I think it is sad we have slipped down the slope we call “being civil”. Being away from these posts for the better part of a week has allowed me to look at them in a different light then before. The thoughts and feelings of many of the people who post here are very raw right now. Decency, understanding, compassion, patience and kindness have been lost to pain and anger.
I have learned some very valuable lessons over the past nineteen months. Often, anger is directly driven by pain. I read pain into many of the post here. People have offended one another and tramped on each others toes and people have been hurt emotionally.
Gosh, I am the farthest thing from a counselor or referee for that matter, but I am qualified to say that each of us has good days, and each of us has bad days. Without exception, EVERY SINGLE POSTER was decent, understanding and compassionate towards me during a very tough time in my life. Ion has a way of invoking anger and hostility in people. Having said that, he reached out to me during a very tough time and demonstrated a very different and compassionate side then the one we see here.
My point, in the final annalists we call life, what more do we really have then one another? We are a body of swimmers who share a common bond for the love of swimming and adult exercise in the water. Let us keep to this course as opposed to offending one another and fracturing our beloved sport with pain, hard feelings and anger. We are different, yet, we are the same. We all love our children, we all want to excel in life, we all want to think of ourselves are winners, we all want to be free people, we all want to raise our families and enjoy life as best we can. Regardless of how fast we are, how smart we are or anything else…. in the final toll….we all want and strive for many of the same things. As we all did on playgrounds all over the world as children, let’s shake hands and make up….
Parents
Former Member
kiwi, are you from New Zealand?
I remember that in another recent thread you asked me what has coach Bill Sweetenham (Aus.) done for the U.K. swimming that U.K. coaches haven't done, and I didn't answer that question.
In the thread 'Dubai -proposed changes' I vowed to not post anymore because it was getting into bickering at anything that I was writing just for the sake of bickering, and it was not a productive discussion anymore.
I wanted to e-mail you or send you a private message asking to get your question elsewhere, but they aren't available.
Your question came here, and I am answering it here.
I only do pool competitions, not open water races.
To me open water is a different sport than pool competition.
In pool I did one hour of continuous swim of a little over 4,600 yards.
It amounts to maybe one hour and eleven minutes for a 5,000 meters swim non stop.
Open water people train in pool like me, and most of them don't have speed, but they have steady endurance.
They swim with the head up to see above waves, don't do flip turns and don't do starts from the blocks in practice.
Their training is distance, a steady training, without big sprints.
The training for pool competitions is more high-tech than 'Distance Training' is, with:
1.) kicking sets;
2.) four strokes sets;
3.) breath control;
4.) diving from the block;
5.) flip turns;
6.) 'Explosive Sprint Training';
7.) 'Sprint Race Training';
8.) 'VO2Max Training';
9.) 'Anaerobic Threshold Training';
10.) skinny competitors who don't need the fat required in the open water to stay warm, but need to be slender so that the blood flows fast during high heart rate burst races of two minutes.
6.), 7.), 8.) and 9.) ensure that fourteen hours -or so- of weekly training get condensated in a two minutes race like a karate man unleashes a concentrated blow in a split second.
The heart rate during these two minutes is at its highest and stays there.
The 'Distance Training' of the open water doesn't have this speed and heart intensity, it is a steady pace for hours.
This is fitness for open water and triathlon, which is how it is raced, in fitness.
Comparing pool competition with open water is like comparing the high-tech fast swimming of Alex Popov (Rus.) with the fitness swimming of triathlete Peter Reid (Can.), two different sports.
Distance pool competitors at the Olympic level, like Chad Carvin (U.S.), Alex Kostich (U.S.), Chris Thompson (U.S.), Ryk Neethling (R.S.A.), Christina Teuscher (U.S.), Brooke Bennett (U.S.), Hannah Stockbauer (Ger.), etc., they do open water competitions even if it is different than pool racing, I think because they like to win the prize money.
kiwi, are you from New Zealand?
I remember that in another recent thread you asked me what has coach Bill Sweetenham (Aus.) done for the U.K. swimming that U.K. coaches haven't done, and I didn't answer that question.
In the thread 'Dubai -proposed changes' I vowed to not post anymore because it was getting into bickering at anything that I was writing just for the sake of bickering, and it was not a productive discussion anymore.
I wanted to e-mail you or send you a private message asking to get your question elsewhere, but they aren't available.
Your question came here, and I am answering it here.
I only do pool competitions, not open water races.
To me open water is a different sport than pool competition.
In pool I did one hour of continuous swim of a little over 4,600 yards.
It amounts to maybe one hour and eleven minutes for a 5,000 meters swim non stop.
Open water people train in pool like me, and most of them don't have speed, but they have steady endurance.
They swim with the head up to see above waves, don't do flip turns and don't do starts from the blocks in practice.
Their training is distance, a steady training, without big sprints.
The training for pool competitions is more high-tech than 'Distance Training' is, with:
1.) kicking sets;
2.) four strokes sets;
3.) breath control;
4.) diving from the block;
5.) flip turns;
6.) 'Explosive Sprint Training';
7.) 'Sprint Race Training';
8.) 'VO2Max Training';
9.) 'Anaerobic Threshold Training';
10.) skinny competitors who don't need the fat required in the open water to stay warm, but need to be slender so that the blood flows fast during high heart rate burst races of two minutes.
6.), 7.), 8.) and 9.) ensure that fourteen hours -or so- of weekly training get condensated in a two minutes race like a karate man unleashes a concentrated blow in a split second.
The heart rate during these two minutes is at its highest and stays there.
The 'Distance Training' of the open water doesn't have this speed and heart intensity, it is a steady pace for hours.
This is fitness for open water and triathlon, which is how it is raced, in fitness.
Comparing pool competition with open water is like comparing the high-tech fast swimming of Alex Popov (Rus.) with the fitness swimming of triathlete Peter Reid (Can.), two different sports.
Distance pool competitors at the Olympic level, like Chad Carvin (U.S.), Alex Kostich (U.S.), Chris Thompson (U.S.), Ryk Neethling (R.S.A.), Christina Teuscher (U.S.), Brooke Bennett (U.S.), Hannah Stockbauer (Ger.), etc., they do open water competitions even if it is different than pool racing, I think because they like to win the prize money.
