Motivation

While at the gym the other day, I caught a CNN piece on Olympic swimmer, Cullen Jones. Sports Illustrated just posted the article Jones Seizes Swimming Spotlight. It appears I am not the only one moved by Jones' motivating story and commendable work in the community.

Please find the article below:

Cullen Jones can still picture the top of the water slide at Dorney Park in Pennsylvania where his life took a fateful turn when he was five years old. His dad Ronald, had made him promise to not let go of the inner tube on the way down, so, Ronald shot down the slide, screaming all the way, Cullen followed, gripping the tube tightly. "When I hit the bottom of the ride, there was this huge pool of water, and I flipped right over," Jones recalls. But he didn't let go of the tube. "I actually passed out," he says. "They had to give me CPR, and when I woke up, I was like, okay, what's the next ride? It could have changed my life completely if it was traumatic. I might never have touched the water again."

It was traumatic for Jones' mom, Debra, who signed up her only child for swimming lessons the next week. Jones started competitive swimming a few years later, and on Thursday night, he became just the third African-American to make an Olympic swim team when he finished third in the 100 free, good enough for a place on the 4x100 relay team. On Friday morning, Jones set an American record of 21.59 in the 50 free preliminaries and emerged from the pool to a standing ovation.

This is just the spotlight Jones has been hoping for since he burst onto the international swim scene with a Pan Pac win in the 50 free two years ago. He's hoping minority kids will see his success, get inspired and demand their parents take them to get swim lessons. Jones isn't necessarily trying to inspire the next Michael Phelps, though he wouldn't mind that. Mostly he doesn't want any little kid to have an experience like he did that doesn't have a happy ending.

A recent study sponsored by USA Swimming found that nearly 60 percent of African-American and Hispanic and Latino kids in the United States don't know how to swim, twice the percentage of their Caucasian counterparts, and that they are more than twice as likely to drown. To help address the problem, Jones has talked to schools in at-risks communities and held free swim clinics at YMCAs as part of USA Swimming's Make A Splash Initiative. "Learning to swim is a matter of safety," he says.

A surge in swimming's visibility coupled with his sponsorship with high-profile companies like Nike could give him an unprecedented platform to reach minority kids, says Jones. "The timing has been great. I love the fact that I can be a role model, that I've been given that title and that label. As Tiger Woods did for golf, I'm hoping that I can ascend to a level where I can do that for swimming."

Jones is not the first elite-level black swimmer in the U.S. "There were a number before me. But the problem is, they didn't get exposure. Maritza Correira (2004 silver medalist in the 4x100 relay) got exposure for being the first black female Olympic swimmer, but did she get enough? Not really."

Jones' first swim team, in Newark, was predominantly African-American. His role model, however, was Gary Hall, Jr., who swam in his first Olympics in 1996, when Jones was 12. "I never had an African-American swimmer come up and talk to me ... but Gary Hall, Jr. was big," says Jones, who kept a poster of Hall on his wall. "Watching the '96 Olympics, and watching him swim, I was really psyched. I was like, Dad, that's where I want to be. He said, 'Really? Then you have to put some work in.'"

Ronald passed away from lung cancer when Jones was 16, but Jones kept working, becoming a star at NC State before signing a lucrative deal with Nike two years ago. In the finals of the 50 on Saturday, he'll be racing in the same field as Hall, who is trying to make his fourth Olympic team. It's not likely Jones will turn to jello in Hall's presence like he did four years ago in Long Beach, when he was, he confesses, completely psyched out by the sight of Hall in his boxing robe and didn't make the semifinals. After all, it was Hall's eight-year-old American record that Jones broke Friday morning.

Jones wants to win Saturday, of course, and he wants to be seen. "My job is swim really fast," he says," and maybe some kid will be sitting on a couch looking at me, and saying, Dad, I want to do that."

Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/writers/kelli_anderson/07/05/cullen.jones/#ixzz0uHW6yInL

Find Opportunities in Difficulties, Not Difficulties in Opportunities

I have long been a fan of pulling. Give me a pull buoy over a kickboard any day, however, I often have to rectify a slipping pull buoy, taking time at the wall to put it back in place. But is this challenge really a challenge or merely an opportunity in disguise? Flip your pull buoy sideways between the bony part of your knees to help strengthen your groin muscles.



I've also found that swapping the pull buoy for a kickboard can prove equally challenging - you REALLY have to squeeze your legs together to keep from losing a kickboard! Are you ready to find an opportunity rather than a difficulty?

Swim In Spring Meet 2010

Swim Meet How To

When it comes to swim meets, there are some key things to remember:

1.) Your body will need lots of energy for your races - carbo load the night before (i.e., enjoy a big bowl of pasta)

2.) Visualize your race and then make your vision reality

3.) Pump yourself up with music!

4.) Remain hydrated - bring a water bottle to the meet

5.) Shivering wastes energy - bundle up between races!

6.) Warm up behind the block immediately before your race by jumping up and down and shaking out your muscles

7.) Practice good sportsmanship - congratulate your competitors

8.) Cheer for your teammates

9.) Bring a healthy snack - no junk food!

10.) Have fun!

10 + 10 = 20

10 Reasons to Practice Yoga

1. Flexibility:

Yoga poses safely stretch your muscles, releasing the lactic acid that builds up and causes stiffness, tension, pain, and fatigue. Additionally yoga increases the range of motion in joints and the lubrication in the joints. The stretch is not limited to the muscles - it also reaches the soft tissues of your body, including ligaments, tendons, and the fascia sheath that surrounds the muscles.

2. Strength:

Practicing yoga will help improve muscle tone, strength and endurance. Poses like Downward Dog, Upward Dog and Plank Pose improve upper-body strength while standing poses build strength in hamstrings, quadriceps, and abdominal muscles. The lower back is strengthened through poses like Upward Dog and Chair.

3. Posture:

Increased flexibility and strength results in better posture. Most standing and sitting poses, which rely on the abdominal muscles as support, develop core strength. With a stronger core, you're more likely to sit and stand "tall." Another benefit of yoga is the increased body awareness, which helps you to realize when you're slouching or slumping so you can adjust your posture.

4. Breathing:

Because of the deep breathing involved in yoga, lung capacity tends to improve. This in turn can improve sports performance and endurance. Most forms of yoga emphasize deepening and lengthening the breath. This stimulates the relaxation response -- the opposite of the fight-or-flight adrenaline boost of the stress response.

5. Stress Relief:

People who participate in yoga tend to feel more relaxed than they were prior to practicing yoga. Some yoga styles use specific meditation techniques to quiet the thoughts that often underlie stress. Other yoga styles rely on deep breathing techniques to focus the mind on the breath and calm the mind. Yoga decreases the catecholamines, the hormones produced by the adrenal glands in response to stress.

6. Mood Elevator:

Yoga students claim they feel happier and more at ease after class. Yoga boosts the oxygen levels to the brain, which can help to alleviate depression.

7. Healthy Heart:

Yoga helps to lower blood pressure and slow the heart rate, which benefits people with hypertension and heart disease. Yoga was a key component to the heart disease program designed by Dean Ornish, MD that was the first program to partly reverse heart disease through lifestyle and diet rather than surgery.

8. Help with Preexisting Medical Conditions:

Yoga is recommended as an adjunct treatment for chronic medical conditions such as depression, heart disease, asthma, back pain and arthritis.

9. Concentration:

By keeping the mind focused on a single object or mantra during a yoga session, you work to improve your power of concentration and focused attention in and outside of yoga practice.

10. Energy:

Yoga exercises, breath control training and use of yoga body locks all work to activate and balance your energy pathways, giving you the vitality and power you need to maximize your potential.


10 Reasons to Swim

1. Flexibility:

Swimming aids flexibility. Heated pools help the muscles to relax, which promotes flexibility and enables stretching of the muscles. An easy swim flushes out toxins that can build up after intense lactic-acid building endurance workout, which helps to prevent muscle tightness and soreness.

2. Strength:

Swimming uses nearly all of the major muscle groups. Water provides 12 times more resistance than air, so it takes more work to move through water than air. It tones and strengthens both the upper and lower body. Swimming not only helps to strengthen muscles but, too, it helps to build long, lean and flexible muscles, which help to boost metabolism.

3. Posture:

Your core muscles have a lot to do with posture. Swimming develops core body strength, which in turn improves posture and prevents lower back pain.

4. Breathing:

Studies have shown that swimmers have higher lung volumes and capacities than land based athletes and non athletes. Swim training studies have also demonstrated increases in total lung capacities in children and young adults. This is likely due to swimmers having to breath in a restricted breathing pattern with repeated expansion of the lungs.

5. Stress Relief:

Because swimming allows more oxygen to flow to your muscles and forces you to regulate your breathing, it is extremely relaxing. By focusing your attention on your body and physical self, you allow yourself a break from your mind.

6. Healthy Heart:

Swimming improves the body’s use of oxygen without overworking the heart.
Studies have shown that a workout routine that includes swimming can help reduce and possibly prevent high blood pressure, which lowers your risk for heart disease and stroke.

7. Help with Preexisting Medical Conditions:

The buoyancy provided by the water is beneficial to people with osteoporosis and arthritis as well as pregnant women. Swimming helps with asthma as well. In fact most asthma websites recommend swimming as one of the best forms of exercise for asthmatics. When you take deep breaths and hold your breath at regular intervals, you increase your lung capacity and train your lungs into steady regular breathing patterns, which helps asthmatics.

8. Low risk of injury:

There is little to no stress on the bones, joints or connective tissues while swimming because of buoyancy. Indeed, in the water you weight 1/10th less. On average a swimmer can burn as many calories per hour as a runner, however swimmers’ bodies are cushioned from the harsh pounding and stress on joints and muscles by the buoyancy of the water. With very little risk of injury, swimming is held as one of the safest forms of exercise and recommended as a form of rehabilitation for the injured.

9. Longevity:

Swimming promotes longevity. In a recent study of more than 40,000 men ages 20 to 90, swimmers were 50 percent less likely to die during the 32 year study period than were walkers or runners.

10. Endurance:

Typically you can sustain swimming longer than other activities. Swimmers with proper technique can swim for longer periods of time than runners and burn more calories as a result.


Equals 20 Reasons to Participate in Physique Swimming's First Swim Yoga Clinic

Fake It, Don't Break It

Any parent who gets his or her young child in the water earns my respect. It's my belief when it comes to swimming, the earlier the better. But if you are joining your child in the water in a class like Me and My Shadow, you ought to be aware of one thing - you must fake it, don't break it.

By this I mean when you are in the pool with your child, you are on stage and your audience is your child. In this situation you are an Oscar winning actor - you effortlessly move your audience with a smile or a look of fright. Although it's easy to be nervous with your child in the water, it is vital to play down these nerves and play up your enthusiasm. Children are uncannily perceptive and pick up on emotions easily. If your child unintentionally gets his or her face wet, avoid giving into your nerves. Try not to worry about how your child may react and instead pretend it is the most incredible and amazing feat. Many a time I have seen a child accidentally splash himself, pause uncertain and then burst into tears after hearing his mom exclaim, "oh sweetie are you okay". That sort of experience may hinder progress.

The same experience with a different reaction from the parent can be beneficial. If, instead of responding to the situation with nerves and fear, the mother had shown excitement and joy, the child most likely would have paused uncertain and then showed a tentative smile before, perhaps, doing it again.

When you're in class, don't forget, you're the star and the show must go on.

It's Never Too Soon (Part 1)

It's never too soon to learn to swim - but it can definitely be too late. Drowning is a leading cause of death in youth. The inability to swim is especially dangerous in warmer, coastal states where drowning is the most preventable cause of death in children under the age of 6. Starting children in swim lessons at a young age can help protect against drowning and water related injuries but there are additional benefits not widely known.

As children develop new experiences create neural pathways throughout the central nervous system. Particularly in children aged 6 months to 2 years, swimming lessons can aid the development of synapses, which in turn are connected to increased cognitive reasoning skills. Pre-school children involved in activities like swimming are shown in recent studies to trend upward on the learning curve.