Mckenzie Siroky

In this episode of Unfiltered Waters, Elizabeth Beisel and Todd Anderson fill in for Katie Hoff, a week from having her baby girl, and sit down with Team USA breaststroker McKenzie Siroky right before the Pan Pacific Championships. She's coming off a personal best in the 100 breast at nationals, capping two hard months when her stroke feel vanished. She tracks nearly every metric of her training. So how does one of the most data driven swimmers on the team find her way back by feeling instead of measuring?

McKenzie ranks her outside of pool priorities: nutrition first, then recovery and sleep, then mental work like meditation and breath control with a sports psychologist she calls Dr. Joe. She wears a Whoop and has hit strain scores over 20, though she ignores it on race day, going best times in yellow and red. Her best lift is a 195 pound bench, chasing 200 right after Pan Pacs. Todd asks about the suit that ripped fifteen minutes before her nationals final, and she walks through the breathing reset that got her back on the block.

Along the way, the conversation goes places most swim interviews don't: hosting the team for Saturday pancake brunches off her Blackstone griddle, thirty pancakes at a time, plus wood fired pizza nights with homemade sourdough crust. She traces her breaststroke to family history, her mom swam at Michigan State too. She and teammate Moana treat practice like an actual race, speaker on the deck included, to rehearse the nerves. She admits she doesn't always know what a lactate based target split is supposed to feel like, she just trusts it and goes.

Underneath the technical talk is a real account of what it costs to lose your feel for the thing you're best at. McKenzie describes two months so frustrating she was near tears most practices, calling her aunt and dad from the car to find one thing to control each day. The fix wasn't more structure, it was less: slower practice, no intervals, feeling her stroke again instead of measuring it. It's a lesson that lands harder given how much of her identity runs on tracking numbers, a contradiction Elizabeth is well suited to draw out of her.

Whether you're a swimmer who tracks every number in training or someone who has never touched a pool but loves a good return to form story, this episode delivers. Watch the episode, then head to the comments and let us know: what's one thing you've learned to control when everything else feels like it's slipping? Subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast platform, and follow us on social media (https://linktr.ee/unfilteredwaters) for clips, bonus content, and updates throughout the week.

Note: this conversation was recorded ahead of the 2026 Pan Pacific Championships, so McKenzie's answers reflect where her head was heading into the meet, not how the racing actually went.

FOLLOW MCKENZIE SIROKY ON:
Instagram: @kenzie_siroky

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