What a weekend for sport. We saw the glory of success with Sarah Hempenstall reaching France yesterday and being back on the beach, full of beans before the end of training. We saw the glory of the first England goal in under 2 minutes in the football final.

We also saw the agony of defeat in the final score in the football and poor Annie being so sick for so long that her swim was stopped after 13 hours of solid swimming and being sick.

We saw similar patterns in training too, those who nailed it, those who battled with themselves with gloomy weather not helping the mood.

In the early weeks we have the excitement of everything being a bit new and exciting. As the weeks tick by it becomes familiar and different pressures can emerge - the time before the big day evaporating; the sameness of long hours in the harbour becoming less exciting; sometimes even self-sabotage emerging. Sometimes there are physical challenges that present themselves as mental ones - at some point in long swims you will deplete your glycogen stores and start to use fat as your main source of energy. At the point this happens you can become a bit gloomy, tired, despondent. It’s only when you swim on that you realise that this is a moment in time and it passes. You’re hitting that metaphorical wall and it will pass. Sometimes it feels like demons though and it isn’t.

Take the positives, it’s good to face demons in training, it makes them easier to recognise on the big day and to the be able to banish them.

Be kind to yourself. Listen to the compassionate voice.

The era of bollockings has passed, that is not my style. You might find us working hard to help you stay in the water to get through a moment in time, but it is always your choice. We want you to succeed almost as much as you want it (actually sometimes more when you loose your reason why) and we’ll do our best to unpick the tough days to breakthrough to a better place.

Your pod leaders’ observations

What we write in this section is based on observations of the weekend. Generally, it’s based on multiple similar incidents or observations. So if you read something and think, ‘They’re talking about me’ know this, there is more than one of you facing the issue that we refer to. We may have noticed a challenge that you are facing or maybe we have noticed others.

I have found that it somehow helps to know that I’m not alone in the demons that I face.

We’ve seen some amazing examples of buddy swimming. Swimmers helping others through tough sessions, being the difference that helped someone get through a tough patch. I’ve certainly benefited from that in the past and have also been that person who has helped someone through. This is the great side of buddy swimming. There can also be barriers too. When we come to rely on someone else to achieve in training and that person is not there or does not have the same number of hours as you, it can be difficult. We saw several swimmers battle with that this weekend. If you saw that in yourself, it’s time to find a new strategy where you can succeed with or without your best buddy. There will always be people on the beach rooting for you, remember that.

Another thing we saw this weekend was people lifting goggles or taking earplugs out at feeds. My advice is not to do that. We’re helping you build your process for the big day and these actions take time and risk losing vital pieces of equipment. I’ve certainly found that if I lift my goggles that they can later fog up. Keep them in place and they don’t. Practice the process for the big day.

Back to basics - remember to bring the things you need with you to training:

Hot drinks for afterwards or money to buy drinks. Yes we have squash and hot water on the beach, but we don’t have easy access to more, so when this gets used by swimmers who are not in the water, there is a risk that we’ll run out of the supplies needed for feeds.
Warm layers. Bring appropriate layers. At this point of the season it’s generally less layers needed than in May. If you don’t know, take a look around at other swimmers, are you doing the same? Look at the photos. Dress for the ski slopes, not a beach in the Caribbean!
Swim basics. Goggles, hat, towel, suncream.
Waterproof bag. We’ve had more than our fair share of rain this season. There were quite a few people who came back to wet clothes on Saturday with bags not as waterproof as you’d thought or wet layers from getting changed being put on top of dry layers for later. Think through changing in the rain.
Big day. I’d suggest arriving at the marina 30 minutes ahead of the time that your pilots asks you to be there. That gives enough time to allow for any traffic issues, get your parking permit (from the new marina office on Marine Parade), unload your stuff and calm your nerves before the adventure starts. Your pilot will have calculated the start time they want based on the tides and what they know about your speed, you will benefit from being ready for that time.

Shout outs

When you are involved in a sport like ours, you surround yourself with people who routinely do amazing things. You’re all pretty darn amazing to be honest. These shout outs aim to highlight some of the breakthrough moments or big training weekends that we notice. There are many more. Please please give yourself a shout out in our Facebook group if you had a personal breakthrough moment or are proud of your achievements. I’d love to hear about it.

Channel swimmer on the beach!

How special is it to congratulate a new channel swimmer fresh from France! Sarah leapt onto the beach after she successfully crossed yesterday much to the delight of those still in the water and on the beach.

Swims to call out this week:

Sarah Hempenstall: EC solo 11th July - 11 hrs 27 mins

Well done to all swims this week, wherever you trained. We enjoyed tracking you. 😊

A few of our end of session celebrations (more videos can be found on my Vimeo channel)

Weekend Stats

Note: Water temperature taken during the swim session in the harbour. The lowest recorded reading is shown here. Air temperature, wind direction & wind speed taken from the Port of Dover app.

Saturday:

Swimmers: 33
Water temperature: 15.8C
Air temperature: 14.6C
Conditions: Heavy rain to start. Cloudy. Flat water. F2 gusting F3 NE.

Volunteers & beach crew

Thank you to the pod leaders and to our volunteers. Richard was on the rota for Sunday and Annie helped with feeds on Sunday too. Thanks to everyone who rolled up their trouser legs and helped.

Reminders

Remember to book your sessions online. Bookings close 24 hours before the session, it would be a massive help if you booked by Thursday morning.

The system doesn’t arrange automatic refunds, so please message me if you cancel ahead of these deadlines and I’ll arrange a refund.

You don’t need to sign into the website to book a session - just pop your email address in to the booking system and it will remember you. Remember to click into the discount code box if you are a subscriber and it will auto complete your discount code. If you are a pay as you go swimmer and are also a member, remember to use your discount code to get your membership price.

Long swim opportunities

We will be running 10 hour swims on Saturday 17th July and Saturday 7th August. If you are tempted and want to find out more, please get in touch. There will be a different start time for these swimmers only.

Pod Ponderings: What can we learn from England football

Photos credit - Sky

I’ve never particularly been a fan of football, but I am a Gareth Southgate fan. In his book ‘Anything is possible’ he talks about how he came to be in the position to be the manager of England at this time. He’s faced challenges as a youth player, as an apprentice, a club player, an England Player and as a manager. It’s how he’s used those challenges to build a better national team that most impressed me.

If I think back to 2018, I had a disastrous swim in Jersey when the pressure of life at that time became too much and, for the first time, I pulled out of a swim very early simply because my head went. The experience broke me. I had failed in swims before but not like this. It was a very, very dark time.

I’ve written about this before and I’ll mention it again now because it feels relevant.

The challenge was made harder because I had an English Channel Solo swim booked 3 weeks later. I was very aware of how fragile I was. If I went ahead and swam and failed at that, I suspected that I was in nervous breakdown territory. If I didn’t start I would already feel like a failure. Catch 22.

Then I read an article in the Guardian about how there was a new approach to the game through psychologist Pippa Grange. It was fascinating. It completely changed my mindset.

As my channel solo approached I noticed an air of excitement return. The pressure had gone. I started to remember why I did this and the joy of my 2014 solo.

Did I watch the match last night? I absolutely did. That goal just under 2 minutes in was magical. There were other magical moments too. Clearly, it wasn’t the fairy tale ending that we’d all hoped for but I still think that Gareth & the team did us proud.

There was another article in yesterday’s Sunday times into some of the book content (thanks for the heads up on this, Guy Davis). If you’re one of their digital subscribers it’s well worth a read, or just buy the book (I did).

Whilst it is about football, it’s actually really about dealing with overcoming adversity. For anyone who’s left a training session with regret, or had a swim that didn’t end the way we all hoped, there’s content here for you. You don’t even have to have had a mental implosion for it to be relevant, there are lessons for going again and how to regain the focus and energy to approach it with positivity.

Here are some of the key points that struck me the most….

Penalty shoot outs

In 1996 I played for England in one of our biggest games in 30 years. In extra time, the score remained level at 1-1. It meant a penalty shoot-out would decide which team would go through. With England and Germany level after five shots each, we were into the sudden-death round. It meant the next side to go one goal up would win. All our obvious penalty-takers had taken a turn, and I was asked to take the next shot. I didn’t say yes because I felt I was good at penalties. I stepped up because, having been the captain of almost every club I’d played for, I was used to taking responsibility.

Football is a team sport. Normally, I’m one of 11 players on the pitch. Just then, having positioned the ball and walked back a few paces, I felt all the attention on me. Rather than focus on the things I could control, like my breathing or what side of the net I should aim for, I started worrying about what might go wrong. What if I slice the ball, I fretted to myself, or don’t hit my target? As a result, when the referee blew the whistle for me to take that penalty, my head was full of negativity. On my run-up, I just focused on connecting with the ball. I didn’t think aboutpower or precise placement. In fact, I didn’t really feel in control of my legs, and I definitely wasn’t thinking clearly. As a result, I watched in shock and dismay as the keeper saved the shot.

In that moment, I wanted the ground to swallow me up.

The nation had been riding a wave of good feeling throughout the tournament, and that came crashing down with one kick. We had lost, and I felt completely responsible. Back in the dressing room, I carried a feeling that would stay with me for years. As I saw things, I had let everyone down: myself, my team and my country.

Returning home the next day, I just couldn’t face anyone but my family.

It was a bleak time. I felt anxious and nervous, as I didn’t know how others would react to me. Nowadays, players have access to experts who can help them come to terms with difficult experiences like this. Back then I just had to find a way to deal with it myself.

Then there were the notes from incredibly brave individuals, which touched me deeply. Some were living with terminal illnesses, or were devoted to caring for family members who relied on them. Despite this, they had taken the time out to write and thank me for playing a role in what had been such an exciting tournament for England. This put everything into perspective. There I was, fretting about missing a penalty, when others had really serious issues to deal with in their lives. It was time I faced up to what had happened and made the most of the future.

Twenty-two years after that fateful night at Wembley, I found myself facing another England penalty shoot-out. This time, I wasn’t one of the players; I was the team manager. We had reached the knockout stage of the 2018 World Cup in Russia. A last-minute goal from Colombia had taken us into extra time. After 30 minutes of additional play, both teams remained level. It meant we now faced the final way of deciding who would go through, and what could seem like a cruel defeat for one side.

I was well aware that it looked like history might repeat itself. If England crashed out, I would be the man who lost it for the country as a player and now as a manager. This time, however, I had faith in our preparation. Over the years, I had spent more time than most thinking about penalty kicks.

That night in Moscow, as players from each team took turns from the penalty spot, we focused on the process rather than the possible outcome. Only one side could win, of course, but I knew that we were relying on executing a skill under pressure rather than luck, which was down to the practice that we had put in during training. I was nervous, just like the players and the nation watching us at home, but this time it felt different.

And we won. I couldn’t hide my delight, and pumped my fists with pride. The England team had taken ownership of their story, while I opened a new chapter in my life.

Of course, I still wish that I had scored from the penalty spot as a player all those years ago, but I can honestly say that it changed me for the better. It was with this in mind that I consoled Mateus Uribe, the Colombian player who had hit the crossbar and paved the way for our victory. No doubt it seemed like the end of the world for him, but I knew it could also lead to a new beginning.

Missing my penalty made me more resilient and gave me a better perspective on life. Over time, I came to realise that the worst thing that could happen in football was behind me. Nothing else could be as painful as that experience, and knowing that became a motivating force. It encouraged me to understand myself better, and then go on to help teams — from youth squads to senior sides — to play to their strengths. Every single one of us has a life story to tell. Sometimes there are moments in it that don’t work out as we’d hoped, or bring unexpected twists and turns. Then there’s self-doubt and anxiety, which can creep in when things aren’t going well and tempt us to give up. What matters is how we respond to these moments.

With a positive mindset, a willingness to learn from our mistakes and the ability to cope with both highs and lows, every one of us can make the most of our lives. It’s about being brave, being kind and following your dreams.

Relating to swimming

Picking yourself up after a challenging training session or unfinished business from a big swim can be a challenge. I didn’t get to France on my first attempt at the channel. The whole experience from training through to the day itself was extremely traumatic for me. Had I made it that day, I would have walked away from the sport with a sense of relief, not achievement.

It wasn’t easy to come back and do it all again and yet the decision to do just that changed the path of the rest of my life and has opened doors that I didn’t even know existed. Not just in swimming either. You learn a lot about yourself in this sport and come to learn that whilst we fixate on the destination, the journey is just as important.

Like Gareth, based on my experience, I have changed some aspects of training. We focus on the process. I care deeply about the journey and the overall experience. We’re there beside you on the good days and the tough ones. We’re human, so we don’t always get it right. We do always care though.

Not a talented sportsman

When we moved to Crawley in West Sussex, I soon found a group of kids who shared my interest in the game. With a ball to kick between us, any awkwardness I felt quickly melted away. I discovered that football could help me to socialise and make friends. Without a doubt, by the time I turned eight I was passionate about the game. Bryan Robson was my hero (I was a Manchester United fan), and when I knocked a ball against a wall in my back garden I would imagine myself playing for England. I certainly didn’t have the skills to back up my enthusiasm. Nothing marked me out as a lad who would one day step out for his country at Wembley stadium. Why not? Quite simply because I hadn’t begun to develop as a player.

The more I played, the more I learnt from the experience and from other players, but the true skills, commitment and discipline I’d need to make it as a professional had yet to come. My early years in football were just a starting point for me, and there was nothing remarkable about them. But in a world where anything is possible, every single one of us has to begin somewhere. More often than not, that place is really quite normal. I wasn’t the only kid with a passion for football and an ambition to become a professional one day. Nor did my ambition guarantee that I’d find success.

As a schoolboy, I started training one evening a week with Southampton. I was in the same year group as Alan Shearer, who would go on to play for Newcastle and England and become the Premier League’s top goal-scorer. They had a lot of good players — and as I was a late developer, many of them were bigger than me. I just did my best and hoped that I would catch up. I was 13.5 when Southampton’s head of youth development wrote me a letter to say the club would be releasing me. They obviously thought I wasn’t going to be good enough, and they even said they doubted I’d have the build.

I was devastated. I’d spent two years training with them, watching the first team and hoping I could join them one day, and now that had come to an end. It was my first taste of rejection, and it left me in tears.

Around this time, I played football on a Sunday in Selsdon, near Croydon in southeast London. A lot of the boys were also training with nearby Crystal Palace. Once I’d got over the shock of being let go by Southampton, I wondered if there might be an opportunity for me there. I wanted to prove that Southampton had made the wrong decision, while also showing that I could still be a professional player. Having been knocked back so early in my journey, I found myself responding because of a mixture of negative and positive drivers. I am still motivated by a combination of these two elements, but this was when I began to understand how I deal with challenging situations.

I was thrilled when Crystal Palace took me on. I was 15 years old and they invited me to play for the under-18 side. One year later, the club offered me an apprenticeship, with a small wage plus travel expenses from my home in West Sussex. It meant I faced a choice. After taking my O-levels (now known as GCSEs), I could stay on at school for my A-levels or follow the chance to work through the Palace youth and reserve squads, and finally earn my place as a first-team player.

It was a no-brainer. I’d been playing well that year, and thought I would just adapt to the step up from schoolboy to apprentice. But I hated it. All of a sudden, the game I played for fun became my work, and I found that I was treated differently. As a schoolboy, there had been no pressure. Playing up two age groups, I had always been the young one who was doing well. Southampton hadn’t worked out as I’d hoped, but I was a little older when I started the apprenticeship at Palace, and also bigger. Even so, I found the training became much tougher. As a full-time footballer, I was nowhere near strong enough.

Then there were the difficulties I faced in terms of fitting in. I found a lot of the apprentice players around me were brimming with confidence. Being the quiet one, I really stood out in the group.

On the pitch, surrounded by players who were used to a high level of training, I no longer felt like I could shine. I even began to pick up little injuries from trying harder. The coach, Alan Smith, called me in for a chat and just spoke his mind. “You’re a lovely bloke, Gareth, but as a footballer you’ve got no chance. If I were you, I’d think about becoming a travel agent.” I realised later that Alan wasn’t really letting me go. He was just looking for a reaction. It was his way of waking me up to the fact that I needed to make some serious changes to my outlook and commitment if I was going to survive.

But at the time, I left and just cried my eyes out. One of the older players took pity on me and gave me a lift home. On the way, he talked to me about the realities of the professional game and how it worked. He could tell that all the fun had gone out of it for me, and that I had yet to feel comfortable in such a competitive and aggressive environment. Even so, he left me thinking that with the right mindset I could turn this low moment into a learning experience.

Without a doubt, it was a challenging start to my football career. I could’ve taken my coach’s harsh words to heart and my dreams would have ended right there. Instead, despite feeling very sorry for myself, I knew what I had to do.

Channel swimming

The world of open water swimming has changed beyond recognition in the last couple of decades, and again through lockdown. It used to be that you would work your way around the open water circuit and a channel swim would be something to aspire to with a lot of experience behind you. It used to be the domain of ‘good’ swimmers from a club background.

The world has changed.

Yes, there are still a lot of swimmers from a club background and awesome technique built in the pool as a child. There are those who have done all the open water swims on the BLDSA circuit and beyond.

There are also a new breed of channel swimmers, those who dared to believe that there could be another way. Some who have never been club swimmers. Some who are ‘adult onset’ swimmers.

Both pathways are equally valid and different.

I am one of the latter.

I started ‘proper’ swimming in 2000 when I joined our local masters squad. The coach taught me how to swim with my face in the water. A channel swim was not something that I’d ever considered to be honest, I stumbled upon this sport accidentally.

Throughout my swimming career I have carried a ‘crap swimmer’ complex with me, an imposter syndrome perhaps. Yet I have succeeded despite that.

I still carry these issues with me I see them in others.

Sometimes we simply need to get out of our own way and let the magic happen.

Whether you’re a club swimmer, with a great open water CV and full of confidence; a late developer who is battling demons; or somewhere in between we are here for you.

As this bit in Gareth’s story is about not being talented, we’ll focus on that. Hundreds of people just like that have gone on to achieve amazing things despite themselves. Are you one of these people? Yes, you have to work smart to catch up. I’ve spent years now doing drills and working on my technique to make up for the gap as I was not a club swimmer as a child.

In terms of the mental battles, I’ve faced more than my fair share. I’ve also witnessed them from all types of swimmers. I can often spot them before you clear the excuse debris and come to realise that there are mental demons or ‘barstools’ blocking your progress.

I’ve done breakthrough sessions with all sorts of people to work through and identify the lynchpin issue that, when removed, clear the path to success. I had some NLP intervention before my first successful solo as I recognised that I was building a failure pattern. It saved my swim.

Get in touch if you think this could help you and I can explain what is involved.

Missed opportunities?

Soon after I’d pushed back on the idea of being a candidate for the England manager job, I was watching a post-match interview with an old Crystal Palace teammate, Chris Coleman, who was the Wales manager at the time. He was celebrating a victory for the team, which was made all the more special because he had previously faced challenges in his career as a coach. Like me, Chris had been sacked as the manager of a Championship side. The experience had rocked his confidence, and yet he’d found the courage to step up and steer a national team to success.

When asked by the interviewer for his advice for anyone in a similar situation, Chris spelt it out very simply: Don’t be frightened of going for things in life. I watched him on the screen, and it felt like he was talking directly to me. I had also been invited to coach a national team, but unlike Chris I’d chosen to back off. Some call managing England “the impossible job”, which makes it sound as if there’s no hope of a successful outcome, and I had fallen into that way of thinking. I had become so worried about what could go wrong that I’d failed to consider the opportunities such an honour presented. It had taken watching that interview with an ex-teammate and old friend for me to realise this.

Of course, I also figured it was too late for me to do anything about it. But then the role of England manager became vacant again later that year, just on a temporary basis at first, and I knew what I had to do. In some ways, having turned down the job once, I felt more confident in my approach. I decided that if I was going to try making a difference, I had to do it in my own way. I knew it could fail, but I wasn’t going to worry about that.

My focus was on how things might look for the team if it went right.

Looking back, this proved to be one of the most significant decisions in my life. If I think about the worst thing that could’ve happened, I now know the answer. Had I ruled myself out of the running to become England’s senior team coach again, I would never have stopped wondering what might have been. Instead, committed to growing a young team, my role turned from caretaker to full-time manager, and I have experienced amazing things ever since.

It’s an honour to lead the England players; I have enjoyed every moment, and that includes the challenging times. I’m doing what I love, which is helping young players reach the top of their game, and my life would be poorer had I responded to a low point in my career by thinking it was the end of the road. No matter how bleak things become as we pursue our goals, even if it happens a number of times, we can always learn to move on and feel stronger. What’s more, that newfound resilience and determination to succeed can help us to climb higher than ever before.

Channel swimming

Had I walked away from channel swimming when I didn’t make it to France in 2007 my life would be unrecognisably different to today. It took a lot of courage to come back from defeat (and I’ve faced the more than once) and my life is magical now because of that decision.

The day after than first unsuccessful solo, three quotes came into my mind:

There’s no failure, only feedback
What we do does not define who we are, it’s how we rise after we fall
The world is full of people who didn’t realise just how close they were to success when they gave up.

I knew I had to regroup, learn the lessons that I needed to learn, and go again. It wasn’t easy and I’m so glad that I did it.

If you can see a little bit of you in this story, look for the possibilities and opportunity. Look at the journey and the people you meet along the way. Could this be your turning point for a magical outcome?