A while ago I wrote a post, entitled, "Are High School Athletics And Academics The Road To A Life-Long Love Of Learning?" Can this ever happen in the USA, I wondered, when parents put pressure on coaches to win, win, win, while judging teachers based on their children's grades? Then I found The Positive Coaching Alliance, which gave me hope. I am of the opinion, being both a fairly successful academic and an ... Read more
Hi folks, Rick Fee, my local swim coach, has been telling me about his frustration with triathletes, who as a group seem to believe that they will pull up their swim times by focusing on technique. When Rick started coaching me, three months before the Eagleman Half Ironman 2012, I would have been lucky to hold 1:50 x 100 yard repeats. After some pretty solid swim sets 3x/week with Rick, my 10-20 x ... Read more
Hi folks, Learning new skills always seems to be a kind of stepwise process, be it learning a foreign language, running a business, playing a musical instrument, or becoming an athlete. You reach a plateau, stay stuck for ages, have a breakthrough, and with your new found knowledge work towards the next sticking point. This certainly seems to be true of swimming. I've made major progress in the last ... Read more
Hi folks, When you undertake any new endeavor, there are things to learn and skills to develop, be it public speaking, ballet dancing or safe exercise for better health. Skills are obtained and honed to perfection through the application of practice, guidance, and consistent self-assessment. When it comes to sports, the process of developing a particular skill, say low-impact running, has an initial ... Read more
Hi folks, I just found, via an RSS feed, that there is a series of books or articles available for coaches dealing with athletes who have special requirements, such as those with hernias or those undertaking religious fasting. These potentially valuable books are available at Peak Performance Online, so I purchased a copy of "Coaching Diabetic Athletes," downloaded the pdf, and here are my initial ... Read more
Hi folks, I pay a coach to set my workouts based on his experience and my athletic background, combined with laboratory data such as lactate threshold and VO2 max. So why would I suggest that one might arbitrarily add a workout to his plan? The answer is that I consider it acceptable as long as it is not a physical workout, but a mental one. For instance, today I added a short early morning swim, but ... Read more
Hi folks, It's been an interesting couple of days, and now we are thinking about adopting a pit bull. She seems to be a lovely little dog. Pit bulls are generally frowned upon, but this has not always been the case. It would appear that this breed has been inappropriately maligned, according to the interesting linked article on the 'I've Got Something To Say' blogsite. I think that we are going to go ... Read more
Hi folks, Here I am in Australia, enjoying a boiling hot Christmas day. I may be an aging Ironman athlete, but I sure don't want to swim with sharks. This reminds of an article I read years ago, in an old French magazine, called 'Swimming with Sharks.' It contained some great advice for a nascent businessman, such as myself, including, "When bitten, don't bleed." As a swimmer I would prefer to not be ... Read more
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