Showing up makes us a community. Our eighth season at U Žida begins

Otakar (Ota) Zemek · Otužilci Frýdek-Místek (Otužilci FM)

Hello, friends! On Saturday 3 October 2026 at 9 a.m., we begin our eighth season of swimming together at U Žida. Over those seven years we have grown into a group you look forward to seeing even when it is raining, everything is muddy and you would not feel like getting into the water alone. In this video, I talk about the people who keep showing up and how we can keep this community going.

In the video I explain why I created JSEM TU!, how it can help us stay consistent, and how each confirmed dip brings a crown from a sponsor to Faunapark. I also talk about the cold-water diary, stars and plans for the years ahead. Take a little time to watch the video — or, if you prefer reading, the full English translation of the transcript is below.

Watch the video on its own and jump to a chapter

JSEM TU! app — information and installation

Transcript contents — jump to a topic

1. 00:00 · Hello, friends — our eighth season is starting
2. 01:11 · Every confirmed dip helps Faunapark
3. 01:56 · Consistency matters for each of us
4. 03:05 · The people who show up make the group
5. 06:30 · How JSEM TU! works
6. 08:59 · Saying thank you and seeing your own attendance
7. 10:45 · A cold-water diary and optional competition
8. 13:04 · Photos, statistics and inspiration for others
9. 15:13 · A place you can return to
10. 17:04 · Hats, a chronicle and a hall of fame
11. 18:15 · Stars for perseverance
12. 20:53 · Something you cannot simply buy
13. 21:57 · So that our group lasts
14. 24:34 · Installing it on Android and iPhone, and help with your phone
15. 26:11 · Together we can help the animals too
16. 27:42 · More ideas and developing the app
17. 29:03 · Perseverance in development too
18. 30:38 · Free, out of love for sport and people
19. 32:21 · I look forward to seeing you at the water
20. 33:14 · A painting of our place and a final goodbye

00:00 · Hello, friends — our eighth season is starting

So, hello, friends. In this first-ever video I have decided to record about cold-water swimming, I first want to say hello and invite you to the season opening on 3 October, which is this coming Saturday, at nine. We will meet for another six months, until the end of March, on Mondays and Wednesdays at four and Saturdays at nine, followed by our usual run. So, actually, nothing is changing at all. One thing has been added.

Sometime towards the end of March, it occurred to me, as someone who has organised all kinds of sporting activities for at least half his life, that it might be good to bring a little technology into this hobby of ours and use our phones for something like a cold-water swimming app. I just did not know exactly what its features should be. Somehow, during April, I put it together. I started programming in May, and in July we began testing the app at our Válcovenské stairs runs. Thank you to all the testers.

01:11 · Every confirmed dip helps Faunapark

Now I want to tell you what the app does and why it would be great if as many of you as possible installed it. I am asking you — of course, I cannot order you to do anything — but please install it, because, and I will start at the end, for every dip confirmed through the app we get one crown from a sponsor for Faunapark.

Statistically, there will probably be thousands of attendances. I expect something between ten and fifteen thousand crowns that we could raise over the season. That is no longer a tiny amount, and Faunapark needs it. They are our friends, they have animals there, we go there with our children. So, first of all, it has this charitable purpose.

01:56 · Consistency matters for each of us

Now, the features. I thought about it and realised that, not only in cold-water swimming but probably in any sport you want to do so that it really gives you something, rather than just trying it once, the most important thing is consistency, regularity. And that really applies above all in cold-water swimming.

We already know that getting a little tipsy once, climbing into icy water and then doing nothing for another six months does not make you a cold-water swimmer. And we also know — although many people do not — that it is much better to swim three times a week, or twice a week, but regularly throughout the season, or at least take a dip for a minute or two. That is much better than going once a month and swimming for twenty minutes. Many people may not know that it is not the total that counts, but regularity spread across… or those minutes divided into as many parts as possible.

So, let us start from the assumption that regularity matters for each individual, for a person who comes to the water.

03:05 · The people who show up make the group

The second thing is that the regularity of your, of our attendance matters if the group is to work at all. Those of us who come together have discovered that we enjoy being with people. Often we do not even go because of cold-water swimming itself, but to meet one another. And the people around us make getting into the water easier.

Let us be honest. If you come to U Žida on, say, a Tuesday and nobody is there, try getting in and swimming. You will manage once, perhaps a second time, but few people will push through a whole season. Some do, but they do not come with us. Personally, I am the same. Sometimes I go to the water simply because it is expected, because I am there every time. If I did not have that sort of duty, in quotation marks, and also the chance to meet you there, I would give it up. I might go once, then go to the pub, then do something else. So we go because of the people.

And I say this to newcomers — most of you I am talking to now are people who started cold-water swimming with me — I told all of you that the rule we follow is that we go together. We do not go at five to four, we do not go at ten to four. We go together because, at the same time, we give the others our presence. They give us theirs and we give them this in return. They give to me, I give, everyone is happy.

Then I asked myself which people are actually the most important there. Every club has athletes who go to races; we have them too, people who set records, who are excellent. For some winter swimming clubs, travelling to races and collecting records is their main programme. Those are not the most important people for us. For us, the most important people are the ones who come every time, or very often, regularly.

You go there knowing that you will find those two, three, five or ten familiar faces grinning at you as you come out of the water. Picture yourself going down those steps into the water, passing your friends, people you know by sight, with those great grins on their faces. It makes you want to get in more. That is what I want to support: the people who make the group a group by being there every Monday, every Wednesday, every Saturday, or at least once a week. You know you will arrive and you will not be alone.

Usually nobody recognises these people, because they do not win a competition, they are not the best or fastest swimmers, they do not stay in the longest, and sometimes they are quiet and not very noticeable. But that is what has held this group together for what is now our eighth year.

It occurred to me that alongside something like our duathlon, where we recognise the winners, the fastest people and so on, those supposedly nameless people deserve recognition too. They do have names, of course. Sometimes they are people like me, who are seen and heard, perhaps a bit too much, and sometimes they stand in a corner. But you know they will be there. There are the steps, the railing and the sign, but also that fellow Franta, or someone whose name you do not even know. These people deserve our thanks.

06:30 · How JSEM TU! works

How do we put that into practice? I said at the beginning that regularity is good for each person and good for the group. Now we just need to quantify it somehow. In the twenty-first century, when we all have a mobile phone, I thought I would make an app with a schedule. Our activity has a schedule, obviously: Monday, Wednesday, Saturday. We tested it over the summer on the Válcovenské stairs, which have a Wednesday and Saturday schedule — now it will be Sundays, that is another matter. The app is quite versatile, but I will talk about cold-water swimming now, because above all I am a cold-water swimmer, among other things.

So, before my thoughts run away with me: we said regularity is good for each person and for the group, and we would like to quantify it somehow. Yes, entering the twenty-first century means using a mobile phone. A phone has GPS, so it can tell that you are at the location of the activity — we call it an activity in the app — and that you are there when the others are there, when the group wants you to come.

I am happy when people swim anywhere else, at any other time. I love cold-water swimming, and I really do not mind — I wish everyone well when they go to their own favourite place. But above all I want you to come to U Žida at the times we go, so this wonderful group, which now meets outside the cold-water swimming season for other activities too, keeps going and going. This could help.

You install the app, arrive at the water, and a box lights up saying “Jsem tu” — “I am here” — which you can press. Operating the app really just means installing it and joining the activities Otužilci Frýdek-Místek, Beskydský ledoborec, swimmers in Prague, or other cold-water swimmers who use it. I hope there will be many more. Let us talk about us for now.

You install it and on the home screen you see “Otužilci Frýdek-Místek, I am here”. If you are there at the right time, around four o'clock, a few minutes before or after, and at the right place, you press it and that confirms you were there. It is a bit like people who climb mountains and put little slips into a box at the summit, and then someone works out who came most often. The organiser can do something with that.

08:59 · Saying thank you and seeing your own attendance

As the organiser of our swimming, I want to use it so that, at events such as the duathlon where we recognise the fastest people, we now also recognise the most consistent ones. The people who came most often. We will say: here are ten of our community builders, the people who made sure our swimming sessions were not empty. We will applaud them, and perhaps a sponsor will buy them something too, although I cannot promise that. For now, the sponsor will pay for feed at Faunapark.

Right, I have jumped ahead again. You know me. I am not going to edit this or do anything with it. I just feel like talking in one go like this, so I might say something twice and forget something else. I will leave it as it is.

So we will have records of who came to the water and how many times. For you as a swimmer, that is quite useful, because you can hold up a mirror to yourself and say: “Bloody hell, I call myself a cold-water swimmer, but I came five times this season. Maybe I could improve that. Look, I came forty times, that is great, I am fifth in the rankings. Or I came seventy times, almost every session — I am really doing well.” It gives you a sense that you belong to this community, that it is a sport, an interest, a hobby that belongs in your life. You take it a little more seriously.

I do not mean that everyone who refuses to use the app, or for some reason does not have a phone at all, fails to take the sport seriously. But we know from running and from gyms that every little thing like this can help us identify with what we do.

10:45 · A cold-water diary and optional competition

Since we are cold-water swimmers, the app does more than confirm attendance, which is good for the community. I have also made a really good cold-water diary. Cold-water practice is not only swimming together. It is also someone — a shout-out to Helča Benčová, for example — having a tub and soaking in it when they cannot come swimming with us. Many of us take cold showers and set ourselves challenges: building up from one minute to five, doing it every day, and so on.

The diary records the attendance you confirmed with “Jsem tu” at U Žida and transfers it as an open-water swim. It also lets you keep additional records of these other cold-water activities.

For the really competitive types — and I want to say this whole thing is not a competition, it is a record, a chronicle of how the club has developed; I will get back to recognition later — some people want to compete. Let us say they want a challenge about who takes cold showers more often, who stays in the shower. Because that is not as harmful as competing over who can stay longer in the river. That would be harmful; I would not want that. But seeing who can keep taking cold showers for a whole month is quite a good challenge.

That part, the cold-water diary, can do this. You say: “Fine, I will compete in showering, in how many times I took a shower, how long I stayed there, what the lowest temperature was.” All sorts of things. It can do a lot, and you can see how other people are doing and work with that.

It is similar to something from running. I ran for a long time — I still run, just not so much now — and people loved looking at the tables on Běhej.com showing how far everyone had run that month. Often people went running simply to keep up with Franta, the fellow they met in the pub every Thursday, to reach, say, one hundred and ninety kilometres. If he has one hundred and ninety, I will do two hundred. Competition comes naturally to some people and not to others. Anyone who wants to compete can. Anyone who does not simply never opens that part.

13:04 · Photos, statistics and inspiration for others

It has features like Garmin: you go for a run and at the end it offers something to share on social media, a map, some statistics and perhaps a photo. This can do that too. You take a photo, or have someone take one, of you by the sign, and then you add, or the programme, the app adds, further information and makes a collage for Facebook, for example.

It can also produce statistics for a month or a year showing how you are doing. There are graphs of the water temperature falling, your time in the water increasing, how you felt before and afterwards. All of this can be shared and processed further. There are exports in all sorts of formats for people who like playing with data in Excel, for example.

So it is for complete technology novices, who just install it and press “Jsem tu”, that is all. It is for people who want to keep a diary, and for people who want to show off a little on social media. That is a good motivation too. Some people look down on it and say: “You put it on Facebook.” But it is something not everyone can do. Saying that you swam in icy water thirty times over three months is something quite worthy of following.

Someone might see it as boasting, as us being show-offs. Someone else might see it — and this is the right perspective — as motivating people. At least, I do not know, a hundred people who watch this video will say: “That is my story. I spent two years watching cold-water swimmers on social media, on Facebook and YouTube, and after two or three years of standing on the sidelines I finally found the courage and did it.”

Think of sharing on social media as inspiring people too. More and more join, and the group gains exactly the people we want: the people who later become friends, people we enjoy seeing away from the water as well. That is how you build a community.

15:13 · A place you can return to

Now, a little more about how this app can help build the community, besides letting us thank the dedicated swimmers who deserve it. In everything I do, I think a long way ahead. I do not just see our swimmers now or next month, but in ten or fifteen years. Something has emerged here that will hopefully be part of Frýdek-Místek for good.

Recently I have often used this comparison. I tell people: “Look, do not feel embarrassed that you came ten times and then stopped. Think of the swimmers at U Žida as something like the Polárka ice arena. You know that during winter you can come skating at scheduled times. There is a rink, but nobody checks whether you came three times a week. If you want to be good at skating, you go skating. But perhaps you also like skiing, so when it snows you go skiing. You want to improve at that, so this year you skate less and ski more. If you want to improve your fitness, you go cross-country skiing. If you want to improve your cold tolerance, you come regularly to U Žida.”

It is not as though I would then tell people: “You have been slacking, there is something wrong with you.” No. I know life is more varied than that. We go through different phases when one thing makes more sense and another less, when we need to clear our heads somewhere, when a place makes us feel good. Our reasons for doing things vary enormously. I really understand that, and through this activity I am offering a possibility: come and try cold-water swimming with us in a group. Perhaps now is the time when it will become something you keep for the rest of your life. If that time is not now, perhaps it will be next year, or in two years.

17:04 · Hats, a chronicle and a hall of fame

Because I want this to last, we do things like the stickers that attract new people. That is why we have hats now. I meet someone at a Christmas market, see that they are a cold-water swimmer and can strike up a conversation, strike up a conversation. We have a website with posts from all eight years — or the seven years of swimming that have passed — showing how it developed. People see what they looked like seven years ago, who they came with, whether they enjoyed it and when they missed a season. It is a sort of online chronicle.

Now I would like to introduce something new through the app. I hope it catches on. Many things do not, but I think this will. I would like to make a kind of hall of fame, in the good sense. Fame or showing off can have a negative ring to it, or it can be motivating. NHL hockey players have a hall of fame, athletes have them. I would like us to have something like that online and in our groups: a place for people who have been doing this consistently for a long time and deserve the thanks and admiration of the others.

18:15 · Stars for perseverance

Besides counting attendance, the app has a fairly elaborate algorithm that awards something like merit stars. For now, we call them stars. It is a little bit of Duolingo, a little bit of Garmin and a little bit — quite a lot — of Ota Zemek.

Put simply, the system works like this: you come to the water for the first time and get a star straight away. You have overcome your hesitation, joined a new group and started a new sport, so you get a star. You keep it while your attendance stays above fifty per cent. If you keep it above fifty per cent for a certain time — that is calculated too, usually it will be around halfway through the season — you can get a second star. But if your attendance falls below thirty per cent of the group sessions, you lose the first one too.

Now that will motivate you: “Come to the water or you will lose your star.” For some people that means nothing, but others know that anything that helps us be consistent is useful. Duolingo knows it, Garmin knows it and Ota Zemek with JSEM TU! knows it too. For some people, every little gimmick helps.

So you get your first star, can earn the second halfway through the season and the third at the end of your first season. Only people with attendance above half throughout those six months will do that. There will not be many. It will be a few dozen. You carry them into the next season, and during that season you can lose one star or gain one. It will no longer be quite so easy.

In the third season, which incidentally will be the tenth season of swimming together at U Žida — that will be one hell of a celebration; no, a big celebration — we can recognise the first people to receive five stars, the maximum. We can thank them very, very much and really celebrate them. They will enter that hall of fame. It will be virtual, but I would like people who do this sport long term and see it as part of their lives to want to be there, among the most dedicated cold-water swimmers. Over the years, perhaps two, three or four people will join the hall of fame each year, and we will slowly gather there. I hope I get there too.

20:53 · Something you cannot simply buy

I already have ideas in my head, like the different coloured belts karate practitioners have for their levels. Anička Javorková would certainly tell me the proper name in taekwondo. I do not know it. They have coloured belts, or cyclists in races have jerseys according to how they ran — I mean rode — the previous stage and where they stand.

We could have something like that too. We have hats, so perhaps a hat with a star. It would mean: “I am the person who has really been coming regularly for three years.” Something a person should want. It is not taking credit for somebody else's achievements. Today you can buy almost anything, almost immediately, but some things are difficult to earn. This should be very difficult, and someone who achieves it should deserve admiration. Of course, this is my imagination. It might come true, or it might not.

21:57 · So that our group lasts

In any case, I see us, the swimmers, this group, here in another five, ten or twenty years, assuming we are alive and well. Eventually I will die too, and I hope that will not be soon. I hope the swimmers will still be here.

All these little things — the app, hats, logo, stickers, regularity, the occasional television piece about us or newspaper article, my efforts to raise awareness in different media even though I sometimes find it uncomfortable — I hope all of that helps make the group immortal, in a way.

It has worked elsewhere. A great example is the First Swimming Club of Cold-Water Swimmers in Prague, going back through Nikodém and Liška, with Tomáš Prokop running it well for years now. They organise those attractions or events, those celebrations of cold-water swimming, such as the St Stephen's Day swim by the National Theatre.

We have our duathlon. We have held it three or four times, I do not know. Perhaps one day there will be its twentieth anniversary, and perhaps we will make it an open event for people from other cold-water swimming clubs too. Who knows where it will lead? We are really only at the beginning. We say we are starting our eighth season, but in the first one there were just two of us, me and Martin Tvardek. A warm hello to him. He will come to the opening of the eighth, and perhaps he will do the eighth season with us again.

Then suddenly there were ten, twenty, forty of us. Think about this: I kept an eye on it last year, and not once were there fewer than forty. Imagine that. When I said that in Prague, they do not have that there. When the weather is horrible, ten people might turn up over three hours. But we never had fewer than forty people at the water.

Imagine the weather: two degrees, raining, mud everywhere, really horrible, and still forty people come. You go into the water and see those grinning faces and think: “This makes sense.” Then you run in the mud as well, get home filthy as pigs and say: “Yes, this really is a good hobby.” We want — or I would very much like — it to last a long time, ideally for good.

24:34 · Installing it on Android and iPhone, and help with your phone

So please, I really am asking you: I will put a link to the app's website below this video. Give it a chance, install it. It works on Android, it is on Google Play, and it works on iPhones too. We have tested that.

For iPhones, it is not on the App Store yet, because I do not have an Apple computer. The one you see behind me is an HP, a PC. To put it on the App Store, first of all it costs money, and I do all of this for free. I could probably find the money, but I need to buy an Apple computer and compile it on that. In short, I have not got around to it yet. I want it to work well on Android first.

Now I am getting to it: if you have an iPhone, that is no problem. Open the app in Safari, type beta.jsemtu.info, and select Share, save as an app — sorry, add to the home screen. It behaves like a normal app, it just has not been downloaded from the App Store. There are instructions, and I will gradually add some video guides.

Above all, I am here for you, not only with swimming but with using it too. You know I work with computers and phones. Technology is really close to my heart. I help many of you with websites and setting up various electronics. You know I am not just the fool freezing by the water. I will gladly help you set up the app on your phone too.

26:11 · Together we can help the animals too

I really want this to work, so that in spring, at the duathlon, we can thank our dedicated swimmers and hand over that big cheque. I picture the director of Faunapark arriving and us, together with the swimmers from Frýdlant — this arrangement of a crown from the sponsor for Faunapark works for them too — handing over a nice cheque so the animals can fill their bellies. Then they will get stomach ache. Right, I will not go into that. I do not know much about animals. What I do know is that I enjoy cold-water swimming and meeting this wonderful group, and I am really looking forward to the six months ahead.

Please, there is no need to write comments saying: “Blah, blah, blah, I do not use apps because I go into some little pool somewhere,” or whatever. Goodness, then this is not for you. Not everything is for everyone, just as cold-water swimming is not for everyone. Keep that to yourself and simply do not install the app. I am talking to people who understand that it is good to help Faunapark and our group, who understand this idea that regularity matters both for the individual swimmer and for the group, and who also want to help a little. I really will help you with it.

27:42 · More ideas and developing the app

One more important thing: by using it here in Frýdek-Místek, we give the app a chance to spread further. A few clubs have already adopted it. I would like to bring it to a wider audience. As we use it, we will certainly find the odd bug and ideas for improvements, and I am sure those will come from you. I will develop it further so it gets better and better. It will reach more people and, hopefully, have plenty of users. A competition makes more sense when more people take part than when there are just two of us.

I also have plans for things like a photo competition. I have already started laying the foundations for one about cold-water swimming. People would post swimming photos and each month the best photo would be chosen. Anything related to this, really — the app can keep developing. Just as you testers have already given me a wonderful range of ideas over the season, I expect even more now. I am not some Einstein. I have thought of a lot, but you will certainly think of even more. We will develop it together.

29:03 · Perseverance in development too

I want to point out that the idea of a cold-water swimming app is not my own original invention. There is one called Cold Water Therapy, which I think was a Slovak app and unfortunately does not work. If you download it, or search for “cold-water swimming app” — try it and see what Google or artificial intelligence tells you now — you will find, and this is interesting too, a lot of apps still appearing out of inertia. But when you download them from Google Play, almost none of them seem to work.

It is a little more complicated than it looks. You have to maintain a database and look after things. Thanks to cold-water swimming, I have staying power, so when I start something I do not just stop. As you can see, many others started and stopped. Those who know me know that I really am persistent. You do not have to worry that the app will suddenly stop working in a year because I have given up on it.

It is designed so that it does not actually need me. If, for example, I happened to drown, the app would keep working. It is built on free services, so it is not a case of my survivors suddenly stopping some payment somewhere and the app stopping. That was meant half jokingly, but only half.

30:38 · Free, out of love for sport and people

What shall I add at the very end? Like everything I do around cold-water swimming, it is free, of course. The app is free, there is no advertising, it does not collect unnecessary personal data about you. Of course, it takes your location when the server checks whether you are at the place. It takes the location, establishes that you are there and discards it. It does not keep a map of your movements so that you later get an offer from a swimwear seller saying: “You are a cold-water swimmer, Ota Zemek sold me the database, so buy some swimwear.” There is nothing like that. I make my money elsewhere, through work unrelated to cold-water swimming.

Just as I do not make money from hats, stickers, what else do we have… patches and other things, I do not need to make money from this. Notice that I do not organise events like “getting into icy water with Ota Zemek for fifteen hundred crowns”, or workshops where you can pay somebody to tell you to get into the water.

Some people do that. I leave it to them; let them make their living that way. I know how to make a living elsewhere, so I do this purely out of love for the sport and for people. I like people, I like you. If I started doing it for money, it would be like making love. When you make love, it is beautiful. When it is for money, it is called prostitution. I do not want to turn the love I have for cold-water swimming and sport into a prostitute. It should remain a lover.

32:21 · I look forward to seeing you at the water

That is probably how I would finish. I am really looking forward to seeing you. I will see some of you on Wednesday at the work party, when we will use scrubbing brushes to get the steps ready for everyone else, because right now they are slippery enough to seriously hurt yourself. That will be Wednesday after the stairs, after the last Wednesday stairs session. I am really looking forward to seeing you, really very much.

Briefly — on Saturday I will just say a few words, perhaps we will toast everyone's health, from the railing there. You can bring some refreshments, as usual, you know it, you have been there five or six times. I am quite emotional about it getting close. Sorry, I am not going to edit this out, but I really am looking forward to it.

33:14 · A painting of our place and a final goodbye

I also treated myself — or Markéta treated me, the painter Markéta from Frýdek, whom I will promote somewhere else. If you look behind me, there is the first cold-water swimming painting, a painting Markéta made for me and for us. What you see, the original, will be available, and so will a high-quality framed reproduction, and so on. It will also be available as an ordinary print for about three hundred crowns from Mr Becher at the Kapitola bookshop. You can buy our place, our swimming, in the form of a picture, for yourself or as a gift.

Right, thank you very much for listening. I see it is half an hour long. Good thing I spoke it, because if I had had to write all of this out, nobody would have read it anyway.

Install it, come along, enjoy it, and may cold-water swimming keep bringing something to your life. It has the potential to give. And when you give to the others, you give an enormous amount. I hope you also receive what you are hoping for. So, bye, see you on Saturday.