In a very good way, that is!
I've touched upon this subject before, but it came up again for me over the weekend.
Master's swimming is (in my experience) a much more cerebral sport than age group swimming. I'm looking at it from the competitive perspective, so those who swim for fitness might not have the same outlook on the sport.
Anyways, back in age group swimming, it was almost always the coach who did the thinking about technique and stuff for me. He was the one who showed me what hand position to use in each stroke. He was the one who told me what breathing pattern to do. He was the one who yelled at me for not doing something properly. If I wasn't grasping a particular technique to his liking, he'd pull me out of the water and walk through the motions on land. He'd have me wait around for 15 minutes after practice was over to have me go over my backstroke start until I could do it to his satisfaction. So on and so forth. I was pretty much just an automaton, doing what the coaches said without *really* thinking about it. For 13 some odd years as an age group swimmer, I never really gave the technique side of things much thought. I always knew that the coaches would be quick to point out flaws in my stroke and tell me exactly what to do to fix them. I can't even begin to count how many times Mike and Scott yelled at me or worked with me in person on my technique. Indeed, when I coached for two years down in Charleston, that was exactly what I did for my swimmers, too.
After taking the 6+ year hiatus from the pool, though, a lot of that technique that the long line of coaches beat into my head isn't 100% instinctual anymore. I'd say all the core technique is still there without me consciously thinking about it, but it's that remaining 25% that's giving me the headache. One good example of this is my freestyle. When I joined Alexandria Masters last summer (I technically joined in August, I believe, but didn't really start training till October), that was one of the first things I noticed--the coaches don't coach us adults the same way as age group coaches coach the kiddos. There's no yelling (which, now that I think about it, I actually kinda miss), the coaches generally don't critique your technique unless you ask for it, and they also generally don't work with you one on one either by pulling you out of the water, having you stay after practice, or by doing lessons with you.
I miss it. I miss it a lot.
On the other hand, now I'm the one who has to educate myself on swimming. That means I read up on technique, watch instructional videos, watch race videos, and constantly have to think about my technique as I swim. Take the 200 IM, for example. When I swam it in meets in highschool, the only things I thought about were stroke counts going into the wall, arm turnover rate on back, and making sure I didn't choke on the water. Everything else was pure instinct or had been drilled into my head for so many years that I didn't have to consciously focus on it anymore. Now, not quite. When I swam it at Zones in April, I had to think about my start, my breathing pattern on fly, my stroke counts going into the walls, my turn speed, my hand and head position on back along with my turnover speed, shooting my hands forward on breast, my hand and elbow position and my kick on free, and a bunch of other little things.
Every practice and every meet involves a whole heck of a lot more concentration that it used to. And I love it! I'd say I'm much more knowledgeable about the technical details of the sport than I used to be, and I've also got a much greater interest in it. By and large, all the technique that I've incorporated into my strokes over the last 9 months or so has been on my own, with no coaches there to tell me what to do or how to do it. I can look back at the progression of my backstroke since last summer and recognize the vast improvements that have been a direct result of my fiddling with technique without a coach weighing in. Same with fly. Not so much with free, since I have gotten a fair amount of feedback from Drew and Katie over my ongoing struggles with that blasted stroke. While I really miss the hands on 1-on-1 aspect of age group coaching, this method of me mostly figuring out my strokes on my own is much more fulfilling in the long run. I have direct control over what I do in my strokes, not the coach. Yes, it can be a pain in the behind to have to focus on this stuff all the time, but it will *eventually* become a subconscious process again...I hope.
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