FAQ
My name isn't Hellcat
It's Heli - McHellcat
I'm not a rabid water beast
I just swim like one at any pool
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Swimly / Bubbles - I am your top Swim Angel until proven otherwise
10 FAQ / Q&A on me and my background
Question #1 - Who am I?
I am a lifelong athlete who didn't give myself a chance until later in life. Chance for what? I don't know. To be great at something. To dedicate to something. To admit to myself that it's important. To try hard. To do something over and over to where I have became one with the activity and process. To be able to operate my goals with a singularly focused mind.
Things were too easy for me in some ways and that was bad for my expansion. I lacked discipline and fortitude and I failed to innovate my conditioning to meet conviction-based goals. I'm a naturally gifted athlete so I ignored things like stretching or the weight room.
It's not all bad news. I have flourished all my life in biking, running or other recreational activities not to mention martial arts and being the world's best sports dad. I have a great time, but also I was a nervous and under performing athlete earlier in my athletic career.
Something about my sports gift shows my athletic potential coming to view in middle age.
It's the part on still doing great sports, being healthy and having a blast - that I'm sharing.
Question #2 - What am I?
I was not able to grow up near my father. Despite being loved and cherished by those that cared for me when I was young, being cut off from my father often made me feel like an orphan. I felt unrepresented and had a world of questions. It was a lifetime of uncertainty about small and basic things that were never recognized or answered in my course of life. A little off-leash, you might find a bit of adult language mixed into the lessons - It punctuates different parts of manifesting the will to opt into serious physical challenge.
Question #3 - Why am I the way I am?
A number of my encounters with society have gone less than planned. For example, when it was time for me to grow up and be an adult, I was okay with that but not great. Jobs, managers and waking up in the morning to sit in unnecessary meetings just about ruined me. For me that second job wasn't being waiter or bartender so I became a sports coach. When I became a sports coach I learned it doesn't pay much so people don't do it much.
Except now I have a real problem with that because being healthy is way too important.
Doing sports is way better than straight fitness and exercise because it's way more fun.
The difference between sports and fitness is the presence of a goal besides body shape.
This is why I take this fitness goal and inject it with this imperative - get to the Choppa.
There is probably no chopper coming to extract you and the town will probably be fine.
Question #4 - What can I do for you?
My work is sharing a memoir about how I came to be able to swim multiple miles weekly.
This step-by-step recall of the most important topics provide a critical blueprint for same.
Question #5 - How can you use this material?
With a premium content management system, I created a swim curriculum regiment that was then converted into a book. This is not exactly a 1-2-3 standard operations procedure manual. This material is coherent and was created as an online course but then it was devolved into a memoir for your enjoyment and mine. If you want to turn this into a training app, you can do that. You'll have to do things one at a time. Start wherever you like! There are simply too many starting points for me to formalize this; plus I want non swimmers too.
Whether this is a story or a curriculum is up to you - both are perfectly fine. It started as a militant program and was turned into something your grandmother might enjoy reading.
What I want is to get you amped on the idea about boosting regular swim workouts into your health. I can affect your mind about a bunch of things that correspond with swim.
Question #6 - What will you get from this material?
Here's the plot: Upper middle aged man gains weight during 2020 lockdowns. That made me angry! I wasn't trying to get kicked out of my gym. As the world reopened for general public, I was determined to do something even better, and got to thinking. How do actors get all buff and ripped to play in parts? I thought, "I can do that" (haven't yet). Please understand, several times in my 2-year transformation I had to take extra rest for injuries.
Question #7 - How long will it take?
I don't like this question in fact I loathe this question. It's such a silly question because it speaks about anxiety held in the mind of the person asking. Do you have somewhere to be? Are you deciding if choosing your health happens quickly? What if we teach you to dribble a basketball while wearing a blindfold - how long will that take? It doesn't matter. If you do it, you'll do it. I'll give you the steps. I can't monitor the inside of your experience and I refuse to push you to burnout or injury. Doing so would be irresponsible coaching. I also refuse to bow to this pressured necessity of earning your validated time response.
See what a ridiculous question this actually is? First we start the training. We will start dribbling the basketball - then we will do that in so many different ways - that the muscle memory takes over. How long does it take? Keep going. You will know when it's complete.
You'll either have your own problems or your own solution at any given time in progress.
The activity will be complete when it no longer requires conscious thought and attention.
Question #8 - What will this do to a person?
Being a person who now swims by the miles in an interesting transformation. My boost in confidence is a strange surprise - I was not expecting that at all. Other swimmers are like, "whoa". I would not say there has been a big change in my body however I'm sure there has been a positive effect. Losing weight has been part of this but that's largely from changes I've made in the kitchen. The best way to see body change is to take the same picture of yourself every day or week in time lapse. My training did not lead to lots of weight loss but some muscle gain. My changes in the kitchen led me to losing over 30 pounds in eight months. On a number of instances I have unique feelings and sensations in my body. I'm feeling my back and my chest in new ways and that's pretty magical.
There have been blisters on my feet from the short fins and a shoulder injury that manifested in a period of around three months and took eight months to heal/rehab.
Question #9 - Where do people fail?
There are dozens of common failure points that will affect every single reader. I will not be able to name them all and I haven't been doing this long enough to see every trend. If you were near me in real life, I'm confident we could quickly find, diagnose and correct many things. My conditions were such that I was motivated to fix each problem and that's what this book is. I opted into this because it was just the right thing for me. Maybe for you too. When I told one woman that her thumb needs to enter the water first as she comes around for each next catch, that set off in her a series of impressive mental gyrations. One guy told me that he kept hurting his shoulder until he learned to stop under-rotating and that once he received that particular piece of advice, the injury was gone in a single day.
Question #10 - What's up with the Liver Cleanse?
If you look into the Medical Medium (Antony William), you'll find an intriguing nutrition program that caught my attention. I'm not a lifelong nutrition expert by any stretch. Like swimming, I took a crash course in it four years ago when society became a difficult child. As with all of my initiatives, this is something I sought out independently and that makes a difference when it comes to keeping up any practice. No one else told me to do this or told me that I need to do this or that I should do this. Basically to stop sugar cravings and other toxins from the body, it's advised to consume citrus water as the first meal each day. For a more detailed explanation, hang tight I'm going to produce that as a future digital asset.
