Introducing Physical Capital: Swimming
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If you have listened to our previous episodes of Human Resources, In The Ring, you'd have heard me mention our sibling series, Physical Capital. We're sharing the first episode of the new series here. I hope you enjoy it, and if you do, just search Physical Capital in your favourite podcast app now. Season 2 is available for free to everyone. Happy listening! This is Swimming by Sarah Arvio. Our relation to you is the same as that between abstraction and metaphor.

between the idea of a clear lake and the sighting of the lake to describe the clear idea, one said with a laugh. "Oh," I said then, "what a fine idea. And now what lake will embody its fact? And this? Aren't we tired of comparisons to the natural world? Then this? And what world isn't natural? Only the world of the mind is unnatural. And this? It defies nature and defines nature and won't be defined, the life of the mind.

But it's death, one punned. Perish the thought in the deep. All these questions sink away. And only the swimming matters. Water sliding around the head and heart and hip. Arms cresting and curving. With, not against. Carried along on the roll and the rush. A good swimmer knows water won't resist. Swift or even slow. But yes, effortless. Are these words merely pretty? No, my dear.

Water is the principle of pleasure and of pain, the receiver of the touch. For the cells and tissues are water bound. With a splash of a smile one turned to me. What bodies do we choose? A glacial lake. I'm Rebecca Acheng, a Julia Bushell, and I was the first black woman to swim for Great Britain. I'm a former British champion and world number one, but I quit the sport just before the 2012 Olympic Games at just 17.

I'll be navigating you through the waters of my swimming world, as I remember it and as it exists now. In hosting this series, I'll also tell you more about my story whilst we explore a question I've often been asked: Why do we swim? Welcome to Physical Capital, a series centered around the human relationship with swimming. What draws us to it? How do we use it? What do we gain from it? And what can it take from us? We'll be looking at swimming from multiple angles to help paint a complete picture of the sport.

We're going to be exploring swimming through the prism of physical capital, discussing the physical attributes that can give you an advantage in the water and how they've been used to achieve greatness, but also how they can be affected and influenced by politics, geography, and the unequal distribution of resources. But most importantly, we'll be speaking to swimmers.

From those that push themselves to their limits in the swimming pool and in open water, to those that swim for fun and for pleasure, and those who document its history. To me, it feels like the closest thing to being a superhero. I feel like Superman. I feel like limitless. Pushing off the wall is the closest thing to flying. It feels like a dream.

You know when you dream something and it's just so sweet and like perfect to the point where in your dream you're like, "Am I dreaming?" That's what swimming feels like to me. It always has.

Swimming makes me feel strong. It makes me feel empowered. It makes me feel like I have achieved. And with every single stroke that I do and that every hand that I put in the water and every time I pull and every time I feel that drag, I feel propelled at the same time. It is the most beautiful thing.

It just feels natural to me. It feels like where I'm meant to be. Sometimes it feels terrifying, other times it feels relaxing, sometimes it feels like hell. Comfort in discomfort, like you said. But first, why don't we start with the story of why I swam? I don't really remember how I first got in the pool, but I do remember being really scared of the water when I was younger.

I used to have a rubber ring and armbands and I would go in and I'd have to have my mother hold me. Neither of my parents could swim very well. I think my mum taught my dad to swim at university when he was teaching there. He was in his 40s and he still couldn't swim, which is common among the Black community and among other Black and Brown communities as well. But then less common because my dad is from Kenya, from a tribe on the shore of Lake Victoria, so he grew up by the water.

My tribe is also a tribe of fishermen, so it's ironic that he couldn't swim at all, but probably less ironic that I was scared of the water because of it. My mum did a lot of athletics and my dad played hockey nationally and internationally, and so sport, I think, was always in my blood. My parents always say that I have these perfect genes. I think my mum was quite proud of that, and she was proud of the fact that I was strong and naturally athletic for my first moments.

So eventually when I stopped being scared of the water, I think I was about three or four, and we'd already moved out to Kenya. I learned to swim in Lake Victoria, and that was quite a nice full circle moment, learning to swim in the waters on the shore of where my father was born. As soon as I felt at home in the water, I loved it, and I'd swim all day. I would stay in the water for eight hours until my fingers were all pruned. And finally, I did my first competition when I was six years old.

I've always loved the water. It feels easier than walking. And what happens next is a wild journey to the heart of swimming, not unlike this podcast. But more of my story as we progress through the series. For now, let's begin with the basics. Why do we swim? We swim for all of the reasons, you know, survival, well-being, community, competition, flow. I mean, I answered everything.

That's Bonnie Soy, author of Why We Swim.

Her book takes a look at swimming from so many different angles, ultimately aiming to answer the question, why do we as humans swim? We don't live in the water. So what draws us to it? So I think we are drawn to it because as living beings, we need the water, evolutionarily speaking. But I also think in more modern life that we respond to it because it is...

essential to us, to our bodies, but also because it is something that now our brains respond to as well. And I think that if you go too long without spending time by it, even if you are not getting into it, I mean, I write about this in Why We Swim, but just the science of how our brains respond to

the natural environment and specifically to water itself, it's so beneficial to us. I mean, our brain activity changes, you know, when we are

around water, seeing it, listening to it, immersed in it. It was so interesting to me to learn that the alpha wave activity in our brains, you know, which is associated with creativity and calm and relaxation. Of course it is. Of course it is. But we didn't know that until we stopped to parse that out and do all of the required experiments to give us that data. But we knew that, you know, we knew that to be true for a long time.

And I think it is evolutionarily based, but also now there is a sense of, you know, we draw a sense of well-being from being around the water that is so essential to existing in modern life. You know, that is so it is a quite a constructive concept.

life and existence we have. And when we return to green spaces, blue spaces, we feel better. You know, we feel more connected. And, you know, something that I have talked about and written about a lot is this sense of awe and wonder that is so essential to health. To try and get to the root of why we swim, let's take it right back.

That's kind of an impossible question to answer, but I know you have to ask it. I can answer it by saying we know some of the earliest human records of swimming and some of these are cave paintings that date back

you know, as far as 10,000 years. But that is not, you know, the funny thing about water is that you can't, doesn't really leave the same traces as imprints on land do. But, you know, we have...

these records of cave paintings and the cave of swimmers, you know, but also like archaeological evidence of civilizations, groups of people who lived by the water, you know, in the Sahara when the Sahara was green. And so we have evidence of lake beds having dried up with, you know, harpoons in the middle and fish hooks in the middle and all that and piles of shellfish,

middens, you know, it's just cool stuff. And so we have a certain picture of peoples living and swimming by water for many, many thousands of years. But we can also kind of extrapolate out from that, right, to know that that went back much further. So, it seems we were swimming for necessity as far back as 10,000 years ago. Of course, it starts with basic needs.

My effort to answer the question of why we swim is

shaped by these, you know, the kind of like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? Like survival, of course, you know, we swim first to survive the water. And then once you do, you can swim for a sense of health and well-being and, you know, community or groups of people, the tribes that who you collect with to experience the water in ways that are meaningful. I think competition is something that

developed because, you know, as tests, right? And I think militarily for military martial arts reasons, you know, over the history of civilizations that water skills and swimming skills were important in battle, right? In war and was taught as such. But

You kind of remove that and you create competition as a way to kind of go back to the sense of like testing yourself without the matter of it being life and death. Right. But there is this thrill that we get from that. And swimming is one of those ways of getting close to that thrill. Yeah.

And then more abstractly, but actually no less important, I think, is the sense of flow where we now do it for mental as well as physical health. And so I think this is like an arc of time, but also those different reasons kind of flow into each other. Some of the points Bonnie mentions really resonate with me. I started swimming because I felt at home in the water.

But as I became more competitive and started doing competitions, I realized it was a way of focusing my mind, of feeling as close as possible to my limits. And competition incites that thrill of being alive or feeling like you're at the edge of the world. And it's also solitary. It's a completely unique and almost indulgent experience.

And it makes complete sense to me that we started competing. I think competitive sport, you know, without all of the politics and the sporting bodies surrounding it, it's inherently pointless. And there's a beauty to that, especially with something like swimming. You swim as fast as you can down a lane and a clock runs down and you see how quickly you can get to the other side.

Throughout the process of making this podcast, I keep coming back to that question. Why did swimming become a sport? Or more importantly, when did swimming become a sport? I think we could probably think about it as being traced back to the modern Olympics, right? I mean, for many,

Most of the competitive sport that we see as iconic now and seems like it's part of the fabric of our culture for a long time, how we think about it is, you know, international competition in the Olympics was something, the modern Olympics especially, is something that has shaped globally, right, our perception of what competition is and certainly with swimming.

And, you know, those first races in Olympic competition were outside and they were at the Port of Piraeus and they were like weird lengths, weird distances. And people were shocked at the cold of the water. And, you know, it was it did feel a little bit like survival because they asked some of the competitors in that first modern Olympics, you know, how did it feel? And they're just and I think one of the competitors said something like that, that they thought they were going to die at some point of the race. Yeah.

Because the shock of the water was unexpected. It was like spring in Greece. You know, I mean, it is just so fun. It's such funny sensory details of like what. And so that kind of is harks back to this idea of like life and death in this funny way. I think certainly international competition is,

you know, in pools. I mean, that kind of, kind of evolved from there. Like, how are you going to judge who is the best swimmer? It's like speed, but also distance. And, you know, and also the kind of stroke, what's the best stroke to do. And like, how do you break out to different strokes? And that was kind of evolved from there. But freestyle, you know, first was like, I mean, you do, you do it in whatever stroke you want, like the freestyle. And,

And then eventually, you know, the crawl becomes the front crawl becomes the fastest shakes out that way. But it is also funny to think about, like when Matthew Webb first swam the English Channel, he swam breaststroke, I think. It's like, well, you know, was that was that the fastest? Probably not. But that was what it was, you know, being done at the time. I mean, it's just so, so fascinating. That is fascinating.

As a modern athlete, a lot of the hard work has already been done for you. The science behind the technique, the physics behind each movement. It is incredible to think about how each stroke developed over time. Next on the podcast, we'll be diving deeper into swimming and exploring the past, present and future of the sport to better understand what it takes to become a competitive athlete. Like when I touched the wall in 2016 and I missed it and got third place,

I got out of that pool at trials and there were people crying and they gave me a standing ovation. And people were like, what you have done for the sport, no one else has ever done. And to see people literally crying, it was touching in a way that I can't even explain. That I was able to have 12,000 people standing on their feet to get, as soon as I got out, to start clapping. And I thought at that moment I was whole.

but I didn't feel done yet.