Master the art of swimming to beat joint pain

'Your arms are whirring round like windmills, and your shoulders are flat in the water. That's creating resistance. This is why you find it difficult to swim crawl."

Steven Shaw, founder of the Shaw Method of swimming, has just filmed me in action, and apparently everything I've ever learnt about swimming should be consigned to a watery grave.

Until a few years ago, swimming – or, rather, breaststroke – was the only routine exercise I really enjoyed. I would plough up and down a pool and enter a Zen-like, meditative zone where I would forget to count lengths and pretty much everything else.

Then I was diagnosed with osteoarthritis in my knees. It is a painful, incurable, and degenerative disease in which the cartilage in the joints gradually erodes. It was such a shock, as I am in my forties. Osteoarthritis usually affects older people, or those who've done a lot of high-impact exercise.

I was advised that if I wanted to continue swimming, I would have to switch to crawl, as the breaststroke leg-kick would further damage my joints. But just one length of crawl had me gasping for breath, so I decided to attend swimming guru Shaw's Learn to Crawl workshop.

A former competitive breaststroker, he had practically given up swimming after suffering chronic neck and shoulder pain. After studying the Alexander Technique, which works to re-establish the natural relationship between the head, neck and back, he pioneered a way of swimming that uses its principles to assume a more natural and effective technique and better posture out of the water. He has trained around 100 teachers around the country, and the Shaw Method is accepted by the Amateur Swimming Association.

"There is an ease and grace to good swimmers," Shaw says. "Your body is like a see-saw, and if your head and neck are in alignment, it affects the way you move. It's poetry in motion."

Following a brief run-through of the theory, he shows us how to glide, face down in the water, letting our weight be supported, and kicking our feet to a slow, steady rhythm. This, he explains, is part of "smart swimming" – knowing when to work and when not to work. "Before every propulsive movement is a non-propulsive movement," he says. "You have to get ready to apply the power. It's about using your energy economically and maximising the distance per stroke."

In crawl, he says, only 20 per cent of the propulsion comes from the legs. "It's a front-wheel-drive stroke. The legs are primarily for balance and stability." Those swimmers who thrash up and down pumping their legs like pistons are simply wasting their energy.

Shaw breaks the stroke down into component parts, following a series of exercises on land and in the water. It's a gentle, hands-on approach that focuses on "redirecting" the body to move in a different way, slowing everything down, so that you are aware of every movement you make.

The walk-through exercises on land are crucial. "You need to walk before you can crawl. You need to get the rhythm and the pace of the stroke without worrying about breathing in water," he says.

This is much harder than it seems – a kind of choreography in which the timing of every movement in relation to the next is crucial. Keeping our heads totally still, we learn to rotate our bodies, streamlining our passage through the water. There is a moment, midway through the afternoon when I suddenly feel I've got it right. I'm gliding along with the minimum of effort.

The big problem I still have at the end of the day is the breathing. The skill is to focus on the out-breath and let the in-breath take care of itself – what Shaw calls "passive breathing", but I'm still gasping.

Three weeks of regular practice later, and I still hadn't quite mastered it, so I had a follow-up lesson. It turned out that I'm rushing part of the stroke. We go back to doing exercises on land before returning to the water, and I can immediately feel the difference. My breathing is better, but I've booked another session. Shaw says he can teach me to breaststroke without hurting my knees, too. Now, that would be fantastic.

For more details and classes, visit www.artofswimming.com