Recently, we've conducted a few experiments. First, we took two rash guards of the same print color; both navy rash guards, both brand new, and we submerged them in heavily chlorinated water.
Here is what happened; the regular rash guard made of nylon-lycra heavily fades in color, and it starts losing its stretch.
Conversely, the chlorine-resistant rash guard holds up well in the same conditions. In addition, it is incredibly durable & Long lasting.
See the video documentation of the evidence here.
We need to pay attention to microplastics. More and more are understanding microplastics' effects and realities on the environment and living creatures. One thing you can do to both enjoy the outdoors safely and be conscious of our effects on the environment is to choose a PFC-Free clothing product. PFCs ( PerFluorinated Compounds) are found in clothing, cookware, and multiple other products. PFCs are/were a popular choice in manufacturing because of the stability of the compound; the trade-off of manufacturing with this compound is that it persists in the environment forever, entering the eco-system through drains, dumping, and shedding. So...make sure to choose PFC-Free clothing.
When it comes to protecting the body from UV rays, a combination of clothing and sunscreen may be the best option for you and the environment. It is important to note that protecting oneself from the harm that prolonged exposure to UV rays can do. We also need to know the good that the sun does for us. As noted by healthfully" The sun rays themselves don’t actually contain any vitamin D; instead, skin that is penetrated by specific ultraviolet rays works to synthesize this energy into vitamin D, starting a process involving the liver and kidneys to create the essential hormone calcitriol."
What is UPF? As opposed to SPF which only block UVB(unless listed as a broad spectrum product) , UPF(ultraviolet protection factor) blocks both UVA & UVB.
Why is that important? With respect to UVA rays, the WHO reports that "recent studies strongly suggest that it may enhance the development of skin cancers. The mechanisms of this UVA damage are not fully understood, but a popular hypothesis assumes that UVA increases oxidative stress in the cell."
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The whole concept of this personal swim buoy is something you can tow around behind you that does not interfere with the swim. It's far enough behind you so that your arm stroke doesn't touch it; it sits in front of your legs in the crook of your knees underneath, and your kicking is not affected either.
So in that sense, it doesn't affect you or cause drag, which is surprising, but that's because the bow wave you create with your body eddies behind and even pushes it, which is quite interesting.
The Swim Buddy helps you be seen when swimming in the open water. In our lake – Lake Okanagon, we've got boaters and watercraft of all kinds, and when you swim in an open body of water, 80% of your body is submerged; therefore, we can only see you at the moment that you have an arm stroke.
Even when there is minimum chop or swell, swimming can go unseen by watercraft, and it doesn't help if they're wearing a black wetsuit as well.
If you have something brightly colored tagging behind you, you will be more likely to be seen. Not only do you have the feeling of safety and security, but if you feel anxious, the Swim Buddy also has enough air to help hold you up if you need to rest.
It always made a lot of sense to enhance the safety and security of swimmers; that is why you should use a Swim Buddy.
Before you know it, the sun will be shining, the birds will be singing, and another summer will be upon us!
With the pandemic, many children have not had access to all the wonderful swimming and water safety instructors, making the risk of drowning-related injuries and fatalities an increased risk for EVERYONE who has access to water.
About the author: Kim Maurice is the owner of A L'Eau Natation & team member with JMC Distribution & Vorgee. See morat https://safelyswimming.com/
Working in a new province with different regulations and expectations was a severe handicap, I did not know anyone nearby who could assist me. Regardless, I was determined to make it work. Fifteen years later, I was able to retain a staff of 30, raise profits by 20-30% every two years, and with the help and support of my pool staff, we motivated hundreds of staff over that time to join our team.
Here are some of the things I have learned walking into a challenging situation & running a swimming pool and the associated programs in a rural Francophone area 90 minutes away from a major metropolitan centre.
Inspect your pool for broken fences, locks, or equipment, and have them repaired before swimming. After swimming, remove ALL toys from the collection to prevent children from reaching for them.
Check all your PFDs(personal floating devices) for rips, mold, bleaching, broken buckles, and sizing. Kids grow fast, and even if the PFD may “Fit”, they may actually be too heavy for the recommended weight size of the jacket. Floaties, toys and
This is a PFD This is not
If boating, inventory all your safety equipment and mechanics to ensure your boating trip is enjoyable and stress-free.
Review your water safety rules and go over them with your children. Learning to swim is only ONE part of water safety. Teaching kids safety rules around pools, lakes, and camps are a great way to teach safe behaviors.
Communicate with day camps/camps about your child’s swimming ability, and if necessary, ensure that your child ALWAYS wears a PFD around or near the water. It takes seconds for children to disappear under the water.
Assign a WATER WATCHER. Put down your phones and make sure there is someone designated to supervise all swimmers, ensuring non-swimmers are within the arms' reach of a responsible adult.
Ensure older children ONLY swim in supervised areas and that they NEVER swim alone.
BONUS TIP – Make sure you know CPR, and what to do in an emergency.
Teach sure your children know how to call for help.
Feel free to add on your best Safe Summer Tips!
The Missile swim goggle from Vorgee is a staple swimming product for kids up to adults. It is a versatile swim goggle that fits almost all face shapes and sizes. In the videos below we break down the features of the swim goggle as we unpack the goggle . Get into it and enjoy!
The Ocean Junction Podcast Network was launched in early 2022 to add some diversity and talent to the content that we wanted to share. The Network includes the
The On Deck Show: Hosted by Jason Chugh, the show features guests with a unique way of doing things that aim to benefit those they serve first. We talk with coaches and other professionals that have and continue to make contributions to their communities and teams
The Gab: Hosted by Sheila Treleaven & Lisa Svihus, the show hosts guests from all walks of life that align with the show's tagline - Triathlon, life, and everything else but the kitchen sink. Both Sheila & Lisa are accomplished triathletes in their own right and bring their sense of community and well being into every show
The Head Liners Hosted by Jason & Sheila, the show features guests who have a unique way of doing things that aim to benefit those they serve first. We talk with coaches and other professionals that have and continue to make contributions to their communities and teams.
It is said that art and science are closely related. Today's guest shows us how true that statement really is as someone who leads by example, prioritizing health, wellness, and balance in life. In addition, he shares his strong passion for medicine and music as a hematologist and thrombosis specialist for the Niagara region health system. As a lead singer-songwriter for his band, please welcome Dr. Blair Leonard.
The one thing that's been consistent with Peter throughout his career is how he impacts those around him, regardless of the situation and how difficult or dire it may be perceived to be. Peter's got a skillset. That's just going to bring you through it. You can call it optimism. You could call it good, emotional intelligence, whatever you want to call it.
Claire Duncan is a long course triathlete top of her age group and often competes at 70.3 worlds.
She's a former editor and board member for triathlon magazine Canada. She now runs her own PR firm and is working as an account manager for a marketing firm in the pharmaceutical sector, young and vibrant. Claire was living her best life until it all came to a halt due to a COVID vaccine injury. Today, we are going to hear her story.
As the gravity and magnitude of the COVID pandemic became a blunt fact of reality, I was utterly unprepared for the rollercoaster ride that we were about to start on; I didn't see it, I didn't see the car, the track. I was oblivious to what was about to happen; grinding life to a halt drew me down the rabbit hole of introspection. I found baggage that I thought was gone; I found scars that I chose to ignore for decades; I had to confront behavioral patterns that were born out of a need for self-preservation during a traumatic childhood that I had never let go of. They served me well when I needed them; when I finally broke free, the physical, mental, and emotional torment was over, but those protective measures were now subconscious routine, and the pace at which I moved left no time to recognize that or them. Looking back on it now, I can see that using work as an excuse was my way of avoiding dealing with the past. Months before the lockdowns began, we had decided to step away from the pool deck after 20 years of coaching and focus on my business; it wasn't long after that the lockdowns went into effect, and we had to shut down the business for more than a year - as did many others. I was conditioned as a child to believe that you are only worth what you earn, and this was the first time in my life that I had no means of providing for my family. My wife was in the process of finishing her Ph.D. and was doing quite well for herself and by default for us, but I felt useless. When you are forced to slow down and look around, you see what you have chosen not to or have chosen to remain willfully ignorant of because of the discomfort it brings you. It sucks. It is hard to work through and even harder to live through. Working through it and having the courage to confront the difficult and uncomfortable leads to the enjoyment and the safety to be truly authentic and live in the moment, relinquishing the difficulties of the past and becoming a true observer and participant of the present.
Although I have been alive for the last 43 years, I can confidently say that the previous two years have been two of the most educational. So that is what I would like to share.
We live in a time where everything has to be neatly packed into a nice box, and anything that spills out is somehow bad, wrong or misunderstood. It seems like it takes a disaster before we pay attention to someone or a group of people who need help. It is ok to be the one to offer support just as much asit is to ask for help. When my past was weighing on me, my family and friends helped me recognize your value as a person is not what you earn. Conversely, it is what you can do to enrich the lives of others. Things really changed through that rough journey to the lowest of lows and having the support to pick myself up again. An Incredible sense of clarity and purpose had manifested itself.
No matter what or who you listen to, there is a narrative of fear being pushed. When you choose to lead with courage, you transform fear's impact into action; courage is what you do with fear. COVID was and is scary for many people for many different reasons. However, having the courage to treat those in and out of your tribe with compassion is courageous. Every day we are exposed to a relentless rat race of negative reciprocity, the zero-sum game; there always has to be a winner and a loser. When you lead with courage, you can be vulnerable and exposed to those who seek to take advantage of you. You have to be able to recognize and accept those people knowing they aren't worth the worry or the emotional energy. On the other hand, you also get the people who will make you better, the worthy rival, as Simon Sinek would put it. Those that will respect your work and help you improve by improving themselves. Be courageous enough to find those that will make you better, and hopefully, you can make them better at the same time.
COVID isn't over, nor will it be the last time we are forced into an uncomfortable situation where we have to adapt and be open to change. However, WE can unlearn the poor habits of the past and relearn as we live this experience. Human-designed fiat systems can continuously evolve; the key is that the people who participate in those systems must be willing to evolve.
In 2005, after a failed attempt in purchasing and a 9-month stint of unemployment, my now husband, in frustration, said, "Just find & do something you like!" That year, I was hired as the Aquatic Supervisor for a community center swimming pool in a rural community on the Quebec-Ontario boarder. I was not the most experienced, but I had years of both waterfront, pool, and instructor experience.
I came into a broken Aquatics department, where the previous supervisor had cursed out the staff before storming out and destroying all the paperwork and resources needed to do the job. I came into this new job with a sheet of names and phone numbers and little else.
About the author: Kim Maurice is the owner of A L'Eau Natation & team member with JMC Distribution & Vorgee
Working in a new province with different regulations and expectations was a severe handicap, I did not know anyone nearby who could assist me. Regardless, I was determined to make it work. Fifteen years later, I was able to retain a staff of 30, raise profits by 20-30% every two years, and with the help and support of my pool staff, we motivated hundreds of staff over that time to join our team.
Here are some of the things I have learned walking into a challenging situation & running a swimming pool and the associated programs in a rural Francophone area 90 minutes away from a major metropolitan centre.
GET TO KNOW YOUR STAFF. Take time to meet with the pool staff, one on one, to discuss their goals and expectations, their life, and their family. Ask them what they like, dislike from the job, and opportunities they would hope to benefit from.
GET TO KNOW THEIR FAMILIES. They will encourage their children to support you if they are like you. Be open and friendly, but remember to communicate well with your staff.
GROW YOUR NETWORKS. A small isolated swimming pool does not get the opportunities to have outside help. Set aside a small budget to get other aquatic professionals in to host training or trade services for emergencies. A great example on this point: I was losing my mind trying to explain and implement a policy at one point. I decided to bring in a trainer to run in-service to help define the policy and demonstrate why it was important. It solved the problem in 2 hours.
FOOD IS YOUR FRIEND: We implemented a Saturday breakfast before lessons, where swim lesson staff got 30 paid minutes to talk swim lessons, get advice, eat food and get to know each other. As an aquatic supervisor, I supplied the first and last lessons. The first lesson was a breakfast bar; the last lesson was a pizza lunch. All of our staff were invited to participate. It helped new staff learn about teaching, get to know new staff and clients, and was an enjoyable way to spend a Saturday morning.
Saturday guards would also pop in early before guard shift to see if there were any goodies left! And, of course, the high-level swimmers from the local team wanted food, so it was a great incentive to get them into lifesaving classes!
STAFF EAT OFFICE SUPPLIES- gifting random stickers, sticky notes and pens was always well received.
BE AVAILABLE. Ensure your pool staff ( AND CUSTOMER SERVICE) know they can reach you or another aquatic supervisor any time the pool is open. Encourage them to make decisions based on your training. Since I was the only supervisor, the staff knew I was available for any questions if I was not at the pool.
CUSTOMER SERVICE IS YOUR BEST FRIEND. These are the eyes and ears of your department. Listen to them. Help them when you can.
YOU DON'T KNOW EVERYTHING. My quote was," I'm sorry, we messed up!" If you are open and honest with your faults, you can help new staff work through their mistakes. We are all in this together!
YOU CANNOT DO WHAT YOU DO WITHOUT YOUR STAFF.We all have lives, families, obligations. Set your expectations, make sure your staff knows them. It is essential to understand it's hard to find replacements sometimes when you have a small staff. Try to be flexible, and train your clients that way too.
SPOIL THE MAINTENANCE STAFF. If you run a small aquatic facility or swim school, operations staff have several spaces to track. If you want a mess cleaned up in the locker room or washroom cleaned before the arena ice is done - Inviting maintenance to your morning breakfasts, saying thank you and making sure your aquatic staff know who they are, and treating them with respect goes a long way.
For some time, we've been working on greening our business and incrementally taking steps to provide a greener product to the public; this has been an ongoing process.
The first step was to move to a recyclable hard case; it was always important to have a reusable case, and moving to a recyclable case initiated the greening process.
The second step was to remove the cellophane cover that protected the product during transport from manufacturing to our warehouse. We've switched to tissue paper within our packages. So when it leaves the factory, there's no longer the - plastic going to waste. Products are protected & wrapped in tissue paper.
Step three was to remove the plastic goggle cradle, which was recyclable, and replace it with a cardboard piece of a recyclable cardboard cradle.
Taking these three steps means that everything you receive in a case pack is completely recyclable.
We are constantly working on reducing our environmental footprint; we recognize the need to do our part by contributing to the solution, regardless of how big or small.
We are a part of a group of companies always looking to lessen our impact on the environment and understand that enough people taking small steps make a big difference in undoing the bad habits driven by convenience.
In addition, to all of our goggle cases being fully recyclable. They double as a protective case that can be repurposed after it is no longer needed as a goggle case. Further, they are made from recycled material and can be recycled after use.
Your blue box is the green answer.
Curbside recycling - put it out for your local city pick up. If there in not an established recycling program, of the city program has restrictions take advantage of drop-off programs - take it to your local eco station. CD & DVD cases are in the same category and are easier to search for when referencing a data base.
It is worthwhile noting that we are working through inventory that contains plastic packaging; for the most part, the majority of products should be delivered in our new environmentally friendly packaging midway through 2022
At the bottom of this article, you will find comprehensive examples of the easiest ways to recycle the cases
We are always looking for ways to further environmental sustainability.
The Seahorse swim goggle from Vorgee is the latest in the line of quality swimming products from one of Australia's top brands. The goggle is made of all you would have come to expect from Vorgee in terms of quality and reliability with a new twist.
The recreational category is built for kids and adults swimming for leisure; it includes classic-shaped swim goggle frames. The fit is watertight and flexible. They are designed to protect from water-borne bacteria, provide great function and exceptional value.
The Seahorse swim goggle is a bright, fun, comfortable and easy to wear goggle for the kid who swims!
Perfect fit for kids 2-8years. Available in a variety of bright and funky, two-tone colours
One piece soft silicone flexi-frame
Clear lens with UVA & UVB protection, and Anti-fog coating
Quick Fit Single Strap Adjustment System
See more at https://oceanjunction.com/. Welcome to the on-deck show, a show that looks at people and organizations working to make things better for folks like you and I; every day, this morning, we have the pleasure of speaking with Paul Yetter from the North Baltimore Aquatic Club. We dive into philosophy, some technical aspects of swimming, we talk a lot about club development, and we dive into the parallels between athletic growth and human development. Great interview.
Below you will find links to the Youtube interview and Spotify Podcast.
"Coaches have a key impact on the development of young people through their actions, and also through time spent working with them."
Paul Yetter, Senior Head Coach at the North Baltimore Aquatic Club,was on the show.
We talk about development and the parallels between athleticdevelopment and human development.
Paul has been through several great programs, includingAuburn, Florida and North Baltimore, so give me a high-level description ofeach of them.
Paul is working with coaches to improve the coachingcommunity, and I've worked with different people.
Murray Stevens learned a lot from Michael Phelps' coach, and Murraylearned a lot from coach Bowman.
At Auburn, I learned so much about myself and the power ofoptimism, as I had so much trouble being pessimistic, and it brought on a lotof negative things.
In order to better serve his athletes, Paul started a newtradition and culture T2 Aquatics.
I want to come back to the power of optimism versus passingthe pessimism.
In the 1990s the world had its spotlight on north Baltimore.
A culture of excellence was established at the NBAC swim club.
After swimming for the Potomac LSC, Mason moved to the NBAC,where he was coached by John Mason.
I was moving from a different state to a different school andI didn't know what the tradition was rich. Beth Botsford, an athlete from NBAC,was based 45 minutes away from her home, and was a hard worker.
When I was 10 years old, I got her autograph and knew this kidwas going to be a great swimmer.
The MVAC values swimming fast and practicing, which isimportant throughout longer workouts.
NABC does a lot of "race pace" training and they doit throughout long workouts, longer repetitions.
The ultra-short race-based screening is not unique tohigh-level USA swimming teams, but it is interesting to see the technical sideof it.
Years ago Jason had the opportunity to do an apprenticeshipdown at the Queensland Academy of Sport where I learned from many top coaches.
Stephan was training with ultra-short race, pace training,which he called reverse periodization, and he wanted to get your your take onit.
In North Baltimore, the ultra-short race is something you'vealways done, so it's not a new thing.
You're ahead of the curve of swimming, we were going 9,000 to13 or 14,000 yards per weekend.
During the early 2000s, with my training group, we wereswimming several times a week and swimming fast at the end of the practice.
If you want to work on speed, do a thousand or 2000, and thenmaybe 50 moderate, 50 fast.
We take it seriously that they have to swim. So we take itseriously, and that really sets up.
At the time, the team trained at Loyola high school and wasinspired by Theresa Andrews.
After moving from Song Club to Meadowbrook, the picture of theOlympians was posted on the wall. The wall was 50 meters high.
In the 50 meter pool, athletes broke in on one side of thepool, and pictures were taken in the middle.
This athlete was eight when she saw the wall and she told Tomthat she wanted to be a part of this thing.
People at NBAC aren't afraid of going fast, and the coachesaren't as worried as they may be about the competition.
If somebody has a good practice, they don't get an elbow fromsomeone within the lane.
Grant Hackett and people like him redefined fast and what itmeans for a swimmer.
The flip of a switch and a mindset change are more importantin improving your performance than getting a little bit better each day.
NBAC had the kids training in between the old and the new.
Michael Phelps, our youngest kids, were talking with him whilethey got into the pool.
Parents of NABC kids are among the least pushy parents on theteam.
Paul's kids swam when they were seven, and my ten-year-oldslams. They're building an identity as athletes by working hard at theirsports.
A lot of people have to take care of their homework, but I thinkmy team is different.
How much symmetry can you see between Auburn, Florida, and NBAC?
When I got to Florida, the tradition was the same as when Igot to Auburn.
The Olympic record board, people on the Auburn team, and theOlympic medals are great.
We had kids that weren't swimmers that were doing their firstswim practice with their phones.
I started working with the satellite team to teach kids how toswim and to do flip turns.
Some kids could swim, but the fact that we had many new peoplemeant that we had to teach the sport.
It wasn't a true expansion franchise, but they won the superbowl in 2000.
At T2, we wanted to establish a certain style of playing. Wetook a lot of what we learned from my brother's coaching and joined it withKevin Ertell's.
Coach Hyatt and swam very well during the years that Eric andHyatt were together. She also contributed to the culture of the team.
Over time, I think my definition of success has changed, but Istill try to help people to reach their full potential.
My coaching style is a little more holistic now, and I getathletes to swim fast.
Fast swimming is a huge part of life and it is something thatyou should reflect on.
I think people get sick of their lives because of theirswimming or their athletics, or they get sick of reflecting on their own lives.
Because of the inaccuracy of your own reflection, you can'treally see how well you're doing.
I've been taught that you need to get your athletes to buyinto the sport and have an identity of being an athlete.
The practice of yoga is part of our identity, and we can startpracticing as young as 8 or 9 times a week.
It's hard to stay consistent and build confidence, but havingseen the results is good.
People build up an identity in swimming, and at the end of theday, it's the swimmer who is greater than the swimmer.
When someone is responsible for everything, it's hard tocontrol things if the person hasn't developed their personal side.
Coaches try to help athletes achieve success, but it'simportant for coaches to have a soul.
The best people are those who can swim, and you can't be astudent, a professional, or a single parent without having these skills.
All the lessons you teach in your program would apply in anormal family.
The athletes I've coached have gone on to do what many othershave done.
Students who train at the U.S. military academy are trained tobe doctors and lawyers, to become swimming coaches and to serve in themilitary.
Coaches help people see the big picture, which is somethingthey need to do on a daily and weekly basis.
You're a coach and are involved in helping other coachesbecome better and helping the swimming community. How can others help you?
To help other people reach their full potential, you need towork with other coaches to get better.
It's really difficult to coach 55 kids or 30 kids or 25 kidsin the same two-hour span.
I realized that a T2 was needed to help drive the culture ofexcellence on a daily basis.
I was like, I have no choice but to work with other coaches tobuild a culture that is similar to the culture we have within the school.
After creating a high school coaches course, Chris Ritter,founder of Ritter Sports Performance, was talking through podcasts withcoaches.
We were doing some stuff and I mentioned a course to him andthen sold it through his platform.
The main thing that I do is run these zoom calls every twoweeks with different coaches. We've had four or five guests on the show, and weeither discuss a topic or just throw out some stuff.
We talk about how to prepare for the 200 freestyle, and someof the things we talked about are X's and O's.
I think the podcast is a fun outlet and I'm getting new ideasfrom it every week.
Chris's access to this group is part of a business they run,and it's part of the hive.
Chris's website has a section calledthe hive where coachesare interviewed for an hour.
The library is a yearly membership thing, so you apply onceyou're purchased.
Everybody gets accepted into the group. They upload theirrecordings and have discussions in the group slack.
It's all private in our group, so people can link to it.
So it's deep within the groups, and I have a speed chart fromthe Queensland academy of.
I want to tell you where you need to be at 15 meters off thewall to get a certain time.
When you're talking about getting videos of your kidsswimming, you want to know how you can take the videos to another level.
If I've got a junior national, I'll start taking people to thenext level with a final instructor.
I stole the charts from other coaches and tried to get as muchinformation as I could.
Yeah, it's important that everybody understandsthat to get better, everybody gets better.
It's always about the community, it's never about theindividual, it's always about the team.
I remember several really fast swims being set, but it's otherperformances by athletes that I've coached that I'm proud of the most.
Coaches feel good when swimmers are reaching their fullpotential in the pool and in life.
To learn from experience, Brett says that working with othersand trying things is more valuable than taking a theoretical approach.
I think you're right that mentoring is very valuable but Ithink of Lydia Jacoby's coach.
Lydia Jacoby is the first Olympic swimmer from Alaska, and Ialso think back to when I first started coaching.
I don't know if the coaches had mentors, uh, but they're justsome examples of coaches that may have had mentors.
Coaches have the ability to coach athletes to perform at highlevels even though they may not have had the experience of doing the same thingthemselves.
We've shared a lot of information on coaches, the developmentprocess of coaches, the environment of coaches in North Baltimore.
Paul talks to Paul about how to become a better coach and abetter human.
What made you become a coach? What has led you to become theinsightful coach that understands the success of others?
The definition of success is pretty broad and impacts how you interactwith others.
I want to have fun and get stuff done, but I'm going to try torelax and have fun.
I try to make people feel their greatness throughout the day,as a coach and as a father.
The athletes need to know that their dads are proud of themand want them to see their power.
I want people to be able to access their power even if they'rein their thirties, forties and beyond.
As a parent or a person who walks the earth, I like to feelconnected to all living things.
Every day, chemical changes in our bodies are created by thethoughts and words we say.
I think there is something to be said about, um, our bodies,our minds and our nervous systems.
People who grow old together end up looking like each other,and that's because people look in the eyes of others.
We're trying to create an environment where people can actlike predators, as opposed to pray.
In order to create confidence within the organization, lookinto each other's eyes and mimic the look of confidence.
'''Coaches have a key impact on the development of youngpeople through their actions, and also through time spent working with them.'''
The show takes a look at people and organizations doing things in their own way every day to make things better for folks like you and I. Our guest today is a steward of that philosophy. We speak with Michael Bohl out of Australia; he is currently the head coach at Griffith University swim team and runs a performance program there. Now you may have, I certainly have seen Michael at many swimming & coaching conferences and listened to him speak many times, and we know he's got a wealth of knowledge to share. But today, we will drill down to is why he does what he does. Because apart from being an incredible coach, he's also an outstanding human being who creates amazing communities and teams everywhere he goes. And no matter who you talk to, they've always got something great to say about this guy.
So we're going to get into it. We're going to explore the technical side of what he does, but really, this is about Michael. And we're going to focus there.
Below you will find links to the Youtube interview and Spotify Podcast.
'''Watching the Olympics was like watching a culture that hadan unselfish passion for doing what it does.'''
I wanted to really get into the theme of the interview.
If I'm going to be a better coach, I want to be a bettercommunicator.
A happy athlete or swimmer is one who wants to improve andputs himself in a position to do so.
It's all about trying to improve the coaches and athletesfirst and foremost. If you can make your coaches better and your athletesbetter, you're going to have a successful program.
It's interesting how swim coaches try to improve the people infront of them. They want to make the athletes better as people, not as justathletes.
You always seem to have this positive outlook in life. Is thatsomething you learned from your family?
The athletes and the people surrounding you will be positive,and you have to be positive yourself.
When you look for the positive in every negative experience,like when you miss the Olympics, you try to find the positive side.
I missed the Olympic team. I missed 84, and I think it was thebest opportunity I had as a swimmer.
I was a coach to get people to try and get them into finals.The next avenue for me was to be a coach.
To strive for Olympic success, and make an impact with thepeople you've got on the team, is a goal that drives and eats at him.
My mother cleaned buses and worked two or three jobs tosupport five kids.
I learned a lot about swimming from my coaches, DennisPursley, Bill Sweet and Laurie Lawrence.
I think all the coaches I've worked with really helped medevelop as a swimmer when I was swimming.
In letter coaching, you should also think about what a personwould do in a certain situation.
The three year cycle into the 2021 Olympics is unusual becausecoaches normally take a four year cycle.
In three years, the program could look drastically differentbecause of the coaches and the swimmers.
It involves thinking about the events, the people, and thetimes I'm going to make finals three years from now.
Looking at the last couple of Olympic cycles, it seems to be amuch harder competition.
The Olympics in Rio were denied, but the standard in Tokyo washigh and it will get even tougher in three years.
We're going to make the team and then we'll figure out a wayto improve once we've made the team.
Trying to get on the phone, and then using the potty, will getyou to the Olympics.
There's some new people that I'm going to try and learn a lotabout.
I'm trying to work out new swimmers quickly, and I'm trying toget as much improvement out of them as I can.
I want to ask a question about the Commonwealth games, and thefirst time you met Alex.
[00:12:26] I was just amazed by his talent, and the greatrange of his swimming.
He was a fearless competitor, you know, and was just a greatswimmer.
Alex was my old boss when I worked in Queens and a wonderfulperson.
He has been the CEO of swimming Australia and chief strategistof the Queensland academy of sport.
We're sad to see Alex go, but he did a great job in Queenslandand Australia.
The group moved from St. Peter's to Griffith, and I assumethat Alex was involved in that decision.
The leadership to reorganize the centers and so forth is yourlegacy to him.
Alex was a great leader and he made the right decisions.
'''Alex influenced all decisions about the swimming team towin, and not just first, second, third, or infants.'''
The admin can't coach, so all the admin can do is set upsystems and work within the system that he inherited.
The national head coaches Jack Oberon and Rowan Tyler set upthe systems in place.
Alex was the manager that came up with the slogan,"Winning when it matters to inspire a nation".
When racing, the goal is to score a goal, touch the wallfirst, to win.
The pressure to win permeates into a program or into aswimmer's program.
If we put too much emphasis on winning it, we will end up witha smaller number of successful centers.
It's fun and enjoyment for all involved in the junior programat St. Peter's.
If your squads aren't getting bigger, you need to teach youryounger son a great technique.
I think it's important to have the kids turn up for the clubwhen they're younger, and develop a sense of team and comradeship.
The younger athletes were aligned to win, but I think as theygot older they focused on improving their speed and technical abilities.
I think it's important to emphasize the importance of goodtechnique and great strike mechanics.
San Pedro's Western coach explains that, with youngerswimmers, it's more about fun and enjoyment, while with older swimmers theemphasis is on times and competition.
Aston's reputation is tough, so St. Peter's has to be ready.
After Peter's Western summer, Dan and the coaching ruins andpennies have kept Dan's skills and have taken it to another level.
The keys were left with Dean as he moved to Griffith, but theyare still there as the club is still going strong.
Don't bring, build it even bigger. And what does it mean toyou to see your son have a successful Olympics?
The kids from St Peter's swam well at trials, but they know itwasn't just Arianne who did well.
The team at St. Peter's Western is attributed to Dean who wasunable to get on the team.
Arianne was working with Dan when I was still at St. Peter'sand I was very proud of her.
Ariana did an incredible job to get Dan to break four minutesin the 200 freestyle.
Arianne and Dane were great at the Commonwealth games, butArianne really stepped up at the world championships.
Brian and Dane, they're just a great team, and they're doing agreat job.
I've coached swimming for 34 years and have swum for 15 or 16years. I love the sport.
Cheryl Humphrey taught you to swim, and she could take overyour coaching spot at the tacit Lucia uni club.
I said I was almost finished with a physical education degree,but Cheryl got me in the pool and I got hooked.
I met all the people I've worked with along the way who havehelped me understand and learn a bit more.
There are more than one way to skin a cat in the Ivy league,and there are eight different kinds of cats in the Olympic final.
[00:26:14] I try and get my preparation to be within 0.09 ofthe other people.
I listen to other people's talk and then try to put together aprogram that feels comfortable to me.
To follow another coach blindly, one should understand whatthey're trying to do.
You've got to sell your ideas to your athletes or swimmers,they've got to believe you're doing the right things, and it takes time tobuild that belief.
If you have a good connection with your athlete, it makes yourjob easier and the athlete's job easier.
When you set the formula for success right, and take input andimprove, you are setting yourself up to be successful.
I think the majority of my work is intuitive and experiencebased, but I think you have to listen to the sports scientists in 2021.
Sport scientists are doing amazing things. They are usingvideo to help athletes with technique fatigue.
The most revolutionary piece of the training program has beenlooking at training data.
Coaches use videos to help their swimmers with their startsand turns.
Over the years, he's learned to understand his limitations,and work with experts in nutrition and strength training.
Emily is coaching 29 year old athletes to try and recover asquickly as possible.
There are some people who are expert in different areas, soit's important to talk to other people who are expert in those areas.
The key to getting your athletes better is to be constantlylooking for new ways to get them better.
If you've got to bring in experts, try their advice. It mightnot work, but it's worth a try.
Stephanie Rice was a visual learner, but she learned fromwatching her own techniques on a video screen.
Some people are more visual, and some people are auditory.Work with athletes in the areas that they can improve in.
Brilliant. Um, I really want to dig into the granular side ofthings, but I think a flattering compliment to you would be nice.
It's easy to become cynical about coaching because of all ofthe challenges you face. But, this podcast really helps to find the humanity incoaching.
"I love working with young people" is what keepscoach's job so pure.
I'm going to focus on the athletes, and every coach is goingto help the athletes.
A parent tried to make it about them, but the focus is alwayson the swimmers.
When a young swimmer makes a PB, a S uh, a final or a nationalteam, it really excites her.
Emily McCain came out of the Olympics great, and I got just asmuch joy from saying that.
Emily wanted to coach a person in the 200 backstroke, and Isaid 'no'.
'''You are expected to win a medal at the Olympics, but youwon't coach me,''' said the coach.
After 29 years of ice dancing, her intent was to retire in2020, but the Olympics were postponed.
She stayed up some nights and drove backward and forwards a bit,but was always determined to position herself as best as possible.
Emma's results were fantastic and she got a bronze medal inthe Olympics.
Emily's, Emily's results, were magnificent as well, and it wassuch a pleasure to see Emily do well.
To see Emily turn around after she didn't swim very well, wasjust the most pleasing thing for Michael.
[00:38:23] Okay, I'm going to finish up now, but thank you fortaking the time to do this interview.
'''As a way to end the interview, I'd like to ask a fewquestions about your future and about your fans.'''
The future excites me, I think it's nice that we're gettingcloser to the U.S. now.
I'd probably like for Australia to keep doing well. It's goodfor world swimming.
There will be a new group of young swimmers for the ParisOlympics and it's exciting to see Australia doing well again.
Don Talbot tried to get Australia the number one mantle, andin 2001 Australia won the gold at the Penn PACS world championships.
You never saw Don ever cry, but he had a tear in his eye whenhe saw the improvement in the Australian swim team. The rest of the world istaking notice.
I can see myself coaching through Paris, and then maybe takinga role helping other coaches or athletes.
The final words to leave with for all sorts of people are thatswimming's a sport, whether you're a coach, swimmer, or parent.
I thought I'd turn it off, but I can't see you. How do I turnit back on?
Michael bowl was asked for his last words. He said he wouldturn off his phone and get a new one.
The most important role of a parent is unconditional love andsupport, whether they're parents or swim coaches.
I set a high bar for coaches, and a lot of parents try to becoaches, and that can cause frustration.
Parents should understand what their role is as their child'scoach and help them to understand the swimming world.
You see athletes at major competitions, a positiveenvironment, and a good work ethic.
If you hear someone being negative, you should pull thatperson out in front of the group.
To improve, we need people to be supportive and hardworking.
Eddie Reese's mantra is to improve every time you try a worldrecord.
I don't mind having someone with a good attitude coming intothe group, but I don't like the hardest workers coming into the group.
I think it's important to protect a positive environment, tokeep people with a great attitude and a great work ethic.
I think that it is very important to have a group of peoplewho are on the same team as you are to have a positive, hardworking group.
Positive, hardworking people tend to drift away from the groupin the wintertime.
Mikey Missy made the world championships a hundred fly, final51, but he's a swimmer that I like having in the group.
Coaches like coaches who support their teammates and arewilling to push a little harder than they're asked.
'''A pool full of people like that''' is a brilliant answer tothe question of why people do what they do.
You can reach Kent at: info@tcstrength.com | (250) 299-9114
]]>In a recent episode of the On Deck Show sponsored and hosted by Ocean Junction, we sat down with Kent Aitchison of Tournament Capital Strength & Conditioning(TCSC), and the Kamloops Classics swim club. You can find the Youtube & Spotify links by clicking here. The episode talks about the genesis of TCSC and Kent's philosophy on living a healthy lifestyle and promoting it with a well-curated fitness plan. During the interview, Kent demonstrated some exercises that athletes and swimmers of all ages should know to pursue goals of any kind. You will find these below.
You can reach Kent at: info@tcstrength.com | (250) 299-9114
The dead bug position
Pull your belly button into your spine
Push your lower back into the floor
challenge yourself by raising your leg and arm to different positions
Kent has gone from left to right in this country, coaching and Chilliwack ro Markham & now back in Kamloops, he is still associated with the Kamloops Classics Swim Club. Today we're going to talk to Kent about functional training; we're going to get some tips for athletes of all ages, regardless of whether or not you're a kid, an age group, triathlete, a master swimmer, whoever you are.
We're going to pick his brain & get some useful tips for everybody.
]]>Morning folks. And welcome to the on-deck show a show that takes a look at people and organizations operating outside the scope of normal to make things better for folks like you and I; every day, this morning, we have the pleasure of speaking with Kent Aitchison, originally from Lethbridge, currently resides in Kamloops as the owner of Tournament, Capital Strength and Conditioning.
Kent has gone from left to right in this country, coaching and Chilliwack ro Markham & now back in Kamloops, he is still associated with the Kamloops Classics Swim Club. Today we're going to talk to Kent about functional training; we're going to get some tips for athletes of all ages, regardless of whether or not you're a kid, an age group, triathlete, a master swimmer, whoever you are.
We're going to pick his brain & get some useful tips for everybody.
Below you will find an unedited transcript of our conversation. You can find the YouTube & Spotify links by clicking below
All right. There we go. Now, now we're official now. We're now we're starting there. So you doing this morning? Yeah. Thanks for having me. Yeah. We're finding you in your office. Um, I'm want to get into the business side of, uh, um, things quite a bit in sort of our pre-show talk.
You were telling me a bit of it. Your business and it sounds really exciting. And I'm interested to know, you know, like the Genesis of all this stuff. Cause it's, it's a significant operation you have going on there. But before we get into that, I just want to start with, um, some of the history.
So I know you're originally from Lethbridge, you and I met for the first time in Markham. Um, and uh, just in terms of, uh, You know, your sporting background, your swimming background, all that stuff. Um, take me through where you started and what brought you to this point. Uh, see how far I can go back, but, um, pretty big blend of, of swimming and fitness experiences, which led me to where I am now.
So started as a young, uh, summer clubs swimmer in Southern Alberta. And it typically without a lot of Alberta kids, if you're doing well with summer swimming, you make the jump to year round, which I did. And he was 12 and then balanced out different sports and things for a little while there. And then I first started swimming coaching.
And when I was 15, just coaching some middle guys in the year-round club. And then I got into summer club coaching. And then as I finished through high school, Then went to university. I really like, um, got pretty serious into summer club. Coaching is as serious as summer club can be. And I had the opportunity to head coach in 2009 when I was 19 with our 2020 with Lethbridge Orca summer school.
And then I kind of finish up my university and sort of almost growing up every summer by really kind of going all in on, um, being a head coach and really give him the keys to drive the bus on a swim club and then had really good summer clubs, success with some, um, high rankings and provincials and championships and stuff like that.
But what I really kind of stumbled upon while I was going to university for like kinesiology or phys ed or whatever. Is it really found like a niche group business while was being a head coach, because really that's how a lot of small clubs operate like a business and they need to get a lot of excitement and energy and building, I thought at the time, because I was like, you know, in the middle of the university and taking physiology courses and all that stuff, like, oh yeah.
Like they lock him as he's been flat. And like, you know, this, go on and, and that's. I thought like a lot of my servers are serving really well, looking back on it, of course that helps. But I think a lot of us, I was so excited doing extra events and getting the kids hyped up the team hyped up all the time.
And it just becomes a snowball thing where people get really involved in. And of course the people are being showing up and being consistent. Then the results are going to come from that too, regardless of how nailed it. Your physiology is anyways, while I was doing that, um, I also started doing do some swim camps.
I want to do these swim camps is kind of part of this with club and the board at the time. It's like, I can't just go do it yourself. You can just use the lanes. And then that's when I was like, okay, like how do I get people to sign up or register? Like, do they write a check to me? I'm not like a business business.
I didn't really know how to do it, but then just that process of like, okay, I'm like 20 or 21 at a time, kind of figured out. Make it a little mini registration thing online, get these waivers forms, sell the camp, sign it up. And then I remember I had, I had 44 kids sign up my first year for the week-long summer club camp for mostly Southern Alberta kids.
Go get some other Northern kids come down too. And I remember like depositing the checks and I had 44 checks of $200 each, which was 800 bucks, which was a lot of money for me at the time. And I remember going to the bank like, oh shit, I can't. Screw this up or else all these parents that, you know, think highly of me are going to be disappointed that I wasted their $200.
So it's really want to do a really good job and it really make any money that year. But I broke even by just a little bit. And I did a really good job in the camp then kind of grew from there. That was like an aha moment for me, like, oh, business. Like you can kind of. Figure things out. And, uh, if you do a good job, you just build it from there.
And then I still have run those camps up until 2021. I had to take break and then expand it down to, uh, even down into Montana and stuff. But that was the kind of the origins I get really, really getting excited to drive the bus to the head coach and doing this thing where I'm like totally on my own, not asking anybody questions or permissions to run a camp.
That kind of set the scene, like, okay. Some kind of business things got to be in my wheel house. So as we finished, uh, sorry to put the fitness side of things into it. So I really got into working out while I was swimming. And I, in a lot of ways, I kind of like dry line training, more, did swimming training, and then I should have been a, more of a well-rounded swimmer and a lot of ways, but it's kind of lost my way a little bit in high school, really.
Okay. One or two things, but largely because of my dry land abilities were pretty good and it kind of took, you know, took pride and how good I wasn't doing pull ups and stuff, but I probably could have been a little bit better than the pool, but, uh, so that was the kind of foundation that I'm kind of like the dry lands from a guy.
And then. As I really got into like CrossFit and certain things during the off season. And then my friend who turned into a girlfriend and turned it into a, my wife eventually got into similar things with, um, going to the gym and get doing CrossFit, things like that. She wasn't a swimmer. So we were both kind of finishing university.
She was a little bit ahead of me. She wanted to go do more school and I didn't. We thought about trying to open up a gym slash clinic thing that we'd talked about while we were young, but I think we just needed some growing up to do before we were actually going to do that. Um, so she wanted to do more schoolings or physio or Cairo landed on chiropractic school.
There's only one chiropractic school in Canada. So if she wanted to, uh, move to Toronto to do that. And then I was onboard with that because. Primarily, I wanted to support her, but also secret motivation for me to want to move to Toronto. So I could go to Toronto Raptors games. That was my life. That's why I was like, oh, let's go up to Toronto.
And I got, I'll get a job when I get there. And then when I first got there, um, I was like, okay, it's finished university. I'll just apply to all these jobs. I didn't know anybody in Ontario and didn't really know how to really. World worked. I was looking for all these I kind of public city sector, jobs and recreation and all that.
I didn't get any bites cause trying to, it's just such a beast. It's all who, you know, it was open up. Uh, I was open to coaching, but I had moved like in January, so there wasn't really any openings up to move landed. And uh, eventually once that first kind of year bounced around. Survived is currently still a student and I haven't really gotten any real income yet.
And then eventually actually started coaching with Marco for a couple of years there. And then it was kind of lined up that just kind of culture the market for two or three years. And then once the car leaves on chiropractic school and moved back to Lethbridge and get her gym slash wellness clinic, going to try to do a really good job with mark.
And we had some cool team success and big things happening there. And then it got to eventually be the lead trailer coach for the whole club as well. It's really kind of, you know, pretty high in competitive swimming and dry land. Uh, not really like a business thing or being my own boss yet, but I was just.
Killing time until Carly was done. And then once she was done, we were trying to line it up to open up a gym, like a CrossFit group, fitness gym slash a clinic. So it's a unique kind of setup with our skillset. We feel like we can pull it up in Lethbridge or from, and then have kind of the 11th hour. There just wasn't a good commercial real estate opportunity that was gonna work.
Cause there's like non-competes in different plazas. So if there's like we wanted to open up a gym. Area on this certain side of town and that bridge, there's like a chiropractor in the same Plaza. There's non-competes in their leases that you can't bring like a competing. This is an interesting thing.
Another Plaza or commercial area. There's a gym there. So you can, you can have a Kira there, but not both. And then the other spots, weren't going to be a good decision. So we've pulled the plug kind of last second, which was disappointing because we were kind of looking forward to going home for a few years there.
And then I just started looking for coaching jobs and the job board, but I knew I wanted to go back to Western Canada. So I was looking around, uh, NBC and then in Calgary maybe, and cause there's nothing in Lethbridge to really, that was serious to coach. And then just my dad's originally from canvas. So I knew the area and we used to come up to the suit Schwab and stuff, and my wife and I've always liked the interior of BC.
So just kind of put a flyer up the cameras with their position. And then I got a decent offer to get started and landed here. And then, uh, as removing. The whole idea of wanting to own our own gym or, um, and slash clinic was still there. It's just there wasn't, you know, we'd go into a new city where I wasn't in a rush to do it.
Hopefully it would end up working out. So I was coaching and Carly was, she still wanted to work inside of a gym. So she ended up. Renting a room from a current, my CrossFit gym owner out of the couple that should reach out to that. We were in Kamloops at the time. So she was just kind of starting from square one.
And she's a little bit different than most Kairos or most traditional Kairos. And she does like a lot of exercise, rehab based stuff as part of her, um, her practice. And she didn't want to be stuck with some random clinic where she didn't believe what they were doing, like kind of a five minute cracking appointments so she can do that kind of stuff.
But she really has that nation and exercise. So anyways, you want to be inside of a gym. So she got in there, slow start, like anybody starting out. And then as we got a few months and we realized that, uh, the gym owner doesn't do too well on the business side of things and you haven't for awhile. And then I was worried that like, okay, like if.
Something really bad happens. The business goes belly up. Carly's going to be left out flat on your feet. I have all these like business plans, all these lights stuff that I've been typing up for years and like ready to apply in Lethbridge. So I'm like, okay, let's talk the owner. And then maybe we can buy him out.
And he's a capable good hands-on coach. And he can just work for us. He hates being the business guy anyways. And then, so anyways, talk to them and then lining it up to get the least set or like. No, we had incorporated and then bios company and all that business stuff. And then two days before. Or two days after I incorporated and going up, this was January of 2018.
Um, right. And we were going to kind of try, try to take over in March. He, uh, he had been behind on some lease payments for rent in the previous summer. And then that day Lyft came up and changed the locks on the door. And kind of kicked them out of their space while, while we were in the middle of talking to him, though about buying him out unexpectedly.
So it was a huge curve ball. So use the business deal. And then we ended up just finding different spot cameras to rent out and took over the business kind of quickly. And we'd been going to the gym. We were kind of like no members, but we weren't, people didn't realize, but our plans were then settled there.
Lots of growing pains. And then, um, the first two years were like good learning and building and kind of building our own, our own brand and, um, culture in this salvage in where it's very community based and a lot of first name basis, but also quality coaching kind of tries to bus some people coming and enjoying their, their hour or whatever time they're spending here.
And then in conjunction with that, the more that the business grew, especially with the lifeblood that I was able to put into it that helped both Carly's practice up. And then like two year mark in February 20, 20, we're like, okay, this is going to be good. And then I was still coaching swimming and all that.
So pretty busy days, but balancing it all. And then two year mark, I'm like, okay, let's start making some big changes here. And then right before, I mean, it could be implemented COVID and then in the fitness industry, a little bit tricky. So we wanted, we always wanted to kind of expand, uh, the wellness team.
Like not this Carly's the Cairo, get a few more people in here and do like a really excellent job in Kamloops for the group that this thing trying to set us apart. But, uh, I, I was never really personally concerned about the COVID thing when I was here in like the early news Satan's coming out earlier in 2020, but I could kind of see the, the writing on the wall or whatever.
That analogy was that like, things were going to be a little bit like closed off. You could see it coming to Italy or whatever it was happening crazy. So I started doing these zoo online workouts pretty early on, even before things were actually fully closed and kind of made sure I had my systems down with some trial classes.
And then, you know, a few at the start, a few people from my gym were like staying at home. Like, and then, but most were still coming. And then within a week it was three quarters of the week. Like 95% of people are at home. So at the state, and then by that time, the swim club is going to be shut down too.
So at that time I was like, okay, I mean, I don't know really what I could do as a swim coach, other than they are kind of lucky that I also own a gym. So I got all these going to be sources that I can deliver a pretty good program through zoom video, relative to most people, and also like kinda latch onto my gyms schedule so I can offer different times a day.
And so what I did is I let anybody. You know, I mean, my membership is super supportive and a lot of them pay the full bills, even though the, the services are limited, dropped off, dumbbells are all over town and all my workloads are based off like single dumbbell workouts. So you just use one doorbell and then it really, really tested my coaching creativity.
Have good camera presence and deliver a good 45 minutes, even though I hate you and make seeing myself on camera. So I had to get used to that and also just making sure that it wasn't letting people down. Cause that's really, when I feel like I'm at my best, when people rely on me to do a job has been different since then.
But that early March, April and may and BC anyways, it was very like, everything was shut down. Not just like, okay. Certain businesses. Give them a hammer here. It was, everything was shut down. So people really relied on that, you know, the hour where they're like sitting in almost kind of sulky. And then, you know, I had up to 75, 80 people sign in sometimes between this club and the gym.
So got over my camera shyness pretty quick, but, and then, uh, opened things up, I think. And then a VC has been a lot more relaxed than other provinces with being a cooperate small business. So there's been some frustrating hurdles, but I know it could be a lot worse. And then between the swim club and the gym, things have been kind of steadily growing, um, and then it kind of halted in the fall, but Jim growth way, just because there's been a lot of the gym based restrictions have been difficult.
But on the flip side of that, we started growing our, uh, our movement mechanics team. So that's what Carly, um, that arm of the business is called. So we got another Cairo here, massage therapist, a kinesiologist standards as of yesterday physio therapist. So that's always been a goal to kind of like, all right, the gym is going to be like a really good like backbone, like the group fitness community, everyone knows their name.
They're here for a high quality product. And then in addition to that, we've got a team of people. It's geared towards getting people better. And then, uh, just now that, that I was hoping I was trying to aim it for these restrictions, that date and hope there's a lot of this. Yeah. So we started pulling the trigger on some construction and stuff to do a better job on that, that way too.
And then it goes hand in hand this Amanda, you know, good coaching and being involved in a smaller city and making a name for ourselves has been pretty exciting adventure since we got here. Yeah, no kidding. Well, that was a really in-depth, uh, capture of your, of your story and your time and your journey.
So maybe got a little long there, but it had to paint the picture. No, it was great. Cause you mean, you provided us with a ton of context and a ton of details in terms of, you know, like, um, where you are now and stuff like that. So, uh, drilling down onto the business now. So the business is called term tournament, capital strength and conditioning, right?
Yeah. A bit of a mouthful, uh, commonly known as TCSC. Yeah, I mean, I mean, they've anybody. NBC or that travels up the Kamloops knows the tournament capital center and all that stuff. Right. So, I mean, like it's, it makes a lot of sense. Um, and so your, your wife, Carly is a partner in the business as well. Yeah.
She primarily focuses on like building up her, her practice as a chiropractor, but, um, and let's be kind of like go crazy on I'm running the business, but I'm always bouncing off ideas with her and she's. Supporting as much. Yeah. And, uh, just touching back on the, on the some clubs. So you, you're still, you're still involved with the Kamloops classic club as well.
Are you still working with. Yep. I'm the assistant head coach there. I got three competitive groups, rub it under my belt. I was coaching masters as well until adult sports got shut down in the fall. But our clubs, our competitive numbers have actually doubled since I got here. So we're at about 120 competitors.
Yep. So that's been pretty exciting to see kind of both of my parts of my life grow in conjunction as we got through the four years, even with the pandemic has been some pretty good growth in both places. Yeah, no, that's brilliant. Um, and so, I mean, so you've talked about why and conditioning and what you really love about it.
Um, now in terms of generating some specific value for the people that might be watching and so on and so forth. Yeah. I'm very general question, but what are some assumptions that you see people making when they come into or they're looking for a gym, like, um, and you know, I, I don't mean to be, you know, uh, you know, I don't mean to point fingers or, you know, like tell people like they're doing things wrong, but I mean, we all have assumptions.
We all make assumptions based on our experiences when we enter into something new, um, or. Come into a new environment, so on and so forth. So what are some things that you often find yourself correcting with, whether it's training habits or planning or exercises or so on and so forth? Um, I think one big assumption is that people think that they can go into it.
And spend a week or two there or a month or two, and really just changed. Like there they're there. So if there were like a swimmer and they want to stay lean and mean, you think like, oh, I can't lift weights, I'll get too big. That's like a very frustrating frustration because if you actually want to get big, um, the years and like the, the volume of work that you have to do to change your, your competition levels, take a lot of hard work and consistency if that's like your specific goal, but you can always tell that.
Your training style and in conjunction with your eating habits to align whatever energy requirements to need or body types you need, or body type you're looking for as well. Uh, another big misconception with this allergy mix, especially that it's, you know, like more of a functional training, uh, gym with barbells being thrown around and dumbbells is they can get hurt easily.
What usually gets people hurt isn't ego, not really necessarily. Exercise selection. And then, especially with a gym like ours, that it's the whole backbone of this is how this place works is that it's coached. So as soon as you walk in your hour or half an hour is taken care of you, whether that's in a group environment or a one-on-one environment, or even better yet with one of our clinicians.
So as long as you're coachable and listening, and you're working on techniques, similar to your swimming, if you're being, if that's your focus and that's your base of your pyramid, What your strength and conditioning program is that movements are appropriate and look good and not biting off more than you can chew.
The chance of injury ends up being pretty low. So those are the two big ones like, oh, I'll get hurt or, oh, I'll get too big or whatever those misconceptions are. Fair enough. And you know, for, for the average John Smith that walks in off the road and they're not as. No, they're, they're not an athlete.
They're just looking for fitness. I mean, like, do you see the, sort of the same, the same kind of misconceptions and assumptions there? Yeah. And I think, um, what we try to paint a picture on with how our website's set up and what our social media looks like is that there there's G. On your own gym. So like a planet fitness style gym, or even like a community center gym you walk in and there's use nice equipment there and it's laid out well, but you're not really supported by people.
After you sign up, you really are left to your own devices on the treadmill for a bit. Okay. I guess I'll do some set ups and then freeways look kind of scarier. Uh, I'm good. And you leave. Whereas if you're taken care of by a coach and you're showing the way with a good program, but also good support and coaching is very relationship driven profession.
Is there, if there's that as your base, and we can convince people with the Joe blow walking on the street that it's different than like a, an on your own gym. That's where we try to separate our service levels. And then hopefully over time as these kinds of jobs, continue to develop the assumption of what a gym is, has kind of two different versions, whether it's not in your own recovery.
Um, so that's really what we try to make sure that it's what we're offering is coaching. You can imagine just even with swimming too, like I've barely spammed since I stopped university swimming, because I don't like going to the pool, getting in, having a coach there, a group of people to work with. It's like a couple hundred meters and it's hot tub time.
Whereas like, if you can imagine, you know, as a, as a young adult, but also just adults trying to do things on your own, there's such a better product. And, you know, enthusiasm and you're selling only whatever the set is. We're going to go broke. That is when you have a culture, a good culture and environment.
And that's the biggest thing we try to hit home with with, and I think a lot of it comes from a swimming background to it and realizing that a lot of coaching is just selling, selling the kids. Okay, this is hard, but this is why we're doing it. It's going to be fine. And you get the snowball effect of people buying in.
And then it's pretty exciting when it takes. Oh, that's great. So anybody who walks into your gym, they got a personally tailored plan. Uh, not necessarily. So like, um, primarily as a group in this thing. So if we got like 12 people in the class, And the workout has, let's say like dead lists and pushups and some running in it.
If me and a 47 year old lady that hasn't worked out in 10 years since she had a kid and you are all in the same class. The weights that we would choose for a deadlift would be individually tailored. So if you're doing like, you know, sets of 10 and around, or the circuit style thing, we're not all gonna do the same thing.
Or if, um, and then pushups, if she can't do pushups on the floor and she needs to do them on a box, or I need to do my box, my shoulder hurts and I'm working with one of our people to make sure I'm getting better. That's an individualized option. And then if they're running. And then, or they got shin splints from doing a big triathlon from last week and they want to ride one of our air bikes.
Instead, that's always an option, but it becomes from the ops has always come from coach and conversation says you leave class. So it's the same workout. You all do it together. So you get that group kind of cohesion, momentum going, but then you have an individualized basis. Ability levels experience. And how are you feeling?
Fair enough. So it's really as the coaching, like they get the individual coaching regardless of who. Yeah. And they do the workout together, but they get an individualized approach to it based off conversations and experience. And then. And option to do like one-on-one training as well, which is part of our business, but primarily it's a group thing.
Yep. So now I'm making an assumption now, but I'm, I'm assuming that in that model, your injury rate is probably far less than what you would typically see a, what you call an on your own gym? Uh, yeah, especially at hours because there are really comes down to like culture and environment. So there are gyms like ours, you can see, um, some cringy stuff on, on the internet.
They're really pushing like that. Everyone go heavy, everyone go as hard as you can. Like let's, let's cross this every single day and not really page. And everyone just kind of do the same thing and the individualization or the experience level is like, okay, you pump the brakes, you take it easy today.
Okay. You can crush it then. It was like, that's our model and making sure everyone's kind of has that he stays in their lane and is, is being watched appropriately and not being pushed in the wrong way. Then the injury rates quite low and that's really important to us. And that was kind of the whole model with like this wellness.
And the functional gym as one is that we want people in here for 10, 20 years, not getting smashed after two or three months, never seeing them again. And then the, I mean, especially like within, on your own gym, if, if you're not like a former athlete, like swimmers and stuff, take it for granted. Cause we've usually seen a weight room as we grow.
In high school and university and kind of know what we're doing, but if you've never been to a gym before and you just kind of like sign up your membership and go walk in there and you just, you don't have any like recognition of how much 40 pounds is or whatever you're grabbing. That's where, where people can not only get hurt.
But turned off like, oh, this is the true me. And not get into like a little bit more of a fitness lifestyle, which is a shame. Yeah. I've definitely had those questionable moments when I've been in the weight room. That's something out of the corner of my eye. And I'm like, what the heck is that? Yeah. Um, you know, like out of respect, I, I don't say anything because it's not my workout and you might know something, I don't know.
So fill your boots and have fun, but I've definitely seen those questionable things in terms of that. So, um, it sounds like you've. I like the, the, the end goal. And you're you're well, on the way to doing that is to create a very holistic service where somebody can walk in and they can get all the associated services to do with leading a healthy lifestyle.
So the fitness aspect, um, you know, the, the care sustainably with you moving mechanics team and stuff like that. Is there any plans to like, expand that with like nutrition or anything else like that? Yeah, we offer nutrition coaching too. Um, again like another individualized approach where it's like, it's very, and this is stern as coach.
Like it's just very relationship driven on a one-on-one level. Culture driven on like a group level. And like, I know a lot of coaches get really geek out on like steps and volume, um, and format and, you know, and schedules, which is important. But I just, I, over my experience, I feel like it's just, if you get those good relationships and good colors, That's the base.
It's the same thing with nutrition. The way our model is it's a lot of it's like, one-on-one, check-ins you fill it out. Some sheets, we'll be having a video call once a week, or at least like a very in-depth email conversation once a week. And not just giving somebody numbers, you're there to support them and guide them.
So that's been part of it too, and specific changes for some people that have done that. But yeah, our goal is to kind of be like that kind of one-stop shop for wellness and especially in a community like Catholics, where there's a very active lifestyle with all the outdoor amenities. Um, not necessarily everybody that's comes through our wellness team is like, uh, members of our gym.
Like, hopefully that can be like part of the marketing thing is when they're coming in to see a practitioner and they're like, oh man, this looks fine when people are so nice. They're great. But also we can really sort of. A pretty niche group of people in canvas, because there's a lot of those kind of people just wanting to come in to get better and looking forward to getting their active lifestyle back.
Yeah. It sounds like a fantastic business and you've, you've built it. You created a very people-centric model and I, I can, like, you're talking about it. I don't live in Kamloops, but you know, like I would certainly join your gym. I would certainly subscribe to your service. Why was there because. That's that all that stuff speaks to me because I enjoy that group environment.
And I can relate to what you said about going to the pool, swimming by yourself for 200 meters getting bored. Yeah. And being done with it. Um, but yeah, no, that's fantastic. So I want to be, I'm aware of your time, cause I know you have a class to get to in about 25 minutes. Um, and I I'd love to do, um, just some demos of just some, some basic exercises that, you know, like.
That that would, that would cut across a transcend generation call it. So, I mean, like, regardless of whether or not you're a young swimmer or triathlete or master swimmer, or, you know, um, focusing on the water, but an athlete of any kind that, uh, you know, it would just be good in terms of, you know, maybe let's focus on prehab and warmup today, um, and just like start with some general things and so on and so forth.
But before we get there, I needed to ask you, so how many Raptors games did you go to when you were there? Well, I was kind of like paycheck to paycheck lifestyle. So not as many as I wanted, my fantasy was all right. Yeah. Like this is like coming from a, you know, Alberta and I've been to Toronto from swimming before, but I'm like, yeah, I'm going to live downtown condo or get a job downtown somewhere.
Then we'll lock the Raptors games every day after work. We're way up in the suburbs. Yeah to downtown, but probably like 20 to 2,500. It's like free play off games too. Nice. So, sorry. I interrupted, sorry. A good amount, but in my mind, not enough, but yeah. Fair enough. So you, you're one of those ecstatic ones that were jumping off the roof when the, when they won the championship.
Yeah. I was going to fly to Toronto to go to one of the games. Cause I know it's like a once in a lifetime thing that the Raptors are good. And then actually, because of swimming commitments, I couldn't like hit the bullseye on like a game to go to Toronto oral Clint, but 30 years from now, they'll be back in it a lot more time.
Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, like there's certain, you, you got to see them win a championship in your lifetime, which is a story you'll always be able to tell. And then as I was in Toronto that whole time there, that was kind of the Kyle Lowry era getting better and getting good. So I feel like that's part of it.
Fair enough. Fair enough. Well, that's awesome. And congratulations on opening and running a great business. Like it sounds like it's a fantastic environment. Oh yeah. It's, uh, it's really been like a highlight, uh, for a lot of people that are coming here. That's just as important to me. Like, especially if it is in general, but especially during a tough time when you're stuck in your city and stuff.
Not being able to really do much, uh, members have been really appreciative that we've been able to stay open and doing their best to work with restrictions, but also deliver really good service. And I can just feel it. And this is why I'm excited about these expansions that we're doing. Like we're just on the cusp of something really, really phenomenal in this city.
And, uh, um, I don't. More for, to something like really delivering and doing a great job coming up. They just fall very far to that. Well, I think we'll have to arrange a check-in with you in the fall in September. Um, all right. So, um, why don't, why don't we go and, um, we'll see if we can do some demos here.
Um, And like I said, just, um, I'm gonna let you lead this. Um, and, uh,
awesome. Looking training space, man. Yeah, I get some, uh, some little rentals done upstairs and down to make it super, super sharp. So I kind of like the branding of like pull up rig and stuff, but also like some pretty like on brand signage and flow to the space. So it's. There's like kind of like a hardworking brand with like the black and the rigging stuff, but also super policy practitioners are coming in or patients are coming in there.
The whole concept of this personal swim buoy is something that you can tow around behind you that does not interfere with the swim. It's far enough behind you so that your arm stroke doesn't touch it; it sits in front of your legs in the crook of your knees underneath, your kicking is not affected either.
So in that sense, it doesn't affect you or causes drag, which is surprising, but that's because the bow wave you create with your body eddies behind and even pushes it, which is quite interesting.
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The whole concept of this personal swim buoy is something that you can tow around behind you that does not interfere with the swim. It's far enough behind you so that your arm stroke doesn't touch it; it sits in front of your legs in the crook of your knees underneath, your kicking is not affected either.
So in that sense, it doesn't affect you or causes drag, which is surprising, but that's because the bow wave you create with your body eddies behind and even pushes it, which is quite interesting.
The Swim Buddy helps you be seen when swimming in the open water. In our lake – Lake Okanagon, we've got boaters and watercraft of all kinds, and when you are swimming in an open body of water, 80% of your body is submerged; therefore, we can only see you as the moment that you have an arm stroke.
Even when there is minimum chop or swell, swimming can go unseen by watercraft, you know, and it doesn't help if they're wearing a black wetsuit as well.
If you have something brightly colored tagging on behind you, you will be more likely to be seen. As well, not only do you have the feeling of safety and security, if you feel anxious, the Swim Buddy also has enough air in it to help hold you up if you need to take a rest.
It always made a lot of sense to enhance the safety and security of swimmers; that is why you should use a Swim Buddy.
What else you should have to swim safely in the open water: Be seen and be aware of your surroundings.
Get the necessary equipment
He's the author of two books, Swimming in the Open Water and Swimming in the Open Water Volume II both available on Amazon. He's an advocate for open water swimming, and he's passionate about the subject. He believes that everybody should know how to swim and especially know how to swim in the open water.
Seeing as so much of the earth's surface is covered with water today, we're going to dive into some of those topics, and we're just going to let Mark tell us about swimming in the open water and why he loves it so much. We welcome Mark.
]]>Good afternoon folks. And welcome to the on-deck show, a show that takes a look at people and organizations operating outside the scope of normal to make things better for folks like you and I; every day today, we have the opportunity to speak with retired doctor Mark Fromberg out of Kelowna. Mark is one of the creators of the Swim Buddy, an open water swim safety product popular amongst open water swimmers in Canada.
He's the author of two books, Swimming in the Open Water and Swimming in the Open Water Volume II both available on Amazon. He's an advocate for open water swimming, and he's passionate about the subject. He believes that everybody should know how to swim and especially know how to swim in the open water.
Seeing as so much of the earth's surface is covered with water today, we're going to dive into some of those topics, and we're just going to let Mark tell us about swimming in the open water and why he loves it so much. We welcome Mark.
Below you will find an unedited transcript of our conversation. You can find the Youtube & Spotify links by clicking below
Good morning, Mark. So I realized after I recorded that intro, I left out the fact that you are one of the principal organizers of the Across The Lake Swim, which is definitely, um, a notable fact because it's the most prominent open water swim, race swim event in Canada.
And I say event because I believe that like you, you have a, um, You're much more connected with the open water, um, than most people are. So I would say it's much more than just a race. It's an event. It's, it's an experience. So, um, I want to go and that in a second, but I want to start with you as a doctor.
So I know that you, um, your history as a doctor, doctor, um, you always put the person first and you believed in, um, you know, What doing what was best for the person and not necessarily traditional medicine, is that accurate? Can I say that you know, in medicine, there's been traditionally a, uh, what's called a paternalistic approach to patients where you go to see the doctor with your problem, the doctor owns the problem, he tells you what to do and that's it. But in the last decade or two, there's been an increasing movement towards. Empowerment and a sense of giving the patient the control of their destiny, if you will, to actually work with the patient and give them the directions, and then they own the problem and they can work with it.
So they become not so much. You know, a dependent person on the doctor, but they become independent and stronger. So you, by empowering people to get them to make healthier choices, you know, not smoking, not drinking too much, exercising well, eating well, resting, sleeping, and less stress, you know, and these are all motherhood issues.
And yet, um, you know, unfortunately, a lot of medicine is dictated by the prescription pad, and I've never really liked that very much. So, uh, I've often thought that, Hey, if you do everything right, your need to visit doctors is going to be fairly limited. And then you're going to maintain your independence, your health, and vitality for much less.
Fair enough. And, um, there's a connection there in terms of that holistic approach and the relationship you have to open water swimming. I know we've talked about this in the past and you've talked about it as a transcendent experience; can you elaborate on that a little bit?
Yeah. You know, as you pointed out earlier, I mean, 70% of the workers surface as water, so. We're all sort of intimately familiar with water; wherever we live, you can't survive anywhere without at least some of it. So whether you live by a river or a lake or an ocean, you're going to be likely near water.
And so we have a relationship with it, whether we like it or not. And yet, so many people have never really gotten comfortable with it. And that included me actually, for the longest part. I never really had any formal swimming lessons as a kid. And because of that, I always had some trepidation being near water times.
Like when somebody would say, Hey, let's go to the beach and play football to play football or something. I'd be the one hand back and watching everybody sort of thing. And yet, yeah. Getting it to water. Um, once you get over the fear of being in it and understanding that the water will work with you, if you let it and the water isn't out to get you in any real way, you just have to work with it.
Initially, it kind of feels like working with a clumsy dancing partner or something, but the point is that you can learn to enjoy it. And it can be actually a transcendent experience because it gives you a sense of independence and freedom that you never had before. Once you feel like this is no longer your enemy.
So I've always been one of the reasons I really enjoy working with the, uh, the across lake swim process is that as you say, we try to make it more of an event for most people. Obviously, lots of people race the event to see how fast they can do it. But most people. Honestly are just happy to do it. And there's something to be said about the victory of mind over matter, to be able to swim over a deep lake, two kilometers worth, keeping your head the whole time, just focusing on what you need to get done.
And so many people when they find it. Feet on the sand. They're not even out of the lake yet. And they've already got their arms up calling. Yes, I did it. Even though there's a finish line, it's still another 20 meters away. Hey, you got to cross the line and then they go, no, you know, I've already done it.
I've already succeeded. So I'm at the end of the day, I don't even think the racers care so much what their time was, what they do care about is that, Hey, I did it. I crossed this like, and in that sense, It makes you more than you were. It makes you, it grows you internally. You you've succeeded in overcoming a hurdle and everybody who crosses that line as, as I can tell you, they're smiling.
They're happy. It's a compelling, favorable hearing. Yeah, and I want to come back to that in a second, but you touched on something there that, um, I want to get to first. So, uh, along the lines of what you do with, um, across the lake, there's also, Oakenoggen swims where you guys and your organization, you actually fund swimming lessons for kids, a grade three and below.
Is that correct? Yeah. Yeah. So it's actually mostly graded threes. Um, I think below, I don't think frankly, there's probably not enough money to do all of that, but, uh, we've just decided that the right age is probably grade three, the eight year olds if you will. They're old enough to be physically there.
They're already into the routine of school. Um, they're more teachable perhaps than the average five or six-year-old. And, um, so I, it was kind of a, an arbitrary decision, uh, based on what the lifeguards, uh, our local Ys said as well as the S the, uh, local schools. Um, but we settled on one particular year.
And, um, and the goal there was to sort of essentially drown-proof a community. I mean, the idea of, of, of saying, okay, when you can teach people to swim at an early enough age before they've actually learned all kinds of negative attributes of water, you know, What, what adults can tell me about a negative experience they've had in the water.
You know, whether they were dragged behind a boat or they fell off a dock, or, you know, they, you know, they got held under water by their big brother, you know, who knows the point is they all had something in their head that it's developed that is now a quota, a near death experience associated with water.
And because of that, you know, it's funny how the older you get the harder it is to teach somebody comfortable skills within water. So. The younger, they are the more, you know, untouched, they are with those negative experiences. And because of that, it makes them actually enjoy the water. You can watch these kids play in the water and they're thrilled with being in it.
I mean, they, they splash. They just think it's great fun because they don't, they haven't developed those negative feelings. And yet the average 25 year old, who's never been near water. Watch them freak out as soon as they're in deep water. And it's quite remarkable how difficult it is to teach an adult swim.
Compared to a younger kid. Absolutely. That's fantastic. And how has that program been, um, adopted within, is it just Colona? Is the Okanogan valley it's, it's sort of the central Okanagan. I mean, the ergonomic valley obviously expanding the spans essentially from, you know, Vernon to, uh, uh, Penticton essentially.
So there's quite a long breadth of water there in the central Okanogan right now is the most populous area in and in and of itself. That's Princeton. I think there are 150,000 people just in that area. And so there are some 3000. Kids in grade three, um, that can benefit from them. So at a certain point, the money only goes so far.
I mean, if we had more money to raise, we'd probably try to take on a larger area. But, uh, so far we're pretty content with sort of focusing on what we can do and do reasonably well. So interesting enough, it's not the swimming lessons that cost the most money. It's the busing of the kids, to the swimming lessons.
And so, you know, depending on where the schools are, would dictate just how long the bus ride is and therefore how expensive it gets. So, um, we're happy to carry, you know, at least do our thing for our community in Oakland. The Okanagan one of the, one of the dubious distinctions that the Okanagan lake has.
It is the most drowned in lake, in British Columbia right now. We're not real proud of that, but having said that, um, if there's a silver lining to that, most of the people who drown in Okanagan lake, I mean, are people who come to visit the Okanagan and they're may not be familiar with the lake. Um, you know, they may be a little bit carried away with getting too rambunctious or too drunk on a boat, or God knows what, um, but, um, I can say that most of the people that are unfortunately succumbing to drowning in our lake don't come from here.
So our first goal is to take care of our own people here. Um, and hopefully that kind of wisdom will spread over time to other communities, but, uh, we can do our bit and we'll stick. Yeah, and that that's great. I that's a fact I did not know. Um, and, uh, you know, like earlier in the summer we ran a drowning prevention series and we're transitioning that to a water safety series, uh, now, um, and really, you know, trying to get people to understand that drowning prevention and water safety is not a seasonal thing.
It's not something you just pay attention to in the spring when the snow melts. It's something you need to be aware of 12 months of the year, and the risks are all around you, even if you don't see them right. Well, that's great. And I'm sure that, uh, the residents of the central Okanagan are eternally grateful.
I know I would be if, you know, like we had a, that service for us. But, um, and I guess ironically like there was a time in BC and Alberta where swimming was just part of the curriculum, and it's been yanked out. Um, and, uh, you know, we see the, the by-product of that now. So, um, going back to the, across the lakes, Uh, so in terms of the event and what you guys do, um, you know, like having been there as a vendor, having, having had family participate in the event and so on, like I know the experience I see, like you see the smile on people's faces when they come out, you see the excitement when they're getting bused to the other side of the lake and so on.
Um, as an organizer, as an advocate of open water swimming, What does it mean to you to see so many happy people come through the event and returned to the event every year? You know, it's almost ironic to say this, but, as a physician, I would deal with patients one-on-one to try to help them get better and, you know, get back into their lives.
And, and, you know, this event to me has been. More meaningful in an ironic sense, uh, to see people thrive in ways that I could never get them to thrive in the doctor's office. You know what I mean? Um, so often in the doctor's office, I'm actually helping somebody get back from the brink of serious illness back to something normal.
Um, Throw them a prescription of some kind to try to get him back to once where they were, but with the across lake swim, you know, as an event, we're trying to actually transcend where they are to even something more than they were. And, and, uh, you know, it's for some of these people. It's there, you know, it's, it's like counting, climbing, Mount Everest.
I mean, it's, this is a, uh, an event that makes them more fulfilled when they started and, and, you know, having gone through the process myself of, of, um, having to learn how to swim as an adult, um, You know, I, I know firsthand how meaningful that actually is, so I know what they're going through and I'm totally excited to be part of helping them to get there.
And as you know, we, we spend something like six weeks ahead of the event to try to get people. Fully aware of what they need to know and in swimming in deep and open water. So we have weekly lessons to, to build them up to that point. So we can sort of screen out all those types of people that aren't ready to do it.
And we can certainly help those people who are willing an interest to try. And, um, it makes for a much more likely successful event. Come, come actually swim time. And, uh, and as you say, I mean, when you see all these smiling happy faces, this sense of, uh, cumulative victory, if you will. I mean, they're their victory in a sense is my victory too, because.
We we've shepherded them in that direction to a point where yes, I did it. I did it. And of course, the minute that you actually have some meaningful, significant event that you've succeeded in doing, um, then it opens the door to other things in your life. Like, Hey, if I could do this, I can do that. And it's just a matter of working at it and being diligent about it.
I'm committed to it and chances are, you can do that. So that's why they say those swimming lessons that we have. Um, in a way it kind of weeds out all those people that sort of sign up as a Lark. Oh, I, maybe I can do it. Sure. I can do it. I've I've swum once in my life or something, you know, it doesn't seem that far.
And you know, they, they, um, we kind of call them on it in the sense of, okay, well, come on. Let's just see how you can do, and it's amazing how many people go. Wow. I just didn't realize how much different it is to swim in open water then. Hmm, I'm gonna get into that more, um, a bit, um, you learn to swim as an adult.
Yeah. So, um, Y um, well, let me just be Frank and asking the question. What, what took you so long to learn how to swim? Well, you know, I mean, first of all, opportunities were limited as a kid, uh, to get swimming lessons. Um, I guess I was, you know, Although I grew up in the greater Vancouver area. So I wasn't very far away from water.
The ocean was sort of more intimidating and, you know, I mean, I guess I was by, by other sports at the time. I mean, I played lots of baseball and tennis and whatever. And so I was happy from an exercise point of view to do all those things. And I remember having a friend who wasn't in a local sort of swim club.
And she was getting up at five in the morning to go swimming. And like, that was just not in the cards. So I actually thought, you know, like, that's all fine, but I did actually have some friends of mine who were good swimmers and they would kind of go, Hey, let's go to the beach and play football in the water and have, you know, diving catches in the water and all this kind of stuff.
And you know, they'd be out treading water, you know, a hundred meters off of lighthouse park, throwing Frisbees around. And it's like, Oh, my God, I can't do that. I got, you know, and so, so there was a certain avoidance pattern after a while that were built up. And, you know, I can't say I had an awful lot of drowning experiences really, but I can think of one or two where I think, uh, you know, that was lucky or something and, and those kinds of things sit on you.
And of course there's a feeling of inadequacy that sort of settles in on you. And that I can sort of do the avoidance pattern for so long, but you know, in my early forties, What my wife was a lifeguard growing up and she's actually a very good swimmer. And, and, uh, when our kids were young, they, um, my wife had them in the pool when they were six months of age.
And by the time they were five and six, they were pretty good sweaters. I mean, they certainly didn't have water phobia or fear. I mean, like they just kind of love to splash around and all that kind of stuff. And then there, there, there was a time where, you know, I'd be sitting in the kiddie pool with the kids and they'd kind of go, ah, I'm tired of this.
I'm going to go into the pool and do some lengths. And here I am, you have a grand matriarch and patriarch of my family and I'm the kid in the swim in the kiddie pool while my kids and my wife are doing laps in the pool. And it's like, oh, there's something wrong with this picture? You know? So, um, I think the worst part of it was thinking that gee, if I ever fell off, if I, if we were on a family, cruise on a boat, we fell over, my kids would be trying to rescue me the other way around.
And frankly, I'd probably freak out and drown the both in the process. So I. Couldn't sit still for that. And, and, you know, I think a couple of things came together all at once when it was this sort of nagging feeling that wasn't going away. And the other one was, um, I, I had a back injury from playing squash, I think, and, and, uh, I couldn't walk and I couldn't run and I couldn't do all the sports I really needed to do.
And the only place I didn't have pain was in pool. I couldn't swim. So I actually had to sign up for swimming lessons, which was a very humbling experience. Where you just kind of go, geez, I hope nobody recognizes me here. I just felt like a total nerd, you know, but, uh, so it wasn't, it was okay after a while, but that it was a big, big, first step to do.
And from there to here where, you know, like now I w I guess I would say you're probably a subject matter expert in terms of open water swimming. You've written two books. Uh, you host a major event in Canada, you coach open water swimmers, and so on and so forth. Um, so going through your website, you you'll, you list a few points that kinda summarize, um, you know, open water swimming for you.
So I want to go through those and maybe each one of them. And you can just say a few words on it. So. Um, enriching your experiences. What is it? Well, as I said before, you know, if you can do something that, um, successfully, uh, first of all, it can actually allow you to consider other bigger, better things in your life.
Hey, if I can swim, you know, why can't I consider going surfing in Hawaii or learn how to kiteboard or, you know, like all of a sudden. Your life actually opens doors to you in various ways. And so in that sense, that gets rich. But even before we get to that, um, you know, swimming as an experience, and this is something I didn't really expect.
And I, I get it mostly when I swim open water, I'm not so much in the pool. And that is that, you know, The, the cadence and the regular swimming stroke, stroke, breathe, stroke, stroke, breath. I mean, it's, it sounds very repetitive, but on the other hand, it's meditative, if you will, like, you can kind of lose yourself in that rhythm.
And, and so it's just you and you're in the water and in a way, Um, what I also love about it and especially useful today is that you get completely unhooked from the world. Does the cell phone is nowhere near you. You can't deal with it. And, uh, on the other hand, you know, you are now just you in the water and almost nothing else.
And the only thing that you can hear is the sound of the lapping water as you're stroking, uh, you know, there's no conversations, there's no newscasts, there's no bad news. Uh, there's no traffic to deal with. There's no work stream. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. So it's a complete unhook and it's a wonderful experience in the sense that you can now actually at least leave your life behind into this parallel universe or these fertile life.
And when you finish it, you know, again, you feel refreshed and transcended in some way. And then that say in that way, I feel you're also enriched because what I find about swimming in open water is that ironically. It's grounding. It actually gets you back to who you are, you know, like when all the extraneous crap is out of your life, um, it's just you in the water.
Who are you anyway? Well, I'm just a small little thing in the whole world and, uh, all this water is here. Just a part of me for now. And, uh, it's just you, it's just you, nothing more, nothing less. And in that sense, it's a great way to connect back with some basic fundamental attributes of who you actually are.
Brilliant. That's a great answer. Um, I feel like a lot of these are going to kind of run into each other, but I still want to kind of go through them one by one. So, um, feel safer beyond the obvious. What does that mean to you? Yeah, so, you know, one of the things that I often mentioned to the, to the.
Potential across lake swimmers as their training and our events is that, you know, the lake is not wanting to swallow you up. It wants to spit you out. It's not out to get you, you know, like, like when people have some anxiety over the water, like as they Wade in deeper and deeper, they start to realize that they're being engulfed by something.
Yeah, one more step in there. Now we're going to be surrounded and taken by this water, but the water doesn't have a personality. It's not out to get you. And, uh, and one of the things that we often do this, I just call it the sit on the bottom drill. We were at about four or five feet of water. And I ask everybody to sit on the bottom and just go down and try to sit on it.
And nobody can do it for much more than a second. They all just slowly pop right up. And of course I admonish them and I say, listen, I asked you to sit on the bottom and they go, I can't. I go well, exactly right. You have to wait for it, but the water is trying to push you out. It's trying to bring you back to the surface and I don't care which part of the lake you want to do this experiment, and I can guarantee you it's exactly the same everywhere you go.
So if you get a feeling. The safety and security of what the water situation is. I mean, of course there's lots of things to know about every particular source of water that you're in and whether it's a fast running stream or a title current or godliness SWAT. I mean, those are all important things, but it's essentially about the water itself.
It's trying to float you up. It's not trying to swallow you up. So in that sense, you know, your, your feeling of safety and security is actually improved by learning how to swim. Mm, great tip. Um, you kind of touched on this before, but enter a FA uh, new, uh, new fitness. Yeah. So, you know, especially for old farts like me, you know, when the joints start to hurt a lot, when you, you know, I mean, I've played a lot of running type sports, soccer, baseball, you know, and I've done triathlon and tennis and squash are all hard on the joints after a while, uh, running, you know, like running as, you know, No, the Cooper aerobics phenomenon, the jogging phrase that started in the late sixties, early seventies, you know, running and certainly been a sort of mainstream event for fitness, cardiovascular fitness, and fair enough.
It carries on well today. And of course, sports like marathons and triathlons have really embraced that, but gets harder to do as you get older. And you don't even have to be that before you start complaining about, oh, my hips are hurting. My knees hurt and all that kind of stuff. And yet in the water, the water support supports and suspends you, it's not hard on the joints.
And, you know, I have known many people who are still swimming into their eighties and nineties. Um, and it's the one place where they can actually have sort of gentle resistance, you know, and you've probably seen. Water aerobics courses, classes effectively. And the people who actually like those the most tend to be slightly older or people who've had bad arthritis or things along with joint problems, you know, past histories of joint pain or, uh, surgeries or guidance.
Um, and part of that is simply because that gravitational force right through you, isn't it. And, and now you can actually start to move in ways that only has gentle resistance. You know, I've had probably dozens, if not hundreds of running injuries, I can't recall having had a swimming injury it all the time.
I've done it. And I mean, except for, yeah. Hitting my finger on a lane rope or something like that. Um, you know, it's never been hard on my joints. It's never been hard on any other thing. I mean, yes, I can tire myself out in various ways, but it's certainly not like, you know, running where you sprained an ankle or your knee is swollen for a week or two, that just doesn't happen in water.
And so I do wonder if in fact we really should be more water aware because this is relatively accessible. It's inexpensive and it's good. Yeah. And it certainly is, you know, that therapeutic aspect, which ties into your next point, which is connecting with nature. And I know that's a big, a stable. Yeah. So, you know, in Japan, And they have a concept called, uh, Shinran Yoku and what that means.
And I don't speak Japanese. Um, what that means is forest bathing. Now I hate to sound stereotypical, but the Japanese. People are hardworking people. Many of them work 10 and 12 hour days. They work six days a week. You know, they're often trapped in cubicles in downtown Tokyo sort of thing. And you could, well imagine this sort of very, oh, I mean, it's a, it's a very sterile environment.
Uh, there's nothing natural about it. You're you don't even see the air half the day. And, uh, and what many of these people do are they're very stressed and, uh, whether some of them turned to drinking or smoking, that's one thing, but. What's also really interesting is how often these people will take their one day off in the week, get onto a train and ticket for 200 miles outside of Tokyo to the nearest big forest where they literally just walk through the forest to touch the trees, to hear the gurgling Brook, to smell the fresh air that comes through the branches of the trees to actually see things wafting in the reason, and actually having a feeling of actual dirt underneath your feet and feeling what nature is all about.
They have found. And there's been studies on this now where these people who have high blood pressure all week because of the stress, the nature of their work and the lack of sleep, et cetera, their blood pressure comes down measurably within half an hour of being in an island environment. And so it's a, it's a really important thing to know that when you're in a natural environment, Your body feels more relaxed and being an open water is exactly the same thing.
It happens to be water as opposed to the forest, but I would submit that it's exactly the same thing. And just like I mentioned earlier, you know, when you're swimming in this rhythmical kind of meditation, um, you are actually bringing your blood pressure down. It's a calming thing. It stills your mind and in that's way, and that way.
It's terribly therapeutic. And that connection with nature to me can, should be for all of us, two things, getting into water and getting into the forest away from houses and buildings and highways and cars and things. Um, and I w I would add probably disconnecting from technical. Yeah. And that's actually a big part of it.
Yeah. So your next point is distress. We've kind of become a, we kind of covered that with what you just said, and your final point is become life confident. What is that? Yeah, so, and that sort of alludes to something I said before, you know, like when you have a, a feeling of self efficacy, like you can actually succeed at doing something.
I mean, like we've all tried things and failed them, you know? I mean, you could probably say that. Well, I tried skateboarding a couple of times. I broke my ankle and I'm never doing that again. Right. Tried to go snowboarding and it lasted a couple of times and I have a head injury and I'm not doing that again.
And you can get the sort of feeling of it. Failure, especially marked by injury or something like that. And, and so whenever you've had a series of what I might call failures or a lack of success, if nothing else, um, that's not life enriching, but if you can actually become a competent swimmer. And you can start to realize that swimming, you can grow in swimming in various ways.
I mean, first of all, it's to learn how to swim then to be able to swim some distance in a controlled environment, like a pool, and then actually get out into open water and then actually increasingly out into. Nastier or colder water with more waves or more wind or, you know, more remoteness. Like there are crazy to swim across the Bering Strait these days, you know?
And, and so, so no matter what level of swimming you're on you are, there's, there's a challenge above you that you can actually continue to grow into. And so it just increases. You are feeling of empowerment and self efficacy, that, that if you can learn how to swim in open water, um, you know, you kind of start to feel like you own it.
And when you do wow, I own that because I believed in myself and I actually focused on this and I was disciplined and thinking in my thinking when I actually was in the water and know, okay, well, if I can use that, I maybe I can apply that to something completely different than whatever that actually is.
That depends on. Where you are in life and what's interesting of interest to you. Oh, you know, if I can focus on becoming a better swimmer, I could become a good university student, or I can become a better baseball player or something like that. Whatever, whatever turns your crank. I mean, you can actually now start applying what you've learned in one thing into another area.
Yeah, brilliant. Brilliant. So, um, I want to talk about, um, kind of people entering into the open water swim world and some, some tips and advice. Um, before we do that before jumping into that question, tell me about the origin of the swim buddy. Cause that's, that's your creation as well. Um, and why was that important?
What purpose does it serve? Why should people use it? Yeah, so you know, many years ago, so, um, 10 or 12, um, it was, I mentioned the Bering Strait and, and, uh, I was invited by somebody to, uh, coach, um, a swimmer who was contemplating becoming part of a team that was going to swim the Bering Strait in little more than just a Speedo in goggles, which is.
For minimal. When you think about it, here's a serious ass, cold water, big, massive ways. I should show you some pictures anyway. Uh, yeah, I'll send you one anyway, because these guys were out there and these are, these were so we're open water, ice swimmers from all over the world, some of the very best in the world.
And they were on swells that were 40 and 50 feet high. You know, like when you have a, when you're taking charge of a swimmer out there. And, you know, if they go down in some way, are you losing in a wave? Like, it could be a critical point. Like, Hey, we've just lost a swimmer. And so they actually were using this, this orange little floaty thing that they had attached that they'd gotten.
I think. And, uh, and apparently, you know, in China, this is something that they had been doing for several years and some, some specific swims. And, uh, and in fact, there's one large swim. I think it's in Taiwan actually that, uh, they have something like 50,000 people who do this swim and overwhelmingly almost all of them are pretty average swimmers with lacking confidence.
And they all have some kind of little floaty, I think with them, some of them have. Essentially pools that they put underneath their armpits and they just do breaststroke over top of it. But others have something that they're toying behind them as their security blanket, essentially. Anyway, but when I saw that picture in the Bering Strait of, of a, of a swimmer just lapping away, he was literally swimming up a hill because of the size of the swell.
And then behind him was this little orange thing. Easy to see where he was and easy to find him and rescue him if that was needed at any point. And it was also something he could hang onto if he actually needed it because he is anxious or swallowed water got in his way. So when I saw that, um, I started researching as to, you know, where and how this all originated.
And, uh, China, I think is where it all came from. There is another organization in the United States. It's actually, um, it's in Florida and it's the international life, life, uh, hall of fame, the international swimming hall of fame. It's called the guy that runs that as well is a retired lawyer. And, uh, he's got a product called the safer swimmer and he gets that made in China as well.
So, um, although I could have contacted him and buy him, buy stock from him, I just thought I'd short circuit and you kind of go to where the origins of this work. And so, you know, after finding a couple of companies that were able to make these things, we've settled on one that had pretty reliable service and good quality products, and we've been bringing them in ever since.
And the whole concept of this, this, um, personal swim boy as it were, is something that you can tow around behind you. That, uh, does not interfere with your swim that's behind you enough so that your arm stroke doesn't touch it. And it's in front of your legs. It's in the crook of your knees underneath you sort of thing, so that your, your kicking is not affected either.
So in that sense, it doesn't affect you. It doesn't actually even have drag, which is surprising, but that's because the bow wave that you create with your body actually eddies behind and actually even pushes it, which is quite interesting. And I've, I've swollen with it many times. Quite surprised how little I felt it was there.
Um, and there's good reason for that, actually. So if you are using one of these things and especially if you're having trouble as a beginner, intermediate, I kind of think of it as training wheels, learning how to ride a bike. Hey, you've got something there and a security if you need it, but if you don't need it, that's fine.
It won't affect you sort of thing. And the other part that's important is good. Good to know, even for accomplishing competence, swimmers. This helps helps you to be seen. Um, and, uh, you know, in our lake, we've got boaters, you know, we've got all kindness of see doers and all kinds of things, power craft, watercraft of all kinds.
And you, you are absolutely, and totally vulnerable out there as an open water swimmer. Since you know, 80, 80% of your body is submerged in water. And therefore the only time that we can see you as the moment that you actually have an arm stroke. Oh, there he is. You know? Oh, there he is. But you know, when there's even minimum chop or swell, you know, you can kind of look where somebody isn't, you just can't see them because there aren't barely crypt clears the water when they actually put their arms stroke in and the rest of them is submerged and it doesn't help if they're wearing a black wetsuit as well.
So, so it's pretty hard to see. So if you have something brightly colored that's tagging on behind you. Ah, there he is, you know, and, and you can actually get a sense of, oh, he's moving is progressing. So he's probably fine. That kind of idea. So, so not only do you have the feeling of safety and security, if you feel anxious, you know, it's got enough air in it to actually help hold you up.
If you need to, you can sit and take a rest. You know, you don't even have to tread water. You can just hold it up against you. Um, you know, Lower shoulder or something like that. You have that as a security blanket, you can sit and wave if you need to. And then on the other hand, if you're competent and you're doing fine, and then you're in way open water, you know, if there's any power boaters that go screaming by you, you know, they can see that orange thing.
Oh yeah. I don't know what that is. That's a marker. Let's clear that because power voters don't want to get their, their rudders tangled up in whatever might lie might be attached to that. So. You're more likely to be avoided if you will at, by, by pulling one of these. So it always made a lot of sense to enhance the safety and security of swimmers from at least a couple of perspective.
Yeah, fair enough. And I guess, um, you mentioned that last summer was a pretty big summer for you guys in terms of sales, with pools being closed and, you know, people wanting to get out into nature. There were more and more people turning to the lakes and oceans and stuff like that. And you certainly have these open water, swim groups popping up across the continent where people are gathering in groups.
Um, oftentimes unsupervised. So no lifeguards, just people going out together. So obviously if you're going. It's the best practices to have one of these swim buddies, um, to make sure that, um, uh, you've got it now, we're putting together some bundles on our site, and you mentioned that having a bright colored cap and a good pair of goggles, like be seen and be able to see are two things that are equally important.
So with that said, including that. W, if somebody's going out with a group for the first time, what are some simple things they need to pay attention to you to stay safe? One of the first things that you need to have some comfort with is the water you're about to get into, you know, if you're familiar with the water, you know, like I've lived here in the Okanagan for 20 years and the beaches where I go swimming, I know them cold.
I, I know what the water is. Like. I know how deep deep it is. I know if there's any hazards, you know, like whether there's, you know, Uh, submerged log or, you know, some rock corner or something. And I know where not to swim or dive. I know where the boats are, this kind of thing. So every open water area is different.
And you know, if I was to go down to the lower mainland and now swim in areas that I'm unfamiliar with, well, I would still go, but I would make a point of going with people who are familiar with this. And so, so, okay. He went, do I need to know about this area? And they might say, well, there's a submerged.
See do over here, avoid that. Or there's a, there's a funny big rock here. You don't want to swim into that. Or, you know, there's some boaters that charge out of here and go water skiing in the morning. You got to watch out for that. And there's a current and there's a tide and there's a, there's some anchors.
We're in the middle of a shipping channel or, you know, any number of things that may actually be important if not critical to your well-being out in the water. So before you actually get in, no, the water or at least ask the right questions or be at least led by somebody who. Competently knows the area well in this one.
Well, that's, that's probably the first and most important thing. And even when you do get into the water again, before you do much in the way of swimming started taking a look around from landmarks. I mean, whenever your swim is going to be, whether it's a point to point or a circle or loop or a back, whatever.
You're going to have to be able to swim in a way, directionally in a straight line, you need to be able to swim so that you know where you're going. And so citing points become very important than siting is a skill that you don't need to learn in a pool, but you certainly do. They teach you to learn it, you know, open water.
And if you haven't learned how to. You know, it's not a very difficult thing to learn, but it is important to learn how to do that. So you're siting for a buoy you're siting for a swim toward that bridge, or sometimes even, you know, swim toward that mountaintop because that is actually in the line that you're going in those types of things.
So if you can. Things sort of set roughly in your mind before even ask about them, Hey, where are you? What do you swim toward when you go west there or something like that? Those are all important points to make sure that your swim is an efficient swim and that you don't wind up sort of drifting off into someplace where you shouldn't go.
So, uh, familiarity with it with the site is, is probably the first, most important thing. Secondly, the most important thing product and acute health point of view is frankly, the temperature of the water. Um, you know, Even when it's a lovely summer day, you know, it could be 25, 30 degrees in Vancouver or Colin or wherever you are.
The water temperature will be less than that. Um, and you know, weather, uh, here in the Oakenoggen, I mean, we've had an exceptional summer here, of course, but most of the time, no 22. What we mostly expect is being about as good as it gets, but even at 22, that's still 15 degrees colder than your body temperature.
And so you can still become hypothermic, uh, at 22 degrees of water temperature because when your core temperature drops below 35, Yes. That's the beginning of hypothermia and that's that's, you can see how being in 22 degree water. It might take you a while. It depends on your installation and whether or not you're wearing a wetsuit and how much you're moving, all those types of things.
But that said, uh, you have to be aware of that. And the colder, the water is. The more, that's a concern. And of course the more likely you need to wear a wetsuit and maybe full sleeve wetsuit. And then you're talking about silicone as opposed to latex caps and maybe even double capping. And then of course, even adding a neoprene cap to all of those things.
So each of these are progressive steps of staying contained and understanding your water temperature. And as you swim a lot, you will start to know. What you specifically can tolerate and for how long, like when I go into water, that's 15 degrees Celsius. I'm going, you know what, that's about the bottom end of my comfort zone, as it gets colder than that, it starts to hurt title.
Particularly love it anymore. I like the challenge of it, but I also say, you know, I'm going to limit my water exposure to 30 minutes or something as opposed to in the mid summer. Oh yeah. I'm going to go for an hour and a half swim or two hours or something. Yeah, brilliant. All very good points and things that, uh, you know, certainly from your experience you would know and, you know, we'll make sure we highlight these as we put together the transcript and the show notes, um, from this particular episode, um, well, you know, like this has been fantastic, mark you've imparted.
Uh, a wealth of information. Um, any final words for, uh, you know, people getting into the open water experience or unexperienced, just final thoughts. Well, um, you know, as you mentioned earlier, the idea that this summer has, or last summer particularly has been sort of a watershed year. Pun intended that, um, has actually allowed more and more people that consider swimming open water, as you say, because pools were closing and, and you know, this is the way it used to be.
You know, like if, if this was 50 years ago before every community had their own community pool, um, people would swim in open water. That's where they would actually learn to swim. And, and th th th the experience was sort of less controlled. And I think initially we've always wanted to gravitate towards something that was safer and more secure, which was the pool.
But now we actually want to almost get away from that for a couple of things. And, um, like I said, I mean, Shinran, Yoku, I mean, whether you're out in the forest or you're out in water, um, since more of us than not tend to be stressed, we tend to have stressful environment. No busy lives, work responsibilities, mortgages to pay blah, blah, blah.
I think it becomes really important to make sure that you are spelling yourself off by giving yourself some quality time where you can truly unhook from your life on a regular basis. And as I say, get into the forest once, twice a week and get into the open water once or twice a week, if you can, you know, obviously in Canada, we're kind of limited to how long we can do that, but, uh, probably in most places, since most of us live within a hundred miles of the U S border.
We're all sort of in a, in a sort of strip of latitude where we can probably enjoy open water swimming for close to six months of the year, may through September. Sometime. I usually try to get swimming into October and wait for the first bad day, and then I give it up and then come the, uh, the spring. It depends on how the spring is going, but I'm usually in the water in may and I have been in earlier.
Um, but I can't say I loved it. It's. Painful, but nonetheless, it's sort of one of those things that, okay, how do I get through this? And like, okay, I'm just going to ease my way into it. I'm going to adapt as I can. And yes, this is painful, but I still have to focus on what I need to focus on controlling my breathing and all that kind of stuff.
And so swimming is easy. It's cheap. It's something that anybody can do, or you can do it for a lifetime and it has greater benefits than just the pure physical fitness part of it. I think it has. Least is important, is effective on mental wellbeing. And that's why I think it's one of the best sports.
Brilliant. So let's finish off by just talking about the origins of the across the lake swim. Cause I think it fits real nice with what you just said in terms of what life was like 50 years ago. So the aura, like the origins of the across the lake swim are literal intrusive. Yeah. So, you know, back in, you know, and I wasn't around them, but the, the across the lake swim, um, has been around in various forms for almost a century.
And it became more or less formalized as a regular annual event, I think in 1949, which obviously predates me. But that said back then, Know, Kelowna was a small community. It had 10,000 people, it was a fruit growing area, and most people lived either right on the lake or very close to it. The lake was the recreation site and people would be water skiers or.
Uh, back then there was an, uh, a tower dive that you could actually become good at. And, uh, and of course there was a handful of kids that were learning how to swim. And there was a place called the Columbia aquatic center, which happened to be an outdoor pool sort of fashion in, in the lake. It was just a whole bunch of basically a log boom, surrounded by the acts, if you will.
And they actually even had a tower dive there. Anyway, the point was that, you know, w when you think about it, if you could try and transpose yourself, Era, you know, and if you're a parent with young kids, you know, yes, you'd be at the lake on a nice hot day and the kids would be splashing in the lake, but you could never really totally relaxed because you're always sort of looking at where the kids are and, and are they okay?
Are they safe? And so one of the things that happened was, um, the across the lake swim was actually born. Out of, um, one of the smallest swim clubs that was the, the Testament of the swimming lessons was if you can swim across the lake, then we will consider you a competent swimmer and we can now stop worrying about you.
So in many ways it was. A Rite of passage, if you will. It was sort of not quite like going from a child to an adult, but having the responsibility, if you will, of being a competent swimmer. And back in those days, you know, there would be eight or 10 or 12 kids trying to swim across the lake. And somewhere in August, if you will, what was considered the warmest day of the year?
And they would have their dad in a rowboat, you know, a sort of right beside them kind of going hang in there, kid. And back in those days, there wasn't wetsuits or even goggles and stuff. These, these kids were doing it right. And, uh, you know, like no one really cared about the time either. And, uh, these kids would swim and sometimes the winds would chop up and it'd be a tough swim, you know?
And, uh, these little bikers, you know, they were 10 and 12 years old, 14 years old. And, uh, if they swim across the lake, you know what mom and dad stopped worrying about them. And now they could sit at the side of the lake. Yeah, with their friends and yeah, the kids are out swimming and who cares? They're good.
You know, so it, it was a Rite of passage. And, uh, and so for the longest time, this was really about kids, but, uh, since that time and with the growth of the across lake swim is much more than just about kids. It's it's families, it's adults, and, you know, people like me who learned how to swim as an adult, it's still a Rite of passage and it's still just as meaningful, if not more.
So for adults to actually get over this amazing hump. Being competent enough to swim across the lake. Well, that's brilliant. That's, that's a great story. Great explanation, explanation, excuse me. And, uh, anyways, you know, fantastic time and I really enjoyed this market. Like you've shared a ton of information.
It's always great to talk to you. You can feel the passion kind of oozing out of you as you talk. So, um, no, no across lakes from this year, at least not as traditional format, hopefully in 2020. Yeah, I I'm, I'm almost certain that 20, 22 it'll be back. It'll be hard to say what it looked like. You know, obviously, you know, these last year and a half or so is, has shaken everything to its core.
And, uh, we, we, we weren't able to organize it even though, you know, Various sort of restrictions or lifting you, it's still just in the process. And, uh, you know, when you, when you create an event that has a thousand swimmers in it, um, you need several months of lead time to basically make sure that everything is, if all the ducks are in a row in a sense of safety and all that kind of stuff.
So we, we just couldn't. In all good faith. You sort of go for it and organize this starting in April or something, not knowing whether or not we were going to sort of have to rescind all the, all the orders and everything else. So, um, yeah, next year, next year has gotta be a better year. Um, whether it winds up being smaller or more spread out or, um, who's to say, I don't know, but, uh, th there's still a fairly.
A tight group of people who are still passionate about open water swimming in the event in particular. So we'll see how, how it plays out, but, uh, you know, keep, keep your eye on the across lake swim.com website. Um, it'll tell you the latest sounds good. And get yourself a swim buddy. Yeah, there you go.
Well, mark, thanks a lot for your time today. Really appreciate it. Um, look forward to connecting again soon. Pleasure, Jason, anytime. Thanks for tuning in. If you'd like the content that we've been creating, make sure you check it out here.
It's not something you pay attention to when the weather starts to turn warm, the ice melts, and so on; there are documented accidents over ice, in bathtubs and small volumes of water and pools, lakes, oceans, and so on. So now we transition the series to water safety, and we're going to be talking with several experts on the subject and learning what they do because of the dangers are.
And what we know from our drowning prevention series is that drowning happens quickly and is when you're not looking, you're not paying attention. So as we transitioned to water safety, our first episode is with Johnny Johnson from the blue boy swim school in California. We're going to talk to Johnny about his passion for open water, drowning prevention, water safety, and what he does is at his swim school.
]]>We started the summer with our drowning prevention series. We featured stakeholders, some school owners, researchers, industry experts, and so on to bring you critical messages about drowning prevention and things you can do. But the reality is is that drowning prevention and water safety are not seasonal issues.
It's not something you pay attention to when the weather starts to turn warm, the ice melts, and so on; there are documented accidents over ice, in bathtubs and small volumes of water and pools, lakes, oceans, and so on. So now we transition the series to water safety, and we're going to be talking with several experts on the subject and learning what they do because of the dangers are.
And what we know from our drowning prevention series is that drowning happens quickly and is when you're not looking, you're not paying attention. So as we transitioned to water safety, our first episode is with Johnny Johnson from the blue boy swim school in California. We're going to talk to Johnny about his passion for open water, drowning prevention, water safety, and what he does is at his swim school.
Welcome, Johnny.
Below you will find an unedited transcript of our conversation. You can find the Youtube link next to the text or by clicking here
Thanks again for, for giving us your time. So, um, I want to start by just building a little profile. I know you're really well known in the some school industry, but I still want to take some time to provide some context on who you are and so on and so forth.
So, um, the blue boy swim school is not just, it's not just a business for you. It's it's a life's work literally from being a swimmer, to being an owner and, you know, something we'll get to a little later on, but also an international swimming hall of fame inductee as well. So tell me a little bit about the blue boys swim school on your journey to the point where you were.
Well, you touched on it briefly. A blue boy was founded in 1956 by Mellon doors Maxwell. And I joined their swim team in 1958 and swam for about a year and a half. My father was in the Marine Corps, so we were stationed here in orange county, California at the time. So that was my introduction to competitive.
And it led to, uh, a six year career, nothing glorified. I never broke a minute in a hundred free, but I always like to claim that, uh, one of my students has the fastest, a hundred meter freestyle swimming history. So that's Jason Lee, Zack from the Beijing Olympics, but blue boy has. Probably taught a quarter of a million people.
And the, the mission statement basically is that within each student, we want to provide the ability to preserve their life in the water, to enjoy their life in the water, and then to become as proficient as they want to become. Okay. Give them that opportunity to fulfill their potential. So it ties right in with what you're talking about with the water safety water competency.
And I think we've had a very successful formula over 65 years. Like you mentioned, I was on the swim team. I started teaching in 1967. So this is beginning my 55th year. And I've had now half a dozen, third generation families that I've had the honor of teaching the grandparents when they were children and then their kids and grandkids.
So it's been a incredible journey. And like I say, it's, it's a passion. I love being outdoors. I love being in the water and I love working with children and people. So.
That's brilliant. And that is the ultimate honor. When you have third generation families coming back, you know, like that's speaks volumes to what you guys provide.
Um, I know that, um, one of the things that, and you, you wrote me, um, in response to my invitation was making the distinction between. Safe and safer around the water and it's really important. So can you elaborate on why is that so important to understand? We need to use the word safer and not resigned to safe.
That was the basis for our development of the safer three drowning prevention program. And it's based on the, the idea that there is always risk. And when I look at drowning prevention, I, I try to look at the underlying causes and what is the 30,000 foot view of this global problem? And what are the common, oops, common elements that will, uh, allow us to come up with prevention strategies that are truly effective.
And it starts with the understanding. There's always risks. There is no quote safe. That means you're free from the risk of injury or harm or even death. So you can have a safe, swimming experience, much like you can get in your car and drive across town and have a safe journey. But it doesn't mean there wasn't risk around.
And the reason I feel this is important. So much of the challenge in prevention is getting the audience to change their behavior, to actually engage and become proactive. In coming up with the prevention strategies, they hear the safety tips like supervision, you know, There's no question that's critical, but it's also the one thing that fails in virtually every child drowning.
So it's going to happen, you know, supervision breaks down we're human. So what are the other areas that we can recognize risk? That's always there. Well, water is always providing, you know, an element that you can drown in. So what we wanted to do with the safer three was try to come up. Common elements.
Like I said, there's three common elements to every drowning. There's always water. There's always a person and there's always a response or lack of one. So in crafting the safer three, we thought, okay, let's use this concept. There's always risk, but we can recognize it and we can reduce it. The risks that we look for.
Are common to every drowning in three elements, three areas, water people in response. So if we can use that as a basic formula. Getting people to buy into the concept that, okay, there's risks. What can I do to reduce it? Now you can have them look for the risk in their lives and those three elements and craft their own drowning prevention message.
That's pertinent to them. For example, 97% of the drownings globally occur in seven countries in Southeast Asia. And it could be in the neighborhood of, you know, 300, 400,000 people. So. The three common elements can be used there. Uh, you could go to a little remote village in south Vietnam and see that the children are at great risk because they're being left with an older sibling while the mom goes to the market and they can topple into the river.
You've got kids that are trying to cross rickety old bridges going to school, but you can apply things like Dr. Julia Gilchrist from the CDC did years ago on a trip there, they went into one such village. They recognized where the risks were. One, the supervision part, they found that these kids were getting into trouble by themselves when the moms all went to market.
So they came up with a water watcher. They had one parent that would stay in the village, watching the children while the others did the marketing in wood shop. They learned that many of the kids or most of the people really didn't have swimming skills or water competency. So they found a secluded area of the river and set aside at a calm place where they could learn the water skills learned to float to get back to the school.
And they put up barriers along the river bank that was very steep that use bamboo poles to make fences. So that's basically creating safer water by preventing, falling in off the bank, safer kids by teaching them to swim and providing supervision. And then it was easy enough to teach them some CPR skills.
So here's a remote area where you're thinking in our civilization and the third word I forgot. The ma what do you call us? The Western world, where we've got all the backyard pools. So, yeah, it's the same formula applies to a backyard pool as it does to a remote village in Southeast Asia. It's, where's the risk with the wall.
Where's the risk with the people and where's the risk with the ability to perform rescue techniques. So that's basically where we came from with a safer three and we can get into a lot more example of the tremendous number of factors that can go into a drowning worldwide at any point in time. And it's literally in the middle.
Yeah, absolutely. And those that's three great pieces that you broke down in terms of being able to identify the risk, identify the soup, I guess, supervisors and so on and so forth, and then have a response plan as well. Right? So this is great messaging in terms, and these are things that people can take.
Like you're saying, regardless if they're in a pool throughout a river or they're on a boat or whatever, they can use this formula to. Wherever they are around water. So that's fantastic. Um, you've transitioned safer three to stop drowning. Now, now that's a national organization.
That's correct. Yeah. W when I was president of the us swim school association at one of our strategic planning meetings, we charged ourselves with coming up with a national drowning prevention message of which there was really the red cross different local organizations.
There was nothing that was really. Tying into what people would use. And that was the big problem. And again, why we came to the safer three, hopefully to get people, to buy into the understanding that they're all at risk. Uh, we've decided to make us separate organization from the swim school association that could reach out to, to all ask effects of aquatics.
And we formed a 5 0 1 C3. It was originally the swim for life foundation, but there's a lot of confusion with, is this just a swim organization? So we changed it to the safer three water safety foundation. And there were still confused. It shouldn't because let's say for three was what does that mean? We changed it to stop drowning now, which is pretty self-explanatory.
And then we can get into what the stop drowning now methodology and programs are, and it basically revolves around the safer three.
Fair enough. And how is that? Because we, when we kicked off our drowning prevention series, we started with a panel discussion and, um, we had that Lisa from the not Lisa. Oh, my goodness.
She's going to absolutely hate because I forgot what her name, Melissa. Excuse me, Melissa. Yeah. Um, uh, from she's done in Arizona and PA. Yeah, exactly. Right. So, so she, she brought us some context from what goes on south of the border and stuff like that. And, um, and anyway, Um, I'm curious, like as a national organization, how, how is the message being spread from coast to coast?
Are people adopting it? Um, what resistance are you
meeting? Well, the, the challenge is who's your audience and what's your message. And again, Taking that 30,000 foot view, I was more concerned with just people grasping the concept and not shutting out half of the community. Because for example, in orange county, we created a task force for drowning prevention and the initial drive was to put up signage and it was children drown without a sound.
And that was the big campaign. But at that same year, we had the largest number of people that drowned were senior citizens. So now it's okay. Never swim alone. So again, it's so hard to target a specific segment of the population, but if you use this. Formula of the safer three, you can reach everyone because you're asking them to take a look at their situation, to create a personal recipe for prevention.
That's going to use that formula. So it doesn't matter if they've got a senior citizen that is not worried about children getting into the pool. They don't care about fencing around their pool, which they should have anyway, but it's again, Ascertain, who are you going to reach? And what are you going to tell them?
And that's always been the problem. So regardless of what national organization it is there, they all tend to get too broad. And not able to focus it down to the family level where we have to make the difference. And the challenge, again, as I was saying with the safe versus safer is people don't believe it will happen to them.
They're in a state of denial. It's, uh, it's not something they want to think about. I mean, the thought of losing a child or a loved one to drowning is just hard to imagine. So they don't think about. And, you know, if they've got a backyard pool and they don't have kids yet, it's not a worry, but as soon as they get neighbors to come over, now, the risk level goes way up.
Back to safe and safer. I mean, the risk is constantly evolving. You know, we talk about, uh, kids taking swim lessons and being able to develop safety skills. Well, obviously they're very at risk early on, you know, we teach a lot of toddlers under the age of three and usually by the time they're three, we have them capable of falling in getting back to the side or actually swimming across the pool, doing, you know, a very competent.
But now the parents think, oh, they're water safe, you know? And there we go. Again, pool safe, water safe. There's always room. What's happened now is the kids have enough ability to enjoy water activities. And now they're into a whole new area of risk that's based on behavior and the decisions they make.
And then whether they're supervised because the parents now think they know how to swim and they don't see them jumping off the patio, cover into the pool and missing and hitting the deck anyway. So yeah, it's a monumental challenge.
Yeah. And you know, it's really interesting about what you just kind of led into is, you know, one of the things I was telling about, um, the five episodes we did on drowning prevention is that everybody that we interviewed had a story about somebody that they knew that called them after the fact saying, I should have listened, I should have been better.
I should have done more. Or they had somebody that. Um, was in a situation that was able to be the response that you're talking about. Right. But the response was not planned. It was somebody, you know, turn their back for a moment and something happened and thank God somebody was there and saw it. Right. Um, so, and I'm hopeful that, you know, interactions like this and we, because we can share it on social media and hopefully more and more people will, will pick it up if we just stay succinct and to the point and identify what water it is.
Who the people are and what the response is going to be your three pillars. Right. And focus on that, that I think we got a really powerful message out. Um, I, myself, like in what really kicked this off for me, it was that like, I'm a lifelong swimmer swam my entire life. I have twin three-year-old daughters.
We were at the pool, um, for swimming lessons. Uh, one of them was walking around the pool. I wasn't paying attention. She stepped on a puddle of water, slipped on her bum and went right into the pool because she was in swimming lessons. Thank God. She was able to get herself back up to the surface and so on and so forth.
But like if I hadn't heard her take a breath. Like, I wouldn't have, like, it was that quiet. It was that silent. And it happened that quickly, like you're saying, right. So that's what made this really real for me is going through that experience. Right. And I think that, you know, hopefully we can avoid anybody else, you know, going through.
Experienced and feeling that level of fear and so on and so forth. Um, but at the end of the day, you know, thank you for what you do and you know, like the passion kind of exudes from you and so on and so forth. I want to turn for a moment to, you know, call it the legacy because you're one of the things that, um, In doing research for this, like you've had a lot of people go on to achieve things after coming out of your program.
And you mentioned Jason Lee, Zach at the beginning. And that was one of the reasons, one of the names that I wrote down as I was preparing the show notes and the plan and so on and so forth. Cause you know, everybody remembers if you're a competitive swimmer, you remember the Canada France? Sorry, the.
Wasn't Canada, the USA, France relay, and Jason leaves. Zack's final leg against Ellie and Bernard. And, uh, in Beijing, that was, uh, an incredible race. The race, you know, like everybody still talks about it. What's it like having alumni like that, come through your program and come back and be examples for you.
You don't know it at the time. You know, Jason was three when I taught amen. And he come in for summer lessons until he was 12 and then my sons were on the same swim team. So it was fun watching him develop. And then, you know, he went off to college and we'd see him in high school. Cause I was coaching high school polo and swimming too at the time.
And it's just so wonderful to see. That growth and what they're capable of doing our slogan is great beginnings lead to great finishes. And we realize that every elite athlete has so many people that have contributed to their success. Family, coaches, teachers, everyone. We've carved out our niche. You know, we provide that foundation of love for the water.
We give them a, a solid understanding of balance and breath control and developing a feel for the water. We do a lot of work underwater, and I attributed that back to my mentor, Mel Maxwell, who really understood physics and movement in the water. We've had so many really neat stories. I mean, we've had now 10 Olympians or world record holders.
Uh, we've had another dozen or so that had gone to the Olympic trials. A couple of them were in the finals, but it's just exciting. I mean, Beijing, you know, we had another exciting race with one of our alumni. It didn't turn out quite as well as Jason's, but that was Michael Kavach with Mike. Yeah. Why Michael
Cavett, Michael Kavach
was one of your students.
He went to Tufts high school and he took lessons there. Going back to 84, Amy White was our first student that became an Olympian and she was the youngest member of the 84 team. She's silver meddled in the 200 back. But the thing that I love is that these. Great athletes that brought their children back to learn to swim.
Yesterday. I had Jessica Hardy's children in the water with me. My wife taught her to swim when she was three and her husband is also an Olympian, Dominic Mike tree from Switzerland. And I just can't wait to see the nature nurture development with those kids and they love the water, but, uh, we've got a neat story this year.
The. Fisher sisters on the U S women's water polo team learned at blue boy and their father was a 96 92 Olympian and a Stanford All-American Eric Fisher, but McKinsey and RA are just so wonderful about yeah. Spreading the word of, you know, learn to swim and that stuff they've, you know, helped with some of the things that we've done with water safety.
And this year, uh, Elise Williams is on the team and I thought her father and coached him when he was an age group swimmer. So blue boys got a connection there. And then another young man that I taught to swim when he was three and four. Um, I also swam with his mother at Lou boy. That's Gavin, a Royal. He was a two time Olympian for water polo in 96 and 2000.
And this year he's going back to the Olympics as the assistant coach on the men's water polo team. So he'll be a three-time Olympian. Again, the stories are just amazing. And again, Brittany Hayes is another medalist from Beijing and water polo and her children are at blue boy, and it's just. The legacy, like you say, it's, you know, we're not setting out to create Olympians.
It's just that we give them that opportunity. Orange county is such a Mecca for aquatics, synchronized swimming, water polo, surf, you name it. And there's opportunities for kids to do. Brilliant.
Yeah. And like all those sports, like, you know, like you've coached the broad east coach, the full spectrum. You've done it all.
So is it just, is it, is it a love of aquatics or was it just the challenge of trying something new and jumping into a different.
A little bit of everything, uh, have to share a little bit of my Canadian experience and talking about doing a little bit of everything in 1972, I took a, now a national association, winter water instructor, scuba instructor course at Simon Fraser university.
Oh no. And my wife. Eight and a half months pregnant with our second son, Eric and she audited the course and she actually got the dippy award on this. I have to share, this is my
surprise.
It was the deputy medallion that they gave the screw up of the day that had to get up every morning and do reveling and wake up everybody.
But everyone. A dual citizen. And he went into false labor and they were going to get a little Canadian and she didn't produce. So she got the dippy award
love Canada. That was one of the most memorable weeks we ever spent. And, uh, I taught scuba for a couple of years, I certified over 2000 high school students over a two year period. We would go into the schools and taught a lot of water safety with that. We actually performed rescue breathing live back then.
That was no one cared. You know, you, you actually did, uh, The live breathing with them in the demonstrations, but we, uh, had a great time teaching kids scuba. And during my umpteen years, I coached high school water polo and swimming got to coach both my sons and I even taught, uh, coach synchronized swimming for a few years with the tussle rock was with another hall of fame inductee, Don.
Who's in her nineties now and just incredible woman, but taught me so much about sculling, which I have applied to all my teaching. And I think as part of the early success we have with so many kids that they really have a great feel for the water. So, yeah.
So with what you just said about the, the skills transfer from synchronous swimming and stuff like that is your program.
Is your methodology still evolve?
I like to think we learn something new every day. You know, I've watched the technique of competitive swimming evolve. Uh, another Canadian Brent Hayden has a great series. And my son who's been teaching with us 30 years now is going to subscribe to his, his little clinic.
I just love the way he's demonstrating freestyle and teaching. And that's basically what we've been doing, you know, since Mel was still alive in the early eighties. So, but we're looking for the new subtle shifts, you know?
Uh, breaststroke is one that's always changing and everybody's got one stroke. Well, yeah, that's one that you're going to see the variety, but you know, the transition that you make from the very beginners and we teach the kids to pop up for a breath first, rather than rolling over. So breaststroke is the first stroke they learn and butterfly, but at what point do you start transitioning into the more streamline.
Uh, powerful type stroke with the whip kick rather than the old froggy kickers. And it's always fun to watch what they're doing at the high levels and try to piece together what you can do at the low levels and get that common thread that will be consistent all the way through and without, you know, sending the kids out for a disconnect and say, no, no, no, no.
Now we've got to do this. So always trying to find that even flow of developers. And it makes for a much safer kid too in the early days.
No kidding. You've imparted a lot of information, but I really like those three pillars and I think that's something that we're gonna focus on and make sure we keep at the forefront of the things that we talk about, because it really are, there are three things that are adaptable to any situation you're in and that's really important.
Okay. Um, I want to finish off with, you know, um, an accolade. So, um, you were a recipient of the, uh, Virginia Hunt Newman, right? You know, inducted into the international sports hall of fame or swimming hall of fame.
Disclaimer, there, I'm not an honoree that is strictly athletes and coaches that have typically achieved the Olympic level or world records, et cetera.
We were fortunate enough to be honored. My wife and I with the. The Harold Martin, every child, a swimmer award. And these are auxiliary awards that are given the night before the big induction ceremony to people from the hall of fame it's easily fused. And so the Virginia Newman award was also it's called a Paragon award, but it's, it's through the hall of fame and it was tremendous honor.
And I got to work with Virginia Newman for awhile. We worked together on that. Infant toddler course that from the U S homeschool association for that's grown tremendously, thousands of teachers internationally have taken this course that, uh, to help teach children in, uh, a sane, safer manner and with love and lots of positive reinforcement.
So, yeah, that was a true.
Yeah, no kidding. I was, I guess my, my, before we get into our final thoughts, you know, like, I just want to know, like, what, what does it mean? Like, I mean, cause it is a high honor, like what does it mean to be recognized like that and you know, for your contributions to aquatics and safety and stuff like that?
Well, it's. It's humbling and it's a tremendous honor, and it's nice to be recognized by your peers and to have validation given to what has become my life's work. And, you know, people always wonder what their legacy is going to be, what would be on their tombstone. You know, it just, I like to think that I've made a difference and am continuing to make a difference.
And, you know, we joked around Cindy and I were recently given the lifetime achievement award. National drowning prevention Alliance. And there again, you know, it's well, not a lifetime yet, but, but it's wonderful to be able to work with people that are making a difference, whether it be in coaching, teaching water safety, in anything.
And we're very active in our community, trying to help with different organizations, helping different nonprofits. It's just great to that. Being able to play with kids in the water for 55 years has led to a position where, you know, some of these things are taking place and it it's it's honoring. Great honor.
Congratulations. Well deserved. Um, so w w we've covered a lot. Final thoughts. If you can leave anybody or you can leave anybody listening, watching, whoever's gonna pick this up, um, with some things that are, you know, what you said was pretty potent and your message came across very clear. But if there's some things you can say about, you know, um, you would want people to remember what would they be?
Well, let's take it right back to the water safety and the concept of the safer three. If people will realize that there is always risk whenever you're in, on or around the water, it never goes away. The risks can be very small. Or it can be monumental. It's important for us to buy into that and ask the question.
What can I do to reduce that risk? Or where's my risk. Okay. What's the risk. However you phrase it, but people have to take the initiative too often. They're waiting for someone to give them their brochure. Of safety tips and they said, oh, well, venture pool, we don't have a pool. You know, teach your kids as are my kids are pool safe.
They've had lessons, but then they go to the river and they get swept away in a current because they've never had any concept of moving water where they go to the beach and get caught in a rip current. So again, where's the risk with the water in your life, with the people in your life and with the response capability in your life and realize.
It's water anywhere. You may not have a pool at home, but grandma might have one. There's certainly one at the hotel. When you go on vacation, if you go to the beach, there's no fence around that pool. You need to know where the lifeguards are. You need to know all these things. I mentioned that, you know, this is kind of a, not succinct, but you talked about all the different things that go into a drowning anywhere in the world.
One of our keynotes at a drowning and national drowning prevention conference. Was, uh, a professor from a school in Colorado and going into the talk, she was talking about the synergy of what's in the room and how we all have to work together. And she thought it'd be interesting to have a, numerologist try to calculate the potential number of factors that could go into a drowning event anywhere in the world at any point in time.
And that's considering everything. And he came up with 12 million and you go ahead and craft your drowning prevention message, covering all of those. But again, virtually every one of those 12 million factors could fall under the umbrella of the safer three, whereas the risk with the water, with the people and with the response, and then you can laser it down to individual families.
It can be a community or whatever, but again, where's the risk.
Brilliant. Well, I think that's a fantastic way. Leave this off because the message is clear. It's concise and it's directly to the point. So, you know, I thank you very much for sharing your time with us. I really appreciate it. And you know, for what it's worth by camera, it's fantastic to meet you.
Face-to-face
nice meeting you too. Jason is so much nicer than just an email.
Yeah, absolutely. I, again, thank you so much. And a big fan of Simon Sinek as well. Tell you that. So very
good. Yeah. That was where I got the brainstorm that, you know, we got to move the needle and we got to start with the why. And that's the safer three message.
There's always risk instead of telling them what to do, we need to have them ask what can we do? What can they do? So, alright, you got
it. Well, awesome. Well, listen, thank you very much. You have a great day.
Blue boys swim school was established in 1956. With the original location in the city of Santa Ana, California, shortly thereafter, additional locations were opened in Newport beach, on Balboa island and in the city of Anaheim, not far from Disneyland, these schools were leased.
And in 1965 here in Tustin melon, Doris Maxwell realized their dream facility. They had envisioned two pool. A small pool where children could have extended play time after their lesson with shallow water chance to explore and discover their new found abilities. Gradually getting deeper, going from 18 inches down to four feet of depth, wide, shallow steps gave out great teaching area and the warm water provided a wonderful learning environment for young children.
And for teachers. Moving to the outside pool. They cater to larger classes with our stroke technique classes for higher level swimmers, but also for adult classes and just older children in general, both pools are kept at the same warm 90 to 93 degree temperature. The outdoor pool is a wonderful feeling of being outdoors.
Welcome to blue boys, homeschools offsite scheduling office. We're located in the center of historic old town testing, just above the wooden Indian bar. At blue boy swim school, you will be treated as a cherished family member. This is evident by the growing number of second and third generation children who come from far and near.
They loved their some classes as a child and will accept nothing less for their own children and grandchildren, lupus commitment to excellence in instruction, service, truck, customers, and community, as well as employee relations is the reason why blue boy is one of the oldest and most successful schools in the United States.
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Damone is the staunch professional, always looking for ways to improve himself and improve his craft. And in turn, bring more value back to the people that he works with. And coaches Damon is currently the head coach of the Re
]]>All right, so we're recording and let's get the intro video going. And here we go. Good morning folks. And welcome to the on-deck show, a show that takes a look at people and organizations operating outside the scope of normal to make things better for folks like you and I, this morning, we have the pleasure of speaking with Abderrahmane Tissira, or as I've known him for the last 20 years - Damone..
Damone is the staunch professional, always looking for ways to improve himself and improve his craft. And in turn, bring more value back to the people that he works with. And coaches Damon is currently the head coach of the Regina dolphins and the university of Regina Cougars. We're fortunate to be able to talk to him today and we look forward to this conversation.
Welcome Damone.
The text that follows is an unedited excerpt from our hour long conversation. The full video interview can be found on our YouTube channel and by the link here. The full audio can be found by vis the Spotify link below
Salut Damone!
And that's where my French kind of ends right now because out of practice. So how are you doing this one? Really good. Thank you. And you, how are you? Thank you for accepting the invite and, and whatnot. And, uh, um, hopefully, I mean, as with everybody else, we've had a year of unprecedented disruption.
So I want to talk a little bit about that later on, but, uh, maybe just share a little bit about, uh, you know, current thoughts and feelings on, you know, like this disruption, we're all kind of dealing with it. Yeah, it was, you know, as everyone, uh, you know, the last year we thought it's only, uh, you know, two weeks locked down and everything will be back normal.
And we never had that experience. And one, everything was like postpone console and things, and, you know, we're like, oh, Okay. What, how we can deal with that. And, uh, you know, uh, talking to other coaches and listening to some podcasts, like, you know, we learn a lot and we just, um, you know, figure out that it's, um, it's an opportunity for us to have an extra year to prepare for when I pick trials or, uh, or H group programming or, uh, uh, build the program or just, you know, having like that extra.
Time to, to, uh, build or rethink or review what we are doing and was I think, uh, you know, a good process, but I, I will say that take, take us. Around like three weeks to, um, to accept the reality. But I think once we accepted, uh, with the coaches, they did really a amazing job, keeping parents engaged. And you know, now we can see that we can, you know, we are looking for the end of the tunnel.
Yeah, fair enough. And, um, it's certainly great way in great process, um, to kind of initiate, to get that that going. And the time really has been a silver lining. Like once you kind of get through the shock and, you know, kind of, you know, the waves of frustration, cause it kind of keeps coming back every time there's a new version of lockdown, but you know, uh, great advice and great decorating insights.
So I want to start, um, just, uh, by developing the story of, uh, You know, where, how you, how you got, how you got into coaching, how coaching brought you to Canada and how coaching and Canada brought you to Regina. Cause there's, I mean, there's a long process. There there's a lot of development and the overarching theme that I really want to hit on and develop here is that, um, like if you go through your track record and if you go through sort of the activities you've taken on over the last, you know, 20, 30 years, you've never missed an opportunity to improve.
Whether that's through, uh, institutional education or through, um, you know, uh, internships or apprenticeships and stuff like that. So I want to go through all that and see how that has all led you here. And maybe, you know, uh, go into a little bit of what the future holds. So background. So tell us where you're from, how you got into coaching, how you came to.
Yeah. So I used to swim before, not really a higher level, but I used to swim, like, let's say a national level and. And, uh, let's say like 90, 95 and 95, 96. I was like looking for something I, you know, uh, to do in my future, you know, uh, it's, it's little bit different than now that the people, they even go in university and they have no idea what you were doing as a job in the future.
But I was like feeling that I really want to help people to achieve what they want to. Uh, I felt that in my time I had great support with my coaches and teammates, but I felt that if I am inside, I feel what the athlete needs. I feel what. Uh, support mean and performance. I, if I become a coach, I will maybe have that better understanding of the athlete and more I can, uh, understand athletes more.
I can help them to achieve their best. So. In 96. I started my education in Algeria about, uh, sports, uh, science and, uh, specific to swimming. So we did the three years university study about that. And I start with learn to swim. So, uh, the education, if they give you, uh, in practical side, they give you a group, uh, like zero, they are scared about water and you have to figure out and to build your confidence, to teach them or to put them in, you know, comfort and how they can learn to swim.
So I already start with zero level zero. I coach I coach learn to swim program. And, uh, two years. And after that, the head coach left in, in the team in Algeria. So my teammates, they asked me to take over and they are like same age or older. So I take over and I took over the, the program and there was really a, you know, uh, happy.
I build that, uh, you know, um, relationship with athletes in the pool. I will be the coach and outside the pool. I still friends and worked really well. And in 2008, when I went to a friends in Paris and they start working in, uh, in a club, in a scoop in, in Paris. So I worked for two years. And it's funny because we went to the nationals in 2002 and they gave away a videotape about kinesiology.
So, and I was the consolidate about swimming movement and everything. And I was like, wow, I really want to do that. So I Googled, uh, Kenny zoology and I found like university of Montreal and, you know, a program in scholarship program. So I applied and I saw the. Teachers was, uh and, uh, and nuclear is the guy, uh, created the beep test.
You know, there'd be like the VO to, uh, measure. So I was okay. I have to go there. So I applied and I went to university of Montreal and the first two weeks. So circle K. It's not what I'm looking. So I want talk with John. Mark Lavoie is a physiologist. He used to be a swim coach and really a good coach.
And he said, no, it's not what the kinesiology meaning. You're up here. It's completely different. I said, okay, I'm in the wrong spot. And they said, okay, I will come back to France, but let's try coaching here and see if I like it. So I applied to longer and Martin gen GRA, uh, higher B and they start with, he gave me a really, you know, a group that they don't want to swim.
They th it's not, they don't want, they want, but they are not. Swimming for something. So I really, uh, worked with that group. And after one year, like they, they were all approving and they had like, you know, club nationals at that time. And I really like it because I, my philosophy is how I can help the athletes to get better.
And do you know, to improve. So after that, I started coaching with Martin and, uh, I did one year with, uh, Alessandro in 23rd, 2003, 2004, 2005. And after that, they went as my first head coach position in center stash. When I spent three years there, I learned from, you know, it's my first experience. I learned a lot.
They're great people, great board support. They helped me to grow. They helped me to learn, and it was really fortunate to have those people. And in 2008, a long game called again. And I accept the position as head coach. I went for six years and after that, I. The opportunity to hear in a vagina. Uh, I was looking for a club plus university, or do you want to see how, you know, a university is?
And if I can bring something to university level, because I already believe that sport it's not on at seven. I really believe that, uh, you know, you know, the varsity program is the best part of your career and maybe it would extend. And after you graduate maybe for two or three years, depending where you are in your level, if you will, if you are in Olympic level or at a national level, or even, you know, doing something great after that.
So, and my English was really bad and I, I said, okay, let's go and learn. Uh, you know, and they came here and you know, now he's seven years. Yeah, absolutely. And you touched on some really interesting points there that I wanted to go back and kind of expand on it a little bit. So the coaching development process in Algeria, it's quite different from what we have here in Canada and quite different, what exists in the U S like it's integrated into the school system and, and sports specific.
So, um, I'd like to know a little bit more about that. Can you expand on that? Like what, um, what advantages do you see in the system? Yeah, I think it's, uh, Eastern Europe, uh, kind of vision program and, uh, talking to the people that program exists here in Canada, maybe in the city. So, uh, was, you know, a program the first year you study old sports physiology, psychology, uh, bio mechanic, like everything, like all sports.
And after that, you, at the second year, you choose your, uh, your sport and. And the G teaching was how, uh, the impact of swimming exercise on the physiology, swimming exercise on psychology, bell biomechanic and swimming. And it's really, I thought, I think I had really, really great, um, You know, uh, education in Algeria with, uh, you know, uh, really specific to, to the sport.
And after that, I think, uh, everything, you know, was really, uh, clear for me and it, this is what I want to do. I really like it. And, uh, paradise. That's fantastic. Um, so given that set and then building on that question. So, um, your take on theoretical versus practical experience, cause what you just talked about, um, you had like, your, your journey started with was very heavy on the theoretical side in terms of, you know, the conventional or institutional education, but when you came to Canada yeah.
The opportunity and you dove into the exercise of coaching, the experience of coaching and just learned from experience. So, um, I mean, what are your thoughts on, uh, you know, theoretical versus practical experience when it comes to learning? Yeah, I think it's, uh, you know, depend people, uh, uh, depend the coaches, how they like it, how they learn in my situation.
I really like to see the theoretical parts of, uh, of the reality. And after that go and see, you know, the real life, how that work in the field. And for me, it's completely different. And, um, you know, like I, I will say. Mid when I took over longer. And, uh, after maybe three years, I felt that. I did a mistake in my coaches progression that I didn't spend enough time with, uh, you know, uh, coaches as assistant coach with, uh, you know, I was, um, I was like thinking, oh, I should do like, you know, uh, go apply for a job to work with a good coach for three, four years for I'm pick cycle.
See how they work as an assistant. I was doing that with, uh, Paul Berg. And in that time he was in a. In Montreal and, uh, Try to learn from different coaches, you know, uh, around, but it's not as you learn from someone every single day and you can watch him to do things and, you know, and learn, you know, different, you know, scenario because, um, you know, every day when you have 10 workouts a week, Can many things can happen.
And, uh, you know, I started going to the conference. I thought the conference was a great way to learn about when I started doing a visit for week. I said, okay, I was doing completely wrong going to the conference because when you visit someone, um, you know, week you will learn a lot. You will learn a real, uh, you know, the practical side of the, of the job.
And I remember when I asked you, when you went to Australia, I ask you, uh, you know, what's the experience. And, you know, it gave me a lot of, you know, thoughts, but the experience was to be. It's not what they are doing. It's just to be there at, you know, uh, 4:30 AM or 5:00 AM or when we think it's too early, but you go the other side.
It's not that tough that we think. And. I try to do some more education, some more workshop, you know, uh, I did my certification in UVC about, uh, uh, you know, high-performance and technical leadership, try to compensate that lack of, you know, I didn't spend time, but again, I think, uh, you know, the coaches. Uh, should spend more time as an assistant, you know, maybe three Olympic cycle or foreign Olympic cycle to be ready if they want to oddly to adult level, because I really want to help AKI to achieve their best.
I want to help oddly to achieve the highest, you know, step into podium in Pixar, internationals. Yeah, brilliant. And, you know, very well thought out answer. Um, so leading into, I guess, you know, I've got two questions I want to kind of dive into on philosophy and pursuit of excellence and there, in some ways they, they kind of inter intermingle, like they're, they're almost the same.
So, um, I want to talk to you about what your philosophy is now and how that has developed over the years. How has that changed over the years in terms of what you bring. Yeah. My philosophy as a coach is, um, just helping athletes to get better. So, uh, just teach them, try to teach, you know, uh, I start telling people what they have to do in my early coaching career.
And they felt like this is what they have to tell them, but now it's okay. How I can teach them to do that, how I can, uh, convince them to do the work, how I can sell that. This is the way. What they need to do to achieve their best. And I always try to start from their goals from their, um, uh, thought or, uh, dreams, uh, before it was more mine.
When I started coaching, uh, if you do this, you will make this team. Or if you do that, you will make this time. But they, I didn't know if they want or not. So now I'm more, I w I am more how I can educate oddly to see better, to see better their future, because some people, they don't think they are good, but if they work, they will, they can expand.
She was a triple. Olympic medalists, including one gold, one bronze, one, silver she's been inducted into every possible hall of fame. She's been awarded the order of Canada to say she has had an incredible career, would do it injustice today. She's the head coach of the Pickering swim club, and we're honored to have her here on the show this morning.
]]>Good morning folks, and welcome to the On-deck show, a show that looks at people and organizations that are working every day to make things better for folks like you and I, in their own way. This morning, we have the pleasure of speaking with Anne Ottenbrite from that infamous 1984 Olympic team in LA.
She was a triple. Olympic medalists, including one gold, one bronze, one, silver she's been inducted into every possible hall of fame. She's been awarded the order of Canada to say she has had an incredible career, would do it injustice today. She's the head coach of the Pickering swim club, and we're honored to have her here on the show this morning.
The text that follows is an unedited excerpt from our hour long conversation. The full video interview can be found on our youtube channel and by the link here. The full audio can be found by vis the Spotify link below
[00:00:40] Jason:[00:00:40] Good morning. And thank you for being here again. Thanksfor having us. Yeah. So I kind of want to, just to dive right into it in termsof, uh, you know, talking about, you know, your swimming history, because, youknow, being the age that I am and growing up, um, swimming, you know, like that1984 team, those, those Olympics, like [00:01:00] legends were born there andyou were.
[00:01:02] Um, and, um, I want to talk alittle bit about that. Talk about women in swimming. Talk about women on thatteam. Talk about your coaching career and kind of go from there. So, um, ifyou're right, let's just get into it. All right. So in, uh, You know, uh,starting the obvious place. I want to go back to the 84 Olympics.
[00:01:22] Um, same night as if, if I'm remembering correctly. Same night is when Alex won the 400 IM . and you were up shortly after that in the 200 breaststroke? Uh, you, you had just come back or you, or you had recovered from an injury. Um, first event up first, final up at the, at the games and, um, in a really inspiring swim, you know, like you won a gold medal.
[00:01:47] Um, what do you remember?
[00:01:52] Anne:[00:01:52] Well, you know, it's still incredibly clear. Um, the, themoment in time, I was talking [00:02:00] about the moment in time, when you,you, when, when that metal and you add everything together that you've beenworking for a long time, uh, leadinginto 84, um, Well, there were obviously some issues that popped up.
[00:02:16] Uh, uh, my injury was one ofthem. Um, I dislocated my knee, uh, beginning of may. In 84. But prior to that,I was my biggest competitor at the time was who was an east German woman. Andwell, we had, we had some major competitions over the years have always sort ofone, two in the world. And, um, so fortunately I was looking forward to, youknow, Going to Olympics and winning my gold medal.
[00:02:53] That was the original plan and,uh, being up against and then when they [00:03:00] decided to pull out, um, Ibelieve it was around February that we found that out. Um, I guess my coach wasaware of a change in my training. So brought me into a, uh, Uh, I don't knowhow it came to be, but he discussed it with, from Canada and from Canada.
[00:03:22] Um, Brought me over to eastGermany. And I got to go through checkpoint Charlie, uh, into the east side.And that was quite the experience to swim against Judah at her home pool atEuropean championships. Um, and then being able to come. I after meeting her athome, I did come home and then refocused only just then to get money, dislocatemy knee.
[00:03:51] So all of that, uh, I meanbetween, um, probably March till July was, [00:04:00] I don't know if I'mswimming in my event.
[00:04:05] Jason:[00:04:05] Just to interrupt you there for a sec. So talk to meabout that. Um, because it really came down right to the wire because theswimming Canada, your coach, it set up a time trial prior to the games toactually qualify for the games. Is that right?
[00:04:19] Anne:[00:04:19] Yeah, well, they, they put me on the team, uh, with thehope that, uh, my knee, if it was, uh, close to 100%, I would be able to, uh,do the time that I had done prior to, uh, Olympic trials.
[00:04:35] Um, I, I didn't do anything ason for travel, but prior to Olympic trials, the time I did in may, before Idislocated my knee, um, was based off of that. It was based off of couldanybody beat the time that I did in may. So I didn't participate in an actualtime trial. The other swimmers.
[00:04:54] Jason:[00:04:54] Oh, understood. Okay.
[00:04:55] Okay. Um, anyways, so, but, butthat swim going in, I [00:05:00] mean, um, from an, uh, you know, in myresearch for this, I went back and just watched archive videos as much as Icould find so on and so forth. So the Japanese girl, and I can't recall hername at the moment. Like she was, uh, going into prelims, like she was expectedto be going in first, but ended up yeah.
[00:05:17] Uh, I think somebody got a sevenor 9, 8, 5 seconds off her best. And then you had this 15 year old Belgian girlwho kind of came out of nowhere. Um, and in the end it was a race betweenCanada and Japan. Um, and really at the end of it, just Canada, because, youknow, like it was, it was quite a race. So, um, talk to me a little bit about,you know, um, you, you mentioned your competition.
[00:05:40] That was okay. They decided toboycott. She wasn't there. You had the Japanese that was supposed to be uphere. Who was down in here. You had the Belgian girl who was, came out ofnowhere and was way up here. What was that like? Um, to sort of manage,navigate those emotions, going into that.
[00:05:56] Anne:[00:05:56] Well, yeah, there was a lot of emotions.
[00:05:59] First of [00:06:00] all, my heatswim, um, was an experiment for me pretty much. Um, getting up on the blocks.That was the first time I was able to do full, full width kick. Um, I didn'tknow really what kind of strength my leg would have through the whole, um, 200.Um, I always had a stronger backend, so it was always, um, that kind ofconfidence I had at the back end, uh, to rely on.
[00:06:30] I didn't know if I would havethat at this point. So everything was quite nerve wracking. The heat swim wasnerve-wracking. I didn't even, you know, the, the, my, my start. Even worsethan normal. It was not, I don't have a good reaction time to anything. So thatwas that. That was always my biggest worry, uh, what I was going to be doingoff of the block.
[00:06:55] Um, but of course I was in theready room while, [00:07:00] um, Alex. One is 400. I am the 400. I am what theTV was on in the writing room. Um, uh, and hearing your national Anthem. I, I,there was no, there was nothing that could pump me up more, obviously. Um, sogetting up and doing that race, uh, against Hiroko neck and Sakhi was the girlfrom Japan.
[00:07:26] We had swam together before. Um,and I was pretty confident that if I was able to do the race with the splitsthat I was able to do in the warmup, um, that I would. Uh, I could possibly winif I did it the way, but the adjustment had to come of not being able to do theworld record. I did realize that that was probably not within my area.
[00:07:56] Although I was at the one 50. Itwas still [00:08:00] nice, but yeah, legs.
[00:08:03] Jason:[00:08:03] Yeah. I mean, it's, it's still, it's, it's quite a storyto, um, you know, to go through the injury, recover show up and still be ableto perform at that level. I mean, at the end of the day, when you look at, youknow, what you were able to accomplish in that moment and how you were able tocontinue bettering yourself, like that's pretty remarkable.
[00:08:21] Um, One of the things like goingback and watching the archive videos. And, you know, I, I reached out to one ofyour former teammates, um, Tom Ponting, who, um, you know, is quite thehistorian on swimming. Um, anyways, just asking for some memories and stufflike that. And he shared some fond memories with about you and your friendshipwith Julia, Danielle, and so on and so forth.
[00:08:42] And. Anyway. So, um, he pointedme in the direction of a couple of archive videos to go look at it. And I haveto say that, although, uh, that 200 breaststroke was the race that it was, andit was your first gold medal. I was like, I had great, greater goosebumpswatching the a hundred breaststroke [00:09:00] simply because, I mean like youwere, I don't know if the camera angle was true, but it looked like you were,um, seventh or eighth going into the turn and you just like crushed everybody onthe second 50.
[00:09:13] Like, it was just, it was superawesome to watch. So what do you remember about that?
[00:09:19] Anne:[00:09:19] Well, that's funny. It's so funny that you bring that upbecause it was actually quite, um, uh, and I was standing swim for me becauseI'm just not as, I'm not a 100 breaststroker. So it was coming back from theback end was really exciting.
We're looking at a comparison between the Superflex silicone swim cap from Vorgee and a standard silicone swim cap from Vorgee. So if you're somebody with a large volume is luscious hair, the chances are that you've run into the issue of a cap slipping off or a goal to fit a cap on your head with the volume of hair that you might have.
Today, we're going to look at the difference between the two and why the super flex cap from Vorgee is an excellent option for you. So, first of all, everybody wears swim caps regardless of the size, the amount of hair, etc.
Starting with the standard silicone cap, it's a 50-gram weight, typical silicone from Vorgee high quality, it has a good thickness. So now you see, as you put on, put it on, it stretches the cover the whole head, but you also see the stretch that's required for it to cover the entire head, which means as soon as you get in the water, that's going to start the ride up if you have a large volume of.
A high grade silicone swim cap, available in a range of colours.
But we're talking to somebody who's benefited from one of those people. Who's working hard every day to make things better. Folks like you and me, and that's Dave Johnson in Calgary. We welcome Cole. Cole will talk to us about his journey, what he's looking forward to at the Olympics, and so much more. Stay tuned.
]]>Special Episode: Cole Pratt - Post Olympic Trials Interview. We spoke with Cole on his experience through COVID and his nomination to the 2021 Toyko Olympic Swim Team
The text that follows is an unedited excerpt from our hour long conversation. The full video interview can be found on our youtube channel and by the link here. The full audio can be found by vis the Spotify link below
All right. Good morning folks. And welcome to the on-deck show, a show that takes a look at people and organizations working every day to make things better for you and I. In this special episode, we check in with Cole Pratt, a recent nominee to the 2021 Tokyo Olympic team. We are not talking about one of those people doing things to make things better for you and me, although he impacts young swimmers and many communities around the country.
But we're talking to somebody who's benefited from one of those people. Who's working hard every day to make things better. Folks like you and me, and that's Dave Johnson in Calgary. We welcome Cole. Cole will talk to us about his journey, what he's looking forward to at the Olympics, and so much more. Stay tuned.
Good morning Cole. Thanks for joining us here. And congratulations on your recent nomination to the Tokyo Olympics. Yeah. So you know, I wanted to get into a few things, but first I want to, I like to start with, drawing a picture of who you are, where you've come from?
You're still a relatively young guy. You're a rookie on the Olympic team this year. Where did swimming start for you, and where do you see it going later on?
Well, swimming for me. I started with the Cascade Swim Club since I was probably four, I want to say, in the middle of the swim school program. And I did that for maybe a little while, and then I just moved up from group to group up until the senior performance group.
And from there, I went on to provincial teams and national teams, and now I'm on the Olympic team, which is why this is my first year. So I'm just happy to get off and get off the blocks a couple of times and see where I'm at. And then we'll see what the next couple of years have in store.
I'm hoping they just push it from here.
Sounds good. Do you do draw some inspiration from those closest to you? For example, do you have a sister that's traveling to Tokyo this year? Your older siblings were all accomplished athletes and so on.
So what is it like being in that environment? What's it like in the household?
The last couple of years have been I won't say nobody is that we're home. We always have to come back. Off doing something in the road, like my split there and I are gone for a week or a month time.
And that, that's, that comes with the, with what we do. And I don't know, I was asked that question a while ago and. I can't tell you anything more about what we got going on, but that's just that's with my family.
Yeah. Fair enough. Fair enough. And I know your dad and your mom as well.
So you know, like I know that they bring a lot of passion to the sport and so on. A bigger picture question in the next few days, you're about to leave for Vancouver for the staging camp to get over to Tokyo. What's it going to be like to represent Canada in Swimming as an Olympian?
Well, I've represented Canada before swimming at international meets. I went to The World Swimming Championships; I didn't have quite the performance I wanted there, but it was a good starting point. And ever since then, I've been really hungry to get back in the water and represent my country and, this year, I think I'll be a bit more comfortable in the environment. I'll be a bit more ready to perform. I believe representing your country is the biggest and the highest point you can even get to in your sports. So. I'm always honored to do that.
Fantastic. And you're certainly surrounded by a good cohort of young swimmers, both male and female.
And what's it like to be part of this emerging class of young talent coming up from across the country?
Well, it, it always makes me happy. Because the last like year or two. Many people like treating us like the younger and junior swimmers of the group, but what a couple of my friends and I showed everyone at college was like, we're not 16-year-old boys anymore where we're here mean business.
So we're, we're going to be up here. You guys better match us. So I think those performances at trials got us a lot more fired up, and I think it's going to carry myself and all the juniors, the younger boys. So we're going to clear that attitude now and throughout the summer, and in the future.
Yeah. You know, certainly very exciting to watch.
And tell me a bit about that 100 backstroke swim. Were you expecting that out of that first swim?
Yeah. I don't know, I swam the morning swim and tried to do something. I couldn't quite get to it, but it was still all right. And then at night, I wanted to be, better and I wanted to get my hand on the wall first, but I was, I was happy to make the team, and it was the best time, but I feel like I still have a lot more in me. And swimming at the Olympics. So hopefully, doing that back a few more times, maybe get a little better each time.
Absolutely. A great answer and great attitude. I want to go back just quickly to what you mentioned when we were just talking about the younger cohort of swimmers.
You seem to take pride and not a disrespectful pride, but pride in the fact that you could respond to the challenge in front of you. The way you described it was almost as though as a junior on the team, somebody told you to wait your turn and instead of waiting your turn, you said, okay, I'm not waiting for it; this is my turn. And here we go. So you know, how much of that attitude comes by you naturally?
Well, it's been, it's been a lot of like build up a lot of when you're the young guy on the team with a bunch of the seniors, and you're, you're beating them a couple of times. So they'll, they'll be a little intimidated. They say things like, oh, I miss being your age because I could do anything when I was your age.
You earned the right.
Today we're talking about what we think are the best swim goggles for training and competition. We are looking at the competition swim goggle range from Vorgee. We will look at the entire range, including the Torpedo, Missile, and Stealth MK II, three different swimming goggles that work great for racing and training.
We are starting with the Torpedo; It is a swim goggle with a very thin gasket, an almond eye shape & sits very close to the eye. It is incredibly light as a swim goggle and It has 4 Interchangeable nose pieces, as well as competition straps with a lock guard. It retails at $40.00 compared to other similar products on the market that cost much more.
Morning folks, and welcome to the on-deck show. A show that takes a look at people and organizations doing things and operating outside the normal scope to make things better for folks like you and I. Today, we have the pleasure of speaking with Suzanne Escobar from the 2008 Mexican Olympic team graduate of the University of Texas in Austin, NCAA swimmer currently resides in Ontario as the co-head coach of the Tri-Hart triathlon club today, we're going to speak to Susanna. This is going to be the first in a multi-part series where we talk about tips for training this summer, bringing her expertise as a swimmer and what she's doing in her home-based swim business. We welcome Susanna.
The text that follows is an unedited excerpt from our hour long conversation. The full video interview can be found on our youtube channel and by the link here. The full audio can be found by vis the Spotify link below
All right. Good morning, Susanna.
Good morning, Jason. Thank you so much for the introduction. That was lovely.
My pleasure. And you know, just, just simply a resume of, you know, things you've done and we're going to dive a little bit more deeply into that, um, in the early parts of this episode, but I want to spend the time, the majority of the time talking about the home-based business. You have, you've developed with your husband Lee and, talk about some tips for the summer and people listening and, and whatnot. And then, from that point forward, um, I'm hoping maybe we can arrange a quick tour of your swim area. Okay. Perfect. Um, so just to set the stage and give people some context to understand, you know, like sort of your journey and whatnot.
So you're originally from Mexico, the prime motivation for you, yourself getting into swimming was a near-drowning accident. Is that correct?
That's that's correct. Yes. Um, I would have been maybefour. I, I don't remember the incident, but, um, my mom does; I've always lovedthe water, like, and I, you know, always going to pools that more shallowenough so that I would be safe. I didn't know how to swim. We were on vacation,and sure enough, I jumped into the hotel pool, but that was a little bit toodeep for me; I was having a hard time, I went under, and my sister jumped in,got me out.
And then from then on, my mom's like, okay, well, we're notgoing to go anywhere unless everybody knows how to swim. So my three oldersiblings already knew how to swim. They're already in swim lessons, but theyounger three words. So since then, uh, all six of us kind of got into it, andyeah, the rest is history, right?
Fair enough.
And it, that, that piece of information that sort of times,well, cause we're in the midst of a drowning prevention series that we're alsorunning. So very important message in terms of, you know, like the need forswimming lessons and so on and so forth. Now you've had the fortunate experience to swim in Mexico, the USA andin Canada.
Tell me a bit of the swimming environment in each of thosecountries.
Oh, yes. Uh, that's an excellent question; we can talk aboutthat for hours. I'm just going to get to the point. It's very,very different than, you know what, it's no wonder, you know, the US is the numberone globally, the resources in the United States are overwhelming. In Mexico,like growing up there, uh, there were many challenges, right. Um, there, so ourhistory as a family is quite rich, we had to move from one city to the next,um, you know, my parents had built a swim club from the ground because theywere just not seeing eye to eye with the head coach at the time. I was very young when this happened 9 or 10years old; I remember vividly how my parents were very active with thecommunity members, especially on the swim club. They talked about how thingscould be better. And they not only were talking to talk, but they walked thewalk where, you know, they recruited the parents who aligned with theirbeliefs. They drew up a plan and started their swim club; it was pretty impressive.They recruited a coach from Cuba at the time; swimming and just sports in Cuba arepretty strong. They've been very, very smart. So they brought in a coach fromCuba; he started teaching my sister, who is now head coach up in the Yukon with the WhitehorseGlacier Bears.
She started at 16, and that's how we began to get a glimpseinto high-performance swimming and training. It was always a struggle; there was always something, and there's a lotof politics in play there. I remember atime with a swim club that we were swimming with dissolved due to challengingconditions. We had to move to anothercity to keep finding ways to training and find pool time and swim coaches &resources; we ended up moving three times before I was 12 in [pursuit ofswimming. I was always the new kid at school because I was going to differentcities. I recall a point in time where peoplejust were not happy that we were taking too much pool time for training, and Iwas physically pushed out of the building. And that's just an example of how itwas to just get good high performance or just performance swim club back in,back in Mexico, especially in the city and in the region.
The focus was high on health and fitness, which is excellent,but there's very little focus and attention on youth sports. Ithink sports in general, swimming I love. But, still, sports in general, it'sjust a great gateway for youth to grow, you know, to, you know, get them tolearn, teach discipline and you know, all these virtues and values that aregoing to be good throughout life.
It was tough to get them to see back in Mexico at that time.So my journey, you know, and the first early in life, you know, my teenageearly teenage and mid-teenage years were very difficult. It wasn't up until I was about 16 during highschools, like grade 11 or something like that, there was a huge boom and thecenter of the country, at a swimming training center; it's more like a health club, but thefacilities are phenomenal. So you have 50-meter pool, you have the track, youhave your tennis courts, everything. And they brought in an American coach. InMexico, we have this thought that when it's somebody else other than a Mexicancoach comes, they must be better. It's an idea that still kind of haunts us tothis day, but that's another story. So anyway, he came in. His name is Jack Roach, widely knownin the United States.
We heard about it. We thought it was the best choice at thetime.
We wanted to get somewhere in swimming; we went there and started training with Jack, and it was, it was great; it was a great push. There were a lot of swimmers that Jack drew into that team. The competition day in day out was phenomenal. I improved a lot., it was my first time being in a virtual team because before that it was just family; It was just my sisters and myself getting me the workouts. Performance pushes you to do your best every day.
Coach Jack Roach in the adjacent photo
So, how did the USA augment that for you? Did you go from Mexico to the US or did youcome to Canada first?
So, because I was training with Jack, he would take us tothe United States to race. I was utterly oblivious that I could, as a swimmer,go to university and represent a university at the same time while getting anexcellent education and do both at a hundred percent like without compromising.
Unfortunately, you don't have that possibility back inMexico; for 90% of the swimmers, they have to decide once they graduate highschool, continue swimming, or just pursue their education.
And this is going back to; we don't, we can't pay attentionto that youth, recreation, youth sports and youth performance, because as anexample in high school, I had a teacher that said, well, you know, it's gettingtough. So you're going to have to decide at some point whether you want to swimor you want to be a student.
That's the reality. We have so much talent in Mexico, butkids just can't pursue as much as they should or much of that one because theyhave to compromise.
Would it Be fair to say that they're told they have tochoose one or the other rather than meet the challenge?
I was told you're going to have to choose swimming or ourschool. I was told. So they're going to pick school because they can't make aliving out of swimming. So I just spent like, I best focus my efforts into theschool.
Sorry. I want to interrupt you there; just a follow-upquestion to what you said. To dig alittle bit deeper on that point. So you're not going to make a living out ofswimming, but what you do get, you know, through the journey you took was a lotof experience.
Oh, absolutely.
You're not, you're not going to make a living yet. But theexperience that you're going to live, you know, will help shape and help youunderstand what you might enjoy down the line that you can make a living at.
It's great that you bring up that point that's how we think;we appreciate what sports do for a person. I vividly remember times where mymom was fighting with my uncles, but you know, it's neither here nor there. Thepoint is that there are a lot of parents who just don't see it that way. Theymay believe they are wasting too much time;, you're not going to get, you'renot going to get to the Olympics, and retreat to the idea to go to school and just forget about swimmingand that's usually how it works.
Welcome to our next episode in our drowning prevention series. For this episode, we go south of the border to our friends, Stacy and Debbie at the Dolfun Swim School in Portland Oregon. Stacy, and Debbie are going to talk to us about safe water behaviors, their recommendations and things for things to pay attention to in their area.
And talk to us a little bit about that, their school, what they do and what their philosophy is. We welcome the ladies.
Below you will find an unedited transcript of our conversation. You can find the Youtube link next to the text or by clicking here
All right, and official. Good morning to you both. How's the weather down in Portland. Uh, a little sunny today, but it's supposed to just start raining again, which will be really good because, uh, we're looking at a drought this year.
So, and I say, son always bring the sun on.
Thank goodness. We have lots of water around us, but yeah, they're already talking. It's only may, they're already talking, like we need more rain and we're like, oh boy. Most of the time, we'll say that, but we're like, um, over five inches behind and our annual rain amount, that's spring green on with the last year we've had, what else do you expect?
Well, you know, like, you know, on the west coast, especially, you know, like if you don't get that rain, that leads to a pretty bad forest fire season down later on in the year. So it's careful, you know, Balancing, you know, like nature, mother nature is always looking after, right? So we had a rough fire season last year.
So hopefully we get lots of rain, the waterways dangerous right now. So this weekend coming up is our Memorial weekend and for the United States and the, you know, they're, they're, they're really talking about that water danger, you know, boating and all the rivers and lakes and everything for people to be aware that there's not as much water.
You know, and that makes it the current faster. It makes a lot of things more dangerous in the water. So it's a great month for us to be, um, you know, we focus on that water safety for mail. So. Well, it's fantastic. So why don't we just get into it in terms of, um, getting the show started? So, I mean, obviously, uh, the Oregon coast is, you know, one of the most magnificent coasts, um, in the world cannon beach in that area there.
Um, and then. Yeah. And I say that from a tourist point of view, because I'm sure, you know, places that are much more spectacular than cannon beach, but that's pretty fantastic. And we're going to take you to canopy chest our first, you know, exposure. Yeah. Fair enough. Well, it's beautiful place. Um, anyways, so when I, when I started this show, um, started this series.
We started out with a panel discussion talking to some experts about drowning prevention and things to pay attention to in the room. And I had a question. I had a thesis that I wanted to answer, and it was largely based on the activity and what was going on here in Canada. But I'm curious how this may apply in the U S and how, what your thoughts might be on it.
Um, but because the learn to swim industry and community is so effective at what they do, they do such a great job of teaching and getting safe water behavior messaging out and so on and so forth. In Canada, at least at a time like this, when we rely on people, politicians specifically to make decisions about what's essential, what businesses can open, what can't open.
Um, water safety was always something that was never prioritized. And now we're in a situation where. We expect to see the trend of 2020 continue. We've seen that it was looking at the numbers out of Australia earlier today, where they're they're ahead of us, obviously, because of seasons. Um, and drownings I've already gone up 38% there.
Um, so the thesis is this. Um, we take water safety for granted. Because of people like you guys that do such a good job of teaching those safe water behaviors every day. And, um, my, my question or my, my intent is to have that either validated or debunked. So my opening question is what do you think are as a culture, as a society?
Do we take this for granted? We're going to Gabby first. Let's let's do it. So curate this. Yeah. So the, the question is do, does our society take this for granted, obviously swim school owners. We're in the business of drowning prevention. That's our goal. Right. Ultimately, and, and we work on having fun while we do that.
Um, but you know, we were very concerned. We got ourselves on the news and everything last year that the lifeguards weren't being trained, they weren't going to guard. Even in Oregon, they took the lifeguards. Off the open water, um, ways that we usually would have lifeguards, um, saying that they didn't have pools to train those guards.
So, you know, our hair was up on the back of our neck, super nervous, and we are interested to see, and we felt like our thesis was and saying to the newscasts. Yes. You know, we're going to see a higher level of drownings. Because we aren't having this prevention happened and, or protection. So predict pension protection, all the layers that we need for the drowning prevention arena.
And so I'll be interested to see what those statistics are. We have a very difficult time pulling those statistics out. We are able to go to a couple of different counties at a time or municipalities and grab those incident reports, but it's not comprehensive. So that's the sad part. So we don't know. Um, what has and or has been caused for about we're going to be two years behind knowing if the drowning rates actually went up.
Yeah. And that was mentioned in our panel discussion that, you know, the data is a problem because of the times of process and said it has to, you know, you're basically looking at coroner's reports, which take time to go through the court system and so on and so forth. Right. So Stacy, your thoughts. Um, so I actually saw a new news podcast or a news broadcast the a day ago that was talking about the drowning rates and that they did go up last year.
Um, so they had, um, some, someone from Multnomah county on, and there was a significant increase about 30% of drowning rates in our area. Um, And it breaks our heart to see that because we're in this business to help keep people safe and get that message out there. And we couldn't for a year. Yeah, fair enough.
And I mean, I guess, um, you know, in terms of, uh, you know, the stats, I mean like, uh, often, um, and you know, I, one point I was part of this demographic, but it seems to be, you know, males between 18 and 30 seem to be the highest culprit of drowning. Cause you know, We're not necessarily the smartest at that time in our lives.
Right. I liked that you actually widened, usually it's like 14 to 18, but you allocated 30
to get, you know, There you go. But I mean, at the end of the day, I mean, like out of the series, we've got, you know, several really potent nuggets about drowning prevention, you know, like drowning a silent happens in 30 seconds or less so on and so forth, things like that. So, I mean, these, these are the things that.
The public is not aware of. And you know, and this is, you know, like even myself, who's, you know, I was a swimmer for 10 years. I was a coach for 20 years and took my kid to the pool for swimming lessons. And, you know, she slept on the deck, went right in the pool. Nobody heard her and. The fact that, you know, you say the words drowning, a silent become ever more real.
And I was like, wow. Like, I didn't think I would turn around for one second and she'd be gone underwater. Right. So, um, anyways, so to that point, uh, you have several bodies open bodies of open water. Pools and so on and so forth. Um, what are you doing? What are you communicating out to your membership in terms of, uh, the behaviors, things to pay attention to, uh, from a water safety point of view?
Um, we'll go to Stacy first and then come back to Debbie. Uh, well, this month we did our water safety month focus and, uh, It was a lot of talking about safe water practices, how to be around open water, making sure that you're wearing life jackets as teaching all the parents, how to have a proper fit on their life jackets.
Cause some of them brought in their own life jackets. For us to look at and they were wearing life jackets that were too big for their kids or too small for their kids, or just not fitting well to make the life jacket effective. Uh, we are also talking about, uh, reach or throw and don't go. So teaching the kids to reach for somebody, if they are safe online on laying down on their bellies, throwing a life ring for somebody and yelling for help for an adult, because a lot of kids get into themselves into trouble because they.
Go, oh, I can swim. And then they want to go in and help somebody who is having trouble in the water. So that focus yesterday and this week, actually this whole week and the kids are having a lot of fun with it. And I'm getting a lot of parents who go, oh, I didn't know that. So it's really educating our parents as well.
Fair enough. And over to you. Yeah. So I think we have the fortune of our parents being on deck with us and there's always different pros and cons about that. But the good thing is that they can hear every word that we're talking to these kids about. And what we know is it's a triangle relationship. We have to educate the parent as well as the behavior of the child.
Um, and let the parent know where where's the boundaries that your child does or does not have. The one thing I thought was a great, uh, incident that just happened this week. Stacy, do you want us to tell us about the little boy that went swimming in the Sandy river? Oh, yes. Well guy, or if he's a bigger guy, I dunno.
Um, he went swimming in the Sandy river and, uh, which is one of our swimming holes around here. A lot of people go and swim in it, but a lot of people swim in that river without a life jacket. And he did. And so he came and he was telling me about how he went and swam in the Sandy river. And I asked it was the week after we did life jackets.
So I am asking him like, okay, so did you wear your life jacket? And he's like, no, there are like a hundred people around me. I didn't need to wear a life jacket. Like, no, you always have to wear that life jacket in the water. If you're an open water, you don't know what's there. So you have to wear a life jacket to keep yourself the safest.
Yeah, that lesson to learn for the parents to hear. And she was able to like reinforced to the parent. They need, they got to have a life jacket on. It's a really dangerous area. We have a lot of drownings on this particular river in that particular area. It's relatively shallow water. Um, so it seems, but you know what that means.
It means it's shallow and then drops off hard. So. You know, always kids have a little more confidence than they might know about. And in the pool we don't have current. We don't have rapids. We don't have undertows the ocean, you know, in Oregon has this terrific undertow happening. That's very, you know, we're always talking about.
Don't turn your back to the water. Don't turn your back to the ocean always face. So all those little tips that we're trying to get across and Stacy has done a great job. She's made sure we had printed promotional information going out with all of those tips and safeties safety tips, basically for people to know for the summer.
That's fantastic because as we're saying, you know, the, the education piece is, is what makes you guys stand out and ultimately creates a depth deficit and the understanding by decision makers and legislators as to the importance of this. And so, you know, you need to prioritize this and recently with the, um, announcement from the who, that this is a worldwide issue that everybody needs to pay attention to, um, you know, it makes it even more real.
Right. So, um, thank you for sharing that. So maybe tell me a little bit more about, uh, the dolphin swim academy now. Uh, tell me where did it start? Um, and what are you guys doing? What is your philosophy? Uh, tell me about the kids that come through the school. Let's go to Debbie first. Awesome. Well, thank you.
Uh, I got started back in 1994 taking my own 18 month old child to a swimming lesson because somebody knew somebody that was teaching water babies, which I had never heard of before. And they said, you know, she needs some brochures or some marketing done. And I was a business consultant, marketing, you know, um, background.
I said, yeah, sure. Well, let me go do my research, took my child and I fell in love with the water. My child had. The special needs and the water magically, as we all know, uh, like in lightened and gave us that information about more about what his needs were. And I was, you know, I was one of the, I was her best campaign manager for water babies, and then long story made short.
She ended up leaving the industry. I was still connected with her taking my children there and. Uh, people started asking me, you know, where are we going to go? And I was like, I don't know why they're going over to this school over here. So I called that school and they went there and they came back to me and said, where else are we going to go?
We want to go somewhere else. If you know, it was out of the way. It wasn't where we lived. So long story made short, started my business. Start a swim school. I was a mortgage broker at the time. So it was a different leap for sure. I hired people to run some of my mortgage company for me because I started loving and loving this business.
And six months later, I left my back corporate corporate life and came into the swim business and never looked back. So that's where we've been. We are a child approach, child centered approach, um, methodology, I would say. And, uh, my background also in college, I had studied childhood development. I was going to be a teacher, but then I decided I couldn't make enough money for some reason at that age.
That's what I thought. So I became a fashion merchandiser at that time. So I brought a lot of business of. Approach to the business of swim school. And I think that's how we've also stayed in business over all the years through all the different economies I knew we would make it through this last year also.
You know, it was a hiccup that we needed to figure out. And, um, I just fell in love with the fact that we can be making a difference in people's lives. I mean, people ask, you know, what do you do? And you get to do something that you're passionate about. Well, you know, what's. What's there more to be passionate about than saving children's lives and being preventative, uh, about that and building relationships.
I just love the part of that comes with this in building relationships with families. And so we've really taken more of a approach, like the mind body soul balance that the water brings to us. And we look at, you know, what are the neurological benefits? What are the physical benefits, all of those things, and working on communicating that with parents.
And in 2006, I found if I brought the parents in first and talk to them about what their journey with this, with this program would be with their babies in the water, uh, that they, they are highly educated. All of our clients and customers, they're highly educated people to be in this industry. As you know, we want to serve all the markets, but that is our demographic.
And when they were educated, we had a better experience. We minimize the fear factor, gave them information to make good decisions. And so they would know that we were going to have a four or five-year journey with them and maybe longer. And that we're we're, you know, we may or may not fit. And I am happier than anything just to send them onto another school or location.
That's closer to them that they will go every week. And so I started going out to the hospitals. Somehow or another, I had a connection started going, talking to the parent and meet, um, moms and dads groups. When you're first born, you come back to the hospital, so I'd come back there. And that's where we started.
Building the education I wasn't selling my business. I just wanted to educate the public. And, uh, we've been at 18 different locations over the years in Portland, Oregon with any water that we can find that we can rent and, um, backyards apartments, leasing, renting condos clubs, and, um, and now finally, We're hoping to build our own facility coming up here so that we can have a solid home to serve our country, our counties and our community and the, um, the, the biggest change that we made this last year was changing the.
Um, timing of our classes and what we found is we had to get less children in. So that was heartbreaking when we'd been closed from may, till October, we couldn't get all the kids back in every single child is, you know, a family that we know. And so we had, we moved over to a 20 minute lesson and got three families in per hour into our programming.
And that's been a great asset. Um, to the community and getting the numbers of children in, because again, we feel this a little bit of pressure when summer's coming in our community, right? We're like, oh my gosh, we need to get every single body and every single child. And, you know, we found out that our, our municipalities are not going to be open most of their indoor pools, even this summer.
So super. Upset about that. We can't service all of them. Of course. Um, so we're doing our best to try to get a second location open up as fast as we can so we can get those kids in the water. Yeah, well, I mean, it's, it's absolutely clear. Um, you know, you want to talk to Stacy, uh, you know, like I, I hear like, like the good vibes that come across the phone about your school and what you do and hearing from the founder, you know, hearing that enthusiasm, that passion, all that stuff.
It all makes sense. It all comes together here. So, um, Stacy, I want to, did you want to weigh in on that as well? Uh, so I come with a strong swimming background where I did work for the public pools, um, for seven yeah, seven years. And so coming over to dolphin, um, after all of this swim experience has been, uh, amazing.
And I love that every lesson that we do there is actually a water safety factor in there. Yeah. And that's, uh, one of our biggest things, even when we go out and we do teach classes, like we'll go out and teach a bathtime class. And in the bathtime class, we talk about water safety at home. Right. Your child can drown and one inch of water, it cannot happen.
You know, you have to know what water can do to your, your family. And so when we go and teach, we talk about bathtub safety and how to be safe around bathtubs or backyard little, um, splash pools. And, uh, we just. The development and the knowledge that we try to give to our community is really precious. And I hope that we can expand on it and keep growing and maybe partner with some of those bigger pools, a little bit more to extend their programs and extend their knowledge.
You mentioned the bathtub classes. Was that an adaptation for COVID or was that something that you were doing? That's actually something we've done for a number of time. Uh, and it's 1995, 96. Yeah, baby time. Yeah. And so we, uh, did the actually for a while with babies R us, which closed unfortunately. And they were really great partner to work with as we could really reach a lot of babies and parents would come and we'd talk about like how to, how do you hold the slippery child and make sure that they stay warm and safe and that your.
Using the bathtub time to teach your child to be around water. So, you know, not wiping their face after their face gets wet is very key to teaching them how to be in water, like their face, that's the habit they get. And when they enter a pool or a lake or a river, that is what they try to do. And that means that they can't use their hands to swim, which is a factor in drowning.
So. It starts from just that bathroom. Yeah, we started, we started work here. I started working myself, uh, in the birthing center. So we have a lot of water birthing centers here and I was working with the international birthing center. Um, waterbirth international and they happen to be here out of Wilsonville.
Uh, near Portland, Oregon. And, um, so we would literally go to the birthing center after the birth of the baby and take them back in the bathtub the next day or two right after that. So I couldn't, everybody was asking, can we get in the pool? I'm like, There was nothing in the United States back in 1995 in our area that I could learn or educate myself with.
Um, however, a person named John Bainbridge was a friend with waterbirth international Barbara Harper, and he was in town and he just had his new baby and he was putting the baby in the bathtub. And so he came up and started working with me and I was, you know, Sailing without every sense and found out that, you know, if we can get with the sooner that we can get with those babies and the families, the better and, um, making, you know, making them understand that it's okay, water safe, they just lived in water there, you know, first part of their whole life.
Now they're here on earth with us. So now we're how do we minimize that space? Because it used to be. Swim schools, traditional swim school, private schools. So we start around eight months and I couldn't figure out why we weren't getting them back in the water right away. So our goal was to minimize that gap, um, and the, you know, the, the, the relationship and the bonding.
And what I love is that the dad gets an opportunity to be with the baby at a time that. Mom is with the baby quite a bit during that first age. And this is like a space and time that he gets to have. I mean, I can't believe how many dads are in our classes. Like they, they, they come once and they're like kicking the mom out.
Okay. I got, this is my activity with my baby and they can, you know, have a great time with them. We make sure that our, our, um, there's a lot of play. I think all of us learn better through play. And so we make sure we initiate that in the water too. Even with those little itty bitties. And then, you know, we can start them at eight weeks in the, in the pool.
We're able to keep our water warm enough at that 92 degrees or 33 Celsius right in there. So we're able to. And emphasize that you need warm water to be able to work with those kiddos, but yeah. And it sounds like you're perfectly set up for that. Um, I want to, uh, I want to finish this off just some quick tips from both of you on things to pay attention to around open water on the pool.
But before that, um, you know, I would say from what I've seen based on conversations, whatnot, um, Debbie, you're almost in the authority figure in this space. I know that people, um, bring you into, uh, teach your program. Um, and you consult quite a bit with some schools. And I wonder if you could shed some light on that.
And from the point of view of, um, Why are they bringing you in? Right. And what are they, what are they looking to get from you? Yeah. Thank you. I guess that's what happens when you've been in the business this long, then, you know, I don't know if I'm authority or not, but I am happy to share what ever information I've learned and learned through hard knocks of a few times or so.
Um, I'm just super. You know, I feel so blessed and I'm so great, grateful that I have the opportunity to share with other people. You know, we always have our, our slogan is like one baby at a time, one child at a time, one day we're saving that one life at a time and I get to go and teach other teachers.
You know what knowledge I've learned over time. And so I feel like we're just able to expand that and I do travel around the world and get to do that. Um, you know, why they bring me in is I think that people are looking for that next level of information, a lot of swim schools, uh, start because they know of course.
We need to save lives. Uh, in China, we work in China quite a bit, or I work in China with some clients and drowning prevention is not even on the, on the list. They have learned that child inner child development, they really have a child development approach, a lot of play and fun, which is also excellent, but they do a lot of things that we would see as, um, alarming.
In, you know, because they just don't know. They don't have the, the drowning rates that we're seeing. They do have high drowning rates, but it's not part of their conversation. So I get to bring that piece of the conversation to them and go look that behavior in the pool can be dangerous. Let's let's do it this way.
So I'm just giving them. Additional, um, pieces and pies and benefits and maybe tips and techniques that they wouldn't have otherwise known. And so with, um, you know, with veteran schools, working with schools that have been a long time, we just have a little bit, uh, maybe a different approach. We also have a very strong preschool elementary approach that.
Um, is LinkedIn with the total immersion approach. So we, we work on that approach with, uh, um, and I rewrote we've rewritten all of our lessons, um, to incorporate that information. So some people will come and train with us at our facility. As, uh, to come into our baby program and we definitely have had a strong baby program.
That's where I started. I wasn't a swim teacher. I had note coaching, you know, I, I swam in when I was young on a swim team and on the, but I had no knowledge. So when I taught a three-month old, then I had to learn how to teach a six month old. And so what I did is I watched that child and I saw what worked in the water with them.
And then I. I feel like they were trained teaching me. So it's taken years to get to the point where we have a very comprehensive curriculum. So they're just looking for those extra tips and techniques just to elevate their, um, you know, training and their knowledge and maybe learning more of the why. I think the biggest reason people bring me in is because I.
Uh, talk about the why I talk about the neurological functioning of the brain. How does that work in our whole body? Why do we want to use our core of our body to swim versus our secondary propulsion of legs and arms take those off and what happens? So learning about breath, buoyancy, and balance, and what that looks like.
We know you have to have that. But how do you do that with techniques? So we've got a couple little fun techniques that we've learned over the years. And, um, when people see that they think, well, that's kind of interesting and new. And so I look at people's programs and incorporate what they might take to the next level, um, as an, as an offering to their, to their families or their children in program.
We also, I can also come in and I, you know, I also consult on business development, pool development. Um, staffing development, you know, that type of thing, as far as what people may or may not be operating efficiently, you know, and we had to pivot all this year. I think a lot of people have got the opportunity to learn what am I going to do to keep this business moving?
So that's part of what we help with too. Oh, that's fantastic. I mean, certainly you've seen the resilience here at several people in the industry. Um, that certainly I've been casualties, but for the majority, you know, like you've seen the resiliency in terms of being able to adapt, figure out ways, how do we fit?
What is the new normal going to look like and so on and so forth. Right. So, yeah. Fantastic. So preneur down. You know, fear and entrepreneurial spirit don't even give us a challenge, right? Find a way to find a way actually connected better this whole year and, and help each other. If one person was down, we helped them back up.
You know, everybody pulled each other along and regrouped and became stronger as an industry. Oh, a hundred percent, a hundred percent. It's fantastic to have both of you here. Um, so to, to, to, to wrap this up, you know, we want to stay focused on drowning prevention and the information that the public needs to know, um, so on and so forth.
So in your, your own list, Individually, some, some key things that people need to pay attention to, um, at whether it's out at the lake, uh, on the coast, you know, at the ocean or backyard pools, whatever the case is. And don't worry about being repetitive because of the public needs to hear it. They can hear it twice.
So let's go to Stacy first. Well, the first thing is to teach your child to sit and wait for permission to enter the water. That is the number one prevention. If they don't have permission to enter the water, they should not be entering the water. Uh, that is our biggest thing. We do that every single lesson with every single child, they all have to have permission to enter the water.
They shouldn't be touching the water without you saying that they can do that. Um, um, then otherwise, you know, use your safety equipment. If you're out voting. Where the life jacket, just having it is like having your seatbelt in the car and not wearing it. It's an accident waiting to happen, where your tools use our tools, make sure that you have them and make sure that they all fit well and inspect them regularly.
So if you have old equipment, make sure to replace it with new equipment when it's getting worn and frayed. And then if that's your big all-in-one and then, um, otherwise make sure that you are doing. Year, round swim lessons, as much as you can. Cause that water exposure is a lifesaver. Either kids learn how to navigate water systems.
Like we do jumping in with clothes and ensure that the kids know how their body is going to feel. If they've been fall into a body of water, right. Wearing a life jacket, wearing their clothes, what to do. If they're stuck in the middle, you know, extended back floats, making sure that those kids can float for a long time, they get five minute back floats and we really do time them five minutes.
I got to do that. I'm going to backload now how to keep themselves up so that if something happens, they can be safe and their life is safe. Hmm. Very concrete. Yes. Very all the time. Yeah. And we, we teach them how to remove their clothes. So depending on the age of the level and what we know their skill levels are, you know, we've been working with them week after week after week.
And then we have the test week or the safety week we call it, which we do every may. And, um, so they learn how to, how to take their clothes off or to jump in without goggles. So, you know, learning how to swim without your goggles. You're not going to fall off a boat and have your goggles on, but for swimming lessons, we encourage goggles, especially your goggles.
But we, uh, we, we, um, we make sure that every lesson they learned to wear their goggles for safety, so we can create the positive behavior they need for when they fall in water and that they, they know their surroundings, understand their surroundings. Look. Around and see where it is to go to also rescue yourself because ultimately it's about self rescue.
So learning how, when you get to the top of the water, parents will actually ask us, why do you flip the baby over? Why do you teach the child to flip right? When they get to the top of the water? And that sounds like a ridiculous question, right? When we all know it as professionals, but we're like, that's where the air is.
That's where, right when you're at the top, you need to grab that breath because you may only have a second before you go back under. You need to teach them at the interface of that water is where you grab that breath, recirculate and greet prepare yourself because you may be going back under fair enough.
And any advice around specifically, and I'm going to go to Debbie on this one, backyard pools. Um, I know there has been a high incidence of purchase of backyard pools, indoor pools being closed, and people looking for water source. So some safety tips around the backyard. Yeah, well, that was one of our first approaches.
When we found out, you know, what we're closed, we're going to be closed for the summer. Our biggest campaign approach was, um, backyard safety and what to do, and where I started was teaching and backyards and taught for many years, um, in backyards and an apartment building. Cool. So yes, the pool purchasing industry went crazy last year.
Even our customers were saying we're putting in a backyard pool, they'd call us to find out who to have installed the backyard pool. So talking about the preventions of, you know, making sure you have a gate around the pool, again, not going in the water. So those layers of prevention of making sure you have the gate, don't go near the water need permission.
Then you have your safety equipment. And or how to self-rescue and, um, really talking about all of those different layers of prevention were super important. And that's where we completely focused our attention in our media and our Facebook and, and out to our customers, really getting that information out there.
Um, just, you know, That they needed an adult to be in the water. We talked to the children, you need to ask permission and the adult has to be in the water, you know, just because we're standing around behind you doesn't mean it's okay for you to get in no matter, even if there's another person, you have to have your, what we call it person in charge, um, with you and give you permission.
So, yeah, that, that was super scary. We were all over the news and the media about. About that just because I'd like, okay, now as professionals, we might not give him the swimming lesson, which is only one layer of protection. We need all these other layers to make sure that we're in front of it. And that parent education piece, because you have the parents on deck with you is super important because often one of the other things has been revealing about these shows and conversations is like, um, And I'm going to pull a quote from a show we recently did.
Um, I'm probably not going to do it justice, but I will try, um, is that you can't put the onus of safety squarely on the kid. Um, at the end of the day, as a parent, like you have to be aware of what's going on, so you can't turn your back, take a sip of a beer walk away and so on and so forth. You have to be present.
Yep. You know, I just had a, uh, we have so many stories, so, um, I had a niece call me they're in the backyard. They're at a birthday party. She used to teach for me. So she's pretty aware of the safety factors. And she watched a mom set a two year old down in a water water was about two feet deep. So the water is up here right there.
That's where you've lost your balance in your body, especially a two year old. And so she sat there and watched the mom, put the child in the pool, told the dad, Hey, I'm going to go in the house. Dad still doesn't turn around and watch the child. My DCE walks over just to observe the lifeguard basically.
And sure enough, that little girl fell under the water and she looks over at the dad. She's looking, nobody's going to. Do anything, are they? So she, you know, pick the child up out of the water, furiously walked her into the parent. And I won't tell you the message.
We can leave that to the imagination
that could have been just this very, you know, it's always, that's why we call it an accident. Um, so, um, being alert and aware and, you know, being a water watcher and what to watch for, and that your face, if you're the water watcher does not leave that space where that child is that okay. And we, uh, we even talk about, some people will say, you know,
make sure we are within arms length, but I love what Robert Strauss taught us.
He said, be, be sure you're within the child's arms length. Because the child needs to be able to reach you. So that's a little distinction. That's one of our little distinctions that we have, um, in our program that we work on, you know, educating the kids and the parents. That's fantastic. Well, this has been packed full of information and things to pay attention to.
Um, same about water Watchers really quick. If you are using a wa you have to be using a water watcher. If you're at a pool, like a backyard pool, you must have an adult with their eyes on the water. And a key to that is actually them not having their cell phone. Right. They can't have a cell phone. And if you have like a tag that says water watcher, That they hold onto, so, or they have on, and then if they need to go and leave, they have to pass that to another adult to watch.
And that's one, uh, for your like backyard parties, that's going to be a key to keeping everybody safe. Is you have that? Like I don't Aton, uh, you know, it can be a bubble wand, whatever, that's your water watcher, uh, stick today. And you made sure that your ha you have that stick. If you need to go do something, it gets passed.
Then they have their eyes on the water. So you're keeping everybody safe. Yeah, or watch or piece is something that's come up in a few episodes. And I think that that's a clear example of why we take like, as a society. So not YouTube, but everybody that subscribes to your service and everybody else around them, why they take it for granted, right?
Because you take it's important to you. You relay the message with urgency, with passion saying, you gotta be safe. You gotta do this. And because you do such a good job it's and this is, I don't know, it's, it's certainly not a critique. Not meant to come across this way, but because you do such a good job, the people that should be paying attention to the job that you're doing, aren't paying attention to the job that you're doing.
Right. And so. Hence my, my thesis, my theory that we, we take water safety for granted seems to be true because you don't hear any government saying if you have a pool, you need to have a water watcher. If you have a pool. I mean, like I know there are fence laws, there are barrier laws. Um, our discussion panel revealed that they're not consistent across the country and they're not.
That's strict. Right. They're not easily enforceable as well. Right. So, um, it just further to that point anyways, I really want to thank you too for your time today. Um, before we go, any final words for, um, people listening or public, the public. Go have fun and be safe and be sure you put safety first and then have fun.
I would say that I should have re burst that, but definitely important water is very attractive and we want to be in the water and we love our water, but it also, we need to respect the water. That's our ultimate goal. Fair enough. And to you, Stacy? Uh, I would just say the exact same thing cause they have fun and the water is fun.
And please, please do get swim lessons for everybody and you have to have all of your kids in the water. Well, thank you very much. And I look forward to catching up with you two ladies sometime soon, have a fantastic opening to your summer. I know it's Memorial day weekend this weekend, so there still as fun to be had safely.
Um, enjoy it and look forward to connect. Thanks for having us, Jason. Yeah, my pleasure. And thank you for sharing your, uh, your words of wisdom. If you'd like the content we've been creating online with the on-deck show and recently our drowning prevention series and all the stuff we share on our social media channels, like in follow for more.
The phone is actually a big one as well. Like your phone down if you're watching kids in a pool. Um, so, you know, uh, again, boat safety, um, sun safety, all that kind of stuff. We've been, we've been putting out, um, on social media and. You know, we just we've been hopeful to be open, was been put onto social media last six months.
I have to admit, we were kind of just not really sure what to post at this point. Cause we've been sort of going through this cycle of, so we're getting back into it as the summer approaches and um, yeah, so we'll just continue with our safety messages and hopefully people will just see them and adhere to them.
And. And I'm hoping that at least it makes a difference in, in a few people's lives. Right. And the collective of all of my colleagues and all sums go owners and anybody who's involved in swimming, you know, if we all do it, it reaches that many more people.
Yeah, absolutely. And I'm hoping like, you know, in an initiative like this can help as well.
You know, even if it just, if it helps save one person that summer, then it's all worth it. Right. So, um, we, we wanna, you know, get that drowning rate down to zero. Um, but that said, um, you know, It's it's nice when you have, or it's helpful when you have like world bodies, like the who saying that this is a world epidemic and we all need to pay attention to it.
And so on and so forth, let alone Canada, the world is covered, you know, 70% water, right? So you to learn how to swim
and like who basically they say is Berry first, first line of defense is barriers, which is like the fencing. And the second line of defense is some lessons, right?
Yeah. Yeah. And I guess going back to my original question, it's just curious why, you know, like we don't seem to prioritize that here.
Right. When it is, you know, like you, don't the fact that we, we have a world body that says that it's great, but it's kind of like, you know, somebody telling you to remember to drink water or to eat, like these are basic things you need to do to survive. Right. And this is one of them.
And, you know, it's just, like I said, a bunch of us, you know, have been lobbying governments to, to make it as considered as an essential, you know, it's like, it's like for them more children going to school, right.
It's the same thing. It's, it's a life skill. Um, you know, and like you said, tell me, wait, Joe sees it as a, as a, uh, as a problem worldwide. I'm not sure where our government is and why they're not standing up and, and, uh, letting us do what we do. Um, it's, it's unfortunate. Um, but I, I do believe that what we've learned out of this whole entire year is as a collective group, we're working really well together that some school industry, I know, you know, most of the people that I'm referring to, um, and we're not done with the pandemic.
We're not, we're not going to say after the pandemic, we're going to stop this fight for being classified. As essential, we know are essential, we're going to fight and make sure that the government as well knows that we're essential and that everybody out there. And if you ask any, any parent out there and you talk to them about this, they're like you are essential.
So. I'm not sure why the political people are doing what they're doing, but like you said, it's like drinking water and, and, you know, eating healthy, you need to learn how to swim. And, and most people see that here. Um, you know, it's just, we just got to make a little bit more noise, I guess.
Yeah. And I'm definitely aware of all the work that you guys have been doing as a, as a group lobbying.
Maybe let's, let's talk about what can the general public do. We can get a couple of words out to the general public, who can they write? What drum can they bang to, um, you know, get the information out and help support that caused that fight that you just alluded to.
Um, it really it's it, I mean, at this point, I'm not sure how much they're listening.
Um, I know obviously the vaccine role is, is priority number one right now, and it should be, um, but it's, it's writing their MP, MPPs, you know, letters to politicians. Um, that's pretty much how we're going to get noticed. I think, you know, at this point, um, in terms of what they can do. I don't know
that that's fair.
I mean, like, I just, I thought if we could, you know, by virtue of this video, if we could recruit, if you know, a few voices, you know, like, and then point them in the right direction and say, go do this right. And you've done that, right. Your MP, right. Your MPP, right. Your MLA, whoever it is just, you know, make them know that this is important.
So on and so forth. Yeah.
Your vote counts. Right. And they want you to, they want. Any voter is, is going to get attention. So hopefully if we can get a, you know, a few more people to do that, that'd be
awesome. Yeah, absolutely. Well, look, um, I want to thank you for your time and sharing all that information and you shoulder shared a wealth of information and we'll, like I said, we'll put it out there and, you know, hopefully there's some folks out there that will pick up something they didn't know and so on and so forth.
Um, Yeah. And, uh, you know, we can go from there, like personally with my three little kids, I'm very grateful to the summer school industry, because I had one of those silent moments, you know, a few months ago where one of our little ones like slipped into the pool, you know, not because of anything, malicious just slipped on a puddle of water and on Obama and into the water.
Right. And nobody saw. Right because there was some, so I'm, I'm, I am eternally grateful to the swim school industry and what you guys do. Right. And so I thank you for that. I thank you for what you do in your area and so on and so
forth. Well, we all thank you, you know, for making this, this podcast and, you know, in getting the message out.
Right. And, you know, you're, you're helping all, you've been supportive to all of us, so, you know, thank you. And, and, um, you know, we appreciate you guys as well, and all the stuff that you guys do for us,
Well, that's awesome. So, I mean, I wish you all the best. I hope lessons are went up in Toronto. I mean, not just for the sake of business, but really for the sake of safety.
Absolutely. And, uh, you know, we kind of go from there. Yeah.
All right. Well,
thank you. Yeah, no, my pleasure. All the best. Give my best to the team and, uh, we look forward to connecting soon. Great. Okay. Thanks. Thanks for watching. I hope you check us out. Anything that you need. We've got it at www.oceanjunction.com. .
In our continuing series on drowning prevention this week, we feature Jayme Craig from Kids Can Swim in Ottawa. Jayme is the VP of Education and Training. I want to speak with her to get some insight into the school, as well as some useful water, safety behavior tips, and things to pay attention to when we're out and about this summer.
Below you will find an unedited transcript of our conversation. You can find the Youtube link next to the text or by clicking here
In our continuing series on drowning prevention this week, we feature Jayme Craig from Kids Can Swim in Ottawa. Jayme is the VP of Education and Training. I want to speak with her to get some insight into the school, as well as some useful water, safety behavior tips, and things to pay attention to when we're out and about this summer.
Below you will find an unedited transcript of our conversation. You can find the Youtube link next to the text or by clicking here
[00:00:19] Welcome Jamie. All right. Goodmorning, Jamie. How are you doing? How are you doing? Good. Good, good. Uh, sothank you for joining us today and taking some time to, to communicate andshare with us a little bit about the school and impart some wisdom andexpertise on in the area of drowning prevention and water safety.
[00:00:39] So, uh, I know. Like Ottawa issurrounded by open water. There are lakes everywhere and pools everywhere andso on and so forth. And we're getting to, uh, you know, some of your, some ofthe advice you would have for the general public, but first let's start withyou. So tell me a little bit about your background.
[00:00:56] Tell me a little bit about theschool. I know that you guys like a big, [00:01:00] um, like tagline that youguys use often is that you are science-based. Tell me a little bit about that.
[00:01:06] JaymeCraig: [00:01:06] Yeah, absolutely. So, um, to start off, I've been,uh, working in aquatics and training and aquatics for about 10 years now. Istarted off as, um, most lifesaving people do in their bronze cross or, andbronze med, uh, went through to be a lifeguard and I've been teaching for a fewyears now.
[00:01:23] Um, about six years, I overseeall the education and training. And so it's been super fun to help, um, growthis program. So the science-based for us. Um, we, we did a lot of research onlots of, um, human behavior, child development, um, biomechanics, things likethat. And so, um, three really big things for us are, um, learning through playrepetition and consistency.
[00:01:51] So, um, one of the mostfascinating things to me is learning through play. It's so interesting to, um,Learn that [00:02:00] children really develop, you know, a lot of who they arethrough exploring in their environments and learning through play allowschildren to develop their critical thinking skills, develop their problem,solving skills.
[00:02:13] Um, and, and it really helpstheir overall development. I just thought that was so fascinating when, whenresearching and learning about the program and the repetition and consistencyis a big, a big part for their learning. Creating a routine, um, aroundswimming lessons allows children to know what to expect, and then they knowwhere their skills are at.
[00:02:35] And then we can add on andchallenge them with that routine that we've created around the water.
[00:02:42] Jason:[00:02:42] Yeah, that's interesting. And those, those skills youjust mentioned, we're learning more and more that those are, you know, skillsthat are equally important for adults, you know, learning through doing andstuff like that.
[00:02:51] So it's quite interesting. And Iguess it gives them a foundational set of skills that set them up for the restof their life, which is fantastic. Now you guys are in Canada, is that correct?[00:03:00] Yeah. Is that your location? Are you your only location or do youhave plans to expand or like where, where are you guys going next?
[00:03:08] JaymeCraig: [00:03:08] We do. Yeah. So, um, our goal is to be, uh, anOttawa wide company, um, and serving the whole city right now. We're in thewest end in Canada, and this is our first location we've been open for. Uh,like I said, a little over a year, we opened in January, 2020. So, uh, what's awild ride as bins and stuff. So yeah, we definitely do want to expand, um, And,and be in, in the east end and, and in, down in southwards, towards Barrhavenand just to serve the whole city.
[00:03:39] Really, we, we, we are reallyproud of this concept that we've created and we're, we're very different from,from other methods of swimming lessons. And we really want to, um, you reallywant to change the industry.
[00:03:51] Jason:[00:03:51] Sounds good. Talk to me a little bit about what you justsaid in terms of opening January of 20, 23 months before like lockdown reallyhappened.
[00:03:59] Like [00:04:00] we, things werehappening at that point. So you, you open a business three months before apandemic, you know, and you operate throughout the pandemic and stuff likethat. Um, so the people that had come to you, they were coming to you, um, Youknow, what, what, what are you communicating to them? Um, in terms of safewater behaviors, or, you know, like, what is your philosophy around what youare asking them or telling them, or communicating them to stay safe around thewater, you know, until they can come back to see you guys.
[00:04:29] JaymeCraig: [00:04:29] Yeah. Um, one thing that we've really, really,really pushed and established in all of our lessons throughout, like throughthe routines is, um, creating, like I said, those safe routines, um, the safe routinesaround the water, I think are the most important thing. Important thing to me,um, creating a safe routine means when you know, you're going to the pool,you're going to talk with your child about what you're doing, what it's goingto be like, what they can expect so that the kids kind of get an idea of howthey should be behaving around the [00:05:00] water and the parents can teachthem that.
[00:05:01] And then, um, creating a routinewet such as like when you go, when you approach the pool, when you approach abody of water, the beach or whatever, Um, I know that the red cross uses like astop look and listen type thing, and we have a very similar. Um, a routine. Soyou're stopping, you're looking and making sure that, you know, everything is safe.
[00:05:23] You're looking to make sure thatyour adult is around and you're waiting for instruction to approach the water.So, um, and then you're creating a routine with how to get in the water. Uh,kids concern. We use a very specific technique of teaching our children and ourbabies to get in and out of the water.
[00:05:39] Uh, it's very simple. Allparents can use it, uh, around a pool elbow, elbow. Me me climb out of thewater. Um, I think for kids who can't swim a big part of our safety week, we runa safety week every month and it is learning how to get in and out of the waterand navigating yourself to the side of the pool.
[00:05:59] Climbing [00:06:00] to a ladderor a safe spot or using your elbow, elbow, knee, and climbing out. And, um,again that like stopping before you get in the water or approach the water andcreating that routine and parents can make it really fun for kids. Like, whatare you missing? What do you have? Like listing all the things that you need tobe around the water you're adult, you need your eyes, you need your listeningears, all of these things.
[00:06:19] Um, and also if, if anythingwere to ever happen, like children run up to the edge of the water. If you'vecreated that routine already. Then it saves the parent a little bit of time tocatch up to the swimmer. And the kids know when I get to the water to the edgeof the water, I have a couple things that I need to do.
[00:06:37] I need to look for my adult. Ineed to have my, my eyes open. I need to have my listening ears open. Um, andit saves everyone a little bit of time too. And it lets the kids again,establish that routine, which I think is really, really important.
[00:06:49] Jason:[00:06:49] Yeah, it's intuitive process. That makes a lot of sense.Um, in our, in our previous episodes, when we've talked with other providers inother schools, I mean, they, they, um, a couple of [00:07:00] key points thatcame out drowning, silent happens in 30 seconds or less, um, comes, you know,oftentimes when accidents happen because the adults aren't paying attention.
[00:07:10] So what is, what messaging doyou have, does that process you, you just spoke about is largely swimmer based.What process do you have for those that are supervising the swimmers? Like no.Or what recommendations do you have for those that are supervising the swimmerslike parents or guardians or whatever?
[00:07:26] JaymeCraig: [00:07:26] Yeah, I would say always like always stay withinarms, reach that as a general rule. And I kind of think sometimes peopleunderestimate that when their swimmers are in, uh, wearing life-saving devices,like jackets, puddle, jumpers, things like that, it really doesn't make adifference. Um, especially for the little ones who don't have that, um,equilibrium in the water yet when you're wearing those devices, it can be veryeasy to tip over and difficult to get yourself back up.
[00:07:50] If you don't have that, um,always staying within arms reach that is like every single lifeguard will tellyou that. And I know that they've said this, like [00:08:00] other, uh, otheraquatic specialists have said this on your show before that. Like you can notunderestimate saying within arms reach, um, because yeah, like you said, ithappens so quickly, even, even summers, um, on the side of the pool, um, ifthey can touch where they are, they're getting, you know, towards a brand andthey're on their tippy toes that like slipping under, off the wall can happenso quickly.
[00:08:21] So, uh, staying within armsreach is, is number one. Um, and, and I think not being distracted, like, forexample, um, around like your personal pools, home pools, There does need to bea designated person who is, who is looking out for the swimmers and who, whoknows what to look for. I think, um, a really important part of this seriesthat you're doing is letting people know that it can happen that quickly.
[00:08:47] And I think that is somethingthat needs to be known for everyone. Like 30 seconds, you turn your back and,and it can happen that quickly. So you need to be so, so, so diligent.
[00:08:57] Jason:[00:08:57] Yeah, absolutely. Fair enough. Um, [00:09:00] and I guessone of the things I'd like to get out, um, from each episode in your own wordsin regardless of whether or not it's repetitive, doesn't matter because if youknow, the audience needs to hear this a thousand times.
[00:09:12] And the need to hear it athousand times, but give me a bullet point list and you kind of already did,but just break it down even more simple, three or four things to absolutely payattention to around the pool and then three or four things to absolutely payattention to when you're out by a lake or open water source or something likethat.
[00:09:29] Go make Nicholas bigger if youwant to as well. Okay.
[00:09:33] JaymeCraig: [00:09:33] Um, yeah, so firstly, like I said, uh, Uh, oh,it's on the parents to create a safe routine. What are the, what can the, whatcan we expect around being around the water? What do we need to look out for?Um, educating your summers. So, you know, staying where mom and dad can see youand mom and dad need to stay where kids can see them within arms reach, like Isaid, and, um, being aware, teaching your kids about all the things about thepool.
[00:09:56] So like, Or, or the, or thelight buoy lines, [00:10:00] um, busy areas, things like that. Your kids arenot, your kids are not too young to learn, um, about the all areas of the pool,about, you know, water depth and, and not to scare them. But just to say likethis, this area is deeper. This area is shallower. This is where you can go.
[00:10:16] This is where you can't go.Like, I don't think that kids are too young, like from three years old onwards.I don't think that they're too young to understand, um, learning how to besafe. So, um, educating your swimmers. So saying when are creating a routine,educating your swimmers. And, um, and then I think obviously swimming lessons.
[00:10:37] I know that we can't do thatright now. Um, but there are there like many resources online, um, again, abouthow to teach her summers, if you can't. Um, if you can't be in a place whereyour summers aren't at a place yet where they can, um, swim themselves. You,you should be wearing a life jacket, obviously around, especially open bodiesof water, um, pedal [00:11:00] jumpers, anything like that?
[00:11:02] Um, yeah.
[00:11:05] Jason:[00:11:05] Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. Um, and you know, when itcomes down to, you know, what you said about swimming lessons, I'm assumingthat that's a general plea and it doesn't matter where you are just find theswimming lessons. Right. And, you know, to your point and what you were saying.I mean, um, from a who standpoint, the recommendations are, you know, likefirst thing, fence, the pool and the second line of defense against, um,Drowning as swimming lessons.
[00:11:32] Right? And this, this leads meinto, um, a question that I've been asking everybody and, you know, they, uh,they have their own version of the answer. But when I started the series, Istarted it under the premise of trying to get. Uh, question to answer thatquestion is, do we take water safety for granted? And let me unpack that alittle bit.
[00:11:53] So because you guys run folkslike you, that run schools that do such a great job of providing these amazing[00:12:00] services to the public, right? Governments, decision makers, don'tusually pay attention to this stuff. And why would they, because you know,there's private businesses that are doing a great job doing this, right.
[00:12:10] And the, why would they is thein part, because if you weren't there. If folks like you weren't there. If kidscan't swim, weren't there, right. Who would stand in and make sure that we hadthe water safe education, right. And now in the middle of a pandemic where thisis not being prioritized, we saw a spike in drownings in 2020.
[00:12:31] That trend is likely to continuein 2021. Right. And this is part of the emphasis. Um, and part of the point ofgetting the show out as people get more information, like look out for eachother, when you go out to the beach, you know, have your water watcher, howthat, you know, your plan like you coined and so on and so forth, all that tosaid, bringing it right back, full circle.
[00:12:51] My question is in this country,do we take water safety for granted?
[00:12:57] JaymeCraig: [00:12:57] Um, I don't [00:13:00] think that we do, I thinkacross the country, like the, the national programs have, you know, address theproblem and done a really good job at educating people now. But, uh, one thingthat really stuck with me was, um, you had a woman on from the lifesavingsociety and I'm sorry, I'm blanking on her name, but Barb.
[00:13:15] Yeah. She, um, her point about,um, you know, community was, I think really stuck out to me. I think that. Witha lack of access to swimming lessons. Um, Uh, actions like this, like educationand, um, swim schools and, and, you know, everyone who provides aquatic safety,I think it is part of our responsibility to educate people on how they cansupport their own families and their communities.
[00:13:42] When you're at a beach. Youknow, you're not the only one on the beach. We're, we're all, I think, as like,uh, people who want to be safer on the water and educators and parents, we'reall looking out for like kids all the time. I know when I'm on the beach, Idon't have any kids, but I'm always like scanning and guarding.
[00:13:57] And I think like, just gettingthis messaging [00:14:00] out of like, what can you do can protect thecommunity. And I think that as a community member, It's it's, it's importantto, to you have a responsibility to look out for your community, I think, and,and, and that doesn't exclude anyone. And, uh, I really liked that she, Ireally liked that point that she made because of the access, lack of access toswimming lessons that we all need to be put in putting out this messaging andthen being diligent when we are in those spaces and looking out for otherpeople.
[00:14:27] Jason:[00:14:27] Yeah, absolutely fair. And like that, that, I'm, I'mhoping that, I mean, it sounds like you're referring to the drowning preventionpanel discussion that we ran. Um, and hopefully, you know, like you found somevalue in that. Um, and you know, like the public in general as well. I meanlike that, that community piece is, um, It's pretty important.
[00:14:47] So coming back to the swimschool, uh, you talked a little bit about it. What are you guys doing to engageyour community? Um, whether it's from an action point of view or just awarenessinformation. Point of view.
[00:14:58] JaymeCraig: [00:14:58] Yeah. Um, a couple [00:15:00] of things for us isthat we, we do, we start. Early, like, uh, in our babies program, we do teach,obviously I want to preface by saying you can not put the onus of self safetyand so breastfeeding, autumn, baby at all.
[00:15:14] That's not what I'm saying atall, but, um, you can teach them, um, go through the routine with them. Um, anearly start in swimming lessons. Our babies are, you know, a year old andthey're. We're getting their parents to work with them through falling in thewater, turning around, swimming back to the wall, that basic thing that, thatyou need.
[00:15:33] Um, and eventually practicing itevery week. Like I said, that routine and consistency that we have in ourprogram, um, the chill that gets drilled in and they remember those things. Andeventually within a couple of weeks, you know, um, a, you know, year old, baby,eight months old, your baby can climb out of the pool with the support of theirparents.
[00:15:50] Not, not every summer. I mean,they still, again need to be supported, but I think an early start, um, is veryimportant. And just to teach them, you know, like, Near the [00:16:00] water'sedge around the pool, like reaching for mom, reaching for dad, staying close.Um, and then in our program, um, we actually don't use, uh, flotation devicesin our lessons because our pools are purpose-built.
[00:16:14] Uh, all of our kids can stand upin them. So it gives them that confidence. Um, to swim. So it may soundcounterintuitive to not use flotation devices, but then they're actuallydeveloping their skills rather than relying on those things. I've, I've heardparents say before, like, you know, I put them in a puddle jumper for a summerand now they, they won't swim without it.
[00:16:31] They don't have the competenceto be without it. And that is so dangerous. If a swimmer were to fall. Into thepool or into the lake and they don't have that confidence. And they're sooverwhelmed with, oh my gosh, I don't have my pedal jumper or whatever that canreally prevent a swimmer from using their knowledge that they have to get tothe side and climb out.
[00:16:47] Um, so a big part of our programis, um, we don't use flotation devices and we teach the summers to like havethe confidence, um, to gain the confidence, to be comfortable in the water, uh,independently and [00:17:00] develop their skills that way. Um, and again, whenyou're on boats and when you're around the beach and, and all these otherthings, you should be wearing life saving devices, but we want to develop thatconfidence in our swimmers, um, and then creating our safe routines.
[00:17:13] So we have our elbow, elbow,knee, knee that we teach babies, right from our B2 level, which is six monthsold. Um, how to climb out of the water. And then in our, uh, three of ourprogram, we do a life-saving week or safety week, and it's all, uh, throughoutall the levels. It's kind of more real life. Um, scenarios.
[00:17:32] So for our little ones, likefour years old, um, we take them over to the bigger pool where they can't touchand we get them to fall in, turn around with the supportive and instructor andclimb out. So like those real life things. And as they get older, we teach thempartner rescues, um, reaching, pulling, throwing things like that, how torescue someone else.
[00:17:55] And, um, we also teach thelittle ones how to call for help. So every week. Uh, [00:18:00] we practicewith them. What do you say? You know, when you need help and you'll heareveryone on safety week across the pool, because we want to encourage the childrenagain, to have that confidence, to, to reach out and save themselves.
[00:18:13] Jason:[00:18:13] That's fantastic. That's a, like a very, you have watersafety embedded in every aspect of that curriculum. It's really good.
[00:18:21] JaymeCraig: [00:18:21] Yeah. Yeah. I, I'm very proud of it for sure. Um,
[00:18:25] Jason:[00:18:25] so I want to come back to that in a sec, but I wanted togo back to one thing you just mentioned there about the confidence or lackthereof when a kid or young swimmer is brought up on a flotation device.
[00:18:36] Um, first I want to, it'simportant for me to make this clear, like a puddle jumper is not a savingdevice. Right. Um, so, and I think oftentimes parents, you know, like thatattention piece you mentioned before the puddle jumper is a way to mitigateattention. So. You know, I can put them in a puddle jumper and if I turn aroundfor three minutes or whatever, they'll be okay, [00:19:00] that's the mistake.
[00:19:00] That's where the accidentshappen. Right. And that's one of the things I wanted to point out and so on andso forth. Um, I dunno. Did you have anything else you wanted to add on that?
[00:19:09] JaymeCraig: [00:19:09] Um, no, I don't think so. I think that I, like Isaid at first, when I, when I, when I came into this program and startedlearning it, I was like not using flotation devices.
[00:19:20] Well, that doesn't make sense.Um, but now I'm realizing that that confidence can, can add to safety so much.Competence is a huge part of, of safety. They go hand in hand to me now.
[00:19:31] Jason:[00:19:31] Fair enough. And then circling back around to theprogram, like where, what was the Genesis of the program? Like who developedit?
[00:19:37] Like where does it come from?
[00:19:40] JaymeCraig: [00:19:40] Yeah. So, um, the, the model is Australian based.There's a lot of swim schools that are similar to us, um, in Australia. And,uh, the model is very different from here in Canada and, and that's why we'reso different. We're, we're based on that model. And, um, it goes along with,with everything about our business, the, you know, the monthly [00:20:00]registration, um, and the ongoing assessments, the monthly assessments, thingslike that.
[00:20:04] It's, it's very different from herein Canada and I find it much more. Um, much more efficient, to be honest. Um,the monthly assessments allow us to meet swimmers where they're at. I knowsometimes sessions can go up to 12 weeks sometimes, um, with maybe one, um,progress report in the middle. And I find, um, through personal experienceteaching those programs, you know, you have swimmers who, um, are way past.
[00:20:30] The level that you've taughtthem and they, they pick it up very quickly, but they're in the program foreight more weeks and they're bored and you know, there's really no way tochange it up once the session is created. So for us, the monthly assessmentsallow us to meet the swimmers where they're at.
[00:20:43] They're not being held back andthey're being challenged just enough. Um, that was a really big, a really bigpart for me. The monthly assessments.
[00:20:51] Jason:[00:20:51] Yeah, fair enough. Sounds good. I mean, you shared a lotof really potent information on your school and how the links [00:21:00] behind,uh, or between what you guys do and the water safety out in the real world.
[00:21:04] So I thank you for doing that.And as we go to wrap this up, I just want some final words, right? If you havesome final thoughts in terms of what do you want to leave people? Like, whatmessage do you want them to take away in terms of going into a summer where,um, we know beaches are likely to be crowded because people have been stuckindoors for the last year.
[00:21:23] Um, and you know, as soon assummer pools open, people are going to flock there. We know there's going to becrowds. We know there's going to be chaos and mayhem everywhere. Final thoughtson water? What should people pay attention to? What do they need to look outto? And like I said, if you look out for, excuse me, and if it's repetitive,that's fine.
[00:21:41] Because if people need to hearit, they need to hear it.
[00:21:44] JaymeCraig: [00:21:44] Yeah. I think that, um, people need to. Like yousaid crowded beaches need to be aware of where they are. I think one thing thatI meant that I said when I was explaining how we, uh, include safety in ourbabies program [00:22:00] is that you can't at all put the onus of being safeon your children.
[00:22:04] You can teach them and you caneducate them and you, and they may very understand it very well, but you areresponsible for them. And that goes along with, um, being an adult near thewater around kids. I think being diligent is the most important part. Um, beingaware of those high risk areas, you know, the drop-offs things like that.
[00:22:22] Um, so yeah, being diligent, notputting the onus on the summer as it is all on the parents, that is a hundredpercent on, on us as adults and water safety people to, to look out for ourcommunities whenever we're at a beach, I think it's, it's everyone'sresponsibility to make sure that the kids are safe.
[00:22:38] Um, and again, I think creatingthose safe routines around the water. Um, well really, as, as you go to thebeach, you know, if you go to the beach once a week or whatever, or go to thepool every evening in your backyard, create that routine, whatever that lookslike for you. Um, I know like the S the stop look and listen is a great, um,tool.
[00:22:58] I think it's super simple.[00:23:00] You stop, you look for, you know, your parents, your adult,whatever, and you're listening for instructions when you can go in the water.Um, yeah. So say creating safe routines, I think. Yeah.
[00:23:11] Jason:[00:23:11] Yeah, fair enough. That's fantastic. Well, I thank youfor sharing your time with us today.
[00:23:16] Really appreciate it, and reallyappreciate, you know, like your, your passion and desire to share, you know,some information behind this important subject. Um, are you guys currently openor are you guys closed with COVID restrictions?
[00:23:29] JaymeCraig: [00:23:29] We are closed right now in Ottawa, but, uh, we'relooking to a tentative, June 3rd opening date.
[00:23:37] So we're gearing up for that andwe're, and we're so excited to. Get back to our community. Yeah. I'm reallyexcited.
[00:23:44] Jason:[00:23:44] Yeah. Well, I'm sure your community is going to beexcited to see you guys as well. So I know like there's high demand right nowfor, you know, the parents that are aware of the risks around water safety toget their kids in.
[00:23:54] So that should be great. Andagain, thank you for your time today. Really appreciate it. Um, [00:24:00] lookforward to connecting again in the future and all the best kids can.
[00:24:04] JaymeCraig: [00:24:04] Thank you, Jason. You too. Thanks for having me.
[00:24:06] Jason:[00:24:06] My pleasure. Thanks for watching. I hope you check usout. Anything that you need. We've got it@oceanjunction.com.
The phone is actually a big one as well. Like your phone down if you're watching kids in a pool. Um, so, you know, uh, again, boat safety, um, sun safety, all that kind of stuff. We've been, we've been putting out, um, on social media and. You know, we just we've been hopeful to be open, was been put onto social media last six months.
I have to admit, we were kind of just not really sure what to post at this point. Cause we've been sort of going through this cycle of, so we're getting back into it as the summer approaches and um, yeah, so we'll just continue with our safety messages and hopefully people will just see them and adhere to them.
And. And I'm hoping that at least it makes a difference in, in a few people's lives. Right. And the collective of all of my colleagues and all sums go owners and anybody who's involved in swimming, you know, if we all do it, it reaches that many more people.
Yeah, absolutely. And I'm hoping like, you know, in an initiative like this can help as well.
You know, even if it just, if it helps save one person that summer, then it's all worth it. Right. So, um, we, we wanna, you know, get that drowning rate down to zero. Um, but that said, um, you know, It's it's nice when you have, or it's helpful when you have like world bodies, like the who saying that this is a world epidemic and we all need to pay attention to it.
And so on and so forth, let alone Canada, the world is covered, you know, 70% water, right? So you to learn how to swim
and like who basically they say is Berry first, first line of defense is barriers, which is like the fencing. And the second line of defense is some lessons, right?
Yeah. Yeah. And I guess going back to my original question, it's just curious why, you know, like we don't seem to prioritize that here.
Right. When it is, you know, like you, don't the fact that we, we have a world body that says that it's great, but it's kind of like, you know, somebody telling you to remember to drink water or to eat, like these are basic things you need to do to survive. Right. And this is one of them.
And, you know, it's just, like I said, a bunch of us, you know, have been lobbying governments to, to make it as considered as an essential, you know, it's like, it's like for them more children going to school, right.
It's the same thing. It's, it's a life skill. Um, you know, and like you said, tell me, wait, Joe sees it as a, as a, uh, as a problem worldwide. I'm not sure where our government is and why they're not standing up and, and, uh, letting us do what we do. Um, it's, it's unfortunate. Um, but I, I do believe that what we've learned out of this whole entire year is as a collective group, we're working really well together that some school industry, I know, you know, most of the people that I'm referring to, um, and we're not done with the pandemic.
We're not, we're not going to say after the pandemic, we're going to stop this fight for being classified. As essential, we know are essential, we're going to fight and make sure that the government as well knows that we're essential and that everybody out there. And if you ask any, any parent out there and you talk to them about this, they're like you are essential.
So. I'm not sure why the political people are doing what they're doing, but like you said, it's like drinking water and, and, you know, eating healthy, you need to learn how to swim. And, and most people see that here. Um, you know, it's just, we just got to make a little bit more noise, I guess.
Yeah. And I'm definitely aware of all the work that you guys have been doing as a, as a group lobbying.
Maybe let's, let's talk about what can the general public do. We can get a couple of words out to the general public, who can they write? What drum can they bang to, um, you know, get the information out and help support that caused that fight that you just alluded to.
Um, it really it's it, I mean, at this point, I'm not sure how much they're listening.
Um, I know obviously the vaccine role is, is priority number one right now, and it should be, um, but it's, it's writing their MP, MPPs, you know, letters to politicians. Um, that's pretty much how we're going to get noticed. I think, you know, at this point, um, in terms of what they can do. I don't know
that that's fair.
I mean, like, I just, I thought if we could, you know, by virtue of this video, if we could recruit, if you know, a few voices, you know, like, and then point them in the right direction and say, go do this right. And you've done that, right. Your MP, right. Your MPP, right. Your MLA, whoever it is just, you know, make them know that this is important.
So on and so forth. Yeah.
Your vote counts. Right. And they want you to, they want. Any voter is, is going to get attention. So hopefully if we can get a, you know, a few more people to do that, that'd be
awesome. Yeah, absolutely. Well, look, um, I want to thank you for your time and sharing all that information and you shoulder shared a wealth of information and we'll, like I said, we'll put it out there and, you know, hopefully there's some folks out there that will pick up something they didn't know and so on and so forth.
Um, Yeah. And, uh, you know, we can go from there, like personally with my three little kids, I'm very grateful to the summer school industry, because I had one of those silent moments, you know, a few months ago where one of our little ones like slipped into the pool, you know, not because of anything, malicious just slipped on a puddle of water and on Obama and into the water.
Right. And nobody saw. Right because there was some, so I'm, I'm, I am eternally grateful to the swim school industry and what you guys do. Right. And so I thank you for that. I thank you for what you do in your area and so on and so
forth. Well, we all thank you, you know, for making this, this podcast and, you know, in getting the message out.
Right. And, you know, you're, you're helping all, you've been supportive to all of us, so, you know, thank you. And, and, um, you know, we appreciate you guys as well, and all the stuff that you guys do for us,
Well, that's awesome. So, I mean, I wish you all the best. I hope lessons are went up in Toronto. I mean, not just for the sake of business, but really for the sake of safety.
Absolutely. And, uh, you know, we kind of go from there. Yeah.
All right. Well,
thank you. Yeah, no, my pleasure. All the best. Give my best to the team and, uh, we look forward to connecting soon. Great. Okay. Thanks. Thanks for watching. I hope you check us out. Anything that you need. We've got it at www.oceanjunction.com. .
Below you will find an unedited transcript of our conversation. You can find the Youtube link next to the text or by clicking here
Welcome to our fourth episode in our drowning prevention series. Today, we speak with Davina Lopez from Davina's Swim House in Toronto. Ontario. Davina is going to speak to us this morning about her swim school, the importance of water safety and things to pay attention to when you guys are out at the cottage and like the summer and what she's doing to help keep people safe.
Welcome to our fourth episode in our drowning prevention series. Today, we speak with Davina Lopez from Davina's Swim House in Toronto. Ontario. Davina is going to speak to us this morning about her swim school, the importance of water safety and things to pay attention to when you guys are out at the cottage and like the summer and what she's doing to help keep people safe.
Below you will find an unedited transcript of our conversation. You can find the Youtube link next to the text or by clicking here
Welcome to our fourth episode in our drowning prevention series. Today, we speak with Davina Lopez from Davina's Swim House in Toronto. Ontario. Davina is going to speak to us this morning about her swim school, the importance of water safety and things to pay attention to when you guys are out at the cottage and like the summer and what she's doing to help keep people safe.
Welcome Davina.
Hey, Jason, how you doing? Well, thank you very much for making time. Um, and, um, welcoming Davina, like I said, from Davina's Swim House in Toronto Ontario. Um, and this is the fourth episode in our Drowning prevention series, trying to bring some key information to people. , as swimming lessons have been closed for the last.
You know, on and off for the last year and a half, essentially. And, uh, we're going into what predictably might be, um, a summer of increased routings as we saw last summer. And we're hoping to avoid that. And people like Davina, um, are getting the information out to her community and hopefully sharing they're sharing information outside of that.
So, um, Davina. I want to start out with the question that I've asked has been my opening question in all the interviews that I've done on this particular subject. Because as we mentioned before, it's curious why we're even having this conversation. Um, but in Canada and north America in general, do we take the concepts of water safety for granted because of folks like that?
You do such a great job of doing this under normal circumstances and the people that are making key decisions now in the middle of a pandemic are not paying attention to, um, the risks, um, that exists around drowning.
Yeah, no, it's such an important question. Um, definitely. I, I think there are certain populations that definitely take it for granted.
Uh, you know, seeing it, you know, just in Canada, mainly just being closed off for the past, you know, on and off for the past year and a bit, um, you know, w just talking with just families with young kids and. Talking to them about that little pool in the backyard that they just purchased from, you know, uh, Canadian tire Walmart or something, or even just the, a little bit of a bigger pool or a brand new pool.
They don't realize the dangers that, that is involved with it because their kids obviously haven't been in some lessons. So the, the education piece that we would give is not, is not getting translated. And, um, you know, it's just as simple as. You know, having that locked gate and, and always knowing where your, your child is, uh, at all times, you know, and turning over that little pool that you bought at Canadian tire, or like I said, Walmart, because you know, it only takes a few inches of water.
Um, for, uh, for some per child to drown. Um, and so it's, it's getting that education piece and obviously getting into boating season and cottages and all those, uh, different dynamics of water that we have in our lovely country here in Canada. It's like, it's great that we have those. Those those bodies of water, but a lot of people are not quite understanding all the dangers that could be involved as well.
Um, and just having that water safety education piece missing in the last year and a half, I I'm pretend, I I'm constantly thinking about it. Um, just being an educator. Uh, and I know a lot of my colleagues have as well, and we've tried to. You know, implore the government to, to take it seriously. And a lot of the thing is a lot of people don't just realize, um, because they've been exposed their whole life to water and they, they are swimmers themselves.
Um, they, they know as common sense as it is to me. And you. It's not necessarily to that year old or two year old or that, you know, uh, and it's been proven like immigrant families or people who've come to this country and they're not used to these types of bodies of water and they want to just go away for a weekend and they go hang out a beach that doesn't have lifeguards.
Yeah, they think it's safe to swim, but there's a current or there's they can't touch the bottom and they don't know how to swim. So there's a lot of impeding factors that come in and our job, uh, some school owners and anybody in the swim industry, our job is to educate and. That job unfortunately, has been taken away from us in the last year and a half.
So there's definitely a concern, um, on that piece. Um, and, and I was just speaking, actually, I don't know, sorry for blabbing on here, but I was just speaking to, um, one of my, one of my friends, who's a dentist to have my kids at the dentist today and he was telling me how he's fearful of his four-year-old because she's missed a year and a half of lessons.
And when they were on their previous trip before COVID, um, he turned for one second. And he said his, his child went under the water. He didn't even hear it. And he just turned back and he had to grab her. He was like, I did not realize that it's silent and it's quick. And he's a very educated person, but a lot of people don't realize that.
And that's what you know is our job is to teach children how to swim. But not only that to teach that child, maybe not to step off the ledge or all those types of safety things that, uh, that we do as a profession. So I hope I answered your
question there. That was fantastic answer. Very complete. Um, you know, so in the absence of a desire from government bodies to recognize and, um, you know, take action on the importance of drowning prevention, water, safety, and so on and so forth by default, they rely on people like you.
Who, you know, you take your passion, you drive it into a business and you create this amazing service. Right. So, um, you know, first of all, thank you for doing what you do. Um, that, to what, what drives you? Like why is it so important for you to get this message out? What, what is behind the passion
right now?
Just to get that message out is, you know, it is have. You know, if you do have the bodies of water, your access, they're accessible to you, just learn about them, um, and make sure your children know about them because unfortunately we can't. Do anything right now to teach you, teach your child or yourself on a weekly basis.
So, you know, look, look at the different websites that are out. There's tons of water, safety, education websites, um, and you know, I'm sure you've posted a few. I have, you know, just look at what are potential Jane, dangerous around water. Cause we just don't realize it. Um, you know, when you have that, a couple of people over at a pool party and you don't have an assigned person to watch the pool.
You know, like I said, it doesn't take long it's, it's silent, um, for a child to slip under water. So making sure you have a dedicated person there to, to watch the water, um, you know, in simple as with boating, you know, everybody should be wearing a life jacket. You know, I know it's uncomfortable and it's not great, but what if the boat hits something you could fall out and it's not your swimming ability at that point that might save you.
If let's say you were to be knocked unconscious, it would be the life jacket that saves you. So it's just things like that, that we don't assume are big deals, but they can be, and it can be. You know, it can be that decision with life and death. And so I just want people to just educate themselves as much as they can at this point.
Um, and then the minute that we're able to open, bring, bring your families. And because, you know, we want to, we want to get back to teaching. Um, important life skills to people.
Yeah. And I'm assuming that's a plea, regardless of wherever they are, regardless, wherever you are, get into swimming lessons and water safety education, so on and so forth.
Um, just, just to bring your point full circle, uh, And, you know, an example, uh, you used, um, you know, uh, new Canadians, um, and people desiring to take on vacation, stuff like that. And I recall the incident in Vancouver last summer, where, um, a family of three went out to a local beach, um, One and they weren't swimmers.
Um, one of them went a little bit too far where they can touch the ground, started to panic. Um, the two parents went after they couldn't swim either and all three ended up losing their lives. Right. And it's just, it's really an awareness thing because you know, like the beaches are there and they're beautiful.
You want, and people love it. Well, I would do them, but often there's no markers. There's no nothing to show where the lead drops off or where it gets super deep or whatever the case is. And these are all the things that we need to know and need to be aware of. So I appreciate you sharing that.
Absolutely.
And another thing, just give mine, I don't know how it's going to be this summer, but I know in Ontario last summer, because there, um, a lot of the beaches weren't open cause they were trying to keep people from, you know, gathering. What was happening is then those beaches are losing the lifeguards and people are still like, well, I can still go to a different beach and they might not have that lifeguard, or they're getting forced to beaches or, or unsafe areas that aren't normally guarded anyways.
Um, but yet they're going swimming. Cause it's like a thing to do in terms of cooling off or, you know, like you said, it looks great, looks fun. Um, and that, because the other body of water is not accessible to them. They're now going to somewhere that wouldn't isn't safe. And so please keep that in mind that just because it looks great, you really need to know the area.
Fair enough. So I want to go into kind of like a bullet point or a checkpoint list if I kind of put you on the spot here, cause I didn't get any of this before, but if you can give us how to like, uh, to list a bullet point list for what to pay attention to for all those people that are rushing. To put it in backyard pools this summer, or may have done it last summer.
And all of the people that, you know, will spend a little bit extra time, you know, at the beach or on a boat or whatever. And they wouldn't normally have had to. So we've got two separate ideas and two separate environments or ecosystems where we have to look to be safe. So for the backyard pool, what are some checkpoints that people should really pay attention to?
So in, in Ontario it's law, basically that they have to have a gate around their, their backyard. If there's a pool inside. However, if you have young kids invest the money and get a gate, that's separate for just the pool area. Um, cause you know, that child can sneak outside in the backyard, sees the beautiful water, but if you have that extra barrier, A hundred percent it's worth money.
You do it because you don't want an accident to happen to make sure that it's like self latching gate so that even if somebody does leave it open it latches on its own. Um, so just have that safety measure, um, in place, um, just in terms of always looking for hazards in and around your pool, you know, um, so, you know, obviously don't want people slipping and falling or, or what have you.
So just looking for general slip and stuff that you can slip on or, or trip over, um, you know, always making sure that somebody is. Having their eyes on the pool in terms of when you have any child that is in that pool, you should not be within further than arms reach. Um, because like I said, it happens it's fast and it happens quick and you need to be able to grab that child.
Um, if you, um, just basically having always like the accessibility to a phone, um, uh, nearby just for an emergency purposes. Um, you know, making sure that if you are having, if you have a little bit older kids or what have you, and they're coming, some kids are coming over to swim. Um, when we're not in isolation, you know, when they're coming over, just make sure that you do, you make sure that the kids know how to swim.
Um, I've been around too many times where, um, you think they all know how to swim. The kids are all in our bathing suits, ready to go. And then this kid just jumps into the deep end and boom they're, they're not swimming. So just make sure that they do a little bit of a swim test to look at the ability and, and, you know, life jacket on that kid, if they don't know how to swim.
Um, making sure that they're, you know, obviously know, um, drinking and swimming are the same as drinking and driving. So if you are watching the pool, you're sober. You know, if you're going in the pool, you're sober, you know, um, just the things like that also, um, a big thing is diving. Um, a lot of pools aren't deep enough.
So just making sure that you know, your surroundings. Um, I usually, and I, my, my kids, they love me, but they hate me all at the same time. Um, because when they ever, they are friends over, I'm like, there's no diving. There's no, there's no that, but because these people think these kids don't know my pool and I pointed out to all of them.
I'm like, here's where the. The hill drop-off is, um, because I don't know what they're going to do or not do. Right. So, uh, you know, make sure people are aware of what your pool is and how it drops off, or there's like a blind spot to something, you know, that those things are important. And if you have a lot of floaties in your pool and you have a lot of kids in the pool, really try hard, not to have so many floaties in the pool, cause it's easy for a kid to slip underneath them and, and then you don't see them.
And it's just an. You don't need that hazard there. Um, if you, if you can avoid it.
Yeah, it seems like there's a lot we can do to mitigate, you know, accidents, but all there's a lot of stuff that you may not pay attention to. Cause it's normally wrapped up in fun and stuff like that. And being able to see the bottom of the pool is critical and
seeing the bottom of the pool kept testing your pool, making sure that the chemicals are good.
A lot of people don't know how to test their pool. So, you know, just go online. There there's a million YouTube verbal online, and just look at, look at how they do it and test your pool because you know, you don't want that uncomfortable rash or whatever it is, or it could be dangerous. Right. So, yeah, making sure you can see the bottom of the pool is a big one clarity and, um, as well as testing the pool,
Fair enough.
And I mean, I shared a lot of those points will cross over to open water if you're out at a lake ocean or on a boat or whatever, you mentioned life jackets before. I mean, what else do you do?
Well, it's a life jacket. So like, you know, just kids in general, like if they're just playing around and, um, they're not swimmers yet having them play around in a life jacket, like won't hurt anyone.
So just put them in life jacket. Make your life a lot easier. Um, you know, even if they're just playing around at the shore, you know, you just don't know when a wave comes or turn around for one second, they run in one direction towards like, you know, the water. It just helps everybody out. Um, As well as kids should know how to put on and off their life jacket properly, um, you know, making sure that it fits properly.
That's another big one. A lot of people don't have the right sizing for life jacket. So there's lots of, again, YouTube videos on how to properly fit a life jacket. Um, for lots of different sizes. Yeah. Children, and like, there's, there's a whole slew of different huh. Places that they can look at. Um, you know, I know red cross lifesaving society, they all have, uh, lots of, uh, water safety, um, uh, websites, uh, dedicated to that.
Um, and then just making sure, like, again, you don't know where the drop-offs are. Find out where they are in terms of a lake water or a body of water that you're going to, if the river, you know, if it's not marked as a place to swim, usually it's because it shouldn't be a place to swim. So don't, don't just go if you don't know.
Um, you know, and I, again, just, you know, it's the general sort of safety things. If you're not sure about something, don't do it, you know, um, if you're not sure how deep something is, don't dive in, uh, you know, uh, When, and then you said when we're boating, you know, make sure that your boat is, um, I mean, obviously you should have a Boulder's curb.
Um, the license, you know, um, that's provided by, I believe it's all the different provinces have their own, but, um, basically if you have your Boulder's card, then you should know what should be in your boat in terms of like, you know, uh, flares, flashlight, uh, um, you know, uh, paddle P you know, life jackets for everybody who's on board where the life jacket.
Same thing as a car, don't drink and drive and don't drink and boat. Um, a lot of people don't associate the two together. It's kind of weird that you just assume that you can have a few beers on your boat. Um, you know, it's okay if the passengers have a beer or two, but the driver should not be, um, because it's the same concept.
Um, you know, just make sure you have enough gas and if you are on a big, big lake, you know, um, Make sure that somebody knows where you're going. That's also another thing is don't swim alone. Um, you know, even myself very, you know, swam for many years on a swim team and I'm a very confident swimmer. I don't swim alone.
Um, you know, it's just a general rule. I just don't know if I slip and fall. And I can hurt myself or her that unknown. Right? Like you end up in a bad situation, just somebody there to bail you out so you can enjoy the water. And then water can be a lot of fun. And I know that I have tons of fun in the summer, um, lakes and stuff like that, but I just, we do it safely and it will make your summer more enjoyable if nobody's injured or her, um, or worried.
Right. You know, um, fall proper precautions and you should be okay.
Fantastic. Yeah, very comprehensive list. And I just want to clarify, we were talking about, uh, PDFs, like one of the questions I hear people, but one of the things I hear people talking about all the time. So I said, PDF PDF, sorry. It's a computer file.
The other one's a life-saving device. Don't waste the money anyways. Um, puddle jumpers are not, uh, PFDs.
Correct. Yeah. Yep. You have to make sure that a lot of those and a lot of them are great little devices, um, with kids, but if they're in a puddle jumper, you're beside them, you know, like it doesn't excuse you from like sitting back 10 feet because they can slip out of them.
Um, you know, and you know, there's always, the, they're not meant to be a life-saving device, just like a noodle flutter board. All those things are great to assist in certain things, but they're not meant to replace the adults, you know? So just as long as you're aware that, you know, even a life jacket shouldn't be replacing the adults, um, you know, but it's, it's a precautionary thing and it just.
Keeps that element a little bit safe and most kids don't care to be honest when they're wearing that, as long as they're playing and having fun. Right? So, um, uh, yeah, the puddle jumper, or, you know, even a swim fin, those things are they're great. Great things for. You know, having the child swim around and, and play and learn and, and do independent work, but it doesn't replace that you need to still be there within the arts.
Fair enough. Fair enough. Um, so I want to turn to what you're doing at your swim school. So, um, like you guys have, um, you know, you obviously do a great job on social media, but you have a, an ecosystem of cohort of clients and customers and so on and so forth. What have you been telling them? Over the last year.
And how have you been communicating to them in terms of what to pay attention to for water safety and so on and so forth? To
be honest. Um, we haven't been the best in last six months. Um, you know, um, last year we did do some different safety messages. Like, you know, again, don't be within arms reach. Don't get distracted by your phone.
The phone is actually a big one as well. Like your phone down if you're watching kids in a pool. Um, so, you know, uh, again, boat safety, um, sun safety, all that kind of stuff. We've been, we've been putting out, um, on social media and. You know, we just we've been hopeful to be open, was been put onto social media last six months.
I have to admit, we were kind of just not really sure what to post at this point. Cause we've been sort of going through this cycle of, so we're getting back into it as the summer approaches and um, yeah, so we'll just continue with our safety messages and hopefully people will just see them and adhere to them.
And. And I'm hoping that at least it makes a difference in, in a few people's lives. Right. And the collective of all of my colleagues and all sums go owners and anybody who's involved in swimming, you know, if we all do it, it reaches that many more people.
Yeah, absolutely. And I'm hoping like, you know, in an initiative like this can help as well.
You know, even if it just, if it helps save one person that summer, then it's all worth it. Right. So, um, we, we wanna, you know, get that drowning rate down to zero. Um, but that said, um, you know, It's it's nice when you have, or it's helpful when you have like world bodies, like the who saying that this is a world epidemic and we all need to pay attention to it.
And so on and so forth, let alone Canada, the world is covered, you know, 70% water, right? So you to learn how to swim
and like who basically they say is Berry first, first line of defense is barriers, which is like the fencing. And the second line of defense is some lessons, right?
Yeah. Yeah. And I guess going back to my original question, it's just curious why, you know, like we don't seem to prioritize that here.
Right. When it is, you know, like you, don't the fact that we, we have a world body that says that it's great, but it's kind of like, you know, somebody telling you to remember to drink water or to eat, like these are basic things you need to do to survive. Right. And this is one of them.
And, you know, it's just, like I said, a bunch of us, you know, have been lobbying governments to, to make it as considered as an essential, you know, it's like, it's like for them more children going to school, right.
It's the same thing. It's, it's a life skill. Um, you know, and like you said, tell me, wait, Joe sees it as a, as a, uh, as a problem worldwide. I'm not sure where our government is and why they're not standing up and, and, uh, letting us do what we do. Um, it's, it's unfortunate. Um, but I, I do believe that what we've learned out of this whole entire year is as a collective group, we're working really well together that some school industry, I know, you know, most of the people that I'm referring to, um, and we're not done with the pandemic.
We're not, we're not going to say after the pandemic, we're going to stop this fight for being classified. As essential, we know are essential, we're going to fight and make sure that the government as well knows that we're essential and that everybody out there. And if you ask any, any parent out there and you talk to them about this, they're like you are essential.
So. I'm not sure why the political people are doing what they're doing, but like you said, it's like drinking water and, and, you know, eating healthy, you need to learn how to swim. And, and most people see that here. Um, you know, it's just, we just got to make a little bit more noise, I guess.
Yeah. And I'm definitely aware of all the work that you guys have been doing as a, as a group lobbying.
Maybe let's, let's talk about what can the general public do. We can get a couple of words out to the general public, who can they write? What drum can they bang to, um, you know, get the information out and help support that caused that fight that you just alluded to.
Um, it really it's it, I mean, at this point, I'm not sure how much they're listening.
Um, I know obviously the vaccine role is, is priority number one right now, and it should be, um, but it's, it's writing their MP, MPPs, you know, letters to politicians. Um, that's pretty much how we're going to get noticed. I think, you know, at this point, um, in terms of what they can do. I don't know
that that's fair.
I mean, like, I just, I thought if we could, you know, by virtue of this video, if we could recruit, if you know, a few voices, you know, like, and then point them in the right direction and say, go do this right. And you've done that, right. Your MP, right. Your MPP, right. Your MLA, whoever it is just, you know, make them know that this is important.
So on and so forth. Yeah.
Your vote counts. Right. And they want you to, they want. Any voter is, is going to get attention. So hopefully if we can get a, you know, a few more people to do that, that'd be
awesome. Yeah, absolutely. Well, look, um, I want to thank you for your time and sharing all that information and you shoulder shared a wealth of information and we'll, like I said, we'll put it out there and, you know, hopefully there's some folks out there that will pick up something they didn't know and so on and so forth.
Um, Yeah. And, uh, you know, we can go from there, like personally with my three little kids, I'm very grateful to the summer school industry, because I had one of those silent moments, you know, a few months ago where one of our little ones like slipped into the pool, you know, not because of anything, malicious just slipped on a puddle of water and on Obama and into the water.
Right. And nobody saw. Right because there was some, so I'm, I'm, I am eternally grateful to the swim school industry and what you guys do. Right. And so I thank you for that. I thank you for what you do in your area and so on and so
forth. Well, we all thank you, you know, for making this, this podcast and, you know, in getting the message out.
Right. And, you know, you're, you're helping all, you've been supportive to all of us, so, you know, thank you. And, and, um, you know, we appreciate you guys as well, and all the stuff that you guys do for us,
Well, that's awesome. So, I mean, I wish you all the best. I hope lessons are went up in Toronto. I mean, not just for the sake of business, but really for the sake of safety.
Absolutely. And, uh, you know, we kind of go from there. Yeah.
All right. Well,
thank you. Yeah, no, my pleasure. All the best. Give my best to the team and, uh, we look forward to connecting soon. Great. Okay. Thanks. Thanks for watching. I hope you check us out. Anything that you need. We've got it at www.oceanjunction.com. .
Are you looking for the best open water goggles for your swim this summer? We've got them at Ocean Junction. So let's get into it. Open water goggles are a misnomer; swim goggles are good for any water, body pool, and Lake ocean. It doesn't matter. What you really want to find is a comfortable swimming goggle, and that's going to fit.
Let's go through these options, which are great if you're in the open water. We're starting by looking at the Vortech range.
Are you looking for the best open water goggles for your swim this summer? We've got them at Ocean Junction. So let's get into it. Open water goggles are a misnomer; swim goggles are good for any water, body pool, and Lake ocean. It doesn't matter. What you really want to find is a comfortable swimming goggle, and that's going to fit.
Let's go through these options, which are great if you're in the open water. We're starting by looking at the Vortech range.
We have the absolute pleasure of speaking with a gentleman by the name of Tom Haney, formerly of the Manta swim club, a steward that lasted 20 years, including today, we have the absolute pleasure of speaking with a gentleman by the name of Tom Haney, formerly of the Manta swim club, a steward that lasted 20 years, including putting a swimmer on the Olympic team who in medaled that the 2016 Olympic games now resides in Atikokan, Ontario back in his hometown, where it all began for him. Tom is a Paralympic athlete himself and has embraced change and challenge his entire life. This was a fantastic conversation.
]]>All right. Good morning folks, and welcome to the on-deck show, a show that looks at people and organizations operating outside the scope of normal to make things better for folks like you and me. This morning, we have the absolute pleasure of speaking with a gentleman by the name of Tom Haney, formerly of the Manta swim club, a steward that lasted 20 years, including today, we have the absolute pleasure of speaking with a gentleman by the name of Tom Haney, formerly of the Manta swim club, a steward that lasted 20 years, including putting a swimmer on the Olympic team who in medalled that the 2016 Olympic games now resides in Atikokan, Ontario back in his hometown, where it all began for him. Tom is a Paralympic athlete himself and has embraced change and challenge his entire life. This is going to be a fantastic conversation. Stay tuned.
The text that follows is an excerpt from our hour long conversation. The full video interview can be found on our youtube channel and by the link here. The full audio can be found by vis the Spotify link below
All right. Good morning, Tom,
Good morning, Jason,
I think this is going to be an excellent conversation. So why don't we just get into it?
Yeah. Sure.
One pattern that I found from the time you were young and I'm sure continues today is this pattern of defying, the odds embracing change, you know, rolling with the punches, so to speak, throughout your life. Tell me a bit of why that is for you or why that, how that became first?
That's a common story for many Paralympians or anybody that accomplishes something. Adversity is a big ingredient. I was born with spina bifida in Atikokan, which is a remote community in Northwestern Ontario.
And back in the day, when a doctor made a diagnosis, it was God-like; whatever they said, was going to happen. And once they found out I had spinal bifida, which is a congenital disorder. The doctor told my parents, "your son's probably not going to walk" With that level of spinal bifida where it affects the spine, typically, you don't see the motor skill development that will enable somebody to be able to walk. However, I was the fourth of four kids, three older sisters, and my mother early on saw that the behavior I was exhibiting wasn't a lot different. Yes. I had struggles and things of that sort. So she and my father and my three sisters took the approach of "do it yourself."
You know, typically, what you would want to do is feel a little bit of pity for someone struggling and go to help them. But my parents were strong, resilient immigrants from Scotland, who had gone through the war. They knew hard times and knew, if you're going to survive, you know, particularly in a harsh mining community, you're going to need to figure out how to, you know, be resilient and do things on your own.
So climbing up the stairs, crawling up the stairs, actually, all of the little things that perhaps, maybe today's world, I hope not, but might be just—inclined to help the child out that wasn't my reality nor was pity. So I came home from school, for instance, and kids had picked on me, I stood out like a sore thumb in a small town; there weren't many disabled kids. Once the kids saw that I walked a little funny. All of that kind of went away. I never let it bother me. I did in the beginning, but there was no room. There was no pity. There was no; there was no comfort for that.
It was an attitude of "just deal with it." When you get down to dealing with the physical disability and the idea of How, do you overcome this? What are the things that you need to do? For me, swimming was huge; it was a level playing field at the international level league level. The disability plays a part when competing against able-bodied athletes. But when you were young and coming up, you can work harder than the average, 10, 11, 12, 13 years old and be competitive. As I got older, it got more competitive; when I progressed to the Paralympic group, all of those lessons I had learned growing up just made me a stronger athlete, which is what any Paralympic Olympic champion & world champion knows.
Fantastic answer. Digging in on that a little bit, I mean, but call it the tough love approach. It wasn't without compassion?
Oh, absolutely not. There wasn't a time at all that I ever felt that my parents didn't love me. I got mad to go to my room and be upset and things like that, but. When you get to a certain level of maturity, you're grateful for it, love and guidance. Suppose I hadn't had parents like I had everything that I have and done, I don't think I would have experienced.
You spent 23 years in Winnipeg like that's a long time to spend in any place when it comes to coaching or how to like, and you got great results there. How did that affect and influence your coaching philosophy and coaching career?
I took the same approach to coaching initially as I did with my swimming. Which is hard work & hard work; in the beginning, I had a certain level of knowledge; we all do when we leave swimming, you're familiar with certain sets, and I just consumed myself with understanding the physiology of what we did, the physics of what we did and took more of a scientific approach to coaching, but firmly based in the idea that hard work is as best regards and conveying that message to the kids.
We had a motto at Manta: Pride Toughness, Respect, which they carry today, and I'm thrilled to see. We lived it; we embodied it, pride in the work, pride in our teammates' toughness, and respect.
And so as time went by you learn just any good swim coach, what works, what doesn't work.
That's a great piece of advice coming back on track, you talked about swimming being a level playing field. Let's take that idea and extrapolate. What was it like to take your swimming and progress through local domestic levels and international levels up to the Paralympic Games?
Well, interesting story. I'd grown up being told you're really not that different. So competing in a sport like swimming, then SWAD (summers with a disability), didn't exist. My first couple of years, I was competing with able body kids, obviously improving, which is the hook for swimming. That's self-improvement, never mind the ribbons and stuff; that's secondary. Through an official in Thunder Bay, my parents learned about the Northwest Regional Games for the disabled Northwestern, Ontario.
My parents approached me and asked if I would you, is this something you'd be interested in? That first resulted in tears, you know, I got upset I had told all my life, I'm not disabled. They wanted me to go to games for disabled athletes, so it took a bit of time, but I went to the first set of games, I won a whole pile of medals, and everything changed. In the same year, we went from there, I went from regionals to provincials, I think in Sarnia, then from Sarnia to Vancouver for nationals. So for my first experience in Paralympic sport, it was pretty extraordinary from going from yea.
You have to remember; I already had a strong work ethic from my parents and my coach here and out of Atikokan, a really tough coach; he didn't look at my disability. His attitude was that if you show up, you do the workout, I could have some swim fins if you want to keep up and kick, but that's the only exception. You can imagine that reinforcement loop and its effectiveness; it's just huge. I went from being nobody to suddenly a national medalist, and then progressing to 1984 paralympic games, where I won four gold and a silver medal. That was my foray into international swimming. After that, we moved into a new classification system; what the classification we have now where disabilities are integrated. When I won four gold and a silver, I was competing against people with spinal cord injuries. That's it, class six, the least disabled of the, of the success of the spinal cord injuries. In 1985 this new system was introduced. We went to Germany, and I was classified as an S10 but based on where I rank internationally. And from there, everything took off, and over time, they recognized my disability was more pronounced; I got bumped down to a class S9 and competed in class nine for the rest of my career. After suffering a near-fatal accident in March, I went to Korea and won four silver then went to Barcelona in 92. I didn't win a medal there, just finalled, it was So a pretty illustrious swimming career.
Then, full circle in 1994, I went to Victoria, and competed for Canada at the Commonwealth games because it was integrated.
I want to go, I want to talk briefly about Your mom. And then the breaking, the barrier swim. Okay. Sorry, go ahead. Your mom passed away in a car accident when you were young. And the summer after to honor her, you swam across Quetico park.
Which was almost a hundred-kilometer swim, including portaging a canoe; the swim was coined "The Breaking the Barrier Swim." Tell me about it, tell me about the name, tell me about why so important?
Which was almost a hundred-kilometer swim, including portaging a canoe; the swim was coined "The Breaking the Barrier Swim." Tell me about it, tell me about the name, tell me about why so important?
It was, it was the single most important thing other thanbeing a father that I've experienced in my life.
My mom passed away in 1992. She was coming home from whereshe worked, which is in Quetico park. That's a beautiful provincial park uphere in Northwestern, Ontario, pristine. My mum loves working there, but shealso loved her garden. So on that particular day, May 20th, she was drivinghome, and for reason, we've never been able to find out, her car went off theroad. She wasn't wearing a seatbelt that day, which is odd for my mother. Wethink perhaps it was because she had breast cancer earlier to see whether therewas a cancer tumor, it turned out to be benign.
It was a massive shock to our entire family and thecommunity of 4,500 people at that time.
My mom was well known for her involvement in the communityand because they knew she was a big part of my success. And so right afterward,the Ontario government was pushing an initiative for barrier-free access toplaces like Quetico park, which meant no boats, no motors. Quetico Park ispristine, and people with disabilities usually have a hard time accessing it.The project initiated was a boardwalk idea, and it was fantastic andwell-received. What shocked us was that they came to us and said, "we'dlike to name this after your mom, the Sheila Hanney boardwalk, because of whatshe did for you."
We were honored, you know, and my family was honored. I walked away from it going. You know that'sdoesn't do justice to what she did for me and what I contributed to thedisabled community in terms of the idea there are no barriers.
I was familiar with Quetico park; it's our backyard,essentially. I thought about it andresolved a more impactful way to illustrate the effect that she had on me anddo something that no one's ever done before. That was swimming across a brutally difficult Quetico park. It's notjust lakes, creeks, and rivers it was also portaging a canoe.
So we set about; I had a friend David Maynard he knew thepark very, very well. He pulled in a local outfitter; Bud Dixon, the largestoutfitter in the area, told them the plan. They were blown away by it and said,"that's pretty audacious, Tom. Can you do it?" I had no idea Jason,if I could do this right, I had; I'm not an open water swimmer.
I did huge volumes of training. I just wanted for Herb DeBray.I mean, come on, you know, the guy's famous for 8,000-meter morning practices.And so I could handle the distance in the water. Once we started to put the logistics together,we brought in a team of people who had joined us on the trip.
We knew that we would do what we called grunt - guys who were going to go from one campsiteto the next because this was not going to take place over a day. We knew thiswas going to be three or four days; we almost built in five to make sure thatwe could do it because the last thing you want to do is something that big andthen fail.
Before we did it, I spent hours and hours in different lakesaround where we live. And we had an abundance of lakes up here in NorthwesternOntario. I always had a friend or two in a canoe to guide me, and that's whatwe did. So we undertook the swim, and I did a prep swim in one of the lakesthat I would do in that formal swim later on in the summer.
We got the team together. Everybody was excited. Everybody believed in what we were doing. It wasa great thing to honor this special person, not me, my mom. I swam, there wassome adversity. We ran into a storm, I had to be pulled from the water the dayafter the storm, because. I thought I would have hypothermia, they warmed me upby a campsite through some warm Gatorade in me through & some more Vaselineon.
We finished the swim, and it was pretty spectacular; there was a huge crowd at the beach. It was very, very, very special and the point was made. When you talk about that barrier that provides free access to that boardwalk, it coincides with the conversation about that kid.
But this always about Sheila Hainey, Not Tommy. To this day, it is the Sheila Hainey Boardwalk
Brilliant tribute, so that particular swim was five days and just under a hundred kilometers.
How much of that was portaging?
Fortunately I didn't have to Portage the crew that I had with me were pretty clear. I had to haul a pack though. I mean, they weren't that nice. Well, in fact it wasn't that wasn't probably about a kilometer or two in total.
It was tough terrain though These aren't, these aren't boardwalks. Like it was at the other end where we finished was we're in the middle of nowhere. So they were challenging. But the first day was really interesting. We had no idea what to expect and we start, well, the second day we got there on the Wednesday night. And I just, I wanted to make sure I did the whole parks. We started at the Western edge of it, and it was a 10 kilometer swim, not even mean just to, to get to the ranger station where the rest of the team would get together. And that's essentially where we would start. So we accomplished 48km on the Thursday with 4 days left to go. So everybody breathed a bit of a sigh of relief until the Friday when we, the storm hit and the water was frigid and we got it all done. And then we finished up on the Saturday. And there was, like I said, a ton of people on the beach. It was wonderful.
It must've been an emotional moment for you walking up onto the beach.
Yeah, it was. But at that point, Jason, to be honest is kind of the conversations that I have with my mom throughout that, throughout that swim, it wasn't as emotional, as I thought know, it was like, yeah, we did this. Yeah. “Thanks mom”.
You know, and for everybody else, it was, you know, it wasn't a dry eye in the place and there was some pretty, pretty The ceremony itself was pretty special. The whole day was a celebration of my mom.
Coming back to the Paralympics. The Paralympic movement started shortly after World War II as basically a mechanism to get injured soldiers, give them purpose, give them something to do and so on and so forth. It's definitely grown into a worldwide movement at this point. It's embraced by everybody.
What does that mean to you?
Well, a lot, because it was fledgling when I first started racing. The biggest name in Paralympic sport was Rick Hansen. Rick and I were roommates in 1984 in England. That's where, like, has you referred to the injured soldiers.
This was our chance to compete. That's that's basically where it all started.
It was an honor for me to be able to compete and have thesuccess I did. I went back to England a few times for annual championshipsafter that, and I had wonderful success there. And I remember having thisconversation with Rick, I'm not sure if he'll remember. But I was, I was young,right? I was younger than them and here comes this kid out of nowhere and is astar I'm winning four gold and three world records. It's silver metal, but Rickwas great. And so were all the other guys, Mel Fitzgerald, and a bunch of. Abunch of the guys who'd been doing this for a bit. And Rick shared with me his Man InMontion Tour. He told me he's going to wheel around the world. I thought, that’s audatious, that'soutrageous and you're in a wheelchair…. a 1984 wheelchair. Not what we havetoday. Now he didn't do it in 1984. And so. But I'd like to think I'd like totake a little bit of pride that those successes and the person that I was, Iwas an athlete that trained like an able-bodied athlete, trained withable-bodied athletes; didn't use the disability.
When I was being classified. One of the measures that theyhad, how much do you train? And when I explained to them nine times a week, youknow, 45, 55,000 meters a week, it was foreign to the people who were classifiedme that they hadn't seen, not in a swimmer and then slowly but surely otherparallel, great Paralympians, particularly the Canadians. Andrew Halley case in point, Stephanie Dixonstarted to move forward. We were always on the front edge of the Paralympicmovement. We always had wheelchair basketball team. Very good. ArnieBoldt on the track on high jump. Canada's always been very good and theworld has caught up.
And as a result of the world, catching up, you see thisappreciation for athleticism. So now it's no longer just looking at athleteswith a disability competing. You're looking at great performances and you'relooking at athletes competing, you know? And so I, I pushed hard to be alobbyist for the Paralympic movement because it had given me so much you haveto give back, but I wanted to so to see it where it is today is wonderful. Nowthere's so many, so many great Paralympians that came through what I was comingthrough. I shouldn't say that just athletes, that, that just changed the waythe public governments look at, you know, a sport for athletes with adisability.
That's brilliant and superb advice for anybody listening. Sothat fits nicely with, you know you know, I guess my next statement orquestions life has kind of come full circle for you. You're back where youstarted. Correct me in terms of how tosay the name of the town. I practice it about know several times Atikokan.
So you started swimming there now.
When we spoke back in the PRO conference back few years ago,you talked about starting up the club. So does that mean that you repatriated theclub, you brought it back.
What had happened is that. Over time after I left, not unlike small towns across the country, the program just dissolved. And that was Atikokan . And I knew I'd come back to coaching and I, and my daughter loves swimming. So we can't do this alone. So let's see what the interest in the community is about.
Atikokan's a small town. So anybody who does anything that's successful is celebrated and remembered and honored. So even though it was sometime later that I came back, The memory of the town knew that this was Tom Hainey, the athlete there's a sign assignment would come into Atikokan the welcomes home of Tom Hainey amongst other athletes who we celebrate.
So it was a little easier to get the ear platform to have a meeting. And we had many parents come out and I went through what the program's gonna look like from its infancy, basically manta light. Right. I was just going to duplicate the entire structure that we had at manta and, but not so.
High-end we're just focusing on getting kids in the water and learning how to swim, essentially. And and once that we started getting the ball rolling, you know, Darren was fantastic. He was really big help. All of the good guys at somewhat. They a big help helped me guide through it. It's a complicated process, starting up your own club, know policies, procedures getting incorporated.
But the energy that I saw in that room, Jason said, okay, There, there is a real potential for this program to get up and running. And we did a mock spring session in 2018 and the interest was there. Kids were there, give them certificates. It was a lot of fun. And then when 2020 came around, We got, we did another version in 2019, and then official suite.
We went through the motions, like we were swimming other than not going to or something other than not going to a swim meet. And we did some mock stuff in our pool when 2020 rolls around and we were told, okay, you're good to go, Tom. Your program has met the criteria you're on official swim team. You know, we had 30 kids registered.
So then of course, locked down and two, three, and now we're going to shut down again. I'm hoping that when we finished all of this, the majority of these kids come back and they get it. You know, we, we show them the ISL, you know, what's what swimming has become nowadays. And they understand who Michael Phelps was.
And they're learning who the Canadian swimming heroes are and becoming students of the sport, which. We both know if you're not a student of the sport and you're only gonna go so far, right. Teaching them to be students and learning and be hunger for that is a part of it is as well.
That was great. I wanted to know if, you know, upon your arrival you made a conscious decision to restart the swim club, which it sounds like you did. You know, definitely sounds like the reputation of that. Tom Hainey and the Hainey family, you know, is, is, is become a legacy.
And you know, like that certainly helps in terms of what you're doing and, you know, like, I, I like how you referenced it, Manta light.
There's a certain call it self security, self, you know, more than self-awareness there. When you talk about inviting people in and you'll helping to build the, you know, the, the greater culture of swimming in the community there and like, that's I mean, it really is the greater good.
If I can sum it up and you mentioned this in various ways throughout our talk it's not about Tom. It's about the kids, it's about the community. And I think that, that that's a thought that can resonate with many people and we get a lot of people can learn from that.
What's it like to be home?
Oh, it's great. It's great. In two ways, let me tell you why the job that I came back from is not the job I have now. This was a complete fluke. And so when this, the job that I have now, which is community services manager, so my coaching is volunteer and I plan that to be till retirement.
I love that. I'm a volunteer. I'm a volunteer coach. You know, it's just, I love that feeling. And so community services manager here. It's a great job. It's, it's crazy at times COVID has really made it come get it, but I manage a golf course, an arena a pool, a seniors active living center and outdoor recreation area, amidst all the programs.
And so knowing what I know from what sport can do for kids, what sport can do for people particularly coming from that high end point of view. It's great. I I'm getting to do a whole bunch of things in other areas that I never dreamed about. This is not something that I thought I would finish my career with, but no headaches with pool time.
I don't know if I got it as a coach, Tom, I I'm upset with it. I, I phoned the community services manager and everything gets sorted out. The coach is always smarter than the the pool manager. But yeah, so, and the resources I have that I just mentioned to you before, when we came on here the success that the club was having in reaching out for financial support.
So we have. A lot less, a lot more means, you know, you I'm buying a ton of equipment for the kids. We're just going to get them a bunch of snorkels and fins and they don't have to go to the pocket for that. The community is supporting it and when we can use snorkels again. Right. But the video system, all the things that I believed in Winnipeg with Manta we're going to do here.
And and that translates to our junior golf program. We're doing things for the junior golf program that. They didn't realize could be done. My cabin's 10 minutes away, Jason, it's beautiful. It's right on the water. I have to finish it. That's a lot to do to finish it.
But you know, any job that you care about is going to be stressful. So this stress of this job is my professionalism, my competitiveness wanting to be good. But going to my cabin, sitting on the way, going for a paddle, you know, it all goes away. And I have, it's a wonderful community, small communities are they support one another.
So yeah, it was a good move. As sad as at times when I look back and miss everybody in Winnipeg embrace what we have here.
What you just described, as you know, it seems like it's areward for, you know, a lifetime of service to the community, so I'm sure itfeels well, you know, and as I said at the beginning, like, This, like, it wasinspiring. It was gave me goosebumps reading and listening to some of the stuffas I was preparing for this.
Given everything you've done, everything you've overcome andwhat you're doing now, do you have any final thoughts for people listening?
Yeah. What I love about our profession, Jason, is what, one,an example of what you're doing today. And thank you for this. Cause this isimportant at this time.
That conversations on the pool deck that we keep sharing ourpersonal troubles and be open to the support, which has been wonderful. Itkeeps sharing ideas that I think that that's what I love the most and miss themost, to be quite honest, this has been fantastic morning chatting with you.
And and I think if, yeah, in everything that I experiencedin the profession, be open to learning and be open to sharing. And I think itmakes the coaching experience or whatever you do that much better. The constantlearning is just builds confidence.
It will be interesting if you're open to do it, to do acheck-in maybe in a year's time from now, because one of the things I'm curiousabout now is, is the impact that you're gonna have on those non-swimmingprograms, like you mentioned, like the junior golf program and stuff like thatand how you might open their eyes to different perspective and how things mightprogress. So certainly an area to an area of the country to keep our eye on andI've really appreciated. This conversation has been really enjoyed it quite abit.
So I enjoyed it as well. It's not so much that we weretalking about me, but just reliving some of the memories that I've had in thepast 20 years. It's, it's nice to go down memory lane. And when you're in afast paced job, like this, you go off and have the chance. So thanks. Thanksfor inviting me on. I think what you're doing is awesome and keep doing it.
And I'm looking forward to seeing more of your podcasts.
Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you again andthank you for your support
In this second episode of our drowning prevention series, we're going to speak with Kerri Russell from Russell aquatics in Markham, Ontario; Kerri is going to bring us her message on drowning prevention, give us a little glimpse into what she does and give us a little insight into the swim school itself.
We welcome Kerri.
The question: whether or not as a culture, we've taken drowning prevention for granted because of folks like you, who get that message out every day, and you do such an excellent job of getting the message of safety out, It's not prioritized, by people that are making critical decisions now during a pandemic, in terms of what should be an essential service, we know that drownings were up significantly in 2020, we expect the trend increase in 2021, we hope that it doesn't, that said, can you give me your take on that?
In this second episode of our drowning prevention series, we're going to speak with Kerri Russell from Russell aquatics in Markham, Ontario; Kerri is going to bring us her message on drowning prevention, give us a little glimpse into what she does and give us a little insight into the swim school itself.
We welcome Kerri.
The question: whether or not as a culture, we've taken drowning prevention for granted because of folks like you, who get that message out every day, and you do such an excellent job of getting the message of safety out, It's not prioritized, by people that are making critical decisions now during a pandemic, in terms of what should be an essential service, we know that drownings were up significantly in 2020, we expect the trend increase in 2021, we hope that it doesn't, that said, can you give me your take on that?
Yup. A hundred percent. It's not prioritized. It's not seen as essential. It really should be when drowning is the leading cause of accidental injury-related death for children under the age of five years, drownings happen in 30 seconds or less, and they happen silently.
So to me, with the number of backyard pools and access to water that we will have this summer, kids must know how to swim because we know that kids that participate in formal swimming lessons can reduce drowning up to 88%. So that's huge; it is so, so important that we are getting our swimmers back into the water, learning how to swim so that we can be more water safe this summer while we all are all having fun at the cottage and around the lakes and backyard pools.
Sounds good. So I want to dive into what you are doing withyour messaging to your members and how you communicate those safe waterbehavior messaging messages?
So we've been on social media, just talking about water safety, and that will ramp up now that we're entering the month of May and that people will have even more access to water. So just really ramping up those water safety messages. We're also offering water safety courses and courses for people with backyard pools to help them understand the risks associated with the backyard pool and the water and how they can further protect their families and the other neighborhood children.
So really, just educating the public through different courses and social media, we also have our monthly newsletters where we do the same thing. We ramp this up every year in the spring, and it continues into the fall. And yeah, we're continually hitting people with water safety messages and being realistic about the risk of drowning.
With the closure in 2020, where we were closed for four months when those students came back, we saw a significant reduction in their abilities of how to swim.
They had regressed a lot and then even further when we saw these students who I didn't come back. Until the fall of 2020, they had regressed so significantly we were going back at least a level or two. So I can only imagine what it's like for those kids who thought they would get to participate in April of 2021 in our spring sessions; we probably won't see those students until the summer of this year or the, hopefully not, but maybe even the fall.
It's very scary when you think about the fact that children have been out of the water for over a year in lessons; correlate that with the regression we saw within a few months; what's that going to look like after a year? What's that going to mean for this summer?
And that's how fast drownings happened. And unfortunately, that's why they are the leading cause of accidental death for kids under the age of five; it just happens so quickly. And I always tell the story of a 12-year-old in a Bronze Starr class, and she had just finished her bronze star course, which is the first course in becoming a lifeguard. She was at a pool party that weekend. And a mom was swimming with her daughter. The daughter was in a life jacket, and I think sometimes parents are too dependent on life-saving devices like life jackets, puddle jumpers, and water wings. They think if they're in a life jacket, then they're safe and don't pay as much attention. This child, this three-year-old, ended up taking off their life jacket and throwing it out of the pool. The mum was right there within arm's reach but did not pay attention, and the child started to drown. It was our, our 12-year-old bronze star student who saw it and saved the little girl.
So it's just being conscious, and the more you know about the dangers of water and water safety, the more you can prepare yourself when you're in and around the water.
1. Being pre-equipped,
2. Having the knowledge
3. Knowing what to do
4. Knowing what precautions to take
As much as it's a cliche in this scenario, education is your best way to stay safe
100 percent. And, and your children knowing how to swim, is your number one protection.
I have three children; my youngest is 18 months. I have a backyard pool. And even for us, our parent and taught classes have started and stopped so often in the last 18 months. Luckily I have been able to continue swimming with my daughter, but I have a lot of anxiety, even though she can swim. Just this summer and having a backyard pool and I have the fences and the locks and everything.
I will still be very conscious this summer with her because my other children are four and five, and they're strong swimmers. I still worry about them, but it's just so, especially for the 18-month-old. Water safety is so important to know, and having your kids know how to swim is crucial.
One hundred percent. We even have water watcher cards. We do backyard swimming lessons where we travel, send our instructors to family's homes, and give them a package. And in that package includes a water watcher card so that they can designate somebody to be the water watcher and then provide them with that card when they're having a pool party or just, you know, enjoying the pool themselves.
I did do adaptive aquatics, so I was a competitive swimmer. And then, I went into adaptive aquatics with the city of Markham. And then I worked there for about a year, and then I was 17; I started swim school in my parents' backyard pool. And then, when my sister was old enough, she got certified and joined me in the backyard pool, and both of us own Russell aquatics now.
So it's been 18 years. We went through university and decided when we had graduated that we wanted to continue expanding the business. We rented different pool spaces; we did indoor lessons as well during the colder months. And then we always ran the backyard lessons in the warmer months. Then three years ago we expanded, and have out custom-built facility in East Markham.
So Kristi and I did a lot of research on what we, what size of facility we want and what size of the pool we wanted, what we wanted our facility to look like and feel like. And we always wanted still to maintain that, that family-run business and that approach, and just really knowing our clientele and our team.
it's a lot of a lot entering into your own facility, but if you're prepared and have a great team of people working with you and architects and engineers, it does come together beautifully. And we're proud of the location that we did. There are some things we would do differently.
It being our, our first facility, but to be honest, tiny things. So I recommend for anybody wanting to expand and grow into this opportunity, do your research, visit other swim schools and get to know other swim school owners and immerse yourself in the industry; so that you can learn exactly how you want yours to be.
Brilliant. So for your swim school, you guys have this beautiful, you know, all window natural light entrance to your facility. Please tell us where you're located to get that message out to people when they're looking for you guys. And they're looking for lessons in the Markham area.
We're at 66 Copper Creek drive in Markham at the box Grove Plaza. So it's East of Markham, and yeah, we're. Russell aquatics is your 6,000 square foot units in the Box Road, Plaza, and Markham with plenty of parking.
Phone: (905) 471-6767
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Get Google API KeyI mean, You've imparted a sense of urgency when it comes to water safety, any final words you would like to leave people with in terms of things to pay attention to the summer and so on
Brilliant. So if you're in the Markham area, make sure you guys look up Russell Aquatics. You find them on Google. Find them on Facebook, find them on Instagram. I think if they can find you everywhere, right?
Yes. Facebook, Instagram and at www.russellaquatics.com.
Absolutely fantastic. Well, I really appreciate your time letting us in showing us around Kerri
We're launching a series on drowning prevention. This is a really important subject to us. In this first episode, we've convened a panel of experts and community stakeholders to talk about why we need to pay attention to this. We're really fortunate in Canada and the US to have such a robust lesson system. But now in a COVID world where those services have been restricted, or closed, or canceled altogether, we may not be fully aware of the risks. So let's dive in and dissect this and get some great information. Let's get into it.
The text that follows is an excerpt from our hour long conversation. The full video interview can be found on our youtube channel and by the link here. The full audio can be found by vis the Spotify link below
The Panel:
Jason:
Thank you everybody for being here. So I'm just going togo through some quick introductions. We have Barb from the Lifesaving Society.We have Eric from Shendy's Swim School in Toronto. We have Lisa from theCanadian Drowning Prevention Coalition. We have Adam from Canada Swim Schooland the Montreal Institute of swimming. We have Tamar Connell, as arepresentative from the YMCAs of Greater Toronto. And joining us from south ofthe border, we have Melissa Sutton from Active Kids Global. Thank you all forbeing here.
Jason:
So I want to start just with some individual answers to asimple question. Has COVID or because of the robust nature of the system ofswimming and teaching in Canada and in the US, and we do such a good job ofmaking sure that every kid knows how to swim, in the COVID world where we'vehad basically a year and a half of no or little swimming, are we at risk of notreally understanding the true risk of drowning because we've done such a goodjob of preventing it in the past. I'm going to go to Adam and let him start.
Adam:
Yep. So first, thanks for putting this all together,Jason. And yes. I mean, I'm located in Quebec, but we have definitely seen animpact from COVID on I guess what's happening with drownings. In Quebec alone,drownings were up over 51% last year in 2020, or summer of 2020.
A lot of these drownings, every drowning is preventable.But the vast majority or a good chunk of them were a direct result of what'shappening with COVID in terms of less pool or less supervise the area's beingavailable to swim, more people seeking out alternate ways to refresh themselveson hot days since a lot of pools were closed or had limited capacities. So alot of people seeking waterways, rivers, lakes, stuff like that. And there area lot of drownings there too.
Backyard drownings are up as well. It's important tomention that the fact that kids have had limited access, if any access, toswimming lessons over the past year and a bit is definitely a contributingfactor to that. So to answer your question, Jason, yes. The ongoing COVIDsituation has definitely had a negative impact on the number of drownings we'veseen here.
Jason:
Okay. I want to go to Tamar next. Tamar, can you shareperspective from your perspective and that maybe of the YMCA as well?
Tamar:
Yes. So at the Y, we offer swimming lessons for, not onlychildren, but their adult parents as well. We have a lot of newcomer families at our centers. So ofcourse, our pools have been closed since the pandemic hit. These families, asAdam said, have been seeking out other places to go swimming. So we've heardabout, of course, these drownings that have happened.
We've worked to keep in touch with our families andeducate them on safer swimming habits. So utilizing our staff that are onqueues, etc, to just talk to them and say like, Swimwear, there's a lifeguardusing PFDs and life jackets, things like this." to just try and make surethat they're staying safe as possible. But we know like they are going to tryand find alternate sources. So it definitely is going to happen. But we want tokeep them as safe as possible.
Jason:
Over to Barb, I want to know, from the perspective of aservice provider. Maybe you can dive into a little bit more of the meat of itbecause you sit on a lot of stats, you have a lot of information.
Barb:
I think it's important to note, Jason, that of course ourstatistics are always a couple of years behind. But we do have the trend data.So if we look at the initial shutdown from COVID in the Spring 2020, we haveobservational and media reported data. So that observational data told us thatthere was a lot of outdoor activity and we did have drownings. Now, that wasn'tnecessarily all children, because again, the trend data is more to your adults.
Because our indoor and outdoor public aquatic facilitiesare life guarded, we've always had a low drowning rate there. And so some ofthe pools were open, some were closed, some were open, then we got into a lotof one on one swimming lessons, private lessons. Now, we're closed again.
The one good thing is the government has allowed us tocontinue on with leadership and life saving and lifeguard training and stafftraining. So I think we were able to run a really strong water smart campaign lastyear in the summer pf 2020, even with COVID, and the facilities not open in thecommunities to be our messengers. And so we took a different route and a verystrong social media approach. And it actually had a lot of really positiveimpact and went very well.
So I think the important thing for us to stay on top ofand watch for the summer of 2021, is that COVID has increased our outdooractivities significantly. There are less group programming, and of course lesssupervised public facility visits, and everybody's out in the outdoors.
And so then we have to look at the barriers of protectionin regard to how we go there. So we had a really strong WaterSmart campaignwith the town of Banff last year. And that's continuing, where the communitytook up the charge and the champion to the messaging outdoors with signage andthat sort of thing.
So I think what we have to do is not accept this as a newnormal. But we have to look at alternative strategies, the outdoor activities,and those areas. And we have to look at working towards maintaining thatindustry standard, not lowering it, but also trying to continue to make surethat there's training going on, especially the life saving and the leadership,because when we do open up again, and we will, we're going to need that basefor our facilities so that we can have supervision and continue the lowdrowning rate in those supervised areas.
Jason:
Thank you very much. And I'm going to turn to Eric next.And I want to drill down a little bit more into the idea of whether or not asCanadians and Americans we take the low drowning rate in pools for grantedbecause stakeholders such as yourself have done such a good job of making surethat kids know how to swim, and people are water safe. Do we take that forgranted?
Eric:
I don't think we take it for granted. I think that thedrownings, I think, will be interesting to watch this coming year, especiallywith the kids and the adults and new Canadians not having swam in so long. Wewere fortunate that the swim school to be able to run lessons from last summerto about November 24 to be exact.
So I think that because they've had such a long break,even the lifeguards are out of touch with what to do. So we can't guaranteethat this 1% drowning rate around supervised settings is going to stay at 1%.Our goal was to get supervised settings to zero. And Lisa will talk about thedrowning prevention coalition. That was the main goal. And I happen to sit onthat committee within the coalition.
But I always look back at the global report on drowning thatcame out a number of years ago. And they always said swimming lessons is reallyeither the number two or number three way to offset the drowning rate. Thefirst is to barrier water, to put up fencing. And the fact that they cut offlessons, really concerned me throughout the year. I did sit on a number ofcommittees and I went before media saying that we've got to make swimminglessons an essential service. But the essential word became this gray areaacross the country. So it wasn't a project we were willing to push through.
But back to your question, Jason, it's a concern. The factthat it's 1% right now, I think that number is going to go higher. We were alsofortunate like Barbara said to be able to operate lifeguard and life savingtraining through the pandemic safely with protocols. But the number oflifeguards that are going to be required to supervise these areas thatpotentially may open up this summer is concerning to me, because people are outof touch and out of practice.
Jason:
I want to go next to south of the border and Melissa, andget your take on the same question. So it's a little bit different. And I'm goingto let the institutional experts speak on this in a moment. But tell us alittle bit about the US and Canada, the majority of drownings happen aroundopen water. Do you get the sense that people have taken water safety forgranted in the US?
Melissa:
I echo a lot of the sentiments that have already beenexpressed. But what we are seeing here ... And first, I want to also let youknow that I'm with the National Drowning Prevention Alliance. So I've got themore national scope for us here as well. But I also am on board member for ourDrowning Prevention Coalition of Arizona, so I can break it down to a littlebit localized. And that kind of is relevant to what you guys do, whether it'syour territories or Canada as a whole.
Certainly, we saw exactly what you were saying. And wefought the battles you fought. And similarly, we had to get creative withregard to our messaging and how we put it out there. It was definitely socialmedia and webcasts and relying on our communities to get the information outthat we couldn't do. We typically were seeing a trend downward because of allthe layers that we put in place.
Speaking to a little bit of what has been mentionedbefore, Arizona first saw its big decrease in drownings because of the barrierlaws that were put in place. And now barrier laws are still very weaknationally. So then we rely on the swim lessons that are provided, which as weknow, that didn't happen as much unfortunately last year.
So from a local perspective, Arizona's numbers definitelywent up. We had a horrible ... We were the lowest we've ever seen before in2019. In 2020, we're starting to shoot back up. And we attribute a lot of thatto lack of swim lessons, lack of supervision, we talk about the layers ofprotection. But in Texas because most of their drownings have been in thecommunity pools, their numbers went down.
So it's just kind of what data you're looking at how thosedrownings are taking place and where. But we also launched, at the nationallevel, the Resource Center, and we pushed that out as many channels as we couldto say, "Here's some resources, here's some information." And we'vehoned in on backyard pop up pools, because that was something we were startingto see as you guys are noticing. Not only were they going out to rivers andlakes, where we typically do see the majority of drownings nationwide and withour adults, but now we're starting to see these pop up pools. So we had to getinformation out about that.
So it was kind of just coming at us at all angles of,"Oh my goodness! What layers are being breached? And how do we message againstthem, because we can't have people in a pool being taught lessons." Andthen, as you guys know, we share Great Lakes. And that is a huge problem forus. I mean, I think there's recorded over 900 drownings that we know of on theGreat Lakes. I think just from our state reporting, I don't even know if thatincludes Canada's numbers. So I think I answered a lot of questions in thatone.
Jason:
No, it was absolutely great. And actually I'm going toturn to Lisa next, and get Lisa to weigh in on that, and then bridge over totalk a little bit about the Canadian Drowning Prevention Plan. And then we'llbring Melissa back in in a minute. But so to you, Lisa, the same question on basically,have we taken water safety for granted? Do we expect to see an increased risk?And then tell us about the work behind the Canadian Drowning Prevention Plan?
Lisa:
Thanks, Jason, and thanks for setting this up. This issuch an important conversation to have. We've done a really great job settingup leadership programs, life saving, life guarding programs across Canada. Andwe see that echoed in terms of even fewer than 1% of drownings taking place inlife-guarded supervised settings. And I really been specific in terms ofidentifying supervised settings as being life-guarded when we're looking atthat number.
The Drowning Prevention Coalition technical working groupfocusing on supervised settings redefined that. They dug a little bit deeper.And Eric is privy to that because he sits on that technical working group. Andso other supervised settings may include boating activities, school activities,other places in, on or around water in which supervision is assumed.
And so we ran those numbers through the database, and I'lltalk about the fatal drowning database in a moment, we found that that numberincreased, that percentage increased to 3%. But still, one and 3%, they're verysmall numbers. So what's happening here? And I'm going to swing over to anotherpiece of your question. And then I'm going to talk about the fatal drowningdatabase here in Canada, because it's quite impressive and we're reallyfortunate to have that.
The Canadian Drowning Prevention Coalition came about as aresult or in response to the World Health Organization's report on drowningback in 2014. And they put out a subsequent publication, preventing drowningand implementation guide in 2017. So the coalition came about and formed in around2016.
One of its key pieces of communications is the Canadiandrowning prevention plan. So what's it going to look like? It wasn't aboutimplementation, but rather about taking the data, combining it with theexperts, so that these experts could then create recommendations forimplementation. And then we have delivery partners, such as Lifesaving Society,Red Cross, and other stakeholders at various levels, and within various sectors,implementing these to make things happen, because we know that no matter whatit is that we say at a national level, and Melissa may get this too, we can saywhat we want to say. But the true magic happens at the community level. It's thosecommunities that take that information and make it their own.
So at a national level, we identified 13 possible targetareas. That's far too many. We were trying to narrow that down to five. We cameback with eight. That includes supervised settings because even though thatpercentage that we talked about earlier is really, really low, we figured itwould be the first and easiest to achieve zero. And the pandemic has thrown abig monkey wrench and all of that. But we can still strive to achieve zero.
Lisa:
So taking a look at stats just for a moment for 2020,because we talked about that earlier, and I have some from the DrowningPrevention Research Center of Canada. And again, that fatal drowning databasethat actually came about in and around 1990. So there were some questionstaking place about who was drowning. And so that information started to becollected. We have wonderful partnerships with the chief coroners and medicalexaminers across Canada. So we gather this data.
And so this database has been building for over 30 years, theenvy of the world. We have this data, it continues to grow. We also collectpreliminary data as part of this. And I say we because there was a recentamalgamation with the Drowning Prevention Research Center and the CanadianDrowning Prevention Coalition. So now we have, under one single umbrella, thedata and the experts working together. And of course, this is now falling undera broader banner within Life Saving Society Canada as well, and Life SavingSociety Ontario because of the PRC is linked into LSO. And so you now have adelivery partner.
So look at the different levels here. There's the layersof the drowning data, combined with the experts, combined with one deliverypartner, one delivery stakeholder of many, that can make this happen. So we'rejust now starting to figure out how this partnership is going to get tighter.But it truly is a dream to work with.
So I pulled up some data for you. And this includes somepreliminary data as well, because as Barb mentioned earlier, we're two yearsbehind in this. And that makes complete sense. We're working with the coroner'sand chief medical examiner's. And so many of these cases still have yet to beclosed. So we're always going to be looking about two years behind. But we trackinformation within the media, and we track that information and combine it andlink it up when we do get the actual data later.
So preliminary data from 2020 indicates that there were morefatal drownings in Canada than the previous year. So as compared to 2019.However, there were still more drownings in 2018, fatal drownings, than therewere in 2020. So that's an interesting thing to note.
Coming back to Adam's statement about Quebec, becauseQuebec has been a real outlier here, especially when we look at fatal drowningsin 2020. And so we see that there was actually a 64% increase in Quebec, whichis significantly higher than both 2019 and 2018. And so we need to take abigger dive into this, pun intended, to really look at the locations and thewho, what, when, where, and how.
So we have those bits and pieces as we present them in thenational drowning report each year. But we really will, this is going to beinteresting to see what's happened there, because it's really not ... It wasn'ta link to backyard pool fatalities per se. They weren't higher in 2020, eventhough there was a boom in backyard pool, pop up pool purchases, as Melissareferred to earlier. That wasn't the link. So again, research will come in andtake a look at this retrospectively, because that's all we can really do.
Jason:
Yeah. That's great. I mean, I think that we'll definitelylook to check in with you on that as we progress. I want to turn to before Imove on more with the stats and whatnot, I want to turn back to Tamar, Eric andAdam, from a community perspective, given the information that Lisa justshared.
How are youimparting that message?
How are you bringing that message to your community?
To Adam first here.
Adam:
So look, we've tried to take a very proactive stance interms of educating the community in terms of drowning prevention, that said, themost important thing the most important thing, in my opinion. One of the thingsthat we can actually do and what you want to do with the club is that this is alittle outside the box thinking, so bear with me everybody. But I feel thatwhat we can be doing is to sort of ... How do I say this? But I guess changethe expectation of when kids need to know how to swim. And I apologize again,if I'm going a little bit of topic. But one thing I wanted to get out there isthat there is an expectation out there that kids can only learn how to swimaround six, seven years old. That's the age that they become independentswimmers. And we've been trying really hard to sort of promote a lower age andmake parents know that you have to get kids into swimming at a younger age,because they can learn to swim on their own at a younger age. And this, inconjunction with the fact that we're trying to revamp our I guess, lessonprogramming, the Red Cross does an excellent, excellent job of this.
But from the very beginning, Red Cross is promoting watersafety from the very early levels. And this is something that needs to beexpanded across every swim program across the province, across the country. Andby educating families and swimmers at younger ages in terms of how to be safe; then in terms of what are the expectations forswimming & when should you be able to swim on your own, and how can you dothat safely, is a really good way, we feel, to start to help promote watersafety and reduce drownings even further.
Jason:
Great answer. And there's nothing out of the box with thatanswer. So thank you for being proactive with that. Eric, I want to go to younext.
Eric:
Well, I mean, we have continued to connect with ourcommunity of families that come to the swim school through social media,sending the newsletters on tips and tricks on how to be safe around water, justto make sure that's maintained throughout the year. I think it's going tobecome a situation where it's going to be the haves, and the have nots goingforward in the spring here in Ontario.
The haves will have backyard pools that can welcome aninstructor back there, which is a complete luxury. We did a bunch of programslike that last summer when families asked us to come to them. And so we cateredto them. And again, it's all about teaching kids and adults to swim that don'tknow how. So anybody we can get our hands on or off of to teach them how toswim, we're going to do it.
The summer camp industry, of which I'm very well connectedand part of the task force to open camps in Ontario, and we talked to the CanadianCamping Association as well regularly, it's like a 50/50 right now, don't quoteme on that. But as long as cases in different provinces continue to go down,the camps might be another place to promote lessons in aquatics, and so forth.
But again, with the shutdowns, all we can do is connectthrough social media, newsletters, emails, answer questions. When I was onmedia about a month ago, the reporter asked me, "What kind of tips can wegive parents who have backyard pools to teach their own children?" And tome, that was a fascinating and scary question at the same time, becauseunfortunately, we've seen statistics of parents who don't know how to swimbefore their children. And so I'm a little worried about that. So as far asaccess, that would be my big concern in the haves and have nots. But wecontinue to connect with our families through the internet.
Jason:
Awesome. Thanks, Eric. So moving over to Tamar. So Tamar,with the YMCA in Toronto, I mean, you're in one of the most densely populatedareas of Toronto. The YMCA typically caters to a very wide or very diversesocio-economic group of people. You have people who are very well to do, havefirst-time people into the country, and so on. So you also have a very broadrange of swimmers and people looking for lessons. So maybe you can speak to howyou address that diversity.
Tamar:
Yeah. So pre-pandemic, at all of our nine centers, we wereserving probably just over about 10,000 people through our different aquaticprograms. So when we shut down, it was trying to find a way to continueeducating those members. So the first thing we did is at our centers. We had avery successful junior lifeguard club program, a couple of competitiveprograms, our barracudas in our Wahoos at our Westend, and our Bramptonlocation.
So we started right away doing the virtual program withour Junior Lifeguard club and our competitive life saving program. Soimmediately, worked with the kids in the virtual program to build on the safeswimming and all that. So they were working on projects. And even one projectthey did was just hosting ... They made posters and sent them to the coaches topost up on the windows so members that would walk by the facilities were ableto take a look at that. As I mentioned earlier, our lifeguards on queues weremaking phone calls to all of our swim lesson families, just talking to them andletting them know about staying safe around water.
We have continued with our Junior Lifeguard club program.One of our head coaches, Natasha, is doing a great job with that. So the kidswill continue with doing a water safety and reaching out to our members againwithin a couple weeks. So we're just trying to make sure that the members knowthat we're here and we want to support them. And then on social media reachingout, and things like that too.
And then for last summer, we were fortunate enough to beable to redeploy a bunch of our aquatic staff to our camps. So they were ableto touch base with a lot of our families, and that happens too. So we had ourToronto Island camp. We had another camp in Peel that was kayak and canoe. Soeducating our families in that way when they were there about safe waterbehavior.
Jason:
Great, that's fantastic. So I'm going to turn to Barb, andthen back over to Melissa. And I want to ask Barb to share a bit of thenational drowning report and more of the stats along the side there. And stillcome back to this idea because, what I'm looking to get from this panel is, oneway or another, have my idea either validated or my thesis validated ordebunked, that because of folks like you that are passionate about swimming,you bring this message, you drive it home every day for your clientele, to yourmembers, and so on, that we have a critical mass of people that have a goodunderstanding of water safety. But if we take that away, and enough time goesby without that education, we're going to be dipping into a black hole. We'regoing to be falling into a point where that's going to become a gap, and thenthat's where the risk occurs. So leading into the drowning report, so lookingat the stats, and just a quick overview, and then please dive into a Barb. Butmajority of swimming of drowning related accidents don't happen in supervisedsettings.
Barb:
Yeah. And so I think one thing that's important to note, Imean, there's great work being done on the data. And we've got technology onour side with that. But what's important to note is the evolution of theCanadian drowning report and the drowning reports across the country. And thatevolution is that each territory and province has their own drowning report,because they have their own specific, unique data, even though there's generaltrend data.
But the evolution has turned it into an infographic, avery simple, standardized infographic. And that's key to those wordy documentsthat we used to have. So we need those techies, and those researchers, and thatsort of thing, and those papers. But we really need to go back to the tools,what's the toolbox, and the templates required for community activation. When Isay community, I'm also meeting a community of Canadian residents, whether it'sas immigrants or certain religious background. We have a lot of Mennonites andHutterite colonies.
So every community is unique. And so we need to resetourselves. I don't believe in a new normal, but I think we're going to have to resetand take the opportunity to move forward with a future vision in how we dothis. And I believe we have to do it differently, because we are, in a sense,going to be starting from scratch in a lot of areas.
So we talk learn to swim. But what we really know and whatwe mean based on the World Health Organization report is basic swim survivalskills. And so we have to have standardized messaging, standardizedinfographics, icons. If all of those who are passionate start working togetherbetter and sharing, then if I take my family to Arizona, the messaging isunique to the community. Still, the intent of the messaging needs to bestandardized.
And so we can talk about the data and the trend data. Andof course, our youth and child drowning is low. But every time it happens, it'stragic. And it tugs at our heartstrings. And we know that 99.9% is preventable.So we also need to refine and redefine our need to hang on to what aninstructor is.
And I heard Eric express some concerns that we need tounderstand that parents can teach. But we have to give them the tools and thebox to do that in. They need basic swim survival skills. But it needs to be ineither supervised settings, or have safe areas set up with life jackets inshallow water.
So by us hoarding the teaching just to organize thelessons, we need to shift that. So just like bathtub drownings are up, thereare lots of different things that are happening. I mean, who knows down theroad what suicide by drowning might be. There are going to be differentchallenges that are thrown at us.
So really, I think we have an opportunity to reset, collaborate,and standardize, and change the way we think because community activation andaccess will be so important. And it is. It's going to be the haves and havenots. We also depend on that education system and years ago when every childgot swimming lessons.
I still believe we need to work with our electedofficials. And that's one of our pathways. But I don't think we should throwall our eggs into that basket, which is the only pathway that we pursue forchildren and adults to access basic swim survival skills. So let's not have anew normal. Let's re-shift the old normal of how we think, and let's be betterat it together and letting go of those myths that we grew up on, and weretrained and certified on, and look into the future to the millennial generationand the Canadian resident demographic in our unique communities. And we have toreach out to them, and engage them, and have them help us deliver these essentialskills that we're going to have a considerable void based on the results ofCOVID and the pandemic.
Jason:
I wanted to just, if you could just expand on somethingyou referenced. You mentioned, at one time, all Canadians got swimming lessons.Can you expand on that a little bit? I wasn't aware of that.
Barb:
Yeah. It wasn't so much my boomer generation. But it wasmy children's generation, who are millennials and pre-millennial, where you hadswimming lessons in your educational curriculum in Alberta. And that waslessons. So at least in elementary school, you got exposed to lessons. With thecost of busing and liability and everything, then that turned into an aquaticactivity in the curriculum. And then it disappeared.
And so I don't believe we're going to have governmentsthat support going back to what was there. So okay, how do we work withgovernments so that they do you support still trying to achieve the results? Tohaving every grade three students or in elementary school at least, as early aspossible, be exposed to learning basic swim survival skills, how to put a lifejacket on, that sort of thing.
I'm going to give you a good example. In the NorthwestTerritories in Yellowknife, they have a beautiful beach and lake, within themunicipal borders. And they have a drowning. And there was a fatality inquiry,and they worked with us. And the immediate charge was the need to put alifeguard on that beach. Well, the town couldn't sustain it. They could barelysustain putting lifeguards in their public pool.
So we worked with them to wrap their head around putting alife jacket loaner station right on the beach and having beach attendants whodid not have to have bronze medallion and bronze cross. What they had to havewas aquatic emergency care & standard first-aid. And they had a safe swimarea supervised and roped off, and they became the water-smart advocates in thewhole city of Yellowknife
And that beach on a hot day in Yellowknife in theNorthwest Territories can have 400 people on it. But we gave them all the toolsand the standards of, "Okay, for every 400 square meters, we want at leastone beach attended, that sort of thing. Those locally employed, young adults& students did not have to takeyears and years and hundreds and hundreds of dollars of training to be able toprovide a safe environment, have life jackets free of charge and provide basicswim survival skills to a swim to survive program on the beach.
So that's in the Yellowknife, Northwest Territoriespeople. If we can do it there, we can do it anywhere. They're doing it globallyaround the world. And we have to loosen those ties that we have to ourtraditional thinking. And now's the opportunity to do it.
Jason:
Fair enough. Thank you for clarifying that and greatanswer. So I want to go to Lisa and Melissa next. I'm going to start with Lisa.And just kind of build on, I guess for your purposes, Lisa, build on what Barbtalked about. But also try to answer a burning question that folks like Adamand Eric and people in businesses like that have. Why is swimming not anessential service? Why is learn to swim and drowning prevention and theservices related, why are they not essential?
Lisa:
Remind me again of that question as we get toward the end.I've been writing down some notes. I loved everything that Barb has said here.So I'm going to try to touch on a few different pieces because these were allpart of my speaking notes. So awesome, Barb. This is great.
So the first thing I want to point out is that I referredto the Canadian drowning prevention plan of the key target groups, if yourecall. We aimed for five ended up with eight, with supervised settings beingone of those. But I think it's important because it echoes what everyone issaying here,
So what are we going to do? Reaching out to these groups,trying to educate the public about what to look for, what to do, what toconsider in terms of safety is all very important.
I'm going to swing to survival swimming skills trainingbecause this is important. And we talked earlier about what we are missing orwhat impact the pandemic is having. Not all provinces rolled out a Learn toSwim Program through the years. But I'm a Gen-Xer. And so I grew up in thatsystem. And it continued on with the millennials after us, where we attendedswimming lessons in grades four, five and six. And so we'd go in and learnthose basic swim skills. Really important.
And as Barb mentioned, it started out as skillsacquisition training and was perceived as a recreational activity. Arecreational activity is something that it's nice to have but not necessary,and boom it went off the budget because of all these other overhead costs. Butit continues in some provinces.
So you look at the province of Ontario, you look at theprovince of Nova Scotia, you look at the province of Quebec. And so you've gotsurvival swimming skills training; and we know that survival swimming skillstraining is essential. Global data has shown us that. Research has proven ittime and time again.
And if not survival swim skills training, so the basics interms of how to reorient yourself from a fall into the water. So be it throughthrowing yourself into the water, or the roll into water, treading for acertain period of time and then doing a distance swim so that you learn thosebasic survival swimming skills is important.
Basic swim skills are absolutely needed. So one of thethings you're going to see come out and started in the eighth edition of theCanadian drowning prevention plan, which will be launched on or around May 4,we're aiming for May 4, is that all Canadians need to have basic swim skills.Need it, absolutely essential. And it has to be part where we're actuallyrecommended that it be part of the public health care system with no barriersand universal access. This is to be used as immunization for drowningprevention in Canada. So basic swim skills, absolutely essential for all groups.
So let's swing back to these swimming lessons in schools,or let's swing back to the survival swimming skills training that's takingplace. So that's through a program called Swim to Survive, a life-savingsociety program put out and still delivered in many schools, as I mentioned,Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, in particular.
Why is this still able to happen within these provinces?It's because three key components tend to come together to make it successful.
And we've seen that when we look at these threecomponents, a tripod if you will, when all three of those legs are in place,this happens within the school systems. So what's happened because of COVID?We've lost two cohorts. We've lost the talent because when did they go in todo? How do the schools go into doing this program? After Christmas, after MarchBreak. So we've lost 2020, we've lost 2021. Now, we have missed two full schoolyears, two cohorts of kids have gone through.
Why is this important? Because just like vaccinationclinics for COVID, you can set up the clinics and wait for people to come. Butthe people who are at greatest risk are still working; they're still inworkplaces. So in order to immunize them, the best place to have the clinic isin the workplace. Take it to them. The same thing holds true for kids.
So we're going to have kids who can sign up and continueswimming lessons because it's something that they've grown up doing orsomething within their community or their neighborhood. But those at mostsignificant risk won't be signing up for swimming lessons; they need to take itas part of their participation within the school system. It needs to come tothem. And we've missed two whole years.
And it's not simply those two years. This impacts familiesbecause this is an introduction. So those at greatest need, we have for newCanadians in particular. Many have come from countries that wouldn't even have swimminglessons on the radar. And if you're coming to a new country, are you going toput swimming lessons and something that's considered to be a leisurely activityhigh on your radar? No, because you're looking at housing, you're looking atlearning a new language, you're looking at food, you're looking at work. Andall these other things take precedence over this.
But through the school systems, through a swim to survive theprogram, or a basic swim skills acquisition program delivered through theschools is certainly a way that we can do that. And so again, immunizationagainst drowning. And I'm purposely putting these two together, because ourmindsets have shifted over this last year plus, learning a great deal from thispandemic. And there's there should be a new normal coming as a result of this.Let's take what we've learned. Your big question. Why-
Jason:
I guess, let me just add, because you provided a ton ofgreat information there. So with what's coming out in the following report,what is the likelihood that that is adopted by the ... Is this a federalinitiative or a provincial initiative?
Lisa:
We would like for this to roll out nationally. And sothere are ways of doing that. We're investigating ways of doing that. We arehaving conversations; the Public Health Agency of Canada does recognize thatnew Canadians are a high-risk population for many different things. And so whenyou're coming to a new country, there are new foods. So there's inactivity thatwill be on the rise because you're adjusting. There are all kinds of things toconsider from a health perspective.
I have other notes here. We know that many of the risksparallel social determinants of health. So it disproportionately affects, as Isaid, First Nations, Metis, new Canadians, elderly rural populations. We take apublic health approach with the Canadian drowning prevention plan and withinthe coalition itself, which is a unique way of looking at drowning. But it hasbeen driven by the World Health Organization.
And part of that, Jason, is that we also need to wrap ourheads. And this echoes something else that that Barb has said, which is essential.We need to look at drowning; we need to look at it from the perspective ofapplying a multilayered drowning prevention strategy. It's not just one player.It's all the players.
So if you look at it, and you'llsee a diagram coming out in the eighth edition, there are four puzzle pieces,but they're all interconnected. And there are questions, and of course, itbreaks it down a bit of bit within each of these quadrants. But the first iswhat can I do? Or what could you do as an individual? What can my community do?What can research do? What can government, that's big G, little G? What cangovernment do? And it all fits together in multiple pieces.
So sure, we can do the research, we can bring in the data.But we need delivery partners, and we need the communities to absorb that. Forexample, we'll take survival swimming implementation as part of it. Thecommunity needs to drive that, we need funding from the government, we needindividuals to participate. And we're not just talking children. We're talkingadults. Everyone needs to learn how to do this. We are a country with how manylakes, rivers, how many open water sources? We have access everywhere. And sowe really need to make this a priority.
Jason:
That's a fantastic answer. I want to go to Melissa, I wantto give her a chance to add to the conversation here. Along the same lines,Melissa brings a different perspective from south of the border. But I'm surethere are commonalities here. And I will also put the same question to you. Howdoes swimming become an essential service or essential, a priority in Americanculture?
Melissa:
Well, like you mentioned many times, this is a globalproblem. It's not just us; it's not just you. This is something that the WorldHealth Organization has indicated that it's a third leading cause ofunintentional deaths worldwide. And that varies obviously from country tocountry. But overall, third, that's huge.
But data, I believe, is what's going to help us. It'susing that data to tell your story to those targeted demographics, get money,and pay attention to the problem. One example is New Zealand; when puttogether, they added up what it costs for non-fatal for either rescuing them,the care, respite care, or hospitalization, and then possibly search andrecovery for those fatal drowning. And they got a big price tag.
And then they said, "Hey! You know what? If we justadd some pools, it will be a lot cheaper, and we save a lot more lives. And sothat was a really cool eye-opener. So that's something we can all learn from,again, even further away from just south of the border.
But then it's really honing in on that messaging. We haveproblems with messaging as well. I mean, Water Safety USA started a few yearsago to try and get one standard message. And I think what we found out is thereisn't one standard message. I mean, we are driving one each year, just tryingto help the education, easy from a consumption perspective of families.
But that's why we lean on those layers of protection,exactly what you guys have been saying all along. And that's kind of a two-prongedapproach. It's one; we never know what layers save a life until it does. Andthen one layer transitions into the other. Can we start educating, say,kindergartners or elementary schoolers with a curriculum? Is that going to be alife-saving aspect? Or is it those swim lessons? Now we've gotten them intoswim lessons.
Well first, does somebody have an alarm on their home orthat barrier around their pool or body of water, which we can't with openwater, as we know. So that's the education component. Once they breach thatbarrier or there isn't one in place, now we rely on those swim lessons to comeinto effect. And heaven forbid if something were to go terribly wrong, now wewant that lifesaver to be there, somebody who knows CPR.
So it's just who's our message to, who is our targetdemographic. Just case and point is the data we have right now. We look at sixdata sets because the vetted stuff as Barb mentioned, will be two years atleast past the incident, the day of the incident. So that's helpful, and thatgets us those numbers that we need to tell, whether it's the drive the fundingmessaging or the attention messaging. But we're driving through the rearviewmirror.
So we work on first responder data. So our lifeguards ourfire, EMS, police to give us the incident reports to be able to say, "Thisyear alone, we have already lost this many people." So right now we'relooking at about 232 lives that have been lost. And that is through March 31.So that's not even to date. I have to pull from so many different data sources.
But again, to the point, 171 of those are adults. So drowningis a really big adult problem. But it pulls more in our heartstrings when it'sthe youth. And we already know that, again, another data set that's reallyimportant. And to use that to drive messages as the one to four age range, it'sthe number one cause, the absolute number one cause for a child.
So kind of to Eric's point of how do we help educate ongetting kids into lessons younger? Right there alone, once you're six or seven,thank goodness you've survived that long. But your chances of a drowningincident is going to happen between that one and four. So we need to get themin sooner, we need them to learn sooner.
Another data set was mentioned before, but of those 232,so far that we know about, 193 of those were males. So, where's the messaginggoing? Where's the targeting going? In a couple of our states, we did in the USget some lessons deemed as essential. And it was because we could use this datato make that point to say, "This is a big problem." And then ofcourse again, localized, be able to show that because COVID shut down somelessons, it caused this particular age group to have a higher rate of drowning.So we could tie those together.
And then again, it's using your partners and collaboratingfor that targeted marketing. I mean, we know it's adults that are inunsupervised areas that are drowning more for those more significant numbers.So we work with our local family foundation or a lot of our family foundationsto put up life-jacket loaner stations so that there are life jackets in those unsupervisedareas and to encourage that that behavior.
And then we also have like river rangers out there, wheresimilar to the program that Barb was talking about, or I'm sorry, it might havebeen Lisa talking about, that we use the community. These are just community-basedpeople. They didn't spend hundreds of thousands of dollars gettingcertifications. They have your basic first aid, maybe even a wilderness firstaid. But they're just standing at the launch sites for a kayaker saying,"Hey! I'm noticing you don't have a life jacket on."
Whether or not it's the law for that state in that area,for us, it's going to vary from state to state, unfortunately. But they'resaying, "You need to put a life jacket on. The rivers run high today.You're not an experienced kayaker." Whatever messaging they feel like theyneed to use for that time. They're just volunteers. They're don't havecertifications up to a certain point.
And then we engaged the community during this time too.One of our cities decided to do water safety parades. They got their aquaticspeople, got their fire trucks and police car, and did these mini parades wherethey started at a school and used their loudspeakers and tossed out watersafety information to the crowds during this time.
There are creative ways out there without necessarilyneeding funding for it, or there are organizations. Again, like at my localone, our local joint venture coalition of Arizona will give out grants. So thereare many grant-based organizations out there to tap into to get support forthese programs that are saving lives.
So yeah. I think COVID has given us the blessing of uslooking at things differently and change how we do things. And I think out ofthis, we've learned that some lessons and water safety education needs to bedetermined essentially everywhere. And I believe we've got now a little bit ofmomentum behind that and cases we can draw on and say, "Hey! This hashappened in California. This is how they did it. So let's track how theirnumbers go from that point forward and see if just making that one designationmade an impact." And I think it will.
Jason:
Yeah, thank you very much for sharing. There was a lot ofinformation there. And it's, from the entire panel, the passion and everybody'scommitment to the cause becomes very, very evident. So I think that we got towrap this up. And I want to go before I get into what everybody else, a finalword from everybody.
Jason:
I want to let Eric come and share some of the work he’sdone. Eric's a very, very big advocate. He's very active, similar in Toronto,similar to Adam in Montreal. He's a very big advocate on the news, on social,about getting the message that the service needs to be available for everybody,it needs to be essential, and so on so forth. So Eric, can you speak to us a bitof your work?
Yeah. I mean, I've been running a swim school for 28years. I was a teacher, I ran camps for many years. But I felt that teachingkids to swim was my mission in life, and training instructors to use specialtechniques and all of that stuff. So when COVID hit it, it shut it all down.And it was like a roller coaster-like we've all been on.
It needs to be up charged. And it seems selfish to saybecause I run a private business, "Adam runs a private business." Sothen I flip on my drowning prevention hat, and I sat through an inquiry at aninquest through the camping association of a four-year-old who drowned in apool that was supposed to be supervised by lifeguards. And all of it waspreventable. And we hear of all these preventable drownings.
To be on a panel like this, Jason, I thank you for thisbecause I would love to create a command table across North America where wehave 12 top people to make swimming lessons an essential service. And Melissa'spoint is really well taken. It's happened in California.
And I would say why wait for the data? Can we work on thisnow and not worry so much about when the drownings come in? I say we do it nowas a preventative move. And I would love to work with anybody willing to sit onour command table to do that.
Jason:
Well, you certainly have the resources here at this paneldiscussion in the US and Canada to get that all initiated. So here's how we'regoing to end this off. And you can't repeat what the person before you said. Iwant one clear message about what you're going to leave your community, yourfamilies, whoever you interact with; what do you want to leave them with as adrowning prevention measure, something they need to be aware of? And we'regoing to start with Adam in Quebec because Quebec had a major issue withdrownings. So to Adam first, one thing.
Adam:
One thing - Learn to swim as young as possible, and getyour kids in the pool as young as possible. Haven't learned to swim yet, get inthe pool as soon as possible.
Jason:
Okay. Tamar, you're up.
Tamar:
Well, see I'm currently in Muskoka, because that's wheremy family and I are from. So I think it's you need to keep your eyes on thewater at all times. And it doesn't matter what the water is, whether it issupervised or not supervised. You are responsible for the people bring there.
Jason:
Brilliant. Barb, let's go to you next.
Barb:
The sharing of simple messages and tools so thatcommunities can be their own drowning prevention champions.
Jason:
Brilliant. We're going to go to our American guest.
Melissa:
I really like Barb's. I'm going to go back to data. I'mgoing to say use the data to tell the story you need to tell to whoever thatgroup is, because you can get good targeted messaging and from whatever datayou need to tell to that specific community. So use the data.
Jason:
And finally for Lisa.
Lisa:
Melissa took the line right out of my mouth. Notsurprising, is it?
Jason:
You guys would really work very well together.
Lisa:
We would. We need to touch base after this, Melissa. I thoughtthis would be great. Okay, so here's mine. There are key policy and legislationopportunities for drowning prevention intervention. So evidence supports theneed for improved life jacket PFD wearing with a strong focus on wear for all.
Jason:
Brilliant. And with the final word, I'm going to thank ourpanelists here for taking the time out of their day to join us & sharetheir information, their expertise, their opinions, most importantly, theirpassion. I think I still believe thatthis is something that the ability to swim, learn to swim, and take that forgranted. Without people like you guys offering the service, pushing theimportance to do things right in a certain way, the structured programs and soon, we would have a problem.
To the people watching, and to the people at home, we'veall been locked up for the last 12 months on and off. Summer is coming. Thewarm weather is coming. We're all anxious to get out, run to the summer pool,run to the pond, run to the lake. You got to do it safely. You got to do itwith awareness, and you got to look out For each other. So I thank all mypanelists here. Have a safe, water-safe summer. And we'll talk to you soon.
Thank you.