Measuring Quality in Open-Water

In rock climbing, when trying to climb a route ‘clean’ (no falls, no hanging on the rope) the artist has no room for mistakes. A mis-step, a mis-catch causes a fall and the climber is obligated to start over. The whole climb has to be executed without a mistake to earn the mark. Dedicated climbers [...]

Shinji-Like Kick

This last weekend TI Coach Ricardo (Tenerife, Spain) and I were examining a post in the TI Forum from a swimmer who had just completed an advanced workshop with TI President and Master Coach Shinji. Shinji is known for being a master of intricate detail and refinement, as his 9-stroke 25m freestyle video demonstrates. As [...]

Smart Speed Part 1

Smart Speed Part 1 – Your Optimal Stroke Length In this series of essays I will walk through the process of achieving speed through superior precision, rather than through absolute power. For anyone wanting to improve her triathlon time, expand the distance he can swim with confidence, or improve sprint speed while preserving enjoyment and [...]

The Perfect 25

THE PIECES OF THE PERFECT 25 No matter how short or how far we intend to swim, it starts one 25 meter (or yard) pool length at a time. The excellence of the whole swim is never greater than the excellence of each part of the swim- so why permit inferior parts? Excellence does not [...]

One Amazing Stroke

When pursuing a new PR on my [insert your favorite distance here] why would I crank out more and more mindless yards, going harder and harder, hoping that improvement will magically appear one day? When does quantity ever lead to quality? My amazing 1500 (for example) must first be preceded by an amazing 500 meters. [...]

Slide, Don’t Hammer

I had a great practice set in the pool early this morning- 1600 yards broken into 16 x (4x 25 yard sprints), with a rest interval based on my heart rate*. The objective- holding SPL (at 16) while increasing tempo from 0.95 to 0.83 seconds, using a Tempo Trainer. In the winter I like to [...]

Control or Adapt?

One day last week I was in the community pool in 31 C (87 F) water. This was quite comfortable when entering and just floating. No effort needed to be at ease. But if I tried to move around at all it was anything but envigorating. Within an hour I had lost all ambition. The [...]

Change Is Risk

I’ve heard of this scenario a few times now- a swimmer comes to a TI course, realizes the physics and physiology behind the concepts, surrenders to the learning process, then begins to practice a new stroke skill with some success and growing excitement. Then she returns to her regular coach to show off the new [...]

Train For Brain Power

A lack of understanding of how the brain and body work together to learn new skills and achieve high performance can sabatoge our improvement. To help explain I’ll define two kinds of effort, and their result, the two kinds of exhaustion that we need to be aware of: Muscular-effort and muscular-exhaustion essentially come from muscles [...]

Learning Requires Trust

Continuing on with the topic of Challenging Normal, I’ll share a simple example of how even I, a swimmer quite focused on the details of my body and each movement, can develop a ‘blind-spot’, and greatly benefit from some outside feedback…