Torpedo Swimtalk Podcast - Exploring Masters Swimmer Experiences to Coaching Insights

On this episode of Torpedo Swimtalk Podcast take a deep dive into world of masters swimming! Join us for an enlightening chat with distinguished master swimmers, Jacinta Humphrey and Darius Schultz, along with insightful coach, Anthony Kattan. Jacinta and Darius peel back the curtain on the sport, sharing personal stories and the indescribable thrill of achieving personal goals in the water.

We chat to Anthony, a seasoned master swimming coach, about his joy in coaching masters swimmers.  He compares and contrasts coaching master swimmers with age group swimmers, touching upon the importance of program flexibility and personal accountability. Whether you're a veteran swimmer seeking a new wave to ride, or a newcomer looking for a friendly and supportive community, this episode promises to take you on an unforgettable journey exploring the incredible world of masters swimming.

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Transcript

Danielle Spurling: 0:04

Hello Swimmers and welcome to another episode of torpedo swim talk podcast. I'm your host, Danielle Spurling, and each week we chat to a master swimmer from around the world about their swimming journey. I recently conducted some interviews for master swimming Australia to help them present a case at the National Swimcon Conference on the Gold Coast to encourage coaches and swimmers to get involved in master swimming. I spoke to Swimmers Jacinta Humphrey, Darius Schultz and caught up with coach Anthony Kattan to hear their thoughts and ideas on that very topic. Let's hear what they all had to say about their involvement in master swimming. I'm here talking with Jacinta Humphrey from the PowerPoints Master Swimming Club in Melbourne. Hi, Jacinta, how are you going this morning? Yeah, good thanks, danielle, Great to have you here. What motivated you to start masters swimming?

Jacinta Humphrey: 1:03

So I've been a squad swimmer since I was eight years old and kind of swam the whole way through primary school, high school and then into my university degree and suddenly I stopped and I found that I really, really missed it. So when I came across masters, it just seemed like the next logical progression for me.

Danielle Spurling: 1:23

And what role does the social aspect of master swimming have in store for you?

Jacinta Humphrey: 1:27

So one of the things that I really missed about squad swimming was having that community of fellow swimmers around. So it's really nice when you go to a competition and there's a group of people from your club or even other clubs, interstate that you know and you see regularly. It's always been such a friendly and welcoming community. It doesn't matter someone's age, gender, ability, everyone's just there for a good time and to see how quick they can swim in the pool.

Danielle Spurling: 1:55

Does the competitive aspect of master swimming appeal to you? Is that one of the reasons that you're in master swimming?

Jacinta Humphrey: 2:01

Absolutely yeah. So, as I said, I've been a squad swimmer since I was a kid. I went to my first state champs and I was a 10 year old and I love competing. I'm a very competitive person, so it's awesome to be able to continue racing into my 30s and hopefully in 40s 50s, and it's great to also be able to race people of any age and gender. I like that Masters does put you into heats based on your time, so there's always someone of a similar speed.

Danielle Spurling: 2:32

What benefits do you find personally from being involved in a master swimming club?

Jacinta Humphrey: 2:38

So when we first joined master swimming, my partner and I we were in a very small club. So whilst we did get to compete, which was great, we didn't often have the opportunity to race in relays. So we've since moved to a larger club at PowerPoints, and now it's fantastic we're able to swim relays at meets all around Australia and also just to have that really big crew. When you come to a swim meet and there's a lot of camaraderie and everyone's there kind of supporting each other, it's a really great atmosphere.

Danielle Spurling: 3:14

I'm here on a really cold winter's Melbourne morning with Darius Schultz, one of our great Masters, swimmers and record holders from PowerPoints in Melbourne. Hi, Darius, welcome.

Darius Schultz: 3:25

Great to be here.

Danielle Spurling: 3:26

What motivated you to get involved with Masters swimming?

Darius Schultz: 3:30

I always grew up age group swimming and it was actually full time work that motivated me to go into Masters. So when I started working full time I couldn't fit in training with an age group club and you know I didn't really have any opportunity to swim and you know I really missed the water and Masters really offered that flexibility with training times and weekend training and really feel that void that I was looking for.

Danielle Spurling: 3:56

Does the social aspect of master swimming appeal to you, Darius?

Darius Schultz: 4:00

Yes, it does. The social aspect is very different to age group swimming, where age group swimming is quite intense and, you know, at swim meets you don't really get many people from different clubs talking to each other, whereas master swimming is very positive, that from the fastest person at the meet all the way to the other end, everyone is so happy and you know whether you swim well it might be good for yourself and everyone's just really happy about that. So it's not so intense, it's, you know, a very positive place.

Danielle Spurling: 4:27

And tell us a little bit about your competition aspect of your master swimming, because I know you're very involved in a lot of different competitions.

Darius Schultz: 4:36

Yes. So the competitive aspect is probably one of the most important things for me. You know I really like to challenge myself, you know, against my own best times and against also other swimmers. So master's offers competitiveness for everyone. I think, whether it's, you know, you're trying to win the race overall in your age group or just you know, against your own best time, you know master's offers a lot of interstate meets, a lot of opportunities to race.

Danielle Spurling: 5:04

Can you share with us some of the benefits that you get personally from being involved in a master swimming club?

Darius Schultz: 5:10

So for me again, it's that positive attitude from everyone. Everyone is really, you know, uplifting, happy to be there swimming and I also think the relays are probably one of the biggest things that you know as an age group swimmer, unless you're in the top in your club, you don't really get many opportunities to do relay. But Masters is completely different. We have many relay teams, we have relay meets, short course and long course, and that you know, everyone loves a good relay and Masters really offers that opportunity.

Danielle Spurling: 5:45

I'm here with Anthony Kattan this morning, Head Coach of MH2O at Harold Holt Pool in Melbourne. Tell us, Anthony, what's the difference between coaching Masters swimmers to other swimmers you've coached in the past?

Anthony Kattan: 5:58

Hi Danny, there's some really serious differences. I think that we often try to say that age group and open swimming is very similar to Masters and that Masters swimmers can just jump in. There's a very different philosophy With age group and open programs. It's all to do with control, making sure that all the variables are taken account of. We know how many times swimmers are coming to the pool. When they're coming to the pool, what sets they're going to do for an extended period of time.

Anthony Kattan: 6:22

With Masters we like to have the flexibility of coming in and out, dropping in and out, having different coaches working in different programs. So it really comes down to the Masters athlete themselves to take accountability for their health and well-being, their recovery, what information they're actually listening to, the advice they're getting from YouTube whether it's actually good or not, because no individual coach can be really responsible for any athlete they're only really seeing them one to two times a week on average, and that's the weeks that they're actually in Melbourne, not vacationing in Europe. So in age group and open swim we talk hard facts. How many sessions did you do in the year? I did 362 sessions a year over 365 days.

Anthony Kattan: 7:00

Masters swimmers like to say I swim four times a week and I'm like, well, on the four weeks that you were there, but what about the four weeks you're away? So what was your average for the whole year? 0.7 session a week. So I think the biggest difference is that control versus flexibility arrangement. And I think if we treat Masters swimmers the same as age groupers and we put these huge workloads on them, they're not physically doing the work to be able to do those loads. So we have to be very mindful of managing injuries and different expectations, different needs. Not everyone wants to race and that's totally okay. Some people do want to race. So how can we help them race and race well and enjoy swimming at whatever age they may be?

Danielle Spurling: 7:37

So in Australia we open Masters swimming to 18 and over and there is a little bit of a discrepancy out in the community about why that is. Can you explain to us why you think we should have 18 and plus in Masters?

Anthony Kattan: 7:49

100%. I was actually asked this question recently. There's some really, really important reasons why we should have masters for 18 overs. There's a bit of a void for swimmers when they finish high level competitive swimming, or if they never reached high level competitive swimming, to masters. So what happens with a lot of our early 20s and late teens is they go off and do other things and we lose them from the sport completely. One example is a young lady that I used to coach when she was a junior and currently at her age. Now she's 17,. She is swimming a program with 12 year olds because most age group programs won't take her because she's not fast enough or she's too old, but the masters clubs can't take her because she's too young. So I already know that on the day of her 18th birthday she'll be joining our club and she's super excited, but for now we can't even have her in our program At MH2.

Anthony Kattan: 8:36

A few years ago we didn't have any swimmers in the 20s and 30s.

Anthony Kattan: 8:40

Now we've got about 30 in the 20s and it's created a whole different environment for our evening program. We have a lot of university students and younger adults, young professionals, coming in and they're learning to find their swimming again in a way that maybe they weren't super competitive at high school or they weren't in the top team and they can come and learn about swimming in a medley based program without having to join a triathlon program and just do freestyle. We get that a lot. A lot of our swimmers come in and say I don't want to do a triathlon program, I'm not interested in triathlons, I want to learn to swim, but I was never able to do it as a teenager. Have you got a program for us? And yes, we do. So. I think it's really important that we start to understand that just because you're 18 and 22, 23 doesn't mean you're able to do an open program, doesn't mean you're fast enough for an open program. But you're welcome at Masters and we want to help you.

Danielle Spurling: 9:26

So, as an experienced coach yourself, what do you see as the way we can integrate Masters Swimmers into existing clubs and programs?

Anthony Kattan: 9:35

I would like to see more existing programs take an approach to the swimming for life and have, hopefully, a separate Masters program. And the reason I say that is it's very difficult to integrate Masters Swimmers into an age group or open group program, as I said before, due to loadings and commitments and so on. We did five years ago have a setup where we had an age group program, we had Masters athletes, we had a lot of Masters athletes, but we had about six or seven who said, hey, I really want to do a larger load this year and I want to join in with the Masters Swimmers in the age group program. Can we be accommodated? And we said to them 100%, as long as you agree to the rules of the age group and open program. So you can't come into a program where every athlete has to do seven to nine sessions a week and be there at that session and not miss programs and come to training and say, well, I only want to do two or three sessions of that because that interferes with what they are doing. But if you're willing to come in and do the same rules, it might not be seven to nine, it could be four to six. Whatever that rules set up and follow the rules of the group and get it, get to training early and do your TheraBand work with those swimmers and be part of that group 100%, then you should be allowed to be part of that group 100%. But that's not for everyone and most Masters Swimmers they'll be happy to do their two, three sessions a week.

Anthony Kattan: 10:48

So I would like to see more clubs having good coaches available to coach adult swimmers in a program where they don't get the worst full time all the time. They have good options. We're very excited that we have 14 sessions a week. We have 545 in the mornings, 57.15 am in the mornings and four evening sessions from 5.30 to 7, which gives people flexibility in options. We have some people who are hard on Monday, wednesday, friday, 5.45, but we also have people who move around because of shift work so they might come Monday night and then Tuesday morning and they might miss two days and then come three times the following week. So by having options and good coaches and good people around, then it gives the people the opportunity to swim and be integrated in a club without necessarily having to be in the age group, and open programs which are far more, as I said, controlled and committed to.

Danielle Spurling: 11:39

So what personal rewards do you get from coaching master swimmers, because I imagine there's quite a few.

Anthony Kattan: 11:45

There's a lot. Actually, it's funny. If you'd asked me 10 years ago, would I be coaching masters now, I would have said no. I was very much on that Olympic World Champs pathway and coaching swimmers at that level. When I moved to Australia and I was working with age group and masters, I really started to enjoy coaching master swimmers and then I went back into a performance age group program and the hours that were put on me just burnt me out to a point that I actually hated coaching. So I took a few years off coaching and then I was asked to come back and coming back to being the best thing that I could have done.

Anthony Kattan: 12:17

I adore all my members. I love getting up every single morning. I'm excited to be here. I love coaching and seeing people have their like light bulb moments. I love working with beginner swimmers and seeing them get swimming for the first time, and I love working with advanced swimmers and trying to work on those nice little things and them go. I've never thought about it that way before. I've never done that before. I love working technique and seeing people come in and get those, and I also love thrashing swimmers and seeing them die on the lane rope.

Anthony Kattan: 12:42

It's all good fun and we have a really mixed program and I get a lot of joy out of just being around this amazing community every single day. One of the things that it's allowed me to do is have weekends. For 20 years of coaching I didn't have weekends and for most of that time it also didn't take any vacation time. So I'd have about one and a half weeks off a year, and that would be to see family. So it's allowed me to take a couple of weeks off a year and enjoy travelling and enjoy the things that I was never able to do as an age group coach or an open swimmer coach. So I think it's really important that we don't burn our coaches out, and for me, the best thing is that I can do what I love and also have a work-life balance as well.

Danielle Spurling: 13:23

Thanks for listening into today's episode with Jacinta, darius and Anthony. We have some great episodes coming to you over the next few weeks. Follow us on Facebook, instagram and YouTube to find out what's happening at Torpedo Swim Talk. Today's episode was brought to you by Amanzi Swimwear and the Magic 5 Custom Swim Goggles. Use Torpedo Swim Talk at checkout for a 15% discount at themagic5.com. Links to Amanzi and the Magic 5 in the show notes of the pod. Until next time, happy swimming and bye for now.