Decoding the Language of Swimming (Part 1)

I had a very interesting conversation last week with one of my co-workers in my day job. I’m not sure if all of you know, but I am a humble engineer by day. The co-worker was born and raised in the country of Korea, and came over to America at 23 years of age. Never spoke a word of English at the time, and being stuck in an English-only environment made his arrival a stressful affair. Now in his mid-thirties, he has found himself fluent (yet ever learning) in a new language and culture.

I talked to him a bit about how he overcame the language barrier to succeed in the world of corporate America. And his responses were intriguing. At the core level, his strategy for learning English was very similar to my strategy for teaching swimming to adults. Up until this point, I never thought I was teaching “language” to people in the water. But I think about it very differently now.

Learning English when Korean is all you know is a challenge. Not only do you have to learn a whole different set of words, the sentence structure is in reverse. In English, you state the subject, the verb, then the object (example: “I like you”). But in Korean, you state subject, object, then the verb. And to make things more complex, Koreans often assume the subject. Thus, a simple sentence in English, “I like you” becomes a very different statement when directly translated to Korean: “you like”.

You thought this was a website about swimming didn’t you? What gives? Because, like learning a new language, learning swimming is a challenge when running / walking is all you know. No only do you have to learn a whole new technique, good swimming requires your muscles to fire in a different pattern from most land based sports.

A good example of this is in your kick. Good kickers are very used to driving with the quadriceps / hamstrings, while keeping the calf muscle almost completely relaxed. The loose calf muscle is critical, as it allows the ankle maximum flexion as the foot is being driven into the water, resulting in greater surface area pushing you forward and faster speeds. Most runners really struggle with this. They are so used to firing that calf muscle whenever the quadriceps is engaged that it is difficult to stop.

I thought it would be worthwhile to talk about a key point that my Korean co-worked made in learning a new language as an adult, and how it closely parallels adults learning in swimming. Mistakes are treasures to make frequently.

In spoken language, you have to make mistakes in order to succeed. Our adult brains cannot instantly change hard wiring to convert “I like you” to mean the exact same thing as “you like”. The only way to get over it is to keep trying. And a natural consequence of trying is failure. If you aren’t willing to fail a thousand times in a row, then you will never succeed.

In swimming, it is all too easy think you must always be perfect. Many break freestyle into small steps or drills in an attempt to memorize perfection. They want to be perfect more than they want to be fast. But micro-managing every single muscle fiber takes time and doesn’t always work when you speed it up.

As in learning English, it is important to make mistakes in swimming. Get out there and sprint 50yards as fast as you can go. Ask yourself, “what did I do right?”, and “what did I do wrong?” You cannot begin to swim right until you recognize exactly how you are swimming wrong at speed. Then sprint it again, and again, asking the same question every time. Watch how your stroke goes more and more wrong as you get tired. Think about what it takes to make the stroke a little less wrong. It is your answer to “less wrong” that will give you the instincts that will ultimately hold your stroke together on race day.

I hope this article gives you a little background and appreciation of what it takes to learn movement. Make many mistakes, and enjoy them. Be confident when you finish slow, so long as you are always thinking about what makes you slow. Language and sports are initially learned in memory but are ultimately mastered in instinct. It takes a lot of effort, but it is worth it. It takes just one dream where you can feel your body move in a way that it wasn’t designed to do to make a thousand failures worthwhile. If you haven’t had dreams like this yet then you will have to trust me and keep at it.