Don't worry, swim happy
I was blessed with three great kids. They are adults now and I am so proud of who they have become. At this point I can now look back and review my performance as a parent. Overall, I feel I did a reasonable job, yet I remember times when I got it wrong. One such incident came to mind the other day...
We were on holiday on the beach and my son Jack and I were kicking a football between us. He was probably about six at the time. He merrily toe-punted the ball as hard as he could as is the wont of small boys. He had no control over where the ball went and, as a result, there was a lot of running about involved from me which was rather tiring. Jack though was loving it and roared with laughter throughout.
I decided it was time for Jack to learn how to control the ball a bit better. Accordingly I showed him how to place his non-kicking foot alongside the ball and to strike it with his in-step rather than his toe, leaning forward to get his head over the ball at the point of contact.
Photo by Martin Magnemyr on Unsplash
I noticed two things immediately. One was that this instantly improved the control he had over the direction of his kicks. And two, he stopped laughing. For Jack, the sheer exhilaration of being out in the fresh air mucking about with a ball and his Dad on a cold and deserted beach had gone, to be replaced by a lesson in coordination and timing which, if he got it wrong, he felt might displease me.
Inevitably, we stopped playing soon after, and I felt really rotten.
Now I find a parallel in working with swimmers.
Recently, I overheard a swimmer asking for tips on how to swim faster. He said he swam at a fairly low tempo, often achieving that Nirvana of free-flowing, effortless swimming he sought, but still wanted to find a way to increase his pace.
Undoubtedly there were things that he could do to change his stroke. But part of me wanted to ask a simple question.
Why?
If you're already swimming beautifully, why would you want to change it?
I can imagine many different and valid answers to that. I get that. Our kind of swimming can be viewed as a journey towards self-improvement and, as such, is a journey without an ultimate destination. Who can honestly say they are the perfect swimmer?. I know some awesome swimmers but I don't think that any of them would claim to be perfect. And therefore they try to improve which means they must try to change something.
I understand all that. But do we sometimes lose sight of another reason for swimming? We swim to enjoy ourselves; to improve our state of mind as well as the performance of our body.
Factors such as time and strokes per length are so ingrained into our coaching and training that it is easy to think that they are the be-all and end-all when it comes to measuring performance. After all ,when did you last get out of the water and think “Wow, that swim made me 87% happy – and I was only 83% happy last week”? It can't be done. There is no way of categorising our level of happiness at any given time and thus we usually fall back on relying on the time or the number of strokes taken to complete a swim in order to judge its success.
Photo by Martin Magnemyr on Unsplash
Of course there are many other measures that we can, and do use. Ask an open water swimmer at this time of year how their morning swim went and they will tell you that they spent 15 minutes in water of 5 degrees C. They might be focussed on their performance whilst actually in the water but, once out of it, these won't be the factors they use to judge their success.
A first-time Channel swimmer will not be primarily focussed on how long it will take to get to France, merely completing the distance is reward enough. (These priorities might be reversed on subsequent attempts!). On a smaller scale, when we are on holiday we might set ourselves the target of swimming out to a particular buoy or landmark and back. Rarely do we add the extra parameter of achieving it within a certain time.
We can measure our swimming in other ways too but seem to do so less often, somehow perceiving them to be of less value than time taken and stroke rate because they are more difficult to measure objectively.
Thus we might spend a little time working on our ability to maintain our concentration on conforming to a specific task or cue. Or alternatively noticing the exertion level we are using and the degree of fluidity in our stroke. But these never seem to be our primary measures.
Why does all this matter ? Well, in my view, of all of the ways to measure our success, that elusive one I mentioned right at the beginning is the most important of all. How happy does our swimming make us feel ?
The job of a coach should be not only to change the performance of their swimmers, but just as importantly to influence their mindset; to help them recognise that what we have come to accept as the traditional ways of judging success - speed and efficiency - aren't the only ones available. And that might mean that they have to make a fairly seismic change in their own thinking and their own perceptions of achievement too.
Of course, for many swimmers an improvement in something like their speed will automatically result in an improvement in their happiness too. Even if you're never going to win a race, who doesn't like smashing a PB ? But maybe for some, like Jack all those years ago kicking his football on the beach, they are perfectly happy with a level of competency which is some way less than perfect, but just perfect enough for their happiness in the moment.
I'm not expecting all of you to share this view – and I'm certainly not saying that swimmers should never try to improve their stroke. However, I do believe that sometimes coaches can be blinded by the perceived need to produce faster swimmers or more efficient swimmers and forget that ultimately, by whatever means, what we really should be producing are happier swimmers.
