Magic Happened, Balance Happened

By Louis Tharp

Last week my novice triathlete spent 25 seconds kicking in hand-lead position while staying perfectly still. I swear if I told a swimmer to do this, it couldn’t be done. When it happens I can’t stop staring. It’s like this one person has figured out how to contravene the laws of propulsive physics, and just to prove the point, they’re going to keep doing it until lunch time.

But that was last week. Today, balance happened. It wasn’t perfect, and there were frequent relapses which proved Newton’s law as hips and legs floated  toward the bottom, but that’s not important.

If balance happens for four seconds, then balance happened, and it will happen again, and continue for longer periods. The secret has been discovered. Growth follows.

It’s like meeting someone for the first time and your eyes lock and in four seconds you each share a download of Erich Fromm’s "Art of Loving" — or any country and western song if you’re from Texas. Love happened in those four seconds, and despite relapses, it will continue for longer periods. Because for those four seconds, and then more and more, my swimmer, and my theoretical lovers, realize the the rush of something exciting, something promising, something adventurous.

Once a swimmer has this success-induced enthusiasm from four seconds of balance, all a coach has to do is feed it by reading the swimmer’s mind so the coach knows how far to push without extinguishing enthusiasm.

I believe once a swimmer experiences enthusiasm, the responsibility for success goes back to the coach who has to know what to do and how fast to do it. The swimmer has to have the commitment to find balance, but after that, the coach has to have the empathy, experience and engagement to move that swimmer to the path where the search for swimming excellence by coach and swimmer, is challenging and fun for both.

But how does four seconds of balance happen? I have no idea. I’ve watched it happen with many novice swimmers many times, and I still don’t know how it happens. It’s nervous system, it’s brain, it’s interest, and it’s commitment. And then it happens. The hips are high, the legs are high, there’s a relaxed sense that wasn’t there 25 yards ago. It’s magic.

But even though I don’t know how it happens, I know how to encourage it, and I know how to create a universe in which the swimmer values it when it happens, and protects it intellectually and emotionally so it will happen again.

And some of this happens before anybody gets wet. Before we got in the pool today, I wanted to weld the concept of letting your brain do the work by using the red pillow. I have no idea what it’s really called, but look at the photo on the right and you’ll recognize it. It’s that dusty thing the muscle heads at the gym don’t use because it doesn’t weigh at least 40 pounds and make them grunt. Worse, it can embarrass them.

The dryland pillow encourages balance in the water because it puts gross motor skills in perspective by highlighting their uselessness. And because it’s on the ground not in the water, there is immediate feedback — usually falling — when the swimmer gets it wrong. I love the red pillow.

It’s so easy to explain on dryland that it’s your brain/nervous system that is working out how to balance you one-legged. You are not building muscle, and you are not increasing your heart rate — two necessary stimuli that triathletes usually think they need in order to feel as if they are making progress. Nope, you’re just trying to balance one-legged on that squishy red pillow and all you’ve got is your brain to make it happen. And it happens. How does it happen? No idea. It just does.

So, we take this faith-based balance concept to the pool, and wait. (It’s so nice to be able to use this phrase — faith-based — again with swimming now that Bush is out of office.

I’m not sure it’s even necessary that the swimmer consciously make the connection between the red pillow balance and balance in the water. I’m not even sure what the connection is. But it’s fun and it seems to work. 

So it doesn’t matter because today the wait was over. Balance happened.

The most gratifying part is when the novice swimmer realizes it’s not just a combination of my words at the wall and their movement through the water.

It’s feeling, it’s relaxing, it’s opening up to a new experience in which success is measured by the ability to engage in faith-based practice.It’s a willingness to become part of something fearful and exciting, bigger and more complicated than running or biking, something that you know you can do when you’re 97, and enjoy. It’s understanding that you don’t want to swim like eveyrbody else you see struggling and unfulfilled, wondering when they’ll lose weight as they plod down the pool at an 89 heart rate, fins and pool buoy at the ready should they get bored.

It’s the desire to get out of the pool knowing that you learned something, that you feel better than when you got in, that you are further sensitized to what can be accomplished by letting your brain direct your muscles, and asking your muscles for nothing more than to be the recipients of the magic.

 About:

Louis Tharp is a competitive age-group swimmer and a TI triathlon swim coach who is currently taking a few semesters off from West Point coaching in order to work one-on-one with Nicholas Sterghos, an ’09 West Point graduate and pro triathlete.

Louis Tharp’s book, "Overachiever’s Diary, How The Army Triathlon Team Became World Contenders" is available from Total Immersion.

Read a sample chapter and reviews from the top triathlon and swimming media at Overachiever’s Diary.

Buy Overachiever’s Diary by Louis Tharp on TI. Read a review of Overachiever’s Diary at active.com

His home pool is Club Fit, Briarcliff in Westchester County, New York.

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