Michael phelps why is he so good

That allowed Phelps to "broaden my mind and believe that I could do whatever I wanted to, and I think that was a big key of us being so successful," the swimmer says. And dream as big as I could possibly dream.

Swimming seven days a week and taking care of an Olympic-tuned body means there isn't much time for much else. I think that's a really big word, a big key word," says Phelps. Phelps won't talk about his business goals, other than to admit they are ambitious. At the pool, Phelps was known to keep quiet, too. He says there's "no point" in trash talking. I love when people do it. I love when they do certain things to just fire me up," says Phelps.

For me, at the end of the day, when I was training, as long as I figured out what I needed to do in order to accomplish my goals and dreams, then that was all that mattered. Nothing else mattered. Everything else would just play out. Rather than get distracted by other swimmers, Phelps learned what he needed to do to be successful and focused squarely on that.

If he has some pronounced laxity in his ankles, he is not likely to be that much more flexible [than his competitors]. Having elbows and wrists that bend easily should not be an advantage, mechanically speaking.

If you put force through a joint that is unstable, you are in danger of hurting the joint. His joints may be somewhat looser, but that could put him at a disadvantage in the weight room. By analogy, think of someone who is stroking a backhand in tennis who just seems to know better [than other tennis players] where the ball will go.

Mark Spitz [the swimmer who won seven gold medals in the Munich Olympics] was claimed to have anatomical advantages. But it was not like he had six fingers. Almost everyone who has success [in sports] is said to have some unusual property, though I have not seen this borne out. You can compare it to the Ted Williams [urban legend in baseball]—they say he could see the stitching on the ball [of the incoming pitch] rotate, and that he would know by the rotation whether he was getting a fastball or a curveball.

It is the same as saying people have some special intellectual gift. Why is it these people tend to be the ones to close down the libraries and study all the time?

Tiger Woods probably was not born being able to hit a ball yards in a straight line, but hundreds of buckets of balls later, he developed such a skill. Why do you think these ideas of physiological advantage are often repeated? Unless a seemingly suitable explanation comes up, people then think that this individual must be cheating or doping.

Anti-Doping Agency that concluded he cheated throughout his career. I suspected if we could comprehensively measure all Olympians in finals, we would see significant differences [when compared to non-Olympians], but we would not see them having freakish things like percent more lung capacity, or muscles that can contract at twice the [maximum] force of a normal human muscle. At 15, he turned pro, becoming the youngest male swimmer ever to do so.

For the next 16 years, Bob Bowman and Michael Phelps traveled the world together competing internationally and eventually became household names. Coach Bowman was there when Michael made his first Games in the meter butterfly and represented Team USA in Sydney, Australia, and when he became the youngest swimmer ever to break a world record, winning the meter butterfly at the World Championship Trials.

So much so, that he has followed his coach around the country to keep training with him. You have to if you want to be the greatest swimmer in the world!

During the peak of his training, Phelps swam about 80, meters a week. He would swim twice a day, and sometimes more if he was training at high altitude. A lot of his training was focused on drills, underwater kicking, vertical kicking and sculling. Even the best of the best need to work on the fundamentals every day!

Bob Bowman is to thank for such rigorous, specialized training. Phelps has said that Bowman reminds him of a drill sergeant! He hit the gym to lift weights at least 3 times per week. Overall, he trained for 5 to 6 hours a day, 6 days a week.

Training was a full time job! Inadequate rest could impact his performance and leave him prone to injuries. Phelps has said that he would sleep at least 8 hours per night, and take a 2 to 3 hour nap during the day. He would spend weeks at a time at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs to reap the benefits of training at altitude.

And Phelps was definitely an eating machine. There was a rumor that he ate upwards of 12, calories a day, but Phelps himself squashed that myth. He actually ate 8 to 10, calories each day to fuel 30 hours per week of training. In one interview, he said maintaining his diet felt like a job. An important job, but a job nonetheless. So, what did a full day of eating look like for Phelps? Lunch was often a hearty meatball sub. For dinner, Phelps piled his plate high with lean meats, whole grains and lots of veggies.

He often went back for seconds! Fueling up with nutrient dense foods helped Phelps maintain his high training volume and continue to build strength. His work ethic, dedication and determination, combined with his natural talent, set him on a path to succeed in 5 consecutive Olympic Games. He understood that to do extraordinary things, he had to go above and beyond.