The Olympian Experience Swim Team (TOEST)

The Olympian Experience is a family operated not for profit training program based in Burlington, Ontario, Canada, which is registered with Masters Swimming Ontario (MSO). Our mission is to rise to become the epitome of swim programs in Ontario. Our goal is that TOEST becomes renowned for the quality of training, competing, coaching and sportsmanship, as well as being equally respected for the quality of management received by the athletes, individually and as team members.

To accomplish these objectives, TOEST will retain a boutique approach, capping the number of athletes to ensure that every athlete has a spot in a lane, the space to train, the freedom to train at their skill level, and the one on one coaching to take their performance to the next level.

“If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life.
There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.”  Bruce Lee

What is the TOEST philosophy?

Its an attitude which appreciates that quality surpasses quantity, that there is no substitute for exquisiteness and excellence. Its a mindset in training that focuses on skill acquisition, learning and refining technique, developing acute awareness of how the body moves and why, to the point that the athlete can execute on demand: skills, tactics, and strategies across a range of levels in training and in competition. Its an understanding that real success lies in the process, not the destination, and success upon success is built when process is partnered with a long term vision. Its the belief that true success, true potential, true peak performance arises from an healthy body, mind, and spirit, therefore training healthy is the starting point for any true pinnacle experience. This is the approach taken to coaching athletes and managing TOEST.

“All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.” Bruce Lee

Why start TOEST?

Why does anyone start a business? Because the solutions available in the market are insufficient, unsatisfactory, unsavory. Despite a space crowded with established players – there are no less than five (5) age group swim clubs – BAD, OAK, DSC, GHAC, and LOVE and three (3) masters swim clubs training in Burlington & Oakville pools – plus a protectionist and highly regulated environment (i.e. Swim Canada & Swim Ontario policies), TOEST was started because of the belief by its founders that there is better, they have better, and they can and will deliver better. It stems from the belief that there is always a market for a product or service of higher quality. As parents, the other reason to start TOEST is to teach our own kids entrepreneurship: when the solution you want is not available in the market, then the opportunity – or perhaps obligation – is for you to go out and create the solution.

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”  Gandhi

“Giving your child a skill is better than giving them one thousand pieces of gold” Chinese Proverb

How is TOEST different?

TOEST is the school of 2 beat swimming technique. Nowhere else will an athlete learn how to swim in all 4 of the competitive strokes. And, nowhere else will an athlete learn to progress from 2 beat to all 7 beat patterns in Freestyle, the 5 Backstroke beat patterns, and the 3 different beat patterns for Breaststroke and Butterfly. Plus, no other training program integrates dryland (aka gym/strength & conditioning training) into swimming like we do. Our team has the experience and the resume of results to take you/your junior athlete to their potential.

As one TOESTee put it… which he did in his own humorous style : before starting with our team, he envisioned that the coach would be a beer-bellied rusty old sod still deferring to training concepts a half century old, namely yelling and shouting at athletes how fat, slow, and inept they are in hopes that that would cause them to push harder, dig deeper and inevitably hurt themselves attempting to achieve performance gains. He expressed his gratitude that there is a coach who cares enough to learn the individual strengths and weaknesses of their athletes, a coach willing to study their athletes to identify the specific gaps in skill needed for them to achieve a new level of performance.

“Adaptability is about the powerful difference between adapting to cope and adapting to win.” Max Mckeown