Three weeks ago I published a post The 4 Stages of Skill-Learning. And the Critical Kaizen Loop which proved to be one of the most popular of the year. In that post I explained the stages through which we all must progress in learning any skill, and why it’s so critical that the final two stages become an endless loop.

This post is about how to navigate those two final stages–especially as you move from simpler to more advanced skills. It’s in this process that you develop the habits of Mastery–habits you can apply to anything.

My Sensei (Master Teacher) on Mastery has been George Leonard. Leonard was a student of zen who began study of aikido at age 47, and earned the rank of Sensei. Of all who attained Sensei rank, he began study latest in life.

From this experience, he wrote Mastery, the Keys to Success and Long Term Fulfillment, which has become essential reading for any serious student of TI.

In a single sentence, Leonard’s message is: Success and satisfaction in any endeavor are byproducts of learning to love practice.

According to Leonard, that transformation occurs as a result of choosing a challenge that requires your full devotion. All TI instruction is consciously designed to provide that sort of challenge, and to increase your passion for, and enjoyment of, practice.

Four Mastery Habits

A conscious ingredient of all things TI is the goal of not only swimming better than ever, but also developing habits that have an enduring positive impact on body, mind, and spirit. Here are four essential habits, and one critical insight.   

Habit One: Focus on improvement. Your core goal for every practice should be to Improve Your Swimming. For instance, learning to replace the instinctive habit of pushing water back with a conscious intention to use your hand to hold your place in the water is an important step in learning an effective Catch-and-Press (the part of the arm stroke which propels you forward.  “““Can you sense yourself doing this slightly better after 10 minutes of concentrated practice? Did your ability to maintain focus also improve? Improving both is critical to success.

Habit Two: Strike a balance. Each time you practice Hold Your Place, set your ‘success bar’ slightly higher. In fact, every task you undertake should feel like a stretch—but not too much. Too easy = boredom. Too difficult = frustration. TI lessons are designed to guide you through a series of small ‘wins,’ each preparing you for the next.

Habit Three: Embrace imperfection. Most of the time, you’ll miss the mark you were aiming for. That’s good! Mistakes concentrate your attention and are essential for course correction. Continual improvement is a process of repeated mistakes and recalibrations, each bringing you slightly closer to success.

Habit Four: Love the ‘plateau. The most essential skills in swimming efficiently–Balance and Streamlining–involve large body parts and muscle groups, and require simpler coordination. So breakthroughs generally come in steady succession.  As you progress to more advanced or complex skills, you encounter a steeper learning curve. At times, you may wonder if you’ve hit a plateau. You haven’t! If you embrace the first three habits, change is ongoing—but at the cellular level. That cell-level change periodically consolidates to produce an exciting forward leap. (After 50+ years of swimming, I still experience such leaps about once a year.) Between leaps, the pleasure of being totally immersed in practice becomes its own reward.

The Invaluable Insight: You never achieve Mastery!  A true Master never becomes complacent, never stops pursuing improvement.  Swimming, where every important skill is counter-intuitive, provides more opportunity for this than any other skill or sport. Among all athletes, and students of movement arts, swimmers have the greatest expectation of being able to realize lifetime learning and improvement. This is why TI embraces the ethos of Kaizen.

Our downloadable Ultra Efficient Freestyle Complete Self-Coaching Toolkit not only teaches the essential skills of an ultra-efficient freestyle. It also teaches the four habits of Mastery.

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May your laps be as happy as mine.

Terry Laughlin