Learn Swimmer speak

How far you swim and how you will swim it. 

Typically, this includes the distance, which stroke and how much rest before you start the next swim.  

Not swimming.  

Usually, the amount of time you stop between swims to catch your breath.  

Multiple swims of the same type or pattern.  

At Saddlebrooke and many other Master’s swim clubs, a set is also defined by how much time you are given to perform the swims and subsequent rests.

A swimming stroke that has nothing to do with those pretty little butterflies in your garden.  

Instead, it is a legal method of torture that requires you to swim by moving both arms through and over the water together.  Technically, it is done with the legs kicking together also.    

Luckily, in Master’s Swimming - if you want - you can use a Breastroke kick (See Breastroke below), which makes it much easier.  

A stroke that allows you to breath anytime you want by swimming on your back while staring into the sun.   

Just as the Butterfly stroke has nothing to do with butterflies, the Breastroke has nothing to do with – well you know.   

This stroke can be swum slow and easy like a rowboat gently flowing through a lazy river.  Or it can be swum to increase fitness. The choice is yours.  

Either way you swim it, it is kind of the odd duck of swim strokes.  Your hands are always underwater and your legs do this strange motion where you bring your heals up to your butt before pushing them backward to move your body forward.  

Technically, Freestyle means you can do whatever you please to move yourself through the water (Don’t tell your coach I told you that).  

But from a practical perspective it is what most people call the front crawl.  This is the most common way people swim.  

Short for Individual Medley.  

Taken from the competitive world where you swim Butterfly, Backstroke, Breastroke, and Freestyle, in that order.  

What we do with our legs when swimming.  

Sometimes the coach will have you do a kicking set, best done with a kickboard, where you move through the water using just your legs.  

A kickboard is a flat piece of foam, usually in the shape of a rectangle with one curved edge that allows you to breath during kicking sets.  The Club recommends breathing.  

See kicking above, but replace "legs" with "arms" and "kickboard" with "pull buoy" (except a pull buoy isn't rectangular nor does it help you to breath).

Strange and unusual ways of swimming rumored to help you train your body to swim normally.