01/21/08
Mindful Swimming
As some of you know, I spent 10 days at the turn of the year in a Mindfulness Retreat in Thailand. This was a version of what is known as "Vipassana" meditation, a 2500-year old practise of developing wisdom and mindfulness in our daily living and approach to life. In a nutshell, the time was spent honing one's concentration with 12 hours of sitting, walking and swimming (!!) meditation daily, balanced with meals and several talks a day on aspects of developing wisdom, compassion and "loving kindness" as our natural disposition.
Category: Inner
Posted by: vinnie
Vipassana influences are everywhere in western life, from sports psychology to plain old common sense advice columns. In practical terms, Vipassana has us focus our concentration on our breathing or on a specific movement or bodily sensations to the point where utter concentration lapses into total relaxation -- in effect, you experience both states at the same time. The most familiar conceptualization many of us have of this state is of being in "The Zone" and that is a good point from which to understand what Vipassana helps us achieve. At its most profound, the practise is designed to hone awareness of our deepest responses to the stimuli bombarding us on a daily basis. I have always been a big believer in "Tuning out the noise" and Vipassana helps us to do just this by forcing us to confront our reactions to various stimuli. We spent our time living on floating thatch huts, 350m across the lake from a 2000' mountain wall rising up out of the depths...and used swimming to focus our mind on a specific movement in order to develop our concentration skills.
Mindfulness practice makes us more aware of the ceaseless chatter of our minds and our reaction to this. As a coach, it will help me better convey the need for athletes to focus wholly on the workout of the moment. We are able to get far more out of a training session by being aware of the sensations we feel, the technique we apply and the reaction we have to discomfort. If you hear me speaking of training mindfully in future emails, this is where that stems from!
As a practical first step, however, is to think of "mindful training" as having "two minds" at work. One mind is paying attention to detail: Breathing, technique, pacing, fueling (during an event) and the myriad of details we are familiar with when fully immersed in a training session. The other "mind" is open to the outside world, is curious about what happens next, is floating along for the ride, enjoying the effort and sensation...these two "minds" at work are in effect the balance of concentration and relaxation.
To get the most of your training try to enter into a "mindful" approach when you are training solitary sessions. You can, for example, try to develop a focus on your breathing and technique in your swim training. Many of you have heard my spiel on short intervals and have a set of 25's in which you sporadically swim ALL OUT to develop power and speed, while swimming easy in between. Develop your powers of concentration by focusing on technique during the easy efforts and effort during the hard efforts...while trying to remain mentally as relaxed as possible throughout all of them. A consistent effort will over time hone an ability to hold a relaxed, highly concentrated state of mind during races, something of particular value in the hard, long race we know and love as Ironman, where the elements, our own personal levels of pain and the fatigue levels in the race always tempt us when things feel most difficult.
