Fast Comes Last Mastering the Process Before the Performance with Frank Sole

One of the things I wanted to jump into today is, you've recently started coaching a high school team again, which was your sort of original, how you started coaching. But then you went to a lot of master's coaching, but now back to high schoolers. What would be some of the things that you've taken from coaching master's athletes over the last few years that you are now incorporating into teaching the high schoolers? And what are those things that you're starting to focus on now? And has that approach changed for you over the years? You know, Brendan, excuse me, first of all, it's good to be back with you. Again, this is, I think, our third time together, and I appreciate the energy and camaraderie between the two of us. But yeah, I mean, you know, going club, you know, I grew up in New Jersey, Jersey Shore League, high school, club teams, YMCA, and that was a good part of my life for, say, 15 years. Then I moved out to Arizona and got, you know, a triathlon, open water swimming, and a lot of master's, years under my belt as a master's coach. And, you know, I come to the realization that water is water is water, right? A body in the water will, whether it's a master swimmer or a younger swimmer, is still going to need to pay attention to the laws of, you know, hydrodynamics. They're gonna need to learn balance. You just got done doing a piece on that on Instagram. They're gonna need to learn mobility, hip rotation, how to kick and how to breathe. So I take a lot of what I've learned from when I was a high school coach into my master's, because now I'm dealing with adults. Now I've gone away from master's so much, but I still have a lot of my triathlon clients and open water swimmers who I've worked with. But going back to my roots, young swimmers, I am living in the Florida called The Villages, and I am the director of Youth Club Swimming here and a high school coach also, who answers to a head coach for the high school program, but I run the club program. It's great to be working with fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh graders again, and really getting them excited about the sport of swimming and bring up another generation. So I see so many similarities between US master swimmers, high school swimmers, and young swimmers. Again, as I shared with you, water is water is water. There's just the laws of physics that still have to be applied. But what I will tell you, the high school swimmer, it's so cool to be around that club and high school event again, being on deck for high school meets and the cheering and the camaraderie and being at districts and our team won districts in the boys and the girls, which was kind of unheard of. Generally, you win one or the other, but we took districts in both. We did well in regionals and had a great, strong showing in states. But being around that energy of those young swimmers is really what got me excited again, if that answered your question. But you learn a lot working with adults, right? There are a lot who are very willing to say, I wanna learn how to swim better. And then they have that fixed. There's others who have that fixed mindset. No, no, no, no, I've been coached. I know how to do this. And you get to learn what you, how far you can go with a US master swimmer or an adult swimmer. High school swimmers, a lot of 99%, they wanna learn. They wanna get better. How do I get fit? That's all they, how do I get faster, coach? How do I get faster, coach? How do I get faster? First of all, patience, take a deep breath. We'll get you there, but this is a process, right? If we, I got to convey to a young swimmer, if we're focused on the outcome versus the process, you focus on the outcome, you may do well at an event and you're gonna be very disappointed lots of times when you don't hit your best time. But if you stay focused on the process, you're constantly building towards that outcome. So that hasn't changed. I don't care whether I'm coaching a fourth grader or somebody who is swimming for in the Pan Am Games as a US master swimmer. So that's the similarities between what I'm doing now, what I did do. And in terms of focusing on the processes, one of the things that I've done last year and this year in terms of just setting goals for different life goals, business goals, coaching goals, all that sort of stuff, it was, it's not setting that what's the end result that I want, certainly thinking about it, but it's what are the habits that I need to do every, like what are the things I have to do every week to achieve that? And if that's the thing on my goal list, it's like go to the gym two to three times a week or swim three times a week, whatever it might be. That's been so much more attainable than this thing way out in the distance. And it keeps it just really simple and it's doable, but for people. You're 100% right. I apply it in my own life. I literally have a journal that where I will literally check off virtually through the course of a day, all these things that I want to get done in a day. And the X, the cross means that it's gotten done. So it's all processed every day. Habit, chop wood, carry water. Chop wood, carry water, do it every day. If it's three times a week, do it every day. There are certain things that I just will not go to bed until I've done those things. And I try my best to convey that to young swimmers. They like results, right? They want, so what's your goal this year? I want to hit a, I want to hit a state time. Okay, are you willing to do this, this, this, and this to hit that state time? Meaning, I call it like monopoly. You get two get out of jail cards, right? You know, you get a monopoly. How many practices will you not miss, right? Poor English, but you only miss two practices in eight, nine weeks? Okay, too, too many, but you get my point. So it's, I really want my athletes to focus on the process. If we do that, the outcome generally will take care of itself. As an ex high school teacher, I would tell my kids go home and study every night, read 10 minutes. By the end of the week, you've got an hour's worth of reading done. You take your quiz, you take your test, and all of a sudden you're getting your B's. You're getting your B minuses. You're getting your C pluses, your A's. But it's all about the process, right? We hear that, but there's so much truth to that, Brenton. It's so true. Focus on the process, my friend. Create habits. Yeah, exactly right. And are there any certain particular things that you're really drilling into the swimmers at the moment, like in terms of like technical things? What's your coaching style? What's your coaching approach like with the athletes? Again, I'm gonna go back to the video you just did on Instagram in regards to balance. I am a true believer, and I've always coached this way, and I will continue to coach this way, is that you must take care of the vessel first, meaning the body. The body has to be balanced. It has to understand buoyancy and body position, right? I heard a coach use these terms, and I've used them for years, and I take no credit for it. Stay athletically long, stay athletically taught. And I teach athletes that, right? If you are 6'1", I want you swimming like you're 6'4". If you're 5'5", I want you swimming like you're 5'7". I don't care technically what God has given you in regards to length, but I want you to swim long. I want you to use your body. I want you to swim from your body first, then we'll add propulsion, right? So I will always tell my athletes, always protect the integrity of the vessel. I could be a tugboat with a big engine, and I think I'm a fast boat, but I'm still a tugboat with a big engine. You follow where I'm going. So I see swimmers drop hips, poor body position, poor timing, and they're adding additional propulsion. That elevates drag and resistance eight times. And I don't care if you're, who you are, an Olympian or just a club swimmer, you're going to lose every single time because water will win that battle every single time. When you can keep the body long, maintain the integrity of balance, meaning as I'll use your term, as the Aussies say, bring the, keep the bum up, you're creating a more hydrodynamic body, minimizing drag and resistance. I will spend as much time as necessary. We, in my club program, the last 10 days, that's been the focus. That has been the absolute focus, with fins, without fins. Anything I can get them to do is stay long in the water and minimize drag and resistance. My definition of swimming is get from point A to point B in the most efficient, effective manner possible by simply minimizing drag and resistance and adding the right amount of propulsion. Meaning where you're at, right? I can't swim right now, say, Frank can't swim at 90 strokes per minute and add that kind of power in my wrapping and catching effect. So right now, if I can only swim at 52 strokes per minute, but swimming efficiently, let's celebrate that. This episode is brought to you by Pillar Performance. Our new sponsors, Pillar, are a sports micronutrition company. And the easiest way to describe it is that while hydration and carbohydrates products will take you through to touch the wall as fast as possible, Pillar's mission is to get swimmers to the starting blocks in the best condition over and over again. 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And then I could start to add the engine piece to it. Now let's talk about propulsion. But again, if we're a tugboat with big propulsion, you're just a tugboat with big propulsion. Make sense? I mean, it's just something that I just cannot stress enough to young swimmers, to older swimmers, master swimmers. Maintain the integrity of the vessel, always. Yeah, it doesn't matter the age or the experience of the swimmer, that it's always gonna come back to that. And one of the things that I like to do at clinics is, in the beginning, we always start with body position and balance. And I have them go through a couple of exercises, some wrong way, right way exercises, just to experience the difference between the two. And then I have them go through this bit of a checklist in their mind, where they push off, go 50 freestyle, they check in on the head position and making sure they're long from head to toes, checking on the body and the posture, make sure they're using the lungs to help support them and letting the water support them, which it can do if you hold yourself correctly. And then just making sure the legs are doing the right thing. Not kicking too big, not kicking too hard, but just there to support you as well. And when they get all those things in place, they're very much like a needle. They're long, they're streamlined, and then everything becomes so much easier. And typically when people go through that, they're feeling pretty good, they're moving quicker, they're moving easier through the water, but it's easy to get distracted with other things like the catch or how much should I be breathing, all these sorts of things. But if we always just come back to that, getting that vessel, getting the body to be long and streamlined, everything else builds from there. So yeah, it's always a place to start. And whenever I dive in, I just subconsciously, I kind of go through that checklist, but it's conscious now, because I'm aware that I'm doing this checklist, but it's always just been that thing of like, all right, where's this, where's this, where's the legs, and making sure that's all correct to begin. Couldn't agree with you more. And again, that's why our philosophies are so in tune with each other. And the same thing I do, as soon as I'm in the water and I'm warming up, you know, warmups, five, six, seven, 800 yards, and I can start to feel, am I in the right position? No, I can feel myself, my heart rate's going up. What's wrong? Well, I'm working too hard. Well, is it my balance or am I not breathing? No, my breathing's fine. It generally goes back to the fact that I am dragging myself through the water, being frontal drag, form drag, my wave drag is elevated. The amount of oxygen now that needs to go to the muscles is being robbed from the heart and from the lungs. And it's just a runaway, a snowball effect. And people say, well, I just can't swim fast. No, let's get you swimming lean, long, and like you said, you're just lengthening out the body. And once we do that, I will always tell the swimmer, Ironman athletes, if they feel like the wheels are falling off at 1.2 miles halfway through, go back to buoyancy and balance and body position. Am I over-kicking? Like you said, in the world of triathlon, we hear all the time. How do I get a stronger kick? You don't need a stronger kick. Your kick is fine. Kick is designed to maintain the integrity of the balance and buoyancy. That's what the kick is there for. We're not trying to move you forward. At the Olympic level, the kick only really accounts for about 10% of propulsion. In our level, we want a strong, solid two-beat kick. If you're great at a six-beat kick, great. But I want my swimmers to understand if they're going to be swimming a distance event, I want them to think and swim like a distance swimmer. You're not swimming 50 freestyle. You have to think that way and act that way. So as soon as you come out on deck, if Coach Frank wrote you, your workout today is three by 1500 with a three-minute break in between, I need you thinking like a distance swimmer. I need you thinking long in the water, two-beat kick, lower my stroke rate. I am not swimming like there's an alligator behind me. That's a pun joke, because I live in Florida, you know, alligators. But you get my point, right? I mean, it's all relative in how you coach that athlete and how receptive that athlete is. And to hammer home, your point is, the more you pay attention to this stuff, you don't need a coach on deck. Most of the time, you're going to start to feel it. You decide maybe next length in the pool, you're going to count strokes. You went up three, four strokes. Something has gone wrong. Maybe your timing, your buoyancy, you're getting balances off. But bottom line is, as coaches like you and I, that's my job, is I want to convey that to the athlete, whether it be a young athlete, any of my athletes getting ready. I got one getting ready to swim Catalina Islands this, we're coming up this August. Think like a distance athlete. Think like a swimmer. Think like a distance athlete all the time. That's what you got to tell yourself. So when I talk to my young kids, you're a sprinter, think and act like a sprinter, okay? So bottom line is I'll keep my sprinters away from my 500 people because I don't want those two ever. It's like oil and water because guess what? I got a sprinter in this lane and a 500 swimmer in this lane. Guess what this 500 guy wants to do? He wants to swim like the 50 freestyle, right? But the bottom line is teach your body to what I will always say is learn how to know your environment, proprioception, a fancy word. Know what your body's doing in an environment, own what it is doing in an environment and have the ability to make the necessary corrections when that time comes. My hips are starting to drop. Am I kicking too hard? Not kicking hard enough. Am I not rotating? I tell you what, a part of where I've gotten the balance piece, I go all back way to total immersion. I will give Terry a lot of credit for that. He taught me early on to swim from your center of balance which is right at that T here, right at the sternum, leaning how to lean into the water a little bit as you rotate that pressure, pressing the armpit a little bit into the water helps to elevate the hips versus our center of gravity which is about an inch above our navel, right? All of that because our large muscle groups, our legs, our hips, our glutes, all heavy muscles, it's gonna drop, it's gonna drop. I think you did one of the little example that one of your videos where you're just lying there in the water and eventually all of this starts to drop, right, and especially if I'm not breathing right, now my lungs are like at the buoy, all of that's floating up too. So it's timing, breathing, balance, buoyancy, but all of this, it takes a lot, a lot's going on, man. And like you said, now I gotta think about the catch? You gotta be kidding me. So that's a long answer to say we will spend a lot of time, a lot of time on this. Don't care, I tell my high school swimmers right now, my club swimmers, I don't care about speed. I don't care how fast you're going. I care how fast, excuse me, I care how well you're doing it, not how fast you're gonna do it. Fast, and as they say in Italian, men's a men's technique, not good, right? Fast with great technique, man, the world's your oyster as a swimmer at that point. Yeah, that's exactly right. And I know you're doing some online coaching, and so what would be those things that you are trying to make the swimmer aware of so that they can self-coach and self-correct and they build that proprioception when you're not there to give them feedback or have eyes on them outside of them sending you footage? Man, we are spending a lot of time on balance, buoyancy, body position. The other one is breathing. I find young athletes, master athletes, senior athletes, college athletes, most of them were never taught how to breathe. I am working with a gentleman right now, 65 years old, and his note came back to me when I gave him some breathing assignments to do. He goes, I'm almost embarrassed to say that at 65 years old, no one has ever taught me how to breathe properly. We're born, nobody teaches breathing. We just assume that breathing in and out through our nose or our mouth is normal. And we see that many times I'm standing on deck and I'm looking at a video of an athlete, and you can just see that the breathing pattern's off, right? I mean, you got that classic, as they rotate, they're blowing out, they're breathing in, and you know they're holding their breath underwater. But those are the things that I like to work on, balance, buoyancy, body position, breathing, right? I will have them old school. I mean, if they have a Garmin or Apple Watch, check their heart rate. But if they have to go old school, right now, if it's an older athlete, I don't want you any higher than 128 to 134 in your heart rate, check it. If you're too low, I need you to kind of, you know, again, pretend there's an alligator behind you, right? But he's far behind, but he's not trying to run you down. So those are the things I try to do. And then we start to work mechanics, the technical proficiency. I'm an old school coach. I know a lot of coaches talk about reaching, wrapping, or excuse me, reach, catch, pull, and push. There's a term we used to use calling wrapping the water. And I still use that term. We come in, we wrap the water, unwrap the water. So we extend, we want to feel that water under our armpit. We want to wrap the water and unwrap the water. When I use those terms, they seem to take that corrosive feeling of got to reach, catch, pull, and push, boom, right? And they go, I got to push the water behind me. Wrap the water, drive the body, unwrap the water. And I undoubtedly will have come back, athletes come back to me going, oh my God, that was effortless. I didn't have any trouble breathing. And I actually watched my times go down three or four seconds per hundred. And I'm saying, we're on the way, we're on the way. So those are the things I want them to learn. And it takes time for them to be able to self-coach themselves. And I got no problem with an athlete texting me, sending me an email, many times during the week, Sunday afternoons, Sunday evenings is a big night for me to do Zoom calls or phone calls. Checking in, how's it going? Good, how'd this go? Good, how's the back feeling? Good, okay. You know what, you've been stressed a little bit at work. I'm gonna tell you not to go swim tomorrow. You can almost hear a pin drop. Take a deep breath, it's okay. That's part of the process, is letting the body recover, rejuvenate, regroup. And nine times out of 10, they come back to me going, I slept an hour and a half later this morning and I felt like I got caught up. So those are the things that I incorporate in coaching my athletes. Get to know the athlete, get a feel for where they're at, great communication, like you're brilliant at this, great communication with the individual. Be able to, after time, you get to know them before they even call you or send you a video what you're almost going to see. But the videos that they send me, it's critical, right? I think people like you and I have been doing this for so long, I've been at this for 27 years now. I would always love to see underwater video, but there's a lot of, I hate to use this word, there's a lot of assumptions I can draw just by what I'm seeing on top of the water, what's going on underwater. Water refraction, I can see a little bit, hey, he's crossing under his body, he's got thumb down and his palms out, and then I can work on making those corrections. Drill sets, I'd like to create the drill right into the body of the workout, right? Six strokes drill, six strokes swim, six strokes drill, 25 drill, 25 swim, 50 drill, 25 swim, you get creative with it. But as long as the athlete is getting it, and I'm finding at the younger level, Brenton, is that one swimmer in lane three is grasping it, that same swimmer in lane four is struggling mightily. But I'm blessed to have enough coaches that we could pull that swimmer aside and go, let's back them up a little bit if we got to get them swimming with a PVC in their hands because they're windmilling their arms and they're not staying anchored out there or they're cupping in their hands too much. You get to learn, you get to feel your athletes, you get a real sense. And I take a lot of pride in knowing my athletes and where I need to take them. So a lot of pleasure out of doing that when you're not on deck with them. You know what I'm saying? At Effortless Swimming, our mission is simple. Make swimming more enjoyable. Whether you're training for your next race, swimming for fitness, or just love being in the water, we're here to help you swim faster, smoother, and with more confidence. And one thing that can make or break a swim is your goggles. If you've ever struggled with foggy lenses mid-session, you know how frustrating it can be. That's why we created the Effortless Swimming HydroClear Anti-Fog Goggles for long-lasting, crystal clear vision. I've been using them myself and the difference is night and day. And I'm not the only one. Deborah swam 36 kilometers down the Derwent River and the entire time her vision stayed crystal clear. No fog, no frustration, just an uninterrupted swim. So what makes the HydroClear goggles different? 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So if you're not happy with the goggles for any reason, you can simply return them for a refund. Don't let foggy goggles ruin another swim. Try HydroClear today and experience clear vision from start to finish. Yeah, so we do every fortnight, I do a coaching membership call where people send in their videos. And I had one yesterday and we had 20 odd people sending their videos through. And I'd say, all right, this is the one thing I want you to focus on for the month. This is a drill or two drills that I want you to incorporate into your workouts. And it's interesting watching when they write in, I ask them, what have they been working on? Where do they feel they're at? Where's their pace at? And often people will say, this is what I think that I need to work on. Or this, yeah, this is what I think I need to work on. And particularly if they're quite new, usually it's the wrong thing. Usually it's like, you know, they've got an idea. They think, all right, I think this is what's the issue, but it might be too far down the line. Yeah, it might be, I feel like my elbow's dropping in my catch. It is, but the reason it's dropping is because the way that you're breathing is you're looking too far forwards or you're lifting your head or you're over-rotating, whatever it might be. So let's go back further down the line in those initial things. Let's get those dialed in and then we will build up to the catch. We'll work on that, but not yet. Yeah, yeah, and I love that approach and I really work hard at that. So I will look at a video and I may look at it three, four times to say, what do we really need to address here? Is it the dropped elbow or is it the poor body position and the timing? And if we took care of those things, all of a sudden you fix this and all of a sudden these little things, these other innocuous details fall nicely under and all of a sudden they have success. But if I will always say, look, A, B, and C. When I coach you, A always has to come before B. B always, this is not up for debate, before C. Once we get to D, E, and F, we can kind of fool around with those letters. You know what I'm saying? We can fix this because I, but if you do not have the fundamentals of A, B, C specifically under your belt, I can fix all the dropped elbows in the world. But if my timing is off, now my shoulders are plowing through the water. Now my form and frontal drag is gone exponentially high through the roof and we're no better off than we were. So it gets that way. So if you don't mind, I'd love to share something with you, okay? Not that I do this, but my phone is sitting right here. I have a athlete I've been working with for over a year now who is a U.S. master swimmer. He swam in a U.S. master's meet in Florida today. His exact words, 112.2 fastest time in two years, broke my old record from last year of 115.2, 100 fly. But this is a guy, when I write workouts for him, he just does what I ask him to do. Take a day off, he does what I ask him to do. 4,000 yards tomorrow, he does what I ask him to do. Today we're only doing 1,500 with a focus on walls. That's all I want you to focus on is walls. So when you see something like that, that's exciting. That's exciting. Okay, and as coaches, you and I get text messages like that going, I was off my best time. Well, that's part of the process too. You're not gonna always get best time. But we've worked on breathing. We've worked on body position. This is a gentleman who would swim fly all arms using virtually no body and his kick was just too much knees and we had to break that down. How did we do that? We went into the gym and we started doing a lot of Pilates and we started doing a lot of yoga stretches and we started doing nothing but a monofin to get the feel for the body. What do you want me to do? 20 by 50 on 20 second break with a monofin. Swim a 300 cool down, get the hell out of the water and go home. Okay, gotta love those kinds of athletes, right? Gotta love those kinds of athletes. So I thought how appropriate this came in through this conversation. That is like, good job, Frank, but the athlete is doing what I'm asking you to do. It's just reassurance as coaches that we are writing workouts, we're doing our tapers properly for these athletes and have them prepared to go out and perform. Again, master's level, college level, Olympic level, high school level, club team level. And we've been there for a long time. We've seen a lot of things, seen a lot of different athletes. Jen, have a pretty good idea of what's going to work for someone. Not always the case, but I have a pretty good idea. And so like I compare it to my two kids do jujitsu, the oldest one, he stepped up a class. So he's kind of going against this kid who's a little bit older. And yesterday the instructor was giving him some advice while they're trying to take each other down. And my son's trying to trip, he's trying to do this trip on the other kid. And he's just too far away. Like he needs to get in, he need to get in close, need to wrap his one hand over the top of the other. And he needed to get in close to be able to do it. And he kept like trying to get him to do it. He kept saying, get in close, get in close. But he kept trying to trip him from too far away. And eventually when he listened and took the advice, it worked. But before that, he's still trying to trip, but he's just too far away, nothing's happening. And so like if you can just listen to your coach or your coaches, you're probably going to have success over the long term. So that's great to hear. It's so good to see masters swimmers who may have swum as teenagers, they can still hit lifetime PBs, many of them. And if they were really elite, okay, maybe they're not hitting lifetime PBs, but they're getting faster at 45, 50, sometimes 55 and beyond, like it happens. And down here in the villages, they have a master's program here. And it's amazing. I mean, mind you, it's a retirement village. So the youngest person on the team is 55 years old. And they have a couple of guys, 82, 83 years old, but they swam Eastern Illinois, Hanford. They swam at some small divisions to school and they're still living their passion. And you're staying healthy while they're doing that. And we know the body mind relationship, keep this, keep this and this working together. Okay, I mean, a little hard to explain that to a 16 year old kid, as he's walking by on the way to practice, eating a McDonald's hamburger and a bag of French fries, right? Going, dude, this was the best meal that you could pick before you get into practice. You're in the water in 15 fricking minutes. And I would say, if you throw up in my fricking pool, after eating that, you know what I'm saying? So it's good to see that the love for swimming is still there at whatever age. Again, bringing young swimmers up, whether it be jujitsu, if that's their love, or swimming, triathlon. We know here in the States, USA Triathlon is doing a phenomenal job at the college ranks. I think they have over 40 plus, maybe more, I'm sure they do, more triathlon programs for females here in the States. So they're introducing a lot of these younger people to triathlon, open water swimming, if they were big pool swimmers. But bottom line is, your point is well taken, is that is when we can define a plan of action for a swimmer and ask coaches, be honest with ourselves going, this is not working. Is it the athlete or is it me? Let me go back and rewrite this workout. Let's try it again, because we're not perfect. I don't care who you are, you, me, any coach is going to make mistakes, but we have to own up to those mistakes and saying, nobody got hurt, nobody died here. We just go back and figure out what we need to do, right? So that's it, I'm always, always doing it. I have my journal here. I'm always, always writing my workouts in this journal, and then writing notes as a follow up to that day's practice for my club team going, this was an awesome practice. I wanna do the same one two weeks from now. I wanna use this as my test set, because they loved it so much. And you get there, you see their energy, right? Some practices, you walk away going, this was a tough one, this was a tough one. Could have been better. Today, what we needed to get done, I would always tell, you know, I tell my master swimmers, I do the same thing. Not every practice is gonna be like, you know, all right, we're having fun out here. Coach, we're not having fun, fun? Who the heck said we're having, we're not supposed to have fun, we're supposed to swim. You know, this is my big joke to them, but I want them to have fun, right? I don't care if it's a master's, it's a triathlete, I want them to enjoy the process, because if they're enjoying the process and they can see some results starting to develop through that process, their confidence level is gonna start to go up. Wow, my times are going down. I'm feeling stronger. I'm feeling better at this. I wanna show up again tomorrow. If they're not feeling confident and they're not seeing a process, that could get disheartening, right? I mean, you and I both know that. So my line is, that's my focus. And that's the energy that I put out there. That's been my philosophy. My philosophy's changed a little bit over the years, but I still believe that if I can connect with that person, one-on-one, great communication, show that athlete I truly care, which I do. Every one of my athletes, I don't care who you are, do I care about that athlete and do I wanna see them succeed? They're gonna start to see that. And that's what I see in your coaching. It's clear. When I'm watching an Instagram where you and I are talking off the air, the passion's there. And any of your athletes know that. And I've talked to athletes who you coach and they couldn't speak more highly of what you have done in their lives. So that's what I said to you early on. As coaches, we don't care who connects with them as long as somebody connects them and they're really moving themselves forward through this process. I appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. And how has your philosophy changed over the last five, 10, 20 years? I believe when I was a little bit younger, as a younger coach, I was very adamant it was gonna be this way and we're gonna only do it this way. And I've learned to embrace some information from my athletes. Let's go with triathletes specifically, what's working for them. I'll give you an example, right? Here we go. We are off the wall. We're gonna get that high elbow, fingertip drag, thumbed up the side and we're gonna drive those fingertips in the water. That's great. You're 48 years old. You've got the shoulders are locked up like a bank on Sunday. You're gonna have to modify what you wanna do with that particular athlete. So we may have a three-quarter recovery, throwing that arm out there a little bit more, a la Janet Evans, straight arm into the water and you start to learn to work with the athlete and where they're at. You know as well as I do, working with a lot of the adult athletes, shoulder surgeries, maybe they've been sitting at a computer for years and internal rotation is so, so bad and now you're asking to open up pec major, pec minor and getting those lats engaged, that's gonna take time. So I work with the athlete where they're at at that time. How did I learn this? I will tell you, I had the absolute blessing to work with a lot of challenged athletes at a place called Ability360 in Scottsdale, Arizona. And what I found out as, as much as these athletes wanna swim, they have very, there were many of them with strong limitations coming out of wheelchairs, shoulder issues, a lot of military who were injured in Iraq and Iran and the Middle East and you learn to work with them and saying here's the vessel I have, now if they're more like a tugboat, I'm gonna get them as efficient tugboat as I can get them. And that's where my, I think my philosophy's changed. I get yoga coaches, you will do it this way. Another thing, I challenge myself every single day and I haven't missed a day in well over a year. 18, there's this 18 minute rule, say if you study something for 18 minutes a day at the end of the year, you will know more than 90% of the people in your field. Every day for 18 minutes, I read something on swimming. Every single day, 18 minutes. Whether it's watching one of your videos, watching something, a fascinating book I literally just finished up. I don't know if you know this one, The Biology of Swimming. I would recommend any swim coach, any swimmer to buy this book. I read it cover to cover. Every word, every word. Even the boring words, every word. And I'm reading his second volume right now. If it's swimming, I will learn something, but that's what I do. That's how I changed my philosophy. I don't know everything. There's some pretty smart people out there in this industry who know more than I do. I was very blessed two years ago through US Masters, through ASCA to become a fellow, I was a fellow of 2023. I was in a room with seven other coaches and I felt like the dumbest man in the room. And that's what I wanted to be because I wanted to learn from them, right? Mentor taught me years ago, you go in a room like that, you wanna be the dumbest guy in the room. You want everybody smarter than you, learn from them. And they brought in coaches from some names that I don't recall, but a coach from Georgetown, from North Carolina, from Virginia back then, an assistant coach. And they would come and talk to us as fellows to educate us on the project we were working on. So learn, learn, learn, be open, be willing to say, I don't know everything. Be honest with yourself. If you screwed up with a workout, you made a mistake, be honest with yourself. And just as Carol Dweck in her great book mindset, have a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset. No, always done it this way. This is the way we're always gonna do it. I don't care what Bretton does. I'm not doing it that way. And then you step back on, damn, Bretton knows what he's talking about. I will try that with my squad. So that's how my philosophy's changed. I think as I've aged, I've become more open to hear from other coaches. Years ago, I wasn't so open. You know, it's that young man's mentality, a lot of testosterone flowing through my body. Now I look for coaches to talk to, look for these opportunities to be able to collaborate and to share and to get educated. So, yeah. Yeah, well, Frank, it really shows through speaking to you. The passion shows through. Appreciate that. The knowledge shows through and the fact that you're still so interested in it, you're open to new ideas and studying every day. It's really evident from chatting with you. So it's great to hear you're keeping really busy over there in Florida. Doing a lot of different things swimming-wise, which is fantastic. So it just really expands the breadth of knowledge and working with all these different types of athletes. You have to become really good at everything, in a way, the really advanced skills, the more basic skills. And I think having that width of knowledge can, it just means you've got so many tools in your tool belt that you can pull out when you need them. So, great to chat again. Now, those that are listening, so you've written a book, which we'll include in the show notes, which we covered a little bit on the first podcast that we did together. But we'll make sure we include that in the show notes as well. And what's the best way for people to get in touch with you? Well, you know, believe it or not, I don't have an email. I don't have a website anymore. I've gotten to a point where I didn't need it and I was getting too many inquiries in that. But you go right on Instagram and try Soul. If you type in Try Soul and you wanna send me a note, you have a question, I'd be more than happy to do that. Even if you have no problem adding my email address, you can certainly do that. And if somebody wanted to reach out to me, and I will always respond back to people because again, the passion to educate and help swimmers to become better at this in the sport, that's my whole goal in life anymore. So, yeah. Yeah, fantastic. Well, thanks again, Frank. Great chatting. Always good seeing you, my friend. Always good for you. See you next time. Stay well.