Swimmers Snorkel product evaluation
from Health and Wellbeing (365 articles)
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Image Gallery ( 17 images )June 3, 2008 We wrote extensively about the Swimmers Snorkel back in September 2006, marveling how just a few millimeters of change had produced an entirely new product, quite distinct from the diver’s snorkel and one with almost untold benefits for the pool swimmer. After 18 months of using the snorkel almost daily, Mike Hanlon has found more benefits and few drawbacks – indeed, as a regular traveler, the snorkel goes with him on every trip, becoming, in effect, his portable gymnasium.
Eleven weeks ago, I broke all the bones in my left foot in a pool accident. I went to step across the edge of a spa on my way to the pool, my left foot slipped, my right foot went into the spa and lodged securely between the side of the spa and the bar which ran along its edge and then I fell back over the top of it – a freak accident which saw all the metatarsals broken and one in particular severely displaced. After two weeks of waiting for the swelling to go down and to see if the bones would match up, it was decided to pin the offending central bone and just over two weeks ago, the protective casing came off.
As anyone who has experienced trying to get around in a protective boot will tell you, the brain quickly rewires itself to protect the damage and sorting out the rewiring can take a bit of time after the boot comes off. Walking on the foot again was naturally going to be a bit painful in the weeks following the removal of the boot, and the pool was the logical place to go. Fortunately, after a bit of searching, I found a pool that was ideal for the process of retraining the leg – flat bottomed and deep enough so that the buoyancy of the water took enough weight off the foot to enable walking without too much discomfort, and shallow enough so I could keep my head above water when I was walking up and down the pool.
Hence for the last 18 days I have walked daily for hours in the pool, using the Swimmers Snorkel so I could submerge my head and watch my foot and breathe at the same time, using willpower to build a new walking technique and exercising the leg all the while. Whenever the foot or ankle got too sore, I swam a few laps and tried again. I’m pleased to report that given this rather unconventional approach, I am almost walking straight and without pain again.
The Swimmers Snorkel has been with me almost permanently since my first article about it back in September, 2006. Following the article, Finis sent me two snorkels, one being the swimmers snorkel and the other the Freestyle Snorkel.
The Freestyle Snorkel is an evolution to the original Swimmer’s Snorkel, shaped so the snorkel fits closer to the face and does not rotate at the mouthpiece, offering increased stability and a streamlined fit with less resistance. The new design allows the swimmer to achieve a lower head position during freestyle and apparently optimize body position.
I just couldn’t get used to the Freestyle Snorkel, probably because my technique got severely compromised from many years as a surf competitor where the head position during swimming needs to be more upright. When pool swimming, the vortex of air behind the nose allows a low head position to be maintained whilst still allowing access to fresh air – in the surf, the same low head position just didn’t work for me because with the roughness of surf, it was just too easy to get a mouthful of water.
Muscle memory is obviously a powerful thing. Try as I might, I have been unable to modify my breathing technique back to its pool origins and I have also found that I could no longer breathe effectively on both sides of the body to keep things balanced. Hence one side of my neck and shoulders got a different workout to the other side and I have been mindful for many years that I wanted to get a more evenly balanced workout. The Swimmers Snorkel has given me that.
Furthermore, with a more upright head position and a technique in serious disrepair, I found that getting a mouthful of water when using the Freestyle Snorkel was just too frequent to be worthwhile particularly when I had the far more upright Swimmers Snorkel in my bag.
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