Join us today in a candid and fun discussion as we chat with Andy Donaldson, the world record holder for the Cook Strait Swim and a great ambassador for the sport who's on his way to becoming the first and fastest swimmer to complete all Oceans Seven swims within 12 months.

The podcast was filmed live and can be viewed here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taR7J3TJTM8&t=1315s

To contribute/help with Andy's noble endeavours to raise awareness of mental health issues via swimming, please visit:

https://www.teamblackdog.org.au/fundraisers/oceansseven

Enjoy!

Last week – when I flooded everyone’s inbox with news that Swim Smooth was back (sorry, not sorry – as the kids say!), a gentleman from Oregon in the USA reached out to who informed me he’d just turned 89 years old the week before and that swimming was what was keeping him going in later life. He described his life in three parts:

1. His youth was the first third, he said, when he was very successful in both the pool and open water. This time included the dream of most all athletes, to be a member of the US Olympic team. He swam the 1500 in the Melbourne Games in 1956.

2. The second third would be his Masters Swimming in both the pool and open water. During this third he was honoured with an introduction into the International Masters Swimming Hall of Fame.

3. The final third is now, Dave said – dealing with the likely diagnosis of a rare neurological condition called ALS. Wikipedia states that, ALS or Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease, is a rare neurological disease that affects motor neurons—those nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord that control voluntary muscle movement. Voluntary muscles are those we choose to move to produce movements like chewing, walking, and talking.

Despite these challenges, Dave says that when he swims he tries to be Smooth and steady. He says, he’s not fast but he feels smooth and comfortable and that it is still a great feeling to just get in and try to glide through the water. Swimming has enabled Dave to keep a certain level of fitness. Mentally it is keeping him active with a positive attitude about life. So Smooth Swimming is a must for me, Dave says.

Dave Radcliff from Oregon in the USA, a 1956 Olympian and someone who has held every master’s swimming world record from 50m to 1500m freestyle for the 75-79 and 80-84 age groups, when he returned to swimming in 1995 at the age of 61. Dave’s 1500m freestyle World Record time at age 80 was 22:16.90, only 3 minutes slower than his time in the 1956 Olympics.

He’s here today to talk to you about the importance of using it, or losing it! Enjoy!

We've got a cracker of a podcast for you this week - a fireside chat with Rob Hutchings, author of The Downriver Nomad, as he tells his story about dealing with the adversity of an alcoholic parent, the heartache of trying to adopt a child, and how he's found solace in his open water swimming pursuits and his own triathlon adventures, including swimming the length of the Clutha River in New Zealand, a distance of 256km!

We hope you enjoy!

Today we're joined by Ross Davenport - 3-time Olympian, 2-time Commonwealth Games gold medallist, former European record holder and now FINIS international business development manager.

We talk about Ross's childhood as a wannabe soccer star, his break at 12yrs old from swimming and the pivotal moment that saw him return to the pool fully committed and ready for action. Interestingly enough, former podcast superstars Rebecca Adlington and David Davies have also have similar hiatus periods in their adolescent years only to return more fired up than ever. Ross's interview is a great one to listen to with your kids in this regard as there are some excellent life and moral stories to be gained.

As Ross discusses right at the start of the show, Paul was Ross's key referee for landing his role with FINIS, a position in which Ross has been in for over 8 years now. Ross's passion and enthusiasm for swimming really shone through when Paul first met Ross at the Loughborough University in 2013, shortly after Ross had retired from competitive swimming. During that meeting as part of one of the Swim Smooth 3-day Coach Education Courses, Ross blistered through an amazing 100m kicking set in well under 1:05! Crazy. The coaches loved it! From there, FINIS CEO, John Mix, was looking for someone who understood swimming and the company's training aids and Ross was Paul's obvious first choice for the role. After a trip over to California for the interview, John was suitably impressed and the rest, as they say, is history.

We hope you enjoy!

In today's podcast, we speak with Jess Potter, our online video analysis competition winner from a couple of weeks ago.

Enjoy!

What a cracker of an episode Paul Newsome and co-host Lucy Gibson have in store for you today with special guest, Rebecca Adlington - double Olympic gold medallist and former world record holder in the 800m freestyle event with an incredible 8:14.10.

Becky has recently got married and had her second child, Albie, so we are incredibly grateful to have spent an hour in her company discussing her story and rise to dominance in the swimming world. As well as her amazing career, the podcast covers life after swimming, her great relationship with coach Bill Furniss and a 20 question Pub Quiz challenge to boot!

Join us and challenge yourself to 100m of fast freestyle for every time Paul says “you’re my absolute favourite swimmer” without reservation.

Ladies and gents, Rebecca Adlington - whoop!

Today we speak with a super inspirational athlete and coach, Swim Smooth Coach Paolo Mangilinan, who's based in Dubai, UAE.

As part of the annual Dubai Fitness Challenge - which seeks to encourage people to partake in 30 minutes of exercise every day for 30 days - Paolo decided to take it upon himself to swim 10km in the open water around the world famous and tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa, every day for 30 days in November! Yes, that's significantly more distance than many of you might cycle or run in a month, and Paolo is swimming it, unaided, without a wetsuit, flippers, pull buoy or paddles and has so far backed up every day at an average pace of 1:30/100m! Insane! Listen to the podcast to hear what makes Paolo tick, what inspired him and who he hopes to inspire as part of this conquest, the highs and the lows and how he's drawn strength from those around him whom he coaches to make it through this arduous task!

Paolo has swims 29 and 30 to complete on Friday 27th and Saturday 28th November, so please give him some love and support on his Instagram page https://www.instagram.com/pao.mangilinan/ or if you happen to be in Dubai at some point in the future, check out https://www.swimsmoothdubai.com - he'd love to see you!

We're back and pumped today with the achievements of Swim Smooth Manchester's Head Coach, Lucy Lloyd-Roach and her team of four female swimmers who on the 1st September broke the world record to be the first ever female English Channel Relay Team to swim across La Manche in full medley order - backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly and freestyle - with each team member having to complete 60 minutes of uninterrupted swimming on their given stroke. Lucy swam the butterfly leg as British Master's butterfly champion, with Melanie Holland (a Triple Crown marathon swimmer and 4-way English Channel relay swimmer) doing the honours on the backstroke, Claire Thorne (multiple British Masters Champion) taking the breaststroke leg, and Sarah Hempenstall (Ironman and another British Masters Champion) rounding out the team with the freestyle.

Paul also celebrates his own 9-year "Channelversary" from the 8th September 2011, which proved to be the fastest of only two swimmers who made it across on the day which the Channel Swimming Association ratified as "the toughest conditions of 2011" - you'll see why here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnevVG4YiwQ 

Enjoy!

Today we're joined on the podcast by 5-time Ironman World Champion, Craig ("Crowie") Alexander.

Crowie was the 2008, 2009, 2011 Ironman Triathlon World Champion and previous course record holder (8:03:56 in 2011), and the 2006 (inaugural) and 2011 70.3 World Champion. In 2011 he won both the 70.3 and the full Ironman World Championships. Needless to say - he's a beast, but best of all, he's an absolute gentleman too!

Craig was humbled when Ironman legend and six-time World Champion Dave Scott lauded him as “the first true men’s champion the sport has seen in years.”

The most important thing to Craig is family. He is beyond proud of his wife (and the love of his life) Nerida, and his three amazing kids, Lucy, Austin and Lani. Everything Craig does starts and ends at home with his family. Crowie’s won a lot of titles over the years but the one he likes best is ‘Daddy’. As an aside from us, we've only met Crowie once face-to-face but recall how genuine and approachable he was and when the opportunity to record this podcast with the great man came up, he didn't hesitate, such is his show of great character - he's very much "the people's champion" as you'll hear in the first 60 second intro.

Post-retirement, Craig now runs his highly successful coaching program SansEGO (which basically means "without ego") which we believe, at it's heart, is a philosophy we can all learn from (details at: https://www.sansego.co ). A lot of people talk about “life balance” but Craig really does walk the walk, not just talk the talk and his information from his website below is well worth a deeper dive, especially at this period in time of extreme uncertainty and worry:

We really hope you enjoy this conversation with Crowie and a big thanks and shout out to Coach Chris Southwell for arranging!

Well, we did it! This one's been about 3 or 4 weeks in the making! True to the worldwide collaborative efforts we're currently seeing around the globe with corporations coming together in a siege-like mentality and utilising technologies like Zoom and Slack to build a stronger team, so too have we compiled our resources to bring you something very special today.

Coach Jana Oosthuizen from Johannesburg, South Africa, first contacted us in 2013 as a physiotherapist seeking to extend her knowledge and skills as a swim coach after researching our keen eye for video analysis and the use of the latest technologies to really enhance our effectiveness as coaches. She was also prompted by our regular discussion and diagnosis of swimming-related injuries which has come (in the most part) from the shared knowledge between Head Coach, Paul Newsome, and his wife Michelle (also a physiotherapist, specialising in shoulder issues). Michelle actually wrote many of the shoulder health related passages within the Swim Smooth Book and was a regular attendee in the early day Swim Smooth Clinics around the world back as far as 2004/5. Jana came to Paul with the idea of producing a collaborative dry-land cord and injury prevention training routine between herself, Paul and Michelle to help swimmers around the world deal with being out of the pool during this period, and what you'll hear today is the result of that work which we're super pumped to finally get across the line!