If you ask 10 athletes about their pre-race meal you will probably get 10 different answers. Often pre-race nutrition depends almost entirely on the continental breakfast of the hotel they stayed in the night before the race. This meal can make or break your race,...
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A carefully planned race schedule should develop you as an athlete with valuable race experience, help guide your training, and serve as stepping stones to peak performance. Racing Frequency Races planned too frequently leave little room for quality training between races and can erode some components of...
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“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts” We often talk about training metrics and how to use them to guide your training. They can help define training targets, gauge progress, and give you confidence heading into races. However,...
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You’ve mastered the breathing techniques and body positioning required for freestyle swimming and your swimming times are dropping in the pool, but you just hopped in your first race and swam the same pace or slower than you did last year. Anyone who has been...
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Pacing an XTERRA race can be a tough nut to crack. It’s not uncommon for athletes to finish a race disappointed because they thought they could hold a faster pace or more power than actually panned out on race day. On paper an XTERRA race...
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Proper breathing is a fundamental skill for freestyle swimming. For adult-onset swimmers, breathing can be problematic since it is dependent on stroke rate, can throw off body position and alignment, and disrupt timing. Part I focused on breathing patterns, whereas the focus of this article...
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Breathing is problematic in swimming freestyle. The primary issue is that breathing is dependent on your stroke rate and the type of breathing pattern you adopt. The most streamlined position has your head in alignment with the rest of your spine, the water line hitting...
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Spreading your training across three or four disciplines can be challenging. It is not realistic nor recommended to match the training loads of single sport athletes in swim, bike, and run simultaneously. The individual event that propelled you into the sport may still be your...
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People want simple answers to complex questions. Athletes are people. Athletes want simple answers to complex questions. The last thing you want to hear is “it depends.” Either you believe in high volume or high intensity. More is less or less is more? Actually, it...
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There are so many different facets to a training program that determine whether or not an athlete is successful or not. However, when looking back at an athlete’s training log the single biggest indicator of improvement is consistency. Were they able to follow their plan...
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