Quality Vs Quantity

Quality Vs Quantity

We live in a world where we are consumed by information. Whether it is from school, work or our passions, the technology that we use nowadays is programmed in such a way that keeps us hooked. On one hand these can be powerful tools that can be used to our advantage. For this to happen one needs to be very strong with the power of self-awareness and self-control. On the other hand they can soon become our enemies that can make us addicted which in turn can make us depressed, moody and empty within. Wherever the side of the coin we find ourselves in one thing is certain, growing up in this time and age we are learning to be multitaskers, getting different things done at the same time. This is certainly our case which has pushed us to formulate a training program which is driven by quality rather than quantity and which extends to our daily life even outside of the pool. So what does that even mean?

Quality in Training 

The journey of becoming “real” sprinters happened back in 2012 where a shoulder surgery pushed me to look for alternative ways to stay competitive. So the one option that opened up was to get away from middle distance swimming doing 80-100km volume per week towards the art of sprinting. From 2012 - 2016 we were experimenting and learning new territories for the concept of "training hard" for us at the time meant to swim a lot and feel the pain constantly. From 2016 onwards the Team Razzo program was born, training alone as a married couple with a full time job, we were able to create a program that suited our needs. The volume in the pool was no longer an indicator for our performance but more the daily form and becoming smart with every decision we took when we were training. Our work started to flourish and every session was very high in quality. We were racing hard and fast every week. We were having fun every day in the pool. We started to become super consistent with our work and times started to drop quickly.‍‍

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‍Quality in Health 

As sprinters we started to become even more aware of the power of our mental and physical health. We started to view health in a holistic way. This means we started to become very cautious of what we ingested in our minds and bodies. We started to experiment with different types of diets such as the ketogenic one which we followed with discipline for a couple of years. Our perception of training started to change viewing recovery sessions as training itself. We started to incorporate weekly physio visits as well as cryotherapy sessions to speed up the recovery from the intense workouts. However, we very soon became aware that this new type of work that we were putting in the gym and in the pool was putting a strain on our nervous system. This impacted our sleep quality and stress on our organism in general. So slowly but surely we started to cut out all extra stress factors in our lives and replaced them with things that helped us calm down and relax. We stopped watching Netflix, we stopped following the news actively, we stopped drinking alcohol and we switched our diet to a pure vegetarian one, which means no fish, no meat and no eggs. After being very consistent with this for the past 4 years we can very confidently say that this is one of the keys to our success. So easy yet so difficult. Why? Because you need to “sacrifice” some of the things that can be viewed as bringing us “joy” to our lives. With years of experience we can undoubtedly say that we are willing to give up something easily in this very moment for the sake of what this will bring to us later on in the future. 

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‍Quality in Life 

With the previous switches in training and diet this awakened a need to look for something that could help us calm the mind to stay focused and grounded throughout our practices and competitions. Through the power of yoga we were very quickly guided to our spiritual master. The prior years of disciplined work that we put in showed our sincere willingness to become the best version of ourselves. Through the grace of our teacher we were introduced to our daily meditation practices which we started doing 1 hour in the morning and 1 hour in the evening before going to sleep. Slowly but surely our life started to change. Everything started becoming simpler. Every experience started to become deeper. Everything started to make sense. The life mission started to crystallise and a sense of deep purpose and gratitude awoke. Appreciation for having been given this unique opportunity to experience this beautiful sport with love and happiness.

This is what we can say to you all. We all tend to make our lives difficult but actually in reality the secret lies in the simplicity: in how we train; in how we eat; in how we think; in how we live. For us it's clear what we feel inside is what drives us fully, for this no one can take from us and is dependent on no one apart from ourselves. Make waves in the pool but keep calmness within!