This week's question is based off another topic for this week, and so is the reason it is being raised at this juncture. What is FEEL? What goes into our feel for what we do, and what tools can we introduce to help swimmers gain a stronger sense of feel for what they are doing? When you post a thought regarding this question, please read the posted topic that deals with using ankle weights to improve a swimmer's turning skills.
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Seems like feel is the feedback you get through your muscles and skin. The skin I would say helps for a swimmers FEEL for streamline since you can feel where there is pressure buildup and you can feel when your body isn't in quite the same position it was when you were moving your fastest or how you wanted to be positioned. Moving the arm or leg through the water slowly will not give much resistance, so I believe feel is more useful when power is applied while swimming. I know when I swim I can feel when I am putting out more power in my pulls or kicks because I can FEEL a greater load on my muscles or it feels heavier. I can tell when I am putting out very little power because there is a lack of feeling of that heavy resistance. I can also tell when I am positioned wrong or am doing something wrong because when I am putting out power through say the pull I can feel different muscles being used. I can usually tell if it is good or bad by how fast I am going and how much resistance I am feeling. The biggest problem with this type of FEEL for me is knowing whether it is mechanical problem or fatigue... Thats what I think of when I think FEEL. |
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In all sports there is a very strong relationship between the somatosensory (sensory) cortex and the motor cortex. In this case the relationship between the feel of the movement and the movement itself. They sit adjacent to each other in the brain and are very similar in structure. As coaches we’ve always talked about feel as being a genetic thing. Some swimmers have great feel and others don’t. In thinking this through my opinion is that as swimmers develop, some brains are very comfortable in the water and others aren’t at all. So the learning process plays a huge role in whether swimmers have great feel or no feel at all. Since the brain will use sensory inputs from a variety of different stimuli in order to manage movement, we have to recognize that in order to develop the sensory cortex, we will need to limit the brains area of input from other sources. Simply put, in order for the brain to improve the sensory/vestibular system, it might be required to remove the input from sight and sound in the process. For example, perform the simple task of walking on your heels. Then perform that same task with your eyes closed. Taking out the brains visual input will create some initial imbalance issues in terms of spatial awareness, and under conditions where the initial balance is more critical, a possible fall. In swimming the relationship between these two cortices is critical to understanding motor movement, and knowing that they are related will change the way you go about restructuring movement patterns in adult swimmers. So although on land this is somewhat easy to do (take sight out of the equation), in the water it presents problems... so be very careful with how you apply this knowledge. However, doing stuff on land and doing stuff in the water with the eyes closed can present some learning opportunities, and as long as all drills are done with total focus on the pattern of movement, then there is a strong chance that more neurons will be recruited in the sensory cortex, and more myelin will be wrapped around that electrical network associated with that pattern of movement. So by enhancing the sense of feel, we give the brain a greater chance at managing the movement in an enhanced or exact manner. |
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I come to swimming from a martial arts background and I am far from fast, so please take my thoughts with that in mind. For me, feel is a combination of touch awareness (can you feel pressure on the water, or water moving along your body) and proprioception (do you know where you are in space, or do you look on video the same way you think you look). I develop feel in 3 ways.
I believe each of these three has its place with different athletes at different times. But I believe number 3 is the most effective and has the least potential for messing up the stroke. |
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Great post... really liked the thinking on how to utilize different modalities to develop a greater sense of feel. |
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Really thoughtful responses. We experimented a lot with the swimmers perception of "feel" when we were developing hand paddles and fins. The paddle in particular presented issues with swimmers who believe feel to be the sensation of water in their palm and water running through holes in the paddle. We started with a very different opinion that, as the earlier post states, is related to pressure against the hand (in the case of paddles). We feel that conditioning the muscle to "find" the attitude of the hand and arm that create the highest level of pressure or greatest resistance, then teaching the brain to recognize and repeat this stroke and position improves "feel" and eventually increases efficiency and reduces stroke count. We are still developing this process by allowing modifications to a paddle that increase the resolution (for lack of a better word) of the sensory feedback from the hand and arm. I can not be more specific, but the experiments have been really exciting. More later. I am not sure that I feel the same about item 3 from above. Although I think Eric makes a great point and I am open to try to understand this, but I have not been a fan of the reduction of critical surface area by fist swimming as a teaching technique. Not because it increases the sensory feedback from the forearm and body position, but for the simple fact that swimming slower and making the stroke harder is discouraging to the swimmer and has psychological effects. Strange theory I know, but I think that this is one of the reasons why people train with fins and pull buoys. If they go faster, they have more fun, train harder and stay in the pool longer. Completely unrelated to the feel, but critical to swimming is the enjoyment of the sport and wanting to progress. |
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