Hear the details of how Kelly Palace broke six national records, in six different events within a six-week span. Maria interviews Kelly who shares the challenges she faced, the 10 specific things she attributes these records to. You'll hear about her transformative experience of altering her swimming technique at age 62 helped pave the path to success.
She gives credit to the "village" of Swim Coaches that have helped her including BJ Graham, Mitzi Kremer, Mark Kutz, Jay Peluso, Johnathan Kaplan and Kelly Hargreaves.
Further, this episode delves into advantages of resistance training, the impact of a the right tech suit and the benefits of frequent racing, like Siobhan Haughey advocates.
Kelly also discusses how she's inspired by Olympian Paige Madden who breathes out of every wall after each flip-turn, enforcing the importance of doing what's right for the individual and not always what is the norm.
So, whether you're a seasoned swimmer or an enthusiastic novice, there's something in it for everyone. Tune in and get ready to improve your swimming too!
Hear the details of how Kelly Palace broke six national records, in six different events within a six-week span. Maria interviews Kelly who shares the challenges she faced, the 10 specific things she attributes these records to. You'll hear about her transformative experience of altering her swimming technique at age 62 helped pave the path to success.
She gives credit to the "village" of Swim Coaches that have helped her including BJ Graham, Mitzi Kremer, Mark Kutz, Jay Peluso, Johnathan Kaplan and Kelly Hargreaves.
Further, this episode delves into advantages of resistance training, the impact of a the right tech suit and the benefits of frequent racing, like Siobhan Haughey advocates.
Kelly also discusses how she's inspired by Olympian Paige Madden who breathes out of every wall after each flip-turn, enforcing the importance of doing what's right for the individual and not always what is the norm.
So, whether you're a seasoned swimmer or an enthusiastic novice, there's something in it for everyone. Tune in and get ready to improve your swimming too!
Welcome to the award-winning Champions Mojo hosted by two world record-holding athletes. Be inspired as you listen to conversations with champions and now your hosts, kelly Palace and Maria Parker.
Speaker 2:Hello friends, welcome to the Champions Mojo podcast. I'm your host, kelly Palace, and with me today is Maria Parker. Hey Maria, hey, kelly. Well, maria, I am being forced to have you interview me.
Speaker 2:So, in all seriousness, I've really been using all the tools that we talk about on Champions Mojo and I've had a banner year and I think that year started at the Rowdy Gaines meet and I was doing a lot of on-deck interviews, as everybody knows, at that meet and my friend and teammate, kirk Clear, insisted on interviewing me and at that point I knew that I still had quite a few goals that I had not reached for the year and I thought it was nice for Kirk to interview me. He did a great job, he has a lot of background in that. But I wanted to fast forward to now and I told Kirk. I said I'm going to let Maria interview me after I hit these goals. So here I am, I'm yours, and I do want to share some of the Mojo that I've been using to achieve some success, and you can maybe tell everybody what I've been doing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm so delighted that we get to do this. We've tried before. I mean, I've been saying, kelly, you've had the most amazing year. Let's put you on there because you are an amazing and world-class currently a world-class swimmer and you've had a great year. Right, six national individual records in six different events in six weeks, led off by a world record relay. I can list the records here, or do you want to say what you did?
Speaker 2:Probably for the sake of quickness and all these abbreviations it might be nice. So on October 1st I swam short course yards. I did the 3,000 national record in the 3,000. That's the long distance records, that one is not at a meet and it's a little more relaxed. But that was October 1st and I think that kind of set up a good 1650 for me. And I'll talk about that when we go into some details on how this all came about.
Speaker 2:Then, just a week later I swam the 500 free short course yards national record on October 8th and that was at a USA meet in Virginia, at SwimRVA. Then at the Routy Gaines meet in Florida I set the 800 and the 1500 short course meters national records. That was October 13th and 14th. That meet also was led off. Actually I swam the 800 first, but the 4x200 free relay. Our team did set the world record in a relay, but that's not one of the six individual records. And then back to SwimRVA. I swam the 1650 in a USA meet and I set the national record on November 5th. And then a week later, on November 10th, I swam the 1,000 in a USA meet, that's at the Hampton Aquaplex and I set the national record there, and what was funny is when I being in the middle of my age group.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's what I was going to say. This isn't normally a time when you would set a bunch of records. Usually in the past I've been following your career for years and years and usually you wait till you just get to the very bottom of your age group and you turn 55, you turn 50, you turn 55, you turn 60, you just collect all those records and then you sort of quiet down. But that didn't happen this time, did it?
Speaker 2:I think maybe COVID and maybe being out of the water for several years going into the 60 age group, I needed to get in a little bit better shape. But I was close to the 1650 record and the 1000 record when I turned 60 and I almost got them. I think it was three seconds off in the mile.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's nothing, maybe seven seconds off in the thousand.
Speaker 2:But in this year I broke the 800, the 1500, the 1000 and the 1650 record by a substantial amount. It wasn't just, oh, I nicked it by a couple of tenths. It was a lot of seconds, I think up to 15 in the miles and 10 seconds in the 800s.
Speaker 3:So it was a huge breakout year, just huge.
Speaker 2:It was a huge breakout year.
Speaker 3:Huge breakout year and in some ways it wasn't an easy year for you personally. I mean, I know what's been going on, so tell me, how did you do it?
Speaker 2:I think, addressing that. I think sometimes the pool can be such a refuge. I think what's been going on for our family is my 93-year-old dad, your 93-year-old father-in-law has been really struggling, and we've had to spend a lot of time in Virginia, even though we live in Florida. We've had to spend a lot of time with him, helping him. He's had a couple of falls, he's had just some problems, and, being his only daughter, I tend to be there more than my other siblings, and so I feel like my one refuge for keeping my mental health was to swim a lot, and so and I mean I just want to interrupt there for a second because a lot of us, who you know, who have a sport.
Speaker 3:When life gets in the way, especially if we have to travel, we have to take a break from it, and swimming is a very it's one of those sports where you have to look for water. You can't just go out and put your running shoes on and run. So what impresses me is that, even though you have been all over the place traveling, and especially up in Richmond, you still have made swimming a priority for your physical and mental health.
Speaker 2:And I think it was more that than actually I'm going to go after all these records, right. Right, I'm going to go after some mental health, because when you're with a lot of the issues that my dad has had, or they're not fun to be around and it was just like I'm going to go get in my beautiful paradise of the pool, and so I ended up just finding and I think, yes, you do have to go find water, but there are a lot of programs that you can swim with. So I would say the number one reason why I really dropped my time is because I just upped my intensity of my swimming. I didn't swim that many more days a week, but I ended up swimming with groups that taxed me more. I swam with the SwimRVA group when I was in Richmond with my dad and then when I was back home, I would really miss that really taxing workout.
Speaker 2:And I swam with the USA team, which is coached by Olympian Mitzi Kramer, and that just took me to another level.
Speaker 2:Certainly, I love my Swim Melbourne Masters group. They are a wonderful group for me, but just as yet there's not that distance lane that I need when I'm going after the 1650. As an athlete. I think some of the people have asked me what's the secret? You have to find what you need and it's not saying, if Swim Melbourne doesn't have the lane that I need right now, then I got to go find that lane and there'll be plenty of times when they are going to provide what I need. But I found SwimRVA Masters and then swimming with USA teams and taking that intensity up to deal with that pain that you have to deal with in the longer stuff really made a difference, and so I would put out there that the takeaway from that is maybe the group that you're swimming with is fun, they're your buddies, but you just need something, even going a couple of days a week to finding another group or something that gives you a little bit more.
Speaker 3:Right, Right and just helicoptering up swimming with the Melbourne Masters brought so much joy to you and the swimming brought back the joy for swimming for you. So that was a great step just to be swimming with joy and pleasure, not just by yourself every five years prepping for the next age group. And then from that stepping stone, or that base of all your friends and all the happiness that you found there, you're able to challenge yourself more with these other groups.
Speaker 2:No, absolutely so. Melbourne. They're my people, they're my family they're the foundation that got me back into swimming and then just saying I'm always going to be there. It's just like you go out from home. I wouldn't be where I am without BJ and the team and all that. But sometimes you just have to add more and that's what you got to do.
Speaker 3:As we age, we sometimes have aches and pains and weird injuries, and I know you've struggled with your shoulder. How was that?
Speaker 2:That might have been the number one thing. Obviously, you can't up your intensity if you have bad shoulders. So I know that on our website we have promoted this, we've talked about it on different shows is keeping your shoulders healthy, and we have a resource tab on our Champions Mojo website called Shoulder Health and I have been hanging. So shoulder hanging can keep you out of shoulder surgery. I was diagnosed with a torn rotator cuff in one shoulder and an impingement in another shoulder, and these were confirmed by MRI. But this book by I think it's Dr John Kraus I'll have to look that up but it's on the website that you hang and so three days a week I hang 10 sets of 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off, and that puts my shoulders into the right alignment. It opens them up. I don't get impingements. The rotator cuff tear healed itself and so my shoulders knock on wood are totally pain free and I can swim at a very high level because I continue to hang. That's great.
Speaker 3:Okay, so I know another thing again you're 62 and another thing is that you had a little bit of a change in your strokes. Talk about that.
Speaker 2:Yes, I think probably, again in order of things that really made a difference in this year was I changed my stroke back to what feels good for me, what actually feels good, and I got into the mindset of watching a lot of videos like Olympians and they're doing kind of a catch-up stroke, and so I started doing a catch-up stroke and then I was not going anywhere. I was still okay fast, I was just not getting what I wanted to and not feeling as good as I had historically, and so I just happened to be watching some videos one night on YouTube and I ran across Paul Newsom's Swim Smooth videos on Technique and we've had Paul on the show. He's awesome. In fact, his episode number we've got it right here is episode 229. He had a video that said catch-up stroke is bad, Do not do catch-up stroke. And I'm like, wait, I'm doing catch-up stroke. So I watched what I should be doing and the very next day I implemented that and I dropped 30 seconds in my 1500 feet and so and I felt you loved it, you were happy.
Speaker 2:You were happy. Yeah, I felt better than I felt in years. So I think that finding that technique, that a lot of us at a high level, or just not even necessarily a high level, but at a lot of experience if you've been swimming for a long time, then you think you've got the technique that you're always going to have, and that's just not true. You can change your technique. Believe me, I changed it, you know, at age 62. And I think technique it's the ultimate importance.
Speaker 3:So then there were two other kind of equipment oriented things. You said that really helped you this year. Can you talk about those?
Speaker 2:I definitely got into some resistance training with using bands. Of course we all need to continue strength training as we age and if you can't get to a regular gym where you're doing weights with lat poles and bicep, tricep, curls and squats, then these stretch cords, or bands as people call them. So I do maybe 20 times, three, three times a week. Where I'm just doing on the dry land, I'll hook a band and it's the Fennace Orange cord. It's got two hand paddles on it or two little handles, and I hook it around a doorknob and I just make sure that I'm keeping that. I get my lats burning three times a week to where I feel that full pull. And then in the water. Of course, erica Braun, who we all know is amazing and has been a big inspiration to me with her training, she's like Kelly, you need to be doing some in water resistance training and so I have used the swim tether where I hook that to either a block or to the actual swim tether and I will swim again like 30 seconds, just firing as fast as I can, just getting some really good turnover in the water. So doing a lot of tether, swimming with the swim tether as my resistance training. And I think resistance training is just so huge and getting faster, because then when you're not resisted and then you hit that water, you're like wow. I feel amazing In talking about the times that we know that I broke records, but from last year to this year, my 200 free drop from 211 to 208, my 500 free drop from 548 to 538, my 1000 drop from 1155 to 1131.
Speaker 2:Wow, my 1650 dropped from 1948 to 1924. Those were my yard times. So I really think that resistance training has helped me a lot. And then I know that people underestimate their tech suits, because I set every single one of these records in a thinnest hydrox tech suit. And so, remember, I'm swimming 500 up, so 500,000, 1650, 800, 1500, 3000.
Speaker 2:And if you swim anything maybe over 100, even a 200, and your shoulders get tight, then you just start to feel worse in the water, you start to feel slower, and then your mental game starts to unravel because you are feeling these things digging into your shoulders. And so the Fennis Hydrox Tech Suit gives you this unbelievable comfort and yet it has incredible compression. As a 60-year-old lady, I don't have rock hard, flat abs. I have a nice little pot belly that is sucked in completely by my Fennis Tech Suit and it's like a very comfortable girl, which is great, because you want that hydrodynamics you want to be completely flat in your stomach and I'm also a rather big breasted woman and it sucks in that, but culturally it's the strength thing.
Speaker 2:This fabric is very comfortable and, most importantly, on your shoulders. I never felt that dig from every other suit that I've worn. So I think that this Fennis Hydrox Tech Suit has made a huge difference in me breaking all these records, and I couldn't be more thrilled with that part of the technology and the equipment.
Speaker 3:That's great, that's terrific. It's nice to have just a thing that makes you better, that doesn't involve pain or something.
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Speaker 3:OK. So then I know it seems like every other day I was talking to you you were swimming in another meet. Was there something about swimming in a lot of meets that helped, do you think?
Speaker 2:Yes, I think that I did those six records in like six weeks and I was pretty much in a meet every weekend. Again, another hack that I get from some of the elite swimmers I know Erica Braun does a lot of meet. There is nothing that prepares you for racing like racing, it's just you learn that streamlined dive, you learn more about your race pace. I think I swam the 510 times before I broke the record. It's just learning how to deal with that part of a race that you may not feel comfortable with. And another person who just said this, who's just swimming out of her mind, is the elite. She swims for Hong Kong.
Speaker 2:She's been on the show, siobhan Hawhee, she just beat Katie Ledecky in the 200 free event the last US Open meet and she is just swimming, incredibly. And she said one of her. They asked her what do you think the secret is? She said I'm racing a lot, and so I think if you want to get better, racing a lot is definitely a great way to do it. When you just swim one meet a year, if you learn something about yourself, then you can't even implement it until next year when you race. There aren't a lot of masters meets. There are a lot, but there are a lot of US teams.
Speaker 2:And so I highly recommend USA meets because one, there are a lot of them. Two, there is just nothing like being supported by a bunch of kids I can't tell you the number, like all these records that I set other than at the Rowdy Gaines meet, there were kids standing on the side cheering for me just because I'm like their grandmother's age and they want to support me, and the coaches were cheering for me and the parents would come up and say what an inspiration that I was. And also, as a distance swimmer, you get to swim against your same gender. So I've written an editorial that was published in Swimming World Magazine that I don't think that we should mix genders, especially at nationals, because if you're a faster distance swimmer as a female, you might be in between two big males where you're just getting bounced around in a bunch of water. And so I've been swimming with women, with 16-year-old women and 17-year-old women with the same body size that I have, and it's been really nice.
Speaker 3:Yeah, fewer tidal waves, that's great. Now I know there's something to do with the temperature of the pools that you've been swimming in.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, as a Florida girl, for the last 20 years every record that I set in the past few months here has been in a Northern pool Swamara, va, the Hampton aqua plex. These have been cold pools and that just makes a huge difference. Warm pools are just not good for fast swimming and unfortunately, a lot of times in Florida we just have warm pools.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so cold pools are good. Okay, and I know a huge step forward came after we talked to dr Colleen hackers. You want to talk about that?
Speaker 2:Yes. So dr Hacker, sports psychologist for USA team USA Olympic teams, and we each got to ask her a question, and one of my questions was I started backing off from the pain in my 1650 and my longer events and I started to even get afraid of the pain I asked her about. She's like wait, no, no, no, kelly, this is what separates you. And then I thought you know, that's right, that's the pride of being in the D lane of swimming, the extra sets of being able to push myself, and I just kind of let it sneak up on me this bad attitude of, oh no, I don't want to hurt. And so when that pain used to come in the last couple of years, I would just be like, oh, I'm just gonna back off, which certainly takes the pain away. Or Now, by mindset, when that pain comes, I'm like I've trained for this, this is my superpower, this is where I get better and everybody's in pain, but I'm just gonna push through it. And that really helped me.
Speaker 3:That's great. Yes, it's surprising to think of you backing off, but yeah, we've been saying pain is your superpower, so I love that that just shows you can slide into bad habits, right.
Speaker 2:it just takes one bad race where you're like, okay, oh, I didn't want that pain, and then you just slide it into bad habits and then they can become bigger.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's true, they can grow, okay. Second, the last thing you've got some help this year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel like, because we've been traveling around a lot and had different Pool opportunities. One of the reasons that I ended up starting this one with Mitzi Kramer down in Florida is because we lost our pool to the high school team, swam Melbourne. We had us traveled to a farther away pool, which was just not convenient and where Mitzi swims is 10 minutes from my house, and then the other pool was like 30 minutes and so wherever I am, I picked the brain of that coach. So obviously I've gotten great stuff from BJ. I've swam with Mark cuts and Richmond, who we talk about all the time. Mark has given me incredible advice swimming with Swam RVA. J Paluso has been really instrumental and Kelly Hargraves, who is with Hanover Aquatics, has really helped me a lot, and Jonathan Kaplan, who coaches the USA team at Swam RVA.
Speaker 2:So every one of these coaches I will try to connect with and talk with them about. What do you think makes a fast swimmer? Now, what do you think people need to be doing to do this? What are you doing with your kids and that? And Jonathan Kaplan at Swam RVA's Let me use the resistance bands in the pool where I'm in lap swim and I'm like can I use the bands, he's like, yeah, go ahead and told me what to do with them. And Kelly Hargraves from Hanover Aquatics Watched me swim a couple of the local meets USA meets for the kids and she's given me some pointers. So every one of these coaches has Played a role and just buoying me up and you know, hey, I'll take it. It takes a village, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so, kelly, I mean I know there's many, many ingredients that went into this amazing world-class year that you've had, but tell me what. Maybe the last takeaway is.
Speaker 2:Obviously, I have a love and a passion for the sport. You have to be a student of your craft, a student of your passion, whatever that is, whether it's just swimming or painting or whatever it is. Whatever your craft is, you've got to study it. You've got to talk for the best. You've got to watch the best. You've got to learn about yourself. You've got to push yourself. You just have to find things that excite you about it. And yet I think, at the end of the day, you have to be authentically you and do things that feel right for you. Because we're all told, of course, the pinnacle of the events that I swim, that swimmer is Katie Ledecky. And if I were to try and emulate Katie Ledecky on my terms, Katie Ledecky does not breathe out of every wall. She takes a stroke and then she breathes out of every wall and that is the standard best practice, quote unquote. But as a student of the sport, I studied Paige Madden. Paige Madden was the NCAA champion in the 1650, a few years ago. She's also, of course, she's an Olympian. She's returning again to make the 2024 Olympic team. And Paige Madden, who's very fast? Obviously she breathes out of every single wall. She pushes off the wall and grabs that air, just like her mouth is open. There's not even a stroke that she takes before that wall, which is against that.
Speaker 2:When we interviewed Paige Madden on the show, we asked her about that. Do you remember, maria? Yeah, I do, yeah. And she said yeah, it's just what she and Ty DeSourbaugh said was best for her and she needed air. And when I traded that up in my races which I did this year, where I was not afraid to just do what feels good for me I think that made a difference.
Speaker 2:So it's not saying, hey, if you're listening, you need to breathe out of every wall. It's saying what do you need to do? And now I'm even trying this thing where I've seen a lot of people double breathe. So they're the opposite of Katie, where you don't just breathe their first stroke, you don't even take a stroke. You breathe them between strokes, and this is getting into high-level breathing. But you breathe to the right and before you even take that next stroke, you breathe to the left, so you grab a couple of bites of air. And this is some of the swimmers at the highest level of the sport. I'm watching them do this and now maybe we're learning that distance? Swimmers, who are you used to think oh, you can breathe every third. Wow, now you breathe every half.
Speaker 2:So I think, just not being afraid to do something. That's different.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and also knowing yourself. Listen to people try things and then know yourself and trust your gut. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I love that yes.
Speaker 3:Kelly, you have inspired me. I'm sure you have inspired our listeners so much. We're so grateful, I'm so grateful for just your willingness to share what you've learned and to continue growing as an athlete and a person. So I'm so, so proud of you, love you so much All right, maria, thank you so much.
Speaker 2:I know that I am very average when it comes to talent or my gift for swimming, and so I know that if a lot of my competitors implement all these things, I won't have those records in the world. But I don't care. I just want people to give banister and it's really fun. It's fun to try to keep getting better.
Speaker 3:So proud of you. Love you, Kelly.
Speaker 2:Love you too. All right, bye-bye.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Champions Mojo podcast. Did you enjoy the show? We'd be grateful if you would leave us a five-star review on iTunes to help others find us, and we'd also love to hear from you, or on all social media platforms, or you can reach us at championsmojocom.