Give Peas a Chance

Image courtesy of Tayo Gross

I learnt some very interesting things in September 2020 and I want to share them with you. In this instalment i talk breathing, vinegar and how we learn - well anything!

Do you know where your weight goes when you lose weight? Have you ever thought about that? Has it entered your mind? Well it has mine and I’ve always thought that we lose weight by doing more exercise and eating less. Of course this is true, but I’ve thought my whole life that it was movement and sweating that burns your weight up.
Well it turns out that I was wrong. I stumbled upon a TedTalk that gave me the answer I wasn’t looking for.  But oh, how very interesting. So interesting I have to share it.
We breathe it out.
Ruben Meerman gives a fascinating TedTalk about this very subject called How Breathing and Metabolism are interconnected. Check out the link. I had never made the link before. The link is this: we put carbons into our mouths in the form of carbohydrates and other food sources and breath them out in the form of carbon dioxide. 
I also found out that there is a gadget called the Lumen that measures the O2 and CO2 levels in your breath. You can calculate, just like Meerman, how many atoms go in and out and what’s the net surplus or deficit. Very interesting.

It doesn’t stop there. Keep reading because I talk about swimming later on.  I promise.

Next, I learnt how home-made Vinegar is made.  Have you ever thought about how vinegar is made? Vinegar, in old English, means “sour wine”. And yes, it’s literally that. More fermented than wine. Fermented until there is no alcohol left, just acetic acid. The mildest form of acid and hence why it has so many uses (not just for the fish and chips). The Italian household I visited showed me the vinegar bottle in which the vinegar is made. A big Tuscan looking flask. Here all the dregs of red wine get thrown in to meet mother.
Mother or mother of vinegar, is a term used for the substance that develops on fermenting alcoholic liquids. It is a form of cellulose and acetic acid bacteria. It is more common in unpasteurized vinegar, like the bottle I was staring into.
There were various pieces of mother, some big and some small. Mother can be hundreds of years old. One was much bigger than the others. This was the oldest mother. This mother was apparently the offspring of a much older piece that the family had treasured for over a hundred years.
A smaller piece was taken out and given to me. It looks and feels like a piece of liver. Slimly and soft. It does not look appetizing, but it is completely harmless. It stays in the flask getting bigger as it does its job of turning wine into Vinegar.
Mother is also known as Mycoderma Aceti or “Fungus skin of the acid”, an apt description I’d say.
I would never have guessed or given it a conscious thought that this is how vinegar is made.  Have you?

Learning new things is so cool. It turns out that learning new things changes our brains and that’s the third new thing I learnt. Our brain’s structure changes regularly and with it, so do we! Who I am today, I won’t be tomorrow when I wake up. The changes and the effects may be either big or small, but however you look at it, the ever-changing brain means a changed you.

We have neuroplasticity to thank for this. The ability of the brain to make new synaptic connections or sever old ones. And the changes can be for good and bad.  I may learn to play the piano but forget how to tie knots I learnt in scouts as a kid. It’s a bit of give and take I’m afraid.

Our brains are not like computers: they do not have perfect recall, and some things rank higher than others on the memory hierarchy. There are three reasons for that and it has to do with how we learn. Let’s check it out people.

Memory drives learning and change. Memory failure or loss of memory does the opposite.  Memory happens in three ways: chemically, structurally and functionally according to Neuroscientist Lara Boyd. Go and check out her cool Tedtalk Here.

Want to learn to swim (finally something about swimming) or improve your swimming technique as an adult? Welcome to the world of neuroplasticity and brain change.

It turns out not to be that easy.  As a Swim Coach I know exactly how hard it is. You have learnt some pretty hard-to-get-rid-of shit over the course of your life. Even if you’re not a swimmer, you have genes and motor function co-ordination that helps or hinders. I often get asked if one lesson of an hour will be enough to change a swimmer’s technique. Simple answer. No.  More like one to two years if you are lucky. Why?

Because we are all dumbasses in the end and our fantastic brain wants us to work for it. It won’t just give your adult self a quick win of learning freestyle in a week. Where would the triathlon coaching world be if this was the case?

I think there is some truth to the above. The old adage of, “if it worth doing, it is worth doing right,” comes to mind. Our brain wants to know we are serious about this new skill acquisition before it diverts resources to support it. That enthusiasm and energy must come from our attention and willingness to reinforce the learning of the new skill.

Side-note: we pick up bad habits in the same way: by diverting time and energy to them. Bad habits seemingly need less work because they give us pleasure that drives us to the next fix. So if you can makes things pleasurable, you will learn them quicker.

According to Boyd, “The best driver of neuroplastic change in your brain is your behaviour,” and she continues with, “Nothing is more effective than practice. You have to do the work.”

So, what now, practice and get a good coach? Yes. The three ways in which your brain changes are, as mentioned above – in case you can’t remember­ – chemically, structurally and functionally. Sometimes this happens in isolation, but more often than not in concert with each other.

Let’s take a common swimming problem and look at it from these three lenses.
Freestyle Problem: The hand comes in over the middle line upon entry. [the middle line is an imaginary line coming out of the head which we don’t want to cross when the leading hand enters the water]
Analysis: Common problem among adult learnt swimmers.
Result: Snake like motion in the water, drops the elbow. Swimmer has to push down or to the side to get into the pull-through. Hardly any catch.
Injury: Makes Tennis elbow worse and puts pressure on rotator cuff

The problem is difficult to fix for two reasons. Swimmers cannot see their hands enter the water as they are looking down, and secondly they are moving in the water which makes it more difficult for the brain to feel what’s going on.

The first thing my swimmers need to do is place their hands in time and space and water. Easy on land. Difficult in water. I ask my swimmers to swim with their heads down, arms above their heads and hands in a neutral position, shoulder width apart. There is no arm movement. This is done with fins and snorkel. This exercise helps them feel where their hands and arms need to be upon entry. Playing is the best way here. So, play around with your hand position without swimming. go from neutral to wide to streamline. This teaches the swimmer how things feel and induces the chemical signaling that begins the learning process.

Next, I apply this with having swimmers swim freestyle with what they think, is a very wide hand entry. Extreme actually. And even though they feel like their hands are wide, they are in line with the shoulder. This is the trickery of the brain coming out. Once a swimmer sees this on video, they know that their feeling is incorrect. For now, at least.

The difficult part is getting them to come back every time they swim and remember to swim with a “wide” entry. Because it feels wrong. The brain goes back to default. It has to feel wrong before it feels right. Any sportsman will tell you that about a technique change. Practicing this “wide” hand entry will induce structural changes and light up different parts of the brain which is also the functional change.

The brain wants us to get it right, but we need to stick at it.
Remembering the technique after showering and leaving the pool is a hard ask. Keep a journal with what the coach said, how you felt and if possible, add the videos made to it.
This will help you remember the crucial things for the next time you swim and keep your motivation high.

So give peas and peace a chance in this next month. Learn, love and play responsibly. BY that i mean without hurting others or the earth. Have fun in the sun.