Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Wall Street Journal: How not to ruin a swim prodigy!

Our friend, Hubie, sent me this profile on Missy Franklin from the Wall Street Journal. It details her lifestyle and more importantly why swimming, when placed in the proper perspective, isn't a job but rather a whole bunch of fun!

From the Wall Street Journal:
This meant that Franklin would swim two hours a day, five or six days a week, with an average of roughly 4,000-5,000 yards per day—less than half the yardage logged by top college swimmers. In the summer, he doesn't hold Saturday morning practices, giving Franklin and all of his other swimmers a weekend-long break from the pool.

"The last thing I want to do is for them to get to the end of the summer and feel like all they've done is swim," he said 
[Link]



9 comments:

junker23 said...

Or, alternately titled, "How to not reach your full potential!"

Tony Austin said...

Natalie Coughlin swims the same amount of yardage

junker23 said...

Yeah, and she's been swimming like hot garbage recently.

I'm not of the adage that you've got to swim millions of yards a week to "reach your full potential" or w/e I just said, but it's a case someone clearly could make. I'm sure Michael Phelps is swimming a buttload of more yards than either of these two ladies - but he's often disappointed with how he's swimming so he's a doo-doo head.

Anonymous said...

Gold medal = full potential. Let's see the rest of you do it.
She is a total winner in my book.

Unknown said...

I love u missy franklyn

Anonymous said...

Junker, how do those words taste? She ovbiously has more talent and put in more hard work than any on us. You wish you could do anything, let alone swim, half as well as she does on your best day--even while she is swimming like hot garbage.
Missy is nothing short of a hero.

junker23 said...

Haha! Hello, anonymous commenters!

I made these original comments in the midst of a great fit of bitchy comments, so it's not like I was being 100% honest here. But hey, I still believe a sliver of this stuff.

Anonymous comment 1: I mean, you could argue she hasn't reached full potential yet, as her freestyle races didn't really improved from where they were last year. (But her underwaters and backstroke was waay better.)

Anonymous comment 2: The "hot garbage" comment was referring to Natalie Coughlin, not Franklin. (And was a bit facetious.)

I still am not a huge fan of her coach though. Obviously what he's done has been effective, I just don't know if it has been the absolute most optimal training she could possibly have (which is where my original "full potential" comment came from). I was quite excited when I heard Missy won't be visiting Stanford anymore - I expect almost ridiculous things if she ends up at a Cal or Georgia.

And to both of those comments - I never understood the whole "You can't do (X) as well as that person, you can't criticize them!" I can't swim nearly as well as Michael Phelps, but I can sure as hell notice he messed up all of his walls in the 200m Fly. Is my observation somehow less valid because I'm not him? Well, I suppose, kinda. But not minimized enough that I shouldn't be able to make such comments.

Tony Austin said...

This post has received 18,671 page views since I put it up.

junker23 said...

That seems like a laht. Surprised I only had two people yelling at me.