Overview of A Lesson Series

What to expect in your lesson series and in each session.

Length of the Series and Format

The standard version of this course is usually covered in a series of four or five 60-minute sessions, or four 90-minute sessions. These are typically spread out a week apart so that you have time to practice and digest what you’ve been learning, but these could be spread out a bit more.

In some circumstances (like for students traveling from afar) we might condense these four sessions into a 2-day weekend workshop (2 pool sessions each day), but that is a lot to digest in two days!

The lessons might be done in a small group setting, or one-on-one. There are advantages to each setting.

Parts of This Series

There are three parts to this series for you to experience:

Attending the live training session with your coach
Studying the notes from your lessons on the Dojo, as well as studying additional materials in our library as needed
Conducting your own practices between training sessions and after the series.

The lessons are taught in an important sequence that we are wise to follow. If you are taking this course as part of a group and you miss one of the first three lessons, you’ll need to schedule a makeup session (for an additional fee) with your coach, before the next lesson in the series, because the skills you learn in the next lesson are built upon the skills you learned in the previous lesson.

Objectives for The Live Sessions

In our live training sessions you will:

Understand the purpose of the skill
Learn how to use the drills
Introduce your brain and body to the skills through drills
Know what the skill looks like and feels like so you can guide yourself in personal practice time

In some parts of the lessons your body may find it easier and quickly acquire the skill. In other parts your body may find it strange or challenging because this particular way of holding or moving is new or different to what you’ve been doing. It takes time (minutes, hours, days) for the brain to map the position or movement, for the muscles to wake up and work in a new way. This process will start during the live training session and continue during your personal practice time. You will get better at these skills just by being patient and persistent with practice.

More than merely understanding the purpose of the skill, in order to practice on your own, you need to know what the skill looks like and feels like when you are doing it well. The coach can more easily see when you are doing it better or not, while you are in position to feel when you are doing it better or not. So, during the live session, the coach will explain and demonstrate and give you feedback – your job is to use the drills, to search, to ask the coach for guidance or better description until you can feel the difference between when you are doing it closer to ideal and when it is getting farther away. This feeling will guide you while you are practice on your own, away from the coach.

Even if a little uncertain at first, as long as you keep mindfully practice the skills, your brain and body will gradually learn, adapt and grow into these new skills. The brain and body are set up to learn and grow and the activity of learning to swim skillfully, with all the mistakes and successes, feeds this process perfectly.

Personal Practice Time

In art, in music, in martial arts, in language learning, in all sorts of other skillful practices it is commonly understood that the student makes progress only as much as she/he practices, and practices attentively. So too with this lesson series, you must practice, practice, practice, and pay attention while you do it.

During the live training sessions, your brain and body are being introduced to the skills – like putting some food into your mouth – while it is during your practice time between sessions that you actually have the time to chew and digest these skills. The skills presented in the next session in the series will rely upon the skills you acquired from the previous session.

During the live training sessions, you are being shown, not only what to practice, but how to practice. There is a particular way that we introduce you to the skill and then have you start with more simple drills to first grasp that new skill, then step up to gradually more complex drills to keep stimulating deeper integration. You do well to follow this same pattern in your personal practice time.

In the Dojo there are notes for each lesson and some suggested practice sets for these skills are provided.

How Much Practice Time?

That’s a good question. How much can you afford each week?

Ideally, if you could practice three times a week, between sessions, that would be great. If you can only practice twice, that’s OK. And if only once, that is better than no practice at all.

These do not need to be long sessions – it is better to do frequent short practices than to do infrequent and long ones. 30 to 45 minutes for practice would be fine if these skills are new to your body. You just need to work through the skills of the previous lesson so that your brain and body are repeatedly stimulated to strengthen these new neuromuscular connections. Even if you like you made much progress in a single practice time, the fact that you made signals travel through those connections will still be effective at stimulating them to grow. And, when you rest between practice, that is when the actual growth takes place in the brain and body. You may be surprised when you get into the next practice and find the skills easier to work on than the day before.

Anatomy of A Lesson

Main Components

There are three main components of a lesson activity:

The skill we are going to work on
The sequence of drill activities we will use to develop that skill
The specific cues you will use to develop awareness and control over the features of that skill

‘Drills’ are activities that break down the action of swimming into a more simple, more controllable action, where you can isolate some part of the position or movement to work on it more easily. Drills are meant to help you pay attention and train one part or one section of your body more easily. They may be a simple as moving a part of the body while standing on the deck, all the way to what appears to be normal, whole stroke swimming, but doing it with attention focused on one particular part.

‘Skills’ in swimming are made up of many smaller ‘micro-skills’, which correspond to specific parts of your body. In order to build the whole skill, we guide you in working, one-by-one, through a list of those smaller micro-skills that, together, compose the whole skill.

‘Cues’ (also known as focal points) are the code names we put on those micro-skills. Cues are individual commands we give to specific parts of the body to train them to play their part in that whole skill. During the lesson you will be introduced to a particular skill by working through that list or a menu of cues. You will use this list of cues to help you continue to develop that skill on your own.

In the notes for each lesson we will provide you with a list of the skills, the drills and the cues.

Steps in A Lesson

You may experience many of all of these steps in a lesson:

The coach introducing the skill and its purpose
The coach describing each cue for that skill
The coach demonstrating the skill
You doing a standing rehearsal of the skill (on deck or standing in shallow water)
The coach demonstrating the drill
You performing the drill over and over, cycling through cues
The coach giving hands-on guidance
You reporting to the coach what you are experiencing inside
The coach answering any questions you may have
You continuing to practice with the assigned drill

Receiving and Giving Feedback to Your Coach

Like with physical therapy and other movement arts, this is a bodily, interactive learning experience. Your coach will be in the water with you much of the time, positioned to observe, communicate and support you. They will provide verbal explanations, demonstrations, professional touch to help your body find the correct position and movement patterns, ask questions and tell you what they observe when you are doing the activities. If you have delicate spots or are uncomfortable with certain forms of touch (or all forms) or do better with certain kinds of feedback, please tell your coach about your preferences. They will customize the session to fit your needs.

The coach is experienced and skilled at reading body language and continually customizing the activities to fit your personal needs. But she/he still cannot read your mind – so please keep giving little reports to your coach about what you are experiencing inside as you go along, something like this…

I think I’m getting it!
I don’t think I understand yet. Can you explain again, a different way?
I am not sure. Can you demonstrate how to do this again?
That feels better.
That feels awkward.
I can’t feel it yet. Can you tell me what it’s suppose to feel like?
I feel like I did that one well.
I feel like that one was off.
I would like to do this some more before you give me another cue.

And, at any time, please ask for more explanation, more demonstration, more hands-on guidance if that will help you. The coach is there to serve your learning needs. Each person is a bit different. As the coach is training you to swim, you are guiding the coach in how to tailor the experience to your way of learning.

How Tiring Will This Training Be?

Whether learning the stroke for the first time, or making changes to your freestyle stroke, these live sessions will not necessarily be physically tiring to you. But, the learning that you do will involve the whole brain-body connection and will be quite demanding on your attention and neuromuscular control. This will likely leave you feeling a bit tired in the head, so to speak. 60 minutes will go by fast as you remain so intent upon the activities, but you’ll also likely notice how tired your head is getting toward the end, and attention will wane.

Even at best, pool water is usually slightly cool for the slower drill work we do in the first couple lessons. For the first part of the session this may not be a distraction to your learning, but we know that eventually the body also starts to get chilled as it burns up fuel keeping the brain going and keeping the body warm. The coach gets chilled too.

We do keep an eye on your attention and changes in your body’s responses during the session. We will try to regulate the flow of new information and keep you moving in the water to stay as comfortable as possible in the learning process. We might call a break or finish the lesson early if your brain and body have had enough for that session.