Frank Sole -audio

This is a podcast called Open Forum in The Villages, Florida. They talk to leaders in the community and discuss what is happening in The Villages. The podcast is listener-supported and they ask for donations or for people to make purchases on Amazon to support the podcast. In this episode, they interview Frank Soul, the head coach of the Villages Athletic Swim Team (VAST). Frank talks about his background in swimming and coaching, emphasizing the importance of technique. He explains that swimmers often make the mistake of trying to muscle through the water instead of using proper technique. He believes that going slower and focusing on technique will actually make swimmers faster in the long run. Frank also shares how he ended up in The Villages and how he became the head coach of VAST. He discusses the philosophy and resources he brings to the program, including a book he wrote on triathlon swimming. Overall, it's a conversation about swimming and the benefits of proper technique. Welcome to the Open Forum in the Villages Florida podcast. In this show we talk to leaders in the community, leaders of clubs and interesting folks who live here in the villages to get perspectives of what is happening here in the Villages Florida. We are a listener-supported podcast. I'm thrilled to share with you this podcast which is my passion project for you. This podcast brings me joy, brings you knowledge, inspiration and a lot of things that people need to know about the villages and the people who are living here and what's actually going on. Creating this podcast is a labor of love even though it demands more time than I can easily spare but hey time isn't something we can buy back right? Now here's where you come in, the unsung heroes and heroines. You can help us keep the podcast alive and thriving. How? By becoming a supporter. There are two simple ways that you can support us. The first is a small monthly donation. Visit our podcast website openforuminthevillagesflorida.com and click on the black supporter box. Even a small $3 to $10 a month donation makes a difference. And guess what? You can cancel anytime, no strings attached. The second way that you can contribute to the podcast is by making a purchase of an Amazon product at Amazon standard prices and we are paid a small commission on each purchase as an Amazon affiliate. That way there's no extra money out of your pocket but you are supporting the podcast. We're back every week because we're going to be adding new Amazon products that you can buy and support the podcast with. Thank you. And your support means the world to us. Stay curious, stay inspired and keep those headphones on. This is Mike Roth on Open Forum in The Villages, Florida. I'm here today with Frank Soul. Thanks for joining us Frank. Mike, good to be here with you. Frank, why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about your background regarding swimming and swim coaching. I've been at it for 25 years. I'm a USAT triathlon coach level two. I'm a technician coach and I'm very big on the technical and technique aspect of swimming and been at that for a long time. I've coached everything from high school to the national level to club teams on the Jersey Shore and presently I am the head coach for the VAST swim team here at The Villages. Okay, so you use the buzzword that people outside The Villages won't understand. What does VAST mean? The Villages Athletic Swim Team. Okay, and you say you're a swim technician. Why don't you explain for our listeners what that really means? I'm really big on technique. Plain English is I'm really big on technique when I'm working with athletes and I work with athletes all over the country. I have a couple pro athletes, triathletes who I'm working with presently, but it's how you get faster in the water is it's all about technique, right? Golf, tennis, pickleball, any sport that is technically driven has to be coached from that perspective. So I work very deliberately with my athletes in their technical proficiencies because that's how you become efficient, right? It's the law of physics. You can't out muscle the water. You're going to lose every single time. You must maintain the integrity of the vessel. The technique has to be clean and that's what I work with. What's the biggest mistake that swimmers make? The biggest mistake I see swimmers make, especially adult swimmers, is they're trying to out swim and muscle themselves through the water versus using their body and technique. Swimming from the hip versus the arms, trying to avoid shoulder problems. So the biggest mistake I see is just trying to muscle the water. Muscle the water? Yeah. What do you mean by that? Muscle the water meaning that you're trying to move copious amounts of water while your body is still retaining the shape of a tugboat. I always like to tell the story, a tugboat that wants to be a speedboat, you could put a big engine on it, but it's still a tugboat. So the laws of physics apply here. If I can maintain the integrity of my vessel, stay long and hydrodynamic, apply the right amount of propulsion, breathe, stay relaxed, simply will say, this is what you'll be able to do and do it well. So it seems like you're saying going slower is really going to get you to go faster. Absolutely. I use a Navy SEAL term, slowest, smooth becomes fast. The SEALs say that. My athletes here all the time, slowest, smooth becomes fast. So master it from the slow perspective. The speed will be a byproduct of the good technique. The rest is, as I say, just happens organically, all of a sudden you become faster. Okay. Frank, what brought you to the Villages? That's a great question. I was on deck in Arizona probably about a year ago, just got out of the water and there were three or four of us standing around and a gentleman who I swim with regularly said his parents just moved to the Villages in Florida. And I said, oh, the Villages, what's the name of the town? He goes, dude, that is the name of the, it's called the Villages. I forgot about it. About five nights later, I'm sitting on the couch with my wife, watching a little TV. I always have my computer doing some work. Yeah. I said, let me type in, let me go to YouTube and type in the Villages. And I go, oh God, I mean, look at all these golf carts and downtown and music. And I would say for about 30 minutes, I just started to tool around and walk. And then I went to the real estate section, slid the computer over to my wife, which caught her attention. And I said, take a look at this. We were coming down to Florida the very next month. We were going to Disney World to celebrate our, I hope I say this right, our 44th wedding anniversary. My wife will correct me if I'm wrong. Yeah. And I said, why don't we go to Disney and enjoy ourselves and then let's go drive up to this Villages and check it out and spend three days. And we did. I remember the day before we were going back to Arizona, sitting at the Starbucks in Lake Southerner about 6.30 in the morning. And I'm saying, yeah, this has a really cool feel for me. And I think our house was pretty much on the market before we even got back. My wife was on the phone with the realtor and getting the ball rolling. We were short-lived for Arizona and we packed up and here we are. Did you buy your house in the Villages on the first trip? We did. Let's, let me be honest. We spent a lot of time with a whole bunch of different realtors and we went from the North end to the South end and we came back. When we moved here, we rented for a few months and then made the decision what village we wanted to call home. Yeah. That's the best way. How many people say they took the trolley tour and they bought a house at the end of the trolley tour? Over the years, it's taught us not to do it that way. So we were, again, we were very fortunate with the realtor we had. She was phenomenal and really counseled us in the right direction. And plus the experiences tell us this is the way we wanted to do it. And no regrets. We enjoy where we live and we love the area. Good. You're the head swim coach for the VAST. How did you wind up getting that job? Once I started doing some research on the villages, I said, I wonder if they have a master swim program. So I'm a research nut, I typed it in and sure enough, they did have a program. I reached out immediately to the president at that time, who was pretty much ending his presidency. And I said, hey, look, I'm a U.S. master swim coach, a triathlon coach. I had all my credentials. I'm just looking to get involved with the swim team. And within an hour, he came back and said, hey, we're looking for a head coach. So we scheduled while we were down here, some dinner with that president, the new president. And as I said, the rest is history. I came here to retire, but I am now the head coach of the master program here. We have about 90, 95 swimmers on the team, ranging age from 55 all the way up in their mid 80s. And what kind of resources did you bring to the program in the way of coaching and philosophy? I've been at it for 25 years. And again, my technical background, being a technique coach, and I was directed, there's a lot of people who are swim coaches, but I was directed to go into and really become a really heavy on the technique aspect of it. I wrote a book on the topic for triathlete a few years ago, and it's still selling. Tell our listeners what the name of the book is, right? The name of the book is The 5B Method to a Successful Triathlon Swim. A long title, of course, but there were five B's that I used in regards to as a foundation to learn how to swim, balance, buoyancy, breathing, biome, bio, and belief is a really a big one because I get a lot of adult swimmers say, I don't know if I can learn to swim in my shoulder and my knee, and I haven't been in the water in a long time. And my job is also to be not only their swim coach, but their biggest cheerleader, build confidence for them because once I can get them to do some of those more technical aspects of floating and breathing, the rest becomes history. They're all of a sudden, they're off and doing laps. Are they going to swim on the English Channel? Probably not, but can they go to a pool here in the villages or home when they go back home in the snowbirds and get a good workout and something you can do, as we said, a bunch of our athletes are well over 75 into their 80s, you can still work out virtually every day doing it. Yeah. Swimming is one of the best exercises. Love it. Yeah. Good. Frank, let's take a break here and listen to a Alzheimer's tip from Dr. Curtis. Dr. Curtis, should people who want to reduce their risk of Alzheimer's and improve their brain health take something like Centrum Silver, which is advertised as a brain supplement? Well, another great question, Mike. So in a study published last year, they actually showed that people that took a multivitamin such as Centrum Silver actually did slightly better on memory tests. And this was a double-blind placebo-controlled study sponsored by the Alzheimer's Association. However, the Alzheimer's Association has come out and said, we still don't have enough information to recommend a daily multivitamin. There was a study that showed no effect of a daily multivitamin a few years back that was also a double-blind placebo-controlled study. So we do have conflicting evidence on whether or not you should take a daily multivitamin. So the question is, take a multivitamin if you have an unhealthy diet. If you have a healthy diet, get your vitamins from natural foods. Couldn't have said it better myself. Much like Curtis. Thank you for having me, Mike. Good. With over 20 years of experience studying brain health, Dr. Curtis' goal is to educate the Village's community on how to live a longer, healthier life. To learn more, visit his website, CraigCurtisMD.com or call 352-500-5252 to attend a free seminar. Frank, we were talking before the break about your book, The 5B Method to Successful Triathlon Swimming. If someone was interested in getting a copy of that book, how would they do it? Simply go to Amazon and type in the title and it will come up. How long ago did you publish the book? Probably about two and a half, three years ago. For what it's worth, my wife called me into her office this morning and she said, your book sold this month and sometimes it'll dribble in a few dollars here, a few dollars there. And I'm going, how many books did I have to sell to make as much as we did this month? To me, it's humbling and it's an honor that people are reading my book to get help. And I do get emails from people, hey, I bought your book, I've got some follow-up questions. And I'm more than happy to support them in any way I can. So how many copies of the book have been sold so far, roughly? Oh, I have really no clue. Yeah. So was the book self-published or is it? Self-published, yeah. Okay, that's a good success story. Yeah. We have a couple of really nice writer's clubs here in the village. I'm a part of one of them and I will tell you, self-publishing was a great experience. Hindsight, I made a lot of mistakes, but that's how you learn, make mistakes and just don't hesitate. Tell somebody you want to get in the water, get in the water. Don't worry about it. Just get in the water. And if you can swim a handful lap, that's better than what you did yesterday and we can start to build you. So hopefully I'm a product of my own advice that I give is that I'm not afraid to jump in feet first and make mistakes, look foolish and learn from those mistakes and move forward again. Good. So did you convert the book to an audio book yet? Not yet. And that's something that it needs to be done. Yes, indeed. I'm aware of that and you're maybe the fourth or fifth person who suggested that to me. So I need to take that under advisement, of course. Books that are written without pictures in them and without large tables convert very well, especially if it's a single person speaking. If you have six, seven or eight characters, they can convert very well too, but they're much more expensive to convert. Instead of using one actor, you got to use three or four. I got you. That's the easiest way to convert your book since it's a first person memoir. Let's just use an AI voice on it. We can knock it out for 400 bucks, it's a done deal. So how did you start this career as a swim coach and how'd you get there? In my early career, many years ago, I was director of engineering at a hospital at Riverview Medical Center in New Jersey. And life has a funny way of throwing curveballs. This was a good curveball. And the medical center merged with a big health facility and it was going to be clear that I was going to be on the outside looking in. There were other highly qualified candidates who were going to oversee the three hospital system. And I left and I would like to say for a couple of years, I meandered around from job to job and then really realized that I should become a teacher early and ignored it. So I became a teacher. And I taught for a few years, coached high school swimming, taught at Red Bank Catholic for a couple of years. And the rest is history, I'd say. I started getting into swimming. I started to volunteer at a local Y and just fell in love with the process. So I went after my passion. Frank, can you tell our listeners why you decided to write a book? A whole lot of years ago, I enjoyed writing and walked away from it. I enjoyed writing poetry. My father enjoyed writing. I found some of his writings. I just started writing one time. And then I said, let me write a book about this, about the topic. I just believe that there's a lot of great information out there for swimmers. What I wanted to do is break it down to the most basic, easiest way to get somebody from point A to point B successfully. Many people don't have time to read about the history of swimming. They don't necessarily want to know the necessary, the physical aspects of it. They just want to get into water. And how do I become better at this? Because we'd hear that over and over again. So I just simply took that and put it to paper. And I enjoyed the process. It was probably the most satisfying thing I've ever accomplished in my life. Yes, with my wife getting married and my children, but writing that book and holding the finished product at the end of it when it came in through the mail was absolutely exhilarating in so many respects. How many pages are there in the book? Oh, it's about 75, 80 page book. Oh, that's good. Yeah. And that's where, again, I wanted to make sure that each chapter of the five Bs was deliberately bringing up the points that I need to make without, you know, a sense of loggeria just throwing up over myself. But it was a very natural book for me to write because of my passion for the sport and for swimming and for the ability to help people succeed in that arena. Frankly, you're working on another book. I am. I'm working on a book right now. And it's really, it's a book. It's hard one to explain. It's more of a self-help book. And a lot of things that I've experienced over the years, ironically enough, every chapter of the book right now starts with the letter S, self-help, scare, scarcity. And I write a brief piece on it with a couple of questions for the individual. And I've shared it with some people and they said, you've got, you're on to something here. And I probably right now have over, quite honestly, over 200 chapters for this book. Not that I'm going to use all of them, but each one, again, starts with the letter S. And it came to me one time when somebody told me, a mentor told me, he said, Frank, it's time to draw a line in the sand. I said, what does that mean? A line in the sand can mean a couple of things. Sure, sure. Either it's time to stay back, I have to draw this line, I can no longer live my life this way, or I can no longer live my life this way. And it's time now to take that step forward, to change, right? Change is very difficult for most human beings. It certainly is. And that is the whole premise of the book. And I'm writing it from the perspective like Marcus Aurelius wrote meditations. It's just me sharing my thoughts. And at some point, if one or two people pick this book up and get some value out of it, you could die a happy man. So this is going to be a self-help book. It's going to be a self-help book. With 200 S-word chapters, it sounds like it'll be a long book. It's going to be narrowed down, of course. But I do plan on starting a podcast around it. So once a week, I would get on and talk about scarcity. I've heard so many people recently say, I don't have the resources for this, I don't have the resources for that, I don't have the time for this, I don't have the money for that. And that's a scarcity mindset. So the other mindset would be a growth mindset would say, despite the fact that I don't have the money for this, I'm going to find a way to make it happen. I've always had an abundance mentality and said, there's always a way, whether it was buying my first car, I just found a way to come up with the money to do it. And worked for several start-up companies and no one had heard of their products before. And I had an abundance mentality and, gee, it was a very good mentality to start with. That there's always the resources out there, it was my job to find them and apply them. And I wish, Mike, I could say the same, this was something that came to me later in life because I did have, early on, a rather negative perspective of life, almost a victim mentality. I'm not embarrassed to say that, but at a certain point, I had to draw my line in the sand and say, if I do not change, nothing's going to change. And I remember specifically one afternoon, just hanging around on the couch, about 2.30 in the afternoon, call it what you want, a divine voice or just that good old kick in the butt, and I literally said, it's time, I gotta get off this couch, I have to do something. And I have not been the same person ever since. Since then, I have changed in so many different ways and each and every day, I've challenged myself. I journal every day, I have a certain amount of things I need to get done every day, I read 10 pages out of a book every day, I do my meditation every day, but those were the things that were necessary. So... It was necessary for you to get to the level that you needed to get to. Absolutely. Tell us a little bit about what your passions are since moving here to The Villages. Yeah. Passions, again, I'm involved with the VAST program, as I mentioned to you, and I'm now also involved with the high school swim program here at The Villages, and I'm going to be developing their club swim program and youth program. So that's a passion for me. I love to see young people excel and I feel like right now, at this point in my life, it's something I still need to do because it's, again, it's a passion of me. I haven't gone to work in 25 years. I go to coach and I sit and do Zoom calls and I'm writing my emails to athletes or writing a blog. It's something that I've ordered working on my book earlier this morning. I challenge myself. Every morning I get up and I've got to write a certain amount of words every single day. You sound like you're a very motivated guy. Michael, you know what it is? It's more, I am motivated, but there are days where motivation, I can't depend on my motivation. I have to go back to my self-discipline saying, I don't want to write this. I don't want to read this. I don't want to go swim today. Despite that, just say, my little voice says, just shut up and go do it. Right? I even have a chapter in the book, shut up and go do it. Right? It comes off harsh, but sometimes says, if anybody knows, our listening audience, those who David Goggins is a ex Navy SEAL, who is a no nonsense, does not hold back on his language and or on the message. It's like you look yourself in the mirror and just call yourself out and saying, I have to change this, whatever that this may be for you. And I've learned to take on that perspective. I can tell you a portion of what living in his villages has been for me. I played pickleball the other day, which is now becoming a passion of mine with a woman named Karen, never met her before. And we sat down in between games and she said to me, I'm living my best life right now. She told me a little bit about her background working and you know, just the demands of family and working. And I can say to you, my wife, Laura and I have 45 years, we're living our best life right now. And that's the message that I think has to get out about the villages, that people are living their best lives. Okay. And it may not be true for everyone, but there are a lot of people that I come into contact with in various areas. That's exactly the truth. And you brought up something just a moment ago, right? If I'm taking on a growth mindset, a positive mindset, I don't care where you live. You could find something wrong, negative. It just doesn't sit well with you. I choose to look at all the positive things. It's a beautiful day, but it's raining. It's still a beautiful day. It's not snowing. It's not snowing. So what I tell people is, yeah, there are some things, but I choose to stay focused on the positive aspects of what this life in the villages is all about. And as I said, I drove my golf cart all the way down from the North end of the village to be here. And I'm meandering at a bombing 20, 21 miles an hour. And I'm just looking and going, Oh my God, this place is so cool. It is. It's spotless. There wasn't a gum wrapper on the ground. I just choose anymore to look at what's going, not what's not going well. And that to me, we talked about drawing a line in the sand. Okay. That was one of the things that in early 2017, I drew a line in the sand. I said to my wife, we're not going to spend another winter in Cincinnati. It's over. Don't know where we're going to go yet, but I was mentally out of there. There you go. That's the line in the sand. And in my book, the reference to the line in the sand is made often. We draw lines in the sand virtually every day. We have to make decisions. I go out and do that mile walk that I promised myself I would do, or do I don't do the walk? Do I read the 10 pages like I promised myself I would do, or I don't read the 10 pages. That's where the discipline comes in. Motivation is one thing. I can get up and feel, Oh my God, I got this day. I'm going to crush it. How about the days you don't feel motivated? That's where discipline comes in. And you have to go back to what I like to use the word, one of the syllabus use is prudence. The ability to discipline and govern oneself by the use of reason. Here's the reason why I need to do this. Here's the reason why I need to do that. Here's the reason why I should not do this anymore. I do lean on stoicism a lot because I believe in the virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance, courage, wisdom. I literally will recite them virtually every morning to myself as I sit at in the one eye. And that's how I start my day. I started using customer relationship management software and had a calendar and I use one today too. It forces me to do the things that I know I should do. And I can schedule things a year or more in advance and feel just fine about them. And those are days where I'm not going to get out and swim or walk a mile, but you know about it in advance. And that's okay. It's okay. You got to give yourself a little bit of flexibility to move in and out of it. But for the most part, we all know when we're, when we need to make sure we get done what we need to do. And I understand that with all that. It's interesting just to follow up on living here in the villages. My wife and I are busier now than we've ever been in our lives with activities. The Richmond Academy, I'm taking multiple courses at one time because I'm just a lifetime learner. So the more I learned, I can stimulate the brain. I'm keeping those neurons flowing. That's what it's all about. So for me, this has been a transition and I know I can speak for my wife. This has been a transition for both of us of the most positive and successful decision we ever made in regards to where we look, everywhere you move, it's a good decision at that time. But it was time for us to get out of Arizona. Sure. Sure. We were there for about 18 years and I was ready to move out of there 17 years ago. Coming up at the Richmond Academy, since you brought it out in the fall, I'm going to be teaching a two-session AI course on what AI is, how to use it, and we'll talk about at least five of the 168 different AIs that are out there and how you use them to make your life better. Very cool. Good. Now, Frank, if someone wanted to get a hold of you after hearing this podcast, how would they do that? You can literally reach out through the VAST website, go right to the website, VAST Swimming. V-A-S-T. Yep, Swimming. Yep. That's it. Dot com. Yeah. You type that in and it takes you right there. And I do not have a website anymore. I've gotten to a point where I don't need a website. Actually, I don't want a website. I was getting too many inquiries and I'm to the point now where I've chosen specifically on who I work with and when I work with them. It doesn't mean that I'm not interested in talking to people and helping them. You go to my Instagram account, which is Trisol, T-R-I-S-O-L-I, and you can always reach me through that website there or through that Instagram account. Frank, thanks for joining us today on Open Forum in The Villages, Florida. And I really appreciate you being on. Mike, it was real fun and I enjoyed every bit of this conversation. Thank you very much. Good. Appreciate it. Remember, our next episode will be released next Friday at 9 a.m. Should you want to become a major supporter of the show or have questions, please contact us at mikeatrothvoice.com. This is a shout out for supporters Tweet Coleman, Ed Williams, Paul Sorgin, and major supporter Dr. Craig Curtis at K2 in The Villages. We will be hearing more from Dr. Curtis with short Alzheimer's tips each week. If you know someone who should be on the show, contact us at mikeatrothvoice.com. We thank everyone for listening to the show. 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