The Three Phases of Learning

By John Leonard

     Watching winter champs this weekend had its frustrating moments. I saw a lot of my wonderful 4 PM group at various times look A) GREAT!  B) Ordinary C) like “who the heck coaches that child?”

    WHICH REMINDS ME OF SOMETHING THAT I EDUCATE COACHES ON ALL THE TIME BUT ITS PROBABLY USEFUL FOR PARENTS TO KNOW AS WELL…………..

“Learning Something” just isn’t that simple.

First, we all learn by being “mindful”…thinking our way through it. (Parents, remember when you first drove a car? You thought about every single little blessed thing…now the car drives itself home from work.) Same for young athletes. We have some in that stage and some in the next.

Second (and there is no Skipping the first stage) is the stage where your nervous system does “it” automatically.  Good. We used to think that’s all there was to it. Go from mindful to automatic and…You’re Home! Wrong. (We have lots of athletes in this stage).

The THIRD STAGE, is to be able to do it automatically UNDER PRESSURE…..which is a totally different mind-set. Pressure makes us “think” again. And once we’re thinking we’re in trouble!

You get up to swim a 4 x 50 free relay with your teammates and suddenly you forget your breathing pattern, you breath out of the turn, you breath every stroke on a 50, you breath inside the flags, you forget to kick etc. etc. etc. Because when you are under pressure, ALL YOU CARE ABOUT IS GETTING THE NEXT BREATH!

It’s a miserable experience. And it’s why competing in a swim meet is so valuable. You learn that failure is not a real big deal, another swim comes along in a couple of hours, and it’s a pretty “ordinary” experience. But you have to go through some real foul-ups to learn that.

We have LOTS of athletes who have conquered stages 1-2 of learning and are in the struggle with Stage 3.

We’ll all get there! It will be fine!

This is one of those “life lessons” we always talk about. Learn it, learn it on automatic, and learn to do in on automatic under “Pressure”.

Happy Thanksgiving to All!

Coach John