Swimming That Changes Your Life…How?

Shane Eversfield is Founder and Head Coach of Kaizen-durance, serves as a Total Immersion Master Coach, and is an accomplished ultra endurance athlete.  Shane and Terry met after Terry read Shane’s first book “Zendurance”.

Shane enjoyed countless hours swimming and dialoging with Terry.  (And they cooked many meals together too!)  Frequently their discussions centered around endurance sports as a highly effective form of mindfulness practice, and how mindfulness skills enhance the quality of our lives in every area.

Can swimming really change your life once you pull off the goggles and leave the pool?  Let’s explore one way this is possible – through a process called the “Fitness Cycle”.

Why do we swim?

Some of us jump into the cold water of our community lap pool simply for mindful exercise, with no specific athletic goals. We’re just looking for some exercise and some quiet time. Some of us swim each time with a structured “game plan” to train for a specific event, striving for a goal pace and time. Regardless of whether we are recreational or goal-driven, each time we swim or engage in any form of exercise, we are engaged in the first phase of the Fitness Cycle.

The Fitness Cycle

There are three phases in the Fitness Cycle:

- Stress

- Recovery

- Adaptation

When we are actually exercising, we stress our bodies. When we finish, we shower, rest and eat to support our bodies to recover. If we are consistent and wise with the balance of stress and recovery, our bodies will adapt to make us stronger and fitter.

The Balancing Act

As TI Swimmers, we know that balance in the water is Priority #1. Balance is the most empowering skill we bring to swimming. Our success at orchestrating the Fitness Cycle also requires balance, and determines how much fitness we can build. If we don’t really stress our bodies much at all, we won’t stimulate the capacity to adapt. If we stress our bodies beyond the rate at which we can recover, we won’t be able to adapt. The long term effect of consistent and sensible training is a gain of fitness specific to that activity, at the intensity and duration we have trained for. It’s a balancing act.

As we improve our skill set for orchestrating the Fitness Cycle, we can use swimming and other forms of physical activity to change our lives by transforming aerobic fitness into life fitness. How is this possible? Growth and improvement in every area of our lives occurs through the same three phases of the Fitness Cycle – stress recovery and adaptation.

The Real Secret

We “maximize return on our aerobic investment” when we use the fitness we gain through aerobic training to improve every area of our lives. How?

Here’s the secret: Develop a healthy and empowering relationship with stress. There are three ways we can relate to stress:

- Avoid

- React

- Respond

- If we avoid stress, we will not grow, because we never even engage the Fitness Cycle. We feel stagnant, bored, unchallenged, and are often depressed.

- If we react to stress, we resist it. This requires energy and force, and often compounds the stress. In our daily lives this occurs when we blame someone else or some circumstance for the stress we are experiencing. We make ourselves the victims of the stress. As victims, we disable our own capacity to recover. We feel stuck in the stress, angry, resentful and disempowered.

- If we respond to stress, we embrace and accept it. This does not mean we “like” the stress. However, we use the stressful experience as an opportunity for growth and fitness. Isn’t this true every time we exercise?

The Power of Choice

When we swim, we embrace the discomforts of cold water, aerobic exertion and effort, and limited access to oxygen. When we run, we welcome the hot, cold or rainy weather, the discomfort of impact with every foot fall, the effort to run up the hill. Why do we embrace these discomforts? We know that growth and fitness first require stress. We are clear about our choice. Our choice is to respond to stress.

Three Skills

Here are three skills we can develop every time we swim, bike or run to empower our relationship to every form of stress in any area of our lives:

- Patience

- Trust

- Curiosity

With patience, when we first encounter stress, we can pause. In that pause, we can acknowledge the urge to avoid or to resist the stress. Every time you lace up your shoes to head out the door and run, or put on your swim suit and brace yourself for the that cold plunge, you can use that ritual to pause and check-in with yourself. Notice any reservations you may have. Be present for a moment with your fears, with your reluctance, your resistance. Acknowledge and embrace them. And then consider why you are choosing to embrace and experience this stress. What are the benefits?

With trust, we can choose to respond. As we begin to run or swim, we trust our own experience and skills to respond masterfully to the stress that arises. After all, we have done this before, many times. The most valuable thing we must trust is our own sense-felt experience. If we can clearly perceive exactly what is arising in this moment, we are most apt to respond brilliantly. This is precisely how we can continue to refine and improve our efficient swim technique when we don’t have a coach to guide us. Through our sense-felt experience of how we move through the water, the water becomes our coach!!

With curiosity, we pique our senses. We let go of our judgements and attitudes and truly attend to what is arising in this moment. This is when brilliance arises. Zen culture recognizes “Beginner’s Mind” as an attribute of mindfulness and mastery. “In the mind of the Beginner, there are infinite possibilities. In the mind of the expert, there are very few.” Beginners are curious.

Training Fitness in Everyday Life

We have the opportunity to train life fitness in every area of our lives, whenever we encounter stress – if we choose to respond, rather than avoid or react. The training skills we develop through our formal practice of swimming empower us to transform stresses of daily life into life fitness through the Fitness Cycle.

Each day, make a commitment to practice your power of choice at least once in each of these three areas:

- Exercise: Your formal practice of swimming, biking, running, etc.

- A mundane task: Washing the dishes, cooking, any household chore

- Relationships: Every relationship from the most casual to the most intimate

Practice Your Power of Choice

It’s probably easiest to practice your power of choice every time you exercise. That’s why I choose to exercise as early in my day as I can. I skillfully respond to stress and experience balance and harmony. This prepares me to transform the stresses I encounter in the rest of my day into life fitness.

Mundane tasks may not feel stressful at all. Instead they seem boring or annoying. However, these ordinary chores are a great opportunity to hone our skills of patience, trust and curiosity. With patience, we can perform them well. We can trust that there really is time and energy to do them well. If we approach the mundane with curiosity, we perform with brilliance.

Relationships are perhaps the most challenging arena. It is easy to blame the other person when we experience discord and make ourselves the victim. Embracing the stress we experience in relationship and transforming it into life fitness for both people is a high level skill that requires patience, trust and curiosity. Patience and curiosity empower us to really listen and to accurately perceive what is true for someone else outside of our own point of view. And we need trust to let go of our defensive point of view and experience what is really true.

Streamlining and Relationships

In swimming, we are rewarded when we seek the path of least resistance and greatest harmony through the water. We call it streamlining. Our streamlining skills are quite valuable in relationship as well. We don’t blame the water for creating resistance, and we don’t fight it. Instead, it becomes our guide to efficiency and grace. The same is true when we experience resistance in relationships.

Fitness for Life

Every moment of our lives offers us an opportunity to strengthen our fitness and change our lives. The secret? Moment-to-moment throughout each day, we must constantly choose to respond to stress. When stress arises, pause. Summon your patience, trust and curiosity – skills you use every day to enhance and further your swimming practice. And then move forward with the balance and grace you embody.

** Shane Eversfield will be directing a Total Immersion Effortless Endurance & Smart Speed workshop in Coral Springs, FL January 27-28.  Click here for details.

** Shane is also the producer of Zendurance Cycling, available on DVD in the Total Immersion online store.  To learn more about Shane “Zenman” Eversfield visit the Kaizen-durance website.