Finding Feedback

Last night was a fun mini session with my mini me. We share a love for the water…..and a stubborn streak. We don’t work together often in the pool but when the stars align, we do have a great time and learn a lot from each other.

Our goal last night was to find ways for her to experience the ultimate internal feedback loop – feel and fix!

Like many swimmers she has struggled with feeling the incorrect movements as she swims. Listening to verbal explanations or showing her has not yet made a big impact on finding awareness within her own stroke. So we added some steps, had some fun, and found that feedback loop. Here is how we spent our time.

Land – priming the core with 10 minutes of land based conditioning exercises. Each exercise had relevance to freestyle. We talked about how the muscles we were activating and shapes we were creating applied to the stroke.
Pool Drills – 2 simple drills to isolate specific areas of the stroke. We connected the shapes from the land exercises into the drills, and chose words that for her, connected a thought to her movement. She found 3 words to connect to 3 stroke thoughts.
Freestyle at Cruise Speed – She took the 3 thoughts into the whole stroke at an easy cruise speed. At first one thought per repeat, then blending the three together. Each repeat was recorded, she watched the video immediately, and was asked to assess the quality of  movement.
Faster Freestyle – 6 repeats, each one at increasing speed. Video after each repeat. The first 3 videos were watch and assess, feel and fix in the next repeat. The last 3 videos the challenge was to assess the movements first – which thought had the best execution? which thought had the least successful execution? Followed by watching the video.
Reflect and remember – she reviewed the areas that we focused on by repeating the 3 thoughts, their application to the whole stroke and how she could take them into her swim team practice.

I think what was important in helping her find the beginnings of an internal feedback loop were:
1. Thoughts and words that were meaningful to her. This tested my agility as a teacher – how many ways could I explain a concept until we found one that connected for her. She leaned towards creative imagery rather than trying to find a specific shape or feeling consequential movements.
2. Immediate video feedback with self assessment.
3. Increasing speed to see how she would adapt. She had a desire to test the neuromuscular system by going faster… and faster!