More Than Our Story

Triathlon Tips: Don’t Go It Alone

A swim coach oversees his team's practice.

Table of Contents

Swimming: Part 1

You don’t need to go it alone. Finding a great coach and team to train with is one of the most important things you can do to improve your swimming. Read on to find out more:

Finding A Coach

Swimming coaches aren’t just for elite swimmers, they can be helpful for swimmers of all levels looking to improve their swimming abilities. Whether you’re looking to swim faster, farther, or wonder why you get so sore – finding a great coach is your best bet.

A Great Coach Will:

  • Make you more confident in your swimming abilities
  • Assign drills to help you swim faster and more efficiently
  • Look at each phase of your freestyle swim stroke to find areas where you can improve your technique
  • Help perfect your breathing technique
  • Help with your kick technique
  • Help you choose the right training equipment
  • Listen to you, and help you achieve your specific goals

Breaking Down The Freestyle Stroke Cycle:

  • The Catch: The goal of this phase is to reposition your arm in front of your body so that you can execute a really great, strong pull.
  • The Pull: This is the phase where you create propulsion by pulling your hand directly backwards in the water, propelling you forward as straight as possible.
  • The Finish: This phases of the stroke has two purposes:
    • 1. Maximizing the forward movement achieved from each pull.
    • 2. Setting up the recovery.
  • The Recovery: This is this phase where your arm comes back to the front of your body in preparation for the next pull.

Finding A Team

Just like finding a great coach, joining a swim team is for everyone. It’s also a fun place to meet people and challenge yourself.

A Great Swim Team Will:

  • Challenge You: Being part of a swim team provides the perfect environment to motivate, challenge and push yourself.
  • Provide Inspiration: Being part of a team and watching your team mates push their limits provides inspiration, motivating you to work harder.
  • Provide a Fun, Social Environment: Joining a swim team can provide a fun social activity in an environment where shared interests are a given and camaraderie is strong.
  • Commit You: Let’s face it, it’s not always easy to get motivated to head out for swim training. That only gets compounded when it’s still dark outside, and harder still when it’s cold. Knowing there are people counting on you to show gives you that extra boost of motivation to get you out the door and on your way. Not to mention, you always feel better afterwards and were glad you went.
Picture of Daniel

Daniel

Daniel is an extremely curious person, a wealth of random knowledge and facts. Extremely passionate about a vast array of interests ranging from health to history, science to athletics, everything culinary and the list goes on. Trust us, you would want to be on his team for Trivial Pursuit. Daniel is also years into his battle with brain cancer. He experienced a seizure while on a Zoom call at work in late 2020 and quite literally, his life changed within minutes. After his operation he started to talk about his story but had always known it was more than just him. From then, More Than Our Story became a PROJECT that has evolved into the starting point it is today.

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