Core exercises without equipment video

Stupid things I’ve done Number 3,754 involved a mountain in Switzerland, snow, an inflatable inner tube and a cliff. It led to me damaging my lower back (and therefore taking up swimming). It flares up every so often and the best option is to go back to doing some core exercises. I should do them…

Just another long pool swim

(WordPress somehow chewed the original of this post, which had followed the Socrates quote, so below is a quick and lazy rewrite). Last Friday we (2010 Channel aspirants) met for a 10 hour pool swim. I had only approximately 4 hours sleep the previous night and was feeling tired but expecting the worst after the…

Preparation for a 10 hour swim…

Alarm clock set to 4 a.m. 2 home-made Solo Bars (560 calories each), 1 ham sandwich, 4 chicken sandwiches, 1 flask of Tomato & pasta soup, 1 flask of coffee, 1.5 litre home-made smoothie, 1/2 litre milk, 4 litres of isotonic drink, 500gr. of grapes, 1 banana, 1 packet recovery drink, 1 small slice of…

Saturday Mornings

I love Saturday mornings. Rest day and after 6 1/2 hours session yesterday, it’s even better. Put on some music, have a fruit smoothie, grind and brew the coffee beans, throw on some pancakes. Not training food but pretty nice for a change. Like being a normal human. The Magnificent Seven, and Eddie, assembled at…

Fridays are harder than Mondays.

Our scheduled training week starts on Thursday, but my day off is Saturday. Currently Sunday is sea swimming, so Monday is my first day back in the pool. So right now I swim pool for 5 days straight, finishing the previous week’s schedule on Wednesday and immediately starting the next week’s schedule on Thursday .…

How To: Understand Swimming Notation

For those who may be reading this and aren’t familiar with swimming notation, I’ll do a brief round-up. I don’t go through session plans for a variety of reasons, but this week there’s a bit more of it. These are useful if you get a copy of someone’s plan or find some on the ‘net,…

“Magic cups”

Yesterday talking about ice being one of the best solutions for swimmer’s shoulder, brings up the question of the best way to apply ice. My sports masseur, Vinny Power, who is just great, told me of his “magic cups” way. Fill some disposable polystyrene coffee cups with water and freeze. Because they are ‘styrene, you…

Shoulder pain – the Swimmer’s Bane

When I started swimming OW long distance, my first long distance swim was Clew Bay, a 12km in the West Of Ireland. (Boat drop onto an island out in the bay, guided swim into Newport Town, through the islands…you’d get lost without a boat guide). A week later I started to have shoulder soreness, especially…

Anatomy of an 8 Hour swim

So three plus hour swims are a weekly (or more) feature of training right now (end of January ’10). “Normal” day’s training is hovering around two  to two & an half. I did a four hour about a week and half ago, just to see how I feeling. I had been planning to do a…

First 8 hour swim done –

Happy to have finished. Having contracted yet another lung infection really quickly after the flu earlier this week, I had recovered enough to do a quick hard hour yesterday to test whether my lungs would hold without an asthma attack. One hour isn’t much of test so I did some speed-work to stress the breathing…