Joel Spolskey is a software engineer and writer. In a essay which makes many excellent points about the strategy required to do well in the software business, he shares the following about the best strategy he has found to getting things done.:
“When I was an Israeli paratrooper a general stopped by to give us a little speech about strategy. In infantry battles, he told us, there is only one strategy: Fire and Motion. You move towards the enemy while firing your weapon. The firing forces him to keep his head down so he can’t fire at you. (That’s what the soldiers mean when they shout “cover me.” It means, “fire at our enemy so he has to duck and can’t fire at me while I run across this street, here.” It works.) The motion allows you to conquer territory and get closer to your enemy, where your shots are much more likely to hit their target. If you’re not moving, the enemy gets to decide what happens, which is not a good thing. If you’re not firing, the enemy will fire at you, pinning you down.”
I think this is very applicable to the sport of competitive swimming and would have found it extremely useful when I was growing up.
During my age-group and senior swimming career there were times when I just couldn’t get into the water let alone concentrate on practice. I would have be told to jump in so that I didn’t miss the first part of warm-up. I would have to be reminded that I shouldn’t breath into and out of my turns. I would have to be reminded to pace myself and not burn out during a set. I would have to be reminded about other parts of my stroke technique.
I knew that I should do a full warm up in order to be prepared for the main sets just as I knew that practicing not breathing in and out of turns would help my races. Yet, there were times when I would go for weeks at a time without being able to accomplish these two seemingly simple things.
Being reminded that I wasn’t concentrating on warm up or my stroke technique would make me upset. “Of course I know that I should do that.” I would say. “Of course I should get into the water now so that I don’t set a bad example for the younger swimmers.” However, much I said I knew what I should be doing my mental attitude would get in the way and I would find myself repeating the mistakes.
It seemed at points like I couldn’t control my mental attitude and I just had to try to average out my negative and positive mental attitudes in order to try to come out ahead. It turns out that my biggest competitor was not the other swimmers in my lane, my team, or at the meet. My biggest competitor was my head. Every step of the way it was fighting me to take shortcuts during practice, to breath in and out of walls, to not get in on time, and to not give it my all during practices.
My mental competitor in my head didn’t want to put in the extra work. I couldn’t get it to concentrate and work for for the whole practice. Sometimes though I was able to distract it and do a good warm up or do a few good turns before it came back and made me lazy again.
From Joel’s quote we can apply Fire and Motion and focus on just getting in the pool when it’s time and not breathing into the first turn. You are fighting your mental competitor after all, so if you start going in the right direction all you have to do is to keep firing at it with correct turns and correct attitude.
You have to move forward a little bit, ever day. It doesn’t matter if you are feeling down or you wish you were in bed sleeping instead of morning practice. If you are moving forward, concentrating on your turns, or your breathing, or your head position, or where your finger tips are, time is on your side.
Fire and Motion, for age-group and senior swimmers, means two things: Concentrate on the smallest available thing related to your workout and you have to move forward. Sooner or later your brain will catch up to your body and you will have a great workout and this will lead to swimming faster. Jump into the pool and focus on the first lap concentrating on your technique and the first turn ignoring the rest of practice.
Everyday your technique and practices will get better. Until you are going to national swimming meets, don’t focus on grand strategies. Let your coaches do that. All you have to do is come in every practice and concentrate on the first lap.
“A good plan violently executed right now is far better than a perfect plan executed next week.”
General Georse S Patton
Your job is to go into practice today and not worry about setting goals like “I will do perfect turns at every practice.” You will be wasting your time. Your goal should be to do the most amazing first lap and turn you have ever swam.