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Daily in a local pool (sometimes in other cities and even countries, with my roaming club profile). I am far from grand achievements, but quite proud of myself diving through the whole pool, 25 metres. Kids are always amazed when I dive in at one pool edge and appear at another.

How do I spend my half an hour in the pool? Here it is:

• 50m on the back, only hands

• 50m on the back, only feet

• 25m on the back, only feet - and feet-first forward  (like a  duck)

• 50m 'bear'-style (saw a photo of a white bear diving, this taught me!)

• some water gymnastics near the border (splits, etc.)

• 50m on the back, only hands, and feet lotus-fixed (swimming yogi)

• 25m still feet lotus-fixed, but 'sitting' while moving

• 12m (half of the pool) diving with feet lotus-fixed, sometimes rolling with folded lotus, pretty much like nautilus

• relax 5mins suspended in water, only face on the surface. When I did it for the first time, lifeguard rushed into water to save me - he thought I had drowned

• the final diving through the pool, 25m - applause please! 

In 2011, a lifeguard asked me to stop diving through the whole pool, because I "give wrong motivation to young guys" who attempt to do the same - one of them even needed help of lifeguards. I answered that I am sorry and I would try to dive less noticeably. Still, they started following me every day talking about health & safety, very annoying. Finally, I moved to another, much better club (more expensive but with spa and sauna), for which I cycled daily about 5kms one way. It was less crowded and had better equipment. Altogether, this was a change for better.

In October 2012, I started visiting Virgin Active clubs in London, where water is processed with UV radiation, and spa has 5 regimes of hydromassage. This is the daily luxury any researcher needs after many hours of thinking and sitting!

On the new year eve 2013, five months after the bad knee trauma (04.08.2012) I started swimming in lotus pose again, having overcome the problems with torn meniscus by 3 hours of daily exercising.

On 13th June 2019, I managed to do what I couldn't when I was 15: lift myself out of water on the edge of the pool and leave water without stairs. Apparently, I've got into better shape than when I was a teenager.

On 25 August 2019, the lifeguard in the club told me that I am "the best swimmer in the club", and that he "never saw anybody swimming like this". This is flattering.

In February 2022, I invented a new swimming yoga exercise: first make a lotus and float with only head over surface, then rotate upside down, so that only the lotus is on the surfaces, and then, finally start rotating around the vertical axis, staying afloat with the lotus on the surface and the head near the bottom of the pool. I am sure it looks very weird for observers, but in the water this is very natural and entertaining. 

Funny that way back I started inventing all these exercises because club swimming pools are usually shallow, 1.2m. In childhood I would swim in olympic pools (50m long, 2.2m deep), and there I would not have the problem of touching floor all the time, which is inconvenient. As soon as I started swimming and diving in lotus position, the problem of shallow depth vanished. Need is mother of invention.