Hello, everybody, and welcome to the swim brief. I am Chris DeSantis. This is the Tuesday edition of the podcast. And before I even get into the topic today, I want to say I got some really valuable feedback last week that told me that one of the things that this person enjoyed a lot more was actually the Thursday pod with Joel on that. And the reason for that, I really actually agree with. And one of the things that Joel really helps me with when I have him on the Thursday pod is uh he asks really good questions. I think he's a good proxy for the audience. And he can get to focusing some of the conversation so that it at least follows a sort of consistent, coherent theme. Um so one of the things I'm trying, I I can't say that uh I feel very confident in my ability to do this, but one of the things I'm gonna try today is to focus a little bit and try to anticipate some of the questions people might have and pretend almost as if I'm in conversation with another person and not just talking into the microphone to record this podcast. And one of the things I want to talk about today, if you've followed me on other places and even in this podcast, you know that one of the things that I think a lot about is actually like perceived weakness or sort of actual deficiencies, weakness, and uh ways to think about that that I think are really productive and can really help to reframe because even as I say that word a weakness, I think people come up with a negative connotation for that. But the truth of the matter is we all have some areas where we have a lot of ability, where we have a lot of capacity, and we have other areas where you know we can like strain and and try and work, and it just doesn't seem to really work uh even up to the average level. And I think, you know, when I was growing up, there was we we didn't necessarily think about categorizing this stuff so much. It was sort of like, are you smart? You know, do you pick up things easily at school, or are you not smart and you're not picking up things easily at school? And I think it's quite a bit more complex than that. And I have been on my own journey trying to understand some pieces about this. So you may actually notice in the way that I do this podcast, um, you know, uh a feature of ADHD is that I have certain areas where I just uh never, ever, ever stop thinking about something. And one of those things is myself. Um I'm never short on introspection for myself, but part of that is, you know, I have the only uh brain that I'm really uh aware of all the time in my own head. And you know, problem solving through various things, I think it can prove helpful. So I want to talk about something that I did in the winter uh at that that helped me understand something I've always really, really struggled with. And once I realized that I'd been struggling with it my whole life, I realized all the things that came after that, and a lot of them are really positive. And I think there's something instructive here for looking at your own sort of capacities and abilities uh as you go. So I took something in the in the winter, it it was essentially an intelligence test. Uh it was a abilities, it was called the Highlands Ability Profile. It was uh it was a test that took me about three or four hours. I forget now as I'm talking about it. Um and you know, there was a professional on the other end who was going to help me in interpret results. Uh, it was a kind of a costly test, but I I've learned a lot from it. And the the best way I can come up with of explaining the test is that it measured your intelligence in many different distinct categories. And I want to talk about the one that I scored the absolute lowest on, and because it's um it's pretty interesting uh in the context of of what I do as a profession. Um and that is uh, you know, so so you you take these tests and on the other end, it spits out, you know, um a percentile for you. If if you've ever taken a standardized test, you know, you go like, oh, I I did the SAT, I'm in the 86th percentile for you know graduating seniors or whatever, that you may be sort of familiar with that measure. So here's something that I scored in the fifth percentile. That means that of the people that have taken this test, 95% of the people that have taken this test are better than me at this particular thing that was measured. And I'm gonna laugh when I say it out loud. But it's observation. And I'm gonna I'm gonna read what the test has to say about observation. It says this work sample measures the ability to notice and remember small visual details. The stronger your observation, the more naturally able you are to make visual comparisons quickly or automatically and recall details or notice body language and facial expressions. Okay, so think about that application to what I do or what I have been doing for a living for my entire adult life. Okay, I have often actually gone out and told people, you know, what is the coach's job? I mean, one of the most important parts of the coach's job is observation. We, for instance, in the context of a practice or a meet, we are observing people moving their bodies. And based on that observation, we are giving them information that we hope can lead to them moving their body better. And I am possibly worse than 95% of people at I think specifically, if I if I recall the activity that I had to do here, what I'm particularly why I particularly struggled was that the memory of what I had observed moved through my mind so quickly that by the time I had to sort of got tested, which was it was like a matter of less than 30 seconds, on what I had seen, I had almost no memory of what I had seen. I had almost no memory of what I'd seen. I'm just going to repeat that one more time because if you think about, and this is what this makes me think about, you think about being at swim practice, you know, how often as a coach does it go at least 30 seconds from when you see a swimmer doing something to when you are going to tell them something. Or how about a meet? I mean, are the swimmers do they teleport from uh from finishing behind the blocks to directly standing next to you? No, absolutely. Every I would I would gather 99% of those conversations happen beyond the time frame that a lot of what I've observed has probably moved completely through my mind. So, you know, and I know that some people that I've coached are listening to this, and they must be at this point being like, oh my gosh, Chris never really actually knew what I looked like when he was talking to me. Like, you know, their their heads are swimming right now. But, you know, when I sat with this information for a little while, I thought, well, I actually have a lot of confidence that uh first that I that I can do this job, that I'm good at this job, and that even actually I am good at helping people uh based on my observation of how they swim. So how do I do that? Well, you know, the thing about these tests is right, they are designed to really isolate one process within your mind, right? And just measure you know what is going on in this little area. But in reality, in real application, nobody just relies on one process to do anything. And so people have various strengths and capacities, and they have other areas where they really, really struggle. And what I've learned about myself, and I think this has this is a universal experience, is you you come up with workarounds, you know, you find a way to be good in the context of who you actually are. And so for me, I took some time to reflect. Okay, how do I actually give swimmers feedback if this is if this is how I am in terms of remembering images that I have seen. Um and I started to just think about, you know, what behaviors I had built around this before I before I got up to the grand scale of like, you know, the sort of lifestyle adjustments. Um, one of the things that people have always observed about me is that I'm I'm uh very intense with eye contact. And in the description there it says, you know, that uh you can have a lot of trouble reading other people's facial expressions. Well, I don't know that I've never ever really struggled with that, but I probably try harder than 99% of people to read faces on the other end of what I am doing. And interestingly enough, contrary to what this test says, I have noticed I have an incredible memory for just generally what people's faces look like. Like I can, you know, if I have a wait the same waiter, if I go to a restaurant once a year and I have the same waiter, I recognize the waiter. You know, I recognize some guy that I saw at a swim meet, and the last time I'd seen him, I I figured it out was 2004. So this is 18 years later, and I just saw his face and I was like, I know that guy. I've met him before. Right? Um, and so you know, it it it first again, look, think about these tests that there are certain things, you know, that it it may be measuring that are not necessarily line up with real life. But if I try to think about what people look like swimming, you know, people that I've coached, I uh I can't really conjure up an image in my mind. So I actually think that piece of it is is accurate. And um one of the other behaviors I have noticed is you know, I am a very forgetful person in terms of remembering where my stuff is. Like if I if I don't have a very specific place to put away very specific things, like um I've told people I I have the same two objects in each pocket of my pants, um, two in the left, two in the right, and it's always the same two in the left and the same two in the right. Um because if I don't have a routine like that, then I have no memory of where I've put things. Right. So I will be grasping around and even, you know, when something is in my left pocket, it'll be like, you know, or I'll be one of those people who's, you know, where are my keys? Oh, they're in your hands. You know, it it's just if if I if I don't know and I'm not sort of build a habit of consistency of where stuff goes, there's gonna be no part of my brain that can visualize, like, oh yeah, you put it down, you know, on your bedside table, uh, unless that's where I put it down every single time. Um and uh I do a lot of grocery shopping, and of course you got the grocery list, and um, I will notice that I will look at something, and unless I say it out loud, you know, so I must look kind of like a crazy person sometimes in the grocery store, um, I will forget what I've looked at. You know, on I'll start walking towards it, and within 10 seconds, I will forget what I've looked at. So, you know, then I'll just be like, where am I going? What am I what am I looking for? Um, and that's where we start to get into some of the workarounds. Because if I look at um some of the other percentiles on here, um I uh I uh I scored much, much higher on my ability to recall words, vocabulary, etc. So one of the ways I I uh interpret stuff like this is the idea that um translating images into words, which is another important part of coaching, uh allows them to me to remember them for much longer, right? So as soon as I get an impression of a swim, um, it helps to have assistant coaches for this. Um otherwise, you know, uh I guess I'd just be talking to myself. Um again, you gotta sometimes you gotta just not worry about what other people think and do what works for you. Um, but uh for the most part, I've had assistant coaches standing next to me. And um, if you stand with me at a meet, I'm obsessively chattering um over things as I'm watching them. And once I say them out loud, that stays in my memory until the moment that I have to talk to them. So even though I cannot recall the imagery of what I've seen, the words and the description that I came up with while I was watching it, um, that stays, right? That stays with me. Um and you know, I can imagine there's probably a lot of swim coaches out there who are who can really richly remember the image, but but translating it into a word form, because for the most part, you know, that uh that's our default for coaching on the other end is is is really hard. So, you know, you you deal with the capabilities that you have, you work around stuff. Um and I guess this is where I want to pivot because I think the applications of it, you know, I've been talking about my end of it, but when you look at the swimmers, when you look at the people that you are coaching, okay, understand that you may, and I think you are likely to have people in the water, okay, who um can very easily hold in their mind a visual image. So, like for instance, like I'll I one of the things I didn't mention earlier is that video is incredibly helpful to me because it's literally a captured image, right, of what's going on. So, you know, in in instances where I'm coaching privately, I use video a ton because then I have I literally have technology that can remember the image of and remember the motion of what I observed for me so that I don't have to hold that in my head, and I can continue to watch it and commentate on it live as I'm watching it without having to hold it. I mean, uh like gosh, I'm so lucky to have been born into that time. And I think so. If we we get into the discussion of the swimmers, okay, understand that video, for instance, right? I think a lot of people do use video now. You're gonna have people who um you show them video of them swimming, and I think this is valuable for anyone, regardless. I'm not suggesting that, like, oh, you have some swimmers that video will be really helpful and some swimmers it won't. That's that's not it. What is it is you're going to have some swimmers who walk away from having watch and watch themselves swim, and they can hold that image of what they look like as a set of instructions, you know, sort of into instructions as what to do. And some of them, they will forget it the second they've seen it. And so they may need help translating the feedback that you are giving them into like a code that they can use. It's another way to think about this. Is that at the end, people have codes that can get stuff to, I think, stay in their memory. And then they also have codes that they actually have to translate that that information into like instructions for their body on how to move. And so the first step is is getting those actual instructions to actually stick into their memory. And I would suggest that for any person that you are coaching, pay attention, try to observe that maybe you have people in front of you who the way in which they are receiving those instructions, um it may not they may not know how to translate them into a form that will stick in their memory. That doesn't mean I see I have seen presentations, you know. Um I watched one that cracked me up so hard, you know, on this multiple intelligence you've heard people say, like, oh, so he's an auditory learner, or he's a visual learner, or okay. I think that the that the focus on that stuff has been so intensely on somehow it's a responsibility of the coach or the teacher to present things in, you know, like I I I mean I watched the most ridiculous presentation at a coaching conference once where somebody insisted that for any given set they were giving, there were probably 20 different ways that they presented it for the audience. I mean, it went to such an extreme. I was thinking, nobody ever swims at practice, you're just explaining it, you know, in in 20 different languages the whole time. Right? That's not the point. The point is teaching athletes how to translate it into a form that they can use. Because there's only one coach. It does not make sense for the coach to take their you, and you should, as a coach, you should instruct in the way that you are best at. I mean, like for me, that is words. That is I I do a podcast, I write. Um the best way for me to deliver instructions to people are are either in writing or me saying words out loud. Okay, if I um if I coached by drawing pictures, I've seen some people who are like, you know, great at drawing pictures, you know, to teach people things. If I tried to make myself coach that way, gosh, I'd just be making it so hard on myself. And there'd still be a great number of swimmers in the water who would have to take that and translate that into a form that was actually usable for them. So so I think I think the wrong assumption has been made in most cases with this stuff where you go, okay, well, now it's on the teacher or it's on the coach and to You know, teach essentially in multiple different languages versus why don't we teach swimmers to translate? Why don't we give them fluency in different methods of instruction so that whatever way the teacher on the other end does it best, it works for them. It works for them. And I think that is actually possible. Um, but I think one of the assumptions that I would be actually really healthy to make as a coach is if you have people that you are coaching and you're just thinking like they're not getting it, consider that they have not learned how to translate what you're telling them into a usable set of instructions yet. But they can. They can. And it may have to do with the way in which they hold things in their memory. Um and do I have specific instructions how to figure that out? No, but you know, it it's something to get curious about, you know, because if you are interacting with swimmers or you sort of get to know them a little bit beyond down and back, you know, you you might you might start to pick up some ideas of what kinds of things or what kinds of stimulus out there in the world just sort of stick with them, and what kinds do not. And, you know, if they have something that is naturally sticking with them, that is the form in which they need to translate feedback into. Okay. Um they probably know how to do it. If they're different than you, they actually know how to do it better. They probably are doing it in all sorts of instances, but they may not have seen that application to swimming. So if we do the reverse, you know, you may have swimmers who um are very, very good at keeping imagery in their mind, but they may not have figured out yet how in a swimming context they take the verbal instructions that you are giving them and form, use them to form an image. You know. Um but I guarantee you they've been in school and or, you know, like my daughter was in second grade, and they're listening to a story and they're daydreaming and they're like painting this beautiful, you know, image of what's happening in the story as they are listening to those words. And if they just are there trying to, okay, I've just got to remember the words, and the words are what will, you know, though that's what's gonna that may not work for them. That may not work for them. Um and you know, I think if you can set up systems where everybody is engaging or or taking things and and and feeding them into what actually works for them, then you really unlock a next level within whatever teaching or coaching environment you have. I hope that you guys enjoyed this deep dive into um understanding uh language and capacity and all the pieces of it. I hope that I anticipated some of the questions. I I really appreciate any and all feedback, uh guys. So one of the reasons I've been citing this feedback is I really value people in my life who uh come to me and and give me their honest feedback on what they see, especially if you're somebody that listens all the time. I really, really value that. I'm serious. And um I hope I hope that uh I hope I'll hear from more people, and then I hope that you continue enjoying listening to this podcast and and and growing with it as we go. Umagic5.com slash the swim brief. That is the code to save on a custom fit pair of goggles. Instagram, Christy underscore coach, CD swim coach on Facebook, the YouTube channel. We'll put stuff up there now when we have something with a visual component to it that you know is is we're going to be talking over an uh image that you might want to watch at the same time. We usually release those in podcast form as well. Um, thank you to everybody for listening. Look forward to seeing you again on Thursday with Joel. And uh until then, bye.