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In swimming, there are only two things someone can get wrong—not finishing a race and being disqualified. Unfortunately, like in many sports, swimming has officials that run the meet but also have the power to disqualify individuals and relays. No matter how old you are, being disqualified is earth-shattering; your race does not count, and your time and finish mean absolutely nothing. What makes matters even worse is the disqualification process is somewhat secret, you actually do not know you were disqualified until an official hands a little yellow slip of paper to your coach essentially explaining that you messed up and all the effort you just put out into the pool means nothing; followed by your coach giving you the “you messed up look”. Essentially, just by reading this, you can see that being disqualified is not a position you want to find yourself in. Statistically, younger kids are more likely to be disqualified due to them still learning the stroke and learning all the rules that go with them. One of them is the rule of “a simultaneous arm stroke” in butterfly. Essentially means that the butterfly stroke requires that the individual moves their arms in-phase. The same goes with the stroke of breaststroke. The moment that the individual's arms move in anti-phase results in the official whipping out the notorious yellow slip ultimately ruining the individual's day.

We learned that within patterns of continuous bimanual coordination anti-phase refers to the timing of landmarks being 180° out of synchrony while in-phase refers to the timing in which landmarks on each hand are the same, 0° out of synchrony (Lecture Notes, Coordination, 2021). Arms moving anti-phase in butterfly becomes prevalent when individuals become tired. The anti-phase movement becomes the attractor (the pattern of behavior the individual falls into) rather than the in-phase movement. The change from in-phase to anti-phase are order parameters that make up the non-linear behavior present. Non-linear behavior is a component of Dynamic Pattern Theory that ultimately describes an abrupt change in behavior. Personally, the butterfly stroke is the most taxing. As a kid, I dreaded swimming it. The longer the race, the more I thought to myself that it would probably be easier to drown than to get my arms out of the water at the same time. It was easier and more natural to move my arms anti-phase rather than in-phase. In this case fatigue is driving the order parameters and my body naturally rejecting the idea of moving my arms in-phase. Based on the Dynamic Pattern Theory we can examine how my stroke changes from one stable state to another due to the influence on a particular variable (Lecture Notes, Coordination, 2021).

It is always rough to watch little kids swim butterfly not only because it looks and feels painful but you know that that little boy/girl is trying so hard to do their very best only to get disqualified in the end because their arms are not moving at the same time and entering the water at the same time.

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I used to dread Christmas break and the first week after school ends. While I never thought those words would ever come out of my mouth, here we are. Those two weeks were something that not only did I have to physically prepare for, but also mentally. Known as “hell week”, our team would have two practices a day, each being 8,000 yards (just over 4.5 miles). The amount of yardage was significantly more than what we would usually do at a normal practice. It was this week where I would simply put my head down and hope that the 2 hours goes by as fast as possible. During hell week, everyone did the same thing no matter what they specialized in or what they preferred to swim. That is something that I enjoyed about my team; my coach never allowed us to only focus on just sprinting and short distances, or long-distance pace workouts, he made us do everything and anything all the time.

The Shea & Kohl (1990, 1991) study on the variability of practice and its effects on retention highlighted that individuals in the group that has variability within their practice proved to have the lowest absolute constant error a day later in their retention test. The study was conducted looking at individuals and training them to accuracy generate a force of 150 N by squeezing a hand grip. Of the three groups established one group did only 100 trials of just trying to grip 150 N; another group did a total of 200 trials but still only tried to grip exactly 150 N; and finally, the group that showed the most success in retention tests conducted 200 trials but did 100 trials of trying to squeeze exactly 150 N and the latter 100 trials squeezing different forces of 100 N, 125 N, 175 N, and 200 N proving variability in their practice (Lecture Notes, Practice Variability, 2021). Ultimately this study confirmed that in order to succeed in tasks, training, and performance, variability needs to be present.

This study can be related to my training program. While I am predominantly a 200 distance swimmer. My practice never consisted of doing just the 200s. I was doing distances significantly over 200 yards, and distances that were pure sprints of 50 yards or even 25-yard distances. Essentially, if my practice is 8,000 yards there is no way I spent it doing just 200-yard distances. My variability within practice allows me to train for my race in a different way. Specifically the 3rd out of the 4 50s within the 200. Known as the hardest 50 within the race, the 3rd 50 is usually the one that decides the person that will come out victorious. It requires endurance and strength that does not normally come from doing 200s at practice, but rather 800s or 400s that were dome.  My variability in swimming can also be related to the contextual interference theory in the idea that random practice and variability  leads to more interference which ultimately better retention results for myself. While in practice I might hate it and believe that what I am doing is excessive and unnecessary, it is evident that without variability, I would not be able to succeed in what I am best at.

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How did you feel? I don’t know…. My coach always talks to me before and after my race; before the race, it is always encouragement and motivation for me to perform and give it my all, and after the race, the first question he always asks me is how I think the race went. The only problem is that I never know. It is like my brain shuts off for the duration of the race and I have developed amnesia. Whether the race is 25 seconds or 15 minutes I can never remember what occurred in the race besides me touching the wall and seeing my time on the board. Usually, when my coach asks me how I feel I usually base my answer based on my time displayed rather than my actual stroke or strategy during the race. This information leads me to believe that when I compete in races, I do so on complete autopilot; otherwise known as that I have been able to completely switch over to procedural memory. The procedural memory system is an unconscious and automatic state where you are performing a task without being consciously aware of what is occurring. This can be contrasted to declarative memory that occurs for individuals who are completely conscious and using semantic (concepts and facts) and episodic (events that you have experienced in the past) to help them perform (Lecture Notes, Memory, Defining and Assessing Motor Learning, 2021). Procedural memory did not occur for me right away; I have now been swimming for over 15 years and it definitely took time for me to build up experience and practice to be in a position where I am using procedural memory to compete. While it is always a fun experience when my coach asks how it went and I respond with “no clue”, it is a sign that different memory systems are working within my brain. Lets just hope that there will not be a time where my procedural memory switches to declarative memory mid-competition and I end up choking.

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Never Have I Prayed More For Positive Transfer 

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Never Have I Prayed More For Positive Transfer 

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The photo above shows me crossing the finish like in the happiest place on Earth. Running the 10k in Disney World was something that I signed up for but very irresponsibly did not train for in the correct way. I was so encapsulated within my swimming training and practice with the club team at UW, I never took a chance to train specifically learning how to pace myself. Meaning while I spent every single day in the pool, not once did I try to consistently run at a set pace for a set distance. This wasn't done on purpose, but rather I overestimated how much time I had to balance exercise and school. Quickly into the semester I realized that running and swimming was not an option, and at that period in time I choose to continue swimming as it was the task that I was more comfortable with and had been doing it for years. There were very little times where I took the chance to run and it usually came in the form of me running a mile or two as fast as a can and calling it a day. I never focused on consistent pace, but rather how can I get my steps in as fast as possible. So, I said a little prayer and hoped that when it came time to run 6.1 miles (with absolutely zero training in regards to pace) I would cross the finish line; whether it be running, walking, crawling, or being dragged.

It is safe to say that swimming had a positive impact when it came time for me to run. Based on the picture I ran across the finish with a smile on my face and everything intact. The benefit that swimming gave me is the ability to pace without ever training it. One of the greatest factors and biggest hurdle to climb over within the sport of swimming is the ability to pace while still moving efficiently and quickly. A notorious practice that my team does is 30x100s best average. 3000 yards of straight sprint forces myself to train to hold a consistent fast pace for over 45 minutes. Because my coach loved this set, we did it every 3 weeks. Additionally we had other sets in our repertoire where we were tasked to swim at the same pace and hold the same times for a prolonged period of time. As frequent as I did this in swimming, I never did it running. However when I was running in Disney for the 10k I was able to use my watch and control my pace and hold pace . In fact, with no training at all, I was able to hold my pace for each mile within 15 seconds of each other. This newfound pacing within the race because of swimming allowed me to run a lot faster than I expected and surprised myself when I crossed the finish line as for once I actually felt good when I was running. I was surprised that me swimming could do such a thing to my running.

The ability to pace my running from my training in swimming is an example of the identical elements theory within the realm of positive transfer. The identical elements theory deals with the similarity of the skill and context components.  (Lab Notes, Bilateral Transfer, 2021). In my context, the idea and practice of pacing is similar in both swimming and running. My training in swimming has allowed me to be able to pace at a high speed and intensity for a prolonged period of time was able to carry over and positively impact my ability to pace in running. Positive transfer ultimately means that constantly training sets of pace in swimming provides benefits to my performance in pacing when I run. I am forever grateful and honestly would have found myself in a big big problem if swimming provided a negative transfer or even no transfer towards pacing my running. Negative transfer means that my pace training in swimming actually made my performance in pace running worse, and no transfer means that my pace training in swimming provides absolutely no benefit or relation to my performance in pace running (Lecture Notes, Transfer, 2021).

Ultimately, I have never been more grateful to be experiencing positive transfer. As funny as it may sound, if it were not for swimming, there would be no way I could run a 10k. Without the positive transfer in pacing that smile across the finish line would have most definitely been tears

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What I Would Give For An Extra Arm and Set of Eyes and Ears. 

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What I Would Give For An Extra Arm and Set of Eyes and Ears. 

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Oh to be an octopus. My club swim team that I was a part of also taught swim lessons. After my practice, I would stay to teach lessons to little kids. While it was very rewarding and fun to work with kids, there were times where just having two arms and two legs was simply not enough. Teaching 4 to 6-year-olds how to float was hard because not only did you have to help the girl or boy float by holding onto their sides or their back; but I constantly had to look back at the wall to make sure the other kids I was working with held on because they were to let go, they would drown due to them having no life-saving swimming strategies. If  the children were the only problem, my days would have been fairly easy. I also had parents at times screaming in my ear about their child and how they are not getting enough time. In other words, my attention was stretched.

According to the different theories of attention, we can conclude that we have a fixed attention capacity and there are limited attention resources to do all the activities that we may attempt at one time. In the end, it is possible for me to perform several tasks simultaneously as long as the resource capacity limits are not exceeded (Lecture Notes, Attention, 2021). There would be times where I would be 6 feet from the wall helping a kid learn to float while trying to look back at the kids and repeating “the wall is glue, the wall is glue" to them while trying to also talk to the child I am working with simultaneously looking at the stands at the parents that are trying to get my attention for something that is not urgent. That run on sentence is not poor grammar, but rather my anxiety coming back remembering the days where I was ambitious and believed I could do everything and anything all at once. I would urge myself to multitask, I found myself being afraid that if I lose vision and attention on just one thing, it may end badly; such as a kid losing their grip on the wall and going underwater, or a parent complaining that I am not listening to them. I found myself not providing as much feedback and attention to the child that I am working with and not being the best swim instructor that I can be.

This experience made me realize that I am not a superhero and I need to filter information that is not deemed necessary at this very moment, for example, the parents' comments at me that most certainly did not need to be happening. Filtering what is important to pay attention to and what to let through into my attention is similar to the Bottleneck theory that was discussed with the theories of attention. While the parents may think it is rude that I am ignoring them during the 45-minute lesson, for the safety of the kids on the wall, and to give my very best instruction and work to the child I am handling, I need to filter out the conversations parents are trying to hand with me during lessons. This will allow me to be the very best swim teacher that I could be for my swimmers. But, if there is a way for me to get extra eyes, ears, and arms that might work too.