One of the things that I am constantly asked is do you need a coach or can you go about this thing on your own? My answer is always the same whether you are a triathlete or a swimmer. My answer is you don’t necessarily need a coach; if you know enough about training plans, technique, race strategies and race pacing then you can get some pretty good results on your own.
Typically coaches who have looked at other athletes and coached for a number of years can do well competing on their own and training on their own without having a coach or squad. It doesn’t hurt to have a coach because someone looking from the outside in at your training program and looking at your technique then they can make some suggestions as to what you might need to adjust in order to get better results.
That’s why I put together Effortless Swimming’s membership Program which is our online swim coaching community for triathletes and swimmers. In there we have all of our video programs, all of our workouts. You can submit a video of yourself for some technique analysis. The swimmers in there are getting really good results because they are getting advice that they might not have got before and they’re able to access this big data base of information and videos that is helping them improve their technique and their swim speed.
One of our members joined last week and he went through 20 minutes of some open water videos where we talk about different strategies and open water skills. Just from that he has dropped his swim time down 6 minutes in a 2km open water swim as a result of going through 20 minutes of video.
That is just one example of what having a coach can do for you; by all means you can go about training and your swimming and triathlons on your own but there is a huge advantage of having a community and a coach who can suggest different things in order to improve your swimming. When you are stuck in the middle of it and doing all the hard work sometimes you can miss things; I have been through that myself.
If you have a coach looking from the outside in then they can make some good suggestions as to what you might need to adjust in order to improve your swimming and triathlons.
That’s it for swim news this week, if you would like to join us at our online coaching program and I will see you inside.
The website you mentioned is even more expensive than a coach to register and get the info , and its free version offers almost no info.
Hi Mario,
Swimprove is where you get access to all of our products (over $400 worth) plus you get video analysis and one on one support from me (normally $100/hour) so it’s a much more affordable option for most people for just over $1 a day.