Last night’s masters swim practice wasn’t as painful as the one on Tuesday. Instead of focusing on pain and suffering through long sets of kicking, we got a crash course in each of the major strokes. With each new coach, I find I learn something new. The main ideas I picked up last night were…

Breaststroke: keep my elbows higher, improve the timing of my kick compared to my recovery, and really attack the recovery.

Backstroke: four strokes from the flags to the wall (ok, it’s not new, but there are no flags at Gold’s Gym, so it’s new to me), the tea-cup method for entering the water pinky-first and exiting the water thumb-first.

Butterfly: pulling down the center of my body instead of out to the side, improved the flow of my body through the water with the dolphin kick.