Champion's Mojo for Masters Swimmers
The award-winning podcast for Masters swimmers, adult athletes, and fitness enthusiasts who strive for peak performance and personal excellence. Hosted by world-record-setting Masters swimmer and Health and Performance Coach Kelly Palace, each episode offers inspiring stories, expert insights, and proven strategies to help you unlock your champion mindset—in the pool and in life. With nearly 300 episodes and a track record as one of the top-ranked swimming podcasts, Champion’s Mojo is your go-to resource for motivation, success, and well-being. Ready to dive in? We’re here to champion you!
Champion's Mojo for Masters Swimmers
Racing & Business Insights with Olympic Coach Dudley Duncan, EP 264
Coach Dudley Duncan, a legend with over five decades on the pool deck, joins us to unravel the art of swimming and the strategic nuances of racing. Promising a fresh perspective, Coach Duncan underscores the importance of keeping the sport playful, even as athletes become more goal-oriented. His new book, "The Art of Swimming and the Game of Racing," offers strategic insights for swimmers and coaches aiming to elevate their skills and perhaps manage their own swimming clubs. Whether you're an aspiring swimmer or a seasoned coach, this episode guarantees lessons that will inspire a playful yet strategic approach to racing.
We also explore the world of master swimmers, where the motivations and challenges differ vastly from those of younger athletes. Coach Duncan shines a light on the empowering environments of master meets, where camaraderie and personal strategies help adult swimmers rediscover joy in competition. He reminds hesitant swimmers of the supportive nature of these gatherings, encouraging them to embrace racing without the pressures of youth, focusing on personal strategy and enjoyment.
As we navigate the themes of process, preparation, and mindset, Coach Duncan shares anecdotes of coaching athletes to Olympic levels, illustrating the power of mental rehearsal and focus. From Olympians Whitney Hedgepeth's and Rada Owen's journey to Dudley’s own experiences in pool ownership, this episode is rich with insights on maintaining excellence in the sport. Whether discussing the entrepreneurial side of pool management or the benefits of outdoor swimming, Coach Duncan’s philosophy centers on staying present and encouraging excellence, offering a comprehensive guide for both athletes and coaches alike. Dive in and listen to be inspired!
Email us at HELLO@ChampionsMojo.com. Opinions discussed are not medical advice, please seek a medical professional for your own health concerns.
There is a game within every race. It's a lot how you use your techniques as well. Racing isn't just swimming. It's what you're doing in and out of turns, on finishes and starts. Of course it is a game. The more you can keep it in that realm of consciousness, I think, the more you enjoy the sport.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the award-winning Champions Mojo hosted by two world record holding athletes. Be inspired as you listen to conversations with champions and now your hosts, kelly Pallas and Maria Parker.
Speaker 3:Hello friends, welcome to the Champions Mojo podcast and, as usual, I am co-hosting with Maria Parker. Hey, maria.
Speaker 4:Hey, kelly, it's great to see you today.
Speaker 3:Great to see you and also it's great to see our guest, coach Dudley Duncan, really excited for today's show. Dudley is a fellow Virginian, like the two of us. He has a storied coaching career in Virginia, with over 50 years on the pool deck, but not just as a swim coach. Coach Duncan is an innovative businessman and the author of a new book. Coach Duncan began his coaching career in 1968 in Newport News, virginia. Just one tiny part of his coaching history is that he put two different swimmers on the US Olympic team. He also had numerous champions in the USA and NCAA swimming and, maria, you've got a little special little couple notes that our master swimmers are going to be interested in about Coach Duncan.
Speaker 4:Sure, coach Duncan's new book is the Art of Swimming and the Game of Racing Reflections of a USA Club Swimming Coach which shares his coaching history. It breaks down the philosophy at the core of quest swimming, reflects on the coaching practices Duncan found most effective and provides advice to coaches interested in owning their own club and pool. But this episode's not just for swim coaches. Coach Duncan coached master swimmers for over 20 years, so we're going to dive into some special topics to take your own swimming to the next level. Welcome.
Speaker 3:Yes, Coach Duncan.
Speaker 1:Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3:We're really excited to have you here. So we want to dive in with the topic that it might even be a little taboo among master swimmers, but it's in the title of your book the Game of Racing. We all can kind of understand the art of swimming, but the game of racing. So let's preface this by saying that a lot of master swimmers, the majority of master swimmers, don't race, and by racing we're going to say going to some kind of a meet and standing up and racing someone else. Tell us why racing is important.
Speaker 1:Now it came to mind originally was I was thinking, you know, about 10 and under. Swimmers are typically just so joyful when they start competing for the first time and all they want to do is get to the end of the pool. And there's not really too much technicality about it, they just have tons of fun doing it. They're always smiling and running around and playing, having a great time. And then as you get farther into the sport, then it becomes a little more serious and goal-oriented and those types of things. So oftentimes I think the game of racing itself is lost in all of those goals and the things you're trying to achieve. So it was just a way that I wanted people to think about swimming.
Speaker 1:Still, there is a game within every race. You know, some swimmers like to build a race toward the finish and get stronger as they go. Others like to take it out fast, try to hold on. Some just race the competition depending on. You know how they're set up in the lanes and they race with the field itself, and those are elements of racing that I think give a lot of opportunity to do different things and to enjoy the game of racing. You know, it's a lot how you use your techniques as well. So racing isn't just swimming, it's what you're doing in and out of turns, you know, on finishes and starts. Of course it is a game and if you, the more you can keep it in that realm of consciousness, I think, the more you enjoy the sport.
Speaker 4:Did you encourage your master swimmers to?
Speaker 1:race and I would say that it was all to get others successful. We did have people that were going to national championships and going, you know, outside the state to race, but it was probably about half of the people that were actually training at the pool or swimming at the pool. Different adults do things for different reasons. Adults do things for different reasons.
Speaker 4:What stories do race? Or do master swimmers tell themselves that keep them from going to events and actually racing?
Speaker 1:I think the main thing that I heard from master swimmers was that they were tired or they had some experience that wasn't good for them when they were younger as you know, kids growing up and they didn't want to get back into that sort of pressure environment, you know, of putting a judgment on their performance in any way. So they like to stay calm and just enjoy the act of swimming rather than the racing itself. And you know I had others, though that were highly enthused to race, so just depended more on the individual.
Speaker 3:I love the concept of making it a game because you know they say as adults, we need to play more, and I really love you know, fellow swim coach to swim coach here that you do have a game plan. I mean the word game is in game plan and that if you don't have a game plan, when that gun goes off you are completely lost. You're at the whim of you know, maybe the guy next to you swimming or whoever you're racing, or you may go all out and die, which is definitely not fun. And I think that's a key in successful master swimmers that I know and that I've both worked with, and the success that I've had in my own career is that you do have to have this.
Speaker 3:Like somebody take a 200 free, which is so you know it's such a great distance because it's not a sprint and it's not really a distance event. But, believe it or not, I have a plan where I swim the 200 free, where I do a six-beat kick on the first 25, then I drag my legs on a 50, then on the next 100, I do a different type of kick and then on the last 50, I build it to an all-out six-beat kick. I'm always thinking about that game plan when I swim a 200 free and if I didn't I would just be completely lost and it wouldn't be any fun and it's almost like if I can challenge myself to do that, it's a game and I don't really care where I end up if I go to my game plan. Can you tell us a story of any of the many, many swimmers that you have coached that have kind of stuck to a game plan that might've looked different but that ended up either successful or not? Just a good story around people using a game plan for a race?
Speaker 1:Well, you may remember Jeff Hutch. He swam at Briarwood. He was a pretty good swimmer, went to the University of Arizona and still swims. Also was involved with the Navy SEALs and teaching them adapted side stroke. That enabled them to gain more speed, but with efficiency, so they didn't tire.
Speaker 1:But he loved to race.
Speaker 1:That was just what gave him joy, and he would typically he's very good, by the way, but he would typically put himself somewhere between the knees and hips of the leader and he would kind of just watch them and move along at their speed until he felt like it was his turn to move ahead and then to try to gain the win in the race. That way. I remember when he was probably a junior or senior in high school, he was swimming for our team and there was a boy that he had swum with on another team too, who typically took races out fast, and so there was a little disagreement over whether Jeff should continue to do what he normally did and found joy with, or whether he should get ahead of this boy and stay ahead of him all the time. What ended up happening in that particular meet is that he went ahead and tried to stay ahead and he failed in the race plan because it wasn't to his comfort. It wasn't the way he liked to race, so I think it was the last time that he did that.
Speaker 4:I love this discussion of game and game plan and I just finished a bicycle race and I think one of the advantages of racing is putting yourself in a different, a different place with different people. And I think for most master swimmer if I, if I don't do well, it's not going to bring me down, you know. I mean not too much, maybe for 10 minutes, but mostly it's just it's such a great experience to just be in a different, you know, a different venue and against different competitors and, um, you know, in a different pool, I suppose, with the bike and a different you know, and it's exciting, you know, and you finish that and it's you've seen a different side of yourself. But yeah, it's a game, it's fun, that's the whole point. It's supposed to be fun, it's not. It's interesting to think of even adult master swimmers being plagued by the pressure that maybe they put on themselves or parents or coaches put on them as a child. You know, we're adults, we don't care, nobody cares, not getting any money for it.
Speaker 1:I think that's always been.
Speaker 1:If I could talk somebody into that was apprehensive, and talk them into going to a master's meet, then a lot of that would fade away.
Speaker 1:You know, a lot of that apprehension would fade away, because really, a master's meet, then a lot of that would fade away. You know, a lot of that apprehension would fade away because really, at master's meets, while they're serious at the time of the race and they want to do the best that they can, the atmosphere is so much different. You know, it's so fun and loving and people are just enjoying each other's company and all and they make great friendships that last a lifetime sometimes. So yeah, there are advantages if you can just get them past that place. A lot of them too, I think, will come out after it's been years and years since they swam competitively as kids and they are uncomfortable in bridging that gap of time and they don't feel confident because of the amount of time that's passed. So you have to get them to a level of fitness where you can talk to them about it and then, if you can get them to a meet, pretty much got them hooked. You know they like it.
Speaker 3:Yes, so you started coaching in 1968. You retired from coaching in 2019. That is a 51 year, as we referenced in your intro, a 51 year span of coaching, and obviously you must have worked with lots of people's mindsets and how they, you know, dealt with both failure, success. What do you think some keys to your champions that you saw people succeeding? What were those traits that you saw in your best performers?
Speaker 1:performers.
Speaker 1:The prime instance that reoccurred so often and every swimmer has a tendency to lean this way or not is if you put the goal ahead of the process, then you typically will see anxiety or some nervousness or sometimes even fear develop, because they're not only elevated to try to accomplish the result that they wanted to accomplish, but they also kind of fear it at the same time, whereas if you can get them to focus on the process itself, just do a good start, swim the race the way that we've practiced it all year in anticipation of this, and finish well, and it kind of goes away and it takes away some of that nervousness and anxiety and that.
Speaker 1:So the problem with thinking about the goal first is that there's typically a judgment put on that. So if they achieve it, they're usually very happy and they have some type of judgment associated with the happiness. But also if they don't achieve it and they'll ask themselves questions like is this worth it, or should I be doing this? Should I do something else? You know they'll put that judgment on and they'll wonder what everybody else is thinking about them. It's like they feel like everybody's watching their performance, you know. So yeah, I think it's an important thing for a coach to try to channel that energy toward things that they're accustomed to and a belief in themselves to do those things, and the result will come as a result of that, rather than to try to put the result ahead of the process. A lot of times they'll get so nervous thinking about trying to achieve the objective that they'll almost forget how to swim, or forget a race plan that they've practiced all year long.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I remember my first running race Kelly got me into and I was so nervous I couldn't feel my arms or my legs. But I love this again, this concept of separating out the process from the goal. And one way to think of that, I think, is you're the hero in your own adventure story and every race or every event that you do is kind of a new little adventure. You know, sometimes the bad guys are going to you know be bigger than you expected, and sometimes you know you're going to, you're going to come out on top and I love that. You know just taking the judgment out, this is your own story. Every event you do is your own story. It's your own adventure and you know at the end of it you're going to learn and you know, take your next adventure from what?
Speaker 1:you learned. I do have a story. This is a story about Rada Owen, who was on the 2000 Olympic team in Australia. Who was on the 2000 Olympic team in Australia and she got second in the 200 free to make the team and I wasn't there. She was swimming for Auburn at the time, but I had coached her all the way from eight years old to 18. So she called me after the race was over and I asked her how she was feeling and she goes gosh, that's the weirdest thing she goes.
Speaker 1:I really had that race in my mind. I had visualized it and thought about it every single day. I knew exactly what I wanted to do in prelims and semifinals and finals and it happened just like I wanted it to. And if I made the team, that was great, if I swam the way I wanted to, but if I didn't, that would be okay too. But I made it. So I was really happy, of course, but she said I was really happier for some of my teammates that made it than I was for myself.
Speaker 1:So then she gets to the process of going from Olympic trials to the Olympics. And she didn't swim well at the Olympics she went not a good swim at all, really. So she called me again from Australia and she said well, you know what I was telling you about Olympic trials and I knew what I was going to do and everything she goes. When I got to Australia, I never thought about that race, not even one minute, from the time that I made the team, all the way until it was time for me to swim semifinals.
Speaker 1:Actually, he said prelims were easy, no problem, but semifinals they announced us out, you know, or taking off our uniforms or announcing us. And I realized while I was taking off my uniform that I had not thought about that race even for a minute. And she said I felt this enormous fatigue come over me like a wave. And she said I was more tired when I stepped onto the block at the Olympics than I was during all of Olympic trials and everything I had to do there. She said, and it's, I swam like that too, of 75 meters and she died because I just didn't think about it. So, yeah, that's how it goes really.
Speaker 4:The lesson there is to think about it, to prepare in advance, to rehearse mentally.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, ideally, you're setting your goal, you set up an action plan where you're going to practice every day the way you want to swim, to do that goal. You're going to practice every day the way you want to swim, to do that goal. And then it comes, you know, from your mind and from your subconscious when you're there at the race, which is what happened for Rita at Olympic trials.
Speaker 3:But it didn't happen at the Olympics because she didn't go through that. Well, I would think a lot of our Olympic teams, when they go over there, from whatever country, you've got to be so focused on getting gold or getting silver you know, getting on the podium that you know you may not think of the process. So, other than Rada, you also coach Whitney Hedgepeth to the Olympics. What were some things that you felt that Rada and Whitney exhibited that made them special?
Speaker 1:She's very different. Whitney was. She was born to race. I mean, she had race all inside of her from the very first time that I saw her, at eight years old. It was a YMCA meet, the first one that I had been to with her, you know and she gave the heat a head start because she thought she could win. And then which she did win, you know and I told her when she come back I said whitney, you gave my head start. Why'd you start so slow? She said I thought I could win, so I just thought I would give him a chance.
Speaker 3:I go, whitney, that's not a good thing to do, you know, that's hilarious yeah, that trade is called cocky, which is pretty well yeah, exactly how about how about Rada?
Speaker 1:And Rada was a super technician. Some people said that she was one of the most efficient freestylers that they'd ever seen and her mental game was exactly as I described it she was very good, loved to go through visualization sessions and use what she had visualized in the pool. She had a picture in her mind all the time. So that was different for Whitney. She could hardly ever pay attention to a whole visualization session, you know, but she would really go for it in the race. I did have an experience with Whitney that I thought was significant, that I thought it proved to be significant. So we were training hard in the max VO2 phase of the training and she was tired, as were many others, and I was trying to encourage her, although she didn't take it that way, and she looked at me through her goggles I could see the hatred in her eyes, you know and she said I'd better make this Olympic tee. And we were toward the end of practice. So I called it there, you know. I said let's call it a day, whitney, you stay for a minute, the rest of y'all go out. So I sat with her and I told her you cannot think like that at Olympic trials. You'll put too much pressure on yourself, you won't be able to make it. You know Well, at Olympic trials she was swimming five events, monday through Friday 100 free on the first day.
Speaker 1:We were hoping she could make a relay. She didn't, she was 10. She didn't really care that much about that. You know, it was kind of an event she didn't do normally, but she had had a good race in it during the summer. Then the second day, though, was the 200 freestyle, and that's the one we really thought she had a good shot in, and she was third. So she didn't make the team, because there was no 800 free relay in 1988 for the women. Man, I was pretty apprehensive about going to that warm down pool after that, but I went over there and she goes well, I'll miss, so I go, oh good. So she was third in that event. The next day was 400 free, which she did not want to swim. She swam it for me because I wanted her to swim it, and she was really good at every distance. But she did not like 400 free. She didn't make finals and she was happy.
Speaker 1:Then, thursday, she was 100 fly. She was fifth in the 100 fly, and the last day was 200 IM. So she places ninth. But Angel Martino scraps the 200 IM because she wanted to do something special in the 53. So Whitney got into lane eight and she placed second and made the team in 200 IM Totally not expected. You know she had a really wonderful breaststroke split for her. She dropped about three seconds off her breaststroke split. All by itself All the training that we had done for the IM really worked for her. But yeah, that's an important lesson, I think. You know she didn't make the 200 free. She could have got down on it, you know, but she kept her spirits up and took everything in perspective. And then she ends up making the team on the 200 IM. And you know she did not make the team in 1992. She was very close but missed making the team in 1992 and stopped for a couple of years and came back and then made the team and medaled in backstroke in 96.
Speaker 3:What a great story. So you know, it's pretty amazing that you put, as a longtime swim coach myself, you know it's always a coach's dream to want to put somebody on the Olympic team, and not many coaches do even one swimmer on the Olympic team. But you had two on the Olympic team, but you had two. So let's talk about Dudley Duncan and your goals and your mindset. Like how do you, you know, did you set these goals? Did they just happen? What is it about you that you're continually achieving these incredible things, like your 50-year coaching career, your Olympians now your incredible, unique model for swim coaches to purchase their own pools. Now you've got a book. What drives Dudley Duncan and what's your mindset to get all these achievements?
Speaker 1:That's a pretty good question. Actually, I never thought about where I was supposed to be as a coach. I was really focused in, I think, on the moment and things that I did and things that were accomplished during my career I think happened sort of naturally because of the advancements that the people that I was coaching were making as a result of the process that we did. Like I didn't ever apply to be a national team coach or anything. I thought I was better suited I actually got this from John Flanagan. I thought I was better suited to be at home with the majority of kids that I was paid to coach than to go off in other places and coach. So I just stay in the movement. But I do require, I think, of people that they try to be the best that they can be. I really appreciate excellence as a concept and try to bear it out of myself as well as them.
Speaker 3:You know Iceman for John Flanagan? I think you knew that John Flanagan never put anybody on the Olympic team. Did you know that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, he got really close with Michelle swim coach ever and certainly one of the finest humans, but he would just to put one person on the Olympic team would have been great for John. So for you to do it, you know, to do it twice is incredible and really Dudley. You know, writing a book after your whole career is something that's quite an achievement, and a book does not happen in the moment, so tell us about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right. I guess the first inclination I had to do it was that I really had people telling me I shit over the years and I never really thought about it seriously because I was usually working too hard. But when I retired, I don't know, it was in the back of my mind some. So I started putting some bullet points in place, you know on the computer and just thoughts, and then I started to elaborate on those thoughts a little bit and expand on them and next thing I knew it looked like chapters were developing. I go, OK, then I'm going to try to do this. And so I did. I kind of started to put an order together for the chapters and I wanted to present the book. And it was a lot of my experience, you know, from a young coach to a mature coach. So that's a kind of a natural progression. But then I also wanted people to understand the elements of club coaching that differ from, say, college coaching or YMCA coaching or coaching that's primarily seasonal coaching, or coaching that's primarily seasonal because as a club coach you're taking a child, you know when they're seven or eight years old, and you're coaching them for a decade of time at least and it's year round and the meets are typically a minimum of two and a half days and 18 swims, you know, or so? Yeah, it's a whole different paradigm for coaching that I think needed attention because it's not really out there. People talk about coaching but they don't really talk about club coaching. It's not like very much in, for example, at coaching clinics. You're not hearing it that way.
Speaker 1:The other thing I wanted to do was to share my feelings on that, my thoughts, and then the last thing was the business, because every coach that you all know on this has made this statement If I had my own pool, I think I could do this a bit better, because you're always answering to board members and not that they're bad, I mean, that's a good thing to do. Board members are great but you're always having the back of your mind. If I had the ownership, I could do this, you know. So I resigned from Poseid, so I wanted to share with younger coaches how I did that, because most of the time you think I can't do that because it's too expensive. I don't have, I'm not a business person or whatever, but for me, I bought that pool by assuming a mortgage of $225,000.
Speaker 1:It was a homeowner's association. It wasn't a good pool, you know. It was a really bad pool actually, but it didn't cost me much. I didn't have to put any money down, I just had to make the monthly payment. I refinanced it a few times to try to, you know, create some cash.
Speaker 1:But then in 2017, I had it appraised and it was appraised at that time under that zoning for $468,000. And I wanted to build a teaching pool, which was going to cost $1.7 million on the property. So, you know, I looked into rezoning and decided I could rezone it. Maybe it would be worth more. So I rezoned it and it was appraised at $2.62 million. So I was able to build the pool you know, the teaching pool and now it's pressing on a $3 million revenue. So I think it's kind of a story that makes it seem like it could be reasonable. $225,000 was the price of a typical home in Midlothian at that time for a three-bedroom rancher. Right, I bought a three-bedroom rancher when I was 30, and it cost me $49,950. I could have done the same thing when I was 30 that I did when I was 56. So that's what I wanted to share about the business.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a great story. That's the deer run pool, right.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 4:Help me understand how it's great for a coach to own their own pool.
Speaker 1:It depends on who you are. I admit that you know. So you're able to make your own decisions. It doesn't take you any time to do it. You don't have to go and sell the idea to 13 board members, you know, and have them agree on it and then go through everything you have to go through. You can't get anything done so often, you know it just takes time and then you don't have people that agree with you all the time. So you kind of work through all that. But when you have it, when it's yours, you make the decision and it's done.
Speaker 1:It's meant not be a good decision and you pay for that. You know you have personal accountability for that. But most of the time, I think for me I felt like they were and you also have to be willing to do the work, because you're no longer, you know, depending on other people to do the accounting or doing the legal work or you know all those things. You have to clean the toilets and do that kind of work at the end of the day and, you know, mow the grass and do all those kinds of things, and then you have to coach the team and enjoy. So there's a lot of work to it and I didn't sleep much for those first few years, but eventually it worked out. So if you want to do the work and you're an independent type person that wants to control your own destiny, then I think it's a good paradigm.
Speaker 3:You're never going to, you know, run into someone else booking pool time when you want it so you can have your practices, you know, whenever you want.
Speaker 1:We didn't stop swimming during COVID.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so those are. So you own those types of things. Well, yeah, that's great, and so that's just like being your own owner, operator, entrepreneur. And did you say you expanded to another pool, or was that the only one you did?
Speaker 1:Cool that one's owned by the pool management company that I started. We have total flexibility to use that pool as we need to. There's nobody else in it, really, it's just us. It's the only reason it's open is us. So we have that. It's a 25-yard by 25-meter Z-shaped pool, and then we have the pool that we built on the Deer Run campus, which is the teaching pool. It's a pretty good situation altogether. Our intent now is to try to make this the Evergreen pool. What we call the Evergreen pool is the 25-yard by 25-meter pool, as good as Deer Run is, because it's not as good.
Speaker 3:I swam at Evergreen this morning with their master's group, oh gosh. So I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah, it's a beautiful venue and a great location and yeah, definitely would be nice to be as nice as the deer run facility. But yeah, I can totally see the potential in that. But I joked with the master's group there, you know, Stan was the coach and swam with the usual's group there, you know, Stan was the coach and swam with the usual group, that's. You know. I've been swimming at Deer Run when I'm in Richmond visiting, you know, my family and helping my 94-year-old dad. So we've been here quite a bit over the last several years and so I've been swimming with different master's groups because I love I just love all my master's friends and I have different friends on different teams. So I've been swimming at Quest and then they moved us over to Evergreen where we've been swimming at the Deer Run Pool, and they moved us over to Evergreen. So I would love to see that Evergreen pool get as up to par as the Deer Run Pool.
Speaker 1:Well, I've told Chad and John that well, I actually still own the business. By the way, I'm not there to operate it, but I'm still on the loan for the teaching pool.
Speaker 3:Are you part of Quest Swimming still, even though you're retired?
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I own it.
Speaker 3:Oh, okay.
Speaker 1:So I'm the majority owner in Quest Swimming.
Speaker 3:Okay, and then Quest owns Evergreen through your pool company Swim Metro.
Speaker 1:Well, swim Metro owns it, so that's a separate company, separate owner. My son actually has ownership in Swim Metro. The majority owner is a guy named Kurt Schuster, who we started the company together. So they own that pool but they pretty much don't pay any attention to it. So, john and Chad, we're always wanting to get approval from Kurt and Ryan to make improvements, because they don't want to make improvements and then have a loss for it. And I've told them make the improvements for yourselves, because when you make the improvements you're going to improve people's desire to come there and your cash flow will get better from that, you know. So it doesn't really matter if they don't want to pay attention to it, that's their decision. Just document it, tell them what you're doing and make the improvements which they've done. They put in new bathroom facilities, the urinals and toilets, and that they put new ones in this year without having Kurt's approval. In my suggestion.
Speaker 4:I love the entrepreneurial spirit. Yeah, you're definitely the hero of your own story.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a great, great story.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I did want to talk with you about something that I think you do incredibly well and I think those out there listening that hey think, oh well, I know this person that should buy a pool.
Speaker 3:That is completely breaking the mold in my mind and that is the pools that we've been talking about. And, maria, this is probably going to surprise you it was 32 degrees this morning here in Richmond Virginia when we woke up and we swam outdoors. So the two pools I don't know if Deer Run originally was an outdoor pool when you bought it, but I know that Evergreen is just might be your local summer league swim pool that just doesn't want to be maintained by the neighborhood country club or the neighborhood HOA Homeowners Association. So I love that Quest has had their kids and their masters swimming outdoors throughout a Richmond winter. I'm not sure how far north that model could go, but, dudley, talk with us about how you came up with. Hey, let's put heaters in these pools, because that's probably your most expensive expense and we're going to swim outdoors all year round because I love it, love it, love it, love it as a swimmer.
Speaker 1:The first time I had the idea was when I was in high school, actually, and I was looking at a National Geographic and geography class and there was a picture in there of a Russian practice. And it was outdoors and the coach was dressed up all in you know Russian type head thing and he looked like the Michelin man or something. It's a furry hat. You could see there was steam coming up from the water and all you could see was barely a silhouette of an arm and some other arms as well, and I thought, golly day, that really that's a good thing, man, they're swimming in fresh air. You know a lot of people have problems with chloramines and indoor pools and that I like that idea.
Speaker 1:So later, when, you know, I started thinking about building pools or getting a pool or buying a pool or something. I thought we can swim outdoors. You know they did it in Russia. We can do it, you know. So, yeah, we're on the way back to high school, but we have heated water and the coldest temperature we've swum in outdoors was seven degrees. So you could get pretty far north with that idea. I think you just have to have the heater and it helps if it's dependable. So I bought new heaters. I bought several heaters in my time.
Speaker 3:And cool covers, right Cool covers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah's a. It's a great thing, I think. Uh, it's not natural for people to think that that's a good idea. You have to sell them on it a little bit how do you sell them on it?
Speaker 1:well, that's what we've always talked about the fresh air, that we think it's really preferable to swim outdoors than it is indoors because of the chloramines that happen in there and a lot of times the air gets hot, you know, it's steamy and stuff. It's not really a great environment indoors anyway, but it's a great environment outdoors. It's just getting to the water and getting out and the coaches are uncomfortable. I will say that I've been very cold, and so have John and Chad, but they're a lot bigger than I am.
Speaker 3:They could plug in a little space heater or something. Yeah, and I'll tell you another thing it's not good for us to be in temperatures all the time that are like 78 to 82. Like we're always in that range, always with our body, and that when we're exposed to cold, cold and this is non-shivering cold, so you're not put into that total shivering all the time. But you know, mark and I, after practice we were wet and we stood on the deck and talked in our bathing suits and everybody was looking at us like we're crazy and we like, oh, we're trying to burn our brown fat and we're really trying to embrace. There's something now called maria, you'll love this called discomfort science.
Speaker 3:I love it it's a whole new thing about how we're all just way too comfortable as humans. So maybe we can add that into it, dudley, and we can, you know, we can start this drive where all USA, all club teams, should be buying their summer league pools and training outside all year round yeah, you know, kelly, I believe that in the other side too, with respect to heat, because when I was growing up there was no air conditioning.
Speaker 1:Maybe in your house you had a room, you know, a window unit, so one room would be, but there were no new air conditioning in schools. We went to school and all the schools had windows and, you know, occasionally a teacher would bring a fan in or something and we went, you know, we did football practice and stuff in the summers, double sessions and all it was a lot, man, it was like totally uncomfortable, you know, during the day. But yeah, I think it's the same thing on the other side Now. Now we've air conditioned ourselves, you know, to be comfortable at those temperatures and we've heated ourselves to be comfortable from both ends. We're not uncomfortable enough in our lives.
Speaker 3:That's exactly. Yeah, that's exactly what the author said. That it swings the same way. Yeah, that's exactly what the author said that it swings the same way, that we need to be hot and we need to be cold and we're just too comfortable, and that, when we are exposed to these extremes, that we get a benefit, that we get a real physiological benefit and then therefore a psychological benefit, because we're you know, we've endured this tough thing, because we're you know we've endured this tough thing. Well, dudley, is there anything that we have not asked you that you would like to share with us?
Speaker 1:I think with the Masters. So I started the Masters program up at Gear Run and I coached it pretty much until I stopped coaching. There's so much competition for Masters there. Swim RVA is an awesome facility that a lot choose to go to, and Briarwood still has some masters over there. There's a lot of people that swim in the summer at their summer pools blah, blah, blah. You know.
Speaker 1:So from a business standpoint it's a difficult thing to do, but from my perspective I really wanted to do it because I really think that it's a good lifetime sport. People keep doing it. They stay healthier, I think, if they like to swim. So it didn't really matter to me whether it made money or not. You know, I just thought it was a good thing to have going, and I think it's still that way at Quest. But the people are just a ton of fun. They're just a blast, you know, and they really they try hard and they do things that are good and you have some that are really focused. You know they want to work hard, want to get BART rates up, and that you have others that just want to be technical. They want to work hard, want to get BART rates up, and that you have others that just want to be technical and as a coach that's kind of fun to do too because you can really help a lot of those swimmers technically, you know, because they're a lot of them come in inefficient, so you know they haven't swum for a long time.
Speaker 1:You know instinct is I always say it's counterintuitive to swim well to a human being. So most people if they use their instincts they're going to swim wrong. Our instinct is really take a drowning person, you know they want to lift their head, they want to press down on the water, they want to kick vigorously to try to stay at air. That's a human instinct. It's all wrong.
Speaker 1:You know you're much better if you understand to press your head, one, you know, either forward or back, press your body weight into your chest so you can leverage your hips up. So not kick too hard, you know, so that you don't get tired. Then you'll probably be okay. But it's counterintuitive and we do the same thing even in competitive training. If you're not reinforced on a regular basis I would say daily in fact to do the right thing, you will instinctively start doing the wrong thing. That's why coaching is a good job, because you always have it. You know they'll never get it exactly. So yeah, I think, to be able to give a master swimmer that ability to swim with ease and effortless movement and to feel themselves glide through the water, a lot of them find great enjoyment in that.
Speaker 3:Well, wonderful. So the very last thing we do is the sprinter Round, where we just ask you a few fun. These are one-word answers so that our listeners will get to know you a little bit better. Are you ready to play the Sprinter Round? Coach Duncan, take your mark. What is your favorite sandwich?
Speaker 1:Boat, ham and mustard.
Speaker 3:Okay, what do you own that you should throw out?
Speaker 1:Shoes that I don't wear.
Speaker 3:What is the scariest animal to you? Snake. What celebrity would you like to meet?
Speaker 1:Red Pit.
Speaker 3:What is the hardest swimming event in the pool?
Speaker 1:400 IM.
Speaker 3:All right, how about your favorite movie?
Speaker 1:Braveheart.
Speaker 4:I like it, favorite smell.
Speaker 1:I don't have a sense of smell, but as I recollect a gardenia.
Speaker 4:Oh nice.
Speaker 3:That's mine. I think that's the only other person that said gardenia. That's fine too Okay.
Speaker 4:It's a very significant smell. Okay, do you make your bed every morning?
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 4:Kickboard or no kickboard, no kickboard. If you had to listen to one song for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Speaker 1:Ave Maria.
Speaker 4:That's beautiful Window or aisle.
Speaker 1:Aisle.
Speaker 4:Describe your life in five words.
Speaker 1:I like to win races.
Speaker 4:What word comes to mind when you dive in the water?
Speaker 1:Dug, I'm not a swimmer. I mean I swim, but it's not the sport that I choose for my personal exercise. So usually when I dive in, I don't like it. What is your sport? Wrestling was my favorite sport in high school. Now it's biking, actually.
Speaker 3:On the road or on a stationary.
Speaker 1:An A1A.
Speaker 3:The A1A.
Speaker 4:Wow, basically a couple hours a day. Where do you live?
Speaker 1:Vero Beach, Florida. Oh wow, Basically a couple of hours a day.
Speaker 3:Where do you live?
Speaker 1:Vero Beach, Florida.
Speaker 4:Oh, okay, okay.
Speaker 3:So yeah, you're just south of us. Yeah, be careful out there, all right? Thank you so much for your time today. We really appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Oh, I do too. It's great talking to you, great seeing you again.
Speaker 3:Great Thanks, all right Take, it was great talking to you.
Speaker 2:Great seeing you again. Great Thanks. All right, take care. Bye, maria, bye-bye. Stay tuned for the takeaways. Want to succeed like a champion? Five-time Olympic coach Bob Bowman, coach of Olympic legend Michael Phelps, says Kelly's book Take your Mark Lead is a powerful addition to your personal improvement library, and learners from all walks of life will gain key insights and enjoy. This inspiring book. Take your Mark Lead debuted as an Amazon number one bestseller in five categories and is available online. And now the takeaways.
Speaker 3:Okay, Maria, the takeaways. What a great interview. I know we went a little long, but it was just so interesting. I could have talked to Coach Dudley Duncan for much longer, but he's just got so much experience and he's such a besides being an amazing coach, he's a really great businessman, and you and I are businesswomen and we run our own companies and we wanted to even talk to him after he got off the call with us. But what was your first takeaway on Coach Duncan?
Speaker 4:I think what hit me the hardest is his description of our natural. The way we naturally swim is really not efficient because we're trying to keep ourselves from drowning and that technique is everything you know and that that's what a coach does. A coach helps you with your technique and it's counterintuitive and you need coaching every day. You need to work on technique every day and you know of course I knew that, but he just put it so clearly that swimming is not natural, but with proper coaching we can create an incredibly efficient and beautiful style of swimming that will feel good and get us through the water faster.
Speaker 4:I just I'm a beginner swimmer and so well, I don't know if you call me a beginner swimmer, but I but I struggle. I don't have the background of swimming from when I was six years old and as a 61 year old, like, technique is hard. So it was a great reminder that if you just work on technique, you're going to get better and you're going to become more efficient. I love that. I think master swimmers a lot of them want to just get in there and burn calories or whatever, and that's you know that's a waste. Get in there and become a better swimmer.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I like that. I think more people in master swimming should focus on technique and that it might be why swimming always feels better the more you do it. So when you're really swimming a lot, you're really swimming at a high level. If you miss two days in a row, or even sometimes even one day, you just lose that. It's called feel for the water, and so the feel for the water comes from having good technique by doing it a lot.
Speaker 3:My first takeaway was that I love that he said he requires excellence from the people that work with him. And then he kind of humbly said, oh, and I require excellence from myself. So I think that is such a great standard. You know that so many things that we do in our lives, sometimes we can just phone it in or do it, you know, not to our best. You kind of know I'm not really doing my best, but I'm going to get it done. Daily basis. If you do something excellent that in the end you get such a bigger reward than if it's just average, average, average kind of get an average reward. But I love that he focused on excellence for those that he worked with, those that worked with him, and for himself.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I did too. I love that word excellence.
Speaker 3:Yes, so what is your last takeaway?
Speaker 4:Oh, we talked a lot in this interview about process and I mean we started talking about how, if you are more focused on process, you're going to be less less emotional, less concerned about outcome and goals, and I really really like that. I mean, I think it's easier for me as I get older. It's good to have goals. They inspire me, they get me out working out, but then in you know the process of actually the event or the competition, or just the process of practice or the process of building one work on another. I just love that. I think the older you get, the more you realize, yeah, everything builds on itself.
Speaker 4:He even talked about his book. You sort of challenged him. Like, you know, being in the moment doesn't write a book. But the way he described it is like, yeah, I first I started out with bullet points and then I sort of fleshed those out and pretty soon I could see that I had, you know, chapters and I was like, yeah, everybody can write a book. If you got an idea, create some bullet points, flesh those out. I mean it's the process. And create some bullet points, flesh those out. I mean it's the process, and then you're not so bunched up about how it's going to come out or what's good, you know what the end point is, or whatever you. Just you can enjoy it.
Speaker 3:And you know that's what life is about. Yes, I love that. I mean, at the end of the day, everything can be about process. It's like that, which is you just get down to the process. I love that for sure. That was a huge part of it, everything that you know that he was doing.
Speaker 3:My second takeaway and this is what I'm going to close with is I loved how much he thought out of the box on acquiring outdoor pools. So you know, when we started talking about swim coaches, go out and buy a pool. You know I'm envisioning like an indoor pool with a roof you got to maintain and all that. But the part about these outdoor pools is training outdoors. So the takeaway is that we can do well in cold, cold weather or hot, hot weather, you know, but we need that discomfort and he frames it and promotes it as great air, which is fabulous. As a swimmer, you know you're a cyclist who rides on the road, so you get great air. But you know how many times have you gone into an indoor pool and it just smells like chlorine and the air is awful, and so I love that.
Speaker 3:He was a big initial, you know, an early adapter of training outside, and that he that he remembered it from high school. Hey, I remember seeing those Russians training outdoors, so I love how creative. And then what a good salesman he is to say, hey, let's train outdoors. And they said they trained down to seven degrees. So it's a little miserable for the coaches, but it's great for the swimmers because the water is like 82 degrees. So you, you know, you go from the freezing cold air into the water. It feels like a spa and it's good for you.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:All right, we got another great one in the books. Thank you, I love you.
Speaker 4:Love you too, kelly. See you soon. Bye, all right, bye-bye.
Speaker 2:Thank you for listening to the Champions Mojo podcast. Did you enjoy the show? We'd be grateful if you would leave us a five-star review on iTunes to help others find us, and we'd also love to hear from you. We're on all social media platforms or you can reach us at championsmojocom.
