Hello and welcome to the swim brief. I've got a very special podcast for you today. And I know I say that a lot. Um, but we try a lot of different things here. Uh, one of the things I aim to do with the swim brief is provide stuff that you won't see uh or hear on other swimming podcasts. And um, I was doing a podcast a couple weeks ago with Trevor Gray. Um, if you're watching the video version of this, you can see him on the other end seated next to a couple of high school swimmers. And um we were talking about the fact that uh he's launching a new coaching project. So we thought uh we would correct the mistake that we did with his own swimming, which was we should have um at the outset of him trying to break some master's records, talked about what the plan was and then evaluated it. At the end, we thought we'd try to catch this moment right at the beginning of something new being put in place at University Place Aquatic Club, and um actually get some swimmers in here, get some of their impressions, get some of their thoughts here at this early stage, and then be able to revisit things in several months and um see what kind of stuff held up from this, what surprised people, what um twists and turns this all took. Because I think um beyond what kind of learning experience you guys are gonna go through there, it's gonna be a great learning experience. The audience of this podcast is uh a lot of swim coaches and a lot of uh, I should say, families and athletes from the club that I work at, Jersey Wahoos. Um and even though some of the training we're gonna be talking about is pretty different, I think a lot of the concepts for coach athlete cooperation, um development of uh training and all that stuff are are pretty universal. So um just to introduce everybody on the other end, we've got uh Trevor Gray. Trevor, your your your title with university, because I know Aaron was was here before we started recording. He's the head coach of University Place Aquatic Club. And what is your title again?
SPEAKER_00So I'm senior coach here. You're senior coach, and we have I work with 14 to 15 to 18 and college athletes as well.
SPEAKER_01Um and we have uh Gabby here. Gabby, just give us like um age, year in high school, how long you've been swimming, you know, what your favorite flavor of ice cream is. You don't have to do the ice cream, but the rest of it is is good.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so I'm 17 years old. I'm a senior in uh high school. I go to Curtis Senior High School. Um, I typically swim like spring to medicines freestyle. Yep. And my favorite flavor of ice cream would be chocolate shit.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Any I we're not accepting any answer but cookies and cream. I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_04Okay, I understand it.
SPEAKER_00Um and by the way, Chris Gabby is uh state champion in the tuna freestyle just a couple weeks ago.
SPEAKER_01Good, good for good, good, good to brag on her in case she won't mention that. Um, Trudy, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself as well?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I'm Trudy. I'm also 17 and a senior in high school, and I swim mainly backstroke with 100 and 200, and then sometimes 100 free, um, and tuna-free, and then I I don't know, my favorite flavor. It goes between chocolate and vanilla all time is the classics.
SPEAKER_01Right, right. I like like when it's really 75% Oreo cookie, and then like just a little bit of ice cream, really, but it's like the mushed, you know, soft Oreo cookie basically. Um, Nona's in Hingham, Massachusetts makes the best cookies and cream ice cream. That's a free plug for them for all your Massachusetts listeners. Um, all right, Trevor, just back up for us a little bit here and explain to um how you came to be the senior coach and what your thoughts were before starting on what kind of project you wanted to launch there.
SPEAKER_00Uh Aaron approached me months ago, if not a year ago. Yeah, yeah, it was like mid-pandemic one. I think we're in, I don't know what phase we're on here. 3.0.
SPEAKER_01I think Omicron puts us in 3.0, maybe. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, 3.0, right. And he says, Hey, what uh what do you think if you were gonna be senior coach? And I'm like, Well, I really like my main job. I don't want to go back to full-time head coaching. He goes, No, no, no, I'm head coach. You would be senior coach. I'm like, Oh. And I said, Well, so I wouldn't have to work with the board or do meet entries, and I just come in and train the athletes and kind of that's kind of it. He goes, Yeah, basically. I'm like, okay, well, let's keep talking then. And over the months, uh, we had a few more conversations, and I said, Okay, let's do this. And I'm on week three now, I think, of just starting. And and then go ahead.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and how long? I mean, Trevor, we've talked about this on previous podcasts before, but I'm I'm trying to remember when was the last time you were coaching year-round?
SPEAKER_00It's been almost 10 years, I think.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00I took a I took a break and went and got my master's in exercise science and then dabbled in a little bit of high school and college coaching. Uh before this opportunity came up, I'm like, this seems like a good fit. Let's go for it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And you're still gonna be uh teaching, you're still gonna be a profess Professor Trevor, still gonna have that part of your life. Um but you're also gonna be training. And um, I know over the time, like you're you've always been kind of working on a draft and drafting and editing and drafting and editing the plan for what you were gonna do if you were in this situation again. So, where did you land? Um, or what did you land on before you started this?
SPEAKER_00So I've been planning this program for at least six, at least six years, if not a little bit longer. But when I went and legitimized my knowledge of human performance, because I thought I was a decent coach 10 years ago, and then I got burnt out in coaching, as a lot of us do, and I thought, let's go legitimize my knowledge of human performance. And in studying all that, I came across so much information that it became mind-boggling. And I thought, how is a coach supposed to optimize every single aspect of training for the optimum training stimulus? And I came to the conclusion that we can't. No coach in any sport is unable to optimize a training performance, which leads us to the conclusion that we're basically guessing on how to optimize any athlete's performance on any given day. Should we do 50s? Should we do 800s? Should we do 500, 800, should we do four, 800s? Why don't we do 10, 800s? We're really just guessing on the optimum stimulus for a group of 10, 20, 30, 40 swimmers.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_00And then I'm like, okay, so we are really far away, and you've said it before, we're in the dark ages of coaching, right? We're really far away from optimizing any given athlete's performance. So if we don't know, if coaches don't know, is there anyone that knows how to optimize their own performance? And then I came across athlete-centered coaching, which suggests that, which is uh positive psychology, which is a part of, suggests that, well, what if it's the athlete who knows best? What if it's them who, if you tap into their instincts, they can tell the coach, like, this is what I need to do. And athlete-centered coaching states that, like, you should give the athlete a lot of autonomy uh in their training program and their racing program for any given meet. So I took that information and started formulating this plan. And yeah, here we are with this grand little experiment, which I've implemented with other teams before. Right. But uh, this is probably the biggest scale that I've implemented this program.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And so you you you started three weeks ago. I assume there was um a grand picturing you in a hotel ballroom, but of course you guys are all sitting in masks. So I'm sure there was like a Zoom meeting where all of this was introduced. Um uh Gabby, like when when Trevor goes on about what he's gonna do, what what was your initial impression as you were listening to it as an athlete? Like, what did you think about what was to come? Were you excited? Were you like, yeah, what is this?
SPEAKER_03Oh well, I was excited, and then I was kind of like, well, what have I been doing these past like 10 years when my coach has been telling me all these sets and like you know, kind of put like not doubt in my coaches, but now I understand that like they don't really know what they're doing that much. And the fact that you know Coach Heaven brought that up and he's like admitting that they don't know what they're doing, but they're still gonna try their best sort of to get us where we want to be. That and his whole plan that just really excites me, you know, the future of swimming and um, you know, we can all get better in some way, and this just seems like the best way to me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I do think you're touching on on something there that I think uh is quite important, which is the sort of the humility um I found myself as I continue uh going on and coaching, admitting more and more what I don't know. Um, you know, it's I have athletes every day who are asking me, you know, like, oh, uh I my my shoulder hurts right here. Like, what do you think's wrong? And I go, I'm not a doctor, I have no idea. And it's not a very satisfying answer to them at the first time they hear it, right? Because they they're used to somebody like trying to diagnose what's going on, and and and then later I can see the same thought process you went through. They go, like, huh? So all those people who did tell me they weren't doctors either. How did they know what was going on? Um, Trudy, how about you? Um did it change your perspective at all on what you've done swimming-wise up to this point?
SPEAKER_02Um I guess I was just like a little surprised, like that it was even like, I was like, wow, who even came up with this? Like, it's so genius, but it's also like, why don't more people know about it? And like, why isn't it more of a thing? Um, but it's also, I don't know, it made me look back on my past few years of swimming and be like, okay, like I know what I did like was good because obviously I got faster and I got better, but I feel like there was something lacking in the sense that I could have maybe, maybe like looking back, I could have had like these conversations with my coaches that would have like led to something different or something. I'm like, okay, I've come into practice and I'm really feeling awful that day and I couldn't, I really had a horrible set, and maybe I didn't need to do that kind of thing. So, like just little things like that that might have you know helped in the long run. But um I don't know, I'm not necessarily like disappointed in my coaching at all, like in the past years, but it's definitely giving me like more of like wow, there's there's not just one way to do things, like there's multiple ways to get better and get faster. So yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I mean, again, I as I outlined this at the outset, um uh I was telling you guys about doing five, eight hundreds every Monday here at Wahoo's, and that's certainly pretty different if you look over the course of my own coaching career from how I might structure practice. But I've always been a believer that um the structure of the practice is probably one of the least important factors in terms of how well people do. It's not that it's doesn't have some effect. Of course, you can optimize um what's in the practice for the people that are in the water, but it has a lot more to do with the way that the swimmers approach it and the way that the coach coaches it. You know, it's it's the people on the other end, the the the sets and the repetitions and the rest intervals. That's just math, right? Um, and and human beings are not math problems. Um, they're they're quite a bit more complex with that. Um, Trevor, what kind of, you know, I'm assuming in developing this, because I I go through this too, whenever, for instance, I'm I'm engaged in, you know, doing a positive psychology educational program here in Wahoo's. And the thing I try to get better at every year is anticipating what's going to go wrong. You know, so once I launch my little, like I just did a sequence on optimism, and I've started figuring out what goes wrong for people, what are the second-order problems, third order problems that people run into trying to implement what I'm actually asking them to do. So to you, what are some of the sort of potential pitfalls of this that you see? And what's your best guess right now as to what you might do to address them?
SPEAKER_00Uh, specifically, one of the pitfalls is the first few weeks or months of implementing this is gonna be messy. And we saw that yesterday. Yesterday's practice really bothered me, but I know it's that's what's gonna happen because tell me what happened yesterday. So this team seems to value circuit training. And so let's do some circuit training, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So yesterday I had two groups uh organize a set, uh, a 40-minute set of circuit training.
SPEAKER_01And when you say time, I'm just gonna interrupt you for a ton of questions because I think a lot of this is unfamiliar people. When you said the two groups organized, did did they come up with the set that they were gonna do?
SPEAKER_00Yep, exactly. Okay, how did they do that? They sat down in groups and started writing it out. And whatever, let's see what they come up with. Okay, and I didn't have really any input. I said, You have 40 minutes, and this is the equipment we have, and I had everyone look out like, here's our pool. Start imagining the set. Yeah, and they did it, and it took them about 10, 15 minutes, and it ended up being a girls' group and a boys' group, which was unplanned. It just happened to be that way.
SPEAKER_01Okay, got it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, the girls came up with it pretty quick, and then I flipped a coin and said, Okay, the guys won, so we're gonna do your set today, and next Tuesday, the girls are gonna do their set for the entire team. And it was, it took us a while to get going, and a lot of people like didn't know what was happening. The idea here, though, the the problem solving is we're gonna do this same set for a few weeks. So next time we come in and do this guy's set, they're like, Oh, yeah, we did this again. And then they're gonna go, you know what, uh, coach, I don't like that this part of the set. Can we make it better? Like, yeah, we're gonna make it better, and we're gonna start designing and and evolving this set to make it better. And so that's one of the problem solving aspects of it is that uh they get their voice heard on how to make a set better for them.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So, so I think to just you know, to the skeptics like listening, they're gonna go immediately like, Well, isn't that a gigantic waste of time? Like, I only have 90 minutes of pool time, I'm not gonna spend 15 minutes of it letting the swimmers prepare practice when that's something I could do, right? As a coach, what do you say to that?
SPEAKER_00Yes, correct. The first few weeks is gonna eat into a little bit of pool time. However, as this program evolves and the swimmers understand what is happening and how it goes, uh, that will go away and they'll come in and know beforehand exactly what the set is going to be that day. Which leads into a little bit of I've talked to them about teleoanticipation, and teleo meaning the outcome, and anticipation, of course, is anticipation. So they're anticipating the outcome of the set. No more walking into the set, like what are we doing today? And the swimmers have no idea. An important aspect of this program is they have an idea weeks before they come into the pool what set they're going to do on any given day. And so, with that knowledge beforehand, there will be no time wasted. We'll get in right away and they'll know what set's going on.
SPEAKER_01And um I'll go to Trudy. Trudy, what did you guys come up with? Like what was the set? What did you guys do?
SPEAKER_02Um, well, we did the boy set yesterday, but oh yeah, sorry, I think I got that flipped.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you're right. You told me you did the boy set. But what did you end up doing anyway?
SPEAKER_02We ended up doing like some one part of it, it was like four stations of 10 minutes long, and one part of it was like a dryland circuit kind of thing, and then another part of it was um sprint 25s with parachutes, and then a few more sprint 25s, and then another part of it was with the bands tied to the diving board, and you just like try to get as far as you can, like with resistance, and then what was the last part?
SPEAKER_00We did body weight exercises, bands, med balls, oh yeah, medballs, and then parachutes, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Med balls. So it was like a bunch of med ball exercises that we did online. So it was a lot of dry line stuff, actually, not as much swimming, but um, it worked out fine that way.
SPEAKER_01And and Gabby, on a scale of one to ten, how much did you enjoy it? And what do you what would you say prior to this shift was your average rating of a swim practice?
SPEAKER_03Um, I actually enjoyed it a lot. I think it was like an eight for me because like for me personally, I really enjoy resistance training and like drilling exercises that are like bodyweight focused and like hub lot for swimming for me personally.
SPEAKER_04Yep.
SPEAKER_03And like I guess previous to this, honestly, I'm one of 10, like a four, I usually did not a choice of practices, like on average, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so now I have I now I'm really interested because like you're 17 years old, you've been swimming all this time. I I don't know when you started, but I'm assuming it was probably eight, nine, 10 years ago or something like that, right? So how long had you been showing up to swim practice where it's a four out of 10 on the enjoyment scale and why?
SPEAKER_03Um, actually, it's been pretty recent. I think uh when quarantine started in March 2020, yeah, I had like not like peaked, but I was getting a lot faster. I was actually enjoying going to swim practice. And then during quarantine, I just lost like a lot of my motivation. And um I would come to practice. I wouldn't really want to be there in the first place. And the certain sets I was given, I just had no motivation to do. I would like sit on the wall, you know, and complain. And um yeah, and I kind of showed in meets as well. I wasn't dropping time, and then that like unmotived me, unmotivated myself even more, and I just I never really enjoyed um the most success we did. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So part of it was you you weren't enjoying the competitive success you wanted, and that had a bleed to the practice because you're thinking, like, I'm spending, I don't know, I I'll get into this in a second, but I'm spending a lot of my free time doing this activity, and I'm not seeing that it's leading to anything that that I want, right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_01How how how much do you guys practice? I'll I'll keep going here with Gabby.
SPEAKER_03Um, right now, I think it's an hour and a half.
SPEAKER_01So you have an hour and a half six days a week. Yeah, so nine hours in the water, and then do you have a a dry land component on top of that?
SPEAKER_03Um, I think that's a little later in the season. Right now, I'm doing my own uh weightlifting. That's about like an hour and a half, like two times a week, two times a week. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'm gonna be implementing a strength training program here in a few weeks.
SPEAKER_01Great.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, okay. Uh any other any other pitfalls you anticipate, Trevor. I'm thinking like just in general, like how long do you expect this period to last where there's sort of some, I don't know, want to call it dead time, because there is some value to taking up, taking time. If there's a long-term payoff, there's some value in the short term to taking time from practice to plan um sets and this kind of stuff. But when do you anticipate? How long do you anticipate it's gonna take to sort of have a smoothly flowing, um, mostly used by swimming or swimming related exercises 90 minutes?
SPEAKER_00I believe that we will be a well, well-oiled machine by late January. And okay, and I here's how it's gonna work. Swimmers will come in, I'll say, Hey, what are you working on today? And they're like, I'm doing USRP today, USRPT today. I'm like, Great, go to lanes one and two. What are you working on today? Uh, I'm gonna do some peer coaching today. All right, you guys go to three and four if you're doing peer coaching. And then over here, I'm like, I'm gonna do a kick set today. All right, you go over to lanes five and six, and this group does a kick set, and then we'll probably have subgroups as well, and then they go do it, and then I uh walk around the deck uh giving motivation and technique advice and generally make sure that the practice is going well. So that's I expect that's by late January, that's what's what's going to happen.
SPEAKER_01Okay, and give me an overview like how how many lanes I just you just sort of did it like other. There's eight lanes in the pool. How many swimmers?
SPEAKER_00We have six lanes here at Kirk's, but we're also using the University of Puget Sound, which has eight lanes. On by January, I hope we're there Tuesday right now. By January, I hope we're there by Tuesday, Tuesday and Thursday. Okay. So that will have more space to have three groups, or maybe we have eight lanes of people doing things. And uh it really gets uh detailed uh and geared towards each swimmer what they need to do that day.
SPEAKER_01And sorry, how many swimmers are in the water and on any given? Oh, sorry.
SPEAKER_00Uh I think we have what 20 now? Yeah, we have 20 now, and I'm guessing at the end of boys' high school season, which here in Washington ends in mid-February, we could have 30, 35, and I'm not even expecting 40 by April or May.
SPEAKER_01And is that the general profile of somebody that would be on this team? Somebody who wants to train year-round for swimming, um, but they're heavily invested in high school swimming. So when the high school swimming season is coming, that's their priority.
SPEAKER_00That being actually okay like Gabby's gonna play polo coming up here. Oh, right.
SPEAKER_01We're talking about that beforehand.
SPEAKER_00This program is designed so that uh if you qualify for this group, um, you can come in and out during the season and you'll know exactly what sets are gonna be worked on, and you can incorporate in and out of the program as you see fit. So it's gonna um have people who yeah, dedicated to club swimming six days a week. I'm doing 15 hours of training, including auxiliary training, or those who come three days a week. They're they have the skill to swim in this group, but they only want to train Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and they can come in this group and do that as well.
SPEAKER_01So that actually has a lot of parallels with the group that I coach here at Wahoo's, because we have about 10 hours in the water and spread across six practices a week. Um, and it is designed for kids that are gonna come in and out a little bit due to high school swimming or due to playing another sport or playing water polo. Um so it, you know, probably very instructive. Um, that's selfishly now. I'm gonna get information for for what I'm doing from all you guys. So that's that's fantastic. Um uh Trudy, when you look forward, like I asked Trevor, um, some of the pitfalls, do you have any fear? Like, is any part of this because it's different? Does it does it scare you in a way?
SPEAKER_02Um, I don't know. I'm I think I'm mostly just excited to just start something new. I've been doing the same thing for so long that it's like, you know, that gets mundane after a while, so it'll be exciting to change it up and like work on my sprinting, especially, which needs a lot of help. And um, I'm excited to, I don't know, really see what like my body needs and my my own like swimming career, like what can help that. And I think for me personally, it's it's um it's gonna be good because I like being in control of like what's happening, and I like having like that sense of like, okay, I know what's going on, I know what I'm gonna do, and I know what like what needs to happen in order to do well. So I think that'll be good for me. I think it might be harder for like my sister, who is like you know, not as self-motivated and doesn't know how to push herself as hard. And like I'm she's a great swimmer, she's super talented, probably way more than I am, but she doesn't actually have as much of a like, okay, I know what I need, and she's not as like in tap with that yet. So I think this will also help her to, you know, um get that like okay, I need to figure out what I need, but it's also gonna be harder for like if you don't have as much self-motivation, um, then that might be a little bit more difficult. And obviously, Trevor said, like it's gonna be um maybe a little bit messy the first few minutes because we're all figuring it out, but um, you think eventually it'll it'll be really cool to see what comes out of it. And I'm excited.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, Trevor, I think Triti brings up a great point that I think you know, again, the skeptics, and I'm playing the skeptic on this one, would ask like, what do you what do you do about that person who shows up and you know they don't even necessarily want to show up to swim practice? And now you're going, well, not only I know you don't want to be here, but like decide what you want to do for training, and they're like, Right. I mean, I can anticipate if I did that with there, there's a healthy amount of swimmers in my group who would just look at me and go, like, I don't know, maybe I'll just sit here for 90 minutes.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly. Okay, so two points on that. One, the younger you are, the more direction you do need because you're less experienced. And so, yes, those younger swimmers like Trudy's sister needs more uh direction at that age. We can provide that. I can still easily go back to the old coaching style and write sets for any specific group that needs that. I can absolutely do that. And I expect to be doing that. Another pitfall is with any program, whether you're a distance program or an athlete-centered program or a sprint program, you will have some people buy in, you will have some people who are mediocre interested, and you'll have some people who are like, I do not like this program at all, and I need to find another program. That's going to happen with any program that you go to. The idea here, though, is that we can still provide you with direction if you need that, or full autonomy if you need that, um, so that you can be some level of success. Um, so that I hope to provide the range of opportunity for every single swimmer uh needed here on this club.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think uh I mean you bring bring up a great point there in that like I think one of the pitfalls just for clubs in general is that sometimes you have an area and everybody's just trying to do a variation of the same thing, essentially, instead of offering a completely different product, basically on the other end, and um there's probably room for what you're doing and room for um a place that you know swims 20 hours a week and is uh really sort of has a really high standard for you know attendance and you can't show up to your high school swim practice and you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. There's there's sort of probably room for both of those things um in the same area because not everybody wants either one, right? Right. Um we're providing both, we're providing all the above there. Um so what give me a little bit more like forward looking. So if you say we're well-oiled machine by the end of January, um, how does this evolve? Or how do you at least anticipate it evolving? Like what are, you know, if that's if getting this to a stable sort of state at practice is is step one, what's step two? What's step three? Like what's what's the evolution of this?
SPEAKER_00The next step is because autonomy can be scary for coaches and parents, because some swimmers are gonna go, I'm just gonna sprint for the next few weeks or even months. So the next step is allowing the athlete to fail. When they go to swim meets, and they might be successful at first, but then they go to the next few swim meets and they're going that they will instinctually go, uh oh, my endurance is is is trash. I need to do some more endurance. And I'll be like, Yes, you do. But now you're ready to accept that and choose that endurance, and now you are going to do willingly the eight, five hundreds or five, the five, eight hundreds that we were talking about earlier. And because they're gonna go, I need to do that kind of swimming because I want to be successful. So that choice, the evolution of choice will become more apparent to them. Yeah, and then eventually after that, is they're dragging me along. They're like, Coach, uh, when can we start doing morning practices? Or how do we get two hours in? Or let's do some weight more weight lifting. And then that's the ultimate goal is that one of the ultimate goals is that they're dragging me along to help them out with their swimming career instead of me or us coaches always going, okay, swimmers, let's go and try and motivate them and and in doing it that way.
SPEAKER_01But aren't you next goal? Sorry, let me just interrupt one more time. Aren't you scared though that like some swimmers and parents are just gonna blame you? Like they're gonna go to the meet, they don't swim well, and they're just gonna go, Well, it's Trevor and his stupid athlete-centered plan, that doesn't work, you know. Like, and that's that's what I would anticipate if I were you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, some people say and part of that is communicating with parents beforehand and during and after the process of like, hey, here's how here is how this is going to go. Your swimmer, if I was talking to a specific parent and I knew that they were not going to do well, I'd probably give them heads up, like, hey, they're not gonna do well, and it's gonna be tears all weekend long, and they're gonna come to you just heads up on that. Okay, and then they're gonna go, Well, why would you allow that to happen? And then I explain the process and that uh failure is part of it, and we will learn and grow from this a growth mindset, which actually I was so happy of the other day because I talked about growth mindset to like an 11-year-old, and she's like, I got the book, I got Carol Dweck's book, and I'm reading it. She goes, It's awesome. I'm like, Yes, awesome on you. So um then, yeah, it's it's it's telling parents, like, hey, your your summer is gonna fail. And after that is when the learning and the growing takes place, yeah. Um, so that's that's one of the things. The ultimate goal, uh, number two, is that it they don't need me, is that it's a Jason Lizak style of training, and they you simply use me as a guide. They're like, here's the next three or six or six months of training. What do you think of this, Coach Trevor? And I'm gonna look at it and go, Yeah, but did you consider this or did you consider that? And they're like, no, but that's a good idea, or yeah, I did consider that. I don't want to do that. I'm like, great, then don't do it. And then they implement the training program and I support them along the way.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Okay. Um all right, I just want to uh finish with this because I know we're we're we're coming up on our um time deadline. Um I'm gonna go back to Gabby. Anything that I haven't asked about that you sort of like you got noodling around in your mind about this that it that might be worth revisiting in a few months.
SPEAKER_03Um I'm not sure. I think maybe like I um looking forward to the many US RPT sets that we're gonna do, but I'm also um I'm interested in how like my endurance comes up or like because I know that we call it like sets of value, which basically like touches on like your endurance and yeah, like you know, it's like 5800 or something like that. And I just um I like to see, you know, how much I'm willing to like, you know, um put myself out there and do those sets of value. Um, or you know, if I'm not feeling good in the water, you know, am I just gonna quit or am I gonna push myself or you know, how will that you know play out in the end?
SPEAKER_01What what do you like about USRPT? I've coached USRPT before. I'm well known for saying many things about it, every other other angle of it. So what do you like about it?
SPEAKER_03Um, I like that, you know, Coach Sher told us that like if you do this set, it will give you this time. And I kind of like that, you know, clear and concise, like it's this kind of guaranteed you're gonna go this time. And you know, I before it was kind of vague, like, you know, how am I gonna do it? This to me, I have literally no idea how I'm gonna swim. But you know, now with these sets, I'm like, okay, if I can push myself to like hold this average, I know I'm gonna go this time, and it motivates me. I'm like, um, if I want to go 149, I have to go, you know, this certain pace. And so I'm gonna I'm gonna push myself and I'm gonna, you know, hold this average for as long as I can.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, believe it or not, Trevor, even in in um with as much as I've changed, I had a challenge set day yesterday, and our challenge set was four rounds of 1225s and then a couple hundreds recovery, and you had two rounds freestyle, two rounds non-freestyle. So I essentially recreated USRPT in a main set. And I just said to everybody, I tried to, I was trying to think about like how do I explain USRPT in one to two sentences with a loud fan blaring over my head and 40 in the water. No, and I just said, look, here's the goal. Take your goal 100 pace, divide it by four. If you want to break a minute, you know, um you're gonna go 14s, get as many 14s as you can. And if you get 24 14s, I say you're on track to make your goal. If you get three or four, you got a lot of work to do. That's it. That's my USRPD.
SPEAKER_00I think that was six sentences though. So you went to the city.
SPEAKER_01Ah, come on. Come on. It was one big run-on sentence. Um do you, Gabby? One last question for you. Um, I know you play water polo as well. Do you have plans? I know I'm gonna ask you the horrible senior in high school question, but do you want to continue on in swimming or continue on in water polo in college?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so I've already actually committed to UC Davis uh for some, which I'm really excited about. Yeah, the coach is amazing. He actually um was coaching at UC Santa Barbara and then moved to Davis uh to be near a family. And uh he and I have talked, and our philosophies about swimming are like pretty much the exact same. And um, I think I'll maybe like introduce him to Athlete Center coaching and see what he thinks about it. Uh I think he'll like it a lot. Um yeah, I am I am swimming in college. Um, and I do enjoy water polo a lot, but I don't think I'd I don't think I'd make it in college. It's more of like a side sport, and then just you know, um during the season, I'll obviously still swim and you know, enjoy it for my senior year.
SPEAKER_01And what about you, Trudy? Do you have plans to swim beyond this year?
SPEAKER_02Um, I've gone back and forth a lot in the past few years, and I'm still in that like middle point of like, I don't know, yeah, just because I had a pretty sucky senior year season. So um, I don't know, that was kind of like a dampener on like, do I really want to do this for the next four years? Or like, I don't know. So right now I at least one more year. I'm gonna try some like open water swimming next summer and see how I like that and just try to change things up a little bit. And then I'm also gonna play polo and um, you know, just stay in shape and that kind of stuff. But I I haven't, I don't know, I don't know if I'm gonna actually do four more years of swimming, but at least a year, at least another year.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Well, that'll be good to revisit. You know, we'll we'll we'll find out in when we revisit this. We'll find out has um uh a change in stimulus uh rekindled that fire for you in swimming or not. Um I think that'd be a really important thing to examine. Anything else you, Trudy, you feel like has gone unmentioned in here? I want to give you your last chance because I gave it to Gabby as well.
SPEAKER_02Um no, I'm just yeah, I'm like I said, I'm just excited to see, like, especially for my sprinting. Like I know I have endurance right now. I know my endurance is solid. Um, but like for me, like working on my 100 and 200 free and 100 and 200 back, like I'm really excited to see how like especially USRPTV like works out and if my endurance, like Gabby was saying, is like gonna stay intact. Um, because that's the one thing I'm like, I don't know. Like this is like something completely new because obviously we're gonna be doing a crap ton of sprinting, but am I gonna, like Gabby said, have the motivation to continue to do those sets of value and like those long aerobic recovery sets and like um those you know more intense but like high endurance kind of stuff. So I don't know, we'll see. I guess we'll have to go back again in a few months and see if I'm like, you know, still have that same amount of endurance as and be able to finish like a 500 free or not. But yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but hey, look, I I just want to say, because I'm gonna go to Trevor and I'm so uh if if you guys approach swimming anything like the way you've talked about it here, I think I find you both to be um quite articulate about what you want to get out of the sport. So I think um that's a that's a really promising start for if you're gonna do something like this. Trevor, any final words?
SPEAKER_00Um, nope, I think they said it all right there. And I'm really looking forward to uh coming back in you know six or 12 months or whatever we decide.
SPEAKER_01And and we'll wait, we'll wait until it's going really well. We won't we won't we won't bring you on when when you're in the dark place. We'll we'll bring you on when things are going amazing.
SPEAKER_00So we can get things fire on all cylinders, yeah. When you're firing on all cylinders, because I do have large ambitions for this team, and I briefly talked about them a couple weeks ago on like going to national championships and Olympic trials qualifying and and and and all that. So we'll we'll see how that goes.
SPEAKER_01Okay, great. Um, guys, thank you so much for being willing to do this. And um I uh I'll be cheering for you from here from from New Jersey, uh across the across the country. And uh thank you, Trevor. Uh thanks, Gabby, thanks, Trudy, for everything you shared here and look forward to uh revisiting this in a few months.
SPEAKER_00All right, thanks, Chris.
SPEAKER_04Thank you.