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Posts Tagged ‘Mental Skills and Attitudes’

Mental Skills Training in Swimming – a new approach.

What is your experience with sports psychology and mental skills training?

Is it meeting a psychologist or mental skills professional at an office and talking quietly about attitudes, anxieties and ambitions?

Or is it having a mental skills professional come to the training centre and do a “motivation” lecture or a mental skills training session on relaxation, focusing, visualisation / imagery and attitude?

Time to take mental skills training out of the office, away from the training room and into the pool.

How?  Read more

Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Physiology based Training Set Design in Swimming: There must be Another Way.

Walk on deck at any pool in the world on a typical Monday afternoon.

There it is – the old whiteboard over there at the end of the pool.

And what’s written up on the whiteboard?

Today’s training program!

• “10 x 100 on 1:45 at 75%” or
• “20 x 50 on 1:00 holding PB plus 5 seconds” or
• “12 x 200 IM on 3:30 holding 2:50 or something similar.

You would think that swimming training, preparation and performance was all about the body wouldn’t you? Read more

Republished by Blog Post Promoter

The Last Race

For every swimmer there will be one last race.

One time when you hit the wall, look up at the score board, see “Jones, P   1:03.07” for the last time. Or “Lane 6 56.83”. Or “Lane  3 – 2:45.71”

And in that one moment, how do you want to remember your swimming career?

And in that one moment, how do you want to be remembered as a swimmer?

And in that one moment and throughout the next 50, 60, 70 years…..what will you remember about swimming? 

What will all those early mornings, long sessions, tough gym workouts and competitions mean? Read more

Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Five New Ideas that will Change Swimming Forever.

They say that “success is a moving target”.

This is so true in swimming where new ideas, information and innovations are constantly being thrown up to challenge, inspire and stimulate the thinking of swimmers and coaches.

Recently a wave of exciting and challenging new scientific research has come forward which has sparked some new ideas and forced the swimming world to sit up and take notice.

Here are five new ideas that will change our swimming world…………..forever! Read more

Republished by Blog Post Promoter

The Ten Myths of Swimming.

The dictionary says:

myth (noun)

1. a traditional story of unknown authorship, ostensibly with a historical basis, but serving usually to explain some phenomenon of nature, the origin of man, or the customs, institutions, religious rites, etc. of a people: myths usually involve the exploits of gods and heroes
2. such stories collectively; mythology
3. any fictitious story, or unscientific account, theory, belief, etc.
4. any imaginary person or thing spoken of as though existing

There’s the Yeti.

There’s the Sasquatch.

There’s the shopping cart with four good wheels.

There’s the low fat, great tasting chocolate cake.

And there’s these….the ten myths of swimming. Read more

Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Swim Up to Swim Down: Some new ideas on Swim Downs to enhance your Swim Meet Success

In the old days it was simple.

You raced. You did your best.

You spoke with the coach about your race, you swapped ideas about dives and turns, you listened to feedback, discussed splits and stroke technique etc etc.

You drank a little water or sports drink.

You jumped (or maybe slumped) into the swim down pool, did a few laps at a speed your grandma would consider too slow and climbed out three minutes later ready to go for your next race (or so you thought).

That, as they say was then and this is now – and now, more than ever, swim down is a critical element of every swimming competition. Read more

Swim Shop – Now Open

The Swim Coaching Brain has Opened a Swim Shop.

In response to the overwhelming demand for more information on swimming topics, we have put together a series of swimming books for you to download and enjoy.

The first book in the series: Longer and Stronger: Stretching and Strengthening for Young Swimmers is available now!

More books will be added regularly.

Make sure you bookmark the Shop page and visit it regularly to check out some of our great new swimming products.

 

The Engagement Factor – the essential element in designing training sets and swimming workouts.

In my last post, I introduced the P.A.C.E. system – a simple, easy to use, practical way of managing training intensity in young age group swimmers.

P.A.C.E. System Level	Description	Feels like	Used for
P or PACE 1	Practice and Preparation Pace	Easy, relaxed.	Recovery, drills and skills.
A or PACE 2	Air-robic Pace.	Easy to moderate.	Endurance development.
C or PACE 3	Competition Specific Pace	Hard.	Race specific practices with race specific speeds, skills, techniques and breathing.
E or PACE 4	Electric Pace	Fast - explosive.	Speed development.

Now, let’s build on the P.A.C.E. system by introducing the Engagement Factor: the first training prescription system which incorporates a mental skills focus in swimming workout design.

Everyone talks about the importance of the mental side of swimming and how important it is for swimmers to train both their bodies and minds in training and preparation.

Talking about it is one thing.

The next step for coaches is to make mental skills and the integration of the mind into every session and the way to achieve this is to incorporate mental skills in the workout design itself.

Introducing the Engagement Factor.

Read more

Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Top Ten Tips for Swimming Coaching Success.

  

ten from Crestock Images

Here are my best ever Top Ten Tips for Swimming Coaching Success.

Whether you coach men or masters, toddlers or triathletes, females or freestylers, babies, breaststrokers or butterflyers, these ten tips will help you make a success of your swimming coaching career and more important help you to help every swimmer turn possible potential into peak performance. Read more

Speed development workouts – five of the best speed workout sets to have you burning up the lanes!

Gennadi Touretski– coach of legendary Russian speedster Alex Popov once said, “speed is the most precious thing in swimming – in the end it is what we are all about – it is what we are all trying to achieve”.

There are no gold medals or world records for the person who can swim the slowest or swim with the best technique or with the strongest kick or who has the best heart rate. There are no gold medals for the swimmer who wears the most expensive swim suit (at least not any more!).

There are no gold medals for the person who can lift the most weights or who has the best hairdo – winning is all about speed. Read more

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• About this Blog

  Expert advice, ideas, innovation and inspiration for all sports coaches and team managers - from 'grass roots' through to elite and high performance levels. All posts are written by Wayne Goldsmith, AKA the "Sports Coaching Brain". If you have a question or comment about any post, please add it to the comments section.

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