Eric reconnects with an old swimming teammate from Team Elite, Bryan Lundquist. Bryan hosts the popular podcast "Social Kick", and joins the show to talk swimming, water and air quality, and changing the culture of swimming.
[00:00] - Introducing Bryan Lundquist
[02:15] - Swimming Talk
[15:48] - Cloudy water, from a swimmer's perspective
[20:53] - Changing expectations of water quality
[27:09] - ChloramineConsulting.com
[29:33] - Showering before swimming, and not peeing in the pool
[36:27] - Swimming in natural water (a lake)
[40:24] - Unqualified Pool Advice
172. Social Kick (w/ Bryan Lundquist)
===
[00:00:00] Introducing Bryan
---
Eric Knight: Welcome back everybody to the Rule Your Pool podcast. This is episode 1 72, and I'm actually doing this one on video with somebody that I haven't seen in many years, but we used to train together and he, in that amount of time, has grown a mustache that I've quite fond of. Bryan Lundquist, the host of the Social Kick Podcast, one of the fast growing podcasts in the swimming world. Bryan thanks for being on our show.
Bryan Lundquist: What's up Eric? Good to see you, man. You haven't changed a bit, and some might say that the mustache didn't grow, but that the beard got trimmed away. You know, it's kind of like the old Michelangelo adage. I took away everything that wasn't David.
Eric Knight: Oh, so you just cut the hair away and left everything that remains. That's smart.
Bryan Lundquist: I don't, I don't know if a mustache is truly earned unless you grow it from the ground up, so I can't take credit from it. But no one seems to do that. You grow the beard and then you take it away.
Eric Knight: I don't know, man. There's some people that just go mustache only, but that is not why people are listening to our podcast.
So let's start with you. You swam at Auburn, then we swam on Team Elite together, and then you started doing triathlons and cycling and stuff. It seemed like you left the sport, but you came back with a vengeance and now you're operating the, you're the host of the Social Kick podcast. What got you back in the sport, man?
Bryan Lundquist: Yeah, actually, well, you know, it's always made me sad that people, when they finished swimming, they lost their relationship with the water. And I always knew that that wasn't going to be the case for me. So I got into a master's swimming group, uh, made friends through swimming and became lifelong friends of mine.
And we used to hang out and watch the live stream of swimming. NCAAs or the world championships, and just hang out drinking beers and whiskey and talking about swimming. And after a while of doing that, we thought, well, I wonder if anybody wants to have a similar type of conversation to the one that we're having?
[00:02:15] Swimming talk
---
Bryan Lundquist: so we created a hangout style pod. And selfishly, it's opportunity for me to stay connected to friends who no longer live in the same city. While that's how we met, we don't anymore. Um, it's a great way to maintain long-term friendships while also still being, you know, sports fans of, of swimming.
Eric Knight: Nice. Nice. And so they're living all over the world now. Where
Bryan Lundquist: Yeah, we all used to, we all used to live in, we met in the Bay Area in California, not too far from Palo Alto and Stanford area. I still live in the same area, but, uh, my buddy John, uh, who's a physical therapist, lives in Seattle now. And then Luke, who's a filmmaker by trade, but also. Uh, you know, we're all former swimmers. He lives in, outside of New York now in White Plains.
And then our guests join us from all over the world. You know, yesterday we had guests locally in California, a teenage swimmer. And we've had a world champion based in Australia. So, the remote pod situation is a fun way to stay connected and build the network within swimming. And honestly, like I'm sure part of your journey is enjoying listening to podcasts, and so when you get to host one, it's almost like you're listening to one except you get to guide the conversation.
Eric Knight: Yeah, I do like listening to podcasts. Not this one, but, you know, customers tell us it's okay. But , I'm one of those guys who thinks like, I hate having my time wasted. I don't want to do episodes that are a waste of time. I try to add value. And so I haven't done too much of the social side of things. But now that it's coming back. What I'm trying to do is, is give our audience who lives and breathes swimming pools for a living, and there's also homeowners who listen to this too, i'm trying to give them the perspective of why it matters. You are a swimmer and I could see behind you, I, you got your framed world record and your American record and that subtle flex made me go grab mine. I haven't really shown it, but yeah, it's
Bryan Lundquist: You gotta keep yours on the wall, man. Street cred. Look at that. An aquatic creature, a fast one. I gotta get on the gold mat. I really like that. It looks sharp.
Eric Knight: You should, yours looks like a diploma, but it is a cool certificate.
Bryan Lundquist: Yeah, no, mine are going to get updated with the frames. They're like a mid two thousands sort of dated look. Some might say even older than that. So I'll, I'll upgrade 'em at some point. But, and both of our American records sat in the same pool right? At Tennessee?
Eric Knight: Yeah. Tennessee, what was yours?
Bryan Lundquist: Yeah. Uh, yeah, 50 fly. I set the American record, the 50 butterfly, while going out, the first 50 as fast as I could in a hundred butterfly at a sectionals in July of 2009. So I did the world's worst, uh, back half of a hundred butterfly. I was, I was out in 22 9 and back in 37.
Eric Knight: Oh, oh my goodness. But you didn't DQ. That's the key. You cannot dq otherwise, the record doesn't count.
Bryan Lundquist: Yeah, fortunately the pool at Tennessee, I was able to see that I had made the time on the video board as I did my open turn. So I knew that I got it and then at that point I knew, okay, all I need to do is not break stroke. I just need to swim legal butterfly, which is a whole lot harder to do than you think it might be.
When you've gone as fast as you can go with one breath, uh, you know. Yeah. So it was, um, it was, it was challenging to finish those last 10 meters.
Eric Knight: But, but I think it's a little different because the audience knew what you just did. So like they could tell you shut it down. As opposed to at the same pool in Tennessee at a sectional meet, I don't know if you were there, but do you remember watching Ryan's 200 fly when that 15-year-old kid almost ran him down?
Bryan Lundquist: Oh, yes. Yeah, I do.
Eric Knight: He went vertical. That was one of the funniest swims I've ever seen. And so there's this term in swimming, for those of you listening. The piano falls on your back when you really gas out. And in butterfly it's hilarious because you go vertical. Like your feet sink and I mean, you've been there. I wasn't a butterfly, but I've watched some, I've watched some pianos fall.
Bryan Lundquist: I'm sure there's also people that listen to this podcast that, uh, have taken their last stroke of butterfly because they know that butterfly is a tricky stroke to try to be able to keep your hips up on top of the water. So, um, that does happen. Yeah.
Eric Knight: Well, well, that's very cool. It's a fast pool. That brings me into my first question. Since you're actually keeping up with the sport, you're keeping up with the best athletes in the world right now and best coaches. I really do enjoy your podcast. For those of you listening, if you're into swimming, it's called Social Kick.
And the first question is, well, I know the answer, but for the audience, what is social kick? What does it mean?
Bryan Lundquist: Ah, well, social kick is a bit of a play on words. In swimming, it's, known as, quite literally just a, a, a social activity that's kind of a filler exercise that swimmers will do in the middle of a workout. Sometimes in warmups, sometimes in warm down or cool down. Uh, where you just, kick simultaneously next to a friend and there's no interval. It's casual and we named our podcast that because that was a time in the swim workout where, you know, there were no intervals. It was time to just chill and relax. And also the types of conversations that you would have are about really anything. It could be swimming related, it could be what's going on in your life. It could be what classes you're dealing with or all kinds of hot goss. So, you know,
uh,
Eric Knight: Uh
you're to have to you're going to have to, you're going to have to cut down the, uh, the shortened words here, man. We don't all live in the Bay Area of California, so I presume hot goss means gossip.
Bryan Lundquist: Yeah. Yeah. You gotta get on the Gen Z terminology, man.
Eric Knight: Dude, you're older than me and you're from Georgia, so I don't know what's happened. You've, you've been in California less than a decade and everything has changed.
Bryan Lundquist: Eric, yesterday we had someone on our podcast who was born in 2009. So
Eric Knight: Oof. Oh,
that hurts my feelings.
Bryan Lundquist: We gotta get with, we talked to, um, Luca Vic, who broke Michael Phelps, national Age Group record as a 16-year-old. So, um, let's, let's say the, the times are a change in, as Bob Dylan would say. And that is a reference that maybe your audience would get. So,
Eric Knight: I get that one. Yeah. Maybe I'm older than you now that I think about it. uh, Speaking of the sport, it seems to be getting absurdly fast. I mean, Caleb rewrote everything and then now there's just a lot of people that are very similar in speed. And I'm not just talking the 50, I'm looking at the times and thinking, you know, just to make the NCAA meet you have to be going 18.
And I'm old enough to remember when Fred Busquet was the first guy to ever do that. And you were on his team. What was that moment like and what do you think the next barrier is?
Bryan Lundquist: Good question. Yeah. I remember vividly watching Fred go 18 seven for the first time. I trained with him that whole year. I was on the 200 freestyle relay with him that season in 2005. That was my sophomore year at Auburn when Fred was a senior. Um, we continued to train together for years after that.
But um, I remember there's like a few moments that I've been on a pool deck where the whole crowd stops, and it's like you could hear a pin drop. And I get chills even thinking about those types of moments. That's what that was like. Everyone in the pool said, okay, it doesn't matter what team you're on, that was amazing, and we all need to celebrate that.
And you have to realize that when that moment happened the NCAA record had stood at 19.05 for like 20 years or something really long. And there'd been a number of athletes, including Anthony Irvin, that were right there knocking on the door.
Roland Schumann, you know, these are Olympic champions and world champions in the long course pool. Cullen was close, I think he was 19 oh, or 19
Eric Knight: 19.07 or something like that.
Bryan Lundquist: He was, he was really close to it as well, but like, no one got it. Right. And then, and then came Fred. Well actually Colin came after Fred. Um, but so.
Eric Knight: good point.
Bryan Lundquist: So, um, but he was still, he was close and won an NCAA title. But Fred won 18 seven and gapped it. You know, you put like three tenths between the record and, that's like a gigantic monumental shift in time.
So it's like this thing where you go like, that's not even possible. And you know. Uh, this past year, the one that keeps coming up with our recent guess is Leon Marshawn skipping 1 53, uh, breaking Ryan Lochte, longstanding 1 54, flat 200 IM world record and going 1 52. You know, these are like unheard of drops.
So, with Fred, it was just one of those like earth shattering types of moments. Um, you know, and now, uh, the, the, the next thing you asked about, like, so what's the next big barrier to drop? And I think that we saw a really big one this past year, uh, with the men's 400 free long course. That one being the 3 39 from Lucas Martins, the German. The world record had stood at three 40 flat since 2009. And no one had touched that. And, um, I'm trying to think of like what other major barrier though. It's a good question. I don't know that there's one that really stands out. I guess I'd have to say the 200 Free Men stands out because that's one from the same guy, Paul Beaterman, that has stood with his suited world record at 1 42 flat. And nobody's really gotten close until David Popovich, the high schooler from Romania. The teenager now he's, he may be 21 now. But he's been a world champion and Olympic champion now. That's one that I think it's like wiping out some of these like longstanding super suit world records and then.
Eric Knight: Now you say the super suit era. For those of you listening, if you remember the Beijing Olympics, when Michael Phelps won eight gold medals, they were wearing what we would consider now to be super suits. They were wearing laser racers and these full body suits that went up over your shoulders and all that stuff.
Those were banned at the end of 2009. But now the sport has gotten so fast that even the people from our era, Bryan at our best times, would not be scoring in these meets. Which is just absurd to look at, to think what were we doing? And my theory on this, and I want your take on it. 'cause I, I had Rowdy on this podcast last year. He thinks it's a little bit more Then my theory. But my theory is these kids grew up with YouTube. They grew up with video, and so did their coaches.
So their coaches can review the best in the world at with a fine tooth comb as much as they want. When you and I were in college, YouTube didn't really come out till the very end, and it wasn't prevalent, but we had flow swimming the last two years of my years.
But you were probably finishing up your senior year when Flow swimming came out. The only swimming we could review was the Olympics. It's like the only footage that we had access to. So what's your take on it? Why did the sport just get so absurdly faster?
Bryan Lundquist: Well, if your example of YouTube, um, is indicative of greater knowledge share and more transparency, uh, than, than I agree. Because to me that's sort of the macro theme is that, and this has been true throughout history, that sport evolves as new training methods are discovered. And then like the path to elite level is also passed down. And so I think that now when you look at what high schoolers are doing and college swimmers are doing, the way that they operate is just at a much more professional level.
And also they're doing a lot more quality work, you know? And we were both sprinters and got to benefit later in our careers from a lower volume type of training. Um, and that's not to say that distance swimmers, I just mentioned distance swimming is at a peak. The, they have to put in the, the yardage. But, um, oh, hello.
Eric Knight: Oliver, the cat has decided to join our podcast and he's bumping the microphone. Hey, I, Emmy was on the last episode, the
Bryan Lundquist: Not a very, not a very aquatic creature I, I, I would imagine. Um,
but
Eric Knight: doing?
Bryan Lundquist: I think that, I think that it's, it's that, it's that there's, you know, the evolution of training methods, uh, and and a and a greater focus on, on quality, on rest, on nutrition. Uh, on, you know, like. People just are treating it differently now because that's what it takes.
And I think like in aggregate, you see that in the net results at the college level. And then one final point is, I'll, I'll make is that like there's something to the, the mental, um, impact of having someone have done it. And this is true when, when Banister broke four minute mile.
Like, there were three guys who were all over it for two years prior to, and then after that it, I can't remember what the number is, but it's like a lot of people in the next 12 months ended up beating it. And the same is true with 18. Like once Fred went 18, then bunch of people started going 18 and it hasn't quite happened with 17 yet 'cause that's really fast.
But you know it, but it changes the way that you think about what's possible if you've seen one or multiple people do it.
Eric Knight: Right. And to that end, I think there's been a shift of focus towards legitimate high performance. It goes outside of the pool. It's your diet, it's your rest, it's your recovery, it's your pt, it's your weights. It's so much more than what it used to be. And it's really cool to see the boundaries of what the human body is capable of. And it's not just in our sport. You're seeing this in every sport. But, um. No, it's cool to, to nerd out on swimming a little bit.
[00:15:48] Cloudy water, from a swimmer's perspective
---
Eric Knight: But I do wanna bring this back because this podcast is about swimming pool maintenance, repair, construction. And historically it's been about pool chemistry.
So when I'm watching, let's pretend we're live streaming it or something like you and your buddies did when you came up with the idea for the Social Kick podcast. I like watching NCAAs. I don't like how I feel when I watch them smash my times out of oblivion.
But it, it's cool to watch and I, I know how hard it is to swim at that level just like you do. We were there. And it's amazing to see how dirty the water is in some of those pools. Not just NCAAs, but like even the Olympics, how cloudy the water is. And I know that you've watched a lot more swimming than I have. What goes through your mind when you see that underwater shot during the break, or you know, the underwater shot of Leon Marshawn doing his butterfly kicks and kicking everybody out of the water, and it's cloudy and you can hardly see what's going on. What are your thoughts on that and how does that reflect on our sport?
Bryan Lundquist: The same way you and I feel about when we watch a old baseball clip from the 1990s. Which doesn't sound that old, but it was when we were young. You're in like grainy tube tv and then you know what it's like to watch sports and you remember when like HD tv, the HD channels first came out? And you had channel zero three or channel 1003, and you're like, if you could pay for it, you got channel 1003.
To me, that's the difference. It's that level of clarity that once you've reached a level of clarity and definition. It enhances the visual experience. I look, I wore clear goggles because I wanted to see as much as I could because I really believed, like, I dunno if it's like a Huberman theory that, you walk outside and you expose yourself to light and that lights up your, you know, neuromuscular system.
So like alertness is at its max with like higher exposure. And I'm obviously not coming from a scientific perspective, that's your area. But I'm just telling you from lived experience, that's what I wanted was like greater clarity all around. And so that's what I think whenever I see like rainy, footage, but it's honestly that way with water too. I don't understand why we can't have a greater definition. Because swimming hasn't quite evolved to that point.
And it's possible that we don't have more views for underwater technical review on the broadcast because there's a lack of water quality that's such that it's not going to be a great visual experience.
I don't know that, but I like, I, I've definitely seen some, like dimly lit, poor, clarity and water. And whenever you have that, it's like, to me it's like the energy, somebody just sucked the energy out of the room. So the more that we can reverse that to me does nothing but enhance the, the visual experience, both for those who are in it as well as those who are watching it.
Mm-hmm.
Eric Knight: Lighting is huge, and not just for tv. I mean Olympic trials. Come on, man. You, you think it's lit up. And then the TV cameras come on and they bring those extra lights up right before NBC kicks on. And you, you know, I, I don't know how to explain it, but the energy level almost doubles when those lights turned on.
And I've been in a lot of pools just like you have. And when you're swimming in a dungeon, it's not fun. Cloudy water, for instance. I'm going to, I'll pick on Ultra Swim 'cause that was one that we swam in quite a bit. That warmup pool. When you're on day three and it's so cloudy, you can barely see the line three feet below your face. Not exactly inviting water is it?
Bryan Lundquist: No, it's not. I do remember that happening at, at that particular pool. And it's happened too. Uh, you know, uh, whenever, like my masters group here locally in California, every once in a while there's, we'll show up in the pool is just dark and dim and you can't see even two lanes over. In that not only do I wonder what am I swimming in? Like it's, is this healthy for my body to be swimming in what I'm swimming in?
And besides that, it's like disruptive to the workout. 'cause I can't see two lanes over to understand like, I like racing people and you can't even see 'em.
Eric Knight: How do we change the expectations of operators? Because as it currently stands, operators take a minimum exam, which is a good thing. I think there need to be minimum standards. But most of them, when I talk to them, and it's not just my opinion, ask them. Most of them are not really confident in what they're doing until they have like at least a year of experience, and then they really start to grasp what's really going on.
But for that year, you could have an operator that even if they've been an operator before, they don't know that pump room. They don't know that pool yet. And the water quality suffers man. Because as we discuss a lot on this podcast, body oils, sunscreen, cosmetics, and lotions, these things are organic materials, they float. But dirt sinks and they stick together and they stay suspended. And that's what is the primary driver of cloudy water.
You can blame the filter all you want, but if that water's not getting up to the gutter 'cause it's too heavy, and it's not getting down in the main drain, it doesn't go to the filter. It just pushes around. And we keep stirring it up as we swim.
[00:20:53] Changing expectations of water quality
---
Eric Knight: Now you remember, I'll, I'll use the name but I'll, Do you remember the Latin pool? We swam in it a lot? Did you ever see across that pool? When we were training in it?
Bryan Lundquist: Absolutely not. No. I do remember watching Nick Thoman go like 43 in a hundred backstroke and practice in that pool.
Eric Knight: But that was our, that I was actually going to say, but my best 200 freestyle of my life was in that same practice 'cause we suited up. But that's unrelated to this. But yes, that pool. Um, the first time I got exposed to Orinda, actually, the company that I was with the past nine years that started this podcast was in that pool.
Now I want you to imagine exactly what you and I went through for all the times we trained in that, you know what that pool looked like.
I'm, I'm out of the sport for like almost a year, and I get a call from David and he's like, Hey, you think, uh, you think you could still rip a 50 breast? And this is like Halloween, Halloween weekend. And I was like, uh, yeah. I mean, I haven't been in the water since over a year ago, since trials in 2012, right?
So this is October, so it's over a year. He's like, yeah, we, uh, we're going to go to nationals in Knoxville. At ut we could really use Breaststroker. I think we could win some relays. like, I could probably still rip a 50. So I got connected with Nate Boyle and that's where the American record came from.
And so I go and I was like, I, I better get in the water, right? So I'm, I do a workout at Latin in the weight room there. I just, just go to the pool and I just hop in and I freaked out. It was drinking water, dude. It was the clearest I'd ever seen that pool. It looked like Olympic trials on day one.
And I, I like, whoa, it kind of felt weird on my skin. And that was the first time I was exposed to Orinda. It was the enzymes. And I didn't know that. So I asked the coach, I'm like, what did you all do to the water? And he's like, oh, you know, Jeff, Jeff Cackle, my old boss, Jeff, uh, he put this stuff in the water.
And Jeff had been talking to me, 'cause I worked for him at the time, about these enzymes, man, these enzymes. And at first he was really mad because he put the phosphate remover in, which clouded it up and he it turned that pool into milk for like four days and they had to shut down practice and he's getting all sorts of hell from the parents and the
Bryan Lundquist: Oh.
Eric Knight: team.
Yeah, like milk. You couldn't see six inches into the water 'cause it clouded up like crazy. And then it dropped out and Jeff had been bragging about this water. After it dropped out, it looked like snow. It covered all the tile lines on the bottom. Just a pure white shell basically. And he thought someone drained the pool. And 'cause you know, the water was
Bryan Lundquist: That clear? Wow.
Eric Knight: So they vacuumed it out and he had been bragging about it for several days. And I kind of forgot about it, I was working. And so I was like, I gotta get a workout. So I go there and I hop in that pool. Freak out and then he's like, oh, Jeff did something with it. So I called Jeff and I said, Jeff, I just got out of the water at Latin.
And his response was, right!? I told you that stuff was in made, and that was CV 600. That was enzymes. So if it can take that pool, this was my logic, if it can take that pool from where it was always for the year, that year and a half that we swam in it to what it was that day. I was like, oh my God, I gotta get to know this company.
That's, that was my first introduction to them. And, I was fascinated by pool chemistry ever since, because, you know, you and I have had plenty of our share of respiratory problems and ear infections and, you know, insert swimmer problems here. But water quality really matters to me, man. Like we were in it all the time. So it's cool talking to someone who actually was there with me, so like you can verify we are in the water a lot and water quality really does matter.
Bryan Lundquist: Yeah, well, I as, as do, uh, so many things that we find out later in life. We don't know what the impact was, like the long-term effect to our bodies. And I think that if you can just reduce the number of risk factors in your life, and improve the quality of what you're actually is coming in contact with your skin, or that you're ingesting, I have to believe that that's a net benefit to society as a whole in, in general wellness.
Eric Knight: Mm-hmm.
Bryan Lundquist: And I often think like I learned, you know, recently, I I personally don't have children, but I've had several friends of mine who, uh, are, our age. Like, I mean, I'm 40 and, uh, men who have had fertility issues as a result of what was in the food supply in the nineties, two thousands. Like red 40 and some other things that were just super common and a lot of ingested that it's created this um, like sperm deformity. It is like a really big societal impact.
And I bring that up just as an example of like, we hear about microplastics all the time and like how much is that is being ingested. And I think that having spent as much time in chlorine and water as we did as competitive swimmers, as well as anybody who's just in their backyard pool and that's where their family likes to hang out and spend quality time, you certainly want that to be an experience that you're confident is not only not negative, but is also enhancing the quality of, of your life. So the more things that we can do to shore up, like how we, you know, how we treat our bodies, um, certainly for the better.
Eric Knight: Right. Well, what got me into the industry after we stopped swimming and 2012 was your last meet, right?
Bryan Lundquist: That's right.
Eric Knight: Okay. Yeah. Same with me until David called me. I thought I was done in 2012.
Bryan Lundquist: Yeah. Couch to American record. Nice job.
Eric Knight: Exactly, I actually literally, except my 200, all of my fastest times happened after I retired. Like my a hundred free. I dropped a second and a half of the a hundred free, my a hundred breasts got faster by a second and a half. My 50 free went by half a second faster.
Bryan Lundquist: make no sense.
Eric Knight: what was I doing man? I was clearly over training.
Bryan Lundquist: much..
Yeah,
Eric Knight: yeah, unrelated. Um, what got me into the industry was air quality. And I'm just thinking of JC Smith. Where we trained in there, we had the doors wide open all the time, and that when they put that evacuator bench in there, it changed everything. But it wasn't just JC Smith, it was, it was every indoor pool we trained in. And I know like you grew up in Georgia, I grew up in Virginia. I didn't have the big issues in college until they changed from bromine to chlorine.
[00:27:09] ChloramineConsulting.com
---
Eric Knight: And then I got really sick and then I went to a meet, I had an asthma attack in the middle of the a hundred free. So it was really deeply personal to me. And I'm still doing that actually. It was a condition upon being hired at Orinda and a condition upon being hired here at Water Shape that I still do facility evaluations 'cause I know how to fix that problem.
And I guess one of those messages is like, you don't have to put up with bad water quality. You also don't have to put up with bad air quality. It is fixable. But it's just not common knowledge. People just don't know what they don't know. And what I con continue to find is I show up to pools and they were so close.
You know, they, the engineers who designed it, they were trying to do the right thing, but they just didn't really understand the chlor means. 'cause the knowledge wasn't out there. And I I yearned to get to a point where what I do is obsolete because everyone understands it and it's the new standard. Like you don't build cars without seat belts now. And I don't panic when I drive over a bridge on a highway because I just trust that the engineers and the codes and the standards are strong enough that they built that bridge right. I don't have to worry about that. And yet here we are going into pools and they're designing it to the code and yet there's still air quality problems.
'cause they missed this one little piece that was not. Anyway, it's super important to me and that's why I continue to do this. It's why I do the podcast. Not just air quality, but water quality too. These things are a choice. These problems that we're talking about, they are optional. If you're going about things in the traditional way, you're going to face these problems depending on the bather load.
But if you think about what they are actually caused by, for instance, cloudy water being caused by oils, you can't just shock the pool and expect that that's a long-term solution and. because when you shock oils and you add chlorine to oils, they get sticky and they get tacky, and that's what a scum line is, and they gum up your filter.
Whereas if you feel oil, it's like slippery and stuff. But we would get into pools. Now we're talking commercial competitive pools, where we had, you know, if you had a massage in between sessions at a championship meet, a competitive meet, or biofreeze or any of these pain relieving, uh, Icy Hot or whatever. That so complicates pool chemistry and we didn't care like we're just swimmers. I remember we used to run in practice in college and nobody would shower. We're just sweaty as hell running and then you know, you just take the shorts off 'cause you were wearing your suit anyway and you start swimming. That was commonplace. I'm sure it was commonplace for you too.
[00:29:33] Showering before swimming, and not peeing in the pool
---
Bryan Lundquist: How much does, okay, so pools that say that you need to shower before you get in, and pretty much nobody does unless you go to Europe. Um, and they make you do it.
Eric Knight: They make
Bryan Lundquist: DD Or they have those weird like fountains. If anybody hasn't seen those, uh, you've seen these, right? Like you go through like a forest, you have to walk through the fountain and you have to step your feet into like a moat of disgusting foot water.
Um, what is that? Is that making a difference?
Eric Knight: It will absolutely make a difference. They enforce it culturally. And that's actually my next point to talk to you about. Swimmers pee in the pool. And I've made the case, i'm not saying that it's right. I and I it is gross. I I'm not saying any of that, anything controversial there. What I am saying is it happens. My question is how do we change the American swimming culture to get away from peeing in the pool and to get towards rinsing off before getting in the water?
Bryan Lundquist: Why do we wanna do that?
Eric Knight: Why do we wanna not pee in the pool?
Bryan Lundquist: Yeah,
Eric Knight: What a swimmer question. Is that a serious question?
Bryan Lundquist: That's a serious question. And by the way, well, like we, for a long time, probably the first 200 episodes of Social Kick, we asked, uh, the majority of our guests, do you pee in the pool? And at least 80% of them admitted to peeing in the pool that it's like a common practice. But it's super convenient. So I've always thought like, what difference does it make?
Eric Knight: Well, you know, the thought is that, chlorine kills everything. Well, funny thing about that is. Urine is actually sterile unless you have a big infection in your body or something. So it's actually sterile, so there's nothing to kill. But it is an organic nitrogen compound called urea in there in a pretty good concentration and that creates a lot of harmful byproducts, which that's one of many sources.
In residential pools, not as many people peeing them because not as many people are in them. In commercial pools, this is a much bigger problem, of course, especially with swim teams, aqua aerobics, kids, but it's also elderly. It's hard to get in and out of the pool. It is convenient. And I think we just accepted that, yeah, it's gross, but I'm not going to tell anybody and the water doesn't turn blue around me when I do it, so no one will know.
But
Bryan Lundquist: that's your answer.
Eric Knight: yeah. Yeah. We need a dye. Yeah. We've, we've talked about that to something that will create public shame if you do it. But, uh, in the swimming community, you'll do it and you'll push it on people because you know
Bryan Lundquist: I know I was kind of hoping that you might have like a way for me to magnify it so that I could like have a cloud around me.
Eric Knight: Yeah. No, it's, it's, it's gross. You know, there's a difference between peeing in the pool and peeing into the pool, Bryan.
Bryan Lundquist: Well, that's been done. I've seen it happen.
Eric Knight: Yeah. I know. So anyways, it's disgusting. But we're laughing about it because this was our world and we know how hard it is to convince people. I mean, remember when they changed the deck change rule that you couldn't deck change at a meet? And all the swimmers were like, what? What are you talking about? Like, there's no way that's going to happen.
Until it was explained to us that said, what do you think all those young people are watching? They're watching you. They're watching us. What are we doing? We're setting the example. So is there a way that we can change that culture?
Because the chemistry that does happen, chlorine's going to get devoted to combining with that urine and creating harmful byproducts that end up being things like the pool smell. But there's a lot of other compounds that come in which create the air quality problem. Now, in a, like I said before, in a backyard pool, it's not really urine that causes this. It's mostly algaecides actually. Uh, I have this whole thing on algaecides. A lot of them are nitrogen based, but you get the same effect.
Um, so urine is really bad, but it's also like you get some urea and sweat and stuff like that. So if you come back from the weight room or running, just rinsing off, it's not even about soap, honestly. You don't need soap, you just gotta get the sweat off. A quick rinse, and that's what they figured out in Europe by making those gauntlets where you have to get doused before you get in the pool, that makes a big difference. It really does.
Bryan Lundquist: Hmm. Uh, you're breaking my heart here, man.
Eric Knight: I, know. I'm sorry.
Bryan Lundquist: I, I I don't, you were asking Vito for ideas of how to change the culture and I don't, I don't know. I'm asking you for a scientific solution. No, I solve it with science. Come on. Figure out a solution that's what you guys are all about.
Eric Knight: Oh, man. Trying to
Bryan Lundquist: I don't know. It it.
Eric Knight: If there was, If there was an enzyme that could break down urea, uh, Orenda would've been selling it. But unfortunately, you have to break a nitrogen bond, and that's not an easy thing to do. And there's harmful byproducts when you do.
Bryan Lundquist: Well, you know, I don't know. I think, uh, your solution to public shaming might be the, the answer then. Because I will say that, to answer the question honestly, uh, from a competitive swimming perspective. It was a, a cultural thing like, oh, it must must be nice. I mean, that used to be a thing at Texas, where they'd say, oh, it must be nice, you get out of workout and go to the bathroom or something like that. Must be nice you don't have to work as hard as the rest of us.
If you got out of the pool in the middle of a workout, you better have like a, a very strong excuse to do so. You know, it's easy being a guy.
If I'm out for a run or, or, or a bike ride, I can very easily just pull over to the side of the road and relieve myself right there. But if you're saying that like that's harmful to do in the pool, then I don't know, maybe we need to think about more convenience to a pool and bathroom design from an architectural standpoint.
Otherwise, a lot of pools only have one bathroom and it's deep in the locker room and it's going to, you're going to be away for many minutes. Or if you're lap swimming, you're going to lose your lane. Uh, if you get out to go.
Eric Knight: You're going to lose your warmup. It's cold, it's air conditioned locker room, evaporative cooling on your skin. Your teeth will chatter. I mean, how many times did you get out of the pool and it's, you know, the water's like 80 degrees, 79 degrees. The air is like 82. By any circumstance it's warm until you're a wet swimmer. And then it's like, oh God,
Bryan Lundquist: Yeah. Yeah. It can. Dying to get back in the water.
Eric Knight: Exactly dying to get back in the water so you adapt quickly. So there's a lot of very real physical reasons why swimmers don't do it. In order to change the culture, I think you're right. You have to either have deck showers, uh, that are, you're already in a swimsuit, so it's not like you need privacy. You're already in a swimsuit and just rinse off. Maybe a privacy wall or something. But I don't know. But I do know it's a big problem.
Bryan Lundquist: Well, I'm counting on you to solve it, man. Because uh, I'll honest, it's, it's not a problem to me. Unless, unless it's a cause for me to swim in cloudy pools and, um, you know, I guess it's a matter of, uh, which one's, which one's worse? Swimming in my own pee or swimming in a cloudy pool? Which one do I
Eric Knight: I think we've just lost a lot of subscribers from this episode and to the listeners out there, um, we're not kidding. This is actually a real conversation. So as, as absurd as it sounds, um. Enroll your kids on a local swim team. You'll understand. Trying to grow the sport.
[00:36:27] Swimming in natural water (a lake)
---
Eric Knight: So anyway, um, I just did Swim Across America. I think you've done Swim Across America before, haven't you? Those lake swims?
Bryan Lundquist: Uh, did they also do some pool stuff too? I feel like I've done it once, but it's, um, I'm trying to
Eric Knight: money for cancer. It's Rob Butcher's thing.
Bryan Lundquist: Oh yeah. We did it when we were at Team Elite, right?
Eric Knight: Yeah. I, I'm pretty sure. Well, I just did it in Dallas and that that water's cloudy as anything, you know, and then you smell like lake on the way out. And reminds me that natural water doesn't clean itself. And so we have to artificially clean water to get it to the standards that we want.
And that's why we filter it, we chlorinate it, we do all these things to treat it, to get it nice and clean, but water doesn't do that on its own. Which brings me to this story that I think you probably remember this, but I don't know if you remember what happened afterward. Do you remember a morning where Dave's like, Hey, we're going to meet at this dock on Lake Norman and throw your fins on and we're going to go swim to that island. Do you remember that? Okay. So that lake swim, do you recall washing any of your equipment or suit after that?
Bryan Lundquist: No.
Eric Knight: Exactly. Neither did I. And I started getting these black spots growing on my fins. These little black, little tiny little thing that they were like textured and everything, and I never knew what they were and I couldn't get them to go away.
And yet. If you remember that certain, I'm not going to say the name, that certain 50 meter pool with a slide that we went to regularly through the summer and it started getting black algae. Those black spots on the bottom of the pool, like real bad. I have realized a decade after it happened, we did that. Because black algae doesn't get in a pool accidentally. It has to be introduced. It came from us, our suits that we didn't wash, and our equipment that we used in Lake Norman.
I feel terrible about it now, but, uh, for the people listening to this who fight black algae, it has to be introduced. The most common cause is somebody was in natural water, like a pond or a lake, and maybe they were wearing their suit and they didn't wash their suit, and they bring it into the pool, which introduced this cyanobacteria, which we call black algae, introduces it to the pool and that's how it gets in.
Or a contaminated brush or something like that. But we never washed our equipment. We hardly ever washed our suits because we were in a pool all the time. So what do you need to wash it for? Right? It's, it's in chlorinated water.
Bryan Lundquist: Well, we do it when you get out of the ocean. I don't remember that happening. I do remember the lake swim, but not the black algae thing. Um, I think that it reminds me though of, I live in, California and have for 10 plus years. And if you've ever taken a boat on water in California, that's probably true in some other states as well.
But if you go. Uh, from like body of water to body of water, you can't just jump across different ones unless they're all within the same county and testing environment. So it's super common, If you put your boat on a new body of water to go through de-musseling and have like a boating inspection and it's just commonplace.
And it's kind of like what should be the common practice, but there's no way to regulate it unless you put a tag on their fins every time they come into the pool, you
Eric Knight: Yeah. It's unrealistic to think, but it's the
Bryan Lundquist: Yeah.
Eric Knight: of like, don't contaminate the next body of water. And for Pool pros, which is the core audience here. They have the same brush. And so they'll be brushing a pool that has black algae and not even think about going to the next pool, which they brush too. And that's usually how it gets introduced.
So yeah, it's, it, it's a contaminated toothbrush. You wouldn't share toothbrushes with somebody else? Well, maybe you, would. You like swimming in your own pee? Who knows? But most
Bryan Lundquist: I just don't mind it.
Eric Knight: Yeah. Anyways, I've, I've, we've now lost almost all of our subscribers. I'm fairly certain, so this has been great. And by the way, Bryan thank you for being on this show. It's undoubtedly the low point in your career. Um, but
Bryan Lundquist: It's a, it's a high point. I, I thank you for the low expectations on knowing anything about pool chemistry. Um, and thank you for avoiding asking me any tough chemistry questions.
[00:40:24] Unqualified Pool Advice
---
Eric Knight: I wanted to wrap on this. You ask your people some rapid fire questions and I wrote down three. If you don't mind. So I, I call this segment unqualified pool advice.
So this is when I ask people who have no earthly idea. I did this with Rowdy Gaines. It was pretty funny. Um, no earthly idea about pool chemistry at all. So I'm just going to ask you these questions and answer however your heart tells you to answer. Okay.
Bryan Lundquist: Okay.
Eric Knight: What is the optimal alkalinity level for a saltwater pool?
Bryan Lundquist: Nine.
Eric Knight: Okay, this is great. Okay, cool. Uh, very, very good. Okay.
Bryan Lundquist: On a scale of what? I have no idea.
Eric Knight: Exactly. This is, this is why it's funny. Um, okay. The next question, name two different types of chlorine products.
Bryan Lundquist: Uh, two different types of chlorine products.
Eric Knight: Yeah, like the chemical names.
Bryan Lundquist: Uh, chlorophyll and boraphyll?
Eric Knight: Dude, you're a swimmer. You could do better than that.
Bryan Lundquist: I have no idea. Dude.
Eric Knight: How about, how about liquid chlorine? How about bleach? Like that's a
Bryan Lundquist: I didn't, I didn't know that's what bleach was.
Eric Knight: Oh my gosh. So now that the audience has an idea of just how connected swimmers are to the aquatics side of the, of the pool, we use the pool, this is where I came from. So if you ever wondered like, am I this really experienced guy? No, no. I started where Bryan is. That's, that's how much knowledge I had when I came in. So that's really funny. Okay. Uh, the, the last, the last question. What does the LSI stand for?
Bryan Lundquist: Dude, I, these are so far, I have no freaking idea.
Eric Knight: So what I did was I had Jarred who is my old boss on the podcast with Rowdy, and I asked Jarred five swimming questions like, alright, I'll ask you the same questions. How far can you kick out underwater before you have to come up to the surface or else you'll DQ?
Bryan Lundquist: Uhhuh.
Eric Knight: How far?
Bryan Lundquist: Oh, you
want me to, oh, 15 meters.
Eric Knight: Exactly. So you know that. All right, cool. These are the kind of questions I asked Jarred. He didn't have an answer for hardly any of 'em. Rowdy, didn't have an answer for anything pool, so it, we are in a slightly different world here. It's kind of nice being bilingual in this case. But anyway, Bryan it's been a pleasure having you on, man.
And, uh, we're going to do what we can to try to improve water quality and air quality for the sport because the swimmers depend on that. Like when we were just athletes, we had no control over who designed or who maintained that water, but it was our health on the line. And, uh, you're still actively engaged in that sport. So thank you for continuing to grow it, and thank you for being on this show.
Bryan Lundquist: Thanks for fighting the good fight. Yeah, appreciate it. Every pool that I go into that's even better than it was when I was growing up is a noticeable difference. And so keep on doing it. Thanks for having me, Eric. Good to see you man.
Eric Knight: Yeah. Yeah, you, too. All right. Take care everyone. This has been episode 172. As a reminder, check out watershape.org. We've got the Education Vacation coming up December 4th, 5th and 6th. If you want to take any of our core classes there.
We are going to be teaching Essential Major Renovations. So if you are renovating pools. You can come in from wherever you want in the country. Just fly into Reno. That's going to be October 22nd and 23rd.
Uh, we got quite a few people signed up from Northern California for that one. Um, we've got fluid engineering going on this week actually, when this episode drops. Well, I will be sitting in a classroom with Dave Peterson teaching here in the Carolinas.
We've got classes at the trade shows coming up in the spring. And if you have any questions about this podcast. Reach out. It is ruleyourpool@gmail.com. I'm your host, Eric Knight. I greatly appreciate you being here and hope you enjoyed this off the wall episode. Uh, we will get back more into the technical stuff in future episodes.
Take care everyone.