Chris DeSantis
Make it Fun For People To Tell You "No"

When I was a senior in high school, I asked Helene Horan to prom. She said yes. Looking back, I really wish she’d said no. In fairness to her she got there eventually.

Make it Fun For People To Tell You "No"
Chris DeSantis
Sometimes, You Just Wait

I committed to Positive Psychology before Positive Psychology even “existed”. As a small child I had a deeply formed, perhaps rigid, sense of right and wrong. When I saw something wrong, I wanted to fix it immediately. Now with children of my own I can see the same rigidity, but it’s not only about what you perceive as right and wrong. There’s also what you will DO to right that wrong.

Commentary, leadership
Chris DeSantis
Swimswam's Business Model is Unmoderated ...

What is disturbing, however, is that Swimswam, nominally a “news” website, seems unwilling to seriously moderate comments in any way. I have pointed this out to them before, when they have posted stories of sexual abuse victims and allowed anonymous commenters the freedom to slag those victims.

Swimswam's Business Model is Unmoderated Commentary
Chris DeSantis
The Swim Brief Is Coming Back

I’ve always felt like I should not produce anything, whether it be writing or audio, if it’s redundant to what’s already out there. So I didn’t take the decision to kick back up again lightly. If my podcast was just a low-fi version of either of these two podcasts, with lower profile guests, why even do it?

The Swim Brief Is Coming Back
Commentary, #butserious
Chris DeSantis
How to Spot a Swimming BS Vendor

The BS Vendor is a person who tries to profit off of selling you pure, unadulterated cow manure. They are often IYI’s, putting a veneer of “science” around an empty shell. They don’t understand how probability works, which you don’t need to understand complex math to figure out. They seek rent (money) for their BS.

How to Spot a Swimming BS Vendor

announcement

,

Coaches Need to Believe in Swimming's Reckoning

,

Right now, the leading story in Olympic sports is Gymnastics. Specifically, the actions of one team "doctor" Larry Nassar, who was allowed by many people with the power to stop him to molest hundreds of teenage girls.

Many are asking the right questions in this moment. How did we let this happen? How did so many people fail to protect these young athletes and enable such monstrous behavior?

Gymnastics is having a reckoning, with no end in sight. If anything, the pace of change only seems to be accelerating, with the stunning move to no longer have national team athletes train at Karolyi ranch.

I know a lot of people in swimming that think our "reckoning" is mostly over. What's closer to the truth is that it never happened. 

USA Gymnastics CEO Steven Penny had to resign in disgrace last March, and new CEO Kerry Perry is basically in constant damage control for the very existence of USA Gymnastics as an organization.

In swimming, Chuck Wielgus was able to assume a defensive posture, black out media except for the groveling Brent Rutemiller of Swimming World, and slowly start to implement "SafeSport" measures. He was able to retire with many people within USA Swimming considering him some kind of hero. 

New CEO Tim Hinchey has also been allowed to ignore USA Swimming's legacy altogether. In the near future I'll be asking him to come on a podcast to do a bit more than the current gestures toward SafeSport.

We can make all the rules we want. We can ban coaches, and make educational programs. None will address the true problem that our greater society is actually talking about and finally seeing a reckoning on. When "men" hold nearly all the power in anything, it will be abused, and anyone down the power food chain will suffer.

I've watched my "group", coaches remain mostly silent on this topic. We are the on the ground leaders of this sport, but we have failed to provide leadership. The major coaching organizations have shied away.

So I've decided that we need to organize as coaches to stand up for the most vulnerable people in our sport. I'm starting a group "Coaches Who Believe".

What does that mean? Instead of the status quo, (which is do nothing), we will trust people in our sport who come forward to say that they have been abused. We will work to verify those claims, instead of ignoring them or reflexively dismissing them. We will not leave the victims of abuse in our sport on an island, with only a handful of people to support them.

As for leadership of the organization, I hope that as soon as it gets some members I can cede that to someone else, preferably non-male. It's time to let somebody else run things for a while.

 

Chris DeSantis Coaching and Pro Swim Workouts

Today, I'm really happy to announce Chris DeSantis Coaching's first partnership. I'll be working with Pro Swim Workouts, beginning with a podcast, to continue to my mission of providing better conversations around swimming.

The partnership grew out of a conversation with Nico Messer of Pro Swim Workouts shortly after I revived the Swim Brief podcast. Nico saw a gap in the swimming podcast world. When he presented it to me, I agreed wholeheartedly, and we agreed to try and fill that gap together.

Don't let me get too far ahead of myself. Why Pro Swim Workouts? Because I believe that Pro Swim Workouts walks the walk when it comes to making the swimming world better. It spreads knowledge, including the type of practical stuff (workouts from top coaches) that you used to have to fly, book a hotel and sit through hours of a conference to see.

Pro Swim Workouts puts money in the hands of swim coaches in exchange for their valuable work, and I like that. It also gives that valuable work to beginning coaches who so desperately need it. Now, we want to take a conversation into a dynamic format. Each podcast will feature a discussion of workouts, addressing all the questions you might have as a coach (or swimmer) about a given workout.

What is the point of this workout? Why should I do it? How do you implement the workout the best way possible? How does this workout fit into the greater context of a week, month, cycle or season?

These are the kind of questions we'll try answer. and we don't pretend to know everything. This is a podcast for people who want to hear an intelligent conversation about swimming training, and although we can't deny that we'll bring our own biases to the table, we're also going to work hard to not treat training like religion. Part of the journey will be trying to figure out how workouts neither Nico or I would ever use ourselves can work for other coaches.

The podcast will start with a bi-weekly format, with room to increase depending on demand. So get ready to join in the conversation with us and talk some workouts.