English Channel in 2016, it may not be too late to put it into practice this year as the challenge runs until the 7th December…
so let’s get swimming!
Olympic swimmer and World Championship medalist Chris Cook, shares his tips on improving your front crawl
“You want to make your stroke as efficient as possible so think about keeping yourself long and flat so you can be streamlined in the water,” says Chris. “Aim to create as little resistance in the water as you can so you can glide through. It’s also not about how many strokes you can do, better to think how few!”
Chris’ ten top tips:
- Make yourself as stretched out as possible.
- Keep your body position as flat as you can with a slight slope down to the hips to keep the leg kick underwater
- Look slightly ahead and down
- Reach out as far as you can with the pulling arm as it enters the water
- Pull back in an S shape so your arm comes back to your leg.
- Keep your legs close together and ankles floppy in a continuous motion
- Kick from your hips, not your knees
- Make small fast kicks, not large down and up beats
- Keep one side of your face in the water as you turn to breathe
- Don’t lift your head out of the water, the more your head raises the more your feet will drop. (Keep that long line so your neck is in line with your spine)
Chris Cook is supporting the Aspire Channel Swim 2015, a charity swimming event designed to raise money for people with Spinal Cord Injury. www.aspirechannelswim.co.uk
