Spa Talk 8.

Friday, October 31, 2025.

Having arrived at my local YMCA, I stood in line at the reception, waiting to be handed a pass for the 10:15 am aquafit class. Since I had about half an hour to spare after I got the pass, I made my way to the spas outside the indoor pool to kill time before the class started. People came into and left the 100°spa water during the time I was there. They had either come from the outdoor pool before or after their swim workout, or from the previous aquafit class that was about to finish. Or they just came into the spa to enjoy the nice warm water to enjoy the soothing action of the water jets on their backs.

Those entering the spa uttered the customary greeting. “Hey morning, hey morning,“ and they found a seat in front of the jets. I had the choice spot, in front of the jet with the most powerful spray. A lady (L) came in and took a seat pretty close to my left.

L: “I’m pretty snuggly to you,” she said. “Don’t push me away, for I got a good one” I countered. “It happens, you know, you’re sitting here and some, some burly guy comes in and sits beside you.”

Me: “Did you just come in? So, there was no shortage of passes. On Monday, they sent half of the people that had come for the class away. Yeah, yeah, there weren’t enough life guards. Some of them hang around for an hour and took the next class. No life guards, they just should open those positions to seniors like me. I took CPR forty years ago. Anyone in the pool got a certificate? But they don’t pay enough. Guess what, 15 bucks an hour, minimum wage.”

L: “So were you here yesterday?”

“No,” I said.

L: “Cynthia was teaching and she attracts more people.”

Me: “Yes, she teaches Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.”

L: “I came from the outdoor pool.”

Me: “Normally, I go for a walk in the outside pool before class, but today I decided to take it easy. Maybe after this class.”

L: “My friend Ellen likes to walk out there.”
Me: “I haven’t seen her for a while.” I didn’t say that I was away from the pool for about four weeks as a result of a persistent case of Covid-19.

L: “She got a hip replacement.”

Me: “I see.”

L: “She got a partial hip, and then it dislocated, and so she had the whole thing redone today.”

Me: “Oh, really.”

L: “I hadn’t seen her for a while."

Me: “Partial hip, eh.”

L: “Well, she'd had the hip replaced before, so they were redoing some part of it, okay, but whatever they did, it wouldn't hold into place. And so, she was just standing at her counter, and the hip dislocated. And oh, so yeah, she said, hard for me to believe what caused it, since she was just standing there.”

Me: “Yeah, it can loosen. It can loosen.”

L: “Mine was done four years ago, and I feel it starting to kind of like it gets loose in certain…”

Me: “You're active?”

L: “Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And, well, gotten to where this is my most active activity, yeah, but with the things that I did, I noticed they kind of pull on it, and I don't do those anymore. It's like because, I mean, that was already my second hip. I had it done, and I had to redone six months later?”

Me: “Well, it depends, if you have heavy bones, you can have it done a bunch of times.”

L: “I don't really want to redo it again.”

Me: “I had a hip resurfacing, which means the ball is actually intact. Yeah, they just put a cap on that; so I can still have a traditional one. But mine was 18 years ago. so, I don't think it’s going to happen to this one.”

A pause…

L: “Okay? I gotta get a little cold before… I can cool off.”
She leaves the spa.

Several other people enter the spa.

We share our thoughts about one of the aquafit instructors.

Me: “The 10:15 class will probably be taught by Josh, the noodle man.”

A senior with a pony tail: “They call him the noodle man?”

Me: “I call him noodle man, because he always uses the styrofoam noodles towards the last ten minutes of his session.”

The guy: “Is it good?”

Me: “It's different. Well, I mean, you feel like a kid, right? That's pretty much the idea. Yeah, right, because that's a fun kid toy in a pool. Yeah, they love each other to death with it, yeah? That's right. It's a weapon. You got to go on your back, get it around your waist, and kick.”

The guy: “Kick, kick. You’re getting a workout, kicking. That's good.”

Bill has come into the spa. He is a stocky man in his early sixties, bald as a billiard ball. He gets his swim workouts around 10 am, takes a break and then coaches a master swimming class to men and women twenty to thirty years his junior. He and a veteran water polo swimmer, engage in a conversation on swimming technique. Since we just talked about kicking, Bill starts a monologue on kicking with the legs during free style swimming.

Photo 1 - Katie Ledecky, swimming at the 2016 Olympic Games.

“When I swam competitively. And I don't know if you guys know who Katie Ledecky is. You heard that name. She is the greatest female swimmer of all time. She's lasted 20 years, and she's still setting distance world records. She just has a very straight, odd stroke, but she has endurance that's unbelievable. She beats people by two full pool lengths in the Olympics.”

Others: “Pool lengths, pool lengths, wow.”

Bill: “She's only swimming against herself and the clock. She doesn’t care. I mean, her feet are just balancing. I was the same way. The reason is that kicking deprives you of more of oxygen than your upper body. There's something about the muscles in your legs, your thighs and your calves that require a great deal of oxygen. And so, sprinters, because it’s a real motorboat, world class sprinters have kicks that are unbelievable. They can go faster with just kicking than I can go swimming. They have that advantage they've got that machine behind them, but they can't do it for long. They can only do it for about four miles.”

Another older guy enters the spa. “Hey Bill, how you’re doing, buddy? When you swim, do you kick a lot?”

Bill continues his monologue. “Never, yeah, never. I was just talking about Katie Ledecky. She never kicks.”

Another man: “But the sprinters say that you have to be able to kick.”

Bill: “Yeah, a kick helps, but I don't think so. You know, they've interviewed Katie about that. And she said that it is too much of an energy drain, uh huh, and that she doesn't need it. It doesn't, yeah, it's, it costs more than it benefits.”

Another: “I remember there was a guy I was watching on TV, that guy from Australia, Murray Rose. Yeah, he had a trudging kick. Remember that?”

Bill: “A trudging kick, yeah, that was the Australian crawl.”

Someone asks: “What's that?”

Bill: “It’s a side… it's almost like a sidestroke, a modified breaststroke kick, a modified whip kick worked in it.”

Someone comments: “You think about that, you think it throws you out of whack, throws you off balance, right?”

Photo 2 – Murray Rose in 2009.

Bill: “Well, he must have timed it with his arms. So that's the big thing. I tell the swimmers here, you want to stay level, yeah, you know, because then you're more efficient. And, you know, I see kids that are strong, they're young, you know, they're fit, they're athletes in some way, and they cannot put their head in water. Means, you know, they're just swimming vertically and they're wasting all that energy. By the way, I can tell a water polo swimmer, yeah, because actually you don’t drink the water when you're in the pool. You want to look safe now, yeah, yeah, but, but I want people to work it, you know. And they could probably be pretty good swimmers. They cannot put their head in the water. They're afraid of it. They can't get the timing. They're afraid they're going to swallow water. Well, they’re a bunch of people that can swim, they do lap swimming, but their breathing is all wrong, because when they come up, they pull their heads way up the water to try to breathe out here. Because I tell them, the oxygen is exactly the same, right here. Well, it is there, you know. And, and if you do that, then you get side of the problem. You’ve got to be moving fast enough to build that little pocket of air, yeah? So, if you're not, you're not moving fast enough. You don't have faith in that pocket of air. We have faith in it all right. But every time they pull their head up like that, that slows you down.”

A lady asks Bill. “Yeah? So how many times would you say is the right amount of time to breathe.”

Bill: “You do whatever you like, air is our friend, air is our friend. Do you do it every third stroke? Or go like eight. No, if you do any distance workout, you're going to tire yourself there, yeah, because here's what happens. When you're jerking your head on the water every second stroke, or every third stroke, you don't run out of oxygen that much, and you don't have to turn your head that much.” ….

It was at that point that I realized the aquafit class was about to start. I left the spa, walked to my bath robe to grab the pass for my class: handed it to the instructor and descended into the 90°F water of the indoor pool, ready to start the workout.

This story was, in part, recreated from a recording.

MvR – 1 December 2025. ✍️