What if I am practicing the wrong thing?

I’ve approached questions and comments like these at least a couple times before on my blog, and let me try another…

What if I am practicing the wrong thing? I don’t want to get good at something that is incorrect!

Two recent blog posts address part of this concern:

How Long Will It Take?
Correction vs. Over-Correction

There may be many features in your stroke that are not ‘correct’ or not close to the ideal you have in mind. The first post offers some perspective on how much you need to work before experiencing a change that sticks. The second post offers some guidance and encouragement for improving your understanding of how focal points work, and how to cooperate with the correction process better.

In this post I want to help improve understanding and attitude about working through the change process.

First, the kind of help many swimmers are seeking is about changing something from ‘incorrect’ to ‘correct’. Obviously, the swimmer needs to affect some sort of change in her stroke pattern and needs a method for doing that.

The next kind of help swimmers seek is taking something that is ‘correct’ and making it even better. We might call that enhancing the stroke skills.

Consider that if you change your stroke length or the tempo a little in order to adapt to a different pace or different water conditions, that requires a change in the stroke pattern, does it not? There is a range of possibilities for some parts of the ‘correct’ stroke, and the better choice is dependent on the situation. A swimmer who is capable of handling a wider range of swimming events, conditions and paces needs to be able to adjust these variables to adapt appropriately to that situation. So, even a ‘nearly perfect’ swimmer has to be able to change things in her stroke, and do it quickly, and hold it consistent. She has to have a box full of memorized patterns she can choose from.

What does correcting a stroke error and enhancing a stroke by adjusting some variable have in common?

The intentional act of changing a feature in the stroke.

 

~  ~  ~

To read more of this article – Stroke-Change Skill – visit Coach Mat’s Smooth Strokes Blog.

The post What if I am practicing the wrong thing? appeared first on Total Immersion.