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Hey, it's Lewis. Welcome to the podcast. Enjoy our conversations anytime, anywhere. Cool, I'm alive. Hey guys, welcome to the podcast. So today I've got the pleasure of being virtually joined by Kerry Ann Payne. Born in South Africa, she's a British swimmer and she does marathon open water swimming. God knows why, but we'll find out. And long distance freestyle in the pool and she's two time 10K open water champion, Olympic silver medalist and doing some really, really cool things. So look forward to hearing about it. Kerry Ann, welcome to the podcast. Thank you very much for having me. It's always nice to see people face to face so even kind of that face to face conversation. Definitely. So where about are you at the moment? Oh, so we're in London. I guess as everybody else is doing is living through the lockdown at the minute. Crazy times, hey? Crazy times. I think like two, three weeks ago we were planning our 10 year work anniversary and all of that stuff. And then the pace of change has been really ridiculous. Yeah, I think it definitely has. And actually if I was to try and put positive spin on my previous experience, it's kind of already prepared me for things that might, we've always been told to expect the unexpected. That was something that a guy called Bill Sweetman who was the national performance director for British swimming quite a while ago now 2004 to 2008 around that time. And yeah, his motto was basically expect the unexpected. So yeah, we've kind of always been, something unexpected happens. We've gone, right. Okay, what can we do about it? What can we control? What can't we control? And then try to move on from that. Yeah, so you just have to, so it's prepared you just to be calm, under pressure, what something happens, I guess your mood must be say, just like calm and steady now. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, just you've got to, again, there's no point in worrying about the things that you can't. Although having said that, I'm sure there's lots of people who just don't know enough information about where they need to be and what needs to happen. But yeah, if you can try and motion out of things and try and think about it in terms of what you can control, but you can't control. Now, having said that and hearing myself say that, I've definitely had a few wobbles the last couple of weeks. Well, no, this is real. And then after Boris, basically locked everyone down, it's definitely a sobering moment. But that's about just kind of looking into what you can and what you can't control. Yeah. Well, I've started a little gratitude diary. I started it a few weeks ago after we had a sports psychologist come and have a chat with us. But I mean, if you think about it, I mean, we're locked down, but I can get food delivered to my doorstep. I've got like on-demand entertainment. I've got like fully stocked shops in London still. You know, there's a lot to be grateful for. So despite having to move and do exercise in the house and stuff like that, there's a lot to be thankful for. And my motto for the year is not to worry about things I can't affect. So I'm trying to work hard on that. Definitely, it's a good motto. How did you get into swimming? So I guess I didn't really have a choice. So my older brother and sister and my brother's nine years older than me and he was already swimming and so was my sister. So I was essentially born onto a poolside. I wasn't. But essentially, my mom must have been pregnant when she was taking my brother swimming and then when she had me, she was still able to take him swimming. And I just absolutely idolized him. So it's quite a big gap between the two of us. And I just wanted to do what he was doing and he was swimming, essentially. So that's all I wanted to do. Amazing. I was just in South Africa. You grew up in South Africa. Yeah, so I was born there, lived there until I was 13 and I had been swimming literally from the second I possibly could learn how to swim. And my mom made us try everything. She didn't want to just be swimming because again, by the time I came along, she'd already had at least nine years of my brother doing it and then my sister doing it. And then she was like, he turns out I was a swimmer after all of that. And I would get so upset if she didn't take me training with my brother and sister. So I must have been like eight years old and I'd wake up in tears because I realized she didn't take me morning training. So she took my brother and my sister on my brother morning training. She's like, Carrie Ann, you're eight years old. You should be sleeping in your own bed. You should not be on the pool side. That's it, but you said you'd take me. What time is morning training? I heard that's early for swimming. Yeah, it can be. It's about five a.m. Yeah, because it's gotta be done before school because it's quite a young sport. So yeah, about five a.m. Crazy. When were you allowed to go morning training? I think just so that I would stop crying. She basically did it. I think it was also easy trying to navigate three kids into different schools and all that kind of stuff. So maybe 10, which is far too early. And if anybody's watching this, who's got kids as far too early to be taking your kids morning training, sleep is really important. So make sure they get as much of it as they can. But you always hear this kind of mixed thing of like specializing something. You know, like, for example, Tiger Woods, right? I mean, he was like specialized in golf early on versus like a Roger Federer, whose parents like said, don't bother doing tennis and dissuaded him from doing it. And obviously it became like the best. So it's quite interesting, isn't it? The specialism versus like just try loads of things and maybe you then navigate. Yeah, it's a really tricky one because I guess I've seen through the years loads of different people and families trialing the different routes. And actually the ones whose parents forced them to specialize in something from a young age ended up not carrying on. So they were brilliant athletes and really good at swimming. But they got to maybe like 14 and when they felt like they could rebel, they rebelled and they were like, that's it, I'm done. I'm leaving this anymore. And you just knew that they had like incredible potential. And then we've seen from the other side of the spectrum. So I guess my parents were not actively asking me not to swim, but you know, they wouldn't take me. And then I said, when I got a bit older I would have to wake them up in the morning. So that was kind of the new rule was we're going to wake yourself up. If you want to go, you better wake me up and get me up and enough time to get to training and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah, amazing. When did it switch for you that you wanted to like really pursue a profession? I guess it's not professional, right? But yeah, it's amateur, technically. But yeah, we're kind of everything we do is in a professional manner. So we're training all the stuff that professional athletes would be sacrificing and missing parties and family, friends and weddings and baby showers and all that stuff. And you know, training 25 hours a week minimum on top of that. I had, I never, I don't think I ever chose a moment where I'm like, right, this is it. I was just always, I just loved it so much. But for me, swimming was about being the best athlete I could be. It wasn't about necessarily being on top of the podium. It was about doing what I could do. How could I be the best athlete possible? And racing was an opportunity to see how I was progressing, you know, was I getting any better? How was I doing? But essentially for me, it was mainly about being the best athlete that I could be, essentially. Which is why I loved training so much because every session had a quick purpose and it was either contributing or not contributing to me being a better athlete. Yeah, and did that happen right from the beginning? So during school and, or did it, once you'd hit a certain level, then the coaches got better, the training became more sophisticated and... It was definitely a combination of both, I think. And I definitely had ups and downs When I was here, I just wanted my brother and sister to basically say well done and congratulate me. So it was more for them, I guess. And then when they kind of stopped swimming and then it was just me, it kind of, I had a bit of a lull and the way I describe it is that when I was a kid, I was always just looking forward. I didn't care who was next to me racing me, like if there was six foot or 14 and I was eight, I didn't care less. It was about just going forward. Then when I got a bit older, I kind of started looking behind me and I kind of knew that that wasn't the right thing to do and the right way to do it. And then, yeah, probably about 18 and I was like, right, this is not working for me anymore. I'm, something's not right. I need to make sure I'm focusing again on me and what I can control, what I can't control. Yeah, yeah. So again, back to mindset. Yeah. Did they have sports psychologists to work with you at that moment? Yeah, they did. We've had sports. We've been very lucky with British swimming and UK sport to England, actually. And the English Institute of Sport, a combination of all those guys have made sure that we had everything that we needed. Sports psychologists, through to physios, through to doctors, anything that we needed really to make sure that we were always on top of our game. And you use them as and how you need them. So it's not like every single week I'm going to go and see physio, but if I needed it and it was something that was going to be going to benefit my performance, and that was going to happen. And the same with a sports scientist, sorry, with a sports site. If we needed him or needed them, then there was always going to be someone there for us. Why did you decide to go crazy and do these marathons and like long distance swimming? So I was always a long distance swimmer anyway from kind of being quite young. And unfortunately, that isn't something I got to choose. That was very much just the makeup of my body. And if I print, I 100% would have been sprinting, but I'm definitely a long distance athlete. There's not a huge amount of fibers and running through my body, unfortunately. So I knew I was definitely better at the longer event, better I used to do in there. And I would, you know, there was, I remember with my, the first coach that I had when I came to the UK guy called Dave Crouch, who was up in Rothschilds, Rothschild Aquabares. I had fond memories of that. And he used to tell me that there was this test that I used to try and convince him that I was a sprinter because I'd moved and I was like, well, he won't know, I'll be a sprinter for him. And try to convince him. He was like, there's a test that we can do, Carrie, and to tell whether you're a sprinter or not. And I was like, okay, right, we'll see. And he was like, right, basically you're going to float on your back. And if you float on your back and you stay up, you're a distance swimmer. And if you sink, then you're a sprinter. And I was like, okay, fair enough, that was easy enough. Anyway, I lay there. I was like, have you started yet? And he was like, I'm already convinced. Cause I literally, I was just flat on the water like that. And I was like trying to get my legs to sink down, but there was none of it. Crazy. And what's, so long distance swimming is, is it from 10K, 10K or no? So in the pool, the furthest distance that you can go is pretty much a, is an 800 for women. And they're kind of pushing the boundaries now to 1500. Cause the furthest distance for men is a 1500 meters. So there are kind of moving that so that the men and women are doing the same distance. And then if you want to go any further than that, then there's a definite choice that you have to choose. So I was just after Commonwealth Games in 2006, where I had a couple of bad years. I came fourth at that competition. I had a terrible time. I wasn't enjoying it anymore. And my coach was like, right, something needs to change. So you've got two options. You can either completely change the event for a while and do the 400 meddling, which is doing two strokes of two lengths of each stroke in Sheffield. Or we've got an opportunity to change events completely and go to a 10K out in Australia. And I was like, right, I was like, 400, Sheffield, 10K in Australia. I'm going to Australia. That's my first 10K and I qualified for the World Championships for the next year. So yeah, it kind of was like, all right, okay. Here we go. I'm a 10K swimmer now. And then, yeah, moved on from there. And this is open water swimming now. Yeah. So then you move on water swimming. So that's doing a 10K in a pool is not an option in a race, definitely not too many turns. Yeah, 10K. So there's, at the Olympics, there's only one event that you can do which is a 10K and they call it marathon swimming. And then there's a couple of different. There's a 5K, there's a 10K, there's a 25K. It's like five and a half, six hours of swimming. It's absolutely, I've never done one, never will do one. It's far too far. That's crazy. But yeah, there are some great stuff out there that do 25K. Crazy. So you kissed the pool goodbye and then you went open water, 10K and you found your thing. Yeah. So I kind of, there was no pressure on me because it was a brand new event. I didn't know anything about it. Beijing was the first time that I've been in the Olympics and my coach said, you know that you're one of the fastest in the water in a sprint over, you know, like the sprinter distances. So if you can be anywhere near the top for the last thousand meters then shop but just see how it goes. You've got nothing to lose. See how you get on. And at that time I thought, you know, this would be the only Olympics I potentially have a go to. Yeah. And then I started the swim and I came out with a silver medal and it was kind of like, yeah, you're an open water swimmer now. Let's carry on. Let's crack on with the next. Congratulations. What was the journey like? So did you, how long did you have to train from when you decided you wanted to do the 10K event to the event? You had like a year or two or was it? Oh, it's training. Training doesn't ever really stop. So we pretty much train for 50 weeks of the year. We get two weeks off after the major meeting summer and actually the training for a 10K in the year 100 although there's a longer distance in between the actual event. The training is quite similar and I didn't need to change a huge amount and I had been training at that point. I've been training for at least sort of eight years anyway. And so I was definitely ready to take on a new challenge. I didn't have to check drastically. What I did need though was experience that open water experience. So actually going out, doing open water swims and dealing with the fight that happens in and amongst that and just figuring out what the tactic was. So knowing as a for Beijing team GB, we were the first ones to pull swimmers into open water. So we knew that we were the fastest ones but we needed to figure out how we could, in terms of speed on paper, we need to figure out how we maximized that. And then myself and Cassie, because my teammate, she, we both basically had the same plan, which was to, you know, we definitely had a high threshold but we knew that if we could tire everyone else out for the last 1000 meet, we had a pretty good shot of doing well. And that's kind of how the race planned out. Although we got to the last 100 meters, I think, before anybody passed us. Yeah. Amazing. But only one person, only one person passed you in the end. Yes. Only one, only one Russian person passed me at the end. Amazing. What was your, what was your like nutrition program like? Nutrition had never really been a massive thing for me. I mean, I always tried to eat as well as I could. But when I was like in school and training in school and all that kind of stuff, nutrition wasn't necessarily something that was forced down our throats. I knew at home, I was getting good home, good meals and my coaches were happy with that. And then at school, I was buying my own school lunch. And when I think back now, I don't quite know how I managed to survive on those, but my school lunch is pretty much every single day all around sausage rolls and chips, which is absolutely mental considering I was... And you still had the energy train. I love transitions. Crazy. I did, yeah. I don't quite know how and I would not recommend that for anyone. But when I, you know, the Olympics became very much in the foreground of what I was doing. Yeah, we definitely had, nutrition for me was more around race nutrition. So what I was going to do when I went into competitions and how was I going to, you know, we were going to do some carb loading a couple of days before and what I was going to have during the swim. So our carbohydrate loading program, essentially it's what we were essentially figuring out. Okay. So, and then as you got closer, did it get a little bit more scientific or were they... It wasn't, again, it wasn't necessarily scientific because other than sausage rolls and chips, which I stopped eating when I left school, I did a pretty good diet, which was, you know, very much based on routine and vegetables and all that kind of stuff. So no one is ever concerned. My weight had never really changed and I wasn't feeling fatigued when I was training. So there, I guess the theory was, let's not put an extra strain or an extra pressure on what she needs to do. But how many more years was that? Probably 10 years later. So it was only my three years before I finished swimming festively. I found out that I was gluten intolerant, which kind of was good to know, but at the same point when I thought back to all the carb load that I had done, basically two days before every major competition of my life, I was thinking, poisonous stuff. One of the biggest symptoms was tiredness. So yes, that was kind of like when I found that out. But yeah, it was just one of those things that you kind of find out, you know, with more and more people talking about it and having the access to the testing and all that sort of stuff. So then from that point on, I guess, I was 2013 and we then started to create, you know, the new gluten-free carb loading program and all that kind of stuff along there. Oh, amazing, amazing. So no like kind of plant-based or you had like balanced omnivore style. I mean, my parents are from Africa, South Africa. Well, they've probably been here for a long time. And we're always going to be part of our lives. And I have done a lot of research and you know, watched like game changers and the document on Netflix. And it was interesting, very interesting. I found it a little bit one-sided. There wasn't quite enough for both sides. But, you know, there was a lot of sound advice that they were talking about in there. So from that, I've definitely tried to make my life now a little bit more plant-based, but not for the performance gains for me, but for the environment essentially. And, you know, we've got an 18-month-old daughter and if I can, I was gonna say trainer up, I didn't mean that at all. I can bring her up. Not expecting to have me every single meal and it's just to have every now and then. I think that's gonna be ultimately better. But otherwise, I'm not sure I think the nutrition stuff and the strength and conditioning, it all adds to the confidence of an athlete and a swimmer and any athlete really. And if you don't feel confident with something or you're unsure of how it's gonna play out, because every year there was a major competition. Even the amount of any Olympics, which is every four years and the World Championships every two years, there was always a major competition. So to trial something out quite drastically and it's not like, oh, this week I'm not gonna have me and then go into the next, you know, and be like, oh, that work didn't work. It all took a lot of time. And whilst I was training, it just didn't feel like a risk, essentially I was willing to take on that. The other thing, yeah, the game changer stuff. I think there's a difference also between veganism, which is a kind of, I'd say an ideology almost, right? Versus plant-based, which is just eating plants and stuff. So I think for me, I don't like anyone pushing stuff on people and we're all different, right? I mean, your body's different to mine and what, you know, the food you digest, you know? I mean, so we're gonna have different meal plans and different diets and stuff like that. So I think there just needs to be in a little bit of appreciation. The other interesting thing I think with this COVID was going on, it's almost like the planet is saying to us, like, stay at home in your room, chill out, let me recover a little bit. It's quite interesting. Definitely, we, yeah, I think it's definitely, I mean, it's obviously doing some amazing things for the planet in terms of the canals in Venice and clearing up and all the planes that were for more. So yeah, I think the planet did kind of go right. Sit in your room. It's so funny. And then back on the game changer's thing, I just, there's a lot of pseudo science around. And, you know, I mean, I've got two daughters and they're at school and stuff like that. And you hear people saying, hey, meat causes cancer, obesity, diabetes. You know, it's like, it doesn't really. And I just need to be good science and good information. And, you know, people produce, you know, everyone has got a free choice and stuff like that. And so, I mean, for me, I eat a little bit of meat, not a huge amount. I eat fish, vegetables, try and keep it healthy. My little motto is if it's got a nutrition label on the back, it's probably not so healthy. I'm trying to like, try to eat like fresh broth and, you know, things like that, which is really cool. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I think there's just, but it starts from such an early age, all of that stuff. So having, you know, had a band, you know, all the weeks before you have a baby, everything, you know, goes on to how formula fed babies, you know, they need to being obese and all that kind of stuff. And you're like, okay, yeah, yeah, no, I got that, I got that. But then when you get into it and actually as a parent or as a new mom, you kind of hope and expect that you'll be able to do everything that's expected of you. And then you actually get into it and you realize it's really not that easy for everyone. And we had a terrible time breastfeeding. It just didn't work out at all. So we ended up, you know, I expressed for about 12 weeks, which is probably too much information, but I felt like I was doing the right thing for her. And then she was, you know, topped up within that. And, you know, whenever I went to the clinic to talk to someone about it, it was definitely a, oh, you know, you just, if you just persisted a little bit longer, you know, it would have been okay. It would have been okay. And I was like, you have no idea what was going on there. You can't even go on and I made the right call and I've done it. And once I'd made the call and made the decision to mass or anything it said, but in the, in the emotion of having a baby and dealing with no sleep. And, you know, it's 3 a.m. in the morning and she's basically screaming the house down and I gave her some formula to opt and I was like, right, okay, that's kind of something. Again, it's not forcing anything down anyone's throat, but yeah, when it starts from there and then you think about the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. So yeah, it's just about picking what you feel is the right thing to do and sticking by your guns. 100%, 100%. My wife's a women's health physio. And so I've always had two kids who are all into this stuff but you get a lot of, you get a lot of people that are really preach the Canadian breastfeed formula is really bad. You've got to do this. You've got to do that. You've got to do that. And when it's, when it's your first kids you get so, so much information and there's so many things you feel you need to do this. And, but I mean, formula is great now. I mean, you know, you can get like all of the nutrients it needs. So again, it's like, it's what works for you. You know, everyone's different. In the end was a fed baby as a happy baby. So how I'm not sure. Absolutely, that's very true. That's so true. So what have you done, I know you've done late. What have you done since swimming? Or since professional swimming? Yeah, so I, so I was in a professional somewhere, as you call it. So I went through three Olympic games and through those three Olympic games, Beijing and then I went to London and then to Rio as well. Which was your favourite? Oh, they were all special in their own way. Beijing was my first one. Coming home with the medal was amazing. But when we went to London, my venue was Hyde Park, the Serpentine, which is my venue, which so many people were saying I didn't get any tickets but my event was free. So I was like, come down and watch the water. And there was 30,000 watching, watching the 10K, which is incredible. Four years previous before Beijing, I had to explain to everybody what it was. And but yeah, literally, you know, four years down the line, there's 30,000 people that came to watch. And it just was amazing. Like, I mean, I'm sure like 50 people were there for the other 23 girls that were in my race. But it felt like 29,900 there to watch me swim. Just incredible. It really was absolutely amazing. And that noise I will never forget, definitely still makes me feel quite special. And I think about the noise when I came out and I said, I'm from Great Britain, carry on pain and I, you know, wave to everyone. And I was like, what? No, no, no, game face, game face, back in the game, back in the game. And then Rio, really, really favourite cities in the whole world. And I travelled there a couple of times before and when I found out that Rio was gonna be in the host city, I thought, you know, the only place they can do the water surely has to be the Copacabana, which is exactly where it was. And I was like, I need to be there. I need to do that. I just love it. It's an amazing country. and the real Olympics for me was incredible. Amazing, what a great experience to have. Yeah, no, it was amazing, absolutely. But I guess the point I was making about that was through those years I saw lots of my swimming friends that retired, whether it was their choice or through injury or through illness or through not making teams or that kind of stuff. And just kind of saw the impact that it had on a lot of them. And my husband was my great kind of role model for me. So he was also a swimmer, also went to the Olympic Games. So his first one was Athens, then Beijing and his last one was London. And from Beijing to London, he basically decided that he was gonna do something alongside swimming, so that when he finished and he knew he was finishing in London, he had a plan to step into. So he did a coaching degree, essentially, while he was, you know, it took him four years to do it and he got experienced at the same time while he was doing it, so that when he finished in London, he had a job to step into. And for me to see that and to see how he transitioned from being an athlete, I kind of wanted to have the same thing. I didn't want to see what I saw so many of my other friends who finished going, you know, kind of getting depressed and not really knowing what to do or expecting like, right, come on world, I'm an Olympian, what you got from me really doesn't work that way at all. So we made sure that before I retired, I knew I was gonna finish in Rio. So a year before that, we set up a business called Tri-Scape, which is my kind of my baby, which revolves around coaching, so swimming coaching. So my husband does business coaching, but I do swimming coaching. And people one-to-ones who do master classes as well, helping people learn how to swim and people get better at swimming. And then we do retreats as well around the world, which is all very much on hold at the moment. But yeah, I still am trying to work on how I can still inspire people to swim, even though we're obviously not able to get out and about. But we'll get there soon. We'll get there soon. Yeah, definitely. How was the transition for you mentally? Obviously you had something to go into. I guess prepared yourself. You'd seen your husbands do it. Was it still quite difficult mentally to like stop doing your 25 hours a week training? No. By that point, I knew I was making the right decision because I had probably about three months before the Olympic Games, I was driving to training one more morning, going, oh, I can't wait to not have to do this again. And I was like, oh, I've heard myself or I'd never allowed myself to say that before. And I was like, I can't wait to not have to do this anymore. And I was like, oh, no, that is not where I need to be. Game, but keep your check on it. And as soon as I'd finished that last, like my last training session before my race, I knew that was my last training session and actually had a little mini celebration. I think my coach was happy about that. I'm not sure. I'm not too sure. But she was there anyway. And then, yeah, I just knew it was gonna be the last thing for me and actually it's really nice not having to get up at 5 a.m. and something I still catch myself doing every now and then it's definitely happening less frequently now. But when I stopped, I trained every day and you needed to leave the house by 3 p.m. And I now still know like 2, 2.45 or 2.50 because I was usually late. 2.50, I looked at the clock and I was like, so, oh, I don't have to go training anymore, I don't. What's the fun of it, okay, it's fine, I don't know. It must be good training, at least if your kid wakes you up early, at least you're a little bit used to it from the swimming training. You could have thought that, but really it's not easy. It's not easy. I'm like, I think because I know I don't need to do it anymore. And I'm like, really, I have 15 years of catching up on sleep to do. I've got back to doing it. What training are you doing now? Are you still swimming mostly or are you mixing it up a little bit? Mixing it up definitely. So I've actually got into winter swimming. So there was always an assumption because I was swimming. Because I was British and I was doing open water and I was a cold water swimmer, which is not the case at all. We used to swim around the world. If water was less than 16 degrees, races were canceled. So essentially we would chase down the world. And yeah, so the thought of getting into water less than 15 degrees was like, no. But yeah, I kind of needed a new challenge and literally only the last two months I started to, I made the conscious decision to do it, which is very difficult for me to do it. So yeah, so I've done in preparation for that because one of our retreats, a new one we were doing this year with Triscape was in Tresco, which is the Isles of Silly. And it just looks absolutely incredible. But it was an April and it was definitely gonna be cold. So I kind of, there's a little bit of a necessity to kind of be ready for that. But I absolutely loved it. It's been amazing. So a combination of doing it really gives my mentality just a real buzz. And then on top of that, I'm just out to the gym as well. But I'm using Fit at the moment, an app called Fit, which has actually been the best thing for me. What is it? So it's an app that's classes, there's virtual classes. It's called Fit. So it's an F double IT. And it's an app that is, they've got live classes that you can do with a leaderboard with a whole bunch of other people that are there. So there's a bit of competition. But they also have like non-live classes that you can do. And there's anything from cardio to strength and then rebalance as well. So that yoga, Pilates, meditation, breathing and all that kind of stuff. There's a whole range of things that you can do and they can create plans for you. And for me, that's worked amazingly well because there's no excuses. I know I have something that I can do when I just set it up on the floor at home and kind of get on with it. Nice. So it's like a one-on-one video, either live or prerecorded. And then you can do it in your living room. Amazing. Do you ever go like down to CrossFit Gym or a live class? Or do you prefer being at home on the app? I used to do that. And I used to really enjoy that. But I guess having a baby, you kind of, you know, there's things that you do, there's things that you need to do. So I'm definitely into it. But I do enjoy going to the gym and doing the classes. It feels a little bit more, and there's more equipment there. And you can use dumbbells if you want and kettlebells and things. But I did, during the day, I did a blaze class, which is essentially similar sort of thing, but just like everyone's there doing it. And yeah, you're strapped up to a heart rate there and it comes up on the screen and you've got to basically push yourself. And that's when my athlete competitiveness definitely comes out in those moments. Again, hitting against me. How high can I get my heart rate? Which is good, but I end up just being literally a sweaty mess on the floor. You should have posted. I love that stuff. I do a lot of CrossFit, which is really cool. Since the lockdown, well, since the couple of weeks, they're doing online Zoom classes. So you can like dial in on Zoom, which is similar to what we're using in Hangouts. And then we have a workout of the day and then everyone does the workout and you can see everyone on the screen. And then they're doing like a little yoga session as well. Life is really cool. And you like recognize people from the gym. We're like, oh, hey, hey, hey. And it gives everyone on track and we post our scores. It's really cool. I found I've got like almost more sociable being locked down than I was before the lockdown. Definitely, definitely more than my mom every day and speaking to the average age is fine too. And yeah, it's definitely a positive in the situation is more communication with people and you know, more things like Hangouts and Zooms and FaceTime and stuff. It's easier to do that because you're not running off to the next thing. You're like, oh, well, that's your FaceTime. And we actually FaceTime with my family. So I've got a brother's sister, like I said, and my mom and dad. So mom and dad were at home. It was Mother's Day actually. Mom and dad were at their house. We're at her house with her two kids who are young. And then my brother's at his house with their two kids and we were away with Josephine. And it was literally like being actually all in the same house because it was chaos. There was noise everywhere. Kids screaming, running around. And that's just what it actually, it's like we're all together. It's really cool. The only thing I find now is you actually have to speak, you know, because if you're face face, I found everyone was on their phones all the time, you know, like on social media, on Instagram, taking selfies. And part of the name of my podcast, Don't Take Out Your Phone was the fact that I used to see my mates and my family and no one would speak because everyone's on the phone. Whereas now you're like arranging to have a video call with your family and actually like you have to have a chat with them. You have to speak. It's got quite, quite social now. It's really funny. What are you doing now with your training swimming coaches now as well? Yes, so through our sort of swimming retreat business, which was me coaching people how to swim and one to one thing. We kind of along that journey realized that swimming coaching and certainly swimming for adults in the UK or around the world is just not done very well. Because adults are different, you need to approach adults in a very different way. And when we look back at how people have been taught how to swim, we realize that there's a lot of things that are fundamentally wrong. Just the doing things because that's the way that they've been done for such a long time. And what we decided to do was take everything we knew about swimming, just forget all of it and actually look at the things that you can't argue with with science. So the psychology of the brain, biomechanics of your body and the physics, how you move in the water. So we use Newton's law quite a lot. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. So if you're pushing your arms that way, your body will be going in the opposite direction that way. So if you want to swim in a straight line, every action has an equal and opposite reaction, you need to be pulling in a straight line. But your body needs to be doing a whole bunch of sway. So the first thing that we work on with everyone is breathing. And that is, you know, so many people think, oh yeah, I don't know how I'm breathing. But actually when you come to water, so many people don't know the best way, the right way to do it. And they're essentially having to bend slightly themselves. It's like they're sprinting up a hill holding their breath essentially, which you can't do for very long. So through the whole process, we realized that there was a need for something more of a coaching approach to the way that you teach people how to swim. And that's when we came up with Straight Line Swimming, which does what it says on the tin. Making sure you swim in a straight line. And then through all of that as well, I was approached by the Swimming Teachers Association to do or to help them create an open water coaching qualification, which I jumped at the chance to. And I don't think they were quite expecting me to get as involved as I did. But yeah, I said, you know, if you want, I need to fully be involved in it. I want to contribute towards it. And if there's something in there that I don't feel right, then we need to talk about it and figure out the best way through. So yeah, I literally dive straight into that. And I'm incredibly proud of that qualification. And up to date, I've qualified 123 coaches. Wow, congratulations. That's really good. Thank you. Yeah, I'm really loving it. And the new challenge, so I had my first course was meant to be the middle of April and then I had Melbourne at the end of April. So essentially I had four courses between now and May at the end of May. So what we've tried to do, as everybody is trying to do at the moment, is trying to make it as virtual as we can. So it's a three-day course, usually involving classroom and practical stuff. And so thankfully the STA have worked together with all the tutors to figure out a way that we can do two days online learning. And then when we can, and they have to do so again, we can do a third day practical in person in open water. And then we can qualify people that way. So it's gonna be tricky and a bit different, but that's kind of where we're at the moment. Yeah, that's really cool. Yeah, I mean, it's difficult to get in the water, I guess. Although this is probably gross science, but they say chlorine causes the virus, but I don't know if that's true. I think it's perfect. Yeah, there's so many different things out there at the moment, but yeah, the water, the chlorination, like the chlorination, that's right, I would or not, but the levels be perfect in the pool. And it's, yeah, I don't know, it's not worth getting involved in now, but yeah, there we are. So they all have their class-based education and in a few months' time, dive straight back into it. Yeah, I mean, my mission with Straight Line Swimming and Tri-Scope as well is to empower the world to swim. And I was doing that well enough myself. Coaching people, I've coached almost 2,000 people how to swim, which is amazing. I've been a small part of 2,000 people's swimming journeys, but that's not the world. I wanted to have gotten ambitions to make sure that it can go worldwide. So I made sure that I had the opportunity to do that by now. If I'm qualifying coaches to do it the same way that I'm doing it, then if all those 123 just coach one person or two people, that's 200, 300, 400 people down the line, and ultimately it will go hopefully worldwide. I guess if the virtual stuff works quite well, and then I could maybe do some virtual stuff and then go over to other countries for a couple of qualified people up that way. So there's definitely lots and lots of scope and through, again, through the process, we have created online learning platforms, so CPDs, as you might have heard them before, of our straight line swimming method, front crawl. So there's three parts, breathing, and then your body position, and then motion of your arms and legs. And that's through the swimming teachers association's website, but anybody can do them. So what I'm doing is encouraging people to try and do this. So we've made our breathing one free of charge and the other two are heavily discounted as well. So even though this is not the best time for actually going out and swimming, the breathing stuff, every day, you can practice it in the bath as well, actually, which will give you something else to do for some part of your day. How can people find these courses? Is it an Apple website that they can go to to sign up? Yeah, it's a website. So if you had to straightlineswimming.com, there'd be a couple of blogging on CPDs. So if you click on any of those, we'll also put a banner up as well so that people know that they can click through that. So it's a free, you just sign up to the STA, it's free membership, and then you just add the CPD to your online account and you can learn how to swim in the comfort of your own home. Amazing, awesome work. What can people do, do you think now, any tips just to stay healthy until they can actually get out? Because obviously you can't go into the pool, you can do a little run, you're using your app. Are there any bits of advice that people can easily implement while they're at home? Yeah, I think it's just trying to get into a routine that can work for you as quickly as you can. So yes, the novelty of staying in your pajamas all day might seem like a good idea and you might do that for a few days, but very quickly it gets very boring. So if you can still try and get up at the same time that you used to, have a shower like you used to, do your hair like you used to, have breakfast, even if it means you've got to go out, walk around the garden and then come back in, that's your commute to work, then you work for a bit and then you do the commute back to lunch and the commute back to work again in the afternoon and then you plan your weeks, exactly. You plan your weeks like you used to, if you used to go to CrossFit on a Monday night, yeah. You still can try and do that same sort of thing at that time and I would definitely recommend going outside for that walk or run or cycle that the government at the same time do because fresh air and starting to get a little bit warmer as well, the vitamin D is definitely going to help people. And then the tricky thing after that is, so get a fitness routine, make sure it fits within your day and then also just trying to eat as well as you can. Again, for the first few days, I'm sure people are basically trying to eat all the snacks that they bought and then if you can trap it into what was a normal working day for you. So like I said, you could only set rules aside things like you can only eat in the garden or something. So it's a bigger thing than just going to the kitchen again and you're like a Christian, you can only eat outside or you can only eat when there's two in front of something. I don't know, whatever, pick some rules and try and stick them as much as you can. That's so true. I hate working from home, I always get distracted by the fridge constantly looking in, seeing what's going on. So I've been like that actually, I've been really strict. I'm doing intermittent fasting at the moment, which it feels quite, I feel really good on that. So I don't have breakfast. I kind of eat at seven PM and then I start eating again at about 12 one. And then, yeah, so I'm kind of sticking to that because I was doing that five days a week while I was at work. So I'm sticking to that, I'm diarising my exercise. I diarise what work I've got to do. So I'm keeping quite structured, doing my little walks. And the weather at the moment is like beautiful. So a little walk in the garden and cruise around. So no, it's good. It's important to keep that structure for sure. Yeah, it's probably the last thing which I'm not particularly doing very well myself is stick to the alcohol consumption that you would do in a normal week. So if you wouldn't normally drink during the week, then try and stick to that if you can, and have your virtual with your friends in a Friday night. But again, like I said, I'm not really sticking to that very well myself, but that's definitely something if you can start thinking about, because if you're having lots of alcohol, you're probably not going to be sleeping so well. If you're not sleeping so well, it's all kind of kind of comfort. So you don't want to get up in the morning and you don't want to do that. And you want to just eat all the snacks that you've got in your kitchen. So yeah, there's a lot you can do to try and help you. But it's very easy to fall into the things that aren't going to help you as well. Very true. My last little thing is I try not to watch or read any news until like well after lunch, because like having a diet of negative news breakfast is not good for your mind. So I'm trying to like just take care of all that stuff and positive, speak to positive people, surround yourself with positive people and good for the mind. Yeah, I think we're basically just waiting until the announcement came from the government. So whether that was 5 p.m. or whether that was as it was last night, half eight. And just that anything that I've been looking at because everything else is kind of speculation until Boris says it, we don't really know what's real and what's not real. And then the next day during any research I needed to on what he said. So yeah, no point in reading any of those websites. Don't read social media. You also get people, what really noise at the moment is you're getting people forward stuff. Saying like, my mate works. My mate's a doctor. My mate's, you know, here's like some audio clip from my mate who's working at the hospital. I think for me, like if you don't know the source, don't forward it on. You know, like know them personally. Otherwise, don't forward it on. I just cut all that out. That's important. Coriann, great to speak to you. Thanks so much for coming on. Next time I'm really looking forward to like meeting in person and we can do an actual like face-to-face which would be cool. And we can like recap on what happened the last three or four months or whatever. But I hope you stay safe, healthy, all that stuff. Thank you, you too. And say thank you very much. And yeah, speak to you soon. Hey, folks, thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe in all the usual places.