In this episode of Unfiltered Waters, Elizabeth Beisel and Todd Anderson fill in for Katie Hoff, about a week out from giving birth to her daughter, and sit down with Emma Weyant ahead of the Pan Pacific Championships. It has been a strange year for her: a full training block with no Olympic Trials to break it up, and one of the hardest, most rewarding stretches of her career. So what does it take to trust a year of work you haven't gotten to prove yet?
Emma walks through the overhaul that has reshaped her stroke work: heavier backstroke sets on power days, sometimes pulling backstroke with buckets while everyone else swims freestyle, a callback to band sets from her club days. Adding Pilates to dryland has helped her mobility and eased some hip issues. At Pan Pacs she's swimming the 400 free and 200 IM, training the 400 free daily alongside Katie Ledecky after a 4:07 at Fort Lauderdale. Todd asks her to name the biggest change, and backstroke is the answer without hesitation.
Along the way, the conversation goes places most swim interviews don't: her walkout song pick of Getaway Car by Taylor Swift, a Shake Shack double cheeseburger with bacon as her cheat meal, a deep dive into hair care science that has her dreaming up a chlorine specific product line, and getting talked into her first spray tan by Katie Ledecky. She admits she still hasn't gotten the TikTok color analysis everyone keeps pushing her toward, joking she can never tell gold from silver when the trend hits her feed.
Underneath the training talk is a real reckoning with what comes next. Emma graduated in August, studied for the LSAT, did well, then chose to push law school back a year rather than close the door on swimming. She's leaning into a word her coach repeats to her, courage, separating it from confidence: one is doing something bold and unexpected, the other comes from consistency and trust. She traces that shift to a breakthrough race in Fort Lauderdale a year ago, when she stopped chasing her old self and started building someone new. It's a shift Elizabeth is well positioned to draw out of her.
Whether you're a swimmer trying to figure out your own next chapter or someone who has never set foot on a pool deck but loves a good identity story, this episode delivers. Watch the episode, then head to the comments and let us know: what's the difference between courage and confidence in your own life right now? 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 Emma's answers reflect where her head was heading into the meet, not how the racing actually went.
FOLLOW EMMA WEYANT ON:
Instagram: @emmaweyant
#UnfilteredWaters #Swimming #EmmaWeyant #ElizabethBeisel #FloridaSwimming