Social Kick • Swim Culture & Stories

Men’s distance swimming is having a moment, and Irish super swimmer Daniel Wiffen (  @WiffenTwins  ) is one of the key players making the long races as exciting as ever. 2022 Commonwealth Games silver in the 1500 followed by matching 4th place finished in the 800 and 1500 at 2023 Worlds, Daniel Wiffen keeps delivering higher finishes and faster times as he has ascended to the elite group alongside...

Ask yourself - would you move across the country as a young teenager to pursue your dream? World Championship team member Claire Weinstein did, as she moved from New York to Las Vegas to join the guru of coaching high schoolers, Ron Aitken and the Sandpipers of Nevada. Training alongside other standout swimmers like World Championship silver medalist and Paris Olympian Katie Grimes, Tokyo Olympian...

Raise your hand if you want to swim a mile breaststroke. Any takers? If so, you are in good company with World Championship Bronze Medalist Matt Fallon saying he would add that event to his program. While secrets abound about how Matt Fallon trains, off the grid relative to most of his Team USA teammates as he trains at University of Pennsylvania, we pulled a few tips and tricks out of him. If you...

If you don’t know his name yet, you will soon. Ilya Kharun just started college and is already a 4th place finisher at the World Championships, and now he is joining forces with Bob Bowman, the mastermind behind current World Champions Léon Marchand and Hubert Kós. How is Ilya Kharun so fast at this young age? Well, his parents were Cirque du Soleil acrobats and he’s also trained at the best club...

Swimming needs a little personality and World Championship medalist Katharine Berkoff is happy to provide it. With arguably the funniest walkout video at Worlds, Katherine Berkoff likely distracted a few competitors from what they should be focusing on - her ridiculous backstroke speed. With a lineage of underwater prowess, her infamous dad David Berkoff literally changing backstroke and swimming...

Get strong. Sprint a lot. Go fast. World Champion Swimmer Cameron McEvoy joins the show to tell us how he did it. How he came back from retirement and previously being known more for his 100 free to drop a 21.0 and win the title world’s fastest man. This one gets pretty sprint nerdy as Cameron “The Professor” McEvoy takes us to school on how he trained for this season which is quite unconventional...

Never stop learning. Be a good person. Have fun. Sometimes improvement and excellence are born from the simplest actions. Josh Huger, coach of World Champions and Olympic Medalists, exemplifies these core tenets of coaching greatness which has led him to the next stop on his impressive coaching journey, as the new Associate Head Coach for the Cal Bears. Josh Huger arrives in California with a stel...

The respect and admiration of your peers means more to many athletes than athletic accolades. How you show up matters more than what you achieve. But then there are those rare athletes who have both the HOW and the WHAT, like Natalie Hinds. Natalie Hinds is an Olympian and TeamUSA captain. Having had great success as a college swimmer at Florida, she headed to her 2nd Olympic Trials with legit ski...

Self-proclaimed CEO of Swimming Twitter and Intern at Swimming Youtube, Kyle Sockwell (@Sockwell) has become a star as a swimming content creator on the socials. Before his time speaking truths to the swimming community about all the currently relevant topics of the day in swimming, he was a breaststroker and IMer at ASU, while also side hustling the development of a successful marketing company....

Australian Olympian and World Champion Isaac Cooper does things differently. Having tried a typical training program for swimmers, Isaac Cooper realized the norm is not for him. He doesn't keep up with results and happenings in swimming. He doesn't know the names of many of his competitors or the elite swimmers in the world today. He just likes to swim fast and for short distances. Isaac Cooper in...

Olympic Champion and Team USA legend Nathan Adrian returns! Life looks different than the last time Nathan Adrian joined us on Social Kick. Nathan Adrian is an entrepreneur, managing a pool and swim lessons business, while also serving as an ambassador for several brands he trusts in the swimming space. Nathan shares with us some ways he's incorporating innovation into teaching young swimmers the...

Abbey Weitzeil. American phenom. Olympian and American Record holder while she was in HIGH SCHOOL! Baller. Goes to Cal. Racks up points for the Bears. Wins an NCAA title. Then makes another Olympic team. That’s a hell of a resume. But she’s back for more after a down year where she missed the USA World Championship team. In 2023 she destroyed the field all season in the Pro Series meets. Her faste...

She’s the type of person who says “Yo!” in a text message when you’ve never met her. That’s Olympic Gold Medalist and many time World Champ and medalist Olivia Smoliga, who sat down with us for the 2nd time recently to talk swimming and tell us about her life training at Arizona State, things she’s working on as a 6ft 2in tall elite backstroker & freestyler, and even a humble brag about how many p...

It’s World Championship hunting season for 50 backstroke World Record holder Hunter Armstrong. The aptly named backstroke and freestyle specialist, Hunter Armstrong, has continued to elevate his strengths and once again enters this championship season as a legit contender for multiple world titles. On the back of a strong Pro Series season where he racked up several wins, we sat down virtually wit...

The Cal Bears rolled through NCAA Swimming Championships once again this year and we caught up with two of their biggest point scorers, 200 backstroke champion Destin Lasco and the 2022 400 IM champ Hugo Gonzalez. Life is changing a bit for the training partners, as Hugo Gonzalez has finished his collegiate eligibility and will now split time between training environments in Berkeley and his nativ...

At some point in time, the great swimmers cease competing against the field and ascend to a level where their performances are works of art, solely focused on what they can make their bodies do in the water. At 2023 NCAAs, we witnessed the transcendence of Gretchen Walsh. She became the fastest 100 yard backstroker ever, by a wide margin, with her ridiculous 48.26. Even her sister Alex (Olympian,...

2nd Annual Men’s NCAA Championship Recap Show featuring Gabriel Jett (Cal), Brendan Burns (Indiana), and Hubert Kós (Arizona State). The dust settled after Cal’s successful title defense in the storied Minnesota pool, and some of the highest point scorers in the NCAA sat down for a cross-team chat about the meet and about college swimming. They dished on their coaches, talked about life in general...

Most good swimmers get asked the same questions: How tall are your parents? Do you play basketball/volleyball? Were your parents athletes? In Trenton Julian’s case, he has quite the validating answer: yes, my parents were both world-class swimmers. His mom Kristine (Quance) Julian was one of the best swimmers in the world in the 90s, a multi time Olympian and gold medalist, and his dad, Jeff Julia...

No one has ever repeated as Olympic champion in the 200 free. Will Tom Dean be the first? Even if Ariarne Titmus defends her title, the men’s 200 final happens before the women’s. To accomplish a feat not even the likes of greats like Ian Thorpe, Katie Ledecky, nor Michael Phelps has done, Tom Dean will need to fend off some serious challengers like super phenom David Popovici, the current 100 met...

On the heels of the best season of his career, World and Commonwealth 50m Freestyle swim champ Ben Proud is getting his mind and body right for the next 18 months before the push to Paris. What better place to do that than immersed in the ohana of Hawaii, with Aloha Aquatica sprint guru Elliot Ptasnik? Ben, Elliot, and 2x Olympic Champ Anthony Ervin spend their days on Oahu sprinting 8-15 meters a...

In the mid 2000s, Olympic Swimming Champion Roland Schoeman was on top of his game, winning several world titles, breaking world records, and being the first person to legitimately scare the iconic 50m freestyle world record of the great Alexander Popov. Roland Schoeman made a lengthy career as an elite sprinter, and changed the game for many others with his legendary start, a skill we go into in...

Olympian and World Championship Silver Medalist Backstoker Phoebe Bacon is after those marginal gains to win medals as one of the world’s best backstrokers. Phoebe Bacon represented the USA at the Tokyo Olympics, finishing 5th in the 200 backstroke, then turned around the next year and nearly won a World Championship title in the same event but was barely touched out for gold, still 1.5 seconds fa...

Not many swimmers, or athletes for that matter, are willing to speak their mind publicly. Olympic Champion Lilly King, however, has generated headlines for years, and not just based on her insane resume of swimming accomplishments as one of the best breaststrokers of all time. Lilly has spoken openly against performance-enhancing drugs and competitors who have tested positive, unafraid of the spot...

In the late 90s and 2000s, the road to an NCAA title went through Auburn. From 2003-2007, Auburn men and women won 9 out of 10 possible team championships. While that dominant era seems like the distant past, this year’s team, led by Aidan and Nate Stoffle, is out to prove Auburn is headed back to the promised land - ahead of schedule. Enter Ryan Wochomurka. In year two at the helm of his alma mat...

The Texas men never seem to have down years - they just reload. Their legendary coach Eddie Reese continues to develop NCAA point scorers. Jake Foster and Luke Hobson, both high school standouts that were destined to rack up points for the Longhorns, have certainly delivered on that promise. Jake Foster is a stalwart in IM finals, and in the past year has seen his breaststroke develop into a legit...