The sense of touch
"The perception of reality is a mind’s construction and this is between objective and subjective reality."
In order to really intervene in the learning process of our swimmers, we must focus on what is interesting and important for them, and for that we may have to include materials during training. The usual response of athletes is to abandon reality and not pay attention to technique, avoiding an uncomfortable and boring situation. There is a mind’s abandonment, since there are not circumstances that assure us protection for our integrity, as would happen in a dangerous situation.
Many coaches underestimate the degree in which emotions can influence the training process or competitions. It is not usually taken into account stimulating factors, namely environment, the training blackboard, the pool’s decoration during a competition that is supposed to be low rank or a timing control, or even swimwear.
Emotions are a fundamental tool to manipulate time and imprint long-term experiences in a positive way. We store in the memory everything that was remarkable, whether it was positive or negative. The effects produced by kZoomi Proactive Products leave an over-stimulating trace, which generates cognitive and neuronal adaptations, permeating in our long-term memory, becoming something memorable. In the same way perception is not a movie, memory is not a computer program. We settle in it what we find interesting from the environment.
“Experience is the result of perceiving, acting, memorizing, guiding perception again, returning to act and storing a memory.”
This circle is interdependent and memories set the personal way of perceiving things. Then, we only keep the relevant part and we repeat the same pattern successively.
Selective attention is essential. There are several independent factors and one of them intervenes in our learning process. When certain aspects that are relevant for our swimmers’ performance are awaken, for instance due to a simple recording about one detrimental behavior or style correction, all necessary brain mechanisms will go down to business and will prepare what is mandatory to deliver the task, where the relevant part will appear. Willingness will influence the task and perception, so will our own evolution, as long as we use everything at our disposal as it is coded in our perception system. Therefore, we must intelligently influence the process, taking into consideration that our brain is not as perfect as we think it is. Besides that, the images it provides us with are not so real, and consequently we need guidance in order to overlay both subjective and objective parts.
In the case of ideal sports patterns, such as swimming, a planned learning is necessary, because in very few cases the intuitive adaption is closer to the optimal point. Over generations, our evolution has been an adaptation to sports swimming, and accordingly, our gestures must be guided and learnt while maintained during swimmers’ long sports process. It is not the same moving through the water randomly than doing it effectively and with personal and better executed movements in each stroke.
Observation of charismatic swimmers can be used to make the viewer feel positive. We have to overcome this generic practice of not wanting to think, focus and meditate about who we are or what we do, since in order to be technically excellent we have to be aware of our process. We cannot let a mind exodus happen while training. Swimmers need to know what is going on and why they use specific elements.
“Time is a crucial component when organizing our experiences.” Kia Nobre
Investigations of Perception: Results and Conclusions
“Without conscious perception there can be no intentional behavior.”
Subliminal perception can give raise to unintentional behaviors.
Behavior is the result of past experiences and the starting point of future perceptions.
The subject of perception and its perceived world can not exist independently.
The sense that the subject of perception provides depends on previous stored experiences.
Perception is a personal non-transferable experience.
What is perceived is a link between the past, from which it receives meaning, and the future, which helps to be understood.
Things that are more frequent, more linked or closer to personal experiences are more easily perceived than other unexpected and strange ones.
Since two people can not be exactly at the same place at the same time, their vision of the environment is different, although this difference would be very small.
Consequently, two people cannot attribute exactly the same meaning to what they observe, but common experiences tend to produce a shared meaning, which makes communication possible.
J. Bonal Pedrón
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