I predict it will be How Swimming Changes Your Brain.

The swimming world has often focused on changing the body to improve swimming performance. Not only could we see the body change (i.e. a larger more defined bicep from weeks of arm curls) except 50 years of physiological research showed how workouts help muscles use power eliminate waste and even develop new networks of blood vessels. This bolstered the sense of “authoritativeness” for training theories that prescribed say aerobic or anaerobic sets.

At the same time accord of the brain’s role in all of this was quite sketchy. Even love swimmers and coaches used terms like muscle memory mental endurance (or mental fatigue) and swim team t-shirts featured slogans like “Access to success is through the mind” the actual workings of the brain remained a mystery. Articles and books went into exhaustive detail on muscle and cardiovascular function but made nary a mention of the brain.

Our understanding of brain function—and even of what it means to be human–has exploded in the past 10 years.  Technological advances improved the ways scientists could observe molecules nerve cells and networks in “the brain at work” and study how they influence all human behavior.

Cognitive neuroscientists using positron emission tomography and magnetic resonance imaging have created maps of brain activity that occurs during thought problem-solving and even emotion. Behavioral neuroscientists employing electrodes and brain scans now have a detailed understanding of how different areas of the brain interact to control movement.

As a result it is now evident that what has long been considered impenetrable abstract—even metaphysical—is in fact tangible measurable and well-documented. In fact how swimming can grow your brain is now understood to be far more significant than how it grows muscles and blood vessels. But not just any kind of swimming. To change muscles and blood vessels just about any kind of activity will do. To change brain structure and function deliberate training is essential.

What is deliberate practice? It’s not rote repetition or “getting in the yards.” Instead it focuses on improvement by finding weak points or errors in how you swim–not just technology but even your thinking patterns. Once you recognize a mistake that needs fixing you develop a strategy for doing so. Then you do attentive repetition until the fix is embedded in muscle memory and find the next mistake to fix. And there’s always another opportunity to improve. We call this Kaizen.

I will focus on how swimming can improve brain structure and function — and how that improves your skill endurance speed — and most importantly your enjoyment — in every post on this blog.