Drills, Drills, Drills…
Why do you need to do your drills?
I promise it’s not to annoy you, although many athletes think so…
It is actually to program a new neuro pathway from your brain to your body to help you swim, pedal your bike or run with better form and efficiency.
What does that mean?
Your brain sends messages to your body to perform the movements of swimming biking and running. If you are doing it incorrectly over many days, months and years the pathway gets reinforced over time, even if it is inefficient.
I’ll use swimming as an example.
If you were never taught HOW to swim with proper form and technique, you find a way to move in the water that is most likely incorrect. The more you swim with incorrect form the more reinforced that neuro pathway is.
When you decide you want to get a video analysis from an experienced coach- they should point out what you are doing well and also what you need to do differently to improve performance.
The patterns you learned by winging it, now need to be unlearned. And new patterns created doing it the correct way.
But just telling or showing you what you are doing incorrectly is only the first in a multi step process to correct your inefficiency.
There are so many moving parts that go into swimming well.
So that is where drills can greatly speed up the process of reprogramming those movement patterns.
There is a catch.
You must do the drills correctly if you want them to help you perform better.
So many of my athletes skip over the drills when they get to a certain level of confidence and that is a HUGE mistake.
Drills performed correctly as a part of every single training session can greatly improve the speed at which you become more efficient and get faster.
Drills are created by taking a small section of each phase of the SWIM, BIKE OR RUN. For example, with the freestyle swim stroke (which has so many moving parts) the drills allow you to isolate them so you learn how to do it correctly without getting overwhelmed.
Drills need to be performed over and over and over to perfect them so that you can then know and feel where that move falls into place within the freestyle swim stroke.
It takes a trained eye and years of experience for coaches to be able to:
-Assess a swimmer correctly
-Isolate what they are doing well and what needs work
-And then teach them the drills to practice to correct their form and
-Finally put it all together!
I can say for 100 % certainty I have that skill and can help you identify your limiters and give you the drills to correct them, but YOU have to do the work, repeat the drill over and over and over to create the new neuro pathway in the brain and the body so the correct form is the default move!!!
So, if you want to improve your swimming, biking or running or any sport, you must do the drills and do them correctly over and over and over again.
Even the best athletes in the world are doing their drills on a daily basis to reinforce good technique!!
Happy drills training!
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Erinne Guthrie is a USA Triathlon Level II Certified Coach since 1999 and Chief Motivating Officer at Full Circle Coaching, LLC since 2010. Creator of Triathlon Transformation. She has been training, racing and coaching triathletes since 1997. She is also a CHEK Holistic Lifestyle Coach Level 3, USMS Master’s Swim Coach, Motivational Speaker, Metabolic Efficiency Specialist, Mom, Mermaid and much much more.
