Process in Swimming
by Terry Laughlin
Recently I’ve done a good deal of study into the
question: When someone is very good
at something, what is it that makes him good? Being a lifelong swimmer who
realized nearly 40 years ago that I lacked what some call “talent” I wondered “Can
I still become good at this?” So I was understandably heartened when I read that
masterful performers in nearly any field are nearly always made through
practice, not born.
Anders Ericsson a psychology professor at Florida State
University and a group of colleagues worldwide in the “Expert Performance
Movement” recently published a 900-page book on the subject after studying
expert performers in a range of pursuits, including soccer, golf, surgery,
piano, Scrabble, chess, software design, stock picking and darts. And what they
found was that inborn talent had less to do with determining who rose from
“average” to “expert” in a skill-based field than with how they spent their
practice time.
Expert Performers shun mindless drills and rote repetition for
what Ericsson calls Deliberate Practice. They set specific goals, continuously
analyze their progress and focus on process not outcomes. In swimming
that means focus on the feel of your stroke before you focus on stroke
count – and on both feel and count, before you focus on time. "A crucial part of
practicing well is that you are always learning," Ericsson says..”Expert
performers constantly find ways to integrate learning into the doing."
I was thinking about all that
while swimming in leafstrewn Fourth Lake in Rosendale yesterday (Oct 5th)
afternoon (even with the water temp around 62, it feels like a rare privilege to
still be swimming in nature over a month after Labor Day) and pondering what
"process" means in swimming.
What swimming propulsion comes
down to is moving your arms back, and bringing them forward. Repeating that
dozens, hundreds or thousands of times, fitting in kicking and breathing as you
do, are what constitute a race or workout. Several things are noteworthy about
that:
1) Being land-dwellers, humans
are "hard-wired" to perform those movements ineffectively. Because of the
uncooperative nature of water as a medium for skilled movement (we're unstable,
incapable of exerting any real power, and, for many of us, actually feeling at
least uncomfortable, at worst in peril) even elite swimmers convert only about
10% of their energy or power into forward movement and 90% into creating waves
or turbulence. You can intuit what those figures might be for the rest of us.
2) Every time you repeat that
motion, you imprint a habit of some kind, making it more likely that every
subsequent repetition will be like those before it.
3) Improving that movement
pattern is complicated by: (a) the power of habit and (b) our inability to
visually observe what we're doing. Which leaves "sensation" as our only guidance
system, and those sensations are often unreliable. What we're doing is usually
different from what we think we're doing.
By reading most of what’s been
written about swimming over the last 60 years, or watching what "serious"
swimmers do, most novices get the impression that one improves by doing "more
and harder" and the measures that matter most are lap count and what the pace
clock reads. They usually ignore -- or discount -- the sensations occurring.
Swimming is supposed to be hard. It's not supposed to feel
especially good -- even though logic suggests that the best way to move in
water is to move like water.
But both lap count and time
are purely a product of those dozens, hundreds or thousands of repetitive --
most likely inefficient -- movements, with time (speed) and distance (endurance)
far more influenced by our energy waste than our energy supply.
When I read how expert
performers focus on process, not outcome, it resonated strongly because I
immediately recognized how what we call “Mindful Swimming” is exactly that.
Though the act of swimming hour upon hour seems like process, the lap
count and pace clock numbers that virtually everyone focuses on are pure
outcome. Process, at the most basic level, is what happens during each of those
strokes, and on a deeper level it’s how we experience those strokes –
i.e. sensation. When you practice Mindful Swimming – concentrating on Focal
Points, nearly to the exclusion of anything else – your practice becomes pure
process.
Which brings me back to why I
enjoy and value lake swims so much. Lake swimming strips away the “distractions”
of lap count (or even stroke count) and pace clock. All that’s left is
sensation. I’ve taken the lessons learned to the pool. Countless hours of
Mindful Swimming practice has allowed me to experiment and organize
sensation-based training to a level that others have devoted to organizing
numbers-based training -- lap count, time, rest interval – around
creating still other numbers – like VO2max.
While most swimmers are
keeping track of all the numbers, I’m thinking about how each stroke feels, what
those feelings might signal about my efficiency and the muscle memory being
created with each new stroke. Because the entire stroke is too complicated to
focus on, I’m usually focused acutely on some micro-movement – and feeling as if
I’m training some bundle of “microfibers.”
While others think about the
“training effect” of their laps in terms of the energy system, I focus on a
vivid impression of electrical signals traveling from the nerves in my
hand to my brain and back to the muscles in my hand trying to do a
minutely better job of controlling elusive water.
While others focus on getting
stronger and fitter, I’m trying to swim with an ever-improving combination of
technical precision and artful grace. Because lack fish DNA, perfection is
unachievable. Thus I can happily return to the lake day after day feeling there
are new sensations to access, insights to gain, and refinement to achieve. Best
of all, unlike the aerobic system, the passage of time will not impede or
constrain any of that.
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