Having swum for over 50years 88% of which was done prior to any knowledge TI, I have had a serious opportunity /necessity to tackle unlearning head on.

 

My initial introduction to TI was with 3 friends and coach we knew who although he had done the TI training no longer worked as a TI coach. He gave us a morning session and introduced us to the drill set. There wasn’t much explanation about the underlying principles of the drill and no discussion on how they related to wholestroke.  We were from the same squad and decided to come to the pool ahead of our session to practice our new skills. That lasted for 2 sessions. The blokes couldn’t see any reason for doing the drills they just wanted to swim.  I on the other hand was in 3 squads and trained very hard by myself one other day per week. Needless to say I was a bit tired of swimming  hard, hard, hard all the time. The day I trained by myself and just practiced the drills became my favorite session of the week. It was lazy, languid and luscious. I drilled for over 12 weeks. One day swimming in my squad I noticed a cold breeze on my left shoulder, I was stunned. Somehow skating on the right side with my left shoulder up had found its way unbeknown to me into my wholestroke. I was also passing people and moved from the slow lane to second fastest in the fast lane.

I have been thinking about the question Keith posed as to whether drills or wholestroke is the way to go. Although my swimming took a quantum leap just by my lazy drills (I had no idea I was doing neural training and so providing a base for re learning) I think both drills and whole stroke must be used together. Unless we somehow disturb the entrenched motor trace of years of past swimming we cannot relearn a new way forward. While I had the desire to drill not everyone does but teaching drilling as it relates to wholestroke and

allowing people to experience the drill and then incorporate it into wholestroke provides a broader choice of practice opportunities.

I was still way off understanding mindful swimming but as a physiotherapist I understood motor learning and theory of skill acquisition. I knew if I wanted to change my motor trace for swimming I had to stop repeating the old way of swimming. When swimming in my squads I would think this 200m I am just going to keep my eyes down, the 100m repeats I would think about feeling air on my left shoulder. My repertoire was limited. Each time I swam however I made a little change.  I went onto do a full TI workshop and then became a coach. Little by little my stroke has changed.

The circle of learning/unlearning and relearning provides the basis of lifelong learning.

 

I wanted more and have just completed the speed camp in Florida with Terry.

Swimming harder is your last choice and building a fast brain was on offer.

Talk about unlearning /relearning. I will be sharing that shortly.