
Read time: 2min.
By Coach Yan Busset
Ever wondered why some swimmers glide through the water like sleek dolphins while others splash around like enthusiastic puppies? The secret lies in their "feel for water." Unlike cycling and running, where the bike provides multiple points of contact (handlebars, saddle, pedals) and the ground offers solid feedback, swimming involves moving through a fluid and requires control in three dimensions. This makes mastering swimming technique more challenging and highlights the importance of developing a strong feel for water.
Understanding the Feel for Water:
Feel for water refers to a swimmer's ability to sense and manipulate the water effectively. This skill involves a heightened sense of spatial body awareness, or proprioception, allowing swimmers to execute precise movements and maintain consistent technique.
The Science Behind Feel for Water:
Developing a feel for water involves creating strong nerve-to-brain connections. This process relies on the sensory feedback provided by the skin and the body's proprioceptive sensors, such as the Golgi tendon organs in the muscles and other skin receptors, which inform the brain about joint position and muscle activation. These connections take time to develop and require consistent practice.
Practical Tips to Develop Feel for Water:
1. Drills: Incorporating specific drills into your training can enhance your feel for water. Examples include sculling, fingertip drag, and the hand-in-fist drills. The hand-in-fist drill involves swimming with your hands in a fist, which forces you to focus on the forearm's role in generating propulsion and once you re-open it, it enhances the feel for the stroke trajectory.
2. Frequency: Regular and frequent practice sessions help reinforce neural connections and improve technique consistency. It's better to swim more often for shorter durations, like four times 30 minutes a week, rather than one long session of two hours. This frequent exposure helps develop the feel for water more effectively.
3. Consistency: Maintaining a consistent training routine is crucial for developing and retaining your technique. We all have experience the odd sensation to loose our technique after a longer break, staying consistent will avoid your technique to play yo-yo with you.
4. Visual feedback: Use video analysis and feedback from coaches to understand and correct your movements. It's usually painful for the ego to watch ourself swimming and notice the gap between the " What I think I do" vs the "what I actually do", but ego aside it's the best way to improve.
5. Learning Different Strokes: Mastering various swimming styles like breaststroke, backstroke, and butterfly can improve overall motor skills and increase your feel for water. Just like teaching an athlete to juggle can improve their ball-catching skills, learning different strokes enhances motor skills in swimming.
6. Mobility Exercises: Engage in mobility exercises to improve body awareness and proprioception, making it easier to perform and refine swimming techniques.
Developing a feel for water is a gradual process that requires time, patience, and consistent practice. By incorporating the tips mentioned above into your training, you can improve your technique and become a more proficient swimmer. Remember, it's not about instant results but about steady and continuous improvement. The secret in triathlon is that there is no secret. You need time and consistency, and building the feel for water falls into that category as well. Keep practicing, stay consistent, and the results will follow. Before you know it, you'll be gliding through the water like a sleek dolphin, leaving the awkward puppy splashes style behind!
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