The Art of Swimming
By Steven Shaw and Armand D'Angour
Book Review by Andrew Shields, Time Out Magazine
In her foreword to this fascinating and inspirational book Victoria Wood recalls at her secondary school, she loved the water but never felt at home in it. It's a familiar lament. Many people learn to swim, but are then deterred by tutors or manuals emphasising the need to swim faster or further rather than swim well and enjoy the water. Shaw and D'Angour quote US Coach Terry Laughlin, who complains that discussion of technique is often coached in language, which makes "efficient swimming sound like rocket."
Shaw was a competitive swimmer in his youth, and went back to the activity, which he'd rejected in exhaustion to become an Alexander Technique (AT) teacher. His instructor suggested that the long hours he had spent in the pool were the cause of residual stiffness in his upper torso. Shaw returned to the water to find out.
D'Angour in contrast was a non-swimmer who went to Shaw for lessons- but knew of the AT form his musical training. The result of their combined efforts is a book which questions the conventional view of swimming as a sport, in which the principal requirement is fitness, and makes a convincing case for it to be considered as the title suggests an art.
One of the virtues of the AT is it praticality, as a way of unlearning bad habits unconsciously acquired in posture, breathing and body management. In the pool these traits are repeated to such a degree that instead of being a safe form of exercise, Shaw believes the majority of people swim in a positively harmful way.
Like the Technique itself, this is an eminently practical guide to swimming efficiently with pleasure. The theory is imparted as effortlessly as the bodies shown gliding through the water in black and white photographs.
This is an outstanding manual for incompetent and nervous swimmers. But it has even greater value as an illustration of how the principles of the Alexander Technique are absolutely relevant to modern day living.
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