The Form Fix Project: From Not Drowning to Actually Swimming
I learned to swim at 47. Now, more than a decade later, I'm trying to learn how to swim all over again.
It Started With a Feeling
In 2012, I was standing on Old Orchard Beach in Maine, filming a documentary about runners who had lost 100 pounds or more through running. One of our subjects was a triathlete.
As the sun rose over the Atlantic, I watched hundreds of swimmers dolphin dive into the ocean. And something happened in my chest. You know the expression "eat your heart out"? I'd never really understood it until that moment. It was an actual physical ache, a longing for something I couldn't quite explain.
I wanted to do that. So I went home and registered for a triathlon. There was just one small problem.
I didn't know how to swim.
Well, I thought I knew how to swim. As it turned out, I knew how to not drown. There is a difference.
My first event was the I-TRYathlon in Irvine. A 200 meter pool swim, a 10 mile bike ride, and a 3 mile run. Fortunately, the swim took place in a four lane pool that was only four feet deep. I could stand up to breathe, which I did. In the middle of a 25 meter length.
For the bike portion, I rode my steel Gary Fisher bicycle, complete with a collapsible grocery basket attached to the side. I swam in my bathing suit, pulled on a pair of leggings for the bike and run, and off I went. I was not exactly a vision of aerodynamic efficiency.
But I finished, and I was exhilarated. Naturally, I signed up for an Olympic distance triathlon next. Apparently, my response to discovering I didn't know what I was doing was to sign up for something harder.
A D+ Student Discovers the Ocean
I had set myself a goal of completing a half Ironman for my 50th birthday. That meant I actually needed to learn how to swim. In the fall of 2012, I began learning to swim in open water.
Academically, I've always done pretty well for myself. But swimming? I was a D+ student at best. I could study technique, listen to instructions, and understand perfectly well what a coach was telling me. Then I'd get into the water, and my body would apparently decide to do something entirely different.
And then there were the waves. It took me five years to get over my fear of ocean waves. Five years of showing up, trying again, occasionally panicking, and wondering why on earth I'd chosen a sport that required willingly putting my face into moving water.
I eventually became a pretty accomplished triathlete. But even after years of racing, swimming was something I survived rather than something I was particularly good at.
Then COVID happened.
With gyms closed and hospitals overwhelmed, cycling on Los Angeles streets suddenly seemed like an unnecessary risk. I didn't want a bike accident landing me in an emergency room. But the ocean was still there.
I began driving to the South Bay almost daily to meet friends from my One With the Ocean group. We'd spread our belongings six feet apart on the beach and head into the water. With no traffic, the drive was easy. And once we were swimming, the world felt almost normal.
Somewhere along the way, the ocean stopped being something I was afraid of and became the place I most wanted to be. And that's when I started getting ideas.
How Far Could I Go?
I'd been supporting my friend Ajae as she trained to swim the Catalina Channel, mostly from a kayak, where I was perfectly happy to cheer her on while remaining safely above the water. Swimming 20 miles across the ocean seemed a little crazy, but perhaps I could swim farther than I thought.
One morning, after our OWO session at Corona del Mar, I skipped our traditional post swim breakfast and stayed in the protected swim area. I went around and around the swim buoys until I'd completed my first 5K.
Then I began joining Ajae for longer swims instead of just kayaking alongside her. On a trip to Catalina Island, we swam to Doctor's Cove and back, nearly seven miles. The day after Thanksgiving, Ajae invited me to swim around Coronado Island in San Diego. Knowing I wasn't nearly as trained or as fast as she was, I strapped on my fins. We spent six hours swimming around the island.
It was bliss. And I began to wonder if I could actually swim a channel.
The 20 Hour Reality Check
By this time, I'd met Sidney Russell. In 2021, I'd driven to San Diego to kayak for her eight hour training swim as she prepared for her first Catalina Channel crossing. She was volunteering with One With the Ocean, and I wanted to return the favor.
When Sidney heard I was considering swimming from Anacapa Island to Oxnard across the Santa Barbara Channel, she offered to help me prepare. I was thrilled, but intimidated. I didn't consider myself a marathon swimmer, wasn't a paying client, and didn't want to take advantage of her generosity.
She gave me a training plan with distance benchmarks and encouraged me to start doing structured pool workouts.
I thanked her. And largely ignored the pool part.
Hot water, chlorine, black lines on the bottom. Yuck. Why would I swim in a pool when I was training for the ocean? I knew almost nothing about structured swim training, which, in hindsight, should probably have been my first clue.
In April 2023, I completed a swim around Coronado Island without fins as preparation for Anacapa. Then came July, and my Anacapa crossing took nearly eleven and a half hours.
I'd always known I was slow. My triathlon results had made that clear. But I loved that marathon swimming wasn't a race. It was just Mother Nature and me.
Except Mother Nature doesn't care how long you're out there. Your support crew might. When I did the math, I realized a Catalina crossing at my pace could take 20 hours.
Twenty. Hours.
That's a long time to swim. And an even longer time to ask other people to watch you do it.
My neck and shoulders were also in considerable pain after Anacapa. I'd made it across the channel, but I wasn't exactly a picture of swimming efficiency.
Maybe learning to swim as an adult meant I'd never develop the easy, efficient stroke I saw in other swimmers. And surprisingly, I was okay with that. I loved the ocean, my friends, and the adventure. I didn't need another channel crossing to prove anything.
But there was one thing I couldn't stop doing. Watching other people swim.
The View From a Kayak
Every summer, I spend countless hours supporting Catalina Channel crossings. Sometimes I'm an observer, sometimes I'm crew, but most often I'm in a kayak right next to the swimmer.
From that vantage point, you see fascinating things. Some swimmers look effortless. Others appear to work twice as hard to move at half the speed. I started studying their strokes. Hand entry, body rotation, breathing, rhythm. Why did some seem to glide while others, including me, appeared to be fighting the water?
Meanwhile, Sidney and I had become close friends, and our conversations increasingly turned toward swimming technique. Sidney has been swimming since childhood. She's an extraordinarily intuitive coach, and there are things about swimming that seem completely obvious to her.
They are not obvious to me.
To this day, she'll explain something she assumes everyone knows, and I'll look at her like she's just revealed some ancient aquatic secret.
"Wait. What do you mean by that?"
She'll explain it another way, and I'll ask, "Okay, but how do you actually do that?"
I'm sure there are moments when she regrets encouraging my curiosity.
Eventually, I told her I was reconsidering Catalina. She was excited and eager to help. Together, we agreed that the first challenge wasn't distance. It was learning to move through the water differently.
I wanted to learn how to swim better before I learned how to swim farther.
Why Can't I Do This?
Sidney began giving me drills to correct problems with my stroke. We'd work together in San Diego. I'd return to Los Angeles, practice diligently, and come back excited to demonstrate my improvement.
"Look! I've got it!"
Sidney would watch. Well, yes, some things were improving. But I was still doing parts of the drills wrong.
How was that possible? I understood the instructions. I practiced. I genuinely believed I was doing what she asked. But what I thought my body was doing and what it was actually doing were two different things.
I began wondering whether weaknesses, muscular imbalances, or limited mobility were preventing me from performing the movements correctly. So I did what I always do when I don't understand something. I Googled it.
Unfortunately, I have a habit of entering research rabbit holes and emerging with professional certifications. I'd already done that with nutrition. This time, I enrolled in NASM personal training and corrective exercise courses.
There are probably cheaper ways to figure out why your arm does something weird when you swim.
The functional anatomy was fascinating, though. Suddenly, I understood which muscles were supposed to be doing what. Knowing their names, however, didn't automatically make them cooperate.
Which brought us right back to our original problem.
The Conversation That Changed Everything
When Sidney and I decided to join forces and build Swim Open Waters, we started talking constantly. I brought decades of business experience. Sidney brought her years of coaching and marathon swimming knowledge.
And the more we talked, the more we realized how large the gap could be between what a coach was trying to communicate and what a swimmer actually understood.
Sidney told me this was one of her biggest frustrations as a coach. Some athletes just wanted to be told what to do. She wanted them to understand why they were doing it and take ownership of their swimming.
She said something that stuck with me. The best reward a coach can have is to get fired someday because the swimmer no longer needs them.
And suddenly, something clicked.
What if we stopped approaching my stroke as a series of problems Sidney needed to fix? What if I learned to identify those problems myself?
After all, Sidney can watch me swim. She can tell me what she sees and explain what should be happening. But I'm the only one who can feel what my body is doing, how the water moves around me, and whether I'm gliding through it or fighting against it.
What if we could connect those two things? What I feel and what a coach sees. What I think I'm doing and what I'm actually doing. And what my body needs in order to close that gap.
That became the idea behind the Form Fix Project.
So, About That February Launch...
We originally announced that Form Fix would launch in February 2026.
That was optimistic. Very optimistic.
It turns out that developing a system to help people understand and correct their own swimming technique is considerably more complicated than putting together a library of drills.
Who knew? Well, Sidney probably knew.
We've already learned that understanding a correction doesn't mean you can perform it. Performing a drill doesn't mean you can incorporate it into your regular stroke. And even when you manage to make a change, there's no guarantee it will survive fatigue, speed, or hours in the ocean.
I've improved my strength. I've even managed to eliminate a rather spectacular chicken wing recovery. But have I made the dramatic improvements in efficiency I was hoping for?
Not yet.
Rather than pretending we've figured it all out, we've decided to turn the project into an experiment. And I'm going to be one of the guinea pigs.
We're bringing other adult swimmers into the process too, because the challenges we encounter aren't necessarily unique to me.
We'll use video, assessments, drills, strength and mobility work, and regular reassessments to investigate what's happening. We'll compare what we feel with what we see, focus on one or two corrections at a time, and see which changes actually stick.
We'll document the successes and the failures. Especially the failures, because I suspect those are where we're going to learn the most.
Eventually, we hope what we learn will become a useful program that other swimmers can follow. But first, we have to figure out what actually works.
Can an Old Dog Learn a New Stroke?
I'm now preparing for something I once decided wasn't worth attempting. The Catalina Channel. My goal is August 2027.
I know that with enough training, I could probably get across in under 20 hours. But that's not what I'm after.
I want to swim more efficiently. I want to stop wasting energy on movements that don't move me forward. I want to finish a long swim without the neck and shoulder pain I experienced after Anacapa. And maybe, just maybe, I'd like to get to the other side a little sooner.
Sidney rebuilt her own stroke after her first Catalina crossing left her with a painful shoulder injury. She had years of swimming experience and deeply ingrained habits, yet she found a way to change them.
Can I do the same? I don't know.
I learned to swim at 47. I've spent more than a decade reinforcing some less than ideal habits. And I am discovering that knowing how something works is very different from teaching your body to do it.
But I also know that at 47, I stood on a beach in Maine and wanted something I didn't know how to do.
So I learned.
Then I wanted to swim farther. So I did.
Now I want to swim better. And I'm going to see if I can figure out how.
Come Along for the Experiment
This blog series will follow the Form Fix Project as it unfolds. We'll share what we're learning, the techniques we're testing, the changes we're making, and the occasional spectacular failure.
There won't be any miracle transformations or promises that everyone can develop a perfect stroke in six weeks. Just real swimmers, real challenges, and a lot of curiosity about what our bodies are capable of learning.
If you're an adult who learned to swim later in life, or someone who has been swimming for years but knows there's room for improvement, I hope you'll follow along.
You can follow the series here on Swim Open Waters and on the Form Fix Project's Instagram account.
And please leave your questions and experiences in the comments. I'd especially love to hear from anyone who has ever watched a video of themselves swimming and thought, "Wait. That's what I look like?"
We'll figure this out together. Or at the very least, we'll have some good stories to tell.
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