SWIM CHI
Swim Chi has been founded and developed by Mark Guest. Through his own experience as a later life swimmer, Mark became aware of a disconnect between traditional ways of teaching swimming, and the needs of later life learners. He saw that traditional ways had been developed primarily for childhood swimmers. Even swimming coaches specialising in later life swimmers were often using mainly traditional methods. They had also tended to have learnt to swim themselves in childhood, resulting in a lack of empathy with what later life swimmers were feeling, and creating an experiential gap.
Swim Chi addresses these issues. Later life swimmers have picked up many ingrained habits, both of body and mind, some from being in the water and some just from general life. These habits need to be undone, as well as new ones learnt. This affects the training that is required, and how the student will respond. The later life swimmer is no longer a blank canvas.
THE FOUNDER OF SWIM CHI
Mark considers himself to be a later life swimmer, having only learnt to swim crawl around the age of forty. Prior to that he was confident in the water, but was mainly a breast stroke swimmer. Mark’s increased passion for swimming resulted from meeting and being inspired by swimmers at his local pool who would pound out sixty four lengths of crawl, the swimmer’s mile, every session. Mark’s initial spluttering attempts to manage even a length of crawl were the start of a journey that within two years, resulted in him swimming a faster mile than the swimmers who had inspired him. More importantly though, crawl became his stroke of choice, which he could enjoy swimming for extended periods.
Mark continued to progress, completing 5k pool swims, 9k outdoor swims, and moving onto wild and outdoor swimming, completing challenges such as crossing the river at the Humber bridge. This inevitably led him to ice swimming, achieving an ice mile at his first attempt in 2017, and in 2019, winning 500m bronze as a representative of Team GB at the World Ice Swimming Championships in Murmansk, Russia.
During this time, Mark met numerous other later life swimmers, assisting them whenever he could. Many had received coaching, but were struggling. It was Mark’s ability to empathise with what they were feeling, having recently experienced the same, that initially resonated.
Around the same time, Mark had taken up Tai Chi, immersing himself in the practice and rapidly becoming an instructor in the Kai Ming School. Based on this, he was able to develop techniques and exercises that enabled the swimmers he helped to improve further. Kai Ming practises Cheng Man Ching style Tai Chi, which is based on Yang style Tai Chi, one of the most popular in the world. It is therefore Swim Chi’s main influence.
Mark saw that his swimming training methods and Tai Chi were closely related and complementary, and over the next few years, began the process of documenting, testing and improving his approach. He has now refined and formalised this to the point that Swim Chi can be shared with and learnt by anyone, to improve their swimming and gain the benefits of Tai Chi.