Q&A Series #3 with Kyle Stürmann
Athlete #3: Kyle Stürmann
P2P Challenge: Plum Island Punch: Swim — Dawgpatch Bandits
Questions by Mike Mata (Director of Mental Performance)
Mike: Talk to me about this challenge.
Kyle: “The Dawgpatch completed a few great swims in 2020 that I was unable to attend, so I was really excited to do a good one in 2021. We had already swum to Gardiners Island in the past from Cedar Point for what we call the “Gardiners Blitz'' back in August of 2019, so I was excited to return to Gardiners again. I don't remember exactly whose idea this was to swim to plum… I wanna say it was either Spencer Schneider or Drew or maybe even Jeremy Grosvenor. I don't remember exactly whose idea it was. Anyway, it was not my idea, but it was an opportunity to go back to Gardiners Island, which was awesome, and to get into some truly deep water… because Gardiners Bay maybe gets to like ~50 ft… but if you're like, you know, up in sort of the proper sound there between Plum and Gardiners, it's effectively the open ocean. I hadn't done one in a couple of years so I was like, alright, let's do it. Let's go for it.”
Mike: What thoughts come up when you initially look back?
Kyle: I think it probably was the hardest thing I've ever done physically. You know, it probably was because it was a really cold morning… it was an eerie vibe with the gray sky, the sun had not come up yet. There were clouds in the sky. We saw a giant fishing boat. We swam by the ruins, which are just a lighthouse or a base of some sort of fort or something for the military that they basically blew up and the rocks are still there and a lot of big seals swim around there. So I think just the general sort of vibe of that day. I also think of touching sand on Plum Island and just being really impressed with myself and the team.. Another factor with the swim is that you're not allowed to go to Plum Island, and it's such a fabled mysterious weird place. Remember the Montauk monster, that weird animal they found washed up on shore? They thought it was from Plum Island; those conspiracy theories. So it was like, I literally just set foot on Plum Island, having swam five miles in the open ocean. So, the general craziness of it.
Mike: Was it fun?
Kyle: “Yeah. Ultimately, I would probably always say these things are a little bit fun or funny…there's moments of comic relief amidst all the seriousness. I always love doing these things, man. I love the build up. I love carb loading the day before and eating a big pasta dinner…the anticipation of getting up at four o'clock. I always love seeing the sunrise and getting up before the sun is up no matter what I'm doing. And then, the build up of getting on the boat from Sag Harbor and going out to Gardiners Island was great. There was some resistance. I mean, Drew and I both saw that there was some swell and chop and we were kind of like, oh, “is this the right way to do it?” And I had just gotten back from Costa Rica. I hadn't done a significant swim in years, I just really trained like two times like I did two long beach swims before this and then just got in the water and did five miles…the boat ride back is one of the best feelings you can have because it's like you just had to swim through these crazy waters and then you get on the boat and you go by fast and you're safe… I think one moment that I would say was just kind of maybe fun is not the exact word, but there was a moment where the sun finally came up and like broke through the clouds and we were really cold. I mean, it was cold, dude. I had some hypothermia fears and because I had gotten used to the warmer waters in Costa Rica, it was a shock for me. Drew and I don't have a lot of body fat, he has even less than I do. So the sun came up and there's actually a picture of us in the ocean where you just see our heads with the caps in the sun and we're almost kind of smiling and that was a nice moment. So for me, I always find some fun in it.”
Mike: What do you love most about open water distance swimming? (How do you tap into this while swimming?)
Kyle: “There are multiple reasons why I do these things… I'm very inspired by Drew and Nico and Spencer and Jeremy and Caite and the other amazing athletes who do Dawgpatch challenges and I sort of say, “hey, they're doing it and they're going hard. Why can't I?” I have the opportunity to train and do these swims with people who are incredible athletes who inspire me. That's a great opportunity and I should go that way and I should pursue that. So I definitely get the collective inspiration…Drew and I have been friends now since we were really little kids and we have a deep bond when it comes to open water swimming that was fostered by our years working as ocean lifeguards under Mike Semkus as our head lifeguard…whenever I can tap into that and enjoy those moments with Drew, I really love that. It’s a hallmark of our brotherhood… and I just feel better in water.”
Mike: The energy, the drive that gets you to accomplish these feats- is there anywhere else in your life where you feel it?
Kyle: “I would say training in the gym, doing strength workouts. I try to go to that place of “dig deep,” “hey, get it done, it's really hard, it's gonna be painful. But on the other side of pain is glory and you can suffer for a little bit to have a life's worth of sense of accomplishment from having achieved something really impressive”… because I know on the other side of that you can look back and say, “hey I got that shit done, I did it, it was scary. It was daunting. I didn't necessarily have the confidence to do it, but I did it…” and you can apply that to any other domain in life where you have a similar set of fears… I can go to this aspect of my life when I'm going for a job interview or when I'm trying to get a new job or when I'm moving to a new place or when I want to go talk to a really pretty girl who I'm scared to talk to… I can kind of come back to the swims and all of my stuff I've done as a lifeguard and through the Dawgpatch… it has that deeper significance for me that I can bring to my other areas of life.``
Mike: Describe your perception of what it’s like to swim over 100+ feet of water
Kyle: “I try not to think too much about these specific details and facts when I'm in the moment… I kind of like to place myself in these positions where fear is not really an option. Inevitably, you're going to have certain thoughts or you're going to feel fear. But if you're in the open ocean, a place in the world where the shark population is thriving, not to mention bluefish… you just make it infinitely more miserable to think in concrete terms about what could go wrong. I also practice freediving and that has a lot of parallels where you can't think about what could happen to you when you're, you know, more than 10 m under the surface with no oxygen tank or you're gonna panic or you're gonna feel infinitely worse if you do. So, it's almost like in these positions when I'm freediving or when I'm swimming in the open ocean deeper than 100 feet I know that if I allow fear to really fester, it's gonna get out of hand and it's gonna make me miserable. There's almost a sort of resignation to the moment or just an acceptance... You're already in such a vulnerable position in which you have very little control. If something wanted to come and bite you or if something happened, you only have so much control. So there is that resignation and the acceptance of just, “hey, I am in a vulnerable position but thinking about that in concrete terms or catastrophizing or worrying about it is not gonna get me anywhere.” There's that saying we have nothing to fear but fear itself. And I do really think that experiencing fear in a lot of ways is almost worse than going through what you actually want… If I'm in the ocean and I start to think about great white sharks, that's gonna go to a bad place. So basically, in fewer words, I'm forced to not indulge so much in fear. And that's actually something I really like because otherwise on land I do have my moments of fear and worry, but in the ocean it's like I can't even go there.”
Mike: How do you work with emotions like fear or worry when you’re in the open water? How would you describe your relationship with fear?
Kyle: “There are a few things that make you feel better out there. When we do these swims, I swim with Drew as my swim partner and he breathes one way and I breathe the other. So we pretty much always have eyes on one another. And that's definitely a comforting thing to know someone's there in the water with you. You do have the support boat and you have a spotter looking around to make sure you're good for the most part. So those sorts of things help me for sure and allow me to feel less fear. I think one thing in general, I don't know how related this is to fear, but it's very difficult in this day and age to feel present in what you're doing. And there's always a million things to think about or worry about... I don't always find it easy to feel present and to be where I am and to just experience stillness… inevitably my mind often goes to a place where I'm either ruminating or beating myself up over my perceived failures or mistakes in the past or I'm worried about tomorrow or the future. It could be hard to sort of get myself into these moments of true presence… One thing I've learned from free diving that I'm really interested in now is energy conservation - thinking uses oxygen and worrying uses energy and to the extent you allow those things to drain your energy. It's gonna complicate your ability to perform and complete the task at hand… sometimes I’ll say to myself things like “I've been here before, I've gone through this,” and that does carry over in other aspects of my life where I think, “hey Kyle, you might be scared of this now, but just keep going and work through that fear and develop that healthy relationship with that fear.” And then, you know, it’s a really great feeling to be able to look back and say this used to scare the shit out of me, but now I'm all good… you never fully conquer the fear, right? It's always gonna be there, but you develop that relationship with it…” I do think that it’s fundamental about what we do with the Dawgpatch of how I am doing this swim as a part of something bigger than me for causes that are bigger than me to ultimately create a positive impact in the world. Because I place a certain faith in the universe or in fortune that I won't get taken out by a thresher shark or a great white or I won't drown, or it won't go terribly wrong or I won't get struck by lightning… faith is a huge part of allowing me to overcome fear. I think if I can put acceptance, vulnerability and faith together, that's my “cocktail,” so to speak, for dealing with fear.”
Mike: How did sport and performance psychology fit into this swim?
Kyle: “It was definitely a mind over matter experience all told… experience doing distance swimming was totally essential for me to be able to mentally and physically get this done. I think that the rest of the team would agree. We all had some decent experience, particularly Spencer and Caite Kapel who are stars when it comes to open water swimming. Drew and I, because we had done the eight mile swim or 8.5 mile swim from Cedar to Gardiners, we were not intimidated by the number of five miles. I mean, don't get me wrong, that's a lot of time to be swimming in the open ocean. I'm not saying it wasn't difficult… I was plenty scared leading up to this. But, you know, because I had done that before I was less worried about the distance. It was more about the fear factor of being in the open ocean, the cold water… it was critical and necessary to draw from those past experiences to have the confidence and to remember like, “no, I can get this done. We're gonna get this done. I've been here before.”
Mike: What were the biggest hurdles along the way, both physically and mentally? How did you overcome them?
Kyle: “You know, Drew and I always joke about this, but we take a lot of pride in not wearing wetsuits or any sort of top for these swims. We wear our monkeys… it’s from that ocean lifeguarding tradition of you can’t take the lifeguard test in a wetsuit and it's always cold when you take your first lifeguard test in June… but this time I was like, “no, dude, I'm not, it's way too cold five in the morning”… Drew and I both had a sense of like this is a little bit rogue and we haven’t quite done something like this in waters like this. So, the first obstacle or hurdle was my own inner resistance… not even really wanting to do it in the moment… But then feeling the totality of the moment, I was like, this is nutty… eventually I started swimming… I was like, “ok, Kyle, it's time to come to acceptance.” So I came into the acceptance… The other hurdle that was rough was the cold man. And it wasn't just because I had been living in Costa Rica for three years, it was cold that morning and the sun was not up… I did sort of have fear of hypothermia. Like I could see Drew's skin color was changing. He was getting more yellow and I could see he was losing a little bit of range of motion in his stroke. And I was as well because when you're not as warmed up you lose a little bit of that range of motion. And I was like, all right, this is a little dicey and we had to say that to Chuck on the boat, “hey, you know, keep an eye on us because it's cold in here. And if you see us moving weirdly or stop moving, that probably means something's wrong… then the sun came up and it was like, “oh my God…” I've never been so happy to see the sun come out in my entire life… it was like, “okay, we're gonna be good now.” So that one sort of took care of itself and the elements behaved and conformed.”
Mike: What did you learn from this expedition that you will carry forward, both in everyday life and sport related?
Kyle: “Just because you've never done something does not mean you can't do it. It's not a “not,” it's a “not yet”… I did not train or prepare in the traditional sense for the Plum Island swim… but mentally, I'm pretty damn prepared, and that is more important ultimately than the physical preparation… Almost always, I think the majority of it is mental and that is a good thing to remember in life that even if you don't feel prepared for something because you haven't trained or prepared in the traditional advised way… you can get it done, and humans are capable of incredible things. And if you're a human, by extension, you're capable of incredible things.”
Check out the full Plumb Island Punch write-up here.