Guest Editorial: The Pool as a Place of Peace
By Jordan Fargo
Every August, I can’t help but remember all of the times my dad would wake up nice and early to drive me to Sunday morning swim practice for my club team. He’d make me a piece of toast, butter it, and leave it on the kitchen counter with a bottle of water. He’d be waiting in the car before I even got out of bed.
Then I remember the last conversation I had with him a few days before he passed away in August of 2019. He cried and apologized for not being a good father, but I only ever saw him as the best.
After he passed and I was left to pick up the pieces of myself, I had to ask myself: how do I recover from this? I knew what I had to do. A few days later, I was back in the pool, back on the grind.
For many, exercise is an escape from reality and the discomfort that comes from the outside world. It’s a place where we can, ideally, put our thoughts aside for a bit and burn off some steam. We can focus solely on our bodies and the movements we’re doing, rather than dwelling endlessly on things out of our control.
I knew that dwelling and blaming myself for something I couldn’t control was the last thing I needed to do.
I needed to have an outlet to properly process what I was feeling and thinking. I didn’t want to just push the grief, the confusion, the anger aside for an hour or two in the gym or pool, and then get hit by them twice as hard after my workout.
No, I needed a place of peace where I could both feel the burn physically, and heal myself mentally. Swimming was the one place where the world around me wasn’t too loud, too fast, too overbearing.
The only sounds were my arms and legs pulling and kicking, and the water around me splashing. The only smell was the chlorine that was occasionally too strong. This grounded me in a place that felt familiar and safe, yet also engaging enough to keep my mind from spiraling out of control with negative thoughts.
It’s likely that many of you out there have felt something similar when you’ve hopped in the pool. One study shows that swimming is proven to reduce negative emotional states and lower stress, anxiety, and even depression in some cases.
Of course, this may not work for everyone, especially in extreme cases like a death in the family. Yet for a large group of individuals, even in those horrible situations, the pool is a much-needed source of comfort.
I often think back to a swim meet up at M.I.T. that my dad came to. Usually it was just my mom who would drive me everywhere and cheer me on, but this was a special meet, so my dad decided to tag along.
He had absolutely no idea what was going on. He didn’t know how many laps were in a 200, or what a “heat” was, or why so many swimmers were yelling and smacking their bodies.
However, he knew how much swimming meant to me, and how I always swam the 100 and 200 back. He knew the guys that I wanted to beat. He knew that I wanted to make NCSAs, Senior Zones, and every top cut time imaginable.
He’d listen whenever I told him about my practices or gave him a recap of my meet performance. He gave me comfort when I should’ve felt anxious. He gave me confidence when I usually felt self-conscious about my height, my weight, my technique compared to the boys around me. He gave me hope, even when I felt a practice was too hard, or if a cut time seemed impossible to achieve.
Those moments where I could look back on his silent support were what got me through a dark, dark time in my life. Instead of remembering the pain of my dad being gone every time I hopped in the water, I instead remembered how much he cheered me on, and how he’s still cheering me on, even if he’s gone. He was my number one fan.
That support gave me strength. It gave me peace. It gave me a reason to keep going. It helped me see the pool as an opportunity to honor my father and his wishes for me to be a top-level swimmer. I was able to properly acknowledge my feelings and better care for my mind.
So many swimmers today, especially those on competitive club teams, are taught to just “suck it up” and swim. Whether it’s overbearing parents, tough swim coaches, or pressure from teammates, too many swimmers don’t focus enough on their mental states. They focus much more on the physical side of things.
This pressure from others, combined with hardship or other internal struggles that outsiders can’t see, can quickly cause burnout. I’ve seen dozens of friends, some of the most talented swimmers I’ve ever seen, lose their love for the pool.
Rather than seeing the pool as a place of peace and focus, they see it as a place of stress and frustration. They can’t use the pool as an outlet to heal, to think, to regroup.
My biggest hope is that future swimmers, parents, and coaches better understand the mental health benefits that swimming provides. People deal with pain in their own way, and a majority of swimmers rely on the pool to re-establish themselves.
To anyone out there going through hardship right now, ask yourself this: what does the pool mean to me right now? How will I feel after I get in a good swim?
If you can’t find the answers, just hop in and go. More likely than not, you’ll be able to let go for just a moment, and take those first few strokes towards peace.
Jordan Fargo is a committed U.S. Masters assistant swim coach with nearly 20 years of competitive swimming experience who strives to educate others on the role of mental health in the sport.
