Race-Crashing

I had some spontaneous fun today… I snuck into the 1500 meter swim portion of the Antalya Olympic-distance triathlon today! Something I don’t think I could ever get away with back in my homeland. I came down to meet up with some new Antalya swimmer friends before the start of their heat in the triathlon. [...]

Swim Coach Yoda

When Luke Skywalker went looking for the great Jedi Master to learn the way of The Force he didn’t expect to find the shriveled mini-martian Yoda. But what Luke learned from this offensive little back-planet specimen was that it did not matter what kind of body The Force flowed through, but what kind of mind. [...]

Machine Versus Fish

Next time you’re at the pool or waterway, take a look at the swimmers around you. It is not hard to see the difference between those who swim like ‘machines’ and those that swim like ‘fish’- those that are mechanical in their movements, plowing through versus those that are fluid and quiet- slipping along smoothly. [...]

Who is a REAL open-water swimmer?

Last week I met up with a couple from Lebanon. They heard about me in Antalya and invited me down to Kaş to give them an introductory TI lesson in the sea on their last day of vacation. I asked the gal if she liked to swim out in open-water. She started to explain how [...]

Don’t Forget To Play

Have any of us gotten so serious in our swim training that we have forgotten to play? Good swimming involves having a relationship with water. To swim well and swim long a swimmer needs to know the water intimately, to know its ways and how it likes to move and carry us and how it [...]

Courage Is A Skill

Courage is not possible in the absence of fear, rather courage is the ability to take positive action in the midst of fear. Behind the courage we admire is a trained skill: the ability to focus the mind and effort on something more important, something positive, something productive in that intimidating moment. Courage is a [...]

Swim Like You Kayak

By invitation, I spent 2 hours in the pool last night observing my Turkish swim coach friends 15 swimmers, all around 9-12 yrs old. While all were working just as hard, stroking away madly, the most remarkable difference between the best swimmers in the lane and the worst was how straight and long they kept [...]

Coaching in Portland Oregon USA

I am back in the Pacific Northwest USA for 3 weeks. I have been joined by TI coaches Shane Eversfield and Ryan Chapman to lead TI 1.0 and 2.0 workshops this weekend at Allstar Fitness in Portland, Oregon. We had two students today, and with such a small group we could give totally customized lessons. [...]

Patient Neck

I was helping one of my 13 year old swimmers to position his head and time his breathing better while he was practicing the UnderSwitch drill. He’s got a neurological impairment (cerebral palsy), but definitely no mental one. He’s full of daydreams and ideas and sometimes his mind seems to wonder out the window of [...]