Swimming: Art, Science…or Sport?

By Terry Laughlin

It seems they haven’t heard of Wu Wei at the Southern California Aquatic Masters Swim Club (SCAQ). That club’s April newsletter featured an article by head coach Clay Evans, which referred mockingly to an article I’d written which advocated “mastering swimming as a movement art, before training for it as a sport.”

Clay wrote:

NEWS FLASH: USA OLYMPIC SWIM TEAMS STOPS (sic) WORKING OUT!

Instead, they are concentrating on the ART of swimming! Based on recent revelations that swimming is an ART form and NOT a SPORT, the Olympic coaches have decided that they will cancel all morning workouts, weight workouts and just meet in the afternoons for
gentle, aesthetic sets of drills, choreography and zen mantras.

OKAY YES I AM KIDDING APRIL FOOLS IN APRIL POOLS.
But some people are buying into this from snake oil salesmen that are convincing impressionable adults (mostly triathletes who want the easy purchased road to their swim speed) that you do not want to work out with an impending Ironman a couple months away. They say just do drills and purchase expensive private lessons, online coaching, clinics, videos and books.

After reading his article, I wrote to Clay to explain what we meant in referring to swimming as art: “Great art is the result of intensive practice and attention to detail over time. Ease does not mean an absence of effort. For every TI coach, and the thousands of swimmers we have taught, ‘ease’ comes only from countless hours of overcoming stubborn habit, with patience, discipline and mindfulness toward an envisioned end. If we are fortunate enough to achieve some efficiency, it is inevitably modest and temporary and so the pursuit goes on…for life. That is recognized as ‘hard’ work by all who have experienced it.”

Coincidentally, the question of whether swimming is an art form arose at the same time in a thread on the Discussion Forum, which illustrated the considerable contrasts in how the TI Community think of such questions compared to those who take a more traditional view.

Topic: Swimming: Science or Art?

Conf: Discuss Total Swim Articles

From: Ken Teh

This question came to me a few days ago after reading a number of postings in this forum over the past month. Is swimming art or science?

Some discussions on this Forum examine V=SL x SR, force vectors, physics, body chemistry. Others focus on flow, sensation, patient catch, etc. The former refer to objective quantities, while the latter are subjective.

Can we really draw a line between them? If so, where would this be? What is the optimum swimming model? Balance between them or bias to one side? I don’t have an answer but would be interested in seeing what others think.

From: Richard Skerrett

From the swimmer’s point of view, it is art. From the sports scientist’s point of view, it is science. The swimmer can learn from the sports scientist and must obey the laws of physics and hydrodynamics, but finding the optimum method of integrating everything is art.

Teaching is also art. The big art in teaching is helping the pupil to discover things on their own, and not to follow slavishly.

In this respect, I think TI is as close to art as you can get in swimming.

From: Grant Hall

Apt distinctions Richard. Over the years I have found a beneficial approach to questions like this one, is to create a context. My context is “The Joy of Swimming” and that context holds the content.

Everything (even plateaus, bad practices and injuries) is included and nothing is denied. Things that are not used in the present are set aside for use when they are wanted or needed.

This approach applies and nurtures all aspects of life. Create an inclusive context and life is experienced as a flow not a struggle.

From: Robert McAdams

The explanations for how one maximizes speed and efficiency in the water are drawn from science. Actually doing it is art.

An aeronautical engineer can work out all of the design equations that make an airplane aerodynamic, but those become peripheral to the pilot as he flies the plane. Instead, he learns to rely on the view out his window, on how the plane feels, as well as on his instrument panel.

The sensations you feel when you’re swimming are the instrument panel you use to pilot your swimming vessel. You can calibrate your “instruments” using tools like stroke count, swim golf score, and Tempo Trainer; but in a race, subjective sensations and perceptions are all you have to guide you.

From: Terry Laughlin

Ken

Thanks for suggesting a stimulating topic for discussion. A coach named Bill Boomer was probably my primary inspiration for the approach to teaching and coaching that eventually came to be recognized as “the TI Way.”

What most strongly attracted me to Boomer’s point of view was my sense that he integrated right-brain and left-brain thinking more seamlessly than any coach I’d been exposed to previously.

Bill had received graduate-level training in movement science and could speak authoritatively about topics like the relationship between increase in resistance and increase in speed.

But he also displayed the soul of an artist, describing Tracy Caulkins’s strokes as “lyrical in their beauty.”

I’ve felt that the most effective coaches combine a clear-headed understanding of the physical forces at work in swimming and the energy cost they extract, as well as mastery of the art by which swimmers translate technical knowledge into mastery. And as well to guide a swimmer toward practicing in an artful way.

My natural instincts as a coach, from the very beginning in 1972, reflected an inclination toward viewing swimming as an art form. I drew the same kind of pleasure and fascination from watching the esthetic beauty of Tracy Caulkins swimming breaststroke as from watching Judith Jamison perform “Cry” with the Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre.

But as a coach and athlete with keen competitive instincts, I also recognized that the most successful swimmers – like Tracy in the 70s and 80s, Alexandre Popov in the 90s and Michael Phelps today – tended to be the most esthetic. That motivated me to work on the esthetics of my less-successful swimmers, where other coaches would more often focus on intensifying their workouts. From the outset, I consistently saw dramatic payoffs from an esthetic emphasis.

I became more interested in the science underlying the art form when I began writing and knew that my books and articles would carry more weight if I provided empirical support for what my instincts suggested. And so I worked to improve my understanding of the technical foundations of the experiential approach we taught, then included those in my writing and teaching.

After nearly 20 years of developing TI methodology, art and science now seem completely assimilated. When I see an element of grace in a stroke – like how the arm enters in freestyle or the way the head returns to neutral after a breath in breaststroke – at the same moment, I also see its “geometry” and the resultant force vectors.

“All” and “None”

I’ll give the last word to my good friend, noted photographer G. Steve Jordan who sent me an email saying,

As a TI devotee, I know that the “answer” of course, is like the answer to a Zen koan — all and none. “All” since the categories – art, science, sport – exist merely so our linear right brain can keep track of the different ways of perceiving the action of swimming and “None” since swimming is swimming is swimming…a larger and organic whole relative to the puny ways we have to think about it.

Comment on this Article