Your swim stroke *might be* hanging in the Balance

We hear a lot about “having balance in life”.

What is balance?

It seems like a vague word that can mean a lot of things.

When we talk about balance in swimming, we mean swimming on the surface of the water, not sinking, and not favoring one side much over the other.

But there’s a lot more to this word.

You were probably attracted to the sport of triathlon because there is a balance between 3 disciplines.

Maybe you were tired of just running, or just biking, and combining swim-bike-run would challenge your body in many new ways.

One of the dictionary definitions of balance is: “A state of equilibrium or parity characterized by cancellation of all forces by equal opposing forces.”

You can see why balance would be of huge importance in swimming!

This is why we start out our Tri Swim Success program with drills to help improve your balance (which most triathletes don’t have enough of in the water).

It can also be applied to balance in the rest of your life. Many of us attracted to this sport can quickly become imbalanced- spending too much time training, overtraining, letting triathlon become part of our identities, and struggling with overuse injuries.

So we must balance our training with rest and family/friends/social time, or face negative consequences.

On the flip side of this, there are people who make fun of the idea of balance. They say if you want to achieve great things, you have to be the opposite of balanced, which to them would be focused hard-nosed discipline.

A select few may be able to achieve their wildest dreams. However, this also comes with a cost. For the most part, the key to success and happiness is having some kind of balance.

For all the Elon Musks in the world (and do we even know how happy he is?), there are thousands of people who would be utterly miserable trying to accomplish the things he is, working 120 hours a week and barely seeing their families.

Balance your swim.
Balance your training.
Balance your life.
Befriend the water. 🙂

This will mean different things to different people, but you likely know when you’re out of balance.

The key is to do something about it before things spin out of control- and you end up injured, sick, or unhappy- none of which will help your swim, triathlon, or goals in life.

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