The sense of water
During the growing stage, many swimmers experience changes in body segments that hinder maintenance of swimming technique. Then, it becomes indispensable to keep a proactive attitude in trainings in order to preserve and develop. when possible, the optimization of certain actions. The transition to an adult brain involves a progressive myelination of the Nervous System, improving the associated impulse conduction. There will be a neuronal cutback of the most underused circuits, leaving the superfluous side and transforming into a more analytic thinking, which delivers the work it does in a more rational way. This is the moment to start to introduce logic relationships at a cognitive level, to form a well-organized technique for the future. Emotion and logic begin to acquire sense and the necessary strength to accomplish our purpose.
While the adolescent swimmer is capable of creating a new proprioceptive layout, since their body scheme have experienced physique changes and has to be reorganized, daily tasks must have a control in series’ execution and instructions will have to be under the proactive materials’ guidance. Besides, we should take into account the use of multi-technical series and the condition of the “perceptive paradox” during the feedback we provide to our athletes. We must use them with complete subjectivity depending on our swimmers’ levels, because the information they receive may differ to some extent regarding the subject.
“If a swimmer excessively flexes their legs by the knees, we should tell them to swim with their legs outstretched and block their knees.” In this way, the incorrect posture will improve. Although the swimmer takes it as an “exaggeration”, the result will be what we were looking for. Our contribution as an irreplaceable support would be the recording, where the two images (subjective and objective) will be compared, and its immediate exposition to the swimmer in order to achieve the positive reinforcement of a “real” body scheme.
Mirror neurons have also a lot to do here. Located in the primary motor cortex, they act as a mirror in the swimmer’s observation, and represent a helpful key tool for the coach. Independent athletes, who do not enjoy a professional’s feedback and supervision, should use this system as an aid during their self-teaching process and technique construction, taking into consideration that it just represents another contribution.
How many times have we seen swimmers or triathletes with similar styles, both in high-performance and beginning stages? Its put in action cannot be avoided, our brain likes imitations and we should use it to our advantage. Animals close to us in a phylogenetic scale have a great number of mirror neurons, and for that, they can imitate human actions. In our objective of forming an optimal, personalized and suitable for swimmers’ proprioception body scheme, we will observe advanced students as an inherent part of the process.
Nuances exposed in this post are tools that each sportsman and coach must experience, use and validate for themselves, strought together with the ones they personally prefer. This aims to enhance success possibilities for the benefit of the teaching-learning process, so important in performance training. Many times, discriminating between what is useful and what is indispensable is a decision that can make us doubt.
“Evolution is not always seen clearly. It is discovered while evolving…”
J. Bonal Pedrón
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