Want to swim faster?

 

 

Average performers tend to feel they are getting the job done if they grind out long sets of freestyle repeats. But too often that just means the same stroke limb tract patterns imprinted thousands of times.

Swimming is unique among all sports in the opportunity it offers to compensate for physical ordinariness with superior mindfulness. Moving a human body through water requires so many subtle skills that the combination of time and clear focus can add more to your mastery than whatever age may subtract from your physical capacity.This raises three questions of relevance to Competitive Swimmers:

 

 

1 ... What level of swimming achievement can we aspire to?

 

2 ... What role does talent play?

 

3 ... What goals are realistic for 99.0% for swimmers of all disciplines?

 

 

 

 We have noted that the above questions have intrigued researchers such as Anders Ericsson, a psychology professor at Florida State University.  Ericsson’s Colleagues worldwide have studied high level performers in disciplines ranging from sports to surgery, music, chess, and even to the stocks and shares market. What they discovered is not new to us at Swimmers Acceleration but, may raise an eyebrow or two with our readers. They discovered that talent is highly overrated and masterful performers are nearly always self-made, not born.Many swimmers limit their potential by believing we were born ordinary. We have also observed swim coaches who reinforce this limitation on their swimmers.

 

 

While, it often appears to us that the ‘talented’ elite make it look easy, Ericsson states that the best performers almost always practice the most. For example, winners of piano competitions practiced over 10,000 hours by the age of 20, while also-rans only practiced 2,000 to 5,000 hours.But, sheer doggedness does not explain why some people become better than others. Tiger Woods dominates the PGA Tour, but his rivals are not exactly slackers. Ericsson and his colleagues also found that the best performers practice in purposeful and thoughtful ways, or Deliberate Practice.

 

At Swimmers Acceleration, we call this Mindful Swimming. We have noted that the ‘average’ swimmer tends to feel they are getting the job done if they simply grind out long sets of repeats, normally on front crawl. But, too often this just means the same front crawl limb-tract pattern is imprinted hundreds if not thousands of times during the course of the swimming season.

 

 

Top tennis players tirelessly experiment or refine with every drive, swing, or stroke they make. They set specific goals, tirelessly self-check, stay in the moment, and never become complacent.

 

Tiger Woods will scrutinize video or snapshots of his swing; analyze each part, then he will drill subtle tweaks until they are automated responses. Further, by his own admission his swing is never good enough. Even when he was already winning more than anyone else, he took it apart, endured a year of adjustment (and for him mediocre results) then emerged more dominant than ever.

 

Compare this attitude to the countless numbers of Swimmers around the globe who focus mainly on recording a certain yardage figure, and who are satisfied to repeat the same unimproved stroke technique over-and-over.

 

 

In the world of swimming, Alexandre Popov, the world’s fastest swimmer for an astonishing 11 years, constantly tinkered, polished and refined his swimming technique.

 

In 2007 I had the great pleasure to work with open water and Channel swimmer Sophie Mitchinson a 5th student doctor at Imperial College, London. I gave Sophie a series of focused drills that were designed to improve Sophie’s underwater application I have reprinted Sophie’s test results above to reflect how the drills increased her overall velocity while maintaining the same stroke count. As can be seen, Sophie also increased her efficiency through the water by some 3.90% from 89.9% to 93.8%. This was achieved in a period of 40minutes.

 

 

 

The most relevant message in all of this for all swimmers is that you should tackle new challenges, especially those challenges you think require talents you are not sure that you have within your kitbag.