FEARS
Diving. When I was a kid I had no problem at all...now, I never dive forward. Fear of belly flop
Try practicing with a wetsuit, the coverage/cushion provides belly flop protection.

LACK OF SKILLS
Never knew how to swim butterfly
This is true of most folks that didn't grow up swimming competitively, not a big deal.

My kicking in the breaststrock sucks... it is more like a scissors style
It just takes practice. The "ideal" breaststroke kick has changed overtime, so many of us have had to learn a new kick different than the one we grew up with (we also had to unlearn the "S stroke" in freestyle).

I cannot make the turn at the end of the pool using my right armas the last stroke. I also tend to get more tired with the orthodox turns as I lack of oxygen....so I often do the unorthodox turn (the breastroke one)
Doing "orthodox" turns (flip turns, tumble turns) does take a lot of getting used to, since you do get less oxygen. I "cheat" by taking a breath as I head into the wall, and it helps a lot. Since Sun Yang also does this, I'm not sure it's cheating anymore, but lots of coaches grew up discouraging it.


By the way, m coach told me to breath every 7 strokes in some 25s and I almost die.... :P anyone experienced it?
Hypoxic training has little to no value. Coaches still use it, but the research says it doesn't work. If you look at Monty's thread on bilateral breathing, the trend is toward getting as much oxygen as you can (for anything over 200m).
It's hard to talk a coach out of it ("Hey coach, I read this on the internet...." is rarely a good start to a conversation), sometimes hypoxic sets are the price you pay for sticking with a coach you otherwise like.




At the end of the day, none of these are deal breakers for developing a strong open water swim in triathlon. They are just some thing to work on.

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ECMGN Therapy Silicon Valley:
Depression, Neurocognitive problems, Dementias (Testing and Evaluation), Trauma and PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)