I wanted to ‘fix’ my stroke. I was having shoulder pain when I swam, and I wanted to make it go away. However, it is not a break-fix proposition. If you aren’t making the intervals that you used to or can’t swim as far as you want, or have pain, it has considerably less to…
When you’re looking to improve, I recommend thinking like a scientist. Hypothesize if you want, or just try it out! Employ wonder and test. Pretend there is no right or wrong; discover what works for you. What happens when you stop going through the motions and get curious?
Is what someone said to me this morning at the pool when I mentioned that I want to get better and that’s why I take notes in my notebook. I started when I was young as well, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t have room for improvement! Everyone has room for improvement. What’s your…
“Do I want to improve?” If the answer is, “no,” keep doing what you’re doing. If the answer is, “yes,” continue reading. “How do I improve,” you ask? Learn how to learn. With accountability and focus, you can improve at anything. Washing dishes. Folding sheets. Making bread. Playing an instrument. Learning to sew. Knit. Tie…
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….
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…
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…
Last time we talked about Posture, for part two of our four part series on efficient swimming basics, enter: The Pull In the pull, our goal is to push the water behind us; as much as you can, as soon as you can. It’s that simple. Start floating face down in the water in neutral…
I’ve been working on my in-water posture for more than a year. For in-water posture, I practice what I call Neutral position: long neck, tummy tight, low back flat, arms over head with shoulders back and down – I try to spend some amount of time in this position every time I’m in the water….
Try floating on your back and gently kicking, do your knees pop up over the surface of the water? If so, you’re trying to run or ride a bike in the pool. This can wear you out and sap valuable energy! Continue practicing in a back float, bend your knees back, slightly, towards the bottom…
As the leaves start to fall in Southern Oregon and the crisp air lasts well into late morning before the sun shines bright to warm things up, the idea of an open water swim is less and less appealing. Where we live, it is down right hard to swim in the open water this time…