David Johnston's 3 Reasons Why He Transferred to Florida

0:00Welcome to this swim swim podcast. I'm today's host Coleman Hodges and joining us today. He's an NCAA champion for the University of Texas, but big news is he is transferring to the University of Florida for a grad year and to train with their storied distance freestyle program. Today we are sitting down with David Johnson. David, thanks so much for joining us. How's it going? Great. Thanks for having me, Coleman. Excited to discuss this. The swim swim podcast is sponsored by Commit Swimming, the only club management software built exclusively for swim teams. Since 2015, Commit has been the go-to for coaches writing workouts, planning seasons, and tracking performance data. National level coaches around the world rely

1:03on it every day. Now Commit brings that same swimming first design to team management. Combining workouts, performance, meet entries, billing, communication, websites, volunteer tracking, and more all under one roof. Make the switch off, go motion to a simpler, more powerful solution. Book your demo today at CommitSwimming.com. It's been a big year for you. Let's talk about the news I just mentioned. You're transferring to Florida. You're going to go train with some very heavy hitters there in the distance for you world. You know, among them, obviously Katie Ledecki, Bobby Fink, Medjewati, the new NCAA record holder in the 1650 as well as his Tunisian teammate, Ahmed Hafnawi. But can you tell me just a little bit about what went into this decision for you and ultimately what made Florida the right fit for, you know, 2026, the college year of 2027, and what I'm assuming will be shooting for LA 2028 as well.

2:04Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so this was definitely a move that will be able to set me up for LA 2028. So, you know, typically when people ask me why I chose Florida, I can give them three reasons as to why that was the case. I think first I wanted to choose a program that could help me, could help work with me through my injury. You know, I wanted a program that I think I trusted the training staff and could have good communication with the coaches. And based on, you know, the calls I had with the coaches, the training staff and other athletes on the team, I felt like this was the right fit in terms of a program that can help me get back to where I was and help me get back to going best times because with where I am right now in my injury process, like it's not going to be easy to come back. I need these people in my corner to be able to help me. And so I wanted to choose a program that I think could help me help nurse me back to full strength. And second of all, I wanted to go to a program that could help me out financially. I think that I've never really had an opportunity to make an aisle money at Texas. And so I wanted to

3:05use this opportunity through my last year of eligibility to seek that out. And I think just heading into the Olympics, it'll be nice to, you know, now be working a job next year and go for a second graduate degree and just swim, you know, swim for the team and, you know, be fully funded with that. So it's just a huge plus because typically in swimming, there's not too many opportunities to get funding unless you're making international teams or kind of top two in your event, the country, which I have been in the last couple years. I've made money in the last couple years, but which is the way that this summer could shake out with kind of my lack of training through this injury. It'll be hard for me to qualify for that. So having this in my back corner is huge. And I honestly think that was probably the biggest, one of the biggest reasons why I chose Florida. And then third of all, I just wanted to be a part of a team that I think could give me more individualized training towards that distance freestyle. You know, I think part of the reason the last two years didn't go or the last year didn't go the way I wanted wasn't necessarily the coaching staff of Texas or anything that I think they have a great team, but I think that I just

4:09need to be healthy. And once I am healthy, I want to train into a program that is able to give me more individualized training towards that distance. So I think there's not really a better program to join than coach Nasty and the Gators with the amount of distance summers they have, the amount of people that can push me. And you know, I'm going into a team with, you know, three plus really fast, more class distance summers, not only plenty of other people on the team to push me as well, but I have always thrived from going into environments so people faster than me and trying to chase them. Like when I was 18, I made the decision to come to Texas. And I remember talking to my parents about that. And they were like, you could be like a big fish in a small pond and go to, you know, Auburn or A&M where you could go to UT and you'll be one of those guys. And I was like, no, I'm going to go be a big fish in a big pond. And this isn't even bigger fish, this isn't even bigger pond than I've been in. But I want to go there and try to chase down those guys every day until I can become like them. You know, I see those guys as much better summers than me. They've accomplished a lot more, but I'm going to go in there with some humility and

5:10make them work for every rep that I'm in practice. When I'm healthy and I'm going to go chase them down until I become them. So that's why I think Florida is a good fit for me. Yeah, that you've laid it out very clearly and makes sense. I mean, I think in this day and age, like you said, NIL money is out there. There are lots of opportunities and we see a lot more movement and I think movement that's motivated by that because if there are opportunities for swimmers to make money doing this and I don't want to say make a living necessarily, but be get funding to do what they do year to year. Why not take those opportunities? I think I think we've talked a lot about it in swimming and I think it's cool to see those to see people get those opportunities when they're available. I do think that was a really big part of my decision because I felt like after all this time, I'd put into swimming. I didn't want to start

6:13working eight hours a day and try to handle training 70k a week. So I need to be funded and then I think it's, you know, I never wanted to be in college swimming at this point, but I think just with, you know, the red shirt that I took in the injury, like I can't pass down the opportunity to make money swimming as opposed to if I didn't, I would, I guess just make nothing and work as I swam. So I think it's just an easier path for me to prepare for the Olympics and, you know, the money that I can be given, I can just save that for the Olympic year so that kind of no matter what happens in 2027, you know, the trials, I'm not as stressed out about that and I can just go race freely because I think I can make this a little bit team and I can continue to go best times even after everything I've went through. So it's easy when you have or easier when you get this kind of financial stability to help you along the way because I think just the finances have played a part in the last couple of years for me and that's just a real, a real

7:13part of being a, you know, a professional swimmer, you know, college swimmer in your 20s is you got to deal with the finances. So it's easier when you're, you know, in school and so being in school, I'm going to do that. So I just, I can't say how grateful I am for this opportunity. And I would say really, really weird situation to being in college at my age, but I'm just so grateful for a chance to be funded and keep swimming. I appreciate you recognizing that because obviously we have, we have commenters with opinions and we have people, you know, saying, oh, he's still in college, but the reality is, you're, you're taking advantage of the opportunities that are being given to you. I believe in current rules and I don't, and I don't think anyone can fault you for that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I appreciate that. You know, I think I had a couple friends contact me and say, hey, you know, like, did you, did you see what people say? Like, like, I hope you don't listen to him, you know, I'm like, I kind of haven't read one thing from the last like

8:18eight months. Like, I know people definitely have their opinions, but I feel like for me, if I went and read those things, I don't think that would help me sleep at night. I don't think that would be good for me. And so I honestly don't know exactly what they're saying, but I do know that there will be some people that are frustrated by this decision. And what I can say is I don't think there's going to be anything that I can say in this podcast that is going to make everyone happy, but I can at least share with 100% honesty and perspective as to why I made this decision and why I think it's best for my career moving forward. And so if, like, honestly, like, I could go read it and I could go look through all the arguments and see how I could debunk or see, like, how would make me feel, but I don't even think I'm going to spend the time to do it. I think I'm going to just do what I think is best for me. And I think if someone's frustrated about it, I think they definitely could have a very valid perspective. I'd like, I don't like that we have these roster limits and calls for me now. And it's, I would hate to see somebody not be able to be a part of the

9:20team with me being on it, but, you know, at the same time, I have to do what's best for me. So I feel like there's not going to be, I'm not, I can't come on here in this podcast and convince everyone that, you know, what I'm doing is good, but I cannot be share my honest perspective behind why I think it's best for my career. And a lot of that is the finances, but the other part of it is just that I love being a part of the team. And, you know, I think when I look back on my swimming career, I don't think I'm going to remember as much of like what it was like to make the Olympics or to win US trials in 2023 or I think I'll remember like what it was like to be a part of the team. You know, one of my favorite meets in my, my career was the 2022 NCAAs. And how to good meet, but our team lost, but I really love the feeling of being in that team battle. You know, and that's something that I really miss. And I got to experience it again in 2025 when we won. And I loved that like feeling of swimming for a team and being there for other people. You know, so when I go into Florida, like, I'm going to be three to six years older than everybody

10:20on the team. But I, at the same time, I want to come in there and try to make these people better. And I want to try to be a good, I want to try to be a good leader on the team. I just, I'd love swimming. I love being a part of the team. And I also want to help other people get better. And I think through this situation in Florida, I can do that. I appreciate hearing it. Yeah, like you said, can't please everyone. But I think as an athlete, and certainly as an older athlete and then moving into a professional athlete, you got to, you have to do it's best for you. And I think people, you know, if we get to see the fruits of your labor payoff, people, people are going to thank you for that. And I think you will thank yourself as well. Yeah, absolutely. I think like, you know, I'm not done with swimming. I feel like I've achieved quite a lot. But I'm still not done with swimming. And I want an opportunity to be able to make another Olympic team or do more. And I think that ultimately, if we adopt the mentality that we

11:27want our athletes in our mid 20s who have already achieved, you know, national team status or Olympic team status to retire or which I don't know what they're saying, but at least not compete. Like, I mean, you can swim outside of college. But I think if we adopt that mentality, then we're ultimately not going to grow because we need to adopt. We need to find a way to get this, you know, sport more money. And that's a really hard thing to accomplish. And it's, I couldn't give you all the solutions here today. But, you know, what I can say is that if you push people out of the sport, they have a chance at making the Olympic team. Or I mean, I'm not necessarily saying that's what they're doing. But if you make the path harder for them to do that, then it hurts our sport to grow because part of the reason we don't like why there's not as many people competing at world trials as there are Olympic trials or why there's why their sport is so young is because there's just not many opportunities for people in their mid 20s to continue swimming. And so if we like

12:29kind of adopted a mentality of like trying to spur on our athletes in their mid 20s to continue competing, then we'd probably have a faster and more, you know, a feel a little more depth that our trials meet. So I don't know if I explained that perfectly, but ultimately I think like I have a chance to make the Olympic team, you know, like I'm not sure how good it is. I think it's great, but whether it happens or not, I want to like pursue that with everything I have and considering that I have this option to swim in college, given the injury I experienced, I'm going to take it because I think that is what's going to prepare me best to get to that moment. And so I'm still dreaming of those things. I still have goals to make the Olympic team go best times. And so I'm not going to give that up and I'm going to pursue that with everything I have with the options in front of me. So let's change gears a little bit. You've you've mentioned the injury now quite a few times. And so let's talk about just your last year. You were at Texas,

13:31you would plan on competing, but then you were dealing with this injury and didn't end up racing at all for the long horns. How can you can you take me through this year and how you've managed this injury? And I mean, I guess how it has set you back from what you wanted this year to be. Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, this has been something that I haven't really spoke publicly about. And a lot of the reason for that is because I didn't think I was going to miss the season or be out this long. So what happened was I strained my calf over the summer. And that, I did a lot of pulling over the summer and I did a lot of upper bodywork and my shoulders held up. And then when it got to August after I had swam in that knee, nerve, I and after worlds, I kind of got back really quickly into weights because I feel like I hadn't been lifting as much and I was doing a lot of bench press and stuff. And when I would like bring down the bench press, my shoulder would just crack and crack and crack and then I'd lift it up. And so my shoulder was

14:34always bothering me, my left shoulder, but I didn't really think much of it because I had shoulder problems in the past and I was always able to get by if I just icing all the time, you know. Like I was icing my shoulder, you know, every single day, both of them, I was doing cupping, I was doing therapy. So I started the season and it was bothering me, but it wasn't anything abnormal that you couldn't work through. And then it continued to bother me more and more. I went to that Alabama meat and that was the meat. So I did the team intro squad and I did that Alabama meat and it went pretty well. Like I mean, I was 843 in the thousand and like I was getting off to a good start in the season, but I was kind of working through the shoulder and then it was the next week is when things really got bad for me. It really started bothering me on the Friday after that Alabama dual meat and I did this like I don't think this set injured me, but I think it made it harder for me to get over the injury. I did this suitup set on that Friday afternoon when my shoulder was bothering me and I think that really sent it over the edge and then I pretty much didn't swim after that. So basically it was really bothering me. So I got an MRI on it the next week.

15:40And you know, ultimately with the first MRI, you know, they said it was a rotator cuff, supersonic strain, you know, that I could be able to heal from a couple of weeks, you know, max a couple of months or something. So I ultimately just started kicking and I started doing a lot of kicking with my hands on my side just thinking, okay, I'll be back in like a month or two or even less. And so I was doing that, but it never really got a lot better. And so I got to the point where I've been kicking for like two months, two, two and a half months and we got to the new year and I was like, well, if I want to have a season at this point, I got to try to start swimming. So I tried to swim for two weeks. Well, I had a couple of doctors suggest that I get a PRP injection around the new year. I met with three different doctors that told me that I should do that. But I was like, look, that might be what's best, but like, I don't want to give up on the season, yet. So I'm going to see if I could make it work and then maybe do it after the NCAAs. And I tried to swim for two weeks and I did some of the team workouts, but it just didn't work. I mean, like, to be honest, I don't think I took one stroke that didn't hurt. And that was terrible

16:42for me because this whole time I didn't know how long I was going to be out every time. Like, I was like, okay, I'll be back the next one, playing back the next month, I'll go back the next month. And then we got to a point where I was like, okay, this just isn't going to work. So I can't swim in the college season. So once I realized that, you know, the coaches let me come up here to Colorado Springs. So I'm still here. I've been in Colorado Springs since February 4th and I've been rehabbing my shoulder. And so I got a PRP injection in my left shoulder on February 6th. And I got a PRP injection in my right shoulder on February 27th. And ultimately, the official diagnosis here was that the doctors believed that I had micro tearing in my bursa at about 25% and then I had chronic ten-in-a-pathian tube muscles in my rotator cuff. And then the right one was really similar. I had problems. So I'd also had problems in the right one, also due to the kind of the overcompensation from the last couple months. So I didn't think I was going to need to do anything on the right one. I thought I would just need a rest, but I ended up getting an

17:43injection on that one as well because we thought it was needed, but it's just not as serious as the left one. So now what is it? It's like mid-April. So since then, I've been at the UTC for nine and half weeks now. So every day I rehab, I do, you know, I kick and bike as much as I can. And, you know, still trying to come back. So I've literally missed six months of training. Like when I come back to swimming, this is not going to be pretty. Like it's going to take time to come back, but like I didn't tear my shoulder, fully tear my shoulder or need surgery, right? So like I had a legitimate injury that kept me out of competing, but at the same time, like this is something that I will scientifically come back from. And to be honest, I know this is a really, really long answer and like someone's listening to this or probably thinking this way too long, but I think, you know, this will heal what time and it's astounding that it hasn't healed at this point. Like you would think that it wouldn't have taken me this long to get over in the first place. But I do think that I've done enough kicking and biking to be in pretty good shape. But, you know, like I said, it's not going

18:43to be pretty when I come back, but, you know, I'm still, I have two years to the Olympics in every year until the NCAA. So I'm just going to do my best to rehab every day and come back from this. I'm starting to turn, you know, turn a corner right now. Like overhead motions are getting easier. Like the last therapy in the last, I would say like two to three weeks has been really, really good. I'd swam a 500 on Wednesday of last week or maybe it was Thursday. I think it was Thursday of last week, which is the most I'd swam. So I'm hoping that, you know, in the next couple of weeks, a couple of months, I can get to a point where I'm, you know, training half or full capacity. It's just going to take a little bit of time to build up. But I think now I'm really like turning that corner where I'm about to get back to things. So, you know, it's been, it's been a really, really hard last six months because I love swimming so much and it was really hard for me not to swim for the Texas team this year. I think part of the reason why I tried to continue training and not get this injection earlier was because I wanted to be there for the team. Like I wasn't sitting here wanting to just wait around and try to see if I could swim another

19:45year. Like I wanted to swim. I wanted to win NCAA. So I wanted to compete against, you know, Joay and Zalon and Levi and those guys like I hated like I was on a bike watching those guys break that record. Like I was working out as I was watching that and, you know, it was really entertaining. But at the same time, I hated not being there and I hate not being able to swim. But, you know, it's, I had a lot of upward progress from, you know, 17 to 22, 23 and sometimes things happen to you and things are going to happen to everybody and a lot of times how you handle that is going to figure out how you move forward. And I think I'm going to handle this the right way and come back from this the right way and not let this be the end of my story. That's, I mean, that's great to hear, David. And thank you again for just being honest and sharing such a thorough perspective on what the last year has been like because I'm sure there are many, many swimmers and former swimmers and coaches who can relate to going through an injury

20:45and things not going according to plan, right? Yeah. The rehab and the recovery process can, can honestly be more frustrating than the injury themselves, right? Because you have this expectation of getting back to normal and this timeline of getting back to normal. And especially if it keeps getting pushed, that sounds really challenging. Yeah, exactly. And I think part of the reason why I was never like officially like, oh, I'm not in NCAA as I'm not doing this is because like, I never, I probably could have done that in late January or early February, but I thought I was coming back and I thought I'd still be able to swim. So a lot of it is just like a lot of uncertainty. You know, like when you're dealing with like a chronic issue, it's like, you never, you never really know when it's fully going to heal. And like, I've been swimming since I was really competitively since I was six years old. Like when I was six years old, I was doing multiple times training a week, you know, working on my stroke technique.

21:46So I mean, I've been just a lot of years of swimming on my body that I think I just need to recover from. And yeah, I mean, it's, it's incredibly frustrating because when I look back to where I was in 2023, you know, that moment that I won U.S. trials and with where I was at that point, you know, I would have thought by 2025 or 2026, you know, I'd be on top of the world. I'd be one of the best summers in the world. And I am a great summer, but I figured I'd be a lot faster. And I feel like I, there were a lot of things that happened to me in that three-year window that I think really prevented me from achieving that. You know, like when I got mono before the 2023 world championships and then swam at Japan with the mono that having swung through that and then not knowing I had it for a couple weeks, that kind of tanked my health for a while. And then dealing with this injury and getting in code at the Olympics, like there were some things that happened to me that frustrated me. But again, like I said, it's just how you move forward. And so like when I think back to where I

22:50thought I'd be in 2026, I thought it'd be a lot better than I'm doing now. And it's kind of hard breaking to see the situation I'm in now. But I ultimately just like have to put that behind me. And I just have to move forward like I was when I was 18 and I was just chasing. And that's why I also think Florida is going to be great because I get to go into a new environment and I get to go chase guys who are better than me. And I get to kind of have like a fresh start in my career. And so you know, I think I got to try to put this behind me as hard as it is to not sit up at night and think about all the things that happened to me, like what could have happened at the Olympics, what could have happened at the world's, you know, what happened if I wanted to get injured, what could I could have done at NCAA's, like those are real mental things. But I think I'm just going to put it behind me. And I'm just going to move forward and not necessarily forget the things that I've done because the things that I've done are great goals, mentally like it's in the past now. And I'm going to try to come into Florida and and chase and become a better swimmer just like I did back in the day. Like I just love training and I love being a part of a team

23:53and I'm excited to do that. I know I repeated myself a lot through this, but no, no, it's all good. I mean, I really appreciate getting your perspective on these topics. And I think a lot of other people will as well. It's an exciting update. And yeah, like you said, I hope a new perspective, a new environment. And obviously this rehabilitation can help, you know, kind of kind of get your career back to where you want to go. But I appreciate you taking the time to sit down and explain it all, David. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you know, I'm really glad to. And, you know, I think this is going to be a great opportunity for me to continue. It's a very, very unconventional opportunity. Yeah, but I think just with these resources that I have in front of me, I kind of be more thankful for this chance to continue my career in a way that I think is best suited for me. And so I'm really excited to chase that. So I appreciate you asking

24:56me these questions and getting me to provide my perspective because I think it's really important to share with people who might not fully understand or necessarily know what's happening. So thank you. You've been listening to the Swim Swim Podcast. Stay tuned for new episodes every week. You can take Swim Swim Podcasts on the go by subscribing on your favorite podcast platform. Look for links in the description below and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more videos as well.