Brad Langevad

If you were to have a freestlyle swimmer in lane 1, a backstroke swimmer in lane 2, a butterfly swimmer in lane 3 and a breastroke swimmer in lane 4, then who would win over 100 metres? If you were in lane 2,3 or 4 and give up some 'individuality' ie. all swim freestyle, then surely the race outcome becomes more difficult to predict. By somewhat eliminating one 'individuality', we can start eliminating some others eg. say the swimmer in lane 1 has a more natural technique, then would lanes 2,3 and 4 be prepared to give up some 'individuality' to 'un-learn' some style from lane 1. Then surely the race becomes even more interesting. But what if lane 2 is clever at pacing the distance and swimming in lane 3's 'wash', then wouldn't the race become even more interesting if the other lanes learnt from lane 2. The further we go with this process, the more interesting 'individuality' gets. Maybe lane 3 is not clever enough at this stage to work out what lane 2 is up to. Maybe lane 4 is not very fit. Maybe lane 2 is too short and fat. But one thing for sure, the least most needed 'individual' thing..."hey man, it's freestlye". Bring some waves into the pool and we have a whole new 'ball-game'. As a keen body-surfer, I know that with waves and rapidly changing surfing conditions plus turning etc to catch waves....there are a whole range of situations when all styles of swimming are more useful than the other but, "hey man, that's body surfing". And tennis is no different.. with forehands and backhands etc. A player will have less difficulty with changing a forehand that is unreliable and causing injury than stopping themselves from hitting down the line instead of going crosscourt or wearing a blue shirt instead of white. So if a coach preaches their deep and meaningful search for a student's 'individuality' then they are most likely 'copping out' to the fact that they don't understand enough about technique to know what 'natural' is. And, peculiarly, this coach will often be the person to say the most after each shot the student hits and it will most likely be the coach who knows the most about technique/natural that says the least during a lesson because they can summarize the problem so eloquently. "But, hey man, it's tennis". If you run an experiment with 2 people climbing a set tree then surely after a hundred goes both of them have learnt, from themselves and from watching each other, a less 'individual', a more 'natural', a faster, a more efficient, a less-tiring way of climbing this tree, "and, hey man, it's climbing". It becomes even more complicated when you throw in two variables eg. in cycling and horse-racing. Surely if the bicycle is designed poorly for the riders shape, leg/arm size etc or the horse has a bad back, then both the cyclist and the jockey have only remote chances of winning. People seem to spend most of this life either trying to be like everybody else and or trying to be 'themselves'. Surely 'individuality' is very recognizable but it is also very 'dodgy' and moving like liquid, "and, hey man, that's life".