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If you’ve coached long enough, you’ve lived this moment. An athlete drops time. A parent beams. And then you hear it: “Well, we’ve been doing private lessons.” Sometimes it’s a local technician. Sometimes it’s an online video analyst. Sometimes it’s a strength coach, mindset coach, or underwater dolphin kick whisperer on Instagram. And if you’re the primary coach, it can feel like you’re suddenly competing for your own athlete. Years ago, ASCA (the American Swimming Coaches A

For a long time, this was just a dream. The kind you carry quietly, almost carefully, because saying it out loud feels reckless. A book. A real one. Not notes, not essays, not half-finished thoughts scribbled between practices—but something tangible. Something finished. A younger version of me certainly wouldn’t have thought I would be here. The mountain felt too high, the path too unclear. And yet, somehow, here I am, standing just shy of the finish line, holding a thing tha

The Bad Bunny Super Bowl halftime show hit me like a truck. It made me cry, laugh, dance, remember, and feel everything at once. I didn’t expect it. I didn’t know it would shake something loose in me that has been quiet for decades. For much of my life, I have tried to hide my culture, my history, my background. I grew up speaking both English and Spanish, but from a young age, I was pushed to focus on English, to speak it perfectly, sin acento. My parents knew the world woul

Many of us were taught to think about sport or competition a certain way. Perhaps it’s part of the culture of living in the U.S. or our modern worlds monetization of time. You compete to win, earn something; Medals. Trophies. Rankings. Records. Glory. Fame. Prestige. Pride. Win or lose. First or forgotten. But there is another way to look at it—one that feels older, deeper, and far more honest. Sport, at its core, is not about beating someone else. It is about meeting yoursel

This week, I had to deal with something that every coach eventually experiences. We had morning practice with our top senior group—the group with the highest standards, the biggest goals, and the expectation of full commitment. Out of 18 swimmers, 10 showed up. Not terrible. But not great. Later that afternoon, when everyone was back together, I decided not to lecture. Instead, I asked a few questions. “How many of you spent more than two hours on your phone today.” No words

Big swim meets can be emotional, for swimmers and for the parents watching from the stands. Swimmers feel the pressure to perform, while parents want nothing more than to see their child confident, calm, and proud of their effort. Stress and anxiety often show up at high-level meets, and that’s normal. What matters is how swimmers learn to manage those feelings. One of the simplest and most effective tools for doing that is routine . Stress Is Normal. Especially When Kids Ca

At first glance, this feels like a practical question. Why should I try to improve my backstroke if I never race it? If I’m not a backstroker, why spend time on it at all? But if you sit with the question a little longer, it becomes something much deeper. It stops being about backstroke and starts being about why we pursue improvement in the first place—why we train, why we compete, and why sport matters beyond medals and times. This question gets to the heart of growth. Impr

Nearly every Local Swimming Committee (LSC) across the country offers what are commonly called “last chance” or “qualifier” meets. The purpose is straightforward: swimmers attend these meets in hopes of earning a qualifying time for a larger, more competitive championship meet. On the surface, that sounds reasonable. But over time, the way we frame  these meets—and the expectations we attach to them—can have a much bigger impact on swimmers than we realize. The meet itself is

If you’ve ever watched a swimmer rush onto the blocks “cold,” or seen a great early swim followed by a flat, sluggish race later in the meet, there’s a good chance the issue wasn’t a bad race strategy or effort, it was preparation and recovery. Warm-up and warm-down are not filler time at swim meets. They are performance tools. When done well, they help swimmers race faster, feel better, and hold their form deep into long meet sessions, and multiple day championships. Let’s b

Our teams January Character Theme: Resilience & Stress Recovery Why Learning to Manage Stress May Be the Ultimate Performance Advantage If there is one skill today’s young athletes need more than almost any other, it is not a faster start, a more dynamic dolphin kick, or a better turn. It is the ability to handle stress, recover from setbacks, and keep moving forward without “burning out” or giving up. In January, our focus is Resilience & Stress Recovery , helping swimmers

In competitive swimming, it’s easy to fall into a trap, a trap many athletes spend years in without even realizing it. We begin to believe that our happiness and fulfillment live on the scoreboard. That our worth is measured in tenths of a second. That joy is something we only get to feel after a best time, a cut, or a medal. Our identity and self worth are entangled with cuts and comparisons These milestones are worth celebrating, absolutely. They’re exciting and meaningful.

Success’s in sports isn’t just determined by strength, speed, or skill, your mind plays an equally important role. How you talk to yourself, how you manage fear, and how you stay present under pressure are game-changing skills that can elevate performance when it matters most. Why the Mind Matters Before a race or big performance, nerves can creep in quickly. Thoughts like What if I fail? What will people think? What if I’m not good enough?  create fear. Fear lives in the fut

Rethinking the “Taper”: Why I Don’t Call It That, and What Actually Happens in the Body Let’s get this out of the way early: I hate the word “taper.” My typical response when kids ask, “are we tapering?” or “when do we start taper?” is, “we don’t taper in this group…” Which is always followed by shocked and blank stares. ;-) The veterans of the group just chuckle. I rarely use the word “taper” when describing the training block leading to a suited and shaved meet because, ove

As a college swim coach, I started to notice a pattern I couldn’t quite ignore. Some athletes seemed to swim their best when they were in a stable romantic relationship. Others, especially around breakups, struggled to find the same sharpness in their training or racing. Even more interesting: this pattern wasn’t evenly distributed. In many cases, I noticed that some male athletes seemed to thrive  both during relationships and after breakups, while some female athletes strug

Energy drinks are everywhere these days, on the sideline, in the gym bag, at tournaments. As an athlete or a parent of an athlete, it’s tempting to think of them as “performance boosters.” But the reality is more complicated than the flashy marketing. Are they truly performance-enhancing? Or are they a health risk, or a mental crutch? The short answer: all three can be true. Here’s a breakdown of what the science actually says, plus guidance for making smarter decisions. What

What USA swimming club swimmers and their parents should understand about the value of 50-meter training. Most American club swimmers spend the majority of their year racing and training in short course yards (SCY) . That’s the course most age-group championships, high school meets, and college seasons take place. So many families naturally ask: “If all the “important” meets are in yards, and my goal is to swim in college… why swim long course meters?” “What’s the point of a

I hear a lot of talk about mentors these days as if the only way to grow is to find one great guru who takes you under their wing. In fact there are quite a few people who make a pretty good living doing just that. But the truth is, excellence in any field rarely comes from being hand-picked by a master. It comes from the drive to seek , study , and steal from everyone who’s doing it well. “Self-Taught” Isn’t a Limitation. It’s a Superpower In college I was an art major, I d

Teaching Athletes to Lead Themselves As coaches, we talk a lot about “building character” we hope our athletes learn to become resilient, self-motivated, and responsible through sport. But hope isn’t a strategy. If we truly want to grow strong character, we have to teach it deliberately , not just assume it happens between laps or sets. This month, our team’s character development theme is Self-Driven Motivation & Ownership  helping swimmers build the kind of inner drive that

I heard something recently and it made me think.... “This new generation is doomed.” Hmmm… Is it? I’m not so sure, but if it is, how do we help? What I’m sharing below comes from a mix of thought, practice, and plenty of trial and error on my part, trying to figure out the best ways to reach and work with today’s athletes. I’ve leaned a lot on Tim Elmore’s work, along with my own day-to-day coaching experiences. Hopefully, this gives you a bit of direction, and maybe a little

*I guess I should start by saying, “spoiler warning!” My guess is though, if you clicked on this you’ve seen the movies, if not you have some homework. Watch Rocky 1-5 or is it 6?…then come back ;-) Before anyone starts throwing punches — yes, I know Rocky I  is one of the greatest sports movies ever made. It redefined the underdog story and gave us one of cinema’s most human portrayals of grit, struggle, and perseverance. Now, full disclosure, I might be a little biased here