When To Keep Or When To Change A Set

[Mat Hudson]

When you have chosen a particular skill and are working on it through a series of sets (over several practices) you may observe some weaknesses or failures in parts of your stroke which seem more fundamental, and therefore higher priority than the skill you are working on right now.

What do you do – stop and change focus to work on this foundation skill because it is more important or stick with the skill project and series of practices you are on?

This is a very good question about when to stay with the set as it is designed and when to adjust, based on new observations in that set.

 

What Matters Most For Your Event?

If you happen to be training for a specific swimming event that requires a certain amount of fitness along with all of the necessary skill, and there is a deadline for when you must be ready, then this would help you make decisions about whether to stay with the set or change it – what is more critical to staying on schedule in your training and arriving at your event sufficiently prepared?

You cannot perfect everything at the start. Like children playing sports while their bodies are gradually growing up and becoming more skillful, sometimes you’ve got to move forward on other skills and fitness work, even while some foundation skills are not perfect yet. 

 

Pick A Few

Also, you should likely have 2 or 3 skill projects you are working on during the current training cycle, not just one. Over the course of the week you may assign sets which work on each of these skills 2 or 3 times. You can pick one or two of the projects to be focused on a fundamental skill and the others to be focused on an advanced skill.

You may have 20 skill projects on your list, but at this moment you must choose three and then give them your best attention for a few weeks. During that time you may have many observations that will urge you to choose other skill projects to work on in the next training cycle. In the start of a cycle you may choose to change the focus in one of those skill projects, but you then must get back to work and give that skill many consecutive practices. The swimmer cannot keep switching around, or nothing will get much better.

So, there is a tension between…

1. the freedom to change focus when an important observation urges you to change priorities, and
2. staying focused on a particular skill long enough to for the adaptation process to work.

 

Does It Cause A Little Trouble Or A Lot?

Sometimes you are focused on an advanced skill that depends on the strength of a particular foundation skill. As you are working on that advanced skill you may notice that something is weak or troublesome in that foundation skill – it may be so troublesome that it prevents you from working effectively on the advanced skill, so you are obligated to switch focus back to the foundation skill and set aside the work on the advanced skill.

But at other times, the trouble in the foundation skill might not be enough to prevent you from working on the advanced skill – so you may continue, while being aware of the weakness. It is possible that your body and brain will figure out a way to work on both skills at the same time, in the same set. By being aware of that weakness and keeping some attention on it, you may stimulate some improvement there also.

It just takes time – you cannot do it all at once, and you cannot perfect even a few pieces in one cycle  – so you need to move forward with the foundation you’ve got during this current cycle of training (a few weeks or months) and then come back in another cycle and work on those foundation pieces again. Your swimming life will be filled with cycles like this where you come back again and again to work through fundamentals and advanced skills. Don’t get paralyzed by perfection.

 

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