Erica is a really tall skinny girl of 12 years old. She started swimming two years ago at age 10.
She’s very uncoordinated and stiff which are things that slow down her progress in swimming. It’s more challenging for her to learn how to do the right movements because she’s not that coordinated yet due to the fact of how her body grew so rapidly. It’s normal but obviously she doesn’t know that and she would like to do well.
In the freestyle set today, I was asking the kids to always swim at the same speed, with the same time for each 50. The idea behind this set was to teach the kids to read the clock while they’re swimming, as well as teaching them to be aware of their speed, because a lot of them have the tendency, when they go to a competition, to start out so fast that they end up running out of gas and have difficulties finishing the race.
The fastest swimmers in the world all swim their races at 1 speed. There are very little variations in their swim speed from the first 50 to the last. This is a very important skill for swimmers to learn. My swimmers and I call this skill the ability to spread one’s effort wisely.
The interval base for the set was 1:10 per 50m, which is not normally challenging for Erica. However, today it seemed to be the hardest thing for her to do. She was falling behind the interval, let alone keeping the same speed per 50. Also, she wasn’t looking at the clock anymore.
By the time the swimmers had done ½ of the set, I asked Erica to come out of the water so we could chat.
I asked her with a caring tone in my voice: “What’s going on? It doesn’t look like you’re putting much effort into your set. Do you feel like you’re putting a lot of effort?”
She answered faintly: “yes”
Although she said yes, I knew that she wasn’t. She said yes because she doesn’t feel safe enough yet with me to open up. Therefore, I needed to make her feel more comfortable before I could help her make adjustments to this situation.
Then I said: “When I look at someone who is putting a lot of effort in their swimming I can see them breath heavily and rapidly, I can see their face is red, they can’t talk, their heart is pumping fast, but I haven’t seen that in you today. So how much effort are you really putting in?”
I could see that she was becoming emotional as her eyes were getting wet. I asked her then to move to the side, away from the other swimmers in the pool, to give her some space and privacy, hoping this would help her open up.
Once we had some sort of privacy, I asked her: “Alright, why don’t you share with me the sentences that you could hear while swimming?”
She said with a very quiet voice: “I can do this; I’m going to do my best.”
I acknowledged what she was sharing. However, I knew that these sentences were the surface sentences she was telling herself to not hear the real sentences she was hearing beneath the surface and which were at the source of her behavior in the water.
At this point, tears were falling from her eyes.
I then said: “Erica, when I was looking at you swimming it felt like you were probably hearing sentences like: they’re all faster than me, I’m never going to beat them, what’s the point? I’m going to look stupid. I’m not good enough.”
When she heard me say these sentences, her facial expression changed and I knew that she had heard something similar to what I had expressed.
So, I asked her: “Did you hear these sentences?”
She nodded and said yes, several times.
“You know Erica, while you are hearing these sentences, is it possible for you to swim fast?”
She answered: “probably not.”
“You’re totally right! So, let’s put all of this behind us and think about the rest of the practice. How about your goal for the rest of the practice is to do something, that when you go home this evening, you’ll be super proud of having accomplished? I’m not sure what this will be for you but it could be something like making the intervals without focusing on holding the one speed. It could be that you do your best ever streamline after all your turns. All I care is that by the end of the practice you feel proud of yourself. Is this something you think you can handle?”
She nodded feeling like a huge weight had been lifted off her shoulders.
When she got out of the practice, she had a big smile on her face! She had made the intervals with lots of time to spare and looked really proud of herself. I told her how proud of her I was and reminded her how what she had done wasn’t easy to do.
She was able to shift her focus from what it’s going to look to others to what it’s going to look for her.
She was able to shift her focus from what it’s going to look to others to what it’s going to look for her. Teaching the swimmers to shift the focus is an important skill that leads to the ability of tuning into one’s racing channel at will. As swimmers accumulate experiences in shifting the focus, they become better at monitoring their internal dialogue and adjusting their behavior to match their objectives.
As a coach I always look for opportunities where swimmers can be guided into shifting their focus.
0 Comments