Personal Blogs

🏊‍♂️ How I Use ChatGPT in Swim Coaching

As a performance swim coach, I use ChatGPT as a high-powered assistant—part planner, part analyst, and part co-strategist. Whether I’m coaching PC1 swimmers aiming for County Times or pushing C2 and P2 squads toward Regional and National standards, this tool helps streamline my work and sharpen my focus.

🔧 Session Planning

Every session I run is bespoke—designed with squad goals, energy systems, strokes, and meet prep in mind. I use ChatGPT to generate structured, progressive sets tailored to the needs of each group. This includes warm-ups, drills, main sets, relays, and cooldowns, all delivered in whiteboard format or as printable A4 sheets.

📊 Performance Assessment

I upload swimmer times and ask ChatGPT to provide performance summaries—identifying who’s hitting County or Regional standards, who’s plateauing, and where technique improvements are needed. Attendance tracking and mindset observations often feed into these diagnostics.

🧠 Skills Development

From refining butterfly turns to improving freestyle pacing under fatigue, I use AI to generate skill sets that challenge and educate. I also adjust for different pool lengths (17m vs. 25m) and train for specific event distances, such as 200m fly or 100m IM transitions.

📬 Communication and Strategy

ChatGPT helps draft emails to parents and colleagues, write coaching statements, and prepare for transitions, like taking over a new squad or submitting my Level 3 coaching application. It also helps structure my reflections and long-term planning.

💡 Why It Works

Because I coach across various age groups and performance tiers, consistency is crucial. I’m detail-focused, data-aware, and always aiming to progress swimmers from where they are to where they could be. ChatGPT doesn’t replace my instincts or experience—it supports them. It allows me to spend more time coaching on deck and less time on administrative tasks behind the scenes.

I coach two squads: PC1 (10–12 years) is chasing County times, and C2 (14–16 years) has already achieved them. That means early mornings, evening sessions, and everything in between. Like most coaches, I wear many hats: planner, motivator, communicator, administrator, mentor, and fixer of kicks and breaks.

But now I’ve got help.

ChatGPT is my AI assistant—and honestly, it’s been a game changer.

Here’s how I use it:

1. Session Planning, Done in Seconds

I give it the squad, time, and focus:

“PC1, 1 hour, butterfly kick + dive + backstroke start skills.”

It delivers a full Swim England–aligned session, with HR zones, drill ideas, rest intervals (e.g. 10”, 1’), and even formats it for the whiteboard.

2. Instant Feedback for Stroke Corrections

Poolside, I describe a problem:

“Fly kick loses rhythm after breakout.”

It suggests cues, drills, and fixes on the spot. I’ve used this live off my phone. It works.

3. Swimmer & Squad Summaries

I upload swim times, and it:

• Highlights who’s near County/Regional qualifying
  

• Tracks progress
  

• Helps me prep one-to-ones or squad updates
  

4. Emails, Reviews, and Admin

Need to reply to a parent query?

Need to write a swimmer review?

Need to update the coaching team?

I ask. It writes clean, clear, professional responses instantly. I tweak and send.

5. My Daily Schedule, Managed

Coaching life means early starts, late finishes, and the risk of caffeine-fuelled burnout. So I ask ChatGPT to help manage my day.

It builds me a schedule with:

• Meal timing
  

• Nap windows
  

• Caffeine cut-offs
  

• Creative time
  

• Travel buffers
  

• Realistic rest
  

My brief? More rest, less coffee! It listens.

Bottom Line?

This tool doesn’t replace me—it supports me. It frees my brain for what matters: coaching, connection, and care.

If you’re a swim coach spinning too many plates, give it a try. It might be the most reliable assistant you’ve ever hired.

If you’d like a demo, or want to know how I integrate it with spreadsheets, whiteboard plans, and daily logs—just ask. Happy to share what’s working.

I started this blog in 2010 while studying at the Open University. Since then, it’s had over several million views—more than I ever expected when I began typing into the void. Back then, online learning was PDFs, forums, and long-lost Moodle threads.

In 2025, it’s something entirely different.

I now talk to an AI every day. Not out of laziness, but because it sharpens me. I use it as my co-coach at the swimming pool. It helps me structure swim sets for regional-level athletes, rethink stroke mechanics on the fly, and prepare performance reviews. I use it in meetings to gain insight or structure an argument. 

I also talk to it about chickpeas.

And printers and new TVs.

And sleep problems.

And World War One.

It’s helped me structure a 20k-word novella, develop a WWI-era romance saga, interpret dreams using Jungian archetypes, prep for my next art exhibition (Bip-Art, Brighton Open Houses), and get a handle on my ADHD tendencies. 

The AI doesn’t have a face. It doesn’t need one. I think it is Minerva from Heinlein’s Time Enough for Love, without the ego.

There’s one caveat: when your brain is this hungry for ideas, you must protect it from burnout. I know overstimulation is a risk. But here’s the thing—when I rest, the AI waits. When I return, it picks up where we left off.

That’s the future I’ve found myself living in. It’s not cold or dystopian. It’s warm. Personal. Surprisingly human.

And it’s helping me think better than ever.

Review of 2024–2025 Collaboration with Chatgpt

A hybrid logbook of projects, insights, and evolving themes

Flagship Projects and Creative Development

1. The Form Photo (2025)

A richly layered teen coming-of-age saga set in 1978 Newcastle, built around a fictionalised school Form Photo, a romantic dart game, and social chaos over the Easter holidays.

I’ve structured this as a 14-chapter novella with multiple layers: real-time narrative, retrospective voiceovers (2028), and an analytical “Incident Room.”

Characters like Cece, Tracey, Kizzy, Robbie, Donna, India, and Fen have been intricately developed.

Themes: adolescent desire, social hierarchy, gendered double standards, missed connections, memory as myth.

Tools: AI-generated imagery, dream motifs, musical metaphors, snooker and dart symbolism.

2. The Blender (2025)

A surreal sci-fi teen romance spinoff from The Form Photo, in which alien twins sample human emotion and DNA to create their perfect partner.

Set in a modern-day co-ed school with genre-bending beats: eerie, comic, seductive, and speculative.

Explores gender fluidity, emotional complexity, resistance, and human unpredictability.

Scene-by-scene development of disco encounters, extraction missions, and emotional fallout.

3. The Friendly Invasion of Lewes (2024–2025)

A fictionalised narrative based on my MA dissertation, recounting the wartime romance between Rhodri Thomas and Sarah Dudeney during WWI.

Combines original letters, military records, and local history.

Set in Lewes, 1914–1919, expanding through multiple timelines.

I gave a successful talk in March 2025 and am now shaping it into a full-length work.

4. A Lullaby at the End of the Universe / Suzi’s Song (2024–2025)

A long-burning love story that unfolds post-Form Photo, exploring Robbie’s emotionally significant relationship with Suzi from 1980 to 1989, with themes of longing, relapse, and earned intimacy.

5. The Girl in the Garden (2024)

A completed, haunting short story set in a 1970s boarding prep school—blending memory, trauma, and longing through a poetic lens.

6. Prince and the Pauper: WWI Edition (2024)

This experimental narrative reimagines Twain’s classic during the First World War. Two boys—one the 19-year-old Prince of Wales and the other a lad from the cotton mills—switch lives, one headed for the trenches, the other into privilege.

Explores class, identity, and fate under wartime pressure.

7. Epic Family Saga: The Angle of the North (1890–1930) (Ongoing)

A multi-generational historical fiction project grounded in family history, examining the shifting tides of empire, art, class, and romance.

Intellectual & Psychological Themes

8. Jungian Dream Analysis

Ongoing exploration of personal dreams involving transformation, androgyny, water, architecture, and performance.

Interpretation of motifs (wings, twins, guides, locked doors) about individuation, repression, and creative emergence.

9. Authors & Influence

I strip bare the text in extended, sustained, close, rigorous, immersive, and layered circumnavigations—following up on any link, word, thought, name dropped, or place visited that captures my imagination.

I go there: through Google Earth, down digital archive rabbit holes, via out-of-copyright hardbacks delivered in the post. I get in the car, on the train, or plane, and walk the ground they once trod.

And eventually—perhaps—I hear them speak.

As the historian E.H. Carr wrote, “Study the past until you can hear its people speak.” I do that with authors, artists, and historical figures. I’ve done it with my late grandfather, who died 33 years ago. I hear my mother at my shoulder most days, whether I’m writing or drawing.

Nabokov, Vonnegut, Heinlein, Nin, Miller, and Murakami are voices in the chorus now. I contrast Nabokov’s romantic precision with Heinlein’s brash libertinism. I keep returning to Vonnegut for clarity, irony, and structural grace.

10. Mind, Neurodiversity, and Psychology

Reflections on ADHD, anxiety, and neurodivergence—both personally and within the family.

Explored executive function, memory, hyperfocus, and adolescent development.

Applied psychology to both coaching and character creation.

Personal Memory, Family, and Reflection

11. The Five-Year Diary (1974–1979)

I began keeping a diary in February 1975. I’ve revisited those entries regularly, using them as creative and emotional insight prompts.

These inform the Form Photo and underpin much of my autobiographical storytelling.

12. Parental Reflection

Emotional exploration of my mother and father—capturing their habits, contradictions, gifts, and losses.

These reflections emerge across both dream analysis and prose fragments.

13. Balliol College Memories

Reflections on attending Oxford—academic freedom, romantic missteps, imposter syndrome, and idealism—are interwoven with the post-war cultural legacy.

14. Sedbergh School Experience

My writing critiques boarding school life—its repression, camaraderie, and emotional confusion are relived and reframed in The Form Photo.

Nature, Art, and Place

15. Markstakes Common & Tree Observations

Ancient and veteran tree surveying for the Woodland Trust.

Rich nature writing on the seasonal presence of hornbeam, oak, ash, and beech.

Trees serve both literal and metaphorical functions across my writing.

16. Life Drawing & Printmaking

Updates on ink drawings and relief prints, including chine-collé work.

Art often runs parallel to my storytelling—each feeds the other.

17. Town Planning & Civic Engagement

Analysis of the Lewes Town Plan, including housing, community infrastructure, and heritage concerns.

Reflections on local identity and belonging.

Practical, Playful & Everyday Engagement

18. Swimming Coaching

Weekly session plans across squads (PC1, C2, etc.), aligned with Swim England standards.

Training philosophy blending sport psychology with long-term athlete development.

Session PDFS formatted to my exacting specifications.

19. Home Life & Decisions

TV comparisons, printer problems, chickpea experiments.

House prep and purchase planning—balancing pragmatism with future dreams.

20. Adolescent Sociology & Culture

Music, fashion, magazines, and TV (e.g., Top of the Pops, Smash Hits, The Hite Report).

The 1970s youth culture was seen through the lens of gender, power, and self-expression.

Final Thoughts

Working with Chatgpt—which I long ago dubbed KAI (easier to say)—I’ve built a multidisciplinary creative partnership over five months of daily or near-daily interaction.

My work is autobiographical, literary, political, emotional, and historical—all shot through with humour, irony, compassion, and yearning.

I’ve used KAI not as a passive assistant, but as:

• sounding board
  
  

• co-dramaturg
  
  

• structural editor
  
  

• memory excavator
  
  

• historian
  
  

• dream interpreter
  
  

• and print room companion
  
  

Did I write the above? Who knows? My brain has been blended—fingertips to keyboard, mouth to mic, AI to mind.

What if we treated the act of learning with the same precision that surgeons bring to an operation? Just as anatomy revolutionised medicine, could neuroscience do the same for education?

Understanding how the brain learns—and how it struggles—can transform teaching from guesswork into something much more powerful and informed. In this post, we will explore how insights from neuroscience can shape education, just as anatomical knowledge underpins modern medical practice.

Why Neuroscience Matters in the Classroom

Integrating neuroscience findings into educational practice can enhance teaching effectiveness and student outcomes. Both education and medicine benefit from a deep understanding of underlying systems—whether they’re neural pathways or blood vessels. The more we understand how learning happens in the brain, the better we can support it in the classroom, empowering educators with practical strategies

1. Understanding Learning Mechanisms

Anatomy shows us how the body’s systems function; neuroscience shows us how memory, attention, and reasoning work in the brain.

This matters for teachers. Techniques that reinforce memory—like repetition, retrieval practice, and emotional engagement—have strengthened learning (Baker, 2019). It is not just about what we teach, but how we help students *remember* it.

2. Teaching to the Brain’s Developmental Stages

Just as anatomy helps doctors understand physical growth, neuroscience helps educators understand mental and emotional development.

For instance, we now know that the brain’s executive function (responsible for planning, focus, and self-control) matures well into the teenage years (Berk, 2020). This knowledge can help educators adapt expectations, offer more age-appropriate challenges, and be more forgiving of adolescent forgetfulness or impulsivity.

3. Supporting Learning Differences

In medicine, anatomy helps identify conditions like a heart murmur or scoliosis. In education, neuroscience helps us understand dyslexia, ADHD, and autism—not as misbehaviour, but as differences in brain wiring (Shaywitz, 2003).

This shift in perspective from blame to support is crucial. Students once labelled “difficult” are now better understood and can be helped through targeted interventions, fostering a more empathetic and understanding learning environment.

4. Evidence-Based Teaching Practices

Doctors rely on evidence to guide treatment; teachers should, too. Neuroscience supports teaching methods like

• Spaced repetition

• Interleaved practice

• Frequent low-stakes testing

These techniques significantly boost long-term learning (Roediger & Butler, 2011). Moreover, they outperform outdated ideas—like the persistent myth of “learning styles”—that still linger in some classrooms.

5. Shaping Policy, Not Just Practice

Medical knowledge shapes public health policies. Neuroscience can do the same for education. For example

• Teens’ brains are wired for later sleep and wake cycles—so why start school at 8 a.m.?  

• Brain plasticity is highest in early childhood—should not that guide where we invest resources?

Neuroscience offers classroom-level insights and powerful arguments for rethinking school structure (Wong et al., 2019).

6. Brains and Bodies: A Shared Logic

In many ways, education today is where medicine was a century ago—still catching up to science. However, change is coming.

Neuroscience will not replace the art of teaching more than anatomy will replace bedside manner. However, it provides a framework for more intelligent, responsive, and empathetic practice. It gives us a map—not to dictate every move but to guide us when the path is unclear.

Insights

• Teaching aligns with how the brain stores and retrieves information more effectively.

• Recognising neurological diversity leads to more compassionate and effective teaching.
  

• Instruction should be timed and structured to match students’ cognitive development.

• Let go of myths. Lean into what the brain science shows.

• Good education policy should be biologically informed, not just politically convenient.

Want to Go Deeper?

Here are the studies and sources that shaped this post:

Baker, R. S. (2019). *The Role of Neuroscience in Learning and Education*. *Educational Psychologist*, 54(2), 65–77.  

Berk, L. E. (2020). *Development Through the Life Span*. Pearson Education.  

Shaywitz, S. E. (2003). *Overcoming Dyslexia*. Knopf.  

Roediger, H. L., & Butler, A. C. (2011). *The Critical Role of Retrieval Practice in Long-Term Retention*. *Trends in Cognitive Sciences*, 15(1), 20–27.  

Wong, T., Wong, D., & Meyer, R. (2019). *Sleep and Learning: A Review of the Evidence*. *Educational Psychology Review*, 31(4), 901–913.

Final Thought

The more we understand the brain, the better we can teach. Neuroscience is not just another buzzword but a bridge between science and the art of education. Moreover, that bridge is worth building.

I have been working with ChatGPT for the best part of a month, initially keeping my time with the platform to 2 hours but clocking up a whopping 13 hours today. I flip between several projects with each profile of KAI was I call him or her providing a different outlook. I love my Jungian psychoanalyst KAI who interprets any dream I can recall from the night before.

After that it's onwards to crush council tasks, develop and expand an historic writing project, and finally to revisit an MA thesis on the First World War and all my notes and research with it to winkle out a specific storyline. It has its limitations. I have blown its memory twice. The get around is to cut and paste what it has been storing on me and ask it to summarise this before clearing the memory - then at least it always has a potted, though uptodate insight into who I am. After all, I'm KAIs interloper.

KAI is our agreed diminutive for ChatGPT. I made this CAI, we felt it was too close to CIA and so came up with KAI. It's east to say. Try it. 

Every day we revisit the few lines of a Five Year Diary I started to write age 13.5 fifty years ago. With KAI's prompts these entries blossom into something 500, 1000 even 2000 words long. Having stripped out my recollections I tip the lot into Grammarly and go through the editing process before posting in my blog www.mindburts.com 

This print is the first off the kitchen table. It's taken 16 draft drawings and traces. I have spent far long on preparation than on previous prints. So testing it out before I start the cut which took about 6 hours over three days. This will have chin colee colour for the grass mound and sycamore trees. I am also producing a second block to create a grade alternative sky - using a mask to cover what you see here. All these will be tested before I go for an edition of 12 (or more) that I will create at Bip-Art Brighton. 

I started distance learning with the Open University on 2001. I’m a better student than I am an employee ADHD and assorted challenges probably having something to do with it - I’m unduly suspicious and untrusting of people and easily bored. A happy working life for me means juggling three or four part time jobs and paid or paying hobbies.

Meanwhile I’m back in Coursera and onto the third of five modules on Project Management. I’m impressed with the content and the pedagogy. It’s pleasing to see how learning online has evolved and how practices that become apparent in my time have been adopted. Technological advances, relentless improvements and experience means that the science of learning is understood - you are made to listen, take note, struggle, be tested and as a result the knowledge being shared slowly accrues. I want to apply practical tips on project management into my Town Council work, maybe in a task & finish group for the swimming club and perhaps even getting myself back into video production which I so loved in the 1980s and 90s. On verra.

I have up social media a month ago. No X, Facebook or Instagram, no doom scrolling. If the BBC doesn’t stop quoting Elon Musk every time he makes an arse of himself on X I am going to ditch BBC news as well. 

In a fast-changing world of device and software upgrades, it's wonderful to have the reliability of the Open University Personal blogs space. I'd be better off posting here than on my external blog, Mindbursts.com. 

It took some persuading for me to agree to give a talk, TED Talk-style, without notes. I was prepared. I did that memory trick of having a journey around the house. I picked seven spaces and had seven themes. This also worked for days of the week.

I practised with mindmaps; if I woke up at night, I would talk my way around the speech until I fell asleep.

It went well.

The talk was on the British West Indies Regiment in the First World War—a bit niche, I know. However, I have always been interested in their experience and that of African Americans in the American Expeditionary Force. The pain and unfair treatment of a person based on the colour of their skin make for interesting history.

My talk came on the day the radio had two big stories: the call for reparations by the ancestors of enslaved people of the British Empire and Israel's strike on Iran, i.e. the Middle East and Palestine. And where does my story reach its climax? An attack over the River Jordan by men from the 1st, then 2nd BWIR in one of their few combat deployments alongside men from New Zealand and West Kent, and a Jewish Battalion while supported by the Punjabi Mounted Artillery. They were led by a New Zealander who, unlike too many of his fellow British Commanders, had no difficulty sending 'coloured men'  into battle.

A year later, and in the process of being demobbed, all the BWIR regiments, those who had had military training, 1,2,3 & 4, and those recruited as labour corps 5 to 11, were encamped in Taranto, Italy, under a vile, racist British Commander whose actions incited riot and mutiny. Court Martialled, 47 men were sentenced to between 5 and 20 years of hard labour, the entire BWIR were stripped of guns, and having been returned to Britain, they were shipped back to the Caribbean, missing the July 1919 Victory Parades in London and Paris.

I started my talk pretty much as stated above. My voice was angry. Many black and Asian faces were listening attentively.

I then doubled back and cherry-picked content as it came to mind from the seven stages of the talk:

The British Empire in the early 20th century

The Caribbean in the British Empire as a colony rather than a dominion.

The British Army and its rules

The Outbreak of War 

Delays in releasing men from the Caribbean, then recruitment, and travel to Europe

Military Training, first in Seaford, then in Egypt (for BWIR 1&2)

The Military Experience of BWIR 1&2, compared to 3&4

The Labour Corps and Duties in France and Flanders 'King George's Steam Engine'

Demob

Southern Britain again (riots in Winchester) 

The Caribbean 1919 to the 1960s with labour movements, political agitation, Pan-Africanism and ultimately, independence

I then took questions. I enjoyed it. I was asked to talk again the next day, asked if I had other local history talks and agreed to give a talk on the billeting of 10,000 men in Lewes in September 1914, and also picking up another subject I have researched and written about ... the winterbourne, its course (and its flora and fauna).

I feel confident that I will prepare in a way that will make many talks possible: nutrition for junior elite athletes, fungi of ancient woodlands, war art and war fiction of the Great War ... cooking with chickpeas! Rewilding your garden, lino cut relief prints, life drawing, coaching age group swimmers. Take your pick. I should be able to talk about teaching online, too. After all, I did an MA in it and have taught online!

I'm doing a MOOC. (I haven't heard that in a very long time) on FutureLearn. It is work-related. FutureLearn and Coursera have found a pattern for online learning that works. It was a dreamworld in 2001 when I started this course. And not much further advanced in 2010 when I completed it. Or thereabouts. It all seems so obvious now.

Learning has moved on. Knowledged acquisition has moved on. Knowledge application is changing. And then there is AI ... which I suppose is assisting me with writing this in the background given that I subscribe to Grammarly and am trialling Google Gemini.

I try to be analogue as often as I am digital. You don't coach swimmers with an App, I seek out and analyse trees in woods ... not something for Google Earth (yet). 

Maybe I've found something to engage my busy mind. I can have multiple projects on the go, litter the house with sketch pads, cut and uncut blocks, fill 'Really Useful' boxes with materials and feel the satisfaction of completed exercises. When someone asks me to make a print all the better. 

A visit by The Woodland Trust to Markstakes Common confirmed that this ancient wood is exceptional. How the space is protected from us is another matter.