“I love it when the waves are huge.”

“Just get on with it.”

“The colder, the better.”

So many open water swimmers are tough as nails. They thrive when the going gets rough. When the ocean is lumpy, when the winds on the lake throw up whitecaps; when the tides turn, many open water swimmers love pushing through the elements.

And there is apparently a new word to describe that characteristic: antifragility.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb coined a new word in his latest book, Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder for the biological, medical, economic, and political systems on terra firma: antifragility. Instead of merely tolerating adverse or unexpected conditions, a system that is antifragile means that performance improves. It has an ability to benefit and grow from random events, errors, and volatility.

Sounds like a perfect terms for many open water swimmers who we have met around the world.

Copyright © 2013 by Open Water Swimming