Building the Foundation: What Grant Fleming Taught Me About Doing Things Right

Grant Fleming and I have been in the same league for years but never really crossed paths until his friends started hyping him up enough that I had to get him on the show. UVA commit, senior year just kicked off, and he had a lot to say about swimming, school, and everything in between. This episode ended up being one of my favorites because Grant doesn't just give surface-level answers. He actually thinks about why things work.

Technique first, speed second

Grant told me about joining Suburban a couple years back and having Coach Charlie basically tell him his technique was terrible. Not exactly the warm welcome you'd hope for, but Grant leaned into it. They spent the beginning of the season rebuilding his stroke from scratch. His reasoning stuck with me: it's better to build a good foundation than to perform on a stroke that's broken. He mentioned dealing with a crossover issue that was putting strain on his shoulder instead of his lats and triceps, which is exactly the kind of small technical flaw that turns into a bigger problem down the road. His team still runs a week and a half of pure technique drills after every break, and he says he genuinely loves that stretch of the season. Most swimmers dread drill weeks. Grant treats them like the setup for everything else.

Recovery isn't an afterthought, it's the job

I asked Grant what he does to recover after brutal practices, expecting the usual answer. What he actually said was simple but it's easy to forget: chocolate milk after practice, cherry juice closer to meets, and sleep, real sleep, not staying up messing around the night before something important. But the line that got me was when he talked about "controllable risk factors." His coach apparently drills into the team that you don't do anything stupid in the week before a meet. He used the example of guys getting hurt playing pickup basketball or, only half-joking, deciding to go cliff jumping a week out from a big taper meet. It sounds obvious when you say it out loud, but how many of us have tweaked something doing an activity that had nothing to do with swimming right before it mattered most.

Make the list, then make the connections

Grant's approach to school was refreshingly unglamorous. He just plans everything out, uses a planner, checks Canvas, and goes to his teachers during lunch and learn even when he doesn't think he needs help. His comment about teachers being "lonely during office hours" and rewarding kids who show up made me laugh, but it's true. The bigger thing he said, though, came at the very end when I asked what he'd tell his freshman self. He said he'd go back and actually try to build connections with people, because you never know when being in the right place at the right time turns into an opportunity. That's not really swimming advice or school advice. That's just good life advice from a seventeen-year-old who's already thinking about what happens after he leaves the pool deck for good.

What ties all of this together for me is that Grant isn't chasing shortcuts anywhere. He fixed his stroke instead of just swimming harder. He treats recovery like part of training instead of an afterthought. And he's already building habits and relationships that have nothing to do with lowering a time but everything to do with who he becomes after swimming ends. That's a mindset worth stealing, whether you're chasing a UVA cut or just trying to survive senior year.

— Anton