How the Olympics Rekindled My Love for My Sport…But Not the One You Think

Most of the time I couldn’t care less about sports. I don’t go to games, I don’t watch sports on TV, and I don’t get involved in discussions about sports. My eyes glaze over when my coworkers talk about their fantasy football picks. I enjoyed watching the Texas Rangers play in the World Series a few years ago, and I enjoy watching the occasional UFC match, but that’s about it. When the Olympics are on, however, my inner jock goes into overdrive. I love it. Whether it’s the winter or summer Olympics, the TV is playing the games whenever I’m at home.

There’s one sport that kept me on the edge of my seat and motivated me to get up early and go to the gym more often.  I eagerly awaited finals and semifinals, yelled at the TV, and jumped around the living room when my favorite athletes won medals.  I watched the athletes’ form and technique carefully, eating up any tips I could gain to enhance my own performance.

Was it taekwondo? Nope! It was swimming.

Swimming was my first love. My parents had me in the water before I could walk. Dad, who was an art teacher at my small town’s community college, taught swimming lessons in the summer, so my brother and I pretty much lived at the college pool for most of the summer breaks. The pool was 50 meters long and included a high dive that I decided I needed to jump off when I turned four because, well, I was four and needed to get that done. I still remember plummeting down towards the water like a happy little four-year-old bullet.

I would swim underwater for what felt like hours, enjoying the silence and solitude (even when the pool was crowded), amuse myself with games, and scrounge around for loose change. Sometimes I played with my brother or with friends; sometimes I did my own thing. It was only when we were starving and exhausted that we would go home, watching the twinkling lights on the West Texas horizon blink in the darkness.

As I got older I made the time to learn proper techniques for crawl, breaststroke, and backstroke from Dad, and by the time I got to college I’d fallen into a routine of getting up early and getting in a swim before I started my day. I also taught myself butterfly stroke in college and have always enjoyed the heart-pounding rush of a butterfly sprint. I always liked going to the pool when it was dark and quiet, meaning there was less of a chance I’d have to share a lane (I still hate that) and that I could stretch out the solitude and solace the early morning brings me a little longer.

A few years ago I fell out of the habit of waking up early and often, and sometimes I’ll go weeks or even months without a swim. Sometimes my best laid plans are foiled by fumbling for the snooze button in a half-asleep stupor. Sometimes I feel discouraged by my relatively slow pace and weakened long-distance endurance. Unlike in taekwondo class, my mind tends to wander while I’m swimming, leaving more room to be bored and distracted. Despite all that, I get to the point where I desperately miss swimming, and I know that no matter where I end up living throughout my life, I’ll need to have access to a pool. I always need a swim fix at some point, no matter how long it’s been since I was last in the water.

Watching my favorite athletes compete in my favorite sport pushed me to jump up when my early alarm went off and race to the pool. I looked forward again to my early mornings gliding through the water. There’s still no feeling like swimming, and it’s not the same mind-body union I get in yoga or even in taekwondo. There’s something about that sensation of your body being sand-blasted by oxygen, of combining the best of strength training, cardio, and stretching all into one swift motion–ahhhh. Nothing else wakes me up quite like swimming, and I’m energized (and ravenously hungry) for the rest of the day.

I love swimming, and I love taekwondo. I need them both in my life. I just love them in different ways, and I think they complement each other. They’re both great for upper body strength and cardiovascular health. There are the mental and emotional aspects to consider as well.

For me taekwondo is a combination of exercise, study, tradition, a second job, and community engagement. Swimming, meanwhile, is just for me and me alone, and as an introvert with a fairly interactive professional and martial arts life, I need that solitude in the water and the rare moments of being totally self-sufficient and disengaged. I am not intellectually challenged by swimming the way I am by taekwondo although perhaps I should explore that possibility. There is something more primal and subconscious about swimming. I was born with gills.

I hope to both swim and practice taekwondo for the rest of my life, as long as I am healthy and active enough to move. I wonder which one will be my biggest source of comfort in my final years. Maybe they both will, in their own unique ways.