This Week in Swimming

The most interesting stuff going on in swimming.

Morning, Nerd.

Welcome to the Swimnerd newsletter: your tour guide through the wild, wild west of swimming.

Now, let's get into the good stuff for today:

🏊‍♂️ISL appoints new volunteer CEO & Commissioner
💪 How to apply Strength & Conditioning to high-performance swimming from Swim Ireland's Paul Talty
📰 Swimming Headlines 👀 Titmus not swimming Worlds, Sates goes pro
🤡 Swimming Meme & 📜Swimming Set of the Week

🏊‍♀️ FAST SWIMS AROUND THE WORLD 🌎

There was more fast swimming after the newsletter went out last week...

The 800 in Stockholm was 🌋. 7:41.43 Lukas Märtens -- 7:43.10 Florian Wellbrock -- 7:45.32 Felix Auböck. German Lukas Märtens put together one of the most beautiful 800 Freestyles; impressive negative split and spirit crushing final 100 meters. The heat also included Austria's (Felix) & Ireland's (Dan Wiffen) fastest 1500's ever. Dan has a twin brother, Nathan. They are training at Loughborough. Subscribe to their YouTube here.
Flynn Southam (16 years old) put up a 48.6 to break Kyle Chalmers' Australian NAG in the 100 Free.
Three Australian girls 16 or under went 54 point in the 100 Free. America hasn't won the Women's 4x100 Free Relay at the Sydney Olympics since 2000. Since suffering that loss in front of their home crowd, the Australian women have won this relay 4 out of 5 times.
Sarah Sjostrom popped off a 53.1 100 Free good for 2nd in the world behind Shayna Jack.
17 year old Benedetta Pilato of Italy nearly bested her best time the World Record in the Women's 50 LCM Breast going 29.58. Little slow off the blocks at night, you can watch her win Finals in 29.8 here. Yes, that is her in the gif.
In Denmark, Nic Castella ripped a 1:50.4 (53.48/56.96) 200 LCM Free. He's 14.

BEN ALLEN (COMMISSIONER) & MATT DAWE (CEO) VOLUNTEER 🙋‍♂️TO RIGHT THE ISL

Gold Medal Mel interviewed the ISL's new leadership. Here are the CliffsNotes...

#1 priority is to pay the ISL's debts
The ISL needs to stop being funded solely by one person (Konstantin Grigorishin) and start being funded by independent commercial revenue
"The key aspect to commercialization is engagement with viewers. Engagement with the swimming community." - Matt Dawe
"The format, we think, really, really does work and it's a communication problem." - Matt Dawe
They want to simplify the rules and the messaging both for the meets and for the draft.
"We need to be much more responsive to community feedback." - Ben Allen
They are guessing that it will take 5 years more until the league can become sustainable.
Have spoken to YouTube.
Are looking towards other viable media and content options. Most watched piece of ISL content has been a mini documentary about Yui Ohashi.
"We have plans but let's pay everyone first." - Ben Allen

HOW TO APPLY 💪 STRENGTH & CONDITIONING TO SWIMMING

Paul Talty is the Head of Physical Preparation at Swim Ireland. Love that job title, btw.

He wrote a blog post all about his approach to strength training for high performing swimmers and exactly how he does it at the Irish National Centre in Dublin.

I bet you can read it under 15 minutes.

"It is my hope that you have found this to be a useful insight into the application of S&C to high-performance swimming." - Paul Talty

Paul's Top 3 Exercises:

Squat
Bench Press
Chin Ups

📰 Swimming Headlines

MATT SATES GOES PRO

The South African superstar is headed back home after a long holiday in America at the University of Georgia. He made a little guest appearance on The Swimsuit Guy's latest vlog and you can expect him to be in more of them.

According to Matt via the Any Question app, he currently doesn't have a home base but will be meeting up with Chad Le Clos, Max Litchfield, and Sonny Trigg in Dubai for a month.

ARIARNE TITMUS, KYLE CHALMERS, EMMA MCKEON

Ariarne Titmus is not swimming at World Championships.

Therefore, we will not get to see the rematch of Ariarne Titmus vs. Katie Ledecky for quite a while.

Bummer.

JAMAL HILL INVITES YOU TO THE AQUATICS EQUITY SUMMIT

Tokyo Paralympics gold medalist Jamal Hill (Episode #171) is hosting a webinar to discuss equity in aquatics.

"The Aquatic Equity Summit was organized to empower underserved, and marginalized communities in aquatics.Some of the foremost leaders from around the world have been kind enough to come together in one place and provide a collective opportunity to learn & create more inclusion within the water." - Jamal Hill

Join us this Wednesday, April 20th. Go here to register.

SWIMMING CANADA POSTS TWO HPC JOBS

Are you a high performance swim coach that likes long, cold winters and working with the nicest people in the world? The don't call it The Great North for nothing.

Swimming Canada is looking for a new HPC in British Columbia, based at University British Columbia in Vancouver and another for the HPC located at the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre (TPASC) in Toronto, Ontario.

All the deets can be found here.

PULLBUOY'S (PRONOUNCED PULL "BOY") BRITISH CHAMPS REVIEW

Do you fancy a cup of tea? If so, you'll enjoy this new podcast from our friend, Steve. Pullbuoy Steve reviews British Champs with Bob Ballard.

"It was almost a return to business as usual at the British Championships in Sheffield with full fields and crowds in the stands. In the pool there were a number of standout performances as the swimmers jostled to secure selection not only for the forthcoming world championships but also the Commonwealth Games teams for England, Scotland and Wales." — pullbuoy

BRETT HAWKE CLIPS OF THE WEEK

Emily Seebohm's go-to dryland exercise for her backstroke pull, which she says she's the best at -- some even say her backstroke catch looks like a freestyle catch
Stop rotating your hips so much in backstroke -- lock them in
Improve your underwaters with drag socks (not a paid ad but you should buy them from our friends at Aquavolo - enter code BRETT and see what happens)
Plus, what suit should you wear for the 100 Breast with The Swimsuit Guy, Sonny Trigg