Aqua cycling

Aqua cycling is quite a new trend in the world of aqua fitness. As most of the aqua fitness programmes, it started from fitness studios but with more benefits than the original and with more categories of population to be able to use it. We all know that cycling and spinning classes help you improve your fitness levels as well as strengthen your legs, abs, and buttocks. However, people with back or joint issues will be hard to keep up with the rest of the group.

Effects of training on cardiac output

Cardiac output is defined as the amount of blood ejected from the heart during each minute. As with stroke volume; cardiac output is considered only the amount ejected from the left ventricle. The right ventricle will eject an equal amount of blood during the same time.

2nd Meeting International de la Mediterranee

The 2^nd Meeting International de la Mediterranee in Marseille was completed yesterday after three days of great swimming action. Mireia Belmonte from Spain, who won two Olympics medals at London 2012 put on an excellent performance and won two gold medals (800 m FR & 200 m FL) during the first day of the meeting. She also took the 4^th place in the 200 m FR (2:02.18) finishing after Melanie Costa (1:58.70), Patricia Ortega (2:00.42) and Beatrice Gomez (2:01.88). We also had a small surprise at men’s 50 m BK where Camille Lacourt (24.94) beat world record holder, Liam Tancock, who finished second (25.46).

Sunday's motivational quote 3

Matt Biondi's story

Matt Biondi, who was born October 8^th 1965, is an American former competition swimmer, Olympic champion, former world record-holder and swimming legend. Biondi competed in the Summer Olympic Games in 1984, 1988  and 1992, winning a total of eleven medals (eight gold, two silver and one bronze). During his career, he set seven individual world records (three in the 50-meter freestyle and four in the 100-meter freestyle). Biondi is a member of the International Swimming Hall of Fame and the United States Olympic Hall of Fame.

Matt Biondi

Infant reflexes related to swimming

A reflex is an automated response to a stimulus, and can be split (basically) into 2 categories: primitive and postural: a primitive reflex is an involuntary reflex that has developed in uterus and is essential to the babies’ survival in first weeks of life.  Reflexes are important when learning to swim, especially in baby swimming many practices rely on these first reflexes. The job of a baby swimming instructor is to aim to turn them from involuntary to learnt voluntary actions. As they are gradually controlled by different parts of the brain they turn into a postural reflex which is automatic responses that usually develop and last over a life time. These infant reflexes are the following:

Guidelines for power training

Training for power places greater demands on the body that training for muscular endurance, and it is important not to overstress the body when focusing on power development. Keep in mind that in this case, quality is more important than quantity. When your swimmers are ready to build up power, you, as a coach, should take several safety and performance considerations into account as you set up your programme. From the safety perspective, you should be aware of these issues:

• Perform explosive exercises at the start of a workout (just after the warm up) while your athletes are still fresh. Fatigued muscles can negatively affect technique and cause injury. Fatigue also limits the gains you can expect to achieve.
• Set up your training programme using exercise progressions so that exercise increase in complexity and intensity as your swimmers become more experienced with this type of exercises.
• Power exercises are meant primarily for physical mature athletes. Younger swimmers can easily handle low level plyometric exercises, such as jumping rope, but swimmers should avoid moderate and high intensity exercises until they have gone through puberty.

Jones ready to fight for a place in 2016 squad

Cullen Jones, who turns 29 today, decides that he’ll try to make his third U.S. Olympic team in 2016. He started training under coach David Marsh for SwimMAC Carolina’s elite team and he is almost sure that’ll he live and train there through at least the Olympic Games in Rio.

Although, Jones has never been a great practice athlete, Marsh always pushes him to do more as he feels his primary competitors have been training harder than Jones. At least, as the swimmer says, he hasn’t gained 20 pounds he put after the 2008 Olympics.

Cullen Jones