When you want to learn how to swim, there are a couple of different ways that you can use. For many people, just being able to swim effectively enough to save their own (and anybody else’s) life is plenty to know for their purposes. For some other people, being able to do complex, beautifully choreographed synchronized swimming techniques is the way they want to go with it. And for some other people, swimming is a great way to win races. Naturally, these are three very different ideologies, and as such they will involve using three entirely different strategies for getting to your goals. And while they will all feed each other (becoming good at one will naturally push you a little bit of the way toward becoming good at the others), they are far from the same pursuits.
If you have ever seen a group of synchronized swimmers, you may notice that a lot of their time is actually spent outside of the water. These young ladies will typically spend more than half of their training time on the pool deck, simply rehearsing their routines. They get it down to the point where they could do the motions in their sleep (which would be very dangerous underwater). But the most impressive thing about a synchronized swimmer is in her ability to hold her breath under water- their average amount of time is about two minutes.
By contrast, most people who are just swimming for their lives (or even competitive swimmers) are very rarely going to have to hold their breath for more than twenty seconds or so. They spend their time in the water, doing lap after lap, after lap. The training is more about getting the strokes down than it is to do anything to the beat of a song. While there is no right or wrong, how you train is very much informed by what you are out to accomplish when you swim.
