Swim Coach for 15 years: training, lifting, and nutrition :)

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Hey Forum,

If you're here looking for advice, I'm more than open to being asked questions if this is of interest.

I swam competitively from a young age and wanted to go to the Olympics. The finical circumstances of my parents never permitted me that level of competition, but I had a technical swim coach who did go to trials and sent other kids I competed against to Harvard with a full scholarship. I started coaching as a private business, my goal was to provide the level of coaching I wished I could of had. I'm going back to school and won't be so involved with as many athletes as I have been over the past few years, but I have worked with international triathletes and national level competitors. I'm not yet 30 and this has been a terrific boon to my life.

Nutrition and lifting has been a natural offshoot interest to add to my coaching skills. If there's anything on topic that you might want to ask, I'm down for pointing you in the direction of good resources, or replying with the best answers I may be able to provide!

A quick tidbit of what I advocate for general health: low-carbohydrate high-fat eating, an educational approach to any coaching, and progressive strength training in Olympic lifting technique

Cheers!

I was wondering if you were an Aspie or High Functioning Autistic. If so how has swimming and exercise affected your life in dealing with this condition.

@OP: You're not gonna try to sell us anything, are you?

You've been a swimming coach since you were thirteen?

Not the questions I was expecting!

-Jimmy, if I'm correct in thinking that your distinction here is between Aspie (or not diagnosed) and High Functioning Autistic (diagnosed) then I would refer to the first identification more closely at the time being, considering that I'm only in the process of consulting a specialist at the time being.

As to how I think this may have affected my life, I think it gave me something I was interested in pursuing, puzzling over, in an environment where to be engaged with it was around people. My usual proclivity to stay in my room with a journal and books would have never offered me the level of skill or experience necessary to pursue swimming and coaching development further. The thinking I did to improve in such a technical sport also gave me the conviction that my mind was capable of achieving real world results through the effort I put into practice. . . It was also great that swimming as an individual sport, during races I could hear no one but myself and the water. That was thrilling to me.

-Fnord, not trying to sell anything, just interested in talking about what I know and potentially sharing experiences with people who may be motivated to ask about them. Now, starting business with someone is something I would be interested in! But that's not something I expect to find anywhere by having the intention to sell whatever I can coerce someone into paying for. . . I am not a catfish. And neither is it my motivation or intention here that there will be any monetary exchange. Swimming has been a life long interest, I've developed that into coaching. That's why I'm posting.

-Prometheus, I started volunteering as a junior coach when I was just about that age, potentially younger, I just don't recall--I was swimming on a team for 7 years at that point. The coach would tell me what drills to run with the younger athletes and I would give feedback. I started doing teacher-training courses not long after that and haven't stopped since.

Since this is your first post, I would like to welcome you to the WrongPlanet community.

Many of the negative traits of Aspies are driven by stress. Stress is cumulative in nature. Unless one can learn to purge stress from their system, it is stored in their muscles and nervous system and can be very destructive.

One of the ways to purge stress is with exercise. But there is a secret here. Normal exercise only relieves stress for a short period of time (minutes, hours). But a certain type of exercise can purge stress for days/weeks/months. This type of exercise is called maximal or supramaximal exercise. This is exercise where the intensity or individual’s maximal oxygen uptake (percentage of VO2max) is 100% or greater. Examples are sprints and power exercises.

I would judge competitive swimming to fall within that type of exercise. So in general, I would say that you picked the right career for an Aspie because it allows you to offload stress. In the middle brain (fight/flight response), the chemical hormone chain released to a threatening situation which is not completely used up is stored in the limbs. So by relieving stress in your two arms and two legs you are almost there. You have one more limb to worry about and that is your neck/jaws/vocal cords. To relieve that limb, it is important to scream every once and awhile at the top of your lungs. But it must be done in a socially acceptable manner. Never scream at a person. I live in the rural countryside and my dog is a free-range dog. When it is mealtime and my dog is up and about; I call my dog very loudly. I yell so loud that I can hear my voice being echoed back to me from nearby hills and mountains. My voice carries about a mile. The call is so strong that it borders on a roar. It is a very good feeling. It gives me a sense of great strength, like I could split a mountain in two just with my voice alone. I feel strong to my core. It is a great stress reliever or normalizer. And it is socially acceptable in the countryside.

One might try howling like a wolf at the moon. There is an individual on this site from New York City that howls at the subway cars as they pass by deep down in the subway stations. But there are other ways to scream in a socially acceptable manner. A singer can do this if it is a very powerful song. A barker in the county fair can do this. A fan at a rock concert can sing along at the top of their lungs. Even a Girl Scout can practice barking in front of the local grocery store when she sells Girl Scout cookies. Or find yourself a soundproof room.

That's really informative, Jimmy, thanks for the reply. I do think that swimming does fall under the category of training that you're talking about. I would suspect that running sprints or lifting may also, however I'm not extremely familiar with that topic. I do know that many kinesiology students do know how to test for VO2 max output, given that I believe it's an indicator of your training capacity.

There is some head and neck involvement in swimming, but I think I got the majority of my yelling from lifeguard training, and now singing to Unleash The Archers while driving somewhere ^-^

A mountainous back yard to have a nice dog to roam with sounds like a magical place. That's a fantastic visual. My husband (he's neurodiverse) has spoken of moving to the country and getting sheep--I have insisted that if he's getting sheep then I'll be getting a sheep dog <3

We raised sheep once. I put up an electrical fence around a hilly part of my yard. That is where they grazed. At the end of the year, I rounded them up and took them in to be slaughtered. But because I was not a farm boy, I had little training on how to capture sheep. Every time I got close, they would bolt and run off. Chasing them on a hill was next to impossible. I spent a hour with minimal success.

Then one of the old timers showed me how. It was quite simple really. All I had to do was put a little corn meal in my hand and the sheep would come right up to me and feed out of my hand.

How many calories do you take in on a training day? What does a typical day of food intake look like for you?

-Jimmy, what tricks of the trade! I get that kind of sense with coaching lots, someones doing something one way and having so much trouble and it only takes one tip to make it a world easier.

-Noca, I'm not in training myself at this moment because I'm recovering after a motor vehicle accident. But I know that caloric intake is highly dependent on the athlete and the amount of work that they're doing. Someone like Phelps would spend the majority of their day doing nothing but training and eating.

Here's an article the Washington Post did on the variation of Phelps diet: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/ear ... 30a3f8606f

There's a lot of attention recently being shed on the quality of the calories you intake and their impact on performance, rather than something simple like a number value. Peter Attia and Gary Taubes are great resources if you're interested in that sort of info.

What tips of the trade are you interested in?

I meant more like -- woah, that's a great tip that farmer told you to take up with your sheep! I wasn't fishing for tips

I swam competitively from age 4 to age 18. Couldn't keep doing it in college, but miss the exercise.

Antrax, I really enjoy the quote you have at the bottom of your post.

If you want to get back into swimming, but you'd like it to be more interesting--I found reading a resource on technique informed my practice a lot more and made it more like playtime. Swimming Fastest, and The Coaching Bible were two of the best resources I found.

Thanks Starlit_Mind I like it to, which is why I have it as my signature. I probably won't ever get back into swimming for a few reasons.

1) It is an unforgiving sport, without great commitment I will never be close to what I was in high school, and it will just make me sad to no longer be able to swim at that level.

2) It is a sport that requires a fair bit of planning in that I have to find a suitable, pool, practice time, make sure I have non-worn out swimsuits etc.

3) My life is a lot busier and harder than it used to be.

Antrax, I can respect that. I was in a motor vehicle accident and swimming now is not the same. I do still try to jump in and enjoy a few laps, but I'm not ready for more than that at this stage of my recovery. With all the time I used to devote to swimming however, I do have a lot of focus and attention that I put elsewhere happily.

I found swimming nearly priceless for the understanding I have of training and fitness. Lifting Olympic style weights, rock climbing, and yoga have been great new avenues to for staying in touch with fitness outside of the pool. Do you have anything you still do as a part of your life after swimming?