The Dangers of Unconscious Competence

 

Many Total Immersion swimmers come from backgrounds where they have all the wrong instincts. Their experience with the drills and focal points is one where they can really see the difference when they change a fundamental. The process is refreshing because every step of the way, there’s a gateway through frustration that’s not that far off.

That’s not me.

I started swimming competitively at age ten, and although I went through a series of coaches who might have been teaching the right stuff, my teenage brain wasn’t listening. It took a series of shoulder injuries and a new coach in college to wake me up. I went through the same process every TI student must experience- of learning that what I assumed was right was wrong, and that fine-tuning certain focal points can be worth more than pure, raw effort.

After a year of developing my stroke, I won two college conference championships in my sophomore year, and I moved into a state of contentment with my technique. That’s about the worst thing a swimmer can do, but it’s the easiest thing to slip into. Whether through overconfidence of speed, self-assuredness of technical knowledge, or a return to stubbornness, we all hit points where we think we’ve fixed it all. We move back into unconscious competence before the work is done.

In 2004 I swam the English Channel. About halfway across, I got pain in my left shoulder for the first time in years, and it got me thinking…swimming can be like a time machine. No matter how experienced you are, there’s going to be a point where mechanics start to break down if you aren’t paying attention. I realized that because the goal had been so big, I’d ignored the little things, and a little thing repeated the wrong way 20,000 times in a row is suddenly a big thing. I knew when I was done that I could swim father, and I could go faster.

How was it that I, an experienced coach and competitive swimmer, was having the same things happen to me that I see in so many swimmers I coach?

I had abandoned technique for flat volume. Training for such a swim does require some long training swims, but I spent too much time thinking about how much longer a swim would be and not what I was doing every stroke along the way.

After I got back from the big swim, I kept coaching, and started working Total Immersion workshops. Assisting and directing TI workshops consistently awakens the learning spirit in me, and on my flight home after every weekend, I always review tape of my own stroke and think "I wonder if I could do that better". I started putting together a plan. My list of rules for training…

  • 1. Whatever I’m doing, it’s not right unless I know it’s right. I can’t assume until I feel through every aspect of the stroke. I’ll never allow unconscious competence to take over completely until I’m perfect, which won’t happen.
  • 2. Negative split everything through focus. Use the first half of any swim to build the stroke’s focal points up, so the next stroke will be mindful practice of a fully developed stroke. Technical endurance must be the route to swimming endurance.
  • 3. Drill in open water. If it works on building a stroke in the pool, apply it to the most specific setting possible.
  • 4. Rotate focal points on a regular basis. If I think you’re hitting the same focal point 500 strokes in a row, I’m wrong. I rotate not just my short list, but I use that list at different paces. I need to know that when I bring the rate up, I keep the focus in.
  • 5. Tempo train. If I get tired, the rate usually goes up, not down, and when rates go up from being tired, I’m always going slower as a result. If the rate is increasing from fatigue, I try to find out what I’m cutting off short that makes the rate go up, and fix it immediately.

So, I’ve got another goal. It’s another long, cold swim- I’m not telling what.  The only way to do it will be with lots of focused, specific, mindful training. It’s the TI combination that offers so much to a  distance swimmer: more efficient strokes and faster speed. If I tackle it with the assumption that I can improve my technique with every focused movement, my last stroke into shore next summer will be the best one I ever took.

 

Dave Cameron is a TI Area Leader Coach in Minneapolis, MN. To read more about his training and distance swimming, surf over to http://www.distancedave.com/ .