Torpedo Swimtalk Podcast with Tracey Hemphill - Swimmer and Performance Coach explains how to master anxiety and pre-race nerves

Do pre-race nerves hold you back from swimming at your best?

Tracey Hemphill, a seasoned sports performance coach, offers valuable insights on mastering performance and overcoming anxiety in the pool on this episode of Torpedo Swimtalk Podcast By focusing on clarity and filtering the right sensory information, you can take control of your swim performance and achieve better results.

This episode is packed with practical advice on dealing with pre-race nerves, using transformational vocabulary to shape your reality, and discovering the power of visualisation. Tracey explains how concentrating on aspects you can control, such as stroke count and breath rhythm, can put you in charge of the situation. We also delve into the common traits of successful athletes and the art of effortless effort.

Lastly, we explore the mental preparation needed for optimal performance, discussing the roles of biofeedback and mental work alongside visualisation. Tracey sheds light on how anxiety and excitement can be the same experience biologically, but the language we use to describe them determines our state. Mastering these techniques can help you reach new heights in your masters swimming performance and overall well-being. Join us for this engaging and informative conversation with Tracey Hemphill.

Connect with Tracey:
Complete Athlete Community

Chapters

• 0:00 Mastering Performance in Swimming
• 13:32 Transformational Vocabulary and Mental Performance Training
• 20:14 Mental Preparation for Optimal Performance
• 29:08 Athletic Background and Coaching Path
• 37:41 Coaching Approaches and Training Sets

Transcript

Danielle Spurling: 1:06

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 welcomed experienced sports performance coach Tracey Hemphill to the podcast today and, among other things, i asked her how we can combat those pre-race nerves that we all have before races. Tracy shared her techniques for that and so much more. Let's hear from Tracey now. Hi Tracey, welcome to the podcast.

Tracey Hemphill: 1:47

Hi Danielle, thank you for having me. It's great to be here.

Danielle Spurling: 1:50

Yeah, great to have you. Where are you coming to us from in South Africa?

Tracey Hemphill: 1:54

I'm currently in Durban in South Africa, on the coast, so yeah, i'm about a block from the beach and the weather's great. Winter is not really winter here, so lovely.

Danielle Spurling: 2:07

And have you live there all your life, did you move there as an adult? What's the story there?

Tracey Hemphill: 2:12

No, i actually started out in Johannesburg, born and raised in Joberg until 2020. And then, in 2020, we decided to make this move down to the coast, really just because of a for a lifestyle change, really.

Danielle Spurling: 2:30

Sounds lovely. I wanted to launch right into your career because that's why we got you on today. So you're a sports performance coach or a flow sports performance coach. What's the difference between that and a sports psychologist?

Tracey Hemphill: 2:45

I think when we say, when we use the word coach, what a coach did? It takes somebody's existing strengths and makes them better. So why not psychologist? Because I prefer to help people realize what they're already good at and go with that, you know, sort of work towards the upper range of their already existing capacities and strengths and things that they're already good at. So, yeah, that's why I have focused myself in that direction rather than in a psychology direction.

Danielle Spurling: 3:29

What do you see as the most common hurdles that the swimmers you work with come to you about?

Tracey Hemphill: 3:39

Lack of clarity. You know it's crazy I speak to, I've worked with so many athletes and when I start with them, the first question is always okay, so why are you here? And most of them kind of go, don't really know. I'm like, okay, all right, What do you want to achieve out of this? Yeah, not really sure. And I'm like, okay, so what are your goals? Do you have goals? Yeah, I have goals. What are they Right, not sure. Like, yeah, maybe we want to go to the Olympics and maybe want to get recognised for colours at school, but there's just not enough information, zero clarity on what they're actually hoping to achieve And, as a result, what they experience is an overload of sensory information. You know, we've got all this information coming into our brain. There's actually 400 billion bits of information coming into our brain per second. Did you know that?

Danielle Spurling: 4:50

No, I did not. That's a lot of information.

Tracey Hemphill: 4:53

That's a lot of information And we only have the capacity to process about 2000 bits of information per second. But if you don't know what to filter, if you don't know what information to pay attention to, then you're sort of blindly allowing a whole bunch of stuff to come in and you're not controlling what's getting your awareness. So that is what I'm finding with our athletes, and it doesn't matter what age they are, they are still. Most of our athletes are just not clear enough?

Danielle Spurling: 5:31

Yeah, definitely. I mean, i think having a long term goal and setting yourself up with short term goals really helps the athlete. And a lot of our listeners are master swimmers And I find in the master swimming community they are quite goal orientated, a lot of them because they know that they're going to be going to nationals next year, for instance, or they're going to swim at the world championships this year. So those kind of things a long term goal really really helps. I think. Clarify for, as you were saying before, your motivation in getting to training. But how do you help them with the sort of the things along the way? So, say, i came to you and said I love swimming, i train and I want to race, but I get very, very nervous when I get behind the blocks. What tools could you give me, as a master swimmer, to deal with those things so I could get the best out of my performance?

Tracey Hemphill: 6:28

My go to is focusing on process. Why do we get nervous? We get nervous because we feel like we don't have control over the circumstances. We don't have control over the elements. We cannot control how fast we're going to go, but we can control whether or not we count our strokes, what our stroke rate is going to be, how effectively am I going to get off the walls? What is my breathing pattern going to be? Am I going to commit to a breath pattern or a breath rhythm and all those sorts of things? My go-to is helping them understand the controllable, stick to the process and use the results or the outcome as a bit of feedback, a bit of information. but that is not the be all and end all. It's about helping people understand that there are a vast amount. there is a vast amount of information that they actually need to take from every single event, that the time on the board is ultimately not the be all and end all.

Danielle Spurling: 7:38

Yeah, and I think that's so pertinent because I think people forget they do all that training and then they get there and they don't think about those processes. Do you recommend that they think about those in training as well?

Tracey Hemphill: 7:53

Yeah, of course It's about developing habits. It's not a good idea to go to an event and say, okay, now what I'm going to do is I'm going to bang this 50 freestyle and I'm going to do it in one breath. First question is going to be like, okay, have you been training that? And no, no, no, i'm just going to give it a try. And obviously what happens is you've now created the situation that you haven't rehearsed, you haven't practiced, you haven't sort of set yourself up to collect information from the strategy. Okay, we need to collect information. What we need is feedback in order to improve, and feedback on various elements of the events to help us improve. We can't just rely on that one piece of information, which is the time at the end, and say, okay, that is the be all and end. All of this experience, all the work that I do, all the training sessions that I go to, week after week, hours spent in the pool, is going to come down to that one piece of information. It's just not enough. We have to work on the constant habits of looking for feedback. So, in training, what is the breath rhythm in your training sets? Are you able to stick to this breath pattern? Are you able to control that breath pattern? What does your underwater work look like? We would never say to our kids, right? So in this race, you're going to dive off the block and you're going to do eight underwater kicks. Break out five strokes and let's see what happens, because they might not even be able to do eight underwater kicks. It's got to be a process. So you've got to, in training, start looking at starting with four underwater kicks, working up to five, working up to six And, in that, helping the athletes celebrate their little wins along the way. So it's just another. It just helps them. Again, coming back to their clarity points, it gives them something to focus on in training because, again, we don't want too much information coming in through the break. We're already experiencing sensory input from the noise outside, the temperature of the water, the temperature of the air, the wind, the way that we're feeling in the water, what we're seeing, feedback from the coach. We want to control as much of that as possible to say, ok, so today we're going to be working on underwater. I need to achieve five underwater kicks in this training session. That's what I'm going to concentrate my feedback and my sensory input on today so that I can make the most of that piece of information And then build that up and recognize the wind and the progress And you see, it all comes back to a high performance.

Tracey Hemphill: 10:57

Individual has to work with three elements Motivation, learning and creativity. First up, we've got to deal with motivation. How do we stay motivated to do this thing? How do we go there every day when it's cold, early in the morning, even if we're super busy And I mean I can just imagine for your masters if you're running business, in business, have a high demand lifestyle or high expectations in your job You still have to find the motivation at the end of your day to get to the pool. And how do you train up and maintain that motivation?

Tracey Hemphill: 11:39

Once you've got that worked out and you've got the motivation sorted out, you move to the next part of the triangle, which is learning.

Tracey Hemphill: 11:46

So why do we go to training? OK, well, we're motivated to go to training because we enjoy this activity And we want to do it well. But because we want to do it well, we need to learn. We need to learn how to do it better. We need to learn what elements to bring together to make the most of this time that we have in the pool. And then, once you've figured that learning out, you need to get creative about how you put it all together, creative about how you train up motivation, creative about what you're learning, you're putting and implementing in the event to give yourself the best possible result. And how do you make that feedback loop? How do you close the time or constrict the time in that feedback loop so that it's not taking too long to move between motivation, learning and creativity? Because it's when that process takes too long that we lose steam And then it's really hard to train up motivation if you've lost the will to carry on, to keep learning and keep getting creative. Does that answer the question?

Danielle Spurling: 12:56

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, because people get. If that process takes too long, people lose motivation as well, or strain, as you say. Exactly, yeah, what do you do with those three things working well, but the athlete has sort of negative thoughts sort of creeping into their mindset, even though they're motivated, they're training well, following all their sort of ticking all the boxes, what sort of strategies can you advise for that kind of thing to get rid of those negative thoughts?

Tracey Hemphill: 13:29

So that's sort of a mindset-related issue. Transformational vocabulary is a very, very awesome tool, right In that if we are tracking, if we get into the habits of tracking ourselves, tracking our behavior, tracking our training, tracking progress, and you start tracking language, start paying attention to what information moves you forward and what information doesn't move you forward. So, for example, the words like tired in transformational vocabulary we talk about how what you say becomes your reality. Okay, If you are constantly telling yourself that you're tired, that eventually becomes the reality you've experienced. You're constantly feeling more and more tired. It's the same as being depressed or being lazy.

Tracey Hemphill: 14:27

I always tell a story about a parent that I had. He would bring his child to training with me and he would always walk into the pool and I'd say to him hey, how are you doing? And for years he said I'm lazy. And for years he used that. He said, hey, I'm lazy, and he never had a job. He never had a job, He never went out to find himself work, And it came from that. It came from him constantly telling himself that that was his reality. So when you talk about training specifically, if you keep telling yourself that you're tired, you're gonna experience that fatigue even more strongly. If you keep telling yourself you're depressed, you're gonna experience that more strongly. So do those words move you forward? No, but can you deny that you're tired? No, you cannot lie to yourself either. So, instead of using the word tired, instead of using the word depressed, what acknowledges your experience but doesn't give it such definitive.

Danielle Spurling: 15:31

Right, yeah, I like that. So what word would you think of for that situation?

Tracey Hemphill: 15:36

So I like slang words. I like sort of tell my athletes if you're tired, tell me you're bushed. You're not really tired, You're just bushed. And then you acknowledge that experience. but it doesn't make it more intense.

Danielle Spurling: 15:54

So I suppose that helps the athlete acknowledge that, yes, they're having that feeling, but I suppose bushed is not quite, as it's not as long term, is it? You sort of it's more of a transitionary feeling? Is that sort of what you're trying to get them to?

Tracey Hemphill: 16:10

think of When we say yeah, like if you say to yourself I'm depressed, i'm just feeling so depressed. It's not exactly an energizing experience, right? And the more you keep telling yourself that you're depressed, the more you experience that depression, the less energy you get From an emotional perspective. All of our emotions, all of our experiences are vibrations. They give off a vibration in our body and our negative experiences give off a lower vibration. Obviously, the results of that, the results of low vibrations, is not as much energy coming off that vibration.

Tracey Hemphill: 17:00

That's why happy people just seem to have all of this energy. They seem to be a bundle of energy, and why maybe frustrated people don't experience that kind of energy inside of their system. It doesn't feel like they've got a cyclone within them that just wants to do and get done and have an experience and go on that hike and run down the road. So we can control those emotional experiences to a large extent by the words we use to describe those experiences. And all I'm saying is that when we are having negative experiences, we can't lie to ourselves and try and convince ourselves that we're not having that experience, but rather than saying I'm depressed, i'm tired, i'm dying this set is so hard, rather just acknowledge that experience by saying something like sure, this is challenging, i'm uncomfortable, rather than damning it to. I'm dying and this is really hard.

Danielle Spurling: 18:13

Yeah, no, that makes sense. I think a lot of people have trouble sort of sitting in uncomfortable feelings. We're very quick to sort of bandaid them over or find something else to get our mind off them, but never sort of sit through them. What do you find in the athletes that are really good at this kind of technique, because this is another type of training, this whole mental performance training What do the very successful people that you come across, the successful swimmers, what do they sort of share in common to be able to be more successful in having a really positive mindset, successful?

Tracey Hemphill: 18:55

athletes regularly do the hard thing. So they have sort of mastered the skill of the six elements of grit. They've mastered the perseverance to go and do the thing even when they don't feel like it. They've mastered the ability to be able to feel their best even when they're at their worst. They've mastered the ability to get up and train a weakness, do it, even though it's not something that comes easy. And for me that's the thing with successful people is they've created this habit of going at hard things. They've made it a habit. It doesn't become. They've moved past the point of it being a struggle for them. It's still hard, it's still a struggle, but they just move through that with more effortlessness. If I mean, that's not really a word, but it's effortless effort.

Danielle Spurling: 20:07

That's the way I wanna put it Do you get your athletes to visualize themselves before a race? practicing those processes?

Tracey Hemphill: 20:16

Yeah, so visualization is another tool that it has to be used regularly Because, again, visualization is this rehearsal But you will also still, you're still going to succumb to the things that you allow to take your awareness. So in your visualization you have to train up the focus on paying attention to the information that you want for feedback. Now what happens is some people, if they don't visualize regularly, visualization actually makes them nervous before they even get on the block Because they haven't trained up the other skills to control what they should be looking for in their event, what information they should be paying attention to. So I had an athlete years ago who just visualization did not work for her. It did not work for her. Every time she visualized she would get behind the block, she was a frazzle before she even hit the water. And then I realized that it was because visualization put her on that stage Well before the time that she had to be there, but she had already exhausted her energy reserves. She already had that elevated heart rate that made her nervous. She acknowledged it as nerves, as anxiety, which made her closed to the sensory input that she needed to just help herself take on information that would move her forward.

Tracey Hemphill: 21:56

Simplifying that anxiety puts us in fight, flight or freeze mode. Excitement keeps our mind open to feedback, keeps us creative. Anxiety and excitement are exactly the same experience biologically and physiologically, but it comes down to the words that we use to describe that feeling that, to a large extent, will determine the state that we find ourselves in. Are we in fight, flight or freeze, paying attention to how do we get out of here? Oh my gosh, i don't know what to do. Oh my gosh, i'm in trouble here. Versus oh right, okay, so that's there and that's there, and I'm just gonna focus on this and work on this and try and count that and get the feedback And maybe if I do all of that creatively and I put it all together, i'll get a good enough result here. It comes down again to those words and how you describe your experience.

Danielle Spurling: 22:54

Yeah, and I know, as I mean, i've had very small amount of sports psychology in my degree, but what I took away from it was being biofeedback, which you've sort of talked about. but that optimal performance inverted you, which is the optimal performance level that you want to get to, and obviously anxieties at one side of that and excitements at the other. but you can be too excited. You wanna be right in the middle, don't you? To really perform at your best? Yeah, and it's fleeting in my experience. It's hard to get to it, but I think what you're saying is very. I don't think enough of us practice that side of things, because we're very keen on practicing the physical but we don't practice the mental or the emotional that goes along with it.

Tracey Hemphill: 23:41

We're not doing nearly enough mental work. You know, i mean, even in my complete athlete program I get to see the kids once a week in a face-to-face capacity. How do I try and get on top of that? Well, they've got access to videos that they can watch daily, three to five minute videos that they can just watch daily to trigger a line of thinking or focus on a habit that I want them to follow through with that day. But you know, what often happens is that we see these athletes once a week and then it's like, great, okay, so how was your week? Oh well, this was my problem. Okay, well, this is how I want you, this is what I want you to do this week to try and solve that problem. Then the athletes walked out of our rooms and they smacked with the maths assignment that they need to do next week in the geography essay that they've got a rights. And, oh my gosh, there's that party coming up. What am I gonna wear? You know, they're so overwhelmed and the filters aren't in place.

Tracey Hemphill: 24:53

And then let's talk about master swimmers. I mean, master swimmers are employed or running their own businesses and have to run households and families and they don't have their schedule just to take care of. They've got their kids scheduled to take care of. Plus, they've got to make sure that the groceries are delivered on time and that somebody is gonna be home to collect that and make sure that they don't put the chicken in the fridge. They must put it in the freezer. And I've got this proposal that I need to do. Plus, my boss wants me to put together that presentation. Oh yeah, and I'm gonna swim for an hour sometime here and actually be present in my training session in order to take on feedback that's relevant to me to help me improve, so that I can stay motivated, keep learning, put everything creatively together to get results.

Danielle Spurling: 25:43

Yes, i think that's such a good point because often from personal experience, i go swimming and, yes, i think about what I'm doing, but it's also a meditative sort of state for me as well, where I can just go through the motions and just give my mind a rest from the phone and technology and people being able to talk to me and contact me. So there's that as well. But you do need to get your mind on the process of swimming and your technique And, as you say, stroke count and breathing and all those things if you wanna be successful in taking that into competition.

Tracey Hemphill: 26:21

Exactly Now. If you wanna talk about flow states, okay, so flow states is the state of it's, a high performance, state of mind associated with satisfaction and joy and fulfillment, which obviously, for most of us, that would be the ultimate ambition for us to experience in our lives. And now, flow state and why I focus, why do a lot of work with swimmers It's because I believe that being in the water such an effect of flow state trigger, because you've got your triggers that you could train and coach athletes into being able to implement in their day so that they can experience flow states. And one of those things, one of the flow state triggers, is deep embodiment.

Tracey Hemphill: 27:12

Now, when you're in the water and, like you said, you experienced this meditative state, it's because you're able, you're in the water and you're able to feel that element on your body. You're able to feel the press of the pressure on your arms and your legs as you're moving through the water. You're concentrating, maybe, on the ripple effects of the light through the water onto the floor of the pool, and so you go into this deep embodiment experience where, yes, you can be sped the overload of information about work, about the email that you've missed, about that presentation that you have to do and about what's coming up next week, you're able to slip into the state of being present, okay, and When you are able to be present, then you escape the experiences like anxiety, because anxiety doesn't exist for the most part in the present moment. We experience anxiety because we're hoping to avoid a negative experience that we had in the past or we're worried about what's coming up in the future. It doesn't happen right here, right now.

Danielle Spurling: 28:31

Yes, yeah, that makes complete sense. I think more of us need to be thinking about those things.

Tracey Hemphill: 28:37

Exactly.

Danielle Spurling: 28:42

Do you like listening to our podcast? Because we want to hear your thoughts. If you do, please take the time to leave us a review on Apple or Spotify or on our website or whatever podcast platform you listen on. It really helps other people find our podcast and we really want to spread the word about master swimming, so if you could just take a minute to do that, it would be so much appreciated. What is your own athletic background? So what sport were you involved in and what level did you play that to?

Tracey Hemphill: 29:16

I was a swimmer. I started out as a swimmer and I was really really good up until about the age of 13. And then I went through that typical 13 year old rat catch where things just weren't happening. I wasn't moving forward And I became a victim of my own soft habitat as a result of experiencing all of these hurdles that I'm working with today but not really having the tools and the resources and the people that understood what I was going through to help me move through that experience.

Tracey Hemphill: 29:53

So I actually, by total Luck, i fell into a life saving and environment. I had a friend ask me to help her with a life saving test that she had to compete Because you know life saving have to do that lifeguard award every year And she asked me if I would test it for this lifeguard award thing And I was like, hey, this is pretty cool Actually. I was like I'm not going to do that And I was like, hey, this is pretty cool actually. And so I ended up taking my focus into life saving more than swimming And I found more joy and success in life saving in the end than I did in swimming. But swimming was a good foundation. That sort of read me in that direction. I did land up swimming up until about 18. I carried on swimming and I carried on competing, but I saw more success in the last seven.

Danielle Spurling: 30:49

And so you're a competitive swimming coach. now, what led you to the coaching path?

Tracey Hemphill: 30:53

I think that was a burning in my guts from an early age. You know, the more I wrestled with my own struggles, the more I sort of started picking apart how I would deal with myself As a typical teenager, was incredibly critical of every single other coach that existed on the planet. You know, in my teenage ignorance state, just that immaturity about how, you know, surely we could be doing this better. But I pretty much landed up taking over my high school team in grade 12. I coached that team and then off to school, i went into helping other school teams And it's just never something that went away. I took a break from it. I went traveling overseas for a couple of years and then I came back and I was given a job by a very good friend of mine, richard, who took a chance with me and sort of said OK, well, listen, i'm going to put you in with Learn to Swim. And I taught Learn to Swim for about two years. But I think he even I think he identified that burning in my gut and he started to give me coaching opportunities.

Tracey Hemphill: 32:15

And then finally it was really my dad. My dad had been a great coach but had all unfortunately not been able to pursue, that It wasn't his primary passion, and so he ended up moving into his primary passion and having to let go of coaching. But he sort of said to me in 2006, he headed up the local swimming club in our area. And he sort of said to me in 2006, you know, chase, i need you, i need you to come in and help me out with the swimming club. And he cut and he really put the pressure on me because he kind of said, ok, well, you know, i need you to come and help. And I said, ok, cool, i'm going to help. And then he said, ok, i've got a pool for you, i've sorted out a pool for you. And I was like, ok, cool. And then he said, ok, i've done flyers for you. I'm like, oh, ok, really, oh sure, but so we're going ahead with this.

Tracey Hemphill: 33:09

And and I remember a phone in him sort of two days before we were launching our program, and I was like, dad, i'm not ready. And he was like, yeah, that's just tough, like you've got people showing up on Wednesday afternoon and you've got to be there. So he didn't give me a back door at all And my first day on pool deck, i was hooked. That was it. I was like, ok, i'm right where I need to be. We went on to grow a really, really really successful team in Joburg. We had a great community. We had a learning system program. We had a development program. We had a really nice group of high level athletes that we were working with. There were a couple of us coaches working together and collaborating And and that was it. I mean, that's where we landed up And that's where I was until 2020, when I decided to move to Durban.

Danielle Spurling: 34:17

So have you continued coaching in Durban or have you moved into the performance coaching instead?

Tracey Hemphill: 34:23

No, i still coach a team here in Durban, and that also was by chance. When I came to Durban it was not my intention to coach. I had committed to myself that I was going to be mum to my two athletes and give them all of my focus, until I was asked to help out with a school training session to help the kids learn how to do tumble turns. And then, before I knew it, i was having coffee with a lady who was immigrating to New Zealand who wanted to give me her team, and that was how I ended up with this great team that I've got now in Durban.

Danielle Spurling: 35:04

That happens sometimes. That way It does, It does Look.

Tracey Hemphill: 35:08

I'm forever grateful. It's actually a competitive team. She had built up quite a nice little age group competitive team. But yeah, she had made plans to immigrate to New Zealand and hadn't figured out yet what she was going to do with the team. And I just came along at the right time And so have you got some swimmers.

Danielle Spurling: 35:28

That are they. How does it work in South Africa, like what's the swimming scene? like there, is it interesting Swimming scene? like there Is it in our sort of states or counties? How does that work?

Tracey Hemphill: 35:41

So we've got provinces. So we've got the nine provinces in South Africa. You've got How does it work? I mean, i suppose it's very similar to everywhere else. You've got your, your age group structures, which are levels. We have different levels level one, two and three, and then you've got your junior national level and then your senior national level and the athletes move through those levels as they progress and get better and better, and that starts off at an inter-provincial level And then, obviously, by the time you get to junior nationals, you're participating in national events. Yeah, national open. You've got national age group events and then you've got national open events, yeah.

Danielle Spurling: 36:28

Yeah, and have you got any swimmers on that track, or are they all provincial swimmers?

Tracey Hemphill: 36:33

I don't have any national team athletes at the stage. I've got a lot of really good age group athletes, junior national athletes that are really top in the age groups across the country. But I mean my oldest athlete at the moment is 16. So I sort of most of my athletes we've got. It's very difficult here in Durban to hang on to athletes going into university because there's not a lot of university offerings here in Durban particularly. We've got great universities that are spread out across the country but nothing here in Durban that cater specifically to your athletes. So a lot of our athletes here in Durban are pushing off and going to either are national universities that are here or they're landing up overseas in some sort of scholarship program.

Danielle Spurling: 37:27

Okay, that's a pity, isn't it, not to keep them around Durban.

Tracey Hemphill: 37:34

Yeah, it is, But at the same time, it's another element of growth, right? I've always been a big believer. I've always been a big believer in the fact that athletes need information And then they need to be taught how to make decisions with the information that they get on hand. Different coaches provide different information. I learned from other coaches and so my athletes can learn from other coaches as well. So I really enjoy collaborating And if my athletes move on and they progress forward and they grow into another team and another senior team, that in itself has a lot of benefits for them, in my opinion. So I don't see it as a downside for me. I see it as something that's I embrace it not everybody does, but I embrace it And I see it as a growth opportunity, a springboard for them.

Danielle Spurling: 38:37

I think that's a great way to think of it. Yes, Now I wanted to ask you some what I call deep dive questions, which I ask all people that come on the podcast, And I wanted to ask them from a coaching perspective. So I wondered what is the favorite sprint set that you give your swimmers?

Tracey Hemphill: 38:58

My favorite sprint sets. I take a very neurological approach to coaching. My focus of my programs is not around the energy systems. For me, it's more about okay, so how am I mapping this neurologically? So a sprint set for me Also. I must add in there, though, that I did a really deep dive into the USRBT program And I ran a strict USRBT program for about four or five years And I studied it And I like so many elements of it And I really do believe in that process from a neurological perspective, but also from a psychological perspective, because I'm able to again help my athletes take on feedback in shorter bits of, in shorter repeats. But what I enjoyed about USRBT was what I could do with the athlete from a psychological perspective in between repeats. So what information are you paying attention to? Did you count your strokes? How many underwater did you get? And I just found that I was better able to reinforce high functioning habits for my athletes. Okay, so that remember, when we get fatigued we move into what is habits. But if my athletes' habits are high functioning habits, then they are going to be better off at that point of fatigue when the athlete who doesn't have high functioning habits. So I enjoyed it from that perspective. So a sprint set for me.

Tracey Hemphill: 40:53

If we're talking 50 pace, the guys will go 825s, because that's four times the race distance.

Tracey Hemphill: 41:02

8 to 1025s They'll do it at. They've got a duet holding half the PB of their 50 meter personal base in that event. But they'll have to do it on the stroke counts and they have to sort of use it as a rehearsal of the race. So if they're swimming 825s freestyle, they've got to do the first four with the first 25 at the 50 in focus, and the last four with the last 25 of the 50 in focus. So I want to know where you're breathing in at 50 free? Are you breathing at 20 meters? Because then what you're going to do is you're going to do all four of these 25s, going all the way to 20 before you take your breath, and then in your second 25, you may be taking two breaths in your second 25. So where are those exactly? Okay, you're going to take them there and there And I try to really make them aware of practicing and tracking those habits, while also obviously putting themselves all in on achieving that 50 pace.

Danielle Spurling: 42:15

Yes, Yeah, i love that. That's great, yeah, yeah.

Tracey Hemphill: 42:20

And then likewise with 100 pace. I mean 100 pace it's not really 100 pace would be 2025s doing much the same thing. but I'm thinking it up into quarters. What are we focusing on in the first five, second five, third five, last five? But USRPT is not something I'm working with at the moment And it's really just because of here in Durban the schools almost sort of over deliver to the kids. Most of my athletes, as a result, are not getting to enough practices for me to rely to run a USRPT program. You know I can't lose volume and frequency and only have intensity as a variable in my program. So but they will get thrown these sort of sets in my program even now.

Danielle Spurling: 43:13

So so what would be a typical volume set that you would give them if you're wanting to get their their own meters up?

Tracey Hemphill: 43:20

So I would make it. If we're talking volume, i'd make it sort of like a 200 pace or a 400 pace set I would. Usually most of my repeats would be 50s, every now and again maybe 70, 75s, very rarely hundreds. But when I'm looking for volume, i sort of want to take the, the map, the neurological mapping. I want to take it to the max. So I'll sort of say, okay, right, i want, i want 850s, holding your 400 pace or your 200 pace. But then I'm going to throw in a 75 to disrupt you a little bit And then we'll do 850s again and then I'm going to throw in 100, but just one. But when you do the 100, i want you to still be giving me double the 50. So if you're holding 38s on the 50, i need you to give me 116 on 100. Like I was with the 75, i need to give, i need you to give me the same ratio swim time on that repeats while you're doing the set.

Tracey Hemphill: 44:21

And, again, a lot of focus going into what's happening in your neurological mapping. What is your stroke count? What are you committing to coming out of the walls? There's a three, five, seven kicks out of all the walls. Don't breathe out of your turns. What is your breath pattern? Stick to three, two, three or four. Which one are you going to commit to? And then you know they can find success all over the place. They can find wins all over the place in that set Because, even if they might not be making the repeats, if you're sticking to the breath pattern of breathing every three, there's a win. If you're sticking to the three underwaters out of the wall, there's a win. So, constantly trying to help them find the wins Again, coming back to helping them with motivation, learning new ways to do it and putting it together creatively.

Danielle Spurling: 45:12

What about a freestyle drill that you would give them? What's your go-to drill?

Tracey Hemphill: 45:18

So go to freestyle drill for me, as probably it will do a lot of.

Tracey Hemphill: 45:23

I do a lot of sculling, a lot of sculling for feel. I'll talk to them about achieving deep embodiments and concentrating on keeping the elbows in front of the shoulders and making sure that the elbows go high. I'll do a lot of kick in entry. So I don't like using the kickboard because of no points in freestyle should we really be flat. So I like them in the water, head down, maybe with a snorkel on one hand in entry, one hand in their pull through position, right down at the hip, and they'll sort of do their kick sets in that body position. And then I'll do a lot of six kick changeover, so getting that body position right with the length of the body so that they can feel the length of the body going. Six kicks, changing it over, feeling it on the other side and then exploding into sort of three really fast turnovers so that they can get that elevated body position and try and reinforce the high hands in the front so that they're not letting the hands fall in the front of the stroke.

Danielle Spurling: 46:37

That's a great drill. I love that. I call it a kick switch drill.

Tracey Hemphill: 46:42

Oh, okay, i like that, that's better.

Danielle Spurling: 46:44

Yeah, i mean I don't know why, but that's what we call it here in Australia. But you can play around with the numbers of the kick and the strokes in between, and I particularly love the backstroke. I find that you can really get that shoulder pop when you change strokes, change sides with the kicking. Yeah, it's a good one. And if someone wants to land in Durban and look for a swimming pool to swim at, what's the best one that they could find?

Tracey Hemphill: 47:14

That's a tricky one, yeah. so loadshitting here in South Africa is causing quite a problem on heating facilities and keeping facilities up to a reasonable state now in winter, obviously. So in winter finding a facility is going to be really challenging. You're going to have to hit the gyms or the privately owned facilities that are managing to maintain pool temperatures and all that sort of thing. In summer there is a beautiful facility right on the beachfront. It's called the Rachel Finlayson Pool. It's a 50-meter pool right on the beachfront. It's really beautiful. That's great. We've got our what's supposed to be our major competitive facility. It's called Kings Park. Sadly, though, that is facing serious maintenance issues and not particularly it's just not particularly looked after at the moment. We're still managing to have most of our higher level events there, but that pool needs serious help, and really soon.

Danielle Spurling: 48:30

Yeah well, that's good to know. Well, if anyone's listening and they're going to be visiting South Africa soon, they'll have to take that on board. Yeah, exactly Well, tracy. thank you so much for coming and joining us on the podcast today. It's been lovely hearing all about the performance coaching that you're doing and we'll certainly put a link to your program in the show notes and wishing you every success with that heading forwards.

Tracey Hemphill: 48:55

Thank you so much, danielle, and thank you so much for the opportunity to chat to you. I'm really grateful. I've had a great morning and, yeah, thank you very much.

Danielle Spurling: 49:06

You're welcome. Okay, then take care, ciao, okay, bye. Take care, bob. I hope you enjoyed exploring the mental side of swimming today with Tracy. It is certainly an area that I need to practice more and I hope you got something from the chat to use in your own training. I'll put the link to Tracy's complete athlete Facebook group in the show notes. Until next time, happy swimming and bye. For now,