Despite COVID restrictions, no travel and very slow local swim coaching work, I’ve remained quite busy behind the scenes building SwimMastery with my co-founder, Tracey Baumann in UK. I am genuinely more pleased and more hopeful for the future as the months go by and would like to take a moment to share with you what we’ve done so far.

I met and started coach training work with Tracey back in 2012. Over the years, through ups and downs, we established clear communication and trust, discovered we share the same core values, found we had complementary teaching styles and a good leadership chemistry which, a little over a year ago, convinced us that we should merge our visions for an international swim coach and swimmer community and build one together.

SwimMastery is…

• A collective of coach professionals collaborating, supporting one another, learning together.
• Developing coaches of extraordinary insight and skillfulness in meeting swimmer needs.
• An international community of coaches and swimmers centered around continual learning and skill mastery.
• Teaching a scientifically-informed way of swimming and training that is suitable for ordinary people – making them safer, stronger, go longer and feel better.
• An extraordinarily effective environment for learning and personal development for the full range of human swimming needs

On one side, we are focused on supporting our coach members, building up their knowledge and skills and supporting their businesses so that they can offer extraordinary service to a wider ranger of swimmers and do more of the kind of work they love.

On the other side, we are focused on creating a safe, accepting, supportive community for swimmers around the world, including access to superior resources for learning and training and opportunities to train with other like-minded coaches and swimmers.

In January of this year we formalized SwimMastery, LLC as a business, launched the website and conducted our first Fundamental Skills Coach Training course in Alicante, Spain with 6 coach candidates. Since then we’ve moved online and conducted five more FSCT courses, and we’re conducting our first Advanced Skills Coach Training course right now. We’ve got over 30 coach members representing 10 countries and more lined up to join.

Initially, the global pandemic and COVID restrictions seemed like it would put a damper on our intentions for this first year. Instead, it has turned into a great opportunity. Though we lament the loss of our plans to meet up in-person for training with our coaches, we found we already had the technology and skills in our hands for moving much of what we do online without too much interruption. Several of our members have Endless Pools so we are able to conduct livestreaming demonstrations. We have found our members with more time and incentive to focus on continuing education. We’ve found it timely to be in position to offer personal attention, encouragement and education to our members.

This weekend we are hosting our first Annual SwimMastery Coach Convention (online, of course), with guest speakers, a workshop and sharing our vision for Phase 2 of our growth plan which we are on track to start in 2021. It would be far better to meet in person (in a sunny place with nice swimming) but we are all very grateful that we have the means to stay connected so much at this time. We’re taking advantage of it.

If you would like to learn more you can visit our SwimMastery website and blog. We have a lot more content being shared on our SwimMastery Facebook page, so visit there to see short videos and news of what our coaches and swimmers are accomplishing. We invite you to sign up for our SwimMastery Newsletter to stay informed of our upcoming opportunities for coaches and swimmers.

Lastly, I invite you to check out this short video on our FB page describing SwimMastery Coach Pavel’s 26km swim across the length of Lake Zurich this summer, in place of the classic swim that was cancelled this year. 

If you are interested in learning more about joining as a coach member or learning about the difference SwimMastery coaching can make for your swimming, I invite you to contact me any time.

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