Inspired by some of the discussion in the fly thread , I was wondering how you all feel about drills.
Personally, they drive me nuts, yet everywhere people rave about TI and boy do my coaches like 'em. I find that generally drills just make me feel as though I'm learning to swim a way I will never actually swim, as opposed to helping me focus on one aspect of the stroke. For instance, last night, we were doing breaststroke drills and I spent the entire time trying to learn the drill as opposed to focusing on what we were meant to learn.
Also, I tend to learn technique by figuring out what feels right, but with drills, it feels different because you aren't doing the full stroke.
What about you?
Parents
Former Member
Originally posted by some_girl
I find that generally drills just make me feel as though I'm learning to swim a way I will never actually swim, as opposed to helping me focus on one aspect of the stroke. For instance, last night, we were doing breaststroke drills and I spent the entire time trying to learn the drill as opposed to focusing on what we were meant to learn.
The purpose of drills is not to help you "focus on one aspect of the stroke." It is to allow you to break out of bad swimming techniques you have been practicing for so long that they have become habit. For example:
When I learned to swim at age 7, they taught us to breathe on only one side. Many years later, I learned that this is not recommended because it tends to make your stroke lopsided. So I tried to learn to breathe on the other side. But it was a total failure. I'd start down the lane breathing on my new side, but by the end of the lane I'd somehow switched back to my familiar side. I'd been breathing on only one side for so long that it was too deeply engrained for me to be able to break out of it.
But then I went to a TI weekend workshop and they gave us drills which we practiced on both sides. My engrained habits didn't cause me any trouble because the drills didn't feel like swimming, and therefore my brain didn't invoke it's lopsided habits. As the workshop progressed, the drill sequence moved closer and closer to whole stroke swimming, until by the end of the weekend I was doing whole stroke freestyle, breathing on both sides.
Originally posted by some_girl
I find that generally drills just make me feel as though I'm learning to swim a way I will never actually swim, as opposed to helping me focus on one aspect of the stroke. For instance, last night, we were doing breaststroke drills and I spent the entire time trying to learn the drill as opposed to focusing on what we were meant to learn.
The purpose of drills is not to help you "focus on one aspect of the stroke." It is to allow you to break out of bad swimming techniques you have been practicing for so long that they have become habit. For example:
When I learned to swim at age 7, they taught us to breathe on only one side. Many years later, I learned that this is not recommended because it tends to make your stroke lopsided. So I tried to learn to breathe on the other side. But it was a total failure. I'd start down the lane breathing on my new side, but by the end of the lane I'd somehow switched back to my familiar side. I'd been breathing on only one side for so long that it was too deeply engrained for me to be able to break out of it.
But then I went to a TI weekend workshop and they gave us drills which we practiced on both sides. My engrained habits didn't cause me any trouble because the drills didn't feel like swimming, and therefore my brain didn't invoke it's lopsided habits. As the workshop progressed, the drill sequence moved closer and closer to whole stroke swimming, until by the end of the weekend I was doing whole stroke freestyle, breathing on both sides.
