Good morning, Halton Hills!

This morning was a pretty good test for the Elite, Platinum and Regional Development groups. An important aspect of swimming that I stress is being able to function properly under stress (that is to swim technically well when you're body is tired and doesn't want to). Up until this point, the main point was fixing strokes and spending a LOT of time on FUNCTION with limited work towards stress. This morning, we added a little stress.

Last night, the Elite and Platinum groups worked on goal setting with an important message; its easy to get excited about your goals when its nice outside and its exciting. Its not so easy when its cold and dark outside and there is a lot of work to do. Its much easier to stay in bed at those times.

This morning was cold and dark. The practice was basically long distance swimming... long enough to create the fatigue I desired in order to test everyone's ability to FUNCTION under STRESS (far from the exciting, goal oriented atmosphere, but still very necessary). While this morning's focus was not speed, I feel that those who put the effort into the right things got some great benefit from what we were doing. Athletes are going to be sore today and probably tomorrow, but lets not forget that it comes with the territory. We cannot break new ground without pushing ourselves.

The struggle for the next few weeks will be making sure that we are doing the right things in the water while we're tired and sore to make sure that we can get better, faster, stronger and swim properly. While no one does anything alone, we should remember that everything can be done with the help of your team mates; not by staying home to rest. We need to make everyone around us better and you can't do that if you're not there.

Lets get better today!

"We don't have to be superstars or win championships... All we have to do is learn to rise to every occasion, give our best effort, and make those around us better as we do it." ~ John Wooden