If you want to be a champion, you have to train like a champion

When you have a new group of young beginners, future swimming competitors, the first thing I automatically determine is that according to their constitution I immediately know which swimming style is ideal for that child and which exercises are ideal for them, because the biomechanics of movement greatly depends on the child's constitution. The second thing I notice in a few days is the child's temperament and character, and I mainly achieve this by monitoring their reactions through various children's games that I use in training. These are very important items that determine the most effective and correct start of swimming training for future competitors. I very often have hyperactive children, and I try to direct them to swimming as soon as possible so that they can materialize that excess energy in the right way.

The knowledge I gained during my student days helps me a lot, and I constantly upgrade it by reading the latest achievements, studies, and news from today's domain, both swimming and medicine and science in general.

On the other hand, there is also the other side of the coin, which forces you to constantly fight against ignorance which, thanks to the system of partocratic discrimination, seriously affects the realization, direction, and manifestation of true values ​​in the right way.

It is completely irrelevant to talk about any institutional legitimacy of licensing in the environment I am currently in, and the consequences of such a system are visible every day and at every step.

Coaching all categories of young swimmers is a great challenge for me, and as time goes by, I am increasingly attracted to the special features that swimming as a water sport offers.

It is also incredible how much ignorance many coaches are not even aware of, and which they expansively manifest in their work, hampering or even stopping, unfortunately, many God-given talents in their development.

A real coach must know which exercises are ideal for each swimmer, but it is even more important to know which ones are harmful. A real coach does not adapt swimmers to training, but vice versa, training must be adapted to the swimmer's performance and skill. A real coach must follow all the latest achievements and training techniques in swimming that are constantly improving and apply them in the right way. It is also a catastrophic mistake to force a swimmer to a technique if he does not have enough strength to perform it, especially if that technique is older than thirty years. Due to the lack of strength, the swimmer's movements are not correct, and the false movements that a child learns in this way are very difficult to correct later. I only recently realized what the only way to successfully achieve this is and to correct what they learned wrongly.

Based on these parameters that you must apply during training, I always quickly notice and see the complete picture and expertise of the coaches who do this very demanding job.

My constant improvement is persistent, studious, and finding the best possible combinations in creating the ideal concept of the most effective training for various types of swimming sprints, and I am slowly working on the middle lines. My colleagues are persistently trying to copy a new exercise from somewhere that will be ideal for them to impress their swimmers and their parents. These are mostly exercises that imitate swimming movements, which is not the most effective, but it is still a form that is not harmful. In addition to explosive strength exercises, I also find the ideal, or rather the most effective, techniques in the water that correct the most common technical errors in swimmers. In this process, I also notice new chronic mistakes made by long-time experienced swimmers, such as the formal last water grip before surfacing after an “underwater” jump, or untimely release of the flaps in the last part of the starting jump and transitioning to an underwater starting “catapult”, or too large an angle of water grip with the legs, which are done by almost everyone in all age groups of these swimmers.

Of course, if other coaches start interfering with your hard-earned success, you will lose it. Then the saying “Many midwives, many unwilling children” comes true, and only then do swimmers have chronic diseases that you cannot get rid of so easily. And while I am trying to create a champion in swimming, for many the only thing that matters is that these children keep their status as long as possible and that they earn as much as possible from the membership fees they pay. This is not the first time I have encountered this logic.

Training does not take place the way many people think, according to a model or program, because training is a very individual thing, especially if the sport is also individual. It is much easier, of course, to treat everything as a team sport and just recite the exercises to everyone at training.

It is completely pointless to ask beginners to learn a technique in the sport of swimming that even the oldest groups have not mastered, and that is precisely the reason why they have not. Because as beginners, due to lack of movement strength, they learned a complete fake, and after that no one corrected that fake. There are progressive exercises and steps which achieve the ultimate performance of the technique. All the world's most famous swimming schools that create champions successfully apply them. It is simply the only right way.

Seventy years ago, swimming with dolphins was considered breaststroke. Until about forty years ago, swimmers did not wear caps or goggles. Many rules have changed, and swimming techniques, particularly, have advanced. Today, the changes are most pronounced. Every cent is bought in every possible way. The starting jump of ten years ago is a completely outdated technique, and if you want to be a champion, you have to follow these changes every step of the way.

It is humiliating for the mind when someone generally refutes these basics of training.

Functional training is movement training.

In human movement, there is pulling, pushing, changing the level of the body's center of gravity, and body rotation. Certain muscle bundles are responsible for each movement, and for each you have a corresponding exercise. For more complex movements and techniques, there are progressive exercises that gradually, step by step, lead the body to perfect execution of the technique. In competitive training, it is essential to progress methodically in strength, speed, and technique. In each subsequent training session, you must gradually progress step by step. Just a small error in the number of repetitions, pauses, or working on a too demanding technique, if they do not have enough strength for that technique, leads to a possible large drop in the progress and form of the competitor. You cannot, for example, force competitors to do a bucket turn in backstroke if the competitor has not previously learned to do a circle in the water in one stroke. Due to lack of strength, they will learn incorrectly and will have a chronically bad angle when taking off or will make a technical breakdown that can be very difficult to correct later, even when they get stronger. It's as if you've disqualified him from further progressive progress in every sense. Every movement has its own muscles that activate it, stabilize it, and help it perform. In every rhythmic movement, energy is spent in a specific way, and the cellular structure responds by structurally upgrading itself or, if the training is negative, by losing and disintegrating. If you don't know these basic things, then it's better to learn them as soon as possible, or if you can't learn them, then it's best to focus only on the most basic initial steps in swimming. A competitive sport that leads to possible professionalism does not allow for an amateur approach to any segment of training, and it is especially important to set it up that way from the very beginning.

If the swimmers do not ask me, I no longer correct them. And it is not easy for me to watch. but at the moment, I am only invited to help because this is not my story.

I will also not allow anyone to feed their sick vanity because of my best intentions.

If it seems to you that the coaches do not know even the most basic things about training, anatomy, or metabolism but just persistently recite training concepts that are outdated from fifty years ago, you do not need to say it to their face, my advice is to work and do your best.

Training doesn't work that well, but you have to adapt. For now, it has to be that way because the circumstances are like that.

I do what I know best; I do my job, and I enjoy it. I find the most effective exercises and concepts for all swimming styles and the most diverse profiles of swimmers.

As they progress, I progress, too. Of course, I will always look to help every child progress in swimming. Children are pure souls; they see everything clearly, and you can't fool them in any way.

Their happiness and progress are also my happiness and progress.