Swim Smooth

Hey there listeners,

Today's podcast will be a little different - essentially some unfiltered musings from Swim Smooth's Head Coach, Paul Newsome, recorded between a car park and bathroom (no less!) as he attempts to give some strategies that have helped him in the last fortnight with the closures of the local pool, dropping to a zero revenue state for the first time in his coaching career, but how he's trying to apply his coaching, planning and forecasting skills as a swim coach to navigate this financial side of this crisis. We are hoping you can do the same.

We are back with an in-depth conversation today with Bec Johnson, a Type-1 diabetes ultramarathon swimmer coached by Paul Newsome here in Perth, Western Australia.

Today we are back with Season 2 of the Swim Smooth podcast after a lengthy hiatus, and boy-o-boy do we have a great show for you today!

It's a brilliant story about the connection between a boy and his dedicated coach John Bullet (or "JB") to take on what many people still see as being the "Everest" of open water swimming.

Today we speak with legendary Swim Smooth Coach and former Swedish Olympian from the 1988 Seoul Olympics, Anna-Karin Lundin. The interview takes place in sunny Mallorca, Spain immediately after the BESTFest 2019 of Open Water Swimming, of which she won a few of the Age-Group events outright against some very good competition. 

If you've never seen Anna-Karin swim, start off by viewing this awesome clip here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LDbps7O5Ps

We talk candidly about Anna-Karin's early successes in swimming (primarily as a breaststroke swimmer), her participation at the 1988 Olympics as one of the youngest swimmers at the entire event, her early burn-out and retirement from swimming and then her relatively recent renaissance through her coaching in Gothenburg and venture outdoors into the great open water arena! We also discuss how Anna-Karin joined the Swim Smooth team and discuss more about that at this link:

http://www.feelforthewater.com/2017/07/new-video-anna-karin-turns-to-dark-side.html

You can find out more about Anna-Karin' background and her coaching services at https://www.simcoachen.se

Recorded in June 2019, this is a "mash up" of interviews featuring excellent snippets of advice from open water swimmers right around the world enjoying the fabulous BESTFest of Open Water Swimming in Colonia Sant Jordi, Mallorca, Spain. Featuring interviews with legends of the swimming world such as Jazz Carlin (dual Olympic silver medallist) and Jack Burnell (open water swimming extraordinaire and Olympian) and recorded live on the beach prior to and immediately after several of the events, this is sure to tickle your taste buds for jetting off to amazing locations to swim in azure waters with hundreds of like-minded souls!

Find our more about next year's event at: http://www.bestopenwater.com 

See you there in 2020!

Today, after a 2 month hiatus owing to Paul dealing with a  very bad back injury and some firm reflections and adjustments to his day-2-day schedule, the boys are back with a podcast recorded some 2 months ago on sunny Mallorca, Spain. This show was meant to go out immediately and was at the 4 week mark of Paul's injury sustained over the Easter period. Sadly, a big relapse immediately after this episode was recorded has seen Paul out of action for a further 2 months. It's a little ironic, as the aim of this show was to talk about some of the insights and research Paul and Adam had gleaned over the years with respect to sleep, HRV, over-training, injury and illness which has further spilled out into everyday life for Paul in particular. Given that the show includes some snippets and insights from Paul's first dip back in the water and what that felt like with the view to showing you how you might also return to activity after a hiatus (for whatever reason), it felt prudent to hold this episode (and the next 2 back) until this blip was properly overcome. But we're now there (fingers crossed and thanks for your patience!), so on with the show!

We strongly recommend this episode primarily for those of you struggling with work / life / training balance as well as those of you currently dealing with injury and illness whom are maybe in a reflective state themselves. If you're going great guns at the moment, you might want to skip this one and / or flick it over to a mate who might benefit from our musings.

Thanks for listening!

Paul & Adam

Oura Ring - https://ouraring.com

Peter Attia / Matt Walker (Why We Sleep) - https://peterattiamd.com/matthewwalker1/

Dan Plews - https://www.plewsandprof.com/our-story

Wow! What an interview we have lined up for you today! Paul and Adam chat with Stephanie Dixon, 19-time Paralympic swimming champion and world record holder from Canada, who recently attended our 3-day Swim Smooth Coach Education Course in Portland, OR, USA at the Nike World HQ.

Stephanie talks candidly about being born missing her right leg and how her body has adapted to deliver a perfectly balanced, streamlined and symmetrical swimming stroke which in Steph's words, allows her to "swim like a mermaid".

This wonderfully open, warm and charismatic athlete will teach us all more than a few things about living a life of balance, acceptance and making the absolute most with what you've got. Stephanie's motto is to recognise that we are all "enough" with whatever we've been born with, to whomever our parents and environment might be, it's what you make of that that really counts!

The first 2 minute intro is well worth re-listening to at any time you're feeling a little low and need a little lift and perspective in your life! We hope you really enjoy this cracking interview!

Paul & Adam

Today, enjoy an awesome interview with David Davies from Wales who is Britain's only swimmer to have achieved an Olympic medal in both the pool (1500m in Athens, 2004) and the open water (10km in Beijing, 2008).

Paul first met David in a cocktail lounge (of all places!) after the men's triathlon in Hyde Park at the 2012 Olympic Games in London, 2012. After spying Dave propping up the bar, Paul plucked up the courage to say hello to his hero in open water swimming and proceeded to then blubber on about how inspiring Dave's swimming performances have been and most importantly how his stroke epitomised the "Swinger" swim type (see www.swimtypes.com). 

Despite Dave appearing to swim with a "spider" like stroke (high cadence and seemingly short, scrappy strokes), his childhood coach Dave Haller recognised that this was the way that Dave was meant to swim - changing this (Haller said), would be detrimental to his performance. It's only when faced with his 3rd Olympic Games in his home country and the prospect of going from Bronze to Silver to (hopefully) Gold was Dave tempted to alter his stroke and approach, and as history will show, sadly he didn't qualify to swim in the 10km open water event nor final in the 1500m pool event. Dave discusses this in a very candid manner which you will find super interesting.

Dave also shares his tips on transitioning from the pool to open water - sage words indeed!

Dave is one of the nicest blokes you're ever likely to speak to, so it was a great privilege to speak with him on this show - we hope you enjoy!

Today, the boys chat with Sam Bradley (née Warriner), former world #1 triathlete and Commonwealth Games Gold Medallist for New Zealand, after a nine week hiatus following a whirlwind world coaching tour with Nike in Portland, OR and Sydney, Australia.

Sam discusses explicitly how she utilises a mental "switch" to move between her athletic / coaching self and her family life (which both Paul and Adam discuss is something they're very poor at doing). This, we believe, is something which everyone can learn to be better at, especially in this digitally connected age.

We discuss Sam's athletic career which peaked very late at the age of 37 when she won the ITU World Cup Series in 2008. Sam turned to triathlon very late in life and didn't actually turn PRO until 2005, so had a meteoric rise to fame following that.

Sam recently attended the 3-day Swim Smooth Coach Education Course in Sydney, Australia and found that despite having spent her entire career breathing only to her right - through our recognition that "if something's going to go wrong in your stroke, it'll go wrong when you breathe" - we found that she's actually faster by 3-4s per 100m breathing to her left. The interesting thing here is that most of the ITU events Sam raced were on LEFT hand turn courses where it's a significant advantage to breathe to the LEFT (for navigation purposes etc) and not the RIGHT. This proved to be quite an eye-opener for Sam despite how accomplished she's obviously already been in the sport, giving way to the notion that sometimes it's the simple things that can make all the difference.

You can read a lot more about Sam's coaching work at www.sweat7.com and on Instagram @sweat7sam 

Today we sit down with 4 of our soon-to-be Swim Smooth Certified Coaches at the end of their 2 week certification course here in sunny Perth and hear all about the training they've received to become one of our 52 international coaches. 

If you're a coach thinking of taking your swim coaching further, or are a swimmer who's pondered exactly what level of service you're likely to receive with your local Swim Smooth Coach, then this podcast will be very enlightening indeed. And if neither of these scenarios is you, and you're just interested in what values a small business has when it comes to ensuring quality and sustainability for the long-game, well then this might just float your boat too!

The training is long and arduous - featuring many 16 hour days all starting with a 4am wake-up call - but the results have been super transformative. We discuss in fine detail what it takes to reach this highest level of premium coaching service that we offer, and don't hide away from the parts each coach found hard (and why) and equally where they felt they excelled. 

We commence the  podcast with a frank discussion with our coach's mentor, Emma Brunning of Active Blu, who tutors for British Triathlon and the International Triathlon Union literally all over the planet. Emma has a strong passion for ensuring that coaches are able to manage their energy output for a sustainable coaching career and her insights and tutelage alongside Adam Young is what really sets this course apart.

We discuss exactly why we hold this final stage of certification only in Perth (despite it's isolation and expense to get to) and why we insist that even the most experienced of coaches who are invited to sit the certification process must complete all stages to ensure a consistency of delivery of our methods in the way they have always been intended. To coin a well versed phrase, "there are no short-cuts". This limits the speed of growth of our coaching program of course, and whilst we fully acknowledge that the easiest way to make a quick buck would be to invite every coach who's ever expressed an interest in our program and certify them all within 4-5 days (especially given the sheer volume of interest), this wouldn't be true to our values as a program, nor as people.

We then speak with:

We hope you love listening to our host of passionate coaches as we chew the swim coaching fat with them. To learn more about the full process and to sign up for the coaches network, please visit:

http://www.swimsmooth.com/coaches/become-a-coach

Enjoy!

Paul, Adam and Emma