Transitions In Training - New Sport?
- c.u.
“Transitions in training” is a favorite topic (title of National Masters News column) – life being long and sometimes unpredictable. Experiences of other athletes and those of my own are sources of learning. They help me coach and teach. And while what I learn from their and my own experience is partly about the sport – adopting a beginner’s mind, embracing the uncomfortable, the value of a coach, deliberate practice, setting successive short-term goals etc. – it’s also about transitioning to anything new. Which makes life exciting (no matter how old we are) and not the “same old, same old”. You can’t transition to anything new without having a sense of humor (sizeable), a “who cares?” - “je m'ens foutisme” - attitude, or confidence that accomplishment in earlier sports is enough already.
This, the first of a few articles on transitions in training, is about thoughts I had after a running injury which led to attending the U.S. Masters Swimming High Performance Swim Camp in North Carolina. I’ve been cross training and swimming as well as running.
The five-day session, the daily schedule involved four hours of swimming – including lactate threshold and power testing—and six hours of lecture daily and lots of energetic talks in between. Testing involved swimming four 100s in a 50 meter pool as fast as possible with 10 minute recovery periods, swimming as hard as I could tethered to a rope and machine (we’ll leave it at that) that measured my power output, and doing the equivalent of a lat pull-down on a weight bench. The lead speaker was Dr. Genadijus Sokolovas, physiologist for the U.S. Olympic Swim Team (of course Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky) and on first Google search he is described as “considered by many to be one of the world’s most accomplished sports physiologist”. Wonderful man. A walking swimming encyclopedia.
“Inspiring” was the adjective for every day. I was the “newbie” in the group of 10 swimmers, most of them either coaches or masters swimmers on the competitive masters circuit. (Acceptance into the program uncertain, I gained entry as the lucky “outlier” – partly because I happened to bump into the CEO of the U.S.A. Masters Games when my open water swim event in Greensboro, North Carolina was cancelled the day before the race.)
Having returned, I think about swimming a lot more than ever: swimming with tennis balls in each hand, my head as a submarine, protecting my ears from 58 degree water with ear plugs, watching any swimmer to see whether their fingers are pointing straight down, looking forward to analyzing hundreds of slides on physiology, comparing findings on swimming performance with those on running, and corresponding with new swimming friends. I just returned from a pool with my nephew, a 32-year-old surgeon. He wanted some tips, having stopped competitive swimming at 15.
I keep coming back to a favorite metaphor based on a house with shutters. Think about life in sports as a metaphor for the house. A new sport can reinvigorate. After all the uncertainty during the early steps of taking it on, you may later realize you may have lived in a house where shutters were closed. And then you add
a new one and see that the shutters are open. You haven’t moved but the light and possibilities are more now.
That perspective was reinforced as I watched new swimmers who couldn’t swim 50 yards with ease last year swim more than a mile comfortably at Walden Pond this past week-end.
- c.u.
“Transitions in training” is a favorite topic (title of National Masters News column) – life being long and sometimes unpredictable. Experiences of other athletes and those of my own are sources of learning. They help me coach and teach. And while what I learn from their and my own experience is partly about the sport – adopting a beginner’s mind, embracing the uncomfortable, the value of a coach, deliberate practice, setting successive short-term goals etc. – it’s also about transitioning to anything new. Which makes life exciting (no matter how old we are) and not the “same old, same old”. You can’t transition to anything new without having a sense of humor (sizeable), a “who cares?” - “je m'ens foutisme” - attitude, or confidence that accomplishment in earlier sports is enough already.
This, the first of a few articles on transitions in training, is about thoughts I had after a running injury which led to attending the U.S. Masters Swimming High Performance Swim Camp in North Carolina. I’ve been cross training and swimming as well as running.
The five-day session, the daily schedule involved four hours of swimming – including lactate threshold and power testing—and six hours of lecture daily and lots of energetic talks in between. Testing involved swimming four 100s in a 50 meter pool as fast as possible with 10 minute recovery periods, swimming as hard as I could tethered to a rope and machine (we’ll leave it at that) that measured my power output, and doing the equivalent of a lat pull-down on a weight bench. The lead speaker was Dr. Genadijus Sokolovas, physiologist for the U.S. Olympic Swim Team (of course Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky) and on first Google search he is described as “considered by many to be one of the world’s most accomplished sports physiologist”. Wonderful man. A walking swimming encyclopedia.
“Inspiring” was the adjective for every day. I was the “newbie” in the group of 10 swimmers, most of them either coaches or masters swimmers on the competitive masters circuit. (Acceptance into the program uncertain, I gained entry as the lucky “outlier” – partly because I happened to bump into the CEO of the U.S.A. Masters Games when my open water swim event in Greensboro, North Carolina was cancelled the day before the race.)
Having returned, I think about swimming a lot more than ever: swimming with tennis balls in each hand, my head as a submarine, protecting my ears from 58 degree water with ear plugs, watching any swimmer to see whether their fingers are pointing straight down, looking forward to analyzing hundreds of slides on physiology, comparing findings on swimming performance with those on running, and corresponding with new swimming friends. I just returned from a pool with my nephew, a 32-year-old surgeon. He wanted some tips, having stopped competitive swimming at 15.
I keep coming back to a favorite metaphor based on a house with shutters. Think about life in sports as a metaphor for the house. A new sport can reinvigorate. After all the uncertainty during the early steps of taking it on, you may later realize you may have lived in a house where shutters were closed. And then you add
a new one and see that the shutters are open. You haven’t moved but the light and possibilities are more now.
That perspective was reinforced as I watched new swimmers who couldn’t swim 50 yards with ease last year swim more than a mile comfortably at Walden Pond this past week-end.