Pain And Peace
Is there pain and suffering of some form in your training experience? For many, this is not only a common experience, this is the expected experience. After all, they say you must be tough to be a real swimmer, right? Perhaps. But what kind of toughness are we talking...
Strengthen The Weaker System
This is an addendum to the post Special Stamina Part 2. I encouraged certain swimmers to test for the weaker system in Test For The Weakest System. The next logical topic is about strengthening that weaker system. Which one is your weaker system? Can you handle the...
Special Stamina Part 2
Continued from Special Stamina Part 1 Incremental Increase In Challenge Let me describe briefly how to adjust just one of these variables at a time to create a gradually equalizing and increasing challenge upon your performance systems… Intensity When the...
Special Stamina Part 1
I received a request from one of you to talk about building stamina. Stamina is defined as ability to withstand hardship, to maintain strength over a longer period of time. I might add to this by saying stamina is the ability to be stronger than the hardship facing...
Test For The Weakest System
Experienced and accomplished swimmers (still practicing) tend to have well-developed swimming-specific fitness from their years of training, even after taking time off. When they begin retraining their stroke technique a challenge in that process is that they can get...
Relaxation Paradox
Sometimes it seems like we have a paradox with relaxation in swimming – a dissonance between the understanding that speed requires power and power requires muscle tension, yet speed is restricted unless there is relaxation in the muscles. In Easy Strength the...
Train And Maintain The Brain
Many people seem to care about what will happen to their physical quality of life as they get older. But do you wonder what will happen to your mental quality of life as you get older? I think we readily understand the importance of maintaining physical fitness. We...
Test for Progress and Weakness
Here is an excerpt from the instruction in the12-week Master Class 1K course inside our Online Coaching Program. It is describing the role of the test swim and guiding the swimmer’s response to it: To test progress and reveal strengths and weak spots you need to...