Philippe started competitive swimming at the age of 6, in Ste-foy, Quebec. After 3 years of competitive swimming, it was clear to him that not all his races were the same. Some were swam with “the eye of the tiger” and some were not. At his first swim meet as an 11 years old, he set out to swim all his races with the “eye of the tiger”. It wasn’t long before he realised that having the eye of the tiger at his command was more complicated than simply wishing or wanting to have it. Months later, experiencing these races “in a state of trance” became more important to him than winning medals. His quest for these races in the zone (called Flow in psychology) permeated his whole competitive swimming career of 18 years.
In 1996, after coaching for 4 years younger swimmers and masters, he became a full-time coach with the Laurentian University Swim Club, the home of Alex Bauman and Dr. Jeno Tihanyi. For two years, he met with Doc daily as he was mentored into his role of head coach.
Although, he experienced many so-called successes at the head of the club, amongst which are placing a swimmer on the Ontario Canada Games team, being named coach of the year in Canada for open water, qualifying several swimmers to the senior national level and etc. he wasn’t really happy with his job. His relationship with the swimmers and their parents was not ideal and he couldn’t see what he could do differently to make anything better.
He left the world of competitive swimming in the summer of 2002 to go teach English in Korea for a year. Twelve years later, in 2014, he decided to return to coaching. Although he was reluctant to coaching again, he was in a financial situation that left him little choice. Teaching private swimming lessons was simply not enough to make ends meet.
He returned to coaching with a schedule of only 15 hours a week on deck. He no longer had any grand plan for his career as a superstar coach such as going to the Olympics. All he wanted was to make some money helping kids get faster at swimming.
Being away from the swimming world for 12 years had changed his perspective on many things. When he met his swimmers that September, he quickly realised that the best he could do for them was to take them from where they were starting from and not from where he felt they SHOULD BE starting from. It is this approach that progressively led him to realize that it wasn’t the swimming that was important, but rather that it was the lessons learned while swimming that made a difference in the life of the athletes.
With the idea in mind that competitive swimming was the medium by which he would teach his swimmers to be Champions in Life, Philippe asked himself what would a Champion in Life look like as a swimmer and decided to uncover a practical system to use competitive swimming to teach these life skills to his athletes regardless of their performances in the pool.
Up until 2020, Philippe learned much as a coach about the soft skills of coaching and how to go about teaching young children to behave like Champions in life. Since then he has been busy developing his off-grid homestead and learning many new skills in the process.
“Every child I’ve ever asked this question has always answered it the same; What does a Champion choose? The hard way or the easy way of doing something? They all know from a very young age that a Champion always chooses the hard way.”
So how does one go about teaching a young competitive athlete to have the discipline to choose the hard way?
It is his answers to this question that he shares openly in this blog and which he can share directly with you should you ask for some guidance.