Can you feel the water tonight?

The high school competition season officially got underway two Friday nights ago, with our boys and girls taking on an opponent squad from way across town. The girls won their meet (boys and girls are scored separately) handily and the boys lost by a slim margin. Lots of spirit, lots of fun and a few swimmers actually posted regional and state cut times - right out of the gate. There was quite a bit to be proud of and excited about.

Members of the team and coaches went out to a late dinner following the meet, as per tradition. In addition to sharing more of our swimming backgrounds (the head coach and I are each in our first season with the team), learning about the phenomenon of "snap chatting" and cheering for Stanford's football team to beat UCLA in their conference championship game, a couple of the swimmers brought up the concept of "feeling the water".

It's not something that's talked about very often, at least outside of swimming-intensive circles. But it's an aspect of swimming that can be very important. You see, having a "good feel for the water", typically corresponds with a swimmer being in the pool practicing at least once per day, at least six days per week, at least 40-50 weeks per year. It means tapping into your reptilian brain.

Regardless of your physical state and stamina, humans just weren't meant to move through the water. As far as mobility's concerned, humans are primarily built to run - chase prey, escape danger and scorned lovers - and walk - gather nuts and berries, raise money for breast cancer research, etc. We are bipeds, not quadri-paddlers.

But while our frames are what they are, the reason why Planet of the Apes is just a movie and dogs don't walk us is because the unique brains of homo sapiens are adaptable: we can train our brains to think differently, to manipulate our default programming. This is learning. This is skill. This is swimming. Humans weren't made to swim, but humans can become swimmers.

Becoming something completely different doesn't happen overnight. And it's not something that stays put after you've achieved it once. Yes, muscle memory will help you get back in and do a flip turn without thinking, after you've been out of the water for years, but not much else. You can lose your "feel" after only being out of the pool for a week. It's tenuous - liquid, one might say.

Having a feel for the water is an elevated status of in-pool consciousness; after hours and hours of practice, it's nearly an out-of-body feeling that your moving through the water is somehow better or easier than moving over land.

However, many swimmers will admit they're not terribly coordinated on land. Maybe that's because they spend more time focusing on their movements in the water than the alternative. Maybe swimming just attracts the naturally clumsy. Maybe it's chicken-and-the-egg.

So is this state of feel for the water the ultimate goal in swimming? Or just a milestone, a means to higher achievement, faster times? Or does it even truly exist? Maybe it's just an imaginary figment swimmers convince themselves is real of to rationalize the hallucinatory effects of hours upon hours of exposure to diluted hypochlorite acid.

I guess it doesn't matter. Back to practice tomorrow.