Find Love in the Pool: Austin Williamson, EP 221

Austin Williamson has found love as a fresh addition to the world of master swimming. Austin's story is anything but typical; at age 37, originally seeking to improve his swimming skills for competing in an Ironman event, he found himself diving headfirst into the world of competitive swimming. It was not just the thrill of the race that captivated him, but also the profound impact on his health, particularly his long-standing back problems. The techniques and strength developed through swimming have provided Austin with relief and a newfound love for the sport.

The conversation with Austin is not only inspiring, but it's also infectious. His passion for swimming, his dedication to mastering the techniques, and his joy at finding a sport that doubles as a remedy for health issues, is profoundly uplifting. What makes Austin's story even more compelling is his testament to the lifelong benefits of swimming, inspired by fellow masters swimmer Willard Lamb who continued to break records well into his 100s.

Austin swims for the iconic Masters Swim Coach Jim Miller as as member of Virginia Masters Swim Team and the River City workout group.

Listening to Austin, you too might feel the pull of the pool, a reminder that swimming isn't just a sport – it’s a journey of self-discovery, healing and high performance. And the friendships are the best!

Email us at HELLO@ChampionsMojo.com. Opinions discussed are not medical advice, please seek a medical professional for your own health concerns.

Transcript

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Welcome to the award-winning champions mojo, hosted by two world record holding athletes and health life and leadership coaches.

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Be inspired as you listen to conversations with champions and now your host, kelly Palace and Maria Parker.

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Hello friends, welcome to the champions mojo podcast.

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I am your host, kelly Palace, and, as usual, I am with my co-host, maria Parker.

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Hey Maria, hey Kelly, it's great to be with you here today.

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Yes, and Maria, this is a special edition of Champions mojo from the pool deck, and we have a great interview for you today.

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It's brief, it's short, but it's powerful.

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Yeah, and we.

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I wasn't there, but I was able to listen to the interview and some great takeaways.

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Yeah, we hope you'll stick around and catch the takeaways.

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And here we go.

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So we are at another on deck inspiration with Austin Williamson.

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Austin is here with me at the first chance long course meet, part two of the Nova two-day meet, and we are swimming long course today, but Austin is a pretty brand new master swimmer.

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So, austin, tell us what brought you to master swimming?

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Yeah, so really it started out with a desire to do an iron man and I've never really swam competitively ever before and it was really my manager that convinced me to join us masters to truly learn the strengths and really just the endurance and just get a little bit competitive in the water, and that's really just turned into a lot of my life.

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Okay, so Austin first.

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Who is your manager?

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What is that about?

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So Erica Burgess, she's a manager.

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And your job.

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Yes, yeah, yeah, I'm a workplace and again, yeah.

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So she just convinced me to join an excellent swim group which I'm part of, acac, off of Robius here in Virginia, and that's the River City Masters workout group and, honestly, it's highly competitive.

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I'm probably one of the younger people in the group and get my butt kicked every day, so it's a good wake up call.

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Okay now you also said it's the new love of your life.

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How can?

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that be.

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Well, my wife wouldn't want me to say that.

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Really, going back, I've always said now said in the past year and a half or so that now that I've learned how to swim and do straights and things like that, I never really knew how to swim.

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I really knew how to play in water and now I know how to swim and I've always had some back issues and degenerative disease, some sludge scoliosis and just some other things that have just hindered me and I've kind of been pain free to the most part since I've been swimming.

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And I don't know if it's the elongation, the twisting, the buoyancy, just the core strength and training, just all of the above.

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It's now been ingrated into my life and I'm 37 this year and finding a new competitive sport is just kind of a new part of my lifestyle.

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It adds another competitive element and it's me waking up and something to check off a box every day.

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The Iron man was completed last November and this is just continuing on.

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Fun thing about the triathlon is that it gets you exposure to a couple of sports in depth and the one I'm walking away with is swimming.

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So you're going to stay with swimming more so.

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Yeah, so one of my eye-openers was competing in Nationals last year.

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That was actually my first swim meet with Nationals here in Virginia this past August and there was an individual that was just breaking world records left and right and it was because he was opening up his own age group.

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I think it was 100 to 105, Willard Ram, and that was an eye-opener for me.

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What did seeing Willard Lamb do for you?

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Yeah, that was an eye-opener that it's truly a full lifetime activity.

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When I think about running and even cycling at some point in time I'm sure the body just cannot continue with some of those aspects.

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But seeing Willard Lamb just confirmed really where my passion is going as far as lifetime activity.

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Awesome Austin.

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What an inspiration you are to me and others who are going to listen to this.

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So the last question we always ask everyone when they're on Champions Mojo is when you dive in the water, what goes through your mind?

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A longboat is a fast boat.

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Jim Miller, our coach on Wednesday, tells me that a lot.

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I don't have extreme height or anything like that.

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So he says stay as long as you can.

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This longboat is a fast boat.

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Awesome.

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Thank you so much.

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Thank you.

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Stay tuned for the takeaways.

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Get tri-swim today and now the takeaways.

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All right.

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Austin Williamson's takeaways Gosh, All right.

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This, my top takeaway, is it's never too late to fall in love with swimming.

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I love it.

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He just started and he is hooked.

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Yeah.

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I see this in pickleball All right, I'm not a people, you do see that in pickleball and golf.

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You see it in pickleball Maybe pickleball and golf, but it's a little more rare to hear it in swimming, because swimming is.

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We know swimming is hard.

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No one says I swim.

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Well, you get water in your eyes and your ears and your nose.

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You rarely hear the term I play swimming.

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You play basketball, you play pickleball, you play soccer, but you don't play swimming.

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But Austin plays swimming.

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I love it.

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He, I just loved his passion and the takeaway is try it, get in there.

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And I'm going to even say I'm going to take this, because everybody listening to this, or most people listening to this, have already tried swimming and they already love swimming.

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But try a swim meet.

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It's, I feel, like part of what Austin is in love with is the swim meets, because here he was at this meet and he was totally focused and locked in on high performance and thinks about everything very deeply with regards to the sport.

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So if you're already in love with swimming, you may just fall in love with meets.

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Yeah, nice, that's a good, that's a good tip.

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My takeaway is and I love this, and I think maybe swimmers don't appreciate this enough that swimming has made him pain free.

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I think sometimes it's like with our spouses we have to look at them and remind ourselves of what we love about them.

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You swimmers, you are so gifted.

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We swimmers Maria Say it we swimmers.

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I'm learning, I'm becoming one of them.

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These swimmers are really lucky because it's a sport that can stretch us out and take all of the pounding pain off of a runner, or the neck or back pain off of for a cyclist or whatever sport we do, swimming can make you pain free.

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Go out there and do it.

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It's a gift, yeah.

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I love it, love it.

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Great interview with Austin Maria.

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Thanks for another one, love you.

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Love you, bye-bye, bye.

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Thank you for listening to the Champions Mojo podcast.

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