Book review: Off the Deep End, by W Hodding Carter

Off the Deep End (affiliate links: UK, US) is the unusual tale of W Hodding Carter, a man having a mid-life crisis.  The fact that he has the mid-life crisis isn’t unusual.  What’s unusual is the way he chooses to deal with it.

As Hodding Carter says, most men of his age (forty-one, at the time), are out buying large motorcycles, getting younger girlfriends and having plastic surgery to disguise their ageing bodies.  Instead of falling into line, he decided to start swimming competitively again.  The trouble was, he set his sights quite high.  Very high.  Like Olympics, high.

So it’s a little odd.  But it’s also the book that I have enjoyed most so far this year.

Try competitive swimming instead of a mid-life crisis

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OK, I’ll bite.  Why did you enjoy it so much?

Let me count the ways I love this book:

1. It’s about swimming

First and foremost, I love swimming.  If you’ve never swum and you hate the water then this book is probably not going to make you light up like it did me.

When I read the sections about Hodding’s races, my heart is in my mouth.  I know what it feels like to dive in at the crack of the gun.  I know how hitting the cold water burns briefly after a long session of waiting on the heated poolside.

I nod knowingly as he recounts the easy experience of the first leg and the progressively harder legs that follow, the cramping lactic in the arms, the burning in the lungs.  I boil with the same frustration that he does when he tops out and reaches his limit just metres from the final wall.

I get misty-eyed when he deliberately holds back in a relay and swims his best ever performance without knowing it because he maintains his form all the way through.

Michael Phelps swims – image by The Wolf

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2. It’s abot using weights for swimming

I hope it goes without saying that you know I love lifting weights.

After trying (unsuccessfully) to repeat his old swimming programme of several miles a day and trying to swim with other swimmers who are still doing that type of programme, Hodding realises that for the shorter distances he wants to swim, he doesn’t have to put the miles in.  He can use resistance training instead.  This training takes the form of both free weights and specialised swimming equipment that allows him to swim against greater resistance than normally.

I am passionate about this partly because I fell into the same trap many years ago and partly because my countryman Mark Foster (the fastest man through water) made extensive use of resistance training in his programmes.  So it’s only patriotic of me…

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3. It’s about sport as therapy

I strongly believe in the power of physical activity, lifting weights and competitive sport to help men through hard phases in their lives.  I believe it provides self-esteem, a much-needed goal to work towards and a distraction from other things that weigh on the mind.

I’ve reviewed a number of books now that contain the theme of sports as therapy for men at various points in their lives and for various reasons.

• In Wrecking Machine, Alex Wade uses white-collar boxing to help extract himself from a rut of alcoholism, smoking and self-destructive behaviour.
• In The Escape Artist, Matt Seaton finds that cycling competitively scratches an itch but he can’t bring himself to admit it.  Instead, he sees it as “escapism” from the realities of life.  However, it helps him get through a very hard phase in his life.
• In Record Breaker, Paddy Doyle finds that he needs a focus to channel all of his energy to prevent himself from going wild.

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4. It’s about sport and life

Hodding has a nice turn of comic phrasing and some of the scenes describing how he has to creep out of the house in the early hours of the morning to get his workouts in made me smile.  I get pretty wound up when people I work with claim that they don’t have time to lift weights or go to the gym.  These are usually the same people who can quote large amounts of last night’s televsion.

I liked the fact Hodding realises that people have difficulty fitting sport around life and yet he makes the strong point that if you really want to do it then you can.

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5. It’s about sport as a veteran (or master in swimming)

There is a generally accepted rule of thumb in masters swimming that you lose 1% of your speed each year as you age.  It’s well-quoted and Hodding refers to it in his book.  One big problem with such rules is that by being quoted a lot they acquire a sort of canonical status and nobody ever questions them.  Another big problem is that they’re usually complete rubbish.

Hodding quickly realises as he starts resistance training that he can reverse these so-called effects of ageing.  I guess that’s because they’re actually effects of inactivity and the consquent loss of muscle mass rather than ageing.

As Biomarkers shows, getting weaker as you get older isn’t because you’re getting older.  It’s because you’re losing muscle.

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6. It’s about self-awareness

Without going into huge amounts of detail, Hodding clearly had a rough ride with his subconscious over a number of years.  He writes about it now with a knowingly wry smile but there is pain there too.

He has evidently done a lot of soul-searching (and maybe even some therapy) to get where he is today and the clarity he has achieved is admirable.  I like honesty and I hope that if I ever write memoirs then they are as open as his are.

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7. It’s the story of a forlorn hope

The English love the underdog and they love stories about fighting against impossible odds (and losing): just look at our favourite stories.  Take, for example, Scott of the Antarctic.  Not only did he get beaten by Amundsen but he actually died in the process.

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More about Hodding Carter

If you’d like to find out more about the curious fellow that is Hodding Carter, he has a blog here.

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