I did it again! This may seem like I'm exaggerating or maybe perceiving things in a skewed fashion, but I swam better today than I did yesterday. I'm really astonished at how much progress I've made.

I did tremendously better at swimming in a less turbulent fashion on the elbow and forearm drills. I am pressing my buoy and balancing tremendously better, too. Breathing was much smoother. There is still a small tendency to lift my head a times, though. I absolutely minimized my kick. It was basically a lazy little flick with each stroke.

On all the drills I think I did much better at keeping my forearm relaxed and my hand relaxed and pointed down. I think my rotation was pretty good, too. I will continue to pay attention to ensure that I don't over rotate.

I can't really say how my breathing was on the fingertip and ear-hop drills, because I basically did not need to take a breath to cover the 17.5 yards. Overall I think that the few breaths I took were pretty good and I did a pretty good job of maintaining a wide recovery as I breathed.

I did count strokes for a few of the lengths on the ear-hop drills. I ranged anywhere from 10.5 strokes to 12 strokes. If I can get my stroke count down to 10 strokes per 17 yards, that would equate to about 14 strokes per 25 yards or 58 strokes per 100 yards. Could I possibly aim to get my stroke count down to 12 per 25 yards / 50 per 100 yards? I don't know what my limit is based on my small stature. I look forward to finding out, though.

I'm pretty much over the moon with the way things are going right now. There is plenty for me to focus on and continue to improve on. But, with each day I've continued to improve. So, I can see that it's only a matter of time until I've addressed my current areas of needed improvement. Then, I look forward to picking new areas of focus to continue to make my swimming even better. I think it will be really fun when I get to start working with the tempo trainer.

I don't think I can adequatlely convey how happy I am that I decided to get one-on-one coaching. Gee, that sounds like a testimonial. I'll have to send it to Danny.

Edit: I did, in fact, just send Danny a nice little testimonial that summarizes what I wrote in this entry (right after I saved the entry). You can find Danny's site at Swim Better.