The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 177 - Swim Squad

Transcript:

Pete: Hey, Jen.

Jen: Hey, Pete.

Pete: So, I've joined a swim squad.

Jen: Oh.

Pete: Yeah, which I haven't told you about. And in the process of joining, in the weeks following, I've noticed a number of things about being part of a swim squad that I think overlap with a lot of the work you do, a lot of the things we talk about, and I think it might be helpful to share with our listeners.

Jen: Ooh, I love it. Swim squad, 2022. Let's go. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Pete: Okay, so I guess for listeners that don't know, I have swum in the ocean every day for the last year and a bit (but for a couple of days where I was away), and have treated that more or less as a mental exercise more than a physical. So I'm not necessarily doing, you know, an hour of freestyle and getting really fit through this. It's more like, especially in winter, I'm dipping in the water for five minutes, I'm splashing around, I'm having a laugh with myself. (That sounds weird.) And then, I'm getting out. And then late last year, which is something I've wanted to do for a long time, I got chatting to someone who swims just near where I swim. And turns out, he's a swim coach. He's swum around Manhattan.

Jen: Around, meaning all the way around?

Pete: All the way around.

Jen: Down one river, up the other river, and across.

Pete: Right. Apparently it's an international open water swimming event, so you can swim around Manhattan.

Jen: Oh.

Pete: He's swum, you know, like the Loch Ness swim. He's swum the English Channel. He's swum like all of these absolutely outrageously mind-boggling events. And he does swim coaching. So, I got talking to him. And actually, what happened is my partner Tracy got me some lessons with him for my birthday last year. And in the process of doing that, I realized that, "Oh, I could get a whole lot better at swimming,"...this is such an obvious thing for me to say to you. "I can get so much better. And I want to get a lot better at swimming, and learn a lot through the process of learning from a teacher/coach." That was one learning. But the bigger learning (which I want to talk to you about as someone who runs group classes, has an incredible community) is how much better, how much more enjoyable, how much more I've learned as an ocean water swimmer (just someone who enjoys swimming and is going in the ocean) through this swim squad, which is a one hour swim that we do every Tuesday.

Jen: I love it so much. Yes. Yes. Swimming in community, learning in community, singing in community, walking in community, writing in community, any of the things you want to get better at, you will get even better at.

Pete: I wasn't even sure whether I'd bring this to you as an episode. Because it's one of those things where I feel like intellectually, I know this. But I had the experience in one particular aspect of my life, which was swimming, and now see all of these other connective tissues through from that to group coaching, to keynotes, to the work that you and I do with 2:1 coaching, to all of the various things, and especially as I was thinking about you and your classes. So yeah, I just thought it was worth bringing up. So, in particular, what's been really interesting is there's two people in this swim squad who are training for the English Channel, which is like a twenty kilometer...I think it's actually, no, it's way more than that. I don't even know how far it is. It's a long way.

Jen: A long, long way.

Pete: All you need to know is it's a long way. And so, these two are very, very good swimmers, like they are strong swimmers. And as a result, I've noticed it push me, challenge me, and drive me to try and keep up with them, to try and, you know, stay in the water as long as them, like all of these little silly games that I play with myself, which ultimately make me a better swimmer. Just because...they haven't done anything. They just exist.

Jen: Yep.

Pete: And they just, you know, they're just in the water at the same time as me, which creates all of this extra healthy tension for me to want to improve my swimming.

Jen: Yes. Okay, so I think there are a couple things to dig into here. The first is a concept Simon Sinek talks about in his book The Infinite Game, which is, "Study your worthy rival." And it's not, "Study anybody who resembles a rival," it's, "Study your worthy rival." And in this case, these two swimmers who are training for the English Channel are worthy rivals. They are better at swimming than you are. And so being around them, you get to see the way they would approach something, which might be completely different than how you might approach it. And you can learn from them, and test, and experiment the things that they are doing on yourself. So, "Study your worthy rival," is one of the points I wanted to pull on a little bit. And then the other one is that when we are in community, learning and watching each other work, we have so much more grace for other people's experiences. The way we might stop ourselves from pushing forward, we would root someone else on to push forward through the thing that might stop us. Like, we are so much more gracious and generous with other people. And I think part of what that does is it gives us more grace for ourselves. Like if I'm in class and I see someone get up, and they're struggling with something that I can relate to, and I imagine myself in that position, I'm like, "Oh my gosh. You know, if I got up and tried that, you know, I would feel afraid, or I would be worrying what people would think of me," and then I see the person actually tackle it and get to the other side of it, now, not only do I have the ambition to do the same thing, but I have some new tools because I saw how they did it.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: And if I were by myself, I just wouldn't have access to that.

Pete: Well, you saw that was possible. I think that's really important.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: Yeah. I mean, I have like such basic examples of this in the swimming context. Is, if I swim on my own, like if I swim-swim as in like, "Now I'm trying to do freestyle, and I want to get fitter and healthier," I would traditionally do like a thirty minute swim. And if someone had have said to me, "Go for an hour swim on your own," I would have been like, "No way. I'll get cold. I'll get bored. That's too long. I can't swim that far," all those stories. And in my first swim squad session, we swam for seventy minutes.

Jen: Mmm.

Pete: And it was because other people were doing it, I was seeing that it was possible that I was able to do that. And now, now I like look back at or think about when I'm going for a swim on my own, through that new lens of what's possible. And it's challenging those, you know, stories I've told myself about doing things on my own, and how far you go, and how strong a swimmer you are, and all those things. So, which...yeah, I'm talking through the lens of swimming, but listener (and like as Jen is pointing out), this is applicable to learning any new skill.

Jen: Yes, okay. One of the other advantages to learning in community is actually the stories other people tell you about their experience. So when these two swimmers come back from swimming the English Channel, they are going to have all sorts of stories to share. And you will learn something from every single one of their stories that will apply to the swimming you are going to do that day, even if you don't know directly how it's going to relate. Hearing about other people's experiences, the stories other people tell you about their experiences, gives you more experience, more borrowed experience.

Pete: I love that so much. It actually reminds me of this podcast I was listening to yesterday. It was an episode of Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard, who has very publicly and bravely shared his journey of being an alcoholic. And he talks about one of the things that he really values when he goes to AA meetings is that no one tells him what to do. Instead, they share their story. And in them sharing their story, he goes, "Oh, yeah. I need to learn that. I feel I hear myself in that story. I'm taking away this." And he walks away with this like little bag of learnings that...no one told him, "You need to learn this thing." They just like shared their experience. So I just, I'm really obsessed with the idea of learning in community is as much about sharing a story as it is about watching someone else swim or write, or hearing from someone what the right technique is on swimming or writing. It's actually also just being about, "Here's my experience in doing this."

Jen: Exactly. Now, in this case, you're in a formal organized swim squad where a coach who has significant expertise was like, "I am going to put together a squad of people who want to get better at swimming." And there are incredible opportunities all around us to find our version of a swim squad, with a expert in a certain area who is willing to share what they know, with other people who want to learn what they know. That is all around us. Coaches everywhere, teachers everywhere. And there are also squads that can be formed of people who do not have someone in the mix who has the expertise, but everybody wants to come together around a particular learning. Like, a book group is a good example of that. You know, we have a book group at the studio. None of us is an expert on the book that we're reading. We're all reading it for the first time before we discuss it. But then we get deeper understandings and questions and takeaways from the book, because I didn't even think to ask the question that that other person just brought into the group, or someone else had a totally different aha moment about this particular point and I went in a different direction with it. And in that case, we didn't need an expert in the room to help facilitate the conversation. We just needed an agreement. And, you know, my definition of community is a group of people who volunteer to learn and grow together. And sometimes that's an organized community that has a leader, like a single leader (like your swim coach), and sometimes it's just a group of people who self-organize.

Pete: I love that definition. It makes me think, do you think...can a community be two people?

Jen: Yes.

Pete: Huh. Yeah. Because as you were sharing that example of the book club, it made me think of actually what we're doing here on this podcast. Which is, we don't claim to be experts, nor are we experts in, necessarily, the things we're talking about. We have experiences that relate to the ideas that we're sharing. And we ask each other questions, which helps us learn. And hopefully (and based on the feedback we get from our listeners), they hear our stories, or they hear the questions we have, and then they develop their own questions and their own stories and their own assertions based on that, which helps them learn. So, I feel like there's a meta example in this podcast. And then I was thinking about something you and I have been doing a lot more of recently, which is 2:1 coaching, where we have...you and I have historically done coaching 1:1. You have a bunch of clients, I have a bunch of clients. And more recently, we've been coaching leaders as two coaches with one client. And I have found...and I know you and I have spoken about this outside of the context of the calls and this call. I find that I learn from hearing the questions that you asked the client that I hadn't thought of yet. Because there's no pressure for me to be always the one asking the question, because you're there. And so, you'll ask a question. And this is like our mini community, I guess, it's you, me, and the client. And I'll go, "Oh, interesting. That is a good question. I'm going to write that down. I just learned something."

Jen: I have the same exact experience. And it's so funny, because I'm like, "I kind of feel like I'm being coached, while I am the coach." I'm like, "I'm going to sit back and let Pete open this session right now. What's the first question he's going to ask? Oh, that's such a great opening question. Let me put that in my back pocket for the next one." It's amazing how being in a group can be so helpful.

Pete: Yeah. Which, it just reminds me of a recent episode we did called Who Not How, where we explored the idea of partnering and collaborating with other people to help us scale our vision, move our work forward, innovate, whatever you want to actually do. And how that's so much more valuable, helpful, scalable, and highly leveraged to do so, rather than having to do everything yourself, learn everything yourself, be everything yourself. So yeah, I hear a rhyme there.

Jen: Oh, definitely. You know, I think there's also...maybe it's worth naming that there is a lot of value in having a specific coach who is working with just you for very specific reasons, like technically speaking.

Pete: Yes.

Jen: So you're in this swim group, and you will get adjustments from your coach that are specific to you but (this is me just hypothesizing about what this experience is like), but that are also useful to the full group. And if you were to have an individual 1:1 session with said coach, they've seen you in the group, they could do a deeper dive on some technical elements that you need to improve that they wouldn't necessarily have the time for in the full group, or wouldn't be appropriate for the full group because it doesn't apply to everyone. So, I see the value in having both of those things. You know, almost all of my clients who come to my group acting classes have a private voice teacher and a private vocal coach. And very often in their work in my group classes, a technical element will come up and I'll say, "Bring that to your voice teacher. And then come back and we'll work it on its feet in here."

Pete: Oh, that's good.

Jen: So, I think the mixture is really healthy and useful.

Pete: And you get different things from each one. I love that example. I didn't give this context, but I had a conversation with my brother prior to joining the swim squad who historically has done Ironman. And he's an incredibly good rider, bike rider, and obviously swimmer, and runner, given he used to do Ironman. And I asked him, "What was the one thing you did that most improved your swimming?" And he said exactly what you just said, Jen. He said the combination of swim in a squad with people who are better than you, and then every now and then, once a month, once a fortnight, whatever, do a 1:1 session for stroke correction. So you swim with the people that are better than you, which makes you want to swim further and stronger and faster and harder. And then, check in on your technique, talk to a technician, do that 1:1. So, that...he echoed that through the lens of swimming. And yeah, it's exactly what you described. So, I totally agree with that. Skills over here, maybe something else you're getting over here, community learning and pushing you a little bit more.

Jen: Yeah. And you know, another use for a squad would be to kickstart something that you're having trouble kickstarting on your own. Like right now, I'm doing this program at my gym. Which, you know I love my gym so much, Mark Fisher Fitness. Everyone check it out. It's amazing. It is truly a community. I'm doing their six-week program called Snatched in Six Weeks. I've done it four times before, this is my fifth time doing Snatched. I know how to do Snatched. I don't need them to tell me how to do Snatched. I've done it so many times before. But getting into that community in a really committed way for those six weeks will literally set me up for a fitness practice for the rest of the year.

Pete: Mmm. Wow.

Jen: I know that being in that group is filling me with all of the things I need to be able to maintain it on my own when it's over. And sometimes we don't really look at learning in groups in that way, as a kickstart possibility. But I just wanted to offer that up.

Pete: I love that idea. It also makes me think of those that are really good at their craft, maybe they're in the top 1% of the thing that they do, whatever that thing is. They still do a version of this. They still train in groups, get 1:1 coaching. Like, I work with executives who I would say are in the top 1% of their particular field as an executive, and they work with me as a coach 1:1, and they do group stuff in classes with other people, and workshops with other people too. So, it's...I don't know, it feels like an obvious thing to say. But just a reminder for myself and others, even those that are world class of what they do still get 1:1 coaching, get group coaching. Even those like Jen who know what a workout practice looks like, go back to the well, you know, reorient themselves with the community, and then off they go and do the thing that they want to do. Yeah.

Jen: I mean, there's just so much value in community. Not just for the learning, which there (we've covered this), there's so much there, but also for the support in getting through the dip. Because I'm sure, you know, forty minutes into your swim class, you'd like to quit.

Pete: Oh, yeah. You bet. Every time.

Jen: Yeah, just as when I get to week four of Snatched, I'm going to want to quit. But all these other people are going to be experiencing the same thing, and we'll commiserate around it, and we'll share strategies for getting through it, and we'll lift each other up, and then we'll show up the next day and lift our kettlebells together.

Pete: I love it. I love it, I love it. And as we begin to wrap this up, I do feel inclined to shout out...actually, this relates to everything we've spoken about. I want to shout out one of our listeners, Shannon, who is a marathon swimmer. Her and I have been exchanging a few messages over Instagram, she has a company called Intrepid Water. But you know how I met Shannon, and you actually met Shannon too? Was when we were facilitating the Real Skills Conference.

Jen: Oh my gosh.

Pete: Which is a learning in community exercise where we ran a two-hour workshop with a bunch of people from around the world, one of which was Shannon, and she learned a bunch in that community. She learned about us, I learned about her, and we have since stayed connected, and she's, you know, exchanged a few DMs with me about swimming and coaching and marathon swimming. So, it's all like full circle here.

Jen: Well, I guess my big takeaway from this episode is, find yourself your equivalent of a swim squad. Learn in community. Get better by surrounding yourself with other people who are also getting better.

Pete: And that is The Long and The Short Of It.