Race Club Article

Originally posted by gull80 Isn't the goal of the coach to help each and every one of his swimmers achieve their full potential, whatever that may be? It seems to me that talking about "full potential" requires consideration of trade offs and balance. Michael Phelps took a year off from school to concentrate on training (leading into the Olympics), something he felt was necessary to achieve his full potential but which I would suggest is not appropriate for every swimmer. If one accepts that some trade offs with the rest of the swimmer's life should be made the question becomes where the balance should be. Perhaps there can even be a training stream for kids who want to use swimming as a lifelong health and fitness tool, or for swimmers that just want to sprint and are willing to trade off a few hundredths of a second in their races for endless hours of 10,000m aerobic development workouts.

Originally posted by gull80 Isn't the goal of the coach to help each and every one of his swimmers achieve their full potential, whatever that may be? It seems to me that talking about "full potential" requires consideration of trade offs and balance. Michael Phelps took a year off from school to concentrate on training (leading into the Olympics), something he felt was necessary to achieve his full potential but which I would suggest is not appropriate for every swimmer. If one accepts that some trade offs with the rest of the swimmer's life should be made the question becomes where the balance should be. Perhaps there can even be a training stream for kids who want to use swimming as a lifelong health and fitness tool, or for swimmers that just want to sprint and are willing to trade off a few hundredths of a second in their races for endless hours of 10,000m aerobic development workouts.