Add curiosity to your practice. What if I breathe to the other side? What if I push off on the other side? Why are we doing this set? What is the goal? Am I propelling myself forward in every stroke? Or am I going side to side? Or up and down? What is the purpose…
What do you measure to gauge progress in swimming? If you beat the send off times for the set that you did yesterday, do you know how you beat them? If you swim further than you did last week, do you know why? Measuring the wrong thing can give a false sense of progress. Just…
Other than waking up and going to sleep each day, there isn’t much that I do consistently. However, since learning The SwimMastery Way, I have become obsessed with the idea of habits. Especially motor habits and how they contribute to making progress in the water. Swimming is unique in that it is a lifesaving skill….
I’ve been enamored with the idea of deliberate practice since being introduced to it in Angela Duckworth’s book ‘Grit’. I wrote about my revelations on Grit after my 25 mile swim from Newport, Vermont to Magog, Quebec in 2019: Deliberate Practice – Intrepid Water. What I focus on with my swimmers and in my own…
I am half way through swimming the length of Loch Ness – a swim that I have been planning for 4 years – when my crew waves me down for a regular feed. They toss me a plastic bottle tied to a piece of line so that I can drink, drop the bottle and the…
This is the question I ask myself as I’m about to jump off a boat into 55F/13C degree water. I can’t remember the last time I swam more than 20 minutes. What business do I have jumping in a lake for a 9 mile swim? And then there is the fact that I signed up…
The Beaver State – Oregon’s official title – is aptly named as there are many waterways in this beautifully green region. With special thanks to Cyndi Werhane for commissioning esteemed swimming historian, Elaine K. Howley to document Oregon’s Open Water history.
Have you ever had a crazy idea? And then a piece falls in place that makes it seem possible. And then another piece. And another. So you keep moving forward… More pieces fall in place. It seems improbable. You’re not even sure it’s a good idea. But you’re curious… Here’s my story of following curiosity:…
On March 28th I jumped in the crisp, mid 50F’s waters at Glorietta Bay and cruised around Coronado Island. After the corner that would never end turned into the jetty that would never end, we finally passed the fog horn. My pace slowed down in the lumpy, bumpy ocean bit, but I didn’t want to…
I never know what to expect when I go for a swim. Time stops. It hasn’t even been 10 seconds? The clock is frozen. I’m willing it to advance. A different swim, a different day, time flies. I feel like I’m on top of the water. On top of the world. Flying. I was taken…
What do you see in this picture? I see beauty, potential; but inside I feel longing, anxiety, mostly fear. That’s what I told myself, my clients, my coach, my friends. After two days of worry and wonder, I finally faced my fear and waded into the ocean. It was brisk, I expected that. I stepped…
The other day I was at one of our beautiful mountain lakes in the Cascade range of Southern Oregon. Towering over the water with remnants of winter spotting it’s back, the view of nearby volcano, Mount McLoughlin, takes my breath away. I welcome the crisp, clear water here at Lake of the Woods, a natural…
With all of my work and personal events getting tossed this year, and 3 months of social isolation with a 3 and 5 year old under my belt, I’ve gone through several rounds of mentally coming to grips with: what do I do now? With regard to my swimming, most recently I’ve settled on speed…
It’s true! I know it’s been awhile… I’m trying to quit hesitating and post more often… for starters, here are several important updates that I need to share! Amid the worldwide uprising against racist policing, we at Marathon Swim Stories have been trying to check our privilege and think about how our sport can me…
I lost it today. I was spiraling. When will it end? I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I snap. I snap at my partner. I snap at my kids. I snap at my dog. It was the first time that it happened – at least the first time it happened this bad. The first time…
I’m not going to tell you how to workout during isolation. I’m not even going to suggest that you have to! What I am going to tell you is that it’s going to be okay. Even when you could, you didn’t have to swim everyday. You didn’t even have to swim more than a few…
This is not just another post about “our response to the COVID-19 outbreak”. I need to halt our regularly scheduled programming to freak out for just a minute. I was going to talk about how to rewire your brain to make change; taking the time during a chaotic masters practices to focus on just feeling…
In 2017 I swam the 20 km Mercer Island Marathon Swim, around Mercer Island near Seattle, Washington. I was fortunate to have a kayaker assigned to me. She was supportive, enthusiastic, motivational – everything you want your support kayaker to be – and she had a GoPro. I had not yet embraced the GoPro world….
For the fourth and final installment of efficient swimming basics, meet: Glide When we swim with great posture, a strong pull, and snappy rotation (drive), we can capitalize on the sweet spot between finishing one stroke and starting the next; this is active glide. As a marathon swimmer and efficient swimming advocate, the glide is…
First we talked about Posture. Then we put power in our Pull. For part three of our four part series on Efficient Swimming Basics: Drive Rotate! This is quite possibly the most common feedback that I have for comfortable swimmers who are looking to improve. Perhaps swimmers *think* that they are rotating because they turn…
