Hello and welcome to the swim brief. I am Chris DeSantis, and I am talking to you here just two days after my much typed swim meet. I've been pumping you guys uh up here about my upcoming swim meet here for a few weeks. And actually, I had a podcast last week where I was reminding people that I was doing it, that uh, you know, it just never got uploaded. And now it feels silly to put up a podcast about something that's happening in the future that has already happened. So I guess we'll just have to roll some of that content into this one for you guys all to listen to. And, you know, I'm not just gonna talk about my own uh swimming performance, although there's probably people who are listening who are curious, and of course, I'll indulge that curiosity, but actually, one of the reasons I talk about my own swimming on here, and one of the reasons, honestly, that I swim is because I've always enjoyed having that as sort of a laboratory, having myself, I should say, as a laboratory for some of the stuff I'm working on. Um I I've always believed that it is a good learning process to try stuff out for yourself. And continuing to do something sport wise, I don't think that you need to do it, but I I know that it helps me to empathize with athletes because I'm continuing to put myself in situations that are not exactly the same, but similar to the ones that they are in. And I gain insight from the I guess the experience and the the age uh of being able to have had enough experiences and had enough goes at it, and to be at different stages in my life where I have different stages of insight into what's going on and what I'm thinking around all this stuff. So, with that all said, let me give you an update on how the meet actually went, and then I want to talk about some of the themes that I'm thinking about coming out of it that are that are relevant to the work that I do with athletes and hopefully relevant to the way that you work with athletes as well. Um, so I entered three events in this meet. Uh if you've been following since uh since I started competing again in January, the first meet I did a 50 breaststroke and a 50 free uh for non-swimming people. Those are the shortest possible races you can do in those two various uh stroke stroke styles. I almost use the Danish word there for a second, got a bit confused coming off my Danish trip. And uh this time around, I wanted to do the 100 breaststroke, and uh people who listen here know that one of my overarching goals, unrealized goals, is uh the very arbitrary getting under a minute. Um I have gone 1 minute 0.10 as my best time ever in 100 breaststroke, and I would like to be able to say that I want 59 instead, or 58. I'd take 58 too, or anything lower than that. Um that's a goal I've always had rolling around in the back of my mind. And, you know, you have 0% chance of achieving your ambitious goals if you don't even enter the thing that you have a goal in. So, you know, I didn't swim the 100 breaststroke in my first meet, and this time I was like, I'm gonna give it a go at 100 breaststroke. And uh so I had 100 breaststroke up first, and then I did the 50 free again, and I did the 50 breaststroke as well. So two races from my first meet, and I'm actually I'm hoping um this is just an aside, but I'm I'm hoping to do another competition here in the summer. And if I can get into another competition for the summer, my plan is to race none of those things again. And the reason for that is um this will just be uh something that I'm coming up with on the fly, but I think is is actually really important as I think about it. And the reason for that is um I do think that it's not optimal to show up at your competitions and race the same thing. Um, that you actually get more out of having a diversity of stuff you are racing, and especially like your tendency if you're showing up and doing the same thing every time, that's usually going to be the stuff that you have a tremendous level of ego invested in. And then it's actually even even less optimal to race it all the time. Um, so one of the things you accomplish by racing some other stuff, and I haven't done this this far, I mean, it's only been two meets, but you give your brain an opportunity to uh try out some events that maybe are are novel. That like if I if I swim some different stuff in the next meet, it'll be a long time since I've raced some of this stuff. Like if I put if I end up doing backstroke in my next meet, I think it'll be the first time I've raced backstroke in almost 20 years. And that's too long. You gotta let yourself do these things, you gotta let your brain have those kinds of um new challenges. And uh because just in the same way that I led this off saying that I think there's value still in competing because of the insight that you get over time, there's value from competing in different things, right? There's value from a diversity um within within the thing that you are competing against. Because some very oftentimes the opportunities that you get to improve are not always directly in the thing you want to improve at. And racing a diversity of events gives you that opportunity to expand, maybe not in necessarily the direction you want to be able to expand, but you have that opportunity to expand nonetheless. And that expansion, that self-expansion, that self-improvement, um, can often sort of redound to the thing, the area that you want it to. But if you just try to force it into the area that you want it to, it's quite often not the most effective path forward. So that's that's that's to explain my event choices for this meet. First up was the hunter breaststroke. Um, and and I I introduced you to my big, scary, ambitious goal, but one of the things that I do with people that I coach, and um you know, I like to take my own medicine uh when I can get myself to take it, uh, I actually set two goals for the meet. Okay, so and in this case, maybe even I had three. And I don't think I think there's value to having different kinds of goals within the same thing that you are seeking out. But when I do two, essentially what I'm trying to keep in mind is one of them would be like an ambitious goal. Another way to describe it would be what do I think I can do if I am at my absolute best in that moment? Right. And to be honest, if I think about my thought process going into this, I did not think that even if I was at my absolute best that day, I was gonna go under a minute. I thought perhaps I could go a 101, um, which would be the fastest I've gone for over 10 years, uh, would have been a really, really outstanding performance. And I think it's always good to have that ambitious stuff out there because if you don't, if you don't let that part of your brain that believes something really amazing is gonna happen, if you don't let it go there, I think you you you decrease your likelihood of actually achieving it, right? You gotta you gotta allow your brain to you know dream a little bit. Um, because it's inspirational, because when done right, it feels really, really good. And so, you know, I've learned to let myself do that, even though at various other times when I've been competing, that has, you know, setting that really ambitious stuff out there, especially when I had it as my only goal, right? Well, then everything short of that, I'd set myself up as that's a disappointment. So anything better than the absolute best I was I thought I was capable of on that day was not good enough, was bad, and I was upset. So um one of the things I've started doing right is setting a a second goal, and the second goal for the most part looks like, you know, what do I where do I really think is fair to draw the line between what is good and what is not, or what I consider to be good for me and what I consider to be not good. And I think that's very distinct from where a lot of people go, which is the first one, what are you, you know, what's the absolute best you're capable of? Anything short of the best that you're capable of, not good. You know, to very black or white thinking around goals. And maybe this is just the value of experience over time, but I know I've I've learned to accept that I will not be at my absolute best all the time. In fact, most of the time I won't. That's why it's your absolute best, right? If we could all be at our absolute best all the time, consistently, it just it's like it's like a paradox. It does, it it doesn't it doesn't necessarily it just doesn't work like that. Um I don't know, maybe that's maybe in the course of this podcast I'm gonna come up with a more satisfying explanation, but the whole point of being exceptional is that it's the exception, right? It's right in the right in the name. It's the exception, not the rule. Okay? So don't try to make an exception the rule that you know you being at the absolute fringes of what you're capable of is is what you should consistently expect from yourself. Have another idea of you know what what's good enough? What's good enough? And my advice to a lot of people, a lot of people resist against this. They think that if they set a good enough goal, it's gonna be somehow demotivating to them. What I say is how's how's it working for you? The the the black or white, how is that working for you? You know, is it is giving yourself a really hard time and um spinning uh in disappointment whenever you're not at your absolute best? Is that helping you to achieve your goals? For me, it was not, right? Um it it certainly was not, and um actually anticipating that pain, right? Because there is a there is a realistic quadrant of my brain that anticipated, well, you're not gonna be the absolute best. There's a high likelihood you're not gonna be the absolute best that you expect out of yourself, and we're we're gonna be in a lot of pain on that. And when your brain gets into that mode of anticipating pain, um that does not help you to do well. So I had another idea of um what was good enough, and I sort of actually I did that with my seed time because I went 31, and I talked about this on the podcast. I went 31 in the 50 in the first meet. So I said, like, what's a reasonable, you know, 100 time? I'm not a person who um I'm a bit of a speed demon, as you'll see when you hear these results. So I thought, like, I don't know, 108. That's what I put in as my seed time. And if I said I had a third goal, um, I sort of put in there, I said, I was 106 six years ago, the last time I competed in the 100 breast, and I really think I'm better now. So um if that's true, then you know my goal is to do better than that 106.
SPEAKER_00And I got it and I went 105. And I had all the emotions.
SPEAKER_01Um, first off, before I get to even to the emotional piece of it, it hurt so bad. I have told people on this podcast, I did not swim an entire 100 breaststroke at any point in training leading up to that. And I think that's one of the things I'm gonna get into after I review all the results. But I was still like, I I I thought I remembered how painful it was. Oh my lord. I was in Hurt City on the last 25 of that. Um actually, though, probably not any more or less in Hurt City than when I was in college, so that's super cool in a way. Um that that's a super positive result because you know it can always get worse. And it it for the most part, I don't I don't think it did get worse. I um I uh I actually was able to execute on a few things in the race much better than I was six years ago. Actually, technically, I was a lot better than I was six years ago. Um I don't think my fitness was, uh, and I had spent a lot more time swimming in the lead up to that competition six years ago. So some of that will come. Um and I've had some issues in training, like I hurt my groin the first time racing out, and I've had a bunch of times in practice where I've tried to train a bit of breaststroke and um ended up sort of tweaking my groin again. So I think I've finally got some of that stuff sorted out. I didn't hurt myself in this meet. Um, and so maybe I'll be able to train a bit more going forward. But if I get into the emotions of what I was feeling, I was disappointed. I was disappointed that I didn't, I felt so good, um, especially warming up. I was like, I I I felt like I was floating on air. I shaved for this meet. Um that's something I haven't done for a very long time. And uh even though I'm I don't feel good about it now, you know, like weird stubble all over my body, and it was exhausting to do. God, it felt so good in the water. It felt so good to shave again. I missed that feeling, and I was warming up, and I just, you know, had that, I just felt like I was floating on top, you know. I was just floating on top of the water. So I got really, really excited for how things were going. So I was a little bit disappointed initially, you know, that I that I hadn't done as well as I thought I possibly could. And I think what was different in this moment was I had prepared for that. I had prepared for that not in the sense of like, you, Chris, you know, like shh the the key the key element in in dealing with this is having a plan for shame, right? And don't try to drown out shame with more shame. So I didn't make myself feel bad in advance about feeling bad after the race. I just let myself go, like, yeah, gosh, I I could have done better. And once I let myself sit with that for a little bit, I looked at the time again and I went, You're faster than you were six years ago. And that felt really good. Felt really good. And I looked, you know, I had two races left, right? I had a 50 free and a 50 breast. And I think even before the meet, the meet was only gonna be 90 minutes. I knew my fitness wasn't the best it had ever been. And I was seriously considering before the meet, not even doing all three races, because I thought, I don't know if I can get up, you know, a third time within 90 minutes and really race well. And at that moment, I was like, nah, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do this. Um, you know, and I let go a little bit. And I think there's a key insight there, because as I said earlier, sometimes you want so bad to be able to control what opportunities are given to you. Like, you know, if if if I could uh just exert 100% control over what happened, I would have made the 100 breasts my best race of the day. But it was that desire to like will it into existence that's sometimes very motivating for me in training, that didn't necessarily help me to be good on the day. But because I because I didn't try to fight off the disappointment that came out of that, um, I was in a really good place going into my next race. Race the 50-free. And um this is another reason why it's good to race stuff that you haven't raced in a long time, because I had not done a flat start 50-free since I was in college. I swam it. Now I am an absolute insane nerd about my own times. So I swam it my senior year of college at the camel invite. Talked to Mark Benvenuti from Conn College today. Shout out to Mark Benvenuti. Um, I swam it at the camel invite, okay, and I went 24.00. And for all intents and purposes, that is my best time in the 53. Um, and I dove in and I went 23.6. Now, do I think that on my best day at some other point in my life I could have gone faster than 23.6? Yeah. Am I taking it? Yes, I am taking the best time. Feed it right into my veins. You know, I think if there's anything I've learned on this journey this time around, it's that, you know, sometimes you can set up situations, and I know I have set up so many situations for myself where I go, well, you know, I could be happy, but you know, let yourself be happy. And the other key part was I let myself be happy before the race even happened. So I was standing behind the blocks, you know, I I had let myself have maybe 40 minutes, let myself experience the disappointment of not being at my best. And I was feeling a little bit of tension behind the blocks. And I just started, I I had just two nights before I'd been to a dance with uh with my daughter. She's she's uh gonna be in fourth grade, she's going to a new school next year. They invited all the people that are going to the this, you know, moving up to this next school to a dance and like, you know, bring your parent. And so she brought me there. I was never the guy, I was always too shy to get out on the dance floor when I was a kid. And you know, she dragged me straight to the center of the dance floor and was like, let's bust a move. And you know what? I was thinking back to those times when I was a kid, and I go, what was I so worried about? Like, this is fun. This is fun. So I was standing there behind the blocks, I was feeling a little bit of that pre-raised tension, and I just started dancing. Like nobody was watching, even though definitely some people were watching. I just started letting it loose. And um, then I said really, really loudly, let's have some effing fun. Uh, and yes, I did use the real word. I don't I don't use it here on the podcast, I don't want to get an explicit. Rating for this, have somebody report it. And then out of the corner of my eye, Mike, who um the guy I run into at the pool, we used to coach against each other. You know, I hear him shouting in the background, let's go, Chris. He's in the next heat. And I just felt so good. You know, just to be 39 years old and back at a swim meet, and my kids were there cheering for me, my wife was there cheering for me, and somebody, you know, somebody else, one of my competitors, was there cheering for me. And I thought, I'm really lucky. I'm lucky to be here. Like, I'm lucky that I still get to do this. And that was the last thought I had before I got up on the blocks. And then I went and ripped to best time. And afterwards, I was I was swimming down, my wife came over and walked to me, and I just like I couldn't wait. I like once she got it within earshot, I was like, that's my best time of my life. And, you know, she had this big smile on her face. Of course she does. She loves me. And she was like, because she had decided, like, I don't know how long I'm able to keep these little kids here in this uh swim meat environment. She was saying, like, I think I think we can stick it out for one more race. So I had the 50 breast stroke last. And by this point, you know what the interesting? Here's another observation. I did not feel good physically, like I felt tired before I raced that 100 breast. Go ahead. Ask me how I felt before the 50, the last race. I'll tell you, I felt great. I felt great. Now, did did I take some magical recovery potion between the 100 breast and the 50 breast?
SPEAKER_00Nope. So what happened?
SPEAKER_01What happened was I stopped fighting against the opportunity the day was giving me. I stopped. I mean, 100 breaststroke was over. I literally could not force a good hunter breaststroke to happen anymore. And I'd had this experience where I just opened myself up a little bit. Something really amazing happened. And then I then I was starting to think, like, I I damn, I only get one more shot to do something in this meet. It's almost over. Right? And I was getting ready to do the 50 breaststroke. And I was standing by in the blocks. And this time, Mike, who had yelled at me before, he was actually in my heat. He was in the middle of a pool. I was in the outside lane. And so I was like, I gotta give this back. So we're getting ready to race the thing. And I just screamed, like, let's go, Mike. And I think I startled him a little bit. And I had the same thought. I thought, well, I'm so lucky that I get to be able to do this. I'm so lucky that, you know, um I'm healthy and that I get to train and I can still swim pretty fast from end to end. Like, this is amazing.
SPEAKER_00This is so amazing.
SPEAKER_01And I dove in and I won the heat. I beat everybody, beat all comers, 39 years old. A couple people younger than me in the course of it. Um, I put up a time and went 28-7 in that race. Uh 23-6 was my 50 free time, and uh 28-7. And that that time actually, I checked it this morning, it's got me ranked top 20 for all people in my age group in the country. Um, and I'm pretty darn proud of that.
SPEAKER_00I feel really good. It was really, really fun.
SPEAKER_01And so I'm overall, I'm I'm I'm feeling great. I feel great about the meet. I think I learned a lot from doing it, and the the overriding thought that I have coming out of it is all about stress management. You know, I've been talking a lot on this particular podcast about, you know, sort of taking the opportunities that are given to you. And I know I have, like most people that I know, carried a lot of stress with me in a lot of situations, especially around the sport of swimming. Um and as I said uh before in the lead up to it, if you look on my Instagram and stuff, one of the things I was talking about is you know, if you're stressing about something, if you're worrying a lot about something, it's first off, acknowledge with yourself that where that comes from is that you really care about what's happening. I mean, I care. I've I'm showing up to a swim meet, I can't help it. I care about how I'm gonna do. Okay? That's the first thing. The second thing is if you listen to this, like, okay, I thought I could do something amazing. So often we let that worry get translated into you know, we just code it as pure negativity, like, oh, you're talking yourself out of it.
SPEAKER_00And no.
SPEAKER_01In fact, part of part of that worry comes from the fact that I I think I'm able to do something exceptional, but I think also at the same time that somehow squeezing it to death is what's gonna make it happen. And that's where the stress comes from.
SPEAKER_00That is the moment where the stress gets introduced because in that moment, that moment where you experience stress, you are you are fighting the experience of what's happening.
SPEAKER_01Okay, you're saying, for instance, like me in a hundred breaststroke, you go, okay, well, I know that 101 is a really unlikely outcome, but I want it to happen, and that's what's gonna happen.
SPEAKER_00That will be what's gonna happen here, and I will make it happen.
SPEAKER_01And I don't know about you, but none of us are omniscient beings that can make ninety-nine out of a hundred things, you know, probability. Sorry, one one out of a hundred probability things just happen through sheer force of will.
SPEAKER_00Well, I would love to have that kind of power. But that's not that's not reality. The reality is you do things over a long period of time that make a range of outcomes possible, and there's a certain level of probability on any given day.
SPEAKER_01Now, training-wise, what I will say is just by virtue of the way I train, and I've talked about this on other podcasts, I think the range of what's possible is pretty big. That is to say, I think I could have gone much slower, and I think I could have gone much faster. Um, and part of that is because I just don't train very much. So I think when you train up your capacity, you know, swimming, we we we have a lot of stuff built around this. We we train a lot of volume. Even me, if you look at like I'm gonna race for 50 yards, and I I swim basically, I swim three times a week, or swim basically 2,000 yards of practice. But that means in an average practice, I'm going 40 times the volume of the thing I'm gonna be racing. That does not that does not happen actually in a lot of other sort of self-powered sports. We're going, we're and that where that's considered actually really low volume, 40 times the race that you're gonna try and swim. You're trying compete in. But nevertheless, training up that capacity, I think it narrows the range.
SPEAKER_00Right?
SPEAKER_01I think you know it what I have observed in coaching swimmers is it can make the low end of what you're physically mentally capable of closer to the high end, you know, so that you you tighten that window up quite a bit. You you buy a really strong insurance policy against a a bad, you know, what you might in a rational mind consider a bad swim, setting aside all the other stuff we've discussed in this. And then, you know, when you try to do stuff to increase that raw speed, raw power output you have, then you can increase the sort of top of your window, like the top end of what's capable, but you might still have a big window. So I think that I've done a lot of things that certainly get my top end of my window closer to my super ambitious goal, but I still also have a giant window. You know, and when I say giant window, like I think um swimmers who really optimize on capacity and stuff, like in 100, they might realistically have, and I'm when I'm saying window, I'm talking about like 99th percentile swim for them and one percentile swim. For in 100 yards, they might have that window down to like three seconds. Right? So the difference between maybe 59 is a 99th percentile swim for them, 102 is like a first percentile. I think my window is probably more like six to eight seconds. So I think, you know, actually if I do like eight, if I say 101 was the greatest thing I thought I was capable of, I went 105, I easily could have gone 109.
SPEAKER_00If I just had a real um, if I had a real crap race, easily could have done it.
SPEAKER_01And um so I take that reflection is you know, when I talk about stress here, I'm not talking about the idea of stretching to your capacity. I'm talking about the idea of actually making trying to force something to happen instead of like perceiving where the opportunities are for you. And I'm I want to bring that into my training uh coming forward. And one of the considerations that I have is that I still basically train by myself. I don't have anybody watching me, I don't have anybody coaching me directly on the pool deck. Shout out to Trevor Gray and shout out to Joel Rawlings, shout out to my boy Garrett McCaffrey. You guys have all really helped me in a coaching aspect. So I don't want mean to say Nikki Kett, um Sherry Fisher at Learn and Flourish, like my therapist. I mean, there's been a lot of people actually who have coached me, but like I'm missing that, you know, real-time feedback that I know is valuable to athletes. Um and I don't really have a solution to that, but I would like to find something because I know it's gonna make my goal more likely if I can find a way to get some more valuable real-time feedback while I'm swimming. So I'm gonna noodle on that for a little bit. Um, and I'm going to look to increase the capacity of how I'm training, but not by forcing the issue, right? Not by just like, for instance, I I could have showed up, I could show up any day and make myself just do 100 breaststroke. I don't necessarily think that that in of itself is going to get me there. Um I think that actually understanding how to expand myself into training that or even build up my capacity to do high-quality hundred breaststrokes in training and have it not be like I'm still sore two days later, right? Have it not be something that I have a long recovery window from so that I can, so that I can actually, because this is the thing about high volume training is I used to think, oh, it's so mindless, you just yards, yards, yards. No, actually, you should be extremely thoughtful about building your capacity. If you're trying to get as many yards uh or meters for for my foreign listeners into a given practice, if you don't calibrate the practices correctly, you know, you're gonna run into a brick wall pretty fast in terms of what you can progress. So I I want to lean into that progression piece of it quite a bit. Um and part of that is gonna involve something that I'm never good at doing for myself, and maybe this is something I can get help with without having somebody stand on the pool deck, but get a little more periodization. I'm a tendency to be the kind of person who just tries to put his foot on the gas all the time and then waits until everything's breaking and then goes, ah, I guess I better back off for a little bit. Do I think that that works for people that are not me? No. I would never set up uh a training plan for somebody else in that way. I would be very intentional about having um having designed pieces where you actually pull back a little bit in the training to progress more forward, take the opportunity that's given to you. And um, so I'm gonna bring some of that stuff in as well. Big learning experience for me. I appreciate you guys all for listening and um being willing to go on this journey for me. Thank you for all the well wishes and all the people who've been following along with this. I I really do appreciate you. And uh I'll be back later in the week with Joel. We'll get something in right before the Memorial Day holiday. I hope everybody's looking forward to it to a nice weekend, uh, a big long weekend here in the DeSantis family. And uh I'll be back with you next week for more stuff straight off the top of my dome. Be sure to check out big sale at the magic5.com slash swim brief on bundles. So you can actually stack that link that gets you 15% off. You can get another 15% off on bundles. Um they have an indoor outdoor bundle. Just follow the link, see if there's something for you. Um, check out the price of these goggles. I mean, uh, for instance, I went through and you know, you can get two pairs, I think with the discounts stopped stocked on top of each other, inclusive of shipping and taxes and all this stuff. You can get two pairs of high-quality custom goggles, custom fitted to your eyes, amazing goggles, for like $90. Okay, you're gonna pay almost that amount for something that fits really poorly on your face, falls apart quickly. Um, so do yourself a favor and get something good. Go to the magic5.com slash the swim brief and check back next week uh for more podcasts.