A lesson from Terry Laughlin on training to be an Olympic swimmer:
“The surest sign of failure (in swimming), Terry Laughlin reckoned, was bubbles, though he found that froth created by swimmers a useful guide when overtaking them.” When learning to swim, he surmised that “the starting point is unconscious incompetence—when a swimmer does not even realise what is amiss. Next comes conscious incompetence when you spot what is wrong and, try to stop it. Then comes conscious competence, when you do the right thing but only with effort, and finally unconscious competence: the equivalent of automatic pilot.” (Obituary: Terry Laughlin, The Economist, Nov 18, 2017)
Clearly, Terry Laughlin as a swim coach appreciated the importance of transitioning from Consciousness to Unconsciousness when training athletes by understanding that the two states are intimately connected, as are the neocortex and cerebellum for controlling the mind and the body, and together representing over 95% of the neurons in the brain (Tehovnik, Hasanbegović, Chen 2024).
On Terry Laughlin: An American swim coach that trained 24 National champions and authored many books on the psychophysics of swimming, especially for those interested in triathlons (see: Laughlin, T., 2004. Triathlon Swimming Made Easy: The Total Immersion Way for Anyone to Master Open-Water Swimming. Total Immersion Inc., USA).
I would question if it is only types of consciousness that affects retention of psychomotor skills. As that word suggests there is a motor/ muscle component the probably involves muscle memory. Because I'm in health care, I was particularly interested in knowing how to perform CPR with automatic competence. In order to have long term facility with CPR, I found the person needed to get to the point of automaticity. Just teaching the components and doing a few practices does not work well for retention. For example we need to teach CPR until the person can perform it automatically on the anatomical model.
Here's an issue, though, with psychomotor skills that have become automatic. They take considerable effort to change when new approaches should be added. Yet life is such we are always learning new ways of action.
I received this question through my email and I decided to give it a go. I apologize if I will not be addressing this matter objectively, but I may contribute here with some epistemological reflections on your question and possible ways to approach it.
As António José Rodrigues Rebelo
presents, the answer you may be looking for will depend drastically on the epistemological paradigm from which you would like it to be answered.For example, as a researcher in Lacanian psychoanalysis, not even what we call “consciousness” would truly be conscious at all, since it is always determined by unconscious processes that take place within the subject’s relation to language. So, in a sports scenario, even if athletes train every day for a competition, they may still fail in ways comparable to Freudian slips that occur in an analytic session.
Thus, in Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalysis, our conscious intentions are a central field of illusion, while something more radical determines them.
I hope this answer interests you and provokes some reflections.
Best regards,
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