INSPIRATION: Back to the Future with John Cocks, 87spm at 87yrs of age!

Our 12 swimmers - including 87yr old John Cocks - from around the world on our brand new “Swim Smooth Experience” enjoying a brief moment before their final swim session at the world-famous Jadran Aquatic Centre, Montenegro 🇲🇪 - there will be more opportunities to join us in 2024 on similar cool experiences, so please watch this space!

Hope you've enjoyed a great week of swimming and enjoyed the final week of our 8 Week Sw-Improvement program all about Swim Types.

We've had some tremendous feedback (thank you) and would love to hear from you about which week's tips resonated most with you?

There's a full summary of the last 8 weeks at the bottom of the blog for you.

It's not every day as a 45yr old slightly ‘tubby’ dad of two teenagers that you get to lead two world Ironman Champions (Chelsea Sodaro, 2022 women's champion and 2018 men's Age-Group world champion and current world record holder, Dan Plews) on the famous Hawaii Ironman swim course!

After 10 days over in Kona, Hawaii helping the 2022 Ironman World Champion, Chelsea Sodaro 🇺🇸 prepare for a title defence with her coach, Dan Plews, I've spent the last 2 weeks in Montenegro with Coaches Sally Scaffidi and Jon Allars working with 12 swimmers from around the world to refine their swimming in the pool and open water.

Tomorrow, we will embark on the mighty UltraSwim33.3 - a 4-day stage race in the Adriatic over 33.3km - wish us luck!

We'll be sharing more insight from these three experiences in future blogs, so please watch this space.

All great things must come to an 'end':

Sadly, two great swim coaching experiences came to an ‘end’ this last week - our wonderful Sw-improvers* completed their 8-week Swim Improvement course, and our 7-day Swim Smooth Experience** for 12 swimmers from around the world finished on a high note with over 20km of swimming completed in the week in Montenegro (see above pic).

*thanks to Cecily, Rod, Frankie, David, Rich, Sara, Wendy and Toby for being a part of this - watch out in a future blog for the results of their video analysis session (still pending whilst we collate everyone's files).

**thanks to Jochen, Raymond, John, Eve-Line, Thomas, Alexandra, Cai, Frank, Marietheres, Nestor, Sakke and Rod for being part of this very special inaugural trip.

Back to the Future with John Cocks, 87:

On our course in Montenegro was 87 year old John Cocks from Melbourne, Australia. When applying for the course, John wasn't sure if he's be able to keep up with the ‘young pups’, but if you check out the video by clicking the image below, John needn't have worried!

Try watching this clip before your next swim when you might be full of aches and pains and the feeling you're “too old for this” - John inspires us that you're never too old for a swim! Onya John!

Please give John a quick like on the video and consider following the Swim Smooth Instagram page for other cool videos, tips and tricks in bite-size chunks, daily:

8 Week Sw-Improvement Plan:

In summary then for the last 8 weeks, we have shown you:

1. How to bench-mark where you’re at using our re-launched (FREE) CSS Calculator

2. How to establish consistency as the primary (simple) habit that will make all the difference to your long-term improvement

3. How to become the leader of your lane to ensure the pace is specific to you and that drafting is not hampering your consistent improvement aims

4. How to use your pool equipment correctly and specifically avoiding over-use of your pull bouy

5. How to avoid short-turning via a couple of (FREE) session suggestions to eradicate this detrimental habit (if you were doing it)

6. How to develop perfect pacing via the (FREE) Goldilocks session

7. How to be purposeful about your drill/technique work via (FREE) access to some of our core drills, namely the “Javelin” drill

8. How to optimise your stroke for you via a specific (FREE) Swim Type training session for you

I really hope you've enjoyed this last 8 weeks, and look forward to bringing you more insight and helpful advice for your swimming in future weeks.

Please let me know how you got on and which week helped you the most?