Books
Where endurance meets expression
Welcome to the written side of Smart Performance Coaching — where endurance meets expression. These books explore the mindset, madness, and motivation behind training, racing, and everyday life. From the comedic chaos of IRON(DAD) to the reflective focus of Smart, Sweaty and Slightly Out of Sync, each one captures a different part of the endurance journey — inspiring, entertaining, and unapologetically real.
Freestyle swimming is often taught as a collection of parts — the catch, the pull, the kick, the breath — corrected one by one in the hope that something eventually clicks.
But strokes rarely improve that way.
In Smart Stroke, endurance coach Darren Gibbons explores freestyle from a different perspective: not as a checklist of movements, but as a system shaped by drag, rhythm, stability, fatigue, and environment.
Drawing on years of coaching swimmers and triathletes, this book examines why strokes behave the way they do, why many well-intentioned corrections fail to last, and how coaches learn to prioritise what actually matters.
Inside, you’ll discover:
• why drag matters more than power
• why fixing everything often fixes nothing
• why fatigue exposes the truth of a stroke
• how sprint, distance, and open water swimming ask the same fundamental questions
• why durability — not perfection — defines long-term progress
Written for swimmers, triathletes, and coaches alike, Smart Stroke offers a clearer way to understand freestyle.
Not as isolated technique.
But as a system under pressure.
Endurance coach Darren Gibbons takes you through a complete, real-life coaching framework:
Identity & Mindset: act like the athlete you’re becoming; fewer stories, more decisions.
Swim, Bike, Run (done smart): mechanics before metres, sustainable power, controlled threshold and long runs that don’t flatten your week.
Strength that transfers: hinges, splits, rows and carries — positions that make hour three feel like hour one.
Recovery & Real Life: plan deloads, scale before you scrap, and keep the habit alive when sleep and stress misbehave.
Season Design: phases with rhythm, mini-rebuilds, taper without panic.
Race Strategy: pacing plans that work, calm transitions, fuelling you’ve actually tested.
After the Medal: reflect, reset, repeat — build the loop that makes you better every season.
Tools that stick: quick reference cues, “Should I train today?” trees, brick progressions, and a Data Sanity Agreement to keep tech helpful, not bossy.
It’s not a promise of perfect weeks. It’s a practical system for imperfect ones — built on UK-plain language, small upgrades and tidy execution: one session, one job, two cues, finish clean.
If you want training that survives real life — and still delivers on race day — this is your playbook.
Ian Dawson is a car mechanic — a man of spanners, stubby beers, and a physique optimised for reclining. One evening he logs on to buy bin bags and, a few clicks later (cheers, targeted ads), accidentally enters an IRONMAN triathlon.
It’s a slow-motion car crash in prose: A calamity told in instalments: an account of one man’s journey from garage gremlin to Lycra liability. Expect wetsuits that vacuum-seal like a ham, bicycles that attempt homicide on hills, and nutrition gels with the mouthfeel of industrial adhesive.
At home, his long-suffering wife watches “training” (here meaning leaking near traffic) with the composure of someone who once saw him superglue himself to a carburettor. The kids call him “the man who used to live here.” Friends cheer as if observing a runaway bin lorry.
IRONDAD is a gloriously unhinged odyssey through midlife delusion, algorithmic betrayal, and heroic failure. It’s Rocky meets Mr Bean — if Rocky got shin splints on the stairs.