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Starts and Explosiveness- Positive Transfer

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Starts and Explosiveness- Positive Transfer

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I was a competitive swimmer between the ages of 8 and 18. As a swimmer we practice a lot of diving and specifically starts. Once you master the movement of a good start and dive you always work towards making it stronger and faster. Instead of just practicing starts over and over we would practice other skills that would aid in our performance of a start. For example we would practice just jumping off the blocks as fast as we could after we hear a beep. We would practice streamline jumps in our dryland training. We would also practice other reaction time tasks to become efficient at moving quickly after hearing a stimulus. These all demonstrate the concept of positive transfer.

We knew that these tasks we were incorporating into practice helped because every once in awhile we would use these pads on the blocks that were able to actually tell us our reaction time off the blocks. They were connected to the starter making the noise and would time in between that and when we left the block. This would then tell us how fast our reaction time was and we could keep track of improvement. As we got more proficient at starts we would keep adding on different skills in different contexts to keep improving performance. It is almost impossible to time a perfect start so there was always something you could do to keep working towards getting better.

Lastly, without the practice of these alternative skills you could still get better at starts but it would take a lot longer. Just training your body over and over again to get a perfect start will be hard to do and could take years if you don't practice in different contexts. That is why in swimming a lot of coaches can get swimmers to be proficient in starts even after just a few months. This also supports the idea of positive transfer.

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This picture is from last season (April 2022) at a race we had in Florida. As you can see while rowing there are 8 people all trying to move at the same time and be in sync as much as possible. By looking at the splash and ripples made by the oars in this picture you can see we are not 100% all in sync. I thought this was a great representation of the speed accuracy trade-off.

In rowing a stroke rate of 18-20 is a warm up pace and anything above a 32 stroke rate is considered fast or what you would go for in a race. Like the speed accuracy trade off, as we get faster in race it is much harder for us to be together and efficient. At some point it isn't productive anymore to be at a high rate if your not going to be together. You could go the same speed at a lower rate.

This is something we practice often in practice. It takes a lot of effort for a whole boat to find there rhythm together and move fast during a race but try and be as accurate as possible. Because even one person being off a little bit can slow down the boat. So, I thought it was interesting how many skills we do everyday that the speed accuracy trade off can apply too.

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Boats and boating--Equipment and supplies

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This is a video of one of our lovely morning practices on lake mendota this fall. As you can see from it rowing requires full body movement and many parts of the body to be working together. In class we learned about the 9 different physical proficiency abilities. I was trying to think of a sport or something that would require you to use almost all of them in some way and I think rowing is a sport that involves all of them.

The proficiency abilities rowing involves are explosive strength, static strength, dynamic strength, trunk strength, extend flexibility, dynamic flexibility, gross body equilibrium, gross body coordination, and stamina. We use explosive strength in our races. Our main race is a 2k and we practice to be really fast and aggressive off the start line and try to be as consistent in holding that until we finish. This requiring us to expend all of our energy available in one sitting. We use static strength in exerting force against the blade in the water. The water making it heavier and adding resistance. Dynamic strength is used in that we continuously have to support the weight of our body and move it as you can see in the video. In rowing you have to be consistently engaging your core to maintain posture, so trunk strength is important in this way. We also need good extending flexibility and dynamic flexibility. There is a portion of the stroke where bending at the hips is a very important motion, so we need to be able to stretch our body in that way comfortably. This also supports why we need dynamic flexibility, in that when we are racing it's important to be able to lengthen our bodies and bend at the hips quickly and repeatedly. In rowing it also requires a lot of balance, in that if you tip to one side or the other you can flip the boat. So we use gross body equilibrium  in a lot of the drill we practice with our eyes closed to work on the balance part. We use gross body coordination in that rowing is a complex movement and has lots moving parts to it. For example your hands and wrists need to be moving simultaneously to your legs and body. Lastly, we are a sport that requires lots of stamina. Even though our main race is a 2k and usually only takes 6-7 minutes, we also race much longer races sometimes all the way up to 6k in distance.

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When I was a competitive swimmer I swam all year round including club, high school, and summer swimming. I was constantly training for the next meet or season coming up. When I was little, swimming required lots of mental and physical demands. As I got older the comprehension of what we were doing and when I needed to go became less challenging. The actual movements and strokes also didn't require almost any thought for me to do. I got to a point where I could probably be tossed into a pool in the middle of sleeping and start swimming.

This demonstrates the shift from declarative memory to procedural memory in the skill. Meaning that I changed from a "what am I doing" mindset to just "doing it" mindset. As I got more efficient in all 4 strokes they almost just became automatic. This can represent the shift the skill of swimming took in my memory systems.

In addition to this skill now being stored in procedural memory, we learned in class that shifting attention and thinking to hard about a skill that has become automatic can lead to mistakes. Specifically, this can be called choking under pressure. I tried to think of any moments I have had in my swimming career that this has happened. I couldn't recall any moments where I felt that during a race my focus shifted from what I knew to do. I think this just shows how much my training would prepare me and how well I have learned to deal with competitions and my mindset.