The end of the presidential primary season, with the two parties’ nominating conventions the past two weeks, has gotten me thinking about some of the slogans we are likely to hear with frequently during the three months between now and Election Day, Nov 8. One that we are likely to continue hearing long after November, is: “We are the 99%.” Well, swimming has a 99% too, and if you read this blog, you’re highly likely to be in it. In fact I’ll bet that 99% of you are members of Swimming’s 99%.

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Are you in Swimming’s 99%?

  1. Are you self-coached 99% (or more) of the time? – Swimming in a group with a coach on deck doesn’t disqualify you. For each hour you swim with a coach on deck do you receive at least 30 seconds of  effective coaching input about how to swim better?  If not–though the coach may prescribe sets–you are essentially self-coached 99% or more of the time.
  2. Do you practice solo all or most of the time, rather than with a group?  Or if you do swim with a group, it’s an informal one, you with a friend or several pool buddies, as much for the camaraderie as because you want to be pushed by others.
  3. Do you swim mainly for quality of life, the quality of your swim experience, and because you feel happier and healthier during and after . . . even if you sometimes  participate in a competitive event of some kind–a triathlon, open water swim, or Masters meet?
  4. Do you look forward to swimming for the rest of your life, rather than for a planned and finite period followed by ‘retirement’ to something with fewer demands or pressures–or simply that’s not swimming?

If one or more of these is true, then you are a member of swimming’s 99%–those who swim more for intrinsic reasons than external goals, and are mostly self-directed. My best guesstimate is that this describes 99% (or more) of all swimmers–though the greater visibility of the 1% can create an impression of them as greater in numbers and as having more ‘important’ goals.

Who is in Swimming’s 1%?

Well, I was for 25 years, from age 14 to nearly 40. From 14 through 20, all my swimming was in coached workouts and had but one purpose: To prepare for my next race. From 20 to my  late 30s, I coached competitive swimmers. I still swam, but irregularly. I found I did my best workout-planning while swimming. But my mindset remained narrow: Swimming was about speed and endurance, not quality of life. I wasn’t focused on improvement; I thought my best swimming was far behind me.

During those years I gave little thought to the prospect that swimming might be a source of daily joy and play a completely holistic role in my life, two to four decades later.

Today I remain just as avid a competitor–if not more so. But 99% of my swimming occurs in practice. The Masters and open water races in which I compete account for only 1%. So, naturally, I focus on the 99%–striving to make it deeply pleasurable in the moment and the wellspring of the physical and psychic energy that helps me be at my best the rest of the day. That way of thinking places me firmly in Swimming’s 99%,

TI: The Swimming Method for the 99%

The origins of TI made it only natural that our focus would be on the 99%. It might not have seemed that way in the early days, since the summer swim camps we offered our first few years were aimed mainly at Masters swimmers, and our most rapid growth phase, in the early to mid 90s, was mainly due to a large influx of new triathletes. Since most were competitors of one sort or another, doesn’t that make them 1 Percenters?

Several factors made them more naturally 99 Percenters:

  1. They were all adults. While younger swimmers have a finite horizon, thinking mostly of the next meet–almost never about swimming for life–all of our adult students were confirmed lifetime swimmers. They readily grasped that their approach to swimming would need to evolve in order to sustain them into their 70s, 80s, or longer.
  2. Especially as triathletes came to predominate–eventually accounting for up to 70% of attendees at TI workshops–the great majority were self-coached. Thus they needed to be intrinsically motivated and empowered with the knowledge and confidence to become their own best coaches.
  3. For our first decade, 1989-99, our focus was almost exclusively on technique. And every fundamental of our ‘fishlike’ techniques was completely counter-intuitive, requiring development of tireless and laser-sharp focus. After just a few weeks of experiencing purposeful and mindful practice, they discovered that practice had become its own reward. Their original goals remained important, but they’d come to enjoy practice so much that they’d have continued practicing, even if they’d stopped racing for some reason. The intrinsic nature of their motivation became complete.

Ironically, this transformation resulted in forming a new 1%–the tiny fraction of the 99% who fully embraced Kaizen and recognized in swimming an ideal vehicle for developing Mastery habits. We won’t quit until we’ve converted the other 99% of the 99% to Kaizen Swimmers. And a good number of the 1%–and their coaches too!

How to Join the One Percent of the 99% 99 Pct

  1. Become a student of swimming, acquiring the knowledge and awareness to coach yourself effectively. Learn how your human body naturally behaves in water and the various natural forces–gravity, buoyancy, and drag–that act upon it. Understand the combination of skills–Balance, Core Stability, ‘Vessel Shaping,’ Active Streamlining, and Synchronous (all body parts working together) Propulsion–that maximize your comfort, control, enjoyment, and efficiency. Learn the principles and habits of Deliberate Practice–the approach that gives you the best chance of attaining the highest level of skill.
  2. Be specific about the improvement you’re seeking. For each practice, choose a skill or aspect of technique that’s just outside your comfort zone, study it on video if possible, then break it into mini-skills you can do repeatedly (using rehearsals or drills–or focal points in whole stroke), revealing weaknesses and figuring out ways to strengthen them. Paying attention to what you got wrong and correcting it is the foundation of purposeful practice.
  3. Be Kaizen. Each time you bring a skill from Conscious Incompetence to Conscious Competence–and then imprint in Unconscious Competence–find a new improvement opportunity and repeat the process.  Swimming offers almost limitless opportunities to learn new skills, refine existing ones, and bring them into seamless harmony.

Our Ultra-Efficient Freestyle Self-Coaching Courses provide just the right resources to pursue the steps above. Each includes high-quality video of the skills you’re seeking to master–including the sequences of mini-skills that smooth the path to learning complex skills. And each video is accompanied by a workbook that comprehensively explains the skill, and the learning process.

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