The hurt-pain-agony approach

Mostly what I write about at my other blog has nothing to do with triathlon, but I thought I'd link to something I wrote just now on two swimming books I've read recently.

(Hmmm, there is a picture that is slightly NSFW--consider yourself warned...)

Here's a taste, one of my favorite quotations from a book I have fallen absolutely in love with, Counsilman's The Science of Swimming (I have the first edition, in a rather dour library binding; I feel that the second edition cannot possibly be quite so delightful as the original):

It is extremely difficult for an intelligent, mature athlete to form an identification with a coach who sets himself up as a dictator, and whose authoritarian manner must be accepted unquestioningly. Athletes of low intellect, weak or unstable personality, or those who are lacking in maturity, may respond to a martinet, but if, in a free world, we do not look upon such tactics with favor in other aspects of human relationships, certainly we should not in athletics.