STA Podcast

Stronger Together: How STA Membership Benefits Swimming Teachers

What does it mean to be part of a professional swimming community? Mark McNichol, STA’s Member of the Year, dives into the benefits of membership, how it supports professional growth, and why every swimming teacher should consider joining.

Lighting up the deep end - The WellyWeight story

The family behind WellyWeight share how a playful idea from their daughter turned a homemade dive toy into a glowing hit with kids, parents, and swimming teachers alike.

Learning to swim in Australia

Rhiannon Kocmar from SWIM Coaches & Teachers Australia discusses learning to swim in Australia, the challenges, the initiatives and programmes offered.

The power of UGC: How user-generated content is shaping the future of marketing

What exactly is user-generated content, and why is it making waves in marketing? In this episode, Valerie Yeun, Paid Media Manager at Big Wave Marketing, explains its benefits, shares examples, and explores how tech, trends, and emerging platforms are driving the future of UGC in 2025.

The benefits of video stroke analysis

Stuart Hacker from the Swim Cube discusses the benefits of video stroke analysis - how it works, who it’s for, how it can help you improve, and why you might want to give it a try.

Cold water and ice swimming

Leon Fryer is one of the founding coaches of Swimyourswim, member of the International Ice Swimming Association and specialist cold water / ice swimming coach.
Today we are discussing all things cold water / ice swimming, how to start, what we need to be aware of, ice swimming as a sport and Leon will be sharing his top 5 tips.

The importance of being trauma informed and the impact we can then have within aquatics

In this episode, Janine Ramsey from Trauma Informed Aquatics discusses the importance of being trauma informed and the impact we can then have within aquatics. Janine has extensive experience and qualifications in swimming teaching, swim teacher education, counselling, traumatic stress and child safeguarding. She is currently a Child Safeguarding Advisor for the Department of Health, in Tasmania, Australia and provides specialist consultancy services to the aquatics industry worldwide in the area of trauma-informed aquatics. Often the term expert can be overused, however Janine is a true expert within this field and incredibly passionate about educating people on being trauma informed.

What it means to be inclusive

Within this episode Antoinette Spear, General Manager at Autism Swim, discusses what it means to be inclusive, inclusive language we can use and some top tips /changes we can make to ensure we are supporting everyone within our lessons, and facilities.
Autism Swim are the world leaders in inclusive aquatics, offering high quality online specialist training in aquatics and neurodiversity and they now have Autism Swim Approved providers in over 26 countries, incredible.

Discussing swimming teachers with Emma Lewis, National Aquatics Manager for GLL

This episode Emma Lewis, National Aquatics Manager for GLL, discusses swimming teachers, what makes them great, how we recruit them and how we keep them motivated.

Keeping Our Pools Clean with Chris Bateman, STA’s Pool Plant Technical Advisor

This episode features Chris Bateman, STA’s Pool Plant Technical Advisor, who discusses how to keep our pool water clean and best practice within the pool plant. Chris will be sharing his 5 top tips to help us keep pools clean.