SPEAKER_01

Hello and welcome to the swim brief. I am Chris DeSantis, and continuing my string of people I met in Lund, Sweden today, we have the head coach of Poseidon Swim Club, not the Poseidon Swim Club that I went and did some work with after the conference, but Poseidon Swim Club in Lund, Sweden, the more or less the home club of the World Aquatic Development Conference. Misha Klefstick, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you, and thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it was it was really nice to meet you at the conference. You just came up, uh, I think it was on Saturday night and introduced yourself. And it was one of those situations where, you know, we'd like known some people in common for a long time, but we'd we'd never met in in person. And then we started, we ended up talking kind of in the cocktail hour, and then we just transitioned straight into the banquet. Um, and like some of these other guests that I've had on from the Lund conference, we ended up having such a long conversation. I went, well, this is a natural person for the podcast because doing 45 minutes to an hour is gonna be very easy. Yeah, Misha. I think we did, you know, four or five hours in one night. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Well, it was a good night, but it's uh interesting discussions as well.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. So we're gonna try to capture maybe some of those interesting discussions, maybe get into some stuff that we didn't get to do in that time. Um so, but before we do that, I always want to make sure, like, you know, I've given uh a basic uh introduction of who you are, but I want to give the audience just a little bit more of a sense. Um so maybe talk about how you got into coaching. Um, walk us through a little bit of your work history up to being the head coach here in Lund. Maybe tell a few stories about what we have in common, our our shared pain. I don't know, whatever you want to do.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, we come to that, yeah. Yeah. Uh no, uh born and raised in the east of Sweden, about uh 90 minutes south of Stockholm. Okay. Uh youth swimmer myself. Uh stopped uh cause of uh shoulder injuries injuries. Uh went away from the pool for a couple of years, and then uh I was down at the pool just I think I was gonna do some gym work. Uh and I met my former coach and he asked me, do you want to take a group here, a small team, and try it? Uh we did. Uh I got stuck. This was about around the millennium. Yeah. Uh so I started coaching age group swimmers. I really, really liked it. Uh I started uh the university in the same period to become a teacher. Uh but when you are in school and you see how interested the pupils are uh and how interested the swimmers are in the evening, my decision was pretty easy. I didn't want to be a teacher, I wanted to be a swim coach. So, pretty much in 2004, uh my age group swimmers won the national championship in the 4x100 relay, my girls. Uh and I really felt I want a full-time job. Uh I only had half time. So I went to my boss and said to him, I want the full-time. He said, I can't give it to you. So I started looking around and they had an elite coach position in Gothenburg or south of Gothenburg, Mundal. Uh applying for the job I applied for the job. And uh fortunately for me, the the national championship for the age groupers was in Gus Gothenburg. Uh just a month before I went down there, and the other coaches from that club had seen me at the competition and liked what I was doing. So I got hired. So in March 2005, I got the lead job position in Mandal. Uh the club was pretty crap actually when I came there. Uh they had one star, a guy pretty much my age, just kind of came home from the European shore course. They'd taken a bronze medal in the 4x50 freestyle. And at that time, I just questioned myself, what am I doing? Because I was coaching 13-year-old girls swimming the 100-free style in 60 seconds. Three months later, I was coaching a guy who was swimming in the 50-free style in 21.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And I didn't know what to do.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So it was pretty much trial and error from that part. Uh but it went well. I think I it was pretty much trial and error during that part, and by 2009-2010, the younger brother, actually, of the fast guy I've been coaching, uh, a talented one, was selected for the senior national team. He had a breakthrough in 2010 and was part of the 4x100 Freeza Relay at the Europeans in Budapest, took the bronze medal. And uh I was selected for the national team, and pretty much my my senior career started there. Um a year later, uh a pretty good swimmer called me uh in 2011 during the summer and wanted me to start coaching her. So then it was taken to the next level and then doing the Olympic cycles. And the club just went up up. Uh we created a great senior squad. Uh I think at the same time, one year, I think it was 2013, we had eight national team swimmers at the same time on the senior, junior, and youth level. Um a great run, but it's always that in certain clubs they were everyone, every club almost, they have parents controlling the club. So in 2014, uh in the middle of the Olympic cycle, and we were breaking Swedish national records in the relays. Uh I had the fortune to have four good boys. Uh the shortest one was two meters. Um so like six foot eight. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Basically. Um I don't know, six six maybe. I don't I don't have my conversions completely right. They were tall. Very tall.

SPEAKER_00

I was on Bilbo uh when I was asylum. Um, but in 2014 we finally broke the Swedish record in the 4x2 short course. Uh then I got what do you say, went into the wall, as we say in Sweden. I have I've been walking working too much, so I was on sick leave for six months. Wow. Um full-time three months, then it came back uh 25%, 50%, and so on. Uh and it was about a lot about the club not wanting us to be an elite team. Uh wanted to my feeling was push me away.

SPEAKER_01

So I decided you found yourself, I mean, just to help you out, yeah. You found yourself in a lot of situations where you were trying to push the envelope, yeah. Performance rise. You were you were trying, like, hey, like let's put resources and energy and effort into this thing.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And on the volunteer side of the club, they were like, eh, how about you don't?

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

How about you don't do that?

SPEAKER_00

Exactly. And they they made a statement pretty clear when they hired uh uh like Tobest position in the club. A couple chief, uh sorry.

SPEAKER_01

I'm trying to talk to an American audience, like a club director.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I would say.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And the first thing he did was take away my whole budget for my elite team.

SPEAKER_01

Um you had control of the budget, and then it was like, actually, we're gonna bring in an administrator, and you can go through him for anything you want.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So uh I decided when I came back that I'm gonna look for something else. It was one record left that we hadn't broken. It was a 26-year-old uh Swedish national record in long course, but a four by two. Uh, so we went to the north of Sweden for the national championship that summer. Uh we broke the record day two. Uh actually, day three, I signed for uh a club in Denmark. And the last day, uh last day I sent an email to the club and resigned.

SPEAKER_01

And this is the point at which you think, ah, I've had it with this stupid club drama in Sweden. Screw you guys, I'm going to Denmark. Little did you know. Little did you know what that meant.

SPEAKER_00

No, but uh you you have your experience from Denmark. So I went I moved a couple of hours from Gathenburg down to Helsingborg, stayed in Sweden, and took the ferry over to Denmark each single day, and it's a huge difference. I'm pretty much seeing uh Helsinger from my apartment.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_00

Uh so you think 20 minutes away is gonna be the same, but the culture is so different.

SPEAKER_01

What did you notice? What did you notice immediately? Because this is really interesting, because from an American's perspective, right, they would look at this and go, Denmark, Sweden, really what's the difference? Bunch of you know, people descended from Vikings and they talk, they talk funny, and you know, like what did you notice immediately to from your perspective that was that was significantly different in that environment?

SPEAKER_00

First of all, when I came there for an interview and I put my CV up, uh they were blown away. If I've been doing that in a Swedish club, they've been okay, you produce this and this, but uh, I could pretty much get whatever I wanted from there. Uh if you get a position as head coach, uh they see you as a boss uh to take charge. That was a big difference for me because I even if they have boards as well who controls things, um you needed to point with your whole hand pretty much.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Uh and that was maybe the biggest difference for me in the start because I always needed the team around me. And I'm creating the coaching team that we're designed together was the best for the club and for the swimmers. But I was gonna have to make all the decisions here.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Uh and for that, I don't say it's the whole of Denver, but for that city and that club. Uh I don't know what they call it in English, but we call it like the Little Brother Complex. Uh here in Sweden. That translates.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, that translates.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, okay. Uh, like you're you want to be bigger than you are. You you look at Copenhagen at your little small town 30 minutes from there, but you want to be as good as Copenhagen.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Uh, but you don't have the culture uh of it. Uh I think the first couple of years was good. We uh we did some landmarks in the club and uh had swimmers at the national union level. I was elected as a national coach, and it was good until I said something stupid or I was too honest to the head of the board.

SPEAKER_01

This is where we really relate. This is like this is where we bonded, you know, like the the the process of working in a Danish club, everything's competitively going amazing, yeah. And then you say the wrong thing to the wrong person, and like you're out of there from that point forward.

SPEAKER_00

And the thing I started talking about that you needed to be straight with them, you need to be direct, you need to tell them what we should do, and be straightforward. But if you are being straightforward to the wrong person, you're out. Yeah. That that's the problem that you you can they expect you to be like the big boss over there, and to tell everyone what to do, but do it to the wrong people, and you're out of there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And that's uh I noticed there was a passive aggressiveness in Denmark too. And I I think it's you know, like like that, it's in some ways it's a country known for some of that directness and bluntness, and then all of a sudden, in certain situations, right? Because I think I'm I'm jumping ahead because I know a little bit of your story, but it's like to me too, I said the wrong thing to the wrong person. And it wasn't like immediately they, you know, they like pounded a table and went, you're out of here. It was like from that point forward, the something changed in their mind that was like, okay, well, I'm I'm done with Chris and and we're gonna make sure he's out of there. But then the process from that point forward is almost like they try to like bleed you to death, you know, and and and get you to leave of your own record, and then eventually you're just you're just gone. The swim brief podcast is brought to you by Chris DeSantis Coaching. Being a coach is isolating. You know that saying that it's lonely at the top? Well, for many coaches, that's reality. Being a coach means everyone has an opinion on what you're doing. It takes work to filter out the noise and make the best decisions. You need to be able to think through plans, ideas, and problems proactively. At Chris DeSantis Coaching, I fill that gap for coaches. I'll help you turn every rocky moment into a slingshot and provide the support you need to be at your best. You deserve to have someone in your corner, and everyone on your team will benefit. If you want an expert to have your back in your coaching career, go to Chris Dcoach.com right now and fill out a contact form. You'll get an hour of my time at no cost to you. You don't have to go alone any longer. Back to the podcast. So it's not a dramatic exit after that. It's a very passive aggressive exit. And I think that happened to you as well.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, because it took two months, I think. We were actually away on camp with uh head of board as well, and he played like being best mates during that camp, and it took like four days from we come came home that I was fired. So but it's just they're trying to find stuff to make me leave, pretty much. Yeah. But uh like I told you before, like I I knew something was gonna happen. So I wasn't that surprised. So uh but it's also like the saddest part for me was not to be able to see the swimmers I coach for four years. It took us three months to get together. Uh, and also like calling in the the team on the evening, the Friday evening, they're thinking we're gonna talk about Danish Open and what to expect there, and they're telling me they're telling them uh Misha's gone because you're performing too bad.

SPEAKER_01

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there their souls hasn't been there. But I think I get the best of them in the end. So and it was it was good for me to be able to be there for four and a half years, but I'm so glad to be back in Sweden in one way, even if we we have our challenges here, so I'm I'm glad to be back.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and that that that I mean, just to skip ahead because I want to get to the next topic. But that the you know, after that, that's what brought you back to Sweden. You're coaching now in in Lund. You you just to clue everybody into the geography he was saying he was living in Hosting Bohr, which is a uh traditionally before there was a bridge between Denmark and Sweden, that was like the way to get from Denmark to Sweden. You know, there's a little sound between the two countries that is very short at that point. So you can take a little 20-minute ferry ride between those. So you you you you didn't have to even move to change jobs. One of the things I want to talk to you about, and like just looking because I was already gone from Denmark by the time like we literally just ships just sort of passed each other, right? Um, as far as me leaving Denmark and you starting in House Singer out. But I'm I'm the kind of person that, you know, I I always observe, right? And I could see that something was going on, and that's one of the reasons I've been so curious to talk to you this entire time because you're right, House Hinger out was kind of like, as far as I was concerned, when I was there, there was nothing going on competitively. And then all of a sudden, you know, they've got a guy breaking national records, yeah, right. And um, one of the things that you and I talked about is you made a very conscious effort to create an environment for older swimmers. Um and I think this is an important conversation to have because I'll give people the context for it. Um, when I was coaching in Denmark, we had an English uh national team coach, Nick Juba. Yeah, and uh he used to get all the coaches in the country together. And we were at one of these meetings, and Nick had had a really bad experience with a swimmer going to the United States. And so he just stood up in front of everybody at this meeting and he's like, You have to do everything in your power, coaches, you know, to discourage kids from going to the U.S. Don't let them go to the U.S. The coaches there, they don't understand what's going on over here. They're not gonna help them uh get ready for international competitions and it's gonna destroy Danish swimming. Right. And I raised my hand and I said, like, okay, first of all, there are some coaches in the U.S. who will help athletes do better internationally. Is it most of them? Probably not. You know, you do have to sort of be discerning. But the second thing is we're not gonna win by discouraging people. What we are going to be able to do is look at look at the fact that we have a lot of swimmers that get to 18, 19, 20 years old, and they go, There's nothing for me here. So I'm going to America to do something else, right? And either you create an environment that they want to stay in or you don't. And then this will continue on forever. So all that is to say from your perspective, what do you think is uh what what did you focus on in order to create an environment for older swimmers in a Danish swim club, which is traditionally really built around, if we're honest, 13, 14-year-olds. Those are like the prime people in a Danish swim club. And you were trying to get 18, 19, 20-year-olds, even older swimmers, to stick around and enjoy that environment.

SPEAKER_00

I didn't come that far, I think, because our wish in Helsinki was twenty until 2024. Yeah. Uh but they only kept me half the time. But um I pretty much worked at the same way in every place I come to because it's been the same problem when I came to Gothenburg. It was the same problem when I came down to Lundnau. But you need to look at the individual uh and see what the needs are and what they want to do and try to if if the culture is if you take my hometown here, Helsinki, where I live, uh I think their culture pretty much are that when you quit the gymnasium, uh you the high school, you go to the states, you go to the states or you quit. Uh in Lund it was pretty much the same. They had no other option to do anything. It was like you quit or you uh you start school, you do university, and you quit or you go to the states. So I tried to find solutions for everyone. Uh for example, uh two guys were starting uh the uh police academy. Uh and I told them they were both sprinters, and I told them, Okay, how much do you think you need to train per week swimming? Oh, we've been told eight to ten times. No, you don't. Let's make it you start school in January, you you just do uh dryland work, gym work, you came Come back in April. You swim four times a week from April to June where the championship are, the national championship, and then we see what happens. Right. They both came in in April, they set 100% PBs in the summer. And find the ways for each individual to keep them in the system. Because the next year is gonna be new swimmers with new challenges and what they do they need to be able to continue. And when you start getting two, three, four, five swimmers that are actually going from high school to the university, the others will see this is possible. So uh it's been harder now because when I was in Gothenburg, if we take that for example, it's 15 years ago now. And the mentality, and especially learned with the academic, the university, they pretty much feel like when you do done with high school, you're gonna do be an engineer. Uh that wasn't the case in Mundal. Uh, they could start working after high school, uh, pretty much. Uh so it was easier then, but now the challenge has been to okay, I have a guy who's in third year being a doctor. Well, how could he be uh in training? But the most the guy who's he's he's pretty special, he's a smart guy and serious, but he's uh going tech technical physics, uh, one of the most difficult studies of the university. And he's been taking steps and was selected now as 23 22-year-old for the first national team ever. I think my role in that part is to help them and to make them see that this is possible, but it needs to come from you. What do you want? Uh, can you still still live at home and have uh 45 minutes to practice? Or do you need to move? Can you move? Uh how can I help you? Uh, but to educate the swimmers what they need to do to be able to take the next step. And I'm I'm honest, and if I think they're not taking the right choice, making the right choices, I need to tell them.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And that's pretty much the same way. But Denmark was even more, or Helsinger uh was even more crazy because they didn't know anything else than to start drinking at 14 and quit swimming at 16.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. I I mean I tell people the story all the time. When I started coaching in Gentuft, which was my second job in Denmark, the one that I I took after three months at the previous job. The first thing that happened to me was I had a series of kids that had just started gymnasium. I I think within the first month of me coaching there, five kids quit.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

My team. And it was, why did they quit my team? They quit my team to go to parties and get wasted. 15-year-olds. Yeah. Like that's a part of Danish culture that goes very under-discussed. It was no, there was no, there was no um ambiguity about it. That's what I was up against. And part of why I thought, and the reason why I wanted to talk about it, part of the why I thought it was important to have some older swimmers on the team was like I felt like kids were getting up to 15, 16, and they had nothing to look up to. They just went, oh, like unless they were really, really, really good, unless they were like a CNA bull who I had on my club, right? They would just sort of look up and go, no, nobody else keeps doing it. So I guess I guess I'm done. Like I wanted people to have an example. Um, and I did something similar to you. I had I had uh what's also common on a lot of Danish clubs, I had this sort of uh bubble, they called it a bubble, I think bubble hull, right? Where essentially they had some older teenage swimmers who weren't really interested in uh training very much. You know, they basically gave them a team where they could show up once or twice a week. Um, I I I folded that into my group. I went and found the swimmers who were baby willing to swim a little bit more because just like, okay, can you commit to, as you said, four or five practices a week? And then we're gonna we're gonna figure out what four or five practices are, those are. I will plan for you to be there, but we're gonna have you integrated because I think where I'm getting to here is it's so hard, I think, for a lot of these athletes when they don't have a peer group. Yeah, when they just look around and think it's just me. Um, psychologically, it's almost impossible for them to continue their commitment. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and uh I have a this September or August. Um, I got a call from uh Para swimmer. Uh she's uh turning 27 this year. She has a cerebral paris injury. So she she's in a wheelchair. Um she's 27. She's been put uh with the 12-year-old kids in the her former club. Uh because she swims as fast as they are.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

Uh the most what I told her, the most important thing is that you can have a social life even when you are in with the pool in the pool. Yeah so of course I can give you this. You can't you can't train with my team every single day. You need to maybe maybe do one or two sessions a week for yourself. But otherwise I will integrate you in the team. Yeah, you will swim for yourself pretty much. But you will have the social uh thing before, during and after practice. And to see the see her shine up during this start of the season to flourish and to be a totally different person than the one BC before. I think it's this kid, it's key to be able to not deselect them and oh, you're only training four times a week. If you're they can give so much back to the team in training because they can come in these four times with more energy uh than the other have because they're they're doing their eighth session during the week and they come down and do the fourth, they can come in with new energy. Uh it's it's a puzzle. And I think uh you you need a lot of years experience to know how to do it. Uh, but I I still think it's key, and you talked about it earlier. If you don't have the role model uh that has shown the way, if you read every talent development book there is, and that's one thing the Danes are really good at the research on talent development. If you don't have the role model, you can quit. Yeah, you will never get a senior team if you don't have a role model who shows the way how to do it.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I mean we, you know, like we have a word in in English, you know, trailblazer.

unknown

Right?

SPEAKER_01

Like, what does it mean to be a trailblazer? It means there was no path to get from one place to another, and you're the first person who walked it, and then people can follow you. And that's and that's what it is. I mean, it's it can be really, really painful in the short term for you as a coach. It can maybe be a little bit rocky for the athlete who's doing it, but to me, it's it's a worthy um long-term investment. And the reason I I bring this up, I told you this in the outline beforehand, is I do think that there's some pretty who nobody knows what's going to happen with college summing in the US, but there's some pretty significant change that could come in a matter of months. And one of those things will be that the rosters of US college teams will be capped. And that'll mean less opportunities for kids from Denmark, Sweden, you know, all over Europe to come to the US. And in that way, I think if I was uh a Swedish coach with athletes that are at a high enough level that, you know, they're considering they would maybe consider doing something like that down the line, then it would be really important for me to do whatever I could to to create that environment at home because they may they they they may not have a choice, they may need it if they want to continue their swimming career. It may not be that they're choosing between one and the other. The opportunity may just not be there. We don't we don't know.

SPEAKER_00

No, exactly. No, I I had three swimmers going to the states since I came. Uh the two first came back after one year. I told them you just go over and try.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Uh the third one, she's still there. Uh she wants to come home, but she also says that I can never get the thing I do in the States. I can study and I can train as much as I can, but if I come home here, I won't be able to do it. So she's and I support her. She has she's happy. Yeah. So I support her.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Yeah. All right. Speaking of people going all around the world, here's something I found really interesting is particularly just because um you capitalized on some opportunities in Sweden, and so you've been putting people uh up at the national level for quite some time. Um, that has offered you the opportunity to get around in the world quite a bit. In particular, uh, you and I, I I pumped you with a lot of questions about traveling to Japan because I really need to have somebody on Japan from Japan on the podcast, although there's not many Japanese people who are super comfortable speaking English. So that'll be a challenge as well. But I guess um I don't have a very specific question here, but I would love to um hear some stories about some of your experiences just sort of traveling the world and swimming and seeing innovative and perhaps different um setups in different places.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, um I think that's been the biggest part for me to develop as a coach is to be able to have an international swimmer uh that maybe needs something extra in the season training-wise, uh, to be motivated and to take the next step. Uh so when when I got sweet swimmers at that level that maybe needs to take the step from being ninth at the Olympic to being in the final, you need to figure out where to go and where to get the inspiration. Yep. So uh went to Tokyo two times, two sessions. The first time was two weeks, the second time the swimmers there for five weeks, uh, and went to Japan Institute of Sports and Science. Uh actually they have a Sweden there, uh Magnus Helber, who is uh working there. Uh so we had an inn, you could say.

SPEAKER_01

Uh and maybe somebody I can interview for the podcast. You're helping me here.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Uh so uh I actually met Tatsu Ugura, I think he's called, at the World Championship in 2013 in Barcelona because I was interested in going to Japan because I had a breaststroker. And we know that Japanese can swim breaststroke.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, they can.

SPEAKER_00

Uh he's good at English.

unknown

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

I don't think he's working with swimming anymore, but he was part of the swim team for a lot of years. Uh so introduced me to Nuri, uh the coach. Um he he's much better in English now. Um so we went over with um another Swedish breaststroke guy uh for the first part, and just was there for like two weeks and looked at them, but we decided for my swimmer that this was a good experience, so we do need to do a longer trip to be there for a training cycle, and it's an eye-opening world. Uh the resources they have. Uh we were staying at the hotel at the institute, and all the meals we have were recorded. The nutrition in every meal was recorded when it took it. Uh, the athletes or from wrestlers, the euro, swimmers, they photographed their plates and sent it to the coaches, the nutritionists. Um, they have probably got in trouble doing that in the United States, but okay. Yeah. Uh they have we didn't train at the Institute Pool, they had like the university pool a bit further away, but at the institute pool they had uh high altitude tents. Um so they could choose they could choose uh just a certain amount of lanes in the pool to get uh 2,000 meters above sea level.

SPEAKER_01

Uh I remember you telling me this story at Lund, and like my eyes got so wide. I was like, wait, what do you mean? And and and literally it's like they're enclosing lanes of the pool and simulating in high altitude environment. So you can just do a practice or a series of practices at high altitude on demand, yeah, which is wild to me.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Uh unfortunately, we didn't try it. Uh but during the they had a pool for themselves. It was a good team. Uh Kuske Kitayima, uh, who I met at UC wasn't there anymore, but Kuske Hagini was. Uh Yamaguchi, the new world record holder at that time, and turn a breaststroke was there as well, and a lot of breaststroke girls as well. Um a really high performance team. Uh Nori as the head coach, I can't remember what his assistants was name, but um, and also during every single practice, uh, a staff of five girls, volunteers, who helped with running the session, taking times and everything, and the coaches just focused on the individual. Um and real professional setup, then I think it was too quiet uh during practices. Uh I I like when the swimmers are laughing and they're having fun during practice as well.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

It was maybe a bit too quiet during practice.

SPEAKER_01

It was serious, everybody was just like laser focused on what they were doing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Of course, it's a good good group of people and fun group of people. Uh, but during the three hours they were training, uh it was pretty quiet. So uh, but it worked out fine and uh a great experience, and I've taken a lot of things home, try to adapt to my own program. Uh but the culture is so different, so you need to just take small pieces from the Japanese stuff.

SPEAKER_01

Um the Swim Breathe Podcast is brought to you by Chris DeSantis Coaching. Are you tired of not competing at your best? I've worked with countless athletes who felt that their mind was limiting them on race day. As a pioneer in the field of positive psychology, I have a unique approach. Instead of fixing what's wrong, I help athletes build an entirely new framework from the ground up. And I do it in as little as 12 weeks. I teach them how to make their active mind something that helps them. The work that I do stays with athletes long after we finish. Those that work with me get permanent results that go beyond their sports career. They not only bust through their current plateau, but learn what to do when the next one comes. If you know an athlete that could benefit from a complete rebuild of their approach, fill out a contact form at Chrisdcoach.com. Let's find out what they're truly capable of. Back to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00

The culture is so different. Uh so you need to just take the small bits of it and see what let me ask you this.

SPEAKER_01

I I would like to get your perspective as best you can on this. I mean, I think you you're right to comment, and the evidence is there that Japan has traditionally been really excellent in breaststroke swimming. And to me, that is a reflection of the fact that just like generally as a country, the technical level of the swimmers is extremely high. Breaststroke's a very technical stroke. Um, but even if I look at uh like a backstroker like Erie, like a backstroker at that height, I don't think is going 154 in the United States. I mean, just the way that he swam was really, really incredible. I don't know that we're ever going to see it again. So, from your perspective, having watched some of that stuff, what what's the best that you could try to explain why there's such a high technical level in Japan?

SPEAKER_00

That's also like because of course it was a lot of technical correction during the practice because the two courses could just focus on that on every single practice. I don't think it was more instructions than we usually do at home. Uh I don't know what they've been doing through the age groups. I just know that uh Hagino uh did like 10k a session when he was 11. Uh so I I don't know how to do it age group swimmers, but I didn't see it like okay, shit, they're they're doing technical stuff all the time. I just thought that they were focused. The swimmers were focused on what they were doing all the time, and that's that's the main thing I take in home to make the swimmers take like the ownership of their development. It's not me that's gonna you need to be focused on every every single stroke, pretty much.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Uh especially when you get to the senior level, that how much much can we develop? Yeah, we talked about it in the start of this long course season that uh I took away a lot uh from the conference now and the efficiency, for example, and uh the skills you're doing in that. We've been doing the metabolism tests with uh Hannah uh for a couple years now. Uh she's taking huge steps uh time-wise, uh making uh ninth place at the World Championship short course. But when we do the metabolics test, you've seen her being like for three years 0.5% maybe improvement at the physiological part. So it's much easier to be two percent better from the wall to ten mirrors. If you have been training that well, that she's been doing uh the last couple of years, and just improving like 0.5 to 1% at the max VO2 or the anaerobic max lactate, it's it's more difficult to improve the physiological stuff.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, just to explain to everybody, this is Hannah. What's her last name? Bergman. Bergman. Um and she's probably the top athlete on your team. Not probably, she is the top athlete on your team. She got ninth at the World Short Course Championships, as you said. When you say metabolic testing, what are you doing? What does that mean?

SPEAKER_00

Uh she's doing uh two four hundreds and two two hundreds. Okay. Uh the first four hundred, we're gonna try to hit lactate between pretty much three and five.

unknown

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

Uh the second one between uh four and seven, and we're doing uh warm down, you can say, between each repetition to get her below two.

SPEAKER_01

So you're bringing it back down and then trying to like step up to an another.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so we're taking we're taking the heart rate, the lactate, the stroke uh rate during these sets, and we're doing it 200 back to three from between three to five lactate, and then we're doing it two hundred all out. Uh, and then we send the results to the federation that they have like the system to work it out. They feed it through an algorithm and it and it tells you something. We sent it to Olbrecht uh previously. Okay. But the cost was a bit too high, so the Federation has their own algorithm now. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Can I ask you can I ask you something about this? Just I'm very curious because I had Mike Perabrun on, who you saw at the conference a couple weeks ago. And I I honestly uh I think I don't know what your perception is, but my perception from American swimming is that we we we have an idea of lactate levels, but for the most part, people are not measuring it. Right? They're not they're not paying attention to it. We know it's a factor, we know it's an important factor in how people swim, right? And so I've been trying to nail him down with some questions, educate myself and educate my audience. So I want to get your opinion on this, right? So you're doing this testing, you're trying to um push things up to a certain level. To what extent do you think um that elite swimmers are elite because they clear lactic uh acid really fast? Or are they are they able to perform at a really high level because they they can swim at a pretty close to race speed without producing very much lactic acid? That's part one of the question. I know I'm asking you you're making a face, you're like, Chris is asking. I wasn't expecting such a tough question, but I I just want to know what you think. And then second, to what extent is either of those something you can train in an athlete?

SPEAKER_00

I think the clearance is the most important thing. That's my uh perception of it. Um it's pretty much the recovery speed, pretty much.

SPEAKER_01

So you think you think elite athletes are producing a lot of lactate, but they but they also clear it very fast.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Uh the way I'm using the lactate monitoring, except that test, is pretty much to make sure that she's not swimming too fast in practice.

SPEAKER_01

She's not training in the wrong system.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

Because the heart rate can be so fluctuant. So uh some of the tests, if we want to be at pretty low aerobic, and I see her maybe touching the heart rate a bit too high, I can stop her in the middle of the session and just take a test and see, okay, it's 1.6, you're fine. Yeah. Um, and using it that way, and also like when you do the maximum efforts and see how fast uh the lactate is going down. Um a pretty interesting thing when we're on lactate now. I'm gonna just tell you that this because it happened a couple of days ago. Uh she's at altitude now. Yep. Uh so she has the beep inside uh measurement in her arm uh that makes the glucose uh but they did continuous uh glucose monitor, CGM. Yeah, yeah. Uh and they did a broccoli test. Broccoli test. Yeah, now you're gonna hear it because um what's a broccoli test? Yeah, I'm gonna explain it what I know because I haven't talked to her about it. Uh she sent me a picture of it.

unknown

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

So she did she did three 400s uh progressive. Yep. Uh the last one was uh 449 uh 6.8 lactate.

SPEAKER_02

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

Before the next press uh practice, uh they drank this broccoli uh smoothie, and I I got the description of what was in it. And they did the same three four hundreds. She did them faster, she finished off 446 long course, 4.4.5 lactate.

SPEAKER_01

Holy smokes!

SPEAKER_00

Um I don't know what to take from it, but it was it was really interesting. Uh they're continuing now to uh drink this broccoli up at altitude, and uh the time she's doing and the lactate she's producing are much much lower uh than she usually are. Um and I don't know if it's the broccoli waters they've been at 10 days at altitude now, they have 10 days left. Uh she's adapting really good to altitude that that she is, but it was just interesting. I wanted to mention it again about the Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So basically, but they're trying to investigate like can this broccoli smoothie help buffer lactic acid?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Wow. Let me ask you this the second question. I want to repeat it because I I now we've gotten into a really interesting conversation. I want to follow it all the way to the end. Okay. So you think it's uh it's more or less about clearance. How trainable do you think lactate clearance is?

SPEAKER_00

I think it's I think like everything, it's uh genetics. Yeah, you don't think it's very trainable, is the answer. Yeah, that that's my the thing is that you need to go. I think you need to, okay, this is my mother and father, and this is my max CO2, uh, this is my muscle mass, and that's how it is. And then I think my experience says you need to take extra measures to try to do something. Uh, is it altitude training? Is it something else to be able to maybe do something different? Because the first sessions she I was at altitude in the 2011, 12, and 13 as well. That my swimmer didn't get the greatest results. The thing I saw when Hannah was away last time, last year, there was she came home and we did a test set, and the guys were swimming with her. Um and they all had their heart rate. And when we do the maximum effort, pretty much everyone was max heart rate.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

When they pushed off after 20 seconds, Hannah was down to pretty much 100 beats per minute. It was so fast she was going down in heart rate, and I can see that the lactic clearance is as good as well. But the guys were going from 190 to 150, and she was from 190 to 100.

SPEAKER_01

So it was in the same time period.

SPEAKER_00

Wow. Yeah. So for her it works, and I think that um you can see it like in races after altitude as well, that uh her weak length is a backstroke, so could she be efficient but be like a little more okay? This is my recovery 50, then her back end hunter is gonna be excellent.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So but in individually as well, because I like I said before, I think it's so hard to be able to increase the max VO2 and everything. It takes a lot of it. And what to do with I I don't know. It's I don't know. Actually, I'm I'm doing this every single day.

SPEAKER_01

For those listening to just the podcast, uh, Misha just licked his finger and and turned it up to the air. Um, yeah, I mean, I think this is why I asked these questions. I asked this hard question because I just have the perception in the back of my mind as I'm watching these things. I'm listening to Mike, for instance, present. He's gonna come back on here on the podcast and talk through some of his examples with uh Rebecca Adlington, James Peady, sorry, Adam Peady, and Daniel Wiffen. And, you know, like I'm looking at all the data he has, and to me, it's just like, wow, these swimmers can swim incredibly fast in practice and not have a lot of measured, you know, acid in them after doing it. That seems to be incredibly important for swimming. But I do think the general perception among coaches is yes, there are things we can do to make somebody like sort of realize their top potential in there, but but it's not really possible to take like an average athlete and greatly like make them into an elite athlete in terms of lactate clearance. Like it just doesn't seem to be possible. And I think that's an interesting consideration uh for coaches.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I think you should measure it and see what your max VO2 are and uh what your max LA are. I think it's good because see the progression there, and if anything changes, because what we've been doing with Hannah is testing the metabolism and seeing it's not an improvement or a slim improvement, but she's getting better. Okay, then we know that it's other stuff she's getting better at.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_00

It's the biomechanical stuff, uh, probably. So if you can just maybe she just needs to be on this level, physiological, but the technical part needs to be even better to be even faster.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, Misha, fascinating podcast. I had a great time doing it with you. Um, I have one more bonus question for you, but maybe we'll ask you afterwards. Um, you are expecting your first kid here in four weeks. Um, and so I'm glad we could uh sneak this in before before you became a dad, because uh, you know, it's Sweden, so you're gonna take some time off here coming up.

SPEAKER_00

Um Yeah, but it's only yeah, it's only 10 days uh uh when uh the kid is getting born, so then uh we need to figure out how to do it. But we have 10 days written in Swedish law that it can take uh during the birth, and uh then we'll see.

SPEAKER_01

Then we'll see. Well, um, it's been a pleasure talking to you. I think the audience is really gonna like this podcast. Thank you for coming. Thank you. Thank you, everybody else, for for listening. If you want to reach out to me at the Swim Brief Podcast, you can go to swimbriefpodcast at gmail.com. You can go to Chris Dcoach.com, that's my website. You can fill out a contact form. Get that goes directly into my personal email. Um, or you can go on Instagram, Chris D underscore coach, watch clips of this podcast, write me a message, everything in between. And um again, thank you everybody for listening, and I'll see you guys again next week.