Can you teach an old doggy paddler new tricks?

It would be interesting to know what proportion of the things a kid hears in their early years is a question or an instruction. Life is an adventure; the great unknown, barriers need to be tested and established. Thus adults spend their time guiding children their way through it. “Do this”, “don’t do that”, “was that you?”, “why did you…?”, “look at that”, “smell this”, “have you just…?”, “come here”, “stay there”, “go away”, “where have you gone?”; the life of a kid revolves around answering questions and justifying actions.

In a nutshell: learning.

This carries on through school, college, societies, clubs and the early years of a career. And then, by and large, it all stops. Life suddenly revolves around mundane things like paying bills, feeding yourself (and others), keeping a roof over your head and occasionally collapsing in front of the telly to stop yourself from wondering where it all went wrong. Yes, there’s the occasional training course at work supposed to teach you new skills but, honestly, when was the last time you went to one of those and thought it worthwhile? The sad fact is that, what you don’t know by your mid-twenties, you probably ain’t ever gonna know.

Unless you take it into your own hands to learn.

But learning as an adult seems completely different from learning as a kid. Because it’s such a big part of their life kids seem to absorb new information naturally. As adults, despite often opting into the process – an option rarely open to the younger generation – learning can often seem far less intuitive.

So, when it comes to learning to swim, for example, is there an age past which adults are simply incapable of learning effectively?

There are plenty of studies into the effects of age on the ability to learn. However, it is important to isolate those which pertain to the acquisition of new physical action patterns – gross motor skills as they are known (as opposed to fine motor skills which typically might involve manual dexterity whilst sitting down). Coupled with motor skills are what is known as associative binding, that is, the combining of individual physical elements to achieve an overall target.

The picture is naturally complex and the research is not as comprehensive as one would like. Nevertheless, there appear to be some broad trends which might have implications for how older swimmers are taught.

It is generally accepted that, as the ageing process progresses, the population, in general, is more likely to lose a certain degree of flexibility of movement and strength. Whilst the latter factor may not be as significant as some might think, if the body is incapable of, or restricted in, the performance of certain movements, this undoubtedly will have repercussions for how swimmers can judge their success. Adaptions and allowances in coaching may be required to compensate for this.

However, on a more fundamental level, does advancing age impact learning itself? Are older people simply incapable of understanding the instructions given to them and interpreting them into the correct movements required?

According to a 2005 study, nattily entitled “Aging and Longitudinal Change in Perceptual-Motor Skill Acquisition in Healthy Adults” published in The Journals of Gerontology “ both younger and older adults can retain task-specific skilled memory search, although older adults may retain less of the skill than do younger adults”…“The long term retention of acquired motor skills declines with age, [but] older adults still retain the ability to learn the skill”.

A paper published in 2019 by Professor Friedhelm Hummel (who holds the Defitech Chair of Clinical Neuroengineering at EPFL's School of Life Sciences) examined the results of a test which involved typing a sequence of numbers as fast and as accurately as possible. Results were evaluated based both on the accuracy of the typing and the speed at which it was completed. Improvements could be measured when the speed increased over time without a related reduction in the level of accuracy.

According to the authors of the study, one of the ways the brain achieves such improvements is by grouping individual motor actions into so-called "motor chunks that reduce a person's mental load, while optimizing the mechanical execution of the motor sequence” They observed. "Motor chunks emerge reliably when young adults train on the finger-tapping task, but previous studies show either lacking or deficient motor chunks in older adults”

They noted, “young show sharp performance increases early in training and improve overnight…[whereas]… older adults improve at a more moderate pace and even worsen overnight." In contrast, older adults improved their accuracy gradually over the course of training, generating efficient motor chunks only after more extensive practice.

In 2008 an overview was published for articles which related to later life learning (Voelcker-Rehage, C. Motor-skill learning in older adults—a review of studies on age-related differences.)

Among her conclusions she stated “that although motor performance tends to decline in old age, learning capabilities remain intact, and older adults are able to achieve considerable performance gains” She went on to say “in low-complexity tasks, the learning of younger and older adults is very similar. …[However]…relative age differences seem to become enlarged when effortful resources are required for motor performance. Thus, the decline in motor learning that accompanies ageing is task specific and not absolute.”…” When people age, they perform complex tasks more slowly and, in some cases, less accurately than they once did. Older adults need to practice and learn new and relearn known motor skills”

How does all this relate to the way in which swim coaching should be delivered? My own (very unscientific) observations would be that age should be no barrier to the ability to learn a new skill such as swimming. It may be necessary to take into account some physical effects of ageing which might affect overall mobility but an experienced and skilful coach can often make allowances for this.

However, the coaching may also need to be adapted slightly to account for the results of these studies. Of course, there is no “one size fits all” solution but the results would suggest that older swimmers may benefit from coaching which is broken down into smaller elements than for younger swimmers. In addition, it may be necessary to revisit elements already covered to re-enforce existing movement patterns more often until they become second nature. Older adults in general may take longer to achieve their goals and they may need to take a slightly circuitous route to get there. Nevertheless, with application and practice successful swimming should be within the grasp of everyone, regardless of their age.