Olympic champion Anthony Ervin taught a masters class that was a little different than most clinics.
Ervin led a clinic in Montauk, New York, less on technique and more about feeling.
“Everything becomes so mechanical in our lives, even how we get through the day ” Ervin told the East Hampton Press. “I wanted to reinsert the fundamental understanding of movement in the water, to try to break up the mechanical nature of it, to get back to the liquid movement … in the water, you plan for every breath, it can be a moving meditation.”
The clinic was for swimmers 18-84 at the Montauk Playhouse pool. Ervin was Cal teammates with Lars Merseburg, who runs Imagine Swimming that also runs a pool in Brooklyn and three in New York City.
“It wasn’t a typical masters class — he had us play around with the strokes and with being in the water,” Jasie Britton, one of the swimmers in the clinic told the East Hampton Press. “(He) was trying to get us to focus on the flow, through practicing different ways of moving … seeing him swim that lap alternating the breaststroke and butterfly was the most beautiful thing to watch.”
Merseburg was pleased to see the different approach resound with the swimmers.
“Yes, think it, feel it, do it,” Merseburg told the East Hampton Press. “He wanted to show them what they could do.”