The Blueprint Season in Finswimming

Max Poschart breaks world records alone, then teaches others why patience matters more than speed.

The 15-second barrier in 50-meter surface finswimming existed until Max Poschart decided it didn't. Swimming faster than anyone in history through water while recovering from knee surgery and training entirely alone would seem like the culmination of a career. For Poschart, it was a teaching moment.

"The independent training showed me how important it can be to focus on personal and individual needs," he explains. After twelve years under traditional coaching structures with SC DHfK Leipzig, his final competitive season forced a different approach. Surgery recovery demanded he listen to his body while still pushing past limits. The result was two world records and seven medals across the CMAS European Championships and World Games. Then he retired. Again.

The first retirement came in 2023. The comeback lasted one season by design. Poschart returned to competition not to extend his career but to complete it on his terms, transforming what he learned into a coaching methodology. Now thirty years old, he measures success differently. His athletes, twelve to fifteen years younger, represent the new scoreboard.

"I try to organize the training group in a way that small competitions can develop during practice," Poschart says, describing his attempt to recreate what he shared with training partner Max Lauschus. Those sessions, the ones he misses most, produced the intensity that separated them from competitors. "Unfortunately, younger athletes today don't engage in that kind of intensity the way we used to."

The observation carries no nostalgia. Poschart identified a problem and designed a solution, the same process that led him to study which strength exercises transferred best to finswimming performance. Every season revealed something new. Every discovery now filters through to his athletes, adapted for their developmental stage.

This frustrates the athletes sometimes. The younger generation wants results immediately, ideally without extended effort. Poschart won't accommodate that timeline. "In performance development, there are no shortcuts or ways to speed things up," he states. He swam his best season at thirty. His athletes need patience, fun, and sustained motivation. The math is simple: point-nine-nine-nine percent of athletes require structured training over time to reach top performances. The other fraction doesn't need his coaching anyway.

His own role models appeared early. Pavel Kabanov and Valeria Baranovskaya inspired him at international competitions when he was the young athlete looking up. The shift happened at the CMAS 2016 World Championships when Poschart became world champion in an individual event and set his first world record. Recognition of his new position as example didn't alter his relationship to competition. He simply reflected on his actions more carefully while staying true to existing principles.

Those principles include his signature statement about obstacles: results or excuses, not both. Measuring coaching performance proves more complex than competition metrics. Variables multiply in youth development. Individual athletes require different approaches. Success becomes continuous athlete development while maintaining enjoyment for everyone involved, including himself.

The "again" in his goal for medal-winning performances at next year's CMAS Junior European Championships reveals previous success with his athletes. Specific technical elements from his world record season remain undisclosed. "I won't give away too much," he says, protecting the competitive advantage he's building into his training group. Innovation was always his approach as an athlete. Now it defines his coaching.

Lutz Riemann, his long-time coach, transferred experience and knowledge throughout Poschart's career. No single piece of that transfer crystallized only after his final season. The education was complete before the farewell. What Poschart discovered through solo preparation and world records was confirmation, not revelation. The methodology worked because the foundation was sound.

He started finswimming in 2013 through friends, a traditional swimmer seduced by the speed and flow of the monofin. Twelve years later, he became the first human under fifteen seconds at fifty meters. The trajectory appears linear until examined closely. Surgery. Solo training. Individualized programming. World records as proof of concept. Immediate retirement to coaching. The final season was a demonstration, the world's most elaborate lesson plan executed at championship level.

His athletes now inherit that blueprint. They also inherit the hardest part: waiting. Not for shortcuts that don't exist, but for the patient accumulation of structured training that produces top performances. Poschart knows this timeline intimately. He lived it for twelve years, peaked at thirty, then coded everything he learned into a transferable system.

The CMAS World Championships next year will test that system. Poschart will be on deck, measuring his performance by theirs. No competition metrics apply to him anymore. The results-or-excuses framework now evaluates how well he transfers embodied excellence to others. His athletes chase their medals. He chases something harder to measure and impossible to rush: the development of champions in a sport that demands you move faster than seems possible, but only after you've learned to wait.