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Celebrating the power of possibility.

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I'm Matt Kreditsch and I believe anything is possible.

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Welcome to Anything is Possible. I'm Haloran Hilton Hill.

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These are great stories about great people whose lives prove that anything is possible.

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And this is the director of swimming. Is that the right title? Director of swimming?

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Director of swimming and diving.

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Diving at the University of Tennessee, Matt Kreditsch. Thank you for joining us today.

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Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.

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I want to start with an apology. I actually, I learned to swim at 54.

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Thank you, Jenna Johnson. But I showed him the video.

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You were so gracious seeing a toddler, a 54-year-old toddler in the pool.

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I tell you what, that's one of the most complex series of movements that you can create.

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And, you know, we're talking earlier and you said it, you have to do it in order to be able to understand it.

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You can't just talk about it, think about it, look at it. You have to feel it.

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And it hats off to you, very few people who haven't learned to swim as a child

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have the courage to learn to swim as an adult and you move beautifully.

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It looks like you've been in the water a long time.

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America, you heard that.

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Where does your story start? How do you end up in this world of high-level elite swimming?

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So I grew up in Durham, North Carolina.

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And both my parents were graduates of and employees at Duke University.

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So I was Duke through and through. And if you live in Durham, you're a Duke fan and you play basketball.

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I also am taller than, I was always the tallest person in my 6'5 and a little bit.

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And I always thought I was going to play basketball for Duke.

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So I grew up, you know, spending hours in the driveway, hours with our neighborhood, kind of gang, playing basketball.

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And played until I was a sophomore in high school, never swam competitively.

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And I was in a game and dislocated my kneecap pretty badly and underwent some surgery and rehab.

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During that time, my parents' close family friend who was a volunteer swim coach for the high school

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told me, you know what the best thing you can do for knee rehab is?

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The knee rehab is, is swim. And we had gone to the beach with this family before.

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And he'd seen that I actually could swim. I don't think he would ever say I was great, but he saw that I was comfortable in the water.

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So he asked me to come out for the team and I did it, had a good time, went back to playing basketball

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the next summer, hurt my knee again and decided maybe basketball is not for me.

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So I continued to swim my junior and senior year in high school and I got, I was terrible to start, got better quickly

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and then had some opportunities in kind of lower level division one schools to swim.

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That included Duke, got the bug, just I wanted to be great.

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I got better and better and better. Never reached what I would consider an elite level, but I always wanted to be.

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And when I was finished with my swimming career, I was given some coaching opportunities.

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And I had seen what a team and the pursuit of excellence in a sport did for me and what the impact that the coaches that I had had on me.

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And so I decided to pursue that in the middle of my college career. I was diagnosed and treated for testicular cancer.

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So it was about eight months of being pretty sick and out of the water and number of surgeries later.

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I, I during that time, I really had relied on the support of my team.

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I was in the hospital over 50 days and every single one of those days, my coach came to see me.

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And what sustained me was the support of other people. It was the identity with a team, like being part of something bigger than myself.

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And I felt like if I could help provide opportunities like that for other people, then my life would be really fulfilling.

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You wanted to do what had been done for you.

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Possibility powered by Covenant Health, Home Federal, and the Knoxville News Sentinel.

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I was looking at your resume, your bio. You've done a lot of winning.

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A lot of winning. Turned around a lot of programs. That's how you ended up at the University of Tennessee.

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But it doesn't feel like that. That's what you lead with, that it's more about the people and it's about this opportunity.

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Love this. There's this Bible verses. It says,

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Blessed be the God of all comfort who comforts us in all our afflictions so that we may comfort those in any affliction with the comfort we're with.

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We were comforted by God.

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This notion of you go through something, somebody helps you get through it, and then you go,

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I want to do that for somebody else. And is that kind of the driving force behind you and your coaching philosophy?

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Because I was going to ask you, how do you coach swimmers?

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That's a great question. And the short answer is yes.

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That is, I felt so grateful for the coaches I had, the experiences that I had.

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They provided me inspiration. They helped me discover who I was at my best.

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And both my parents were incredibly giving people. They were physicians.

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They were community volunteers. They were very involved in the civil rights movements.

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And they instilled in all of us the idea that we're here for other people, we're here to give.

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And to coach swimming, to me, there's the training aspect.

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So if you're a good swimmer and you want to get trained for a 50 freestyle, which is 30 seconds,

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100 freestyle, which is a minute, or 1500 freestyle, which is 15 minutes,

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those are all different durations of exercise that involve different physiological systems and proportions.

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And so there's a physiological training program that you sort of apply to each swimmer based on an event.

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That's really, that's a very narrow, very specific of what makes a performance.

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Then there's the technical element, which, you know, in your video, you move with some fluidity

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and you move in a beautiful line and it's not disruptive, you're not panicking.

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Every person has kind of a signature way of moving. Every stroke is a cyclical movement.

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So you're repeating the same thing over and over again.

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And those movements are, they have a certain level of efficiency.

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And we're always trying to make them more efficient.

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And they're less efficient if somebody is anxious.

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They're less efficient if somebody is feeling, having negative self-talk.

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They're more fluid and more open and more expressive in a kind of competitive way

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if people are feeling good about themselves.

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And so there's this psychological element, there's a biomechanical element,

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there's a training content element.

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And then there's the, and digging into the psychological piece,

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there's a question of what's the why for each person in the pool.

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Like are they there because somebody, they feel pressure from somebody outside to be there.

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Are they there because they're inspired by a vision of their future selves?

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Are they there because they love giving to the team?

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Are they there because swimming is a meditative way to kind of focus on themselves,

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focus on physical expression.

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And every person has kind of a unique combination of why they're there.

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And as a coach, I think if you understand that, then you can help guide them towards improvement.

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Which is more important, because you live in a world of milliseconds, right?

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And so all of the biomechanical parts of the process and the event specific training

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is really about more efficiency, finding an even deeper rhythm with yourself

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so you can shave off time.

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But what adds more time?

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Being psychologically healthy or technically better?

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There is no way to differentiate, to say that one is more important than the other

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because they're so interrelated.

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I'll give you an example.

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Erica Brown, now Erica Connolly, was a 2021 Olympian,

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swam at the University of Tennessee.

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She qualified for the Olympics in the Hunter Freestyle.

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This means that she was the second fastest American in 2021.

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She was not close to that when she came to the University of Tennessee in 2017.

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And she really struggled through that year.

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She was not elite yet, I would say.

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That summer, she spent time searching for her reason for swimming.

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And she and her parents essentially said she needs to swim with a heart full of gratitude

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rather than a heart full of complaining about what's being done to her.

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And she literally became elite that year.

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Very similar training program, but she started moving differently

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because she felt differently about herself.

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That is amazing.

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It's an incredible story.

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And let's jump forward to last weekend.

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For one year, she's been struggling in swimming.

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She hasn't come close to the times that she was able to go.

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She was a medalist at the World Championships in 2022.

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From that point on, she's been a struggle for her.

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And she's been a good two seconds off of her best time.

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She got up next to one of our University of Tennessee swimmers,

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and they were just having fun before the race.

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They were joking with each other.

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This other woman, Camille Spank, is a character.

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And Erica got up on the blocks with a smile on her face.

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Camille got up on the blocks with a smile on her face, and they raced each other.

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And Erica went a second and a half faster than she had gone any time in the past year

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because her approach was different.

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And there were some biomechanical differences that came out of that feeling about herself.

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There were probably like a different physiological state,

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but it's really hard to separate those things.

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I would imagine just with a swimming stroke,

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if you are tense, there's no way it could be faster

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because you're holding the muscle.

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Correct.

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So it's this...

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And I guess part of the process is to...

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When I was talking to this race car driver, he said,

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I can tell within two seconds the quality of the tires

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because of my connection with the road.

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And I guess you have that same physical thing when you're in the water

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where you know immediately, am I tight? Am I...

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Completely.

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Rhythm.

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It's rhythm and the best ones can feel a connection between this sensation in their hand

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all the way down to their hip.

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They feel when their hip moves that they get a hold on the water.

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If it's tight or bound up emotionally, they don't feel the same.

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That's amazing.

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You end up getting some coaching opportunities.

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You love this notion of pouring into people.

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I guess for every teacher that I've ever met,

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they love seeing somebody go from here to here,

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whether that's in the performance of the craft

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or emotionally to go from here to here.

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So you kind of tapped into that as a purpose that was driving you forward.

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I did.

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And the other wonderful thing that I think comes out of swimming,

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it seems like such an individual sport.

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But in college swimming, we have teams and conferences and divisions and NCA's.

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And so it gives you the opportunity to take a group of people in an individual sport

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and set team goals, common goals.

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And that when you're working together with somebody for a common goal,

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then there's this connection that forms between people of all different stripes.

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And I saw that in action over and over and over again.

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And saw the inspiration that individuals are getting from their teammates

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who might not necessarily, they might not get to know them outside of the pool

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if it weren't for what we're doing in the pool.

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So I was just watching this tremendous growth from the people that I coach from age 18 to 22.

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It's a period of tremendous development.

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And there are so many stories that can, I mean, I could tell a great story

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about every single person that would come through any of the teams that I coach.

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And they're the hero of the story.

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And the story always involved them overcoming some big challenge in their life

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through the help of other people.

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That's what I've learned about all great stories.

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There's a challenge that really defines or redefines or refines you.

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And that is always true.

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I want to ask you something.

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Would you describe for me a basic swimming stroke, all the pieces of it?

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Sure.

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So there are four competitive strokes.

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There's backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly and freestyle.

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What's your specialty?

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My specialty is backstroke.

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I can't do anything when I can breathe whenever I want it.

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The challenge of each stroke is to take the human body which won't naturally float in a line on the surface

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and to move it in a line across the surface.

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And there are parts of each stroke.

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There's a propulsive part and then there's the recovery part.

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So the propulsive part, let's just take freestyle,

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so the arm comes through the recovery, enters the water,

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and then we get to what's called the catch.

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And that's where you put pressure on the water with your fingertips to your forearm.

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And then there's a rotational movement that's coinciding with what's happening on the other side, which is the recovery.

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So the opposite side is recovering and it's a connected movement.

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So the recovery is a non-propulsive part, but there's also a swing to it.

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So there's a momentum generation.

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So you're taking a piece of your body that has mass and you're sending it forward in the direction you want to go.

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That was one of the things you did well in that video,

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where a lot of people think, I just got to get my arm somehow to the front.

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So it might come across and then come over here and might swing wide.

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But yours is coming through in a line and so there's some,

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it's like think of a pole vault or you carry that momentum forward.

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And that's what the bottom arm is supposed to do is hold the water while the top side comes over the top.

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And you're using physics, you're using momentum to kind of enhance what you're already doing with the propulsion.

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You're putting a hemi on it or a dose of physics on top of that.

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And then of course you have what's going on with your legs, which I never figured out.

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And the legs are either going to get in the way or be neutral or in some cases help you.

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And the thing I'd tell any beginning swimmers is just don't let them get in the way.

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A lot of people have a really wide kick to help balance and stabilize because that's what we want to do in the water.

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Another thing you did really well is you're comfortable getting to your side.

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That's like balancing the water is really uncomfortable.

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It's crazy.

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It's hard, yeah.

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And so each stroke, butterfly and breaststroke are on your breast and they're simultaneous arm movements.

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And it could be, you know, butterflies recovery outside the body and breaststroke recovery inside the body.

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But you're trying to get a breath and not sink and then come forward.

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And that momentum brings you back forward into a line again.

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It's all about continuing to stay in that line with as little drag as possible and generate propulsion through kind of friction on the bottom side and momentum on the top side.

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Such a great metaphor for life.

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Like you're trying to balance.

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Yeah.

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Right. And you're trying to pull yourself forward and trying not to let your feet get in your way or your legs get in your way.

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So you're blowing and going.

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You find a path and purpose as a swimming coach and you're having a lot of success.

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Along the way, you have a family.

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And tell me a little bit about your family.

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There was the element of pursuit of mastery of the craft of coaching and then the element of purpose in coaching.

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And I think at one point I got to the, I got a little ego involved with, you know, doing great and my teams are winning.

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And it became, there were times when I had to wrestle with my own sense of self worth based on the results versus my own sense of self worth based on the changes that I saw in people.

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And I mean, I would say in the pursuit of just kind of getting better and getting better and getting better.

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I look back and think I was a little bit lost in that. And then Kim and I had Miles and Ben, we tried for a few years and had twins.

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And soon after that we had Coleman.

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So in 99 we had the twins in 2001 we had Coleman.

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And for me, having children gave me a completely different and maybe more clear sense of purpose.

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Yeah, see that's when the story changes.

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I want to, in our next episode, I want to delve into your family and the story about your son because you lost a son and talk about being underwater.

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That's a real thing.

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My guest is, like, credit more next time.