Welcome to the Effortless Swimming podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

Really trying to get the message out there that saying I’m swimming and I’ve got to swim through the pain and swim with shoulder injury doesn’t have to be a thing and we can really work with swimmers and we’ve seen it over the years and we can bring them away from injury or out of injury or avoid injury by working on the arm recovery. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming podcast. My guest today is Tracy Bowman. Now, Tracy, you have been on our most popular episode ever. I think it’s I don’t know what it’s that lately, but it was something like 70 or 80,000 views on YouTube last time I checked. And the first episode we did completely like blew up in terms of a podcast. And I think the reason for that is you explain things in such a not a different way, but in such a way that I think people can really understand it and very nuanced and there’s a lot of I think detail to it that people resonated with myself included. There’s a lot of

lessons I’ve taken from that podcast and a lot of ways that you teach the stroke slightly differently than what I used to because of some of the terminology you used in the way that you teach it. So I’m excited to get you back on for I think a third episode now and get it into some parts of the stroke that we haven’t covered or maybe have only touched on. So looking forward to this episode. So thanks for joining me. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It’s crazy to me how many people talk to me about, you know, listening to your podcast. And so yeah, thank you first of all for giving me this opportunity and this platform to sort of share some of the crazy ideas I perhaps have about swimming and the crazy ways I have about talking about swimming. So yeah, great to be back. Thank you. I’d love to love to start with recovery. So I’m recovery in freestyle and when we sort of caught up a couple of weeks a couple of months ago

and I was hearing you explain the recovery and I thought, oh, that’s a really good way to describe it. I think it’d be great to share on our podcast. Yeah. But let’s before we get into that, why is it important to get the arm recovery over the water? Right. What’s the importance of it? Yes, I think the arm recovery is one of the most elusive parts of the stroke to people for people who are wanting to go and improve their swimming. There’s not there’s lot out of there out there that people can use. And I don’t think there’s, you know, much information. People sort of glaze over it like everyone’s really wanting to get into their streamline or get into a really, you know, effective catch and what’s going on with their legs and so on. So for me, it’s been an interesting journey. As I said this, I think before, you know, I have the opportunity to work with so many swimmers over the years and kind of use that as a

laboratory to see the cause and effect and have the over and under water cameras that I, you know, have in the studio here in Brisbane and back in the UK to be able to really see what is happening when, depending on what’s going on with the arm recovering above the water, having a look at what’s going on underneath the water and how that’s affecting the whole body position, the whole body line. So it really sort of took my interest and I really worked with it quite a lot to find out ways that we could work and talk about the arm recovery. It’s a tricky one, right? Because the arm is sort of out of sight, out of mind, because as we’re recovering, it’s sort of back here, we’re sort of focused in the water and it’s kind of not happening. So it’s much easier to focus on the stuff sort of underneath you and what’s kind of in front of you and your visual field. So the reason why it’s so important and then I’ll go on to the cause and effect of why I

find it so important is that as soon as you take any body part out of the water, it becomes a lot heavier than it was when it was just in the water. And because we are swimming in an unstable environment, obviously when we take any weight out of the water and even we’re still above our center of gravity, it’s going to affect the ability for the swimmer to stay aligned, streamlined or connected. And that then stops them being able to get a proper catch. It stops them being able to do their legs correctly because all the limbs are then used as bracing tools rather than just lengthening and sort of anchoring tools, if you like, for want of a better way on how I describe it. And so if people can really understand how much sending that weight or using that weight can affect their swimming both negatively and positively, then I think we could really help people to work on the arm recovery way more. And through doing that to improve people’s swimming, of

course, that’s what we want to do. But, you know, as you well know, my biggest thing is about reducing injury and swimming, really trying to get the message out there that saying I’m swimming and I’ve got to swim through the pain and swim with shoulder injury doesn’t have to be a thing. And we can really work with swimmers and we’ve seen it over the years and we can bring them away from injury or out of injury or avoid injury by working on the arm recovery. So there’s a couple of factors involved in this because we’re thinking about cause and effect. We’re thinking about where we’re sending our weight and then we’re thinking about, OK, well, how can we use that weight in order to actually give us what I like to call free speed? So what I’ll say, first of all, is what are some of the pitfalls with the arm recovery? And I think that will help sort of demonstrate and explain what I’m saying. So, you know, as everyone probably knows, is the

brain associates us to swimming flat. The brain doesn’t really compute with the rotation. Everyone rotates in free style because they have to. But the brain thinks that we’re just flat. You know, if you throw a dog into water as always the example I use, it’s going to do this to keep its nose up and it’s just going to be square. If you throw a human, don’t try this at home, into water who can’t swim. Typically, they’re going to do this. They’re not going to start doing all the rotation. And so that’s what our brain understands about swimming until we can reeducate it. And because of that, what it’s always thinking it needs to do is it needs to lift the arm over the water because it thinks that we’re flat. It needs to lift the arm over the water. And so what that then creates is this huge world full of people swimming, taking their elbow behind them, taking that elbow behind the front or plane and locking up the shoulder

joint. So when they go behind the front or plane, they lock the shoulder joint and they have no choice to get that arm from here to here. That’s unlocked. And I’ve demonstrated that so many times it actually hurts me to bring that forward. So I can clear the actual joint in the kind of socket. It can’t move without me doing this. So then what we have as a result is we have a dropped elbow, a hand led recovery. But what that causes not only impingement after doing that, you know, time and time again, you know, depending on what people are doing. But what it also causes is it causes me not to use my scapula in the arm recovery, which is a big bone. And it causes most of my arm that is now above the water to be behind my head. And, you know, if you just think of the human body, we have lungs up here, and then we have a whole lot of bones and muscles behind. And so our center of mass center of gravity thing is already

against us. So when we think about these, all these bones, which I like to call recovery bones, let’s just use that terminology for now, are behind you and sending you even more backwards. And so then the tendency to try and get into balance all the time is sort of like you’re chasing yourself, rather swimming in front of yourself. That’s kind of how I describe it. And then the knock on effective doing that is because I’m bracing with the other side, then I don’t have a catch because it’s gone because it’s braced. My legs often will splay. And, you know, I know that when you do your clinics, you see that, you know, you see this all the time, you know, when I’ve been in that the clinics with you, you know, you talk about that bracing and people do this really nice flutter. And then all of a sudden at some point in their stroke that will happen. And largely, I think often that’s to do with where the arm is recovering. But what it

can also do is give them a sort of hammock effect in their body. So they have their sort of, let’s say their shoulders and head at the surface here and then sort of hanging thing going on and the legs up there. So it breaks their whole whole frame. It breaks their whole unit. And then they do it again and again. So it just becomes more of a battle rather than that fluidity where they maintain that length and then use the arm recovery as like a stabilizer wheel on a bicycle or an arm of an outrigger boat. So keeping the vessel from head to feet and recovering the arm within the plane that should be moving in, not behind it and more out to the side and more as one unit. And so how I talk about it is that I have the people really thinking about the whole unit being one. So the whole unit moves, including the scapula. So from the scapula all the way to here moves forward just from the rotator streamline position, it just moves forward and the lower

arm literally just hangs until it’s forward enough. And then the whole body will rotate. Why? Because now we’ve shifted weight forwards and on the side. So we’ve maintained our lateral balance through the rotation. We’ve sent the arm recovery to the front. We’ve shifted that weight and now we can use that weight to tap into our rotation and send us forward and then do the same one with this one. It’s a real it’s been a real change and process that I’ve been over through the years. You know, I went from breaking down sort of individual bones and structures in the arm to now literally I just say one unit and what I do is I just demonstrated in front of the client and I just get them to sort of recover the arm and tickle your fingers. Let’s just call it to recover the arm, tickle the fingers and I get them to mirror me and then I’ll demonstrate it. And all the while I have another coach or something saying I open the arm, tickle the fingers and

they can just kind of create this mantra if you like. And then they mostly just go and do it because it’s so different for the most part to what they’re normally doing. And so because we’re calling it something different, we’re talking about it differently, you’ve given them the why. It’s been phenomenal to watch just on the last camp I’ve just come back from in Heron. That’s literally what I did. We had all the people. I don’t know how many were there in my 13, 14 or so. And I just said, right, spin 180 and off you go. You know, recover your arm, tickle your fingers all the way, you know, just a few strokes. So they just looked amazing because they were using the whole unit rather than focusing on where the hand exits and where the hand entry enters. So, yeah, that’s kind of been my process over the last few years with the arm recovery. That’s really interesting to hear you explain it that way because when you see it done well and what comes

to mind for me is the footage I shared with you with shared with you of Sam Short. So Sam Short, he’s on a tear at the moment. He’s got the strain trials for common games and he’s he’s just off world records at the moment. And I saw that one day. It’s like, yeah, so close. And yeah, his recovery, whether he’s going easy or whether he’s going hard, he’s exactly the same. So relaxed over the top and he’s relatively wide and he’s using that one unit, the whole arm together just to just to kind of swing it forwards and it places out in front and he gets this really nice momentum with it because he’s carrying that weight over the top and he’s using that to extend forwards and rotate and he just does it beautifully. And that’s what I noticed when I was filming him and watching him at the pool a couple months back. And then it’s like it’s become even more evident the more I’ve got into the footage of his stroke. And you see that with

really good consumers like Katelyn Deckie is very similar also way that she comes over the top. And I especially notice that when I’m running clinics, like you mentioned and you see like swimmers who I think they’re quite often just thinking high elbow recovery and they think I lift this elbow up that arms behind them this shoulders if you think of their shoulders here the upper part of their arm is not aligned with their shoulders it’s behind them. And you do that 2,000 times you’re going to you’re going to have some shoulder pain and it’s very hard to avoid. And as you see I’ve come home after a week of running clinics and I’m like God my shoulder is so sore because I’ve been demonstrating the wrong thing to do. The wrong thing. I know, right? Yeah, I’ve got it. I’ve got to back off that a bit. But yeah, we sit all the time just with these awkward yeah, movements over the top. And so even though the arm recovery is not necessarily giving us

propulsion itself. It’s it can impact what is happening with the arm that’s in the water and our body line and our rotation. So if you do it really well it can play such a big part in the rest of the stroke. And so that’s why I thought it’d be a great thing to to cover here. What what challenges do you see people having when it comes to going from the wrong way of doing it? Like you described to then eventually going to the right way? What sort of things are they experiencing or getting out of that the bad habits? Yes, so that’s a really good question. I think the trick is or the pitfall is whichever way you want to look at it is the hand. People are so focused on their hands in swimming generally. But when we’re talking about arm recovery they they think and just just like you just said they you know they trying to take get this high elbow. And you know if you look at that footage from Sam Short I was showing a client yesterday because I was like

look this is exactly what I want you to do like it’s genius what he does with his arm recovery and where he ends up with his streamline. And if you look at that from behind what you see is the I just keep things really simple the upper arm and the scap moving just forwards towards the front wall of the pool that what people are always trying to do is lift that elbow and that creates the illusion of a high elbow. So if you look at Sam Short’s video he is well beautifully within his frontal plane. He’s got a lovely arm if you look for him he looks like you’ve got a high elbow. But I think what people misunderstand is they think the high elbow happens through lifting when in actual fact it happens through rotation. So it’s the road you rotate the elbow into and the illusion of a high elbow. So I think when people are trying to do that because they’re lifting and so focused on where the hand should enter that they just create that. So the hardest thing

that I find to you know that swimmers struggle with is turning off the need to move the hand or put the hand anywhere. You know during my coach training when I’m training coaches or whenever I’m speaking to swimmers in camps or clinics or one to ones in the student studio. I never use the word hand ever. I never talk about it. I try my hardest to get them to think about it because the more I can stop them thinking about it the more chance I have for them to use their upper arm bone keeping it simple and scapula and being comfortable with taking it what feels ridiculously wide and forward. And when they first start to make that change they their brain is telling them that if they were to do that they’re going to recover under the water and the brain fights it so much. And so you have them do it and have them practice and have them take a video and notice that when they are doing the movement the arm is not in the water because they’ve got rotation.

So it’s I think it’s more a challenge of what the brain perceives should or shouldn’t happen or will not happen versus the actual movement pattern. When they once they can get the why and understand it then it becomes just so beautifully fluid and starts to look a lot like Sam’s arm recovery very quickly. So I think the why is the most important thing why not use the hands? Yeah, it’s and that’s like the way I’ve always explained it is you like you don’t if you don’t want to lead with the hand you don’t want to be swinging that hand forwards because then it’ll essentially be behind you. So it should feel like it’s coming from this this upper part of the arm to draw it forwards and that hand is and the lower arms just a passenger along for the ride. And I think the high elbow often gets misinterpreted from being physically very high in the water to that’s what people think they need to do based on the term. But to me it means the elbow will

essentially be pointing mostly to the sky. It’s not necessarily directly up but somewhere in that direction as you are coming over and recovering correctly. So to me it’s like high elbow means elbows pointing mostly upwards there as opposed to behind you which is what it will do if it’s more of a hand led recovery. And so I played around with this a bit since filming Sam and sort of watching him swim and being playing around with a wider, very easy relaxed recovery over the top and you’re exactly right. It feels very wide compared to what I’m used to doing but it’s not. It’s in a good range. It’s very comfortable and it just feels so easy coming over the top and what I find when I do it well is I can put the effort under the water instead of over the top. So you’re applying the force in the right direction in the right part of the stroke but more than anything it just allows it kind of feels like I’m floating through the water

when I do it. Nice, I like that. Yeah. And that’s the way and I use that terminology because Sam described it that way when he’s feeling really good and I find the same thing. It’s like, yeah, actually that’s kind of how it feels like you’re just floating through the water. So it’s such a I really love that with the floating because it’s what it tells me from a coach perspective and no doubt also tells you from a coach perspective. And if we think about what the how the scapula they are floating bones. And so when we have the scapula and upper arm moving the whole arm just forward is one unit. So it’s this really nice idea of the unit just floating forwards shifting weight and maintaining momentum whilst recovering and that easy fluid floating feeling is almost such a great feedback loop and wide just like you said. So I love that floating element to it. That’s so I had Tom Barton on the podcast. He is a physio who’s worked with a lot

of the Australian swim team. And one of the things he mentioned about the shoulder blades of scapulas was we want the shoulder blades will float. They’ll float up and sort of down along the rib cage and they’re going to they’re going to move up and down through the different parts of the stroke. So we never we never taking them down and back the whole time. For sure. I’ve been in my period. They’re just going to they’re going to move. They’re going to slide. And so must. Yeah, they have to. Yeah. And the other benefit here too, I think is I coach a lot of triathletes and open water summers. If you have a wetsuit on, you are probably going to feel a bit more restricted through your recovery just based on having that on. But this way of recovering is so much more conducive to wearing a wetsuit because you’re not trying to get into these awkward positions that are maybe already awkward enough without a wetsuit on. Yeah, wetsuits are a big thing.

And for me, like I always recommend if a swimmer is ever going to spend any money on any kit that they should put the money towards a wetsuit that has one mill in the shoulder because it could be the difference of keeping them in or out of hospital. And the reason I said that I’ve had two clients who have ended up in hospitals through having, you know, two thicker arm section of a wetsuit and with the wrong recovery because it’s always pushing it’s giving resistance. So that’s the first thing. Never save money on the wetsuit. The other thing is really learn how to put it on properly. And, you know, people don’t pull it up enough. So if I can give one tip to anybody wearing a wetsuit, pull the calf halfway up your calf and pull the arm almost to here so that you’ve got plenty of material to work around that shoulder joint and up into the groin. So you’ve got plenty up here and you’re not sort of feeling restricted. And if the wetsuit is right

and you’ve put it on right, you should be able to do this movement and this is the arm recovery movement. Now, just how it’s just straight to the side. It’s not back at all. And it should feel pretty much like it feels now if the wetsuit is on properly. So that would be my top tip to anyone who’s listening and wears a wetsuit. It’s one of the biggest things I see. That, yeah, great tip. And you, so a friend of mine, Sam Sheppard, he owns and runs Great Ocean Wetsuits. And I’ve talked to him a lot about this because he’s deep into the design of wetsuits and the material and that kind of thing. And a cheaper wetsuit will be thicker through the shoulders. It will last longer. So you kind of getting, the more you pay the less it’s going to last but they still last a good amount of time. But basically, yeah, the less you pay the thicker the material, the longer it will last, but the more restrictive it is. More chance of injury.

Yeah. So what I recommend for a lot of people if they’re, say, training in a wetsuit or swimming weekly in a wetsuit, you’re probably better off going for a sleeveless, a cheaper sleeveless wetsuit. You’ll have that freedom through the shoulders unless you really need it for like to stop the cold. If you’re down here in Victoria, for example, in Mintae, you might need a bit extra. But if you’ve got a training wetsuit, I think go sleeveless. But a good wetsuit from like a mid to high range wetsuit, they’re designed in a way where with the cut of the material, it’s basically not going to restrict you too much. Like I wear which one is it? The gold version of the Great Ocean Wetsuit. And it is like, it is so good. Just like it’s very thin through the shoulders. It’s kind of the top level one, but it is very free through the shoulders. Whereas I have had some other wetsuit brands that have just been like, you can feel it basically.

But yeah, with the right cut, it’s money well spent, especially if you’re prone to shoulder niggles and injuries and that sort of thing. Now I want to jump into the next topic here, which is connection through the stroke and through the center of the body. Because it’s all well and good to have this great recovery, beautiful catch and pull, a nice body line. But if all these different things are working separately and they’re not connected, you might, you could go from being like a 130 swimmer to a two minutes swimmer per 100, just based on whether these things are connecting up and working together. And so it’s one of the things that can feel a bit more challenging, I think, to get. But when you see someone well connected, that can be all the difference. And so you mentioned prior to the call that there’s a couple of things that you’ve been thinking about and working on with your swimmers lately that has really helped.

So I’d love to get into some of those things because it’s such a big piece of the puzzle when it comes to swimming better. Yeah, and I would say it’s the biggest piece of the puzzle because without it, nothing else can work effectively or to its greatest potential. Because just as you say, because everything is disconnected. So everything’s kind of working, but it’s not working together. And the key element in really great swimming, and it doesn’t matter, you know, I know we’re talking now freestyle, but in any of the strokes is to be able to work on the components of the stroke and then learn how to synchronize them so that you are tapping into the larger muscle groups in the body rather than isolated smaller muscles that may fatigue way quicker or get injured way quicker. Bringing this all together is the key. So when, you know, I think I talked about this a little bit on the first podcast is the first step for working with swimmers in our camps

or in the studio or clinics is how can we set that first? I call it middle, the middle prong of the trident. So from head to feet, if you like, how can we set that and how can we maintain it and how can we allow the swimmer to not compromise that at any cost? And that’s where the trick is. So, you know, over time, as I’ve, you know, as I’ve got the joy of, you know, working with clients and seeing things happen and, you know, a lot of the stuff in the endless pool because the endless pool gives you so much feedback because of the resistance of the current and, you know, you can feel so much more in the endless pool. It’s why it’s the, you know, the best by far place to ever learn to swim. But it is also the best place to learn how to coach it and how to understand how the body works in water. You know, we get that length through the body and think about being tall, but how can we help the swimmers to maintain that

for first of all 25 meters or 50 meters and then eventually, you know, for their triathlon swim or their 10K or their, you know, channel, whatever it is and not lose it when they start to work on other parts of the stroke. So how I describe it and just as a kind of a recap is the first step is to connect the legs to the torso because that’s where we’ve got our biggest hinge at the hip and when we’re rotated through 90 degrees and now lying on our gravity, if that’s not connected, we’ve got either both or one or the other are going to be the two separate moving parts that just create resistance and make us tap into the smaller muscles because we’ve lost our opportunity to tap into the sling system through the body. And so, you know, over the years, I have used like anyone who has worked with me or read the book or anything knows that I come up with crazy analogies to get people to do things. And the one that, you know, the biggest one I use for this

is I have people stand in their feet. So that sounds like a really weird thing to say. Their feet standing in their feet. And what I mean about this is I want people to tap into the skeleton. I want them to almost imagine they have zero soft tissue while they’re just focusing on this. So they’re standing in their skeleton, in their feet, and they become really sort of grounded into their feet and they sort of want to work on getting equal pressure through both of the feet. So they’re really centered and the feet should be underneath the hips. Then what I do is I have them imagine that they have a book here and I don’t mention this. So I never use the word A-G-A-D and I always spell it out because as soon as we think that, then everyone’s trying the length and just from the neck. And then the rest of the body isn’t connected. So by eliminating talking about this, I have found that it’s much easier for people to connect the skeleton,

knowing that every single bone is designed to go on top of another in order for people to be able to carry incredibly heavy weights here around, you know, water and all the things. The skeleton is literally designed to do that with minimum effort. Like they couldn’t travel 20 kilometers with, you know, liters and cages on here. So if you know- Sorry, just sorry, Trace. Just for those that are listening, I’ll say the word just on top of their head. I’m pointing. Yeah. So I’m trying to avoid saying on top of their head, but yes, I forget. I always forget that this is a podcast so people can’t see me necessarily. Thank you. And so that’s how I started up. And when I then get them to stand in their feet and imagine that they have a book, I’m pointing to the top of my skeleton at the moment. Then I have them really think about taking the whole, it’s almost like getting air in between each of the bones all the way up. So they’re creating this length with each joint,

not just the neck, which is often the case. And then I ask them what they feel and very often, and anyone watching or listening to this, even if you’re in a car, like it really doesn’t matter, even if you’re sitting in a car or on your chair, what you do is you find your seat bones and you sit into your seat bones and then you just have the rest of the body just sitting in those bones. And you just imagine as you’re doing, as I’m talking about this, that you’re literally taking each bone. So the pelvis, the spine, the ribcage, all the bone. And I just try and keep everything as simple as possible away from each other with the intention of sending the book that is at the top of your skeleton towards the ceiling or the top of the car or the sky. And what people feel when they do it in that way is they feel something deep, deep within, suddenly goes, and I call it like this warm hug. It’s like your skeleton’s getting this nice warm hug

of the soft tissue that’s wrapped around it. And what I’m finding that’s getting in the way most for most swimmers is everybody talks about core in swimming. And for the listeners and the viewers watching or hearing this, when I say the word core, I would guess that I’m gonna be conservative and say 70% in kids more. People think that’s abs. And so when I say core in swimming, people are crunching the abs. Now as soon as I crunch the abs and you’re listening or watching to do it, as soon as I crunch the abs, my skeleton, I’m just gonna keep the language really simple, just fold slightly. And so now I can no longer carry the water on the top of my skeleton or the book or whatever it is, it’s all just an analogy. And what I also can’t do when I’m crunching the abs with the thought that’s gonna make me long. First I’m making myself shorter, but what I’m also doing is closing down access to my diaphragm. So now not only am I not long because I can’t be

because the abs are kind of shortening the front of my body, but now I can’t take a diaphragmatic breath either. So I’ve found a lot of people, I’m going there with my fingers, you know, I teach a lot with my hands and do lots of tactile, I’m going there in their abs and think, let those go. And then I get them to kind of slump down into their skeleton and you can do this just sitting in your chair and you kind of just slump and imagine your bone just sort of slumping down onto each other and then do it again. And they then feel that deep inside. And that’s what I’m teaching them to get to know and to learn. And then what I’m doing is I’m having them then take that to the pool. And as they push off, obviously, because we don’t have our skeleton on top of each other when we’re swimming because we’re rotators through 90 degrees. So now I have to have them learn how to create that from the wall. So I have them push off the wall imagining,

and I’m using my phone here as if it’s a book. So they push off the wall, they make connection with the book and they’re imagining that they’re creating that length all the way through the skeleton and using the momentum from the push off to maintain the feeling. Then using the pressure of the wall to maintain momentum, take it into a couple of strokes and maintain the feeling until they got it. And it becomes a little bit like learning to ride a bicycle. Once someone has tapped into it, which is easy because everyone’s tapping into it all day, every day, walking around. They just need to learn how to tap into what their body already knows in a horizontal position. Once they tap into it, the body goes, okay, that’s easy. And it just becomes the easiest, beautifulest, most beautiful way of creating that length and never compromising it. Then you add all the other elements of the stroke that we hear so much about onto that,

but it always becomes, is what I’m doing on my catch or my arm recovery or my legs, whatever, is that affecting or compromising what I’ve built here? If the answer is yes, reintroduce this and then introduce it until you can do it without compromising that. Because otherwise it’s like having a boat that has a whole bunch of hinges down its hole and it can do this. That’s literally what it’s like. The boat’s not gonna go very fast, very quickly, very far, very quickly. So there’s some. Really, yes, that’s so good. I mean, it always, my approach is obviously really similar to that, just in terms of we’ve gotta get this unit of our body, we’ve gotta get this whole thing connected because if it’s not, well, it doesn’t matter what the other stuff is doing because things are gonna move around. And as you said, the hips there, that’s where we can tend to hinge. And you really start to notice it when people have got that curve

or that bend through there. So how do we get them to keep that straight, keep that connected, and then building the rest of the stroke from there? And the thing I notice, I’d say most at clinics is the first few things we work on, head, body, legs, basically getting all of that to be connected, when we work on that is typically when people look the best, they look like they’ve improved the most when we work on those initial things. And it is so obvious. And I know last time I was running clinics up your way, I think you might have come over just as we’d sort of finished working on that aspect of the stroke. You know, geez, they’re looking really good. And then they were, like this one was looking beautiful because they had exactly what we talked about in place. And it’s night and day as a coach watching when someone does that. Then sometimes, like you said, we introduce other parts of the stroke and maybe they forget about keeping that posture

and it falls apart a bit, but we always got to go back to it. So I think the way you explain it there is, yeah, it’s really useful and it’s simple, but it’s not necessarily easy to do consistently if you’re not used to it. So I’d like anything that’s going to take time and it’s, you know, you might fall out of that position, but of all the things I reckon start with that, like always just start with that. Yeah, for sure. And use the wall. The wall is your best friend when imprinting these new movement patterns, doing short repeats using the wall as your floor, if that makes sense. You know, when you’re standing, you have the floor to use. So use the wall to take the sensation into horizontal. Don’t be tempted to always do a whole length. Just, you know, really short repeats. Okay, I’ve got the sensation. Now let’s take that into the length and build it in, you know, build the pathways, the neural pathways and strengthen them

and then they won’t disappear. And that’s when you really see the pace clock, you know, the timer come down. You said, oh, wow, I was doing two, now I’m doing 150, now I’m doing 145. That’s where you’re going to get your biggest gains to begin with for sure. Excellent. Well, Tracey, I know we’ve both got to head off in a second here, but I want to mention what we’ve got coming up. So we tried to organize this last year, but just calendars were too busy, but… Yeah. This year, I’ve got the day booked. We are going to run a clinic together, October 25th in Melbourne, and we will have the details in the podcast, show notes, the description there for anyone who wants to join. We haven’t worked out exact numbers there, but it’ll be a small group because we want to be able to do video analysis, work with people on an individual basis there, but we’re going to run a full day clinic October 25th in Melbourne. And I’m really looking forward to it

because just like obviously we see things very similar, but the way we describe them, it may be slightly different, but I’m really, yeah, I’m just really looking forward to coming together and then basically going through the whole freestyle stroke and teaching it step by step in the right order and using video as well to help the swimmers there on the day improve. And yeah, I think I’ll personally learn a lot from it. Me too. And looking forward to it. For the swimmers who are there, I think you’ll get a lot out of it, especially if you have enjoyed these podcasts that we’ve done together. So I’ll put that link in the, yeah, in the description or the show notes if you listen to this or watching it on YouTube. And yeah, it’ll only be, I think maximum, maybe a dozen people or so. So a very small group, but I’m looking forward to that come October. Yeah, be great. Trace, thanks again for being on the podcast. I’ve got no doubt that this will be a big hit as well

because you explained things beautifully, very simply. And there’s a lot that I’ll be able to take from this in my own coaching. So looking forward to seeing you in October, if not before then, but I appreciate you being back on the podcast. And if anyone’s listening to this. Thank you for having me. How can they find out what you’re doing? How can they get in touch? Yeah, so if they go to swimmastery.online, they can see some online courses. They can find us at the studio in the swim studio in Brisbane. There’s clinics and camps, you know, being added all the time. And they can do virtual coaching with me or even just send them video analysis, the same sort of stuff that you do. So yeah, swimmastery.online and yeah, you’ll find us there. Thank you. Thanks, Tracey. See you soon. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. My guest today is Tim Denier and Tim came highly recommended from a previous guest which you may have heard. Mark Salaby who completed the Ocean 7 has made a doco about it as well called Don’t Be Pray which I highly recommend seeing if you haven’t seen it and Tim you worked very closely with Mark with the Ocean 7 Swims and he said you’ve got to get Tim on the podcast. He’s so he said he doesn’t think you know how good you are at what you do basically. So I thought it’d be great to get you on and just talk marathon swimming swimming overall and as someone who has taken more than 250 people across the channel you and your team. I think there’s a lot that we can learn from that. So welcome to

the podcast. Thanks, Brenton. Thanks for having me. So you’ve just got back from some from a trip to Croatia multiple camps there with a lot of your marathon swimmers. We’re talking before the podcast you had some pretty solid days and solid weeks for those athletes. Can you talk a bit about what those camps were about? And then I guess some of the some of the swims and the tests that you put those guys through in order to be ready to swim some of these big marathon swims. Sure. So exactly what you just said we just come back from three one week back to back back to back camps. We took about 50 athletes over and yet training in the open water is obviously essential. We had to two hour swims minimum every day and also included was the six hour swims on at least one of those per week. Additionally, we did the training in the pool. So we have a long course pool over there which we train in. It’s just it’s just a wave

just getting a huge amount of volume in so many people when they’re coming into these big marathon swims they they do very well in terms of fitting their training within their work and their life and their family balance but actually you need a week they need a week where it’s just completely focused and we call it a springboard into like the main event of the of the summer. So yet 27 hours of training my fastest athletes are doing 18 up to 100 K some people are going 60 K that’s of course it’s fine but over 27 hours of training you can get a you can get a big number it absolutely and how far out from a from a mouth on swim would you ideally like to hold a camp like this for a training week.

I mean a lot of these what are we in now we’re in June so this was in main June and a lot of it is the focused on the English channel which is predominantly July August September. That said with climate change seasons coming forward in the seasons going a bit longer so we’ve got to swim again in two weeks from now. So ideally I would say probably a month before that said some people are much further out a couple of people a little bit closer but if you’re going to get a hit of 80 K on your belt you need the time to recover after it. It’s not just getting the training and it’s getting the training and then the time to recover. I literally after my athletes were trained by training peaks after that and everybody goes on count see do nothing for the next seven days preferably 10 days literally just kick back and enjoy yourself because this is the springboard now we’ve got the recovery time and then it’s going to get big. So you also want to

hang out with your family and do something then then you know next week’s the time to do it but it’s it’s it’s an essential part of training which a lot of people and a lot of swimmers and I don’t mean this disrespectfully but a lot of amateur swimmers. They don’t want to do they feel like when they rest they feel like they’re not training and a lot of the time being a good coach is actually telling your athlete when to back off and went to hold back and it’s OK to take a day off and if you don’t feel great then that’s cool. Don’t don’t worry about it. You’re going to get some days which are good some days which are bad and some days which are awful and you’ve just kind of got to figure out as to how well your body is going to be reacting in those different circumstances. Too many people though train when they feel awful and there is a time to train when you feel awful if it’s just a mental thing and you’ve got to push through a block

but more often than not it’s it’s it’s an overload thing and then you just hold back and be sensible. You got you got to train smart. There’s no point just pushing on regardless with a camp like that where someone’s doing perhaps 80 to 100 case in a week. What percentage of that do you find says the physical benefit of putting the body through that versus the mental benefit they get from knowing that they can clock up some big case they can they can be in perhaps cold water for a long time like what where’s that split for you. Good question. I feel that you know it’s a bit like why is a six hour channel swimmer qualify six hours. You know do people benefit from doing multiple six hours or or not. Now I would argue no they don’t. I think it’s important to do some long swims so that you a you feel confident that you can do that be you feel confident like that your technique can hold see you can take cold acclimation for that period of time and

D nutritionally you can make tweaks and changes that every single training session has got to have a point to it and I make very very clear that we’ve got to have a point and we’ve got to really be focusing on that point in these swims. Now if he’s just getting in for the hell of it and churning out junk mileage I’m not a big fan at all. I’m really not I’ve often said to people I’d rather you go and do an hour and a half lactate threshold working on two hundred and four hundreds rather than going around Dover Harbor for five or six hours. I literally would because a lot of these swims especially when their title swims the speed is the is the limiting factor speed is the reason why people succeed or fail much more than cold for example and there’s we can get on a bit later but you’re not going to get huge amounts of benefit of just swimming in cold water for five six seven hours repeatedly after six two minute dips you’re

going to have your cold shot responses only going to be a certain amount of additional benefit by repeated dips. So what I really want is people to be focusing on on what it is exactly that they’re changing what they’re training for now that can certainly be in the head for sure but once you’ve kind of broken through a three hour or a four hour or a five hour then you’ve got to start thinking about right now it’s pace I’ve got a breakthrough now I’ve got to get down to I like a set of ten four hundreds and seeing what that best average and just seeing what you can take over that on and then just trying to get the cycle down as as much as we can even down to I have a nice one off five two hundreds of a three forty five and seeing and just keeping that consistent through the whole block through the whole year eighteen months whatever or it could be off four fifteen or it could be off four thirty whatever works that athlete and then just

seeing what that five reps averages throughout the whole of training and if it’s not going down if it’s not improving in in average rep and yet the training block says it should be then I have to look at what I’m changing what I’m doing wrong in their training or if there’s something happening like is work stressful or do they go on a big night out the night before or are they eating the wrong stuff drunk the wrong stuff is there stress going on at home you know what’s what’s the reason so I mean I’ve kind of moved on from your original conversation your original question Brenton but for me they’re in equal part in terms of of physical benefit and mental benefit but it changes as you go through the plan everything constantly changes as to where the focus is going to be sometimes it’s on physical are we just getting faster are we getting tougher more robust in the water can we take a bit more of a whack from the the wind and

the waves and the surf or whatever mentally are we able to push a little bit harder emotionally can they actually take it when stuff is actually getting a little bit more difficult it kind of depends on the situation and with a lot of your marathons from as a you obviously that fitness and pace like very important there are you looking at their technique as well like what sort of balance do you try and find there with them 100% so we definitely we always film when we’re around camp by trying to do some filming as well when we’re just in our squad sessions in London from time to time techniques super super super important but I do feel a lot of time people get too hung up on technique there are so many ways to get faster and to improve and just by drilling and drilling and drilling and drilling and drilling is not going to get you quicker and quicker and quicker and quicker is you’re going to get faster by improving tech and working on drills

then work on your conditioning then your SNC then your nutrition improve your sleep levels your phone rolling massage osteopathy mental side there are all these different ways to improve and to get quicker rather than just doing a ton of tech I do kind of look at the you may well love this the moneyball approach and and how through that film how how they managed to really get every single marginal gain as they possibly can I’m very data driven and I’m very analytical and I observe a lot and analyze a lot sometimes I don’t say everything that I observe and I analyze but I certainly noted all down I’m very very data driven so from doing all that I’m trying to look at all these different marginal gains and all these different ways that we can possibly possibly get something quicker if there is something technically wrong then great I embrace it because there’s an old coach of mine he’s not that old but there’s a coach of mine back back in

my early years he said Tim we want people to have faults in their swimming we want errors we want problems and the reason why is so that when we analyze it it’s easier for us as coaches to go there’s the problem let’s fix that boom we’ve got a big gain immediately you know you want an athlete to be working fast but with some problems in there and then make some crazy changes the harder thing is when you’ve got a perfect tech and they’re not quite moving as quickly as you feel that should be that happens very rarely those I’m sure you’re aware of that but yeah so quite a lot of time it can be just tweaking something like hand entry is going in and hand entry is going in and it’s horizontal when it’s in but then as they roll in order to breathe the shoulders naturally dropping but the hand is still staying high and so you’re just naturally getting a little bit of an incline because they’ve gone in and they’ve got to realize it’s got

to go in and still start leaning into the initiation of catch as they’re rolling into the into the breath or even just into the extension and it’s just little tweaks like that that actually just just taking that entry just about two centimetres deeper will actually keep everything more aligned when the wind on the rotation into the extension so you have to be really you know I do drive sometimes quite I’m quite anal in being very particular early vertical forearm is something which I’m all over with my guys and you know it’s something which we were which we were coached so much when I was a kid our coach made us just lean over the lame ropes would be flat and then the lame ropes would be there and we just had to lean over and just go like that the whole time and it was just graining it in as a six seven eight nine year old you know that that is that’s that’s about position the whole time that you’ve got to try and get into now it doesn’t matter if you

can’t get into it you’ve got to know where it is you’ve got to try and target getting into if you don’t have any idea as to what the ultimate game aim sorry is then there’s no way you’re going to be able to prefer that tech so there’s a lot of pro athletes and videos of how they’re swimming and say look this is this is where we’re wanting to get to this is you I know it’s a bit unfair comparing you to in Thorpe on a front angle I know it’s been unfair but that’s what he’s doing he’s got a Ben and 90 Phelps is 110 Becky Allentons 120 you know that’s what we’re looking at there and you’re at like 170 165 170 180 we’ve got to put it up a bit we’ve got to this is where we’ve got to target and then when you sit when they see the target then it’s a lot a lot easier to pull it back and they can see it it’s such a I think a powerful way to get any technique point across is to give them what’s trying to find someone who’s maybe

similar to how they would swim their natural sort of style and then showing them that footage and then they can visualize themselves swing what they need to do and obviously having that side by side is so powerful for people I think for me in clinics where we we essentially do that it’s like for people that just kind of clicks from this like okay I now I understand what I actually look like in the water because first I had no idea so seeing that footage and then having that ideal sort of stroke it just helps them move towards it a lot quicker so it’s such a powerful way to do it. You’ve got to really show what the target is from an Olympic standpoint then say but you may not be able to get into that but this is how you can get into the best possible position a lot of people it comes down to shoulder flexibility yeah and it’s just like you’re just never going to be able to do that so it’s okay just go a little bit deeper

if the target is the early vertical forearm then let’s work on that if it means you have to go a bit deeper you have to go a bit deeper that’s fine but we’ve got to get vertical and so that’s kind of like in the head is as long as a vertical Tim’s happy yeah yeah and you’ve like you’ve had a huge success rate with getting people across channels and straights we’ve talked about a few of those things just in terms of the planning and the training and the technique what other aspects of the way that you like to to run things and prepare people do you think helps with that high success rate. Okay I’m very honest with people I never ever lie like this is absolutely what is what is going to happen you have the classic train for the worst hope for the best except where you get and we added that except where you get on to on to the end of it because everybody wants to go out in that perfect day I would say that arguably pretty much

now this would be controversial I was going to say pretty much okay pretty much anyone who’s training for distance and wants to swim in this channel can swim in this channel when the date is utterly perfect I’m talking the nepiest of neat tides zero wind that happens like once maybe twice a season if that okay so you have to just accept the day there are so many pilots who want to just go out and swims and have lots of swimmers and that’s great so you’ll go out on a swimmable day but it won’t necessarily be a perfect day but you know you just got to make sure that everybody understands what what could happen and I feel that when you keep people’s anxiety low that is when you get the most benefit out of out of an athlete that’s when you can realize most of their potential if they are anxious at any point then that is going to massively translate into their swim they’re going to start a panic internal blood pressure will go up

they are going to probably start to spin their arms more and so power is going to go even worse they’re just going to slip the water making it to just getting wheel spin when they start lifting a little bit too high so and they think that they’ve lost it and you see this so many times so many times is you’ve just got to keep people calm and so by keeping them calm you explain to them way before all the things that can go wrong and so they understand the strategies that we have on the boat that if this happens this is what we’re going to do to solve it and then what happens is they don’t have to worry about it they don’t have to think about it they don’t have to spend mental energy trying to solve for it because they know that we’re on the boat doing that and obviously when you’re on the boat looking down at a swimmer we’ve got the instruments I can see the red lines the green line our speed over ground our course over ground I can see where we’re going

I’ve got all the data in front of me I can see my athlete down there I know exactly what they’ve taken from my kit bag that I can give them a lift I can solve the problem far more easily than they’re ever going to be able to solve it so it’s important that they understand all they’ve got to do is just stay relaxed if I tell them they’re good we’re still on track we’re all right then they’re good we’re still on track and we are still all right but if I tell them I need an extra 5% I need an extra 5% and again like I said before I’m not going to lie so they have that confidence and there’s no point line because I might be working with an athlete in the English Channel here and then they go on and work with me in Sugaru, Cookstra, Catalina, Moloko whatever and if they know when it hit the fan Tim was lying to me then they’re not going to have that trust but all the other swims which hopefully will end up doing so trust in that athlete-coach

relationship is crucial it’s absolutely crucial it’s the pillar as to what got Mark Saabi through his Ocean 7 was actually he didn’t try and fix the problems all the time which is quite good because normally he is one of those blokes that would do that but actually he was able to just delegate well not just delegate because it wasn’t his choice but he was able to just accept right that’s what you do this is what I do let’s just look after each other and we’ll be alright

and the last thing you want as a swimmer is thinking whether or not has the person on the boat said okay we got 5k to go but you know they have a tendency to kind of bend the truth a little bit because they want to try and either pump me up or feel like I’m closer when in reality it’s like 8k to go it’s like that’s the last thing you want as a swimmer and that obviously increases anxiety so I think that truth that honesty is such a good approach and then that’s right people will relax so much more they know they know that you don’t have the truth there was a swim out was it last year or year before I can remember there were 11 boats went out to sea and only 3 boats got over and there were 3 that Matt Niels and I were on the 3 red top boats and that was one of the parts I hate to use the p-word so I’m not going to use it but I was very proud of the boys on that one there you go use it because what we’ve done with those 3 swims

was those swimmers in the water trusted us implicitly to make the right calls at the right time and that I’m honest because I know some of the people that didn’t make it that day and they’re decent swimmers they’re decent swimmers it just didn’t click for them on that particular day perhaps because they didn’t fully understand I’m not going to say trust but they probably didn’t even fully understand I mean it was pretty awful and it was night was falling but there’s one guy pulled out 400 metres past the cap you know he went past it one way went past it another way absolutely he was going to get in absolutely he was going to get in but when you go down and then they see then they see the lighthouse the other way and they think I’ve blown it but actually what I’ve got is I’ve got a ton of different tracks which are printed out and plotted out and I’ve written the analysis next to all of those different tracks as to if your track is like this

this this this this then this is what’s happening in those different scenarios and there’s about 8 or 9 different options and so people have read those through our document on manual like way before so they understand all that positioning they understand what the ZC2 means the marker boy that splits the northeast shipping lane from the French and Schubert as it’s 5 kilometres 3 miles from France they understand what that is they understand when they look up at me at the boat and they say Tim where am I and an observer or show up you’re in the English channel you know I’m like shut up right you’re paid to observe but the point is is that I say right we’re dropping down we’re in the northeast shipping lane we’re about half a mile west of ZC2 in the next 10 minutes we’re going to keep dropping down on the edge for another hour 30 hour 45 we’re then going to drop underneath we will be within French and Schubert easily we’ll have a period of slack probably

not not that much and then we’re going to go back up and we’re going to have that saxophone effect we’ll try and knock in just south of the cap and if not we’re going to knock just over the top and land and land maybe just before the whistle if all that goes according to plan you probably possibly got four hours but who knows but that’s your position you’re on track we’re perfectly okay absolutely everything’s fine just keep doing what you’re doing we’re good we’re getting it and then like fine done got it whereas other people who haven’t understood all those possibilities and options previously anxiety does creep in and I know it because I’ve seen it before so that’s why now I don’t believe in the look just keep them in the dark and just tell them just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming no I don’t I just don’t knowledge helps too much knowledge of course is not useful but I think a lot of knowledge when they’re also

prepared to give over the response and give over the solving any potential issues it’s it’s it’s super key but that’s where the athlete coach relationship really really kicks in that’s such an interesting like answer to that to that question of why you feel like you’ve had such good success with your with your swimmers but it makes so much sense when you when you look at it that way and as a swimmer like swimmers they have goals they need to have goals they need to kind of know what they’re doing and I think just that clarity around it look and if plans change they can adapt but knowing okay we’ve got whatever 10k to go this is what’s happening like swimmers love that they they just they need a mission and then they can they can show it they do but also Brent and they need they need they need they need a reason they need a purpose and of course this is you know a big you know people call it the why but I think that a lot

of people get quite hungry the number of people that will send me an email or call me up and say look I’ve always wanted to do the English Channel I want to do it for this charity I’m good at endurance events I can take the cold and like great I’m glad you can do all that because that’s kind of like the starting position but what I don’t want people to do is to get in the water the same right I’m raising money for this charity because of some some some so or I’m doing this for my kids or I’m doing this to what I want them to do is I want them to do it for themselves at the very start and you know I’ve thought this for years but I actually it was during this six-hour swim on just last week when I was just sitting down I saw it all the feeds out Matt was out on the boat with them they were going loops on this one particular swim and I thought I’m actually going to write down what I’ve had in my head on this one thing and just try and really

really really pin down the phrase and the phrase which I came up with I’ll probably forget it now but the reason why you start is for yourself but the reason why you’ve finished is probably most likely for someone else or something else because what you want is you don’t want to go into these events where all your cards are on the table I’m doing this because a family member started cancer and I’m doing it in their memory because when it all goes wrong where else do you have to draw on you’ve already used everything where else can you go I’m still doing it for so and so I’m still doing it for my kids and stuff you’ve got to start off for yourself because if you don’t want to do it then if you want to do it for you then go and do something else that you do want to do go and climb a mountain or go and do an Ironman or go and do something else you’ve got to do this the start because the training so hard it’s you that’s got to get in the water

and commit when it’s cold and then get out of bed and go and do it you’ve got to do it for you to start then when the shit it’s the fan in the middle then you start drawing on your emotion then you start drawing on right I’m doing this for my mum I’m doing this for me it’s easy if I was going to do it again I’d be doing it for my daughter 100% like even when I’m in training and it’s hard and somebody’s buying I picture her looking at me in the stands going seriously dance that the best you got and I mean it’s probably a bit of a fault maybe it says something more about me and my mental but but 100% and like just that image she just doesn’t even say it just that image is enough to just push me for sure but the reason I got in at training that night wasn’t because of my 8 year old it was because I wanted to get in and start and so you’ve got to start for you but you’ll probably end up finishing for a different reason

absolutely yeah yeah that’s like has that come from having people inquire or even maybe like start preparing for one of these swims where you can just tell that deep down they are not interested in doing it but they’ve thought I’ve got to do something challenging in memory of this person yes so they just haven’t got a clue what’s involved I haven’t got a clue many people want to love the idea of being a channel swimmer but actually when it comes down to it they don’t really want to go through everything that’s involved and everything that is involved is not that one day it is the thousands of hours leading up to it I, we at Red Top, Matt, Niels all of our coach we know pretty much before we start whether we’re going to get over or not and if I don’t think we are, we’re not basically we’re not going to see because there’s no point just taking taking cash off somebody if you know that it’s not going to happen so we have the conversation with him in February

March and say look maybe we need to turn it into relay let’s put it off another year and also you know certainly with the English channel I work with some amazing pilots they’re all amazing the ones that we work with for so long we’ve got a huge amount of loyalty with those guys they know that we know what we’re talking about we know that they know what they’re talking about it makes a perfect team and so yeah we’ll call up the pilot and say I’ve got Brenton coming up tomorrow he is a 4.6 km an hour swimmer I’m picking you up here Brenton I don’t know if you can hold that for an hour and he’s this he breathes to this side feeding strategies on this feeding time is going to be about this this is what I feel looking at whether what are your thoughts what are your times in terms of looking at high when would you want to are you happy blah blah blah and and it’s that it makes the pilots job easier when they know that they’ve got

an athlete coming on the boat who’s prepared and understands what’s going on it just makes the job so much easier hmm that’s good and like you’ve obviously coached for a long time we’re talking beforehand you started around 2007 with your swim coaching but previous to that like you’ve done this channel yourself you’ve been around the pool for a long time in that time what comes to mind for you of perhaps philosophies or ideas that have evolved for you from where you first started coaching to where you are now and you look back at maybe some of those objectives you had and go I was really wrong on that because I know I’ve certainly had a few in my time coaching I look back at some of the things I was teaching when I first started and I just had no idea I was very fresh I was very green to but yeah that changes over time obviously with more experience new nutrition for sure change masterfully for sure and now like what we do we have

we have kind of like a starting position and then we give people that starting position we rotate through four or five different feeds and then figure out what works for them and figures out what tastes work for them or don’t work for them and then we just keep running through from that and so nutrition I’d say is probably the biggest the biggest change over the last two decades for sure but equally periodization I think that I think that I went a little bit low on volume but higher on intensity when I was personally trained I still like that but now what I’m able to do is to look more at whether an athlete is more of a lack whether they can create lactate or not create lactate if they can create lactate then I want to put them and they’re very good sprinters then I want to kind of keep pushing them I want to keep pushing them more onto the LSD training more kind of longer slower distance to push that lactate curve a bit more to the

bit more to the right if they can’t create lactate then I want them to do more sprint based work in order to generate more and then be able to then in the program hold it so it’s being more it’s understanding that not one size fits all is a bespoke approach and that bespoke approach is not just on nutrition but it’s also on on what type of athlete you’ve got my sister-in-law for example Leander Cave won the Ironman World Championship 2017 World Championship back in 2012 and she cannot create very much lactate which is why she’s a perfect open water and perfect distance ultra endurance marathon etc athlete that sounds a bit unfair because she is also was like my wife and her were excellent swimmers when they were kids but she didn’t have like a gear and so but she could just go hard and just go hard forever so a couple of days before Kona World Championships she’s there doing like 2100 soft like a 130 cycle and I’m looking at it thinking

it’s totally the right thing for her to do because you can’t create lactate you’ve got other athletes then copying her and they’re blowing up when it comes to race and it’s not just good race but it’s also because they were very good at creating lactate whereas what she couldn’t do was that so she had to just keep on even that close to the finish that close to the start line sorry she’s still having to remind her body you know we’ve got to get some movement we’ve got to get some stuff flowing here and it’s having that ability to test people see what they do on a sprint I want people to go max effort let me know what the 100 time is and then go 10100 the cycle time is that’s going to give you so much data so much information as to what is going on with them physiologically right off the bat if they can they can only sit on 145s per 100 but they can go 103 for 103 style yeah I know exactly what what I need to be doing but equally

if they can go 140s but they can only go like 130 max effort again I know where I need to be training and it’s two different two different strategies I guess at some point we should also touch on the doco as well at some point else Mark will be like Tim you need to plug it yeah that was such a good they did such a good job with that film it was very very moving yeah so good yeah Mark came down have you seen Two Swimmers which is my first one no I haven’t Swimmers.co.uk TWA Swimmers.co.uk it’s just a website but you can screen that and that was basically created by Steve my friend at university and he filmed it and edited it and that was like his springboard into his career and he basically wanted to create something for Channel 4 docs which is you just want to create a four minute piece and then it would get uploaded and then people would vote and whatever so he followed me trained me into some of my training and then he additionally

came out on the boat on the date and he got as you’ve seen he got the money shot if you like Mark passing away and he realised that from that he he couldn’t do a four minute piece he had to do it more justice he created a half hour piece he was sold to terrestrial here in 607 606 just before Red Top started I’m sure and then then roll forward to all of this Jeff had got all the filming done all the interviews done and I spoke with Mark he said look he’s going alright but just getting frustrated he can’t find the narrative as well look my friend Steve he did mine he’s now an Emmy award winning editor and he’s married an Aussie and they I can connect Jeff and Steve so basically connected them and Steve just ran with it found the narrative and said right let’s do Mark Tim and Steve monotone is the three central characters and then the interviews will bring in will be the athletes did a swim with Mark so three for Gibraltar

and then Joe obviously for Cook Straight and so that was how he then they then filmed it so there’s so much footage which went over a hundred hour footage so how did you get a hundred hours of footage into a 90 minute piece anyway such a such a skill to be able to find the narrative cut down that footage and just type like I can’t even I wouldn’t know where to start with that that’s why they do that and we do this exactly right yeah yeah and they could probably look at what you do and they appreciate that for what it is and then I couldn’t I couldn’t do that so yeah let’s just stick to what we’re good at hey

now in terms of yourself being a swimmer and still hitting the pool what how important do you find it find for you that still keeping connected with the water and having that experience swimming the channel and doing long swims how how important is that for you to be able to then relate to your swimmers and transfer that knowledge that’s interesting and I say that’s interesting because I’m not really training specifically for an individual event at the moment but I think it’s very important to to stay connected and I think it’s very I think it’s much easier to get that that connection that trust that we talked about earlier with your athletes when they do see that you’ve done some stuff and also that you’re still you know might not be a lot people call me 10 minute 10 because I get in at the last 10 minutes of the training session and just jump in and push out a little bit and and open up and that’s it and yeah fine I’ll take it I don’t care

but I because it’s important that they see that I’m still getting in from time to time I’m still working hard but I’m still I’m still getting in the water and I do I do train when I’m when I’m at home when I’m able to I have a membership here and I’m able to get in and train but it’s difficult when you’re not it’s difficult to motivate when you don’t have something specific to train for other than as I keep keep saying my wife and I keep saying a lot you know it’s harder every single time you come back out of retirement it’s easier to stay ticking over rather than going down and then trying to get back up again and so yeah I do have some small goals which which have been hampered through injury over the last couple of years but I think I think I think I can probably link in something actually to what you’re saying here in terms of the relevance and how it reflects on the on the on the swimmer I used to it’s having that trust and having that

rapport and having that connection with your athlete that’s so important I used to feel like four five six years ago I had this story which I had in my head which I’d seen and it was the donkey that was how does the farmer make the donkey move faster does he give him a carrot to encourage him to walk faster or does he beat him with a stick to also encourage him but in a different way to move faster now different athletes require the carrot and a stick at different times some require just carrot some just stick some depending on the moment but it was about three years ago that I realized at the middle of the channel that actually there was a third way to make the donkey walk faster and that was actually to when everything went wrong right out there in the channel I looked down and I reminded my athlete once upon a time I was also a donkey I’ve had those shoulder injuries I’ve been scared of the dark I’ve worried about the sharks

and the jellyfish I had the GI issues I’ve considered pulling out perhaps because I thought I wasn’t in the position that I was in and also I thought you know is this just maybe not my day I started thinking up excuses as to why could justifiably could get out the water and so when your athlete looks up at you when you’re looking down at them with that level of empathy and they know that you know Tim hasn’t done anything really worth a mention in the water since probably Gibraltar in 2014 but he’s done a lot of stuff before then and he’s done seen a lot of stuff on the water underneath him in all the years since then so when they see that and they talk to me like that it gives them a level of confidence it’s not that I’m telling them to be a carrot or the stick but it’s telling them that I get it and I’m not going to lie to you you’re looking up at me and you’re growing up and you’re telling me that you feel shit yes you do feel shit

I get it I really do get it but it’s going to pass and I’m going to help you through it it’s going to pass the tide is going to turn the wind is going to drop the sun is going to come up it’s going to be alright it’s not going to be fun between now and the time that everything is alright but it will get alright at some point and there’s that difference between we are uncomfortable at the moment very uncomfortable at the moment but we’re not dying so we can keep going if we get to that point then I’ll pull you out but at the moment we’re good I had a guy last year in Catalina he started and you’ll probably know from Catalina you started somewhere between Tempium and Midnight and we were going in the end of September we we’d actually had a juvenile great white shark attack in one of our swimmers the night before and I was this night so there’s stuff going through everybody’s head everybody’s head not just a swim in the water believe me

stuff going through everybody’s head and he started feeling bad an hour and a half in and started feeling nauseous this guy’s an excellent swimmer he’s an excellent swimmer and I was just trying to think of all the different things that I could change nutritionally to give him change like this and he said look at the end of the day it’s shit when we’ve been going about two or three more hours we’re trying to solve for this problem I said look it’s not good I get it I get it this is that moment that we’ve trained for but we hope never would happen well it’s happening it’s happening just own it it’s happening all we’ve got to do is actually just get to daylight you don’t have to think about getting to the mainland if you get to dawn you will definitely get to the mainland just get to dawn everything will be better when you get to dawn okay okay okay and I finally resolved it I finally resolved it by doing a combination of things

and the main thing that happened was the acid reflux settlers and I had some stuff in my bag because I took over the year before Harrison Haynes I called Cross the English Channel Backstrike and he would get a lot of reflux because he did a lot obviously he did all of it on his back and so I had some of that some of that medication still in my toolkit and I gave that to Sean and boom it was a game changer so it’s just that was a little bit of luck right that I had that there I’m pretty confident that we’d have found a way we’d have solved a way alternatively a different way to get him across if I hadn’t had those in my toolkit but whatever I did, he took, he loved them and he asked for a repeat prescription next feed and a repeat prescription the following like about an hour later and that was it and then he was good and then he got through to dawn and then he went through and he successfully swam Catalina so it’s having that empathy

having that understanding that look there’s A to B right but it’s rarely a straight line in terms of our performance I’m not talking about swim track I’m talking about our performance but it doesn’t really matter about this as long as we get to this we want to be safe, we want to be successful if you have a good time great if you don’t really care as long as we’ve been safe and we’ve been successful like I said to people on this last one somebody said something about well what if I’m look a lot of people want to enjoy the journey and I’m like the journey it’s all about the destination so long as you get there it doesn’t really matter how you got there so long as you are safe then you’re successful if you want to go on a swim that you definitely want to enjoy of course we always go out hoping we’re going to enjoy swimming Catalina English of course we want to enjoy it but if we don’t we’re not going to get out just because we’re not enjoying it

besides it makes a better story doesn’t it that’s right so you can’t I guess say to people all the time it’s very difficult to do 12 hours of anything without the becoming some kind of a problem if you try and sleep for 12 hours you’re going to be woken up by the dog or you need the toilet or the dustman or whatever it’s almost impossible to do anything perfectly for 12 hours so you’ve got to understand that there are going to be peaks troughs, pitfalls, problems issues stuff we’ve planned for, stuff we haven’t planned for it doesn’t matter just do your swim bang your feet down, crack on and we’ll fix everything else that needs fixing from the boat if you do that and you trust in just me or my boys but it’s the pilot and it’s the whole concept I absolutely believe to understand the channel that that I was Tour de France team equivalent and you know the main guy gets all the accolade but he needs three hill climbers, two sprinters

three domestics, the massage, the engineers team manager, strategist all the massage, all the rest of it and I honestly believed in mine that everybody put their name into a hat and Regin Ray pulled out pilots Steve pulled out filming my sister pulled out cons Lee pulled out feeding Mark pulled out coach Mike pulled out observer and I pulled out swimmer and that’s just the way it was and you just get your head down everyone’s got a job and it wasn’t me getting over it was us getting over when you have that mentality of it doesn’t matter what happens in the water, you’re not on your own everybody’s invested in this success so you have to collectively as a team figure out how we are all going to get over and that’s that’s very important to me I the so I was on the boat with Andy Donaldson he went down the upper River which is like northwestern Australia the first proper marathon swim I’ve been a part of at least on the boat there

so 28 degrees in the water you don’t have to battle tides or currents or anything like that like everything’s sort of pushing you down the river yet you’re still running into issues there was dehydration, the sun absolutely cooked him through the day he’d had massive couple days leading into it driving 4000km 30-40 hours in the car and that’s really quite good conditions for a 55km swim but even then you’re still sort of battling it and it doesn’t matter how perfectly you plan and prepare for it and it was just interesting for me being the first proper long distance from I’ve been a part of to see the emotions that someone goes through like the first 4km he’s stopping every 30 minutes and just going how good is this like the landscape was unreal and then a couple hours later in he’s dehydrated and he’s like pretty quiet and not enjoying the landscape as much but it’s a real journey that the entire crew goes through, everyone on the boat

Feeders, Andy, it’s a real experience and I think I don’t know if I’m sure you find this but I found that it really tends to bond and gel everyone who’s been a part of that journey, it bonds them together because they’ve seen what goes into it and they’ve had to figure stuff out along the way and it really makes you closer as a team. Yeah but that’s also the moment that you have to step back emotionally and figure out and look on it without the rose tinted glasses and if stuff’s going bad and he’s getting more and more and more dehydrated and he’s getting worse and worse and worse, you have to kind of forget the what it means to him the number of people that are watching on social media the money that’s been raised to charity the role model the generation he’s he’s inspiring and actually know when enough’s enough and that’s that is that’s the bit which I which I really like and I’m proud of today is that you know we don’t we don’t really

know when the moment is to pull somebody out I just know that when I see it I know it if that makes sense just you just get an idea of something’s changed and now’s that moment so yes the whole experience does gel people very much together you know I’ve made good friends with some support people on support crews sometimes they you know sometimes they’re knowledgeable about how that one particular athlete works sometimes they’re knowledgeable because they’ve done it themselves but more often or not they’re just super enthusiastic family and friends and that’s great but sometimes they’ll want to keep them in if I want to get the person out or if I want to get the person out I want to keep them in and you have to be very confident in your own analysis and discussion with the pilot as well when enough is enough but you know that’s experience isn’t it I always say that doing what we do is science until the minute we get wet and then once your swimmer is in the water

doing it becomes an art because it very rarely goes according to plan there’s still the data there there’s still the the nutrition going in but sometimes the nutrition that should go in and should work doesn’t work so what do we do then well we have to pivot and we have to solve for that problem just find a way I always remember in Catalina who was going wrong Mark was throwing up and he was nauseous from the fumes and he just fixed the problem to him I don’t know how fucking great in the dark I can’t really see what’s going on because you’re not telling me other than you don’t feel great we hadn’t figured out that he was chewing down on the exhaust pipe at the time you know it’s just but you just got to find a way you just got to somehow go into all the options and just keep observing and keep looking but that again just brought everybody even more together because you could see what was going on I’m liaising with the kayaker

discussing a bit with the pilot looking at other stuff going on with the observer there was a couple of other guys for support on the boat and then you just kind of figured out what was going on and then you’d solve for that problem accordingly but yeah it is it’s a great experience for a lot of people for some people it’s a horrendous experience because either they don’t like seeing their family friend their loved one going to the end of their tether and back or or an ant they’re feeling so violently all themselves through seasickness that they just do not want on that boat whatsoever people throwing up over the side before the swimmers even got in the water to start the swim that’s only a 25 minute chug around the corner to some for holding this channel and then these people have been lying on the deck of the boat for the entire swim and then they’ve got to get back it’s just it’s just the way it is it’s just the way it is but

I find it’s like the really interesting point about not being emotionally invested like having that having that hat on and just being objective about things I think it’s that’s one thing I’ve had to learn as a coach where you’re going to be the best coach if you don’t let your emotions get involved in decisions and it’s that like you know you probably don’t want to tell someone look it’s going to be you’re going to have to slug it out for four hours it’s going to suck you want to sugarcoat it but the best thing you can be is not emotional about it just be factual obviously you want the person to succeed and you might have a very close relationship with that person and you work with them for a year or more but for you as the coach you’ve just got to take that away in order to give them the best chance at succeeding 100% 100% you have to be objective you have to be logical rational pragmatic and you have to be clear in what it is that you’re telling them in terms of

the situation and the solution I cannot stand it in life in general when people come to me with a problem but they don’t offer I didn’t even care for it if I don’t want it but they don’t even attempt to give a potential solution and that people are looking up at me I know because they’ve told me I don’t, they say Tim I didn’t care how bad it was when you told me because I knew that you’ve got a solution for it and so long as they have that confidence that you can create a solution and preferably tell them what the solution is going to be tell them like keep doing what you’re doing stick on this position stay close to the boat let’s be nice and nice and quick with the feeding as quick as we can focus a little bit more on the tech as you get through these swims the tech goes a bit what happens more often than not Brenton is the rotation to the non-breathing side decreases so they’ll still get a good roll to the side they’re breathing

they stay very flat to the non-breathing side and so they get a little bit of finger drag a bit more hay make around the side definitely don’t get extension out the back which means they also don’t get extension at the front with the breathing on side so you just say focus on the tech look down a little bit more get a bit more rotation hip and shoulder through to the non-breathing side focus on finishing off at the back and then just put a little bit more power in when you get through to the next feed the tech it’s just a reminder that’s all it is it’s just a reminder of this is what this is what’s needed and then at the next feed you’re right I want you to give me just 5% more power just 5% and we’ve always said the most we will ever ask you for is 5% I will never do the hour of power which is what I’ve seen happen before I’m never going to ask you to sprint never all I’ll ever ask is 5% because 5% doable it’s achievable

any more than that you’re just going to get wheel spin they’re just going to they’re going to try and increase speed by spinning your arms and it just doesn’t work not when you’ve been swimming for 13-14 hours it just doesn’t work one thing you mentioned there was sometimes they just need to be reminded that piece of advice where obviously people have to be taught new things and all of that but a lot of times especially if it works on for a long time they’ve just got to be reminded and I think for me that’s as a coach it’s taken a lot of the I guess the pressure off with someone who you’ve worked with for a long time it’s like even the best athletes in the world sometimes just have to be reminded I interviewed Sam Short a couple of months ago and he said he lost the it was the world champs in the 400 free bar it was like 0.03 of a second or something because he sort of was lifting and throwing his head around on that last lap

sometimes the best swimmers in the world something as simple as that doesn’t matter what level you get to sometimes you just have to be reminded of the basics exactly I worked with a guy who came out on our last camp he’s a quick swimmer he’s going to degrade the channel this year he’s a fast and he’s also 23 which makes a big difference and he noticed like his head was bobbing a bit and it’s a bit like every time you’re moving really going fast you’re feeling great going into a turn just as you’re going you can’t just lift slightly drive your head down and into it because it feels bigger feels better, it feels faster you feel more powerful but it slows you down and I said why are you doing this? and he’s like just feels good in the moment and he’s like and even just in his swimming he just bobs just a little bit forward, don’t lift it too much a little bit of his freestyle is very good, he doesn’t quite come over the top, just a little bit more like that

because he’s so good at fly, 200 fly is his thing, he’s so good at the fly it’s just that angle with the fly is a little bit more of what his angle on the freestyle is coming into so I’m trying to kind of change his freestyle a little bit to be a bit more freestyle and a little less having a butterfly influence and it’s just reminding in those things just make those small small tweaks, it’s going back to money ball again it’s just pulling out just little bits here, small marginal gains and you know all you’ve got to do is just get to that position it’s so money ball, all you’ve got to do it’s just got to get on base it’s always got to do, you doesn’t care about the home run just get on base and that’s what I’m trying to do I’m just trying to get people to get on base I have been working with a couple of pro triathletes overseas just a bit of analysis and I jump on a call with them and there’s one guy who he said previously he was like back of the

back of the front pack a couple of years ago and he’s just been like third pack lately and he’s like I just don’t I don’t know why it is like technically like it doesn’t feel great but I’m just not sure why I’m third pack and after I’ve asked him a few questions he’s like yeah I don’t really like to draft I like to have my own space I just don’t like to draft so it’s like alright well let’s work on that that’s some low hanging fruit if you’re missing the front pack and so we just talked about how to get a bit more comfortable with others where to sit and he had a really good swim last race that he did and it’s just simple stuff but you know when you’re in it sometimes you don’t see it you need someone a bit more perspective and maybe even he knew it but he’s just like he needed someone else to tell him that and it sounds like with that athlete he might have known it he might have felt it but he’s just like no I need an outsider to just tell me

this is what you’re doing let’s fix that let’s cut that away exactly that but also as coaches sometimes we need that as well being on the boat I’ve looked down sometimes you can’t see the wood for the trees you know as the expression goes and you look down and you’ll think like I can’t kind of figure out if I need to pull them out or if I can keep them in a bit longer can I keep them in are they going to make it the first question I say is look they’re going to make another 30 minutes probably another hour but are they going to make another six and if they’re not then what’s the point keeping them in for another one hour two hours just to prove a point the second thing is is that I look at them and think okay say we’re super close we’re a mile and a half off I had this one this one lady it’s probably about 10 years ago and I looked down I don’t think she looks good but I can’t quite see it I said to the guys look you guys watch her

I just want to go to the other side of the boat I just want to sort myself out I just want to recollect my thoughts I want to look out over there and I remember it perfectly some was going down it was coming through towards Wissom Bay we were about we probably two miles offshore a mile and a half offshore two miles offshore it was beautiful flat calm water and what happens around Wissom as it comes in French and short as you get these flocks of birds and they fly just basically about what seems like about half a meter above the surface of the water when it’s flat calm and I just remember just watching these beautiful birds just flying across I just say it’s this is just it is such a stunning place like when it’s beautiful it is beautiful and I thought when I walk back across this boat and I look down at my athlete I’m going to just know whether to keep her in or whether to take her out and I walk back across the boat and I look down

and I said get her out get her out now enough enough enough is enough we cannot put this woman through anymore that is enough we pulled her out we pulled her out she did pass out and she came up pretty fast but it’s scary and it’s not good and you just have to keep reminding yourself that you’re not infallible as a coach you can make mistakes and just because we’ve got a good record as you said before 250 EC swims we’ve got 350 ultra marathons or marathons worldwide

but you’re only as good as your last one and you’re only as good as your stats so you’ve got to keep on top of it and you cannot make mistakes and with this woman she wasn’t close to being a dramatic mistake but when you look down and you know and sometimes you need to just keep on reminding yourself that you need to take yourself away get yourself out of the picture for a minute then go back and then look at it with a fresh set of eyes and sometimes as well you’ll see Matt and Neil will be at sea as well and maybe back home and I’ll call them up or one of them will call me up and go this is a situation, you can see what my track is I’ve given them this I’m not getting that response, what do you reckon? and we’ll just troubleshoot it and they go have you tried this and this they go yeah good idea and then we’ll do something, we’ll just fix it up and sometimes you just need somebody who’s not even on the boat to give you a

look at that but again that comes down to trust again but that’s trust within a unit that’s not even right there in that moment they’re seeing it completely from the perspective of the information I’ve given them and looking at a dot on a screen yeah that’s right a bit of that separation can help kind of just that outside perspective absolutely and it sounds like the team you’ve built having just other people to bounce ideas off of to be able to share that knowledge like for me I’ve run camps for a long time and it’s put me in touch with a lot of great great coaches and great athletes and doing this podcast as well like I’ve learned so much today from you it’s like that sort of wealth of knowledge from people of thousands and thousands of hours of experience in marathons swimming or competitive swimming whatever it might be to me it’s so valuable to be able to have that because if I was just coaching on my own without any outside

input I think I would know about a quarter of the stuff I do today and that’s why I think it’s just so good to have those other people to bounce off of and it sounds like you’ve put together such a good team to be able to help people successfully complete these big marathon swims yeah you’re obviously right Brenton you can’t be so ego driven that you’re not prepared to keep learning you have to understand that you have to keep on looking and talking to people and learning and learning from the mistakes as well as the bits that do go well and yeah talking to people and also looking at different situations with different athletes sometimes somebody will come to the floor and say like I’ve got an allergy or something and I haven’t had that one before but now we pretty much come across everything that we ever want to come at sea you know now we’ve ticked off shark attacks in Molokai and Catalina last year that one’s done we don’t need to revisit that one

ever again there literally isn’t I would say there’s literally nothing that I haven’t seen at sea now even going down to death in my and without being flipping in my English Channel swim you know and understanding when stuff goes wrong when you’re at sea you are absolutely on your own you are absolutely on your own you are only as good as the people and the kit that you’ve got on the boat and there’s not a lot of kit on a boat if stuff goes through you have to be very aware all the time that that’s at the back of your mind and that everything has got to be as as safe as it can possibly be but you’re right don’t be too up yourself that you like God’s gift and this is my strategy and I’m not going to deviate from this plan you have to be prepared to learn from tons of different people keep talking to people and keep improving all the time just little bits little bits little bits actually one of the first things that I one of the first things I realised

that I was perhaps coaching wrong was when Trent Grimsie broke this channel record he another coach that I had learned a lot from she posted a video about his swim and he has a bit of a crossover kick which can be really quite efficient for long distance swimming provided it’s coming from the right place where someone’s not like over rotating or completely disconnected it can be fine to do it this crossover kick and I’d always thought no completely wrong thing like never you always just need to you shouldn’t cross over essentially but you look at some of the really good distances and some of them do it and so for me that was one of the first light bulb moments where it’s like hang on a second you need to question some of these beliefs that you’ve got and you’ve got to look at what the spectrum is of what the best swim is in the world do and just allow some of these things to perhaps play a part of people’s stroke if it’s there for the right reasons

and yeah that was one of the first things I remember when I was coaching career where I thought hang on a minute like you’re not you don’t know everything let’s start to peel back some of these layers and see what the truth actually is definitely it’s different strokes with different folks as I was taught and it’s not one size fits all it has to be bespoke approach on how you coach people in terms of tech some people just physically can’t get into the positions that you want them to get into and also when you want them to be conditioned through the periodization plans and nutritionally a good a good example of something similar to what you just said was actually when I swam next I took Pedestorichef across Gibraltar and we did some training swims and I swam next to him and I was basically just swam next to him because I wanted to have a look underwater at what he was actually doing and he goes in deep he goes in so deep

but for him it’s in a deep catch position he doesn’t just pull back he pulls back and lifts up and pulls right back past his hip so it was it was going in but it was like he gets his power from like a lift up it’s kind of launches him up and over the water and I was like I’d never seen that strike on on any athlete which I’ve analyzed underwater at pro level as well as amateur level and I was like you know this is this is that guy’s so powerful not just strong that guy’s so powerful and power is you know that power is a swimming is a dynamic sport we talk about strength is lifting a car power is flipping a car is putting in that energy putting in that increase in place and wow that guy’s got it you just there he holds in and you just see that which is what should be that acceleration underwater 99% of people in a public pool would decelerate in their underwater phase where is actually the put in the effort the catch and then

it’ll dribble out the back it’s got to be acceleration in the underwater phase and seeing some of these pro-summers like swimming next to next to Petter really really made that blinding the office to me blinding the office it’s so cool to at Emsack where I used to coach there was Mac Horton and Greg Paltranieri like the two like best distance from us in the world at the time and I just remember watching them go up and down the pool and you just you learn so much from seeing those elite swimmers especially at the whole squad of them you just see like what’s important and just how they move their bodies through the water this you can just take so much from that seeing it in person and I remember a couple years ago I filmed a guy Dan Smith who was on the Olympic team quite a few years back and I thought I’ve never seen someone move through the water like this guy like it is just it was the next level above what I’d ever seen before

and it just gives me it gave me such appreciation for how how good it looks but just also I think the amount of work it takes to get there and then some people are just naturally gifted and naturally talented and you can’t teach that and this guy was certainly that absolutely absolutely absolutely no completely agree with you completely agree with you it’s just getting that getting that ability to look at what makes these people tick and then just trying to translate that to an amateur level as well without making people feel too depressed about it but also they should be inspired in terms of like this is what I feel that you’re doing at the moment and this is what I feel like that you can get to you know we can take bits of this and bits of that and ultimately yes anybody can well not anybody a lot of people can swim very technically perfectly for a few strokes or even a length but it’s just that continuity it’s that repetition exactly

what you’re saying about watching those distance swimmers it’s doing it consistently repeatedly and as well as doing it repeatedly then doing it putting on an S&C program as well on top so you’re doing it with more power in the equating and I think that’s where a lot of people where a lot of people would benefit would be a more enhanced S&C program and it’s not just Brenton so they have more power in the stroke it’s also swimming the one of the very few sports in the world where we need a good strong body position in order to not just improve power in the stroke but also to decrease drag and so when you’re able to keep a if you’re saying nice and strong and high and powerful you’re dropping your drag coefficient which is making you go faster as well putting power into the stroke there’s essentially three or perhaps four ways to go and quicker on you increase your power you increase your cadence you decrease your drag or

improve your tech but arguably improving your tech is part and parcel with decreasing your drag but it’s not it’s not rocket science it’s just lots of different factors as to how we can do those different bits and particularly through the core through the hips like through the truncates that is where I think a lot of people they don’t have a lot of power through there a lot of strength through there and they particularly as they get tired that’s when they start to lose that body position because they’re wriggling around starting to snake through the water a bit and obviously upper body as well is really important there but yeah it’s particularly through through the hips and the glutes and just that ability to sort of keep the legs up I think a lot of people lack that lack that strength and it’s not a like everything’s not a short I mean you had a whole documentary to look at that and he’s going to enjoy this he’s going to enjoy this

he’s looking for copies by the end of some of that

so with that, yeah with like the don’t-be-pray documentaries so you obviously had a big part in that with with Mark and I think I guess I haven’t seen a lot of swimming documentaries because there’s not a huge amount out there you mentioned one before the call twoswimmers.co.uk just one that you did which I’m keen to check out but it’s great I think like those sorts of documentaries about swimming just bring a lot of people to the to the sport and anything that can move you emotionally like I found it was quite it was very moving towards the the whole documentary particularly towards the end there it really gets you to feel something it’s like man this is a really well told story so I know like Mark introduced us and I’m really glad he did because I’ve learned so much from this podcast there’s a lot that I’ll be able to take my own coach and I’m sure the listeners will as well and for anyone listening to this I mean it sounds like you’ve got a pretty full schedule

but for anyone who wants to to get in touch with you who is maybe looking to do some marathon swimming what’s the best way to get in touch with you send me an email and then let’s try and see if we’re cool so either tim at redtopswim.com or info at we’ve also got the redtop performance on Instagram and so pinging line through that as well so those are your best channels really yeah onwards and you’re based out of London was it? Yeah I personally live about now south of London but yeah our squads are in London want to on trainings in London and then run the camps in Croatia we’re looking to do some more stuff in UAE later in the year beginning next and then we fly around all around the world as well doing the swims themselves yeah and you clearly know your stuff so tim it’s been such a pleasure having you on I really appreciate you finding the time to do this and it’s the same before you’re a hard man to tie down usually I’m the one

who’s off travelling and doing camps but I think you’re busier than I am so I’m glad we could find a time to meet and I wish you all the best for the rest of the year and with the squad and all the swimmers you’ve got because it sounds like you’ve got a busy couple of months coming up. Thanks Brinton. Appreciate it. Thanks so much.

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming podcast. My guest today is Chris Ballard and Chris has recently written a book that’s just been released called The Plunge, which I’ve got here. I was lucky to get an early edition of it to read through it and the book is all about cold water and cold water swimming and I was amazed how interesting and engaging a book about cold water could be, especially when it’s written so well for a journalist like yourself, Chris. So firstly welcome to the podcast and what inspired you to write a book about cold water swimming? This is great. Thanks for having me on. As we mentioned before, we’re starting I’m a big fan of your videos and your channels and it ended up playing a role in the book itself. I’ve long been a land sport guy.

I did basketball in college here. I was a track and field athlete and I enjoyed swimming. I enjoyed being out in water but I’d never done swimming swimming and so it was when I was in my 40s that my body just started breaking down from all that like just joint pounding you know basketball outdoors running outdoors concrete asphalt. I eventually got a hip replacement in my early 40s and the doctors you know like you can’t run you can’t play basketball and it sort of put me into a bit of a spiral. I think anyone who really loves exercise has that feeling where it’s your identity it’s your stress release it’s your community it is how you work through things sometimes almost like therapy a lot of swimmers have that sensation of like a moving meditation and for me it was really basketball and running and so I hit that point where I was ready to like whatever it was it was going to keep me on the court I was ready for it and that’s when I heard

I write a lot of sports for the last 20 years for sports illustrated about the NBA and an NBA contact was like you got to check this out it’s like the hot new recovery technique you know LeBron and Steph Curry in the honesty using it and he’s like intense cold I was like that doesn’t sound that innovative right I’ve been icing for decades now and then he described this a little bit different you know you alternate with heat and rather than you know just putting your ankle in the bucket or doing like 55 degrees you do like 39 degrees or lower and it’s like this blast and it works essentially like cardiovascular conditioning you know your body vasodilates and then it vasoconstricts and I was like I’ll try it and so I started doing that and I got hooked on it I got hooked not just because the recovery but because that whole feeling you get like that you’re just boosted with neurochemicals you know dopamine, adrenaline is why people feel like it’s like the high

you get after cold water and that’s what led me down this rabbit hole to learn about oh there’s this whole world especially like in UK it’s really big of wild swimming cold water swimming and then eventually ice swimming and as a journalist and a narrative non-fiction writer I was like this world is so fascinating to me these people are authentic they’re passionate and what you’re looking for when you’re writer is undiscovered stories about people who really believe in what they’re doing and that’s what I found here and so ice swimming is for us it’s five degrees celsius under five degrees celsius is it five or under five technically five if you’re if you’re right there you know rhombarchide the founder says if it’s over five degrees it’s a nice swim not a nice swim and so it’s you know it’s sort of an arbitrary line but that’s what that’s what the founders of ice swimming the early 2000s decided almost five degrees or lower

you wear like a silicone cap goggles and a swimsuit so no gloves no neoprene no booties and you’re you’re going everywhere from the the shortest race I’ve seen is 25 meters up to the longest is a thousand meters at the competition and then outside of competition people do something called the ice mile which is trying to swim a mile in this you know 40 41 degree fahrenheit five degrees celsius or lower and that’s where you know it’s really more battle against hypothermia than anything else and for you when did that transition happen you went from essentially journalist writing about the the sport to becoming a participant and spoiler alert a national champion in in ice swimming so when did that transition take place for you I I think I knew all along that if I was going to write about this world you can’t just stand on the sidelines and explain it to people I had to at least try it I didn’t know how far I would go with that

so I started you know with cold showers and cold plunges and then I’d go down I live in bay area California so the water the lowest it gets is about you know what’s that 10 degrees celsius in the winter so it’s chilly plenty plenty chilly anything you know under 60 degrees fahrenheit or not you’re going to get that physical reaction so I was researching looking at the history and I was profiling the US national team coach there’s national teams for ice swimming New Zealand actually has a really strong ice swimming program the the frozen ferns Australia is building there’s up right now and and I was profiling him and was going to go cover the national championships the United States was having and he’s like you know it’s an open technically you can compete you know and I don’t know and he’s like really you know if you’re going to write about it you should try it so that was the entry point was I could enter this as an open event

and then four months to get ready which was just that training both for cold water exposure and then I’d never been a swimmer swimmer so I had to try to work on sprint speed as well and with with that like was there any sort of fear or doubt like can I do it or are you just like you saw people doing it and thought okay well that’s like proof in the pudding that it can be done but like what was mentally how was that for you going into it because I look at something like an eye smile and I went in a five degree cold plunger the day and I thought how I don’t know how on earth you can stay in there and swim for that long like it is cold so yeah how was it for you mentally it’s very very challenging you know I think for each person they’ve got a different sort of you know how how risk averse are you how does your body react to things you know I’ve spoke to a lot of scientists for the book and one of them described us as being essentially warmies like we’re genetically

predisposed to seek warmth or coldies like those are the people that get hot really quick you know they don’t mind being cold winter and I’m definitely a warmie and I also have something called Reynolds which is when the circulation isn’t great in your extremities which is not good for ice swimming as you can imagine so I had a couple strikes against me it also helps to to carry more body fat if you’re going to do ice swimming yeah it’s just literally insulation and it also provides better buoyancy those are the two things that are really helpful so I was terrible candidate for it I think mentally I thought to myself there’s no way I can do this but it’ll be interesting for readers to watch me go into it and you know and what do I learn along the way it’ll be let’s be entertaining and so I think to me that was the biggest takeaway from the experience is that I totally underestimated myself and the thing about like this is your body will acclimate to cold water

within a week but the first time you get in the first time you get into you know like seven degree of water and you’re trying to get in your hyperventilating and your body is essentially going into fight or flight it’s like this is a threat we need to prepare and get tunnel vision and we’re going to have adrenaline and we’re going to we’re going to be as alert as possible so that’s happening and then your hyperventilating and choose your body to sucking in air and so this combination makes it very challenging to think oh I could do this repeatedly and put my head under and swim so that was a stumbling block for me as I got to the point where I could sit in the sit in the cold tub and you know you could hang out for a couple minutes but then the idea of full submersion you know you might get an ice cream headache and you’re focusing and so that was very daunting and a lot of it is just building up your

ability to do hard things you know you get in that cold plunge you just stick it out for 30 seconds and then the next day it’s 45 seconds and each time you do it you’re proud of yourself it’s like wow I didn’t know I could do that you know I didn’t think I could do that and then it gets easier and easier because your body finds this stressor and says okay we’re gonna prepare for it the next time it’s like anything like if you start lifting weights at first it’s really really hard and you’re really sore and then after four months six months eight months whatever it is your body will build back stronger and what do you think what percentage do you think is mental with it and then the body actually adapting to it the mental is the requisite you have to be willing to to get in and do it right and there’s a there’s a paralympic movement around this there’s paralympic ice swimmers and that’s their thing is well here’s here’s something that 99% of the

population won’t do it’s not that they can’t do it anyone can technically acclimate to this it’s that they won’t and so there’s this feeling of pride you get from it but you need to be willing to stick it out so that’s the mental part is the getting in and then physically to get to the point where you’re swimming that takes some physical acclimation wherein you don’t want to be gasping when you’re trying to swim right because you’re just going to suck down water and you’ll see people at competitions will do that they’ll take a big mouthful water at the same time whereas you know I’m sure if you’re sprint swimming you might just hold your breath and you know all the way down you know the first 25 or 50 meters you’re going to get into a situation where your body’s a total oxygen hog so you know a Keaton Jones who was fifth of the Olympics in the backstroke is a nice swimmer as well and you watch him in these sprints and he

is going every stroke breath every stroke breath just to keep that oxygen going because your body needs so much more of it huh interesting right and for like in the in the book you write about how this sort of cold water swimming and adaptation to it is something that we’ve kind of lost with with modern society can you talk a bit about the I guess the history of it and I guess how we may have used to live quite a few decades ago yeah if you think about people who have grown up in a country like Norway at a young age a lot of it they’ve done studies on this you’ll look at people who’ve grown up where their parents just took them out in the cold in a stroller and like hung out for a while I think they walked to and from school in the cold and they have this natural acclimation to extreme temperatures because they just it was just part of their existence and if you go way back to the Serengeti like we want to exist at

82 degrees that’s like our preferred air temperature but for the majority of human civilization anyway we’re like hot and then we’re cold and like you got to 82 you were pretty excited but today I mean literally where I live you could go like from your house you could keep it if you wanted it 82 you could get in your car which could be 82 you could go to your office it could be 82 so there’s no physical stressors you don’t necessarily need to exercise unless you want to now so people have to go out of their way to you know essentially trick themselves into exercising sometimes if you don’t love it whatever it might be right so we have this this you know this this modern life where all the stressors are now psychological rather than physical so you know social media loneliness depression you know the headlines whatever might be but we can’t really respond to that the same way so I think that’s where you find a value

in this and people have been doing it for centuries you know the rippities the realmans they took cold water banks over the 1600s 1700s the Irish have been sea swimming you know and Dublin promontory for decades and centuries partly just to feel alive to do that thing that afterwards you just flush and you’re like wow you know that’s that’s what I’ve been missing you know sitting there watching Netflix or doom scrolling or whatever it is and so you made really good friends and built a really good community with cold water swimmers and ice swimmers what are some of the things you noticed amongst the people in those in those groups with the demeanor how welcoming are they those sorts of things the amazing thing about it and you probably have run into this as well with swim communities is in the open water swimming community you really you can do it alone technically but it’s not a great idea because you’re you’re out even whether it’s you know warm or cold you’re out in

open water you know there’s there’s dangers there’s boats there’s you know sea life marine life so generally you want to do it with other people and so there’s this necessity to do it with other people now make it cold water and you’ve just force multiplied that requirement because afterwards you get out of the cold water you feel amazing but immediately your internal temperature starts dropping because all that blood that was pooled here at your heart trying to keep warm now goes back out to your cold extremities and when it does it brings all that cold blood back in and they call that after drop and if you haven’t done cold water swimming it the first time it just hits you like you feel great you’re on the beach like I don’t need a coat this is yeah I don’t need a blanket yes let’s go and then like four minutes later you’re shivering like crazy and so it really helps to be around other people if you’re going to put yourself yourself in these situations

and that creates what one swimmer Elaine Howley described as essentially like a manufactured shared crisis so you’re creating this crisis by all going in doing this hard thing together and then you get out and then so that community you know a bunch of people you may never met before you’re immediately bonded and you’re bonded because you all chose to do this slightly crazy thing together so that was really that was the bar when I came in as a journalist I was worried people wouldn’t accept me into this world and they had one question and it was like are you swimming and are you competing and then once I said yes they’re like oh great you know come on in you know let me tell you everything about it give you a you know stay at my place when you’re in Maryland and so that was amazing to me to see this community where it’s like we’re all willing to do this thing and you’re not doing it you know performatively for instagram you’re not doing it once you know

you’re like if you’re ice swimming you’re you’re all in and so that creates this really powerful bond to the community so that’d be the first one and the second one which you you know you probably are aware as well was the the power for mental health and for you having done this for a little while now what have you noticed outside of the pool just seeing I guess day to day life that changed for you because of what you’ve developed and learnt from cold water swimming yeah I put it in two buckets one was the swimming bucket I’d never really been as I mentioned a swimmer swimmer and so learning technique and also learning how good it is for your body especially as you age you know in my case I’m now you know I’m 50 years old and my joints aren’t great but being able to get these great workouts in the water you know hydrostatic pressure there’s all these really benefits to the sport you can do the longest so the

swimming part of it that’s been life changing for me I can cross train more I can play basketball which I didn’t used to be able to do but I can also keep my cardio up and then the cold water element of it was essentially emotional regulation so that was you know this people get sometimes for meditation as well where you’re doing this thing and a daily practice or a couple times a week that when you need to you can call on it so for me it’s like you know if you’re on like an eight hour flight it’s a cramped flight in the middle seat whatever I can call upon that same calmness that you get in the water like oh I can do this you know I tried to swim a kilometer in Boston Harbor in the winter I can do this there’s that feeling of it and you become much better at managing crises and I feel like more you know you from from that you go more like this you can become more level and I’m sure you can do that other ways like this isn’t

you know specific to cold water swimming but it’s a way you can do it and for me I’d never been good at sitting there for 30 minutes of meditating I wanted to do something active so it was an active way to achieve that and with the with the swimmers that that do it do you feel in terms of like psychologically is it a a lot of people running from something or are they drawn towards it for for some sort of reason because I think we all we all do hard things for for different reasons but you know sometimes it’s because we yeah we just want to push ourselves sometimes we’re trying to avoid other things you know so yeah where do you where do you think the motivation lies for a lot of people in this particular community I was surprised at first to see how many people had trauma in their life and you know there’s a phrase that when the organizer of a festival in Vermont uses which is the idea that you’re drowning on drought

and you know people who had things that were things you couldn’t resolve in their life you know a loved one had passed away in a hardship and then here was a place where if only for five minutes right you clear your mind and you find this community that’s super supportive and you get out into nature and that seemed to have this effect on people where they came back to it for that right and and you know there was one analogy I heard which is like an island of misfit toys we’re all broken but we’re broken in the same way and so part of that obviously is the neurochemicals you get you literally feel great and that’s because your body is responding to this threat like giving you a bunch of you know adrenaline and dopamine so you literally feel great and you’ll feel great for about two hours or more afterwards even when you’re out and dry that’s part of the reason plungers do it but you’re adding the swimming element of it obviously now you’ve got the endorphins

from the exercise and the community and it’s like this Venn diagram of things we know will make us feel good and you sort of smoosh them all together and for for people who have done it for a long time do you see that they need to keep going more extreme with colder temperatures longer distances or are they happy kind of being keeping that the same is it something that you just need to keep yeah keep pushing and pushing well I think there’s like two types of people who do ice swimming maybe even three but one of them are those people that are chasing the next thing you know the people who love you know the ultramarathon or the triathlete type of personality and here is something that sounds really hard you know it’s like 8,000 people have climbed Everest and fewer than a thousand have pulled off a nice mile so here’s something you can do and be one of the first people ever to do it and it’s dangerous and it’s you know

more people fail than succeed and it takes like a good year of training for some people that’s total catnip you know like oh sure I you know I want to I want to flirt with hypothermia I want to push myself to that breaking points and I I totally got that like that I understood was you you find out things about yourself when you push yourself where you didn’t know you could go so there’s that element and there’s other people who just enjoy that feeling the repeated feeling they don’t need to go you know chase an accomplishment they don’t need to set a record you know maybe there’s going with a swimming group every sunday and through the winter and they find that camaraderie in that community and a lot of places those two communities would be separate they wouldn’t really overlap in a sport and that’s what I found to be interesting is they do overlap here they all go to the same competitions yet they’ve got like 75 year old

grandmother is competing in the age group competition and then you have these hardcore sponsored polish sprinters who are like 22 and jacked and you know and there’s like I think there’s a handful like six former olympians at the ice swimming world championships in malveno so like really elite athletes who are shaving down before swims and then you know wonderful women who are enjoying the idea of being among others and competing into their 70s you mentioned that it might be a third sort of category what’s what’s that one and I think you know those are the people that I mentioned earlier who are coming to this for for that mental health right so some do it for the community some to to chase you know greatness or maybe find their limits and there’s a third who do this almost because now they need to in a certain way this has become the most effective thing they can find to help with this and they’re doing this giant longitudinal study in the uk right now

like a three-year study with 800 people looking at the effects of cold water swimming on mental health part because it’s you know it’s non-pharmaceutical it’s relatively easy to do as long as you have some water accessible and especially for men who they found are less likely to go to therapy and for those type of interventions here is something you can do outdoors with other people there’ll be a relatively easy thing to implement for mental health and with like your own say setup how how have you continued this continue to do this for yourself because it’s one thing to yeah be a journalist write about it get involved in it but then do you stick with it that’s the uh that’s a big question i guess yeah that’s the question everyone asked me and a lot of my friends who aren’t swimmers or cold water people are always you know they’re skeptical like so are you gonna continue doing this and i think it would be it would be interesting

for the book if i didn’t like it i would have wanted to be honest about that i feel fortunate that i ended up really responding to it and enjoyed it so i you know the area i’m in the water doesn’t get that cold but i can swim in the bay i can it’s about a three-hour drive here in the bay area up to lake Tahoe which does get down to right around five six degrees in the winter and then i now have this this sort of jury-rigged cold tub in my backyard that my kids love to make fun of me for but i’ll go out there in the morning and do like a morning cold plunge for a few minutes whatever it might be i’d love to have a sauna i access to the saunas is great if you go someplace like finland and their saunas are everywhere i want to research that for the book i think that’s the ideal combination is if you get that hot cold because if you get hot enough getting in a cold water is a relief rather than something fear and then just feel fantastic afterwards um

yeah and then i keep swimming and i’ve got a couple good pools around here competition bowls swimming keep touch with people the u.s uh you know national team is looking for a place to hold its next competition and then the next worlds will be in january of 2027 in aradia so where’s that where’s aradia yeah it’s in poland so we’re headed headed to where this is sort of one of the the hot spots for the sport right now cool okay that’s uh i actually was looking up because i’m in a little bit of not research for the book or anything but yeah i’ve been reading the book and really enjoying it and i’ve been doing a few dips and swims here and there just around home it’s only about 14 degrees at the moment so it’s not it’s not super cold but uh i kind of like you said it doesn’t take that long to adapt you know it’s the first couple so painful really uncomfortable but then i just have the mindset of i’m just going to go in until i start to

shiver and like that’s just that’s that’s my sort of triggers like just just getting in until you actually get cold and now start to look forward to it and beforehand i was like oh this this sucks i i dread it but it’s even just that alone that mental shift is i think a really good one to make and it doesn’t take that much to kind of get to that point yeah i think the analogy is to people who don’t like running and they run especially the first they never actually enjoy the running they dread the running they don’t enjoy the running but afterwards they’re so happy they ran i think that’s similar to the cold water exposure is spent to me for writing this right the same way because like it’s it sucks to write it’s great to have written i think there’s something to that with with cold plunging as well also i should say i was wrong already is in romania not poland so i apologize to everyone who may have already

taught that correction it has some angry emails coming your way so i corrected it and so with so i’m gonna get this part out so let’s have a look at this last part here there we go all right so sorry one second chris i’m just gonna make a note so i can get this edited and it’s cool i’d also love at some point to get your take on adam walker stroke and the total immersion stroke yeah yeah sure i’ll yeah i’ll chat about that after if you like because they’re pretty yeah the reasonably similar sort of stroke so yeah yeah that’d be good all right do it now in in terms of someone who’s looking to get started with this what’s an easy way to begin and is there a minimum effective dose to get the benefits yeah the easiest way is cold shower you know everyone’s got access to a shower independent on where you are what time of the year it is that water temperature is going to be different in your cold shower but usually it’s chilly enough to do the trick

it’s also unfortunately one of the least pleasant ways to do it because rather than being out in nature you know you’re in your bathroom and there’s something about the the spray of a shower that is in some ways i find it more challenging than being fully immersed in water so if you have access if it’s a lake it’s a river it’s a stream it’s the ocean whatever you have that’s always the best way because you’re just going to enjoy the rest of it as well but you can start acclimating by doing the cold showers if you haven’t had a gym that’s got a cold plunge tub that’s great if you’re going into cold water outside the best way to do it a lot of people talk about is to walk in about to your to your waist and count to maybe 30 let your lower body acclimate then go in to your chest and count to 30 again this is going to get most of the hyperventilation out of the way and and then go in and there’s like a three-part

process that’ll make it you know less intimidated and also keep you from sucking into water so you can do it any of these ways doing it with someone else is so much better because you’re doing this you know it’s like any like going on a roller coaster with someone else and you know you’re having this slightly scary experience together but then you share it together afterwards and they’ll keep you honest if you’re gonna say let’s meet every sunday and there’s a plunge group you know then there’s that social you know peer-positive pressure that gets you back out there the next sunday so i would recommend that as well i’ve seen where i live in talky down like outside of melbourne there’s quite a few quite a few groups called teabaggers plunger and then a lot of them will then start to start to get into swimming like those groups have really grown and they’re they’re pretty big because they’ve got that great sense of community they all meet

there together same time every week and and just grows and grows and that’s not exclusive to to hear you see it all over the world and yeah i think it’s just such a such a good way to do it i mean in terms of my swim training monday wednesday friday everyone’s going to be at the pool at this time and that’s why i get there otherwise if it’s up to me you know i might sleep in a bit longer i might may or may not go so i think just that small small sense of accountability with other people is sometimes all you need to get you out the door for sure yeah and and at the same time having that goal oriented approach to it right so it’s like i’m going to drop it by three degrees this week or five degrees or i’m going to swim x amount further i think for a lot of people one of the assembly blocks is just open water swimming regardless of temperature is that idea of being out there in water or you don’t necessarily know

what’s below you and and then the concept to me it’s far more far harder to imagine going from you know swimming on a beach to swimming in ocean channel you know like so many people do then it is to imagine swimming for four minutes in cold water which is one of the ways where ice swimming is a much more achievable thing because you know the amount of training as you know you need to do to swim the english channel or you know the north channel is you know years of training and you got to get a tide window and you got to get a boat and you got to get a team so this is like a bite-sized way to take on something really hard have you have you asked anyone who’s done say north channel and the ice mile which one have they found harder yeah it’s been interesting some of them call it basically a channel crossing compressed into 30 minutes that’s if you’re fast some will some will say the ice miles harder it probably depends partly upon

your body time right so if you’re super fast if you’re like a if you’re gonna knock on a smile on you know 22 minutes you’re not going to get into deep hypothermia if you are you know relatively slower let’s say and you are a relatively lean if you’re talking now you’re more in like a 30 to 40 minute range it’s going to be a much bigger struggles both physiologically and psychologically to get through that because that hypothermia is going to kick in and you’re you know your legs are going to sink you’re going to get brain fog your hands are going to claw up a bit but some people would would counter that that’s actually the reward if you can fly through an ice mile in you know in 20 minutes you’re not really getting to the point where it’s super super hard and once again these are the same people that run like the Berkeley marathons and like you know you’re looking to push the limits of you know physical endurance and and see what’s in the locker

upstairs when you do it yeah yeah it in turn a little bit of a shift here for your own swimming in terms of technique because obviously that’s what I I love that’s what we specialize in were there anything was anything in particular for you that helped you with your swimming along the way any particular cues or things that you had worked on for your own strike yeah I like I said as I started literally watching your videos and going out to the pool and mimicking the tips you were giving but I’ve got I’m at a point where I’ve got a bad right shoulders arthritic so if I was doing a head down sprinting for speed which is the events I was doing was at the 50 and the 100 and the 250 I just couldn’t do that much sprint training and I wanted to up my distance and that’s when I looked into alternatives and I’m really curious your take on this I came across both total immersion and then I went to UK and trained some with Adam Walker

who has something called the ocean walker stroke and then I also ran across people who were doing this naturally and the whole concept is essentially you’re never raising your shoulder above if you could see I’ve got my arms straight out here so when you basically turn 90 degrees and you don’t get your elbow higher than here and then use your body to rotate and so you’re not getting it supinated above your head and so I train like this and I mean I don’t think it’s good for sprint training necessarily but for distance it did help reduce the stress on the shoulder yeah and that’s like that rotation is and particularly the recovery because a lot of people let’s say with like say sprint training for example what they’ll teach at the elite level is hips will stay pretty still shoulders will do most of the rotation and you might be higher with the hand with the recovery and stuff but I think for like a majority of people you’re better off having

similar amount of rotation through the hips and the shoulders and particularly with that rotation out of the water you want to the main one of the main reasons of rotation is you need to rotate enough so you can easily get the arm over because as you said if you’re too flat it’s just going to load up that that joint there I can feel that now actually so you like the I think the recovery sometimes gets misinterpreted because people think I need this high elbow recovery and when that arm goes back behind the shoulder that’s when you’re getting into trouble so I think yeah enough rotation to comfortably just bring that arm through and especially if you do have any shoulder issues that recovery is typically one and another big one is just how you extend forwards and how you reach because a lot of people have that tendency to to drift up and then they apply in pressure with that hand higher than the shoulder and that’s where they

load up that joint as well so of the amount of people that have come to clinics that we’ve run and they’re like I’ve got a sore shoulder I’m pretty sure it’s from swing I don’t know exactly why and we look at their footage and it’s like it is so obvious it’s like if you look at this position that you’re in 3 000 times every session that you do it’s like it is no surprise that you’re having having trouble with it so I think a lot of issues with shoulders do come down to to techniques so it sounds like that was probably the case for you as well yeah yeah I was I was I’m sure I was reaching and then patting right on the catch and one of the things that I learned was to basically get your arm down closer to 45 degrees and so now you’re losing that part of the propulsion but once you start pulling from here it’s more of a straight back motion this is one of the things that I want for teachers so I get it here I pull

from here and I’m sure before I was just flinging my arms forward and now I was trying to get to a point maybe every five minutes we’re actually got a glide going you know and so then I was able to use the body more and you know you basically get the feet streamlined so you’re not creating drag on the back yeah that’s good I mean like I normally teach hand hand is about shoulder depth depending on my ability if you’re really tight like if you do like this overhead sort of test a lot of people can’t get their arms back beyond you know above their head so at that point you might you might go a little bit deeper so if if you can comfortably get the arm or the hand at shoulder depth and that’s comfortable then that’s where I like people to get to because it’s a bit more streamlined but if that’s causing any pain then you go a little bit deeper and through that sort of main part of the stroke is the hand comes under the

shoulder that’s when you want to be using your your lats a bit more and that’s where often people are rounding that shoulder and rolling that forwards and that’s where again when they get into trouble so just learning how to keep the shoulder down and back through that power phase of the stroke can just make sure you use the right the right muscles so it’s yeah it sounds like it made a big difference just getting in there in the right position for you yeah and especially over you know when when you’re probably when you’re that cold you probably like you probably can’t feel like what’s what’s going on with the shoulders and how much damage you could be doing to them so it’s probably even more important to get the positions right when you can’t feel what’s going on yeah well the interesting thing about is the majority of the training you do for ice swimming competitions at least is in normal water you know regular pool

water so you train there and then it’s you know unless you have access to really cold water which some of these people do you know part of it’s just your immediate ability to adjust and I thought it was interesting to watch these elite swimmers who would come in and basically do very little training other than a couple cold plunges and then get into that pool and like okay I’m just gonna try to do exactly what I do in a regular pool but in this temperature water and it came down like the elite elite swimmers could do that because they just like swimming and swimming and they immensely were so strong and then more of the amateur people is where you would see you know you’re like hyper aware of the fact that the water is that cold and you know those people that start you know carping their head a little bit during it trying to get their head out of the water and and of course afterwards you’re all you’re all proud of yourself like everyone was was excited

and your times are nowhere near where they are in in regular swimming because there’s no doubt there’s no flip turns it’s open turns on everything keep your your head in the water so you know versus normal but the the best swimmers you’d still see them being you know like Keaton Jones was like three and a half seconds off in his 50 free what he would have been in a pool so and that’s with no dive and no exactly yeah it was that in a 50 meter pool or a 25 meter pool yeah so we had a 50 meter pool and we were doing there’s no underwaters no dives and no so you still that’s not far off at all if you can take away the dive underwater that’s pretty yeah pretty quick there you go well Chris thank you so much for being on the on the podcast and also the book if you’re listening to this highly recommend it great like you can tell when someone’s a professional writer professional journalist just so well written and

yeah really really engaging so um yeah terrific book all the best with the launch which by the time this podcast comes out will have just been released but yeah wish you all the best with that and yeah great to say that you continued swimming and cold plunging even after writing it and and the fact that you can still do the thing you like most which is basketball seems like a testament to the things that came out of the writing the book yeah yeah thanks and the fact that it’s swimming is the great complementary sport like you can do it plus anything else that’s what I learned and what I wish I’d been doing for the last couple decades yeah well we’ll put all the links in the show notes and yeah I love it when someone gets converted to uh to swimming from from another sport it’s just because I mean I get we get so many runners who who come to us and they can’t run anymore but um yeah hopefully with this sort of stuff it can help them continue to

to run and take away some of the pain that they get from it so uh Chris thanks again and uh yeah all the best with the book launch great thanks for having me on thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast if you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. My guest today is Adam Wilkie. Now, Adam, thanks for joining me on the podcast. I’d like I’d love you to share the challenge that you’ve set yourself and how it came about. Because when you sent the email through to get in contact, I was like, that’s, that’s unique. That sounds really cool. And what challenge it is. So yeah, what’s the challenge? Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much for having me on Brenton. Yeah, it’s a real pleasure to be on as we were talking about before I’ve watched a lot of your stuff. So to be talking to you is fantastic. And then in terms of my challenge, so my, I was probably introduced my father first, because it gives a lot of the context to what I’m about to attempt. So I’m Adam Wilkie and my dad was David Wilkie, the great British swimmer who won Olympic gold at the 1976 Montreal Olympics. He won gold at the 200 meter breaststroke in a time of two minutes and 15 seconds. And so

he set that exactly 50 years ago this year. So it’s its 50th anniversary of the record, but also sadly, my father passed away two years ago. So this is very much my way of honoring my father. This is my way of dealing with my grief, and also just showing how damn good my dad was as a swimmer. This record, as I said, two minutes and 15 seconds was set 50 years ago, but by no means is it a slow time. So basically what I’m going to try and do is see how close I can get as a non swimmer. I’m 33. I work in marketing. If I drop everything, how close can I get training for a year to that time of two minutes and 15 seconds in the 200 meter breaststroke. So it’s it’s it’s quite the challenge as anyone who knows swimming will know that that is not a slow time. And it’s gonna take some doing. But as I say, it’s very much about the journey as much as it is the time for me. So it’s gonna be a busy year put it that way.

I think some people listen to that and I wouldn’t mind to do that for 100 freestyle. So two 15 for 200 breaststroke is very solid. And you said you dropped everything. Do you want to talk a bit more about what the what commitment you’ve made to this? So I mean, it’s actually a perfect day to be chatting because today is officially my last day of work. So this is my last formal day of employment. So I literally quit my job to do this full time. So I’ve taken a year off kind of a career break isn’t where I’m 33. I won’t call it a quarter life crisis, but it’s approaching that territory. No, not not really. But you kind of get my point. I’m taking a year out to do this. So this is going to be everything I’m going to eat, train, sleep as a pro athlete. I’m going to go to bed thinking about swimming. I’m going to wake up thinking about swimming. I’m going to be doing everything I possibly can at the age of 33 to optimize my

mind, my body to see how close it is possible as a non swimmer to get to that to 15 and I’ll give some context to the kind of the idea of me being a non swimmer. So I swam a little bit at school when I was a kid. But I never took it further and never kind of pushed myself. My dad never pushed me into it. I think he he obviously knew as a swimmer that it’s something that you’ve got to want to do yourself and any external pressure to push you into it doesn’t necessarily work. And I think a big part of my swimming career was when I was a kid, I’d walk into a pool and there was this pressure, you know, for me to be a great swimmer because of who my dad was. And my dad retired at 22 with five world records, 23 Commonwealth records, 16 European records and 30 British records. So he had quite some career. He topped that off of an Olympic gold. So, you know, people knew him, people knew what he’d achieved. So when I then jumped in a

pool, people were like, was he any good? So I think as a kid, that pressure kind of somewhat took over and therefore I felt like swimming was very much my dad’s story and not necessarily my story. But then when he when he sadly passed away, the pool felt quite a natural place for me to go back and feel quite close to him and kind of it was a very quiet place for me to go and be of my thoughts and kind of think about my dad process my grief and kind of, you know, just have that time out. And then I got the swimming bug. And then and then I kind of thought, well, can I do something with swimming to honor my great father? And yeah, this is where we this is where we’ve ended up. Have you done a turn to breast right time trial yet? Do you know where you’re at? I did one recently, but it was just me in a pool on my own. So by no means an official time, but we’re in the 250. So we’ve got a we’ve got quite some time to take off

at least on below three minutes, which is which is good. That’s a it’s a it’s a good start. But as I say, my base is nothing. So that is me just jumping in a pool and going for it. I’m going to over the year, I’m going to have to obviously overhaul my technique. I’m working with some brilliant British coaches in the UK. I’ve got the help of Aquatics GB. So they’re backing. So that’s British swimming, the British governing body. They’re backing the challenge. So I’ll get a little bit of access to some of their pathways and across the across the year. So I’m going to have some help here. It’s not just going to be me, you know, my local pools kind of charging up and down 25 meters every day. I will be kind of, yeah, doing as much as possible to to to become as professional as I can in this year’s period. Again, at the age of 33, when most athletes are retiring. So I’m starting out while most most are ending. But yeah, it’s it’s it’s

going to be fun put it that way. Do you know what a week will look like once you get going? So I’ve started training a little bit already. And what that currently looks like. So I’m doing five sessions a week at the moment. But that’s obviously I’ve been working full time at the at the same time. So I’ve been doing five sessions set by my coach. So there’s an hour and a half in the pool. And I’ve been doing two two days of dry land. But that will ramp up. So I’ll probably be getting up to kind of, you know, eight sessions a week of swimming plus some dry land. So yeah, I’m going to take it seriously. This is going to be I’m going to treat it as if it is my nine to five. There are other bits to challenge that we can come on to talk talk about like that. There’s a charity angle to it as well. So that will also be keeping me busy. But yeah, the training is going to be the forefront. And I’m going to be training like an elite athlete probably in the

water, you know, for two hour sessions, maybe two days here and there. But also I’ve got to make sure I don’t get injured at 33. You know, our bodies don’t recover quite as quickly as as they used to. So it’s going to be a good balance between getting enough working getting enough technique in but also making sure that I don’t overdo it and don’t get injured because as any kind of, you know, swimmer from 30 and above will probably attest to it’s quite easy to overdo it and get overuse injuries. So I’m sure you have seen a lot of given given kind of the amount of coaching you’ve done, especially of athletes maybe that are slightly older. Well, I did I’m done a double swim day for such a long time and I did one a couple of weeks ago. Hard training on a Monday morning and then a Monday night. And I was like, Oh my God, I think I’m not built for this anymore. Like I used to do that all the time. So good luck.

For sure. Yeah. And that’s the thing. Like it’s getting my body ready for that. So it’s kind of it’s slowly ramping up the mileage in the meters because the thing about the 200 meter breaststroke is I wish I was, you know, a 50 meter front crawler that, you know, then, you know, the modern training methods which are coming out obviously from, you know, the likes of cam but, you know, do do less meters for 200 meter breaststroke you still gonna have that engine. So I’m going to be in the pool a lot and I’ve got to kind of develop that base. And then obviously the technique of the breaststroke is so particular. So I’m going to be in the water a lot, spending a lot of time so the doubles are going to come. I know that for sure. And there will be days where I’m probably sitting on the side of the pool thinking why have I done this? This is quite intense but I think it’s going to be worth it. It’s going to be a real journey and I’m going

to, the big pieces of this actually for me as well is being able to learn about my father. So as I say he retired at 22. He had me when he was 39. So I never really knew him as a swimmer. I never knew him as kind of David Wilkie the champion. He was always just dad to me. No, I had glimmers of that when I’d walk around, people would recognize him, ask for his autograph or a photo. I remember going around to friends’ houses and, you know, friends’ mums would tell me they used to have a poster of my dad on their wall and at 10 years old you don’t really know what to do with that information. But it was kind of, it was there but it wasn’t necessarily the forefront. So I’m really excited to be able to get to go back through my dad’s kind of back catalogue of swimming wins. And, you know, I was saying to some of the other day, I’ve never actually seen the full 200m breaststroke race at the Olympics in 76. Never seen that clip because

it lives behind the table. I’ve seen the last kind of 30 seconds of that race but I’ve never watched the whole thing. So, you know, as part of this I’m going to try and go to the likes of the BBC and, you know, get into their back catalogue and see my dad on the different TV shows and the chat shows and all the races which is going to be just, yeah, fantastic to do as well. Was there a moment where this idea originated from? So, as I say, I kind of got back into the water after my dad passed away. So I was swimming quite a lot and then I just, I kind of thought, I was trying to think of a way to honour him. You know, and he, for those that don’t know him, I mean in the UK he was, he was quite a big name especially in swimming because he, so he won Olympic gold in 1976. Prior to that Britain hadn’t won a men’s swimming gold at the Olympics in 68 years. So he was the first British swimmer to win a gold medal in 68 years in

the pool. British male, I should say, Anita Long’s bottom as she won, she won one prior to him but it was the first male model, male medal. So, you know, he did a lot for swimming, kind of created this kind of, I guess, also in the breaststroke in the UK created a bit of a kind of a heritage for it because then after him became, you know, Duncan Petey, Adrian Morehouse, all the way up to the current day of Adam Petey, you know, he created this kind of, this legacy of breaststroke in the UK. So I was kind of just trying to think about different ways to honour him and what he’d achieved and kind of what he’d done for, for, for British swimming. And I, I came up with lots of different ideas. I spoke to an Aquatics GB about creating, kind of, an award in his name to different charities about creating some funds but they all felt like quite, I don’t know, quite, they felt quite final. They were almost like full stops on his legacy, you know,

David Wilkie, you know, X-Date to X-Date and here’s a fund in his name. So I wanted to come up with something which was more living and more present and that’s kind of where I was like, well, can I do something that has a charitable link, which I’ll come on to and speak in a second. I know I’ve spoken about it twice now. So that also then can help, kind of, the next generation and that mean that his name is attached to that. So the charity angle is basically there’s a, there’s a brilliant charity in the UK called Sports Aid and what they do is, is they give awards to young athletes who maybe don’t have the, the, the financial means to stay in their sport, but have shown great aptitude and what Sports Aid do is give them funding to make sure that they can stay in their sport. So the idea is, is that, you know, sport should be a great leveler and it shouldn’t be dictated by how much money you’ve got to stay in it, it should be

dictated by how good you are. And the brilliant thing is, is that my dad was the first ever award recipient from Sports Aid 50 years ago. So again, in 1976, he got an award from Sports Aid which allowed him to go on a win Olympic gold. So the whole idea was basically, can I do some form of challenge to help raise some money for that next generation? And then what I love about that is, is that my dad’s legacy and his name is attached to this future generation and he, even though he’s no longer here, can help that next generation hopefully go on to, to greatness themselves to win Olympic golds in their own right. And you know, my dad’s legacy and his name will be a part of that story and a part of the next generation. So that’s really how it happened. The other story is, is that I also was at an Iron Man event. So through my work, we started sponsoring Iron Man. And I was seeing these, these guys and girls, you know, putting

everything on the line, you know, you know, and they weren’t, they were semi pros, you know, then this wasn’t a full-time job, but they were really, you know, they put everything and they left everything out there. And I was watching them and I was thinking, I was just, I was inspired and I thought it was remarkable. And I was like, I’ve never pushed myself that far. And I’d love to, I’d love to see what I made of what can I do if I’m, you know, if I really dedicate myself to something. So those two things together kind of took me to this, this idea of how close can I get to my dad’s record. And then the brilliant thing was, it’s the 50th anniversary of his record this year. So it kind of all just came together and felt like, well, I kind of have to do it now. You know, it’s, it’s presented itself as a, as an opportunity. I have to grab it. And here we are.

Well, that’s, I think it’s such a great way to honor him and the amount of work you’re going to be putting in over the next 12 months is going to be huge. And I think the, the physicality of it, the, the time period that you’re going to be applying to it as well, like all of that seems like such a, such rewarding, rewarding way to, to do it, I think, you know, rather than, as you said, something that’s just like a, a final end point where this is, yeah, something you’ve got to work towards. So, and outside of that, for me, like personal interest is also how good can someone, how far can someone go in that 12 month period because I’m obviously a big fan of, I love swimming, I love swimming technique and I love to see that progression and improvement. So that in itself is going to be really interesting to see where you can get down to with a full time commitment of training like a professional swimmer. So we’re definitely going to

have to do a follow up podcast after the 12 months with this one and go through everything that’s where you got to and all of your training and stuff like that. Is there anything that you are most not scared of, but what are you, what keeps you up at night when you look ahead? I think, yeah, it’s a really good question. I think, to be honest, the number one thing and I’m incredibly excited by it at the same time but it does keep me up is this idea of, yeah, as you say, the amount of work and how hard this is going to be at points because if I’ve got any chance of getting close to it and by, by no means is it, you know, you know, that 215 time is still unbelievably quick. I was looking back through some of the 2024 Paris Olympic times. It wouldn’t have come last in the heat. So it’s still incredibly quick. It would have, I think, placed fifth in the 2025 British Championships. So by no means is this a slow time. By no means is this

something that, you know, I have any right to achieve. It’s going to take a ridiculous amount of work and even with that work, I may not make it. But I’m okay with that because for me, this is, if I don’t make that time, even though I’m going to try, I think the brilliant thing is it just demonstrates how good my dad was. Now that record that he set, he broke the current world record by three seconds. Now in a 200 meter event has just unheard of, you know, in the modern era. You don’t take three seconds off a 200 meter world record. So, you know, even if I don’t get the time, it just demonstrates how good my dad was. And I think that’s, that’s wonderful. But it does keep me up at night in the sense that it is going to take some doing. I don’t, I don’t think it’s going to be by any stretch of imagination easy. I know how hard it’s going to be to even approach that time. So that’s probably what will give me some sleep this night.

And then the other piece is I guess also just making sure that I can raise this money for the next generation. Because I think that’s where I’m applying the most pressure to myself of, I want this to, to, to, to really do help, you know, do, do as much as it can to help that next generation. And I’ve set myself quite a big fundraising goal. So I’m going to try and raise two hundred and fifteen thousand pounds, kind of in honor of that time as well across the year. So again, that’s going to, that’s going to take some doing and a lot of my time. So that keeps me up at night a little bit as well. But yeah, it’s, it’s all exciting as well. So it’s not, it’s not too, too kind of, too worrying at the moment, but I’m sure it will get worse. Let’s put it that way. When your dad raised in the Olympics, were the rules then that you can’t have it put your head under the water? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to come on to this cross.

We’re lucky in the sense that the stroke has got quicker. So there’s two pieces of the stroke, which now make it a lot quicker, which is you can now fully submerge your head. So in a 200 meter, that’s, you know, that, that does make you a lot quicker because you’ve got that glide phase, as you well know. And then the other pieces, they weren’t allowed dolphin kicks off, off every turn. So, you know, there are seconds in those two pieces alone. So, you know, if you had those two fifteen,

two fifteen and he couldn’t even put his head fully under the water. So, you know, that, that’s the thing that I want to bring kind of that, that back into the spotlight of just how good my dad was. You know, he was, he was an unbelievable swimmer, not just in breaststroke as well. He held the world record in the 200 meter IM. They took it out of the 1976 program at the Olympics. So there was no 200 IM in the 1976 Montreal Games, which is a shame because I think he probably would have won the gold there as well. No point in crying over spilt milk as he would say. But, you know, he wasn’t just a breaststroker. He was across the board, a remarkable, remarkable swimmer. You know, he could do all the strokes. So, yeah, he was a, he was a real talent.

Have you seen footage of your dad’s swim breaststroke and yourself swim breaststroke? Do you see similarities in the way that you do it?

Not necessarily in the sense that as we’ve just spoken about because of how the stroke was different and they couldn’t submerge, it is slightly different in the sense that he,

yeah, had more of a kind of, well, actually, do you know what? If he was able to submerge, his stroke would have been even longer. My dad had a very long, beautifully efficient stroke. That’s what I’m kind of hoping for. I think I will get closer to that as the year progresses. So, I will, if I can emulate him and get to look like him, that would be fantastic. At the moment, I think I’m more, I’m carrying much more muscle mass than he probably was because I wasn’t a swimmer. So, you know, I stayed fit through the gym and things like that. So, I’ll probably need to drop a bit of, a bit of kind of my body weight to swim like he did. And also, I mean, you know, 200 meters swimmers, breaststroke swimmers, they still are more muscular these days because it is more of a powerful stroke.

But it’s a good question. I should put them side by side, actually, and have a look as the year progresses and see if I do become more like him or if, if I kind of have my own style, as it were. Yeah, I asked that because my, my dad was my coach and my granddad was my coach before that. Wow. I cannot recall seeing what my granddad used to look like. I was too young when he passed away, but my stroke is very similar to my dad’s when I watch him swim. And I just think, and I said, I watch my son swim and I see some similarities there as well. So, I think there’s something genetically where you can, you do tend to move the same, not always, but yeah, be curious to see how that, how that plays out. And in terms of taking that big step in quitting your, quitting your job, was that all, was that always on the line or you thought like, yeah, I’ve got to do this to fully commit? Or yeah, where was it? How did I head out with taking that big step?

It was a really tough decision to make because obviously I’m giving up kind of my current identity, which is, you know, I’ve developed my own career. I work in marketing. You know, I’ve done that for what 12, 13 years now. So, you know, I’ve made my own way in the world and that was my identity. I was, you know, Adam Wilkie who works in marketing. That’s what I did. So, you know, to give that up, it, you know, it was, you know, a little bit challenging, but it, it felt like the right thing. I kind of, I’m an ardent whether I should keep my job and try and do both at the same time. But I thought because of the magnitude of the task and what was kind of in front of me, it didn’t feel like I could then give either the attention they would need. And that’s why I’ve set myself this kind of year time limited kind of time to do it because then, you know, it means that I can focus on it like full bore because I’m not a professional athlete.

So I can’t do it indefinitely. You know, I will need to get an income at the end of the year. So, yeah, it very much just felt like the right thing to do. And I did try and think about keeping the job on. But I just thought, look, if I’m doing doubles a day, two hours at a piece, plus dry land, plus mobility, you know, plus nutrition, if I’m really going to take this seriously, then it needs to be my focus and it needs to become my job as such. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s going to be tough. So, you know, I don’t know if I’d be able to go to the office. I’ll probably fall asleep on my desk maybe. I know people do it as well and my hat off to them because there are, you know, athletes that do train that much and do go to work. Yeah, I think it’s going to be hard enough. I almost didn’t want to set myself up for that because I just think it would be a really tough year. And I want to enjoy it as well because, as I’ve said, this is very much about me,

you know, learning more about my dad, being able to deal with my own grief of losing him. You know, he was such a, such an important figure in my life. He was a brilliant man. Not only was he a swimmer, he went on to become a brilliant businessman. You know, so, so losing him was hard. So, you know, this is, this is my time to reflect on that as well and do something positive and meaningful with it. And the other piece to that as well is that, you know, he had an incredibly interesting life. So he was born in Sri Lanka in Colombo. He then went back to Scotland where he is his kind of his homeland. He was there from 11, 11 until 18. And he then went to Miami University for four years where he trained. And he obviously traveled the world swimming and then won his gold in Montreal. So as part of this journey, I would love to also and I will kind of go back to those places, go back to the pools that he swam in, meet his kind of people that he used to swim

with, his former coaches. So a big part of it will be that as well, of me, you know, going around the world, learning more about my dad. And if I was trying to do a job at the same time, I don’t think that would be feasible either. So, yeah, it just, it made sense to,

to go all in for a year, basically.

Oh, and I think as well, like you, that 12, this 12 month period is going to be quite transformative in a number of ways. And worst case, if you,

you apply for the same job you’re at, I think they’d probably look at the last 12, 12 months and go, good on you, you know, like you’ve probably grown and experienced a lot and you’d be even more valuable to them. So, you know, someone who, who hires, employs a few people, it’s like, you want people who are like out there and living and doing stuff and have that real world experience. So I don’t think it’s going to set you, set you back. And you mentioned your dad was quite a role model for you. Are there any particular lessons that you learnt from him or he taught you or even some, some sayings that always stuck with you? Absolutely. I think that the biggest thing that I learnt from my dad was this idea of, you know, he achieved so much in his life. And, you know, Olympic gold, brilliant businessman, family man, you know, he achieved everything that he set his mind to. But he also never took life too seriously. I think he was always aware

that, you know, the point of life is to, as much as you can, and as much as life lets you, make sure that you have a good time and that you are enjoying what you do and that, you know, that life is fun to some extent. And I remember having a brilliant childhood and he injected it with that fun because, you know, I think he, yeah, he realised that if you don’t do that, almost what’s, you know, what’s the point? And if you’ve got the, you know, I guess if you’re fortunate enough to have a, to have a life set up in a way where you can enjoy it, then enjoy it. Don’t take the little things too seriously, don’t let them crush you. Of course in life, things come along and, and they do, you know, for example, at the end of his life, he died from cancer. So he was fighting cancer for, for close to four years. But even through that period when, you know, he’s, he’s had a terminal diagnosis. He didn’t let that dampen, you know, his experience of life.

I was just so proud of him when he was going through that period where how he just took it on and he fought it like an Olympic champion would, you know, he didn’t let it squish him. He obviously had bad days, but in the, in the grand schemes, you know, he still enjoyed his life as much as he could and to, to the kind of full of stability. So I think that’s the biggest thing I learned from him was whatever comes your way, try and take it in your stride and, and, and as much as is possible, you know, make sure that you’re enjoying your life because you only get one and it, and it will be over at some point. And, you know, the point of being here is as much to, you know, do what you want to do and have a brilliant time. So, yeah, that’s probably the, the biggest lesson I learned from, from him.

I mean, and what better way to kind of honor that lesson that he taught you and doing what you, what you’re doing as well. You know, it’s like, yeah, if not now, yeah, it’s probably never going to happen. So, yeah, good, good on you for making that, that decision because I’m sure it wasn’t made lightly. And I’m sure there was, you know, the easier option is to, is to not do it and just to keep doing what you’re doing.

Absolutely. And I think, I think that’s a huge part of this as well is, and you touched on it. It’s this idea of like, what if someone did try something? And I think a lot of us have this kind of what if in our lives of like, oh, I wish I’d done that, or if only I tried. And I think this for me is that, it’s like, well, if I had gone into swimming, how far could have I gone? Like would I, like, you know, obviously it’s a bit different. I am later in life. So, you know, I’m not going to become a professional, but it was still kind of scratch that itch of like, what if I had taken swimming very seriously and I had knuckled down as a kid and it was my only focus, could have I done something with it? And I don’t, it doesn’t have to necessarily be in sport. I think, you know, we all have this what if in some area or something, and I kind of want this to hopefully be a little bit of an inspiration of almost, you know, to people like,

what is their version of their 215? What’s something that they’ve always wanted to do? But for whatever reason, I’ve found an excuse or it’s not been the right time and actually just give it a go. And I think that,

the lesson also is, is that for me, that if I don’t hit that time, it’s not a failure. You know, this whole process, this whole journey, just me very much, as you’ve said, going on this and taking it on is a win because I’m going to learn so much. I’m going to be showing things that I wouldn’t have been shown if I’d stayed in my nine to five and kind of carried on with my, my current trajectory. So I very much want that to kind of want this challenge to be that for people as well of, you know, Oh, well, if he can do it, I can too. Because also, you know, the challenge of what I’m taking on is absurd in many ways to try and swim a 215 at 33 with very little swimming background. Most people would say that’s impossible. Good luck. But it’s impossible. And I love that. I love that kind of piece around it because it kind of, it fires me up a bit. It’s like, Okay, great. I don’t disagree that it’s probably next to impossible. But let’s see.

Let’s see what we can do because I don’t mind if I, you know, if I, if I fail in, you know, so many words and I don’t make that time, I’m okay with that. But I think there’s, there’s power in the challenge, there’s power in the attempt, which I hope, yeah, other people can kind of see and then also, you know, do something in their own life that maybe they think, yeah, I want to do that. I’m going to do it. Bugger it. Let’s see what happens. And for anyone who’s listening to this, what is the best way to follow your journey over the next 12 months? How are you, how are you tracking it? How are you sharing what you’re going through? What’s, what’s your plan for the next 12 months? So I’m on social media or at Wilkie Swims and so on Instagram, if anyone wants to follow me there. So I’ll be documenting the journey. I’ve, I’ve not been great at documenting it so far just because I’ve obviously been working full-time. But as I go into this kind of next phase,

I’m going to be wanting to kind of try and document it, show kind of, you know, the ups and the downs of this challenge, how hard it is, how I progress, kind of how my, my stroke changes, all of the coaching, all of those bits. So a bit, a bit of a behind the curtain, kind of look at what it will take to get anywhere near this time. And then people can also go onto my website and find the donation link if they want to contribute to, to the sports day charity. So that is in my father’s lane dot com. And you can read more about the challenge there. And then also you can, yeah, as I say, donate if you, if you would like. There’s lots of information on sports side as well on, on, on there. But it is a brilliant charity. So if anyone doesn’t know about it, please do read up on it. And that’s, that’s probably going to be it. I might try and do some YouTube, but I need your, I need your expertise there, Brinton. I’ll, I’ll, I’ll hit you up for some tips.

I was going to say, I think like, yeah, you’d be silly not to and post, post something on YouTube. Every week or something. You know, just, just documenting what you’re going through, what you’re feeling, the training, all that sort of stuff. And because I think like, Instagram is great for that short snapshot, but I, I think to get the proper picture of, of what you’re actually going through, I think like some, some YouTube videos would, would go a long way. So yeah, we can chat about that after, but I think that’d be a great way to, to document it. Yeah. But that’s all the best for the next 12 months. I’ll make sure to share all of those links and socials on our, on our notes. And then I’ll, I’ll put it out there on our Instagram as well. So people can follow along for the journey. Thank you. Incredibly exciting. And as I said, at the start, it’s something very different than what I’ve come across because we get quite a few people contact us to

be on the podcast, but I am quite picky and, and choose you. I want to make sure it’s the right kind of person for, for the people who listen to this. And, and this kind of fits in really well for me too with my, my dad and grad dad, grad being coaches and swimmers and it’s kind of runs in the, in the family. So it’s really cool to say something like that. So yeah, wishing you all the best and I’ll be following along with, with everyone else as well.

Well, thank you so much. Yeah, it’s an absolute pleasure to come on and speak to you. So thank you so much having me on. And, and I love what you’ve just said there in terms of, you know, your connection to your father. Because I think that this is a father and son story. And I think, yeah, it’s brilliant to, it’s brilliant to know that you’ve got that connection through swimming as well. And it’s such an important kind of peace of your relationship. So yeah, it’s, it’s going to be a busy year and it’s going to be a fantastic year. So yeah, thank you. And I’d love to come back on and we can, we can see how quick I can get and we can talk more technique at that point when I’ve, when I’ve got more of an idea of what I’m doing. Yeah, sounds good. I think, yeah, I mean, you’ve probably got some good people you’re working with, but I, I love to talk technique and yeah, see where I can help out. So that’d be, that’d be good. Thanks for being on the podcast.

Adam, great to chat and we’ll get you on maybe six months down the track and see how you’re progressing. If you’ve gotten under that two fifty four or wherever you were, hopefully you’ve come down in six months. Hopefully. That’s a good to keep, keep track of it. So yeah, thanks again, Adam. Great to have you on. Absolutely pleasure. Thanks so much. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

I’ve worked with thousands of different swimmers over the last 19 years that I’ve coached. And one of the biggest things I hear is that people will get stuck or they’ll plateau at a certain speed, and they don’t know how to go beyond it. Now provided you’re swimming three times a week or more, often that improvement will come from a change or improvement to your technique. There are certainly things you can do in training to get faster. But in this video, I want to cover the key technique changes that someone can make to break through a plateau. Now often that plateau I find will come from having this bottleneck in their stroke. A bottleneck being one thing that they’re doing that is stopping all the other things from falling into place. But once they release that bottleneck, the other parts of their stroke will fall into place. For example, someone who’s timing is way out. If someone’s entering the water and pulling straight through rather than extending

out before they begin their catch. That’s an example of a bottleneck that once they get their timing right, everything else can fall into place. And so in this video, I’m going to share with you the things that I would think of in the right order. If I wanted to remove any bottlenecks in the stroke. Now an easy way to think of how do I get faster? If we kept it as simple as possible, it’s you need to be more streamlined. So you need to reduce drag. And secondly, you need to increase propulsion. And that is your catch and pull and rotation and timing. And then we can look at stroke rate from there. So that’s an easy way to think of how can I physically get faster? Now when it comes to being more streamlined or reducing drag, step number one is always head position and body position. Because it doesn’t matter how fit and strong you are. If you swim like this, you’re probably going to be quite slow. So we need to make sure that we get

horizontal in the water. And that means having the back of our head, our hips and our heels at the surface. Now an easy way that I would think of that is with head position, we need to look anywhere from straight down to 45 degrees. But think about having a long neck with a slight tuck of the chin. Now not too much where you are restricting your breathing, but long neck, slight tuck of the chin. That’s step one. But after that, if you think of having tall and proud posture where you are long through the body, long through the spine, and this is the important part, a little bit open through the chest, instead of close through the chest. If you do those two things, good head position, good posture, you’re probably going to sit quite well in the water. Now part of that is when you do that. Usually your lungs, or your, I guess your ribs here, your lungs, your chest will be the lowest part of the body if we

look side on. And that is what is required if you’re going to swim with good body position. Because when it comes to floating and balancing in the water, if we are rounded through the shoulders, close through the chest instead of open, it’s very difficult to keep your hips and your legs up. So, and that’s just because of where the lungs, which are filled with air, where they’re positioned in the water. So that is why the open chest can make a big difference. So if you are struggling to bring your hips up and your legs up, think about where you’re looking first. And a key there is your head’s got to be like an iceberg. You’ve got to have 10, 20% of that you had just above the water and the rest of it below. Because your head weighs five or six kilos. And if that is too high, then it’s very hard to overcome that change in balance with your body. Because holding four or five kilos up above the water can be very difficult to keep the hips

and legs up at the same time. So you get your head position right first, you go tall and proud with your posture, and think about being a little bit open through the chest. And you’ll see it with footage of Sam Short, Nick Sloman, you’ll see it with those swimmers where they’re doing that. And this part of their body is the lowest part of their body in the water there. And that is the key to making sure that you balance well. And the reason I’m harping on about this is because when we do floating drills, let’s say we’re floating with our arms extended, and our legs extended behind us. So we’re like an eye, a letter I, it’s very hard to float at the surface. If this part of your body is not the lowest part of your body. So sometimes people will try and get their hips up by rounding their shoulders in their chest and sticking their bum up, but then their legs drop. But as soon as they open through the chest, and have that good

posture, then their legs start to raise. So it’s an important part to learning how to float and balance in the water. And when you learn to do that, you realize that the water will actually be there to support you. The water will help you stay afloat, because you’re learning to hold your body correctly. Then the effort that you’re putting in can go into moving forwards, not just trying to keep your hips and legs up, which is what I see with a lot of swimmers, they’re kicking really hard, they’re kicking really big, or they’re doing things just to try and stay near the surface and stay horizontal, when it doesn’t need to be the case. So that’s always step one, we always want to start there. The second step is just checking in on how you’re breathing and how you’re regulating your breath. So because we can’t breathe whenever we like, when we’re swimming freestyle, our face has got to be in the water, we have to breathe it

at selected times. But sometimes that means that people will do funny things with how they inhale and exhale. And those funny things that they do are they might just hold onto their breath, and then only release a small amount of air before they take their next breath. So they never release that carbon dioxide from their lungs. So they end up getting this buildup of CO2. And that is where they start to get tired after 50 or 100 meters. So the way I like to teach and approach the breathing is we inhale with our mouth. We have a small amount of air come out through our nose or our mouth just as where our face is in. And then as we’re turning our head to get that next breath, then we release most of the air through that turn to the side before we take the next breath. Because if you don’t exhale enough, then you can’t take much more in. And that is where you’ll get this buildup of CO2. Or sometimes people will

do the opposite of that where they’ll exhale too soon, straight away. So they breathe in, and then straight away, it’s just breathe it all out. Except the problem there is that there might be a second or two seconds where they’ve got not much air left in their lungs. And so then they’re searching for searching for breath, searching for air. And it’s too long in between breaths of actually having that air in there to use. So if you can do it the way I described, you’ll likely find that you can breathe much more comfortably, and you shouldn’t get tired after 50 or 100 meters. So it’s important to learn how to regulate your breath. Now the next one is your catch and pull. So what are your arms doing underneath the water? Now a couple of things that I’ve seen stops from us from achieving good positions here, and being really effective with their catch and pull. One is a lot of people go too hard in their catch. As in, they

think that is where they need to put a lot of power in, that is where they need to put a lot of speed into it through that first part. But the thing with this overhead movement is firstly, you’re not set up to prepare yourself forwards there. Because if we’re starting out in front, then the initial movement is just going to be pressing down. So we want to make sure we’re in the position with our hand and forearm pressing back. That’s where we want to put a bit more effort into it because that’s the thing that’s going to move us forwards. So use your catch as the setup phase of your stroke, where it’s important to be somewhat light and supple through your arm and through your shoulder to set that up. Because if we’re tense and stiff, it’s very hard to bend the elbow and point the fingers down. So we need to have this little bit of suppleness or softness about the way that we move through our catch. But that doesn’t mean that we’re just

completely limp and just pull it through like it’s a wet noodle. We still need to put a bit of pressure on the water, but we don’t want to overpower it. So use your catch as the setup phase of your stroke. Then from there, we can start to accelerate and increase the power that we put through. So you do need to accelerate through the stroke, but it isn’t zero to 100 kilometers. It is just like a four or a five out of 10 to maybe a six or seven towards the back. So there’s a gradual acceleration. And so learning how to firstly set up a good catch position and then secondly, making sure you accelerate the right way or enough through the stroke, then that can mean that it’s much easier or you get a lot more out of each stroke that you’re taking. Whereas a lot of people will just be too hard, too fast at the start, and then we’ve got nothing left at the back. So we don’t want to be doing that. Now, the other part of that as well is

making sure you use the right muscles. So in terms of our arm stroke, the first part up here, we don’t need to put in a lot of power and we need to let this shoulder just move up near the side of our face so that we can set up that catch position with the elbow out fingers down. From here, we then need to allow the shoulder blade to move down and back as we go through here so we can use our lats. And if you can get good at using your lats through this middle phase of your stroke, you’re going to be using the stronger muscles through there. You’re going to be really well connected with what your arms doing to your shoulder and your body and your rotation. And you’re going to be able to hold a lot more power for much less effort. Because a lot of people through that phase of the stroke, instead what they do is they roll their shoulder forwards and then they have very little use of their lats and that is when they’re not very fast and not very

comfortable with it. And that’s often where you’ll get these injuries through the front of the shoulder. So it’s important to use the lats through that middle part and then it’s more triceps through the back. So there’s a number of things there that I’ve seen make allow people to have these breakthroughs where they get rid of the bottleneck in their stroke and then that allows them to get faster. So we’ve worked with a lot of people in our clinics. We have a lot of coaching members who will send their videos if they’re all over the world they’ll send their videos in and we’ll take a look at what they’re doing and we’ll say alright focus on this one thing for the month and do it using these couple of drills and then send another video and then we’ll assess from there. And so often the best way to figure out your breakthroughs is to film yourself, see what you’re doing and if you need it have someone look at it and say alright this is what

I want you to focus on and so that’s what we do inside of our coaching membership which I’ll put the link to below but if you can find what that bottleneck is and then you can work out a way to fix it that’s when you’ll find that that breakthrough comes and whether you’ve been at the same pace for the last six months or six years there is always ways to get faster even for the very best swimmers in the world there’s always ways to get faster especially if you’re at a 145 or two minutes per 100 there are definitely ways for you to get faster so sometimes people get in their head like this is as good as I’ll ever get but I can guarantee you can get faster you’ve just got to find out what that one main thing is and then you’ve got to work out a plan to make that change over the next three to six months. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming podcast if you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to

www.effortlesswimming.com

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. I was recently a guest on the science and art of open water swimming hosted by Grant Landers. And on this episode, he really asked some good in depth questions about what you can do to become a more proficient and open water swimmer. And we also get into some of the principles that help you transition from the pool to the open water, as well as some of the things that are a little bit less tangible. Some of the philosophies of why people are attracted to open water swimming and swimming itself. So this is a really fun episode to do. Let’s get into it.

So welcome to the science and art of open water swimming. My guest today is Brenton Ford, a swim coach, entrepreneur and the founder of Effortless Swimming, which has become one of the most influential swimming coaching platforms in the world. Through clinics, camps, online coaching and his own podcast, Brenton has helped thousands of swimmers, particularly adult swimmers and triathletes think differently about technique, efficiency and performance. As a swimmer, Brenton came through the pool system, reaching the pointy end of national level competition as a teenager, for stepping away and later finding his way back into competitive swimming as an adult. What’s particularly interesting is that many years later, nearly two decades ago, he qualified for open water nationals, a very different challenge both physically and psychologically.

Brenton also came relatively late to marathon swimming, completing his first long-distance swim, the Roto Channel Swim, in 2018, an event that resonates strongly with many in the open water community. Across coaching, content creation and his own podcast, Brenton has become known for his ability to simplify complexity, helping swimmers understand not just what to change, but what actually matters and when. Today’s conversation is less about drills or stroke detail, and more about how technique holds up in the real world of open water, under fatigue, uncertainty and across the long arc of swimming life. Brenton, welcome to the podcast. Hey, thanks Grant. I need to update my bio, I think, and replace it with that introduction that you sum that up perfectly. So thanks for that. It’s great to be on it. So, I’d like to sort of start with, you’ve spent years refining what an efficient stroke looks like in the pool.

When swimmers take that stroke into open water, what parts are the hardest to maintain? My first open water swim was when I was about 13 or 14 years of age, and it was me and another guy I used to train with, and I would beat him in the pool every single time. And then in this open water race, he beat me by a couple of minutes and I was flabbergasted why that was, like how on earth did this guy beat me? And I think that put me off open water for a while. And it wasn’t until my early 20s that I started to get actually into it and learn and try to understand and figure out this open water thing, because I’d always been a pool swimmer, just used to flat water. And I think when I first started coaching, I was very much used to coaching people for the pool with more refined, more perfect technique, and without much allowances for, I guess, some variances in the stroke and some things that may actually help you in the

open water, even if they’re not ideal for the pool. So what I’ve come to learn from working with a lot of triathletes and open water swimmers is that how good you look, how perfect and symmetrical your stroke is, isn’t something that’s necessarily that important when it comes to open water racing. And so some of those things that we want to be working towards in open water, it’s quite often a slightly faster stroke rate, especially if you’ve got the buoyancy of a wetsuit or saltwater to support you, you can get away with a faster stroke rate and you’ll be sitting high, so it’s a little bit easier to do. The way that you recover over the water as well, so my motto there is higher, wider, faster. A lot of times you just don’t need to recover with that traditional high elbow recovery that you might picture in a pool with the hand kind of close to the water, you might need to be a little bit higher over the water to not hit any chop or any waves.

You might need to be a little bit wider, particularly if you’ve got a wetsuit on where it’s restricting the range of motion. And so there’s certainly parts of it as well as the skills like the siding. So a lot of times if a pool swimmer comes into the ocean, they’re not used to siding because the last thing you want to do in the pool is look forwards. And so integrating that as part of your stroke is a skill into itself where you don’t lose your rhythm, your hips don’t drop, and obviously making sure that you follow a straight line. So when I see pools from us go to the open water and the ones that haven’t translated into the open water, typically they’re trying to be too perfect and too correct. So I like the thought of being a little bit scrappy when it gets to open water. And scrappy doesn’t mean just throw everything out the window, but scrappy means that allow your technique and your stroke to adjust to the conditions that you’re working on.

So I think the swimmers that do struggle to make that transition are ones that are trying to stick to the box of perfect conditions and they don’t allow themselves to perhaps experiment with a scrappier stroke that might be more asymmetrical, that might go against some of the things that they would have perhaps worked on in the pool. So you indicated a number of things that might be a little bit different moving from the pool to the open water, but what aspects of good pool technique tend to translate well into the open water?

So I think the fundamentals generally of good head position, body position, and an effective kick, they certainly translate. With the kick though, particularly with most swimmers, aside from say those really at the pointy end, you will find that you hardly have to kick at all. So sometimes people will just have their legs floating behind them, especially with a wetsuit on, so that maybe not quite as much. And then with the catch and pull, so it’s absolutely it’s important, but you will usually start your catch a bit sooner, especially as you’re racing, and with a wetsuit on you won’t typically have as good as catch position. So yeah, those things do transfer across, but not exactly. With the rotation, rotation is still definitely important, but again a lot of swimmers will tend to prefer an asymmetrical stroke where they might turn a little bit further on their breathing side. They might not rotate quite as far on

their non-breathing side, and they might tend to favor like a one-sided breathing, which can lead them into a bit more of a sort of galloping stroke. So yeah, the other things that I see is translating from the pool to the open water. Obviously like swimming is swimming, and if the open water, if it’s calm, if it’s flat, like it’s going to be fairly similar, but as soon as conditions get ugly that is when we need to adapt.

Yeah, so typically with the galloping type stroke we’re breathing on one side of the body only. If the conditions are not ideal and we need to be able to breathe effectively to the other side, how easy is that to change the stroke? So my rule of thumb is whenever you’re training 20-30% of your sessions should be breathing to the opposite side, whether you swap sides on the way back, whether you breathe every three or you just mix it up somehow in your session. So it is like you should be able to breathe both sides if you are racing open water, and really we don’t want to see a difference in the speed, whichever side that you breathe. So if there’s waves and chop coming into the side that you’re breathing, that’s one cause for perhaps breathing to the other side. If there’s sun and it’s hard to see that’s another reason why you might need to turn to the other side to breathe. So there are reasons why you might not

be able to breathe to your dominant side. So I think it’s a skill that’s worth developing and I often get asked at clinics or just people I coach is I just breathe to the one side. I don’t like the other side, I’m slower but I do say to them like yeah it’s gonna suck for now like you just haven’t done it but you will get to that point where it does become a bit easier and then I’d go through some of the reasons with them why they might be finding their non-dominant side to be hard to breathe to. And quite often those things are it’s like can be the timing, sometimes people will just turn the head too late, sometimes it will be that they’re not exhaling enough. They go to breathe in but they’ve still got eight percent of the air left in their lungs and so they just not used to exhaling properly and then it can be things like where they look when they breathe. They look too high, look behind them or they’re just throwing their head

around that can throw their stroke out. But a very common one is if the swimmer goes to breathe and they don’t keep their arm in front long enough to give them support for balance that can make it very difficult to be comfortable with breathing to their non-dominant side. So that’s one of the first things we’ll often work on with them to help them get more comfortable with it.

Now you’ve seen thousands of adoximers on video as well as face to face but what’s the most common gap between what the swimmers think they’re doing and what’s actually happening?

Yeah I mean if you’ve seen yourself swim it’s so surprising and even as I get filmed every couple of months I’m still surprised at how it looks compared to how it feels but it’s often so eye-opening for people. We always start with head position when I’m coaching people and a lot of times people think they’re looking in the right range straight down to about 45 and a lot of them are looking too far forwards and they just don’t know it and so even something as simple as head position and where you’re looking can be quite surprising for people and they don’t have that awareness or proprioception around that so head position is a big one.

People are generally pretty good at knowing how high they feel they’re sitting in the water or how low so when people are sitting low at their hips and legs quite often they feel it they just feel like they’re heavy and low and not horizontal but I think certainly anything above the water with the arms and in front of the head with the arms that is usually where the proprioception is the worst. So if they’re crossing over the center line as they go to enter most people think they’re on the train tracks entering in line with the shoulders but they’re crossing over and then with what the arms are doing in the catch and pull they might feel like they’ve got a great catch but they look at it and it’s the complete opposite so yeah it’s typically just around anything to do above the water and above the head they’re the ones that lack the proprioception so obviously there’s other things too but they’re definitely the main ones.

When you’re observing a swimmer how do you decide not to change?

In my head I go through a bit of a process I guess a bit of a checklist of all right what’s the order of things we would typically need to work on something and so I go through that checklist and

I always want to start with the first thing on that list for them so let’s say that they’ve got great head body leg position in the water all right we don’t we don’t need to touch that the next thing I would typically go to is rotation and so maybe that’s the thing that they need to work on first so I might mention the catch but I might not go into a lot of detail on that right now because that’s probably going to change if we make sure they’re rotating the right amount so I won’t work on things usually further down the list until we’ve worked on the things above it and then also around that too if it’s going to give them a 1% change instead of like a 90% change then I might not mention it at all so there are things that maybe to the naked eye it’s like oh that’s that’s not right but if it’s not really going to impact their speed or their efficiency much at all there’s no point mentioning it because I think people often have

too much to think about when they swim so I always want to try and keep it as simple as possible and have them like leave a session with me with like absolute maximum like three things to go away with ideally less if we can but I want to keep it as simple as possible so quite often I won’t mention things that maybe even they can see maybe they can’t say it but yeah things that are not going to move the needle much at all I sometimes get the impression that I’ve coached someone or I’ve worked with someone and it feels like I’ve kept it almost too simple for them like they maybe they feel like there’s not enough to work on in the analysis but when you actually look at the stroke like it if you have great fundamentals and you know you tick the boxes with body position rotation breathing like if you get those right from there you can really develop a good stroke and then start working on your catch and your pull and things like that

so even though it might seem like it’s okay one thing or two things it’s like well yeah if you don’t adjust that one the other things are going to be very hard to change anyway so I’ve got to be mindful to keep it simple but try to show them the impact the change in those things will have down the track

and then going through and looking at changes what separates them as who successfully adapt compared to those who just sort of keep cycling through these fixes so I’ve coached so many swimmers over the last 18 years that I’ve been coaching and the main thing that we have done to say for in person is our clinics and quite often I people come back and do either like a follow-up filming or they’ll do another clinic and I get to see whether they’ve progressed or stayed the same or maybe even regressed perhaps now the swimmers that typically improve over the long term are the ones that firstly come with an open mind most people do yeah if they come into a clinic if they come to get coached usually they’re coming with an open mind but I do find some swimmers they feel like this is the way I’ve been for 10 years and so I just can’t change it’s a small percentage but certainly there’s some people who are just like no this is something

that I can’t change it’s just the way it is so I think that’s the first thing they’ve got an open mind secondly they stick to the plan that we come up with and that plan is two three specific drills to work on a particular part of the stroke for several weeks or maybe several months at a time and they’re not chasing results straight away they’ve got the patience to go look I don’t care what my times do over the next two months I’m just going to work on this particular area of my stroke I’m going to keep training but I’m going to as part of my warm-up I’m going to do some drills I’m going to think about this thing for the next two months three months and not worry about the times they’re the ones that we tend to see the improvements with whereas the swimmers who are chasing faster times straight away when they’re trying to force their speed and force their stroke it just doesn’t work well with swimming so when we swim often when we’re

swimming the best we feel like we are floating through the water we move well when we’re relaxed we tend to apply the right amount of force and pressure when we’re not forcing things so that’s a really common one that makes people just that they get stuck they get stuck when they try and force it so it’s usually the swimmers that are thinking more long-term about their stroke they know how long it can take to change a habit which is often several months of just constantly thinking about it so that’s what I say has been the biggest difference for people and it is easy to go back to what you were doing if you don’t think about it and I’ve done that myself with many changes in the stroke and I’ll catch myself going back to what I used to do an example of that was probably 80 months ago I was working on my breathing it was a little bit late I probably wasn’t exhaling enough and so I worked on it for probably two months feeling good and then I’ve

sort of moved on to something else but every now and then I just catch myself going I hang on like this breathing is just a bit out of sync and so when I catch it and I change it but it’s just one of those things that happened and kind of on that note like I’ve worked with a lot of beginners, intermediate swimmers, a lot of pro triathletes as well and I think sometimes the beginners and the intermediates think that are the guys at the top have it all worked out but they doubt themselves just as much as you do like they doubt their stroke they doubt their ability they have sessions that are absolutely crap and they’re like oh my god I just can’t I’ve forgotten how to swim and sometimes even more so because they’re often more critical on themselves so I think no matter where you’re at you’re going to be going through the same things as someone who’s been doing the sport for 20 years

so just exploring that a little bit further how should swimmers approach and making a technique change in the middle of a long training block

you don’t want to I don’t want to break anyone’s stroke if they’re leading into an important race so if someone’s a month out maybe two months out from their A race and the thing that they need to work on is

maybe going to to slow them down for the next like two months and it’s a bit of a revamp on their stroke that’s probably not a smart idea especially if racing is important to them if it’s their career it’s not something I’d be looking to do but I think that for most people where it’s a hobby they enjoy it yes they like to be competitive but it’s not make or break whether they’re winning prize money or whatever it is I think for most people as long as it’s more than probably six weeks out from their main race if they’re competing you find a work on it now obviously it depends on what it is but with the majority of things that people do have to work on it doesn’t hurt to start at any point now if we had to think right what would be the ideal point it would probably be in off season or just as you’re just starting to build up and the more time until you’ve got to your main competitions the better but we’ve certainly had swimmers

who have been two months out three months out from their main triathlon or open water race and we give them some things to focus on and they will see those results over time it’s something that comes to mind I did a session with a guy from the UK who came over for the Geelong Half Ironman and he had hardly swam because he’d been traveling and he just didn’t feel good with his swimming and I think because he didn’t feel good with his stroke like it was just hard work he didn’t want to train he wasn’t excited to train or get in the water so we worked on a couple things and one of those was just getting better body position and part of that for him was point the toes like his toes were pointing straight down to the bottom of the pool and so we just worked on that plus just being a little bit more streamlined through the start of his stroke he was sort of coming in was drifting up and crossing over and it was training a lot of drag

so we worked on entering in line with the shoulder reaching forwards making sure the fingers don’t drift up and making sure he was rotating the right amount and that was about two months ago three months ago and he sent me two or three emails since then saying oh I got a new PB I’m really enjoying it and it’s because I think when people see that little bit of improvement whether that’s in a race or just they’re feeling better it’s just so much more motivating to to get to the pool and then they get those little wins and that compounds and that’s how I think someone can go from say like a 220 per hundred down to like a 140 per hundred when they start to see those little wins and they start to enjoy it more and it doesn’t become this tedious task that they have to do so yeah what are the warning signs that assume is overthinking their stroke

when I’m running clinics like we go through the stroke I keep it as simple as possible but still if we’ve gone through five parts of the stroke they’re usually trying to think about five different things at once and I see I can see when someone is overthinking it because they get very mechanical in their stroke as in they lose their rhythm they’re quite stiff intense over the water and they sometimes not just like reaching and rotating and they lose that rhythm and that glide so that’s usually a sign that someone has that they’re thinking about too much so one of the things I try and emphasise to the people I’m coaching is that we have to think about our stroke obviously if we’re making changes you’ve got to think about it to some degree but swimming is so much about feel and so much about being in tune with the water how it feels over your hands your arm your shoulders, your body how it sounds like all these sort of sensory things

and we really want to be in tune with that and so as soon as you can try and step out of that thinking side of your brain get to that feeling side of your brain and that is how you’re going to improve your swimming and you look at a lot of like kids who have swum since they’re young particularly in those early years they are just having fun they’re playing in the water they’re really allowing those sort of senses to I guess be used and so as adults especially adults who are learning to swim I think they do get stuck in there in their head they overthink it and that is sometimes just where we find that improvement is harder to do and we don’t swim as well so yeah that’s always what we want to work towards is that feeling side of the brain not the thinking side of the brain and I know you’re it’s the art and science of swimming I’m very much the art side of things like scientifically Cam McAvoy is probably really good at the science

I probably lack in that area but I think you’ve got to go with your strength so that’s why I like to try and come up with analogies or cues or maybe different ways to think about it because swimming I think for a lot of people is something that they do tend to overthink so how can we get out of that side of the brain

now moving towards your swimming career when you qualified for nationals later in that swimming career

what had changed internally compared to younger self?

yeah so when I was an age grouper like 18 year old

up until I was 21 22 I’d tried to qualify for open nationals again open national qualifying time now I was never going to make the Australian team but I think to prove it to myself that I was a good swimmer I thought that’s what I had to do was get an open national qualifying time I mean open nationals is just like the elite the elite guys and I’d missed out by I was like 0.02 I think it was 0.03 and I missed out a couple of times and so that was at 21 I think and then when I was 38 qualified for 5k open water nationals within an open national time and I did it reasonably comfortably in terms of like getting under that qualifying time and I think what had changed in that time was I kept training and I kept fit like obviously that’s a part of it but then also I just I kept learning and I had a camp with the Olympic gold medalist in the 10k from Tokyo Shane and Rivendell and one of the things she mentioned in on that camp

and she focused a lot on and we did a lot of work on with some stuff out of the water was how to use the right muscles through your catch and pull in freestyle and for me I think I

have a tendency to muscle my stroke and probably not use my lats as well as I could through the power phase of the stroke and so for me that was the thing that I needed to get to that next level of speed and so the things that I learnt from that camp from that trip with her was I then did that as part of my training routine I did the Theriband routine before training I focused on having my shoulder in the right position as I was training and I found that by the time I got to the race that it all came together and that was two maybe three months of practice with that and I just found that I could hold like this really good pace maybe 115 without having my heart rate up that high and I just felt like I could sit there all day and then in the last couple hundred I could bring it home really strong where previously my heart rate I feel like would be probably another 10-15 beats above to hold that same pace but because I was using the stronger muscles

from my power phase I didn’t have to work that hard to hold it so for me that’s what changed and I think in my like for my own coaching and what I do it was nice to see that the things I was teaching and the things that I had learned along the way that I could actually implement them into my own stroke because I think the further you get up the pointy end of the field the harder it is to make changes because they’re much more minute and so I hadn’t really I’d made a few breakthroughs here and there through my coaching career with my own swimming but that was the biggest one and to tick that box in proving a point that I could actually compete with the bigger guys or at least qualify in my late 30s I was like I know there was just something that I was personally really proud of so yeah I don’t I don’t often share much about my own swimming on like our effortless swimming channels because I try and make it about the people who are watching

but when I did share that the response was it was really cool to get that positive feedback from people and so yeah I learned that it’s actually okay to talk a bit about myself but it’s always been about other people so I think I might do a little bit bit more of that but I certainly I’m not here to big note myself because I was like no one really really cares I think like how can I help the person watching that’s the main thing

so what do older or long-term swimmers tend to misunderstand about improvement?

I think as you get older

you’ve got to start looking more at the strength and the mobility side of things because they’re the two things that will tend to slip away if you don’t work on them so particularly for master swimmers oh yeah just generally getting older it’s worth considering that and a story always sticks with me that there was a lady that I used to coach when I was coaching masters and she listened to a podcast I did with a yoga instructor and so from that she started doing yoga as part of her routine maybe two three times a week and within about

12 months or so she was beating the time she did like 10 years ago and she contributes most of that to the yoga that she added into her swimming routine and so whether that’s yoga or gym work or strength like I think that pays big dividends for people who are getting older with their swimming the other one is I think just the mindset that goes with it so knowing that it is possible to actually improve even if you’ve done the same thing for 40 years yeah obviously it’s going to be a bit harder than a 15 year old or a 10 year old trying to change their stroke those neural pathways are deeply ingrained but it doesn’t mean that you can’t get better and I had a guy come to our Witsundays camp he I think it was like 85 at the time the attitude that he came with was the best I’ve seen like he had this zest for life really open to coaching and he improved in that time he’s like his body position wasn’t great so he worked on a few things there

and he was up there with the whole group on this trip who are half his age and then we went out on the final night he was straight to the night club to the karaoke bar picking up the microphone so there was a lesson in that as well

so just finishing off with that what habits do you see in swimmers who are still improving after 40?

I think the habits are

usually they’ve got a group or some friends that they swim with because it’s so much easier to train when you’ve got someone else there doesn’t mean you can’t do it solo but I think if you’re going to do something long-term it helps if you’ve got just got that habit of having other people that are relying on you to be at the pool they’re always interested in learning whether that’s listening to podcasts whether that’s like videos they’ve got this curiosity about swimming and about how they can get quicker and they’re also looking at other ways to get better whether that is not just training harder which is you still got to work hard it doesn’t come easy but whether that is strength or mobility or technique they’re always looking for different avenues there so it’s pretty consistent with the athletes I’ve seen who have gotten better as they’ve gotten older and I’ve had guys in masters who have been in their mid 50s hitting lifetime PBs

which you’d think how the hell can a 55 year old be to an 18 year old but it can happen especially if you just keep on swimming and you keep looking for ways to get better

if you strip it back to basics not drills but more principles what actually matters most for open water swimmers

so in terms of principles again probably not super scientific but I think just working with the water rather than trying to fight it is a big one quite often when it gets choppy or difficult people do start to panic and trying to bash their sails through the water but if you can keep this sense of calmness about the way that you’re moving and you’re holding yourself and you’re breathing it can be crazy conditions out there but just internally like you’re very calm and you’re able to cut through the water better that way so that’s one I always like to think of is just making sure that you’re working with it you’re not fighting it what do you think tends to be overemphasized

one that can be overemphasized is certainly kicking hard it’s a really big one that I think particularly beginners swimmers they get taught you’ve got it obviously got to kick your legs and that’s going to keep your bum up and your hips up but kick is more this role of stability and balance and we need to keep it light because we’ve got big muscles there they’re very strong but the movement of the kicks is not an efficient way to use those muscles so it’s the thing that’s going to first cause our heart rate to raise so not using the kick for propulsion but more just for balance and timing so it doesn’t have to be hard other things that get overemphasized for open water swimming I think is really trying to like rip from the start so the catch to me I think that’s the setup phase of the stroke so when your hand’s extended in front to when it goes down to sort of set up your high elbow

you might be like a four or a five maybe a six out of ten in terms of effort but if you are muscling and forcing that then you’re not going to be that effective with it so we want to go slow to fast with our stroke and I guess in terms of principles this is a good one to think of for freestyle is in swimming your movements are slow to fast so that is out in front as you enter and you extend and you catch that’s going to be a little bit slower and you should be more patient through there because you’re going to have to accelerate through in order to really get that propulsion so slow to fast is a good way to think of how to swim another one another principle that I think is helpful to remind yourself of is swim from the inside out and that is core and hips that’s your inside that’s the center and everything is then sent out from there out to your extremities and so a good sort of mental reminder I guess is if you’re thinking about your hand

or your wrist if you go before that if you go closer to the center so your elbow your shoulder maybe your core there might be something happening there that is causing your wrist to do something funny so always thinking inside out which kind of lends itself to we want to look at what’s the cause not the effect and I think sometimes it’s easy to look at the effect or the result at the end and not necessarily looking at the cause and so for example someone I’m going back to technique here rather than open water swimming but someone who’s say crossing over well it might be because they’re not rotating enough and they’re having a hard time getting their arm over the water and so they’re swinging across so rather than thinking all right just be wider we’ve got to go back to the center and look at all right they’re not actually rotating the right amount and so that’s why their arm can’t get over the water very well so there’s some I guess general principles

maybe not so much open water but just general principles that have helped me with my swimming and coaching as well

and what about maybe something that’s under-trained or under-appreciated

one thing that’s helped me a lot lately and I think also helped me get in that qualifying time for nationals and I’m really starting to see this with some of the swimmers that I’ve worked with as well is just not like VO2 sets we just call them best average sets where you are kind of going you’re going as hard as you can hold for the entire set and you give yourself quite a bit of rest so an example of that we like to build up to doing 2100s on two minutes in the lead up to our main open water swims and you’re trying to hold as fast as you can for all of those hundreds and you want to be consistent across them so you don’t start at 120 and finish at 130 all of them should be around that 120 that is a hard set to do but if you can get really good at that I think just in terms of your fitness your cardiovascular fitness your ability to go fast and be comfortable in that zone I’ve seen that help so many swimmers lately

just be able to hold that faster pace so and when I’ve interviewed Olympians for like a YouTube videos and stuff like Nick Sloman, Kim Elvinton they’ve all mentioned sets like that that they find most beneficial so we’ve really tried to incorporate that with some of the athletes that I’ve worked with so I think that’s probably sometimes under-trained with a lot of swimmers

an example there so I live sort of an hour and a half from Melbourne I went into Melbourne the other day and I just joined one of the local tri-clubs there and part of the main set was 10-100s on two it was supposed to be sort of 85-90% so I would say like the VO2 sort of sessions like that yeah you might classify as like above 90% but anyway I jumped in with them and they said we normally hold like 125s for this set and I jumped in and I’d normally for that kind of set I’d normally try and hold about a 107 and I was I was holding maybe 109s but they are all like well I don’t want to get left behind so a couple of them are holding 113s instead of 125 so I think sometimes people get a bit complacent and they’re going ah yeah I’ll just sort of I’ll tick it over but particularly with those sorts of sets I reckon if you can get used to going hard you can really improve so yeah I’m not sure what you’ve seen with your squads but yeah

what you feel works best but for me that’s been like a a staple in the last 80 months we game a fight so we play golf we have the 21-100s on two we have a handicap score which is the best average which then allows every swimmer in the pool to actually be competitive across that set so the winner could be someone who’s holding 140s or someone who’s holding 115s that’s such a good way to do it because like people love to compete like yes they compete against themselves but they love to compete with with others so that’s a good way to I guess even the playing field between the faster and slower swimmers and give everyone a chance to yeah yeah to win or be the best there so that’s yeah I like that

so just coming towards the end what does effortless mean to you now compared to when you started

originally when I first sort of named effortless swimming the thought there was that when you’re swimming well it feels it feels effortless and I think that’s certainly the case when you’re swimming well it just it feels like you’re floating it’s effortless it probably hasn’t changed a lot since then but I think the way that I approach how I coach has probably changed more in seeing that like so many swimmers particularly newer ones to the sport it just feels hard and it feels like a slog and they want to get to that feeling of it being effortless where you actually get to enjoy swimming and I think if once you get to that point where you have really nice timing and you’re kind of gliding through the water each stroke and it feels like you’re just skating from one side to the next when you’re at that point swimming can be just one of the best sort of feelings in the world because you’re using your own body to propel yourself forwards

it’s very meditative as well especially if you’re just swimming for half an hour like the head space that you get from that from 30 minutes or 60 minutes of it there’s not much like it and so I think effortless now to me is probably more of a like a goal or a point that we want to get to where else like swimming’s more than just like a sport it’s kind of a the way that you want to move through life and you want things to feel like like it just that’s how it should be and so with what we do it’s like I’m not really like high pressure high intensity like rah rah sort of coaching and so my philosophy has always been just a bit more laid back you know kind of do what you want to do and so I think that’s what it encompasses I feel like I’ve gone off on a bit of a yeah a tangent there but I think I got lucky with calling the business that at 19 years ago because I feel like people hear that and they go actually that sounds pretty good

like I’d like to swim effortlessly so yeah a little bit of luck was involved there

just a few quick ones that I usually ask most guests what’s your favorite swim set and why

yeah it would probably be it would be I think the 2100s it’s uncomfortable so I wouldn’t want to do that every week but it’s like yeah when I’m doing that well I feel like I am ready to go like yeah I’ll get in competition and I can’t and like I can push as hard as I want and I’m not going to get tired so 2100s yeah off off too

your favorite place to swim especially given you have a number of training camps around the world well that’s a hard one

I do love the Maldives we’ve been there for a couple of years in a row and yeah the amount of sea life there the water temperature that’s probably up there is one of my favorites it’s very hard though because like Galapagos was incredible it’s just so different and we yeah we’ve had trips there as well yeah I’m going to Tahiti this year so it might change we’ll see but yeah I think for me like Maldives is right up there

when you’re swimming are you a singer or a counter?

definitely singing definitely singing I catch myself whatever’s been on like there on my Spotify in the car I’m singing like five seconds of that course every single time so that’s yeah I never thought about it definitely a singer and is there anything we haven’t covered today that you think would be helpful for open water swimmers?

the only thing would just be like don’t be afraid to use if you’re if you’re racing don’t be afraid to use your open water skills to your advantage and get really good at those and use them to get better results and I say it because I think a lot of people are afraid to draft off someone or like just kind of that sometimes that is victim mentality into the open water so if if you can get really good at drafting and using those skills whereas someone might pay the price for that in their races in like the thing that comes to mind that we have Peter Papier in Melbourne that’s our main event and I raced the age group this year so 30 to 39 and I drafted behind a guy Reese Maidstone for the entire swim and I beat him up the beach and I felt like a real jerk doing it but that was the only way that I could win because he’s a faster swimmer he’s like he’s an amazing swimmer but I just had to do that to win and yeah I felt bad but like

sometimes you’ve got to do it and so if you are into competition like just use what you’ve got there because that’s what the best ones in the world do and Sharon Van Ruvendale like she mentioned that so much on her camp like if you sit right on someone’s hip you will slow them down massively like they have to drag you along but sometimes in racing like that’s what’s going to help you win so yeah get out there and be assertive with how you race

last one if you’d like to sort of maybe give a plug sort of give us a bit of background on your coaching and your podcast

yeah so we I mean I’ve got a lot of content out there so if you’re looking for any swim coaching tips probably our YouTube’s the best resource there so just look up Effortless Swimming if you’re in Australia we run clinics in most of the capital cities so effortless swimming.com we’ve got all of our clinics we do underwater filming analysis and basically just working solely on improving your technique and then we have some overseas camps as well yeah and we’ve just kind of brought out our own range of goggles with the new type of anti fog too so that’s really taken off and yeah helping people see clearly in the open water but yeah doing a few different things but yeah YouTube’s probably a good one for people if they’re looking for any sort of swim coaching tips

Brenton thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today I’ve really appreciated your perspective on a lot of different topics and I’m sure the listeners have gained a lot of knowledge as well yeah thanks for having me I always love chatting swimming can do it all day you know like in our flyers doesn’t it when you’re talking swimming that’s when I’m at a party with my wife and there’s swimmers around she’s like oh my god here we go again they’re talking about swimming so hey this is uh at least I don’t get in trouble for this one so

wonderful thank you thanks great one of the key ideas that came through in this conversation is that swimming well in open water isn’t about holding on to perfect technique it’s about adapting making decisions and understanding what actually matters when conditions change if you found this episode useful please share it with your squad or training group and follow the podcast for future episodes thanks for listening and I’ll see you in the water thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast if you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com

I was recently a guest on the Science in Art of Open Water Swimming, hosted by Grant Landers, and on this episode, he really asked some good in-depth questions about what you can do to become a more proficient and open water swimmer. And we also get into some of the principles that help you transition from the pool to the open water, as well as some of the things that are a little bit less tangible. Some of the philosophies of why people are attracted to open water swimming and swimming itself. So this was a really fun episode to do. Let’s get into it. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast, the show that helps swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer, and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. Welcome to The Trafflon Show, the podcast presented by Scientific Trafflon and hosted by me, Michael Ericsson. With me today is somebody that most listeners are probably very familiar with, Brenton Ford from Effortless Swimming.

Brenton, welcome back to the show after a long time. How are you doing? Yeah, good. Thank you. And thanks for having me back on. I had a look back at our last episode, which was, I think it was three years ago now, three maybe four. So yeah, long time, no chat, but I’m looking forward to it. Yeah, me too. Four listeners that might not know you or be familiar with you. Can you give a brief introduction to yourself and what you do? Yeah, I’m a swimming coach based in Australia. And I work primarily with triathletes who want to get faster and more efficient with their technique. We run a lot of swimming clinics in Australia, some camps overseas, but we also work with a lot of people online. And for the last probably 15, 16 years, I’ve really dedicated myself to learning as much as I can about freestyle technique and how people can improve in the simplest way possible and trying to make something that can feel very complex, hopefully become very simple for them.

And over that time, I’ve worked with beginners all the way up to many, many different pro triathletes. And I love working with all different abilities because those that are new have so much potential to get faster. And then those pro triathletes, it’s those little 1% is that can really make a big difference whether they make the front pack or not. So I love working with a wide range of swimmers and triathletes. And it’s what I’ve really dedicated my coaching to is helping those types of athletes. Yeah, excellent. And we’re going off the script right from the get-go here because when you said that you’ve been dedicating the last 15 years to learning everything you can about freestyle swimming, one question that popped into my head is, is there something that you’ve really changed your mind about or thinking about a lot when it comes to how to swim good freestyle, what is good technique for freestyle?

Something that 15 years ago you would have thought completely differently about. Yeah, I came from a pool swimming background. So I thought every person who was swimming, whether it was a triathlete or a pool swimmer should have this perfect, smooth looking technique. But with my time working with a lot of triathletes, it’s not a different sport, but there’s different requirements to swim well in triathlon. And obviously you’re going to be in the open water. You might have a wetsuit on and the conditions aren’t going to be completely flat. So I used to coach from the perspective of you’re racing this smooth water. There’s no other people around and it needs to kind of look good. But what I learned over the years is that swimming can look quite scrappy and not pretty. And sometimes you want it to almost be that way depending on the conditions. So I’ve really just changed my approach to allowing it to fit a wide range of different styles

and types of swimmers because their needs are going to be very different than someone who’s purely swimming in the pool. Yeah, yeah, that’s a great point. And let’s get into a bigger discussion on technique here. So I guess a good place to start would be if you could outline a bit of a hierarchy of needs for swimming technique improvement. So if you go from most important and are basically the bottom of the pyramid to like layer upon layer of the what do you fix next? Once you’ve mastered or at least sort of fixed, mostly fixed one thing. How would you structure that? Yeah, I really like this approach of starting with this hierarchy of needs because it gives you a bit of a game plan on what you should actually work on and you can almost go through a bit of a checklist. So I think first and foremost, it’s breathing because if you’re not breathing the right way, you’ll find you start to fatigue after 20 or 30 seconds.

So breathing is number one. One of the main mistakes there for people is that they, especially if they’re new and they might have a bit of panic or they’re not comfortable in the water, they will tend to either like hold their breath and not actually exhale enough or sometimes they’ll kind of hyperventilate where they breathe in too much and breathe out too much. So we want to make sure we regulate our breathing the right way. So we start with that. Then I look at building the frame of the body. So our head posture or body and legs and we want that that body to be horizontal in the water and we want this tautness through the body. So tautness is in a little bit of a little bit of tension. So it’s not wriggling and moving around too much. So I look at head position looking straight down to 45 long and tall through the body, good posture, which is tall and proud. And then this relatively small and narrow kick,

which is you’re not using much for propulsion. So we build that frame of the body. Then I look at rotation. So from there, we want to rotate around the spine 30 to 40 degrees because from there we can then start to recover easily over the water and we can then get into our catch and pull. So it’s build the frame of the body rotation, then recovery, entry and reach. And then we look at catch and pull and then we tie in the timing of that afterwards. So that’s the rough order that I’d normally follow when I’m running clinics and coaching people or even just analyzing someone’s stroke. That’s this like mental checklist I’ll go through in my mind. If I’m maybe having a hard time figuring out what should this person actually work on? Yeah, and maybe we can run through a couple of the most common issues like you mentioned with the breathing already with people either holding on to their breath too much or hyperventilating.

What would be the typical fixes for those issues? And then maybe we can run through the other layers as well with the typical typical issue and typical fixes that happen at each level. Yeah, so I had a person come to a clinic a couple of months ago and we were doing the filming, which was 50 meters and she couldn’t make it to the 50 meter mark. She had to stop at about 30 meters, take a breather and then go again. And what we saw in her video was that when she was breathing, she was breathing in, which was fine, but then she was holding on to that air and then she would exhale about 10% of it. And so she hadn’t gotten rid of that carbon dioxide. And so then she went to breathe in again, but she was just topping up and topping up and never actually getting rid of that dirty air or that carbon dioxide. So that’s why she started to fill with lactic acid after 30 meters. So what we had to do was focus on the inhale,

but then when you bring your face back in the water, have a light exhale through the nose or through the mouth and then your biggest exhale comes as you’re turning your head to breathe. So that’s where we released most of the air bear. And so we just got her to regulate her breathing that way. And pretty quickly, she could swim much further than 50 meters and it was just because she wasn’t breathing correctly. And that’s a pretty common one I see. The other one that we sometimes see is that people get taught to breathe out and blow bubbles. So either like hum or it’s like lots of bubbles straight away. And it’s not bad for learn to swim. Like if you’re teaching kids like blow your bubbles, but if you breathe in and then straight away exhale everything, there might be a second or two there where you’ve got nothing left in your lungs and you start to feel that lack of oxygen. So we make sure that we want to hold on to the air a little bit

and then exhale just before we take the next breath. So they’re the two most common breathing ones that I see. And I think another really common one that I’ve experienced with running clinics recently is that when people learn that their lungs provide most of their buoyancy and they can use that in the right way to keep themselves afloat, then they can relax a lot more. So what I mean by that is that if you’ve got the right posture, which I mentioned before, which is trying to get long through the body, open through the chest and almost I got this from a friend of mine, Andy Donaldson. If you imagine you’re trying to squeeze into a tight pair of jeans, we’d suck your tummy in, squeeze your butt cheeks together. You’ve got this engagement through the core with that way of holding your body. Then from there, you can help bring your hips and legs up by using the buoyancy that’s in your lungs. So what we do to help teach this is we get people to take a breath in

and then tuck into a ball. So we just call it a ball float and you’ll feel the buoyancy from your lungs and you’ll just bob up near the surface there. Then we get them to extend their arms out in front, legs out behind them in this eye shape position and we want them to be horizontal. And in order to do it, you’ve got to bring your arms up above your head and your legs up behind you. So you’ve got to make sure that you’re sort of going like a almost like a bowl or like a plate in a way. And you may not be exactly horizontal. You might sink a little bit, but that’s kind of the position that we want for that floating drill. So we’re getting to do that exercise. They feel that buoyancy and they start to learn how to hold their body. Then I get them to push off and go 25 freestyle as easy or as relaxed as they possibly can. And I find after that most swimmers who either don’t feel comfortable or they just hold this unnecessary tension,

they start to relax in the water. And then when they do that, they move better, they move freer and then they can just find that like they don’t have to put much effort into actually staying upright or staying horizontal. Like they don’t have to kick really hard. They don’t need to work really hard. Their body will do that if they hold it the right way. So the effort can go into moving forwards. So for me, that’s been a big, I think I open up with teaching people is that if they can just get those couple of things right, which are really like the base of that pyramid or that hierarchy of needs, everything else gets so much easier from there. So I like to spend a lot of time on those basic things, but they just contribute so much to progressing and really getting under two minutes or under 145 and on from there. Yeah, yeah, no, those are excellent points. And yeah, so then we have, would you consider that already being part

of that body frame discussion or is that still on the breathing side with the exercise of getting into a ball and then reaching out and stretching your legs out behind you? Yeah, definitely into the building that frame of the body. That’s really getting into the meat of it, I think. And then also with the legs, I mean, we don’t want to be kicking like we’re kicking a ball or riding a bike with lots of hip and knee bend. And I think when people understand that the kick is not going to give them much propulsion, even if they’re really good with their kick, it’s more of this balance and stability. I think that helps them realize that they just don’t need to kick so hard. And the way that I found it helpful for me to understand the kick is it almost provides this like grounding effect. Like if you were to throw a ball, you’ve got the ground which you can push off from, which will help you then throw a ball really far

or really fast because you can push off the ground. But the water, we don’t have that stable surface to work with, but it’s the kick out behind us that provides a bit of counterbalance that will help us rotate the other side, that will help us feel like we’ve got something to press against with our catch and pull. So that’s more the role of the legs as opposed to propulsion. And so I think that when people actually feel that and they understand it, then they back off the kick, the heart rate comes down and it just frees up the rest of the stroke. So again, that’s just part of like building that frame of the body. Do you find that some people completely forget about the kick though? Because I think that point that you made is excellent. And I think it can really help somebody swim faster without more effort when you have that counterbalance and grounding the whole body frame really. But I find also that some people, because they are aware of the fact

that the propulsion from the kick is so small, they basically stop kicking completely and then the whole rest of their swim stroke is less efficient as a consequence even though it’s not the lack of the kick itself that leads to them being slower, but it’s that they don’t have anything to ground their stroke in, so to say. Yeah, totally like you, there’s you can do too little with the legs and sometimes we’ll see people who their legs are just dragging behind them and they’re not contributing anything. And so they’re just acting like this passenger to the rest of their stroke. So yeah, the kick still needs to be active, but it doesn’t need to be a whole a whole lot. So occasionally we will see that with with people where they’re just dragging their legs behind them. So then we want to work on making it a bit more active, but it doesn’t need to be much like those that are familiar with a say a two beat kick, which is just one kick per arm stroke.

For a lot of people that can be enough for them, especially in say a wetsuit or the like the ocean where you’ve got this extra buoyancy, you’ll probably you’ll likely find that with a wetsuit on your legs are hardly doing anything. It might just be a little bit of a flick down with with the foot every stroke. So yeah, it doesn’t have to be much and certainly open water or wetsuit. It’s like, yeah, you’ll find your legs aren’t really doing that that much at all. But that said, for the athletes that are really like going for front pack or they might be down like a towards a 130 or a little bit faster, a little bit slower, you’ll likely have your kick being a bit more active than say a two beat kick. You might be kicking a bit more because you will like you will need a say four beat. Or like a bit of a combination of like two or four or six in order to hit those faster paces in your stroke. So it really just depends on who we’re who we’re working with.

But it is good to be able to change your kick tempo and how often you’re kicking depending on the pace that you’re going. And if you look at someone like say like Lucy Charles, she she will sort of change from like a two beat to like a four beat just depending on whether she’s siding or what side she’s breathing to. So it can, you know, the kick is just kind of reacting to what’s happening with the rest of the stroke. So yeah, I mean, the way I would often teach it, if someone’s kicking the right way, then we I don’t really want them thinking too much about their legs because it will distract from the other parts of the stroke. So provided they’re kicking correctly, then like just do let your legs do their do their thing. It’s only if it’s like slowing them down or they create an excessive drag or there’s other things that we might want to might want to work on with them. Yeah, we can move on from the kick.

I just have one more question. Feel free to critique this take. I’m going to run this hypothesis by you. So one thing that I’ve used or that I’ve tried to I guess coach people is that dependent on your stroke rate that might also influence how what kick is suitable for you, whether it’s a two beat kick or a six beat kick. So for Lucy Charles Barclay, for example, because she has a very high stroke rate, it’s a perfect situation where somebody can effectively use a two beat kick. But when you have somebody coming with a stroke rate of 50 strokes per minute versus her 90 or or high 80 stroke per minute, then that person with a 50 strokes per minute stroke rate might a two beat kick might lead them to just constantly decelerate in the water and a six beat kick maybe helps keep a little bit more momentum and reducing the amount of decelerations and accelerations in the water and therefore be more efficient. Or that’s something that I’ve used as a mental model at least

that once you get to kind of in the low 70s, I found that you can that’s the transition point where for me where either a two beat or a or a six beat kick could work. But if somebody is well into the 60s, I tend to recommend a six beat kick regardless of speed and and above 70s low 70s is where I start to be a bit more able to select the two beat kick depending on other factors as well. Yeah, yeah, certainly. And like obviously it’ll depend on the swimmer, but that kick does help stop the deceleration and it helps work through some of those say dead spots in the stroke. So you will often often see that especially with a say a longer more traditional swimmer type of technique as well. You’ll see a bit more of a kick and I think for a lot of not everyone but certainly for a lot of swimmers. It doesn’t hurt to work on a consistent kick in the water. So if you if you look at when I was spoken to there’s a guy

Sam short who’s like 400 meter world champion a couple years back. I interviewed him about his stroke and one of the things that he works on and this was saying for another Olympic swimmer here in Australia that I asked. She said that she was working on a consistent six-beat kick even though she wouldn’t necessarily use that in her races for 800 and 1500 because she just wanted to develop that her kick strength and her ability to kick and then she can fall back on a four-beat in a race, which is what she tended to you know to to suit her for the race. So and it’s a similar thing with other elite swimmers I’ve spoken to they’ll often work on a longer more powerful stroke just to kind of develop that strength and then they can from there they can really rate up in a race when they need to so I think in training it’s good to kind of work on the harder the harder stroke in a way because then it just gives you more options when it comes to racing.

Yeah, no that’s an excellent point. So moving moving on then after the building the frame of the body we had there was something before the catch in the pool right rotation. Yeah, rotation. So yeah with so with rotation the one of the main reasons we want to rotate is we need to be able to comfortably get our arm over the top of the water because if we’re flat our shoulder just doesn’t work very well that way and so it’s hard to recover so that one of the primary reasons to rotate is to help get the arm over the top comfortably and then with that you know good easy recovery easy getting the arm over the water on the other side of that if we rotate the right amount and will help us get into a good catch position and to be able to use our lats and a bit of our peck but the stronger muscles to our catch and pull plus we can get a little bit longer in the water with it as well with a bit of rotation. So the way I see rotation is for most people so sprinters

are often different they try and keep fairly stable hips and more shoulder rotation but for the swimmers that I work with who are mostly triathletes we want to rotate the hips torso and shoulders about the same amount and that to me looks like 30 or 40 degrees. So if we’re looking front on it someone swimming and we look at their the back of their shoulders with the surface of the water that is typically between 30 and 40 degrees. So that’s how I’d kind of measured that angle if we’re looking front on under the water and with that 30 or 40 degrees if you go beyond that so let’s say you turn the hips and shoulders to 90 degrees for most people they’re going to lose a bit of balance so their legs will splay out their arm in front can’t really get into a good catch because that’s just not a comfortable shoulder position for them so they end up pushing down straight on the water so they don’t get much of a good catch and

then this arm over the top might just throw their balance off a bit. So that’s why I like to think of it now I got this from a coach Carl and Carl in parts. She said you want to rock side to side not roll and I think it’s a great way to to picture how you want your rotation to to happen is you want to rock not roll and if you think of your hips is the engine room of the rotation that is where it all starts the rest will flow it will throw through it will flow through the torso and the shoulders and then into the rest of the stroke. So the way I got taught was you should swim inside out and the inside is hips and core and then everything else comes out from there so yeah rocking side to side 30 or 40 degrees that’s that’s where you want to be a lot.

A lot of people do tend to over rotate when they take a breath that’s probably the most common thing I see is over rotation when they breathe so when that happens usually they get very little out of that catch arm and I had a call with a pro triathlete this morning that I’m working with and every time he breathed his shoulders would go to about 70 degrees his arm would be straight and he would just get no purchase on the water at all and this is a guy who said he used to be front pack back of the front pack but now he’s like he’s struggling to come out within about five minutes of the lead guys so we saw that one of the reasons for that was that over rotation when he when he breathed so that’s one of the things that we’re looking to to work on but it’s a very common one is either too flat or just over rotating especially on that breathing stroke. How would you work on orientation? How would you correct that?

Particularly with the breathing so I we try and get people to be a little bit more patient with the arm in front so as they are reaching forwards just have a little bit more patience feel a bit flatter through the shoulders but we also just check where they’re looking when they breathe so if they’re looking too high or looking way back behind them it can be hard to keep the right amount of rotation so we do look at how they’re breathing first and foremost we get them to be more patient with the arm in front and just in terms of a really good drill for it I like the the one arm freestyle with fins on the opposite arms by the side and you stroke you breathe to your opposite side that you’re striking with so if you’re doing your left arm through that single arm drill you breathe to your right side and you’ll probably find initially it’s hard to keep the arm in front as you’re turning to breathe but if you really exaggerate

how long you spend in front extending it’ll give you that support to be able to they’re going to get that breath comfortably and not over rotate so it’s a hard drill to do well but I think it’s one of the best drills you can do for working on that balance and and not over rotating yeah yeah and for listeners listening on the podcast by the way remember that you can go and check because Brenton is doing some he’s demonstrating these things a bit on YouTube so so it’s available there if you want to have a look at that and then we get into the catch and the pull what are the most common mistakes that you find there and and how do you correct that yeah so obviously like with the catch I talk about the catch is the setup phase of the stroke where that is not where we want to power ourselves forwards it’s the setup phase where our main aim is to get out our arm in a position where the hand and forearms facing mostly back so we get this

big arm full of water and the most common mistake I see there why someone isn’t doing that is typically because they’re too straight and too narrow with their arm in front so the way I got this from a coach Andrew Shaeff who really good simple explanations of the technique but I really like the way he explains it and so if you’re if you reach up with your arm and again I’m demonstrating here but I’ll explain as best I can so if you reach up with your arm this arm would be straight as you begin the stroke then in order to get a high elbow catch which just means essentially your hand and forearm will be facing backwards we want the elbow to go out to the side so the elbow has to go wide and then the fingers have to point away from us and then you know aside on that’s got a good high elbow catch position if someone’s upper arm and elbow is too narrow so if you’re looking front on at someone and they’re swimming towards you if they’re

upper arm and elbows too too narrow so let’s say I’ve my elbows narrow then that ends up dropping that elbow as you can see if you’re watching this video so what I really work on with the swimmers at clinics and online and everything so it’s getting the upper arm and elbow out to the side so that we can then get into that good catch position so we’ll often do drills like we call it doggy scoop other people call it front dog where or short dog so where we want to make sure the upper arm and elbow really just gets out to the side as we’re going through that movement so getting used to back because a lot of people just don’t bend their elbows much through that movement so we work on that plus a plus other drills to get that position and yeah when you get that sensation it sometimes it feels almost like you’re not holding or you’re not having as much force on the water because if you a lot of people will push down with a lot of force and

they’re like oh yeah that feels good because I can feel the pressure but when you go through the catch and you just set yourself up you won’t have that much sort of pressure on the hand and forearm necessarily in the beginning but if it’s going in the right direction that’s more important so yeah that’s that’s probably the main mistake is they’re too narrow and straight with the arm then I think other ones are just like people tend to just overpower that the catch so the catch in the pull through so two rules of thumb that I like to go with is it should be slow to fast so when you’re out in front you’ll take a bit of time as you reach and extend out you go through your catch but then you want to accelerate through the stroke so you’ll just gradually build up and to me it’s not like zero to a hundred it’s like yeah 30 or 40 to like a 60 or 70 at the back we’re not just ripping through it’s just gradual build up and acceleration with your speed and

then in terms of power similar thing set up phase put a little bit into it but then you can build up through the through the power phase which is more once your hand starts to pass under your shoulder and it goes from being a bit like a like a pull to a to a push as your body moves over your over your hand and and one thing I’ll share here too which I’ve found really beneficial for my own swimming and with some of the even even not necessarily the more experienced athletes but last year I did a swim camp with Shandran Rivendale who won the 10k in Paris and she was talking a lot about what muscles you should use through the different parts of the stroke and for her if you look at her catch she has the most ridiculous catch I’ve ever seen it’s beyond 90 degrees or at least it used to be but she had a lot of shoulder issues through her her career and so she had to basically go back to basics and work on using the right muscles

through the catch and pull and so one of the key things that I got from her was that at the start you’ll reach up and your shoulder blade will slide up along the ribs and you’ll go through your catch with your shoulder blade sort of still still up there but as you start to bring your arm past your past your shoulder and and beyond that like this is where we need to get the shoulder blade down and back through that part of the stroke because then we can use our lats whereas a lot of people they’re rounded through their shoulders forwards they’re internally rotated and it doesn’t allow them to use their lats much at all so the key thing for me is just being as you come like the midsection of your catch and pull shoulders down and back and we’ve got a few different ways to do that and then we just triceps at the back but I’ve I’ve focused on that for the last seven or whatever it is seven months or so since we had that camp and I’d

never qualified for national like my national open swimming time but at 38 I got my five the 5k national open time I was a little bit off at last year but I contributed a lot of that to just being able to use my lats more and being more effective with it and I was working with a pro triathlete a couple months ago in person and it took about took a good like five minutes to just get her to actually be able to get that shoulder in the right position when we’re doing this in dry land because she was having a lot of pain in her left shoulder and we could see as she was doing these some exercises this was just it was always forwards and it just took a lot of practice to get that in the right spot and so and she’s like often front pack sometimes second pack but yeah there’s even athletes at the very top I think have got room to improve that part of their their stroke I know I went on for a while there but yeah that’s great

going through that you said that there are a few ways that you can that you can work on that can you just give one one one example one common example of how you work on getting that right yeah yeah definitely so I’ll give you I’ll give you one drill that I’ve been giving quite a few athletes recently so there’s a drill that I made up a couple of years ago we call it YMCA drill and it you’ll you’ll kick for five seconds in four different positions so you’ll do it with both arms so the first position is just arms straight out in front where you’d start the stroke so your hands would be just below the surface so you kick there for five seconds then for five seconds you kick in your high elbow catch so hold there then in the third position you kick in what I’d call the power diamond which is just your hands would be directly under your shoulders and your elbows will be out to the side and if you look in front on it looks like a diamond

so we call it the power diamond but the important part in that position is think about being open through your chest so like open through the chest and then draw the shoulder blades down and back together as you hold that power diamond and that’s really practicing where we want the shoulders to be and then the last position is just at the exit so your thumbs will be on your thigh but it’s a it’s a funny drill it like it looks a bit weird it’s it’s a bit of a strange one but I find that drills be really effective for a lot of swimmers I think because it allows them to get the feeling of where their arms should be through the stroke and because of the oncoming water it’s going to be pushing against your arm you’ve got a hold hold against it I think there’s something in that that makes you or that helps you kind of feel that position and just kind of get used to it so that by the time you’re rolling to some swim afterwards your body just

kind of knows where it needs to be so I think that YMCA drills are really good one but the important part there is in the third position think open chest shoulders down and back for it if you I think on YouTube if you type in YMCA drill effortless I mean I’m pretty sure we’ve got a video of it there so you can see the full thing yeah no I’m sure it’s there somewhere I know I’ve seen seen it on in one of your videos at least and it’s basically the mid-skull position but without actual sculling people are used to more used to skull different sculling variations yeah yeah but yeah so I just want to touch on one thing which was the the slow too fast that you talked about in terms of the from the catch to the to the exit and that makes so much sense because of the fact that even even relatively fast athletes especially at an age group triathlon level there’s usually the catch is obviously nowhere near as good as the the really

good swimmers so you’re always going to waste quite a bit of energy there but so what you don’t want to do is or you’re wasting some of your for some of your power is going to a direction that is not taking you forward it’s not propelling you forward but the further you get towards the back of the stroke the more likely you are to have sorted it out from that kind of power diamond position through the end of the stroke there from there on you’re much more likely to have most of your power is directed straight backwards and being propulsive for you so so what you don’t want to do is to waste a lot of your energy in the early phase of the stroke where less of that is effective and then basically be too tired to really have an effective propulsive phase and rather do it the other way around so I think that that also helps maybe explain to people why why that fast to slow makes sense plus when you do it or sorry slow to fast makes sense plus

also when you do it a bit more slowly at the front it might actually help you to to improve to be more efficient in that part of the stroke that that is the harder one to to have a higher level of efficiency I guess absolutely and I like part of that too is like our overhead movements are just not that strong compared to as we pass under our shoulder so like we’re just not that strong and then secondly like you touch on it with the efficiency like the timing of the stroke so I always like middle to long distance from this to be swimming front quadrant just meaning that you’ve always got an arm in front of the head and so when you have that little bit more patience and you’re a little bit slower through the through the reach phase of the stroke and a little bit slower through the catch phase it lends itself to that better timing where you’ve always got something in front and the benefit of that is again I’m going to be demonstrating so apologies

if you’re just listening but if you think of having your arm out in front of you as you’re reaching out to begin your stroke and you’re you’re starting your catch your other arms going to be coming over the top of the water and tell me if you’ve got the you’re swinging one arm over the top you’ve got some momentum from that you’ve got the weight of it you’ve got the momentum of it you’re going to carry that forwards and if you get it at the right time as like this is my arms coming over one arm catching you get this nice kind of syncing up of all of that working together whereas if that one in front is just rushed it’s not really connected and it’s not timed very well with the rest of the stroke and so we want to be able to sort of couple these forces together and that comes from the right timing and that right timing is being a bit more patient in the front of the stroke and that’s why you see like really experienced from is just hitting

one one 15s or 120s and it doesn’t look like they’re trying a large part of that is because like the timing is just really good and those movements are coupling together. Yeah, so the timing was the the final level that that you mentioned at the at the top there. So other than those things that you already mentioned here, what are what is it that people do wrong mainly when and that’s that you find that these are the things that you end up correcting when it comes to timing for the people for whom that’s relevant. Yeah, I think like with the with the say rhythm and timing to me like that that will change depending on the speed that you’re going and maybe the the race that you’re doing and the conditions that you’re in if it if it is choppy but to me that’s like the the dancing part of swimming is this will this will probably change when you’re racing a bit compared to if you’re going going slower. So I do I think once you get to that level where you’re

you’re comfortable in the water and you’re you’re able to hit hit some reasonable times if you find that you kind of just stuck sometimes people are trying to be too pretty with their stroke and too too perfect with it especially those like I work with a lot of people who are working on their technique obviously because that’s what we do but then once we get that foundation in place you want to give yourself a little bit of creative freedom with with how you swim especially with how you race and so some of that will come to come down to not trying to be perfect allowing yourself to get your stroke rate up a bit and maybe be a little bit less front quadrant if you’re if you’re racing especially in the open water and so just giving yourself permission to try try a few different things and again there’s there’s a there’s a pro triathlete I was working with last year and I caught up through again this year and when I first saw her she was quite

quite mechanical and quite robotic with her stroke and it looked really good but she was like she wasn’t quite making the the front pack she was always just a little bit off and so one of the things she worked on was just like just giving herself permission to not not be too perfect with her stroke because she didn’t have a come from a swimming background so she thought I’ve got to work on just being very like very perfect here but open water just doesn’t lend itself to that sort of sort of stroke so yeah

that go once you get to a certain point which is it sounds a bit counterintuitive but I think you know bracing is a bit of a different different based sometimes and yeah there’s other parts that that are important especially when it comes to open water swimming and open water racing because you’ve you’ve got other factors there that they can play part of the race yeah and also like if you place this at the at the top of the pyramid it’s the the final layer so to say then we’re not talking about somebody stroke and whole swimming is a complete mess that being taking too much creative freedom and on on top of that but it’s people that are already already have sorted out some of the the issues that are at the the the base levels so to say so it it does make sense yeah it does I guess we already mentioned a few things throughout this discussion but are there some clear differences that you see in terms of

what are what are the different focus points depending on speed because you might have somebody who’s technique looks good looks decent at 150 or even two minutes or 145 looks good relatively speaking and you might have somebody that’s swimming 120 or 130 and it looks pretty pretty bad and looks like there’s a lot of things to correct but are there yeah are there generally different areas for improvement that are related to that the actual speed rather than what the stroke looks like or is it all based on having a look at the swimmer and and what what’s actually the problem with the stroke yeah it’s so I’ve had swimmers who have sent in their videos for for our online coaching and I’ve looked at their stroke and thought are this person swimming probably one 130s maybe 120 fires with how they look and then when you actually look at the time they’re actually more like a 150 swimmer and so like technically they look they look really good so in cases like that in cases like that

to me it’s often a little bit of lack of connection in the stroke essentially where they’re not transferring the the movement of the arms if they’ve got like a good catch it might be like a good shape but they’re not connecting that through the shoulder and through the body and with the the rotation of the body so there’s they’re just not transferring that as well as maybe lacking a little bit of power in the stroke so I think it’s you can certainly I mean look good with your technique but if you’re not able to to transfer that good the good shape of your catch and pool into everything else then you’re obviously going to be lacking in speed so how can you do that well I think some of it comes to a little bit of what we’re talking about with the catch and pool where like you want your shoulder to be in the right position you’ve got to let it come up at the start for your catch but then you need to get that shoulder laid down and back through the power phase of the stroke

there so there’s there’s that element to it and then also just making sure you actually put enough power through the through the water and we talked about not overpowering through the catch but I do find some swimmers are actually just overall just a bit too gentle because I think they take the we’ve got to relax you’ve got to kind of let things flow they take some of that to literally and they never allow themselves to actually like put the effort in and so I think they’re just keeping it in a gear that’s maybe one or two gears too low and yeah they like the power in it so there’s some of the things that I’ve seen for swimmers who look technically very nice but their speed doesn’t doesn’t match it yeah yeah it’s a different thing isn’t it to um to not carry a constant tension through your body or through parts of your body when you’re swimming versus avoiding tension in some of the active parts of your stroke like when you’re actually doing the the catch in the pool

so doesn’t mean you’re relaxed just because you’re actually putting a lot of force and tension through that phase on the stroke um yeah and one other question on technique then is you’ve mentioned a few different drills for different correcting different issues how do you what how do you recommend integrating drills into a swimmers program is it something that you do every swim as part of the warm-up or is it something that you focus on in specific sessions and also how do you how do you make sure that the drill is actually translating to the the full stroke swimming hmm yeah when I give drills I I say to the swimmers that I coach every session I want you to do between 200 and 400 meters of some drill and swim work just every session and just do it as part of your warm-up because you’re going to be warming up every session anyway you won’t just get straight into your main set so if you can do just a little bit to set to work on a specific part of your stroke

then that should set you up quite well for the rest of the session it might give you the feeling might give you the the awareness around what you’re trying to do there in terms of getting it to connect to the to the full stroke I think it’s more about knowing knowing the thing that you’re actually working on and then having the right drill for it so quite often at at clinics like we’ll do some drills that have really common like 616 drill or like front kick or even sculling but a lot of times people haven’t either been shown how to do it correctly or what they’re trying to achieve with the drill and how and how it relates to the stroke so I think some of it’s just the understanding of it and an example there is say with 616 drill where you’ll you’ll have one arm in front one arm by the side and you’ll turn your body to about 60 degrees on the side so you do six kicks on the side and you’ll take a stroke and you’ll you’ll swap for a lot of people they’ve

they’ve done that drill but they don’t know why they’re doing that drill and there’s a lot of different reasons why someone might be given that drill to work on and so for us like one of the reasons that we would give a person that drill could just be their alignment so let’s say their arm crosses the centerline as they’re swimming we might just have them focus on being directly in line with the shoulder with their arm and their hand and then when they do their six kicks and they take a stroke and switch make sure you’re back on in line with that shoulder if there’s a tendency to cross over that’s just one of the reasons why you might do that drill and so I think it’s just about having a a reason to do it and then translating that into the into the drill so there’s like a lot of there’s probably 10 different things you could focus on with six one six drill for example but as long as they know what that is so I think for for someone who’s listening if you like

if you’re in a squad maybe a coach can give you one thing or two things to focus on or even if you just film yourself and there’s probably something you can see within your your video just pick one thing and then having like one or two things to work on over the course of like six to eight weeks and just being patient with it so yeah it’s more about the the focus of the drill and not necessarily the the drill itself because there’s a lot of different ways to skin a cat so to speak yeah yeah and I often send some of your videos to athletes when I prescribe a drill and one thing that I’m always not sure about is will the will the athlete watch the entire video because you you might spend five six minutes explaining a drill or even longer in some cases but but I think what you’re what you’re saying here is so true and that’s why the videos are a bit longer or the definition of a drill within a video is a bit longer because you actually need to really understand a why you’re doing it

because that helps with the execution of the drill and be also the more the finer nuances around how to do it properly because I I do think that that’s such a common

basically waste of time that a lot of people end up doing when they do drills but they do it more for the sake of doing it without understood without knowing why they’re doing it and and be maybe just going through the motions and not doing it correctly so and in that case might not really be be time well-spent but but if you are doing them like with purpose and good quality then then it can be can be time very well-spent so yeah I think it’s well for sure your YouTube channel has a lot of great information it’s probably one of the best ways for people self-coach athletes to go especially if you don’t have a swim squad or coach on deck that can that can help you

but yeah I think also if you can you can go on the training camp where people take videos like like we have done at our our training camps to be arranged or like your swim clinics or your swimming camps things like that that can really be helpful for for any athlete really no matter what your level is yeah yeah exactly right and yeah and like with some pools like the challenge I think a lot of people run into is it’s hard to get footage sometimes outside of say a camp or a clinic some like sometimes like you’ve got to be a little bit sneaky with your with your phone and get a friend just to film you above the water if you can just to get like a bit of a look or you can go to the open water and get a friend use a use a phone above the water but you’ll

nearly every time someone comes to a clinic and they see themselves swim they’re shocked in the way they’re like I cannot believe this is how I actually look they had a very different image in their mind of how they swam and it’s just it’s just how it is I have that with my own stroke when I look at myself so I go oh I thought it was way better than that but it’s just the first step at actually making a change because otherwise you’re you’re shooting in the dark and you just don’t know what to what what you need to do so I think that’s it’s a great first step if you can just pull the phone out capture some footage yeah yeah and yeah not if you if you are in a pool where you’re lucky that you’re allowed to film then I’m always a big fan of especially if you don’t have because I’ve I’ve had a lot of athletes that they just don’t have anybody that go with them to swim so it’s you can if you get friendly with with a lifeguards then that’s that’s a good way if

but if you are I’ve been in the situation for example where I go and swim on my own and I am allowed to film but I don’t have anybody to film so a suction cup and a GoPro that’s a really good tool you can put put that up and you can get underwater footage as well as in water footage even though nobody’s filming you just set it up statically on the side of the pool or at the end of the pool so you can get frontal and side view so at a suction cup and the GoPro so that’s a good investment when you’re working your technique I think definitely yeah even if you don’t get a GoPro like there’s cheaper cameras out there that don’t cost that much quality is not as good but it’s good enough for what what you need yeah yeah

I guess this question is a bit of a kind of worms but I’ve seen this pop up in a in a few discussions in different places and it’s a question about how much your swim technique is actually trainable and how much is just related to innate talent I guess there’s also the component of being able to learn when you’re younger your the your motor skills are more plastic and so on but but some people do learn really well starting a bit older so then the question is did they just find a really the a great coach or they just have the right mindset about learning or they’re just skilled at learning is that yeah is it the right training or is it a lot of talent mm yeah it’s there there’s certainly people who have a much better a much better feeling of the water just naturally like it’s regardless of of whether they swam as a kid or not and so like you’re always going to have a bit of a spectrum of of how naturally comfortable people are in the water but the amount of people that I have

coached and I’ve seen that have not started as as kids and have gotten to like a very good level with their with their swimming and not come from that swim background as a kid like that’s there’s a lot so I think and it that it doesn’t help to go look I didn’t grow up swimming so I could never I could never be that good but especially in triathlon you don’t need to be the best you like you just need to be you just need to be up there because you’ve got other things that you can rely on like you know drafting siding while like there’s other sort of open water skills that that you can use to actually be up there with someone who swam since they were four years old so you don’t have to be the fastest so I think it’s I don’t think it’s helpful for someone to say I can’t be as good as the next person because I didn’t grow up swimming and whether or not that’s true it’s like just do what you can do just do what you can do and and there are so many examples of

say top of pro triathletes who who weren’t swimmers as kids but they’re still making front pack so I think you look at those sort of case studies and and take that into yet take that into account that you can go a very long way even if you didn’t start young it will take work like it takes a lot of time in the pool it takes a lot of work and focus but yeah you can absolutely get there and I’ve just seen so many people do it is it what is the main what do you think is the main characteristic of is it or what is yeah what is the

let me ask another question because I don’t think that was a good question anyway I guess I can people that have a slow rate relatively slow rate of improvement let’s say not a rapid rate of improvement can they still improve to a good age group level where they might be doing being the 120s per 100 for their threshold or even sort of the high teams 1, 18, 1, 19 but around that level around 120 or 125 is that possible without being somebody that you’re getting to the pool in the first month you instantly drop 32 30 seconds or 45 seconds of your of your swimming but you just had a slow grind over several years have you seen that happen as well that people just through the slow grind they get to a high level high level of an age group level let’s say yeah yeah I mean yeah there’s everyone’s obviously everyone’s so different but like there’s certainly there’s certainly people that that I’ve seen that over the course of and it like takes

like years years of work but like over the course of three, four, five years they start to get down to that point I I’d like not many there’s not many people who would do it in two years you know like one to two years I think it’s really sort of that like yeah three, four, five sometimes like six years of of working away at it where you start to get to that that sort of level yeah that sort of level if it’s like you know in the one 18s or whatever it might be some people might be a bit quicker but like yeah it does take it does take time but I think for the swimmers that are like getting some form of coaching and feedback to get that gradual improvement they can they can get there and sometimes people who aren’t necessarily getting that technical feedback can get there they just have a a good sense of what they need to do but certainly it is those those athletes that are getting some form of coaching and technique feedback and doing the right

types of training sessions like you know like you’re prescribing in someone’s workouts like all those things contribute to getting to that sort of speed and what would you say roughly as a ballpark how much would you have a triathlete how much would you want to triathlete to swim how many times a week and roughly what distance for those swims per week if their ambition is that yeah they want to get up to that good age group level in swimming in triathlete in swimming I would want a minimum of three swims a week of a minimum minimum 3k so that would kind of be the minimum and if you can do more that’s obviously going to help but that’s kind of my that’d be my rule of thumb three swims minimum 3k a week a 3k session yeah I think I think with swimming it’s it’s interesting because that’s I do think I do think and I you probably agree that in the short term in in six months from now it’s probably going to have the lowest return on investment as triathlete

but at the same time if you’re looking to be the best triathlete you can possibly be in five years or five plus years then you’re at some point going to run into an issue where your swim is just not you might be getting to the point at the end of your age group and if you can’t improve your swim then you’re kind of stuck at that level so making that investment earlier on is going to still be worth it and then potentially you get your point where later on you can kind of when you get when you really feel that you’re plateaued and and more swimming isn’t really bringing you to return on investment that’s when you drop it back a little bit rather than earlier on or that’s that’s with how I view it from a long term development perspective at least that’s how that’s also how I’ve done it in triathlete I spent a lot of years doing a lot of for me a lot of swimming like many 20k weeks or a lot of around 20k weeks with five five swims a week sometimes six

and but then later on I did a bit less four swims a week and maybe sometimes even three swims a week and managed to maintain even some at some points improved slightly and then it dropped back but but I felt like that earlier those earlier years of a lot of swimming really helped even though maybe maybe at that point in the short term I could have improved more by just doing a massive amount of biking instead but in the long run I think that that swimming helped that’s such a great point because there are like there’s a lot of triathletes who they like they’d need to do a bigger swim block of like four or five there may be more sessions a week just to try and get to that next level with their their swimming and then they might be able to maintain it with a few a few less because at some point it’s probably it’s going to become the thing that’s limiting you or stopping you from qualifying for Kona or whatever your goals are

and there’s a there’s a young triathlete I’ve been working with over the last couple of years and for him it’s the age old story great biker very good runner but his swim he just wasn’t front pack and that was that was hurting him he got injured a couple of months ago so he hasn’t been able to to run and so he’s been doing six six swims a week it’s been and we’ve just adjusted his training program a bit where he’s doing we’re really focusing on some like VO2 efforts like hundreds where he’s holding as fast as he can and also in his sprint work just having enough rest so he can go like again really quick and he’s in the last couple of months he’s gone from in his VO2 hundreds from being around 114, 115 and he’s now down to I think 108 some 109s which is where he needs to be and so we’ve seen that with a big swim block some more specific training with some harder sessions in there and so I think when he eventually drops back his swims

and he can bring his running back in he like he may not be at 108, 109 but he might be at 110 for four swims a week and that’s like he knows that he can swim at that level now so sometimes you need to put in there the surge with with the swimming so it’s a great great point yeah if you have somebody doing those three swims a week that you recommended as a sort of baseline for somebody that wants to improve would you include some intensity in all three swims or how would you structure that or because I think it’s quite like we has triathletes we draw a lot of influence from running and cycling where you know you have the easy days easy hard days hard structure and whereas in swimming in in pure swimming that’s a bit different like there’s a lot of intense work on a daily basis basically how would you how would you view the swim program from a triathlete perspective if you have three maybe four swims a week hmm

for for a lot of swimmers I’ve given them if they’ve had three a week often we’d have them do one longer swim so for example maybe they’re averaging 3k a swim this one might be a 4k swim and they can do it’s more just an aerobic swim sometimes pool boy paddles especially if the if it’s like a after a hard run or hard ride so have one more aerobic session then the other two sessions I’d want some form of intensity one I’d look to probably have is a like a solid sort of threshold session in there and the other one would be if they can something like those like the VO2 sessions where we’re going yeah hundreds is as sort of hard as we can hold again depends on the on the distance sorry on the event that they’re training for but otherwise it would be sort of two threshold sessions and one one aerobic and you might even throw some even just a couple of sprints in to the aerobic one at the at the start just to help them with a bit of speed

because I find so many triathletes just get stuck at one speed and they don’t get very their pace much and so that just that really limits their their improvement so that’s typically what I’d what I’d do but yeah depends how hard their bike and run sessions are and how they’re how they’re recovering but certainly you do need a good solid threshold session in there at least once a week and then maybe maybe a second time a week as well what did you sort of yeah I would I would be that’s similar to what I do and I’m sometimes questioning it like with if I have three swings a week I would do one aerobic swim it like I said sometimes it does have some really some some light quality it might be a couple of sprints which sprints can be extremely demanding if you’re an actual sprinter obviously but for most triathletes they’re not very demanding because they don’t just don’t have the ability to produce a high amount of lactate

so students are being more of a yeah it’s a bit of neuromuscular work but it doesn’t really require a lot of recovery doesn’t feel that hard so yeah I’m quite similar but I I mean I guess the the thing that I’m thinking of is Joel Filial’s rules of swimming famous article I don’t know if you’ve seen that and one of the one of his rules of swimming is of course this is in the context of elite WTCS athletes or or well word travel based athletes anyway world cups and WTCS racing and continental cups and one of the rules there is that if you’re swimming four times a week or less I think is the cutoff there then every swim should have some quality like that just doesn’t mean that there’s no aerobic swimming in there there’s certainly that as well within those sets but but you don’t necessarily need to have days of

yeah days of just swimming mainly like 90 to 95% easy or endurance based swimming I guess yeah I yeah in the context of age group triathletes I do find that you want you need to manage fatigue so well so I’d rather be a bit conservative and keep those keep some easy days that are easy because also mentally it can be quite hard but at the same time I feel like if somebody actually can manage to do all more of their swims with more intensity I do think that the recovery from swimming is so much so different than from biking and running that it could be beneficial so it might be something that is worth experimenting with for people to have why not try to make the third swim also have a bit more intensity in it and see if that if that works for you that’s yeah yeah that’s the reason I asked the question curious to hear what different people are doing yeah that’s good I agree with you I think that’s if you can manage it like why not

and with like with my own training I can only swim three times a week most of the year and with our squad there’s like between five days a week Monday to Friday in the morning and I can I can’t get to the aerobic sessions so it’s been it’s like threshold sprints and then VO2 and that’s held me in pretty good stead all year because I get aerobic training outside of the outside of the pool and so yeah I’ve noticed that that’s worked really well for my own swimming

but I’m not riding or running that much just doing other stuff but yeah I think if you can it’s probably not going to hurt because aerobically you’re you’re probably pretty good with everything else that you’re doing and yeah the swimming is where you can put the intensity into it and recover quickly as you said and I think the exception might be I’ve had some athletes that are actually quite glycolytic they’re able to whether it’s swimming, biking and running they have a high top end they have a high capacity to produce leg take and can easily swim they might have a critical speed of 140 but can easily do 50s in 30 seconds and so their speed is way is outpacing their threshold and their endurance a lot and in that case I think that yeah you probably do need to work on that endurance and then having that aerobic swim is probably

more important than the VO2 swim which you might have a bit more naturally or maybe not the VO2 but at least the ability to go fast so then it becomes a key session even though it’s not intense but I find that those athletes are not so common in Treflon because Treflon at least for the adult onset crew they tend to draw people that are a bit more slow-twitch dominant yeah, yeah certainly you don’t say a huge amount of pure fast switch or sprinters doing triathlon so yeah, that’s a good point and certainly something to consider if you look at your own speed and pace it’s like if I can sprint really well but I struggle for those longer distances then you might want to adapt your training yeah, I want to ask as well a little bit about open water swimming so first of all what are the changes or modifications that somebody might want to make in their open water stroke compared to how they swim in the pool and is there a difference depending on

whether it’s a wetsuit swim in the sea or a non wetsuit swim well I guess a non wetsuit freshwater swim might be the same as a pool almost so what are your thoughts on that?

so if we start with how would you adjust depending on freshwater versus saltwater there is obviously a difference in buoyancy and also with a wetsuit so a wetsuit or saltwater is going to take care of most of the body position factors of your stroke and so with that you can focus less on them so last week I did I was on the support boat for a guy Andy Donaldson he did a 55 kilometre swim down a river in northwest of Australia and he’s a marathon swimmer but he would normally be in the ocean like English channel, North channel all those sorts of things and so he’s used to saltwater and he said he really started to notice the fresh water when he started to get fatigued because his hips would drop a lot more his body would drop a lot more compared to what he was used to when he’d fatigue in the saltwater so he said he had to be more mindful of head position pressing his chest in a little bit more to just work on that better body position

so if you are in something like that where you don’t have a wetsuit you are in the lake or something you will need to be more mindful of the body position factors the things that contribute to it with a generally going into open water my rule of thumb is with your stroke or with your arm recovery you can be faster, higher and wider with it meaning if you have a wetsuit on you’re probably a bit restricted through the shoulders and that more classic like high elbow recovery might not cut it for you and so you’re better off just kind of swinging that arm forwards over the top of the water maybe a bit quicker than what you’re used to you might be a bit higher and you might be a little bit wider as well than what you’re used to just because of that restriction so higher wider faster with it as well as with your stroke rate that’s probably that should come up and you still need to reach forwards but you’re going to start your catch a bit sooner than usual

and it will be a little bit more not like a windmill I don’t think that’s the right word for it but it will be certainly a bit quicker with the rating so I always like to see people pick their rating up and be less perfect be a bit more scrappy with your stroke and then also you’ve obviously got to integrate your sighting with it and there’s a lot of people I’ve coached that they just don’t sight the right way and they kill their speed with it they lose five sometimes 10 seconds per 100 because they’re not sighting correctly and so the way I’d like to teach them to sight is to sight on one stroke so you look up on one stroke and then you’ll turn your head to breathe on the next stroke so it’s called a rolling breath or I’ll just call it sight and breathe and that way you don’t lose your rhythm with your stroke and you can keep your hips up pretty high whereas a lot of people do just head up head up for two or three strokes

and then head back down and then they breathe but they just lose so much speed doing it so that’s one of the main skills that I like to teach with that and then obviously like you’re drafting and I had a call with a pro athlete this morning he said, look, I’ve gone from being back to the front pack to like five, six minutes behind and like technique wise we could see why that was but he said I also, I don’t like to draft behind people I just don’t feel comfortable and so for him especially at that sort of level it’s like you will be missing out on so much speed if you’re not drafting and one of the things that we uncovered on this call was that he doesn’t like to draft because he feels like he’s not holding the water as much because if you’re sitting behind someone the water’s already moving you’ve got that turbulence of the bubbles and everything and so when you’re going through your catch and your pull you just feel like you’re slipping

even though you’re going faster for less effort so if you can get comfortable feeling not as good in your stroke but sitting behind someone you will save so much effort and you will swim so much faster as well so I think sometimes it’s just knowing that that’s the case too because I just know personally if I’m drafting or pushing off on someone’s feet in the pool I don’t like it because it doesn’t feel very good but I’m going three seconds quicker per 100 for only 80% of the effort Yeah, absolutely. Do you recommend for age group draft leads so maybe less of a… We’re not interested so much in the pack dynamics here that might play a role in the pro race but would you draft on somebody’s feet or on their hips?

You’d probably do both if the opportunity arose but if you’re on someone’s hip you’re going to be slowing the person down who you’re drafting off because when you’re sitting on someone’s hip it feels really heavy for them and you end up taking some of their water so you’ll pull through when you’ve kind of taken the water that they would hold in their catch and they’re kind of dragging you along so it’ll feel very easy for you so in some open water races that’s certainly a strategy but in triathlon you really just want to get to the end as fast as you can so I recommend most people just draft on the feet and as long as my kind of rule of thumb there is if they’re going the same pace as you you can draft on the feet but if you feel like they’re going slower than what you could hold then just get out from the feet and just go past them because you kind of have to gauge that and you might even just like if you’re working your way through a pack

let’s say or through a group let’s say it’s a rolling start you are going towards the back you might be overtaking people as you go but it can be good to just like try and move in behind people and then just move past them and then go in behind someone because they will be moving quite a bit of water with them as well so sometimes that’s a good strategy as well if you’re working your way through you know through groups of people as long as you’re not going to get stuck in a big pack of four or five so yeah use it to your advantage and it could be minutes off your half Ironman or full Ironman time if you do it well yeah yeah yeah I just don’t draft somebody that is navigating poorly because that could be minutes added to add it to your time yeah you’ve done it before it says actually I don’t I can’t remember I don’t I don’t think I’ve certainly had races with poor navigation but I don’t think I can blame somebody that I’ve been drafting

think I have myself to blame and maybe weather conditions as well and also I didn’t have the effortless swimming goggles so so that might have had to do with it as well some some fogging fogging there in those races we’ll get to those in a little bit just a couple more questions on the open water what is any preparation for open water swimming do you advise people do in the pool

a couple of things one the practice you’re citing so we have blocks at the end of our pool so I just get people to sight the blocks every six to eight strokes so practice that sight and breathe method

even being on someone’s feet so sometimes if you’re in a squad or a group you might push off directly behind someone just to get used to what it feels like to be drafting again if you’re in a squad or a group if you can do some pack swimming so you might have eight of you all going down the lane together and just getting used to being next to other people and just getting over that few factor of having someone near you or feeling like they’re going to swim swim over the top or some people touching your toes there some of the main things even just with a wetsuit so if you aren’t used to swimming with a wetsuit definitely practice before race day and you can wear your wetsuit in the pool and just kind of get used to how that feels as well because it’s going to feel quite probably restrictive you might feel like your stroke changes so just getting used to that at least like two or three swims with a wetsuit beforehand so just trying to replicate the race

or the open water conditions as best as possible a couple of weeks out from your swim will really give you the confidence once it gets to race day Yeah, and those are also some really fun sessions especially the ones where you’re in a squad and can do it with other simulators that swimming in closed quarters and all of that and the final question here on the open water swimming is what advice would you give to somebody who’s struggling to translate their pool swimming level to a similar performance in the open water they might be swimming similarly to their squadmate in the pool but then their squadmate is putting a couple of minutes of them in a seven point three or five minutes in an Ironman in the open water It’s a really common one that I come across the main couple of factors there

some of the things we covered like your skills your ability to draft to site well and take a straight line but I think also just getting used to swimming open water and getting the stroke rate up a bit more and kind of just going for it I see a lot of people just being very precious with how they swim but in the open water especially if there’s any sort of chop and waves you do just need to be a bit more assertive with how you swim so getting comfortable being out of your comfort zone in a way and swimming yeah swimming like it’s it’s really open water and not these perfect pool conditions so I like the word scrappy I’ve used it a few times but I do like that word allowing yourself to get a bit scrappy which doesn’t mean like just hideous technique and everything goes out the window but just kind of taking it’s like taking the the limiters off and allowing yourself too to attack the swim a little bit more so part of that too

which is not for everyone but if you breathe every like on one side primarily a good open water stroke will often be a little bit of a gallop if you breathe to the one side and if there’s there’s chop you will see a bit more of that sort of galloping or uneven kind of stroke so if you do breathe the one side see how that feels for you because that can actually be quite an efficient way to swim and it can work really well for for open water depending on the can explain the gallop with more yep so with it like a galloping stroke is basically one side will be will be like a longer stroke the other side will be a faster stroke so with the gallop you kind of see someone like come up and out over the water and then under the water Michael Phelps is a bit of an example of that with his freestyle I might be showing my age but like he he had quite a gallop in the pool if you look on our YouTube Sam Short we posted a video with him when he swims comfortably

he’s got a very smooth and even stroke but when he races he has he grew up in the surf swimming in Australia and in the surf a lot of those boys develop like this this galloping technique where it’s like up and over there’s great footage of him on a recent YouTube video we did with him so that gallop is yeah you sort of be longer on one stroke and then you’ll come over you’ll breathe and then you’ll be a bit a bit quicker on that stroke so it’s like in sort of uneven tempo there but yeah if you do breathe every two or every four give that sort of stroke a try in the open water and see how you how you feel especially at race pace not so much just being comfortably but certainly at race pace it can be a good way to go yeah and I’ll come back to what he said though as well about just going for it because that’s with a personal anecdote I had basically my breakthrough swim in a triathlon in a race where I had been injured I had I had a hamstring strain

for three weeks before a race and still I tried a bit of a jog walk the day before the race that was the only running I had done but lots of pain so I was sure that well I’m not going to be able to run in this race I’m going to get to T2 and and DNF so I might as well just do the swim as fast as I can do the bike as fast as I can see what I can do in those two legs to to get some some information get some and have some fun in the race and I did that funnily enough for some reason the hamstring was fine on the run in that race and I finished and finished well but but yeah the swim was a breakthrough swim because I just went for it and I didn’t really think about what was to come next and so so that was quite helpful to have that to not even think that you had to finish the race so yeah but you did end up finishing I did not finish yeah there you go yeah that’s good that’s so yeah rings that rings very true for the things that I’ve seen with with other athletes

where they they are like really conserving for the bike and really conserving for the run which yeah to some extent you do have to do but sometimes it’s too much and they’re afraid to like get the heart right up beyond 120 you know so yeah that’s good it does it does depend on the race distance and your level your conditioning like this was a half distance it was challenge Lisbon in 20 2019 I think and so yeah and Ironman would be different it would be different if you’re if your base fitness is are you not not the best then you might want to conserve more because you really can’t afford to waste much energy so obviously those things have an impact but but it’s it’s certainly a possibility and and that’s also one of the reasons that I I would encourage people to also do shorter races to Olympic distance races do sprint distance races because then you can you can be more brave with pacing and try see what you can do in the swim and the bike as well

and not always feel that you have to conserve for the run yeah totally especially like an Olympic an Olympic will feel like a sprint like you can really keep the effort up high can’t you in my experience having done two of them I mean yeah I had a season of triathlons and but yeah those like Olympic and and even half was like it’s hard work because you can you can put the foot down quite a bit through those yeah let’s talk about the yeah the the news from effortless swimming relative news at least with you’re now producing goggles you’ve developed developed a bunch of goggles with the antifog technology can you talk about what led you to to do that and the yeah the reason why you you’ve broadened your career from just coaching and education into product development yeah well we sort of stumbled into it really so like I’ve coached for the last nearly like 19 years I think it is but about 12 80 18 months ago now I came across this new type of antifog technology

that had had been around just a couple of years and when I tried these goggles with this antifog I was I was on a camp in the in the Maldives and I just couldn’t believe that I could actually see what was happening underneath the water because I was used to just having to clear the goggles but they would last like two minutes and then fog up again so I was just so impressed with this like new type of antifog so then I thought well this like this is unreal I want to share this with the swimmers that I coach and especially those that come on our camps all those that are racing because I used to buy a new pair of goggles every single time I’d have an A race coming up just because you need to see where you’re going so I’d always be buying new pairs of goggles so yeah so then I thought I want to get ones that are great for open water particularly yeah triathlon that they need to be comfortable for longer swims because I like to race

up to sort of 5k so I I found as many manufacturers as I could I got as many different styles and samples so I have like hundreds of samples of of goggles here at home that we tried and I found the best three that I that I could and then we started and adjusting them and sort of making them really comfortable for ideally open water swimming to start with and we applied this this new type of anti-fog called called Nanoclear so yeah we’ve been offering those for the last

it’s flown now but maybe like eight months six to eight months and it’s been unreal like the feedback from people having people like Kat Matthews Christian Blumenfeld Yella Gein’s wearing the goggles has been awesome and yeah like the strike model is the one that I like to wear and that’s what what those other guys are wearing as well but yeah just kind of stumbled into it but there’s been a big demand for them and it’s just been a good like a new challenge and I think it just it fits really well with with what we do just trying to make swimming more effortless for people so yeah it’s it’s been cool to hear the feedback from people we’re working on some different styles but yeah it’s cool seeing like even age groupers pro triathletes wearing the goggles out there on on race day and just getting a really good feedback about them What is it about the strike model that makes you go for go for that one? Yeah I for me most comfortable wide

field of view so when I’m in the open water it’s it’s easy to see and see everywhere and then it’s it’s a good sort of cross between like it’s not in your like in your socket type thing like it’s not a really small like pool racing model like say like the Swedish ones it’s kind of like an in-between so it’s it’s a bit larger but it’s not really big and so it’s still quite you know hydrodynamic while still being able to see really really well and that just seems to be the most comfortable one for like for most people out there and the way the antifog is different like I didn’t I never really understood like you know why does antifog stop working after five to ten swims and it’s just because like typically it’s a coating that’s applied after the lens is made and then it just like if you touch it or like you just don’t take care of it it just rubs off and that’s why they start to fog but this new type of antifog is it’s this they sort of embed it into the lens

and so if you like the first few swims you won’t need to do anything they’ll just be clear but then eventually like they will start to fog so you just wet the lens clear any residue from the inside of the lens with your thumb or your finger and that gets rid of any dirt or dust and then it will be clear for you so just at the start of each swim you wear it clear it and then you’re good to go for the swim so yeah it lasts about ten times longer than normal antifog so it’s yeah it seems like such a silly thing like no one’s really gonna I need to find like I need to find a really good antifog goggle but I think once people use them they’re like oh this is actually so good because I can see the clock I can see where I’m going nice sorts of things yeah yeah and as you mentioned I’ve also always done the same previously bought a new pair of goggles for every single race and it also ends up being it’s a very unnecessary expensive feels like

and also not very sustainable for the environment to just have these goggles that you use for a short time and then you can’t use them anymore so there’s lots of advantages one more question there’s obviously different sorts of lenses different colors mirrored non mirrored how do you how do you think about what what type of lens to select for different conditions or swimming in the open water yeah yeah so the way that they write the that the tints so the tints of the lens basically goes from they call like s w 0 up to s w 4 so from 0 to 4 basically and like s w 0 is like there’s no tint completely clear and then s w 4 is like like really dark you could look directly at the sun with them but you won’t find really any goggles that are typically any goggles that are that dark so basically I most people are pretty well off with a pair that’s like it’s a smoke pair it’s like there’s no there’s no mirror effect to it but it’s got like a bit of a smoke tint to it

if you’re looking to the sun doing backstroke or directly into the sun if you’re swimming like early hours of the morning then you’d need something a little bit darker which might have a coloured lens and a bit of a mirror tint to it which would be like a like an s w 3 essentially so yeah depends on what conditions you’re in but for most people who are swimming like during the day or early morning I tend to direct them to yeah like a a coloured lens like the smoke lens but if you need a bit more protection then it’s like a mirror and coloured lens as well with like for us we’ve got the tinted mirror which is our darkest one which you can do backstroke into the sun with but if you’re swimming early morning and it’s pitch black like it is now here in Australia that’s pretty dark for an early morning swim so I feel a lot of people tend to get two pairs it’s like a clear pair or a smoke pair and then I’d like a tinted mirror one depending on the

on the conditions just as an example so Iman, Texas they started in the almost in the dark for the pro field so like a cat war just a completely clear lens there so like it’s just as you could see comfortably but then for Iman Geelong here she had like our purple mirror ones which have a little bit of a tint because the sun was that’s sort of almost looking into the sun going out there so you yeah it’s good to have options depending on when you’re racing yeah yeah I’ve always found that those going into into the sun at sunrise and that that can be quite challenging with the reflection of of the sea as well that’s also I’m based here about 30-40 minutes from Iman the Iman Portugal course and it starts swimming east right into the into the sun at sunrise and that those that’s always I mean it’s not that it’s terribly terribly difficult necessarily but but you do have to select the right sort of tint for for the conditions and so it was it was

useful to hear your here advice there on how to think about that but yeah so so listeners obviously there’s yeah the effortless effortless swimming is the sponsor of the show and you can find more information in the show notes about the goggles the links to define the goals check them out and the discount code which I’ll bring up here in just one second because it yeah TTS 15 that gets you 15% off and a free two month course membership for which will help you put a lot of these technique things that we’ve been talking about today into practice with with the effortless swimming courses as well so yeah thank you Brenton for supporting the show I really appreciate that a lot and I couldn’t be happier to to work with you guys then just to wrap up I have a few listener questions as well we’ll just go through a couple of them because I think a lot of them that came in we’ve already answered but this one is from Leonardo who asks what does it mean to swim with your shoulders

and what is the problem with it what he’s probably referring to

would be so there’s there’s a term called hip driven freestyle and shoulder driven freestyle so if he’s referring to that show it’s a hip driven freestyle is more for middle to long distance swimming which is where you would have the same rotation through your hips and your shoulders so you kind of generating the rotation from your hips that’s where you’re initiating it shoulder driven freestyle is more a sprint freestyle where the hips will stay quite still and the shoulders will do most of the rotation which is which can be very fast and very powerful but it’s not if it’s not as efficient as a hip driven so if that’s what he’s he’s talking to are talking about it’s not a great type of stroke for triathlon because it’s just not efficient yeah yeah that’s how I interpret the question so I think I think that’s correct then we’ll take this one from lotta who asks what’s the most underrated skill or technique with which advanced athletes

can optimize their performance and gain a few seconds of their swim time I would say you using using your your lats through the power phase of the stroke which we talked about at the start of a start of the podcast I think that would be the yeah an underrated one especially if you’re in like the top 10% of the field and she also asked from which age on we might already answer this roughly from which age on is optimizing performance not possible anymore

it gets pretty late really like I’ve I’ve had swimmers like say master swimmers people have competed as kids and they’ve just kept swimming I’ve had master swimmers in their late 40s even like early 50s who have still hit lifetime PB’s so I think you can go pretty late into year and those are people that have have been swimming as kids as well yes yeah so if you start in your 30s then like presumably it it’s quite possible that that or those same swimmers could have improved later on because they would have started later and had a shorter lifetime lifetime swimming yeah that’s but that that’s interesting actually to hear that all people doing that that have been lifelong swimmers then let’s do one more this one is from Jack who has when swimming in a wetsuit I can keep good form with a 4-bit kick but in the pool I drop slightly so neither I guess he drops his legs so I need a 6-bit kick to keep my legs up what is the best way to approach pool workouts

when preparing for open water wetsuit swimmers if my kicking pattern is different

yeah we kind of covered this at the start as well I think it’s the wetsuit is giving you buoyancy so there’s less of a almost less of a need to kind of use your legs there and it’s good to train the harder way as in a harder way would be a constant 6-bit kick when you’re when you’re training because you’re developing the fitness to sustain that sort of kick and then when you put the wetsuit on you start racing you can just drop back to that if that’s what’s going to be most efficient for your race so there’s nothing wrong with that it’s just a change of stroke because different factors involved and that different factor is your wetsuit so it’s not necessarily a bad thing or like you’re doing something incorrectly I think you like keep doing what you’re doing while the sounds of it yep great all right that wraps it up for today’s episode thank you so much Renton it was great to have you on any final thoughts or things to comment on?

no I just want to thank you for having me on again it’s been a couple of years since we got to catch up but you’re very good at what you do and I appreciate you having me on because it’s always fun to chat about swimming and I mean you draw on a wealth of knowledge with all of your experience and coaching and all the guests you’ve had as well so it’s yeah it’s great to chat and hear your ideas too so appreciate you having me on thank you for that and listeners check out Brenton’s work on on YouTube on Efferless Swimming and like we talked about the goggles can be found on shop.efferlessswimming.com and remember the discount code TTS15 there so yeah thank you Brenton hope to speak to you again very soon and have a good rest of your evening yeah sounds good thanks Michael catch you later thanks for listening to the Efferless Swimming podcast if you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.efferlessswimming.com

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. If you’ve ever taken several weeks out of the water and you’ve come back and you feel like you’ve forgotten how to swim, you’re not alone. There’s something about our body that needs to get used to being in the medium of water, that needs to have this consistency of swimming and doing laps on a regular basis to feel comfortable, stable and balanced and in control. And so one of the hardest things to do in swimming is to be consistent, but if you want to get better then consistency to me is the key and consistency is doing ideally three swims a week without taking a week off. Now I know here and there you often have to travel, things come up and it might be say two sessions, but you will notice a big improvement in your swimming if you can swim

three times a week for weeks and weeks and weeks in a row without taking time off. Even if you’re sick or injured there’s usually ways around it. Maybe if you’re sick then you can’t push as hard, you have to swim easy, or if you’re injured maybe you’ve got to do purely kick or you’ve got to wear fins or there’s something else you can do there, but having that time in the water there’s no shortcuts around it. That is one of the things that it sucks, but it is going to make your swimming feel easy and it’s going to allow you to feel like you belong in the water because your body just gets used to holding itself in a balanced way in that medium of water. And so if you think about why people who grew up swimming just can always look and feel just so comfortable, it’s because their bodies just gotten so used to being in that medium and so if you can have that consistency over ideally like six months or 12 months where you’re just doing it on a consistent basis

you will start to see that gradual progression. Now one of the ways to fast track that feel for the water or at least enhance it is doing something like front skull. So there’s exercises and there’s drills that you can do to help build up that connection with the water. And to me one of the best ones is front skull where you’re scaling with your arms out in front and you’re sweeping side to side. That will give you that feeling of keeping pressure on your hand and your forearm which is your big paddle. That’s the main thing that’s going to move you forwards and scaling really enhances that feeling of connection with the water. So let’s say you do take a week out just for whatever circumstances arise. Well by doing some front skull and that might be something like 1225s of front skull with a pull buoy between your legs. Doing that is part of your session. That can help you enhance or regain that feeling for the water. And so one of the hardest things to do

but one of the best ways to get better is to be consistent. It is the key to being a better swimmer and if you look at some of the some of the pro triathletes that I’ve watched and some that I’ve worked with they didn’t grow up necessarily as swimmers but because they have swum for five years six years seven years very consistently they’ve just progressively gotten better because I’ve spent that time in the water. So if you’re looking for the magic pill or you’re looking for the secret to swimming a 115 pace you’ve got to put the work in. There’s no shortcuts to that and consistency is the way to do it. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

Imagine driving along a cliff top road, amazing scenery, and you’re watching the ocean pass by, and you’re thinking this is amazing, and you’re in the moment, and you’re really just truly appreciating the view that you’ve got. And then from the back seat, your five year old asks you, are we there yet? And it takes you out of the moment. That’s kind of like what a watch will do to your swimming. A watch will take you out of the moment and not allow you to be as present as you could when you’re swimming. And the problem with that is swimming is so much about the feel for the water and the ability to be present and hear the water moving over you, feel it rushing over your hands and your body and you just having that internal gauge of the intensity and the effort that you’re putting on and how you’re moving through the water that if you get taken out of that, because you’re looking at your watch and you’re trying

to hit a certain time, that is one of the things that is going to stop you from improving as quick as you could. And some people like to track their swims with their watch so that they can post it on Strava. But I would argue that you will actually get way more improvement and become a better swimmer by not worrying about what Strava says and not worrying about what your watch says and just allowing yourself to be more in the moment when you go to the pool. And I’ve seen this with many swimmers that will come into the wall, they’ll hit stop on their watch, they’ll check their time and then they’ll go again. Whereas you’ll have some swimmers who aren’t using a watch and they’re using the 60 second clock at the pool to see what times they’re doing and see what times they need to leave on. And they are the ones that are typically much more in that flow state because you can get taken out of it by using your watch. And personally, I found that

when I used the watch for a couple of weeks, just to kind of test it out, I was always worried about what my time would say at the end on the watch. I’d always want to be trying to hit a certain pace and I’d be doing an aerobic set, trying to hit a faster time than I actually needed to, because I just wanted to beat what my watch was going to tell me. And that’s just something that stopped me from actually putting in the right amount of effort. And it took me out of that flow state with my swimming. And I see it with so many swimmers these days. So if you’re currently on your watch all the time, what you could try instead is track your swims manually, whether that’s like a 3K swim or three and a half K swim, just put it in manually to your Strava or your Garmin app and just tell your coach, look, I want to get better at swimming. And I feel like the watch is a distraction right now. I’m doing the swims, but I’m just going to track it manually and

see how you feel after a month of not using your watch. And I would argue that most people would find that they actually become better swimmers by getting rid of the watch when it comes to swimming in the pool. So let me know in the comments, do you use a watch? Do you not use one? And is this something that you would try for a month just as a trial to see if it’s something that will help you actually get better at swimming? Let me know. Thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

A few years ago, I came across a clip of Steph clatter back in the water that completely stopped my scroll. At the time, her swim videos were being shared and ripped off by hundreds of other accounts because of how easy she made it look. Fast forward to today, and she’s not just a viral highlight, she’s a pro triathlete who consistently clocks top 10 swim splits on the world stage. Today, we’re going beyond the Instagram reels to break down the actual mechanics of that stroke. I started swimming. I think I must have been three or four years old. I joined my first swimming club when I was seven or eight years old and started racing when I was nine or 10 years old. So for me, it’s been a very, very long time staring at the black line at the bottom of the pool. But I’ve learned a huge amount and Stephanie shaped me of who I am today. I started to think about my technique. Honestly, probably only as an adult. Like I remember when I had a, I had like a

10 year period where I didn’t swim. So I stopped swimming when I was 19 and then started back up again. Oh, maybe it was less than that. Maybe it was six years when I was training for a triathlon. When I was younger, it was definitely technique was forced upon me by coaches. So I had a coach that would walk down poolside with a wooden stick and would hit your head if it was too high, would hit your bum if it was too high. Like it was, I don’t want to say hands on because that sounds really weird, but it was quite physical coaching to help you understand body movement and body position. And as I got older and started to understand how to move my body to get a result, that’s when I was able to actually think about technique in a way that was a little bit more than, oh, I need to put my head down or pick my head up. And certainly now as a triathlete where I’m swimming less and I need to get more and more out of my stroke and I’m swimming open

water rather than in a pool. It’s added in a whole another layer of complexity that I’ve had to dial into how I’m thinking about my stroke. In terms of head position, I seem to decide to change it pretty much every session. So in the pool, I can get away with having my head slightly lower because I have quite high body positions. So my body stays quite high. My bum is quite high out of the water. So I don’t need to keep my head high necessarily. Like it kind of balances out. You add in the wetsuit and it almost brings my legs too high and it throws off how I’m used to swimming. So I have to have my head a little bit higher when I’m open water just to try and bring my bum down a little bit more. So it’s different swimming with a wetsuit than swimming with a swimming costume. And I probably have a different challenge than a lot of age groupers where they enjoy the wetsuit because it keeps their legs up. Whereas for

me, I kind of want them to drop down a little bit more. I like to think of myself as a log when I’m in the water and a log that is able to roll with the flow because rotation is obviously a huge part of the swimming stroke. So it’s all very well staying long and tall in the water. But if you can’t hold that as your shoulders and your hips are rotating, it’s kind of useless. So it’s from like the base of my skull all the way down through to my toes. I want to keep long but stay connected so that as I’m driving my hips to force the rotation, I’m able to kind of breathe and move my head as I need to without disrupting the flow at all, just like a log that is rotating in the water. So the role of kick for me is basically non-existent. I have never been a kicker. I was a back stroker. So it was never really part of our stroke. For back stroke for me, it was always about balance and that absolutely translates to freestyle as

well. So I lean into a two-beat or a four-beat kick if I absolutely have to. But I would much rather kick less, but I have quite big kicks because they’re there to stabilise me. My typical breathing pattern is two or four. So in a race, it can be, well, it’s usually two, two, four and siting on the four. Yeah, I just rotate to the right and I breathe every two or four. I try not to search for the breath when I’m breathing. So I really want to make sure that my head is in line with my body and I’m breathing into the pocket. I don’t want my head to be causing any sort of ripple through the rest of my stroke. So it just kind of shifts to the side of my shoulder rotation before moving back and doesn’t come out of the water too much. So I absolutely, like if I can get away with it, I’ll have no eyes out of the water. Like it will just be my mouth kind of poking out and coming in. With open water, it’s slightly more difficult

because you tend to have a little bit kind of more chop to contend with and you have people around you swimming. So the breath might look a little bit bigger, but as much as possible, it’s the smallest breath that I can get away with. So my stroke is long. It is long and it’s actually pretty slow and I think that’s just come from years of being in the pool with perfect water conditions. So I’m able to keep it long and stay really quite efficient with it. And I keep my hands really relaxed. I think that’s really important. So I will absolutely have space between my fingers. Quite often, my hands will be slightly kind of bent as well. Like it’s just really, really relaxed. And it’s a change that I’ve been trying to make for open water is to actually increase my cadence a little bit. And that’s not by ripping my arms through the water. It’s just by reducing the micro pauses that I’ve developed through years of swimming in the pool.

For the catch in the pool, I try not to think of them as a pool. I like to feel as though my hand is static and I’ve got like a nice bend in my elbow and I feel strong and powerful because water doesn’t respond like air and you can’t rip your hand through if you want to swim faster. Like you have to be able to keep your shoulder stable, your elbow stable, your hand nice and locked to then utilize the force and almost make the water solid underneath your hand and like lock all the molecules together. So that’s how I like to think about it. It becomes more and more challenging the faster that you swim and equally the faster that your arm turn over is.

My recovery over the top of the water is absolutely everything you’re told not to do when you’re a kid. I remember it being drilled into me that you need to have a high elbow, low wrist, strag your fingers along. My hand is up in the sky. Like I have a really loose recovery. I think it’s the only way to describe it. So obviously my elbows stay high, but my lower arm is absolutely higher than my elbow. And for me, it actually just, it creates a lot of freedom in the shoulders rather than forcing an elbow bend when one doesn’t want to be there. So for me, the finish of my stroke is really important and I like to feel as though I am really like intentionally ending the stroke out by my hip or like the top of my quad. And if I do that properly, it almost like flings my arm around. So then I just let it carry on. And it’s efficient for me. It works for me. And I’m not intentionally swimming with relatively straight arms,

but it’s just been an outcome of the pull that I’ve developed. Swimming out of water is something I actually still, I don’t wanna say struggle with because that makes it a thing, but it’s something that I’m definitely not comfortable with. And my speed just doesn’t translate or isn’t yet translating from pool swimming to open water. The primary focus has been increasing the cadence and recently the change in head position just to try and actually be able to kick my legs a little bit more because I default into like solid, steady swimming, but it’s basically I’m on pace for a half distance, which it’s not the end of the world, but it’s not ideal. Whereas if I’m able to feel like I can utilize my legs a little bit more by bringing my bum down, then hopefully that will have a positive impact and I’ll be able to translate pool to open water. I think the biggest lesson that I have come to realize that I learn as a youngster

because it’s difficult when you learn, when you learn to swim and you learn to race at such a young age, they become things that are just ingrained in who you are and how you act with water. It can be the smallest things that you don’t realize, like if you don’t have pointed feet, then you are literally anchoring yourself down to the bottom of the pool. And if you’re swimming with fingers together, that means that none of this is capturing any water because there’s too much tension. So all of those little things about how we can interact with water to ensure that we are able to utilize the limbs that should not be in water to the best effect has been quite revolutionary, I think, as an adult. If I could do more, I would. I live a fair drive away from a pool, so I like to swim four times a week. Four sessions a week, they’re all about 5K in length. Swimming is also really important for me in terms of the postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome regulation,

which I’ve been diagnosed with, so it helps keep my nervous system in theory a little bit more stable. And I like to have these 5K swims. The majority of it will be easy. And if I am swimming at speed, I’m not really searching for it. Like my favorite session to do is tempo threshold, like big chunks, like 400, 300, 200, 100, twice, where you get really uncomfortable really fast and you just kind of hang on for dear life, but you’re not ever hitting VO2. So I’ll have probably two solely aerobic swims a week, one that is pool focused and then one that is a session of intensity. So whether that is hard 50s or the kind of tempo threshold work, it’s just got a bit more of a focus to it. But actually the majority of my swimming is, it’s like aerobic, but leaning on easy. I think the biggest thing that I’m working through at the moment is, like, it’s not really a mistake, but I’m having these like, and it’s not anxiety attacks,

but I’m hyperventilating about three minutes into the swim and I’m having to stop and grab a paddleboard, which is weird and unusual because I have no anxiety around swimming, but I just calm my breathing and carry on. So these hour days are so long in the mid and long distance triathlon space that these mistakes feel so much less of a big deal than when your race is two minutes and everything has to be absolutely perfect and there’s no space for it, which for me has been a huge point of personal growth. Like I don’t have to be perfect anymore and actually if you just expect not to be perfect, then you’re probably gonna have a better day because you’re gonna stress way less about the stuff that’s going wrong. General advice I give out swimming is learn how to relax, properly relax in the water and understand what it’s like to do a somersault in the water and dive down to the bottom and swim underwater without moving, not doing front crawl,

just understand how to exist in water and then also find your balance points. So for me, my chest is a huge one, like you fill your lungs with air and it becomes the point at which that your body can move around with your head and your legs and I think it’s one of the reasons that I’m able to keep my legs so high is I know how to utilize this kind of center piece of my body and a lot of people don’t. Like if you fill your lungs with air, it’s gonna float, it’s like a life jacket. So hold the air there and also don’t rush your breathing. So you don’t have to breathe in and out while your head is out the water. You can breathe in while your mouth is out the water and then let the air out slowly as your head is under the water just to be ready to breathe again. So slow everything down, relax everything and the water will feel a lot less intimidating. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. If you’d like us to help you become

a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

it would probably come after the swim because I always had my why and I just knew I had to get there. I understood the support before I left but not to the extent once I finished and it was extraordinary. But I read two books, The Happiest Man on Earth with Jet Eddie Jakku and The Tattooers of Auschwitz, both Holocaust stories. I’m not a reader as a rule of thumb but I just can’t believe what they had gone through, what they were put through and I remember standing on the beach in Dover before the swim and thinking about that and I’m thinking I’m not forced to be here.

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. My guest today is Brendan Cullen, also known as the Desert Swimmer because recently, well, 2022 successfully completed the English Channel without coming from much of a swimming background and living a long way from the nearest pool, a long way from the nearest beach, but you’re still able to successfully swim the English Channel. So I want to dig into a bit of your story, how that came to be and then how you managed to successfully complete that swim because when I look at the English Channel, I think that seems incredibly hard. I don’t know if I could do it yet. Without much experience, you’re able to have a successful swim. So firstly, Brendan, welcome to the podcast. Yeah, good on you. Thanks very much, Brendan. Lovely to chat with you, mate. So tell me a bit about your background in swimming and where you live because I think

it’s not the swimmer’s capital, the swimming hub of Australia where you are at the moment. Yeah, look, I learned to swim very young and then I didn’t swim at all. So, you know, basically five or six years of age and then stopped swimming from that point until about 42. So and swimming has never been my sport. It’s always been running. But look, I live on a Shevan cattle station about 60 kilometres outside of Broken Hill and I’ve been managing properties for the best part of 20 years. And prior to that, I worked on my parents’ place. So I’ve been chasing sheep and cattle since I was 16 and I’m 52 now.

Back in 2015, I was watching my brother and water swim and travelled from Broken Hill to Sydney and I thought I’ve got to have a piece of that. And anyway, I decided to join up with the Broken Hill Aquatic Swim Club in town and that was the start of my swing journey. And I sort of haven’t held back since. So I got to, I finally, look, I went to the pool. I spoke to the coach and I said, any chance I can swim with you guys? He said, yep, no worries. And the oldest person there was about 15. I thought I was going into a master’s clinic and he said, jump in, have a swim. So I did and he said, mate, you need a lot of work. So and he was right. So and from that point on, I just started swimming. And for two reasons, it was good for my head space. And it was a little bit different than running, of course. And secondly, it just gave me the opportunity to catch up with, you know, friends and my brother and have that different conversation, you know, as opposed to talking about sheep and cows and

the weather and, you know, I like to bum the, the open water swimming community and the swimming community in general, such a special place to be.

And being so far from the coast, how did you develop those relationships with the open water swimming community? Yeah, it’s a good question, actually. I did a, I used to travel down to Melbourne a bit. My in-laws are down there and my, I went to the Brighton Bars, actually, and there was a English Channel Qualifier down there. And there was a brochure on the wall, an eight hour, a six hour and a two hour. It was about 87 kilos at the time. And I looked at it and I thought I might have a crack at that. And the fellow who was running the Qualifier was Mike, the tractor Gregory. And I just said to him, is there any chance I can come in and do the two hour? And he said, yeah, mate, no worries. And the water had to be 16 degrees and less. And I said, come down at 5.30 and have a swim. And I said, that’s in the dark, mate. He goes, yeah, so I’m swimming in the dark. So I rocked up about half past seven. And he said, oh, it’s good to see you here.

So I jumped in and I swam for a couple of hours and, and finished my two hours. And I was frozen to the core. And as I was getting out, Mike looked at, looked at me from above. And he said, oh, I’ll jump in with you for half an hour. And I knew his credentials and knew how good he was. And so he got another half an hour out of me. And I was even more frozen to the core. But that sort of started our relationship as a, as a coach as a friend. And my open water swimming really, I mean, that’s when it started to get serious. I find it so funny that you saw a brochure on the wall and thought, oh, that’s a good idea to spend a couple of hours in the cold without, yeah, just on a whim. That’s

weird, bloody weird, mate. But what a, what an interesting, I mean, guess what a, what a journey that’s taken you on from, from that point, because was that the point that then you decided or things came about where you decided, okay, the English Channel is something that I might actually target here. Yeah, well, fairly enough, probably not. It was just, I think, just that relationship with Mike Gregory just blossomed over the years. And that was sort of around about 2017, 18 somewhere in there. I’ll take a step back. 2015 I was diagnosed with depression. And I need to change my life prior to people before 2015, I probably would have said no to most things. But with the late temperature, what did it get down to in winter? Nine degrees. So yeah, that was cold enough.

You know, I remember doing a swim down in Victoria when it was cold and Mike looked at me and he said, mate, you got to put a bit of weight on. So I went from 87 kilos to 97, you know, before the channel swim and you know, to protect your organs and just look after yourself a bit. And funnily enough, I loved it, you know, putting on weight and you know, getting fat and fast at the same time. You know, it was, it was a thing for like normally, if you’re exercising, you’re trying to strip it down with open water swimming, certainly for the channel. It was important to put a few kilos on and I actually enjoyed that side of it. But also had a nice bath here I used to jump in and, you know, regularly get in there and sort of set at about five degrees and get in between 10 and 20 minutes, just depending on the time and what I could handle. And I know the channel was never going to be at five, but you know, you just make it that little bit tougher for yourself.

You know, 18 doesn’t feel so bad for a long period of time. That was my theory anyway. What’s the special diet to put on 10 kilos? Just eat whatever is in front of you, mate.

I actually hired a multi-sport nutrition lady up in Queensland. She was incredible because I think one of the things for me was my lack of knowledge around feeding and, you know, energy-based foods and that type of thing. So for me, that was super important. I just felt quite lost in that side of things. She was great. Christy Robson, her name is, and she just set a guide for me and I sort of followed it mostly. But yeah, I had a lot of ice cream, you know, double bowls of pasta, whatever I could get in my gullet. Because one of the things in my role as a pastoral sort of farmer is that, you know, you’re on your feet all day and you just don’t factor that into your, I suppose, your sporting life. And so, you know, not all days are, you know, physically difficult, but some days are and then you add that swimming component or running component on top of it and you’re burning up so many calories. So, yeah. But yeah,

eating for me, I mean, pretty healthily, just, you know, your normal veg and your meat and stuff like that and pasta. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that’s, I mean, but yeah, being out on the farm all day, you would just, you would need to be eating so much when you’re including the swimming as well. So, I mean, there’s such a thing as farmer’s strength. Do you feel like, I mean, I guess when you are living that, you probably don’t notice it as much, but do you feel like the physicality of what you do for work has helped with the swimming? There’s no doubt about that. Certainly a core strength. There’s, you know, just your lifting most of your life and just using your muscles most of your life. But I will say one thing, when I started swimming, I was activating muscles I’d never used before, you know, and, you know, there was certainly fatigue there. So, I suppose, I suppose I sort of go hand in glove once you start swimming

and you’re still working on the property. You do become reasonably strong, but definitely helps your core working on a farm. But yeah, I just remember, you know, through here, my lats, you know, through my chest, I was burning up big time when I first started. But, you know, naturally swimming built muscle through my chest and shoulders and my arms also. So, it felt good. It felt good. And you, when it came to the

swim itself, it was a three year build up towards the swim from the moment that you’d sort of decided to do it. Yeah. So, we started in 2019 and we were in the water 2022. It was close to go in 2021, but COVID got in the road and we decided to call it.

Look, it was probably a blessing in disguise for me because it gave me an extra 12 months to train. But all I could think of at the time was, jeez, I’ve got to get through another winter. No. And so, I’m glad that went, you know, went by. So, you know, by the time I got to England, you know, I think I was more than ready. But if you’ve never done this sort of thing before, you’re always wondering if you’re doing enough, certainly from my perspective. And, you know, Mike was setting me,

you know, a swimming plan for the week and, you know, what that looks like. And if I didn’t meet the kilometers I used to sort of think, jeez, that’s going to let me down. And he’d just say, mate, you’re doing enough, you’re doing enough. And then if I found a day where I could get into the water and he’d set me five Ks, I’d do eight just to make up for those lost kilometers. And probably more so to help me mentally as opposed to physically,

which is very important. I mean, you need to have your eye before you start something like this. And literally my eye was just, I’ve got to get across the other side. I want to see if I can nail this. And so it was always sitting there. So once you make that decision, then you have to fully commit. And yeah, through Mike’s tutoring and training and me just being the student, I gave him all of me. He had total control, both through the training process and during the swim. And it’s a matter of allowing those people to

you know, come into your life and give you some direction. And without fighting it, just they asked you to do something, go and do it. Anyway, that was my philosophy. And that that wife of you of just wanting to prove to yourself that, yeah, or challenge yourself that you could get to the other side, where does that come from for you? And is that something that you kind of see with other areas of your life? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I’ve always been stubborn and I’ve always ran and

I don’t know. There’s something about distance, natural endorphins through sport and never giving up. And I always said that if I had a crack at the channel, you would have to pull me out the water because I’m not going to get out voluntarily. Now, you know, through my work life, I’ve had quite a few challenges as you do in the rural industry with droughts and floods and muddy fires. And you know, there are good times, mind you, but you can go through some pretty ordinary experiences and you sort of bring that into your life. And I think that creates a steely result. But it can become an issue if you allow things to get on top of you. So which I did at one point, I’ve got a long rap sheet. And but I’m hard to stop if I if I put my mind to something, you know, and look failure is failure or if you don’t make it so be it. But for me, not giving something ago would chew at me. You know, it would sit with me. So

it’s a matter of just making the call and getting stuck into it and seeing where you end up. So my why was literally, right, I’ll see if I can get to the other side. It was really that simple. And let’s let’s go to the day itself. So it was quite a long day out with with some strong currents and and much longer distance than the physical distance itself. So take us through the English Channel swim. Yeah, it was quite extraordinary. I picked a team that was going to be there for me if I didn’t make it. Some good mates and Mike, my coach and my oldest daughter, my wife and my sister-in-law were back on the back in the harbor when we started the swim. Sea Leopard Charter were taking me across the channel and we basically come out to the harbor. We parked about 300-400 meters from the beach. I just did my goggles, jumped in, swam to the beach and got out onto the beach. And you have to be away from water before you

start and literally put my hand up and said, all right, I’m right to go and let’s go. And they blew the siren and started swimming. And it was quite rough, quite windy at the start. And I thought, shit, this is going to be long. It’s going to be a long journey. And

swam up to the port side of the boat and I was getting flogged up a bit. And after about an hour, hour and a half, I come around to the starboard site just away from the wind. And there was actually a couple of boats there at the time that actually turned around and went back to the harbor. I didn’t know that, of course. And so I was getting fed every half hour. And that was, I’d have goo, baby food, ginger tea with honey, flat coke. I mean, that’s just powerful stuff. That is stamina, gatterade, whatever I could get in my body that had a bunch of energy in it. But once again, I gave myself over completely to my team because they were the only ones that were going to get me across there. And I was in their capable hands. And in fact, I remember the captain cooking a feed of bacon and eggs on the boat. And he washed the bloody frying pan out in front of my nose so I could just smell, I could smell the bacon eggs in the water.

That’s just cruel. Anyway, swimming along, I got to about the eight hour mark, I think, I had to do an eight hour qualifier. I had a rough idea how long I’d been in the water, but I had no idea how far or how far France was away. And kept swimming. And I reckon about the 10-12 hour mark in there, I looked up and I could see France. And I just, I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. And I hear this voice from the boat, put your bloody head down and keep swimming. And I remember swimming for over 10 minutes. And I looked up again and put your F and head down, you know, because what, you know, one of the things is the landmass doesn’t get any closer, you know, you’re still a fair way away. Interestingly enough, also, as I rarely spoke, hardly spoke at all. And I was getting fed with a lanyard and a, you know, a bottle, about 300 mils of fluid and whatnot, each 30 minutes.

Anyway, sun was going down. And I was looking over my right shoulder and it was starting to disappear. So I changed from UV goggles into clear. That was a battle I must admit, you know, just floating in the water because I don’t float naturally and put the light on. And I started swimming next to the boat and I always imagined on these boats that they have these huge bull lights that had shined out and open up the side of the, you know, the ocean with a big light. Well, in this case, it wasn’t like that. And so you sort of feel when you’re swimming in the dark that you’re actually drifting out of the light a bit. And I remember a few times that the boat was getting away from me and I was thinking, oh, this doesn’t feel good. It just didn’t feel right. And about the, about three hours out, I started to get crook. I remember just remembering my nose filling up with mark and all the rest of it. And then

my groin started playing up. And, you know, there was a few things going on, but they were counting my strokes from the time I started to basically the time we got towards the end. And my stroke rate didn’t change from the time I started right through. It wasn’t effective, though. It wasn’t. There’s no way to be effective. I remember my coach saying to me, you know, push, push, you’ve got to push. And he always said to me, yeah, there’ll be a stage in the swim where you really need to dig deep. So I did, and I did that for about an hour, hour and a half. I was probably swimming at about 65%. And then I upped it to about 75 at a guess. And I thought, I can’t sustain this. And I knew in myself that I was blowing up. And anyway, I got caught in what they call the Channel Swimmers’ Graveyard. The Channel Swimmers’ Graveyard is, you know, basically you get close to France and you’re trying to swim towards the nearest

point, Cap Grinne. And you get caught up in these rips and then they, they spear back out up towards Belgium somewhere. I had no idea what was going on, but they saw one of the buoys in the water just slapping up and down. They actually thought it was a shark. And it was just the, the size of the rip that was going through. Anyway, unbeknownst to me, I just kept poking along.

And I remember, I remember looking at Mike and I’m thinking, they’re doing a lot of rummaging around. I’m a Collingwood supporter and Mike’s a Carlton Football Club supporter. He’s rummaging around. And next thing I look at him and he’s got this, got this Carlton Football Club jersey on. And so I’ve looked at it and I’ve given him the bird from the water and they, they wanted a reaction out of me because I basically never spiked. So Mike just said, yeah, you know, he’s going all right. And anyway, getting towards the end of the swim and once again, I had no idea where I was at. He called last feed. And he’d always said to me, he said, you know, when you hear last feed, that’s the last feed before he hit France. And there’s footage of me looking at him because I had blue tack in my ears. I couldn’t quite hear what he said. And I was looking at him and I thought, this is the last feed. It was a surreal feeling. And I was pretty busted up at that point.

Mike stripped off and jumped in the water with me. Part of the CSA rules are, is that you can jump in with a swimmer, but you can’t swim next to him or in front of him. You’ve got to sit behind him. And he was swimming behind me and Sea Leopard was shining the light towards France that was on. And I swam for about 20 minutes to half an hour once he called that last feed. And I started to need like another feed. And so I had no idea what was going on because pitch black. And I said to Mike, I’ve got to go in for a feed, mate. And he said, keep swimming towards the light. I said, no, mate, I need a feed. And he said, just keep swimming, mate. And right, I, no worries. So I just kept swimming and

and then this amazing thing happened to me. My left fingers scraped through the sands of France. And I got the biggest shock in the world because I wasn’t ready or prepared for that. I didn’t know what that was going to be like or whether I’d actually make it. And then he yelled out to me, mate, stand up, stand up and get out. And I thought, standing up is going to be interesting. Anyway, I stood up and literally walked out and got clear of the water, put my hand up and I blew the siren at 3am in the morning. And 17 hours exactly and covered a distance of 64 kilometres. Yeah. And we embraced and it was a surreal experience. It was amazing. And then I just had this brain thought. I thought, I’ve got to go and get some pebbles for my kids. So I started rummaging around on the sands of France looking for bloody pebbles. The things you do after 17 hours in cold water, and Mike said, you’ve lost the plot, mate. He’s chasing me around for five minutes.

And he got me back onto the boat eventually and got back on the sea leper charter. And then they basically stripped me down, put some warm clothes on, tucked me into a bean bag. And I woke up at 6am in the morning back in Tobarba. It was just a hell of an experience. Three years of training and managed to make it was extraordinary. They say that it’s about the journey, not the destination, but was there any particular moment within that build up or in that swim where you look back and it’s the most,

the thing that you appreciate the most about that whole experience for you? It would probably come after the swim because I always had my way and I just knew I had to get there. I understood the support before I left, but not to the extent once I’ve finished. And it was extraordinary. But I read two books, The Happiest Man on Earth, with Jet Eddie Chacoux and The Tattooers of Auschwitz, both Holocaust stories. I’m not a reader as a rule of thumb, but I just can’t believe what they had gone through, what they were put through. And I remember standing on the beach in Dover before the swim and thinking about that. And I’m thinking I’m not forced to be here. I’ve chose to be here. And then I also thought about some of the big days that I’ve had or weeks that I’ve had working in some pretty trying conditions. And I just thought to myself, let’s just go to work. It’s only going to be a few hours. Let’s just go to work. So that’s what was rattling around

in my head. And really that, they were the stories I kept telling myself.

I was told that counting might be good for you, count from 100 and then 100 back to one. I tried that and I failed dismally at that. I can’t do this. So yeah, but once the swim was over, I couldn’t believe the support and around that. And I found it really hard to understand all that for quite a while. But I do understand now where I live, where I come from, what I’d achieve. But it was a really good new story coming out of COVID. And let’s face it, COVID was horrible for most people. So people clung onto that, especially our local crowd out of Broken Hill and beyond to be truthful. So yeah, huge amount of support. And you haven’t just stopped swimming from that point. You recently successfully swam the Catalina channel as well. So it’s not something that you were just sort of one and done with. What’s open water swimming given you? And what have you learned about yourself and just about, I guess, maybe about life with open water swimming?

Yeah, one thing, I mean, you know, our bodies are bloody powerful, aren’t they? I mean, incredibly powerful. But our brains, like, they’re so much more powerful than our bodies. I mean, we can, I learned a lot about myself on that swim. I learned that I had a lot more in me than I actually thought I’d ever have. So to know where your limitations are would be very difficult because you can push yourself to extraordinarily, extraordinarily, extraordinarily, you can just push yourself. And so I still don’t know what that looks like, knowing what I achieved. But the open water swimming community is is massive for me and the swimming community, because, you know, I talk a conversation around farming, whatever it may look like, you know, daily to friends and neighbors and whatnot. And for me to be able to shift that conversation over to open water swimming and talking open water swimming, talking swimming in general, it’s a different conversation. So

and it’s such a positive conversation. I just don’t know anyone in the swimming community that’s a negative individual. It is such an extraordinary place to be and live. And look, I it’s something that has to be part of my life now, but also the eating component, Brenton. I mean, after a big swim, mate, you can just, well, after a workout, you can sit down with your mates, have a coffee, have a food, you know, have a good chat about your life and then go back to work. And that’s a big gift you can give yourself. I love the community full style. Yeah, something I can relate to with the food afterwards. And then also, like, you know, we don’t normally go out for breakfast after, but it’s like just chatting in the showers after training. It’s like 10 minutes and you’ve done your workout. You’ve had sort of a good social session with some friends. And you’ve got those natural endorphins as well, just from the swim.

So it’s such a, yeah, I found when I couldn’t swim for a couple of weeks or a few months through COVID, like I really missed it. I really felt like something was missing from my life. And it’s just, I think once you really get hooked, it’s hard to, it’s hard to go a week without swimming, if not a couple of days at a time. Yeah, I agree. And such a good challenge you can set yourself. I mean, it’s can become personal and you can set yourself these little goals, whether you swim 100 meters or, you know, you want to swim 10 Ks, you know, and I think the Strava and Bloody Garmin have got a lot to answer for in regards to that. But it’s really healthy for you. And the other thing I like about swimming is it’s all shapes and sizes, you know, no matter what you look like, just get in there and get a pair of bathers on and go for it. And there’s no judgment. You just get in the pool and have fun. And I think

that’s pretty cool because let’s face it, your bloody stripping down into your jocks, aren’t you?

Call them bathers, but you know, you can call them whatever, but you’re really exposing yourself. And some people feel uncomfortable, but they put their bathers on and they’re empowered. They get in the water and they just do their thing and become really comfortable in that, in that space. I think that’s a wonderful thing. And just recently, a couple of weeks ago, actually, so you just had a book released. Tell me how that, how that came about, because it’s, I’m sure you would have thought a couple of years ago, like there’s a book, like you releasing a book, like that’s not a thing that’s going to happen. So tell me how that all came about. It’s called The Desert Swimmer. And I was lucky enough to be chosen by Rebel Sport in 2024 for an ad called Sport is Calling. And it really encapsulated my swim life in a minute and a half. And the producer of

that ad then introduced me to a bloke called Paul Mitchell, the ghost writer of the book. And I, you know, I’ve always thought, you know, how do you write about yourself? I mean, I couldn’t do it. And I needed someone else to find a narrative. And Paul was very good at that. And so we made the choice to have a crack at it and put a book proposal into some publishers. And lucky enough to, for Alan, I’m willing to come on board and they’ve published the book. And, and the way the book is written is as I step into the water in Dover and start swimming towards France, I actually take you back to the age of seven of my life. And the chapters bounce from my swim back to my life and swim back to my life. And I’ll take you through not only my swim journey, but I take you through my life, boarding, living on sheep and cattle stations, talk about my family and what it’s like to live through droughts. And just there’s a whole

lot of subject matter in that book. But, you know, swimming is probably the instigator that got me the opportunity to be able to author this book. You know, Brent and I wasn’t the best student at school, mate. And here I am. I’ve got this bloody book in my hands. And I really can’t believe that it exists. But it took me a week and a half. I had the book sent to me and it took me a week and a half to open it up and look into it. I needed my family around me because I was excited, but I wanted to share it with them. And I’ve got adult children. I’ve got 25-year-old and two 20-year-olds, twins. And I just wanted them to be with me. And most of them were. And it was just a surreal feeling to be able to author a book. I still shake my head and think, my God, this is out there. If only your teachers could know about this. Absolutely, mate. Absolutely.

Well, we’ll put all the links in the description for this podcast. Or if you’re watching on YouTube, we’ll put them in the description there. So you can grab a copy of Brennan’s book.

Yeah, mate. I appreciate you jumping on the podcast. It’s great to hear about, I’ve been involved in swimming since I was quite young, but really in the last 20 years doing a lot in terms of the coaching and then more so with the open water swimming community. And it’s something that I had no idea about as a junior because I was all about pool competition. But it’s something that I’ve really fallen in love with, is racing in the open water and just enjoying longer distance swims. And it’s really drawn me away from the pool than I used to have as a kid. So I can certainly see the appeal. And I think there’s such a good community around it. So I appreciate you jumping on the podcast, sharing just a small part of your story. And there’s a lot more there that will be in the book. So Brennan, I appreciate you being on the podcast. And yeah, all the best with the future swims that you’ve got coming up too. Beautiful. Thanks very much, Brennan.

And look, you do a wonderful job with your podcast and teaching us all how to swim from afar. I mean, I watch what you do and it’s extraordinary. But also, just if I can add that, but you’re one of the rare species that don’t drop off at the age of 15 and keep swimming through your life. And I think that’s extraordinary. And a lot of people swim because it’s hard work when you’re young. And you can see why people drop out, but then they come back in and they find their love for the sport. So it’s been awesome to chat, mate. I’ve really, really enjoyed it. Yeah, likewise. And I don’t think I appreciate having stuck around in swimming. I just think, how could you not keep swimming? It’s just such a fun thing to do. But my dad was my coach. And I think a big part of that was with my parents that they never forced me to swim. It’s just something that we did. And it was never like, that wasn’t good enough, never questioning results or effort or anything like that. And so

I’m trying to do that with my kids, where it’s just enjoy watching them being in the water and then they can do what they choose to do with it. And yeah, and I think that’s what makes people want to stick around when there’s no judgment or criticism around them as a sports person in their teenage years. So yeah, so I’m trying to bring that to my kids, but then also some of the kids that we have come to clinics and things like that too, because it’s not about how good they are at 16 or 12 or whatever it is. It’s like, well, if they continue swimming, when they’re in their 20s and 30s and 40s and onwards, to me, that is success as a swimmer, because it offers so much more later on in life, which we can see in your story. Yeah, yeah, I agree with you, mate. Absolutely. Thanks. Thanks, Brendan. Great to have you on. All right, mate. Well, all the best. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming podcast.

If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

One thing that’s really common among swimmers who are quite new is that they tend to start to flat when they’re swimming. So the hips and their shoulders are very flat and they end up spinning the wheels and a lot of effort has to go into their arms and their legs and nothing really works together. Then what happens next is we often see people get taught to rotate, but it’s really common to see people over rotate and over rotating is just as bad as staying too flat. And so in this video, I’m going to share with you how much you should rotate and how to know if you’re doing too much or too little. And when you make this change, you’ll likely find that other aspects of your stroke will improve a lot, especially your catch and pull. So recently I was working with a swimmer who had been taught that you should rotate your hips and your shoulders to 90 degrees because the longer you are, the more you are on your side, the longer your strokes will be and

the easier it will be. But the problem with that is, if you rotate all the way onto your side with your hips and shoulders, you’re likely going to lose balance and stability in the water. And what happens when you lose balance? The first thing that tends to go is your legs. They will splay out behind you like a big parachute opening up. And that’s going to cause you to slow down. The second thing that we often see happening there is that if you over rotate through the shoulders, it’s really difficult to keep the arm out in front, especially if you’re quite tight through the shoulders. And so what happens there is that the arm will just drop straight down, it will push down on the water and you’re unlikely to get much of a catch and a pull. And so you’re not going to get much propulsion from your stroke. And so those two things will slow you down and make it hard to get much faster. So with this summer, we

saw that her hips were going to about 60 or 70 degrees on the side. And she was really twisting through there. And we saw with her catch and pull that she wasn’t bending the elbow and pointing the fingers down to set up a nice catch position. She was going down very deep and very straight. And she said to me, I feel like I’ve got no power in my stroke. And it was really obvious why that was once we had a look at the footage. So what we had to initially do was make those hips be a bit more stable. Now you might see videos of coaches talking about keep the hips completely flat and let the shoulders rotate. That’s what you’ll find more with sprinters, 50 meter sprinters, some 100 meter sprinters, where the hips are quite stable, they’ll rock a bit, but not a whole lot. Most of the people that I work with are middle to long distance swimmers, especially triathletes and open water swimmers and general adult swimmers who are going longer than 50 meters fast. So what we

tend to want to do there is rotate the hips, but make them go 30 to 40 degrees on the side. To me, that’s like the engine room of the stroke. If you can have your hips just rocking gently side to side while keeping them in control, then you can start to rotate the right amount of pressure through your shoulders and get into a nice catch position. Now, if you feel, particularly when you breathe, that your hips start to fall apart, start to collapse, and particularly on this lower part of the body, like your lower back arches and your hips drop down, then you’ve probably over rotated. And it’s very common on that breathing stroke because we have to turn to breathe. And that’s where we see most people over rotate. So the important thing there is when you at least take a breath through this bottom part of your hip, almost like your hip flexor there and your lower core, we want to feel like that’s being held up near the

surface. So you’ll be on your side slightly, but from that lower part of the body, the hip flexor, the core, we want to feel like that’s being held up. And so we’re keeping that switched on or engaged. That way you’ll maintain your stability. And that’s what’s going to allow you to get a nice catch, especially on those breathing strokes. And so for her, when she made this change, from rolling side to side and tipping. And then she went to being more stable. One of the things she really started to feel was, oh, my, my lats and my, my back shoulders, they’re starting to work a little bit more. Whereas before it was all through the front of the shoulder. And that is not where you want to be when you’re going through your catching the pull. Because these are not the bigger, stronger muscles that we want to use. It’s more through the lats, around the back, through the shoulders, a bit through the chest as well, through the pec. It’s

more the lats that we want to be using through this part of the stroke. So she really started to feel that. And so what tends to happen there is people will make a change. They go, oh, that’s a little bit harder. That’s a little bit different. And then they go back to what they were doing before. But it’s going to take her three, four, five weeks to build up that strength in those different muscles to be able to hold that change in the stroke that will ultimately be faster. But it doesn’t necessarily feel like that straight away. Now, the other thing we had to do, because she was very deep and straight, she was just used to, she was in this habit of going down deep and straight with the arm. So the way it felt when she was doing it right was that she was very wide with the elbows. Because in our catch here, in order to get a high elbow catch, which is basically where we’ve got the fingers pointing down, hand and forearm facing

back, in order to get there, the only way you can do it is with this elbow out wide. You cannot get a high elbow catch if this elbow is narrow. You just can’t do it. It’s going to put you in a dropped elbow position. So she had to go, elbow would feel very wide in her catch. And the second thing, she just had to feel really shallow with the arms. It felt like she was here when in reality she was in the right depth. But it felt super shallow because it wasn’t what she was used to. And that’s one of the things I’ve learned after coaching thousands and thousands of different people, is that you often have to exaggerate any changes that you want to make in the stroke, to the point where it just feels like you are over doing it. And if you’re not sure if you are doing the right amount, get some footage taken, even with a camera on your phone, get someone to film you, and just get some idea of am I in the right position or not. And if you need help

with that, we work with people in our courses and coaching program to help them improve their swimming. And that’s where you see people improve 10, 15, sometimes 20 seconds per 100 over the course of a couple of months, as they start to refine the right aspects of their stroke. So you can find that in the description below. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. You know your catch in freestyle is important, which is this part of the stroke here, but you’re just not sure why you can’t seem to get any faster even though you feel like you’ve improved your catch. In this video, I’m going to share why that can happen and what you can do to make sure that you actually get the benefit from a better catch position in your freestyle. Recently I was working with a swimmer who had been working on his catch and he’d sent us some underwater footage which we took a look at and we saw that his catch position, which is this part of the stroke. So we begin up here and we get down to here. This is what we would call the catch in freestyle and that’s the position where we had set up really well to press back and start to generate a lot of our propulsion.

And we saw that he had almost a perfect position for his stroke, except he hadn’t really gotten any faster despite improving that position and he wasn’t sure exactly why that was. When we looked back at his footage, we saw that he was actually going too quickly into that catch position. So once he entered the water, instead of extending forwards and then rotating a little bit and then getting into his catch, he would come in and straight away begin the catch and bend his elbow. And so while the position was better and he had more surface area, so he had a bigger paddle that he could press back with, he wasn’t getting the benefit from it because it was out of sync and out of time with the rest of his body and his rotation. And so he wasn’t able to connect up this great position through his shoulder, through his body and with his rotation. And so what we had to work on to get him to increase his speed from that

improvement in technique was we had to get him to slow down a little bit in order to go faster. Now, where he had to slow down was once he entered, I wanted him to think about sliding that hand forwards out in front of the shoulder and allowing from the hips all the way through his torso and his shoulder, allowing that to extend forwards and feel like he’s sending that forwards a little bit before he began his catch and before he began pointing his fingers down. And while that would slow his stroke rate down a little bit and he would feel like he wasn’t trying as hard or working as hard, the benefits that was firstly out in front here is when you are the most streamlined. And so that allowed him to get some free speed from that movement. Whereas if you don’t extend out and you’re not that streamlined for very long and you just go straight into the catch, you begin to create a lot more drag quicker than what you otherwise should.

And then the other part of that, too, was when he took that little bit more time to extend forwards, then it’s easier to actually get into that catch position, too. So it didn’t feel as forced for him and it just becomes much more natural because everything is in time and in sync together. And so essentially once he slowed himself down and he didn’t stop and glide forever, he just took that little bit more time to extend forwards. Once he did that, as he went through his catch and through his pull, it actually felt a lot easier. And he felt that as he was going through this part of the stroke, it tied in really well with the rotation of his body through his shoulders, through his hips, as he went back onto the other side. And then he felt like he was skating from one side to the next. And the reason I use the term effortless swimming, the reason I came up with that is obviously you’ve got to put in the work.

You’ve got to work hard when you’re training, when you’re racing. It’s not just all about going super easy. But when your swimming feels really good and things are timed well and they’re in sync, it feels almost effortless. It feels like you are floating. And that’s the change that this swimmer was able to make. It was able to feel easy and he was able to get that improvement in speed. And that is why it’s important to make sure that we don’t focus on just one aspect of the stroke if other things are not quite in place yet. There’s an order to how you need to work on things. And he had just missed out on that timing piece of the puzzle when it came to his stroke. So if you need help with your own stroke, if you’re working towards an event, we work with people in our coaching and courses program all the time from all over the world to help them become better swimmers. And you can see the link in the description.

Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. If you feel like you would need to work so much harder to get faster in your swimming, you might be taking the wrong approach. If you’re at a 145 or 150 in your 100 freestyle, and you look at swimming a 130, you might currently think of that as well, I just need to get so much fitter and stronger, and I need to try so much harder to get there. That might be the case if you’re not that fit at the moment. But if you’re swimming three times a week, and you’re putting in the work and you’re generally fit and strong enough, then it might not be that you need to get fitter to get faster. What we often find is that people who improve technically in their stroke, they can then really make bigger gains in their stroke with their same

current level of fitness. And we had a swimmer recently who we’re working with in our coaching program, who last year in a race, he got fourth in a five kilometre swim. And he looked at getting faster. How do I do it? How could I possibly get first next year? And he’d been sending in a couple of videos, and there was two key things that he had worked on based on what we had identified in his stroke. The first one was that he had a real tendency to cross over his centreline. Now, when we think about entering and extending forwards, we want to think about swimming on train tracks. Imagining like when you enter the water, we want to extend forwards in front of the shoulder. And then we begin our catch. What we don’t want to do is cross the centreline too much, and then have to make our way back out. Not only because it’s going to cause you to zigzag or snake through the water, but it can really impact your

catch, and it can increase the drag quite a bit. So we worked on reducing that crossover. We worked on him swimming on the train tracks. But the other factor there was he was partly doing that because his timing was out. He was rushing and forcing the catch. So what that meant was once he entered the water, he would extend out and then immediately go into his catch. And he wasn’t patient enough out the front. And so he was beginning his catch early. And so that meant there was a point in his stroke where there was nothing in front of his head. There was no arm in front of his head. And when we’re swimming freestyle, unless you’re sprinting, we typically want to be front quadrant, which just means we’ve always got an arm or a hand in front of our head at all times throughout the stroke. And so when he was pulling through, he had nothing in front of his head. So he was twisting over here, and then his arm would

cross over. So he worked on those two things, which was, I imagine, like he’s swimming on train trucks and taking that a little bit more time to extend out and not forcing the catch. Because it’s one of the most overpowered parts of the stroke is a forceful catch. He’s going too hard through that part of the stroke. Now, what he found was that when he worked on those things, he felt like he wasn’t trying as hard. But the thing was the next time he went back to that race, he ended up winning that same event. And part of the reason why it felt easier and that he won was because his timing was so much better. So that he was actually able to get a lot more out of his catch and his pull because those things were in sync and that meant everything could work together. So if you are thinking it’s got to be so hard to go from two minutes down to 130, it might take you some time, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll have to get way,

way fitter than you currently are or put in five times of work to get there. Quite often it’s improvements in technique and timing. And it’s about being less rushed or less forceful with different aspects of your stroke. And so if you need help with this, we work with people in our coaching and courses program, which you’ll find a link in the description below. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer, and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. If you’ve been swimming for six months or more, but you still run out of breath after 50 meters, this video is for you. I was recently running a clinic where we had a swimmer who’d been swimming for nine months. And she was running out of breath before she got to 50 meters. She’d have to stop halfway down the lap, get her breath back and go again. And it’s not because she was unfit. It’s not because technically she was doing things really, really poorly. It was actually down to one thing that she got taught but didn’t quite understand the nuance of it. So when I was asking this swimmer about what she does with her breathing and what she had been taught in the past, she had learned that it was important to hum when you exhale in the water. So

straight away once you take your breath, bring your face back in the water and start to hum and exhale immediately. Now this is not necessarily bad advice for a lot of swimmers, especially if they are beginners, except what was happening was she would take her breath, bring her face back in the water and start exhaling straight away and exhaling a lot. So by the time it came to get her next breath, she was already out of air. And so that meant two things. The first thing was that she was exhaling and not able to use the air that was in her lungs. So she was kind of deprived of oxygen. And secondly, she was sinking a bit because she didn’t have that air in her lungs for very long. Because most of your buoyancy will come from the air that is in your lungs. So they were the key things that was causing her to run out of air. So once I taught her that instead of exhaling immediately, I want you to hold on to your air but

allow a little bit of an exhale to come from your nose or your mouth. But the bigger exhale comes as you turn your head to get the next breath, then she was able to swim more than 50 metres without stopping. And she was much more comfortable swimming every single lap. And we ended up doing about two kilometres in that clinic. And she was very comfortable throughout it. Now there was one other thing that was causing her to use way more energy than she had to. And that was how she was kicking and how she was holding her body. So quite often we have new customers, they get into the water and they feel like they’ve got to kick very hard to keep their hips up and their legs up. And that causes them to panic and feel like the water is making them sink or that their body is just built to sink. But the thing is if you learn to hold your body correctly and you’ve learned how to balance yourself in the water, then you don’t

need to put any effort into staying horizontal and float. And the effort can go into moving forwards. So what we ended up doing was we saw her kick was bending a lot at the hips and a lot at the knees. And so that was creating a lot of drag and causing her to use a lot of effort within her kick, which is not where we want to put most of our effort. And so instead what we thought about was think of the top part of your legs, your thigh bones, as moving slightly back and slightly forward over the hip. Just a very small movement. More for balance and stability as opposed to propulsion and keeping your legs up. So that was the first thing we did. The second thing that we did was we taught her how to hold her body and hold her posture. And so we want to think about getting the head away from the toes so we’re long through the body. And it’s like we’re this soldier standing to attention and that way we’re long and tall. Now in that position

with that narrow kick, if you’ve got a little bit of air in your lungs, you can float pretty close to being horizontal. If you are extending your arms in front, face down and you bring your legs up behind you. So we can float in that position. Now you might have heavier legs, you might have high bone density, so you might not float as well as the next person. But the thing is everyone can hold a decent position when they’re like that. And so what I find is that when people understand that they can generally float quite well if they learn those few things, then they tend to relax more. And that keeps their heart rate down and then they can put a little bit more effort into going forwards instead of staying afloat. So if you are struggling to swim more than 50 meters or you find that you are starting to tire much quicker than you should based on your fitness levels, then it might be that the way you’re breathing or your posture is the

thing that is causing that to happen. And if you need help with that, in our coaching program, we have swimmers from all over the world who send in their videos because we send you an underwater camera with your coaching program membership and that way you can film yourself. We’ll give you feedback and we’ll let you know exactly what to focus on next to get to that next stage in your swimming. Whether you’re at two minutes 15, whether you’re at one minute 30, we’ll give you the next thing to focus on so that you can see that gradual and steady progression and improvement within your stroke. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlessswimming.com.

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

What does it take to swim 55 seconds per 100 meters? Not just once, but four times in a row without stopping. Sam Short is one of only six swimmers in history to ever break three minutes 41 seconds for the 400 freestyle in a long course pool. And to the average swimmer, that speed feels impossible. So what does he do that 99.99% of others don’t? How is he this fast? I’ve spent my career analyzing the best in the world. But watching Sam swim up close is a different experience. I’ve never seen anyone hold as much water as he does. Even at world record pace, there’s this level of relaxation in his recovery and fluid reach into the catch that defies the intensity of his speed. And Sam told me he’s consistently hitting up to 80 kilometers a week. But despite massive volume and raw power in his stroke, his focus often comes down to the basics like rock solid head position. If you’re a triathlete or open water swimmer, Sam’s power stroke

isn’t just impressive to watch. It’s a blueprint for efficiency. And today we’re breaking down the sets, the technique and the mindset changes regarding recovery that took him to the top of the world. My name is Samuel Shaw, train and swim in Brisbane, Commonwealth champion, world champion, multiple time world championship medalist and an Olympian. How do you describe your stroke when you race? I’d say powerful stroke. I do have a tendency to like lope and I’ve kind of morphed that into like my optimal stroke for me, not as tall as I’m like competitors. So I kind of try and use my long arms for my my heart to my advantage and you know, kind of creates a lope. So and is that something that you’ve always swum that way or you it’s developed over time? Yeah, I’ve grown up swimming in the surf all since I was a baby up till now. And I think I was kind of influenced that a little bit and swum into it and then just developed into me right now and some of my

fastest times on it. In terms of mobility and flexibility, how do you rate yourself in terms of that? I say shoulder mobility and health is relatively really good right now. My very good shoulder range. If you’re talking hips and all that sort of stuff, I can definitely have some help on that. I always get tight hips and all that sort of stuff. But for a swimmer and a distance from that, I’d say my range is pretty good for shoulders. What does swimming feel like for you when you’re swimming well? What do you notice between when you’re swimming well and when you’re not? When you’re swimming well for me, I feel really light, just weightless almost and you can feel yourself propelling through the water. You feel strong and you can feel like you can just keep building through those races. And if someone takes off or you need to chase them, you have the capability to do that. What about any particular parts of your

stroke you’re working on at the moment? Consistent kick. Sometimes if I’m lazy, I have a tendency to like kind of miss it, miss a kick here and there. And that’s just gonna waste its space and not as optimal. So consistent six bit kick for me. And how does it change between a 400 free and a 10 K open water swim? Honestly, probably the legs and obviously the stroke rate as well, but you’re not going to be belting your legs as hard in a 1500 as you would be in a 400. Your legs don’t need to be really fit regardless. But I think your legs, definitely if you’re for 1500 will fatigue very quickly if you’re just belting them. Are you doing a lot of kicking sets to develop it? Yeah, I’ve improved my kick a lot over the last couple of years. I used to be horrible. Actually, when I won the Commonwealth Games when I was 18, I could barely kick sub two minutes. And now I’m like, I can kick some 130 like on repeat probably. So it’s a

lot better. And I definitely far from the best. Is there any cues or phrases that you think of when you’re swimming or you’re racing that you tend to go to? I’m a stroke rate based kind of swimmer. So I know all my stroke rates for my races. And so pretty much just tempo. I just keep trying to repeat the word tempo on my head. Sometimes I have a song with the tempo I like that I just like to try and hit those stroke rates with. What are your stroke rates for the different events? Like 400. When I swim my best, I’m like 42 43. So pretty high for 400 800 free. When I saw my best like 39 40. And then 1500. When I saw my best, the first thousand was like 38. And then towards the end, I was like 36. But you know, probably 36 or 38 range. And what about in terms of head and body position? Are you thinking about that on a constant basis? Or what do you like to think of there? If I’m really tired, I do tend to move my head a lot. And you know, that

creates drag. So keep my head low is a good cue I like to use. So sometimes the break out in the turns I do tend to be lazy and lift my head and that creates drag and it’s slower. So definitely keep my head low. Is that something you’ve seen in in races before from field like analysis footage? So like if you look at my 20 25 400 freestyle, I came second by point oh two and like the last turn I come up and just take a massive breath. And there’s you know, that’s just you could you think what what could have been. So you know, definitely try and keep that head low. What do you still when you have your body position is not where it should be? Well, I feel like you almost something like that like your legs could feel like they’re dragging along along the bottom of the floor. If your head’s too high like that’ll affect your hips and your legs. So it’s all that hip set for me to be honest. If I’m in a good body position and I feel nice and high in

the water and my legs are kind of just like on the surface kicking well. The feeling of heavy legs pretty much. So are they some of the things that you feel like you’re not sitting high in the water? What things would you play around with to try and improve it for the session? A lot of drill work I’d say like I always do drill work it’s out of my sessions to warm up like I love the long dog drill six kick switch. Start to kind of keep my legs active and also a lot of scale I love getting the feel for the water with the scaling that sort of stuff I do kind of helps me have the good feel for the water and that kind of creates good body position. What about breathing? So what’s your typical breathing pattern in a race and then training? Definitely in a race I breathe every two maybe for like the last 10 meters I’ll try and put my head down and just really rip that strike right towards the end but every two and then in

training up every two as well except I try to mix it up so maybe a 50 here and there I’ll breathe to the opposite side just to kind of even out the shoulders here and there but when I really want to try and swim fast all the session gets hard just to the one side my right. What about rotation? So with that more loping stroke do you feel that more uneven rotation and is it something that you’re conscious of or you’re actively trying to pick up? Yeah I definitely try to be not seesawing all over the place like if the legs are on I can kind of be a bit more flat and there will be a tendency for me to have a little bit more rotation just because of my stroke but obviously you don’t want too much because that’s there’s a kind of a sweet spot. What about open water how do you change your stroke for it when it does get a bit choppy in the open water? Yeah I’m pretty lucky that I already do kind of have that little loping stroke so it’s not too hard

but definitely the open water changes it got really choppy and like the waves is hitting me so I feel like it’s just kind of not trying to fight the water almost like you know I relax them is often a fast summer and just kind of using it and not trying to just bash away through it and just kind of not move more water than you need to I’d say. But what about favorite sets any particular sets that you’re doing a regular basis that you quite enjoy? Before Worlds we did this really cool set it was like four twos which are all 400 pace and then like four ones all 400 pace eight fifties fast and 400 pace like no recovery just all in a row and that was pretty good I think the four 200 is wrong maybe four minutes so a lot of rest I think best time I did I was like 150, 150, 151 and 151 off a push and then the hundred fifty fours and fifty threes and then into the fifties like 26 lows maybe finish them a 25 and after that I was like I’m ready to

go so stuff like that it’s very hard and you’ve got that constant vomit feeling but it’s you know look back at it saying that was pretty hectic. What about the hardest set you’ve done? We’ve done a 3000, 2000, 1000 like descend all the way through that’s that’s pretty hard a lot very mentally as well if you start too hard you’re gonna gonna hurt but then also one time we did a 800 free best time four twos on 230 400 best time you could possibly do four twos on 230 200 best time you can do four twos on 230 100 best you could do then four twos that was really hard. What about training wise how much distance would you typically do a week? At the moment this time of the season between I probably don’t have 70k to be honest nothing too crazy compared to some of my competitors overseas that are doing hectic stuff but I mean I kind of can come down to the 200 as well if I want to so need a bit of speed and then maybe when

more quality work comes in probably around the 60-60 something mark. How long did you typically take before leading into a main event? Me I’m probably shorter than most wouldn’t even really think about table till two weeks before off maybe start dropping it down obviously the sets will kind of get a bit more refined into like more quality work less bash yourself but yeah two weeks and then the weekend I’ll probably start to drop it down pretty quickly. How many sessions a week in the pool are you doing and what about gym? I swim I’m doing nine main ones with the squad and then I swim on Sunday by myself just to try and keep the feel for the water for Monday that’s only like a two and a half case swim and then gym I’ll do two lifting days so Tuesday Thursday and then Saturday I’ll try and get some mobility in and roll out stretch just because I’m pretty knackered by the end of the week. What about things that you’ve

maybe picked up or learnt over the years that you wish you’d known when you were younger? Yeah definitely something I know now that I wish I knew like 2024 Olympics is you don’t if you’re injured you know getting shoulder injuries as a distance swimmer or a professional swimmer is inevitable most people have some sort of niggles here and there. I always used to think just had to bash my way through that or illness. Now I know like a lot of training is how good you recover so I’m a much more of a smarter athlete now and if something hurts you know like seek help professional advice like a lot sort of stuff so instead of just bashing through it and pretending like nothing’s wrong realize that it’s wrong and try and fix it and not be afraid to recover a bit more than you know I’d say I need. Thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast if you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

You consistently for six months, you’re showing up, you’re doing the sets, you’re putting in the work, but your times have not moved. You’re still sitting at 150 or two minutes per hundred, and you cannot figure out why. This is one of the most frustrating places to be as a swimmer or triathlete because you’re doing everything right, except you’re not getting faster. Today, I’m going to show you why this happens and what to do about it. So a few months ago, I got on a call with a guy named Michael. Michael’s 42, he joined our Effortless Swimming coaching membership, and he’d been swimming for about eight months. And he was swimming four times a week. And his coach was giving him workouts so he was fit, and he could hold a decent pace in the pool. But his times had not improved in six months. So when he joined so when he joined the Effortless Swimming coaching membership, he sent me a video and I asked me to tell him what

was wrong. So I watched the video a couple of times and his stroke looked overall pretty good. His body position was decent. His catch was okay. And his kick timing was fine. Nothing was terrible. And that was the problem. When nothing is terrible, but nothing is great, you end up with a stroke that looks fine, but doesn’t really go anywhere. And this is what I call the plateau of okay. You pass the beginner stage, you know how to swim, you can finish your workouts without stopping, but you are stuck. And here’s why. Most of us at this level are trying to fix everything at once. They watch a video about body rotation. So they work on that for a week. Then they see something about the catch. So they focus on that for a week. Then someone tells them their kick is wrong. So they start doing kick sets. Every week they’re chasing a different fix. And nothing sticks because they never spend enough time on the one thing that would

actually make them faster. So when I told Michael this, he said, yeah, it sounds like me. So I asked him one question. I said, if you could only work on one thing for the next four weeks, what would you what would give you the biggest improvement? And he said, I don’t know. That’s why I’m here. So I thought, fair enough. So I told him, your stroke rate is too slow. You’re gliding for too long at the front of your stroke, because someone told you to lengthen out. But you’re not actually moving forwards during that glide. You’re just waiting and sinking and slowing down. And when you finally begin your catch, your hand’s not really connecting with the water the water early enough. So you’re losing the first third of your stroke. And this means you’re working twice as hard to cover the same distance. So I told him, we’re going to fix that one thing just one. What I want you to do is with your hand when you finish reaching forwards, I

want you to begin the catch a bit sooner. So your hand connects with the water earlier in the pool. So you can actually use that front part of your stroke. And that was it. No work on body position, no kick drills, no breathing changes, just one thing for four weeks. And here’s what most people don’t understand about improving in swimming. You don’t get faster by fixing 10 things a little bit. You get faster by fixing one thing completely. So when you try and change everything at once, your brain just cannot process it. You end up swimming worse because you’re thinking about 12 different cues and your stroke falls apart. But when you focus on one change, your brain can actually integrate it. You can feel it, you can repeat it, and you can begin to make that automatic. And once it’s automatic, you can move to the next thing. That is how you build a fast stroke, one piece at a time in the right order. And most of us don’t realize that

the order of the corrections matter. If you fix your catch before you fix your kick, well, you might just be kicking harder to compensate for a week pool. If you’re hand, if you try to fix your hand entry before you fix your rotation, or you might just struggle to get that hand entry correct. The fastest way to improve is to fix the foundations of the fastest way to improve is to fix the foundations of the stroke first. And that often the foundations for most people will be head, body and legs. But then we work on the propulsive part of the stroke. But for most adults, as they think it means fixing the catch. Now your catch is responsible for a large part of your propulsion. And if your catch is weak, everything else you do ends up just moving the water around without going anywhere. But for a lot of people, they’ve got to work on body position, head position and rotation first. But that is why I wanted to start with this summer on his

propulsive phase, because he ticked those boxes. He was swimming, he was quite streamlined in his stroke. It was just that he was lacking propulsion because the timing of his catch was off. So this summer spent four weeks working on his catch timing. And every couple of sessions he would film himself, where he focused on getting that hand connecting a little earlier in the pool, rolling into the catch and not stopping and gliding and pausing for too long. He didn’t worry about anything else. And after two weeks, he sent me a video and he said, I think I’m getting it. And he was right. He was starting to grab the water a bit earlier and his stroke looked more connected and his effort looked a lot lower. And after four weeks, he tested his pace and he dropped eight seconds per hundred. Eight seconds from 152 to 144 per hundred, with the same fitness and training volume and same pool, but just that one change. So if you’ve been

training for months and your times haven’t moved, you probably don’t need to train harder. You might need to stop trying to fix everything and just focus on the one thing that will actually make you faster, the one thing that is the bottleneck in your stroke. For a lot of people, it can be the catch. For some people, it’s body position. For others, it’s kicking or breathing. But there’s always one thing, not 10 things. And once this is done completely, then you’ll find that your stroke will improve. So here’s what I want you to do. Film yourself. So here’s what I want you to do. Film yourself, watch it back and be honest about what you see. And then pick one thing that’s costing you the most speed. Not the thing that looks the worst, but the thing that is costing you the most speed. Now, if you’re not sure what that is, send me a video and I’ll tell you. And that’s exactly what we do inside the Effort the Swimming

Coaching Membership is you film yourself, send it in, and myself and Tasman will watch it and tell you exactly what to work on and in what order. So there’s no guessing. There’s no trying to fix 12 things at once. Just one clear instruction that you can actually execute. And we’ll give you some structure around how to work on it and the drills that may help with it. And once we get that piece told in, we move on to the next one. And that’s how this from a drop date seconds in four weeks. And that’s how most of our members drop a large amount of time in the first couple of months of being a member, not necessarily by training harder, even though obviously that can make a difference for many people, but it’s by training smarter. So one fix at a time in the right order. And if you want to help figuring out what that one thing is, you can join the Coaching Membership at effortless swimming.com. You actually get a waterproof camera included with

your first month. So you can film yourself easily from multiple angles and you can upload it. We’ll analyze it and tell you exactly what to work on. Then you work on that one thing until it’s automatic. Then we move on to the next thing. The link’s in the description. Look forward to joining you in the Coaching Membership. And thanks for listening. See you next week. And thanks for listening. See you next week. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

So when she joined the Effortless Swimming Coaching Membership, she uploaded a video from her lane at the pool. She’d filmed herself using her phone, just propped up on the side of the pool. So the angle wasn’t perfect, but I could see enough. And I watched the video once, then I watched it again. And I slowed it down and watched it a third time. And I saw immediately that her arm was collapsing in the front of her stroke. So here’s what was happening. When she would turn to breathe, her shoulders would over rotate, her arm in front would drop straight down. And at that point, she would have nothing in front of her head. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. Last month I had a swimmer join our weekly coaching members call. She’s 39, she was training for her first Ironman,

and she’d been swimming for about a year. And she was very consistent with it, training three times a week and following her program. But the thing was, she was exhausted after every session. And her pace hadn’t improved in four months. So she was sitting around two minutes 10 per 100, and she just couldn’t figure out what was wrong. And we spent about 45 minutes on the call in total with a few other swimmers there as well. And I had a look at her video a couple of times. And I gave her one change, just one. Three weeks later, she sent me a message. She dropped 15 seconds per 100. Her pace went from two minutes 10 to one minute 55 per 100. Same fitness, same pool, same training volume, but just one technique change. And today I’m gonna share with you what that change was and why it worked. So when she joined the Effortless Swimming Coaching membership, she uploaded a video from her lane at the pool. She’d filmed herself using her phone,

just propped up on the side of the pool. So the angle wasn’t perfect, but I could see enough. And I watched the video once, then I watched it again. And I slowed it down and watched it a third time. And I saw immediately that her arm was collapsing in the front of her stroke. So here’s what was happening. When she would turn to breathe, her shoulders would over rotate, her arm in front would drop straight down. And at that point, she would have nothing in front of her head. So no arm in front of her head. And what that was doing was causing her body position to suffer, her hips and legs were dropping. She felt like she had to lift her head up quite high to get the breath, because there was nothing out in front to give her support and give her balance. And she was also losing a lot of her streamline position because when that arm drops down, we create more drag immediately. And she also was missing a large part of her catch.

And it’s a very common mistake I see in adult swimmers, particularly around that two minute to two minute 20 mark, they are often pressing straight down with the arm in the catch, so they don’t get much propulsion from it. So when we got on the call, I said to Sarah, I want you to try this. So I had to stand up and I had to reach forwards with her right arm, rotate her shoulders a little bit, 30 to 40 degrees. And then I had to practice getting a good catch. And what that involves is getting the elbow to bend and go out wide and out to the side, while the fingertips would point down to the bottom of the pool. Instead, what she was doing prior to that was the elbow would stay locked out. So the arm was very straight and just pushing straight down and dropping straight down. So I had to practice bending the elbow and getting it out wide and to the side. And I had to do that in her own time, just in front of the mirror,

just to practice that movement out of the water before she did it in the water. And I said, all right, that’s the catch position. That’s what we’re going for. And you’ve just got to make sure that you don’t over rotate because that was through the shoulders, because that was one of the lead causes of that arm dropping down. The other thing I had her do was think of the catch as the setup. It’s not the power phase of the stroke. So one thing she was doing in the early stages of her stroke was going pretty hard. She was pushing straight down, trying to generate a lot of propulsion, really trying to keep herself up because her body position was dropping through that part, but she was really fighting the water and she wasn’t really gripping it. And so this is where a lot of swimmers feel like they’re working hard, but not moving forwards. They’re pulling, they feel a lot of pressure on their hand and forearm, but it’s not in the right direction

and it’s not connected very well with the rest of the stroke because everything’s out of sync and out of time. So Sarah practiced this along with a couple of other drills. And then she sent me another video a few weeks later and she said in a message that I think I’m getting it, but I’m not too sure. And I watched the video and her arm was staying out in front to give her support and balance as she was breathing and she was starting to get the catch. Rather than everything just pushing straight down on the water, her hand or forearm was beginning to press back instead of down. So she was starting to get it. And I sent her a message and said, that’s it, keep doing that, keep practicing. So she sent me another video a few weeks later and her stroke looked completely different. She was balanced, her catch was clean. She looked a lot smoother in the water and the main thing was she didn’t look like she was gasping for air.

And when she tested her pace, her time had dropped from 210 down to one minute 55, 15 seconds quicker. And I asked her how it felt and she said it felt easier. I’m not working as hard, but I’m going faster and I don’t understand how that’s possible. But I told her that’s exactly how it’s supposed to feel. When your stroke is efficient, you don’t have to work harder to go faster. You just have to connect with the water. So once you’re connected, that effort turns into forward movement instead of wasted energy. That’s what the efficiency is. It’s less effort, more speed. And most women think, I just need to pull harder to go faster. But pulling harder does not help you if you’re not connected with the water. You just end up tired and the fastest women are not necessarily pulling harder or with more power. They’re pulling smarter. They’ve got better technique, better timing. And they’re keeping their elbow high so their forearm and hand grabs the water

and presses back and they’re not pressing down. So they’re connected. And that connection is what turns effort into speed. And if you feel like you’re working hard but not going anywhere, then it could be what you’re doing when you breathe. It could be that your timing’s out or your arm is collapsing out in front of you. And if you fix that, everything else gets a whole lot easier. So here’s what I want you to do. If you film yourself from the side above the water can be fine. Watch what your lead arm is doing as you take a breath. Does it drop straight down, push down on the water? So if you go frame by frame is then nothing in front of your head for a split second. And if that’s the case, then your timing’s off and that arm is collapsing underneath you. So what we wanna do instead is enter the water, reach out with that lead arm, keep it reaching forwards to support you while you take a breath and then roll into the catch.

So there should always be an arm or something in front through each phase of the stroke. That’s the position, that’s the timing that we’re going for. So if you’re not sure whether or not your elbow is setting up a good catch or if your timing is there, then that is exactly what we helped with in the Effortless Swimming Coaching membership. So if you film yourself, send it in. I’ll watch it and tell you exactly what to fix. So there’s no guessing, just clear feedback on what needs to change. So if you want to help fixing your catch position, you can join me at the Effortless Swimming Coaching membership at effortlesswimming.com. You actually get a waterproof camera included with your first month, so you can film yourself easily. You can upload the video myself and the other coach Tasman will analyze it and tell you exactly where your elbow is, what your timing is like and what the main thing is to focus on. So then you work on that change

until it becomes automatic and a lot of swimmers start to feel a difference within a couple of weeks and then the times will start to drop after that. And quite often, they feel easier or they don’t put in as much effort for the same speed and then their time start to get quicker. So if you’d like to join us in the Effortless Swimming Coaching membership, links in the description, thanks for listening. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

Yeah well you’ve got to have a good reason to do it and ideally for me I like layering, I like the idea of having layers of reasons and what I found when I get into those really difficult times I start to literally like a picture of a Rolodex, the old Rolodex I’d be almost going through the files of all of the things in my life and trying to find something to grab onto that is the reason for this swim and it’s funny what matters to you at different times so having one reason is probably not enough it might be enough for one swim but it’s not enough for all of them and so I had you know layers and layers of reasons and you know sometimes it was that you know I wanted to rebuild my courage to go after some of the people that that had done these things to us so you know at some level there’s justice and there’s revenge and I’ll picture them in my head and all that sort of stuff and all the but other times there was it was very personal or and and or it might you know might

have been too you know for Heidi or the boys and so I think having all those layers and then being able in your own mind to choose what’s important to you on the day not knowing what that’s going to be and it was funny it’s funny and you throw lines at yourself so I throw lines at myself so with the cook straight it was because I was really you know not fit enough for that one is is you know one on the ocean seven list it’s got you know one remaining two remaining three remaining if I got the cook straight down I have one remaining so it was just one remaining because it’s not as long a swim but for the north channel it was what the thing that got me over in the end was I said to myself because I knew it was a swimmable day the only thing that stops you today is you and once I owned the success or failure of the swim it was like I dug in so I took away all the excuses of other things that were going to stop me and decided the

only thing that could stop me was me and that wasn’t a better thing that was going to stop me welcome to the effortless swimming podcast to show that helps swimmers and triathletes love the water become a better swimmer and live a better life here’s your host Brenton Ford

what would drive someone to voluntarily swim through the most dangerous ocean channels on the planet without a wetsuit without a cage and no way out except forward today’s guest is Mark Salaby one of the very few people to take on the ocean seven and just one of 36 swimmers to have completed it successfully and it’s often described as the Everest of open water swimming in his new film don’t be prey it follows a decade long pursuit across five continents and seven of the world’s most brutal channels from the freezing Irish sea to the shark patrolled waters of Hawaii no wetsuit no protection just man versus mother nature I’ve already seen the film and honestly it’s the best swimming film I’ve ever watched not because of the distances or the danger but because of what sits underneath it all after a life changing event it leaves Mark searching for direction and his coach Tim Denier helps him turn anguish into purpose

and the mantra becomes simple but critical keep the stroke rate steady don’t splash keep the heart rate down don’t be prey and it’s not just a story about survival in open water it’s about resilience healing and what happens when you commit to something so big it reshapes who you are in this episode we go behind the film the swims that nearly broke him the moments of doubt that no one sees and what the ocean taught Mark about fear patience and staying calm when everything around you is chaos let’s get into it so um Mark in 2015 you’re something with channel yep you raised 1.2 million for charity and then it wasn’t another until seven years later that you did your next swim as part of the ocean seven yeah so what led to wanting to do the ocean seven yeah so I’d heard about the ocean seven when I did the English channel and thought that is something that I never want to do and then I knew Lytton Mortensen a little bit as well

and he was the first Australian to complete the ocean seven and and I think was seventh or eight or something like that in the world and everyone was racing to be the first from their country and so I followed his journey I suppose you know sometimes things in life don’t go the way that you would hope and we’ve done the English channel I’d quit my work and a bit under two years later that company ended up being uh attacked in a very public short selling campaign uh through Australia and and that ultimately led to that company um being taken out so as part of that process I found that to be it was quite a traumatic process and I suppose the definition I didn’t see it coming you know the definition of of trauma really is that it happened suddenly and it’s unexpected and and it hurts but I you know I sort of thought I was um

I thought I was a pretty resilient tough guy I you know I was mid 40s by then you myself pretty well and uh and had done the English channel I had raised all that money had built a really big company um and you learn a lot through that process and then when it really came down to an awful event I ended up falling in a heap and that really lasted for a few years so I ended up at at one point uh twice actually sitting out on a what I call the burly bench at burly heads and and you know looking out at the ocean and seriously considering um swimming out uh so when you get to that level of pain and suffering I think uh clearly you know you need help and the help for me came in the form of Tim Det Tim Denier who was my English channel coach who who popped in for a half an hour let’s have a beer for Christmas on his way through because he’s married to an Australian girl and and uh and I know he was shocked at at my condition and and where I was at and ended

up staying for seven hours and several coronas and and through the course of that uh convinced me that uh that the ocean seven would be a good purpose now this was November 2019 so it’s literally two months before three months before COVID so probably just as well and so so the the line that Tim got me on was um because I said no I like I’ve been this channel was so hard I didn’t have wanted to do that again and couldn’t imagine doing swims that were harder and particularly over you know what was going to be a multi-year project and Tim said to me um you know I’ve never coached anyone to do the ocean seven before why don’t we do it together

so we did and that’s how that’s how it started so back into training and you know takes a quite a while to get a middle-aged man body moving again and and that gave me some purpose do you do you feel like him asking to do it together was something that really helped like to have a teammate there because it’s a for the most part you know it’s a solo sport with all the training but obviously it’s a team thing with all of the uh trips over and you know your wife helping a lot and all that sort of stuff like was it that that really sort of triggered things for you or yeah that was uh that was the winning line like I you know life’s about winning moments and Tim won that moment and for me really and so uh you know I remember it vividly and and uh and from that and then sort of started to think oh my god what have I can but then you sort of jump on the internet a bit more and start looking at it and reading

the horror stories of shark attacks and jellyfish dings and intensive care units and all those things so but for sure it was that was Tim’s I mean you know Tim and I had a really great bond with Tim I think Tim’s a special human on many levels and um and so you know it was a privilege to be asked and it seemed I suppose I understood that I needed something and you know I’d been in a hole for a couple of years and it still wasn’t over and so I needed something else to to to grab on to and then leading to that first swim what was your headspace like were you were you thinking uh like this is doable but it’s going to be a real challenge or were you doubting yourself going into that swim how how were you so similar I did apply myself really well because I always when I did the trend rooms he trained me for the English channel and he had hit a lot of Ks for trend so I did every single lap he told me to do

exactly the pace he told me to do it I just figured that he would have a process that would get me fit enough then Tim was the person that took me across and and so I followed I was point and shoot and same as this I just figure that the only way to get across these big things particularly not being you know very good swimmer is was to was to follow the process and to be diligent and that’s not just on the physical side but you’re also trying to develop your mental side now the Molokai channeling I was straight to the stats and and in the year before COVID so the year before was just when I committed myself to these swims because Molokai was first which is a bit scary so I think there were 17 attempts eight people didn’t get across four knocked out with jellyfish and four knocked out with shark attacks and then only two actually made it so the rest were just exhaustion so that’s 45 ks overnight through shark infested

waters no shark no shark cage or anything so and I look looking back at I mean in terms of the training I trained well but looking back at that swim I remember I’m says oh wow that’s so brave and actually but but to be frank it wasn’t that brave in a sense I suppose to be brutally honest I was still at that point that if I got eaten I wouldn’t have minded you know so it was sort of like a false courage because I didn’t really care what happened and and and the nice thing about that the whole journey is that changes but but at that point it was like well if I get taken it’s you know it’s better than doing what I was thinking about doing just swimming out from Burley so yeah so along the way we got fit again and I was very lucky the group down in Melbourne got me and Chloe McCartle organized for me to go on the U24 swim as training and then you know the community’s so amazing Val Kalmokov stepped up out of the blue and said looking at do something

else before Molokai’s at 10 days before he took me down the Derwent even though he was heading home and so we did a nine hours from down the Derwent knocked over that 34 ks and and that got me ready physically and mentally for the Molokai challenge and with the with the movie so sort of just

fell into fell into a place where you had someone there filming the English Channel swim and then ultimately all the other swims as well and that’s how you’re able to put together this documentary in this film and did you feel a extra pressure with having everything on on camera did that add a certain element to the swims it did for the English Channel like I didn’t want the documentary guy to be there but we hadn’t raised enough money so that was very kind of him to to do it for free and then to put together this sort of 41 minute you know YouTube English Channel film and the script that day sort of played out pretty well it was quite tight and and that’s become a really good resource for English Channel swimmers to see actually how it all works and how you get fed and and how it looks at the end and all those things so so that was just a gift it was you know this is an accident of history and and because that

was so good when I went back to Molokai I wasn’t really I knew no one had done an Ocean 7 documentary but I didn’t expect to get it done so what we decided to do is rather I think in these situations it’s better to keep the optionality open if it turned out which is the way it’s turned out imagine if I had to go back and swim it to get you know good I’d probably get eaten so so you know I think you just Russian rule it out of Molokai so so so I just got a local guy that had been that the captain recommended just to film it and film us before and after and just to see just in case I made it and not really expecting to get across but then we did so then I went back to the documentary guy Jeff Sanger who originally did it and said to him can you come and film the rest and just to see what happens and he said to me but mate swimming’s so boring you know no one’s going to want to watch this I said well let’s just film it and see

what you think and then after he saw Catalita and saw me jump in the in the dark and you know great white breeding ground and I don’t think there’s anything more primal for a human being that’s seen jaws or anything then to jump into the dark ocean and great white breeding ground he’s like this is nuts no one’s going to believe this and and then it just we just sort of rolled it out and we did no script there was so everything was filmed as we went there’s not reenactments or anything and and then of course then he you know he started to meet the other swimmers and the community and that was what really grabbed him and that’s one thing that I noticed watching the film is and you mentioned this to me when you allowed me to watch it you said like it’s it’s not about me it’s about it’s about everyone else and it certainly certainly is and I think I mean anyone who’s probably listened to this podcast is part of some swing community and

there’s there’s so many different open water groups all over the world and they’re really tight knit they’ve got this love for just being in the water often cold water as well but it really bonds people together and and when I think about a lot of my really good friends it’s come from swimming because there’s something about just putting in the hours and the and the case in the pool or in the open water that that can bond you together in a in a very special sort of way yeah and so on this sort of you know rehab journey that I was on which is really what it was I mean there were layers to the ocean seven journey for me and one of those was getting myself back to you know so hopefully a better version but also you know trying to rebuild my courage and various things and there’s nothing quite like those ocean swims to help you with that but the turning point where the was the Gibraltar swim and I had you know Bengi from Turkey and Jamie from Scotland and Paul from

England and and obviously we had Tim with us as well and so we got to swim that as a you do that as a pot of four and something about this group and and the quality of those humans their joy and their love of swimming their excitement and the day we got and all the things that went with it that you suddenly can build a lifelong bond with someone that you’re with for three or four days now some of them were then the Croatia swim camp that Tim had on afterwards which is the cold water swim camp which I was there for the north channel because getting cold water in Australia is a bit challenging so then I went to Croatia and met another 30 or 40 people a lot of whom were coming into their first swim but there’s something beautiful about this group of people from all walks of life who don’t care what you do or where you’re from all heading towards the same goal the same experience the openness and the and the joy and

I don’t know there’s a there’s like a happiness to people that are living out on the edge a different happiness it’s like a self-discovery you know some level I suppose of pride in

in having the willingness to take on something that’s really awful and then there’s the learnings that come as you as you do those things too and with with all those swims you want to you mentioned the north channel was the toughest swim that you did take me through the the moment that you realise in the swim like this is going to be a long day out this is this is going to be one of the big challenges pretty experienced by then so so the two toughest uh in well I mean in terms of toughness the English channel was really tough because it was the first time I’d ever experienced that level of pain and suffering for that long and it was cold enough back then so it was sort of 15 16 when I did it it seems to have been a bit warmer in recent years but and then Molokai is obviously really really long it’s dark you know swimming at night and you can feel sharks coming in and various stuff so the big thing with Molokai I found was uh dealing with fear and then but I think that the north

channel’s dealing with something altogether more horrible than that and and it’s the cold and I did a lot of cold water training I was getting pretty good at it too so I’ve been and I’ve been through that process so I understood mentally how to deal with it but you just never know when the cold’s going to get you and I knew I was in trouble with the cold two and a half hours in like I’m two and a half hours in and going oh my god I can feel this getting into me already and I’m and I’m swimming you know swimming you try and swim at a higher cadence to to keep your your warmth and all those things and I thought well I’ve got 10 hours to go how how am I possibly gonna get this done and you know it was 11 12 degrees when I got in I think most of the day I got a pretty good day as far as north channels go probably in the top quartile uh that was ended up being sort of 13 14 um we got some crazy weather at different

times but then it died down I got stung but not too much uh so from the Lines mains um and they were you can treat them like a bit of an electric shock and get me going again but once that cold started to get into me um then my whole body started to really suffer

and you know so that’s the only swim I’ve really thought about getting out

at six and a half hours halfway basically and I couldn’t imagine finishing this thing at all and then nine and a half hours was by then it was six and a half hours looked good

I just have an experience suffering like that branch and I just can’t I can’t explain you know I mean I’ve had an accident since then I broke my leg and blew my knee out and that pain I’d never experienced before but it was nowhere near as bad as every moment of the north channel you make it sound so appealing oh my god yeah but you learn so much like it’s like I’ve never been the beauty of the north channel and that experience is that it’s stricken me completely and it’s almost like when you’re out in the ocean and suffering like that in every moment that you get to look into your own soul and you see you get to see what’s there good or bad

and so we you know in the end Tim did a magnificent job of just getting to the next feed and doing different things immensely and physically and feeds hearty was there as well and we you know we eventually found a way across well what are some strategies that you either use that day or you’ve you’ve learned so long in the way that’s helping you that you know to help you get through those tough situations yeah well you’ve got to have a good reason to do it I can’t and ideally for me I like layering I like the idea of having layers of reasons and and what I found when I when I get into those really difficult times I start to literally like a picture of Rolodex the old Rolodex I’ve been almost going through the files of all of the things in my life and and trying to find something to grab on to that is the reason for this swim and it’s funny what matters to you at different times so having one reason is probably not enough

it might be enough for one swim but it’s not enough for all of them and so I had you know layers and layers of reasons and you know sometimes it was that you know I wanted to build rebuild my courage to go after some of the people that that had done these things to us so you know at some level there’s justice and there’s revenge and I’ll picture them in my head and all that sort of stuff and all the but other times there was it was very personal or and and or it might you know might have been too you know for Heidi or the boys and so you I think having all those layers and then being able in your own mind to choose what’s important to you on the day not knowing what that’s going to be and it was funny it’s funny and you throw lines at yourself so I throw lines at myself so with the cook straight it was um because I was really you know not fit enough for that one is is you know one on the ocean seven list

it’s got you know one remaining two remaining three remaining if I got the cook straight down I had one remaining so it was just one remaining um because it’s not as long a swim um but for the north channel it was um what the thing that got me over in the end was I said to myself um because I knew it was a swimmable day the only thing that stops you today is you and once I owned the success or failure of the swim it was like I dug in so I took away all the excuses of other things that were going to stop me and decided the only thing that could stop me was me and that wasn’t going to be the thing that was going to stop me I remember doing the rotten ass swim and and I got cold about 13 k’s in and I just said to myself you’re lucky to be here you’re lucky to be here as in like you know it’s fortunate that this is a problem that you’ve created for yourself so it’s like yeah there was just that line that I kept

repeating to myself you can solve that if you want that skinny like if you’re you know one of my skills is staying fat so it’s not fat enough Brenton

well next next time yeah hopefully there won’t be a next time you know well I’ll just like I’ll get better prepared I think that’s right more food yeah yeah so um yeah it’s uh it’s funny what can’t what goes through your through your mind in these these tough situations and I’ve found that even within like difficult uh like training sessions you know when you yes you might you can tell that your mind is saying to you it’s like like you don’t need to do this it’s like you can get out like it’s but if you can identify those thoughts and then go actually I don’t need to listen to that you can just let it fall by the wayside well that’s the power of it well that’s been the power of it for me is that when I was doing the two hour training sessions and uh in the water and I didn’t use music or anything else so I decided that I needed to be used to being in my own head but being in my own head when I was in a really bad way was just an awful place and so you know you’re crying into your goal sometimes

like it’s um and you’re screaming at yourself how can this be me and how can this be my life and how did these things happen to me you know what did I do to deserve this and all the things that people do when they’re in that sort of victim mentality and and I suppose that’s where I think partly the beauty of the film comes in is that is that don’t be prey mentality which is sort of for me was don’t be a victim and take control of those things in your life that that you can you can’t take control of everything and that’s the other thing I suppose that the swims do is that you know you control everything you can your nutrition everything else but ultimately you have to sort of give yourself to the ocean and the day not knowing what you’re going to get and find a way across so you get very comfortable with uncertainty but in the face of knowing you’ve done the perfect preparation yeah you have to allow allow the possibility of failure to

to happen because there’s only so much you you can do isn’t there just make sure you’re not the reason yes yeah you don’t pull yourself out of the water and all those sorts of things which only did even even in the North Channel with the where that line came from don’t be don’t be prey you’re telling that story last night at dinner and I can you tell that tell that story again and I quite like how you used it on that swim as well because I yeah I find that quite interesting and I don’t it’s it was quite a good one. Well there’s a very famous lady Dr. Angel Yanagihira who’s the sort of world expert in jellyfish and she’s a shark expert as well and and literally a mermaid so we were Tim and I went to to her house and she’s a professor at the University of Hawaii and what she’s famous for amongst other things is that she’s developed a jellyfish cream for box jellyfish in particular for the Navy SEALs so it was a seven-year project she told us and

you can imagine with Navy SEALs like they’re doing an operation and they put this stuff around their necks as particularly so that they can breathe if they get stung there then they’re dead not from the jellyfish sting but from people shooting them and so she developed that and we all use that as in the Molokai Channel and it lasts about four hours and it’s certainly better than nothing and definitely I was getting stung early and it seemed to help I definitely helped so we’re in her her house is a lab too she’s one of those people and she’s got all these 20 litre sort of paint buckets everywhere full of dangerous crazy creatures that she’s getting venom out of and various other things and and that she gets this cheeky look on her face and she says to Tim and I she says so boys we need to talk about sharks and you know obviously Molokai Channel is just chockers full of sharks you’re at 700 meters of water there’s sharks

everywhere and she said to us boys don’t worry about it there’s going to be any sharks around when you’re swimming they’ll be around you the entire time that you’re out there they’ll just be there and they’ll know you’re there she said so the only way you get across this thing is that you need to remember that you’re a big ocean swimmer which is what they call them you’re a big ocean swimmer you belong out there you need to keep your heart rate down keep your stroke rate down stay consistent don’t be prey and there was just like this moment like this light by my head exploded I thought oh my god and I realized that she you know she’d literally changed my life because I straight away flipped that to the problems that I was having and realized that I’d actually been prey and so there was that’s that layer for me but also then she talked to us about you know how to keep your heart rate down and keeping your breath the same and

really being consistent in the water not sending off those signals that you’re something that’s worth eating and so in the swim so it happened twice that about you know you get a really good the ocean was washing machine so we’re in a pretty rough night and we’re getting into the night so we’re three and a half hours in and I feel this sort of switch next to me and we’ve got the so you got a kayak and it’s got a a shark shield on the front and back the boats are hundred or two or three hundred meters ahead of you because it attracts sharks and it’s just bobbing away so sharks are sort of around it so it can’t be near you until they feed you then they sort of scoot out come back and feed you and then they take off again so it’s you and the kayak and then you’re out in the dark and it’s just got these few little red lights on the side it’s just you in the middle of the ocean literally in the middle of the Pacific and so

the way those shark shields work obviously it hits them on the nose so the sharks might come in and have a sniff and then if they hit some on the nose they turn around really quickly and go away and you can feel that that switch so I felt the switch I thought oh wow that’s a shark and I stayed really cool but then at about four hours now I know it’s about four hours because I felt was feeling hungry you know you feel you get into that routine of feeling hungry and and there’s this big switch and I thought oh it’s the boat and and I hit the side of the kayak and the kayak has gone oh what was that I look up thinking it’s the boat and the boat’s not there and I’m like oh my god what is next to me in the water here that is big enough to swish me that far across the two meters into the side of the kayak and then I look down and there’s like this box jellyfish that’s avatar blue or something and I thought oh my god and then I but I’m but I

did all those things like I immediately applied don’t be prey and I’d all I had done since I’d seen Angel on that week since just thought about that and my mind was perfect like I literally went back to the rhythm kept my heart rate down and stayed cool and didn’t send off any signals and you know and I survived it’s such a good metaphor for going through life as well don’t you think like it’s just if you can keep that that calmness about you no matter what situations thrown at you yes you’re much better positioned to to deal with it and react in the in the best way possible yeah I like lots a lot about controlling our own minds isn’t it and and particularly in situations that are difficult whether that you know there can be lots of different things and so I have found that very powerful yeah but don’t be prey for me what I liked about it it wasn’t be a predator it wasn’t be aggressive and attack other people it was just

don’t curl up in a ball you know don’t give up don’t you know don’t allow things to happen to you and there’s this great line in the in the movie from Jen Schumacher she says you know how do you make something that’s work for you rather than against you and and so that’s what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to turn you know what might be an enormous negative or appear like an enormous negative to you because it’s always relative we always think those things that may be worse than they are how do you turn that into a net positive and life’s not perfect there’s a lot there’s not black and white so how do you how do you make this the best that you can and that’s that’s worked really well for me for me it’s been life changing from that one comment yeah well and it’s um quite often when I if I reflect back on some of the things in my life that at the time where you know some of the some of the toughest things I’d been

through down the track it’s like yeah I actually could take that learn from it and that’s actually become a positive thing but it can be a challenge to recognize that in the at the time yeah and mostly you know everyone says oh you know it doesn’t kill you it makes you stronger all sort of stuff and they’re all nice lines but nobody you know I wish these things had never happened to us and I’m sure for almost everyone else in their life they don’t want those bad things to happen to them and but unfortunately you know that you cannot get through life without trauma so how do you and everyone has their own different trauma so how do you how do you do a better job of managing that trauma and preparing for it and how do you make it so that the holes not so deep you can’t get out of it and I know it ends up at the bottom of that hole it’s a long way out to be four years to get to some level of turning point what was that moment for you when you felt you had made

that that turn I think the um probably the north channel post the north channel um cook straight was also important I felt like at the end of cook straight I remember sitting on the boat and and thinking that that I had sort of been rebuilt and then which meant that Japan which was my my last of the seven and Japan had had one out of four to get across which was Annie Johnson the year before and that doesn’t count because he’s special so you know so basically nobody got across um so nobody normal got across so so effectively it was a hundred percent failure right the year before and so Japan felt much more about the process the event the swim

preparation doing things differently for this particular swim the team dealing with the uncertainty of whether the channel would let you across or not being the last one all those sorts of things so so it’s not a spreadsheet but but certainly at the end of the north channel I think because I was stripped so bare and then didn’t end up back on the burly bench like when I was in Catalina I ended up in a really big hole I got sick from the diesel fumes which is just a rookie era with by me I got really sick but I was also worried about a bunch of things and I ended up spiraling down I literally was begging for a great white to eat me like I just wanted to be gone um and I just would have thought it was a mercy killing but when I got to that sort of level of pain in or beyond that in north channel I didn’t go there I only went to good things wow well in the film so Suguru straight’s the last win and like high spoilers no

spoilers okay I won’t reveal whether or not um you made it I don’t get eaten obviously so uh but um but for me watching yeah you’re watching that just was really quite a really emotional part of the the film and I wouldn’t say I’m I wouldn’t say I’m an easy cry for a for a movie um but I’m also not a tough cry but it’s just like really sort of stirred up um some emotions and I think it gives such a good insight into the actual things that someone like yourself goes through through the ocean seven because I think you know only what is it 36 people have done it so far you’re the 29th and I don’t think you can you can’t grasp the challenges that you that you face and how how difficult it really is but for me that gave me probably the best insight into what what challenges you faced and then also having the team around you and what that feeling’s like yes when you when you get to the end like it to me is like I felt like

I was a bit of a part of that yeah well everybody does so I that’s the beauty of the film you know obviously we didn’t make it so I did the swims and whatever else and we got really lucky we Tim Daniel my coach had been in in a documentary in 2005 2006 that was a Channel 4 which is a UK documentary and that documentary at the time was quite famous called Two Swimmers and the guy that did that that made that film ended up being our editor so he already knew Tim understood channels but he is an Emmy award-winning editor and writer as well so he’s world class and so where they’ve landed this thing is quite astonishing and so it’s you know documentaries don’t go into cinemas anymore but the distributors all want to put it into cinema partly because obviously being part of the ocean and everything else it looks it’s better on cinema you know in that cinema experience but also also because they think that you know that if

it gets the right marketing and the right push that it could be one of the better documentaries that’s been made in a long long time I think they’ve done a beautiful job yeah I absolutely agree and listening to this yeah somebody’s listening to this might think you have to be an extraordinary swimmer to get across these channels but you told a interesting story about a good friend of yours Olympian Michael Klim who gave you some coaching advice yeah so I’m not a very good swimmer so I own and technically you know pretty awful but obviously you build a bunch of skills to get across these swims and so the swimming technique is part of that but Klimmy before the English Channel said to me oh look I really want to help you with your English Channel experience why don’t we do a technical session down at my pool so I went down to an hour and a half training session with him and he said he was going to give me

a couple little tips and we sat down for breakfast and I said so you know what have you got for me said mate so we just need to find some rhythm that was terrible and so when I finished the English Channel you know I was in Dover and the phone rings and it’s Michael and and each you know drills into my head for 45 minutes because the Olympian he wants to know what it was like mentally you know it’s a whole new experience and at the end of it he says he goes well mate he said I just can’t believe a swimmer as bad as you can get across the channel like thank you thank you Michael so but anyway it’s so you know those that’s sort of true actually and I said you know there’s a really good line when when part of the filming process is that you have to bring your kids on that journey and hours at 21 and 23 and the eldest son Lachlan got to watch it an early version and by himself with the film guys because they needed to show him some

stuff that was a bit confronting and and I asked him how would you describe the film he said that’s easy dad ordinary people doing extraordinary things I thought that was such a good line because it’s obviously a lot of other swimmers that are in it as well and so I think that’s sort of a pretty good description of of what it is

you can sort of touch on that but what message would you hope that people take away from watching the film oh there’s there’s a lot of layers to it so I know where people are landing so people are getting to the end of the film and if they’ve been through trauma then they understand the film and they’re applying their own trauma to the experience that’s depicted in the film and it’s the same it’s a metaphor the film the swimming really for that journey so for people with trauma it gives them hope that you know it does end actually it all it does actually end and that you can you can manage that through and then for other people that haven’t necessarily been through really difficult things yet they’re definitely landing at the end of this thing and they’re inspired to go and do something else so they they don’t understand they don’t need to be an Olympian or a national level swimmer or anything else to to do something that can really change their lives that is really interesting and can

can you know help them be a better version of themselves I think that’s a lot of people that have seen this in sort of the focus group things have come out and they’ve gone back running swimming and not only that they’ve they’ve picked something big to do they haven’t just said I’m going to go down they might do some bite size chunks some little ones along the way but they’re thinking about something really big that can take them well outside their comfort zone not just outside their comfort zone and that’s cool yeah and that’s that’s the thing that a really good film or documentary can can do is it can inspire that that change and actually like booking in a big a big swim or a big run or just you know getting getting people to shift course on their life even even a little bit by a few degrees well we go though we gave uh when I was talking to Jeff and Steve and they said what do you want to get out of the film and I said I I want um that someone who’s done the English Channel

is sitting watching this with their family and that and the film ends their family look at them and go oh my god I had no idea now I understand what you’ve done so there’s sort of that and that and that an ocean swimmer can watch it and they can go that’s what we go through that’s that’s what it’s like and and they’ve delivered that it’s very authentic definitely

I think every swimmer every swimmer I know every swimmer is going to love this movie but it’s probably any endurance sport but it’s mostly I think got more appeal to general public everyone who’s sitting there thinking that they can or should go and do something I’m hoping that this once by them to actually go and do something you gotta you gotta live not exist and the film so you’ve got some dates coming up for UK and then Australia do you want to share those yeah yeah sure so in the UK so we’re going to get to the UK first I think and in fact I found out today that we’re going to kick off and folks and where we’re all started so we’re going to kick off where the English Channel finished for me on the 4th of March but we’re doing advanced screenings around the UK so I’m going to go to all those I think this is like a holiday with purpose and and then Q&A and then there’s eventually the proper cinema release

across the UK is on the 20th of March I really wanted to respect Tim Denier and all of the wonderful people in the Red Totsamming Group by being going there first and so that’s where we’re going first and then then that will end and then eventually it’ll do all those things but it takes a fair while to get to streaming other things this is definitely a cinema movie I think and and then Australia is a Gold Coast Film Festival probably from the 22nd of April but then into cinemas in Australia on the 7th of May and then through Asia and then it’s the Northern Hemisphere Festival season so it’s going to take um year and a half two years it’s great fun yeah I bet is it do you feel like this is a

I mean obviously it’s the next project but like this is uh this is the thing that’s really giving you purpose at the moment you know you’ve done the Ocean Seven like is this it’s more um like Jamie from Scotland said the other swims the celebration of all the work that you’ve done this feels like a like a celebration really others it’s just only pure joy in this thing and knowing that it’s so good is really helpful like you’re not gonna I haven’t said anyone come out of there from any walk of life and go that was a bit crap so so it’s so so and you know our boys are 21 23 so they’re no longer at home so we’re really in this unique situation where we can follow it and run with it and see where it takes us and meet and then you get to meet the same people that we got to meet at Gibraltar in Croatia so for you know I can’t tell you how excited I am about you know following this thing around I’m still watching it

but yeah but it’s uh no it’s it’s it’s it’s a really um you know it’s gonna be a really interesting journey and so we don’t we’re turning it like a channel in the sense that we’re prepared for it we’ve done everything we can the movie’s made and now it’ll go where it goes and and it’ll take us where it takes us and we don’t mind where that is we’re very

indifferent to where that lands just let it land where it lands and so but along the way there’s going to be some really really interesting people to meet that’s great well um as I said at the start I really enjoyed the the film I think you’ve done you and everyone who’s worked on it has done such a such a great job firstly showing what you go through on those swims because I I didn’t fully grasp it I don’t I don’t think even though I’m in the swimming world I know a lot of people have done it I didn’t fully grasp it and then also just the well being so open and honest about where you were in that dark hole and then having being able to come out of it and putting yourself through those those swims to you know to really discover

I guess who you truly are like deep down and and being able to come to the other side of it is was very inspiring so certainly moved me there’s nothing quite like knowing that you’ve got it in you and my personal experience from that is is that that’s now resonating across every aspect of my life so my daily disciplines are better my mindset’s better I have this place I go to called my seven oceans soul that um there’s you know there’s a song that takes me there as well that I use and like any triggers I mean I think it helps the bot helps your mind to to get there so it’s a you know if you get that in ripples across every element so you’re better with your friends you’re better with your family you understand how important the team were you love them more you appreciate things more and you don’t let anything that’s you know I mean the noise is gone I just can’t tell you how beautiful it is well I appreciate you

coming all the way down to uh to talk to you and and doing this podcast we’re saying it’s like this is the first actual in person yeah after 400 something episodes sorry no no it’s it’s great it’s like it’s it’s much much better to be able to do it in in person so um yeah appreciate you making the trip and uh we’ll have all the links in the description so people can follow this and uh hopefully get out there and watch the film because it was um yeah amazing an amazing one so thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast if you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com

That could be costing you five seconds per 100 out possibly more. So for the same fitness, the same effort, with just better timing, you could be swimming five seconds possibly more, even quicker. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

There’s a timing pattern that separates fast swimmers from slow swimmers. And you cannot always see it easily when you watch someone swim in real time. But when you slow the video down frame by frame, it’s right there. Every fast swimmer does this, a lot of slow swimmers will miss it. But when you fix this one timing detail, you’ll feel like someone’s turned the engine on in your stroke. So today, I’m going to share with you what it is and how to feel it in the water. So it was about three years ago, I was coaching a clinic in Brisbane. And there was a swimmer there who was a master swimmer. He was 48, was swimming his whole life, very fit. And it was training about five times a week. And he was stuck around the one minute 25 per 100. So fairly quick swimmer, but he couldn’t figure out how to get faster. He’d worked on his body position, he’d worked on his catch, he’d worked on his kick, everything looked fine. But when I

filmed him underwater, we could see it immediately. His catch timing was off by about half a second. And that doesn’t sound like much. But that half a second was costing him around three to four seconds per 100. And so here’s what most swimmers do, they reach forwards, they glide, and then they start the catch. But the problem is, if they wait too long to begin the catch, they end up decelerating and slowing themselves down. And so if you are beginning your catch, once the other hand has already entered, that’s too late. That’s too much of a catch up freestyle. And so you end up losing a lot of the momentum and the speed that you’ve generated from your catch and pull on the previous stroke. And so you speed up and slow down and speed up and slow down. And that just uses a lot more energy. The other problem with that is it makes it harder to get a really good catch if you glide for too long. Because not only have

you lost some of your speed, but you will also find it harder to get into a comfortable position. Because it’s likely that your hand is beginning to catch too high near the surface of the water. So what I said to this from a was, all right, we’re going to focus on this one thing. We want to work on getting the catch to begin a little bit earlier. So you’re not doing too much of a catch up in your freestyle. And he said, okay, I don’t know what that feels like. And I don’t know how to change it. So I showed him that once his hand enters the water, the other arm should have about finished its catch, or it could even be roughly under the shoulder. And so that’s the timing that we say with most middle to long distance swimmers is that as one hand enters, the opposite arm will have finished the catch or even be under the shoulder at that point. That’s where you see most of the top swimmers. And there is a difference there, depending on the style

and the person and all that sort of stuff. But roughly in that range is what we are going for. The other thing I had him do was back off the power. The catch is not the power phase of the stroke. It is the setup phase of the stroke. So when you’re swimming fast, you might go for a five or a six out of 10 in terms of effort through your catch. So we’re not going really light, but we’re definitely not going really hard with it either. So somewhere in that mid range where we’re building up the pressure on the hand and the forearm through there, that is then going to help you get more propulsion through the power phase of the stroke, which is essentially once you finish the catch and your body starts to move past the arm, that is where you generate most of your propulsion and have most of your power. So use the catch as the setup phase and don’t feel like you should be muscling that part of the stroke. So when you watch an Olympic

swimmer in slow motion, you’ll see this timing pattern really clearly there. One hand enters and as it’s extending forwards, the other arm is going underneath their shoulder through that part of the stroke. So by the time the opposite hand has entered, the pulling hand is already anchored in the water and their body is beginning to move past their hand and they’re already generating forward propulsion and this is why they look so smooth and they’re not rushing, they’re not thrashing, they’re connected early and that early connection gives them time to apply pressure through the entire stroke. But a lot of adults will miss this by about half a second to a full second when they’re doing too much of a catch up and that delay cost them the front third of their stroke where they’re having to work on getting going again and getting that speed going again when they could just keep that momentum. So freestyle is very much about rhythm,

rhythm in the stroke, rhythm in the catch and so we want to make sure that we’re timing that correctly. So if you’re swimming around two minutes per hundred and you’re doing too much of a catch up, that could be costing you five seconds per hundred out possibly more. So for the same fitness, the same effort with just better timing, you could be swimming five seconds possibly more even quicker. So how do we fix it? One of my favourite cues is keep the lead hand in motion, meaning that we never want to stop completely with the hand in front because if we stop, we slow down. Now don’t get me wrong, you will take a little bit longer through the reach phase of your stroke. You’re not going to rush into the catch but take a little bit of time as you’re extending forwards but then when you finish the reach and you’re fully extended, then tip the fingers down, bend the elbow out to the side and roll into that catch to keep that momentum and that

way you’ll maintain your speed and you will not find that you’re having to start stop all the time with this full catch up in the stroke. So keep the lead hand in motion even though you’re going to slow it down a little bit through the reach phase and a little bit through the first part of the catch, we never want to stop and glide and be doing nothing there because then you’re playing catch up. And there’s a number of drills that can help with this, some drills like Longdog is one of my favourites, 616 and there’s a few others but it’s very specific about how you do it. You’ve got to do the drill correctly with the timing to make sure that it’s actually going to make the difference in terms of changing that timing from too much catch up to finding the sweet spot. So Tom spent a couple of weeks working on this and every session he focused on getting his hand connected early and rolling into that catch and he filmed himself

every couple of days just to check his timing and after two weeks he tested his pace and he was able to drop from a 125 per hundred down to a 121 per hundred. So four seconds especially at that pace is fairly significant. So the same fitness, same training load, just better timing. When I asked him how it felt, he said it feels like he’s finally got something to press against and that’s exactly what it should feel like. This is what the catch should feel like. Like you have the hand, the forearm pressing against the water, like it feels somewhat thicker or heavier because you have got something to press against. So it’s not pulling through, it’s not pushing, there’s just pressure there and that pressure means connection and that connection means propulsion. So if you feel like you’re working hard but not getting anywhere, the problem could be your catch timing. So maybe you’re pulling but you’re pulling too late and by the time your hand engages

with the water you’ve already lost your momentum and that’s why you might be losing speed. So if you can fix the timing you’ll feel the difference immediately and you’ll feel like you’ve got something to hold on to and you’ll feel like the stroke has traction and your times will drop without trying harder. So here’s what I want you to do, film yourself from the side, above or below water, is fine, see when your hand enters the water and check it compared to your other hand that’s in the water. So let’s say your left hand is just about to enter, where is your right arm and if your right arm is anywhere from the end of your catch to about underneath your shoulders, your timing is probably good but if it’s not in that range and one hand is meeting the other hand out in front that is probably too much catch up and if you’re not sure whether you’re early or late, send me a video and I’ll tell you. So that’s what we do inside

the Effortless Swimming Coaching membership, film yourself, send it in, I’ll watch it and tell you exactly where your timing is off and how to fix it. So there’s no guessing, just clear feedback on what to change. So if you want to help dialing in your catch timing you can join the Coaching Membership at EffortlessSwimming.com and you’ll also get a waterproof camera included with your first month so you can easily see yourself and film yourself and that way you can upload the video, I’ll check it out and tell you exactly when your catch should engage and how to feel it and then when you work on that timing you’ll be able to work on it until it’s automatic and a lot of members start to feel the difference in a couple of weeks time and they start to see the time drop within sometimes four weeks sometimes a bit more a bit less. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer

go to www.effortlessswimming.com

So she practiced this for four weeks, so she sent me another video after those four weeks and the difference was dramatic. Her head stayed low, her breathing was clean and relaxed and her hips stayed horizontal. No more swing uphill and her time a minute 36 per 100. 12 seconds faster, same fitness, same training volume, just better breathing mechanics. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Renton Ford. I watched her swimmer fix one breathing mistake and dropped 12 seconds per 100 meters in four weeks, not four months, four weeks. She didn’t change her fitness, she didn’t add more training volume, she changed one specific thing about how she breathed and that single change took her from a 148 per 100 to a 136 per 100. I’m going to show you exactly what she changed, why it worked and how you can apply the same fix in your next swim.

This is one of the most common breathing mistakes I seen age group swimmers and triathletes and it’s costing you massive amounts of speed. She came to one of our coaching calls a few months ago and she’d been swimming consistently for over a year, training three times a week and followed a structured program and she was doing everything right, but her times weren’t improving. She was stuck at 148 per 100 and couldn’t figure out why. When she swam, she felt like she was working incredibly hard so her heart rate was high, her breathing was laboured and after 50 meters she already felt quite exhausted. So she asked me, branching on fit, I can run 10Ks, no problem, why am I so exhausted when I swim? So I asked her to send me a video of her swimming at a normal training pace and when I watched it, I saw the problem immediately. Every time she breathed her head would lifted forward out of the water and not to the side. She went forwards with it. So every time her

head lifted forward, her hips dropped and she was literally swimming uphill every single stroke. Now let me explain why this is such a massive problem. Your head weighs about five kilos, roughly the weight of a bowling ball. So when you lift that bowling ball up and you go forwards to breathe before you turn, basic physics takes over. So your head goes up at the front, your hips drop at the back and your body goes from being horizontal to dropping through the hips and the legs. Now instead of swimming through the water, you’re swimming uphill and swimming uphill requires significantly more energy to go the same speed and that’s why she felt exhausted after 50 meters. She wasn’t unfit, she wasn’t necessarily slow either, it was just that she was tiring very quickly and so she was working a lot harder than she needed to. So here’s what made this even worse. When her hips dropped, she created more drag, more surface area pushing against the water

and more resistance. So now you’re not only swimming uphill, you’re also dragging a parachute behind you and to compensate most swimmers will kick harder. They think oh my hips are dropping, I need to kick more to keep them up. So now you’re burning more energy with your legs while you’re trying to fix that problem that your head position created and this has a cascading effect of the one breathing mistake which is just lifting up, lifting the head up high, well above the surface of the water so the hips drop, you create more drag, it’s harder kicking which leads to exhaustion and the solution isn’t to get fitter, the solution is to fix how you breathe. So here’s what I told her to focus on. Firstly I showed her a side by side comparison. On one side, head lifting up, hips dropping, body angled which was her stroke and then the comparison was with an elite swimmer where the head would just turn directly to the side

and the body stays horizontal and once she saw it the difference was obvious. So I gave her three specific corrections to make. The first one is your head should be like an iceberg so this is the key cue. Think of your head like an iceberg where when you’re swimming and you’re looking down 10 to 20 percent of your head should be above the water and when you breathe you turn your head to the side, you don’t lift up or you don’t look forwards first and then turn, you just turn directly to the side. So one goggle stays in the water, the other comes out. Now it’s okay if it comes, that bottom goggle comes out a little bit but for the most part we want almost half the head in the water. If both goggles come out you’re probably lifting or turning too far and that is the mistake. So your head should rotate as part of the body roll staying low and relaxed and not popping up to breathe. The second correction was exhaling underwater mostly through your nose.

A lot of swimmers hold their breath underwater and then they try and exhale everything just as they turn to breathe. This can create panic. So instead what I’d recommend is allow a little bit of an exhale primarily through the nose to happen as your face is in the water and then as you’re turning to get your breath that’s where you can have most of the exhale but by that point your lungs are mostly empty so the inhale is calm, it’s quick and it happens naturally. So allowing a little bit of an exhale primarily through the nose while your face is in the water after you’ve taken a breath is how to do it so there’s no rushing, there’s no gasping. Correction number three so breathing every two or three strokes and learn to breathe on both sides. So a lot of new swimmers actually have a tendency to breathe every four or six strokes and they’re not getting enough air in and for most adult swimmers and triathletes that’s too long between breaths

especially for longer swims. So breathing every two strokes or three strokes helps keep your oxygen levels up and your heart rate under control and being able to breathe on both sides can help with balance of your stroke and it exposes some of the technical faults that often show up when you only breathe to the one side. Now the drill that I gave this swimmer to lock this in it’s side breathing drill with a kickboard. So you hold a kickboard out in front with one arm your other arm is by your side you’ve got fins on and you’re kicking face down in the water and then when you’re ready to breathe you turn the head to the side you rotate a little bit and then you get the breath quickly you get it low and you bring the head back and the board out in front is used for balance and stability so it helps you practice that low quick breath where you’re turning directly to the side and not lifting up and this way your head stays low in the water it’s like an

iceberg and you’re not lifting and throwing the head around. So she practiced this for four weeks so she sent me another video after those four weeks and the difference was dramatic her head stayed low her breathing was clean and relaxed and her hips stayed horizontal no more swimming uphill and her time a minute 36 per 100 12 seconds faster same fitness same training volume just better breathing mechanics and she emailed me afterwards and said I can’t believe this one change made such a difference. Swimming feels completely different now and I’m not exhausted anymore and that’s the power of fixing a fundamental flaw you’re not just getting faster you’re making swimming feel easier because you’re no longer fighting physics so here’s what to do in your next swim firstly film yourself from the side and watch your head when you breathe if both goggles are coming out of the water you’re probably turning too far or

lifting the head so you can practice the side breathing drill with a kickboard 200 meters at the start of each session for two weeks getting used to that way of breathing make sure you breathe every two or three strokes and practice breathing to both sides and the last one is exhale from your nose so your inhale stays calm and controlled that’s okay to have some breath exhale through the mouth as well but primarily through the nose so one breathing mistake can cost you 10 to 15 seconds per 100 that’s 90 seconds over a 1500 meter swim that can be the difference between finishing mid-pack and finishing at the front of your age group and the fix doesn’t require more fitness or more training it requires fixing the mechanics so if you want personalized feedback on your breathing technique join our coaching membership which is where you can send a video of your swimming we’ll analyze it and we’ll give you specific corrections like we did with this

swimmer and we’ll identify a highest leverage technique flaws and tell you exactly how to fix them so you can submit a video once a month get feedback from our coaching team and track your progress over time the link is in the description below but whether or not you join fix your breathing technique stop lifting your head up when you breathe and start rotating to the side keeping mostly one goggle in the water and this change could drop your time by 10 seconds or more per 100 so try it in your next swim and let me know how it goes in the comments thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast if you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com

Two weeks out from the event I ended up injuring my rib so I was playing with my kids in the surf at home and I threw one of them and threw my rib out where it was quite difficult to breathe and I couldn’t rotate to the side and I couldn’t swim for a couple of days but what it meant was I couldn’t really push hard or train as much as I normally would. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. When I was 20 years old I missed out on qualifying from the national championships by three one hundredths of a second in the 50 backstroke. This year at 38 years of age I managed to qualify in the five kilometer open water event for the national championships and in this video I’m going to share with you how I did it in my late 30s training mostly three times a week. I’m also going to share with you the one thing

I learned from an Olympic gold medalist that helped me increase my power but use less effort while getting injured before the race actually worked to my benefit. How five minutes with one coach helped change my technique in the two months leading up to the event and the one workout we did every single week that I feel like helped increase my endurance and my ability to finish fast. If you’re new here my name is Brenton Ford. I’m a swim coach based in Australia and we work with thousands of different athletes all over the world to help them increase their speed and efficiency for their triathlons and open water swimming. So in my late 10 age years and early 20s I was trying to qualify for the national championships and I just missed out by 0.03 twice in a row and it was something that I felt like in my late 20s early 30s that it was starting to slip away like I was getting too old possibly to be able to hit those qualifying times that

you need because they’re fairly quick and you’re racing against the very best swimmers in Australia of all ages so you’re racing the very best and last year I did a five kilometer swim where I missed out on the qualifying time which was a one hour and four minutes. I missed out by around 37 seconds and I thought oh that’s a long time to start training again but if I dedicate myself to it and make some changes possibly I could get back there and qualify. It wasn’t about actually racing at the nationals because I’m not actually racing at the national competition. I just wanted to prove to myself that it was possible and that this thing that I had in my mind 18 years ago was still something that I could achieve. So in October I was in Thailand we were running our Hell Week camp there and we took some footage of my swimming and I sat down with one of our coaches Tasman who coaches in our membership and she said your head’s quite deep

and when you breathe your right arms very straight really pushes down and I wasn’t getting much of a catch and it was really evident in all of the footage that we took when I wasn’t breathing it was much better but when I was breathing it really locked out at the elbow pushed down on the water and it took a long time to get into a good position and so what I’d worked on for the two months leading up to the event was actually having my head physically higher in the water so changing my gaze where I was looking one to two meters further in front physically having the head higher and I found that that allowed me to get the breath a little bit quicker and that goes against traditional advice of your head down bum up but my body position was fine it was just that my head was too low in the water and it was taking me a little bit longer to get the breath so we’re having it physically higher it was less of a turn I could breathe

quicker and that really helped me get my catch a lot better on that right arm when I was taking a breath I thought in my mind about a cue which was just bend early so as I reached forwards I didn’t want to lock out with the arm I wanted to keep it a little bit shorter so I didn’t overextend and just I just thought about bending or hinging at the elbow a lot sooner in the stroke and my times came down by one to two seconds per hundred as I started to get used to that change but one of the biggest changes that really helped me was my stroke rate I could hold it a little bit higher for less effort when I changed the breathing because I could get the breath quicker and there wasn’t this delay or this hitch in the stroke when I took a breath which was previously a problem and after the how we camp in Thailand we had a Maldives long distance camp where we had the gold medalist from the Paris Olympics come along and join me coaching on that trip

Sharon Van Rivendale and one of the things we worked a lot on with the athletes there was how to use the correct muscles at the correct time in the stroke and one of the main muscles that takes over through the power phase of the stroke is our lats that quite often people are not in the position to be able to use their lats they tend to hunch and they tend around their shoulders and that doesn’t allow them to use their lats through this power phase and that’s often where a lot of shoulder injuries can come from so we did a routine we did some fair band exercises prior to swimming most days where we worked on the sequencing of the catch the pool and the press to make sure that our shoulder was actually in the right position so every time I went to the pool I would go through this couple of minute routine or TheraBand routine that would help engage and activate the lats and work on the sequencing so to make sure that the shoulder

was in the right position and I found that when I did that I could really notice the difference when it came to swing freestyle because as I came underneath here I do have a tendency to hunch a little bit and I found that my lats were starting to use get used a lot more and I didn’t have to actually work as hard to hit the same pace in the same times and so I tribute the last two months of those TheraBand routines to helping get into those stronger muscles through my back and through my shoulder and another thing that really stood out to me on that trip that Sharon mentioned was she said when she was training at that elite level she didn’t really work on the strength through the front of her body she was working all on back and shoulders because when we’re swimming freestyle a lot of it is in this direction and we’re working through the front and so we really have to work on strengthening the back and the shoulders so that we don’t cause that

hunching or rounding of the shoulders and to me that really stood out so I worked a lot on shoulder and back strength particularly with a lot of seated rows and a few other exercises to me that made a big difference with the power and strength I had through the stroke every Friday we did one set that made a huge difference to my fitness and endurance leading up to the event so every Friday we would do a heart rate set which essentially was a best average or VO2 max set so what we started with was 12 100s on two minutes and we would actually go as four best average with one recovery and then we would do 12 100s best average now to me best average is as fast as you can hold for all 12 so we want to be consistent across all 12 so don’t go as fast as you can on the first one and be dead on the last one you’ve got to be consistent across the whole set now we started those 12 100s and built our way up to 20 100s best average on

two minutes and in the lead up to the event I got down to holding around a 108 per 100 in a long course pool so a 50 meter pool and to me that like that was very hard at the start and I could knock those out fairly comfortably after around the eight or nine weeks of building that set up we just increased by one per week and what I noticed when I was racing was I could keep the heart rate fairly comfortable and in the last 400 I could actually build and really push the pace as hard as I wanted to and I didn’t find that I died whereas last year I really blew up in the last three or 400 meters so that to me felt like the best set that I could have done in the lead up to the event two weeks out from the event I ended up injuring my rib so I was playing with my kids in the surf at home and I threw one of them and through my rib out where it was quite difficult to breathe and I couldn’t rotate to the side and I couldn’t swim for a couple of days but

what it meant was I couldn’t really push hard or train as much as I normally would but the advantage of that was I couldn’t train as hard and I couldn’t train as much so I was forced to rest and I was forced to taper and actually recover a bit and what I actually found is on race day I felt really good I felt like I was I was well rested but I still had the fitness from the last couple months of training and it’s something that I’ve often fallen into the trap of which is training too hard too close to a major event and not letting the the body rest and not sleeping in and and getting all those sorts of things that we need to recover and so that forced rest actually worked to my advantage which in hindsight was a blessing but in the lead-up to event I was quite annoyed I felt like that I couldn’t do what was required on race day it was really good conditions it was flat there was very little wind and to me

that was perfect conditions for racing and I went out tried to stick it with the fastest swimmers there’s four or five of them who are quite elite swimmers and I just couldn’t quite match the pace for the first 200 so I ended up dropping a little bit behind them and I couldn’t sit in their draft so I was kind of out of my own for the entire race day I ended up wearing our nano clear strike tinted mirror goggles which stayed clear the whole way so I made the siding really easy especially in those longer distance events where you want to take a straight line it’s really important to be able to see where you’re going and so the nano clear goggles made a huge difference there I could see exactly what I was looking for the whole way through the event and the event was four laps of this course this 1.25 course and what I ended up doing was just staying fairly steady all the way through I didn’t really have anyone to swim with or draft off so I

had to go about at my own pace but I managed to just keep the heart rate and the pace fairly consistent all the way through except for the last 400 where I picked up the pace and just put on the afterburners in the last 200 meters or so and that felt really good I didn’t have to spike I didn’t have to go too hard halfway through which can sometimes cause you to blow up and cause your pace to drop overall and when I finished the event I had no idea what time I had done there was no timing visible I had to wait until the times came through on the app but I ended up swimming a 103.17 which is averaging a 115 and the qualifying time was a 104 so I managed to just scrape in and I was really pleased to hold that 115 I wasn’t sure if it was really possible but that was with no wetsuit in the open water and in pretty good conditions overall and the one thing I’ve noticed a few weeks after qualifying is in terms of racing

confidence just personally that has really increased we had a big swim here in Melbourne called the Peer to Pub and I managed to win the age group and have the second fastest overall time on the day and that was a little bit depending on tide and conditions and a few other things but in terms of confidence sometimes just it takes one little personal win to see that happen down the track in other races and so it’s given me that confidence that all right you can swim reasonably well and you can swim at a pretty good pace and mix it with some of the faster guys and I’m trying to keep that momentum going so I hope you enjoyed this video if you enjoyed it hit the subscribe button and take a look at this next video thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast if you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. Imagine holding 105 pace per 100 for almost two hours. No walls, no turns, just precision, every stroke efficient, every breath measured. How do you move that fast, that long, without falling apart? What does your catch need to feel like? How do you stay smooth when the ocean, the pack and your own heartbeat are fighting you? Nick Sloman isn’t the biggest guy in the start line. He wasn’t a child prodigy but through 12 years of work he turned efficiency into his edge earning his place at Paris 2024. After missing Tokyo he rebuilt not by swimming harder but by learning how to swim smarter and the way he talks about feeling the water might just change how you think about endurance and technique forever. Hi, I’m Nick Sloman, five-time Australian open water champ,

five-time world championship representative, also six-time surf race champion as well. Something that I’m really trying to work on at the moment, I know Craig’s really anal about my head position. I struggle with trying to keep it down because in the open water I’m always constantly looking up and so my head position is generally fairly neutral. I’m always trying to look down at the tee or at the sand in open water. It might not always be like that. Under fatigue I generally look up a little bit but I’ve been trying to try and obviously relax the traps and try and keep my head as neutral as possible. I know I want to try and keep my legs as boring as possible so for me trying to suck my my hips up a little bit almost like ass to the sky when I and sort of chest down that way I can sort of stay on top of the water because in open water you you’re trying to almost be how fast can you swim slow essentially and that allows you to

swim long distances easily but also just trying to stay on top of the water is where you want to be. A kick for me is more about balance. I know historically I’ve had a quite a strong kick. I’ve been really trying on limiting the kick for longevity of my career as well as trying to have that change of gear and that last sort of 1000. So for me it’s it’s a soft sort of three beat I would say. I’ve been working on trying that the one beat so one kick per stroke and and obviously when I’m picking up the pace it’s it’s going to be quite frequent six beat kick. That’s what I’ve been trying to do sort of the last sort of six months. I’ve really been trying to focus on efficiency. I know Singapore was was one to sort of really highlight my inefficiency when it came to my heart rate and and stuff in comparison to everyone else so I’ve been really trying to work on trying to limit that kick try and swim as fast as I have been but with less propulsion from the legs.

It’s pretty stable like it’s it’s to the left I know it’s a it’s probably not the greatest habit to get into but just see if I can reach out on my right arm and get purchase on that. I find that I’m a little bit more balanced and if frequency of breath is very important for swimming long distances every two years. I’ve been working recently on trying to get pressure on the outside of my hand. I know that I have a tendency to kind of push out on my stroke so that’s something that I’ve sort of thought about is getting the pressure on my outside of my hand and almost pulling across myself because I want that cross body connection. Obviously I’m a smaller guy so I want to be able to use my whole body rather than just my arms and legs to get as fast as I can so that outside of the hand will allow me to kind of pull across and use my other hip to. Hey real quick in case you didn’t know we run swimming camps around the world from the Maldives,

Thailand, Japan with Sundays, Galapagos Islands plus a bunch of new locations for next year. So if you’d like to join us at a future camp and improve your swimming and explore and experience some of the best locations to swim in the world then go to effortlesswimming.com forward slash camps. We’ve got all the dates and locations listed there. A question I get all the time is I’m not that quick will this camp be suitable for me? We have a wide range of speeds and abilities come to the camps so as long as you can swim a kilometer there’s a very good chance that these camps will be suitable for you. And if you’re not sure just get in touch with us and we’ll make sure that we do find you a suitable camp. Thanks for listening let’s get back to the podcast. Get purchased on the water. When I was a junior there wasn’t much technical expertise it was more how hard can you go for as long as you can. Now that I’m obviously moving with Craig

we’re analyzing it a little bit more and just trying to find that one percent.

Obviously when I was younger I’d look at videos and look at

champions when watching them on TV and just trying to almost copy them and almost have a habit of almost picking up what they’re doing and their bad habits almost. So over the years I’ve kind of just almost trying to find my own technique and what works best for me and finding little cues like the outside of the hand and that one beat kick and just trying to find as much efficiency as I can essentially. I’m quite high typically over a 10K I’ll sit at 40 strokes a minute towards the end maybe up towards 50 typically sitting around that 41 42 right on average. My head position is probably one that Craig’s most anal about. In open water it probably doesn’t matter too much because you’re constantly looking up to sight but in pool you’ve almost got to be perfect or as close to perfect as you can and that head position allows my arse to get up and have a better body position so that is what I’m when I’m in the pool is probably what I’m focusing on the

most. The rule that I kind of work against is when I’m heading into the chop I want to rate up with my my arms and then when I’m going with it I want to rate up with my legs. Typically that’s worked best for me. Higher rates I know I can get in a better rhythm even though it may be inconsistent chop or anything like that I can find a little bit more balance with a higher rating. When I’m going with it I can relax a little bit more and conserve in that way but I also want to lift up my back end so that I’m actually catching those runs. I would say once every 10 strokes it would also change on the length of swim as well and how many people are around me. If it’s a large pack and I’ve got guys either side of me it’d be less and maybe in a relay it’d be even once every three or four strokes because the line is very important you don’t want to be swimming too far off course when time is of the essence so I guess it just depends on

on the the distance and and what I’m trying to achieve. Again it depends on what I’m trying to achieve. If I’m quite fatigued and I know the people around me are in a better position then I’m probably going to stick to the hip try and slow them down but if I want to conserve as much energy then I might drop to the feet so they can swim a bit quicker and again it it just depends on what I’m trying to achieve.

Earlier on in my career I was averaging close to 80k a week it’s a little bit less now it’s probably around 70 70k a week. In Hungary I got close to 100k and half of that was other strokes it’s just the Hungarian training regime they just love doing obviously different strokes with different muscle groups and stuff like that and it was probably the most mentally taxing period of my career but I learned a lot from that from an endurance perspective and there’s a reason why they’re the best in the world. It’s like a a make or break situation.

I quite like the more challenging sets I just feel like from a mental perspective I feel like I’ve achieved something so I always liked doing the 31s even though like it was extremely tough the 31s on 140 just best average as much as like in the moment I’m probably hating myself but I just feel like I can get the most out of that from an endurance perspective probably more so now that the set I did this morning was two three hundreds paddles pull buoy just relaxing A2 and then off the back of that 400 best effort and we do that maybe four or five times I try to hold under a minute if I can on my best days I can hold 57 58 and then on my bad days it’d probably be around that one minute 101. Of late I’ve really been trying to hit out more heart rate zone rather than a pace so with my sort of zone two work anywhere between 130 to 140 beats per minute maybe like a 108 107 my strength is really in that 170 to 180 zone

where I can sort of hit down to that 101 102 pace historically I’ve been able to hold that for pretty much all day and then anywhere in the red zone would be anything under a minute uh yeah it’s um I think it’s a an in thought set that’s where we did nine four hundreds we start on five and we drop 10 seconds each time and they do it in sets of three so we’ll go five minutes for 50 for 40 back up to 450 and then for 40 for 30 then go back up to 440 for 30 for 20 and the idea of that is to start at a one a two a three and then a two a three threshold a three threshold the o2 max and by the end of the set I’m hitting close to four minutes I would typically start at an a one maybe like a a 440 like 110 pace and then it will be dropping maybe five to 10 seconds each 400 the couple in in recent years um swimming in the in the sand in paris was one of the toughest um for its own like environmental reasons like it we were swimming against a current that was

over one meter per second so it was good while you were going with it but when you came back into it there was only really one spot where you could sit and it it was very physically demanding another one would be Singapore just just went um we were in temperatures outside of like 36 degrees plus and in the water it would have been over 32 degrees on average um I ended up being over 180 beats per minute for one and a half hours so that was tough physically um I left that almost on a stretcher there’s been many races where I’ve been pulled out and and taken to hospital it’s almost one of those things that I sort of don’t know when to stop um I yeah just find a whole another level of of you know focus and in can push myself past what’s physically capable of myself and yeah those races really spring spring to mind with with physicality and and also like mental fortitude as well um you kind of get to halfway and you think oh

shit am I am I gonna do it or or whatnot and yeah those those races of recent times have been extremely tough uh I guess it’s just um what my old coach JR used to instill in me is is discipline like you rest when you’re dead essentially mentality and and it was all those sort of work that I did leading into it I didn’t really want it to go to waste so you know there was 11 years where I didn’t really take a break bigger than two weeks and that was forced because of hotel quarantine so it those times sort of spring in the back of my head and basically tell me not to give up and just to keep going thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast if you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

If you find that when you’re swimming freestyle and your arm drops down when you go to take a breath, there’s five main reasons why I find that happens. In this video, I’m going to break down what those five reasons are, how you can fix them, so that by the end of this video, you can swim a lot further for less effort, and you feel like you’ve got all the time in the world to get your breath every time you’re taking a breath is just swimming your freestyle. First thing that I will often look at is the breathing. How are they breathing? Now, the two main mistakes that people make here that causes that lead arm to drop is they’ll lift their head up while above the water. And that sort of comes from that they end up pressing downwards on the water to lift their head up above the water. And, and then obviously, you’re not going to be able to get into that good catch position. So we need to make sure you’re not lifting the head up while

above the water. And we need to make sure you’re looking in the right position. And the right position is straight to the side. So if I’m working with someone, I might get them to look at the lane rope or the side of the pool and try and look there once you’ve turned your head to the side to breathe, because sometimes people will look too far behind them or too far in front. And it really just throws their alignment out. And if you think of swimming freestyle and breathing, I like the analogy of imagining like you got like a skewer through your spine and through your neck. And your head is a bit of meat on that skewer. And when you go to breathe, you’re just turning the skewer, but it stays aligned on that skewer. So you turn to the side and coming back, you’re not shifting your head way off to the side. Now with some elites, and as I see the head come off the side a bit, but generally just try and keep it mostly centered because that’s going to keep

you better aligned. So we’ve got to check the breathing first and foremost. Now the other thing that can help there too is you want to try and keep part of that bottom goggle in the water when we turn to the side. But the other thing is where your mouth is when you breathe. So last week, I was working with someone who’s in our stroke analysis membership. And we looked at his breathing and his breathing was like a gasp for air. It was like open mouth, really sort of upper chest breathing. Now what I have got him to do is to just almost like reach around with his mouth off to the side and try and just make it more of a controlled or a steady inhale instead of this big gasp for air because that’s going to cause you to it makes it difficult to stay calm and relaxed when you’re breathing if you do it that way. So we need to make sure we’re breathing the right way. So first thing is just breathing. If you have trouble

with that, you can do a couple of simple drills like in the first week of our eight week faster freestyle course, we work on some sink down drills just to relax. But if you’re looking to just get that breathing position right, side breathing drill with a kickboard is probably your best bet. So if you put some fins on, hold a kickboard out in front and you can just practice that skewer like approach to breathing to the side. Now it’s OK if when you first start that you find it difficult and you can’t really keep that bottom goggle in. If you need to turn that little bit further, that’s OK. But just over time, you’ll get more comfortable with it until you can get that split vision that we’re looking for.

Hey, real quick, in case you didn’t know, we run swimming camps around the world from the Maldives, Thailand, Japan with Sundays, Galapagos Islands, plus a bunch of new locations for next year. So if you’d like to join us at a future camp and improve your swimming and explore and experience some of the best locations to swim in the world, then go to effortlesswimming.com forward slash camps. We’ve got all the dates and locations listed there. A question I get all the time is I’m not that quick. Will this camp be suitable for me? We have a wide range of speeds and abilities come to the camps. So as long as you can swim a kilometre, there’s a very good chance that these camps will be suitable for you. And if you’re not sure, just get in touch with us and we’ll make sure that we do find you a suitable camp. Thanks for listening. Let’s get back to the podcast. Now, the other thing that we then look at is the rotation through the shoulders.

So overrotations are fairly common problem that I see, particularly on the breathing side. So if we’re looking front on it, someone swinging towards us, you’ll see that for the most part, you know, most good consumers are 30 to 40 degrees through the shoulders if you measure that shoulder rotation at its furthest point. Now, if you’re going past that and if you’re particularly going to 90 degrees through the shoulders, it’s very hard to keep that lead arm in front because of the pressure it can put on your rotator calf, the pressure it can put on the shoulder there. So a lot of people struggle to keep their lead arm in front if they’re going to 90 degrees. So we just want to check how far you’re rotating through the shoulders as you turn to the side to breathe. Now, often that over rotation is a result of the head turning too far or lifting, but sometimes it’s not. Sometimes people will just want to rotate more than what they actually need

to. So that’s the second thing we want to check in with. And if you are going too far, then what you can do there is just work on reducing that rotation. And like I mentioned in the video last week about how to swim relaxed, one of the things that can help you just get the right amount of rotation is think of rotating your torso, think of rotating it forwards instead of side to side. Because like Karl and Pipe said that we want to be rocking side to side and not rolling side to side. And I think when you think of that as rotating forwards instead of side to side, that’s what that’s a way that can help you do that. The third thing that can lead to that lead arm dropping when you breathe is actually the entry of the hand and of the arm into the water. And again, working with a different swimmer in our stroke analysis coaching last week, I had a look at his entry and he was coming over and landing elbow first. And when you’re basically

landing elbow first, it means that you’ve essentially fully extended and reach forwards above the water. So by the time you go to get the hand in, you end up pressing straight down because you’ve got nowhere else to go. It’s very hard to then continue reaching forwards in the water, which is what we want to happen when you’ve done that above. So what we want to work on changing there is making sure you into fingertips first, elbow up, and then you slide the hand forwards in the water out in front of the shoulder before you start to catch. Because if you if you don’t, if you are going elbow first and the hand is just landing in last, you’ll find that that’s that hand, that arm just wants to go straight down to the bottom of the pool. So that’s another one we’ve got to check in with. And another simple drill you can do there with fins and a kickboard is just entry drill. So holding the kickboard out in front, get that hand to come in

fingers first, and that kickboard is going to force you to enter early enough so you go fingers first because if you overreach, your hand is going to hit the top of the kickboard. And you’re not going to be able to get that sliding forwards of the hand in the water. So another really simple drill that you can use to check in with that. The fourth thing I check in with here is the exit of the opposite hand. So let’s say you breathe to the left and it’s your right hand that’s reaching forwards. We want to have a look at what’s happening with this left hand as it’s finishing the last part of the pool or the press phase of the stroke. Because a lot of people tend to finish too short there. They come out before their hip. And if you’re doing that, then you’re not going to get that last bit of propulsion at the back part of your stroke that helps you reach and rotate forwards. So sometimes one of the causes of people not being able

to get that lead arm reaching forwards is they’ve just got no propulsion at the back to be able to actually get it. Because if you don’t have it there, it’s coming out short and you tend to just fall down, collapse on it a little bit. So we need to make sure that the hand is number one pressing back past the hip. So just past the hip. And number two, make sure the palm of the hand is facing behind you nearly all the way back past the hip. Because another common thing we see there is this palm of the hand ends up turning into the body and it’s sort of the hands almost slicing or cutting throughout the back. So again just missing out on that propulsion there. Because that press back past the hip works hand in hand with that reach forward and extension out there. And then that’s where you get that nice lengthening through the body and through the shoulders. So we’ve got to check the exit. The last thing that I will often check here is what’s happening

with that arm as it’s going forwards. We want to look at the what we call the starting catch position where we want to have this very slight downwards angle and primarily looking for is the wrist dropped as they’re reaching forward. So sometimes if people are reaching forwards this wrist is is dropped there like that and that elbows drop down then it doesn’t really lead to being able to continue reaching forwards because with a dropped elbow dropped wrist that arm just wants to go straight down. So I’ve got to make sure that our lead arm is in the right position and in the right shape. And so that’s having the fingers below the wrist, wrist below the elbow in a very slight downwards angle there. Because if it’s the opposite with the elbow lower than the wrist, wrist lower than the fingers then it’s it’s very hard to continue reaching forwards there in the correct way. So we want to make sure that’s happening. Now just as a

side note as a bit of a bonus there the other thing we can sort of look at is where is this shoulder as you’re reaching forward. So with good freestyle as you’ll see this shoulder is somewhere up near the cheek. Not on the cheek but near the cheek. So it ends up staying up there through that reach phase. Now with the students who are new to the sport sometimes we find that that just is dropped down. It’s not near the cheek. It ends up being well below it and again it’s just it’s one of those finer details that’s worth checking in with. So there’s a drill you can do something like shoulder to cheek scoop drill which you may have seen on our other videos before where this will encourage you to or force you basically to keep that shoulder up near the cheek as you’re going through this catch motion. Now in that drill that shoulder is probably a bit too close to the cheek. You wouldn’t actually want to keep it that close but it’s a great way just to get a feel

for that rough position that we’re trying to get into. So if you follow that checklist you can see whether or not you’re doing each those things and that can help you keep that lead arm out in front. Now the very final thing you could do here let’s say you just didn’t want to you didn’t want to go through any of that and just like what’s the what’s the quick fix or what’s a way that I could get this sorted without having to think too much about it. Well if if you want to just try something you know quickly one of the things that’s worked with a few of the swimmers that I work with is just really think of holding the glide or reaching forwards for about twice as long as what they expect. So exaggerating that reach out in front or that glide out in front. Now for example I’m thinking of one of the swimmers that I coach online when he sends me videos we were having trouble with him getting getting a good catch he was just sort

of that arm was dropping down he was too straight with the arm and he was always going too deep so what he had to do was exaggerate how long he felt like he was reaching forwards for by about twice as much so I said to him okay next next video that you send me I want you to exaggerate it to the point where you think this is way too much this is way too too much glide out in front and just send it and we’ll see what happens and when he did that it was the right amount and his timing was actually a lot better the catch was a lot better and then over the course of about three or four weeks he was able to to basically fix it and it’s so much better now so that’s kind of like the quick fix approach won’t work for everyone but for some swimmers we found that that to basically just fix it pretty quickly so a couple of ways that you can go about it I know this is a longer video but sometimes these things require a bit more detail than others

so hope you enjoyed the video and if you do enjoy this stuff check out the effortless swim membership there’s 14 days free have a look at the eight week faster freestyle course inside there because that is what most of our members are going through at the moment and we’re getting some really good results there so thanks for watching please like and subscribe and share this with anyone you know who’s trying to improve their swimming and I’ll be back with another video next week thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast if you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

You’re taking 50 strokes a lap. You should be taking somewhere in the low 40s. The problem is that your shoulders aren’t connected to your hips. That is what Beckerman’s coach told her when she moved across to North Baltimore Aquatic. Now Beckerman was the promising up and coming American athlete and already one of the fastest in the country, yet she had this issue with a stroke where her shoulders and her hips weren’t connected. Now, what does that mean? And how was she able to eventually get to the point where she was consistently swimming 41 strokes per lap every single time? And how did she go on to become a record breaking marathon swimmer and a two time national champion in the 10 kilometer open water event? I’ve been reading Beckerman’s book recently outside the lanes and some of these anecdotes that she makes from the in the book I’ve found really interesting. And that in particular with her hips not connecting

to her shoulders. Hey, real quick, in case you didn’t know, we run swimming camps around the world from the Maldives, Thailand, Japan with Sundays, Galapagos Islands, plus a bunch of new locations for next year. So if you’d like to join us at a future camp and improve your swimming and explore and experience some of the best locations to swim in the world, then go to effortlesswimming.com forward slash camps. We’ve got all the dates and locations listed there. A question I get all the time is I’m not that quick. Will this camp be suitable for me? We have a wide range of speeds and abilities come to the camps. So as long as you can swim a kilometer, there’s a very good chance that these camps will be suitable for you. And if you’re not sure, just get in touch with us and we’ll make sure that we do find you a suitable camp. Thanks for listening. Let’s get back to the podcast. Now, the thing with Becker is she was already very

experienced. So as soon as her coach told her that, she said, hang on a minute, let me get in the water and practice what I think you are trying to tell me. And she said, pretty much straight away, she was able to make that connection from her hips to her shoulders. But what does that mean? And how can you do it? And how can you know whether or not it’s a mistake that you need to address? Now, the way that I say it when I’m coaching swimmers in clinics is that people who are disconnected from their top half to their bottom half, often their stroke timing is out. And the way that they connect through the midsection is not done correctly. So how we can firstly make sure that we are connected from hips to shoulders, we need to firstly think of good posture. So we’re building the frame of our body. So we get length through here. And then think about trying to squeeze into a tight pair of jeans, like may have heard from Andy Donaldson in one of our videos.

Think about squeezing into a tight pair of jeans where you suck your tummy in, you squeeze your butt cheeks together. That will give you this tautness through here. That way, when we’re rotating around the spine, our hips and shoulders can go together because we need the frame of our body to be working as one unit. If we’re disconnected, then usually the hips will stay too flat and the shoulders are just moving around. But we need to get everything working together. The other result of that is when that’s disconnected, quite often people will come into the water and pull through straight away. What they won’t do is reach forwards, extend out and delay that catch a little bit until this arm gets to here and then pull through. So we need to make sure the stroke timing is a little bit slower in front and a little bit quicker in the back. Now, if you are not sure whether or not this is something that you might need to

address, it’s the way that you can know it is if you feel like you get very little purchase on the water when you’re going through your catch and if you feel like you’re windmilling through the water, there’s a very good chance that things are disconnected. And I had a swimmer that I used to coach several years back. When he first came to me, we could see that he’d come into the water and he would just pull straight away. And so his arm was moving separately to the rest of his body. It was completely out of whack in terms of the timing. And part of that was because his shoulders were just rotating on their own and they were completely separate from his from his lower half. And so a way that you can build up on that is doing something like six one six drill where you’re kicking on the side and then when you bring your arm over and you swap sides, you make sure that your hips, your shoulders are going together as you rotate.

And then we can start to build up from that and we work on that connection through that drill. Or another drill is arms by side, kicking with fins on face down the water and we just rotate in the body around the spine and we’re working on that connection from hips to shoulders. And when you get that right, you will notice that you get a lot further with each stroke because with Becker to go from 50 strokes a lap down to 41 strokes a lap. That means that she is increasing her distance per stroke by almost 20 percent. And that is a huge amount. That’s probably another was another 20 centimetres or so from every single stroke that she’s taking because she’s getting more propulsion because things are better connected through the stroke. And so that is why we want that connection to happen. And there are a lot of swimmers out there that don’t have that connection. So it’s something that I think is worth identifying. Some people can just make that

change straight away once they know the issue. Some people need a few more drills to build up to work. So if you’re not sure exactly what to work on, check out our freestyle checklist, which is a you can get free below. And that’s got the order of the stroke to work through and exactly what to work on at what point in the stroke if you’re not too sure. So check that out below. If you like this video, make sure you like and subscribe and I’ll see you next week in another effortless swimming video. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlessswimming.com.

some of the best Ironman athletes, depending on the, on the pace they're going. Some of them do have a light six-peak kick. Um, some of them are doing less than that. So it just depends on the person. But if you can get yourself to the point where you can change gears by changing your kick type, then you'll find that it gives you a lot more options going forwards. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming podcast, the show that helps swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here's your host, Brenton Ford.

If you are confused between the different types of kicking, two-beat, four-beat and six-beat, I'm going to explain what each of those things mean, how you can do them and when to use them in your own freestyle. What the beach refers to is how many kicks you do per stroke cycle. And a stroke cycle is a right arm and a left arm. That is one stroke cycle. A two-beat kick is when you do one kick per arm stroke. So it's kick on the right arm, kick on the left arm. That would be a two-beat kick. And this is a really good way to start as a beginner. It's the most efficient kick because you're kicking the least and it's a really good way to help with the timing of your stroke as well. And you'll often find a lot of longer distance swimmers will use a two-beat kick because it can save energy. And when you've got the buoyancy of saltwater or a wetsuit, you find that you don't need to kick much at all. And so a two-beat can be the preferred style for a lot of people. Now with a two-beat kick, the way we want to think about it is with the upper part of your legs, so your, where your thigh bones are, that's not going to move a whole lot, but the lower part of our legs are going to go from one side onto the next. So we're going side to side like this. What we're not doing is staying flat and just moving our legs up and down. We're going to be on our side and our legs will be slightly apart and then we'll kick and that'll switch us to the other side.

So we go from one to the next. Now, if you think about timing your kick with a two-beat as when your left hand enters, your right foot's going to press down and that's going to help you switch onto the other side. And then as your right hand comes in, your left leg is going to kick down as you switch. So you can think about kicking yourself or pressing yourself into that streamlined position. So we're not trying to do this big massive kick where we're trying to really propel ourselves forwards, but it's this switch from side to side that gives us this grounding point, this sort of point in the stroke where it gives us a bit of propulsion because it feels like we've got something to almost anchor against. So that's the importance of the kick. So that's a, that's a two-beat kick. Now we often find in this, this type of kick that some people will actually need to bend their knee a little bit more than what they would for the others. Just to help them get that switch happening, which is okay. As long as they don't kick too big where the legs are coming way outside the body line and creating a lot of drag. So that's a two-beat kick, very efficient, great for open water. Great for people who aren't too concerned about the speed that they're going, but they want to conserve energy and they want to time their stroke really well. At Effortless Swimming, our mission is simple. Make swimming more enjoyable. Whether you're training for your next race, swimming for fitness, or just love being in the water. We're here to help you swim faster, smoother, and with more confidence.

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Now a four beat kick is when we do four kicks for each arm stroke, for each arm cycle. Except what I find a lot of swimmers tend to do with the four beat is they go one, two, three, four. But the way we want to time our four beat kick is actually different. It's one kick on one stroke and three kicks on the other stroke. So it's one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, not one, two, one, two. I see a lot of swimmers doing this two, two, when they come for video analysis, but I find it often limits their ability to get faster with that two, two. So the way we generally want to work on this two, this four beat kick is one kick on one stroke, three on the next. Now that means you'll have this little bit of a pause or a delay after that one, and that's kind of where you'll get the glide and the distance in your stroke, as you can see in this video here, takes a little bit to get the timing, but what I like to think in my mind is it's one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. So having that tempo in the back of your mind. Another way you can kind of think of that timing is you can go one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, same thing, just different way of thinking about it, but those two types of ways of thinking about it can actually help you get that sort of tempo and timing, but that does take a little bit

of practice for most swimmers I've worked with it, it's taking them two or three sessions of dedicated practice to get that sort of timing. And that's kind of an in-between level of kick. It's still very efficient, but it does allow you to start to increase the pace. And if you look at some of the best distance swimmers in the world, many of them will do a two-beat kick for their 1500, but as they start to ramp it up in the last three, 400 meters, that'll introduce more of a four-beat kick when they want to pick up the pace that little bit. So it can often use a little bit more energy, but it can come along with increased speed. A six-beat kick is three kicks per arm stroke. And that is more of a continuous kick. You'll see this all the time with sprinters, with even people doing 400 and 800 meters who are used to that sort of kick level of kick. But, and you'll also see in the 1500, sometimes where they're finishing off the last 50 or 100 with a strong six-beat kick, it can use a little bit more energy, but it can also be efficient and easy to do if you keep the kicks light enough of, but more times than not, we will see this with your average adults when they're looking to increase the pace. So it's good to develop these different gears in your swimming so that you can change speeds. But a six-beat kick, you will feel like it is just a constant kick that doesn't have any pauses or interruptions to it, but that can come with a higher heart rate. But it's not to say that you can't maintain that for an entire Ironman swim.

If you look at some of the best Ironman athletes, depending on the pace they're going, some of them do have a light six-beat kick. And some of them are doing less than that. So it just depends on the person. But if you can get yourself to the point where you can change gears by changing your kick type, then you'll find that it gives you a lot more options going forwards. And it's probably not something for beginners, but if you are around that 145 per hundred for one kilometer or faster, it's something that you may want to consider developing as part of your stroke and you're going to be doing so many laps in training anyway, you're going to be doing some variances in speed that it's a good thing to at least attempt and see what works best for you. And it may be that you don't actually need to go to a six-beat kick. It might be that for whatever you're doing, two beat is absolutely fine. And that's all you need. And so you might want to stick with it, but at least give yourself the option to be able to change gears by changing your kick type and something that does take time to develop if you are new to the sport, if you're looking to develop your swimming, you can work directly with myself and our other coaches in our coaching membership. So if you can get footage of your swimming, I'll put the link below to join our coaching membership. And that's the best way to work directly with me to help make yourself faster and improve your own technique. Thanks for watching. If you want to see another video on freestyle, check out this one here. Thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast.

If you'd like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlessswimming.com

Thanks to you and your really helpful video analysis, I started to kind of go from 210 to two down to 150, this is per hundred yards, down to 145. And I think when I was right around that pace, you said the next kind of breakthrough for you is gonna be connection, right? So you gotta hit, you gotta kick while you're catching on the same side and you gotta feel that connection and feel like, have the water help you move. Don't move against the water, like use it to your advantage to just kind of glide. And you gave me that skating analogy. You know, like one catch side, one catch kick, just skate to the other side. I think that was another one of those sort of moments where once I practiced that and got it down, that was another sort of like five, six second jump. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast, the show that helps swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here's your host, Brenton Ford. Two years ago, Brian Harns was swimming two minutes per hundred yards, struggling to find rhythm and wondering if he'd ever feel smooth in the water. Fast forward to now, he's cruising under 130s and just placed ninth out of 171 in his recent half Ironman swim. How did he make that kind of jump? What changes in his stroke made the biggest difference?

And what nearly stopped him along the way? In this episode, Brian shares the breakthroughs, setbacks and lessons from his two-year transformation, proving what's possible when you combine patience, feedback and the right focus in training. Welcome to the podcast. Just for those that are listening, if you can give it like a quick background on yourself and your swimming and your triathlon background as well. Yeah, sure. Thanks for having me, Brenton, great. Great to be here. I'm a regular listener to the podcast, so it's an honor to be on. I think you guys are doing amazing things at Effortless Swimming. It's an incredible platform that you've built and you guys are incredible at helping adult swimmers get comfortable and kind of distilling things down into digestible terms. So it's really, really great to be here. Yeah, so just a little bit of background. I swam just kind of recreationally growing up. Like I wasn't a competitive swimmer, just a little bit. I played a lot of sports and then wound up, when I was in high school, middle school and high school just kind of started to focus more on wrestling and that was my thing in high school. So I did that mostly, but I also ran and I played baseball. So definitely played a lot of sports and like I said, just kind of swam recreationally, but wasn't a competitive swimmer. And then after college and went to law school, I was kind of looking for something to keep that competitive atmosphere going and I picked up running. So I did a lot of half marathons and marathons and that was fun. I was like for someone who had a demanding job and I was like a decent runner for half marathon.

Like I could keep like a 715 pace for a half marathon. So it was pretty good. And then my older brother got into triathlon and he was like, hey, you should get a bike and try this, this is amazing.

So I did, I started biking a little bit and I started hitting the pool a little bit. I did a sprint race and that was it. I was just like totally hooked. I was a fairly decent cyclist and pretty good runner like having a kind of running background, but the pool and the swim, I was like so uncomfortable. Like everything, the race atmosphere and the open water and just being able to sustain because I had never really swam competitively, but I was okay. I could kind of just put together a decent enough swim to get myself in a position to be in the mix somewhat on the bike and the run, but it just became a focus where I wanted to get, I just wanted to feel more comfortable, basically swimming. So like around that time, I was probably, like a 210 per a hundred yard pace, like somewhere around that, but not particularly relaxed, like feeling that was like working when it shouldn't have been, because I was pretty good running shape. So I just started to kind of watch some YouTube videos and about technique. And I realized it wasn't about, there's a kind of thing like you talk about where, more effort doesn't equal more results. Like I was starting to go to the pool a little more and it just wasn't translating into better results. So I started to watch a few YouTube videos and pick up a little technique. And I was there one day and I remember,

I forget exactly what it was, but it was either something about like head position or body position. I was trying it for a while. And then one day, like it just clicked, the actual like technique and I felt it. And then that was it. I've just been completely obsessed with swimming since that moment. And it's not like at that moment, I just all of a sudden was, as good a swimmer as I've become over the years, but it was just enough to bring me back. And then I just completely fell in love with,

how highly technical it is swimming and that like tension between, needing to put in the time and how fit you can get swimming. But at the same time, just the mental side where you have to be putting in like smart work, not just more work. And yeah, so ever since then, I've just been just going at it as much as I can. Because when I speak to people, it's like they love the run, they love the ride. Their swim is often the thing that they want to avoid because it's not fun and it's not enjoyable. So that moment there, is that the one that kind of converted you to enjoying the swim more than the other legs? Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, once I feel like I hear people talk about golf a lot like this, like they hit one shot that just like takes them, just like makes them fall in love with it and brings them back. And like that, yeah, that was it for me. Just feeling that moment where that technique just like clicked into place and then just like seeing the difference in pace and feeling how you're supposed to be moving through the water. Yeah, then I just started kind of prioritizing swimming over biking and running. And it just became by far my favorite of the three, for sure. And then take me back to about two years ago, I think when you sent your first video in for analysis, what made you decide, all right, I think I need a little bit of help here. Yeah, I just kind of realized that I wasn't gonna figure it out myself. You know what I mean? And I was talking, there was a guy at the pool

who I kind of watched. We were equal and we were pretty friendly, like really nice guy. He did tries, like a local try guy. And we would talk at the pool and I started seeing him, we were pretty equal. And then I started seeing him all of a sudden and I was like, man, I can't keep up with this guy anymore. You know, and then all of a sudden he's like hitting flip turns and like dolphin kicking underneath the water and just like, I mean, literally just lapping me. So I asked him like, what's going on? And he said, oh yeah, he said, I started doing online tutorial. Like I started watching videos and I sent in to do a video analysis and just like completely changed my stroke. Like I never realized everything I was doing wrong. So I was like, oh, you know, let me give it a shot. So that was what prompted me to send you that first video. And can you remember back to that first one, what were the main couple of things that you got out of that first analysis? Yeah, I mean, yeah, I think you were pretty kind to me. I think you went pretty easy on me because there was a lot, but it was just the basics. It was just head position, body position. I think I was over rotating, which was causing my legs to kind of splay out. But it was mostly just like the fundamentals because I never, you know, even though I love it, I didn't like grow up as a swimmer. So I just didn't have a good sort of like base foundation. So like I said, I think you talked to me about like head position, not over rotating, like lighter kick and just kind of like feeling the water, you know, kind of like skating through the water,

not muscling your way through the water. So I think those were the sort of first kind of cues that you gave me that were super helpful. And then we've obviously done more videos over the last two years. Was there any particular piece of advice or a moment where you were swimming one day and you made a change and you noticed like, oh, okay, this feels just as good as that first kind of breakthrough you had when you changed that initial part of your technique a couple of years back?

Yeah, I think it was, so I started to, you know, thanks to you and your really helpful video analysis, I started to kind of, you know, go from 210 to two down to 150, this is, you know, per hundred yards, down to 145. And I think when I was right around that pace, you said, you know, the next kind of breakthrough for you is gonna be connection, right? So you gotta hit, you gotta kick while you're catching on the same side. And you gotta feel that connection and feel like, have the water help you move, don't move against the water, like use it to your advantage to just kind of glide. And you gave me that skating analogy, you know, like one catch side, one catch kick, just skate to the other side. I think that was another one of those sort of moments where once I practiced that and got it down, that was another sort of like five, six second jump. And then I think the biggest one, you know, more recently was, was breathing. So, you know, just sort of breathing position, breathing technique. I think I was coming up out of the water a lot, which I just, at the pool, I kind of see and kind of notice a lot of people doing that now, ever since you pointed out to me. So you gave me that cue, that like, like goggles split, you know, like where the water should be sort of one, you know, one goggle underneath, one goggle over. So the top of your head is kind of pressing into the water. And that was total game changer,

because that took so much of that, so much of the effort out of the wrong part of the stroke and put it into the right part of the stroke. Like there was no more, like there's no more effort to breathe. Now it's just like waiting for the, you know, catch hand to be at the right spot to like put the pressure on. So that was, that was another just kind of cue. That was a total game changer. And what I really like about seeing your progression over the last two years as well is the, you haven't been in a rush to like, all right, I need to be 20 seconds quicker by the next month. It's like, you know, two years, it's a long time, but it's also a short amount of time. And typically it's people who are willing to just focus on one or two things for several months, make those changes, like your head and body positions and really basic stuff, but a lot of people just don't have that in place. And that's why I went easy on you, so to speak. It's like, well, there's no point trying to like give you everything. Let's just keep it super simple and get that right. And then we can reassess and go from there. And now, so your most recent triathlon, most recent race that you did, it was a 32.50 for your half Ironman swim, where you got ninth out of 171 in your age group for the swim. One of the things you mentioned in your email a few weeks back was you allowed yourself to get a little bit scrappy in that race. Can you talk a little bit about what that means for you? Yeah, and, you know, first of all, I think like, you know, testament to you and everything you guys are doing there.

Two years ago, when I, you know, really was enjoying swimming and thinking like, I'll just try to get better and just see what happens. Like I enjoy that sort of technical challenge. If you told me I would have like a top 10, division swim at an Ironman branded event, I would have told you you're completely out of your mind. So that was, you know, that was pretty cool. And I think, you know, as I mentioned to you in the email too, you know, I think I didn't really seed myself appropriately. I should have probably put myself up a little further because I was kind of climbing over people for most of the swim. So I'm gonna take that with me. And like you always talk about, you know, you can't be a victim out there in the open water. And I think I had a little bit of that syndrome in the seeding. Like I sort of just seeded more appropriately. So I'm gonna remember that for next time. But yeah, so in terms of like the scrappiness, I guess like what I met was, there was a really like a pretty good chop in the water. But it was kind of like, it was a wind driven chop, right? So right underneath the surface was just like nice clean water. So I couldn't, you couldn't do your normal, like easy kind of feeling fluid split goggle, like breathing like you can in the pool. So I had to kind of just figure out like how am I gonna keep my catch, you know, the way that I want it to be, like it is in the pool because I got this nice clean water. But every time I went up for a breath the first couple strokes, I was just like eating water. So I just had to kind of like figure out with elbows in my face and kind of heels, like almost, you know, hitting me in the goggles, just kind of, I skipped the breath about, you know, a couple of times,

just was whatever, hopefully I could get some air on the next one, you know, and then just would breathe like a little bit behind, a little bit in front, like coming up a little bit more maybe than you would if you were trying to execute really good technique in the pool. So basically just trying to like make sure that the basic mechanics were down that I know work, but just figuring out like how to get the breath and just how to get around people. And one other thing that was really helpful was I think I did like a pretty good job of, and I heard you talk about this in one of your podcasts, I forget who was on, but talking about trying to get like a feel of what's around you when you're in the open water, somebody's on my left. And as we're kind of stroking together, I'm trying to get a sense, is that a heel? Is that their catch? Like, is that their arm? And then as soon as I figure it out, I can figure out kind of without breaking my stroke, figure out how to navigate it around, right? There was one guy we were together for like a bunch of it. And then I realized I was gonna like just turn it up a little. And I realized that it was his, it was his catch that I was feeling, right? So I figured after I feel the elbow like kind of slide through, I'm just gonna slide like right over that shoulder and just like get in front of them. So, you know, things like that, just kind of figure it out on the fly. Hmm, so that the awareness in the open waters is such a big one. And we had our Maldives camp last week, two weeks ago. And so we had Sharon Van Rivendel there who was the Olympic 10K champ. And it was really good hearing her talk about the awareness in open water is one of the first things.

And we did a lot of exercises with the group where we'd be drafting, I might be in front and then we'd have three, three, three, and we'd all have to work together in this group. And then we'd kind of do it as like, all right, let's all try and swim at the same pace. And, you know, if you find yourself dropping off or you've got to make sure that you're not out by yourself because you're gonna be having to break all of that water in front of you. So you've got to make sure that you have that awareness, right, where's the group or is there someone nearby that I can slip in behind or get on their hip and just get back up with the group. And especially in an Ironman race where you're going to have hundreds of people spread out. Well, you've got lots of opportunities to slip in behind and then slip past them and kind of use that to your advantage. And then in terms of the scrappiness with the stroke, you wanna be in flow with the ocean. You wanna adapt your stroke to the conditions that you've got. And quite often the surface of the water is not pretty. And so your stroke's probably not going to look that pretty as well. And you have to be willing to get a little bit, yeah, a bit scrappy with it. And often that sort of one-two timing, like one stroke's longer than the other, often that works pretty well in those choppy conditions, especially if you normally breathe to the one side. So just allowing yourself to get scrappy. I'm glad it worked well because I find people usually start off by trying to be too perfect in the open water, especially when they're working so hard on swimming well in the pool, but then they just don't adapt for the open water. So is that something that you feel like you've developed over time or you were generally pretty good at it when you started?

No, I think it's not, yeah, I think it's something you just develop by just doing more races, just doing more open water swimming. So I think this was my, this was my seventh, seventh 70.3. And then I've done one full Ironman and like a bunch of sprints in the Olympics. And I think just the experience, you know, like going out there and knowing like at first, and then this is something that I think actually is, you could work on the pool that I worked on is, you have to be able to really like put a burst on and like feel pretty uncomfortable for 50 meters and then be able to settle back down, right? And just like calm back down, get into your normal stroke or like one race, I swam like right into the buoy. Just, you know, that'll, that'll kind of throw you out like for a loop, you know, you're like, I'm like right under it. And then, so you need to, you know, you get kind of disoriented, you got to, you know, get your stuff together mentally again. But yeah, I think, I think it kind of just comes with experience. Yeah. And it's, yeah, you, I mean, you've progressed a lot in those, in those two years being around two minutes plus to, just under 130 per hundred yards in a lot of your training sessions. And a good question to ask is, how much swimming are you actually doing? Because I know with us, we focus a lot on the technical side of things, but you've got to marry that up with training consistently and putting in the, in the case still. So what's your standard week look like in terms of how many sessions and how many kilometers or miles are you doing? Yeah. So, so yeah, as we've talked about, I have a young family and I work a lot. So if I could, I'd be at the pool,

you know, five days a week, every week, but that's not, that's not realistic. So usually, usually I hit the pool three days a week and I do a 4K session. So, you know, usually around 12. And then if it's a good week, I'll do a fourth. And then over the winter, I like to kind of throw in some longer sessions just if I can on the weekend, like I'll go do like a five or 6K swim in the pool if I can, if I have time, just to try to, you know, ramp it up a little bit. But that's usually, that's like pretty, pretty typical. Three, three or four swims a week and kind of minimum 4K per session. And what's a typical session look like in terms of structure and then like, what are some types of, say, main sets that you've found to be really beneficial, especially for your racing? Yeah. So I like to, I like to switch it up. Sometimes I'll do, you know, just open with like a straight 1K, just straight. And then, you know, the next K, do sort of hundreds on, you know, 150 or two minutes

and just mix in some, mix in some drills. So I'll do, so I'll do like a warmup and sometimes I'll mix in drills to the main set as well. So I'll do like 50 drill or a hundred drill. And then after that, like with no rest. So like take, you know, fins come off, snorkel comes off and then you're right in and do like either two or 300. So I'll do that, you know, for six or seven reps as like a main set. So I usually, I usually keep it pretty varied. And, you know, the hardest set, one that I don't like, but I think is really beneficial. And I think translates really well into the open water is doing sets where within each, you know, within each hundred or 200 or whatever that particular rep is, like you'd go out really hard and then have to settle in. So I'll do like, you know, 50 at pace plus, plus, plus. And then like, you have to settle in cause you're doing like 300 for that particular rep. So you don't know, you can't stop. You have to like, and you can't take it easy on the 50 either. You got to really like let it rip. So I like those, but they're really, I mean, those are, those are super painful. I think one of the ones I got from you, which was torture. I think I was like cursing you while I was doing it was doing 30, 31 hundreds on like 150, something like that. So, I mean, I like stuff like that where you just mentally, it's like physical and mental. So you have to keep it together mentally cause you know you've got a long way to go. And it doesn't sound like it doesn't sound that hard

but you're only going, you're only going 100 yards, right? But when you're at like 15, 16, 17 and there's not a lot of rest there, that's like to me when you get that combination of the mental and physical challenge where you really got to like focus. Yeah, I mean, both of those kinds of sets are great. I mean, at the World Champs recently, an Aussie guy, Matt Houser won that race and his initial 100 meters in the swim, he went out like an absolute rocket. He was like, he got a body length on the field pretty quickly. He went out so hard and so fast. And I mean, most triathletes not gonna have to do that especially in an Ironman race but perhaps as a pro you'd have to but the change of pace stuff where you have to go hard and then you've got to settle, bring the heart rate back down, it is great to practice. And I've told this story a little bit on the podcast probably a year ago but a friend of mine is a pro triathlete and he was training with one of the best Ironman swimmers about a year ago. And he said that he was actually about the same pace in training but the thing that he wasn't very good at personally was that he wasn't very good at going out strong, kept being with the group and then sticking with them. So he had to work on that front end speed. And when he ended up training with this top triathlete he was doing a lot of sets which was like 150 hard and then five seconds rest into 250 moderate or like a seven, seven and a half out of 10. And then they do a hundred hard

and then like a 200 moderate. I mean, they do that sort of thing repeatedly. And so it's great for that front end speed if you want to kind of make a break for it. And then those like sustained efforts with short rest. Yeah, it really simulates that race. Like if you're doing a, well, what is it? 1.8K, 1.9K swim for a half Ironman. Well, if you can do 3,100s with five, 10 seconds rest, quick turnaround time. First eight, nine are fine but then you really start to feel it halfway through. And we did a set like that this morning which was just five seconds rest after each hundred. And yeah, the feedback I got was that set sucked but it was really good as well. It's just hard, it's painful but great for practicing what it's gonna be like in a race. Yeah. The other is really helpful. Yeah, yeah, for sure. The other thing that is hard for kind of a pedestrian swimmer like me who's gotten better but didn't grow up swimming is I try to do the other strokes too because it's so uncomfortable. Like to do butterfly or backstroke is so hard, it's so uncomfortable but I have started to feel how it kind of balances you out. Like I don't breathe to my non-comfortable side particularly well, but I started doing backstroke more and just kind of doing the drills where you swim like half the length and then kind of flip over and swim the rest backstroke. So doing things like that where it takes you out of your comfort zone.

Well, again, for someone like me who didn't grow up as a swimmer, I found those really beneficial. The other thing that really worked really well for me which was so hard to get used to was again so I didn't grow up with a swimming background so I wasn't doing flip turns at the pool, right? And someone said, just try doing a flip turn. You're gonna be a lot more comfortable if you could just keep the momentum going. So I started doing flip turns two years, maybe two years ago or so and it was so painful. I thought my lungs were gonna burst every time I pushed off the wall because I wasn't getting that quick breath. But I think it translates. Now it feels much more natural. I think it looks like a reasonable flip turn and it translates really well to the open water, right? Because you don't know, like I said before, you might go up for a breath and get like a foot in the face and not get like a clean breath or just get like a chop in the face and to be able to kind of know you could still stay settled down and you'll catch the next one. Like doing the flip turns and pushing off the wall and just kind of being patient in that extended position has been a game changer for sure. How did you get more comfortable doing flip turns? Just practice. Just keep doing it. I think I sent you, I sent you some videos. I was like, look at this horrendous flip turn. Can you help me please? And you sent me back some really helpful pointers and then I stuck a video camera on the bottom of the pool and would just watch my flip turn and just kind of compare it to some real flip turns

and over time it has actually progressed into like a halfway decent one. I can't like fully dolphin kick yet and get like a quarter down the length, but it looks halfway decent and yeah, it was just a matter of practice.

That's good.

Yeah, it's one of those initial hurdles for people where it's like, I might actually be going slower initially, I'm more tired, I'm more fatigued and so they don't wanna go through that two or three month period where they're having to adjust to it, but I think long-term, it's just, it's so much more enjoyable if you can get your flip turns and your speed will be better. And as you mentioned, it can correlate to being more comfortable in open water because you may not get every breath easily. Yeah, it's worthwhile putting the work in and from memory, I think, I think you might've been sort of like going in like hands in front maybe and trying to get around initially and then worked on getting the hands to the hips, flipping over and then straighten the streamline because I find when people were coming into the wall, like hands in front and then doing this big pull through with both arms, it's hard work. It's like, yeah, you're doing twice as much effort rather than just finishing both hands at the hip, tucking up nice and tight and then flipping over on your back. So there's some common mistakes there that do make the flip turns a hell of a lot harder. And one thing that people do too, which I don't think you were doing, but quite often they know that a good thing to do is some dolphin kicks under water and try and break out past the flags. But for most adults who haven't had that swim background, trying to do like four or five dolphin kicks under water, you're spending way too long under there. So I'd suggest for most people who are learning them, just push off, do a few freestyle kicks and break out and then you'll get your next breath fairly quickly. Don't try and replicate a Caleb Dressel

off the turns when we're baby steps. You know, we wanna start small. Yeah, yeah. No, yeah, no, it's definitely been a progression. And that was another one of those moments where once that just kind of made me become even more hopelessly addicted to swimming was, like once you can hit that, like I could do a turn off the wall and then just like keep the momentum and the rhythm going where you don't feel like you, if you do an open turn, like you're stopping, you're starting, you feel like you got to start all over again, that's tiring. But being able to hit the wall and just like bounce off, that was another one of those moments where I was like, and I just, you know, I just love that. Like, you know, you pick something, you pick like some technical issue that you're having, you work to resolve it. It's painful and hard. And sometimes you wanna just like take your swim stuff and throw them in the dumpster and just like light them on fire. But you know, if you keep going, like it's gonna get better. And with the flip turn, it was definitely one of that. So that like feeling of being able to just like spring off and just keep the momentum and the rhythm going was another one of those like light bulb moments for sure. And what about now? What are you focused on now with your stroke and with your swimming? Yeah, so a lot more to come offline with you on this one. But I can't, right now, I am just leaving so much on the table because my left catch, I can't get my head back in the water fast enough to really be in proper position to get like the full catch and really get in a good position. So my left arm is dropping because I'm just kind of like spending too much time getting the breath.

So I'm just trying to get my face back. So I'm basically like, if you look at it, I'm swimming with just like basically, you know, like one effective catch and the other one is like serviceable. But I'm just trying to get, work on getting my head back in the water faster so that I could be like head straight ahead to like set up that left catch. So that's been, it's, I haven't been working on it that long, but I think you, you know, you helped me identify that one. And that's so far that's, it's been a, I've had to, I've had to think back to, hearing you say on many podcasts, like don't chase speed, right? And it's okay if you make a change and initially you're slower. Those are two pretty counterintuitive things. So that's hard, but yeah. So that's where I'm at right now. Yeah, fantastic. Well, it's, yeah, it's a long journey and the patience that you've got with working on these things and not trying to do it all at once, I think is why you've had such, partly why you've had such great success over the last couple of years. And I'm looking forward to seeing where it takes you in the next 12 to 24 months. And to see someone who initially is maybe a stronger rider, a stronger runner and a weaker swimmer, but then change and turn into loving swimming, that to me, I really love to see it. I'm being obviously a swimmer and a coach. And when someone finds that passion for swimming and especially the passion for the nuance of the stroke and finding these small areas that they can improve, that's really like to see it.

So I appreciate you jumping on the podcast and sharing that with everyone, because I think there's so many people who are in your shoes, especially that sort of two minute, two minute 10 pace. It's where a lot of people end up starting or getting to after 12 months. But then they feel like that next hurdle might be trying to get under that two minutes or down to 145. And then to get to that under 130 is a big hurdle for people. So I'm sure there's a lot of lessons in that. Is there anything that any say words of wisdom or anything you'd leave people with if they're wanting to do the same thing that we haven't covered yet? Yeah, no, I think like we talked about, it's just that patience. I think like you talk about, you have to just sort of take a long-term view of things and just know if you stay the course, like you're gonna make a change and things you're gonna get faster. It's just sometimes it's not linear. You know what I mean? Like if your approach is, I'm gonna go to the pool and try to make this change and in a few sessions, I'm gonna be like blazing around the pool, like you're just gonna be mad and frustrated. That's like the most helpful thing that I took away from what you always talk about. It's just like take, if you really love it, which I really, like I said, I really fell in love with swimming, like just take that long-term view and over time there's gonna be ups and downs, but it should trend in the right direction. Absolutely. Yeah, you might get like two or three strokes of like, oh, that felt nice, but you might not get it for a pool session for a while. So yeah, fantastic. Well, Brian, appreciate that a lot

and looking forward to seeing what you do over the next year or two and continuing to work together. So thank you for jumping on the podcast. Yeah, thanks for having me. Pleasure to be here. If you can relate to what Brian was talking about in today's podcast, check out our Effortless Swimming Coaching membership. This is where we'll give you feedback every single month on what to focus on to take that next step with your swimming and how you can make those changes with certain drills and how you can make those changes permanent over three to six months. So if you'd like to improve your own swimming, check out our coaching membership at effortlessswimming.com and we'll be back with another episode next week.

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast, the show that helps swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer, and live a better life. Here's your host, Brenton Ford. Bob Bowman, the legendary coach of Michael Phelps and Leon Marchand, he was recently on the Exponential Athlete Podcast. And I listened to this episode and it completely changed the way I thought about some parts of swimming. So in this video, I'm going to share with you 12 powerful ideas I got from that podcast so you don't have to listen to the whole thing. What's actually relevant to the amateur triathlete or swimmer that you can take away and practice that's going to make a difference in your swimming, rather than wasting the next six to 12 months, not progressing in your swimming. Consistency beats perfection. Michael Phelps and Leon Marchand never really had many 10 out of 10 sessions, but they had a lot of eight out of 10 sessions. So he found that they would never really have these standout sessions where they were just absolutely smashing it, but they were very, very consistent with the high level of training that they did. Very rarely would they dip below their average. Occasionally, if they're sick or didn't get a good night's sleep, they might, but over the, over the course of many, many years, most of those sessions were an eight out of 10. So we're not looking for perfection every single training session, but we do

want to maintain a very high level across the board. And if you've got that consistency, more times than not, that is what actually makes a difference. Practice performing under pressure. Bob Bowman, one time accidentally broke Michael Phelps' goggles before a race. He accidentally stood on them and Phelps didn't realize this until after the race. So he did the turn of butterfly, I think it was, and the goggles leaked. But he said to Bob, I like, I just counted my strokes and that's how I actually knew where I was in the lap. And so if you can create these environments and these scenarios in your training, where you are putting yourself under pressure and you're having to adapt and you're having to be challenged by the time the race comes around, you've experienced it and you know, you can handle it because more times than that, you are going to find yourself in a race situation where there's something that is thrown at you left field and you have to deal with it. And so if you can put yourself in that situation in training as often as possible, then you know, by the time the race falls around, you've experienced every scenario that could possibly go wrong. And so you know how to deal with it. Process over outcome. Bob Bowman said that Michael Phelps slept like a baby before every big competition because he knew the work had been done and there was nothing more that he could do by the time the race rolled around. And so he said that anything that you want to do can be achieved.

If you make the first step small, whether that's winning an Olympic gold, whether that's doing your first Ironman, if you make that first goal small enough to achieve, then you can build up that momentum to reach that final outcome. And so that age old saying of how do you eat an elephant? It's one bite at a time. He said, just even that would really help them think about these big goals that they've got for world records, for gold medals at Olympics. It starts small and then you just tick those things off each and every day. Relax and focus under pressure. Bob shared that Leon especially was not initially great at staying calm in these high pressure situations of well, championships and Olympics, but he got himself to that point where he found that he could stay in that relaxed state of mind, even when he was at the highest level of competition, but it's something that is trainable and doesn't necessarily need to be an innate skill that you've got. The power of underwaters, the fastest that elite level swimmers can move in the water is when they are in a streamlined position and doing dolphin kicks. Now this is not necessarily something for the average triathlete or the average adult swimmer where they have these great underwaters that can generate a lot of speed. But for Michael Phelps, for Leon Marchand, these guys, they have incredible underwaters, but it's something that they would work on all the time. And that's when it became really a, a real weapon of theirs.

And they were able to surpass the competition because they worked on these great underwaters. Even if it might not be the thing for you as a triathlete, it might be your ability to adapt the stroke to open water. It might be a different skillset, but they were very intentional about the skills that they wanted to work on. And those underwaters were a key part because they felt that if they could generate great speed off each turn and get themselves close to 15 meters off every single wall, that would give them a huge advantage over the rest of the competition. Different approaches can work for different people. Bob Bowman shared that Michael Phelps and Leon Marchand were very different in their approach to how they trained and how they performed and rested and all these different things. So he said that Michael was very intense. Once the session was set, there'd be no deviating from it. And he felt like that was partly upbringing in culture, being American, being brought up in the household he was brought up in. He was very much set in those ways and wouldn't miss a training session for many years on end. Leon, on the other hand, being French, being European, he has a much more relaxed style of not training necessarily, but how he approached things. He would take six weeks off after a major competition. Once the session was set, it would be okay if part of that main set was changed. He would be okay with it, but he had very different personality to Michael.

And so the thing I took away from that is there is so many different ways to skin a cat, so many different ways to get from A to B. And it probably depends a lot on your personality, how your body responds to things and perhaps the way you see things. And so that's good to know, I think from a coaching perspective, but also as an athlete, you may not have to necessarily train the way or do the things that you see some of the elite triathletes doing or the elites from us doing, everyone's got their own different approach and it can work depending on the person. The seventh big idea I got from this is training volume and breaks. So I referenced it just before, but Michael spent something like five or six years where he didn't miss a training session, didn't not train for a day, even over Christmas, they would do something like 1500 meters just to get in the water and say that they'd trained, whereas Leon was okay with taking weeks off after a major competition. And I think we saw this through COVID where a lot of the swimmers couldn't get in the water, but we actually saw some of them had incredible Olympic campaigns, even though they'd spent several weeks or sometimes even months out of the water. So again, it just depends on the person, but to me, it shows that rest is very important for, for everyone, but for a lot of people, you may actually need to rest more than what you think if you feel like you are overtraining. And I see that a lot with some triathletes, Ironman athletes. They really have this idea of, I've got to train as much as possible,

but they forget how important rest is. And I speaking to Kat Matthews and her husband, Mark, it's interesting to see their balance between work and rest. She is very smart about the way she approaches her rest, where she sees that that is a very important part of her ability to perform. And I think for a lot of people, they just have this go, go, go mentality, which for some people, it's not the right approach necessarily. Michael Phelps started visualization at 11 years of age. And by the time he had gone to his main competition, he had swung that race in his head more than a hundred times and he'd actually visualized the things that could go wrong. Every little situation that could go not in his favor, he pictured going through that experience and coming up with a plan B or what would happen if this, this challenge is presented to me. And so I think it's an important way to get ready on race day is look, you may not have the ability to get into a pool anymore. You might not have the ability to fit in any more training sessions and your body might not have the ability to recover from any more training. But what you can do is you can visualize the race in your head and you can put yourself in that situation and your body doesn't know the difference between living it out in real life and visualizing that in your mind. And so by picturing yourself on race day, what's going to happen? What do you want to happen by the time you stand behind the blocks or

you're standing behind that start line, you are going to find this level of comfort that you wouldn't have otherwise. And so I remember when I was 14 years of age, I was training for the 400 IM every night before I'd go to bed, I would picture myself swimming this 400 IM and by the time my nationals rolled around that race pretty much played out exactly how I pictured it in my mind, I was about half a second off the time that I'd set myself and pretty much just felt like living out a movie that I played in my head multiple times. And so I think it's one of the most undersold parts of performance when it comes to swimming or triathlon. At Effortless Swimming, our mission is simple. Make swimming more enjoyable. Whether you're training for your next race, swimming for fitness, or just love being in the water, we're here to help you swim faster, smoother, and with more confidence. And one thing that can make or break a swim is your goggles. If you've ever struggled with foggy lenses mid-session, you know how frustrating it can be. That's why we created the Effortless Swimming Hydro Clear Anti-Fog Goggles for long lasting crystal clear vision. I've been using them myself and the difference is night and day. And I'm not the only one. Deborah swam 36 kilometers down the Derwent River and the entire time her vision stayed crystal clear. No fog, no frustration, just an uninterrupted swim. So what makes a Hydro Clear Goggles different? It's all in the technology. Unlike ordinary anti-fog coatings that wear off over time,

Hydro Clear Super Hydrophilic technology is built into the lens material itself. Here's how it works. Instead of fog forming as tiny droplets, water spreads evenly across the lens, creating a thin film that prevents fog from even starting. And the result? Consistently clear vision, swim after swim. And the durability? Our lenses are CNAS certified. Tests show that even after 2000 rubs with a wet cloth under a 200 gram load, the lens stays fog free. No gimmicks, just serious performance that lasts. Using them is simple. Just wet the lenses before putting them on and you're set for a fog free swim. Ready to see the difference yourself? Get 15% off your first pair of Hydro Clear anti-fog goggles with the code podcast at shop.effortlessswimming.com. That's 15% off your first pair of goggles with the code podcast at shop.effortlessswimming.com. We also have a 30 day money back guarantee. So if you're not happy with the goggles for any reason, you can simply return them for a refund. Don't let foggy goggles ruin another swim. Try Hydro Clear today and experience clear vision from start to finish. Bob would use the term of making deposits into a swimming bank account. Every session that they would do, they would be making a deposit so that when it rolls around to the end of the season, you can take out this deposit from the bank and you can put that into your final race. So that simple analogy is a good way to think about your training.

You are not looking to spend your money there. You're looking to put these little deposits into the bank account. And if you can have that delayed gratification of all this work that you're doing will eventually pay off, then that is when you'll find yourself swimming better 12 months down the track. And I find the same thing when it comes to technique, the swimmers that are trying to fast track their improvement and be swimming 10 seconds faster next week often don't make the changes that are going to stick. And so the ones that work away at their stroke for two months, three months, and they're not too concerned about their times because they're just focused on the technique. If they can delay that gratification, it's three to six months down the line, they find that they're actually a lot faster. The techniques have become their habit and they lock those in. And so I think that delayed gratification works in many different ways. Bob Bowman saw his role as a coach as creating an environment where success is inevitable. So he said that whenever someone would come to him and they were looking at potentially moving to his squad, he said, the one thing I can promise you is that if you come through our squad, you're going to be stepping into an environment where we are performing at the highest level. And if you do, as I say, you will achieve these goals that you've set because the standard that we set in our group and in our squad is of excellence. And I think that is such an important thing to note because what are the other training partners that you're swimming with like?

What is the, what are the other people like that you're hanging around? Who are the club members, your, your squad, your coach, what's their expectation on you and what level are they performing at? Because I think that culture and that position that you, you put yourself in, uh, can really make or break whether or not you're going to hit those goals that you want. So who are those people that you're surrounding yourself with? Always be willing to experiment. Bob Bowman shared that they would always be trying some new things inside of the things that they know would work. So if you're coaching the same program for 10 years in a row, those swimmers that have been doing that program for 10 years, they're probably going to lose some interest, but they know what works. So how do you keep it interesting? Well, the way they keep it interesting is that they do either change the way that they explain things or change how they do things slightly. So that adds a little bit of novelty to it, but they'd also be throwing in some things that are brand new. And he would let them know that this is something that we're going to try. If it doesn't work, we can always go back to what we were doing, but I have a feeling that this is something that's going to help us going forward and quite often when you change anything, you will have regression initially, but if it's something that's ultimately going to work two or three months down the track, you're likely to see the results of that thing. And hopefully that's in a positive way, but it's very normal to experience some sort of regression initially when you're looking to change any part of your program or your technique or the things that you're

doing. And the last idea I got from the podcast is the importance of feedback and data. They do a lot of lactate testing and they want to see whether or not the work and the practice that they're doing in training is helping the athletes clear lactate from their blood faster. And so with their lactate testing, they want to see basically the level of lactate that they get and then how quickly that clears from their blood. And so what we want to be doing in training is being able to train in a way where we are working hard. We're building up this level of lactate in the blood, but it's more important to make sure that we're clearing it and how quickly do we clear it. So for some of these guys like Phalx or Leon, they are doing multiple races on the same day. And if they're not able to clear that lactate from the blood, it means that they're going into their next race as with fatigue and it means they're probably not going to perform at their best. And so they wanted to use this data to make sure that the training they're doing is actually working. And then when they saw that it was working, it not only was good to know, but it showed the athletes that it works and it gave them the confidence in the program. And so that builds up on itself, not only with the confidence, but they have more buy-in to the program. And so that's a big part of how they use that data and that feedback. So I hope you enjoyed this video. I'll link to the full podcast below if you want to take a look at it. But I think it's great to see how two different people from who have

achieved very similar things, have been able to do that with the help of a coach like Bob Bowman. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming podcast. If you'd like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlessswimming.com.

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast, the show that helps swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer, and live a better life. Here's your host, Brenton Ford.

The freestyle catch is one of the most confusing parts of the stroke. And that's why a lot of people tend to avoid it, or they just do it completely wrong. In this video, I'm going to share with you exactly how to go through your catch in freestyle, because it's where most of your propulsion is going to come from. And if you don't do it right, not only will it mean that your swimming probably won't progress much over the next 12 to 18 months, but it also means that you're leaving a lot of speed and efficiency on the table. And I have seen so many videos on this topic, I've read so many books on this topic, and I've coached almost 10,000 people in our freestyle clinics here in Australia. And so I've seen exactly how it's done well, and how it's not done well and mistakes that a lot of people make. So let's jump into the freestyle catch, how it ties into your stroke, and how to make sure that you do it well, so you are swimming with grace and speed and efficiency, the next time you go to the pool. And if all of this sounds like a lot of information, we've condensed it all down to our five day catch challenge, which more than 15,000 people have done. So I'll link to that in the description. Now when we think about the catch in freestyle, it's just one part of the stroke. So if we look at the different phases of the stroke, we have the catch, which is from here down to here on our arms at about 45 degrees. Then from here all the way back towards the hip, I would call the pull or the press phase of the stroke, and the exit as the hand is coming out past the hip. And then we've got the overwater recovery.

So there's different parts of the stroke. And the propulsive phases of the stroke are the catch, the pull and press, and the exit. And the non propulsive is the recovery. Now our aim with the catch is to ideally anchor our arm in the water and have our body move past that point. So we're not trying to pull our arms through the water necessarily, we're trying to anchor them so they stay in almost the same spot while it's our body

moving past that point. And that's not going to exactly happen like that. But that's what we're trying to work towards. It's almost like if you imagine a ladder on the bottom of the pool, and that ladder has rungs on it. And every time you set yourself up and you perform the catch, you're anchoring on that rung of the ladder, and you're moving on to the next arm and anchoring on the next rung forwards. So that's what we're trying to achieve with a good freestyle catch. So let's start with the beginning of the catch. This is where we are rotated onto our side to 30 or 40 degrees, our arm is extended forwards, and we're long from our fingers all the way through to our toes. And this is where we're going to be longest in the stroke. And this is where we're going to be the furthest on the side. So typically our hips and shoulders will be at about 30 or 40 degrees if we're looking front on and measuring that with the surface of the water. The next step is we need to make sure we get our fingers slightly below our wrist, wrist slightly below our elbow, as we're going to begin the catch. Because if we have the opposite where the fingers are above the wrist, the wrist is above the elbow, not only does that create a lot of drag out in front, but we can't actually press back from that position. And where our propulsion is going to come from is our hand and forearm pressing backwards on the water. That can't be achieved if the elbow is dropping. So we need to start in that position. And we typically find that the fingers are about the same depth as your underarm in that position. Now to get to that position, we also need to make sure that our scapula has slid up along our rib cage. And it's almost like we're somewhat shrugging the shoulders, not shrugging them up here, but shrugging them up this way, where the shoulder can actually move up next to our cheek here.

So a good catch, if you look at any footage of a really good swimmer, you'll find that their shoulder is next to the side of their face, next to their cheek. So it's not covering their ear, and it's not down low, it's just slid up alongside their cheek. And that allows you to achieve that position. And that's a crucial position to getting to, because it's that position that will connect up the arm with the rest of the body. Because a mistake I often see made there is people either don't extend forwards and they just they stop here, or they let their shoulder drop down, and then it really disconnects that scapula from the body, and then we don't really generate much power from it. The other important thing here is that the catch, and particularly this extension phase through here as we're going to start the catch, this is the slowest part of the arm movement. So when we're swimming freestyle, we're slowest out in front, we're quickest out through the back. So think of it as slow to fast, but we're not trying to stop, we never want to pause and lose all of our speed there. It's going to nicely flow into the next part of the stroke, but we are traveling the same direction. So this is the slowest in that part of the stroke. Now as we go through the catch itself, there's a few things that we need to do here. The first thing is to initiate the catch, our hands actually going to move slightly away from the center. And along with that our elbow, and this is the important part, the elbow is going to slide out to the side as well.

Because that's going to allow us to open up through our underarm and allow us to get what we'd call a high elbow catch position. Now high elbow doesn't refer to the depth in the water, that's going to depend on the swimmer, but high elbow refers to the position where we really want the elbow to be higher than the hand in the water. But the way I would picture a high elbow catch is, if we draw a line from your shoulder to your fingers, if your elbow is higher than that line, if we're looking from the side, that would be a high elbow catch. And that's going to give you more surface area of your hand and forearm, pressing backwards on the water. And that's the thing that's going to help move you forwards. So that is what a high elbow catch would typically mean. Now as your hand is coming slightly away from the center and the elbow is going out to the side, that is going to open up through your underarm. And you can see at this position we're still able to connect our scapula, our shoulder blade to the body when we do this. Now if we don't do that, let's say our elbow stays very narrow, so we're here, that sets us up in what we call a dropped elbow catch, where most of the surface area is going to be pressing down and that doesn't move us forwards very much at all. So that's why it's important to get that elbow out to the side, fingers point away, and then we're setting up with the catch. And this is often where it can get confused when people are trying to learn it. They either will think about almost bending the elbow a lot instead of just letting that elbow slide out to the side. And another mistake that people will often make here is they sometimes will think about pulling straight back.

But in order to set up this catch, the hand will move downwards in the water, the elbow will move down a little bit, but it's not going to move down too much at all. So we're not trying to pull straight backwards, it's almost like we're trying to roll over this imaginary ball out in front, and that's going to set up that position. Now to make sure that we're getting as much propulsion from this movement as possible, we need to make sure the palm of your hand is facing backwards. If the palm is turned out to the side or turned inwards, then the direction of that force isn't going to be backwards, so it's not going to be as effective. And we also need to make sure that our hand and forearm is together. If we bend the wrist too much here, we've effectively halved our paddle. So we need to slightly elevate the wrist, just pop it up slightly so that's straight. We never want to drop the wrist or bend it too much in that direction. And through this movement, we're not putting a lot of force on the water. Firstly, because if we go for broke straight away, we're only pressing down, which is not that effective. And secondly, in this position overhead, we're not that strong, especially compared to under here, which is more the power phase. So it might feel like a 3 or a 4 out of 10 in terms of the effort. We're not going for zero, but we're certainly don't want to go for a 7, 8 or 9 in the catch phase. We will build up that power and intensity as we go through the rest of the stroke. And that's quite often where a lot of mistakes will get made when someone is trying to overpower the catch.

Not only does it put your shoulder in an awkward position, it's very uncomfortable. That is where a lot of injuries can come from, because applying a lot of force through this movement here really tends to load up the front of the shoulder. And quite often the common mistake we'll see here is people will initiate the catch with their elbow, where they're pulling back straight away with the elbow. Instead of letting the hand travel down and the fingers point down while the elbow bends and folds, they're pulling back with the elbow straight away. So we need to delay that step just a little bit so that we can set ourselves up in that high elbow. At Effortless Swimming, our mission is simple. Make swimming more enjoyable. Whether you're training for your next race, swimming for fitness or just love being in the water, we're here to help you swim faster, smoother and with more confidence. And one thing that can make or break a swim is your goggles. If you've ever struggled with foggy lenses mid-session, you know how frustrating it can be. That's why we created the Effortless Swimming Hydro Clear Anti-Fog Goggles for long lasting crystal clear vision. I've been using them myself and the difference is night and day. And I'm not the only one. Deborah swam 36 kilometers down the Derwent River and the entire time her vision stayed crystal clear. No fog, no frustration, just an uninterrupted swim. So what makes a Hydro Clear Goggles different? It's all in the technology. Unlike ordinary anti-fog coatings that wear off over time, Hydro Clear Super Hydrophilic technology is built into the lens material itself.

Here's how it works. Instead of fog forming as tiny droplets, water spreads evenly across the lens, creating a thin film that prevents fog from even starting. And the result? Consistently clear vision, swim after swim. And the durability? Our lenses are CNAS certified. Tests show that even after 2000 rubs with a wet cloth under a 200 gram load, the lens stays fog free. No gimmicks, just serious performance that lasts. Using them is simple. Just wet the lenses before putting them on and you're set for a fog free swim. Ready to see the difference yourself? Get 15% off your first pair of Hydro Clear anti-fog goggles with the code PODCAST at shop.effortlessswimming.com. That's 15% off your first pair of goggles with the code PODCAST at shop.effortlessswimming.com. We also have a 30 day money back guarantee. So if you're not happy with the goggles for any reason, you can simply return them for a refund. Don't let foggy goggles ruin another swim. Try Hydro Clear today and experience clear vision from start to finish. Now, if you're looking at videos of your swimming, let's say you've sent in videos to our coaching membership or you're analyzing your own underwater footage. Find that a good catch for middle to long distance swimmers will have this angle of 100 to 120 degrees at the elbow when they're in that high elbow catch. So if you are looking at footage of yourself swimming and your angle is 160, 170 degrees at the elbow from the front,

then you're probably going a bit too deep and straight or you might also be dropping your elbow through the catch. Now the other part of that too is your rotation. So as we are reaching out in front and we start our catch, that is when we're going to be on our side, 30 or 40 degrees. Then as we're going through the catch here, we're starting to rotate back to the other side. So once we finish the catch, that is when we are almost back to flap as we're switching onto the other side. So we're not just going to be doing this move in isolation. We're going to be tying that in with the rotation of the body. So as we're going through this catch, we're starting to rotate back onto the other side. The next phase of the stroke is the pull or the press phase. And this is really the power phase of the stroke. This is where you'll be putting in the most effort. But again, we're not going for a 10 out of 10. You might go for a six or a seven out of 10. So in the pull and the press phase of the stroke, this is once we've finished our catch and then we're going all the way back to the hip. Now as we go through this part of the stroke, we need to have a few things happening. Hand and forearm needs to be facing backwards. And we also need to make sure that we're not pulling back too early with that elbow. We need to make sure this is all going together. And if we look from the front, a position or a term that we came up with for where we want the arms to be is the power diamond. So as the hands are coming underneath the shoulders, your arm will look like half a diamond as the hands about to pass under that shoulder.

You see that with the very best swimmers in the world. They always get to that power diamond position. And what that means is that through their lats and their back and shoulder, they're very strong through there. And it's well connected with the rest of the stroke. Now someone who isn't really getting that position will typically have the arm too straight. So we need to make sure that elbows still out to the side, the elbows pointing to the side there and the fingers are pointing mostly downwards. And it's almost like if you were to get yourself up onto a ledge, then that is where you'd have your arms. So very similar position because that's going to be the strongest part of the stroke or strongest position to be in. Now, as you go through this part of the stroke, this is when you pretty much starting to get onto the other side. So we're not trying to stay flat through this movement. Our body will be rotating along with it. Now, the other reason why this is the power phase of the stroke is this is when we're starting to travel past our hand. So we've done the hard work of setting up the catch and then our body has almost moved past our hand and our arm. So we're getting past it there. And that is when we can obviously be a lot stronger through the stroke. And we've we're able to accelerate a little bit more through that part of the stroke as well. And that's why it can feel like we're going from slow to fast because it's easier to move through that part of the stroke because we have gotten our body past that point. Now, at this point, you can bring your hand close to your center line and we do want it to start to move somewhere in towards the center.

Now, it shouldn't cross the center. It doesn't need to brush the center, but it should start to move inwards through here. So the first part, we are in line with the shoulder and then we come away from the center slightly. And then we're going to come in closer towards the body through that back part of the stroke. Now, quite often I'll see with people, they go through the catch and then they continue to go out wide. But they lose that connection with their arms, with the body, if they do that. So that is why from this point, we actually need to start to come in closer towards the center and almost close this window. All this gap through here as we're starting to finish the stroke. Now, as we go through the exit, the exit is when the hand comes just past the hip. Normally we're exiting just near our upper thigh. And a lot of people will ask, do I have my thumb brush my hip as I do it? It's not a bad way to teach or train that movement, but the thumb doesn't have to touch the thigh necessarily. But in the exit, we want to make sure we finish the stroke and release the water where we've still got a little bit of bend remaining in the elbow. Because if you push back as far as you can and your elbow gets locked out, that is when it's hard to get the arm over the top and we get stuck. So we need to keep that a little bit of bend in the elbow as we finish it. And that way we can release the water and come over very easily and comfortably. So we're pushing back. We're not trying to force as much water out the back as we can.

We're not trying to muscle that part of the stroke, but we will be accelerating through the back end a little bit there. And that helps us transition nicely into the over water recovery. And through this movement, we're still keeping the hand and the forearm pressing back all the way through. And you will find that naturally the hand just turns into the body, the last little bit of that to help it come out of the water. That's fine, but we don't want the hand to turn into the body too early, which I see with a lot of swimmers that I'm coaching at clinics and camps is they turn in too early. But keep that palm facing back because that will give you more surface area, which will give you more propulsion. And once you finish the stroke at the back, the recovery over the top of the water, we want to make sure that we're not trying to come too close to the body. So if you think of what's a sustainable and a comfortable way to bring our arm over the top. Well, if we use our rotation to help us come over the top of the water, then we should get our hand out to the side, elbow pointing up to the sky. And we just bring the arm over in quite a comfortable way where we're nice and open through our underarm as we come through. Now, a lot of people will think they need to have this high elbow recovery and they need to do this. But if you look at where that shoulder is and where the arm is, that's not sustainable or comfortable. So we release out the back, bring the arm through where it feels like the elbow is causing the rest of the arm to come over the top, and then we can place it in front. And then we would start the process all over again.

Now, if we think of the path that the hand should take through the catch in the pool, if you look at it in this video here, with the hand will start in line with the shoulder when we extend it out in front. It will come away from the center slightly and it will come in towards the center. And then just as you're coming out past the hip, it's going to come slightly away from the center again. So it looks a bit like a skinny S shape pull through. Now, you will hear a lot of swimmers and a lot of coaches talking about trying to pull through almost completely straight. Naturally, we're going to have some curve. You are never going to be completely straight there because we're basically our hand in our arms trying to find this still water for us to be able to press back on as we move past it. So we're always going to have some left to right movement. But it's not like they used to teach 40 or 50 years ago with a big S shape pull. We want to make sure that we're doing a little bit of it, but only just enough to help us find that still water to keep the pressure on the hand. Now, there's a number of ways to learn how to do this. The way that we do it in clinics and camps and in our online coaching. I do like to use quite a few drills to help people get used to this movement. Outside of our online coaching membership, we've got all of our freestyle drills that you can do for the catch. And this can help you learn how to do that movement without thinking too much about it. But if you want to keep this nice and simple, get our five day catch challenge below, which 15,000 swimmers have gone through.

And that's a great way to learn this step by step without overthinking it. If you enjoyed this video, check out our 33 minute breakdown of freestyle technique in this video above. And let me know in the comments which part of the stroke you think is going to help make you faster than yesterday. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. If you'd like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlessswimming.com.

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer, and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

If you’re going swimming is not necessarily speed, but it’s more to swim very comfortably, very relaxed, and moves through the water with beautiful technique. In this video, I’m going to share with you how to achieve effortless freestyle. And the thing about this is it can actually be very fast. If you’ve got great technique, you’re probably very streamlined, you’re probably very graceful, you’ve got good rhythm, and all of those things actually lead to swimming with good speed. So if you work towards these sorts of things that I’m about to cover, you might find that your speed actually increases for less effort. So let’s go through the five things that make up effortless freestyle. Let me know in the comments below which of these five you’re going to work on first. The first thing we need to do to swim with effortless freestyle is make sure we’ve got good body line and balance. Everything comes from being balanced in the water

and being streamlined and horizontal. If we don’t have that, it doesn’t matter how fit, how strong we are, we’re always going to be struggling and muscling our way through the water. So step number one is we need to find a good body line which is horizontal. And our aim is to have these three touch points of our head, our hips and our heels at the surface. And even if you feel like you are someone who naturally sinks in the water, it doesn’t mean that you can’t achieve this position. It comes down to how you hold the body. So how we need to set up our frame and build our body is we need to start with good posture. And good posture comes from being tall through the head all the way through to the spine and we’re getting the length through here. And when we do that, we also should suck our tummy in and squeeze our butt cheeks together a little bit. And that tautness through the body allows us to maintain this straight position.

Because if we just switch off when we hunch over like this, our body’s gonna move around a lot. So how we hold the body actually sets us up to have success and have that balance. So we’re tall, we’re proud, we’re sucking our tummy in and squeezing our butt cheeks together lightly. We don’t need to do that in any hard way. The second thing that we need with that as well is good head position. So where you look can determine how high your hips and how high your legs are sitting in the water. Now you don’t need to look directly down. There’s nothing wrong with looking slightly forwards. I like to teach anywhere up to about 45 degrees in front. But think of your head like an iceberg, 10 to 20% above the water, the rest of it below. Because your head weighs four, five, six kilos and if you’re holding the majority of that above the water, you are gonna find that it’s really hard to keep the hips and legs up. So looking slightly forwards,

top of the head just above the water. That way we’ve built our body line. So we’re straight, we’re horizontal and the other important thing to note there is a lot of your buoyancy will come from your lungs which are filled with air. So if you find it hard to keep your hips and legs up you should feel like you’re almost trying to press down slightly with your chest. Imagine you’ve got a set of scales below you that’s here and we’re just trying to add a little bit of weight to that set of scales as we’re leaning into the water. Again, not too much, not trying to be a submarine going underneath, but we need to lean on that somewhat to help keep our hips and legs up. So that’s step one to building our body line. The next thing that we need to be aware of is the setup of our catch position. Now when we talk about the catch, this is the start of it. When we’ve finished reaching forwards out in front. Now when it comes to reaching forwards,

if we feel like this middle finger here is being sent directly out in front, that’s gonna help us initiate some rotation to our body. And when we think of rotation it should be around the spine. That’s around this axis here. So we’re not trying to rotate where we’re going like this. We need to rotate around the spine. So we want to make sure that we’re sending this forward that’s gonna create a little bit of rotation on our side and help us set up our catch in the right position. Now what position is that? Well, we need to get fingers just below wrist, wrist just below elbow, and our fingertips should be about underarm depth as well to set up the catch. Because in that position, it’s very easy to then transition into the next part of the stroke, which is our catch, which is this movement from here to here. And then that’s the part of the stroke we’re actually gonna get a lot of our propulsion from. So if you can set yourself up correctly

to start the catch, what ends up happening is not only are you 10, 15 centimetres longer than if you weren’t rotating, but you’re also very streamlined at that point. And I’d like to think of this as our base position or our streamlined position. And as we swim freestyle, we’re just transitioning from that base position to the next position. Now there’s no pausing, there’s no stopping in that position. But if you can get there, that is actually when you end up traveling the fastest through the stroke. Because if you’re very streamlined, you’re gonna have lots of speed. And you’ve also gone from catching, pressing on one arm, and then you’ve also come from this rotation and the weight of this arm coming over the water into that next part of the stroke. So you actually get a lot of speed from that movement. So you actually traveled the fastest at that point in your stroke. So we wanna make sure that we’re setting ourselves up correctly there.

And it’s a big part of feeling like you can skate from one side to the next if you set yourself up at the beginning of the catch. Now, as we go through that catch position, we wanna make sure that we’re not trying to force it. And the way that we can do that is we need to make sure that we just tip our fingers down, we let our elbow slide out to the side, and our hand and forearm remains as this big paddle. Because then we’ve got all the surface area, plus a bit more up here as well that we can use to then press back and anchor in the water as we slide onto the next side. So if we set ourselves up correctly with the catch, the catch itself starts to become a lot more natural and we don’t have to force it. And in a lot of ways, we don’t have to think too much about it if we set it up in the correct way. Now, if you’d like help with this part of the stroke, if you can get video of your swimming, check out our effortless swimming coaching membership

where you can work with myself and our other coaches inside the membership where we do video analysis. So I’ll put the link in the description below. Now, the next, hey, real quick, in case you didn’t know, we run swimming camps around the world from the Maldives, Thailand, Japan, with Sundays, Galapagos Islands, plus a bunch of new locations for next year. So if you’d like to join us at a future camp and improve your swimming and explore and experience some of the best locations to swim in the world, then go to effortlesswimming.com forward slash camps. We’ve got all the dates and locations listed there. A question I get all the time is, I’m not that quick. Will this camp be suitable for me? We have a wide range of speeds and abilities come to the camps. So as long as you can swim a kilometer, there’s a very good chance that these camps will be suitable for you. And if you’re not sure, just get in touch with us

and we’ll make sure that we do find you a suitable camp. Thanks for listening. Let’s get back into the podcast. Part of swimming effortless freestyle is making sure that our recovery over the water is working for us, not against us. Now, over the water, this is not the propulsive part of the stroke, but it’s important to get it right, because if you do this wrong, then it can impact the propulsive part of the stroke. Now, a mistake I see all the time here with our recovery, which is this overwater part of the stroke, is that a lot of people are trying to do too much of a high elbow recovery. They hear the term high elbow recovery and think it means that elbow needs to be literally very high in the water. They end up coming very close to their body like this. That position is not great for your shoulder. It’s not very comfortable and it can really throw the balance of your body out. So what I’d recommend with this recovery is,

think about keeping a nice open underarm, have the elbow pointing mostly up to the sky and not behind you and we need to relax the wrist, relax the hand as we’re coming through. We don’t wanna be overly tense with it. So the way that I would picture that is, if you imagine you’ve got a piece of fishing line attached to your elbow, someone’s in front of you and they’re pulling that piece of string towards them. That is helping initiate that recovery and bring the arm over the top of the water. And we don’t wanna come too close. We don’t wanna be too wide, but we need to have the arm just out in a comfortable position here. And that way is we bring the arm over, it’s very easy and we’re using that rotation of the shoulder coming out of the water. We’re using that to help bring the arm over the top so that we naturally then just place it in front of a stair. Whereas if anything is really forced or too close to the body,

you’re gonna notice it. But if we can come over that way, then it means that you keep the rhythm of your stroke going and it’s not gonna get thrown out by doing anything weird or awkward over the top of the water. And one small important point there is we wanna enter with our fingers first, elbow up. If you can enter in this position instead of reaching out and landing elbow first, if you can enter here and you have that last little bit of extension happening in the water, then you’re gonna find that the stroke flows a lot better. If you are overreaching and you’re landing like this, then you sometimes feel like you’ve got nowhere else to go except for straight down with your arm. And it makes the catch really difficult to achieve if you do that. The fourth step to effortless freestyle is making sure we breathe in a relaxed way and in time with the stroke. If your breathing is out of sync with the rest of your stroke

or we’re taking these big gasps there and we’re struggling to regulate our breathing in a controlled way, then it’s gonna ruin the rest of your stroke. So we need to make sure firstly, when we breathe, we’re taking a sick of air and then we gradually exhaling as our face is in the water, not too much at any point, but just a gradual exhale, release the rest of the air as you’re about to get your next one. And we wanna time the breath so that it’s in time with our shoulder roll. So we wanna turn the head with the shoulders, back with the shoulders. And a way you can think of that is we wanna pull into the breath. So as this hand is coming past our shoulders, we pull into the breath, we start turning and then as we are finishing the stroke, we wanna start to get our breath in there and we bring it back as that same hand is coming over the top. So it should all go together. So if you feel at any point in your stroke

that when you take a breath, things just lose their rhythm or their connection, check the timing of your breath. And another important thing to note there too, we wanna be looking directly to the side. It’s really common for me to see people lifting up, getting the breath or looking up to the sky as they turn. Look directly to the side, keep part of that bottom goggle in the water and that way it will be almost like you’re breathing on a skewer. So imagine you’ve got a skewer through your head, neck and spine. Wanna turn that skewer to get the breath and then we bring the head back down with it. We don’t wanna break that line of a skewer by lifting up and looking in all sorts of different directions as we turn to breathe. Super common one that I see in probably a quarter of the people that come along to our clinics and our camps. Step number five is making sure we get our rhythm and our kick timing in place. Now if you are fairly new to swimming,

a good way to start can be to use a two beat kick. And a two beat kick is one kick per arm stroke. So as you’re doing the right arm, you’ll kick down. As you’re doing the left arm, you’ll kick down. So it’s one kick per arm stroke. That’s a pretty good way to start. But the important thing there is to make sure that we time the kick correctly. Now there’s a few different ways you can think of timing the kick. And I’m gonna explain two main ways you can think of it. The first one is when your left hand enters, your right foot will be kicking down. And you can think of this as kicking yourself into streamline. So your right foot will kick down and that will kick you into that streamline or that base position to start the catch. So with a two beat kick, it’s a lot easier to think of because you can almost have your legs just going one, two, one, two. And it’s easier to think of the timing that way. As you start to progress and you get a bit more

experienced, you might change the type of kick, a four beat or a six beat. I won’t get into that in this video, but you can click this video here to learn more about those different types of kick. But with our kick timing, it’s important to kick opposite sides hand entry and foot or another way you can think of it as well. And it’s the same thing, but just a different way is in your catch, that is when you’ll kick on the same side. So let’s say we’re coming through in this movement here. This hand is about to enter. So I’m gonna be kicking with my right foot and that’s gonna kick me into streamline. But if we look at this right arm, this right arm will be going through the catch at that same time. And so you can think of right leg, right arm, catch, going together, and it’s the same thing, just a different way of thinking of it. And I find some people prefer the first way, some people prefer the second way, it’s really just up to you.

But it gives you a couple of options to think about the timing of your kick. Now, if you are doing a six-beat kick, which is three kicks per arm stroke or a continuous kick, it can be quite hard to think of the timing of it. So that’s why I think it can be good to start with a two-beat kick, get the timing of that right first and then build up from there. And the reason that’s important is because in the water, we’ve got nothing to ground us. If we’re on land, if we’re throwing a ball, we’ve got that stable surface area that we can generate power from and connect up with. But in the water, we don’t have that. So we need something to ground us and to help us generate that power from and feel connection. And it’s the kick. And I like what Tracer Bownman says about, it’s almost like the press of the legs. The press of the legs is gonna help you rotate your body. And it’s not like we’re trying to kick up and down to move forwards.

We’re gonna be slightly on our side and it’s that press of the legs that’s gonna help you switch sides and feel like you’ve got something to brand yourself from. And that is when you feel like you are much more balanced and stable in the water. So we need to make sure with that kick that we’re not kicking too big and we’re not bending our knees too much but we’re keeping it relatively narrow, relatively long with nice pointed toes as we do that switch. So that’s the last part of effortless freestyle. Now, if that all sounds like a lot to you, I’d recommend going through our eight week faster freestyle course which I’ll link in the description below. It gives you a plan of what to follow for eight weeks to help you develop your freestyle and swim in a way that not only looks good but it gives you speed and allows you to swim for a long time without getting tired. If you enjoyed this video, let me know in the comments

what you’re gonna work on next and you can also check out our 33 minute breakdown of the full freestyle stroke in this video here. Thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here's your host, Brenton Ford.

Sam Short recently went a 341 for his 400 freestyle. Let's take a look at what he does really well in his freestyle technique. And he uses a galloping style of freestyle. So let's take a look at this style and how this kind of technique might benefit you. And I think it can be a very effective way to swim open water for a lot of people, because in the open water, you've got a bit more buoyancy with the waves and the chop. This sort of technique can go a long way. And you do see this with a lot of the good triathlon swimmers and a lot of open water swimmers as well. So let's take a look from the underwater shot to begin with. We've seen with Sam's head position. He looks pretty much straight down at this point. Now as he's reaching forwards with this arm, have a look at where his shoulder is. It's near his cheek. It's next to the side of his face. And we see that with good freestyles as they're extending forwards, they aren't going ear to ear to shoulder. They're going shoulder near the side of the face near the cheek, closing this gap a little bit in order to help them set up their catch. Now you don't necessarily need this shoulder to touch because that's probably going to be uncomfortable for you. But if it's near the side of the face, that can help you move the arm in a way to set up that high elbow. Because what happens at this point if you drop your shoulder is the elbow drops with it. And that means you've got to drop the elbow catch, which isn't very effective. So we see that with a good catch is the shoulder will stay near the side of the face near the

cheek as you go through that catch. Now you'll also see here that when he enters the water, he's in line with his shoulder, extends out, gets fingers below wrist, wrist below elbow, then points those fingers down, and the elbow comes out to the side here, where the elbow is the widest part of the arm. So if you look at your stroke, and your hand is the widest part of the arm, then you're in a weaker position than what you would be otherwise, because that is the position. Well, this is the position that allows you to use your lats, your back through your chest as well, through that movement of the catch and the pull. So it's common to see with all the good freestylers, they get to that position when their hand is moving under their shoulder. We call this the power diamond, right here. So the power diamond is the hands under the shoulder. It looks like half a diamond or a diamond if you've got both arms there. And we came up with a drill a couple years ago called the YMCA drill, which you can see here. And in that drill, we have some as kick for five seconds in four positions, those positions being the start of the catch, the high elbow position, and then the power diamond is the third one. And the exit is the fourth. Now it's a bit of a funny drill. And you might look a bit strange doing this at the pool. But we find a lot of swimmers do that drill. And then they've got a much better sense of where they should be through the stroke as they're swimming. And so they naturally start to move through these ideal positions in their stroke. So the three, the YMCA drill is a

bit of a strange one, but quite often do it at clinics. And a lot of people like to do that to help improve their catch and their pool. Now if you have a look above the water, this is that galloping stroke that you can see here. So Sam goes, he actually submerges himself under the water here. And then he lifts himself up and out of the water quite high over the top here. And then he comes over and goes back down very similar sort of stroke that you'd see with micro falps. He had a similar sort of style. And it just depends on what suits you best. If you look at Elijah Winton, next to him in this race, he stays pretty flat, he's pretty even, whereas this more galloping sort of stroke is what Sam prefers to do and works well for his style, how he's built and what he's developed over time. And it can be extremely effective. Now one thing that we see with this more galloping sort of free style is a difference in timing of the arms. So you notice on this side, his right hand enters the water, this hand is almost finishing the catch. So that enters this one's just finishing the catch. If we go to the next stroke, you'll see that he initiates this catch earlier, the right hand catch is going earlier. And when his left hand enters, which we have the best frame for that there, but you'll see that he's a lot further through the stroke. There we go. So his left hand has entered the water here. This arm is almost at his navel or his belly button

there. So he's a lot further through it. So the timing is actually quite different. One side is a bit more catch up. The other side is a little bit more sprint stroke. So it's a quicker on one side on the other. So that's what you see with that galloping stroke. So the side that you're breathing to is where you'll have a bit more catch up. The side that you're not breathing to is the one that will initiate that catch sooner. And that's where you get that lift through the stroke is just sort of driving yourself through, list you up a little bit higher through here. And he throws that other arm over the top of the water. And that's and then he also has to come down from there. So that's where he gets submerged under the water a little bit more. So this can be a good thing to practice in the open water, especially if you're going race pace, you can do this a lot easier, not so easy to do at slower paces. But if you are going faster, this is when you can start to work towards this sort of technique. Now it's not for everyone. It does require a relatively strong kick and effective kick. So if you're, if you much prefer like an easy two bit kick, and now you're swimming around sort of two minute pace, I wouldn't necessarily suggest a galloping sort of freestyle stroke necessarily, you're probably better off looking for that more even stroke. But just depends where you're at this can be a really effective way to swim at effortless swimming, our mission is simple, make swimming more enjoyable. Whether you're training for your next race, swimming for fitness or just love being in the

water, we're here to help you swim faster, smoother and with more confidence. And one thing that can make or break a swim is your goggles. If you've ever struggled with foggy lenses mid session, you know how frustrating it can be. That's why we created the effortless swimming hydro clear anti fog goggles for long lasting crystal clear vision. I've been using them myself. And the difference is night and day. I'm not the only one Deborah swam 36 kilometers down the Derwent River. And the entire time her vision stayed crystal clear. No fog, no frustration, just an uninterrupted swim. So what makes a hydro clear goggles different? It's all in the technology. Unlike ordinary anti fog coatings that wear off over time, hydro clear super hydrophilic technology is built into the lens material itself. Here's how it works. Instead of fog forming as tiny droplets, water spreads evenly across the lens, creating a thin film that prevents fog from even starting. And the result, consistently clear vision, swim after swim. And the durability, our lenses are CNAS certified. Test show that even after 2000 rubs with a wet cloth, under a 200 gram load, the lens stays fog free. No gimmicks just serious performance that last. Using them as simple. Just wet the lenses before putting them on, and you're set for a fog free swim. Ready to see the difference yourself. Get 15% off your first pair of hydro clear anti fog goggles with the code podcast at shop effortless swimming.com. That's

15% off your first pair of goggles with the code podcast at shop effortless swimming.com. We also have a 30 day money back guarantee. So if you're not happy with the goggles for any reason, you can simply return them for a refund. Don't let foggy goggles ruin another swim, try hydro clear today and experience clear vision from start to finish. Now if we have a look from the side under the water, you'll see his catch from this side view, we get fingers pointing down, elbow bending a bit there. And it's a good catch. It's nothing extreme or over the top, but it doesn't need to be anything crazy. He's still getting a big paddle. And you'll somewhat see it here is he's got that elbow bent a lot on that side. So the left arm in the water there gets a really good catch. But it's not like we're going from 90 degrees. So sometimes people think, the more extreme I can make my catch the better. It's not the case. It's what's comfortable, what's sustainable and what suits you best. And you can say it's still a very, very good catch from that position. So there's some of the main things that we can see in Sam's stroke. Hope you enjoyed this video. If you would like to get a full breakdown of freestyle technique, click this video above. Thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast. If you'd like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here's your host, Brenton Ford.

Australian swimmer Lani Palastar recently became the third fastest ever woman in the 1500 meter freestyle. Let's take a look at her stroke and break down what she does incredibly well. We can see from this front view that she uses a two beat kick, one kick per arm stroke. And you find a lot of distance swimmers like to go this two beat kick. It's much more efficient than a six beat kick much more sustainable over those longer distances. You can pick up your kick later in the event. A lot of swimmers like to finish the last 50 meters or sometimes last 100 meters with a six beat kick. But for those longer distances, a two beat kick is what a lot of swimmers prefer to do, especially those that are doing English channel and those sorts of marathon swims, two beats really popular. Now you'll notice with Lani as well, her head position is looking primarily down just slightly forwards. And what I really like here is her breath timing. One of the things that good swimmers do really well is they time their breath where as one hand is coming underneath the shoulder. So for her it's her left hand, she's pulling into the breath, her head turns nice and early there. And she gets her head off to the side as she's finishing that stroke. So the left hand is finishing, she's getting her breath. And the important part right here is that she returns her head with her catch. So her eyes are back down when this right arm completes the catch right here. The reason that's important, the reason we want

to get the eyes back down with the catch is you can get your catch a little bit easier when your head comes back in time. Because if your head stops the side and you're going through your catch, it takes away some of that power and control that you get in that position because of the position of your head. The second thing is from here, you're back into a more streamlined position. And then she can make sure that she's going through that propulsive part of the stroke that she can really drive herself through from there. So the way I like to teach it the way I like to think of it is pull into the breath. So you pull here to initiate that turn of the head. And then you return the eyes back down with the catch as you could see she does there. Now another thing to be mindful of there have the head turned in time at the shoulders. So we want the straight to be almost like a symphony. Everything's playing together in time with one another and turning the head in time with the shoulders and back with the shoulders is a really good way to do it. Now if we have a look at her greedy, you'll notice here she turns to the side to breathe. She looks primarily to the side here, part of that bottom goggles in the water. Now, only a part of it, she's not looking directly to the side that's slightly higher than that. And usually at that speed, she's swimming a 102 pace per 100 for this 1500 meter freestyle, which is incredibly quick. She has to turn that little bit further to be able to get that breath low. And you can see she's reaching around a little bit with her mouth, almost

like a sort of Popeye type breath. And then she returns it quite quickly as that hands coming back through. So that's really nicely done there. Now if we go back to this front one dude, let's have a look at a few other parts of the stroke. We can have a look at her entry position. So her right hand enters in line with her right shoulder, close to the center here. It doesn't cross that sense line, which is good. She extends forwards a little bit. Very quickly, she starts to bend at the elbow and point those fingers down. You can see what a great catch position. This is right here. Really good catch position. So one of the two things that we look for when you do the catches, we want to firstly reach forwards, but then point the fingers downwards. And you'll see the fingers point directly down. And the second thing is the elbow needs to bend or slide out to the side. If you don't get your elbow going out to the side, you can't get a high elbow catch position. A lot of a lot of consumers who make mistakes with that is they will pull through but the elbow stays narrow. You've got to get that going out to the side to get your catch. So if we look at that from the side view here, we'll see with with Lani on the side. So she reaches out and what we'll notice is fingers bow wrist, wrist bow elbow, which is where we want to be setting up the catch. Then we should point those fingers down, elbow slides out to the side and that creates our high elbow catch. So if we draw a line from the shoulder to the

fingers, you'll notice that the elbow is above that line. So that's a high elbow catch because she's got all this surface area here that she can use to press back on the water, which helps her move forwards, which is obviously the the goal. So really nice catch on that side and she presses back and you'll notice that the palm of the hand faces back behind her the whole way through. Now a mistake I see a lot is from about here, some people will let their hand turn in towards the body like they're slicing out the back and that means that their surface area of their paddle is about half or a third of what they used to have. So keep the palm always facing back from the time you've got your catch all the way back to there when you finish the stroke and she finishes the stroke near her upper thigh. So he hips there finishes near the upper thigh and releases and then comes back over the top of the water. On the right side, similar thing, you can see what a good catch that is there. That is extremely good catch. Now if you are tight and stiff through the shoulders, you may not be able to get that position like Lani's got because that requires quite good mobility and a lot of the adults that I work with don't have that same range of motion. But if you can get somewhere close to a high elbow catch meaning let's say your arm is this green line instead where your elbow is a little bit above that line, that would be more than enough. That is still going to give you a good paddle to work with and if you're extremely tight

through the shoulders, well at least we try and not drop the elbow. So work with him whatever you're comfortable doing there is a good thing to do. At Effortless Swimming, our mission is simple. Make swimming more enjoyable. Whether you're training for your next race, swimming for fitness or just love being in the water, we're here to help you swim faster, smoother and with more confidence. And one thing that can make or break a swim is your goggles. If you've ever struggled with foggy lenses mid session, you know how frustrating it can be. That's why we created the Effortless Swimming Hydro Clear Anti-Fog goggles for long lasting crystal clear vision. I've been using them myself and the difference is night and day and I'm not the only one. Deborah swam 36 kilometers down the Derwent River and the entire time her vision stayed crystal clear. No fog, no frustration, just an uninterrupted swim. So what makes a Hydro Clear goggles different? It's all in the technology. Unlike ordinary anti-fog coatings that wear off over time, Hydro Clear Super Hydrophilic technology is built into the lens material itself. Here's how it works. Instead of fog forming as tiny droplets, water spreads evenly across the lens, creating a thin film that prevents fog from even starting. And the result? Consistently clear vision, swim after swim. And the durability? Our lenses are CNAS certified. Tests show that even after 2000 rubs with a wet cloth under a 200 gram load, the lens stays fog-free. No gimmicks, just serious

performance that lasts. Using them is simple. Just wet the lenses before putting them on and you're set for a fog-free swim. Ready to see the difference yourself? Get 15% off your first pair of Hydro Clear anti-fog goggles with the code podcast at shop.effortlesswimming.com. That's 15% off your first pair of goggles with the code podcast at shop.effortlesswimming.com. We also have a 30-day money-back guarantee, so if you're not happy with the goggles for any reason, you can simply return them for a refund. Don't let foggy goggles ruin another swim. Try Hydro Clear today and experience clear vision from start to finish. Now the next thing is the kit timing. When should we time and coordinate our kicks with the rest of our stroke? Well what you'll see here is that when her left hand enters, which is it's entering there, you'll see that's when her right foot kicks down. So left hand entry, right foot kicking down, which is what we're after there. You'll notice on the other side as well, you'll see the right hand will enter the water there and her left foot kicks down. So right hand entry, left foot kicking down at the same time. So the opposite there, right hand entry, left foot kicking down. Now I've also explained that another way. I will sometimes explain that as kick and catch on the same side. So if we look at this side view here,

you'll see she gets the right catch there and this, so left catch and left foot going together. So that left catch and left foot go together there. It's the same thing because that's essentially when the right foot's kicking down. If we go to this one you'll see that her right, oops sorry, her right arm is catching. So right arm's catching, right leg is kicking down. So similar thing, just a different way of thinking about it. So it really just depends on what suits you best when we think of the timing of the kick and catch. Alright, so same thing but just different approaches to it. Now another thing we can can look at here as well is the rotation. Now good rotation, I see is being 30 to 40 degrees through the back of the shoulders with the surface of the water. So with the landing there, if we look through roughly through the back of her shoulder, she's about 30 degrees at her furthest point of rotation, so 30 degrees from that angle. If she were to go beyond that to 90 degrees, she's probably going to have a hard time getting a high elbow catch and it's probably going to limit her stroke rate as well because it takes a lot longer to go side to side if we're going too far. So 30 or 40 degrees, maximum rotation through the back of the shoulders with the surface of the water which you can see there. Now what you'll notice with her hips, her hips are rotated about the same. So if you're doing anything more than really like 50 meters sprint,

maybe 100, your hips, torso, shoulders, they should be rotating about the same amount. We want to work it together and keep them connected like you'll see here. So imagine that you're rotating around your spine, head stays still unless you're turning to breathe and you're rotating around that spine and that rotation, this is the important part, that rotation comes primarily from the reach and extension forwards. So don't figure out trying to twist under your side and roll onto your side. Good rotation will come from a good reach and extension forwards like you can see here and you'll see the hips shoulders going together. So she enters the water fingers first, extends forwards out in front, begins the catch, then she starts to rotate back onto the other side and just kick out the back here, helps her rotate onto that other side as well. Similar thing here, she enters on the right, extends forwards out in front and then kicks down and that helps her initiate that rotation back to the other side. So she's just so streamlined through here and there's no delay, there's no pause in her stroke. She's got a quite a high tempo, quite a high stroke rate and she can do that efficiently. Sometimes when people come to me and they've got a very low stroke rate, might be 45 strokes per minute, which is just too low for most people, they think, ah, if I increase my stroke rate, my heart rate's going to go up, which can certainly be the case until

you get efficient at it and get used to it. But often with a light kick or a two beat kick, then you can actually maintain a relatively high stroke rate for not too much effort, especially once you do get used to it. Let's have a look at the recovery of the stroke. The recover is when the arm comes over the top of the water. So you'll notice that Lani releases the water at the back here and when she pushes back, she's still got this little bit of bend remaining in her elbow. She's not pushing as far back as she can, locking that elbow out. If you do that, you're going to have a hard time getting over the water comfortably. So releases the water out the back, brings the arm over. See how this shoulder is out of the water. You've got to have enough rotation where the shoulder's out, then the arm can come over comfortably and this elbow's pointing up. So if you're thinking high elbow recovery means this, it's not the case. It means elbow pointing mostly out to the sky as you bring the arm through, but it can be out here. It doesn't, it shouldn't really be here. Let it be out to the side in a more comfortable position. And then as she comes through, she goes to enter there, fingertips first, and she slides the hand forwards into the water from there. Similar thing on this left side as well. And she does get that little bit more rotation here on that breathing side, which is pretty common as well. So you see that entry, fingers first, elbow slightly up, and she slides it forwards. So this is a really nice stroke that I think a lot of people can start to work towards, especially people who prefer that two-beat style of kick. Now you may notice in the front

view, it does look like she comes pretty close to that centre line, maybe crosses it slightly there, but she does correct very quickly. And it's in line with it. It's not crossing it necessarily. So I, yeah, I think that's, it's fine to be in that sort of range. And I've seen that with quite a few longer distance from us. You look at Gregorio Paltrenieri, he does a similar thing. Now not that we're trying to cross the centre line with our hand, but if we get close to it, that is okay. The time where it becomes not okay is if it's impacting your catch. If being across the centre is stopping you from getting into a high elbow catch, because it's staying there through the movement of the catch, that is not what we want. So then we'd look to come out a little bit wider to make sure it doesn't impact our catch. So I hope you've enjoyed this breakdown of Lani's stroke. If you would like to get our free style technique checklist, where I go through all these things in detail and what order you should focus on them in, click the link below and you can get that for free in your inbox today. Thanks for watching. If you want to see my full breakdown of free style technique with even more detail than this, click this video above. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. If you'd like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

you might look at your data from from the EO swim better and it might tell you you’ve got three things. You’re generating too much downward force. You’ve got too much lateral force and maybe you’ve also got hand drag or upward force at the back end. You can only change one thing at a time and you’ve got it and the whole point about the system is being able to not just make the change but measure the outcome of that change. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. How does an Olympic medalist take 19 seconds off her 800 meter time and nearly beat Kader Ledecky? In this episode I’m joined by Jamie Fuller from EO Labs, the creators of these swim better handsets, a company I’ve worked closely with since their early days to share how this breakthrough tech is transforming performance.

From helping Paige Madden make that jaw-dropping improvement to giving triathletes a way to measure swim power in watts, sync with training peaks and use AI to pinpoint exactly where they’re losing speed. EO is changing the way we understand the swim leg. From Olympic podiums to your local pool this could change the way you approach every stroke. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. We’ve got a return guest back on. We’ve got Jamie Fuller from EO. Welcome back, Jamie. Thank you, Brenton. Lovely to see you. It’s great to hear about some of the updates going on at the elite level of swimming and how that trickles down to amateur athletes, weekend warriors, I guess people like myself and to hear how some of the bestomers in the world are using some of the tech that you guys have got available. There’s new updates that you’ve got through EO which I’d love to chat about today because it’s really cool to see this

stuff evolving and where the sport’s going to go in the future. I’d love to chat about that stuff today. Where do you think would be a good place to take it off? Yes, mate. So we’re at a really interesting point because we’ve spent the last, primarily we’ve spent the last two to three years focused on pure swimming. And by pure swimming, I mean the swimmers at the elite end specifically in swimming as opposed to triathlon. So when we launched and for the last couple of years, it’s all been about working with Olympians, working with Olympic teams and federations, working with NCAA colleges and similar organizations here in Australia and Europe and Asia too, about exploring the technology, understanding what it means, because this is new. This is not stuff that’s been around for years. This is stuff that we’ve frankly created slash invented and innovated. And so it’s been a massive learning journey, not just for our customers, but for us as well. Because if I look at,

if I look where we are today, I had no idea when we started this journey that we’d be where we are. So we’re now at this really interesting point where we’re ready and where we’re now not transitioning, but we’re stepping and increasing our focus now, particularly into triathletes. And so whilst there was so much work done around the Paris Olympics and continued to do work, even with the world championships that have just finished in Singapore and at that very elite level, where this system fundamentally makes a huge amount of sense is in triathlon. And that’s for a couple of reasons, apart from the demographics and the economic aspects of it, because let’s face it, this isn’t like a $50 gimmick set of product you buy. This is a serious piece of care. When you’re dealing with triathletes, you’re dealing with a cohort of people who spend a lot of money. They’ll spend 10, 15, 20 grand on a bike. They’ll go and spend 40, 50 grand going to Germany to do an Ironman or

Kona. So in the first instance, there’s a preparedness to invest in equipment for what they do. Secondly, they’re already very, very, very comfortable dealing with data and dealing with digital devices, electronics to collect that data, especially around power. Because when you look at cycling, so much about cycling performance is driven by the amount of power that you’re driving through your legs into the crank and measuring that power and understanding the application of that power and how it relates to performance. Now, until literally last week, our system has been presenting force or pressure in kilopascals. Now we’ve transitioned from there into presenting power in watts. So what’s really great from a triathlete perspective is they’re able to look at their cycle data, their run data, and discuss it in terms of output in watts. And now they can do exactly the same thing with their swim. So the ability to not only measure

how much power you’re pushing and then to apply the technique lens that we bring, which is what direction is that power going? Because over time, you hope to get stronger and to be able to push more power, but then critically, you want to make sure that that power is being pushed in the right direction. Because unlike cycling, where on cycling, you’ve got a two-dimensional plane where literally your feet are just going around like this, not only are we dealing in water, but we’re also dealing in three dimensions. So it’s pointless of you getting stronger and increasing that power, but then pushing it in all the wrong directions and not pushing it in the propulsive direction. So there’s this really interesting point now where, and I know that triathletes, I hear this all the time from triathletes and platforms. We’ve got all this data in run and cycle and we’ve got nothing for swim. When can we have something for swim? Well, guess what?

As of right now, it’s available. And so that data will tie in with, say, someone who’s using training peaks. They can basically just upload it and it syncs with their training peaks with their training stress score, their watts. What are some of those numbers that are coming through to them? Yeah, exactly. Right now, with our product, you can go into your account on the platform and you can click a little link that says connect to training peaks. And that’ll pop up a training peak screen and you enter your training peaks login details, username, password. And from that moment on, every bit of data that you collect on here will automatically populate into your training peaks account. And precisely, as you said, you can look at your run data, your cycle data, and your swim data. And so not only can you see your intensity factor, training stress score, because the idea is you wear these for the whole swim session. Literally, you start recording at

the beginning of the session, you wear them for the whole session, you stop recording. And when you download the data, assuming you’ve already logged connected to your training peaks account, which is like a 10 second step, it’s nothing. Once you’ve done that, then automatically your data will populate into the training peaks. And so, like I said, not just your intensity factor training stress score, it’s also got your total power that you’ve or your maximum power, your average power, it breaks it up into the different phases across the session. You’ve also got your normal information that we collect with respect to, you know, the time taken, the distance one, your distance per stroke, or, you know, what I call the boring stuff. But also, we also calculate, we’re able to tell you accurately exactly what your work is in kilojoules. So you can measure exactly how much work you’ve done in that session.

And where this now becomes really specific for a workout for a triathlete is up until now, when you’ve been doing sets, you’ve had to stop and start recording for each set. And so you might do a workout which has got six sets in it, and you then download six files at the end of it. Well, not anymore. Now what you can do, you can start recording at the beginning of the session, you stop recording at the end of the session, you’ve got one file, and that file will upload. And what it’ll do is it converts your whole recording. So your session might go for 40 minutes. But within that 40 minutes, you might have 32 minutes, 30 seconds of swimming. So what our processing does now, our algorithms, is it kicks out all the non-swim time. So where you’re taking a recovery break at the end of the lap, and where you might be doing some weird things with your hands, and by weird things, I mean, sculling, you know, your hands

might be going in and out of the water whilst you’re not swimming. It might be technically collecting data. Well, now the system has been upgraded and improved so that we can sense those times when you’re doing that weird stuff, and we can exclude it and take it purely down to your pure raw swim component and present it as such. So the ability to track all that, the ability to look at it, as I said, in exactly the same language as your bike and your run, which is language that triathletes are very comfortable with. And you know, they’re always going to be, you know, we see this in cycling, you know, the whole my dick’s bigger than your dick routine, because I’m pushing, you know, 320 watts and you’re only pushing 285 watts. Well, you can play the same games now with your swim. So what my, my objective here, particularly in triathlon, because we know that the vast majority of triathletes come from cycling and running.

We know that a lot of triathletes do the swim because they absolutely have to, and they hate it, right? You know, it’s not something they want to do voluntarily. And for a lot of them, it’s not fun. This thing can change all that. This thing can literally gamify it because the data that you’re getting becomes so interesting and so fascinating, where you’re able to not just interrogate it and see what’s going on, but track it and look at how you’re evolving over time, implementing the changes that are being highlighted. And I’ll get to how those changes are highlighted in a minute. But now it’s, I think it’s going to drastically change the approach. And in very blunt terms, I think because of all the data I see and lots of triathletes that I’ve worked closely with, there’s a lot of low hanging fruit when it comes to improvement. Because, you know, traditionally swimming, and it’s filtered through into triathlon

as well. It’s had this mantra of if you want to be faster, you’ve got to swim more. Well, there’s no more about that because the improvements that can be generated through technique change are huge. With a little bit of focus and some energy. And what I think you’ll find is that triathletes are going to be looking at this stuff and wanting to get back into the pool more, there’ll be more motivated, more incentivized because they’ll see some big improvements. Even just the not having to start, stop it after every 100 or 200, whatever you’re doing, that in itself, I think is a really big one. Because if you’ve ever done testing with athletes with the swim better devices, we want, you know, we’ll work on some different things. We’ll try breathing to the opposite side. We’ll try changing the stroke. So without needing to start and stop it, you can just, you can make those changes, see what the difference is in

their power, their direction. That I think itself is a really important one. I actually had a swimmer who did a follow up filming session in Sydney two weeks back and he wore his swim better devices and recorded that while we did this filming session. So it was really interesting just going through his footage, looking at his data, seeing why he wasn’t as propulsive on his left side, which is all the stuff that his devices have measured for maybe two years now. But it’s just, it’s just so good to see the numbers behind what I see in the, in the video. So in terms of how this data is presented and how you continue to improve that aspect of things and simplify all this data that the devices collect, do you want to pull up a, maybe a share screen and just show some of these latest latest stuff? Sure. And just before I do, I’ll flag one more thing. Because you know, Brenton, with, with this things, you need to, you need two things.

You need the handsets themselves. And you also need a membership. And the membership is really important. You’ve got to have the membership to be able to analyze your data properly. Without a membership, you can still see some data, but it’s very high level. You need a membership to be able to interrogate it. And what I’m going to show you is captured in all the membership stuff. Now, I know that there’s an element of sensitivity for some people who say, well, Christ, I’ve got to pay a thousand bucks for these. And I’ve got to pay you something every year. We get that. We, we understand the sensitivity that comes with that. You know, there’s, there’s, there’s an expectation as to why should I pay more after I, after I pay a grand for these, why should I continue to pay? Very, very fair comment. The reality is this is a cloud based processor. So the data is not stored on your computer. It’s not stored in the app.

It’s stored only whilst you’re collecting it on the handset. And then it’s all sent to the cloud. And so there’s all sorts of costs associated with hosting it. There’s also video integration. So you can upload video through our platform, sync it to the data. And you can see beautifully exactly what’s going on with the hand on the video. And you can see what’s what the implications are for the fours.

There’s constant innovation that’s being performed, constantly bringing out more functionality, more information, better targeted. Because as you can appreciate, this thing collects a lot of data. And part of the secret here is number one, how do we make it simple to understand? And number two, how do we distill it? Because just presenting a whole heap of data is not the answer. It’s a question of how do we go through it and bring out the stuff that is most meaningful. There’s what we call the so what factor. Because I see this with a lot of a lot of device companies that just produce a lot of and you get it and you go, well, so what? I don’t understand what it means to me. And so we are paranoid about that so what factor. And what we estimate at the moment that what’s collected on here, we’re using about 40% of it. So there’s a lot more to come through and a lot more work that we are doing and will need to do to be able to continually

refine it and improve it and offer bigger and better representation. The goal being that we want the user to get as much insight in as short a time as possible. It’s pointless if the user’s got to spend an hour and a half every time digging through and trying to understand all these different components. So I guess where I’m getting to now is the big change that’s happened with the implementation of power and with the connectivity with training peaks is you can get all your training peaks data, what I call the effort related data, not the tech. There’s two, there’s two pieces. There’s effort and technique. And on our platform, we’ve got all the techniques on training peaks, you’ll get all the effort stuff. I mean, the effort stuff is on our platform too, but you’ll be able to go into the training peaks platform and look at all your effort data, your power, your work, your IF and TSS and all that stuff. And you don’t need a membership. So if you choose, I don’t want the

membership, I’m just going to buy the handsets. That’s it. No problems. You’ll get all that effort related data on the training peaks platform. You’ll be able to have it there with your cycle in your run. Happy days. What we would encourage people do is also to subscribe to the EO platform to get their technique data, because that’s when it’s not just a question of how much power am I pushing, but where am I pushing it? And where am I losing it? You know, you can see in data quite clearly, you can easily see where you’re losing your propulsion at what part of the stroke exactly where it is in the stroke. And you can see exactly why you’re losing your propulsion. And invariably, it’s one of two things. It’s because that hand is rotating. And the moment you rotate that hand, not only does the power not go back towards your feet, but it goes laterally either inwards or outwards. But critically, the moment you rotate that hand,

you lose the hold on the water. And I think even like high level NCAA swimmers

at times don’t even fully grasp that basic swim physics 101 concept. It’s all about putting the hand in the water, grabbing the water and advancing the body. It’s ideally we don’t want that hand physically moving back. We want that hand staying there and holding there as the body advances. And the reality is to do that, that hand needs to be positioned like this and not like that. Because the moment you position like that, you’re knifing through. So it’s all these things bringing it together and making it available in the ultimate view, which is the effort based stuff on training peaks and then the technique stuff. And so what I’m going to share now, I’ll share my screen and we’ll have a bit of a look at, let me go to here. So hopefully, Brenton, you can see this. This is, please ignore the quality of the data. This is my swim on Sunday. I haven’t been in the water for 18 months, I had shoulder surgery. And this is the first time I got back in the water.

And you’ll see here it was like, it was a total of eight minutes. But this was an 18 minute recording. So it kicked out all the non swim time when I was doing all sorts of other stuff. And what you’re looking at here are the eight laps and the orange and the blue shows you the power that I’m driving through the orange is my left hand and the blue is my right hand. And you can see that I’ve got it automatically, I’ve got an imbalance between my right and my left. I’m pushing considerably more through my right than I am through my left. And you can see here the darker colors, they represent the propulsive.

So we’re not only, we’re not just showing you total power. We’re also giving you a visual reference of your propulsive power on each of those laps to start with. And if you want, you can click into here and you can see this data for every stroke in that lap. And same story, you know, total power and propulsive power on the first stroke of the right hand and so on as you go through. And then along the top here is the stroke rate. So the stroke rate, as you can see, you know, varied a little bit across the eight. Pretty basic, pretty straightforward. Where we go into the first key metric, which is where are these powers, this power being directed? Now you can see here that we’ve got the six directions. And not only do we show the six directions, we can also tell you what your goals should be. And I can tell you from a distance women’s perspective, we want this propulsive number to be sitting more 70 to 75%. And before I had my

shoulder surgery, I was, I was sitting at about 68, 67, 68%. Now that I’ve had my shoulder surgery and I’ve lost my form completely from not getting in the water, you can see it’s declined.

So this is important is understanding the allocation of where those forces are going. And again, I can turn each hand off and we can say, we’ll show me the right hand. You know, the right hand is 60% propulsive and 25 down. Whereas the left hand is 50% propulsive and 38% down. So automatically I can see that I’ve got what’s going on with each hand independently of one another. When we look at hand path, we can have a quick look at the consistency and we can see here the path that my left and my right hand goes through. And there are two things that I’m looking at here. And this is every stroke in that lap, as you can see, selected. This is just lap one, every stroke. And the two things we’re looking for is how tightly bunched those lines are. And secondly, we’re looking for symmetry or balance between the two. And I’m pretty straight on my right hand. My left hand’s got a little bit tiny, a little bit of an S. I’ve got a bit more depth on my right. So you can start to

have a look at what’s going on. Then when we go for what we call our power versus time, this is where we’re able to look at every stroke and what’s being generated in the amount of propulsive power on each of those strokes as we go through. And the beauty about this is I can also add my vertical force, my vertical power, sorry. And so you can see this is a right hand stroke and a left and a right and a left. And you can see where I’m generating the downward power in conjunction with my propulsive power. And one of the objectives of every distance swimmer is to get through that downward phase nice and early so that then they can be as propulsively as they can be for as long as they can be. So we look at this point right here where my downward is in conjunction with where I am in my propulsive phase, which is very early, which is exactly what I want to see likewise on this stroke here. What you don’t want to see is you don’t want to see this point of maximum downward

corresponding with that point of maximum propulsion. You want to see it happen nice and early in the phasing. And then finally, this is where we bring it all together. And where I’m able to say, for example, pop my lateral on here and I can pick a stroke. Let’s pick a right hand stroke and we’ll look at the overhead view because I’ve got my lateral on here. And the one thing that you’ll notice here, Brenton, that you might have seen before is this green line. And that green line is where we map the hand speed. So you can see now we can look at how fast the hand is traveling in conjunction with what propulsion is being generated and what there’s only a little bit of lateral there. So what I can do is I can move that red line anywhere so I can put that red line right here because that’s my catch. That point there where I’m starting to generate propulsion, that’s exactly my catch. And you can see my hand has traveled from the end of the glide down to

there. It’s traveled all that distance or side on. It’s gone from this point all the way back to there for no benefit whatsoever. That’s a problem or it’s an opportunity because ideally we want the catch to happen as early as possible at the end of the glide. So the quicker we get that accelerating back from here, the sooner we get into the catch. And you can see that I’m not catching to here. So if I could have got my catch here, I would have had all that time you know from 0.34 down to 1.34. That’s a whole second that that hand is set off the day.

And that’s reflected in the hand speed. And you can see here now the hand speed is kicking up and as it kicks up we now get that propulsion generated. And you can also see that little bit of inward force that’s being generated. That’s happening as that hand is physically tracking inwards. You see it physically tracks inwards in that point in the middle. And as it tracks inwards, it’s generating a little bit of inward power pushing inwards. So the ability to bring all that together and see what’s going on and summarize it in here and understand okay, what my numbers should be because we can show you and we can tell you what the numbers your goals are. And that’s the last piece of this puzzle too by the way is we’ve now got artificial intelligence data analytics. So if I think I’ve got to stop sharing and reshare, let me go back to here and I’m in a reshare by screen mate because I’ve got a different

screen for this and here we share. And so now I’ll show you I’ll show you in a bit you can click on a button that says EOI or EO intelligence and in less than 60 seconds you’re presented with a report like this which gives you the charts and then we start at the top and we give us that you just got a little thing at the top because this is in beta testing. So this is coming out around the 20th to the 25th of August. So we’re only a couple of weeks away from this being live for everybody. And you see we get a report of when it is, what was swum, the basic data that’s coming through. And then we get some commentary. And as you can see it says here that you’ve got a significant bilateral asymmetry with your right arm generating 30 to 40% more power than your left. And if I go down to the screen you can see exactly in here that right arm is generating a lot more power than the left. Consistent power declines across the laps suggesting impact from

fatigue. There’s a double peak pattern appearing in your strokes and the power versus time which indicates interrupted force application reducing efficiency. Plus you’ve got high downward force combined with excessive lateral movement compromising your forward propulsion. So it’s a great snapshot to tell you what’s happening and then it breaks it down including where you’ve got excessive downward force with hand drag indicates an elbow drop during the strike which is probably happening during the glide phase. High lateral forces driving energy away from your propulsion. And then a list of things to work on including links to products can potentially help you as well. And then furthermore our ability to include some video drills so that we can diagnose the problem tell you where it’s occurring and how it’s occurring what you need to change and some things to work on and potentially some videos as well for some drills as to how

to change it. That’s cool. Wow. This is really I think this is that’s a really powerful component for people to be able to literally do their do their do their swim just to show you on here.

This is this is what you’d see in the as you get your data here and then there’s this little button up here the little blue button the EOI. So you’re able to click that button

like I said it takes probably about 45 seconds and not only will you get the report on the screen but it automatically saves a copy in word to your downloads folder. And so what you’re able to do then is you’re able to go into your downloads folder. In fact I’ve probably got mine up here I can go into my downloads folder I can see it’ll be one of these in here these downloads try this one not that one evidently might be one of these yeah there you go download so I can I can open it up oh you probably can’t see that yeah it’s not showing on the share screen sorry yeah but I can I can go I can go into it I can then edit it and I can then save it and if if I’m an athlete I can save it for myself or if I’m a coach I can forward it to my athlete with potentially some comments from me as well. Wow that’s cool I remember sitting down a couple years ago and that getting to that point or this point is where I thought this is this is where it will be really useful for

for somebody who’s just using the devices on their own so that’s that’s cool cool to say like it’s a great way just to summarize all that data in a practical and applicable way for people to know what to work on and let me tell you mate we’re we’re only in the first step I mean we’ve been working on the AI for a long time because it takes it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort to train the system because you’ve got to I mean AI doesn’t automatically know everything you’ve got to teach it so we’re just at that very first gate where it starts with the basics information once we get further down the track. Hey real quick in case you didn’t know we run swimming camps around the world from the Maldives Thailand Japan with Sundays Galapagos Islands plus a bunch of new locations for next year so if you’d like to join us at a future camp and improve your swimming and explore and experience some of the best locations to

swim in the world then go to effortlesswimming.com forward slash camps we’ve got all the dates and locations listed there. A question I get all the time is I’m not that quick will this camp be suitable for me? We have a wide range of speeds and abilities come to the camps so as long as you can swim a kilometer there’s a very good chance that these camps will be suitable for you and if you’re not sure just get in touch with us and we’ll make sure that we do find you a suitable camp. Thanks for listening let’s get back into the podcast. The ability of this thing to look at patterns with respect to your breathing pattern you know what the consequences of the impact is of your breathing to both the shape of the hand as well as the power that’s being generated and the direction that power is going the ability for us to then take something like your power versus time curve and apply them one on top of the other and turn that into a consistency

metric because we know what we’re trying to do here is as athletes I shouldn’t say we because I’m not an athlete but what athletes are trying to do is not only get more efficient and more effective but you want it to be repeatable you’re looking for to create the best technique you can and to do it over and over and over so the our ability to take that data and convert it into a score and to and this is where I’ll use the word I don’t particularly like the word but this is where a sense of gamification comes in and I say I don’t like it because it’s got the connotations of game and but really it’s about me being drawn into it and becoming more focused better understanding and more incentivized to improve that number and it’s just it’s just psychology I mean that’s the way it is the more you can measure it and the better you can get the more you’re likely to get involved and this is when I come back to

some of my original comments about the way that triathletes treat the swim leg you know it’s I do it because I have to I don’t do it because I love it I occasionally see somebody a triathlete that comes from the world of swimming it’s very rare the vast majorities come from from cycling and running and the swim is really it’s not done because they want to it’s done because I absolutely bloody have to do it but I dare this system has got the capacity to change that whole dynamic for them which again can unlock some huge benefits I was with a guy last week an elite triathlete here in Australia and this guy’s come from swimming so he always gets out of the water first that’s his always out of the water first and somebody asked him the question what does he think this can do for triathletes he said I’ll tell you exactly you’ll you’ll go from being a one minute 50 down to a one minute 30 you’ll say you’ll you will find with without a huge

amount of effort involved you’ll be able to improve by 20 seconds per 100 meters because the standard of swimming amongst triathletes is generally pretty poor I’m looking forward to seeing what this goes Brenton it’s it’s all about how do we take all that data and over time get smarter and better at training it and understanding it and the system being able to see things that even I’m the super user I’m the guy that does the the data analytics with the Olympic gold medalists and the best coaches in the world right I teach them how to interpret that data but this system will absolutely smash me eventually it’ll know way more than me and it’ll see things because it’ll be able to look at all the underlying data very quickly and see patterns and then when we do get to feed more controlled data sessions and by controlled we’ve got a program pretty much devised to work with elite athletes to collect their data anonymized so it’s not a question of taking

kyle charmers and saying here have a look at kyle charmers data everybody but it’s a question of being able to take that anonymized but that data secured under controlled circumstances so that you know we’ve got the same pool dense distance it’s at race pace west west where everyone is starting with a dive not with a push off so that the time is super accurate to a hundredth of a second and comparable from athlete to athlete and then being able to look across all of the different metrics and work out exactly which metric is contributing to which part of of improvement and then the and this is the beauty about ai to be able to interrogate that and spot those patterns and spot those correlations and those relationships and then being able to feed it back in and then turn that into advice for swimmers like me not just you know gold medalist and an Olympic medalist but turn it into advice for people that are rubbish swimmers who want to swim better

that’s not you want to go into no question and the thing that i’m one of the things that i’m like probably most excited about and i only saw this a little while ago we’ve been talking about bringing other sensors in and synchronizing to the hands so for example we measure at the moment hand velocity the speed that the hands moving through the water we’re not measuring the body velocity so the hand velocity is really important for measuring power so the power that we present today starts with a basis of pressure and if the pressure is you know how much pressure is my hand pushing through that water through that pressure sensor in the oh that’s the the base level then you go up a step and you include the surface area of your paddle and this is my paddle my hand is my paddle so when i take my pressure and add into the surface area of my hand i can now calculate the amount of force in newtons that i that i’m that i’m pushing

so now i’ve got forcing newtons then the last step is i include the speed of my hand and it doesn’t matter what direction it’s about the speed that my hand is moving and that then takes me from pressure to force and then to power and now with surface area and hand speed and pressure i can present power but it’s only the speed of the hand what i really want to know is the speed of my body because everybody when they swim they accelerate and decelerate through the swim itself and the very best swimmers have got a lower level of acceleration and a lower level of deceleration an olympic swimmer their velocity would do that if you look at mine it does this right and then jit swimmers have got high acceleration high deceleration so what is really critical is that we can map and synchronize the speed of the body but not only that so we want a device that can sit at the base of your spine that will measure

your body velocity as you go but not only that it can also measure the rolling of the hips and the timing of the hip roll in conjunction with the hand and not only that it can also measure the pitch of the chest and if your hips are doing not just this but this that too can be measured then you put a device on each foot and then you’re talking about one timing of the kick and two effectiveness of the kick and the kick effectiveness is really important too as you know I mean a lot of it comes down to the flexibility of the foot and the ability of the foot to be able to generate propulsion with your feet so if you bring all those together you’re now able to suddenly map the whole ecosystem and then you’re able to show how the hand relates to the hip roll relates to what’s essentially the drag an increase in the drag component of the body and in relation to the kick as well and then you can present that so you can take two athletes

side by side and you can present them and overlay them and you can play one off against the other and see exactly where one is improving over the other and vice versa and then they can learn from each other so one of the one of the key one of the key principles mate that we should be take very seriously is let’s learn and understand what’s happening in other sports and this is probably the biggest issue with swimming and swimming is is very behind everything else the application and the acceptance and the embracing of data and technology in all other sports is way more advanced part of it’s because swimming has not been able to come up with products like this that do the stuff that we’re talking about that holds it back so one of the key probably the most advanced sport in the world is formula one and there’s a reason it’s because of money right and the amount of money involved in formula one is the same

thing with football you know some of the things that are coming out of soccer football are huge but if I go back to formula one you’re able to look at two drivers in the same car I’d say an F1 team with their two drivers and you can map exactly what’s going on not just with acceleration and brake but gear changes steering wheel adjustments all through the context of time and speed and you’re able then to look at and this is what these drivers do in the in the one team is they look at their data together they look at each of their data and what that does is it lifts each one it gives that more information to each side of the garage that helps both of them improve and that’s why teams have got two drivers because they need to be able to do those comparisons for improvements to be able to apply it in the race against all the other teams that they’re racing against and it’s there’s no question why it can’t be the same

thing when we’re talking about Olympic level federations and Olympic level teams to be able to say you know this is the stuff that you need to be able then you can do this with a back striker or two backstrokers or two butterflies or whatever where you can analyse this data very very minutely and see exactly what’s what’s making one swim faster than the yeah sure so I think it most people know we’ve got a partnership with Kyle Charmers and Kyle’s been on board since very very early on I went and met with him in his coach and this was not about a commercial type transaction this was about us helping him getting onto the podium and you know he got a gold in Rio a silver in Tokyo and then you got a silver in Paris and so Kyle we’ve worked very closely with Kyle and again in Kyle’s context or certainly after Tokyo you know his his goal was to try and find seven or eight hundreds of a second like less than a tenth of a second

now that’s because that’s what he lost the gold to Caleb Dressel buy in uh in Tokyo now we know in Paris it was a different story it was like over a second to uh to the chinese guy Panjama and after after the Paris Olympics after the race in Paris it was literally the day after the 100 meters and I was you know obviously rooting for Kyle and don’t get me wrong super pleased that he meddled in three consecutive Olympics I mean that in itself is mind blowing but you know tiny little thing in the back of my mind you know pity he didn’t get the gold and it was the next day that I got an email from the chinese national team saying we want to thank you for the technology that you’ve produced because it was instrumental in Panjama doing what he did in the 100 meters which was not only winning by over a second which hadn’t happened for a hundred years but also smashing the world record and he literally smashed the world record

though because I’d sold the system to the chinese like a year earlier but I had no visibility into who was using it and they even sent me some some of his data too which was remarkable so we’ve got Pan we’ve got Kyle in the 100 then you’ve got in the 50 you’ve got Cam McAvoy I’ve worked with Cam McAvoy and Ben Proud you know Ben got the silver medal and I worked very closely not just with Ben but with Ben’s performance coach based in London and Ben was training in Turkey and he was getting his data was being looked at in London by his performance guy and me here in Sydney and we were sort of collaborating a little bit on that so from an Olympics perspective that was remarkable there and then added to that is a young lady in the United States called Paige Madden now Paige was an Olympic medalist from Tokyo so we’re talking about a really a high level high quality swimmer and then sort of I think something like

10 months before she started using it and she wasn’t using it specifically herself it was being used by a mathematician out of the University of Virginia a guy called Ken Ono and Ken started using the handsets and looking at the data because he was bringing mathematics and science to the UVA team and this is a team by the way that’s just won the women’s NCAA title for the fifth consecutive year in a row working under under coach Todd Dissobo and Ken put Paige through a number of different training drills and one of them what he did was is he put two male NCAA swimmers either side of her so put her in a lane put put a bloke on the left and a bloke on the right and gave them clear instructions of when to kick and she had to follow and when she did wearing our handsets immediately they could see what was going on as she accelerated she lost her form when I say lost her form she went from having a propulsive number of something like I think

from memory it was like 62% or 60% dropped down to 43% or 42% because instead of her maintaining her form her hand path suddenly stopped going straight and went laterally and so the power that she was generating was not being pushed backwards it was pushed to the side and she also started leaning more and pushing more down so her propulsion plummeted as a percentage and all they did was they sat her down afterwards and they showed her the data explained what was happening brought her back the next day undertook the same same protocols did it exactly the same way but this time she knew what she was doing before and the beauty about page and you see this with some athletes is they’ve got this remarkable connection between the brain and the limb I don’t have that right I can I have it to a degree and I can concentrate and I can change some things but sometimes this is where drills come in and this is where accessories and paddles

and other things come in to try and help you implement those drills but page has got this ability to be able to say okay I’ve got to make sure that I maintain my technique and she did and in doing so she was able to keep her propulsion up there in the the low 60% and not dropping it down to 42 the upshot was and this is remember this is this is an existing Olympic medalist she took 19 seconds of her 800 meter swim time and she won the bronze medal in the 800 in Paris and she was that far away from Arnie Titmus in silver and I think about a second away from Katie Ledecky in the gold and she she told me afterwards she said even Katie Ledecky had said to her my god what on earth have you done how can you possibly find 18 seconds now don’t get me wrong she did other work she was working with great US coach Bob Bowman and she did other like you know her training regime it’s not everything down to EO swim better but it’s the

understanding that she was able to get what was happening and and what forces she was and power she was generating and where she was able to change her change and improve her technique and and lop off the 19 seconds and there’s a couple of things as you know Brent and you can only change one thing at a time you might look at your data from from the EO swim better and it might tell you you’ve got three things you’re generating too much downward force you’ve got too much lateral force and maybe you’ve also got hand drag or upward force at the back end you can only change one thing at a time and you’ve got it and the whole point about the system is being able to not just make the change but measure the outcome of that change because it’s the outcome that’s that’s critical because you don’t want to be making change and and not knowing whether it’s working and once yeah you measure it and it’s where you want to be

you’ve then got to rinse and repeat until it becomes muscle memory once you’ve got that point then you can move on to the next thing and I’ll just show you one more thing because I think this is this is also something that is really become critical I mentioned that we’ve learned a lot over the time we’ve been doing this and this is this is a perfect example of what good looks like so here are our six directional numbers you can see this going to Brenton on the screen yeah right here are our six vector direction numbers so this is the distribution of power in those six directions and then over here on the right these are our goals and so we can see laterally both left and right we’re looking for these numbers left would and right would direction to ideally be less than four percent in freestyle we’ve got hand drag and upward and as you can see ideally we want both of those to be at zero regardless of whether

you’re a sprinter or a distance swimmer we want four percent maximum left and right we want zero upward and hand drag and if we can achieve four four zero zero that leaves us 92 percent out of the 100 to be applied between propulsive and down these two numbers here propulsive and downward and this is where we have to separate it depending on whether you’re a sprinter or a distance swimmer now we’ll talk primarily about distance because I think you deal with a lot of triathletes and a lot of distance swimmers so a distance swimmer what they’re looking for is to get that propulsive number up north of 70 percent and their downward force to be you know somewhere between 17 and 22 call it 20 percent so the idea is that athletes not only can measure where they are but they can also understand where they want to get to yeah then the fun stuff happens and the fun stuff and I’ll tell you the the vast majority of them are carrying too much

downward force right so it’s not unusual to see a distance swimmer carrying only propulsion in the 30s about 37 percent propulsion and downward at 50 okay I’ve got too much downward force and I’ve got insufficient propulsion generally it’s because they’ve got a that they might have a dropped elbow but they’re not using their high elbow catch right so how do I get my elbow higher how do I get from a position at the end of the glide where my hand can very quickly go from the end of the glide into the catch that’s our goal right to go from here into here how do I implement that well I’ve got a you know watch some videos listen to my coach try using a forearm paddle do whatever and try and try and make that happen and then where we do see hand drag and downward force invariably that’s an indicator of a dropped elbow in the glide so as the hand’s coming in you see a lot of athletes they scoop and the moment

they scoop like that the elbows dropped the hand pops up they’re pushing at the water in front and what it means is that hand has got to travel down a long way before it gets into a propulsive position which is takes longer than it should and it’s wasted energy pushing down instead of going over the barrel and being propulsive so it’s a it’s not just about where you are now it’s about where you should aim to get to implementing changes and measuring the outcome of those changes and again this is where it becomes a much more interesting concept than just logging yourself up and down that bloody black line all the time and as you said with triathletes it’s not about the engine the engine’s built from the run it’s built from the cycle the engine’s great it’s all about how do we how do we implement these technique refinements yeah so the numbers that I just showed you they don’t come from a five-year academic study they come from all the contact

I have with the best swimmers in the world and looking at very closely at their data and understanding it so there’s definitely an element of gut feel from me but I can tell you that the freestyle numbers are absolutely bang-on I’ve got backstroke numbers that are really good to my butterfly is more of a guess and breaststroke I have no so we have fly back and free available in the format that I just showed you for people to be able to say okay it’s one thing knowing where I am it’s about where I want to get to but breaststroke is breaststroke is a whole new animal we’ll get there it just needs some time yeah thanks Brenton eolab.com eolab.com and you can get all sorts of info in there there’s a support email address for questions that actually come to me so I I look at those every day so I’m very responsive on those so contactable and the other thing mate is I do data sessions with people even with the AI and

even with everything else you know people still sometimes need their hands being held a little bit so I’m available to do virtual data reviews with people so we can look at it together and they can better understand. Thanks buddy. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming podcast if you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlessswimming.com www.effortlessswimming.com

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here's your host, Brenton Ford. Welcome to Feedback Friday. In this video, we've got Gilly from Sydney. He can hold around 130 per hundred in his half Ironman swims. Let's take a look at his stroke and see where he could find some additional speed. Yeah, you'll notice here that he's swimming really well. If you're swimming 130s, it's pretty quick for your triathlon swims. So you've got to be doing a lot well to be swimming at that sort of pace. So we do see here that head position is quite nice. He's looking slightly forwards top of the head's just out of the water, which looks great. And he's timing his breath where he pulls into the breath to initiate the turn of the head gets a breath relatively early and he brings the head back down with this catch here. So the timing of his breath looks really good. Now there's two things that stood out here that I think will help him increase his speed. One of them is body position. One of those is what happens at this moment here. Let's dig into this one first. So what you'll notice at the finish of his stroke is that the back end of it pushes up towards the surface of the water. So from here you'll see the direction that this palm is going upwards and then that hand gets drawn out of the water

in that direction. What we want to do instead is keep the palm of the hand pressing backwards all the way through, come out on the way back and then come over. So to me that indicates it is just not finishing his stroke as well as he possibly could. So he's going to lose a little bit of that propulsion through the back end of the stroke and it also means that his recovery might be impacted as well. So he might be losing 5-10% of his propulsion through the back end of the stroke. Now that might be the symptom of something else that's happening in the stroke. At Effortless Swimming our mission is simple. Make swimming more enjoyable. Whether you're training for your next race, swimming for fitness, or just love being in the water, we're here to help you swim faster, smoother and with more confidence. And one thing that can make or break a swim is your goggles. If you've ever struggled with foggy lenses mid-session you know how frustrating it can be. That's why we created the Effortless Swimming Hydro Clear Anti-Fog Goggles for long-lasting crystal clear vision. I've been using them myself and the difference is night and day. And I'm not the only one. Deborah swam 36 kilometers down the Derwent River and the entire time her vision stayed crystal clear. No fog, no frustration, just an uninterrupted swim. So what makes a hydro clear goggles different? It's all in the technology. Unlike ordinary anti-fog coatings that wear off over time, hydro clear super hydrophilic technology is built into the lens material itself.

Here's how it works. Instead of fog forming as tiny droplets, water spreads evenly across the lens, creating a thin film that prevents fog from even starting. And the result? Consistently clear swim after swim. And the durability? Our lenses are CNAS certified. Tests show that even after 2000 rubs with a wet cloth under a 200 gram load, the lens stays fog-free. No gimmicks, just serious performance that last. Using them is simple. Just wet the lenses before putting them on and you're set for a fog-free swim. Ready to see the difference yourself? Get 15% off your first pair of hydro clear anti-fog goggles with the code podcast at shop.effortlesswimming.com. That's 15% off your first pair of goggles with the code podcast at shop.effortlesswimming.com. We also have a 30-day money back guarantee. So if you're not happy with the goggles for any reason, you can simply return them for a refund. Don't let foggy goggles ruin another swim. Try hydro clear today and experience clear vision from start to finish. And I think it's a symptom of his reach and extension on his left side. So if you look at his right hand, this one enters nicely. He reaches out, gets good rotation, and you can see this link through the body here. This looks good to me. On his left side, he enters there, which is our, and then when he reaches forwards, he doesn't extend out quite as much there. And I think that he could go for a little bit more

reach at the back. And that, sorry, out the front. And if he reaches forwards a little bit more, that will help him rotate the hips slightly more. And that will also help him keep that palm facing back behind him. Because what can often happen there is that if you cut yourself short with the reach, then it's harder to get the hand out. And if the hips are flat, it's harder to get the hand out. So I think he could get a little bit more extension in front before he goes down. And that will help him rotate a little bit more through the hips, which can help him finish that stroke with the palm facing back. So we want to look at the cause, not the symptom. And to me, that's probably the cause. Now he did mention in his note study has been trying to go a little bit deeper, a little bit earlier, with this arm, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. So you can still go a little bit deeper if it feels like it helps. Slightly deeper than the shoulders are extending forwards. But I think he's just missing out on a little bit of that reach and rotation and rotation through the hips, which is stopping him from finishing his stroke on that right side as well as he could. All right. So that's the first thing. Now that kind of can lead into body position as well. So in terms of body position, at least from this side view, there's room to bring the hips up and the legs up ever so slightly. So looking at this here, you can see how the hips and legs are just slightly lower. And what I'm thinking is that that could be from not extending and reaching out

quite enough. Now if we were to get really picky with some things, another thing he could do over the top is on this left side, when he enters the water, his hands at a little bit of a funny angle there. So it's almost at this sort of angle, as you can see, where it's kind of entering like that. And he's sort of pushes forwards with it, eventually gets to a really good position. But what he could do instead would be get that middle finger going in first and extend straights out in front. It will reduce the drag ever so slightly and it can make that proper extension and reach a lot easier to achieve. So it might just be these either trying to relax the hand a little bit too much where you need enough tension in the hand so that you can enter correctly, but he might be keeping it too relaxed where it's coming off to the side there. So that would be one other thing which may help him with that reach and extension. Couple things that I like here, like his catch. This is really good with the catch there and the power diamond underneath. So that's a big part of his propulsion and his speed. He does that so well. Similar thing, like the left side as well, he gets a good catch on this side too, where we see the fingers pointing down, elbows out to the side and it's quite a nice angle with that catch too. So he's very good at those propulsive parts of the stroke and again I think that's why he's able to go that 130 pace. So at this speed, this is typically where we're trying to refine a few parts of it. We're trying to make sure we've got the right rhythm and tempo

and we're looking to work on race strategy as well. So if you want the full breakdown of how to go from 230 down to 115, watch this video above and if you'd like the freestyle technique checklist where I have got dot points of all the things that you need to be doing in your stroke, in what order, click the link below. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. If you'd like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. What are the most common mistakes adults must make and what should you do instead? The first mistake is holding too much tension. Quite often when people start swimming and they go to the pool, they have this uncomfortableness with being in the water. They might feel like they’re unsafe, like they’re going to sink to the bottom of the pool and they carry this tension and these nerves with them. But if you still have that while you’re trying to improve your swimming, you’re going to be restricted and you’re probably not going to be able to get much better until you can get over that anxiety. So how do we get over that anxiety about being in the water? Maybe we can’t stand up in it because it’s quite deep. There’s a number of ways to do it and a lot of it begins with starting

to get our breathing under control and knowing that we can actually float. So what we do at clinics is we get people to float in a ball. They take a breath in, they hug their knees and they float in a ball for about 10 seconds. Now everyone in that position can float. I’ve never had one person go into this ball with a big breath of air and sink to the bottom. So you can float in the water because your lungs are where most of your buoyancy will come from. So it’s like having a balloon that you push down, wants to come back up and so that’s what your lungs provide. And the thing is when we have this tension and anxiety we start to panic and when you panic and move that way actually sink a lot more. So you kind of have to just trust that the water is there to support you if you can relax and hold your body correctly. So after we go from this ball float, we get them to take a breath in and then try and float horizontally.

Their arms extended, their legs extended out behind them. Now if you’ve tried something like this before and sunk, what I’d suggest is firstly try and soften your neck, your back, your shoulders because if you tense you’re going to sink a bit more. And the next step to that is when you’re extending your arms and legs out, your chest will have to be the lowest part of your body. So I want you to open up through the chest, bring your arms up and behind you slightly and bring your legs up. So you have to use your bum and your hamstrings to bring your legs up and out behind and so it’s almost like this is going to be the bottom of your of your boat. So it’s got to be the lowest part and that way you can float a lot better. Now not everyone can float in that position. Often guys will be a bit heavier through the through the legs and they will sink through the hips and legs a bit more. But you’ll find that you can be somewhere

in that kind of position when you hold it like that. So after we have them do that process, I then get them to think about being long from the head to the toes. This length through the body can help you be taught through the body. Taughtness mean a little bit of rigidity to it. So you’re not moving around like a needle. When you’ve got this taughtness through the body, then you’ll find it can float a lot better. So I have them swim 25 meters trying to keep this long line through the body, leaning on the chest slightly because this is where your lungs are. So if you lean on this slightly, you’ll bring your hips up and your legs up and then I get them to swim as easy as they possibly can for that 25 and usually the swimmers that are rushed and tense and trying fighting the water. They’re the ones that tend to really move a lot better. They move a lot freer and they sit higher in the water. So if you can get rid of

some of that tension and anxiety around being in the pool, then that’s a first step to progressing. Now if you’ve got a really deep fear of being in the water, it might take some lessons with a coach who can help you with that because it is something that if you’ve had something happen in your childhood or you’ve just got something really deep down that you need to work on, you might need to get a little bit more assistance with that. Mistake number two, looking forward the whole time. We want to see where we’re going when we are walking, when we are running and often when we’re swimming, we want to see what’s coming up in front. But the most efficient and the most streamlined position for you to be in is not with your eyes looking straight forwards. So we have to go against our natural urges to want to see where we are swimming. So when I’m teaching freestyle head position, looking straight down to about 45 degrees in

front. So I would suggest for most people to actually look about 45 degrees in front. Now not just thinking about where you’re looking, but also how your neck is. Think about extending through the back of your neck, almost like you’re trying to get rid of the wrinkles there and a slight tuck of your chin as well. I don’t know what it is about it, but a slight tuck of the chin brings your hips up. If you stick your chin forwards, you normally find that your hips will sink a little bit more. The other part of that is making sure that your head is like an iceberg 10 to 20 percent above the rest of it below because your head weighs about 6 kilos and if you’re holding that up above the water, you’re going to find your hips and legs sink. So making sure that you’re not trying to see where you are going, even though that’s the natural instinct when you first get in the water. Hey real quick, in case you didn’t know, we run swimming camps

around the world from the Maldives, Thailand, Japan with Sundays, Galapagos Islands plus a bunch of new locations for next year. So if you’d like to join us at a future camp and improve your swimming and explore and experience some of the best locations to swim in the world, then go to effortlesswimming.com forward slash camps. We’ve got all the dates and locations listed there. A question I get all the time is I’m not that quick. Will this camp be suitable for me? We have a wide range of speeds and abilities come to the camps. So as long as you can swim a kilometer, there’s a very good chance that these camps will be suitable for you. And if you’re not sure, just get in touch with us and we’ll make sure that we do find you a suitable camp. Thanks for listening. Let’s get back to the podcast. Mistake number three over kicking or kicking with very stiff legs. When it comes to kicking, most people think that to move forwards, I’ve got to kick

themselves forwards. So a lot of beginner swimmers will be kicking so hard to try and keep their momentum up and to keep their legs up when in reality, once you get better at swimming, it is there more for support and balance and not so much for propulsion. So if you were trying to kick yourself forwards as you’re swimming freestyle, you’re going to be wasting so much effort that you’re likely to be tired after 25 or 50 meters. So what we need to do instead is make sure that we’re not kicking too big. So a lot of people will kick like they’re riding a bike, lots of hip, lots of knee bend, and that is going to create more drag out behind you because your quads will be facing that uncoming water, creating drag, slowing you down and actually making things harder. So with your kick, think about the legs has been nice and long out behind you almost like a ballerina. You got long legs and you’re just going to have this narrow

kick almost in the size of a bucket out behind you. We don’t want to kick much bigger than that. The other part of that too is keep the kick light. No more than a two or a three out of 10. That’s how much your kick should give us. How much should give in your kick if we’re thinking about the effort side of it. If you feel like it is a six or seven guaranteed you are going to get tired after about 50 meters. Mistake number four, beginning your catch before you finished reaching forwards. When it comes to getting the length in the stroke and getting our balance, we need to enter the water fingers first, then slide the hand forwards in front of the shoulder until you get to 30 or 40 degrees rotation on your side. That small step to reach the extension. That is key to being able to relax when you swim. So many adult swimmers enter the water and go straight down and begin their catch and pull without ever extending forwards in front of

their shoulder. I run freestyle clinics every single month here in Australia and every single clinic there is at least someone who is coming in going straight down with their hand as soon as we get them to extend forwards. Not only do they get faster, the heart rate comes down, the effort comes down because they’re not having to work so hard to move forwards. The thing is when you enter and you’re reaching forwards, that movement through the stroke, that time in the stroke cycle is typically when you’re traveling fastest because you’re most streamlined there. So we want to take that little bit of time to move through this very streamlined position as we’re extending out. And the benefits of that too is that when you finish your extension and you’ve got a bit of rotation, you can use these bigger stronger muscles underneath your shoulder around your back. You can use those muscles through the catch and pull. Whereas if you enter and go

straight down, you’re often a bit flat and you don’t get to use those muscles nearly as well. So you end up being slower for that reason as well. So if you can make sure you have a little bit of extension or reach before you begin your catch, that can really make a huge difference to your speed, but also the amount of effort that needs to go into your swimming. Mistake number five is breathing like it’s your last breath ever. When it comes to swimming freestyle, we want to try and get the breath directly to the side, get it quickly and get it relatively low. A lot of people will lift their head up, throw it to the side, look up to the sky and then come back down and they’ll do it in a way where it’s like this will be their last breath ever. It’s this big gas for air and then they will bring the head back in the water, but that is just not a sustainable way to swim. So if you look at the best ones in the world, it’s almost like

they’re taking this sip of air. It’s like a inhale and then a bit of an exhale as they go underneath. They’re not going for these really big breaths in, really big breaths out. It’s this normal standard sort of way of approaching their breathing. So we want to make sure that when we turn to breathe that we imagine we’ve got this skewer through our head, our neck and our spine. And when we turn to breathe, turn the skewer, turn the skewer, get your head to the side and then come back. That is a much easier way to breathe and it’s much more direct as well. An indirect way of breathing would be that lift up turn and then getting the breath there. So if you can breathe like you’re on the skewer, you will find that it comes easier and that way you can actually get this little bow wave happening around your mouth where you get this little pocket of air. So you can get that relatively low breath as well. If you enjoyed these tips,

grab our seven day email course for beginner swimmers to help you swim easier. You can get that in the link below. If you want to get a full breakdown of the freestyle stroke, click this video above. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

Most women think a harder leg kick equals more speed, but for most adults and triathletes, it actually equals harder and slower progress and being more exhausted at the end of your lap. So if your legs are feeling heavy and your heart rate's really high at the end of each lap, let's take a look at these main reasons why your kick might be slowing you down and what you can do about it. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here's your host, Brenton Ford. Mistake number one is kicking from the knees. Now what does this mean? You've probably heard the term before. Kicking from the knees really implies that you are bending at your hips and your knees too much. If we look at your body line, so where your body is in the water, if your quads and your knees are coming much below that line, that's kicking from the knees. That is going to create a lot of additional drag with your body in the water. And when you're kicking harder, it's actually going to be slowing you down and causing your heart rate to go up. So we want to make sure that we're not kicking like we're trying to kick a soccer ball or ride a bike. This is something I see quite often when we run our freestyle clinics and when people send in their videos for our analysis inside of the Effortless Swimming membership. What we want to do instead is have the thigh bones, think of the thigh bones at the top here, moving slightly back and slightly forwards from your hips. That will create enough of a movement of the legs that it's not going to

break your body line. It's not going to come outside of your torso there, but it will still give you a little bit of propulsion, but it will help you with your balance and your timing. So that is the biggest mistake we see with people's legs, kicking in a way that's actually slowing them down if you're kicking from the hips. Meaning you're kicking where your thighs and your quads and your knees are coming below your body line. One way that we actually get people to help make that change, we start them off by doing 25 freestyle with a really big kick, an exaggerated kick. And you will likely notice that you are exhausted at the end of that lap. Then we get to do a little bit of vertical kick where you're vertical in the water. You can hold on to the wall or the lane right with the hand just to keep you upright, and then we get them to just move those thigh bones back and forth from the hips ever so slightly. And that will help you feel the correct movement of the kick. Then we go on to 25 freestyle with that smaller narrower kick, and you'll likely find that the speed goes up, the effort goes down. Mistake number two, kicking too much. Often people will kick small, which is good, but kick really fast and a lot in order to try and keep their hips and their legs up. And this is a mistake because yet uses more energy and it's not actually going to support you at all. The kick is then dominating the stroke, which is not what we want. So if you feel like you're doing small kicks, but they're very rapid and very fast, then you're likely kicking too much. A lot of swimmers, especially those

that are somewhat new to the sport, they can go a long way with just a two-beat kick, which is one kick per arm stroke. Not to say you can't do a what we call a four-beat kick or a six-beat kick, but a lot of swimmers will have enough speed and balance to have a good two-beat kick which keeps the effort level down. So if you're kicking rapidly and it's causing you to tire, or it's even like a 12-beat kick, which would be six kicks per arm stroke, that's just too much. So don't let the kick dominate the stroke. If you can learn how to hold your body well in the water, so long through the body, you lean on your chest a little bit to let those lungs support you, you'll find you'll be horizontal in the water and you can be well balanced when you do that. Then the kick can just help you rotate from one side to the other and that's kind of all you need from the kick, because the upper body is the thing that's actually going to move you primarily forwards. It's that 20% of the stroke where 80% of your propulsion comes from. So let the arms be the things that move you forwards, not your legs.

At Effortless Swimming, our mission is simple. Make swimming more enjoyable. Whether you're training for your next race, swimming for fitness, or just love being in the water, we're here to help you swim faster, smoother, and with more confidence. One thing that can make or break a swim is your goggles. If you've ever struggled with foggy lenses mid-session, you know how frustrating it can be. That's why we created the Effortless Swimming Hydro Clear Anti-Fog Goggles for long lasting crystal clear vision. I've been using them myself and the difference is night and day. I'm not the only one. Deborah swam 36 kilometers down the Derwent River and the entire time her vision stayed crystal clear. No fog, no frustration, just an uninterrupted swim. So what makes a hydro clear goggles different? It's all in the technology. Unlike ordinary anti-fog coatings that wear off over time, hydro clear super hydrophilic technology is built into the lens material itself. Here's how it works. Instead of fog forming as tiny droplets, water spreads evenly across the lens, creating a thin film that prevents fog from even starting. And the result? Consistently clear vision. Swim after swim. And the durability? Our lenses are CNAS certified. Tests show that even after 2000 rubs with a wet cloth under a 200 gram load, the lens stays fog-free. No gimmicks, just serious performance that lasts. Using them is simple. Just wet the lenses before putting them on and you're set for a fog-free swim. Ready to see the difference

yourself? Get 15% off your first pair of hydro clear anti-fog goggles with the code podcast at shop.effortlesswimming.com. That's 15% off your first pair of goggles with the code podcast at shop.effortlesswimming.com. We also have a 30-day money back guarantee. So if you're not happy with the goggles for any reason, you can simply return them for a refund. Don't let foggy goggles ruin another swim. Try hydro clear today and experience clear vision from start to finish. Mistake number three is stiff ankles. If you have run since you've been a kid and you've developed these stiff ankles from running, it can be good for running but it's not so good for swimming. Now mobility takes a long time to make changes to for most people but you can improve on your ankle flexibility or your mobility. So it's important to be able to point your toes. One way that you can not fast-track that improvement but you can make some better changes to the way that you kick, if you point your toes and turn your feet slightly inwards almost like a little bit of pigeon toad that can give you a bit more flexion in your feet because something that I see fairly often with adult swimmers and a lot of guys have a tendency to do this I think more so for balance. They'll point their toes but then occasionally when they're kicking their foot will turn outwards and that outward turn of the foot creates a lot of drag

on the outside of their body with the top of that foot and even though it doesn't look like much surface area it is killing your swim speed. So a good approach for that point the toes turn the feet slightly in and it's okay to have your big toes brushing past one another at least to develop that way of kicking. Now I don't want you to point your toes so much that you're cramping in your feet and in your calves that's not sustainable that's no good. So we need to keep the ankles loose and floppy when we're doing that kick so it's all within reason. If you want to improve on that ankle mobility there's a number of ways you can do it sometimes wearing fins something like a damn sea fins some good fins or the fins that we've got you can point the toes with those and it will actually give you a little bit of a stretch there you know if you're kicking because you've got that extra weight or extra resistance of the fins that will force you to stretch a little bit through that movement. You can also sit on the top of your feet that can help stretch it a bit and there are other exercises some with therabands as well that can help you with that. So if you want those comment below and I can link you to a video with those exercises that you can use with the theraband. Mistake number four is using your kick for propulsion. Now if you're trying to kick yourself forwards instead of when your arms move you forwards then you are going to be fatigued after 25 or 50 meters so remember the kick is not to help move you forwards but more to keep you

balanced and help you with your rhythm in the stroke so don't try and use it as the primary method of propulsion let the arms do that. So you've got to work on good body position first so eyes somewhere down, lung through the body and a small narrow kick and lean on your chest a little bit to let the lungs help keep you up in the water then you can let the legs kind of just do their thing and you can have that easy two beat kick after that. Now bonus tip here is fishtail feet so imagine that your foot is this fishtail at the back when you kick down it's like this whip of the foot or this flick of a fishtail that lets you get that little bit of propulsion and lift from the kick so if you're trying to be very stiff and rigid with it it's not going to help you we need to have that looseness and floppiness through the feet. Another good analogy that I heard is it's almost like you're trying to kick off a sock so if you've got this movement of trying to kick off a long sock off your foot that's a similar way of how you should kick in the water. If you enjoyed these tips grab our seven tips in seven days how you can swim easier over seven days I'll send you an email every single day with a small tip that you can try next time you go to the pool and this can help you relax more in the water be very comfortable and start to increase your swim speed as you're going get that in the link below if you'd like to get the full breakdown of freestyle click this link above. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming podcast if you'd like us to help you become a

faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com

Anxiety is number one priority. If you are tense and anxious when you’re in the water, that can really ruin the rest of your stroke. So if we haven’t dealt with that side of things yet, the anxiety that you might have around being in water that you can’t stand up in, then we really need to address that first and foremost. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

Do freestyle tips from the 1960s still work today? Recently, I came across some notes that I made from a DVD that the 1960-1500m freestyle gold medalist, John Conrad, said put together. And 10 years ago, I was really deep into learning freestyle technique and trying to figure everything out that I could about the stroke. And John and I would actually go back and forth about some of the things that he was teaching that I was teaching and we’d disagree on some things. So in this video, I want to share with you some of the notes that I made when going through John Conrad’s DVD and some of the things I don’t necessarily agree with as well. Let’s get stuck into the video. And if you’re looking to improve your own freestyle technique, I’ll put together a freestyle technique checklist that you can get at the link below. It gives you everything in the right order to help develop and improve your own freestyle. The first night I made was apply energy only when needed.

I really like this tip. When we talk about recovery over the top of the water, it’s called recovery because you should be relaxed and recovering the arm over the top and not using unnecessary energy. So apply force only when needed. So I really like that tip where a lot of people are trying to muscle their way down the pool through all the different parts of the stroke. But if you can relax and switch off a little bit in the recovery parts of the stroke, if you can build into the catch, put a little bit more force into the catch in the pool as you’re accelerating through, finding that sweet spot of how much effort and force to apply can make a big difference. Swim at floatation depth. This is something that John Conrad’s would teach is you should swim at the same depth that you would float. Now I agree with this in some respects. So when we do our freestyle clinics, one of the exercises we get capable to do is to float

and we’re getting to float in a ball. We get them to try and float horizontally. Now everyone’s got different buoyancy profiles, meaning you’ve got different muscle fat distribution, limb length, where your lungs are, how much air it can hold. So everyone floats differently. So I would agree with this that if you can sit kind of at the surface or just below it, that’s a pretty good place to swim. But we do get a lot of people, particularly older guys, who have heavier hips and legs, and they tend to sink. So I wouldn’t want them to swim at that depth. But I think in general, it’s pretty good advice to follow. Anxiety is number one priority. If you are tense and anxious when you’re in the water, that can really ruin the rest of your stroke. So if we haven’t dealt with that side of things yet, the anxiety that you might have around being in water that you can’t stand up in, then we really need to address that first

and foremost, because it doesn’t matter how fit you are. It doesn’t matter how strong you are or how good your technique is. If you’ve got this anxiety around being in water, then it’s going to be hard to progress from there. As you relax, your body increases in volume. This is a really interesting tip that I got from John Conner as is that if you’re tense, then you will take up slightly less space in the water because of that tension through the through the body. Whereas when you relax, it’s almost like if you’re trying to flex in front of the mirror, things will come together. But if you relax, then you’ll actually take up more volume. And that means that you can float a little bit better in the water. So that is one of the reasons why you need that sense of softness and relaxation about how you hold yourself in the water. Swimming efficiently means you’re relaxed and loose. If you look at the very best swimmers in the world, they don’t ever look like they’re

muscling their way through the water. They’ve got this sense of relaxation, not only necessary tension through the way that they hold their body. So we want to get to that point. So if you’re trying to go faster by muscling your way through the water and trying to force it, that’s not sustainable. So we want this sense of looseness and relaxation through the way that we move. Look forward when learning, look down when more comfortable. John Conrad’s made this tip as part of his DVD and I somewhat agree with it. So if you’re not super comfortable with being in the water, you may want to see where you’re going when you swim. But the downside to that is it may drop your hips and your legs. So I think it just depends on the person. So if you are really struggling with that comfort in the water, maybe it is worthwhile looking slightly forwards or forwards to see where you’re going, but we don’t want to stick with that to too long because for a lot of people,

that means dropped hips and dropped legs. But the range that we want to head position should be zero to 45. So I think you’d be better off looking about 45 degrees in front. So you can still have a sense of what’s coming as opposed to looking straight down. Pivot your body. When we think of rotation side to side, don’t think about rolling and twisting side to side. You’re probably better off thinking about pivoting, thinking you’re rotating around the spine and you’re pivoting from your right side to your left side. And where your rotation primarily comes from is that pivot or that rotation and reach forwards. That’s where the rotation comes in. So that can be a good way to think of your rotation pivoting your body. Relax your kick. It is not worth the effort. Unless you are sprinting a 50 freestyle, maybe 100, your kick really is only going to provide up to about 10% of your propulsion. So there is no need

to kick really, really hard. It’s there more for balance and for timing, not so much propulsion. So I think this is really good advice where the kick can help really coordinate kins in the stroke and can be really useful. So we don’t want to forget about the legs, but a lot of your propulsion is going to come from your upper body. So let’s put a most of our focus there. Keep the kick light. Kick on your back instead of your front. Now I somewhat agree with this advice. The reason you can improve your kick by kicking on your back is it can help you focus more on the down kick. Well in this case, when we flick the foot down, it can help you work on a better up kick if you’re on your back. So sometimes if we’re kicking on our front, we’re just thinking about the downward movement. That’s certainly important, but we also need to think about the upward movement. When we draw the leg up in a somewhat straight movement, that’s half of the kick. So we need to make sure we’re moving our legs

correctly that way. And so by kicking on your back, you can help develop that part of your kick. So I think it’s good advice that kicking on your back, not only on your front, but on your back as well, that can come in handy. But same thing for kicking on your side, you can develop your kick in both directions by kicking on your side as well. Both arms don’t go at the same speed. If you’re thinking of your stroke is this windmill action where everything is going at the same time, the same speed, there’s a good chance that your timing is way off in your freestyle. The speed of the arms will change through the stroke. One of the ways that we like to teach is slow to fast. So once we’ve entered the ordinary of reaching forwards, it’s slower through there and then it will speed up as we go through the catch and pull and then we release out the back. So if we think of timing, it’s going to enter, extend out. This arm is going to be going quicker out the back in order to almost

catch up out the front and then we go through. So we’re not going in complete opposites to each other with our arms. So I think that’s really good advice. Delay the pull. This is pretty similar to that last tip that John gave is you shouldn’t rush into the catch or let’s say he’s calling the pull. You should take that little bit of time to reach forwards, set up the catch and then go through. So pretty similar advice, but delay the pull. Don’t come in and go straight through. It is counterintuitive. You would think that in order to get going and get your speed up that you enter and immediately start pressing back because we need to go forwards. But when you reach forwards and slide the hand out, you’re going to be the most streamlined at that point. You’re going to be able to get into a stronger position with your lats and your back and shoulders as you reach out. So it’s important to not skip the rich part of the stroke. Hey real quick, in case you didn’t know,

we run swimming camps around the world from the Maldives, Thailand, Japan with Sundays, Galapagos Islands plus a bunch of new locations for next year. So if you’d like to join us at a future camp and improve your swimming and explore and experience some of the best locations to swim in the world, then go to effortlesswimming.com forward slash camps. We’ve got all the dates and locations listed there. A question I get all the time is I’m not that quick. Will this camp be suitable for me? We have a wide range of speeds and abilities come to the camps. So as long as you can swim a kilometer, there’s a very good chance that these camps will be suitable for you. And if you’re not sure, just get in touch with us and we’ll make sure that we do find you a suitable camp. Thanks for listening. Let’s get back to the podcast. Learn by exaggeration. This is such a great tip that John Conrods gave in his DVD that if you are trying to make a change or you’re trying to learn something, exaggerate it.

So when we’re running freestyle clinics and a lot of our courses as well, I get people to do things the wrong way and then the right way. Do it completely wrong. For example, with your kick, let’s do a really big kick, lots of hip and knee bend, massive kick. See how you feel. Most people get completely gassed out at the end of that. Then we bring them to a smaller, narrower kick and get them to feel that. So those going between those two extremes is a really good way to find the sweet spot. Because as a coach, I can give you advice, I can give you tips, but the best coach is going to be yourself. You can feel for things in the water. You can get a sense of what’s right by how fast you travel, the feeling that you get in the water. So learning by exaggeration is such a great tip that I think we don’t often do enough of. Because whenever we’re trying to make changes in the stroke, if you try and change it by 5% or 10%, I guarantee you,

you’re probably not changing it at all. So more times are not things have to be exaggerated to be changed. The first component of swimming is relaxing. The second is catch up. The third is almost catch up. This was quite an interesting tip that John put in his DVD. And in some ways, I do agree with this. First, we need to learn how to be comfortable and relaxed in the water. So we just work on breathing and floating and those sorts of things. Next, it can be good to learn freestyle with a full catch up. Because again, that can help you stay balanced. And it can help you work on some of those other parts of the stroke if you’re doing a full catch up. But we don’t want to stick there. Because if you’re still swimming catch up, as you get more experienced, you’re going to be limiting your speed. You do not see the best swimmers in the world doing a full catch up. The timing of their stroke is an almost

catch up, also known as front quadrant freestyle or three quarter catch up. And all that means is that instead of having one hand admit the other out in front, it means that once you get to about here is when this hand will begin the catch. So that’s almost catch up. So not bad advice. I think for someone who is learning to swim freestyle, don’t confuse arm speed with swim speed. One of the mistakes a lot of beginner swimmers make is they try and pull really hard and fast in order to try and go faster. But there’s only a certain amount of force that you can apply to the water before you start to slip and be ineffective with it. So don’t equate arm speed with swim speed. The other part of that too is when we start to go faster. Don’t necessarily try and begin your catch earlier. It may start slightly earlier, but that increase in speed is actually going to come more from more force applied. So a little bit

more force and pressure through the catch and through the pool. That’s going to help you get faster, not necessarily by trying to rip really hard and fast. So don’t confuse arm speed with swim speed. Don’t rush the breath. Quite often when we are struggling to breathe in the water, we try and get the breath either really quickly or we try and gust for air where you might turn up really high, get this big inhale where mouth is really open and you bring it back really fast. Now we shouldn’t take forever to breathe. We just want to time the breath with the turn of the shoulders. So the head turns in time with the shoulders and back with the shoulders. So it shouldn’t be rushed, but it still needs to be somewhat quick. But if you are really struggling with your breath, make sure that you’re not trying to do this big gasp for there, quickly bring the head back. Just try and relax it almost like you’re getting a sip of air coming

back and going back into your exhale. Exhale all the time from the nose and mouth. When it comes to breathing, especially if you’re doing any sort of effort, you will need to have a constant exhalation. We normally see it as a moderate exhale before a bigger exhale as your head is turning to get the next breath. So the bigger exhale normally comes as you’re turning your head before the breath. So it doesn’t have to be this big forceful exhale from the beginning. That can be a trickle of air and then into a bigger exhale as you go. The only time that I would see someone actually holding their breath is more so if we’re doing breath control as part of training. Breathing every four, six, eight strokes, you might need to hold onto your air bend because if you exhale too early, you won’t be able to use that oxygen enough. But outside of that, we should have a small trickle of air at least from the beginning

as you return your head back into the water. Breathe every two but change every 25 meters or so. I kind of agree with this. It really depends though. You see some swimmers who prefer to breathe every two, some every three, some every four. So it really just depends on the person. But I do like the advice of bilateral breathing is okay to do but I think most people prefer to breathe every two strokes. So if you are breathing every two, at least in training, you don’t want to be doing that all to one side for the whole session. You’ve got to mix it up between left and right side. Whether it’s half your session or 30% of your session, you should be breathing to both sides regardless of whether you’re breathing every two or every three. Kicking on the side is good for developing your breathing to the opposite side. I do think this is great advice from John where if you do a side kick drill which is one arm in

front, other arm by your side, turning your body to about 45 degrees, kick with your face down in the water and then breathe to the side. That can help you get comfortable breathing low, keeping that bottom goggle in the water and finding your balance and comfort, breathing to your non-preferred side. So we do a lot of this and a similar drill just called side breathing kick with a kickboard. We do a lot of that in our clinics just to help people develop breathing to both sides and getting comfortable and finding their balance. Keep your hand loose in the recovery. Your recovery is when your arm comes over the top and if you are stiff and tense through here, it’s wasted effort and it does make it more challenging to bring your arm over the water. So if we think of what brings our arm through, shoulder, elbow, they’re the things that are really leading the arm over the top of the water. If we are trying to bring the hand over and not worrying about this, it really stacks up your

recovery and makes you come over in a way where you’ve got this closed underarm elbow pointing behind you instead of elbow pointing mostly to the sky. So I think that’s good advice. Use body roll to bring your elbow through the recovery. This is pretty good advice. If you are not rotating enough on your side, then it’s going to be very hard to bring your arm over the top. So we need to make sure we’re rotating enough, number one, to be able to recover properly. Our shoulder does not love this position here. If you’re flat and trying to get your arm over the water, our shoulders don’t work very well. So we need to get enough rotation to comfortably bring the arm over the top of the water. So you can use that body roll or rotation to help with a good recovery. And that’s where we should start. We’ve got to swim from the inside out. So the inside here, out to the extremities and that inside part is making sure

that we are rotating enough. Number one, pull harder, not sooner to go faster. One of the mistakes many people make, especially those newer swimmers, is they come into the water and they initiate their catch a lot earlier than what they should, especially when they’re trying to go faster, they turn into this windmill. We need to make sure that we are not initiating our catch too soon. We’re still keeping good timing and length, but we put a bit more force into the catch and into the pool and we accelerate through a little bit more. Don’t go straight away for faster in the catch, go for more force, more power. That will help you go faster, because that will keep not only good stroke length, which is half of your speed equation, but it will also help you make sure you keep good timing so things can coordinate in the stroke. Because if we come through and we don’t get enough rotation and reach, if we just come

straight in, well, you’re not going to be able to coordinate your catch with your body rotation and your kick, that’s going to get thrown out of sync. So that’s really, really good advice. And I think some of the best advice for swimmers who are still finding their way through that coordination aspect of how do I get faster without completely gassing out. It’s common for swimmers to pool too early when they breathe. Instead, extend more, press down slightly to help keep you up in the water. I think this is pretty good advice from John Conrad’s, where a lot of people will come in and this arm just drops straight away. If you can keep your arm out there for a little bit of time, it not only gives you something to balance on, it keeps your length in the water and your streamline in the water. And if you can just have a little bit of a press down, I’m not saying press straight down, but a little bit of

a press down through that movement of the catch. It can help keep you up to get the breath, which will make it easier to look to the side and not up to the sky. So there are all the tips that I got from the John Conrad’s DVD. And I think they still apply today. John was an incredible swimmer back in the 50s, the 60s, and all this stuff still applies today. Let me know which tip resonated with you the most down the bottom. And if you’d like to get a full breakdown of the freestyle stroke, click this video above.

Stop training like a runner. You're a swimmer now when people run they often go for long runs and it's just all at the same pace and there's no breaks in between and For running that can be a really good way to approach it a lot of the time But in swing if you look at any of the best swimmers in the world They are all breaking their sessions into sets warm-up Cool down main set preset and more importantly, they're breaking it down into intervals of hundreds and two hundreds and fifties with rest in between and the thing about doing that is it feels like it's actually Not going to help you because you're taking rest in between But even five or ten seconds in between the intervals gives you this short amount of rest Where if you take ten seconds on the wall your heart rate comes down a little bit and your muscles get that little bit of Recovery so by the time you push off for that next interval you are refreshed and then you can get your technique back on track Welcome to the effortless swimming podcast to show that helps swimmers and triathletes love the water become a better swimmer and live a Better life. Here's your host Brenton Ford In this video, I'm going to share with you ten things that I wish someone had told me when I first started swimming Or if you've been swimming for a while These tips will also help you get to the next stage with your swimming goals because let's be honest most beginners train too hard focus on the wrong things and waste a lot of time that stops them from getting to under two minutes per hundred and

they end up wasting a lot of effort and Sometimes it leads to shoulder injuries and other things when they focus on the wrong things But these ten lessons will give you clarity on the gear technique training mindset and what actually leads to progress These are the things that make the biggest difference for me and the swimmers that I coach and when you apply them You'll feel more confident. You'll swim smoother and faster with less effort and swimming might just become one of the best parts of your life Let's start in not all swim gear is worth it. Here's what actually helps There's a lot of stuff that you are told to get when you start swimming but in reality you could get away with just having a pair of swimwear and Goggles that is really all that you need to get started But there are some things that can help you Progress faster the things that I recommend my swimmers get number one is a good pair of fins a pair of fins that are comfortable Flexible and give you a good amount of propulsion without changing your stroke something like the damn sea fins Very very good for the majority of swimmers out there There are other brands that have stiff and rigid fins that actually can make your swimming worse So it's best to avoid those when it comes to snorkels Most snorkels are all pretty much the same as long as you find a comfortable front snorkel Then that can be a good tool for the majority of swimmers out there It helps take away the need to turn your head to breathe and that can be a good thing when looking to develop Your catch and your pull and your kick and rotation. So that's also another piece of equipment that I'd recommend

Another thing if you are doing triathlons or open water swimming You may want to build your strength using a pool buoy and paddles So getting a pair of those can be worthwhile for some types of swimmers But in reality some swimming some swimwear some goggles will take you a long way in your journey Technique overwhelm is a real thing and if you've watched any of our videos or you've scrolled on Instagram or on YouTube You've probably been inundated with technique advice But the thing with too much advice is if there's too much there You're probably not going to do any of it. If you look at learn to swim lessons for children quite often They'll start with breathing and bubbles and then they progress from there as an adult There's a good chance you should probably follow the same sort of progression now You might be able to go through some of those Aspects of the stroke a little bit quicker than young kids might be able to however We still need to learn good foundations and fundamentals So don't try and work on your catch if you're still struggling to swim more than 50 meters You probably need to go back to the basics of breathing blowing bubbles Floating getting your body horizontal in the water. Some of these fundamentals are where we need to start and Sometimes our ego and our pride gets in the way. Well, I thought I don't need to do that I'm an adult kids kids can do it But I don't need to but quite often the stuff that we're teaching adults in our clinics It stems from a lot of learn to swim stuff and getting those basics, right?

So if you can get your ego out of the way and be willing to go through something that might seem really basic There's a good chance that long term to three years down the track You're going to progress a lot quicker and a lot more Sustainably where you can reach higher levels in your swimming if you get good at those fundamentals By trying too hard and got slower When I look back at my swimming career as a teenager one thing that I realized is that I went too hard Too often in the easy stuff. So I was in that gray zone where my slow stuff was too fast My fast stuff was too slow. So I was in that training gray zone where I wasn't really training in the right zones Now as a result of that I feel like I probably didn't progress as far as I could have If I had been willing to do my aerobic sets at an aerobic heart rate and my faster stuff actually to have the speed and Have that recovery in there where I could hit Faster faster speeds and and higher levels there So one of the mistakes a lot of people make is they don't look at those different zones They train in that middle section and I think the reason I did that was because I thought the harder I train the harder I work The more I'll progress Which is true to a certain extent. However Sometimes if we get stuck in that zone, then we're not hitting the right heart rates and other things So I feel like that probably stunted my progress a bit as a teenager now for you as an adult

maybe you're doing everything at one speed and You're not changing the pace that you're doing or perhaps you're stuck in that gray zone as well So it's good to make sure that we follow a good training plan follow something with some structure and we're Committing to it and sticking to it something like the LES squad workouts that we've got in their membership They break it down into different speeds What efforts what speed you should be going to so you actually see real progression and you don't get stuck at that one zone Open water swimming isn't just a pool without walls You know from what out there are so many variable conditions that it can really feel like a different sport in a way And so if you're coming from Swimming in the pool with a background in it and you're very comfortable in the pool You might have a bit of a shock when it comes to open water swimming where you feel like everything you've lands in the pool Doesn't apply in the open water now It does Except that it just takes a bit of getting used to the variable conditions where the water wasn't flat It's not smooth and you're probably having to Almost go against some of those things you learned in the pool in terms of your breathing You might need to turn a little bit higher You might need to begin your catch a little bit sooner your stroke rate might need to come up There's certain things that you do need to change in the open water Compared to in the pool, but it is something that you can get good at even if you come from that pool background it just takes time and it takes practice and There's not really any shortcuts to it apart from putting in the work

so if you can get really good at siding at maybe coming over the water a little bit higher a little bit quicker over the top and Knowing how much you need to increase your stroke rate in the open water and being willing to be Imperfect and a little bit choppy with it Then you can become very good at open water But it does sometimes feel like it's a different sport when you first come to it Though it does take time to get used to At effortless swimming our mission is simple make swimming more enjoyable Whether you're training for your next race swimming for fitness or just love being in the water We're here to help you swim faster smoother and with more confidence And one thing that can make or break a swim is your goggles if you've ever struggled with foggy lenses mid-session You know how frustrating it can be that's why we created the effortless swimming hydro clear Anti-fog goggles for long-lasting crystal clear vision I've been using them myself and the difference is night and day and I'm not the only one Deborah swam 36 kilometers down the Derwent River and the entire time her vision stayed crystal clear no fog no frustration Just an uninterrupted swim. So what makes a hydro clear goggles different? It's all in the technology Unlike ordinary anti-fog coatings that wear off over time Hydro-clear super hydrophilic technology is built into the lens material itself Here's how it works instead of fog forming as tiny droplets water spreads evenly across the lens creating a thin film that prevents the fog from even starting and the result

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Stop training like a runner. You're a swimmer now When people run they often go for long runs and it's just all at the same pace and there's no breaks in between And for running that can be a really good way to approach it a lot of the time But in swimming if you look at any of the best swimmers in the world They are all breaking their sessions into sets warm up cool down main set preset and more importantly they're breaking it down into intervals of Hundreds and two hundreds and fifties with rest in between and the thing about doing that is it feels like it's actually Not going to help you because you're taking rest in between but even five or ten seconds in between your intervals gives you this short amount of rest where if you Take 10 seconds on the wall your heart rate comes down a little bit and your muscles get that little bit of recovery So by the time you push off for that next interval you are refreshed and then you can get your technique back on track So quite often when someone's going to a pool swimming one kilometer two kilometers straight. No change in pace No Rest in between they start to fatigue and their technique and form begins to fall away So if you can get used to breaking your session into intervals, even if it's 10 100s With 10 seconds rest in between you'll find that you're much more likely to maintain good form And good form leads to speed and that speed leads to faster times in a in a brace So even if you feel like it's not as good of a workout necessarily because you've had some short rest in between

More than likely it's actually going to help you because you'll maintain your form and you've got to maintain form to maintain your speed Swimming isn't only racing in the pool. There is a whole world out there When I grew up it was all about pool competitions and racing In the pool short course and long course when I became an adult when I started coaching adults I learned about the world of open water swimming and swimming camps and swimming trips and just going for Swims with your friends. There is so much more to swimming than just racing in the pool and especially as an adult you have so many opportunities out there to be able to Do more than just race in the pool So what I thought swimming was all about just going up and down in the pool But in reality there is so many other things that you can do So if you find that like I don't actually love going up and down the black line while there's open water swimming There's swimming holidays that you can take like our male dive strip and our Thailand trip There's so many other things out there that you can do if you find that following the black line is not necessarily for you simple drills equal fast swimming Whenever i've filmed olympic level swimmers quite often they're all doing very similar drills And they're not just doing that because that's just what they were taught They're often doing it because there are a couple of drills that if done really well have a great correlation between your swimming technique So a lot of the drills that I see olympic level swimmers doing particularly for freestyle a lot of them are doing sculling drills

single arm drills And something like long dog paddle or underwater recovery freestyle They're the main drills I see olympic level swimmers doing as part of their warm-up because it can set up all those key things that they're working on Lengthen the stroke good catch and pull the right rotation and connection within the stroke So if you've got a good staple of drills that you can do as part of your warm-up each session and you know How you need to be doing them then that can go a very long way to helping you progress in your swimming What's the secret to staying consistent when you swim? It's absolutely fine to begin your swimming journey on your own going to the pool trying to figure things out And working working it out and what you can do to get swim a little bit further However, if you want to be able to maintain your swimming and really stick with it Most people i've seen stick with it. They find a squad They find a friend or a group of friends that they swing with it's that accountability It's that social aspect of it that keeps a lot of people in the sport So once you get going and you learn the basics of swimming It's worthwhile trying to find a group or some friends out there that you can go swimming with because that's what makes it much more Enjoyable and even though it's a very solo thing to do swimming up and down You don't really get to talk to people when you swim Outside of that in the intervals on the wall before and after a session That's often when you get that social aspect of it So if you can find a master's group or a triathlon group or something similar

That's often where people stick with it for much longer and find it so much more enjoyable Learning to swim is frustrating and it's not very appealing to get to the pool But once you get good enough at swimming It's frustrating when you don't get to the pool So whenever we learn a new skill, particularly something like swimming that there can be a bit of a learning curve, too It's very frustrating in the beginning because we don't know what we need to do to get faster We're not getting that enjoyable feeling of gliding through the water And so that is where a lot of people stop and they give up on their swing journey But once you eventually get over that learning curve You get to the point where swimming is enjoyable and it's fun because you get that Feeling of all that endorphin release after a good training session Get that feeling of gliding through the water the water rushing over your arms and your shoulders where you're going side to side It's a very good feeling and you actually miss it when you don't do it But it takes a while to get to that point So if you can persist with your swimming for three months or six months and get to that point where it is enjoyable That is when You're over that that hard part where you actually miss it where if you don't get to a session You're kind of frustrated, but you didn't get to do it. The real reward Isn't speed It's who you become I remember growing up. My dad was my coach and every single morning we'd go into the pool and we'd train He would always remind myself and the other swimmers there that There's no one else our age who was up at four thirty in the morning

Going to the pool early training hard. We were doing all this stuff before most of our Friends were awake and so he made the point that it was about who we were becoming the skills We were learning that that's actually more important than getting good at swimming Now obviously getting good at swimming is a is a byproduct of doing all these things But the the main thing that comes out of it I think of getting good at any skill like swimming is the person that you become it's the the dedication It's the commitment that it requires and so there's so much more to it than just getting faster and that's why I think swimming in particular is one of the The best sports for most people to be able to do because they're they can see that progress It takes a lot of effort and time And and thought to be able to get To be able to progress this for me So that is why I think it's not so much about just getting faster But it's about the person become by doing the hard work If you're not sure what to focus on next have a look at this next video Where I break down freestyle in a lot of detail so you know exactly what to do to get faster Thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast If you'd like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to

Effortlessswimming.com

So you don’t need to stop straight away as soon as everything is soon as something drops off But we do need to be aware of it and sometimes we just need to find that balance between putting in the hard work Having a straight breakdown, but not letting it break down too much where we’re training a really bad form Welcome to the effortless swimming podcast to show that helps swimmers and triathletes Love the water become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host Brenton Ford

Most of us spend years making the same mistakes again and again Thinking progress is about piling on endless lap after lap But what if I told you there’s a smarter faster way to become a better swimmer without necessarily training harder But swimming smarter in this video I’ll share with you 10 powerful insights that took me years to learn Insights that if I’d known them earlier would have saved me endless laps endless years of Swimming but not really seeing much progression whether you’re struggling with inconsistency Unsure if your technique is effective or nervous about open water swimming I’m going to show you exactly what to focus on to transform your swimming experience Progress isn’t linear One thing that I didn’t know growing up was that the progression wouldn’t always be in this upward trajectory It’s almost like walking up a mountain with a yo-yo that yo-yo will come up It will go down it will come up it will go down and we will see this

upward progression But sometimes we actually get a little bit slower before we get better and often when people hit those bits where they’ve Regressed in a way. They think that they’re doing the wrong thing But quite often the progression is this up and down movement that if we can just persist through those harder times Where we don’t really see the results of the work we’re doing then we can come out the other side of it Being a better swimmer and so often people quit or they get disheartened that they’re not getting better all the time But sometimes we do have to work away at things for several months and often several years to really get to that next level Especially as we are getting quicker and getting better getting towards the pointy end of the field So at the start you often see a lot of improvement early on but that’s not always the case as you get quicker video yourself early The first time ever got filmed was about eight years into my swimming journey and I thought this is going to look amazing

I have swum for a long time. I’ve reached a pretty good level in my swimming This is going to look amazing when I look at this footage But the reality was that there were so many things I was doing wrong that I didn’t even know about Yet I had trained for a long time. I thought I was swimming incredibly well So if you can video yourself early on in your journey You will progress so much faster than someone who goes 10 years without ever having seen themselves swim I often have a lot of members who sent through their videos for analysis and The first comment they make is I can already see five things I’m doing wrong because they’d never filmed themselves before and so That is such a crucial step to Fast-tracking your progression as a swimmer swimming is as much a mental game as it is a physical game Quite often people think that the way to get faster is to get fitter and get stronger and absolutely that counts for a large part of it

But there’s a big aspect of swimming that is all about the mental side of it Even if you are a beginner Sometimes that mental side of it can impact you more than the physical side of it Because sometimes we get caught in our heads wherever we think that this is an unsafe place to be or we think I’m not any good at this So we tend to panic or we tend to be short of breath so if you can control the mental side of it and Make sure you’re training about just as much as the physical side of it That will help you progress a lot quicker than if you’re focused on just the physical aspect of it And the faster you get the higher up you get in swimming That’s often where the mental games by a big part of it, too If you watch the Olympics and you look at the top two to three competitors in any event Sometimes it comes down to just the mental side of it and who’s been able to kick their nerve All the way for those four years leading up to the Olympics

So controlling the mental game as much as the physical game just swimming more doesn’t guarantee your progress Certainly, there’s an element to having to swim consistently putting in the yards putting in the kilometers However, if you’re just swimming without any focus and your technique isn’t that great Then you’re probably in spelling or training bad habits And if your technique is enough to scratch you’re going to hit this ceiling where you can’t get any faster So a good way to approach the swimming is yes We need to be consistent But we also need to make sure that the lats we’re doing are of a certain standard and a certain quality Because if we’re training bad habits with our technique then we are going to limit ourselves Now it doesn’t mean to be overly cautious and make and not do more than 25 meters without stopping We need to allow some Some leeway in there However, make sure that you’re not just going up and down with this really ugly scrappy technique

Make sure you’re training to a pretty decent level 80 90 percent of your Good technique is often a good good approach there and as you’re doing some harder sessions Yes, you’re going into fatigue your stroke is going to break down a bit So you don’t need to stop straight away as soon as everything As soon as something drops off But we do need to be aware of it and sometimes we just need to find that balance between putting in the hard work Having a straight breakdown But not letting it break down too much where we’re training a really bad form the clock can help But don’t worship it Quite often people will put their self-worth as a person as a swimmer On what their garment tells them at the end of a session But you are going to have days where you are absolutely flying And you feel like you’re hardly putting in any effort and you’re hitting amazing times And there will be other days where no matter how hard you try

You cannot get even close to what you know, you’re capable of doing So that’s going to happen no matter whether you’re an Olympian or whether you are brand new to swimming if you can just continue with your swimming and use the clock But don’t worry too much about the times that you’re doing if you can just continue and be consistent with things Then over time you will progress in this upward trajectory But the clock is only a very small part of swimming Especially with the ups and downs that you’re going to encounter throughout a week throughout a month and throughout a year Your stroke does not have to look like the pros

Hey real quick in case you didn’t know We run swimming camps around the world from the Maldives, Thailand, Japan with sundays Galapagos islands plus a bunch of new locations for next year So if you’d like to join us at a future camp and improve your swimming and explore and experience some of the best locations to swim in the world then go to effortlesswimming.com forward slash camps We’ve got all the dates and locations listed there A question I get all the time is i’m not that quick. Will this camp be suitable for me? We have a wide range of speeds and abilities come to the camps So as long as you can swim a kilometer There’s a very good chance that these camps will be suitable for you And if you’re not sure just get in touch with us and we’ll make sure that we do find you a suitable camp Thanks for listening. Let’s get back into the podcast One of our most popular videos in fact our most popular video that we did on this channel

was a video of dan smith swimming a 1 minute 10 100 In what looked like two minutes where he was absolutely cruising to hit a 110 But he made it even made it look very easy. Now his stroke is amazing Olympic level swimmer incredible technique yet that sort of way of swimming Is not probably the best way for a lot of the people that I coach who are adults who are triathletes Because they have different mobility particularly through the feet through the shoulders through their rotation and that sort of technique is not what they might need to Do in order to be the best swimmer that they can be So there’s so many different styles if you watch the olympics In an eight person final there might be eight different styles of freestyle in there So it’s best to find a style that suits you In our elite swimmer section in the membership. We have triathletes open water swimmers Olympic pool swimmers There’s a variety of different types of swimmers in there

And if you look at the differences between them there are some some big differences And so what I suggest to a lot of people is find a swimmer that looks a bit like you in how they swim Maybe they build maybe their mobility and try and copy their technique try and aim towards something like that Because if you’re trying to swim like dan smith Then you might actually be slowing yourself down because that sort of style isn’t best suited to you So you don’t have to look like a pro Or maybe don’t have to look like the swimmer that you Aspire the most to be because that might not be the best style for you You might actually be holding yourself back comfortable gear matters more than fancy deer The good thing about swimming is you can get away with having a swimsuit And some goggles and that is all you need to swim Unlike cycling unlike a lot of other sports require a lot of Investment in terms of money to be good at it. Swimming is very simple

So don’t get caught up in needing the latest or the most expensive gear Quite often you don’t actually need much to be a good swimmer. So if you just keep to the basics Get some gear that’s comfortable some good goggles cap A good swimsuit that will take you a very long way Now there is other gear that’s that can be worth getting and it’s worth getting a good pair of fins It’s worth getting a a snorfall and maybe some paddles if you’re doing trifle But you don’t actually need a lot. So don’t feel like you need all the gear To be a good swimmer. You can keep it basic have a goal even a small one When you first start swimming your your goal might be 50 meters without stopping And that’s a that’s a good goal to start with Then as you get going in your swimming sometimes we kind of get caught in the weeds a bit And we forget to actually set our next target And sometimes it just needs to be a certain race

Maybe a certain distance or a certain pace that you’re trying to achieve for a 1k time trial But even having a small goal to work towards Will give you that little bit of motivation you need to put in the work to get there I’ve been caught quite a quite a few times without having set a main goal And so my training’s been there and I’ve been going up and down But I haven’t really put in the effort because there’s nothing to work towards Yet when I set a really difficult goal for me, which was the rock nest channel Which is a 20 kilometer swim when I was doing that I got to the pool five times a week. I was driving An hour plus into Melbourne to do some my open water swims And I did whatever it took to to do that. So sometimes we need this bigger goal to actually Bring us forwards and bring us closer to To our swimming our swimming goal. We need something that kind of scares us a little bit Or we know we have to push towards and there’ll be times in your in your swimming journey where

You might just cruise for a little bit and then times where you set yourself a bigger challenge But the mistake I’ve been caught in so many times is not actually setting a target or a goal And then six months or 12 months of training It doesn’t go to waste But I certainly don’t putting the same amount of effort as if I’ve got a big challenge to work towards Learn how to stay calm in the chaos In open water swimming the elements can change all the time And you might be thrown into situations where you’re not necessarily very comfortable So when it comes to training in the pool One simple way that I like to use for our swim is to get comfortable in being in these chaotic conditions First thing is you can do some pack swimming if you’ve got a group of swimmers If you swim down a lane with four or five or six of you all together And you’re not swimming over the top of each other But you’re having people push your feet down swing very close

Getting used to having other people around and used to that chaos That’s a good way to To get used to it another thing you can do is breath control So we’ll often do sets where it’s like eight fifties where we breathe every three strokes five seven and then nine And when you’re breathing every nine strokes You have got quite a while between your next breath And you might feel like you are running out of air and that can cause you to panic But if you can get comfortable being in that sort of position And then you can push yourself to maintain breathing every nine That’s a good way to actually have that calm in that chaos So breath control is a really good way to Have to force the mind to calm down in order to hit that breath control So there are ways that you can help Be calming chaos By training in the pool and not just doing that in the the open water There’s a whole word or swimming beyond the pool When I was growing up all I knew was the pool the black line

I had no idea about open water swimming Swimming holidays swimming trips swimming camps There is so much more to swimming beyond the pool And so if you don’t necessarily enjoy going up and down the black line That is okay. There is so much other things that you can do Around the water and with your swimming that you might enjoy more And so it’s about finding something that you Like and then you’re probably going to stick with it And then you’re probably going to progress a lot more of you would if you did something you don’t enjoy Now that said I loved swimming in the pool I love training with the squad and going through hard sets But in terms of competition, I really enjoy open water swimming And so now that I’ve found that that’s the thing that I mostly do in terms of competitive racing And so when it comes to the pool That’s not necessarily where my head’s at right now But the thing is just do what you enjoy

And that’s usually the thing that’s going to actually motivate you if you enjoyed this video Check out this video with annie donson who held one minute 12 per 100 for four hours Thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast If you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com

They feel the inconsistencies sometimes they feel like they are flying along and feeling really good And then other times they feel like they are Sinking in the water and they lose a lot of their speed So there's often a big Fluctuation between a good session and a bad session Sometimes they've been between strokes a good stroke and a bad stroke and they become aware of those differences between what's good and what's not Welcome to the effortless swimming podcast to show that helps swimmers and triathletes love the water become a better Swimmer and live a better life. Here's your host Brenton Ford In this video, I'll give you the exact issues that holds from his back at each pace from Beginners from us at 230 per hundred or slower all the way to advanced from us at 115 per hundred for a kilometer and I'll also give you actionable drills and strategies to help you progress To the next level and as I go through this comment below your current pace and which tip you'll try first over the last 18 years I've coached thousands of swimmers from beginners all the way to pro triathletes and seen what it takes to go from 230 all the way down to 115 let's get into it. So at 230 per hundred. This is our beginner level of swimmer This is where people are typically having trouble swimming more than 50 meters or 100 meters at a time Usually their body position is quite low. So the hips and legs are sinking a lot They're often having trouble breathing

They lift their head to breathe. They're looking up to the sky or they feel like they are taking in water And they often find that they are fatiguing a lot quicker than what they should be This is where we typically find that people are a bit panicked or they're not comfortable in the water And some of the frustrations that people experience at this level is they can't swim further than 50 meters Without tiring even though they might be relatively fit outside the pool and the other frustration is it's not Fun yet because they're not able to glide through the water They're having to work super hard to go not very fast and not very far And that is completely normal when you are at this 230 or slower pace Now some of the things people at this level need to focus on number one. It's regulating your breathing So in terms of regulating your breathing, it's getting comfortable and relaxed with your breathing Sometimes people will breathing too much so they'll inhale too much where they're Gasping for air and they'll try and exhale everything But we need to breathe in a somewhat natural way where we inhale and we exhale But we're not pushing all of the air out of our lungs. We still need to keep 20 to 30 of our air in our lungs So it's this more normal and comfortable breathing that we're aiming for They also need to focus on getting horizontal in the water So that means that we are minimizing drag So we're more streamlined Because if your hips and legs are low the amount of drag that that creates is a lot

And it takes so much energy to overcome that drag that you're never going to be able to swim with Much ease and much speed at all if you don't first get your body position horizontal So they're the main things we need to focus on How you can go about that? Number one, I love to do some drills like sink down drills This is where you'll take your breath in and you'll then exhale through your mouth or through your nose and sink down to the bottom of the pool and After a second or two of having no air left come back up and go again Now this might seem like a bit of a frivolous drill At first sight But I've had so many people do this drill and give me feedback that actually you managed to keep calm In the water whereas before they are quite panicked and quite tense So they sink down drills if you do this five to ten times even at the start of a session You start to relax and you start to get rid of a lot of that unnecessary tension in the body Another drill that we like to do here is ball floats So this is where you hug your knees you put your head between your knees and you're just in a ball Now make sure you take a big breath in before you do this And the purpose of this drill is to show you that you can float Quite often i'll get a lot of males who are Over 40 who think i'm just a sinker. I've got dense bones I've got a lot of muscle mass and I just sink straight to the bottom of the pool But I've never seen anyone sink while doing this ball float drill So your lungs are filled with air that gives you this buoyancy in the water

And that is the thing that helps keep you up in the water And so if you realize that you can actually float in this ball position That first it gives you the confidence to know that okay, I don't actually Have to kick really hard and thrash my arms and thrash my legs to stay up My lungs my body will actually support me if I use it the right way So we go into this ball float Into an x float which is where you extend your arms out and your legs out behind you And most people can get somewhat horizontal In that position especially when they go from a ball float Into an x float because they start to figure out how to hold themselves in the water to be able to get horizontal and that learning that balance and control of the body is really the first step at them being able to relax and minimize drag One more drill that we tend to do at this level And I actually had a swimmer recently who for more than he said I think 30 plus years he could never really swim more than 100 meters without being completely gassed And so one of the drills we had him do was this Body position kick drill Where he's face down arms extended kicking out behind him And the aim is to get the shoulders and the back and the hips out of the water as much as possible And again, this is just about figuring out how to hold and how to use your body so that you sit in that horizontal position Once you've gotten comfortable with your breathing once you've learned some of that balance in the water Then you're going to be starting to get close to that two minutes per 100

Now at two minutes per 100 This is more of our casual swimmers and triathletes and this is where we're starting to get a good idea of Being horizontal in the water a better idea of the rhythm and momentum we need in the stroke But some of the issues that people run into at this level Is refining their body position So a lot of people at this level have got their head too high We're just their faces in the water And they're not having the head deep enough Now the problem with that is that if they've got just their face in you're probably holding four or five kilos up above the water So your hips and legs are sitting still a little bit low So making sure that our head is like an iceberg 10 to 20 above the rest of it should be below Another thing we find at this level is that Their core control and the way that they're holding their hips and their legs Is in as streamlined as it could be So what we want to try and do there is make sure we draw the belly button into the spine Squeeze the butt cheeks together a little bit to make sure that's nice and straight And then importantly with the kick we want to make sure that we're not kicking like we're riding a bike We need to kick almost like you think of a ballerina moving their legs They need to be long a little bit of knee bend But we what needs to maintain is kick where it's almost like it's in a bucket Not too big not too narrow but somewhere in between so the kick isn't coming much outside of our body line Another thing we find at this level two

Is the breath timing quite often the breath timing is out Where people are often lifting their head Turning and it means that their breath timing is a little bit late And so their stroke is out of rhythm and out of sync So it's important at this level to learn to turn your head in time with your shoulders I also find at this level people are often muscling themselves through the water More than they would at those faster speeds So if you find that your legs or your arms are getting tired fairly quickly There's a very good chance that you're muscling yourself through the water That can often come from swimming too flat Now when we swim freestyle hips torso shoulders we want that rocking side to side Typically 30 to 40 degrees side to side If you are flatter than that Then you'll find that a lot of effort goes into just kicking or just the arms Because without correct rotation You don't get to use a stronger muscles through your back and shoulder And you don't get to set up your caption pool as effectively So that's where the muscling of the the stroke comes into it So at this level we need to make sure that we're rotating side to side evenly 30 to 40 degrees And the last thing we often say at this level too is a poor catch and a poor pool So lacking propulsion in the stroke And if you are not rotating correctly, it's very difficult to have an effective caption pool

So we also start to work on some elements of the catch and the pool at this level Because that is a big contributing factor to increasing speed Some of the frustrations that we run into at this level is that you might be fit And you might be getting overtaken by people who are less fit than you So it's very common to see triathletes here High bo2 max but they're getting smoked by people who have a vo2 max which might be half of bears And so that can be quite annoying And also at this level you might feel that your swimming is a little bit forced And it's not smooth and it's not efficient So what we can focus on here Refine the body position make sure that the heads are the right depth And we have head hips and heels at the surface We also need to focus on making sure we rotate 30 to 40 degrees side to side Because that will then help you set up a better caption pool And we can start to introduce some propulsive drills or caption pool drills To help you improve that aspect of the stroke as well Now at this level some drills that we would often do here Number one front kick with a snorkel So this is where you're kicking face down the water Arms extended and we are aiming to be horizontal Gilling that tautness through the core and through the hips And making sure that we hold this long streamline position Like a needle not like a noodle that's loose and floppy Then we go to side kick one arm extended one arm by the side

And here we want to make sure we're rotating to about 40 degrees as we do it Getting used to being on our side and getting comfortable in that position Then we'd often progress to a 6-1-6 drill where we do six kicks on the side We take a stroke and we swap sides Getting used to being on our side taking a stroke and then switching So we're starting to introduce that side to side rotation And making sure we get the feel for what is 30 to 40 degrees rotation Now equipment at this level you might start to use a pool billy You might start to use some some fins and maybe a snorkel at this level To help you do some of the drills And in terms of using a pool billy That can help you get the feel for getting that propulsion from the rotation And from the catch and pull as opposed to kicking yourself forwards At this two-minute level this is a really typical level that we'll see People go through our eight week faster freestyle course online Or attending one of our freestyle clinics here in Australia So once you're starting to master your body position Have good rotation and starting to feel a little bit of that propulsion Then you're going to be starting to get all the way down to 145 per 100 So at the 145 per 100 this is our intermediate level of swimmer This is where people have typically swum for about 12 months or more And they're starting to get a sense of what it's like to move effortlessly through the water Some of the common issues that people run into at this point

The first one is that they've got habitual errors or mistakes in their stroke So they've now swum for long enough that they do have some habits there But those habits might not be necessarily effective or efficient And quite often there's poor synchronization or timing within the stroke Where they're not necessarily swimming with front quadrant timing Meaning there's always there's not something in front of the head at all times So they might be a little bit rushed with the stroke Quite often people here as well they feel like they've only got one speed So they find it hard to judge how long do I need to keep my strokes And how much do I need to increase my stroke rate So finding that sweet spot between the two of those And being able to change that to go faster And also at this level we do often find a lot of swimmers are late with their breathing So they begin to turn their head too late So that throws off their stroke rhythm And eventually that causes me balance And it means that they drop their arm in the catch as well And so that's where they feel like their catch slips Or it's not very effective on one side or maybe both sides Some of the frustrations that people run into at this level They feel the inconsistencies Sometimes they feel like they are flying along and feeling really good And then other times they feel like they are sinking in the water And they lose a lot of their speed So there's often a big fluctuation between a good session And a bad session Sometimes they've been between strokes A good stroke and a bad stroke And they become aware of those differences between what's good and what's not

And I also find at this level There's frustration in putting in more effort But not necessarily seeing the results of that effort Translate to faster times So at this level what you can focus on to get down towards 130 The first thing make sure your breath timing Is in time with your shoulder rotation So what you think of that is pulling into the breath Turn your head when this hand is coming past your shoulder So when you initiate the turn And then the more important thing is Bring your head back down with your catch So your head and your arm goes back down together So we need to time our breath correctly We also need to start working on a high elbow catch position When we go through our catch So once we've finished reaching forwards and rotating Then we need to point our fingers down and bend our elbow out to the side So elbow goes out wide Getting that high elbow catch So we've got a lot of surface area pressing back If you can start to improve on that That means that the propulsive side of your stroke is really starting to improve And if we think of what makes your swim speed Well it's about minimising drag Which we do in those earlier levels Then we need to maximise propulsion And this is where we really have to put a lot of our focus at this point We also need to make sure that we are timing the stroke correctly Making sure we're in that front quadrant Always having an arm in front of us And that doesn't mean doing catch up freestyle Because you'll lose your speed And you'll just salarate if you do a full catch up Swimming is all about rhythm So we need to make sure we're always keeping the hands in motion

Without ever stopping and pausing completely But we need to make sure we've always got something in front of our head So getting that type of rhythm and timing in the stroke Is an important aspect here Where a lot of people get stuck in rushing the catch So they don't end up extending forwards And then during the catch they just enter and pull straight through So we've got to start to work on that front quadrant timing in the stroke And here at this level we can also start to work on balancing stroke length And stroke rate A good way to do this is doing sets where we are changing speeds For example, four 100s where we descend one to four Or build one to four So first one's the slowest one Last one's the fastest one And we're looking to get a bit quicker each one Now when you first do sets like this You might find that you actually start too fast And you drop off And you finish slower than what you started in But with more practice And getting used to finding that balance between stroke rate and stroke length You can get really good at changing gears and changing speeds And so this is a really good time to begin to do that And get a sense of how much extra pressure do I need to get on the catch How much increase in stroke rate do I need to put Do I need to do to see that results in faster times And quite often it's very incremental People think to go faster I've got a double in and out of power Double their stroke rate But it's very incremental It's like turning up the dial from six to a seven

Seven to an eight It's very small And so figuring that out at this level is what can help you Get that 130 per 100 Now drills at this level Some very common drills that we like to do This is a great time to do single arm freestyle So one arm by the side Other arm in front Wearing fins and working on single arm The benefit of this drill is when you've got one arm to think about You can get each aspect of it to improve to be better And it can also help you refine some of the things like your breath timing So single arm drill with fins on is a great one Another drill we typically introduce here is setup drill This is a one arm drill where you're kicking with both arms in front Going through your catch and coming back We're just isolating the movement of the catch And getting used to that elbow bending and going out to the side As you initiate the catch Because if you can get really good at that movement That helps set up a high elbow catch And that helps you then have an effective catch and pull So often starting with some specific catch drills This is a good time to do it And you might start to introduce some paddles at this point In order to build some strength and get a feel for A little bit more pressure or propulsion through the catch and pull And in terms of courses or products A lot of people go through the five day catch change Which is our five day course Which helps them improve their catch and pull And this is typically where swimmers will get the most out of that course

Because going from a 145 to a 140 or a 135 With the better catch that's doable at that level Because more propulsion If you've already got good body position More propulsion is how you can really see a big increase in your speed

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See how much they're rotating And making sure it's in that 30 to 40 degree range Quite often in terms of the training as well This is where we really need to introduce specific training Making sure we're doing enough aerobic work Threshold work Introducing some speed work So being a little bit more targeted And specific to the type of training that they're doing To maximize their fitness And their ability to race whatever races they want to do And usually at this level People have difficulty maintaining their stroke length As they get tied So here we're looking to be able to maintain Stroke length for those longer distances And not have that drop off too much as you get tied Some of the frustrations that people find at this level The first thing is that next level of 120 or 115 Seems completely unachievable Because they can't physically put in any more effort And so it seems like that's not possible But the thing is it's not about necessarily getting more fitness behind you It might be these finer technique parts That we need to refine in your stroke And the other frustration here Is that those technical errors are harder to pinpoint So you're not sure what you need to work on at this point Where you feel like you're doing everything you can To swim at 130 But you don't know what can take you to 120 or 115 So at this 130 pace What you can focus on to get down to 120 and 115

The first thing is making sure you've optimized your rotation Making sure you're rotating the right amount So that you can get your catch and pull as good as it possibly can On both sides The second part there is making sure that you are consistent With your catch and pull Typically when someone turns to breathe It's that catch arm that drops away Where the elbow drops So making sure on your breathing strokes That you're still maintaining a good catch And the third thing is making sure you're optimizing your training You're doing the right amount of sessions You're optimizing how much aerobic work Threshold work and speed work that you're doing So that you have the fitness and the I guess the aerobic fitness And also the speed to be able to start to edge those faster times Drills that we would often do at this level Single arm freestyle drill Where you're breathing to your opposite side Also known as unco drill So single arm breathing to your opposite side with fins on This is a drill that I see all Olympic level freestyles doing It's a challenging drill to do well But if you can do it well It translates really nicely into the stroke So single arm drill bring to the opposite side The other drill long dog paddle This is a drill that I love to give to people This is a drill I love to do It's where you're extending out finishing past the hip And then you're recovering underneath the body So long dog paddle This is great for working on the right amount of rotation Improving a catch and pull

And connecting that with the rotation through your hips So that's a those two drills sort of cover all of your fundamentals there Now at this level you're probably using a range of different equipment Probably using fins for your warm up Probably doing a bit with pull buoy and paddles to build strength Maybe a bit with a snorkel as well And you're probably incorporating a few different pieces of equipment Within your sessions each week And people at this 130 pace They're typically coming to our long distance camps Like we've got in the Witsundays Like we've got in the Maldives And often coming to clinics as well Looking for that What they need to work on to get down to 115 Where they're looking for more assistance With helping pinpoint what they can do to get faster So as you start to refine your rotation Improve your catch and pull And get the right amount of training behind you That's when you're going to start to find yourself Getting close to that 115 pace per 100 So 115 per 100 This is our advanced swimmers This is our high level triathletes and swimmers Often people who have got several years of swimming behind them And this is really your front end or front pack type of swimmer Now at this level some of the issues that people run into here It's about maintaining Excellent form, excellent technique Under pressure and under fatigue Any changes that they make are for fractional gains So we're not seeing 5 or 10 seconds faster per 100 at this point

It might be half a second It might be 1 second per 100 At this point rather than those bigger gains that people have Earlier on in their swimming journey At this point we're starting to see a highly effective catch With minimal wasted effort Even at this level we're still fine tuning the breath timing To make sure it doesn't impact the stroke rhythm So at this level and myself included We can often refine our breathing So that it goes in time with our rotation Because for a lot of people that I've filmed And coached at this level We can still find improvements there And really at this level Especially for even open water swimming or pool swimming We are looking to work on race strategies Race tactics And really refining those parts of our race as well Some of the frustrations that you'll run into at this level Is improvement is very minor And it takes a long time to see the results Of the work that you're putting in Often 3 months or 6 months Working on one aspect of the stroke In order to see a half a second Or a second improvement per 100 The other frustration here Is that any minor technical flaws Could be the difference between making front pack And second pack So there's a finer line that you've got to work with there In order to be hitting that front pack or second pack And so those minor flaws really start to show at this level So at this level what you can focus on Is refining those small or single

Technical aspects of your stroke And being consistent And working on that for several months at a time And here you can also start to focus on Race strategy and tactics And making sure you're becoming familiar With what's required to compete at the very top level In terms of your pacing In terms of how you should be drafting Or strategizing where the other swimmers are So this is where those things become a whole lot more important Drills at this level Often doing a lot of sculling to enhance and develop that Feel for pressure on your hand and forearm They're very important drills to do As well as continuing with the single arm And the long dog paddle drills as well Like we did at the 130 level At this level you might start to introduce a swim parachute Or working on some power aspects of your stroke And strength aspects of your stroke As well as continuing with use of fins and pool buoy And paddles as well And at this level it really requires some expertise To help you get better Having someone help spot where the flaws or faults are In your stroke And things that can help there Something like the EO swim better The devices that measure your Propulsion, direction of force That's a great way to find things that aren't necessarily very visible to the naked eye Getting some underwater filming and analysis as well To help you identify that So here we're really looking to technology To help work on the finer aspects of your stroke at this point So if you can master your technique at your current pace That is what can help progress you to the next level

Comment below where you're currently at And what you want to focus on in your technique And if you're looking for help in your own swimming Then check out our effortless swimming membership below And I work with people every single day From 2.30 down to 1.15 To help them identify what they need to do to get faster Thanks for watching Check out this video here for a full breakdown on freestyle technique So you know exactly where to start And how to improve some of these things that I've covered in this video

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open water swimming is very, can feel like a very different sport in a way in terms of or different stroke compared to the pool swimming which which I’m sure you’re aware of and you can be a very good pool swimmer and an average open water swimmer so it’s really important to get to get good in the open water some considerations that I would normally teach my athletes is obviously it’s not calm and it’s not flat and there’s going to be more turbulence in the water you’ve got the surface chop you might have currents you might have tied and all these things that you’re dealing with so I think it lends itself to a less perfect sort of stroke which can be good for for most people welcome to the effortless swimming podcast to show that helps swimmers and triathletes love the water become a better swimmer and live a better life here’s your host Brenton Ford hey Brenton here if you ever find yourself uncomfortable in the

open water and not feeling that calm when you’ve got other people around and not knowing where to sit or where to draft off people to be most effective at it this episode’s for you I joined the low tide boys Chip and Chris on a podcast and they asked me all about the science of drafting so on this episode I get stuck into that so you know exactly where to sit in a pack or with other people around to maximize the draft as well as how to prepare for this stuff if you don’t have much access to the open water so I hope you enjoy this episode there’s a lot of value for anyone who’s training for open water swims or doing any sort of triathlon racing this episode is filled with things that will help you maximize your next open water race just give your heads up we’ve added some dates for our 2026 camps for the male dives and also for Thailand I haven’t released this anywhere else yet I’m just giving you the heads up on the podcast if you want to join me next

year on one of those camps to work on your swimming then there’s a few dates that we’ve added at effortless swimming dot com forward slash camps see you there all right coming to us from the future our friend Brenton Ford founder of effortless swimming their second time back on the show welcome back yeah thanks to have me I’ll tell you what the future is very exciting wait and see what’s coming tomorrow we’ll be there it’s amazing so we asked you to come back last time you’re on was episode 237 if folks are at home want to check that one out was just like a 50 minute just stream of consciousness like knowledge bombed super helpful for us in the show super self-serving we asked you to come back on Brenton because a listener of the show reached out and be like hey what is the definitive you know take on drafting during swim run obviously you know about swim run we wear a tether try to stay in contact in

the water so we brought you on and basically just just tell us tell us like the rules but before that we thought it’d be more sense to kind of like branch it out a little bit for open water swimming so generally you know when you’re thinking about swimming you’re thinking about open water swimming so why don’t we start with sort of like general considerations around open water swimming and how you think about you know kind of like that part of the sport and swim run yeah open water swimming is very can feel like a very different sport in a way in terms of or different stroke compared to the pool swimming which which I’m sure you’re aware of and you can be a very good pool swimmer and an average open water swimmer so it’s really important to get to get good in the open water some considerations that I would normally teach my athletes is obviously it’s not calm and it’s not flat and there’s going to be more turbulence in the water you’ve got the surface chop you might have

currents you might have tide and all these things that yet you’re dealing with so I think it lends itself to a less perfect sort of stroke which can be good for most people so that’s scrappier sort of freestyle can often do a lot better some of the main changes that I’d normally recommend are in terms of your recovery you might need to be a little bit higher over the top a little bit faster and be a little bit more assertive with it as well over the water just because if you’re if you’re trying to be really smooth and a low hand recovery and trying to be perfect with the entry you’re probably going to get knocked around a bit so if you look at the very best triathletes and probably the same for swim runners I would imagine is just that arm recoveries like it’s over it’s in fairly quick and you will still extend and you’ll still reach but you’re probably going to start the catch a bit sooner as well so as

you enter and you’re extending forwards you’re not going to take too long if there is much chop there you still need to reach out but you’re probably going to roll into that next part of the stroke a little bit a little bit quicker typically we’ll find and I’d say maybe with paddles this this might be a little bit different but typically for say it’s triathletes or open water swimmers their stroke rate will be higher than it would in the pool so for me if I am going like my race pace in the pool it might I might be about 65 66 strokes per minute but if in the open water with a wetsuit on that would step up to about 74 75 individual strokes per minute so that’s fairly common that we that we see and it’s probably going to be the same for a lot of paper in the open water as well well yeah that’s a considerable 10 10 plus strokes on average more more per minute there and then yeah that’s a good good kind of framework to add in and it’s certainly yeah with the paddles on you

can’t be having a nice low low cast out front you’re gonna you’re gonna get knocked around that hand the paddle is gonna get taken off a different way there when you think about siding in open water I know for some people this is kind of really something that gives them a lot of lot of fits how often are you recommend siding for open water you know especially swim run you might not necessarily see hey here’s the exact buoy where it is it might be kind of siding off a piece of land or something that isn’t as well defined yeah I think you need to decide as often as you need to to see where you’re going so that might be really regularly that might be every six strokes or eight strokes if it is quite quite choppy because you think about going even if you go say a meter two meters off course that can really start to add up and I think if you can cite well if you can if you can do that well without breaking

your rhythm then you’re not really going to slow down much if at all so it’s worthwhile siding probably more regularly than you than you might think and just some of those strategies like you probably can’t see the buoys out there if there is buoys or maybe you’re siding for an island just trying to get lay the land before the before you do the race and it might be siding a tree or the top of an island or the side of a hill just using that to your advantage so we ran a camp in the Whitsundays last week and it was an open water swim camp so we had a bunch of swimmers there and the very first thing we did was just working on siding and I’d say about half of those athletes were siding what I call incorrect incorrectly they were they were breathing and then throwing their head and looking forwards and it’s a way to be able to see but it’s it’s very hard to keep your rhythm doing that so what what we took them through was sites and then breathe so it’s also called the

rolling breath so on one stroke you lift up lift up as high as you need to to see where you’re going and then on the next stroke you’ll turn to breathe and you’ll find that you lose very little speed doing it and it can feel really rhythmic and very easy to do if you do that well you might need to go a couple of strokes head up if you just don’t know where you’re going but that site and breathe or rolling breath would be the thing to get down pat especially before your next race if you if you feel like you can’t do it and it took about 10 15 minutes with those guys to get them sorted get them to be able to do it and it was almost like trying to rub your tummy and pat your head it’s like it takes a bit to coordinate but they got there and I think it’s something that ultimately is fairly easy to develop once you just put in a bit of time is there a drill to kind of develop that like in a pool that you’d recommend if you don’t have access to open water yeah so we were

going we just broke it down so I got them to swim and then one stroke just lift up go crocodile eyes and then back down so just a really quick look and and just get used to that so we did that three or four times and then we got them into sight and then on the next stroke breathing so just breaking it down that way and if you breathe to the I mean there’s actually different ways to do it depending on the speed you’re going so let’s say you breathe to the left only it might be that you are siding when that left hand is reaching forwards and then as then as you sort of go through your catch you’ll then roll to breathe on that next stroke so if you’re going slower you’ve kind of got more time to extend out on it but if you’re going faster with a faster rating it might actually be that you’re kind of lifting up as that hand is sort of catching and then you’re going and then you turn into breathe so it will just depend on the speed that you’re going but not what I was

starting with was the side that you would breathe to use that hand to extend out and press down on the water a little bit to help you lift up and then breathe to that side so for me I breathe to the left left hand was pressing down to help raise the head and then turn on the next stroke

I love that and yeah I mean that’s something just like Chris mentioned I know not everyone has access to open water but this is certainly something you can practice in in your lap pool swimming and you know work in and hey do whatever 10 by 100 but then do some siding on maybe that first 25 or the middle 20 of whatever you want to want to mix it up but that can really help kind of reinforce those movements and that way during the race it’s not your first time trying to figure out like oh how do I how do I do this it’s kind of already baked into your to your rhythm yeah definitely and that’s something that’s really easy to do in the in the pool and I think we might might have spoke about it last time but just trying to get your times as even as possible from when you’re not siding to when you do introduce your siding so if you can get your hundred times within maybe two seconds if you’re doing a hundred meters and you’re not siding

and then you introduce your siding and you might do it five six times within that hundred if you can be within about two seconds you’re probably doing quite quite well with it nice yeah yeah I’m gonna bring the stopwatch out next time on you Chris okay sounds good sounds good I want to go back to something that you mentioned earlier because definitely for swim run it is a bit of unique when compared to triathlon triathlon you know you got the big Dorito chip inflatables in the water you can kind of very easy see that and you’re doing your little rectangle or whatever the swim might be but in a swim run especially for open water Chris and I it’s always really served us very well to like stop take a beat one two seconds and say like okay here’s where we’re going and like we’re going to this tree or we’re going to this building there and that’s always helped us like kind of check in and give us something to like really orient around

when we’re swimming and that way when you’re in the thick of it and you aren’t getting tossed around you can kind of always look for that same spot we might take up another second or two kind of before you get in the water but it saves you like definitely a lot of time from getting lost and and dinged around in the in the water there so just another little tip how it served us oh that it’s so so worthwhile taking that extra couple of seconds to do it on this this camp last week we had everyone was got their siding down pretty well and like they sided quite regularly so rarely would they go off course but we had this one swim on the last day where it was between the mainland and an island and there was like there was our boat just kind of in between the two and everyone was swimming and then there was one swimmer who just started to veer off into the like the channel between the island and the mainland

and he was like a good 30 meters off to the side and he was just heading out and there’s a strong current going there too oh no all right like let’s uh he has not looked whatsoever so let’s let’s go and get him and drag him back in but it can happen before you know it and you know as soon as you switch off um you know and you just kind of get into um you start daydreaming then you can really go off course i think yeah if you can if you can just take that time it’s so worth it yeah i mean our mantra is like you know these races are already long enough let’s not swim any extra any extra meters or yards that we don’t have to so swimming straight is certainly i mean it’s a tactical advantage not just like a finish time advantage and yeah that’s that you’re you’re well served just knowing where i guess the other rule is like don’t get into the water until you know where you’re going right until you kind of have a good sense of where you’re going but

that kind of leads into you so in swimrun you know we’re drafting we’re wearing tethers um how do you think about drafting and yeah just tell us like what is the like what is the optimal way to draft yeah so in it’ll be probably a little bit somewhat different between triathlon open water swimming and swimrun so and i’ll explain why in swimrun you’re working with your partner obviously you’ve got your you’ve got your tether you’re working together and the slowest swimmer is going to be behind to to draft off the fastest swimmer if they’re yeah if they are different speeds sitting behind someone you can reduce your drag by about 25 percent if you’re sitting in the right spot it creates this sort of you know low pressure behind the the swimmer and it’s moving that water out of the way and then it sort of sucks the person behind along with the the swimmer in front so that’s the more efficient way to to draft and and the reason the other part of that is if

you’re drafting off the hip which is the other way that can be yeah you can still get quite a bit of sort of reduction in drag with it 10 to 15 percent you’re more being pushed by that their bow wave off the hips so you still certainly get that benefit you get that push but the downside of it is if you’re on someone’s hip you are often taking their water on that side of them so in their catch in their pull through if you’re pulling through in the same sort of water you’re actually slowing that person down which can be great if you’re trying to overtake them or beat them but as a swimrun pair you’re trying to work together so that’s why i’d suggest for most people to work on drafting behind now if you are say sitting not right at their hip but a little bit further back and just off to the side you can yeah you’ll still get some pretty good draft and that can be a good way to do it especially if there’s any sort of chop and wave so let’s say

you’ve got waves coming at you from the left the slowest from them might want to sit off to the right of the of the fastest from them and almost at like a 45 degree angle so not quite behind not quite at the hip but somewhere in between and just get protected a little bit from the waves also get that draft and it’s probably going to be a smoother smoother swim for them so that might be the easy way to do it especially if there is those waves and and more chop so i think it can change depending on the conditions and other things but as a general rule of thumb i’d suggest most people sit sit behind and you probably need to um you know one thing that i noticed at this camp and we see it all the time is like we try and get people to swim together as a group and it’s really up to the fastest swimmers in front to be aware of the slowest swimmers behind because if they just got their normal pace well then they’re probably going to lose the people behind

but if we’re working as a group then it’s up to the fastest swimmers to just maybe take a breath look behind on that breath and come back so it might be up to the swimmer in front to just have that awareness i mean you’ll have the tether so you’ll have a pretty good idea too um or you i don’t know i don’t know what you guys would normally do but whether you tap their feet every couple of strokes intentionally is there a sort of strategy that you guys would normally use for that yeah i yeah that’s it’s a good question um which remind me there’s a follow question of how far back you should be from from the person in front but but yeah so the way chipper and i go is you know i try to be on his feet and um you know i just hey if i’m on his feet i’m on his feet i’m tapping and it’s just like hey i’m just letting you know i’m here there’s no real you know i’m not trying to do anything other than just like just keep going uh but sometimes if i do need to get as

attention or if we are planning on switching uh you know we’ll have like some signal like hey if i tap you on the foot on the right foot like three times that means that i’m ready to take a pull or something and then he’ll kind of pull up or uh you know so we’ll have some signals like that but yeah but typically yeah not too much communication unless i think chipper’s going the wrong way then i’m like you know just backseat riding exciting which has happened i got a foggy goggle once and he’s like where are you going like where are you going dude i was trying to one eye one eye sighted wasn’t working too well that’s good that like yeah those sorts of signals uh yeah great way to great way to do it so um uh and you normally sit behind is that where you prefer to sit yeah yeah i prefer to be in the back yeah but i mean on your your stroke crest i mean you’re maybe three inches from my foot yeah you’re pretty you’re pretty close i try to

keep it close because i you know i also you know i want to make it as easy for chipper as possible so i don’t want the tether i don’t want him to feel like he’s actually pulling um but we know so one of our dear swimmer friends like their tether is super short and this guy he basically has his head in between the other person’s legs and he’s just doing this really wide stroke and i mean i don’t know that seems like a little aggressive to me but i’m curious like what is the optimal like should you just be tapping the person’s feet or is there is there something around like how close you are that you get more of the benefit of the of the draft yeah i mean that’s uh you’d really want to know the person if you if you head between your legs seriously first date first right it’s like yeah um the i mean really the closer the better if you look at um if you look at any sort of aerial footage of some as you can kind of

see that little like pocket that it creates behind someone where it sort of takes the water and then the other water pulls in so uh yeah the the closer the better really and i think if you’re having to adjust your stroke so you know hitting their feet you’re probably in a pretty good pretty good spot there but i mean um you still get you still obviously get draft three meters even five meters even a little bit further back you still get some well it’s gonna be a lot it’s gonna be a lot less so yeah if you can sit right on their feet i think that’s the the way to go um i’ve i’ve never been invited to swim with my head between someone’s leg so i couldn’t tell you how how much you can join us you can join anytime it’s a worth a trip from australia yeah um because i mean sometimes it does like i’m going back to on the bike days where you know hey when you’re in that great slipstream and the draft it feels

like oh man you’re you’re great you’re saving so many watts but then there is that that kind of space that can develop and if you get kind of like snapped off the back of that you’re just you’re like in not a good place so that’s kind of what what we’re trying to get to on the on the tether piece but it sounds like as close to you as close that you can get for your own personal and your partner’s personal comfort um you know that’s good yeah if it becomes a game of chicken you’re probably winning so yeah that’s uh uh yeah i think that the closer the better and um the thing with like sitting fairly close to like if you’re at behind yes you want to be sliding to make sure your partner’s staying on track but you can also just look forwards and look for the bubbles and look for the feet too um so it can sort of save you from from looking up and maybe slowing yourself down even more so that’s the other thing that uh yeah but uh and it’s also good to

probably play around with it a bit to see where you feel like you get the most draft but it’s most likely going to be as uh well just fingers at their feet yeah now you know you have a pull buoy in your leg so your legs some i mean i’ve gotten this feedback from a swim coach on deck about hey like my lower half just is just you know i’m not holding a good tauntness in my in my fishtailing a lot so i would assume that as the back person you might want to try to keep it pretty tidy is not you know kind of keep a nice streamline there i would assume that would be kind of a a good a good thing to suggest to folks as well if that’s just assuming yeah if you see uh yeah if you see the feet in front kind of doing that just stay in the middle of them it’s um i mean especially with with your shoes on with your pull pull buoy in it’s going to lend itself to a bit more of that sort of fishtailing anyway when everything sort of strapped in so um like normally it normally as a coach

should say keep you know obviously keep things centered you’re going to get a little bit of movement through the hips and things like that but i think what you’re doing it kind of lends itself to that quite a bit quite a bit more especially with not kicking and just the the drag from the shoes as well so um yeah that’s i think that’s just gonna that’s just gonna happen yeah keep it tidy back there chris keep it tidy i’ll try i’ll try i’ll try um you know i so so back at last this is now in november i i did a race with another partner because chipper was injured and i had to lead all the swims and this is the first time we’re out of lead all the swims in a race and i certainly gained new even more appreciation i already have a lot of appreciation be doing more appreciation for chipper for leading for doing so much of the yeoman’s work but he’s 10 years older than me so it’s fine he can handle it but uh but uh but you know it’s what i found interesting was like it obviously

takes more effort to be in the front than being in the draft but i also felt like it was um like i was i had to expend more mental more mental focus right in the back you can i’m citing i’m making sure we’re not messing around going straight but when you’re leading i felt like i was responsible for kind of all of it like making sure we’re swimming straight making sure we’re taking a nice tight line make sure i’m not running over any sort of underground obstacles or what underwater obstacles or whatever and i’m curious um you know do you have any strategies besides just like yeah maybe trying to alternate who’s leading the swims to kind of recover from some of that or or is there like you know some sort of mindset the that that you think would be helpful for people that are leading swims so just like kind of you know keep the main thing the main thing and not just over stimulating yourself with trying to keep to keep things together

yeah that’s a it’s a great point and late last year i i did like our state five kilometer championship race here and in and that was the first time i’ve actually or the first time in probably how do i know in probably like 20 years that i’ve done like sort of yeah like 5k race with that sort of level of swimmers and what i noticed so there was basically a group of about i don’t know eight to ten of us in the in the main pack and for four for 4k i did i didn’t really have to cite i didn’t have to think at all because i knew these these swimmers would be siding going straight and like that’s just the pack so i could just sit in and not have to think about it for 4k and it was it was one of the easiest swims i’ve done for that that 4k then as soon as i i i lost it i drifted off and for i moved about three meters off to the side lost the pack and the last k they were they were gone and that last k felt longer than the first

4k as a result of it and so the the mentality that i’d take into that is like if i’m the lead swimmer it’s like right this is this is on me this is my time and i yeah it’s up to me to to kind of set the pace a bit to make sure we’re going straight and i’m in charge here and i think just taking that responsibility and it’s like yeah this is this is my zone that that can kind of give you this like you know i don’t know not just kind of good good feeling of like yeah it’s my time to shine because the person at the back can’t really do a whole lot to help the person in front apart from just trying to minimize the minimize any sort of impact behind so and then i mean i haven’t really done a swim run for about 15 years i think but you know it could be that maybe in the run the other person goes in front and you can just kind of sit behind switch off a little bit and you know have that mental recovery a little bit because sometimes i don’t know if you find

find that with your running but you just uh even just sort of running behind someone you can kind of just switch off a bit so maybe you can return the favor favor that way is that what you guys tend to do or yeah chris is usually taking the charge on the runs all uh i will usually yeah i i kind of like what you were saying brenton i kind of take the i’m like oh this is a time to shine for me like let me let me you know show off all my swim fitness i have and kind of really charge out and then i charge out of the water uh you know blow my heart right up and then chris comes around and just takes takes the rest of it uh i’m trying to hang on for the rest of the run but yeah that learning that chris had you know we we’ve talked about applying that to our future races about say if we’ve had a couple swim you know runs and swims where the pace is kind of getting up there and someone is feeling a little bit more cooked than they want to be

take that next swim off and i mean you can really have five you know eight ten minutes of recovery on on the back and then you’re gonna kind of be be in a better better spot so i think overall yeah you might give up you know three seconds per hundred or one second or it’s probably really the same pace pretty much uh but the energy levels will be will be better matched for uh for the next couple legs following that so looking forward to deploying that strategy at some point yeah yeah not not too soon though yeah yeah like it’s amazing how much you know whether you’re training or whether you’re racing in the beginning you might feel heavy and then after like a k and a half you come good so i can like that energy levels can oscillate a lot through the uh yeah through through the race and so if you get that little bit of recovery you’re probably good to go again because i mean some of those races are hours and hours in the water and uh and on land right so

yeah yeah and it’s the type of thing where some of the races are so long you can feel great feel shitty feel great again feel great again yeah and then you know just like you just keep going back and forth and you just you know try to problem solve you know throughout it but uh but yeah you know i i think like again what the the lesson for me was like oh you know it’s obviously more work physically but sort of like mentally was more work and thinking about you know i really like like like that advice of just like hey just kind of just for whatever period it says you just kind of lean into it gotta do it so just like get through it and then find other other places where you can kind of like recover whether it’s on the run or the next swim or whatever it is so i think i think that’s a that’s a major pro tip right there

and like when we were doing this camp last week uh we’re doing a lot of a lot of pack swimming we’d get the slowsomers up the front to lead we’d get the middle swimmers there like we just circle around and one thing that i i found like when i’m at the front i’m just like yeah it’s like i’m i’m this i’m a dad and this this is my family behind me and i’m like there to protect them and work for them and stuff like that like just taking that sort of role when you’ve got there when you’re in charge uh yeah it’s like um being like class class leader or something in in school it’s just like it’s something that doesn’t really mean anything but you can take it to mean yeah as much as you want sort of thing so uh yeah whatever your ego needs yeah yeah and that’s a lot here so uh yeah that’s half of it you know it’s like once the kids birthday in elementary school they’re line leader so they’re they’re leading the line

they’re walking kids to the gym and everything similar situation um i don’t you know at least chris and i we kind of end up and we’re racing and and no man’s land between the front group and between some sort of mid pack um but for when you are trying to overtake in the water i i always remember these kind of feelings of like oh man we’re stuck back here let me let me just get around and like surge up but it’s easier said than done what sort of tips do you have for kind of making an overtake in open water or things you should like keep under consideration especially with someone attached to you and you’re literally trying to pass two two more bodies hmm i i mean what i generally i’d try and you know sit behind as long as you can to get that draft to come up to them and then in when you when you are overtaking it’s like i’d try and stay pretty fairly close to the other person in front and then once i sort of pass their hip

it’s like i want to get i want to get off to the side i want to get away from them so that they’re not then jumping jumping on on me so it’s like trying to be trying to be sneaky and you know sneak up on them surprise attack and then just kind of get off to the side and look they might jump across but i’m just using that as much as you can and like even uh like what we’ll find in a lot of swim races and triathlon races is of some people who are like you get the different groups going first and then you might have like a one fifteen swimmer who’s there with two minutes swimmers and they’re having to overtake them but even like even if they’re a lot slower you can still just come straight up behind them sneak past them and just kind of go around so even using just using that as much as you can that’s without any experience with being tethered to someone so curious to see what you guys well i’ll tell you i’ll tell you so tether being in the back

when we’re swimming in a pack and we’re passing people usually this is usually like first second swim type stuff yeah first yeah first swim leg or second swim it’s uh i it’s like my responsibility to make sure that no one crosses the tether because talk about wasting a ton of you get your tethers tangled it’s just it’s a huge mess it’s never happened to us but we’ve heard horror stories but i think one of the reasons that it hasn’t happened to us because i really treat you know if there’s a pack like i’m aggressively protecting the tether with my stroke changing my stroke rate sometimes even like doing like a like a real skip so i can just make sure that i can protect it if someone’s on the right uh you know not like being like a dick like sticking elbows but just making sure that i’m extending just to kind of protect the area because even if someone takes a stroke and just catches the tether if they’re wearing a paddle

it can get stuck in the paddle and it’s just like when someone loses the paddle and you know bad anyway just you don’t want any of that bad juju anywhere so so on the back is is you know i’ll see when we’re getting either into a pack or first swim and there’s just a lot of chaos happening and i’ll i’ll usually just make sure that i’m really close on chipper’s feet and being very cognizant of like my surroundings um i think that’s it i don’t know if i have any chipper if you have any more notes from the tether side yeah no i mean i think for that first one it’s usually trying to get kind of the clean air like clean water and not yeah trying to trying to get out in front of someone or or find a good pair of feet uh as well is helpful um but i like the sort of advice it reminds me of like a tour de france pass you know when they when they’re on the big mountains and they pass around they try to like really dive off to the side

and try to make it so they can’t get any any draft so you’re the way you explain that kind of reminded me of that but um yeah it’s just kind of really like a very very sergi feeling about really uh hitting kind of like a threshold pace to to really break out there and then you know kind of feeling off that tether like hey it how is chris is coming along here as well or is it like oh you know maybe maybe we need to pull back a little bit on it but and i think that’s where and that’s where communication too which is like you know one of the advantages of swimrun is that you have a teammate so you can actually strategize and really think through a lot of these things so you know depending how serious stripper and are taking the race like we’ll be like okay this first swim like what are you like are you gonna just do what you usually do and kind of have like dancing your pants and really want to get going

or like what’s going on um you know and that and that’s super helpful and i was like yeah i’m gonna hit it on this first swim and you know usually it’s i’m gonna have uh you know my left my life flashed for my eyes because i wore the wrong wetsuit and the water’s super cold um but you know regardless it’s like okay i kind of already know what chipper has in mind or he’ll just tell me like i’m feeling good i’m gonna go for it and because you know we’ve trained so much together he can say yeah i’m gonna hit this at like 85 percent and have like some general idea of what that means um but but yeah that’s that’s like an experience thing that uh that works for us but but brenton i’m curious like you know tipper’s talking about like surging in open water and doing all this stuff is there like um again i bring it back to the pool because that’s where most people are training for these events like is there like a

drill or a set that you that you’d recommend to just help kind of develop that like surge especially because you know we would be doing it with paddles so you know it could be you could be in the middle of a thousand-yard swim and you feel like all right now’s the time to really punch it like anything you’d recommend there yeah there’s a guy um uh i’ve forgotten his first name now he’s got three brothers so always get confused with one switch but um so he uh really good long distance smart he held the english channel world record it was um not cody simpson yeah one of the simpson brothers anyway um so he uh i remember looking at some of the sets that that he was doing and pretty much like every every distant set that i saw that he would do and he would prescribe for other people they always finish with something like 8 50s of 50 fast 50 recovery so it always put some speed stuff at the end of each session and like i i’ve started

to incorporate that for a lot of the sessions that i’m writing for our squad here in australia and i think i think that stuff is really good it’s like when you’re tired when you’re fatigued after 3k 4k if you can just get your get your sprint on if you can just pick up that pace that’s going to train you to be able to to do it when you need to as well as i think including some you know some efforts in the middle of of a main set and then just trying to go back to your aerobic or maybe threshold pace like that that stuff is really good the the variable pace stuff goes a long way there’s a set that i really like that i think can be good for those surges one that we would often do is 50 at like 90 effort 5 seconds rest on the wall into 150 at around sort of 75 effort and we do that it depends like six to eight times but i really like that one because it’s like you you go hard really short rest on the wall then you’ve got to try and

settle into that 75 effort pace and just calm the heart rate down at that pace you could probably sustain for your for your swim run event um so a few sets like that i think go a really long way and for people who are newer to swimming newer to the sport they feel like they’ve got one gear they can’t get out of it and this is like i don’t i just i no matter what i do i’ve just got that one pace but i think and the mistake i made when i was growing up is i think i was in the gray zone too much like i just the harder i train the better off i’d be but that neglects the fact of those different training zones so it’s like make sure your aerobic stuff is aerobic make sure your fast stuff is fast so just allowing that that change in speed um to yeah to happen in training yeah i love love the gear gear like having the gears uh when you’re swimming because we were swimming with someone who’s doing the world champion she’s like i just have one speed i

just go the speed all the time i’m like you kind of really the gears are very helpful to have because you are going to need to get out of uh or you know power through like a situation where it’s going to cause you to to go over over a little bit uh outside of whatever your zone to or whatever pacing you’re doing and it is really helpful to have those gears i i love the like eight by fifty or eight by twenty five or whatever and i think something for me that really helped is like hey this isn’t eight by twenty five at like my fast twenty five it’s just eight as hard as you can go twenty five like just get the tank empty for these it’s not who cares about the pace it’s more about the the effort against the twenty against the the distance not what the number is on the on the distance that you have it’s like you got the big fatigue you’re you’re you’re surging you’re you’re getting you’re getting some some big efforts in

there uh that was a really helpful like reframing for me uh it’s like it’s like it’s like a fart lick in a in a run workout where you’re just like just pick it up for 30 seconds like you know what like what have you got you know yeah yeah it goes goes a long way and it Trent Grimsey sorry that was uh that was his name got it nice you got it that’s the important part nice nice um so so so i guess you know one one you know to to start kind of wrapping wrapping this up a little bit Breton i’m curious like you know let’s say someone’s new to swim run and they’re kind of daunted by open water maybe they’ve signed for their first race maybe they have it like you know what what are what are your sort of words of wisdom for someone maybe they’re just like literally brand new to open water like what will you tell them in terms of just got their confidence up to go out there and do it like me you know just curious what you’re like for just camp you did last weekend

like how did you coach people up i’m just like getting into it

yeah so there was actually there was actually one swimmer there who said like every time i race open water after about 200 meters i just might heart rate with skyrocket and i’d panic and then i would just struggle my way way home and she wasn’t like she wasn’t a bad swimmer by by any means but uh she just kind of had that had that uh when she went open water that’s just what happened so and by the end of the week like she did all the swims she she came out of it like so much more confident about about her ability to swim and i think there’s a number of things that played a part of it one is we kind of progressively

progressively made it more challenging through the week so the first swim was was very calm you could stand up and you know we just sort of do a lot of stopping and drills and stuff like that the last swim it was going into a very strong current fairly big chop and waves and it was probably our longest swim of the of the week and like at the end of that like she got through it really well she was tired but she’s like i just feel so much more confident with my ability out there so i think it’s like starting small building up another one is just having other people around so like there was nine nine of us in the water um and just having those people there for for support feel like for safety and also just like when you’re around other people who are doing that it seems like it’s no big big deal and then i think that like the practice component of it so if you were to do say a hundred open water swims is it fair to say that you would get good

at at open water swimming or get fairly competent at it like more than likely yes so just um just taking that first step starting small playing it as safe as you as you want and then just progressively pushing it from there because uh we had a had a lady come to our Maldives camp last year and she would swim a hundred meters and i had to stand up because she was just out of breath quite panicked in the water and i thought well we’ve got a a task ahead ahead of ourselves here like the requirement was to be able to swim 2k um but 100 meters it was but we just sort of worked with her really gradually we’re in the lagoon where we could stand up just talk her through some of the basics um then kind of got up to about 200 meters and 300 meters and by day six she swam around the island which is nearly it’s probably 1.5 miles or a little bit less and but it’s just that progressive you know progressive build up and and having some support

there so it’s like it’s possible for everyone and i think it’s it can be very scary initially because it can seem like there’s just so much out of your control and it’s dark it might seem scary but um just start start small and uh yeah and i think you can really surprise yourself with how far you can get with your with your swimming that way yeah you know i actually think you said some of those those pretty profound there it’s like yeah if you do a hundred open water swims you know it’s it’s like it’s like it’ll kind of take care of itself like you don’t you don’t need to like oh i gotta do all this stuff just go out into the element if you can’t if you have you know and just keep doing that and then eventually it’s like you just have enough reps so it’s like what’s to fear when you’ve done it a hundred times in practice type of thing it’s really really well stated there’s um there’s a group near where i live uh down at the beach here

and uh they i think they call themselves the the teabaggers it’s like you you just sit in the water and just like they would just sit in the water um like it was a bunch of uh getting a soak yeah yeah just getting a soak and and having a chat and then like eventually they kind of some of them just kind of got bored of just chatting they’re like well we really should be swimming here and i think about you know two years later since they first started there’s some of them that are like traveling around the state and going into state as well to do these one kilometer two kilometer swims and like they’ve just progressively built it up and i think if they were to look back two years and go like i that they’re actually traveling to go in these swims i think they’d say there’s no way but that’s happening but um yeah and i can i think some of them will probably push and do some yeah five k’s and 10 k’s in the next couple of years because it

you know what it’s like it gets addictive oh yeah for sure please tell me that one of the members of the teabaggers was named earl earl gray yeah but that’s sorry they’re all women so uh maybe not jasmine was one name jasmine yeah there you go yeah white peach i don’t know i don’t know

that’s i don’t have any more tea references so i’m i’m gonna i’m gonna bow out of the rest of it yeah coffee it might be a different story yeah coffee i can i’m i’m there with you but the i love like sort of this unintentional theme that we ran into you know talking about how to how to do siding properly and how to do that it’s really and i think swimming it’s uh it is easy to kind of get overwhelmed i’m like oh man i might at least my intro needs to be like this and catch and everything break it down into small pieces work on that and then kind of layer up and and stack it whether it’s siding for open water or even just really acclimating and getting used to open water and really expanding your your distance or working with the tether like you don’t have to go swim a mile right out with your partner on you can do a 50 in the in the thing and then see how it goes but yeah kind of start small and then stack it stack it on each other

yeah absolutely and it’s the uh i think it’s like just that uh that consistency over time and just progressively building it up it’s like i think it’s the secret to success in so many so many so many things yeah for sure for sure it really is i mean and speaking of consistency so effortless swimming i mean how many swimmers have you guys had gone through your program at this point like so many yeah well like face to face in our clinics i think it’s it’s probably up to seven thousand plus i think like face to face here in australia um which is like and i’ve yeah so i’ve probably run about half of half of those maybe a bit more um but yeah like thousands and thousands of different swimmers that i’ve i’ve worked with and wow it’s uh yeah and like it kind of gets that point where when i look at someone swimming it feels like it’s really clear on what they need to do and the steps that they need to take but those first you know first couple of years and first

hundred it’s like it really had to kind of uh it was a lot of effort to to do it and so um yeah just like anything as time passes um you kind of look back and go oh crap actually i can’t believe i started there with it because i remember when i started coaching i just thought god how i just find it really hard to pick out what people actually need to change and like the order that or what’s causing what it made no sense to me and i was watching so many videos from other coaches on youtube and dvds back in the day like just trying to figure out freestyle technique and eventually eventually it started to make sense but i remember thinking god it just it’s so complicated but um yeah with it with enough practice i feel like it’s a lot easier now you’d right well yeah i mean it’s like it was like it was super complicated but you’ve actually made it so accessible for so many people so you’ve taken that complexity it actually worked it out to explain

it to people in a way that’s like this is super helpful for so many people not just in person but also all the online programming and stuff so so yeah like you know mad respect from from the low tide boys and as ever thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your knowledge with our listeners and viewers but yeah man really appreciate you brenton oh thanks for the invite it’s great to chat with you guys and it’s it’s always a lot of fun so i appreciate the invite yeah absolutely and if you’re looking to improve your swim effortless swimming dot com is a great resource there’s lots of five-day catch clinics to do online also i’ve consumed many many hours of brenton’s youtube channel it does these great breakdowns as well uh and it’s always uh me finding new new things to work on in the pool so be sure to subscribe to those uh we already know you’re subscribed to the low tide boys so go go subscribe to effortless swimming as well

awesome thank you guys see you thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast if you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com

So we need to be mindful of all these types of factors that go into when we take our supplements. And then also being mindful if you take any other medication, taking things like say magnesium, for instance, can interfere with other medication that you might be taking. So that’s again, why I think you need to be much more strategic around your supplement use rather than just taking stuff willy-nilly because you might be doing things to harm what you’re trying to do otherwise without you being aware of it. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. Welcome back to the podcast. Thanks so much for having me back. It’s been a while Brenton, but good to be back on the podcast. It has been a pleasure to have you come back on and today I wanna dig into supplements. What’s worth taking?

What’s not? To kick it off, what’s the most you’ve seen someone spend on an annual basis on supplements? I have seen it all, honestly. I find that most athletes take far more stuff than they actually need. One of my athletes recently gave me an entire spreadsheet with everything she takes so that I can review it when she joined the Triathlon Nutrition Academy program. I was like, holy crap, I’m oily. And I was like, you can cut all that out except for this one thing. And so her as an example, she’s saving six and a half thousand, but I know athletes that spend way more money than that on a monthly basis or annual basis for supplements that are, are they effective? Are they worth it? Probably not. That you’ve got me very curious as to what that one supplement was. Is that something that is specific to her that you think she should keep taking or is a pretty general one for everyone?

For her, it was something that’s specific for her. She’s recovering from injury. So I guess I take an athlete and where they’re at in their training, in their season, where they are in life. And also we had the benefit of her recent blood tests to go on to know what she actually needed because when we talk about supplements, the truth is in their name, they should be a supplement to a really good foundational diet. They are not the basis of somebody’s diet. And that’s where a lot of athletes go wrong is that they go to supplements first. I always talk about nutrition being a cake. So most athletes will do the sprinkles on the icing on the cake first because it’s really easy to add to cart. You get something shiny in the mailbox, which is a dopamine hit. You take it like people are generally pretty good at taking things the most days. And that’s really easy to do. Whereas the stuff that is the foundational layer

of somebody’s diet, the cake base is much harder. It’s doing things like eating enough for its vegetables, making sure your recovery nutrition start in for training, making sure you’ve got your fueling right for training. All the things that you do day in, day out form the big rock-solid foundation and adding supplements should be something that you sprinkle on at the end to get the advantage from that, not form the big base. Because if you do that first, there’s nothing for those guys to stick to. And there’s a really cool paper that I can dig up for if you want to dive into the research that the more things we take, the worse it seems to be. They all seem to kind of wash themselves out. So we need to be and think much more strategically around supplement use that we’re using something for a reason and with a purpose rather than just like throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping something sticks. One thing you mentioned there was blood tests.

Is that something that you recommend all your athletes get or just specific people get? Yeah, I think active people should definitely keep an eye on what’s going on. Most people do it kind of annually with their GP and if they don’t, then maybe you shouldn’t. I do have a free blood test guide. Actually, people want to go and grab that. If you go to dietitianapproved.com forward slash bloods you can download it. And it goes through a range of different things that are useful for active people. What on earth that test actually means and then some reference ranges as well. Now it’s not medical advice and it’s not going to replace having a good discussion with your doctor or your dietitian but it might spark some ideas for things to actually check in and monitor, particularly when you’re active because our need for vitamins and minerals is higher than somebody that sits on their butt all day but it doesn’t mean that we need to blanketly

be taking a multivitamin to try and meet those needs. So doing your bloods regularly at least once a year for some people it’s more often. So as an example, a female with low iron I’d be checking their bloods every three months because the red blood cell turnover is every three months to see what’s going on. And then strategically doing some interventions to see if what we’re doing dietary wise or even supplementation wise is helping or hindering. So it’s just being smarter and I guess taking ownership of your health a bit more and checking bloods is a really easy way to do that.

And is there a common thing that you see with endurance athletes that they are typically lacking when you get their blood test results? Yeah, really commonly iron particularly if you’re a female athlete or you’re a vegetarian vegan athlete and the endurance variety because we use more iron on a daily basis and we lose more iron as well. So it’s something that you want to keep a good close eye on. The other one honestly is vitamin D. So many people are deficient in vitamin D and have no idea and our whole bone structuring like system doesn’t work so well if we’re deficient in vitamin D. There’s so many like pathways in our body that don’t work well if we’re deficient in things. So iron and vitamin D are big ones to check as an endurance athlete in particular.

And are they ones that you would generally supplement for or you would obviously real foods is what we want to go to first but are they typically ones that you would look to supplement for and you’d be happy for an athlete to do that? Yes, but only if there’s a deficiency. So we don’t want to blanketly supplement those things without having the data first because vitamin D is actually a fat soluble vitamin. So if you have too much it can be toxic. So you want to check your bloods and check for a deficiency and is there a natural way for you to elevate that? So for us or anywhere in the world the depth of winter your vitamin D stores are probably at their lowest but in the height of summer or at the end of summer they might be there higher. So want to check at different times of the year to see what our vitamin D status is because it’s not stable. And that’s the best way to increase your vitamin D stores is to actually seek light at the right wavelength.

And there are a couple of dietary sources as well but it’s not a good one to be really deficient in. So something that I would supplement if it’s particularly low but definitely not one to supplement if you just think it might be. And the other one is iron. Again, like too much iron is bad. And so we want to check our bloods and particularly you’re looking for ferritin which is our storage form of iron and making sure that storage is higher. And the reference range for that for the active population is higher than the general population too. So working with a sports physician or a sports dietitian is going to help you make sure that both of those things are optimal because your performance is not going to be particularly good if you’re deficient in either of those. Interesting. And makes a lot of sense, right? Some are obviously getting a lot more sun you’re getting a lot more vitamin D so it could change with the seasons.

Now, the next one is creatine. It feels like in the last 12, 18 months has had a really big increase in popularity with how much you should take, why you should take it. I remember probably 10 years ago it was like take it to get jacked and get strong but now they’re talking more about the mental benefits of it. So what’s your take on creatine? Yeah, you’re right. Creatine has just had an explosion lately and the messaging is that everyone should take creatine because everyone’s going to benefit which I disagree with but there are certain subgroups and subpopulations that it would be beneficial for. Historically, like it’s one of the most researched supplements and historically it has been in the Jimbrough space to, yeah, get swole, but we are seeing more research in the female space and particularly females through the lifespan too. So there’s some stuff in sort of menopausal women and the cognitive benefits of creatine for that brain fog

which is really cool to see. The dosing for that is quite high though and I wouldn’t suggest that there’s enough research in that space to warrant taking such huge doses. Also don’t enjoy the blanket, everyone should have three to five grams a day advice because it is based on your body weight because creatine is uptaked, soaked up into the muscle and like you’ve got more muscle mass than I do so your dosing of creatine should be specific to you. So something to look at but it is still a supplement and it’s not something that you should replace without having a good quality diet because you can get creatine from all of your animal meats too. So it doesn’t have to be necessarily something that you supplement. If your diet quality is poor then you’re not going to get the same advantages for it. Protein powder kind of along those lines I guess as well. What’s your take there? Again, it is a supplement. So we want to supplement our diet

with that in certain situations. You will get so much more benefit from having something like a high protein Greek yogurt with some berries, some nuts and seeds or some muesli type thing that meal has got healthy fats, it’s got carbohydrates, it’s got calcium, it’s got a huge range of vitamins and minerals in that. Whereas replacing that with a protein powder you are literally only getting the protein. So we need to think more globally around what we’re putting in our high performance engine I like to call it. Our body is our temple and it’s what’s going to get us to the finish line fastest. It’s not this one supplement but protein powder I think is relatively low risk. I’d be looking for something that is informed sport tested so that you know that it’s been independently batch tested and it includes, it doesn’t include any water prohibited substances because supplement industry is in particularly well regulated to be honest.

America’s atrocious, Australia’s slightly better but everything that you put in your body you want to make sure that it is safe and also effective. So checking supplements that are informed sport tested is a good thing. And then there’s a couple of different types of protein powders. You’ve got way based protein powders, you’ve got other like plant based protein powders if you’re vegan or can’t have dairy and their quality is different and how much protein they have per serve is different. So just going into a supplement store and asking the huge buff dude behind the counter for a protein powder is probably not the best strategy. You actually want to pick one that is suitable for you and then using it strategically where you need it to like supplement or top up your daily protein intake where you need it rather than using that as like a lazy way of trying to do recovery because it doesn’t actually tick all of your recovery boxes.

So like any of this stuff you need to be strategic about it rather than just going, yep, that’ll do and like tick a box because it generally isn’t ticking a box for most people. The next one, general multivitamin. Oh God, are you still taking AG1? No. I don’t know. You mentioned it, I think two podcasts ago. I was like, yeah, well, I’ll at least finish what I’ve got and then looked into it more as well. And I was like, yeah, you’re right. Yeah, so no, I’m not. How much am I saving you? I don’t know, probably 80 bucks a month. They did offer to send me, actually they sent me some as like a potential podcast sponsor. And then besides I’ll take that and then like I didn’t proceed with it, obviously. So yeah, I’ve got the free one. That didn’t cost me anything. But no, I’m not taking it anymore. Okay, you’re welcome. So I asked that because it’s in the same line as a multivitamin, right? And people think that that’s a better way to go

than taking a multivitamin. But a multivitamin is kind of like a general practitioner that it’s a generalist at lots of different things but it doesn’t have enough of specific things to be beneficial. So you wouldn’t take a multivitamin and say, if you’re iron deficient and you need to increase your iron because it only has a tiny amount. So it is kind of a little bit like a safety blanket that a lot of people would take but it is also throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping something fix. Oh my God, can I say that again? It is a bit like throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping something sticks. A lot of our vitamins are water soluble. So if we don’t need it, then we are literally going to break it down and pee it out. So it’s not something I would recommend anybody take. I’d much rather be more strategic around supplement use and using sole supplements. So an iron only supplement to treat iron deficiency

or vitamin D only to treat vitamin D deficiency rather than taking a little bit of all this stuff. You will get so much more benefit from eating actual food, getting the vitamins and minerals from real food like our fruits and our vegetables and eating the rainbow to get all that huge variety because you’ll get fiber, you’ll get more satiety from eating and chewing your food that you won’t get from taking a pill. And you also get a whole range of food chemicals that can’t ever be packaged up and put into a shine little product either. So it’s a no for me for a multivitamin. But what about vitamin C? Is that one that you would ever consider? No, short answer no. Same sort of thing. It’s water soluble. If you have a look down at your pee, your urine color after taking a vitamin C, generally it’s kind of glowing. It’s like bright orange. And that’s because you are literally breaking it down and peeing it out because it’s water soluble.

You can get your daily intake of vitamin C just by eating some citrus fruits or a pun of the strawberries. Like it’s really easy to meet your requirements on a daily basis from food. And it’s not something that we’re generally limiting in the modern diet either. Okay, gotcha. I’m sorry, were you gonna say something? Yeah, do you want me to keep going? Yeah, sorry, go for it. If you are feeling like you’re coming down with an upper respiratory tract infection though, like a cold, then taking vitamin C in combination with zinc can be beneficial, but only for the first five days. And that’s been shown to lower the severity and duration of a upper respiratory tract infection. But it’s not something that you wanna take prophylactically all the time either. So again, being strategic around a supplement use rather than just taking things all day every day. One question I wanted to ask before, but I forgot to was in terms of how,

with some of these supplements, let’s say it’s iron or vitamin D, do you have a preferred method of taking it as in like pill or tablet? Like what is there some that are better than others? Yeah, it depends what it is really. Timing of day is often really important for some things over like the form. Say for instance, vitamin B12 often needs to be given intramuscular via injection, but it’s really difficult to become deficient in vitamin B12. You have to do a really crap job of dietary stuff for a long period of time or have another pathway where you’re not absorbing it properly. But I think timing is more important than form with a lot of things. So iron in particular, we have this hormone that controls our iron status and it increases as the day goes on. So if we’re supplementing with iron, we want to put it sort of first thing in the morning before that hepsidon response has increased as the day goes on. And then for example,

and for iron as an example, there’s a lot of foods that enhance the absorption of iron and inhibit the absorption of iron too. So we need to be mindful of all these types of factors that go into when we take our supplements. And then also being mindful if you take any other medication, taking things like say magnesium for instance, can interfere with other medication that you might be taking. So as again, why I think you need to be much more strategic around your supplement use rather than just taking stuff willy-nilly because you might be doing things to harm what you’re trying to do otherwise without you being aware of it. Gotcha, okay, interesting. Next one’s electrolytes. So good, bad, yes, no, what’s your take there? Obviously it’s like it’s a supplement in a way but maybe a little different than some of the other ones we’re talking about but what’s your perspective there? Yeah, it depends. So it’s not something

that I would take necessarily outside of training but because I work with triathletes then having some form of sodium during exercise can be beneficial for some people in some situations which is why it depends. So it really depends on what type of sweaty you are and how much sweat sodium you are excreting. And you might need to be supplementing during exercise if you’re a really salty sweater or you’re out there for a long period of time. But before people get into supplementing out there are other things that I would do first and that’s making sure their fueling is right as well as making sure their overall hydration status is right and then I like to layer in the sodium piece on top of that. So we do other things first whereas most triathletes, because that’s how I work with, they do the electrolytes first. And kind of like creatine, the sodium story has had a lot of limelight in the last couple of years and people are just taking more and more and more.

And that’s not necessarily beneficial either because we know that the more salt that you have in your diet, the more your sweat glands try and get rid of in exercise and the more your kidneys will just filter out as well if you don’t need it because you don’t store salt or sodium anywhere. We don’t have like a bucket, like our protein in our carbohydrate in our muscles as glycogen, we don’t kind of store sodium up for later. So we need what we need at the time but the kidneys do an excellent job of filtering out any excess and then also retaining what they’ve excreted if they need it. So it’s not a really simple answer to that question. So that’s why I said it depends.

Remind me of myself, it’s like someone asked a question about a certain aspect of the stroke. It’s like, well, it depends. Yeah, it’s always case dependent. You need the context that, yeah, great. So it can be certainly be a useful thing to have. Another one here is just BCAAs. So, yeah, amino acids, is that something that can be worthwhile for people? Maybe, so branch chain amino acids are what all of our protein foods break down to so that we can digest and absorb them. So if you’re eating enough protein in your diet, then you shouldn’t need to supplement with branch chain amino acids. The jury was out a while ago when I looked at the research. I haven’t looked at it recently in the last sort of five years but whether you take BCAAs in strength training and whether that actually helps with muscle strength and muscle hypertrophy, there’s papers for that and there’s also papers against it. But because all the big like buffed gym bros did it,

it filtered down to the general population and we think we should do it as well. So I think like primarily if we’re talking back to our nutrition cake, we need to make sure we have enough protein on a daily basis and you’re meeting your protein needs and then you shouldn’t really need to supplement with branch chain amino acids. You’d probably go more of a whey protein isolate powder first rather than doing BCAA. Yeah, gotcha. Hey, real quick, in case you didn’t know, we run swimming camps around the world from the Maldives, Thailand, Japan, with Sundays, Galapagos Islands, plus a bunch of new locations for next year. So if you’d like to join us at a future camp and improve your swimming and explore and experience some of the best locations to swim in the world, then go to effortlesswimming.com forward slash camps. We’ve got all the dates and locations listed there. A question I get all the time is, I’m not that quick, will this camp be suitable for me?

We have a wide range of speeds and abilities come to the camps. So as long as you can swim a kilometer, there’s a very good chance that these camps will be suitable for you. And if you’re not sure, just get in touch with us and we’ll make sure that we do find you a suitable camp. Thanks for listening. Let’s get back into the podcast. The other one here is magnesium. What’s your, what are your thoughts there? I have this love-hate relationship with magnesium because so many athletes take it and we don’t really know if it does anything. And they, when I ask them why they take it, they also can’t tell me why. A lot of people take it for cramping, but there’s no evidence that magnesium is gonna help or reduce the severity of cramping. People take it for sleep and there’s some research in sleep, but are you again masking or trying to, you know, safety blanket a deeper problem there than magnesium is not necessarily the answer.

So it’s not necessarily something I would take somebody off if they were really attached to it, but I would never recommend it to somebody. Mm, gotcha. Is there any that I haven’t mentioned that come to mind that pretty common? There is so many. Like I think collagen is probably another big one that’s getting a lot of limelight at the moment. And that’s because, you know, 10 years ago, the research was like collagen doesn’t do anything. And now there’s more literature saying, yep, collagen does, but again, it is a supplement. You can get collagen from your diet. And I think a lot of women are taking it for the skin benefits, which, you know, I’m all four. I turned 40 this year and I’m absolutely freaking out. So I don’t personally take collagen, but it might be something that I add into my diet in the near future. Like there’s so much stuff, right? Like my athlete that sent me her spreadsheet, I should bring it up.

Like there’s just so many things that she was taking that just get added up over the years. Like someone somewhere told her to take something and then she just continued taking it forever more. So for instance, she’s taking a really high dose iron supplementation from postpartum 10 years ago that she never got rid of. She definitely doesn’t need that. Same as vitamin D, she was taking vitamin D, but when we look at her bloods, her vitamin D levels were fine. Like they’re perfect. And so it’s just being mindful. And I’ve said the word strategic so many times because I think that really is the key that it’s not just to take everything and like cross fingers and hope for the best. You actually want to layer things in strategically. So if you’re going to use creatin, for instance, maybe you do it in a strength phase and then you get rid of it again and then you bring it back in through like a strength block. Protein powder could be something that stays,

but again, it needs to be at a strategic time of day rather than having it every day or every snack because you need more protein. So it’s just being more aware of what you put in your mouth and doing things that are going to help you and actually are effective rather than just kind of taking things because you feel like you’ll get left behind if you don’t do it. Taran, thank you so much for this. I’ve kind of a quick rapid fire or fairly rapid fire answer to a lot of questions that I know people will be wondering. And some people, it may be a little bit of putting to hear that the thing they’ve been taking might not be giving them the advantages that they… They thought and I mean, I experienced that a few years ago with AG1 as well. So yeah, I know what it feels like, but give it a few months and then see how you feel about it. Taran, thank you again. If this all sounds like there’s… It depends, there’s a lot of information.

It’s like, well, what’s relevant to me? Get in touch with Taran. We’ll include the link to your website there with the triathlon nutrition academy. So anyone who needs a bit more help themselves can get in touch. So Taran, thank you for being a guest on the podcast again. My pleasure, as always. Thanks, Brenton. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

there are things you can do to see an increase in speed. So there's a very good chance you might be working on the wrong thing. And the wrong thing is possibly something that's a few steps ahead of what you actually need to work on. So I will quite often get people come to clinics or they'll send videos into me and they're like, yeah, okay, I can see that like my catch, my elbow is low and I've been working on my catch and I can't seem to make it any better. But if you look kind of earlier on in the chain of what needs to be worked on, it's like, you can't possibly get a good catch because you're firstly lifting and turning really far to get your breath. So you're over rotating. So your arm's dropping straight down. And so physically you're not capable of actually getting a good catch on that side because of the breathing. And so we need to really just bring it back to the first order of priorities and focus on those, get those right and then build up from there. So I think more often it's a case of just working on the wrong things. And typically when people, I mean, people watch the videos that I put out and I've had a lot of people say, look, I quite often get distracted by working on different things and I hear it on podcasts, I see it in videos and you can get a lot of really good information there but it can also just be like the wrong thing for you. And so I think I'm guilty of it myself as well. Just like you hear a good idea like, okay, well, that's certainly gonna be better than what I'm doing. But if it's not really specific to you, it's not gonna be to change anything.

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast the show that helps swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here's your host, Brenton Ford. Hey, welcome to this week's episode of the Effortless Swimming Podcast. This is a rebroadcast of an episode where I was a guest on the Get Fast podcast with Trivelo Coaching with Jordan and Gerard Donnelly. That's a mouthful to say. But on this episode, I'll talk about how triathletes can swim minutes faster in any races that they're doing. So if you're a triathlete or you're interested in triathlon or open water swimming, there'll be a lot here that can help you improve your swim speed and ultimately make it easier and a lot more enjoyable. Let's get into this episode on the Trivelo Coaching Get Fast podcast. So a very big welcome back to the podcast, Brenton Ford from Effortless Swimming. Brenton, this is now I think makes you the most repeated guest we've ever had. So thank you very much for joining us again. Thanks for having me. I expect the plaque or the trophy coming very soon. Thank you. So we want to launch right into the main premise of today and the topic, which is just the notion of this inevitable swimming plateau that everyone hits. And how do you break through the swimming plateau? Because improvement in expectations, improvement expectations in the sport of triathlon seem to be just lower than what you can get in the bike and the run. And a lot of people just accept that the swim is the swim. And once they hit that two minute pace

or 150 pace or 140 pace, they just stay there for years. And so why do you think so many triathletes get stuck at the same swim pace even after years of training? Is it mindset? Is it technique mechanics or is it something else?

It's usually working on the wrong thing. I think it comes down to working on the wrong thing and maybe not sticking with it for long enough to see a change. So if we look at someone, let's say they're being stuck at two minute pace for three years and like, oh, this is my pace. I just simply cannot get faster. Physically, I think majority of people they can go beyond that pace. And so look, it may be a mobility issue. Like maybe physically you can't get into some positions that you are required to get faster. But I think for like pretty much everyone, it's just, there are things you can do to see an increase in speed. So there's a very good chance you might be working on the wrong thing. And the wrong thing is possibly something that's a few steps ahead of what you actually need to work on. So I will quite often get people come to clinics or they'll send videos into me and like, yeah, okay, I can see that like my catch, my elbow is low and I've been working on my catch and I just, I can't seem to make it any better. But if you look kind of earlier on in the chain of what needs to be worked on, it's like, well, you can't possibly get a good catch because you're firstly lifting and turning really far to get your breath. So you're over rotating. So your arms dropping straight down. And so physically you're not capable of actually getting a good catch on that side because of the breathing. And so we need to really just bring it back to the first order of priorities and focus on those, get those right

and then build up from there. So I think more often it's a case of just working on the wrong things. And typically when people, I mean, people watch the videos that I put out and I've had a lot of people say, look, I quite often get distracted by working on different things and like I hear it on podcasts. I see it in videos and like that you can get a lot of really good information there, but it can also just be like the wrong thing for you. And so I think I'm guilty of it myself as well. Just like you hear a good idea, like, okay, well, that's certainly gonna be better than what I'm doing. But if it's not really specific to you, it's not gonna change anything. Do you find that if you give some really good feedback analysis, which is what you do very well, you get people to send videos to you and you analyze it and send it back to them and ask them to work on three major things and you give them drills specific to the things you're looking at. So that's a bit of a quick summary. So do you find that when the athlete comes back, maybe six or eight weeks later, that they haven't changed anything about what you've asked them to do because they haven't done maybe the drills or they haven't thought about it enough? What are the things they're doing wrong in that period between you giving them the instruction and it should work. You know, if they, it's like going to the physio with an injury and then the physio gives you all these exercises to do and you go back four weeks later, you haven't done one exercise and you say to the physio, it's not any better.

You know, is that something that you find is prevalent a lot in a lot of the athletes?

Yeah, it certainly is. It's, there's a few things that can result in someone not having improved down the track. So one is they either haven't done the, like the exercises or the drills, even if it's five or 10 minutes, which is normally what I would prescribe for most swimmers, a little bit in their warmup goes a very long way. So quite often they haven't done the drill or also they probably just haven't exaggerated the change enough for it to make a change. And so when we film it at clinics, second filming, I quite often ask people to exaggerate what they're trying to say. And whenever they do that, I would say one in 50 people go too far with the change. Like I'm getting them to exaggerate head position, rotation, whatever it is. One in 50 might actually have gone too far that we're like, okay, you can scale that back a little bit. But the majority of them, it's like, right. It's right there. It's like, oh, that's really good. But it feels like such a big, big change. And so I don't think people get comfortable enough with the exaggerate, how much they need to exaggerate the change. So more often than not, it's that. So that it feels weird. So like, this can't be right. And then we don't like to stick with something that feels unnatural or weird. And so we just go back to what's normal. So it's just, it's more often that than anything, especially for someone who has, say, practiced the drills that booked in for a follow-up filming. Like they've spent the time, they've spent the money working on, I think working on it.

But if we don't see a change, it's quite often that. Or it's just like they've tried to focus on three things instead of one. So if you, I mean, I was getting some coaching myself a couple of weeks back, I had the coach give me one thing to work on. It was looking really good on video. And she said, all right, now I want you to, I want you to focus on your breath timing and this aspect of your catch. And it fell apart most of the time. Like two is, you can't do two really when you're swimming. So I think it's often confusion as well, or just complicated, too complicated.

What I love about your videos and whenever you're on a podcast is you give such good hope to people that the improvement is possible. And even just your early answers, someone listening will just go, okay, that actually makes me believe that I can improve. You mentioned something really interesting there with not enough time dedicated to it. So when there's a change that needs to be made, what is that amount of time in terms of working on it per session, as well as is it a six-week block that you should expect improvement or 12 weeks where you really should expect that habit to start happening naturally? So when I first started running clinics 12, 13 years ago, there was a guy who emailed me on a Monday morning. So this was up in Sydney. He attended the clinic on the Sunday. Monday morning, he said, I did my 400 time trial and I was two seconds slower. Like, what's going on here? I just attended the clinic.

And then I had someone from that same weekend email me nine or 10 weeks later. And she said, I was working away at the technique stuff. My times were the same. Nothing much was happening, but I thought, look, I'll just stick with it. And then I had this one session where it clicked and she went from, I think it was 140 to 134, and she stuck with it from then on. Like, it just clicked and she stuck at that pace. And I see that as like, if you've got the patience to stick with it for eight, 10, 12 weeks, then you're much more likely to see those results. But don't feel like you're wasting your time if you're not getting faster straight away, or maybe it doesn't even feel better straight away. Like it might just feel awkward because it's different. So normally, and from my own personal experience as well, I think two to three months is pretty typical of how long you should expect it to take. And I was getting some coaching at the start of the season as well for myself. And I got this one cue just about breath timing. My breath was a bit late. And what I found there is that it took me, it was like six to eight weeks practicing it in training. The first two races of the season, there were glimpses of it, but then it was sort of three, four races in where it really started to gel. And yeah, it just takes quite a bit of time, even if it's just one thing. So, but I mean, the thing is, you're gonna be putting the time in anyway. When you're going to the pool, might be in twice a week, three times a week, you're going to be there.

You may as well just be okay with just working on your technique rather than just trying to get the fitness gains from it. Obviously they're really important. Fitness is a big factor, strength is a factor, but you may as well just be focusing on something technically as well, because you're gonna be putting the time in regardless. You could be sending a message out that it's okay to swim slower, to swim faster eventually. And if you stick with the process, that's actually gonna be so much better than if you just keep defaulting. Every time you're under pressure, we'll default to our normal swim stroke, which is actually what you're trying to prevent. You're trying to get this new method of swimming technique ingrained into that being a new default swim technique. And I'm doing the same thing. When I'm in the pool and I'm getting tired, I know my thought process has gone out the window. I'm going back to my old stroke and my times go back to what they were. And if I'm not conscious of saying, no, I'm gonna put up with this, I'm just not going to improve. I'm going to be the same swimmer. And we all keep doing that. And a lot of the time, and the question I'm gonna ask you is, is the fitness causing us, our lack of fitness holding the new position or the new entry or the new catch or the new push through phase or the new breathing style, is it that we don't have the fitness to maintain it? That's why we go back to our old form. Is that what's causing us to default to the old way? Is it because we're not fit enough in the water and how do we manage that?

It can be a number of different things. When we're making a change, we often using different muscles or using the muscles in a different sequence or in a different way. And so quite often we have to engage more muscles in the beginning of this process as we work on this change in stroke. So I think it can be more tiring and more fatiguing in the early days. Plus you've got to put a bit of mental, like mental effort into it as well. And so the way that we swim right now without thinking, like we can sustain that at harder efforts for longer periods of time because we don't really need to think about it because we've got that ingrained. And so when we're making that change, we've got to use that mental energy. We probably have to use more, more of the muscles around the area that we're looking to change until it starts to become subconscious. And so I think it's, and there's also the element of like, we don't wanna lose our fitness gain. So we're afraid to actually take a little bit of a step back in terms of the times we're holding. So it's, there's a bit of that as well. And I feel that too, when I'm swimming like, geez, I hate, I don't like being three, four seconds slower than what I'm used to. And I wanna just kind of push the effort and not be too concerned about the change. So it's, in a way you just have to know what to expect. I think that's probably the first thing. It's like, if you know that that's probably gonna happen, then be okay with it. And think long-term, like let's say 12 months down the track. What's my main goal?

Is it that I wanna be, all right, I wanna be fit and fast for the next three months or 12 months down the track, do I wanna be five, 10 seconds quicker? So yeah, looking ahead, that patience and just knowing that the results will come if you're okay just taking a step back.

Yeah, it's such a great discussion and why we wanted to really go through this because there is this notion of the plateau is there and it's really hard. Whereas what we've already uncovered in the first 10 minutes is that there are so many little things that you could do to push you through. And I think that notion of not wanting to go slow, start with or slowing down to go faster later is so funny because you do know that and this is exactly what you're talking about, Dad. When you just default, you'll be that same swimmer. So you might as well try something different. And the only way you're not going to improve is to not try something different, not to try any one of the things we've already said. Whereas if you try something different, at least you have the opportunity to improve. And if it doesn't work, you'll just default to your normal swim stroke and you probably swim the same anyway. But the next part of the plateau I wanted to ask about is often what the pattern we see is, especially for beginner athletes, they go get their first bit of technique help and they get that first bit of improvement, whether that's five seconds per 100 or 15 seconds per 100, they really make that jump and they get stuck at that next wall because they've worked on some good things. They've got a nice kind of looking at catch and pull and stroke and things are on track. Is that next hurdle any more difficult? Because that's where people who are especially experienced swimmers, and I'm thinking about more experienced triathletes here who have been in the game for maybe years, they've made those progressions really well and now they're stuck at 142. Now they're stuck at 136. Is it a myth that that's a harder barrier to jump over or is it the same principles again? That's a good question.

I think that earlier gains can typically be the easier ones because some of the things we need to work on, you can see that much bigger gains as a result. Obviously, because it's, let's say if you're at 230, getting down to two minutes, it's 30 seconds, but it's like, there's some really easy wins you can do there, like better body position, head position, those sorts of things. It can certainly get a little bit more challenging because there's more nuance to it. Some of the changes are a little bit more refined, I think, so the improvements are, yeah, can be a little bit more challenging to make, but it doesn't mean you can't make them by any means. I think of, there's a guy who came in on the weekend for a follow-up filming. So he did a clinic in January or Feb, so a couple of months ago, and he dropped 15 seconds from his 100 pace, just like his long distance 100 pace. I think he was, I think it was around two minutes, he's down to 145 now. And he had just some basic, like some basic stuff where he was swimming, he was crossing over, he was swimming pretty flat, he was really rushing in the stroke. And so we just, we worked on more rotation, good head position, not crossing over, just some of those things. And he improved them really well because I was going through his video the other day. And so now what he's got to work on is that he's quite like, he's actually swimming a bit too wide. So he's actually over-corrected the change, which is like, all right, well, that's good. At least you're not doing the same thing. So we need to work on that. We need to get a little bit more streamlined.

We need to work on a little bit more rotation. And actually the one thing for him is his breath timing. His breath is very late. And so it's kind of throwing the rest of his stroke out. So if he doesn't correct his breath timing, he's unlikely to make many gains from there because that, to me, that's like the bottleneck that's holding him back right now. So I think the faster you get, typically there's like, there's one thing there that can be stopping other things from falling into place. So I think it's about really getting that dialed in and figuring out what that one bottleneck is. And then just being hyper-focused on that one thing for several weeks and then moving on to the next thing. So yes, it is harder to get faster the faster you get, but I think it just means you've got to be more focused on one certain thing. And it can feel like a challenge to know what that is sometimes, but if you do have someone who knows what to look for, look at it, it can make such a big difference, I think. So it doesn't have to be me, it can be anyone else, but I think, yeah, it's often just that one bottleneck. Realistically, because the bottleneck is individual to everyone, you can feel like, oh, what is my bottleneck? It can be so complicated, but if you narrowed it down, it's probably one out of what? Eight to 12 main things, where it's the catch, the pull, head position, like you just said, timing of breath, the position of the arms, tram tracks,

position of the legs. When you actually list them all, there's not that many it could be, so it's gonna be one of those ones. Yeah, that's exactly right. It's like, there's nothing that I feel like I haven't seen with people swimming, and you're right, it's just like, you could probably make a bullet point list of eight to 10 things, and it's going to be one of those things. But I think it's often the more basic things that are the bottleneck for a lot of people. It's just the basics of, all right, good head position, body position, and the right kick, the right amount of rotation, breath timing is a big one that's sometimes overlooked, and then obviously you've got the catch and pull and those sorts of things. But yeah, it can really boil down to just a couple of things, really, for most people. If, this is something I really want you to consider. If you feel that some of your athletes are plateauing that much, that you would stop them from training, because repeating the same incorrect stroke is nearly as bad as not training at all, because you're just reinforcing that the, you're not gonna create a change by continuing to repeat the same technique that you're trying to get out of. So would it be worth just stopping people from actually training as a swimmer and then just getting them to strip it all back and just do the drills and forget about the fitness, forget about the fitness gains that you should be doing in the swim session? And really, can you do it that far?

Or what I'm worried about is people getting new information, understanding what they should be doing, but still they do that in the drills properly, and then when they go to swim, they just go back to their own stroke again. They just keep, and they're only practicing the drills properly, but they're not actually, should you stop people, if you see that happening, would you be stopping them from doing the swim session and saying, look, we're just gonna have to do drills the whole time if you're not gonna change a stroke. Would that be how you would approach it? Or yeah, let me hear what you think about that process. That's a tough one, because it depends on what their goals are too, right? It's like, they might have a race in six weeks time or even 12 weeks time. It's like, well, we still need to have that level of fitness there. What's that person willing to put up with as well? A lot of people aren't willing to do just technique work for the next two months as well. And like I understand it as well, like you can sometimes just go to the pool because you wanna get a good workout and all of that. So it really depends on how, yeah, on what they've got coming up and what they're willing to do for it. But I think it's- If you had a, put it this way, Brett, if you had a person who said to you, I don't care about any races that are coming up. I wanna change my technique so that I can use this for the rest of my life. How would you structure that next eight weeks? Would you strip it right back like that? If you had the person who's mentally on board,

then they're willing to give up then the next six months of races to swim slower, to swim faster in a year's time. How would you structure their program?

Probably similar to what you said. I would go, like let's, we'll pick one thing to, well, maybe one or two things to kind of focus on for them and just firstly have a look at their stroke, see what they need to work on. We'd do some drills as part of their warmup, just focusing on one or two things. But then I would certainly give them some swimming to do and we might bump up the pace as we're going through it because I wouldn't want them to swim just slow. Like I want them to have to try and hold that stroke at different paces. But when they're really starting to fall apart, it's like, all right, let's stop there. Because you want them to get to this point of failure in a way it's like, okay, I can feel like things have fallen apart. So let's just take a break and go again. But that would probably be the approach and it would probably not be in a squad environment. So I think squad is great for fitness, social. I get a lot from swimming in a squad, but in terms of technique, that is often where things just go out the window, especially in squads where people are pretty competitive, you're pushing off a second behind someone, you're gonna have dirty water in front, you're gonna have this choppy water and you're just gonna be trying to keep the feet. So what I normally recommend there is just try and get one session a week at the pool by yourself with hopefully a little bit of space there and work in that calm water. Now, you're not gonna be racing in probably calm water if you're a triathlete, but if you can't swim well in calm water, you're probably not gonna be able to swim well in choppy water.

So just try and find some space and time where there's no pressure to be able to get there the feeling of what we're trying to do. So yeah, I would really just strip it back. Still, you still wanna put in not a lot of Ks, but you still need to do a bit each session. But yeah, it would just be very technically focused swimming. We'd be doing a bit with stroke count as well, just trying to maintain stroke count. So if you're going from say 40 strokes to 45 strokes a lap, something's going wrong there. So being aware of that as well and giving them tools to be able to know whether or not they're starting to fall apart like stroke count. Like it's a simple one, but it can work really well.

It's such an interesting discussion point around what I think is priorities. And we are big proponents of every single one of our sessions. We ask our athletes to spend 400 meters, four to eight minutes at least on drills. And we would do more, but the athletes often just either skip it because it's kind of boring or don't really focus on it as a priority. And I guess in terms of thinking about the really interesting point you made there with the value of swim squad versus the fact that it's really good for, not just social, but intensity, you know, being really pushed for pace. But the consequence of that is, your stroke can go out of the water and you're potentially thrashing around. And really finding in your week, what's the priority here of time spent on drills, time spent on your own VO2 sets, time spent on endurance, time spent at swim squad. If you were to think about, regardless of the athlete preferences, what would be ideal amount of time to spend on swim stroke and technique as a ratio? The last point I'll make on that is the bike analogy, for example. We know that, you know, straight threshold training would be the most valuable thing. If an athlete could just do that twice a week, you know, an FTP test or a 60 minute threshold session, it would be as valuable as you can get, but it's just so grueling, you know, and it's just not possible to repeat mentally week after week. So in a swimming sense, you know, where do you place the value in terms of time spent with drills? If the athlete didn't have a say in it, what would you be really allocating to?

It makes me think it was like, if you have kids, it's like, you'd love them to have like meat and three beds every night for dinner. And, you know, you can have this perfect diet, but then it's like, what are they willing to actually have? So, yeah, with a triathlete, let's say you're doing a 3K set, I would look to do probably a K of that as some warmup with technique within that 1K. And then the rest of it would be, I mean, some sort of swim set where you're trying to maintain that form. So I don't think you need to do just a full session of just technique. I really like to incorporate this stuff into your normal swimming because that way you really get to, like, you're not gonna hold perfect technique across a 2K swim. It's just not gonna happen. But you're going to start to notice, when does it fall apart? You're going to kind of have to challenge yourself to maintain good form, to maintain your speed. And I think it's good to work it out within the normal swimming. So sometimes, what I wouldn't suggest though is that I had a swim on the weekend. She said, I train, I do 3K every swim, and it's three by 1K. And I just like, I just do three by 1K. And that's fine if that's like just good for your mental health or your fitness, whatever it might be, but you're probably not improving much at all because the intervals are too long. You probably need that mental and physical reset

after 100, 200. So just give yourself that little bit of a rest in between to be able to just switch back on. And now that you've got some drills, all right, let's just focus on these things at the start. So it doesn't, yeah. And what would give someone the biggest bang for buck? We talked about FTP with the cycling. Depending on the person, I think one longer swim can be really good where it's like maybe some slightly longer intervals, they're just holding an aerobic pace, but then also like a threshold set as well where they are and one way they may be just building and progressing through the set. Like I love the sets that crescendo towards the end where it's like you start off comfortable, you're building, you're building, and then at the very end you're like, you're going for it. I think those sort of sessions are so good for the average triathlete, provided that it's not getting really messy and their times haven't dropped off. Like I want them to actually get faster because then they're actually holding good form. Like that's a sign. It's like if you, yeah, if you're going 130s and at the end of the session, you're going 140s, but you're trying to go 125s, well, something's gone wrong there. So you might need to start out easy in what you think. Is the theory behind the shorter intervals if we took the elite Olympic world champion swimmer and then all the way down to the beginner, you don't see a lot of the elite swimmers who train twice a day, who probably swim, I don't know, you'd tell me five or six K in the morning, five or six K at night, that might be more than that.

They don't do a lot of long, slow, three by one K reps for a reason. And that's sort of the message I'm trying to get across to the triathletes. Sure, we need to do open water swim where we are actually getting used to swimming. But if the analogy of a runner was, you need to do that long endurance run or a bike ride, you need to do that long endurance bike ride. So your body gets used to holding that aerobic capacity. But as a swimmer, we know that the swimmers don't do the same as a bike rider or a marathon runner. They don't do that long, slow swim. What's your theory on that as the world's evolved with swimmers over the journey? I know we're looking at people who are swimming Olympics of 50 meters, 100 meters, 200, 400, and of course there is a 1500. But the majority of the events are all around 100, 200 to 400. So is that the reason why we're not doing more long, slow training, or is it because it's not appropriate for swimming?

If you think of the, if you look at the long distance swimmers, like the marathon swimmers, I should say like the 10 K at the Olympics, they will do longer intervals. But again, very rarely are they doing like, yeah, one K intervals. It's like, and I think part of it is just boredom. That's like, if you don't get that reset after say 400, it's like, it's quite boring and it's easy to switch off and then your technique can start to fall apart a bit. I think part of it is that. And also just the monotony of it too, where if it is one K intervals and you're doing an eight K set, like it's just, it goes so much quicker if you break it down to shorter ones. There's different reasons why they do it. But I personally think a lot of it is just, you do start to switch off if you're going for too long. And when you start to switch off, technique falls apart. You might be fatiguing a bit quicker as well. So even that 10, 15 seconds at the wall after a 400, and you go into the next 400, that can make a world of difference to how you're swimming. So it's, yeah, to break it, break up a boring session, it's to get that rest and recovery. I see like sometimes with the marathon, marathon swimmers like the 20 K, 30 K, your English channel swimmers, if they have to do a lot, they will sometimes break it into like one K intervals

and 1500 intervals just to get through the miles sometimes in the case. But I think in terms of performance, yeah, it's normally shorter. So yeah, and now I think of myself, when I did one marathon swim, which was 20 K, and it was very hard doing one kilometer like intervals. I might do one K swim, one K pool boy, one K pool boy paddles, and maybe repeat that twice or three times. But my God, it just goes so slow.

Yeah, right, yeah. Even if it's the same distance, it just goes so slow. It takes a certain type of insanity to commit to a 20 K marathon swim. How was it?

For the most part, enjoyable, apart from getting really cold. I just don't deal with the cold. So English channel is not on my list. And yeah, I'd put on a bit more fat next time. But I had a friend who did the English channel and he put on 15 kilos for the swim and he started taking it off 10 years later. Yeah, that's put me off. Yeah, everything is context dependent though. And an example of where a three by one K is quite appropriate and we do with our athletes is for the Ironman athletes who, and especially a lot of beginner athletes who have never swum that kind of volume, they just didn't need to experience three by one K in the open water and get a feel for that. So that the 3.8 K in the Ironman is not a shock. And that can be broken down to six by 500, but that is appropriate there. And I think that's important for the athletes to realize is that, yeah, there's no blanket rules. That's why we're having this conversation. But I did really like your kind of ratio of, in a three K set, almost a K of drills and two K of a set. That's good to think about. But again, it is always context dependent on where the athletes at and what their race is. Absolutely. And that's the, like I had a swimmer on the weekend at a clinic. She said, oh, my last coach showed me to, was like, I thought I should sort of cross my legs and my kick and do something else. And I'm thinking like, well, that's not what I'd suggest for you right now. But like possibly at the time when he was coaching you, like that might've been appropriate. It's like, I'm not going to say, oh, he's wrong. It's like, he saw what he saw and he gave the advice he gave probably

for a good reason. So it's all context dependent. So yeah, if you're saying, oh, well, I heard you should never do more than 400 meters. It's like, well, yeah, you might need to. Yeah. Just on the, probably a topic that a lot of the listeners would like to hear your opinion on.

The athletes in the world pro tour level in triathlon, we've watched Lionel and Sam Long really struggle at the back of the fast swimmers of this generation who are incredibly good swimmers. They're just below Olympic level almost. And yet they can still ride and run. It's gone are the days where you were just a swimmer and you couldn't ride or run. Now a lot of these top triathletes can do it all there. But Lionel and Sam haven't grown up as squad swimmers. And I'm just using them as two examples. There are hundreds of other pros out there who are struggling just as much as these two guys. But because these guys are in the news a lot more than the others, it sort of means more to people to hear your opinion on this. At Effortless Swimming our mission is simple. Make swimming more enjoyable. Whether you're training for your next race, swimming for fitness or just love being in the water, we're here to help you swim faster, smoother and with more confidence. And one thing that can make or break a swim is your goggles. If you've ever struggled with foggy lenses mid-session you know how frustrating it can be. That's why we created the Effortless Swimming Hydro Clear Anti-Fog Goggles for long lasting crystal clear vision. I've been using them myself and the difference is night and day. I'm not the only one. Deborah swam 36 kilometers down the Derwent River and the entire time her vision stayed crystal clear. No fog, no frustration, just an uninterrupted swim. So what makes a Hydro Clear Goggles different? It's all in the technology.

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And they were 130s, 140s when they first started. And, you know, but the guys at the front are now swimming 105s in their sessions. And, you know, one to 105s and leaving on the 110 or leaving on the 120. So what is it that's, you know, with the swimming compared to as a runner or a rider, it takes so much longer to actually get to the level where you're wanting to get to. Yeah, it's, with the level of swimming now, especially in the PTO, it's like these guys, they are so quick. They are just, the level's really, really stepped up there. So I think that gap shows even more for that sort of level of racing. And absolutely it's harder. It's absolutely hard if you haven't grown up swimming. And look, you may not get to that same level of the very best triathlon swimmers in the world. Because as you said, they're like, you know, they're almost off, just off Olympic standard for swimming. Like they're just, they're swimming very, very well. But I think a trap that people sometimes get caught in is that they're not, they're worried about losing the fitness gains by taking that step back, that they never fully commit to the changes in their stroke. That they don't want to get to race season and not feel like they've done the same amount of work. Even though like aerobically, they're probably, they're just so fit anyway. Strength wise, they're probably pretty similar

in terms of their swim strength. So I think it can be a trap that they sometimes just get caught in. Feeling like they haven't done the work in the pool and just smash themselves in the pool. But swimming so technical that I think for the majority of them, they're just better off being willing to take that step back and getting beaten in training by their training buddy because they know that they're working on their technique. Because when you get in that competitive environment, a bit of ego flies around and you don't want to be that guy who's like, well, I'm five seconds behind when I used to beat this guy next to me. I know I'm better than that. So it's very easy to get caught in that trap. So for those high-level guys, I think that's a big factor. And I mean, even for your age group, we've got egos as well. We want to beat the person who's nipping at our heels. So yeah, it just takes a lot, I think, to be willing to take that step back. And it's a tough one. Because the thing is it's not guaranteed either. It's like, if you take that step back and you haven't really changed your stroke and you're not swimming faster, and maybe you have lost a little bit of fitness, like, well, that was a waste of time. So it is a little bit of a roll of the dice and you have to trust the process and you have to trust what you're working on. So yeah, it is a gamble at the end of the day. But I think for a lot of people, it's a gamble that is worth taking.

That's that mindset element that I think is the last piece of the puzzle to come into it. And that was the whole purpose of this topic is to not let any mental barriers, like you're saying, and that ego of potentially being unwilling to go slower to go faster and try something new can get in the way. But what is your advice around athletes? You just, it's a warranted fear to be like, I don't want to go backwards. I'm putting the time in. But I just feel like my stroke is stuck. What do you say to get past that mental barrier, not thinking from a technique or fitness or training perspective?

If you look at what the options are on either side, you go, all right, well, is the way that I'm swimming now, if I'm at 140, is it because I'm just, I'm not fit enough? Like, where can I get to if I just get a little bit fitter and a little bit stronger with my swimming? Like, what's the possibility there, realistically? And it might be like, it might be a 120 to someone. Maybe they're just not very swim fit and they're at 140. But I think realistically for a lot of people, it's not the fitness side of it that's actually holding them back. Like they know it's their technique. They've trained three times a week for the last five years in the pool. Like, it's not a fitness thing. It's a technique thing. So if you can objectively take a look at it as an outsider and determine what's actually holding you back and then just go after that thing, work on changing that thing that is holding you back and just know that it is a bit of a gamble to work on it. But like long-term, what's like, really, what's that gonna look like? Maybe I do get a little bit slower initially. Maybe I take this gamble and I don't race quite as well this season. That may happen. But yeah, at the end of the day, it's probably more technique that's holding you back if you have been at the same pace for year after year. And we see that in the data. And we really agree with what you've just said then because one of the things we're often looking at in swim training sessions is how, what's the gap between your threshold work

and your hard efforts compared to your endurance efforts. And so often an athlete is swimming 142s for their hundred sets. But then in their four by 400, they're swimming 144s. The cap is so small. And then you go, okay, well, you've got fitness. Your techniques can probably stop you from going faster. Whereas if the swimmer could swim 130 in their hundred sets, but when they go to an 800 meter effort, it goes to 150. You go, oh, there's probably a bit of a fitness gap there. You agree with that?

Yeah, that's a great way of identifying it, right? It's like, you can see that you can't get faster than a 142, but you can hold 144 all day. Well, that's a very clear sign. So that's a good way of analyzing it. And what do you guys do for testing their, well, testing their swim fitness or swim speed? What are your go-to tests?

It's a very similar principle to cycling and running. It depends so much on the race goal. And the same way that we do 20 minute FTP tests regularly on an indoor trainer, that doesn't help necessarily inform us of the most accurate data for an Ironman race or a half Ironman. But we do it regularly just to have that comparison. So we do regular pull tests, whether it's 1K swim at 1.5K or longer, depending on the athlete. But then they need to go test in the open water as well and show us what they can do in a wetsuit. And especially as you get closer to race day and that becomes difficult depending on where you live and the time of the season. But it's the same principle. It's translating the same way on a bike. You've got to get off the trainer and go out and do a 20 minute FTP test outside. You've got to go out and do a 60K time trial or a 90K time trial for your half Ironman. The same principle applies for your open water stuff. And it's not just a time trial. It's go do your two by 1K efforts or four by 500 in the open water and show us what you're holding there. And that informs us how well you're translating your pull stuff to your open water stuff. Yeah, that's such a big one with the pull versus open water. I know we've talked about that on previous podcasts, but that can be quite eye-opening for someone who's never tested in the open water. They're like, all right, I can hold 145 in the pool. And on race day, it might be 155. And they're like, well, what's going on here? Yeah, so it's good to see that before your race and then try and figure out whether it's like, well, was it bad conditions? Was it because I just don't swim as well in my wet suit? Like, am I shortening up?

Like, am I just going off course? Like, why am I slower? And just making sure you figure that out before race day. It's interesting, isn't it? We do have a lot of athletes who don't actually swim in the open water at all, except for race day. And they do come back with that. Oh, I'm so confused. Why am I swimming so much slower? And every example you just gave is probably contributing to that result. But one of the things I say to them is when you're in the squad all the time, you're swimming in moving water, and you're getting this inflated pace because you're drafting the whole time. And you need to do some swimming, as you said, in still water, where you're breaking the surface as the number one. The only person in the squad who's really swimming properly is the person at the front of the line who's getting to break the water. And so that's more a realistic pace, isn't it? That you can compare. You just can't compare if you're sitting fourth or fifth swimmer in that pace line and expect that that's the time you'll be able to do outside. And I have a lot of trouble convincing people. You understand what I'm saying. Do you have that same problem with a lot of your athletes? Yeah, so many people think they are faster than they really are because they're used to swimming behind other people. And you can save up to 30% of your effort when you are drafting, especially behind multiple people. So I can, yeah, people can think they're swimming so much faster than they really are. But it's like playing Gran Turismo on PlayStation

and then getting in a real car and thinking you can drive around a racetrack the same way. It's not the same. You've got to get out into the real world and just see where you're really at there. So I think certainly that's a big way that people convince themselves that they're swimming faster than what they are. So if they can do, say, a time trial without being on anyone's feet, like that, then you've got still water. You get a much better sense. And then the open water where conditions can change and it's choppy and it's not smooth, that can, and you don't have the turns to get the extra speed and sometimes a little bit of rest as well. That can change the pace that you're actually swimming too. So it's worth getting that data. We see so often on the bike that the trend is more beginner athletes are more efficient on the trainer because they've got this assistance in helping them pedal efficiently. And when they try and translate that power outdoors, they can hold better power indoors and outdoors. And we find with more experienced athletes, they're actually better at holding, they can put more power outdoors and indoors. They're better at pushing against the resistance of the road. And it's an interesting phenomenon that that would happen. And so it's funny with swimming as well. Athletes tend to show some variability. In summer, it's just slower in the pool. And once they check a wetsuit on and for them, they get some buoyancy. It really improves that stroke. And for others, they get out in the open water and they're so much worse than in the pool. So what are the common reasons or trends you see about those differences? That's interesting. Yeah, in some ways, in some ways it's actually,

there are some similarities there between say, beginner and more experienced cyclists. So for some swimmers, if they have really bad body position, the wetsuit lifts them up and they can be faster. But it makes me realize what you said there that with a lot of people who do go from the pool to the open water who are less experienced swimmers, they sometimes have a harder time holding their pool pace in the open water. And I think, but the more experienced swimmers are typically a little bit quicker than they would be in the pool. And this is with a wetsuit on as well. And I think one of the reasons for that is like they, they're obviously more proficient in being able to kind of hold. It's like pushing against the road or the resistance from that. It's like similar in the pools, in the open water. More experienced swimmers are just, they can really increase their stroke rate and they can get a better grip in the open water and they can maintain their line and their rhythm when they're siding. Like it's just, yeah, that experience counts for a lot. And I see the same thing. That's, so that's interesting. A bit of a realization there, so. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we have had a big discussion on open water swimming and you can listen to an old episode on that, but there is so many elements to it that are just different to the pool. Like the siding, you know, that can throw anyone's stroke completely out of whack. Just that one factor. Yeah, that's right. And you could be doing 2.2K for your 1.9K Ironman swim and that's six, could be six minutes

where you're going slower. So yeah, just that one factor alone is worth getting right. I love that you said that because it's probably our core message to triathletes when thinking about the races. You know, not swimming at 800 meters counts for a lot because if you run an extra hundred meters, it's potentially you're losing 20 seconds. But if you swim an extra, you could be losing two minutes in the swim. So it's something really to get right. Before we go on to, I kind of wanted to finish off with some, some quick rapid fire myth busting questions to see your opinion on, but anything on these last topics data on the plateau or these last topics that you wanted to ask before we go to this final segment? No, I've loved that conversation so far. I think the listener should get the gist now that, you know, it's just not about being fitter in the water. It's all about doing both, having good technique and practicing perfect swimming rather than practicing imperfect swimming will be the thing that you should be actually aiming for as an athlete when you're training. But yeah, I'm really keen to hear some of the, the myth busting questions that you've got lined up to see what Brenton's answers are to this. It's always good to hear his version of what he sees as the important things. And let's get this straight. You are one of the experts in the field around the world, and people should be really honing in on the answers to these questions. And as a preface to this question, these questions, you know, some of these might seem really obvious to some people, and some people will have never heard that answer before. So I think it's really important to, you know, people are coming from all different contexts and backgrounds of education with swimming. So yeah, we want to ask away.

So first one, you need a high stroke rate to swim fast, true or false? False. Add in quickly why.

It's a combination of stroke length and stroke rate. So you can have long strokes and a lower stroke rate if to swim fast as well. Yeah, more Ks or time in the pool always equals more speed. Yes or no? No. I think we've got exactly why, but it's… We would have just negated our whole podcast. Exactly.

Yeah.

This is funny as well. Drills are a waste of time for experienced swimmers and triathletes, and thinking with pros like this as well. Agree? No. Yeah. They're not, yeah, they're not a waste of time. And can sometimes be even more important because it can help them still work on the changes that they need to make. Kicking is almost irrelevant for triathletes. They should save their legs.

Oh yeah, almost, yes. It's like, if your legs aren't doing the right thing, it can really throw off the front end, but you don't need to be kicking hard at all to swim well, or you don't need to be kicking a lot. So it's like, if your legs are doing the wrong thing, it can completely stuff you up, but it only provides probably five to 10% of propulsion for most triathletes, if that. So yeah. Awesome answer. And I'm really realizing now, reading some of these, that I didn't expect the conversation to necessarily go the way it did, and we've answered some of these. Sorry, oh. Sorry, this is me. So wetsuits fix bad technique, reality or myth?

Myth, yeah. It can help improve some things, but it's not a magic wand by any stretch. It's too late to fix your swim if you start it as an adult. True or false? False, you can, yeah, obviously you can improve.

You touched on this before, but I'm interested to hear a slight explanation. You should hold the same technique at easy versus threshold efforts. Is that realistic?

So, not necessarily, but it can, depending on the person. So, yeah.

Yeah, go on, yeah. I was just gonna say, like if you look at someone like Katie Ledecky, if she's swimming easy, she's fairly even, she's fairly balanced. When she goes fast when she's racing, she has more of this sort of gallop stroke. And so some people, like they'll change their stroke that way, whereas other people are pretty consistent no matter the speed. So, it just depends on the person. I'm curious about, you know, potentially thinking about changing your stroke between pool and open water, would you, you know, especially when it's a little bit choppy, like, you know, you definitely can find that trying to get on top of the water and over it, and that's okay for trafficists to think about if they experience those conditions. Yeah, quite often people will be better off with a bit more of that uneven, or unevenly, uneven stroke or gallop stroke, where you're sort of quicker on one side, longer on the other side. That tends to lend itself pretty well to open water, especially with a wetsuit, just to help kind of get over the top of the water. And Dad, chime in with any thoughts you have in these. And I think you were laughing because anytime you, we do this, Dad hates these kinds of questions, because every answer is, a good coach would say, well, it depends, but we still want to get some thoughts on it anyway. I think you're doing a great job, Brendan, because we wouldn't have got past question three with me. A couple more to go. So there is a agreed preferred breath rate and breath first stroke rate. Is that true?

No, no, it depends on the person. It depends what your stroke rate is. Like if you've got a high stroke rate, you could breathe every three, you'd be getting the same amount of air as someone with a lower stroke rate, breathing every two. And just depends what you prefer. Last one. You should never swim with bad form. Is there ever a place for just getting it done, even if it's not pretty?

To a certain extent, yes, but whenever you are really pushing it, your technique will begin to fall apart, but you don't want to continue that for too long and really train that bad habit. But I think it is good to get to that point and be able to push yourself there as it does start to break down, because that's kind of a necessary requirement for people who are looking to compete at a certain level. Just on that question, I'd love to hear your answer, Brenton. The minute you feel like you've lost form, should you take a break in a training session, give yourself 20 or 30 seconds and then reset and go again? If it's within an interval, I think let's say you're doing like a 300 and you're starting to push it, you might start to fall apart halfway through it. Finish off that interval, try to get back on top of it. Try and just make that switch. Maybe you're back off the pace a bit. So you don't necessarily have to go, hang on, stop. All right, I can't continue any further. Try and just correct it the next stroke or the next lap. But if it's just like repeatedly just falling apart, you're having one of those sessions, then you might just want to change what you're doing.

Awesome. Yeah, great answers all around. That's a really good way to finish. Yeah, you did really well there to dispel some of them. And the purpose of asking some of those questions was really just to help any listener gain some clarity on some… It happens in every discipline. There's just some common things. And we, the cadence one, we get that in running all the time. Like I got told I need to have a 175 or 185 RPM with cadence and it's just not true rather. It's true in certain contexts, but yeah, we just want people to avoid falling into the trap of blatant rules. Because as with everything, it's really ever that black and white. Yeah, that's right. And as I said, it depends on the person and the context and what they're training for. Yeah, hopefully people have been able to get something from this podcast where even if it is a little bit of hope that they can get better. Because I see it all the time. I mean, you see it all the time with people that you're coaching. It's like they maybe done a six hour half Ironman and that might've got down to sub five. It's like you can absolutely get better at anything you put your time and your attention to and your focus on. And swimming is no different. Might be a little bit harder in terms of, rather than just putting the effort in, you've really got to put the focus on it as well on the technique, but it's absolutely possible to get quicker. I also really love that side of swimming that it is such a technique thing. I think that's really encouraging because you would look at some Olympic swimmers or the top level pro triathletes or even the top level age group athletes who are 120s and go,

geez, that gap seems so far away in terms of the training. But to know that it's really a technique thing means it's possible for anyone. Anyone can improve their technique, which is really encouraging. Yeah, that's exactly right. It's not just brute strength or height or anything like that. Like it's, yeah, it's almost like a secret, like a card that you've got in your back pocket for anyone and you can play it at any time, but just by working on it. Yeah. Anything last from you, Dad? No, I loved it. And look, I still remember when I used to take you guys to squad training when you were seven, eight, nine, 10, 11 years of age. And I'd see a lot of the big guys come into the pool after they'd been in the gym and they were huge, muscly guys and flexing their muscles. And you had seven, eight-year-old kids just flying past them in the water with no muscle development, no strength, but super efficient swimmers as an eight-year-old. They just used to make me laugh the whole time. These guys are just powering through the water with just brute force, with no technique. And I think that epitomizes the beginner swimmer. They just feel like they've got to brutalize the water to get through it. And it couldn't be further from the truth. It's such a technical sport that if you don't get that right, you are going to be so frustrated for a long time. So I've loved the fact that you're really pushing the technique and just throwing more time at things is great, but not always going to get the right results.

And I think you've really made that clear today, which I really appreciate. Well, thank you so much for having me on. I love telling you about this stuff and especially with you guys. And I appreciate you having so many people come to our clinics and me being able to work with them. It's something I really enjoy doing. And yeah, especially with adults, because they can come in thinking, well, look, I don't, can I actually get any better? I'm just frustrated with it. It's annoying. And I don't love the swim. But I think when you see improvement, that is when you begin to enjoy something and you can see how you can get better. So yeah, it's possible for everyone. So thank you for having me on. And your coaching is aptly named Effortless Swimming, which is exactly what we're talking about. It's supposed to be more effortless and not brute force. So that's a great way to finish. So Brenton, yeah, thank you very much for coming on again. We know that our listeners will get a lot of encouragement from it and we hope we can help anyone out there understand that you can break through a plateau and it is possible and give that hope. So thanks again. And thank you to everyone that was listening and we'll see you on the next episode.

Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming podcast. If you'd like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlessswimming.com.

And so I've had to really teach them about the fundamentals and the importance of listening to their body and specifically for dads is to learn how to, if you have this mentality where you're going to just hammer yourself to death in the gym, you're going to do 500 curls. You're going to bench press until you get hurt. You're going to swim until you're so crushed, your shoulder's killing you the next day to learn how to listen to your body better because you're a dad. And if you're not a dad, maybe you're a husband and you're taking care of aging parents or you have a spouse or whatever you got going on. You are needed by other people in this age of life. You are definitely needed. And if you're injured because you went to her in the gym because you saw some guy on YouTube do it and you're like, yeah, I'm going to do that too. You're not being as useful to your family as you could be. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here's your host, Brenton Ford.

Imagine a group of busy parents hesitating in front of a pair of 25 pound dumbbells. Unsure, even a little intimidated. Fast forward two years and those same people are confidently pressing 75 pounds, moving through life with more energy and far less pain. That's the kind of change Kate Galliott creates. Kate works with mums, dads and everyone in between to build lasting strength without burning out. In today's conversation, we'll talk about why tiny consistent steps matter more than all our efforts, how tuning into your body can help you avoid injuries and a simple morning habit, no fancy gear required, that can boost your energy and sleep. Whether you're a juggling family, work or a swim routine, I think you'll come away with at least one idea to try on your next workout. Let's get into today's podcast with Kate Galliott. Kate Galliott, welcome back to the podcast here on a couple of years back and we talked about becoming unbreakable, how people can listen to their bodies and make changes so that they are not getting injured consistently and just so that they can live a healthier, better life where they can do the things that they love. And typically the people who listen to this, the things that they love are swimming and potentially triathlon and just general health and fitness. So I wanted to get you back on today to talk about some topics similar to that, but basically how can we be living in a way that is not going to get us injured, that is going to help us be fit and healthy long term and how we can listen to our bodies. And I think you are the perfect person to speak to when it comes to those topics. That's nice to be here. Thank you.

Now, Kate, you've been working with a lot of people in your area at the moment. You're over in the US and two of the types of people that you've been working with that you mentioned before the call was moms who were afraid to go heavy with weights and then also a lot of parents or dads who are just used to going hard until they break and then they've got to take time off and then get back into it, but you're showing them a more sustainable way of approaching that. So which one would you like to sort of kick off with in terms of who you'd like to chat about first? The moms are, of course, I want to start with the moms. It's been wonderful. I've been building an in-person practice here in my town and the last several years have been great for that. Just with the people I've met and the type of work I get to do, which is kind of, as you summarize, they're really fun because it helps people who weren't previously, for example, like the moms who weren't lifting heavy, who weren't training, so to speak. They were training, but it was the little aerobics here, lighter weights there, this that or the other thing. It was intentional being active and working out, but not with a really specific intent with really structured programming. I hate to say it, and the audience here will already love this, but I hate to say it. We really have to be that mindful and intentional when we're training as we get older because there is no such thing as too old, but your body does need more directives as you get older because when you're not 20 and bouncing off the wall resilient where you could go out drinking at the bar on Friday night and then go hit the pool

or the gym on Saturday morning, too, your tissues do turn over more slowly. You need more direct inputs to tell those tissues how to respond, whether it's tendons, ligaments, muscles, and so on and so forth. Some of the moms I've gotten to work with are awesome because they were in that phase of like they're trying to do stuff, but it's not super structured for creating really distinct specific change. The changes they were going for was to be strong, but to get in better shape, kind of feel good in their body, but also to learn how to do this for a lifetime. And I think that's really important because I do think knowing how to train your body is important for a lifetime. I don't think you can get away with not learning that at some point. And thankfully a lot of the people listening here, of course, are very into like learning a lot of things about their body. So if anyone listening right now feels that way, don't ever lose that because I do think the smarter you are, the wiser you are, and the more you learn about what your body needs, the more capable you're going to be as things come up. You might be at the pool and you get a weird shoulder tweak. You might get something happening and the body starts to kind of go, oh, I need an adjustment here. And it's up to you to know what to do for that. So these moms were training, having a great time, but it wasn't super structured. And we started working together. And at first it was like starting with what we had, which wasn't even heavy weights. We didn't have any weight. We had what we had. We had like a 25 pound dumbbell, like a couple of things, you know, and slowly we started doing this work consistently of strength training with progressive overload, consistency in the exercises, not doing random stuff every

single week. And what happened was they started to really notice that the soreness was good soreness. It wasn't like, Oh, you just feel wrecked because you beat your body up doing a bunch of weird things. But also that they were getting stronger and then they were feeling more energized and their body was starting to change. And now we've gotten to a point where they've got all their home gym setups and they've got heavy weights and they're, they understand and appreciate and value the, the consistency that I was just speaking about that you have to have as you're training to take care of your body. And they've gone from the 25 pound weight was intimidating and heavy and like, Oh, I don't know what if I get hurt. I don't know. It's so heavy to they're hitting PRs. At the end of this last training cycle, we just finished a couple of these gals that they're, you know, inclined bench pressing like 75 pounds, which is quite a bit more than 25 pounds when we first started. So that's really cool to see. And I love that for women, especially because we get this, we're still, we're coming out of it. I think we're mostly out of it at this point, but we still, a lot of us my age and a little bit older got the messaging when we were younger, like don't get too bulky, don't have too heavy of weights, focus on aerobics, cardio is really important. But none of those actually create the change that we want. Most of us want as women, you know, is to have a high metabolism, have a shapely body that can perform well, that doesn't just look good or can do things, but it's both that we like. And so that's an important thing for these moms. And I just, I love that for them. And it's extrapolated out into so many other things. We went into, instead of just doing cardio for the sake of cardio,

to learning how to do zone training, training for a half marathon, having the best training program they ever had for their half marathon, no injuries and so on and so forth, how they eat, how they live their life, what they teach their families. It really has ripple effects. So any of the moms out there, get, get into it with strength training and proper training and all the activities and sports you like to do because it makes a huge difference. Now on the flip side, you mentioned the dads that I work with, I love the dads too, because they're same but different. They are saying that they've been busy. They've been kind of prioritizing other things just like the moms I've been there, like raising a family work and doing all the stuff. But where they're a little bit different is that the dads I've worked with are great because they, most of them lifted in high school and now they're in their 40s or 50s and what they know is what they learned in high school, which may not be great if you all remember being in the weight room in high school. And we've learned more, like exercise science has learned a lot more in 20-something years, right? So with the dads, it really has been more about getting them to appreciate the fundamentals a lot more rather than trying to kill themselves in the gym with 500 bicep curls because that's what they remember and that's what makes them feel that kind of energetic spunk like they had when they were in high school. And so I've had to really teach them about the fundamentals and the importance of listening to their body and specifically for dads is to learn how to, if you have this mentality where you're going to just hammer yourself to death in the gym, you're going to do 500 curls. You're going to bench press until you get hurt. You're going to swim until you're so crushed, your shoulders killing you

the next day to learn how to listen to your body better because you're a dad. And if you're not a dad, maybe you're a husband and you're taking care of aging parents or you have a spouse or whatever you got going on, you are needed by other people in this age of life. You are definitely needed. And if you're injured because you went too hard in the gym, because you saw some guy on YouTube do it and you're like, yeah, I'm going to do that too. You're not being as useful to your family as you could be. And so our efforts with dads is to say, I love that you have the passion already, but we got to hone in the fundamentals a little bit because we need you to train consistently and still be able to do your life where it actually matters that you show up every day like being a dad, taking care of the house, taking care of aging parents, taking care of your spouse, so on and so forth. So in the same way, they come from similar but slightly different places, but the success we've been seeing has been phenomenal and I'm so grateful to be a part of it. I mean, it's all my clients, it's all them, they put the hard work in. Let's get into some specifics in terms of how do you approach what exercises people should do, how often they should be training and what sort of reps, how many sets. Do you have a general approach that you would take with most clients? Yeah, borrowing some unique circumstances. I think everybody does well with basic programming, at least for a while. I guess that's the funny thing, isn't it? You've probably seen this with coaching. All the hot, flashy, sexy stuff shows up every couple of years and everyone's like, we're doing this wild, intense, crazy, really specific training program and at the end of the day,

and then it fades off. At the end of the day, what comes back is like, you've got to put the time in, you've got to put the reps in, you've got to do it consistently, you've got to do progressive overload, whatever that means and the activity that you're doing and beyond that, we're kind of just playing in the weeds and if that makes you feel joy about your training to play in the weeds, have at it, have a good time. We can do weird crazy stuff, but at the end of the day, everyone does well to start with full body training three times a week. If they're not swimming, if they are swimming, they're probably going to only be able to fit twice a week in. If you're more experienced taking that full body routine, turning it into a split routine where we're doing upper or lower on different days and then again, everybody does well in that six to eight rep range, especially for endurance athletes, I will say you already are putting in so much volume that I do, I do with endurance athletes try to shy away from anything higher than eight reps on leg exercises, back exercises, chest exercises, but if we're doing arms, that might be a little bit different, but because you're putting your volume in, you do want to think about your tendons a little bit and make sure you're not overtraining and creating tendonitis, but here's the funny thing. Man, I love the people who are doing research and exercise science right now because they're looking at all this stuff going, okay, all the bros have argued about rep schemes for decades. So who's actually right? Let's actually figure it out. Who's right? And the funny thing is that always comes back is they were all right. 15 reps was great. 8 to 12 reps, that was great. 4 to 5 reps, also great. Like every rep range worked for creating gains and change provided you were working up to within

one or two of your maximum. So when folks are thinking about strength training in the gym, sport training, whether it's on the bike or in the pool or running, figuring out what that represents for you. So in the gym, it's easy. Could you have done one or two more reps? Okay, then you did enough. If you've could have done five more reps, you probably should have kept going or made the weight heavier. But in the pool, you have to think about that a little differently, same with the bike and running. Maybe the goal is to say, could I have swum that just a little bit faster, or could I have bike that for just a little bit longer? Okay, well, that probably means you're working at that range of your body is going to create the adaptations that you want. So I don't want people to get tied up around the axle between 15, 12, 8, 6, 3, however many reps they should do. But I do think if you're working at a weight that gets you to within one or two of your last good reps that you could do reps in reserve is what we call them. You're going to see success with your program. So that's how I kind of approach that. Yeah, that's the progressive overload that you talk about. We've got to get to that point where we do break down and break the muscles down so that we can build and then continue. And it's one thing that I've found having been consistent for a little over two years now with my gym routine has been that I went too hard at the start and injured myself a bit with some of the exercises that I was doing, brought it back, and then I just built it up much slower than what I did at the start. And now, being two years into it, I feel like I am very hard to break with having built up this strength

through these different exercises. Now, obviously, I still do sometimes get injured if I'm surfing and I maybe wipe out or have to duck dive and it's with a big wave and a big board and I might jolt my shoulder. This episode is brought to you by Pillar Performance. Our new sponsors Pillar are a sports micronutrition company. And the easiest way to describe it is that while hydration and carbohydrates products will take you through to touch the wall as fast as possible, Pillar's mission is to get swimmers to the starting blocks in the best condition over and over again. I recently started taking Pillar triple magnesium after a friend had recommended it and it's been a game changer for my sleep and recovery. I take one scoop 30 minutes before bed each night in the same way that you might start your day with a coffee. I finish it up with a magnesium and recover better for tomorrow's session in the pool. Pillar Performance is used by some of the biggest names in swimming and triathlon, including Zack Stubble to cook, Jan Frodeno, Ben Canute, Ash Gentle, Taylor Nib amongst the host of other well-known swimmers and triathletes. Where Pillar differs from other micronutrition you may have taken before is both the quality of the types of magnesium and the tangible results that I see on my garment each morning. If you'd like to try Pillar today, head to pillarperformance.shop and enter code effortless for 15% off. That's effortless for 15% off all first-time purchases or for anyone in North America. Enter the same code at thefeed.com.

So I still get injured occasionally but it is much less often and I feel much more unbreakable having taken this very steady approach to increasing the weights. And you hit the nail on the head there like I think when across the board whether it's health, wellness, performance, sport, whatever you're doing, the vast majority of us need to take our medicine when it comes to patience with the process. Like we are ready for the results right now. We're like I've decided I'm going to get fit. Let's go right now. I've decided I'm going to do swimming so I better be good at it right away. I've decided I'm going to do a half marathon so I better have the fastest half marathon ever. That's not how body works. And you will get injured when you do that. Everyone does that. Everyone does that at least once which I think maybe that's a sign that it's like a learning thing you have to go through. I've done that too. But if we can say I'm in this for the rest of my life and the progress will happen provided I continue to push for that one to two reps left in reserve, which means your weight will have to go up over time or your reps in the pool will have to go up over time. If you do that consistently, the change does come and actually comes much faster than the person who does go balls to the wall right out of the gate, then they get hurt, they're off for three weeks, then they got to come back again, then they get hurt again. The steady, the tortoise wins the race, right? Tortoise on the hair.

Yeah, that's especially in the gym I think for anyone who has either not been in there much before or is just getting back into it. That steady approach where you think oh I'm actually going, I'm progressing too slow with this. I feel like that's the better option even with swimming as well. It's like don't expect to be, make a change to your stroke and don't expect to be faster straight away. If you have got the patience to stick at that change for two months or three months, you will come out the other end and go oh wow okay I'll look back three months and geez I've improved, but yeah it's just it is not as instant as you. It's not as flashy and exciting but I say that to my moms all the time like the amount of stuff they've learned in the last going on two years that we've been working together they're amazed at how many things have changed and I said to them just recently I said what would you have said if I on day one said here's all the things you need to change because we've done everything from like dietary nutrition changes we've done lifestyle changes we've done how they train we've learned about we've done all these things and they said it right out of the gate they're like we would have thought you were crazy like it would have been impossible to do all of those changes and I said yes exactly because everybody wants give me the whole thing give me all the answers right now I'm ready for the answers but in reality you're not you're actually not going to be able to take all of the answers on and do all of the things and go hard on everything right away you have to accept that you're going to go you know what my technique is not great yet in the pool but I'm working on it and I'm still not good at that drill that he keeps showing us to do but I'm going to keep working on it

and one day this is going to get better because that's what bodies do they respond they get better if you keep teaching them what to do what you mentioned there it's it's keeping it keeping it simple and just adding one thing at a time over the course of many months and many years and I mean I look at yeah like I have and how many sessions I've done at the gym I think it's probably it's probably getting close to 250 three maybe 300 sessions since I started at this at this keys gym and same for my wife she started Pilates when we moved down to the coast and I think she's nearly up to 400 sessions and just like the way that it's kind of come on very slowly where like she just feels so much better and it probably took a good 12 months to really notice the difference there so it's uh yeah looking back you see a big change but at the time it's it is a very slow slow and steady approach hundred percent is there a certain client that stands out to you who is has made a big change and has really changed that their life because of the stuff that you've been doing yeah 100% I have this one client that um this individual had

been on this path maybe you all can relate where when they found getting in shape the first time around something about how their brain works took them towards that place of being a zealot about it like kind of getting annoying and obsessive with about it like they're doing all the things they were paying attention to all these like in the weeds kind of details annoying their family members with how they're cooking differently and doing all these different things like really just like embracing it but to the degree where you're like oh geez okay take a break here but they thought that was what they needed to do at that point which I again I do get all these things I'm like oh I see bits of myself and that for sure from my experience in my history but they that's where they were at and they were constantly trying new supplements trying new routines trying new treatments trying trying everything that they would see online they would try it and then they sustained a couple of injuries and that's how they found their way to my path and so we started working together and at first of course we're like working on the rehab after the injury has healed kind of thing we're like okay we're building you back up and doing all that but of course through talking you know I'm picking up information about like you're taking like 50 supplements and you're eating a really like abundantly strict diet to the point where it's causing some detriment to your performance your health your well-being oh you're being really rigid about a lot of things okay so I'm gathering all this stuff so then I just started you know kind of talking about well hey you want to talk about some food today hey let's talk a little bit about this hey because of the training we're doing I'd like you to focus on some things and I just started throwing out little invitations

for this individual to try new things that I knew would take them the direction away from where they were going but I was like let's just see what they'll do because it's not totally up to that person to decide if they want to do something they're happy with it good I'm just here to invite them to do something different if they would like to and so over the span of two plus years this individual went from being like broken in their body despite doing all this rigid specific stuff they were still were very fragile in their body and very they had to follow the rules otherwise everything went haywire if they even ate one wrong thing their whole body kind of would react right we went from that to they are now same thing they are lifting so hard in the gym they are swimming that's one of my clients who started swimming they're walking regularly which was a very painful thing for them to do before they've reintroduced so many foods into their diet they're eating way more than they were before and have a thriving metabolism because of it we've gotten that supplement list down to like almost nothing which is a miracle because you know how it is like you see stuff online and an influencer will be like I take such and such supplement and they're compelling and so then you're like oh maybe I should buy that maybe I should buy that so we got all that pared down and they have such freedom with what they're doing they're still very passionate about learning so many things about how the body works they constantly ask me questions which I love but they don't feel like stuck if the family is going out for a restaurant meal or dessert or something like that they don't feel frustrated by the fact that they their body can't respond even when they eat a certain food they are just living freely and

training super hard and same thing if I had told that person in a year or two time I'd like to see you eating tons of food more than you are training really hard in the gym doing a bunch of sports you never would even think you'd be doing they would have been like you're insane I'm never talking to you again so it's been really incredible and we're still working together today and continuing we've knocked off all the goals that we were trying to achieve and now we're going okay the next thing let's build the performance now let's get you training at even higher levels and what else do you want to take on that's why they tried swimming because I was like would you like to try swimming sometime it's it's pretty fun and it's it's like you could be in the pool you can train hard you can do some cardio but it could be kind of unloading on your joints so that we're not running and walking too much you know and re-enduring anything or do anything like that I'm like okay I'll get that a try and then when I said and you know you do build muscle when you're in the pool you start to get that swimmer physique and they were like oh I'm into that perfect perfect so here we go now we're swimming and it's awesome I have good it like you said you see yourself in that client in some areas I am exactly the same probably 10 years ago I was into keto diet for probably two months or three months and then fell off that train and I've tried a million different diets and exercise routines and what I do get from that is like I tend to go very hard and almost colt colt like in some ways with the with the approach step out of it go back to where I was but I may I've added that knowledge of all right well this was one of the benefits from that diet or that way of approaching things and I can use that

going forwards and so now I'm a little bit more aware of it where I feel like if I come across a new approach whatever it is I'll just take the one or two key things from it and include that into my routine or maybe replace something I was doing and then just keep going on my way and kind of collect these different ideas or exercises and and just kind of yeah make these minor changes in the direction that you're going to hopefully end up in a in a better spot and now I'm more aware of it I don't go quite as hard on some of these new things that I come across I don't know if you're the same that was my story too and you I think I really do think some of these things nobody can teach you like someone listening today will be like yeah right okay whatever that's good for them but I'm gonna do it my way and then maybe in a year or two they'll be like ah yes I also was zealous and I did not need to be but that's how you that's how you do find that middle ground I do think a lot of people go want really hard one way really hard the other way and then that's how they find the middle ground and you get this wisdom from learning to listen to your body to try things to actually like with the supplements for example I've used to buy a million supplements so like oh I need this and I need that and now I'm like okay I'd like to try that supplement I'm gonna try it on its own for a month and just see what happens that a novel idea my gosh friend do you know how many times I tried supplements and didn't do that I was taking like five things at once and I really couldn't even tell what was working whereas now I'm like yeah like with that soon for me or no I do not like what that is doing for me okay I'm not going to continue that supplement you know it's taking really that personalized approach

take the knowledge learn from other people but then personalize it to yourself yeah yeah that's I'm exactly the same when I went keto for two or three months I made this dessert that was what was it it was it was either like coconuts I don't know if it was coconut milk but it was like it was almost like a frozen cheesecake type thing with a lot of no cashews so it was ground up cashews and some berries and stuff and and coconut oil and it was it was about this big it was would have had hundreds of grams of fat in it and I ate it in two nights and like because I'm like well I'm pretty I'm pretty hungry here and it's this is kind of sweet so it tastes good and like I finished it in two days I'm like what am I doing to myself like this is not healthy to have this much you know this much fat and all that at night so you know you can look back and laugh but I've thankfully changed most of most of my approach now because I think I'm a bit smarter with it yeah and just taking that sane approach is my really it's truly my favorite thing to do is to teach people like a sane fundamental approach to like how we can just take care of our bodies for a lifetime not be over the deep end like doing whatever diet and doing whatever training program because those things never last those are always a flash on the pan you might learn some things and that's what you should carry with you for the rest of your life but that like intensity can't exist for an entire life or if it does you're going to a hundred percent break down from that like I've definitely met some women who have done the super intense super hard never listening to their body just go go go do all the things try all the things

and their bodies are now rebelling like they are experiencing the effects of driving on adrenaline and cortisol for way too long over training for way too long under eating for way too long not listening to their body which is screaming at them like hey this thing in my back it's it's like not nothing you should do something about this pain back here you should do you know that they're dealing with it now and and some of us have to go through that you know we do have to hit the point of going and this really isn't working before we go okay let me try something different you know and that's okay if that's what happens well and one of the things you mentioned prior to the call also was there's a big there's a big element of people getting into fitness with like a 30 day fat loss challenge and things like that and I mean I think part of that is it's almost like a sales tool to get someone into a gym or with the trainers like hey you know you might feel you might look overweight and you know we can promise that you'll lose 10 kilos in the next 30 days so it's a bit of a sales tool it's obviously not a sustainable approach and it's probably not the right approach for people so what's your take on that yeah I was really tired of seeing those approaches and you know I owned a gym as well in Illinois so I get the idea I totally get it I can see where a gym owner might be coming from with that or where a coach is coming from with that but I'm so sick of those things because I'm like I said I'm like two plus seconds into this I've been around all enough to be like okay those things never last they're flash in the pan they don't teach you good long-term habits because whatever you did to lose however much weight in 30 days you're not going to be able to keep that up for the rest of your life and I know

some people think they will but you won't you will not you actually have to learn how to create a good metabolism exercise in a way that doesn't also rely on like willpower and hating yourself into exercising because I think that happens a lot with these challenges too people just turn into a competition against themselves which is not who you should be competing against you should be on the same team as your body and learning how to listen and work with your body with things you can do every day for the rest of your life so I got sick of it and was like you know

I would make a great challenge it would be like the anti-challenge challenge it would be great because what we're going to do is spend six weeks total but 30 days for a challenge but we're going to challenge ourselves to do really basic action items every day for 30 days because that's how you actually build change you actually build change by saying every day for 30 days I'm going to see the sunrise every day for 30 days I'm going to eat a certain food or a certain meal quantity or focus on having better circadian habits in my home every day for 30 days I'm going to do that and so that's what I did I built the transform challenge for my clients at first I just said hey guys I want you all to do this let's see what happens and the results were fantastic like it gave people that 30 day mentality which I think is very doable longer than that starts to get challenging but that 30 days wasn't like go crush yourself in the gym every day for 30 days and do such a restrictive diet that you can't wait to eat dessert as soon as you finish your challenge it was like do things that are going to stretch you a little bit they're going to like one of our action items in the transform challenge is see the sunrise every day just catch it for 30 seconds it's all you got to do and there's some specific rules around that but just go do that that's not hard fundamentally but it is if you live a modern life where you haven't been doing that where you haven't considered your circadian health at all for example and you're doing all this other stuff and you're on your phone first thing in the morning or on your computer or whatever that is hard and so my tagline for my clients whenever we do transform now I have a sign other people up for it now is we're

trying to make the bar so low we can step over it because when you do that that's how you create real change bj fog is a permanent habit researchers research are long before James Claire they kind of tag team buff each other um that's what he always said make the bar so low you can step over it is that exciting no but is that what you and I talked about like 20 minutes ago hey real quick in case you didn't know we work from is all around the world to help them become faster and more confident in the races and the training that they're doing so if you've got access to an underwater camera or a phone even recorded above the water then I work with people on a weekly basis where they send in their videos and I give them feedback and advice on what to focus on and how to make changes to their stroke so that they start moving up in the lanes in squad or getting better results and not having to work so hard so check that out at our effortless mean coaching membership which you'll find on our website at effortless mean dot com all right back to the podcast where we're like we just need to do the consistent thing showing up every day it might take you 12 months to see noticeable change but wouldn't that be better than having fits and stops and all that kind of stuff so that's what we do in transform we focus on four pillars of health food of course that's a big one we want to make sure we're eating all the right foods that support a lowering inflammation building a faster metabolism which is possible as you age I promise you that it is movement so of course exercise movement mobility things like that environment so creating both an internal and an external environment around us that supports metabolism and lowering inflammation and then circadian health as I mentioned light that's the fourth pillar that we work on

and those four all work together very synergistically to create a healthy body because you can't separate them out one by one that's the other challenge with challenge with challenges is if you do like a diet challenge for 30 days but you don't account for the fact that the type of light you're being exposed to in the morning and in the evening and even throughout the day is going to change how your body responds to eating carbs for example it will change how your metabolism works it will change these things that are influencing your food that you wouldn't even think about if all you're thinking about is doing a 30 day diet for food you know so that's what we do in the transform challenge and it's so much fun to teach this program because I feel like I'm getting to introduce folks to things they might have heard of before or know a little bit about or maybe know nothing about and going look at all this awesomeness about how your body works this is how your body works naturally we just have to get it back into harmony by doing some really simple things and that's your only job for the next 30 days is to do these simple but not easy to do for 30 days things and then let's see what happens after that and the goal is to then integrate it into your real life because that's the other thing I hate about challenges okay great you're done with the challenge now what like now how are you supposed to eat and move and live so in in transform we have an integration week where we say okay you finished the challenge congratulations now we're going to see how you uniquely are going to put this into your life how are you going to take what you learned about your body through those four pillars and apply it into your everyday life so it is doable for the rest of your life

and I now have like repeat people repeat people coming back because they love the accountability and the seasonal nature of the program and it's just it's just really fun not to be a salesperson for my program I just love it it's like one of the funnest things I get to do right now is teach that program very similar to with our clinics and say eight week course that we've got at go through the course we go through the clinic and this is you know this is wonderful with you've learned a lot hopefully but now what you know how how are you actually going to incorporate the stuff that we've gone through into your normal routine and like the easy thing for most swimmers or triathletes to do is incorporate something like six or eight fifties of drills and skills as part of their warm-up every session you're already going through your warm-up so we can probably just replace some of your existing warm-up with a few of the drills that's specific to what you need to work on and that's it you know like that just keep it as simple as that and that way when you train for the next six months you will have worked on something that's specific to what you need to do to get better you've you've been able to do some drills so you can hopefully set yourself up well for the rest of the session and like and that's it like it's it's simple it's achievable and we're not necessarily adding new things into what they have to do like quite often if we want to change a habit see the replacing an old habit or we're trying to strip back and we're trying to like the client you're talking about 30 50 supplements whatever it was and all these different exercises and things that they're looking at but if we just cut if we strip things back to the bare essentials then it's actually a lot easier

to maintain it and so I think that's such a such a good approach you know you don't you don't need all this stuff like just get get back to basics get back to fundamentals and you'll find that that accounts for 80 or more of what you need to be doing absolutely I couldn't agree more

and in terms of the circadian rhythm I want to dig into that a little bit more yeah can you talk about how what is it what is it that most people wouldn't know about circadian rhythm and the types of light that you think people should know about it because I'm I guess a little bit familiar with it but I probably don't know much about it yeah yeah for sure and I love that it's making it through to the mainstream now which is really great um so most people listening probably the least have heard of it you know if not if maybe they know a lot maybe they don't know much at all I have just heard the word or something like that but your circadian rhythm is the kind of the master rhythm that regulates everything in your body literally everything is being influenced to some degree by your circadian rhythm and that's essentially like you have a master clock in your brain and it goes out to peripheral clocks all in yourselves and that clock is being set by some really important things called psychibers which are essentially like specific inputs that when your body senses those signals it goes up we know what time of day it is and when the body knows what time of day it is not not on your watch just like on the wake sleep cycle it can work more efficiently so when we think about circadian health we want to first think about light for sure because our bodies are directly influenced by the kind of light we're receiving so if we're receiving natural sunlight shortly after we wake up that signals a hormone cascade to get going all throughout the day if we're receiving you know a blaring alarm clock with a really bright light and bright bathroom lights and none of it's natural and it's all very kind of blue lit heavy our body's going to get a

different signal where it's going to drive course all a little bit higher and have a little bit of a different rhythm as we start the day the thing is our digestion our training performance our ability to recover our immune system our hormonal health our heart our mind all of it is set on a circadian clock there's all influence with that so when we don't get things like our light environment and there's other things that also go into that but I'll just stick with light for now when we don't get that right when we don't consistently signal to our body hey it's this time of day because this is a kind of light you're getting the clocks kind of get a little discombobulated it would be a bit like if we took every clock in your house and set it to a slightly different time and then said okay I need you to get out the door by 745 in the morning but you don't actually know which clock is right and you don't know which one's running fast and which one's running slow and that will negatively impact your ability to get ready on time because you're like should I rush do I not need to rush do I have time to do my hair I don't even know our bodies are kind of dealing with the same thing and so anytime we see some circadian dysregulation we're going to see some sort of slightly less functional slightly less optimal situation occur and so for folks when they're first starting to learn about this the first thing you'll hear about is light but after that is meal timing so the simplest thing people could do listening to this podcast to start addressing their circadian health would be two things number one make natural sunlight the first thing you see in the morning which takes a little bit of intentionality because you might have to not open your phone right away or pull the computer up or turn the tv on you might need to go wait a minute the first place I need to go is to the

window pull the window open okay just gaze outside look at the light you don't have to stare at the sun don't stare at the sun we don't want you going quick just gaze outside get some natural sunlight okay now you can get started with your day and then eat breakfast within one hour waking up meal timing is the second most important signal to your circadian rhythm and when you do that consistently it signals two things like your body about how it should produce insulin throughout the day to manage your body's blood sugar response well how you should digest foods um how much digestive enzymes you should have available to be able to do that how your liver should work these are all going to be influenced by your circadian rhythm so if you could go get natural light first thing when you wake up and then eat breakfast within one hour of waking up you would do more for helping your circadian rhythm get on point then then I could even offer to you and beyond that there are other things you could certainly work on and they're important to get to over time but those are the most important signals to start your day on the right foot to make your whole body work well yeah it's uh I know when days where I have got the uh when I've done that not open the phone gotten that gotten that early sunlight eaten within an hour typically the day kicks off pretty well from there so it's uh yeah those those basic things go a really long way they really do and that's the thing with circadian stuff like it's right there for you and there's a there's a ton of science you can get online and look up circadian health and you'll be down rabbit holes with people talking about things that you're like what are you talking about it's so scientific now it's amazing because it's just coming to the masses but again it's simple can you live more closely to

your natural rhythm and what's it going to take to make that happen consistently hmm well um Kate I've really appreciated you being on the podcast uh for those that are listening what's the best place to get in touch with you if they're interested in perhaps the transform program uh or any of the other stuff that you've spoken about today yeah folks can find me at fit for reallife.com that's my home on the web and that's where you'll find transform um all my about me stuff anything you want to find it'll be at fitforreallife.com fantastic and what have you got coming up I know you're going into summer now so probably a pretty good time for for you and your clients it's much easier when the sun's up earlier and it's a little bit warmer so but what are you looking forward to in the next couple of months oh man well the training is not slowing down we've got transform going on right now so folks are really just diving into that whole realm and then all my clients are doing really well in the one-on-one sessions as well but honestly for me it's garden season so in between and outside of and around work and all the things it's time to be out in the garden growing my vegetables and taking care of the fruit trees and trying to bring in as much food as I can for the year you know that like whether people can have a big garden or just a little patio garden I think that's another really cool thing you can do that is totally not fitness-y it's not in the pool it's not gonna I mean maybe it'll make you better swimmer because it'll make you more like in touch you know but but growing something yourself because that does start to bring you closer to your natural world that you're living in your natural environment thinking about things like you know it's a little different down where you live but up here tomatoes don't grow except in summer

up here so then you see those tomatoes in the grocery store in January and you're like those where did those come from those can't possibly taste good it gets you in touch with like what food is around at certain times of year and what is nature telling me my body needs because it is your nature is always telling you what you need at different times of year so I'll be out gardening a lot this summer and enjoying all that outdoor soil time and encourage anyone listening to this that is totally not a fitness-y tip to give but there you go that's my tip throw a little garden if you haven't already fantastic look my grandparents they when they bought it when they built their house probably 20 years ago now they bought the block next to it so they got two blocks the second block is all garden that's fruit trees a greenhouse they uh they really went to town with it and um yeah they're always giving away vegetables and fruit and we come back with buckets of them so it's uh yeah it's really cool and it tastes tastes good too tastes a lot better oh yeah for sure for sure that's awesome I love that so there you go everybody plant a garden thanks Kate enjoy your uh your summer and appreciate you being on the podcast you too have a good one I'll talk to you soon thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast if you'd like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com

but when you when you're working harder trying to race or go faster particularly at the beginning of the stroke as the ore goes in you have to it's like lifting a weight in the gym you know you have to brace really hard so and also breathing is very is very linked to posture in rowing so in the we call it the recovery phase when you're coming forwards to begin you know to begin a stroke it's important to sit sit in the right way sit tall so the lungs can fill properly and you you're in a you're in by mechanical good position with posture and length at the at the beginning of the stroke so breathing is definitely part of that as you inhale it helps posture welcome to the effortless swimming podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water become a better swimmer and live a better life here's your host Brenton Ford

welcome to the effortless swimming podcast my guest today is Robin Williams a former Cambridge rower and coach of multiple Olympic gold medal crews robin was recommended to me by a fellow listener of the podcast so i thought it'd be great to get him on and this episode kicks off with a promise we're going to uncover lessons from 50 years at the sharp end of elite rowing and translate them straight into your stroke robin has spent decades perfecting the art of turning raw power into smooth relaxed efficiency and will dive into his athlete centered coaching philosophy how to ask for feedback without a fence and how over speed hacks and over speed hacks you can use in the pool with no speedboat required a couple of moments you might listen out for the spoonful of sugar moment it's a simple analogy that helped an Olympic champion go from clumsy pools to effortless power he also talks about a moment that happened at in Lucerne in 2012 where one of his crews gained an extra half second in the dreaded third 500 of a two kilometer race to search from silver to gold and don't miss the brutal feedback that once branded him a gerbil on steroids plus the three no talent required habits every coach and swimmer can implement today to supercharge their culture let's get into today's episode so robin thank you very much for joining me on the podcast I'd like to give those that are listening a bit of a background on how this came to be so we had a listen at the podcast Mike Taylor sent me an email and said

I love the conversation you had with Nick Winkleman and and Bobby McGee and someone who I think would be great to get on is Robin Williams so yourself who has a lot of experience in rowing so I'd love to chat today about maybe some similarities or some things that we can garner from rowing that can translate across to swimming and also the aspects of coaching how coaches coach how they can be more effective because I think there's a lot to be had and a lot to be improved when it comes to how coaches get their message across so welcome to the podcast robin thanks for joining me thanks very much Brenton good good to be here so in in terms of let's say coaching philosophies and the way that you've developed your way of coaching over the years how would you say that your what your approach and your style is like perhaps compared to what it was in the early days of your coaching I think it's a it's a constant evolution is one thing I think you know we were saying recently that as you as you get better and better as a coach of course you pick stuff up but it's difficult to get feedback people tend to get better education or more courses that sort of stuff and they become more qualified if you like but that doesn't necessarily mean you become a natural better coach so I've become really interested in that I always say to other coaches when I'm with them or mentoring them I say you know you your job every day is to tell these athletes how to swim better or row better or be better who helps you who tells us where we're where we're going a bit astray or whether we're doing things really well so in recent years that's what I've been doing

and I found it very rewarding I mean I've had a quite a long career in rowing I've been at it for over 50 years now believe it or not as a rower and then as a as a coach so it feels like it's it's brought things around to a full circle in a way and putting something back into I think coaches are so important because they steer the whole process athlete-centered but coaches are I think key to helping them get to where they're trying to get to in the shortest amount of time if that makes sense yeah absolutely what are some of those actually how would how should a coach go about asking for feedback because it can be I know personally like I uh depending on who it's coming from I'm going to be receptive to it or not and it can be hard to hear sometimes but often the feedback that is hard to hear is the stuff that we we need to hear so as someone who may want to give feedback to a coach what's a good strategy to approach them

I think you obviously have to have the right kind of relationship because it can be quite intimidating or even threatening to have somebody come up to you and say why did you say that why do you say it this way or that wasn't very good you know if if things are too blunt and you'd just be defensive straight away so I think you have to accept the right tone and normally when I go with other coaches I I generally do at least sort of three visits the first visit is a sort of getting to know you visit so there's some trust and you have a discussion about what are you seeing what are you trying to do and then it builds from there so I think it can take a little bit of time but the more honest the coach and the and the and the mentor can be or even a coach and a coaching buddy it could be a co-coach you know the more honest you can be the better the feedback because we'll all say oh brilliant well done that was fantastic because it's nice to hear and what's not to like but nobody's perfect and you know even the best coaches in the world can and should still improve but the question is is how if you're often say I use the example in rowing you know Jurgen Grobler was a legendary coach I mean he won gold medals that I think eight or ten consecutive Olympic games I mean it's astonishing record really and he's a sort of a figure of authority he runs a you know a very strong program and he's got he's got his strong methodology but I wonder how many people would actually maybe ride along on the bike beside the rowing lake and say hmm not sure about that Jurgen you know or even question him

it's much less likely to happen the more senior you get so I think that's interesting

but I'm working a lot at now at sort of club and intermediate level and it's very it's much easier there because you know I've been to five Olympics and I've got a certain track record and a bit of age in my favor so people feel quite comfortable I've finished my real competitive coaching so there's no threat there either you know what I mean but if I go into the national training center it's much tougher you know I'm not asked to give that kind of feedback to them but I watch them coaching and they're brilliant coaches I mean they're winning gold medals Paris last year you know is very successful but I still I still think there's that feedback could be given to those coaches they should want it it's just a question of how how you do it but I think it's really key you know and what about in terms of ways to ways to coach so one of the things I spoke on the podcast with Nick will comment about is using cues stories metaphors as some of the the ways that you can get your message across are there any particular things like that that you've come across in your time that you've used coaching that you've found to be really beneficial as there's actual coaching techniques or in terms of yeah coaching techniques well I guess in the early days I was I had a New Zealand coach mentor Harry Mann who's not with us any longer but he was a big influence on me and I thought he was a fantastic coach it was in the days when I was coaching Cambridge University in the University boat race which was a big deal in rowing in the calendar I did 11 years

there and Harry used to come over and visit and do some coaching and I basically tried to sort of copy his coaching style and it didn't work at all for me you know in fact I had athletes say to me that I don't you know that you were bombarding me with things I didn't follow what you were saying they gave me all this sort of really negative feedback and it made me question I thought I was doing it just like Harry that clearly I wasn't so I think you have to be original you have to be yourself but you can also sort of project the bits of yourself which are useful for coaching you know I think we all have this ability sometimes coaches say oh you have to just be you you can't be something you're not and that's true but you know if you're a naturally quieter sort of more passive kind of person then maybe you have to kind of rev yourself up a little bit and deliver a bit more passion and a bit more energy or maybe vice versa you know and I think this is where the feedback comes in because if if you know if another coach says Robin you know you're like a kind of a gerbil on steroids you know kind of thing you know way way too busy well I'd say okay well if that's how I'm perceived that I need to quieten myself down you know so it's how others perceive us so I've learned I don't have a particularly strong voice for instance so communication for me is tricky you know and in rowing as opposed to swimming pool you're quite a long way from the athlete so you need to work out communication

if it's verbal vocal you've got to choose what to say how to say it at the right time so that the row the rowers would hear it or you use a megaphone or a radio communication so communication is a huge thing for us because they're on rivers and lakes and it's quite quite difficult and I often say to coaches you know I don't know if swimming coaches actually get in the pool with their from as maybe they do but you could do feasibly and certainly with young kids that's sort of how you help teach them to swim but in rowing you can't do that you have to do it all through description you can't even really demonstrate because you're riding a bike and there in a boat so I think I've learned a lot about that you know on the on the communication side and I had one one athlete some years ago who said told me to my face I don't think you're tough enough Robin so I found that quite hard to hear but at the same time I thought well fair enough you know that's something I'm going to have to listen to so I think being being honest with yourself and not being trying not to be offended by feedback as long as it's sort of not malicious feedback of course and uh and I think the other element Brenton is that I've always when I was a rower I used to just enjoy with such a passion I worked in London I'd finish work and I'd race down to that river as fast as I could because it's where I wanted to be and I think sports should be enjoyable I don't know the word fun is I don't know if you know serious competitive swimming you'd call it it's a serious business but

but there should be satisfaction enjoyment and it shouldn't be you know I don't know what's the word a sort of a to grinding a negative process so I think coaches have that ability to bring atmosphere and and set the right tone and in a way that's our job because athletes will get tired or fresher have ups and downs because that goes with training I think coaches are there to kind of help steer that level straight course and you know that's part of our job as well so you know I always feel like I need to enjoy my coaching as much as you need to enjoy your swimming or your rowing yeah those are sort of broad lessons but they're things that I think go quite a long way absolutely in terms of the when you got the feedback about not being tough enough what did you do following that how did you change the way that you were coaching well I think it depends a little bit on the athletes that are in front of you because you know my at that time my assumption was to the athlete like well you're here training hard at national level I expect that's a given I don't expect to have to tell you to be tough or to try harder because that's a basic level that you have to bring to training every day because that's what everybody else is going to bring who you're going to compete against I therefore gave myself permission to be a little more relaxed and laid back whereas I think what the athlete wanted was somebody who's going to kind of bang the drum a bit harder and you know a bit more yeeha you know which isn't really my style so much but I thought well okay appreciate particularly

if you come into competition time you know the race briefing in rowing again it's quite tricky because you might have um you know it's mostly crew so you've got more than one person stood in front of you to be briefed for your race so you might have you know it could be a four or you know you could have an eight you know and you've got to look at a group of people in front of you and deliver your briefing in a way which presses the right buttons for each person you know and somebody they'll obviously some will be a bit up and some will be a bit lower um so I think when it came to race briefing I would make sure I checked in with this with this athlete and gave gave them the sort of you know thought you know the appropriate

type of wording and framework and um but I had um the two women I coached particularly through 2012 2016 Olympics Helen Glover and Heather Stanning it felt I didn't need to be like that with them in fact Helen was quite a revvy kind of person who would you know you'd have to hold her down a little bit and Heather was very very even you know so um and they were so tough on themselves the coach didn't need to be tough on them as well mostly so I think it depends a bit on the athlete really and it's again it's a judgment thing but um but it's not like one style of coaching fits all I guess is the lesson you have to you have to work out what's best for those athletes that are in front of you. Yeah which is it takes a while to get to know the different personalities and the different athletes knows what know what makes them tick and and the best way to to get the most out of them and it takes quite a bit of quite a bit of time right so I want to go into some of the technical aspects of rowing and see what we can take from rowing into swimming because I it's in in water there's a lot of common things I think there so I'd just love to get your take on a couple of topics if we can can go into them and the first one is the connection between power relaxation and efficiency so in in swimming one of the most common things that I see from people who come into the sport quite new quite fresh is they really try and muscle their way through the water and when you get to that more elite level things are smooth they are

they have this sort of controlled chaos in a way and it's it's quite a different approach once they they get really good and experienced in the sport so what was your what would what did you see at that that top end of rowing between power relaxation and efficiency

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I guess the you know that I mean rhythm is is a huge thing I'm sure you know I'm sure it is you know in swimming too but in rowing it's a massive thing and it's a very it's a word which people use a lot so when you talk to a crew after a race you know if the race has gone well and they're giving you feedback they'll all they'll always say oh we had a fantastic rhythm or if the race hasn't worked out they'll say yeah the rhythm was bad or it fell apart you know and they'll say these things and then you say well tell me then describe then what you mean by that by the rhythm and then they often get a little stuck and they can't quite put it into words so it's quite important that therefore in my world you know you do try and define good good rhythm because in rowing because there's a work phase and there's a there's a glide or recovery phase you know I suppose I'm trying to sort of think of a definition in a way which would be succinct here without going into big spiel but essentially that you know the power needs to be fed through in a progressive way so it's not bullying and tight and tense like you let your saying is well in swimming you're not muscling it a rowing or is pretty long you know so at the beginning of the of the stroke the loads are the highest and the leverage is greatest so if you try and over muscle that part then it doesn't reward you with any speed so there's there's a kind of a there are sweet spots in the stroke so that's definitely part of it the changes of direction at the start and the end of the stroke are very key so that the rhythm is not broken up by the ends where you're leaving or joining the water so I think

there are sort of parallels there with swimming um the power that you can deliver will help help to generate the amount of glide that you get so out of that what you get is the sense that if the rhythm is strong then you can row in a more relaxed way and if you can be more relaxed then sort of neuromuscularly or neuroly speaking you could you could execute better skill level so the people that muscle their way through don't give themselves a chance to be relaxed and sort of in control of their movements um therefore their skill level is lower so there's a there's a complete sort of correlation between these things but in in rowing I mean that you know you've got the person obviously they've got a boat that they're sitting in probably with other people as well and they've got the oar and then you've got the things all moving in different directions and so on so if you if you I don't know if you're listeners have seen pictures of of rowing eights but you know rowing eight is a weighs nearly a ton with all the people in it you know a big a big heavy big open weight men's crew it goes 20 feet per second through the water or more you know they're going quite fast and they just look like in some ways like they're like a kind of like a walk and who like they sort of physically just pumping this thing along but actually you know the the weight of the of a boat is about the same as one rower okay the weight of a racing eight is 90 to 94 kilos something like that about the same weight as one rower and there are eight rows plus a cocks in the boat so in terms of synchronicity given that you're you're all moving in one direction

then you've got to return to begin another stroke if one rower is even a hundredth of a second off time with the others for that moment on there on the loading point you feel the weight of boat is doubled and even for a hundredth of a second or a few hundredths of a second that's catastrophic you feel it in your muscles in your body you feel that I've met this sort of deadness you know so I think these are the intriguing things about water sports because there's this interaction between us and the water and and how you deliver power but also have feel and relaxation and they they appear sort of contradictory in some ways but they have to be brought together for it to work it's that dichotomy of tension and relaxation and it's about finding this the sweet spot in in between there and an analogy that I use in swimming is that in terms of how much we want to how much force you want to apply in the water it's almost like if you pick up a glass of water you're not going to grab it as hard as you can you're going to grab it with just enough force to keep the shape and hold it so you can lift the cup up or the glass and it's a similar thing with when we're extending forwards going through our catch in our pool it's like we need just enough tension and force there so that we we hold our shape and form but we don't need anything above that because then it's wasted effort and I imagine a similar thing applies through the rowing stroke as well yeah actually I did an interview with a guy called jack bowmont who stroked the gb men's

quad in the tokyo olympics and they got a silver medal and he was describing this sort of pickup point to me and he said he said imagine if you've got a bowl of sugar then you put a spoon in if you try and scoop out more sugar than the spoon can hold it just falls off the spoon and it's the same with your hand going in the water or the ore going in the water you know if you just if you're over ambitious the water just falls off you you know you you can only take the certain amount and I thought I really like that image because a lot of rowers will will snatch at the water or try and just get as much as they can get and you know I know as a not very good swimmer I'm sure that's what I do too you know in the pool I still I'm one of these sort of recreational swimmers that all the old ladies go passing me by like doing nothing and going twice as fast it's really frustrating even though it's a rowing coach I'm trying to tell myself the same messages that I would tell my rowers and then come on Robin you're swimming work this out you know but I that's where the coach comes in I need that feedback in the pool to get any better because I I sort of swim like that rather than like that I'm not energy efficient for sure you know so even though in theory I've got an idea of what I'm trying to do I clearly am not doing it well or it sounds like you you swim like I wrote I I wrote I wrote in college for I think it was just one year and I made the A the A crew because I was fit from swimming and we made it through our first race and then we're looking to qualify for the final

and I was the one in the eight that caught a crab and just ruined our race and I felt so bad I had no rowing experience before this but the amount of training that we did and you know just letting the other seven down and the coach I just felt I felt so bad but it was when everything was humming along and everyone working together it was such a great feeling just no one's talking you can just you can feel it you can hear it and I imagine you've had more than a few probably thousand hours of hearing that that noise is the they always leave the water and they click up and come back it's a yeah I I worked out that I think I coached that women's coxas pair for six years through two olympics cycles and I think I saw them do four million strokes thereabouts in that time you know and I often say you know it never got boring because they were great to work with and there was a sort of synergy between crew and coach with kind of mutual objectives and I always sort of felt that I mean rowing you know it is a physical sport there's no doubt that you might be technically not tip tip top but you could still win if you've got amazing physiology and you know it's a power endurance sport but they were I think the best rowers are intrigued by the the nuances and the sort of the the you know the the better we often say no technique is your gearbox you know your your

body is your engine or the physiology is your engine but your technique is your gearbox so especially as they were middle-sized athletes they weren't the biggest most powerful ones there so they had to really optimize the accuracy and then the synchronicity and so on of that technique so we had lots of these sorts of conversations with them about it's almost sort of philosophical really isn't it like how you think about what you're trying to do in the pool or on the river I often say to coaches you know that if you can get your athletes to sort of get their approach right the concepts in their head you know what are you trying to do you've done half the coaching job because they are then searching themselves whereas you know sometimes they just wait to be told the next thing oh okay and I'll do that now because you told me that should make me better but I think when they've internalized it and they're really trying to understand it and develop the thinking themselves I think that's the best most rewarding situation for the coach because you think now we're we're all we're trying to solve this together and they give the coach feedback the coach gives you feedback and it's this mutual lovely mutual cycle um it's a sort of real kind of meeting of minds in that sense I had a had a parent call me this week saying that they wanted to bring one of their kids along to a session to a clinic that where we do underwater filming and analysis so technique is is the main thing that we specialize in and they're frustrated because the coach that the kids got at the moment said but they don't do any sort of technique work the coach just said

they'll like they'll find their way and they'll find the most efficient way to to get to the end and in a way that is true but if you just leave someone to their own devices they are going to take a lot longer to get to that point and they're probably missing some really big gaps obviously I'm missing some really big things in there in their stroke and probably need some feedback and some guidance there so I think it's like the truth is somewhere in the middle you know it's people need a bit of direction you've got to steer the ship in the right direction then they can sort of go on that path and then you have to shift you have to steer it again and make sure it's still going in the in the right direction it's not um you can't just leave it to it to its own devices or it's just trying to get from point a to point b without a without a compass it feels like yeah I think that I think that's so true you know and I think also um I mean that's exactly true that if people were pretty much uncoached they could probably get quite a long way through experimentation and trying error trial and error and sort of copying other swimmers but it would take them longer so I think the coach can shorten down that process by helping them avoid the obvious sort of pitfalls and and and that's part of big part of the coaching job is just to help people streamline the process but I think um I've all because I I rode they have we have a lot we have slash had a lightweight category in rowing I was my race weight was 70 kilos and for for lightweight women it was uh 57 58 kilos and so

basically you're all the same size height weight and pretty much power so you had to look for what's going to be the edge here because I can't just be six inches taller because I won't make the weight you know or I can't be 10 kilos heavier obviously because it's not allowed so it made that's always made me think about you know the the the rowers who are or the sports people who are sort of maybe good but not not amazing how how you can help the sort of the average more average person if you like still achieve a really really good standard and maybe achieve their dreams and so you know I think I think a good a good coach can help those people a lot the people who are given granted you know the perfect body for swimming or for rowing or whatever their sport is they've just got that head start and other people because you know they've got the longer arms or they've got the better born with a better genetics but but there's a lot of people out there who can still win their medals and still perform at a really really high level if if they optimize everything else they've got and you know I had um there was a female lightweight rower um she won a gold medal in in 2012 at the at our Olympics in London she was um Sophie Hoskins would it be about maybe five feet five or so and at the time you know with the thinking was oh we need to find lightweight women who are more like five eight five nine tall you know tall lean good leavers and and probably in 2010 I think it was she came up to me and she said I'm look I'm training in the team I've given up work for

the time being to try and make this happen am I wasting my time because it seems like they don't want athletes like me and and I said to her well no you're not wasting your time if you if you can show show your speed and we can help you and and use you you meet the selection criteria why wouldn't it be you and I wasn't her coach her regular coach I have to say and that Paul Reedy who's actually an Aussie who was coaching him he he delivered them to that gold medal in in London but she was maybe not I mean she's a very good athlete but maybe not your sort of um what's the word sort of you know the target body shape that the document says these are the sorts of athletes that you need and I think sport is fantastic that there are so many people that there's no normal really you can be all kinds of shape sizes and physiology and still do really really well as long as you understand yourself and you get good guidance and help from your coach and people around you it's so true I mean you look at the Steph Curry in the in the NBA and obviously it can help to have some of these you know these height and limb length and that sort of thing it can absolutely help but you can also find a lot of examples where people have succeeded without that and I mean for me with the athletes I work with it's a lot of people who are doing triathlon as a bit of a challenge or it's it's their sport that they choose to do kind of recreationally and one of the things that I always come to me with is like especially men who are maybe 40s and 50s they're like I'm a sinker I just cannot float like I just

I just don't I don't float so I know I'm not going to be a very good swimmer but what they haven't been taught is well how to how to use their lungs which is obviously got the buoyancy and how to kind of shift that center of mass forward so that they can bring their hips and their legs up like they just they don't know what they don't know and that just either been told or they just believe that they're a sinker and so that they'll never be able to swim well but there's a lot of people who have maybe got a heavier build or don't have great mobility but they can still swim very very well so I think they've just got to take that into consideration and know that it's no excuse to just kind of stop trying or to limit themselves because there's a lot of other examples where they have succeeded with the same build. Yeah yeah yeah it's so true. In terms of I mean rowing I think one of the most aerobically challenging sports that I've done and seen just some crazy endurance feats that these guys are doing and in terms of the sort of breathing and like breathing patterns oxygen efficiency could you talk a little bit about that and what you see there with rowing because I think swimming particularly like a 400 medley or a 1500 freestyle also very challenging events where people are under a lot of pressure for a long period of time so what was your yeah what did you learn there? Yeah you know it's an interesting one because I think in rowing it gets overlooked a lot because you're sitting in a boat as opposed to having your head in water and you know you

can kind of within reason breathe as you choose but when you when you're working harder trying to race will go faster particularly at the beginning of the stroke as the ore goes in you have to it's like lifting a weight in the gym you know you have to brace really hard so and also breathing is very is very linked to posture in rowing so in the we call it the recovery phase when you're coming forwards to begin you know to begin a stroke it's important to sit sit in the right way sit tall so the lungs can fill properly and you you're in a you're in by mechanically a good position with posture and length at the at the beginning of the stroke so breathing is definitely part of that as you inhale it helps posture if we're in a seated position obviously as opposed to being horizontal and when you're rowing at a steadier pace it's quite easy to you know you can exhale and inhale again before the next stroke but when you're up at pace it's you know as you're describing in those sort of more sprint events or medley events where you're changing strokes there comes a point where one breath per stroke cycle is not enough you can't bring enough air through through your system so you have to you have to get you have to get two breaths in but I think I mean there is a bit of research on it I know I got a somebody I know down in Bristol who's actually I think she's a physiotherapist by trade but she's been looking at diaphragmatic breathing in rows and believes that there's there's some improvements that could be made if people looked into it more in in rowing actually and I think

actually rowers who quite often if rower gets a combined injury they'll send them off to the pool for some rehab you know and they always come back saying oh actually you have an enforced breathing regime in a swimming pool which which actually helps a lot when you when you're not in the pool when you're back in a back in a boat so I think swimming helps rowing but very much in that sense and when you're swimming just nice and steadily and there's not too much of an oxygen demand it's okay you know you can do your bilateral breathing or whatever one of the first problems non-swimmers find when they try and go harder is that the the rhythm goes to to pop because they have to work out suddenly well okay I can no longer breathe in that pattern and that becomes the sort of overarching problem until you know until they solve that so um yeah so I get you know I guess I guess in rowing the training side of rowing is geared towards building a big sort of cardiovascular resource because it's you know it's a sort of six or seven minute race you know and then you've got you've got the oar and the and the the drag on the boat you know there's loads load on your body and you have to produce I think open weight men are something like 500 watts of power over a over a 2k race you know it's quite a lot of power that you've got to produce so that sort of volume training is important so we're we're we're rowing around probably like when swimmers are doing just the sort of volume distance stuff you know low cadence um uh to just create this aerobic base

the problem is that so we do a kind of 80 20 split normally in a top typical rowing program 80% of your training is sort of aerobic volume stuff and 20% would be um crossing over into that sort of anaerobic and higher end stuff but the actual sort of speed work side of things is a relatively small part of the program and of course that's when the breathing challenge really comes in as it does with technique and everything else so it's a big challenge as to how do you give the the the the performer the experience of what it's like at the intensity end of the sport when actually almost all of the training is done kind of down the other end or in the intermediate level so it's quite a challenge but we do have drills and things which we bring in to try and to try and help solve that and teach them what are some of those drills that you do um well we we do um things like you know so like short strokes so for instance the full a full rowing stroke i'm trying to sort of think i mean we measure it in terms of the the arc that the ore travels through normally which is sort of 90 degrees if you've got the just the one or but in terms of distance the handle travels something like it's about six feet sort of 180 centimeters something like that so if we if we want them to do so if you say right do the whole stroke but i want you to up the cadence and up the power they're going to get fatigued quickly it becomes hard very very quickly i think you use about 85 percent of all of your

muscle groups in rowing almost every muscle is engaged so everything's producing lactic acid there's very little chance to sort of flush stuff through you know so one of the things we one of the things we do is say okay well if you row like one quarter slide or one quarter of the stroke the back quarter you can effectively practice the whole of the back part of the stroke but at a higher cadence but without carrying the physical sort of penalty or workload with it so you you can be up at a racing cadence just on that part of the stroke and you could do that for you know several minutes if you want so you're producing the speed of movement and the flow and the rhythm and the and the all the kind of biomechanical stuff in just that section of the stroke so i think a lot of sports do this you know runners they do they do kind of high high knee lifts and sprints and this you know short sprints or short step work it's the same principle really so you take a compartment or a piece of the stroke and try and and and drill that and then of course you've got to put it into the whole thing again at some point which is always going to be more difficult but i mean that's typically what we do but we try and make them sort of you know really functional drills because what we find is that if you do a drill at so low effort low cadence that's fine to just get the correctness part of it but it doesn't mean you'll do it up at pace when you're working hard

quite often people drills can look quite pretty and quite nice when they're just sort of incomplete control and calm so we always say you have to stress test drills so whatever the drill is you then i i normally say okay now do it still with a low cadence but put more power in to see does your body now tighten up or can you maintain competence and then have the power and the cadence because that's ultimately what we're trying to do when we go out to race so that's a sort of the process for drills that we use not to just do them for the sake of doing drills but to do them because we're looking for a specific outcome. I had another guest on recently andrew shave who's an american swim coach and we spoke a lot about drills and he mentioned something very similar where it's okay we might go slow might go easy because we might need to work on a particular movement and one for swimming is is the catch it's that initial movement it's a big one one of the drills that we do in our clinics is is just that catch movement like just just practicing that horizontal just get them to bend their elbow and point their fingers down because most people just do it the wrong way now it's all well and good to do that slowly with fins on and everyone gets it right doing that but then we need to build it up with the speed and the power and ultimately people will fail at doing that at speed that yeah initially if they don't have a great catch it's going to take a while to build up to that but yeah you do need to to really just push it and and do it at faster speeds or whatever it might be

so we advocate a lot for drills and I think a great way to do it is part of your warm-up in swimming and that can help set you up but yeah it does eventually have to be done at speed or really have to challenge yourself throughout the drill can you do can you do like over speed drills in swimming yeah so one yeah you can so basically a lot of people a lot of sorry coaches will give something like 15 meters of over speed where they're looking for the swimmer to get their rating up very high let's say it's like 110 120 strokes per minute individual strokes and have very little hold of the water so they're basically spinning the wheels let's say it's freestyle for example so you can and the tech the technique will suffer a little bit but they do it just so that when they eventually come back down the stroke rate will feel easier and they've kind of just like fired up the neuromuscular system so yeah you can but I guess it's a little bit different to rowing you can't really do a half stroke in freestyle anything like that no I mean it's a tricky one in rowing because I mean you don't want to do half strokes or quarter strokes you you want to practice the whole thing but but like you know runners can do it usually because they just run downhill or if they're doing resistance work they can drag a parachute or a car tire or or another person or something like that behind them you know you can you can resist or assist cyclists can do the same thing because they can easily over over spin the legs downhill

uphill you know so in it's an interesting one because in rowing you know if you take a like the the the target speed for a from the open men's eight to olympic target is five minutes 17 you know but nobody's ever gone that fast but they've got to 518 it's it's territory nobody's ever experienced but probably in 10 or 15 years time somebody will do 517 or 516 so it'll happen the question is how do you how do you sort of preempt it or make it happen you know how do you how do you find out what it's like to go to speed that nobody's gone before so we've tried towing boats at speed but the trouble is you know if you have a long rope or something to a speedboat you know it's going to be very very long otherwise the weight from the speedboat upsets the rowers because they're in wash and also a rowing boat the speed kind of slightly oscillates because it's not you know there's two phases to the rowing stroke so it's you can easily resist because we add straps around the boat or you know you can do that obviously in the pool as well so adding resistance is quite easy and quite straightforward you just swim in a t-shirt or something but the assist I think is is is a bit that fascinates me because you're trying to say to somebody it's like a simulation you know if you could swim as fast as I'll say Michael Thorpe because he's a name that is it might know Richard Thorpe I can't remember who was the famous Ian Thorpe it's the ASEAN and Michael Thorpe it's all my first things wrong Ian Thorpe

like most of us will never experience swimming that fast but if you if you could be going through the water at the speed that he went through the water it would be mind-blowing so I find that kind of that side of it's quite intriguing how do you give the the the rower or the swimmer the experience of going faster than they're capable of going because if you can show them what it's like they might be able to solve the processes that actually the necessary the speed of the although technique of the catch at the muscle contraction whatever you know so it's an interesting one at effortless swimming our mission is simple make swimming more enjoyable whether you're training for your next race swimming for fitness or just love being in the water we're here to help you swim faster smoother and with more confidence and one thing that can make or break a swim is your goggles if you've ever struggled with foggy lenses mid-session you know how frustrating it can be that's why we created the effortless swimming hydro clear anti fog goggles for long lasting crystal clear vision I've been using them myself and the difference is night and day and I'm not the only one Deborah swam 36 kilometers down the Derwent River and the entire time her vision stayed crystal clear no fog no frustration just an uninterrupted swim so what makes a hydro clear goggles different it's all in the technology unlike ordinary anti fog coatings that wear off over time hydro clear super hydrophilic technology is built into the lens material itself his artworks instead of fog forming as tiny droplets water spreads evenly

across the lens creating a thin film that prevents fog from even starting and the result consistently clear vision swim after swim and the durability our lenses are cnas certified tests show that even after 2000 rubs with a wet cloth under a 200 gram load the lens stays fog free no gimmicks just serious performance that lasts using them as simple just wet the lenses before putting them on and you're set for a fog free swim ready to see the difference yourself get 15 off your first pair of hydro clear anti fog goggles with the code podcast at shop dot effortless swimming dot com that's 15 off your first pair of goggles with the code podcast at shop dot effortless swimming dot com we also have a 30 day money back guarantee so if you're not happy with the goggles for any reason you can simply return them for a refund don't let foggy goggles ruin another swim try hydro clear today and experience clear vision from start to finish yeah that actually reminds me so they we do have like rubber not rubber bands elastic cords that people will swim against and then they can also get pulled in by the coach so they can go over speed that way and I know at the AIS in Canberra I don't know if they still got it but they used to have a electronic device at the on the roof and they attach it to the swimmer at the hips and they would actually get pulled along at speed and I had some friends who had used it and they said it's just swimming at world record pace at the time

was like a 48 second 100 freestyle they said it just feels unbelievable like it just it feels feels so quick and like it is just it's mind-blowingly quick and and one thing I've noticed when I've watched Olympic level swimmers compared to even just very good swimmers it's there's a whole another level to it and I imagine this is something that you've seen in your in your coaching like there's just you know you watch someone who can swim very very well but then coming across the bit like the top point or 1% in the world it is just you notice it you can see it you can you can just see something different about them is that something that you you've noticed in your time coaching yeah definitely I mean I think when I was working at the national training center with the national team there you collect so much data in training that you sort of know your speeds and it's an outdoor sport so you have to factor in water temperature and wind direction and things like that plus the fact that crews change a little bit because somebody might have a small injury one day so they change change somebody in the boat but there are lots of variables but on the whole you you build up this body of data so when you go to compete you know already that you're in sort of final a territory or podium territory you know you know that you're in there with a good chance of of having a having a crack at the top top result but I think I mean in my own case when I was rowing I think the early stages of people are you know as you get better at a sport you think I've got a chance of winning

and then it becomes like a very good chance of winning and then it becomes a very small a very small chance that you might lose that in other words you're more likely to win than lose and I think those swimmers and performers who are just out in front the chances of them losing are really small and it would usually be something like you know maybe something like a slight they've had a slight head cold or maybe just on the day there they've got some other little stress or something going on it be some some sort of interference like that I remember there was a race we did with the with the women's pair in Lucerne in Switzerland one year and we had big rivalry with Kiwis actually and they had this very good women's pair that were trying to beat us and I'd said to the two to the two Brits over 2000 meters we'd split it down to 500 meter chunks and you get split times for that and I said to them you know you're quick off the start you have a very good transition into the mid part of the race and the third quarter which is where all actate kicks in and it starts to really bite hard I said you know they they they're they're sometimes a bit quicker than you there you know why why should they be quicker than us if we're better we're better you know being better off the start is about some dynamics and sprint and so on the transition into rhythm we can do with that so if we're fundamentally faster we're faster anyway they took that on board and in in that particular race in the third quarter of the race they took another half a second off the Kiwis

and we got to the end of the race and we I was I was sort of really quite tearful because it was such a brave hard thing for them to do but I said you look at those results and the opposition there's no weak link they can analyze in your performance because in every quarter of the race you've had a superiority even if it's been by a width of a fingernail and I think that's what the top performers do is they they can they can just judge those pacing and those fine margins I mean the touches on the end of the pool amaze me but the person who's won they know they know that they're winning and that they're always going to win and it to a you know just watching from your couch at home I mean it's mind-boggling how slim the margins are but the winners win you know yeah it's I imagine at that level too a lot of it a huge component of it is going to be the mental side of it and not only the mental resilience but also just the the confidence and knowing that you've done the work and almost seeing your competitors as as no we're like they're not as good as us like we having that sort of confidence and I see this in a lot of the top performers like some of the top Australians from as lovely lovely people but when it comes to racing they flick a switch and they are like they hate losing they absolutely hate losing and I you know I think that that kind of almost has to be the trait of of those that are going to win a gold medal they have to have

a little bit of that in their mentality where where they just hate to lose what did you see with the with those two great britain rowers so something something like that that sort of mental attitude definitely I think what I I don't know how it is in swimmers but I think a lot of rowers I think that that they they're sometimes quite sort of like understated type people you know that they're sort of not necessarily quiet you know what I mean they're they're not like you know how like boxes they basically goes with the trade you stand there and you say I'm gonna you know knock you flat and you're you're terrible I'm great you know it's very outward kind of toughness bravado

you know I think a lot of rows have have that it's very much an inner in inner toughness so like like you're saying with a lot of your swimmers you know they're just regular people conversationally and away from the sport but when they get in when they get in the boat or they they're on the water they just have some extra level of toughness and and self-belief

I think I think another thing that plays into rowing a lot which I love is is the loyalty aspect so I was doing a bit of work with a spanish a couple of years ago and we had a two person crew and generally the first round of the race didn't quite work right you know so we we switched the order round and and and it produced a different sort of slightly different psychology in the boat and you know they would try harder harder for each other than they could individually if that makes sense if you put them out individually they'd push hard but when you're in a crew with another person or other people you'll drive yourself to the very very very limit for the sake of other people and I love the fact that it brings that out of people you know people will work hard for other people not just for themselves and in the single skull in rowing which is I guess like being an individual swimmer there's an element of kind of you've got to be slightly mad to do it really you know because it's it's super super tough I mean on your own you've got nobody to sort of help you along or give you an encouraging call so that they're they're a breed almost you know in their own really the single scullers which I think is you know

sports where you are the you know an individual person I mean it's it's that's how you have to be but I think crew rowing is I love that dimension because yeah you know I can think of more than one rower who could achieve something extra in a crew boat because they've got this interaction with their crewmates and they'll they'll they'll kind of go to the end of the earth for them you know literally sort of in a in a physical mental sense in a race it's very much the same in in swimming I know like the like the coaches the and the swimmers as well they they just all look forward to the to the relays like talking about the Olympic Games it's just you see a lot of incredible times swam in those relays and yes like people are a bit faster because they've got a a flying start you know it's a they don't have to leave when the buzzer goes they can leave a bit earlier when someone's coming into touch but outside of that like you just see some some absolutely crazy times because yeah those people put themselves aside and it's just doing it for the for the team and it's I just love watching the relays at the Olympics for that for that reason and the fact that Australia is fairly competitive at the moment also helps with that it's nice to watch yeah yeah for sure Robin so when you're like you go around and run workshops and clinics and things like that for the coaches and you've done this with throwing and and just for coaching as well are there any particular messages that come to the

front of your mind that you try and get across every time you're you're doing these like some some real things that have just kind of been there that are that are fundamental that you think all all coaches or all rowers should should know this yeah there are actually and I've learned a lot from doing it because you know I get to see a much bigger variety of of clubs and rows and coaches than I than I used to when I was just doing my national job so there are three things really Brenton so the first thing and they're in order actually the first thing is sort of the culture like when you go to a club and you walk through the door of course every club feels a bit different but the atmosphere the buzz just the joy of being there the sense of understanding what the club is about these sorts of things I think count for a lot

so from a from a performers point of view or athlete point of view there are clubs you know the best clubs you go through the door and straight away you feel welcome you understand if is it a participation level club is it a high performance club you know but you understand what you're in there to do and therefore you understand your role and people support you and you've got like-minded people so I think the whole cultural thing is is huge I think the thing that then stems from that is the actual coaching because in clubs and any club or any crew or any athlete that's doing well is inevitably going to have a coach there that's working hard and producing those results and when the coach leaves that club for whatever reason quite often the club will drop a few levels until you have another inspiring coach come along so I think the culture and the coaching sort of go together because the coach is there so every day and you know your attitude and the energy you bring to coaching is part of the culture of the club you know if you were a good coach in a club with weak culture it's like pushing a broken down car it's hard to get things to happen so culture coaching and then the third thing I think is that is the training and technique so I think you know they follow from each other and so those are the three main ingredients and they're pretty obvious I suppose when you think about it but in reality for all sorts of reasons it does vary quite a bit when you when you go around different regions and different different parts and usually because

people just you know they're working hard in their own situation because they have done for many many years but they don't always have the perspective that says an outside person like me you can bring in and say like I had one the other week where they were it was a really simple thing actually this is sort of slightly cultural so that it was seven in the morning they all turned up for training the coach did the briefing and and then my assumption was okay we've done the briefing now we go rowing but half of the half of the group went back in the changing because they weren't changed so half were changed and half weren't

and I said to them is that isn't you know why is that and he said well you never thought about it you know we just turn up and brief and so it brought in an extra 15 20 minutes of dead time or sort of faff you know and I said well if you just got everybody changed do the briefing go rowing you're going to gain 15 minutes towards your training if you want it and that accumulates over time these little sort of efficiency things mount up you know and at club level where people have got jobs and they're fitting their sport in and around life and other things you know it becomes quite important so they're often quite obvious things but they don't yeah will we see them yeah but when you're when you're when they're in it you they don't they don't see it right it's just the way that's been done and then not not aware to it and just take someone like yourself to open their eyes to something super obvious that that might be cool because of NTRs actually no talent required that you've probably seen those but there are sort of slides and I like that you know things like turning up on time being prepared bringing energy you know helping out etc you know these are things that

should be embedded in the culture of a sports club before you even start your training session because they don't require talent they just require attitude and full thought really so I think that kind of stuff goes a long way and I one of one of my mentors was was talking about like what you know what is what's culture it's well it's it's basically about like it's how people almost feel or how they associate with with the club and that's just all these little things that all these little things that happen it's like saying hi saying goodbye when you when you turn up it's having a smile on your face it's it's getting there on time it's encouraging your teammates it's like it's all these little actions that that build the culture and it's nothing that's that's difficult it's just it's all these little little things that that add up that everyone can do just these small actions so when it and when it when it gets shown or when you get told that like that's that's how you do it it becomes really tangible and it's not this thing it's like all right we need a good culture it's like well it's just all these little actions like you know we can do this doesn't matter how how bad your rowing team is or how bad your swimmers are they can all contribute to this this good culture so and my dad was my coach growing up and so from when I was about 11 I think he started coaching me and he he was adamant that everyone says hello to him on the way in goodbye on the way out we use each other's names just little things like that and it was just such a like I was 11 I was 12

I was like god why is he making such a big deal of it but I can see now that it was a really important part to building the the club up and having people enjoy it and having people look back at that when they're 30 and going well wasn't that such a great time that we spent together so yeah all those little things are really really add up yeah yeah definitely Robin thank you so much for your time I appreciate you jumping on here and particularly being in the UK it's always hard to organize a a time but I appreciate you getting on nice and early for the podcast and I'm looking forward to showing this without our listeners because I love getting fighting lessons from other sports because there's obviously a lot of crossover but there's things that we can take from it from other sports that will help us in swimming so thank you very much for sharing all that you did on the podcast and it's been a pleasure Brenton nice to meet you and not that early for me but it's a little bit later for you in Melbourne there so thanks for making this happen it's been enjoyable my pleasure thank you thanks then bye bye thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast if you'd like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com

I think the best answer would be that it's just the body's ability of the muscles around the trunk, the hips, the pelvis and the lower back to really stabilise the spine, which is where most of the tension has gone, but it's also to be able to generate power to produce efficient movements, so sports and everyday living tasks without causing injuries. So it's kind of a big umbrella term for core strength. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here's your host, Brenton Ford. I still remember watching a swimmer at our last clinic lean so hard into sucking her tummy in that a stroke felt stiff and awkward, like she'd forgotten how to swim from the inside out. Today, Carl, our go-to strength and conditioning guru, joins us again to finally demystify core engagement for swimmers. We're unpacking the Pilates-inspired hollowing technique versus Stuart McGill's bracing method and revealing simple land drills, think step ups, carries and hip rotations that make your core switch on automatically once you hit the water. Carl will share why loosening your hips could be the missing link in your freestyle, how to balance front, back and side core work and one posture tweak that instantly transforms your catch. If you've ever felt your hips sink or your kicks play or your back start to ache mid-set, this episode is for you. Grab your goggles and maybe a chair because by the end of this, you'll know exactly how

to build a swimming core that's strong, supple and effortless. Let's get into the podcast. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. My guest today is Carl Reader, who has been on multiple times and you're our guru, strength and conditioning sort of expert on the show, Carl. So welcome back to the podcast. Oh, Brenton. Always good to be here. Thanks for having me back. So today I want to jump into core strength, something that I get asked a lot from some of these, how do I engage my core? What does it mean to suck your tummy in? How do we use our core when we swim? And one thing that I got taught from an early age was you've got to swim from the inside out. So it's got to start from the core and the center of your body. And then we can deliver that power to the extremities from there. So let's just start with what is core strength? What should we think of as core strength? Sure. I think the best answer would be that it's just the body's ability of the muscles around the trunk, the hips, the pelvis and the lower back to really stabilize the spine, which is where most of the tension has gone, but it's also to be able to generate power to produce efficient movements, so sports and everyday living tasks without causing injuries. So it's kind of a big umbrella term for core strength. And in terms of how we, I guess, use it or don't use it throughout the day or through different activities, what are maybe some of the common mistakes that you might see people making with their core control and their core strength? I think before we go there, Brendan, we get us to just touch base of what are the two

common techniques people use to engage the core, which is really important. So you've got this idea of what they call the hollowing effect, which is what you talked about that sucking in. And this was really pioneered but sort of developed more by the Pilates industry where they talked about the core being this like an onion, so like an onion. If you think about an onion, you cut up, it's got all those rings inside. So your muscles, your core trunk is like an onion ring. And so they were talking about stabilizing these or engaging these deep muscles, often referred to the TVA, the transvestite dominance. And then you have the other side is the sort of which has been pioneered and developed by Stuart McGill. A lot of this is what we're familiar with him and he's done a lot of great work on lower back pain and had some amazing results. But he talks about this bracing concept. So it's that, and both those are a function of core work out or the system of the core system. But what's important and I want to share on this and propose to the listeners is that the core should actually automatically engage. So what they've used these two techniques to do is to try to help people to engage them. But the key is really to that. How do I engage them without actually trying to think about it? And I think that's where we want to get into that. Think about if you think about like surfing or like even swimming or golf, you it's difficult to really be thinking about how much you're engaging your core and you're about to take off on a wave or like playing hitting a golf shot. You want it to be get there naturally. And so, you know, we can unpack that. But that's really, really important that they know that there's two different ways. Now, which is the best way, which is the correct way that's debatable.

And we can, you know, we can unpack that as well. That it's with a lot of the things that we want to do in swimming, whether it's engaging or switching on your core. Or if we're thinking about the kick, which is another sort of big issue that people run into, if they're thinking too much about it, they're probably not doing it in the right way because it doesn't lead to this natural use or natural engagement of it. So let's get in. Let's dig into that about some strategies that people can apply to be able to do this naturally, ultimately without having to think about it. And it's just there in the background. So the what just before you guys get there is that that hollowing effects when you talk about the hollowing is is very linked to also it's a stress response. So you find people who struggle with anxiety or worry a lot or overwhelmed. They kind of hold in and suck in their tummy. So it's it's it's this is actually creates like I want to say it creates a stress response, but it's actually the bodies we're holding. The other thing is we see with that is that they struggle to breathe. So especially and I'm generalizing it with men, but if you're awesome to hold down there and pull the pelvic floor muscles up and breathe and swim becomes a bit like too much to think about. But like you say, but the kicking the biggest thing is posture. And I mean, we talked about this on the podcast. And I know you've had a lot of guest speakers as well. And you talk a lot about, you know, getting the right posture. And that is actually the key is to position your body correctly. So the core works automatically. So if you've got poor swimming posture or if you've got poor posture in general, it's going to affect how that core works automatically. And a good example. We've done this before, but I don't know if you remember like a long ago

when we first met, we talked about like if you sit at your desk and you put your fist and for those who are new members or new listeners, if you just sit very upright with the chest up and tall and you push into the desk, you'll feel the back muscles working in the and the triceps. And if you just relax the posture and then you push down, you'll feel the core automatically kicks in if you can feel that. Yes. So, so again, when you push harder into the desk, you don't have to think about, do I have to brace to do that? So if you just put, say you're pushing like really gently, then you're pushing harder and harder and harder. As you push harder and harder and harder, the core automatically activates. You see, you don't have to think about, I need to now brace and suck in. It just, it just happens. So that's, that's the, that's one of the key things.

And so with this, with this swimming rinse, I think it's also key is that a lot of people, they're in what we call the sagittal, sagittal front and back plane. So like swimming in the front, front muscles, back muscles kicking. So that cause generally like gets well trained in the pool. And if you look at the, I mean, I've got now here, the top 32 men's health core exercises I've written more down. And I would say like 90% of them are all frontal, like working like, so it may be like, you know, planks or it's a leg lifts or hanging on a bar, lifting the legs up, all those kinds of, so it's a lot of it's moving away. It's not, there's not enough side core workouts or rotational core. Now in the crawl and freestyle, you've got rotation, but this is something that's important. We can also unpack is to, is to balance the core. Yeah. So not, not just working in that crunch type of motion and just working in the different directions. Yeah. So. Oh, so I was going to say with the, I like that exercise pushing on the desk or the, or the table there because to me that relates so much to, to swimming when someone tries to intentionally brace the core and then they're trying to extend their sort of, their shorter through here. And they do tend to, to muscle it through the back and the shoulders. Whereas when they just, they sort of soften, they just relax and they've got that, that suppleness to them with, with just generally good posture. The shoulders move freely. The core can be used just, just naturally. That to me has got such a good correlation to how we want to swim

and the mistakes that people make when they try too hard to engage the core. So I think that's a, that's a really good one. And, and what you just brought up there is that, is being mindful of the core and every single exercise you do. So I always said to my clients, like every exercise you do is a core exercise because we have this mindset of like, I'm going to do my core exercises, then I'm going to do my arm exercises, I'm going to do my leg exercises. But actually the core should be engaging with the leg exercises and the upper body exercises as well. So for me, that's where we can go into all this, like how your posture plays an important role. And we know that most people are, especially they're behind the desk all day, is that the nerves of the core are in the middle back. So that if you, so if you're stiff, which we know from swimmers and just in general, like aging population, they tend to get really stiff in that thoracic spine. And again, that's not saying new to listeners, but it's if you can mobilize that thoracic spine and really improve that mobility, especially extension. And it's extension, it's a little bit lower down. So often when people think about their middle back, they tend to want to extend up through the top, through the middle part of the blades, the wings. But it's actually that where we, where we compromise with the body and the spine is actually lower down. So if you watch me here slouching, it's actually happening, kind of happens like the top of the lumbar spine bottom. So that's where it's really important. Is that swimming exercise you guys do that when you kind of like, you know, lying your stomach and your legs up and up and down like that? That's a good exercise because it kind of gets into that,

that middle to lower back exercise and mobilization.

And in terms of other exercises that would be helpful for swimming, what are some of those other core exercises that you think would be key? Yeah. So the lateral, so the lateral side, the lateral core, which is your, basically your obliques, your obliques are primary function is obviously rotation, but they play a major role in like the lateral side of the body. So what you see a lot of people doing things like side planks, which is where that's why that's important. There's the Copenhagen, I don't know if you know the Copenhagen plank where you put your leg up on a bench and you lift the other leg up. And it's, so it's all trying to strengthen those side muscles. And so one of the ones that I love the most is the pharma carries, where you're walking with the heavy weights on both sides of the body. You can do it on one side of the body if you want to challenge the side. But my favorite is stepping up on a bench or a box with the weights, so with a single hand, because that really challenges that whole side core. And especially for swimmers, because again, we've talked about, they've got the rotational, they've got the frontal and back, but they often lack that side horse stability. And with the step up holding the weight, would you alternate arms? So let's say you're stepping up with your left leg. Would you hold it in your left arm for some of it and then in your right arm for others? Or is it better to do one side the whole time? It's a great question. So if you're stepping up on the left leg and you have the weight on the right side, then your left stabilizes because the weight's pulling you down on the right is going to work really, really well.

And so that's a great exercise here. And if you want to target the glutes and the hamstrings, then you would put the weight on the left hand side with the left leg, which will then challenge much more low abdominals on the left side, again, stabilization. So it's a really, really simple exercise and something the guys can do, but it's super effective. And in terms of what you've seen with some of the people that you work with, because you work with a lot of people online for multiple different things, but you've worked with a lot of our swimmers, whether they've had injuries or they just feel like they're not moving well. What are some of the things that you've seen with how they might come to you? How are they currently using their core? And then what sort of process have you taken them through to get them to the other end, where they're starting to use it better, which can obviously help their swimming a lot? Yeah, so the big thing, Brenton, is just getting them in tune with their bodies. So often I'll explain, I've got this thing called the core quadrants. So they kind of like draw like a, you know, just imagine you're like a, pouring a quadrants on your lower abdominals and upper abdominals. And then I asked them, are you able to actively contract that quadrants? Like if you put your hand on below your belly button to the right, can you squeeze and activate there? And then the left, can you squeeze and act? And often with the members, I've seen quite a few be like, oh, this is really easy, but I don't even feel like I've got anything happening on the left or I don't feel like nothing's happening on the right. So it's just drawing attention to those areas. And then I'll mindfully like guide them through, okay, let's try to now lift the right leg slowly up in the air,

but just use the right side. And they'll say, I can't. And so there we go. So we have to then mobilize the spine a bit. Once they've got that contraction, then we take them onto things like step ups. So without the weight, we're just going up and then asking them to, as you push up, can you feel that core engaging? Yes, or doing single leg like balance work. So that's just building up that awareness is so important. At Effortless Swimming, our mission is simple. Make swimming more enjoyable. Whether you're training for your next race, swimming for fitness, or just love being in the water, we're here to help you swim faster, smoother, and with more confidence. And one thing that can make or break a swim is your goggles. If you've ever struggled with foggy lenses mid-session, you know how frustrating it can be. That's why we created the Effortless Swimming Hydro Clear Anti-Fog Goggles for long lasting crystal clear vision. I've been using them myself, and the difference is night and day. And I'm not the only one. Deborah swam 36 kilometers down the Derwent River and the entire time her vision stayed crystal clear. No fog, no frustration, just an uninterrupted swim. So what makes the Hydro Clear Goggles different? It's all in the technology. Unlike ordinary anti-fog coatings that wear off over time, Hydro Clear Super Hydrophilic Technology is built into the lens material itself. Here's how it works. Instead of fog forming as tiny droplets, water spreads evenly across the lens, creating a thin film that prevents fog from even starting.

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Yeah, absolutely. And then some of the notes we've got here, you've got bracing versus automatic core in swimming. Could you talk to that a little bit? So it's back to that whole thing, it's like when you're swimming, are you consciously tensing the core while you swim? Or are you actually, like you said, like you just, as you perform in the stroke, it just feels like the core is engaging appropriately. And that's the key word, is it doing enough? Have you got enough stability? The work that you do outside the pool plays a huge role. And this is where the coaching and where the work outside pool workouts makes a big difference. So are you able to do it in the pool? You've got to be able to do it outside the pool. Does that make sense? And that's like a logical thing. But I find that what happens is that a lot of the workouts the guys are doing, and we cover this in my course as well, it's just how do you position people in the doing the exercises to get the core to function automatically? That when they get back in the pool, as soon as they start swimming and kicking, they go, it's doing it already. I don't have to think about it. And that's kind of, that was that difference. Yeah. It's not like, of course it's not wrong to brace while you swim. It's just, it's just a challenge because especially people struggle to do multiple things. Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly right. And I once like looking at the, or thinking of the swimmers that we, we say at clinics. So a few things that I think can help them just in terms of technically, with making sure that course switched on, like number one, it would just be head position. Make sure you're looking zero to 45, kind of lengthening through the neck. Again, not too much,

being overly tense and stiff with it. Because most people look too far forwards. And so when they're up like this, they just can't, they can't use the core correctly because they've got too much of this lower back arch. And then second thing would be posture. And we referenced this earlier where posture, like tall, tall and proud, but not too much. Not too much there where you're stiff and rigid through there. You have to have that length through the body, but just kind of letting the shoulders move freely. And then I also think the other part of that can just be how you're using and how you're moving your legs in the kick. A lot of people tend to kick like they're kicking a soccer ball and there's too much hip and too much knee bend. So just keeping the thighs, the top of your legs, just kind of moving back and forth slightly, which creates a good size kick out behind you. But any more than that, and then you tend to kind of lose that ability to hold your core well. Great. So I think those things go hand in hand. It's like good technique and also the ability to control this outside the pool. And if you can't control it on land where you've got this stable surface, you're going to find it very difficult in the water to be able to do it. So you've given all those great tips on how to position the body to do this. So I'm just going to share some of the positions on the land, which we talk about in the course as well. And one of them is head position. Exactly what you're talking about. It's often like where you're looking is so key, especially for things like squats. So even like if you're doing a shoulder press, as you press up, you want to look up slightly. If you're looking straight ahead, it puts pressure on the neck

and it doesn't engage the core as effectively. But here's the big one, and it's as you've got to loosen the hips. I don't know if you, so my kids do karate and if you watch karate guys or golfers, even surfing, it's all in the hips. So they'll often say, you know, like you're not using your hips, you're not using your hips in many different sports. And so that thrusting, that pushing, and the reason that it's not that the hips generate the power, which is where they say it comes from, is that when you release the hips, the core activates. So that you're getting power to the hips. And that's, so a perfect example would be like if you did a shoulder press, for example, if you just stand and do a normal shoulder press, the average person will just say, I feel my delts, I can feel my traps, I feel a little bit of like, you know, the shoulders working. And you say that I just soften the knees and relax the hips. And as they press, I go, oh gosh, I can feel my core now. So all you've done is put the body in a good position. It's the same with the squats. And often are we spoken about this, if you squat correctly, it's a fantastic core exercise. But the average person who squats goes, I don't know what you're talking about, I don't feel my core at all. And that's because they often stiffen the hips, which we know is a big, big issue. All their technique is, in my opinion, not efficient. There's a lot of, just on that whole note, quickly for those who do that squatting, you know, like there's a whole draft towards the knees going too far forwards. I don't know if you've heard of that sort of a knee over toes. It's a new approach now where the guys are squatting and the knees are going like wave forward. It builds the knee muscles like tremendous, tremendously.

But when you do that technique, you kind of switch off the core. Because you're not all in a, which I, in my opinion, biomechanically, you're not in the right position. So you've got a lot of load going into the knee and there's not a load going into the hips and that low and then into the core muscles. So how you squat plays a big, big role as well.

And for those that are listening, we did a podcast. Well, I'll find it and we'll put it in the show notes, but we've done several podcasts. One of those was on some of the nuances for how you should squat to be able to use the core. And one of the things I remember you saying, and anytime someone mentions squat, I remember this is like, you say that squats can be one of the best, or is the best core exercise, which was, which was new to, like certainly new to me at the time. And yeah, I think I'd certainly agree with you, having them kind of learned from you with that and then just having done a quite a bit more gym work in the last two years or so. So we'll make sure to link to that in the show notes for anyone who's interested in some of the nuances of the squat. And you also obviously cover that in your functional movement course as well, which we'll put in the show notes as well. And so Carl, anything else you'd like to sort of cover here for actually, before we go into that, talking about the hips, it's, that made me think of, again, something we cover in clinics is, when it comes to rotation through the hips and torso, we need to rotate enough firstly, so that our arm can come out of the water comfortably. This is in freestyle. And then enough on the side in the water so that we can get into a strong catch position. And if someone's swimming flat, then it's very much like doing a shoulder press without having rotation is it's just, it's all arms, it's all legs, but there's they just miss out on so much power there.

But as soon as they get the hips and shoulders, like it's a bit of a swivel through the hips. And if you're coming forward, it's we're not tipping onto our side. We're just sort of swivelling or rocking onto the side there. Then you get all those muscles through the middle of your body working. And it just makes those movements that we've got to go through 10 times easier because then we get the core and the hips, the hips into it. So again, yeah, again, another good, I guess, analogy or something that I can see just has great correlation to what we need when we swim. To the swimming. Yeah. And just, and remember, we talked about as well, the electrical lines, you know, the body, their muscles, but they're actually battery packs. They produce electricity. That's what gives you the power, its voltage. So you've got the front line and you've got the back line. You've got different lines, but these are your major lines. So when these core muscles are engaging, and remember when you engage the core, the back muscles also engage. So they work, they co-contract, but it's all got to do electricity. So you've got a free flow of electricity. You don't have any sort of impedance or blockages. And you don't have to work hard. That's where the word efficiency comes from. Otherwise, you just, it's like, you know, inefficiency and electricity produces heat where like inefficiency in them in the body is just like just wasted energy, just having to breathe and work harder. I just want to just touch base on this as well. Those who are lifting heavy weights, you know, it's important to brace. And if your body lift bodybuilder, then you must use the same technique that you've been taught. But like that bracing before you do things, if you've got to lift a heavy box out of a trunk

or move something, it's important to first brace. You don't want to kind of like try to figure it out on the way as you're starting to lift, because that's where you do the damage. So like there's a place for that. It's like real gripping, stiffening, tensing the muscles. But that's how in terms of sport, like you want to, like we talked about that earlier, you don't want to get inside grippy feeling it. It's got to be like an automatic course. I think it's a good way to describe it. Yeah. And using it, I would say appropriately was, yeah, a good way to think of it. It's like just, yeah, using it enough so that it's switched on, but we don't need, we don't need more than that either.

And then your other one, sorry, your shoulder exercises, you know, like the guys do a lot of those push and pull in the gym with the cables. We often see them in a very staggered stance. If you just get more like into a wider staggered stance, so it's not like, you know, too far, then you lose the stability. So the core systems are really affected. But just with that, with the training course, like often people say, what are the best core exercises? It's important for you to work with a coach or to assess where you are, you know, look at the core exercise you're doing and saying, hang on, I'm doing all, most of my core exercises are working that frontal and back. There's not enough on the side. There's not enough rotations. So it's to really just to work out where you, which we call core balance, balancing your core exercises. And then, yeah, that's, that's pretty, I think for swimmers that that will be where I spend a lot of my time is balancing their core.

Yeah, well, I've noticed a lot in the last two years or so. There's a gym locally and I've got some, they've got some other gyms around in the state that I'm, I mean, and there's, there's a couple of machines that I use that over the last two years I've noticed building up the strength through these movements has made a massive difference for me. So one is it's you seated and then you kind of got your arms in the machine and you basically just like rotating from here into the center. So you turn the body, but the hips stay still and you're kind of rotating across. So, and you do that in both directions. That, I hate that machine, but it's, it's such, and I think anything that you tend to hate, it's like with drills, any drills you hate is probably because you suck at them and you, yeah, you don't enjoy it because you're not very good at it. So I, you know, I've been working on building that up. That's helped a lot. Another one is actually, is that a gain resistance? Is that a gain resistance? Is there a resistance there? Correct. Yeah. So it's a weight check machine. So you've got the weight going in towards the center. And then another one is a back machine where you start almost sort of hunched over and you're pressing against it. So it's almost like a reverse punch in a way. Yeah, very good. And just like it really loads up the lower back and I've built up this my strength in that probably double to what I was when I first started. And then obviously like just another core one, just it's almost like a weighted crunch in a way lying on your side. But those three just movements and directions have like, I just, I get injured a lot less and just really notice a difference when it comes to my, my swimming, my whole connection feels a lot better. And like you're, you're, you're probably, sorry.

No, sorry, go ahead. So I think I've answered, because you know the 80, 20 principle, like the Pareta principle, if you look at what's giving you the biggest bang for your back there is those back extensions. So like a lot of people are scared to, scared is the wrong word. I understand if you've had back pain, I hesitant to work lower back muscles, but that, that extension machine, I use a lot and also, so I use it more just, and that's, and the squat, by the way, is in that position when you're holding weights in the squat position, you're actually really working those lower back muscles. So it's really, really important to strengthen the back and it's, it's taken a mind shift because we, we all want to protect the back. But I mean, if you look at those muscles, some of the biggest muscles in the body, if not, like it, you have to strengthen your back. And so swimming naturally does that. That's why it's one of the, it's another wonderful sport to do for back. But I love, I love what you're saying. And it's, it's so, so it's.

Oh, it was, yeah, such a, not a revelation for me, but just having never done any exercises that actually build that and always protecting the back and like just being really careful about it. But when those muscles are weak, you, like you're going to get injured a lot more. So you, you can do exercises that maybe look or seem like they could be dangerous in a way. But if you do them correctly, you, you will find that you, that, that strength just stops you from getting these really common injuries or at least makes it happen a lot, a lot less. And like these machines are fairly, some of these are not that widely available, but there's other exercises you can do if you don't have these machines that, that I'm using at the gym that I'm going to. So, yeah, and obviously you would know a lot of variations or ways that people can, can adapt for this. So for those that are listening, if they would like to get in touch with you, we'll put your, your details in the show notes because you've worked with a lot of our swimmers and our members and have helped them either with injury or just developing strength. And we've also got the, your functional movement course available too, which again, we'll put in the show notes. Carl, appreciate it once again. I think you're the most, probably the fifth time or sixth time, which is probably a record. So I really appreciate you jumping on the podcast again. No, thanks, Brent. And then that's always good to share the new insights, it's a continuous learning process. Yeah, that's, that's exactly right. Now, the way that I sort of see it is very much like what we do in our clinics and coaching,

it's like, it's the same, it's the same sort of fundamentals, but what I'm learning is just different ways to approach it that might work for different people. And it's, from my end, it seems like you're kind of doing that. You're working with a wide range of people and so you've got this real, really wide level of experience and you can then prescribe what will help get someone from where they are to where they want to be in hopefully the shortest possible time if they follow the exercises and so on. Yeah, it's, it exercises a tool and that's like any, it's a skill. Great. Well, well, until next time.

Yeah. Thanks, Kyle. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. If you'd like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

I personally find that the people who can swim really hard and really well are the ones who actually know how to suffer in the water and are comfortable doing it. I'm sure you've seen people when you say, well, we want you to swim in a top end effort and they come back in, faces aren't red. There's no real heavy breathing, but they're saying, oh, that was really hard. And you're saying, no, that's not hard swimming. You have more in you. And they say, oh, actually, yeah, I could go again. So the idea with the hell set is again, referring back to that swim literacy to put people in a position to suffer in a similar way to how they would when they go racing so that they know how it feels. They know how and when they can push them and what they're capable of delivering on. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here's your host, Brenton Ford. Not if the secret to crushing your next open water swim isn't just logging more miles, but learning to embrace the chaos, drafting like a pro, taking the occasional hit and then surging ahead with confidence today on the Effortless Swimming Podcast. I'm joined by Damian from Flow State Swimming Island's premier open water coaching squad. Damian didn't learn to swim in a pool. He learned to survive and thrive in choppy conditions, mastering tactics from course recon to aggressive positioning so that you never have to feel like a victim out there.

In this episode, we'll dive into the mental shift from passive paddler to assertive racer. While your catch and glide sweet spot might unlock explosive speed, exactly how to build the suffer tolerance that makes hard efforts feel effortless, hands on coaching hacks for feeling the water and finding flow. And whether you're gearing up for your first triathlon or hunting a personal best in an open water race, stick around. By the time we're done, you'll know how to swim hard, swim smart, and swim free. Know what you're required. Let's jump in. Right, there we go. Damian, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me. So, Damian, you're coaching out there in Ireland, working with a lot of open water swimmers and triathletes. And today I want to dig into some of your coaching strategies, coaching philosophies, how you like to approach things so that people can become stronger more assertive swimmers. And maybe just for those that are listening, if you want to give a bit of background on flow state swimming, which is your squad, your coaching business, and kind of what you stand for. Quite like that when you mentioned that off air before. Yes, flow state was really born out of just a low first competing the open water. I don't come from a pool swimming background. And the competing that I did do was always based on the open water and the bit that I always really liked. And that I was kind of surprised that people didn't pursue more was the real tactical side of open water swimming. So something as simple as reviewing the course before you swim,

understanding how you want to approach a turn, approach dealing with groups, drafting, all that sort of things. And what flow state is trying to do is prepare people for the open water. And when we talk about competing, it's not necessarily that we're looking for people to win races, whether that's at the top end or age group level. But it's just for people to be as competitive as possible, even with themselves. So we look at everything from people swimming at the right paces, we're working in the right zones, but when it comes to courses, how they're navigating it and put them in a position to race strong. But I suppose one of the things that I see also as being or a separating flow state from a lot of other coaching groups is that we're we're kind of actively pursuing people to swim hard, swim strong and in some cases aggressively really impose themselves in a course so that they can put themselves in the best position to perform as well as possible and that they're not subject to, I suppose, the circumstances that appear around them, but that they can kind of control the environment that they're in and put themselves in the best position possible to perform as well as they can.

Yeah, I love that. And one of the the models I've had in open water swimming that that I got from someone else was was don't be a victim. You've got to be assertive. You've got to be aggressive if you want to do well. And and it really like it open water swimming lends itself to that style of swimming rather than just being passive because you've got to you're going to be around other people. You're going to be dealing with challenging conditions. So if you can have that kind of mentality, even if you are outside of the pool, you might be very kind, very nice. You can still have that that dog attitude about you when it comes to racing. And I see that with like a lot of the if I've worked with any pro triathletes, lovely, lovely people out of the water. But I see it like you see it in their eye. You can see it when they get into competition that like they they want to win. And you need that about you if you really want to want to do well. So I think it's a really good sort of attitude to have once you get into the open water. I think even though, as you said, some people are great for others aren't like open water swimming is a full contact sport. And so if you want to get in the mix, you've got to prepare to take a hit. You have to prepare to give a hit if it comes your way. And I think unless you're willing to accept that that's there, you are more than likely going to have to fade back away from that competition because you're not going to impose yourself on those scenarios. We do a lot of race simulation work where we'll set up very short courses, open water, and we'll try and put in three or four turns. And we might kind of handicap our stages. So we've saw our swimmers first, faster swimmers coming through.

So we're forcing people to draft on the quickest line. The message always is if you want to get in the mix, prepare to take a hit. If not, go wide, avoid scrum, leave that go. But like that, some people absolutely love it. And we tend to find that the more people get comfortable with it, the more they actually pursue it. I think there's nearly more of a mental block that people just don't want to be in there. I think there's all these fears that they're going to get buried under the water and never resurface again. Whereas they realise that it might just be a bit of jostling few shoulders, few elbows, and they move on under the clean water again. So it's a great way of learning and a great way of prepping people for racing. Absolutely. Now, I want to get into some of the some of the ways you like to coach some of the key aspects you'd like to to teach the athletes you're working with. One thing that you mentioned before we jumped on this call was the propulsion versus the glide, like just finding the sweet spot there. So what sort of stuff are you saying with the athletes you're working with there? And what's the message you're trying to convey to them with that?

So I think generically, what I would see in a lot of the other people who are competing or getting into the open water is there's a lot of people who are either coming to swimming quite late. They may have never done it as a child or we get some kids who maybe and this is a more recent thing who were impacted by Covid who spent had spent time out of the pool and they're kind of coming back to it again.

That tends to be quite well drilled. They've de-sinformed, they know what they're doing. But for the most part, people who are coming to it later, they don't tend to have the understanding as to how they need to move to make it feel easy to get through the water. A lot of them may have come from, say, a traceman background where there's running or biking where as a basic premise to quick your legs go the faster you're going to go, that transfer of understanding to swimming just doesn't work because, yes, you're out of moving quickly, play a part in allowing you to move fast, but for the speeds that these people are moving at, that doesn't translate. And so what we're trying to do is bring people back to a center point of trying to have equal focus on streamlining as well as propulsion so they get that benefit of the drive through the propulsive phase and allow themselves to glide. And once that penny drops where they actually feel they can produce pace but also do it without feeling absolutely gassed, now you have someone in a position where they actually can start improving time significantly because their pace isn't reliant on cadence. It's reliant on propulsion. And then naturally, if you are propelling yourself, if you increase your arms and maintain the same shape, you're going to travel quicker. So that's generally where our swimmers start and what we're trying to move them to. It's such a key thing to get across and understand. One way that I've found it to get that point across, if I'm doing like an example video on the on the iPad, showing them the different positions that we're going for.

And when you think of someone at the top of their stroke, like they're on their side, they're reaching out, they're about to begin their catch, that position. I remember saying on a race club video where they had the velocity, they're like they had the velocity. The thing that measures velocity. And they showed that the fastest point in the stroke or it's equal to another part of the stroke, but the fastest point in your stroke is at the top of it. When you've finished pressing back with your hand, when you've reached out onto your side. And one of the reasons that that's the most fastest point in your stroke is because you're most streamlined at that point. And so like I say to them right here, this this is the fastest point in your stroke. So if you're coming in and just going straight down, trying to get your propulsion going immediately into the catch without extending out, you're missing out on that fastest point in the stroke. So we want to make the most of it and not make the most of it where we're just hanging out all day and just gliding and losing our speed. But we need to be patient through there. So we hold that streamlined for at least a little bit to enjoy the the fruits of your work with your catching your pull through. Well, and with that point, we've actually one thing that we do like to do like in addition to working on that front end because what we find is that it's out of sight, out of mind. As so many swimmers are focused on just kind of what happens immediately within their range of vision. So once that lead arm goes in front of the head, but they might have had a clean entry, once it goes beyond that point, you see that kind of soft elbow on the weak wrist and things start to slack off very quickly.

So once we get into a position where we have people holding that front end really well in that streamlined position, what we try and get them to do is feel that spike in acceleration but also the drop off to get them to catch and drive on the opposite side. So we get them to focus on that peak and trough in terms of pace, say, OK, you're fastest where you start to slow down. And now we look to start balancing out, find that middle line where you know that you can drive into into your streamlined position, feel that pace. But now where do we have to pull to allow yourself to carry that pace forward and feel like you're moving at an even speed across an entire length? And again, once swimmers start feeling that, I think there's a big transformation in their stroke very, very quickly.

And how do you go about getting them to feel that?

So we usually try and over exaggerate the positions on the proposal phase. So it might be someone just putting paddles on. In a lot of cases, we just try and eliminate the requirement for the head turn predominantly because if they get into a position where they are actually propelling themselves with that speed, breathing becomes so much easier. But if they aren't allowing themselves to feel that pace, the head turns problematic. So a lot of the work that we would do is snorkel on and focus on the floor and make sure the head position is right. And if we get paddles on or fins on where when they drive themselves into that streamlined position, they can actually feel themselves kind of cutting through the water. One aspect we do like to play with is actually where that strike, that strike position enters to. So when your hand comes over and enters into the water, that we're not aimless in that that our hand just doesn't kind of enter high or too low. And so even something as simple as fins on, rotate a position, snorkel on. As we kick through, you raise and lower your arm on the front end. So you can feel the resistance on the top of your arm. You can feel it coming through a streamlined position and then how your shoulder hinges at the top end. And they try and find that spot in the middle. And once they have that position, that's their strike point. Now we added the arm where I might just be to put on a paddle so that we over exaggerate the catch and propulsive phase. And once they drive through, stay streamlined on the opposite side, they can feel spike in pace and then as it starts to drop off and there's a rotation where they catch and drive on the opposite side. But it's really kind of focusing on a gear assisted catch up

that focuses as much on the streamline and rotation as it does on the propulsion. And because it's so segmented, people tend to be able to find that position relatively quickly. And can you go into a bit more detail about

how you get people to explore the finding that sweet spot where they're not gliding too long and they're not gliding at all? Because that's one of the things that I find a lot of people, it takes a lot of practice to get it. If someone is either, say, doing too much catch up, OK, just getting them to back off that catch up so that they keep their momentum in the stroke. And then obviously on the other side of that is someone who's just spinning the wheels and they've got no reach and rotation and there's no there's no patience in front. But particularly those that are doing catch up, I find for them, it's like trying to get that trying to get that continuity in the stroke. So would you have an approach for that for someone who's say doing full catch up stroke and we want them to ease off that catch up? Yeah, so we the way that we approach our swim and again dealing with the group that we're dealing with rather than go kind of drill specific, we like to work on progressions. We work on a single aspect of the stroke. And for the sake of this, we'll talk about streamlining. And we go through five or six steps that carries through a series of progressions that bring us back up to our full stroke. The first movement could just be as simple as again, find that streamline position on the front end, lead arm, making sure that we have our shoulder rotators.

The rotation of the side point, I think is a funny one because it's that differentiation between the twists of the body as opposed to a rotation that happens as a result of your extension through the stroke that naturally has a shoulder to come back. So once we have that position found when we have people moving through their stroke and we generally do swim in that catch up position, I think people find that quite robotic. So what we tend to try and do is when we have that robotic position, but we can see the glide, we can see the propulsive phase, we then just ask people to focus on a slightly more natural cadence where it feels a little bit smoother in terms of how it fits in with their their movement of what they feel is being normal. And then something as simple as that, just their timing, so trying to count in their heads. So we might say, look, we're looking for you to try and maybe achieve 12 to 14 strokes per length. That's what your aim is. So we're looking to pull it back from catch up, slotting your natural rhythm, your natural cadence and allow that to carry you with a balance between propulsion and streamlining. I suppose when you say it like that, it still sounds like a very complicated process. And both when we go through those four or five points, it tends tends to bring people along. Having said that, we always have those people who either stay and catch up too long or dropping too too too quickly. And in my experience, it's not something that's fixed in one session. It tends to be kind of over two, three, four sessions where they might start finding patches in their stroke across

maybe five, six, seven meters where they find that glide, they find that rhythm and then maybe they lose it because all habits kick in and it's just then trying to string those together. And so we have a lot of back and forth, a lot of dialogue with swimmers to make sure that they're finding the right positions and then focusing on the correct ones to benefit off the hard work that they're putting in. I find exactly the same thing. It's it takes quite a while to find the right rhythm for those streamers. Like it's several sessions. They'll get glimpses of it here and there, but it's certainly not fixed in one session. No, and we have with our clinics, like we do small, small group clinics. So it's only six people across two lanes. But before we ever get in the water, you kind of highlight. Look, this is in the case where we're looking for you to produce 100 meters of flawless swimming at the end of the clinic. If you're swimming and you're finding that you have patches of anywhere between five and 10 meters where things click golden. That's exactly where we want to be, because you know the feeling that you're striving for. So the next time you're in the pool, you know what you're looking for. You've seen the drills that we've been using to get you there. And then it's just about stringing those patches together and trying to make it as consistent as possible. And the key thing you mentioned there is that's the feeling we're going for. He's we're always in our head, you know, especially as we're going through through these drills and these key points. But it's the feeling. If you can just go get more of that feeling within your lap, then that's where the magic happens is when you're in that flow state. Like, I think it's a good name for a business.

It's like you just feel like things are flowing well when you're swimming swimming well and you're out of your head. So that's what it's all about. I think, though, unfortunately. Like it's kind of like a double edged sword. We've never had so much access to information. You can train as close to a professional as you want to as it stands with all the information that you have access to through your watch or through coaching systems. And the watch has caused such a huge issue then because if you're trying to get people to work on the rhythm and flow, but every time they leave the wall, the press and start. Every time they come back into the wall, the press and stop. And once the watch is there, there's a fixation on pace and people think it's kind of like a minimum time they have to be hitting regardless of what they're doing. And so all of a sudden, what should be a progression or drill set? People start losing sight of percent. Oh, my times are slipping. I need to kind of speed things up here. So the the watches, again, fantastic. If you're kind of doing distance and you're trying to track pace, but very problematic if you're looking for people to just swim consistently and steady with no distractions where they're literally just focusing on tiles in the bottom of the pool and that feel for the water. If I forget to ask people at a clinic that we run to take their watch off, quite often I'll see them doing like we might do our first drill progression and then we'll do like some fifties of swim, just trying to implement those things. And I see them check it every every fifties. Like, oh, that wasn't faster than what I normally do.

Oh, that wasn't fast and what I normally do. We go through the next one. Yeah, maybe they get a 50 where it's like, oh, it wasn't too bad. But then it's like the next one, it's the same or slower. Yeah. And so it's like, don't worry about your pace. Like don't worry about what time you're doing right now. We're going for a certain certain feeling. We got we're not looking at pace. Like it may improve if you improve these things. Like it may improve straight away, but there's a really good chance that it's not going to because you haven't quite got that timing and that that rhythm. So yeah, get if they can get rid of the watch, especially in anything tech technique related, you will like you'll just be so much more present in the water. And I find the same thing. If I ever wear my garment when I'm training, like there's that fixation on it. So if I do wear, I try and just not look at it whatsoever because then I end up trying to force the speed a bit much. And I find that my effort level goes up, but the the times don't really change with it. Whereas when I'm just I've got rid of it, I can generally go faster for for less effort than if I'm trying to force it. Yeah, yeah. And I'd see that as well, that people don't necessarily understand that correlation between pace through technique driven swimming. As opposed to pace through panic, time chasing swimming. So like that, we go through sets where you might have people who swim kind of steady state and then you ask them to ramp up the pace. And they find that all of a sudden the difference in time between their steady state and their higher effort is quite minimal. You're you're now ignoring technique. You're focusing on turning because you're equating your pace

to turn over as opposed to form. We want the propulsion. We want to streamline it. Yeah, I think exactly what like you said, there's that distraction from your form and your feel for the water when the watch is there, because you just feel like you're chasing time. I think the art of being able to read a pace clock and just count your lengths is very, very undervalued, particularly when you're just trying to hold form. I like to refer to something to swim literacy where people understand they're swimming. Like, I know if I was swimming well, I knew once I left the wall, if you're swimming hundreds, I knew what a 130, 125, 120 effort felt like. I may be plus or minus a second, but by the time I came in, I knew I knew how it felt so that that transfers the open water really well. You knew where your efforts sit. Whereas when we get people to remove the watch and maybe do efforts without the watch, the understanding of pace is quite limited and because they're so reliant on what's on the wrist to dictate how they should be moving, I think it's very different for people to gauge effort. And if you want to swim hard, the last thing you're going to be doing is checking your wrist to see what pace you're going. You're just going to be watching who's around you to see how hard you can go and whose toes you need to chase. At Effortless Swimming, our mission is simple. Make swimming more enjoyable. Whether you're training for your next race, swimming for fitness or just love being in the water, we're here to help you swim faster, smoother and with more confidence.

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with the code podcast at shop.effortlesswimming.com. We also have a 30 day money back guarantee. So if you're not happy with the goggles for any reason, you can simply return them for a refund. Don't let foggy goggles ruin another swim. Try hydro clear today and experience clear vision from start to finish. Yeah, and let's talk about some sets and maybe like the recent hell set that you you did that I saw you posted on on Instagram. I think that's a really good way to to get people to to get off the watch and to to kind of see the results of their effort that they're putting in. So could you explain that the hell set that you did?

Yeah, so the hell set is what it sounds like. It's an hour or 45 minutes of pretty much suffering. But what we have to do is you're you're talking to make sure that people have the ability to swim at a sustainable pace, but then spend significant amounts of time in the red zone. I personally find that the people who can swim really hard and really well are the ones who actually know how to suffer in the water and are comfortable doing it. And I'm sure you've seen people when you say we want you to swim in a top end effort and they come back in, faces aren't red. There's no real heavy breathing, but they're saying, oh, that was really hard. And you're saying, no, that's not hard swimming. You have more in you and they say, oh, actually, yeah, I could go again. So the idea with the hell set is again, referring back to that swim literacy to put people in a position to suffer in a similar way to how they would when they go racing so that they know how it feels. They know how and when they can push and what they're capable of delivering on. So the set starts out relatively tame and it's a little bit deceiving because we would have go to a warm up, go through some progressions, make sure people are kind of targeting the water right and they're getting a good feel for the water. And then we go through just 10 by 100. And it's all of a very achievable pace, like all of 145, maybe all of 135 for the quicker group. So it doesn't feel in any way strenuous. It's just attritional because we're going through a kilometer.

Then we do 500 meters on paddles and fins just to build up a little bit of fatigue in the shoulders and then they get hit with a five by 100 best effort. And they only have 10, 15 seconds between each one. And this is where you start seeing whether or not people have the capacity to suffer and hold that pace. And you get people start having realizations during the session as well, where we some guys who are well able to swim, but maybe only doing one max two sessions a week and they come to something like this. They might only be covered in less than five K, but because of the intensity of the swimming, they go from maybe hitting like a one, say like a 110, 111 per 100 on that max effort. And then it slides right back to like a 117, 118, 119. How not having that fitness is a bit of a sore spot for them. So I go, OK, that's that's the weak spot at the moment. But we move on from them. We one thing in particular that I like doing, I call them Cat and Mouse one fifties, where we match you up with a similar pace swimmer. So say if me and you were swimming and we know that over the course of two, three hundred meters that you probably have 10, 15 meters on me by the by the time we get to that kind of 150, 200 meter distance mark. And so we say, OK, you're going to give me 15 to 20 meters on the first length. And I have six lengths to stay away from you. You have six lengths to catch me. And you'll never see people swim as hard as they do in that just full gas chasing them.

The effort was monstrous. But it's good fun as well, because you don't.

Yes, you are being chased, but there's a bit more purpose behind us. In terms of what you're trying to achieve as part of the overall set. And then when we move on from that kind of really real red zone, heavy work and seeing people hit max paces we get to what I think is probably the most interesting part of the set where we did and there's a series of sets in between this in terms of volume and kind of sets with equipment on where we do three, three by five minutes, unassisted efforts. So no watches. So people have no idea of what pace they're doing that to go purely or feel. And what we're looking for is they go fast, faster, fastest. And so in the first one, they kind of set their benchmark. If they've gone out too hot, they're going to suffer pretty badly in the next two. If they go too low, you'll call them out because, you know, they should be covering a bigger distance. But we had a big mix. We had one lane that pretty much just hit 12 lengths for all three. And it came back to that thing of people just not understanding their pace, maybe thinking that they're going hard, but they're just swinging their arms quicker as opposed to propelling themselves faster. We had two other guys in particular who whose increments were spot on like we went from, I think it might have been say 13 and a half lengths crept up the 14 lengths and 14 and a half. So they were gaining those increments as they went across those five minute markers.

But yeah, really interesting set. Fortunately, a lot of the same people are looking to do it again. So they haven't been completely put off. But a great way to learn how to suffer, which I think is probably something that a lot of people don't spend time doing. Yeah, I totally agree. It's a skill that you'd need to practice to really get to be able to suffer. And obviously some of that comes down to your experience and how long you've swum for, like somebody who's swum for a year probably doesn't have the ability to suffer for long periods in the water. But if you're getting a couple of years under your belt, then yeah, we want to be seeing something like that. Not a it's not a similar set, but a set where we have people suffer when we go to to Thailand for our how we camp. It's become a bit more like heaven week. It's not like hard training for seven for seven days. But we have some harder sessions in there. But one of the sessions is it's I think it's nine fifties dive walk back on about five minutes. So it's just max effort, essentially max effort fifties. And we do it as though first one's not not a warm up. But first time we just kind of do second one, we get the time. And then it's whoever is furthest away from that second time gets like gets out of the competition, but they still have to do it. But they're out of competition for the prize at the end. So I think we lose about three people per 50. And so a lot of people haven't done all out fifties from a dive and backing that up with lots of rest. Like they might have done fifties on the minute, fifties on one fifties.

But when you have a lot of recovery time that lactic acid builds up, it hurts, it hurts a lot. And so I really enjoy seeing people push themselves and suffer through that set. And we've had a few surprises, like people who I thought wouldn't do really well at that set actually actually came out on top and did really well. But that's like something like that is very, very challenging. And it's like it just sort of pushes you to that next level with your swimming. So yes, that's like that. I think a great it gives people the confidence that whether they get there or not, you know, but it gives them the confidence and the ability to go, yeah, OK, I'm actually like I can suffer here. I can actually push a lot harder. And I now see myself as this next level of swimmer. And if you keep doing that over years, then you find yourself doing some some pretty incredible things. Yeah, no, I absolutely agree. I think the there's a tendency, particularly, I think with the open water work because for the most part races, you're looking at a minimum of 750 meters that people tend to target the longer distance sets. And they don't really spend the whole lot of time in that anaerobic zone where they're really putting themselves into the red zone where they're struggling to breathe by the end of it. Like you're saying, lactic acid is building up and they're feeling an absolute joker by the time they come around to do the next one. But having the confidence then at the end of it, where they realized, well, I felt brutal, but I've actually managed to turn out some relatively decent times after maybe peeking on the first or second one. I think, like you said, people start having that confidence

and realizing that that kind of strong swimming, seeing the benefit and how that actually transfers into the open water work so that if you do have to chase the set of toes, if you're accelerating onto the boy or off the boy, that you have that capacity strength wise to put in those big digs, but then come back down to that kind of race pace effort and just kind of hold that. So I would find there's huge benefits in that anaerobic work that again, a lot of the kind of distance or open water swimmers I think tend to veer away from. Yeah, yeah, totally. It's the other part of that, too. The other thing that I like to do a lot of in training is an example we did this week was it was one hundred and fifty.

Was it one hundred and fifty strong like front end race pace? So what would be about a two K swim? Five or ten seconds rest and then we go on to two hundred and fifty recovery. That recovery is just like moderate effort, but like as quick as you can. Get that heart rate under control, keep good form and and then the next one is one hundred and fifty strong and then one hundred and fifty recovery and then fifty one hundred and fifty strong and then fifty recovery. And then we do that twice through. So like just being able to go hard, get the heart rate up, quickly recover, but keep your form that gives you the ability to shift gears when needed as you as you as you're racing there. Like it's that's a bit of an important skill for a lot of people to have. Yeah, I think it's something again that's probably underestimated. And we we we would do something similar and that we try and get people to spend a lot of time in that red zone. But then bringing it back down to that sustainable, maintainable race pace so that even though there might be fatigue, they can still find form. Inevitably when people race, I think they let fatigue get the better of them. And the first thing that they do is that lead arm starts to drop. And so we try and bring things back to a really simple point that when they get tired, like just think about your fingertips because your fingertips can't be engaged if your wrist isn't strong if your elbows are engaged, your shoulders not in the right position. So once you maintain that length rule for streamlining, at least whatever proportion you're putting into the water, you're going to benefit from it. But if our lead arm drops and you're trying to propel yourself,

now you're missing out on both aspects of the stroke. So going back to what you were saying with those sorts of sets where you have people who are fatiguing over the course of being on that upper end of their pace, but then coming back to swimming that kind of distance, that race pace and just learning how to hold up form, develop that strength and capacity for maintaining that position and holding the technique to the water is hugely beneficial. I'd love to jump into any story or example of someone you've worked with recently who you've seen make good progression, because I find that sometimes, and I know this personally for myself, is like, if you hear a story of someone who's gone from, say, to 20, down to two minutes or something like that, it's like, all right, yeah, it's possible. And just kind of having that belief that it is possible. Because I find sometimes people get stuck in their own head and they become their own worst enemy where they're like, oh, it's just tried so many different things and nothing's happening. And I'm just stuck at this one pace and I just don't know if I can actually get any faster. But we see it all the time. They have people to improve, often quite to pretty incredible speeds over the course of several years. So is there any examples that come to mind that people you've worked with recently? Yeah, we're quite lucky. We have a very broad demographic in terms of people that we're dealing with. And we've we've a very broad mix of backgrounds that people are coming from. So like with some people who have been very high performers and other sports that are coming across, they tend to do quite well because they're so aware of their biomechanics that it's easy.

They can take so much more information on and wouldn't go that they tend to adapt to it much easier. The point you're making at times, that thing of people being in that kind of north of 210 to 20, then making those big strides and bring it down to that two minute mark is very achievable with a few small adjustments. It's when you get kind of to the narrow end. So I always find that kind of sub 145 paces, really, where people start struggling to make some big inroads. We do have there's a couple of couple of cool examples. One of the guys Rob, who is currently training for the Ironman World Championships in Nice, he wishes it was Kona, but he's he's got to go to Nice. And he we ran like an athlete development program last year. And the idea was that we wanted to just try and engage a couple of athletes who are maybe performing quite well in certain aspects of what they're doing, but the swimming isn't where they needed to be. And Rob was one of the guys that we took on. And the swimming is probably up. He was probably doing well to be sub two minutes kind of around like maybe north between 155, two minute mark.

And we were working with Rob kind of remotely and things are moving along relatively well. He kind of got down south of like low 150s, high 140s. But over the last since Chris was there, we've actually had him in our lane training. And the lane training were very lucky because the group that are in that kind of buy into our ethos and the ethos being like swim hard, push, push each other, be aggressive when you need to be. He's slotted in there. And over the course of a couple of weeks, we've kind of seen those times drop to where he's posting like kind of sub 130s effort kind of swimming consistently. And we kind of have him down what should be sustained via sub 140s high 130s lowies. So where previously his target across the course of his Ironman swim would have been like if he could get sub two minutes. Whereas now we're saying we reckon like 140 pace, he should be out the hole. But if he gets to if he is a decent ready on him, if he gets onto a good pair of set of toes and if he navigates the course, well, there's definitely a few more seconds there for the taking. So it's been it's been great seeing that progression, especially with people who are who are hungry first. Like it's one thing to have someone who just wants to swim better because they want to swim better. That's absolutely fine. But I think then when you have somebody else who is training for a specific goal and they have specific targets in mind and you can see their confidence building in their swimming and they get more comfortable in the water, pace wise or starting to tease out a bit better. That's always really interesting to watch. Another cool one that we're working on working with

paratrooper athletes and Donica is fully blind. Donica lost his sight at 10. He never saw anybody swimming properly. And so like this guy is competed on the international stage. He has a guide and is swimming. It's actually incredible to get into a 50 meter pool with someone with absolutely no vision whatsoever and watch them swim up one side, come back down the other. He's cut all over his hands because he kind of navigates using the rope. But your coaching approach in that scenario has to be entirely different because his reference points are so different to what you're used to dealing with. And so when we got into that scenario, we're saying, OK, how do you actually teach someone who's never seen someone swimming before and you have to rely on your explanation to them as to what they're doing in the water so that they understand it. Because video analysis is obviously out the window, which is such a huge crutch. It works so well for people. But with Donica now, we've been working over the last couple of months. And I think even the last day, like we just had, there was one session in particular where Cross, I think, is set of hundreds. All he's looking for is for him to kind of hit consistent times at a steady pace. And I think we got him down to like a one thirty eight and he repeated that about four times in a row. And by the end of it, again, the comment was that he was able to produce that and it didn't feel overly taxing. It felt much easier than he had been swimming before.

So those sorts of gains are huge. It's fantastic to see that, particularly when the coaching environment is so entirely different to what you're used to. Can you give me an example of how you had to perhaps rephrase something that you would normally say to someone who can sort of knows what they need to do by some of what they've seen to work with that athlete?

So one of the big things that Donica would have been that kind of slightly struggling with was his catch. So engaging the water on the front end, like super early, as you've seen, that there's loads of people that catch the water really late, like almost under their chest. But it's trying to find that extreme position on the front end where we've like shoulder to cheek and we're getting fingertips pointed towards the bottom as early as possible.

And a lot of that I find comes down to people actually getting a feel for the water and understanding the creation of that leverage and really holding that water in the arm as they drive through. So I was looking and saying, OK, how do we actually explain the catch position properly? And a lot of it actually I find comes down to more tactile work. So I find that I get him to kind of put his fingertips down into my elbow and my fingers to then open his elbow and I get him to start leveraging back and forth, putting pressure through that. We then transfer that maybe to just fingertips on the wall and you're looking to just kind of leverage through the fingertips and get the elbow nice and high and then transfer that straight into the water. You use paddles and stuff to accentuate the feeling and make sure that it's a little bit more exaggerated, but simple things like that where you maybe have to kind of move him into position a bit more and be a little bit more hands on. But it definitely works. The flip side of that is it's incredible to see someone's ability with no vision to take on these pointers and put them into practice.

Choice, choice, my legs are a 50 meter pool. They're ice loaves. It's just it's it's an incredible, incredible drive and determination and incredible focus that you could see. You can see someone fatiguing over time when they're having to concentrate that hard on particular movements and aspects of technique. Yeah, well, that's that's a great, great story. It's it's good to be challenged in those ways to be able to have to figure out different ways to coach and get your point across. And yeah, it's that's really exciting. Well, Damian, I really appreciate you being on the podcast and sharing your expertise for those that are listening. What's the best way to follow you, get in touch with you? And yeah, and hear more, especially if they're in Ireland near Dublin. Yeah, so best place to get in touch is probably Instagram at flowstateswimming and otherwise website flowstateswimming.ie and all the contact details are through there. And look, we're we're we're just stoked to try and work with people who are looking to push themselves in the open water. We're we're very fortunate Ireland that we have some fantastic distance routes like the North Channel, the Fastness, Go Away Bay. But there's also the aspect where people want to race and we want to help people race and pursue times, push themselves and get into a position where they feel comfortable to be aggressive and push hard in the water. If that's you, whether you're a tracelier or open water swimmer, please feel free to get in touch

for a whole load of different types of sessions that people can get involved with. Yeah, great to meet new swimmers. Thank you very much for having me on. It's been great to chat through these bits and pieces and get your perspective of what we're doing. Yeah, likewise. Thanks, Damian. Great to chat. All right, thank you very much. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. If you'd like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

you know, skills take a while to improve, especially if they're, you know, they're the big skills that really matter. Like people are working on them their entire career. And so that can be, you know, I think another mistake is if you bounce from thing to thing every week or so, you're never going to really, you know, spend enough time on something to really make a difference. So I think that's probably the other big thing that we didn't really discuss is you got to be consistent with what you're trying to improve. Because if you jump around, it's like, you know, whatever the chase two rabbits catching on that saying, it's, you know, it definitely applies here to welcome to the effortless swimming podcast to show that helps swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here's your host, Brenton Ford. What if you could become your own best swim coach? In today's episode, I'm joined by Andrew Shaff, coach, educator, and the author of a constraints led approach to swim coaching. We dive into one of the most important skills for adult swimmers and triathletes learning how to self coach. Whether you're swimming solo, training without feedback or stuck on a plateau, Andrew shares a practical roadmap to finally break through. You'll learn why progress isn't about doing more drills, but choosing the right ones. We talk about how to create built in feedback loops, what to do if you feel like nothing's changing, and why slowing down and being intentional could be your fastest path forward. Andrew also shares one of his favorite drills, power pools, and how it reveals exactly what's working and what's not in your stroke. If you're someone who trains alone or you've been working

hard without seeing results, this episode could be the turning point. If you enjoy this conversation and want to dive deeper, Andrew's stroke fundamentals course is a fantastic next step. It breaks down the key elements of freestyle technique in a simple, actionable way. And as a listener of the podcast, you can get 50% off. Just check the link in the show notes to access the special offer. Let's get into the episode with Andrew Shaff.

So Andrew, one of the topics I want to cover today is how can someone who doesn't have a coach giving them feedback on deck to be able to give them feedback on how they're swimming? How can people make changes and self coach so that they can actually make improvements in their swimming over the course of several weeks and several months? Because I coach a lot of adults and they're not getting feedback from a coach on deck, so they have to become their own coach. So I want to get stuck into some of those topics there. In terms of what you see and the people you're working with, is that something that's really common, not being able to get feedback? Yeah, I mean, because even if you're in a coaching environment where regardless if it's a club swimming program, a master's program, or a collegiate program, there's going to be one coach working with a group of athletes and that group might be as small as five people, but it could be 30 people. And so a coach has one pair of eyes and even if they're doing their absolute best to interact with everyone and provide feedback to everyone, there's limits to what they can do. So the more that anyone can get better at kind of facilitating the change process, that's going to be really important because you do 25 meters, you're taking minimum 10 strokes and so each one's an opportunity and unless the coach literally has a microphone in your ear, which is not too common, they can't tell you what you're doing in every single lab or even every single stroke. So I think it's something that's really important and it's definitely a skill set that people can learn. And so I think, and it's not, you know,

anyone can get better, anyone can change, it's not tied to someone's talent, it's just it's kind of a process that people have to learn. Yeah, absolutely. And from the feedback from, say some of the clinics that we've run, when we've done something like wrong way, right way, with it, let's say a drill or a way of swimming, that has been like a good first step for people to be able to recognize when they're in the wrong position, when they're in the right position and building up that self-awareness. What are some of the other strategies and tactics that people can do to actually build this ability to self-coach? Right, so I think even before that step, what's really important is that you have to have a clear goal in terms of what you're trying to accomplish. And so, you know, you'd frame the question in the terms of making progress over, you know, three to four weeks. And, you know, you can make a lot of change in your skills in that timeframe, but you can't make a lot of change in all your skills. And so it can be really, really important to start off with, what do I want to actually improve? Because if you're not really clear about that, and like, you know, a pretty bad goal is, I want to improve my skills, or I want to, you know, improve my technique, like that doesn't mean anything. And so being really clear about that is really important. So, you know, like something like breathing, that's a really concrete skill that that's pretty, you know, specific, and you can make a lot of improvement with that, because it lets you know what type of activities you're going to want to do, because if you're trying to improve your breathing, it doesn't make sense to be spending half your time kicking like

they're not related. So I think that's probably the most important thing. And then once you have a clear goal of what you want to accomplish, it's picking activities that are going to help you get there. But more importantly, like picking activities that do have some sort of feedback built into them. And so, you know, certain drills make it a lot easier for you to feel what you're doing and how you're being effective. And when you do them poorly, you know that right away. And so like, like you used the example of kind of right way wrong way, and that's an awesome way to help people become more aware of what they're doing. But some drills have that built into it. And so like, you know, one of my the textbook example that I like is you've shown a paddle on your head, and you mess up your breathing, that paddle is coming right off. And in that situation, you don't need a coach to tell you, hey, that wasn't, you know, that wasn't effective because you know, as soon as it happened, I think being clear on the goal and then trying to pick the activities that make it easiest for you to feel the key skills is the next big step. Yeah, that's great. So let's set the goal, choose what you want to work on, and then prescribe the drills. And actually, one of the things that going through one of the courses that you've put out there, there's like, I've picked up a lot of good drills to show or to help identify that. And one example is in the freestyle section of your stroke fundamentals, the power pools drill. And so just to explain the power pool, actually, I'll let you explain the power pools and how that can be effective at giving you feedback on your catch and pull effectiveness. Right. Because I've started using this and it's, I love it.

Right. So, so basically what you're doing is if you're familiar with breaststroke, it's just a pull with both arms over the head, and you're just pulling down to the feet, you're on the surface of the water. And it works well if you use a pool buoy so that you don't really have to worry about kicking. And so what it can be really useful for is, and also if you're having trouble visualizing, it's like a double arm freestyle pull at the same time or a butterfly pull. And so what you can do is, the only way to move forward is to be effective with your arms. You're not using your legs. And because you've got a pull buoy in, for the most part, your body position is going to be pretty good. So that's not really going to be a limiting factor. And you're not going to be able to change it. So what you can do is, is now you don't have to worry about the recovery. You don't have to worry about the breathing. You don't have to worry about the timing. It's just kind of a pure pull thing. And so what you can do is you can go, I'm going to go 425s and I'm going to try to take less strokes each one. And so the only way you can do that is by being better at setting up your stroke, setting up your catch, holding it through, getting more out of each stroke. And what's valuable about the numbers is that, you know, I'm just making them up. So you took 15, the first one, and you took 12, the next one. Well, whatever you did, it was better. Something positive happened. And then, then it's just a matter of figuring out what, what changed. And so if you go 15, and then you go 12, and then you go 15 again, well, whatever you did, you stopped doing it. And so it's a, it's a matter of figuring it out. And that's really clear feedback. And you don't just have to use stroke counts. You could also just see, can I go faster each one? And so both either, whether you're using stroke counts or speed,

they're both giving you feedback about how well you're, you're, you're creating propulsion, but the feedback is a little bit different. And it's a slightly different aspect of, of, of the skill. And you could even go crazier and you can, you know, try to combine the speed and the stroke count and try to keep them both as low as you, as you can. And so there you're, you're in a situation where the only way to be successful is to use your arms effectively and you're getting very clear feedback about what, what works. And so it becomes much simpler to try to figure out what you're doing wrong, what could be better. And then you can just kind of play with that.

Yeah. So we do it in most of our clinics now is, there's one of the final drills that we do. And there's so many different areas that you can, this one, it can adjust to get further with each stroke. And obviously, like the catch is the most obvious one, you know, we want this good high elbow catch. We don't want to drop it. That's one. But then also where and how much power you apply. So a lot of people tend to just go for broke at the start and they muscle the catch. And that means that they're not like, they just don't get into as good a position and they're not set up to be pressing back yet. So we have them just think of it as smooth through the catch, strong through the back. So smooth to strong. And they find that like with sometimes almost half the effort they get just as far, if not further, compared to when they're going too hard at the start. And that's how a lot of the swimmers that I coach would typically swim. Like they're just trying to enter the water, pull straight back and just apply too much power. So getting them to experiment with that, where their arms are through the, like the path of the hands through the stroke, a lot of people are too wide at the back of it. So make sure that they're coming in through the center a bit more. But all these little things we're getting to experiment and feel how far are they traveling with each power pool that they do. And it's just so good at like ironing out some of those details because they've got the feedback of, they can see how far they're traveling, they can count how many pools it's taking them. So like even just something as simple as that, I think can be such good feedback, but the swimmer needs to be able to

just go, okay, like for this lap, like I'm just, I'm going to tune into the feeling of this. Because I know that a lot of their triathletes I work with, they just want to get to the pool, have a hard workout and, you know, get the fitness aspect of it. But if you can just slow things down and put that awareness into it, it makes such a big difference to the technical side of your swimming. Right. And a good point you brought up was that you're in, like, you know, a lot of times our instincts are wrong. And so it feels right to just apply pressure right away. And like you said, how could it be that it's half the effort, but you know, twice the effectiveness. And that's where it can be really valuable to have the concrete feedback. Because if you only rely on your feelings, a lot of times they're going to be misleading. And that can cause a lot of problems. And so like, when you can see, wow, I literally traveled twice as fast, but I, but I wouldn't have believed it based upon it how it felt. That can be super valuable because you need the proof that what you're doing is effective, because what your body is telling you is, is effective is not. And that's where, like, the feedback is really helpful, because it allows you to be like, all right, well, I wouldn't have thought that that would work, but it did. And I was able to repeat it. So it's not just a fluke. And then that helps you, you create change. That's, that's interesting with, like, what we think we need to do is often very different than what we actually have to do. Right. Right. So much with that, with the, with the catch, because a lot of times people feel like they're getting more out of it because they're putting more force into it. And if

they're pushing down or dropping their elbow, they feel like they're connecting with the water. Well, not connecting, but there's pressure there pressure. If you go through that, yeah, if you go through the catch, well, sometimes it can actually feel like you're not getting as much purchase initially, because there's less, less force on there. But yeah, if you're setting up, well, well, then you're going to actually have it going in the right direction. So it actually feels a little bit easier and lighter in a way when you do it.

Yeah. And like the name itself is in some ways misleading because it implies that you're trying to like, you know, do something forceful and like hold on to the water when really it's just kind of a simple repositioning. And then like you said, then you start applying pressure after that. And that's where people can get, can get messed up because it doesn't feel right. No, that's, that's it. And I can't remember if I bought this up last time, but I heard this from a coach and I don't know even if it's, if it's necessarily true, but I like the concept that's, you can only put six kilos of force on the water before you start to slip any more than that. And you're going to be ineffective with that extra power. It just doesn't go to actually moving your forwards. And so I think that concept of like, all right, I've only got this certain amount of force that I can apply. So I'm just going to sort of operate just below that. Then people find that they don't actually have to muscle their way through the, through the water and they're better off just having that, that more balanced approach. And that's why you see like really good swimmers, they just, they're not having to work that hard. It's like they've got good body position. They're very streamlined and then they're very effective with the movements that they're making. They're not pulling necessarily harder than the average person. It's like they're just much more effective at it. So just trying to go for that sort of approach is, is, is what we want to work towards. Yeah. Yeah. And I think to kind of build on what you said, like I think there's, there is a limit to how much pressure you can apply to the water. And at the same time, the more patient you are with applying pressure, you can usually apply more towards the, like, so the more patient you are, the higher

amount of pressure you can get to, but like, but if you try to rush it, like you said, or you try to go too fast, then, then you kind of lose it. And so it's like, it's, it's hard because we want to go, but like, we have to be patient with it. And we have to be like almost, like almost as hard as we can, but, but not quite. Now let's, let's go into some other sort of ways or drills that you'd, you'd use with people to give them the ability to know how they're, how they're going with these stroke changes.

Let's say perhaps it's, I don't know, maybe like rotation is, for me, like a big one, a lot of swimmers that I coach, they come in and they're very flat and they, they struggle to get the correct amount of hip and, and torso rotation. And so we want to just develop their ability to, to rotate side to side, but not go, not go too far. What are some things that people could do to help improve that and know how they're going with it? This episode is brought to you by Pillar Performance. Our new sponsors Pillar are a sports micronutrition company. And the easiest way to describe it is that while hydration and carbohydrates products will take you through to touch the wall as fast as possible, Pillar's mission is to get swimmers to the starting blocks in the best condition over and over again. I recently started taking Pillar triple magnesium after a friend had recommended it. And it's been a game changer for my sleep and recovery. I take one scoop 30 minutes before bed each night in the same way that you might start your day with a coffee. I finish it up with a magnesium and recover better for tomorrow's session in the pool. Pillar performance is used by some of the biggest names in swimming and triathlon, including Zack Stubbulty Cook, Jan Frodeno, Ben Canute, Ash Gentle, Taylor Nib amongst the host of other well-known swimmers and triathletes. Where Pillar differs from other micronutrition you may have taken before is both the quality of the types of magnesium and the tangible results that I see on my garment each morning. If you'd like to try Pillar today, head to pillarperformance.shop and enter code effortless for 15% off. That's effortless

for 15% off all first-time purchases. Or for anyone in North America, enter the same code at thefade.com. Right. So specific to rotation, one thing that I'd like to try to do is to keep people within the rhythm of the stroke or the timing of the stroke as much as possible. And so rather than you can have people just rotate all the way to their side and onto their back, I like to have them recover their arms under the water because that makes it easier to focus on what they're doing from a rotation standpoint and the timing tends to be pretty good. And that allows them to explore ranges of motion. And so what's tough about the amount of range of motion is, like you said, it's difficult to know how much you're doing and whether it's enough. And also it's probably a little bit different for people too based upon their buoyancy, how flexible they are. And so it's not like there's a magic number that you're trying to hit. So with the underwater recovery, what you can do is you can do something where like kind of going back to the stroke count. You can try to take less strokes, which will force you to rotate more and to be longer. And then you can alternate that with some where there's less, or excuse me, there's more strokes, which will cause you to be a little bit flatter. And by kind of exploring the extremes, that allows you to be more aware of kind of where you need to be. And so if you, if you tend to know that you need to rotate more, then exploring more at like really low and really trying to stretch it out. And then, you know, you can do some where it's a little bit tighter and you're more likely to find a

rhythm that feels good for you. And kind of going back to what we talked about earlier, you can start comparing that to some times too. And that gives you more awareness of, hey, if I exaggerate the rotation, what feels like exaggerated to me, I noticed that I can go a little bit faster and it's easier. Well, then that's, you know, that means you're on the right track. But let's say, you know, you really try to exaggerate the rotation, but you go significantly slower and it feels really labored. Well, then that's probably not going to be the right choice for you. So kind of exploring the options and then trying to get some measurement in terms of what's effective and the effort part is important too. Like we talked about earlier, if you can produce the same performance for less effort, that's great. And so that can be valuable too.

Yeah, for people to just go, okay, it's actually okay for me to go between these two extremes because quite often what feels extreme for someone is not that extreme. Like when they're, yeah, if they're too flat and then they try and go for a lot of rotation, it's very rare that they actually have too much. So like we, when we do our freestyle clinics, in the last filming that we do, I have them pick one thing to focus on. And I ask most of them to exaggerate that change a bit in order to actually see a change. And then they look at it and look, sometimes it's like it's looking really good, but still sometimes people just need more exaggeration of the change. So it's just, yeah, it's very unlikely that people actually go too far with it. So yeah, just being willing to stretch what an experiment and just try different things and operate within, yeah, these really two big changes will help you find that sweet spot. Yeah, somewhere in between. And I like in one of your videos I saw a little while ago, you're just talking about rotation for freestyle. And you mentioned like how much you need to rotate in freestyle. Well, number one, it's enough to be able to get the arm out comfortably, right? Because if you're flat, then our shoulders don't work very well. And then in the catch, well, it's enough to be able to get into a high elbow catch, use these bigger, stronger muscles through here. And if you go too far, well, you're not going to be able to hold your catch. And if you're too flat, well, you can't really use your lats and so on. So I think that I found that is a really good way to explain how much rotation we need, like enough to get the arm out, enough to get into a good and a strong catch position like that. Just simple, simple thought for me was good

to be able to convey that to other people as well, when we're explaining how much we need. Right, right. Because more is not necessarily better, because like you said, you're going to get out of like, you know, your elbow is just going to be your arms going to be out of position. And then two, it just takes more time. And so if your stroke rate is up by 50%, is 50% slower, because you're taking all this time to rotate, and you're not even you're getting in worse positions, like it's just not going to be helpful. And so, yeah, it's about finding the optimal. And so like, if you feel like you can recover smoothly, you feel like you can set up your stroke well, then you probably don't need to change anything. But if you know that you're just kind of like robot recovering, and you're not setting up your stroke well, then you need to explore. And that's kind of going back to the underwater recovery in the stroke counts. That's why I like putting a number on it too, is because, like you said, people think they're changing, but they're not. And so if you say to yourself, I'm taking whatever 12 strokes of the underwater recovery, I want to get down to eight, that's going to force you to really explore that range of motion, because you might think you're changing, but then the stroke count hasn't changed at all, because you haven't actually changed. And so anything you can do to like, make yourself do something different is going to be really valuable, because our tendency is any deviation from normal is going to feel really weird, and it's going to be like, I'm changing so much, but really not much changes happen at all. The kind of leads into the next thing I want to cover here is that someone who has been trying to improve or get faster over, say, six months or 12 months,

they've been working at a few different things, and they find themselves in the same spot. They were 12 months ago. Why could that be? And then what could they do to make sure that the next six months don't follow that same pattern? And I'm talking more about more like adult swimmers and triathletes. Right. So a lot of times it's not solving the right problem. So basically, if you're so in freestyle and your breathing is problematic, whether it's just you're pulling out of position, it's just slow, the timing's off, it's very difficult to improve anything else, because if every stroke, your head is getting pulled out of line, well, your body's going to be out of line, and if your body's out of line, how are you going to do anything with your arms? If they're just moving all over the place, they're not going to be effective. So making sure that you're addressing the right problem is really important. And two, with a lot of adult swimmers, spending all your time on your kick is probably also not maybe the best use of your time if your breathing's really bad, if your body position's really bad, if your timing's really bad, if your arms aren't really bad. It's not that kicking can't help, but if these other things aren't in place first, it's not going to make that much of a difference. And so

breathing tends to be the, you need to breathe. There's no way around that, you're going to have to do that. And so if you can't do that well, that's typically the first place to start, because every other skill is dependent on that. You can't manage your body position if you're pulling out of alignment every time you breathe, and you certainly can't pull. So once you get your breathing locked in, then it's a matter of can I swim with pretty good body position and pretty good alignment, because swimming's just so much harder if you're dragging yourself through the water, and you're going to get exhausted, and it really, really kills speed. And so that's probably the next thing to think about. And then if you have those things ironed out, then really go into town on what your arms are doing and the propulsion you can create with them is the next big step. So really a lot of times it's about finding the limiting factor for you, because if you're working on something that could be important, but will never be fixed because of some other problem, then you're just going to spin your wheels. And so that can be, it can be really valuable to, you know, one, take a step back and really think about what could be the problem or two, it's like ask someone for help that maybe has a little bit more experience, because, you know, all the work in the world, the best drills or strategies in the world aren't going to overcome working on the wrong problem. Yeah, that's such a great answer that. And with the breath timing, the two like really common ones I've seen the last couple of months, and I guess probably forever since I've been coaching really, but a late breath for triathletes. So for adults like just turning their head too late. And what

I try and teach at clinics is think about pulling into the breath. So as one hand is coming under your head, that's when you should start to turn. And so your head will start to turn as this hand is coming underneath. You want the mouth out of the water just as you're about to exit with that same hand. And then the most important part, I feel is that like the head comes back in, the eyes come back in towards the end of the catch there. So the eyes are back in as this hand is about to pass underneath the head again. Like that to me is probably the more important one. But if you get it right at the start, it's a lot easier obviously to, you know, to get that second part right. But yeah, breath timing, I had a clinic the other day where I think there was three of them that their breath time was just too late. Like they're either lingering with the head, so it didn't come back early enough. Or they just were just turning much too late. And it's like, if you're breathing every two, that's half your strokes where it's going to be thrown off. But then that second stroke where you're not breathing, well, it's everything's out of place anyway. It's out of sync. So that's a big one. And then obviously like lifting the head or turning too far. So yeah, that's, I love that answer because yeah, if you're working away at the wrong, the wrong problem, it's like you're in the same, the same place there. Right, right. And then, and then so once you do identify, go ahead, sorry. No, sorry. So once you do identify the right problem, then it's like, all right, what strategies are going to really make a difference here? And so like if you're working on your, your arm pull, it's like, there are things that are going to be pretty helpful. And they're ones that aren't. And so it's identifying the strategies that are going to be most, most useful for, for that particular problem. And then once,

once you do, once you find those, and that, and that, you know, that might take some time. But again, it's like there, there are resources out there, you know, most of them for, for free, just kind of have to do a little work. The second mistake I see is that rather than changing something that you know works or sorry, rather than sticking with something that you know works, people will change what they're doing because they either get bored or it feels like it's not working anymore. But what I found to be the most effective thing is if you find a drill or a strategy that you really like, change how you do it, rather than changing from strategy to strategy. And so like, you know, with the breathing thing, like just we talked about earlier, the pedal on the hat, on the head, if that works for you, don't do something else, keep doing that, but, but maybe add some speed to it. Maybe you start doing it with fins, maybe you do it with your, your hands closed so that it's harder to, to, to balance yourself when you breathe. So there's lots of different ways to challenge whatever drill or strategy you're doing, because just because you can do it, you know, using, using the breathing, just because you can breathe well in a drill when you're going slow, that's got nothing to do with, you know, your thousandth stroke in a race when you're, you're tired, people are swimming on top of you, you're in the waves, like those are two totally different skill sets. So you have to learn how to do it well. And then you got to keep challenging it because it's not going to get better if you don't continue to challenge. And I mean, if you think of Olympic level swimmers, they still do drills in their, in their warmup and in their session. And just to, to refine some of these, these aspects. And I think

what I've seen, like most of them for the, for the freestyle is a lot of them, like single arm freestyle, bred into the opposite side, other arm by the, by the underwater recovery freestyle or long dog is a really common one. And obviously scaling and those sorts of things like fairly simple drills, but there's a lot of ways that you can either challenge that drill or it actually takes a lot to do that drill very well, especially single arm, bring to the opposite side. Like that's, yeah, that's a very challenging drill for most people. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, I think for the athletes, I work with it triathletes, adult swimmers, if I really like that drill because there's so much that we can work on with it. And so, you know, people might be choosing drills, but yeah, just make sure you've got the, that specific, specific focus. So for the timing, if they're doing single arm, bring to the opposite side, I just, I want them to actually try and get that breath very early, like to even encourage it to be earlier than what it needs to be. So when the hand enters, we want to start to turn the head and then bring that eyes back down even before they start their catch, just to overdo it a little bit, just to try and get used to that sort of timing. So eyes come back in before they start the catch and then they can, can pull through. And then obviously, like that will feel very extreme and it is, but then when they go to swimming, they're going to start to be able to, I think, move closer to that sort of breath timing. Can you talk, talk to some of the other ways that you would increase the challenge of some of the drills or how you would, you would shift them as someone gets better at it? Yeah. So, so like you said, some of them have a lot of different

points of mastery. And so kind of like we were talking about earlier with the, with the power poles, there's a lot of different ways that you could explore to help you get more out of that. And so just because you've made a little bit of progress there, doesn't mean you've figured it out. And so like you said, there's elite elite athletes that are still working on these things and not necessarily just doing them to do them, like they're still trying to get better at them. So, so from a challenge standpoint, you can challenge it with like, so some sort of performance, like you could ask yourself to go faster with it, like you can build, you could descend. Depending on what it is, you could say, I want to take less strokes. In some cases, take more strokes. So like in the example with the breathing to the opposite side, it's not, it's going to be easier to do it when you go slower. And so if you force yourself to take more strokes or to use a higher stroke rate, now you've got to make that breath happen a lot faster. You've got to be a lot more precise with it. And that's another level of challenge than just doing it at your own pace. So like if you have a tempo trainer, some drills, you can put the tempo trainer on and force yourself to, to speed it up. Different training aids can make the challenge different. So like sometimes you put a buoy in, sometimes you put fins in, you could wear paddles, you could hold the paddles upside down, you could close your fists, like a lot of different things. Sometimes you may be doing a drill with a snorkel because it makes it easier so that you don't have to breathe. Then you take the snorkel off and now you have a new level of challenge. Or if you're using fins, you take the fins off, now it's going to be more difficult. And then another way to do it is to add some fatigue to it. So you could start doing the drill and taking a lot less rest or like this can be fun too. It's

like you do 100 freestyle with pretty strong effort, you're focusing on whatever skill you're working on. And then you go right into the drill. And now you're starting to do the drill with your heart rate up, which is going to be more difficult and it's going to be more challenging. You're really going to have to focus. And then two, you know, this is kind of another mistake that people make is I just don't do the drill by itself. Do the drill, swim, do the drill, swim. And so like the example you gave with the one arm freestyle, bring the opposite side, like you could do two 25s like that build to add a little speed to it. And then you could go right into a 50 or 100 freestyle where you're trying to execute the same skill. And that's going to generate a little bit of fatigue too. But also, no one cares if you can do the drill. Well, you're doing the drill so you can actually swim well. And so if you don't practice going from the drill to the swim, like that's a missed opportunity for sure. Yeah, definitely. And like you do a lot of sort of calls with coaches, you put out a lot of content. Is there anything that stands out to you that's really resonated with the people who view your stuff or that you've been speaking to recently?

I think the biggest thing is that there doesn't have to be this distinction between skills and training. And so I think that's the like, and so for people that like to train, which is definitely going to be the triathlete crowd, which is great because fitness is a huge part of it, you don't necessarily have to give up the training and just only just swim easy and just perform easy drills. It's like, if you can find ways to integrate these two things, it's going to be one, a more engaging experience. But two, it's going to be more effective. And so just kind of using the example I just said, if you have a set today that you have to go 10-100, it's like, well, you could go four rounds of maybe a 50 or 225 drill and then do two 100s and then do that four times. And that's an easy way to just constantly remind yourself how to execute these skills a little bit better. But two, your heart rate is going to be up just the same way. It's going to be the same thing from a physiological standpoint, but you're able to get more out of the same thing. And so I think that can be a little bit of a perspective shift. And two, it can be a lot more exciting because now you can be a lot more creative in terms of how you write your workouts or write sets. Yeah. And when I've seen sets from some of the best coaches or those that have had the most success, there's often quite a bit of detail in those sets because they're keeping it interesting. They're challenging you in different ways with breath control or stroke count, whatever it might be. And you're working

without thinking that you're working in a way like the time flies because it's such an interesting and engaging set. And I think that's the real key to having someone get better at swimming without getting bored. So it's like, this is somebody who's coaching 10 times a week with the same swimmer. It's like you've got to spice things up and really challenge them mentally as well as the physical side of things. I mean, you've seen a lot of that. What do you recognize with those coaches who have the best buy-in from their athletes? So it kind of goes back to the have one goal thing from a skill thing is a lot of sets will have a very clear goal.

And it's one that you don't almost have to explain. It's just almost obvious. And those are going to be the most engaging sessions because you have one clear goal and then the work clearly relates to accomplishing that goal. And so that's going to be, you just have a focus set. And so instead of just doing 10-100s or whatever it is, we're going to do the 10-100s or something similar in a very specific way to accomplish a very specific outcome. And then I think it's very easy for swimmers to see this will make me better because I'm doing something that's clearly moving me towards my goals. And so I think at Effortless Swimming, our mission is simple. Make swimming more enjoyable. Whether you're training for your next race, swimming for fitness, or just love being in the water, we're here to help you swim faster, smoother and with more confidence. And one thing that can make or break a swim is your goggles. If you've ever struggled with foggy lenses mid session, you know how frustrating it can be. That's why we created the Effortless Swimming Hydro Clear Anti-Fog Goggles for long lasting crystal clear vision. I've been using them myself and the difference is night and day. I'm not the only one. Deborah swam 36 kilometers down the Derwent River and the entire time her vision stayed crystal clear. No fog, no frustration, just an uninterrupted swim. So what makes a hydro clear goggles different? It's all in the technology. Unlike ordinary anti-fog coatings that wear off over time, hydro clear super hydrophilic technology is built into the lens material itself.

Here's how it works. Instead of fog forming as tiny droplets, water spreads evenly across the lens, creating a thin film that prevents fog from even starting. And the result? Consistently clear vision, swim after swim. And the durability? Our lenses are CNAS certified. Tests show that even after 2000 rubs with a wet cloth under a 200 gram load, the lens stays fog-free. No gimmicks, just serious performance that lasts. Using them is simple. Just wet the lenses before putting them on and you're set for a fog-free swim. Ready to see the difference yourself? Get 15% off your first pair of hydro clear anti-fog goggles with the code podcast at shop.effortlesswimming.com. That's 15% off your first pair of goggles with the code podcast at shop.effortlesswimming.com. We also have a 30-day money back guarantee. So if you're not happy with the goggles for any reason, you can simply return them for a refund. Don't let foggy goggles ruin another swim. Try hydro clear today and experience clear vision from start to finish. The more that I would find myself as a coach having to explain why we're doing something, the further I am a way of delivering something that's going to be effective because it should be pretty obvious what the purpose of this and how this will help someone.

If we're going to work on our just sticking with the theme, our breathing, like our ability to breathe well with some endurance, that set that I mentioned earlier, like the 225s and then the 2100s, it's pretty clear what that's accomplishing. And so it's easier to do something like that than to just be like, I'm going to do 10, 200s and it's just like the goal is just to finish it. So I think, like you said, the more that there can be those little pieces in there and they're all geared towards, they're not random pieces, they're geared towards things that the swimmers need to work on. And if you're writing workouts for yourself that you know you need to work on, it makes a big difference. Yeah, definitely if you're writing your own sets as well or just having to train by yourself, it can be a challenge to get through anything more than about 2k if you've had to write your own set. So if you can do it in a way where you set yourself little challenges like holding a certain breathing pattern or stroke count, then the time will fly and you're not just focused on, all right, this is number three, let's do it, this is number four, get through it. And I say that from personal experience because it's like I would write my own sets and unless I've really got like a big race or a really big goal I'm training for, if I don't have that then it's very hard to like motivate yourself if you've written your own set and you're at the pool by yourself. So right, but I think a lot of people are in that in that situation. Right, right. And again, like just keep it simple. So like we talked about having the one big technical goal that you're trying to accomplish over a period of time. So just find one way, like one simple way to build that into your set

just a little bit. It's not like every single lap has to be super focused and super dialed in, but it's like if I've got zero technical engagement in this set, how can I go from it's at a one out of 10, how can I go to a two out of 10? You don't have to take it to 10 out of 10 and it's just like find one small thing that you can add to it. And then as you get comfortable with that, maybe next time you add a little bit more, it doesn't take much, but it can make a big difference. Yeah, absolutely. Ed, is there anything that we haven't covered that you think would be good to add in here or cover before we wrap up? I think that the other thing is just to be consistent with it. Skills take a while to improve, especially if they're the big skills that really matter. People are working on them their entire career. And so that can be, I think another mistake is if you bounce from thing to thing every week or so, you're never going to really spend enough time on something to really make a difference. So I think that's probably the other big thing that we didn't really discuss is you got to be consistent with what you're trying to improve, because if you jump around, it's like, you know, whatever the chase two rabbits catching on that saying, it's, you know, it definitely applies here too. So much so. I mean, I've had one focus since, I think it was November. So it's been, yeah, like pretty much four months with this one focus. And I think about three months in, it started to click for me. And it was just breath timing. Like just, I was, I was a bit slow to turn, bit slow to turn back. And so my right hand catch wasn't as good as it could be. And it was like,

I didn't really see results for a while. Didn't, I had glimpses of it, but like in sessions, but like, it just wasn't really clicking. But then eventually, like I raced a week or two ago, and I, it just felt so good. Like I felt like I could rate up very quickly and still hold water just in the open water. And yeah, but it just took a very long time. And I've been swimming for, since I was six or seven. And so it's like, it's taken me a good solid three plus months to actually see the results of the work I put in. And that's training on a very regular basis. So yeah, it's just, you got to give it time and just don't, don't jump around. It's tempting to do that. It's so tempting to do it. But you know, if it's that, if it's the one thing, if it's that big rock, or if it's the bottleneck that's stopping everything else from happening, then you might need to spend a good solid few months on it. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. And so like, like we talked about earlier too, it's like, it doesn't take that long to be able to maybe make a change when you're going nice and slow when it's 125. But like you said, you could probably do that within the first week or two. But like you said, it took, it took three months for it to show up for real, like in sessions. And that's where it's like, you know, you can really do this for real. And that's the difference is it doesn't take very much to make a change in a low pressure environment, but ultimately we need the changes to show up in a high pressure environment and pressure being, you know, psychology, physiology, race, all like, all that stuff. And so that's what takes so much time. And I think that's what people don't appreciate. It's like, just because you can do it slow today, does not mean you're going to be able to do

it in a race. You have to do all that training too. And like you said, that's months and that's for everybody. That's not, you know, that has nothing to do with ability level. It just takes a long time for the skill to be, you know, I guess ingrained to a level where you can perform it at a high level, you know, somewhat unconsciously. And that's, I think, the big, the big thing that people miss with them. Yeah. The analogy I made with a pro triathlete I'm coaching at the moment is like working away at one thing for a while. He's like starting to see those results a little bit. So it's like, it's just like correcting the course of a ship by like one or two degrees, just slight shift. And we're eventually going to get there. But just every single day, we've got to just keep course correcting. And, you know, eventually you'll, you'll end up there. But yeah, it just, it doesn't happen. It doesn't happen overnight. Right, right. Andrew. So for those that are listening, so for me personally, I went through your sort of stroke fundamentals course of six, 12 months ago, I can't remember exactly. But I love the kind of structure of this course. It's very, it's very simple in the fact it's easy to understand. And from easy to understand, it's easy to implement. And the way that you explain things, I've been able to take a lot from it and incorporate that into my coaching and my own swimming as well. And so, so for those that are listening here, we'll put a link in the podcast description. So we've got basically an offer for about 50% off that course for those that are listening and would like to go through that through the course. And I highly, highly

recommend it. I've been through it and learned so much from it. So we'll put that in the show notes. Anything you want to add about the, about that course and sort of why you put it together and how you structured it the way you did? Yeah, so mostly it's kind of taking it back to the, you know, the fundamentals of what people need to do to swim fast. It's, you know, because I think it could be very easy to get lost in the woods of I need to have a, whatever, 70 degree or 103 degree angle bend in my arm. But if you don't really understand why that's the case, it's hard to, to really commit to that. And so it's about discussing, you know, what really needs to happen. Like you said, in a simple way, that's not simplified necessarily, but just it's a, it's the simple basics of what needs to happen. And then you can better understand what needs to, you know, what needs to get better, why it needs to get better. And then it makes it easier to select activities to help those skills. And so that, that's kind of the, the thought process behind it. Yeah. Yeah. I really, really enjoyed it. And it's a good reference point. Like I've, one of our other coaches has sort of has gone through it as well, just as like, yeah, to, to give him that, that insight too. So it's been very useful. So if anyone is listening, we'll put that link. It's just, you know, our show notes, just for listeners of the podcast. So Andrew, thank you for being on there on the podcast. Love chatting with you. And as I said, I've learned a lot, learned a lot from you. And yeah, keep doing what you're doing because it's very important for the, for coaches and, and also swimmers who watch it as well. So thank you. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming podcast.

If you'd like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

I like the Bruce Lee saying of be like water where water can be hard. If you come down from 10 meters and there's no nothing's broken that surface tension, water can be very hard. It can also move around, it can be very fluid. We need to hold our bodies and move in a way where we've got some some tautness and tension to it. So we've got form but not where we're too loose and floppy or too rigid and stiff. We need to find that sweet spot in between. Welcome to the effortless swimming podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here's your host Brenton Ford.

Are you struggling to stop your legs from sinking when you're swimming? Even after you've been told to put your head down and to kick harder? Then why is it that some swimmers still have great body position even when they're looking forwards and not kicking hard? I've coached more than 6,000 swimmers and I'm going to share with you what actually causes your legs to sink, how you can fix it even if you feel like you're a natural sinker and one bonus tip that can help you float in the water much easier that I don't see any other coaches talking about. When you look at the human body we are unevenly distributed with our weight. Most of our weight is through our hips and our legs. They're a lot heavier than we are through our torso and so that works against us when we swim, when we're in a horizontal position. The weight of the legs wants to take over so we need to do something in order to change the balance of our body and move our center of mass forwards and the way that we do that is to extend our arms out in front of our head. So this can help raise the hips and raise the legs but the problem that a lot of swimmers face is that when they're swimming freestyle they're not keeping one arm in front of their head at all times. That's what we call front quadrant freestyle. So when I'm analyzing swimmers and we have a look at a bird's eye view we often see that there's nothing in front of their head for a pointing time and that means that the weight of the hips and the weight of the legs is going to take over and that's a big reason why they sink when they swim. So when you swim in it's important

to take a little bit of time to extend forwards with the arm while the other arm is taking its time to move forwards in front of you. That way you'll always have something in front and that will help with your balance but that's going to be impossible to do if you don't do this next thing. When I'm watching someone swim the way that they breathe and the way that they turn their head can have a really big impact on the rest of their stroke down the line and this is one of the things that I find causes someone to sink. It's how they're breathing and a big problem that we see with beginners swimmers is they're breathing in a way that's very panicked and rushed and when they're doing that we find that the balance in the water is not quite there because they're taking very small inhales or sometimes too big of an inhale where they're trying to gasp in the air and that can actually cause the balance to be thrown off a bit. So what we want to aim to do there instead is that when we turn the head we want to take this sip of air not like a huge gasp of air like we're trying to fill our lungs we don't have time for that and if you think about the way that you'd naturally breathe just walking down the street it's just going to be in and it's going to be out and you're not thinking much about it. If you can get to that point when you're swimming freestyle where you're taking this sip of air then you exhale a little bit through your nose as your face is in the water and then release the rest of the air as you're turning your head just before you take that next breath then that is the way that you can keep your heart right down and that will

actually improve how you sit in the water. Now the other part of that is that when people go to breathe if they're in that panic state and they're feeling like they're running out of air they often either lift up and turn to breathe and their heads way above the water and it's like lifting a bowling ball above the water the weight of four or five kilos is going to drop the back half your body so we need to make sure that we just turn keep that bottom goggle in the water so almost half our head is in the water or sometimes we see people looking up to the sky or looking way behind them and when they do that it causes their shoulders to roll too far and it's very hard to keep that arm in front so you lose that front quadrant timing and so that's where we find that the legs really starts to sink when that begins to happen. So once your breathing is comfortable and it's natural then you can make the most of it but you won't be able to take advantage of that until you do this next step. When we go through some of the exercises that we take people through in our clinics we have them do some floating drills and I find that when people try and get their hips up they have a tendency to stick their bum up in the air where they're bending through the hips and the waist but we actually need to do the opposite of that in order to be horizontal and stop our hips and legs from dropping we actually need to belong through the body and almost tuck our tailbone underneath which makes us straight through the hips so it's a little counterintuitive because you think well to get my hips up I've

got to stick my bum in the air but that causes your hips to bend your legs to drop and creates more drag so what we want to try and do instead is think about being long from our head to our toes tuck that tailbone and be tall and proud in this position so when we're straight then we can actually use our lungs to our advantage so your buoyancy comes from your lungs filled with air and it's like having a balloon that if you push it down it's going to pop back up we can then put some downwards pressure through our chest as we're swimming which will help your hips and your legs to come up after that so we can only do that though if we have the right posture first now this will work except if you're making this next mistake

I've heard a lot of coaches say this is I want you to kick harder to keep your legs up but the problem with that is the movement of the legs the kicking motion in freestyle is not very efficient when we're in the water it takes a lot of effort we're using the biggest muscles in our body to try and propel ourselves forwards if we're kicking hard and you do not need to do that to be a good swimmer or to be going fast because the kick is there to support you not so much to propel you so when we kick hard quite often we find that it's a waste of effort and the way that people then kick is they're bending their hips and their knees are lost and it's very inefficient that way so if you're doing that it's going to create more drag which will cause your hips and legs to drop and the other mistake that we see there is that if your toes are pointing to the bottom of the pool that again increases the drag and it can increase the drag by up to 42% which is a huge amount from just not pointing your toes behind you so what I try and have the swimmers do is think about keeping their legs somewhat long we'll let the knees bend a little bit and we want to point the toes and keep the feet and ankles quite loose and floppy and that way you can actually use the kit to support you and propel you forwards a little bit but it's more there as a counterbalance than anything else now I had us from the other week who he was facedown hands in front trying to kick himself forwards and he wasn't going anywhere so what I said to him was I want you to not think about trying to move yourself forwards

with the way that you're kicking right now I want you to firstly just loosen your ankles keep your feet nice and floppy and the way that you kick actually moves you forwards is it's the top of the foot as it's kicking down that's what will actually move you forwards it's that little movement there every time you kick downwards and so as he was going back down to face down he started to get a little bit of momentum and move himself in a forwards direction so the way that you're kicking can really make a big difference and I think a lot of adults especially adults who maybe feel like their kicks slowing them down or that they have very stiff ankles they find their kick either moves them backwards or they don't go anywhere but you can change the way that you're kicking especially by doing that face down front kick drill to help figure out what's going to move you forwards even if it's slowly so if you kick correctly it means your kick will be there to support you and help keep your legs up but not if you're making this next mistake at effortless swimming our mission is simple make swimming more enjoyable whether you're training for your next race swimming for fitness or just love being in the water we're here to help you swim faster smoother and with more confidence and one thing that can make or break a swim is your goggles if you've ever struggled with foggy lenses mid session you know how frustrating it can be that's why we created the effortless swimming hydro clear anti fog goggles for long lasting crystal clear vision I've been using them

myself and the difference is night and day and I'm not the only one Deborah swam 36 kilometers down the Derwent River and the entire time her vision stayed crystal clear no fog no frustration just an uninterrupted swim so what makes a hydro clear goggles different it's all in the technology unlike ordinary anti fog coatings that wear off over time hydro clear super hydrophilic technology is built into the lens material itself here's how it works instead of fog forming as tiny droplets water spreads evenly across the lens creating a thin film that prevents fog from even starting and the result consistently clear vision swim after swim and the durability our lenses are cna s certified tests show that even after 2000 rubs with a wet cloth under a 200 gram load the lens stays fog free no gimmicks just serious performance that lasts using them is simple just wet the lenses before putting them on and you're set for a fog free swim ready to see the difference yourself get 15 off your first pair of hydro clear anti fog goggles with the code podcast at shop effortless swimming dot com that's 15 off your first pair of goggles with the code podcast at shop effortless swimming dot com we also have a 30 day money back guarantee so if you're not happy with the goggles for any reason you can simply return them for a refund don't let foggy goggles ruin another swim try hydro clear today and

experience clear vision from start to finish i've seen some swimmers take good advice and have it completely ruin their stroke because that advice gets misinterpreted and one of those really common things to misinterpret is our recovery when we bring our arm over the top of the water i get have been taught i think we've all been taught about a high elbow recovery and to me that implies the elbow should be pointing up to the sky but the way that that can get misinterpreted is people think they need to drag their thumb along their body or really pull their shoulder and elbow back out of the water where it's coming way back behind them and i see a lot of adults throw their alignment and balance out because of that so if i'm looking from above at someone and i see that when they finish their stroke their elbows getting pulled back behind their centerline here that is going to cause them to lose balance and it often causes their hips and legs to drop so what we aim for there is that we keep this nice and straight in front and as this arms coming through we just want this arm to be somewhere else the side so elbows pointing up hand is relaxed and we're just opening up through our underarm that way we can keep balance but if you are pulling this up and then coming behind you it's going to cause you to lose that balance and that's when we find that your wriggle all over the place the legs will splay out really wide and then you're probably going to find that your hips and legs sink so that's a really big common cause of people struggling to keep their hips and legs up and when you do that right it makes this next step

so much easier to achieve if you think about the direction that you are pressing with your arms under the water that can impact whether you're going forwards or whether you're dropping your hips so if we have a look at someone through the catch which is this motion here if there's too much force in a downwards direction it actually presses the chest up nice and high which is good except it drops the back half the body it drops the hips and legs so if they're pushing down too much then it can actually cause your hips and legs to drop so our aim there is to try and go through this catch motion where we're setting ourselves up to have our hand and forearm pressing mostly backwards and that's what moves you forwards now on a stake that often gets made there is when people are coming over the top of the water they go to enter and instead of entering with their fingers first and sliding their hand forwards under the surface of the water they overreach and they end up landing elbow first instead of fingers first now when they come in and land elbow first they end up pretty much having what we call a dropped elbow from the beginning and that will cause you to push down on the water which will cause your legs to drop so if you can enter fingers first we slide the hand forwards and then set up what we call a high elbow catch position then you're able to press back on the water and that will move you forwards and that's going to give you a bit more speed and propulsion which will help keep you up and you're going to be pushing down here causing the back half to drop so the way that you go through a catch and pull

can also impact whether your legs are sinking or not. At the start of this video I talked about swimmers still having good body position even when they're looking forwards because if you do all these other things right you can still sit horizontally in the water. Now don't get me wrong head position is very important especially as a beginner swimmer so the way that we need to make sure our head is is in the water is like an ice bag. An ice bag has got 10 to 20 above the water but the rest of it's actually below and that's how we need to have our head when we swim in so just the top the crown of our head is above the water the rest of it needs to be below otherwise it's like holding this heavy bowling ball luck above the water which might weigh four or five kilos and it's very hard to overcome that drag so we've got to have it at the right depth. The second thing is we need to make sure we're looking in the right position anywhere from looking straight down to about one or two meters in front while we lengthen and extend the neck because if your chin comes too far forwards guaranteed you're going to see this big lower back arch and that lower back arch is going to make it hard to keep your hips and keep the legs up so with good head position we find that we're very straight through the head the neck and the spine and through the rest of the body so the head position does play an important part but it's not the be all and end all there's a lot of other factors there that we just want to make sure that we're doing to keep our hips up and stop our hips and legs from dropping. Now one final bonus tip for you that I don't really hear many coaches

talking about it's the tension that we hold within our body so particularly swimmers who are a little bit nervous around the water and they don't feel like they're balanced very well they carry this tension where everything is very stiff and rigid. I like the Bruce Lee saying of be like water where the water can be hard if you come down from 10 meters and there's no nothing's broken that surface tension water can be very hard but it can also move around it can be very fluid. We need to hold our bodies and move in a way where we've got some some tautness and tension to it so we've got form but not where we're too loose and floppy or too rigid and stiff we need to find that sweet spot in between so being able to be comfortable be somewhat relaxed but maintain some bit of tautness through the body to keep good form and shape and be streamlined is an important part to actually keeping our hips and our legs up. If you find that you're getting tired when you swim check out this video about why that might be. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming podcast. If you'd like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlessswimming.com

First of all, patience. Take a deep breath. We'll get you there. But this is a process, right? If we, I've got to convey to a young swimmer, if we're focused on the outcome versus the process, you focus on the outcome. You may do well at an event, and you're going to be very disappointed lots of times when you don't hit your best time. But if you stay focused on the process, you're constantly building towards that outcome. So that hasn't changed. I don't care whether I'm coaching a fourth grader or somebody who is swimming in the Pan-An games as a U.S. master swimmer. So that's the similarities between what I'm doing now and what I did do.

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here's your host, Brenton Ford.

What happens when a veteran swim coach who spent years refining adult swimmers and triathletes returns to coaching high school kids? In this episode, Frank Sol, coach, educator, and lifelong student of the sport shares how water is water, no matter your age, and why the principles of balance, buoyancy, and body awareness remain timeless. Frank dives into the biggest crossover lessons he's bringing from master swimmers to juniors, the importance of teaching athletes to own their technique, and why he tells even the faster swimmers to slow down and swim well, not just fast. We explore how Frank's coaching philosophy has evolved over decades and the power of habit over outcome and the surprising results his athletes are getting not just in the pool but in their lives. Whether you're a coach, a swimmer, or someone who's passionate about getting better, this episode is packed with wisdom, stories, and the kind of gold that you can take straight to your next session. So, Frank, welcome back to the the podcast is the third time that you've been on here. One of the things I wanted to jump into today is you've recently started coaching a high school team again, which was your sort of original how you started coaching. But then you went to a lot of masters coaching, but now back to high school is what would be some of the things that you've taken from coaching masters athletes over the last few years, that you are now incorporating into teaching the high schools. And what are those things that you're starting to focus on now? And has that approach changed for you over the years? You know, Brent, and excuse me, first of all, it's good to be back with you. Again,

this is I think our third time together and I appreciate the energy and camaraderie between the two of us. But yeah, I mean, you know, going club, you know, I grew up in New Jersey, Jersey Shore League, high school club teams, YMCA, and that was a good part of my life for say 15 years. Then I moved out to Arizona and got, you know, triathlon, open water swimming, and a lot of masters years under my belt as a master's coach. And you know, I come to the realization that water is water is water, right? A body in the water will whether it's a master swimmer or a younger swimmer is still going to need to pay attention to the laws of, you know, hydrodynamics, they're going to need to learn balance. You just got done doing a piece on that on Instagram. They're going to need to learn mobility, hip rotation, how to kick, and how to breathe. So I take a lot of what I've learned from when I was a high school coach into my master's because now I'm dealing with adults. Now I've gone away from masters so much, but I still have a lot of my triathlon clients and open water swimmers who I work with, but going back to my roots, young swimmers, I am living in the Florida called the Villages and I am the director of youth club swimming here and a high school coach also who answers to a head coach for the high school program, but I run the club, the club program. It's great to be working with fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh graders again, really getting them excited about the sport of swimming and bring up another generation. So I see so many similarities between

US master swimmers, high school swimmers and young swimmers. Again, as I shared with you, water is water is water. There's just the laws of physics that still have to be applied. And but what I will tell you, the high school swimmer, it's so cool to be around that club and high school event again, you know, being on deck for high school meets and the cheering and the, you know, the camaraderie and being at districts and our team won districts and the boys and the girls, which was kind of unheard of. Generally, you win one or the other, but we took districts in both. We did well in regionals and had a great strong showing in states, but being around that energy of those young swimmers is really what got me excited again, if that answered your question. But, you know, you learn a lot working with adults, right? You know, there are a lot who are very willing to say, I want to learn how to swim better. And then they have that fixed, there's others who have that fixed mindset, but no, no, you know, I've been coached. I know how to do this. And you get to learn what you, how far you could go with a US master swimmer or an adult swimmer. High school swimmers, a lot of 99%, they want to learn, they want to get better. How do I get fit? That's all there. How do I get faster coach? How do I get faster coach? How do I get faster? First of all, patience, take a deep breath, we'll get you there. But this is a process, right? If we, I've got a conveyed to a young swimmer, if we're focused on the outcome versus the process, you focus on the outcome, you may do well at an event, and you're going to be

very disappointed lots of times when you don't hit your best time. But if you stay focused on the process, you're constantly building towards that outcome. So that hasn't changed. I don't care whether I'm coaching a fourth grader or somebody who is swimming for in the Pan-An Games as a US master swimmer. So that's the similarities between what I'm doing now and what I did do.

And in terms of focusing on the process, one of the things that I've done last year and this year, in terms of just setting goals for different life goals, business goals, coaching goals, all that sort of stuff, it's not setting what's the end result that I want, certainly thinking about it, but it's what are the habits that I need to do, like what are the things I have to do every week to achieve that? And if that's the thing on my goal list, it's like go to the gym two to three times a week or swim three times a week, whatever it might be, that's been so much more attainable than this thing way out in the distance. And it keeps it just really simple and it's doable for people. You're 100% right. I apply it in my own life. I literally have a journal that where I will literally check off virtually through the course of a day, all these things that I want to get done in a day and the X, the cross means that it's gotten done. So it's all process every day, habit, chop wood, carry water, chop wood, carry water, do it every day. If it's three times a week, do it every day. There's certain things that I just will not go to bed until I've done those things. And I try my best to convey that to young swimmers. They like, they like results, right? They want, so what's your goal this year? I want to hit a, I want to hit a state time. Okay. Are you willing to do this, this, this and this to hit that state time? Meaning I call it like Monopoly. You get to get out of jail cards, right? You know, again, Monopoly, how many practices will you not miss, right? Or English, but you only miss two practices in eight, nine weeks? Okay.

Too, too many, but you get my point. So it's, I really want my athletes to focus on the process. If we do that, the outcome generally will take care of itself. As an ex-high school teacher, I would tell my kids go home and study every night, read 10 minutes. By the end of the week, you've got an hour's worth of reading done. You take your quiz, you take your test. And all of a sudden you're getting your B's. You're getting your B minuses. You're getting your C pluses. You're A's, but it's all about the process where we hear that, but there's so much truth to that, Brenton. It's so true. Focus on the process, my friend. Create tablets. Yeah, exactly right. And are there any certain particular things that you're really drilling into the, the swimmers at the moment, like in terms of like technical things, what's your coaching style? What's your coaching approach like with the athletes? Again, I'm going to go back to the video you just did on Instagram in regards to balance. I am a true believer and I've always coached this way. And I will continue this coach this way is that you must take care of the vessel first, meaning the body. The body has to be balanced. It has to understand buoyancy and body position, right? I heard a coach use these terms and I've used them for years and I take no credit for them. Stay athletically long, stay athletically taught. And I teach athletes that, right? If you are six one, I want you swimming like you're six four. If you're five, five, I want you to swim like you're five, seven. I don't care technically, you know, what, what God has given you in regards to length, but I want you to swim

long. I want you to use your body. I want you to swim from your body first and we'll add propulsion, right? So I will always tell my athletes, always protect the integrity of the vessel. I could be a tugboat with a big engine and I think I'm a fast boat, but I'm still a tugboat with a big engine. We'll follow where I'm going. So I see swimmers drop hips, poor body position, poor timing, and they're adding additional propulsion that elevates dragon resistance eight times. And I don't care if you're who you are, an Olympian or just a club swimmer, you're going to lose every single time because water will win that battle every single time. When you can keep the body long, maintain the integrity of balance, meaning as I'll use your term, as the Aussie say, bring to keep the bum up. You're creating a more hydrodynamic body, minimizing dragon resistance. I will spend as much time as necessary. We in my club program, the last 10 days, that's been the focus that has been the absolute focus with fins without fins. Anything I can get them to do is stay long in the water and minimize dragon resistance. My definition of swimming is get from point A to point B in the most efficient effective manner as possible by simply minimizing dragon resistance and adding the right amount of propulsion. Meaning where you're at, right? I can't swim right now, say Frank can't swim at 90 strokes

per minute and add that kind of power in my rapping and catching effect. So right now, if I can only swim at 52 strokes per minute, but swimming efficiently, let's celebrate that.

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Let's celebrate that. And then I could start to add the engine piece to it. Now let's talk about propulsion. But again, if we're a tugboat with big propulsion, you're just a tugboat with big propulsion. Makes sense? I mean, that's just something I just cannot stress enough to young swimmers, to older swimmers, master swimmers, maintain the integrity of the vessel always. Yeah, it doesn't matter the age or the experience of the swimmer. It's always going to come back to that. And one of the things that I like to do at clinics is in the beginning, we always start with that with body position and balance. And I have them go through a couple of exercises, some wrong way, right way exercises, just to experience the difference between the two. And then I have them go through this bit of a checklist in their mind, where they push off, go 50 freestyle, they check in on the head position and making sure they're long from head to toes, checking on the body and the posture, make sure they're using the lungs to help support them and letting the water support them, which it can do if you hold yourself correctly. And then just making sure the legs are doing the right thing, not kicking too big, not kicking too hard, but just there to support you as well. And when they get all those things in place, they're very much like a needle. They're long, they're streamlined, and then everything becomes so much easier. And typically when people go through that, they're feeling pretty good, they're moving quicker, they're moving easier through the water. But it's easy to get distracted with other things like the catch or how much should I be breathing, all these sorts of things.

But if we always just come back to that, getting that vessel, getting the body to be long and streamlined, everything else builds from there. So yeah, that's always a place to start. And whenever I dive in, I just subconsciously I kind of go through that checklist. But it's conscious now because I'm aware that I'm doing this checklist, but it's always just been that thing of like, all right, where's this, where's this, where's the legs, and making sure that's all correct to begin. Couldn't agree with you more. And again, that's why our philosophies are so in tune with each other. And the same thing I do, as soon as I'm in the water and I'm warming up, you know, warm ups, five, six, seven, eight hundred yards. And I can start to feel, am I in the right position? No, I can feel myself, my heart rate's going up, what's wrong? Well, I'm working too hard. Well, is it my balance or am I not breathing? No, my breathing's fine. It generally goes back to the fact that I am dragging myself through the water, being frontal drag, warm drag, my wave drag is elevated. The amount of oxygen now that needs to go to the muscles is being robbed from the heart and from the, from the lungs. And it's just a runaway, a snowball effect. And people say, well, I just can't swim fast. No, let's get you swimming lean, long. And like you said, you're just lengthening out the body. And once we do that, I will always tell the swimmer Ironman athletes, if they feel like the wheels are falling off at, you know, 1.2 miles through halfway through, go back to buoyancy and

balance and body position. Am I over kicking? Like you said, in the world of triathlon, we hear all the time, how do I get a stronger kick? You don't need a stronger kick. Your kick is fine. Kick is designed to maintain the integrity of the balance of buoyancy. That's what the kick is there for. It is not, we're not trying to move you forward. At the Olympic level, the kick only really accounts for about 10% of propulsion. In our level, we want a strong, solid two-beat kick. If you're great at a six-beat kick, great. But I want my swimmers to understand if they're going to be swimming a distance event, I want them to think and swim like a distance swimmer. You're not swimming 50 freestyle. You have to think that way and act that way. So as soon as you come out on deck, if coach Frank wrote you, your workout today is three by 1,500 with a three-minute break in between, I need you thinking like a distance swimmer. I need you thinking long in the water, two-beat kick, or my stroke rate. I am not swimming like there's an alligator behind me. That's a pun joke because I live in Florida, you know, alligators. But you get my point, right? I mean, it's all relative and how you coach that athlete and how receptive that athlete is. And to hammer home, your point is the more you pay attention to this stuff, you don't need a coach on deck. Most of the time, you're going to start to feel it inside. Maybe next length of the pool, you're going to count strokes. You went up three, four strokes. Something has gone wrong. Something has gone wrong. Maybe you're timing, you're buoyancy. Again, balance is off. But bottom line is,

as coaches like you and I, that's my job is I want to convey that to the athlete, whether it be a young athlete, any of my athletes getting ready. I got one getting ready to swim Catalina Islands this, we're coming up this August. Think like a distance athlete. Think like a swimmer. Think like a distance athlete all the time. That's what you got to tell yourself. So when I talk to my young kids, you're a sprinter. Think and act like a sprinter. Okay. So bottom line is, I'll keep my sprinters away from my, from my, my 500 people because I don't want those two ever. It's like oil and water because guess what? I got a sprinter in this lane and a 500 swimmer in this lane. Guess what this 500 guy wants to do? He wants to swim like the 50 freestyle, right? But the bottom line is teach your body to what I will always say is learn how to know your environment, proprioception, a fancy word. Know what your body's doing in an environment. Own what it is doing in an environment and have the ability to make the necessary corrections when that time comes. My hips are starting to drop. Am I kicking too hard? Not kicking hard enough? Am I not rotating? I tell you what, a part of where I've gotten the balance piece, I go all back way to total immersion. I will give Terry a lot of credit for that. He taught, uh, taught me early on to swim from your center of balance, which is right at that T here, right at the sternum, leaning how to lean into the water a little bit as you rotate that pressure, pressing the armpit a little bit into the water helps to elevate the hips versus our center of gravity,

which is about an inch above our navel, right? All of that because our large muscle groups, our legs, our hips, our glutes, all heavy muscles. It's going to drop. It's going to drop. I think you did one of the little example that one of your videos where you're just lying there in the water and eventually all of this starts to drop, right? And especially if I'm not breathing right, now my lungs are like a buoy, all of that's floating up too. So it's timing, breathing, balance, buoyancy, but all of this, it takes a lot, a lot's going on, man. And like you said, now I got to think about the catch. You got to be kidding me. So that's a little answer and say, we will spend a lot of time, a lot of time on this. Don't care. I tell my high school swimmers right now, my club swimmers, I don't care about speed. I don't care how fast you're going. I care how fast, excuse me, I care how well you're doing it, not how fast you're going to do it. Fast and as they say in Italian, men's a men's technique, not good, right? Fast with great technique. Man, the world's your oyster as a swimmer at that point. Yeah, that's exactly right. And I know you're doing some online coaching. And so what would be those things that you are trying to make the swimmer aware of so that they can self-coach and self-correct and they build that proprioception when you're not there to give them feedback or have eyes on them outside of them sending you footage? Man, we spend a lot of time on balance, buoyancy, body position. The other one is breathing. I find young athletes, master athletes, senior athletes,

college athletes, most of them were never taught how to breathe. I am working with a gentleman right now, 65 years old. And his note came back to me when I gave him some breathing assignments to do. He goes, I'm almost embarrassed to say that at 65 years old, no one has ever taught me how to breathe properly. We're born, nobody teaches breathing. We just assume that breathing in and out through our nose or our mouth is normal. And we see that many times I'm standing on deck and I'm looking at a video of an athlete, and you could just see that the breathing pattern's off, right? I mean, you got that classic, as they rotate, they're blowing out, they're breathing in, and you know, they're holding their breath into water. But those are the things that I like to work on. Balance, buoyancy, body position, breathing, right? I will have them old school. I mean, if they have a Garmin or Apple Watch, check their heart rate. But if they have to go old school, right now, if it's an older athlete, I don't want you any higher than 128 to 134 on your heart rate, check it. If you're too low, I need you to kind of, you know, again, pretend there's an alligator behind you, right? But he's far behind, but he's not trying to run you down. So those are the things I try to do. And then we start to work mechanics, the technical proficiency. I'm an old school coach. I know a lot of key coaches talk about reaching, wrapping, or excuse me, reach, catch, pull, and push. There's a term we used to use calling wrapping the water. And I still use that term. We come in, we wrap the water, unwrap the water. So we extend,

we want to feel that water under our armpit, we want to wrap the water and unwrap the water. When I use those terms, they seem to take that, that, that corrosive feeling of those, gotta reach, wrap, pull, and push, boom, right? And they say, I gotta push the water behind me. Wrap the water, drive the body, unwrap the water. And I undoubtedly will have come back, athletes come back to me going, oh my God, that was effortless. I didn't have any trouble breathing. And I actually watched my times go down three or four seconds per hundred. And I'm saying, we're on the way. We're on the way. So that those are the things I want them to learn. And it takes time for them to be able to self coach themselves. And I got no problem with a coach, an athlete texting me, sending me an email many times during the week, Sunday afternoon, Sunday evenings is a big night for me to do Zoom calls or phone calls. Checking in, how's it going? Good. How'd this go? Good. How'd this go? Good. How's the back feeling? Good. Okay. You know what? You've been stressed a little bit at work. I'm going to tell you not to go swim tomorrow. You could almost hear a pin drop, you know? Take a deep breath. It's okay. That's part of the process is letting the body recover, rejuvenate, regroup. And nine times out of 10, they come back to me going, I slept an hour and a half later this morning. And I felt like I got caught up. So those are the things that I incorporate in coaching my athletes. Get to know the athlete.

Get a feel for where they're at. Great communication like you do. You're brilliant at this. Great communication with the individual. Be able to, after time, you get to know them before they even call you or send you a video, what you're almost going to see. But the videos that they send me, it's critical, right? I think people like you and I have been doing this for so long. I've been at this for 27 years now. I would always love to see underwater video, but there's a lot of, I hate to use this word, there's a lot of assumptions I can draw just by what I'm seeing on top of the water, what's going on underwater, water refraction. I can see a little bit, hey, he's crossing under his body. He's got thumb down and his palms out. And then I can work on making those corrections, drill sets. I'd like to create the drill right into the body of the workout, right? Six strokes drill, six strokes swim, six strokes drill, 25 drill, 25 swim, 50 drill, 25 swim. You get creative with it. But as long as the athlete is getting it, and I'm finding at the younger level, Brenton, is that one swimmer in lane three is grasping it. That same swimmer in lane four is struggling mightily. But I'm blessed to have enough coaches that we could pull that swimmer aside and go, let's back them up a little bit. If we got to get them swimming with a PVC in their hands, because they're wind milling their arms and they're not staying anchored out there, or they're cupping in their hands too much, you get to learn, you get to feel your athletes,

you get a real sense. And I take a lot of pride in knowing my athletes and where I need to take them. So a lot of pleasure out of doing that when you're not on deck with them. You know what I'm saying?

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yourself? Get 15% off your first pair of Hydro Clear Anti-Fog Goggles with the code podcast at shop.effortlesswimming.com. That's 15% off your first pair of goggles with the code podcast at shop.effortlesswimming.com. We also have a 30-day money back guarantee. So if you're not happy with the goggles for any reason, you can simply return them for a refund. Don't let foggy goggles ruin another swim. Try Hydro Clear today and experience clear vision from start to finish. Yeah, so we do every fortnight, I do like a coaching membership call where people send in their videos and I had one yesterday and we had 20 odd people sending their videos through. And I'd say, all right, this is the one thing I want you to focus on for the month. This is a drill or two drills that I want you to incorporate into your workouts. And it's interesting watching, when they write in, I ask them what are they being working on? Where do they feel they're at? Where's their pay set? And often people will say, this is what I think that I need to work on. This is what I think I need to work on. And particularly if they're quite new, usually it's the wrong thing. Usually it's like, you know, they've got an idea. They think, all right, I think this is what's the issue. But it might be too far down the line. Yeah, it might be, I feel like, okay, my elbow is dropping in my catch. It is, but the reason it's dropping is because the way that you're breathing is you're looking too

far forwards or you're lifting your head or you're over rotating, whatever it might be. So let's go back further down the line in those initial things. Let's get those dialed in and then we will build up to the catch. We'll work on that, but not yet. Yeah. And I love that approach. And I really work hard at that. So I will look at a video and I may look at it three, four times to say, what do we really need to address here? Is it the dropped elbow or is it the poor body position and the timing? And if we took care of those things, all of a sudden you fix this and all of a sudden these little things, these other innocuous details fall nicely under and all of a sudden they have success. But if I will always say, look, A, B and C, when I coach you, A always has to come before B. B always, this is not up for debate before C. Once we get to D, E and F, we can kind of fool around with those letters. You know what I'm saying? We could fix this because I, but if you do not have the fundamentals of ABC specifically under your belt, I could fix all the dropped elbows in the world. But if, if my timing is off, now my shoulders are plowing through the water. Now I'm, my form and frontal drag is gone exponentially high through the roof and we're no better off than we were. So it gets that way. So if you don't mind, I'd love to share something with you. Okay. Not that I do this, but my phone is sitting right here. I have a athlete I've been working with for over a year now who is a US master swimmer.

He swam in a US master's meet in Florida today. His exact words, 112.2, fastest time in two years, broke my old record from last year of 115.2

hundred fly. But this is a guy, when I write workouts for him, he just, he just, he just does what I asked him to do. Take a day off. He does what I asked him to do. 4,000 yards tomorrow, he does what I asked him to do. Today we're only doing 1500 with a focus on walls. That's all I want you to focus on is walls. So when you see something like that, that's exciting. That's exciting. Okay. And as coaches, now you and I get text messages like that gone. I was off my best time. No, that's part of the process too. You're not going to always get best times, but we've worked on breathing. We've worked on body position. This is a gentleman who would swim, fly all arms using virtually no body and his kick was just too much knees and we had to break that down. How did we do that? We went into the gym and we started doing a lot of Pilates and we started doing a lot of yoga stretches and we started doing nothing but a monofin to get the feel for the body. What do you want me to do? 20 by 50 on 20 second break with a monofin. Swim a 300 cool down, get the hell out of the water and go home. Okay. Got to love those kind of athletes, right? Got to love those kinds of athletes. So I thought how appropriate that this came in through this conversation that is like good job, Frank, but the athlete is doing what I'm asking him to do. It just reassurance as coaches that we are writing workouts. We're doing our tapers properly for these athletes

and have them prepared to go out and perform. Again, master's level, college level, Olympic level, high school level, club team level. And it's like we've seen, we've been there for a long time. We've seen a lot of things, seen a lot of different athletes. Jen have a pretty good idea of what's going to work for someone. Not always the case, but I have a pretty good idea. And so like I compare it to my, my two kids do Jiu Jitsu, the oldest one, he's stepped up a class. So he's kind of going against this kid is a little bit older. And yesterday, the instructor was giving him some advice while they're trying to take each other down. And my son's trying to trip, he's trying to do this trip on the other kid. And he's just too far away. Like he needs to get in, he needed to get in close, need to wrap his one hand over the top of the other and he needed to get in close to be able to do it. And he kept like trying to get him to do it, kept saying, get in close, getting close, but he kept trying to trip him from too far away. And eventually when he listened and took the advice, it worked. But before that, he's just, he's still trying to trip, but he's just too far away. Nothing's happening. And so like if you, yeah, if you can just listen to your coach or your coaches, you're probably going to have success over the long term. So that's great to hear. Yeah. It's like, it's so good to see masters swimmers who may have swum as teenagers. They can still hit lifetime PBs, many of them. And maybe, and if they were really elite, okay, maybe they're not hitting lifetime PBs, but they're getting faster at 45, 50, sometimes 55 and beyond, like it's,

it happens. And down here in the villages, they have a master's program here. And it's amazing. I mean, mind you, it's a retirement village. So the youngest person on the team is 55 years old. And they've got, they have a couple guys 82, 83 years old, but they swam

Eastern Illinois, Anford, they swam at some small divisions to school, and they're still living their passion. And you're staying healthy while they're doing that. And we know the body, mind, relationship, keep this, keep this and this working together. Okay. I mean, a little hard to explain it to a 16 year old kid, as he's walking by you on the way to practice eating a McDonald's hamburger and a bag of french fries, right? Going, dude, this, this, this was the best meal that you could pick before you get into practice. You're in the water in 15 freaking minutes. And I would say, if you throw up in my freaking pool after eating that, you know what I'm saying? So it's good to see that the, the love for swimming is still there at whatever age. Again, you know, bringing young swimmers up, whether it be Jiu Jitsu, if that's their love for swimming, triathlon, we know here in the States, USA triathlon is doing a phenomenal job at the college ranks. I think they have over 40 plus maybe more, I'm sure they do more triathlon programs for females here in the States. So they're introducing a lot of these younger people to triathlon, open water swimming, if they were big pool swimmers, but bottom line is your point is well taken is that is when we can define a plan of action for a swimmer and as coaches, be honest with ourselves going, this is not working. Is it

the athlete or is it me? Let me go back and rewrite this workout. Let's try it again

because we're not perfect. I don't care who you are. You, me, any coach is going to make mistakes, but we have to own up to those mistakes and saying

nobody got hurt. Nobody died here. We just go back and figure out what we need to do. Right? So that's it. I'm always, always doing that. I have my journal here. I'm always, always writing my workouts in this journal and then writing notes as a follow up to that day's practice for my club team gone. This was an awesome practice. I want to do the same one two weeks from now. I want to use this as my test set because they loved it so much. And you get there, you see their energy, right? Some practices, as you walk away, go on. This was a tough one. This was a tough one. It could have been better. If you conveyed what you needed to get done, I would always tell, you know, I tell my master swimmers, same thing. Not every practice is going to be like, you know, all right, we're having fun out here. Coach, we're not having fun. Fun? What the heck said we're having? We're not supposed to have fun. We're supposed to swim. You know, it's my big joke to them, but I want them to have fun, right? I don't care if it's a master's, it's a triathlete. I want them to enjoy the process because if they're enjoying the process and they can see some results starting to develop through that process, their confidence level is going to start to go up. Wow. My times are going down. I'm feeling stronger. I'm feeling better at this. I want to show up again tomorrow. If they're not feeling confident and they're not seeing a process, that could get disheartening, right? I mean, you and I both know that. So the line is, that's my focus and that's the energy that I put out there. That's been my philosophy. My philosophy has changed a little bit over the years,

but I still believe that if I can connect with that person one-on-one, great communication, show that athlete I truly care, which I do. Every one of my athletes, I don't care who you are, do I care about that athlete and do I want to see them succeed? They're going to start to see that and that's what I see in your coaching. It's clear. When I'm watching an Instagram or you and I are talking off the air, the passion's there and any of your athletes know that. I've talked to athletes who you coach and they couldn't speak more highly of what you have done in their lives. That's what I said to you early on. As coaches, we don't care who connects with them. As long as somebody connects them and they're really moving themselves forward through this process. I appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. And how has your philosophy changed over the last five, 10, 20 years?

I believe when I was a little bit younger as a younger coach, I was very adamant it was going to be this way and we're going to only do it this way. I've learned to embrace some information from my athletes. Let's go with triathletes, specifically what's working for them. I'll give you an example, right? Here we go. We are off the wall. We're going to get that high elbow, fingertip dragged, thumbed up the side and we're going to drive those fingertips into water. That's great. You're 48 years old. You got the shoulders are locked up like a bank on Sunday. You're going to have to modify what you want to do with that particular athlete. So we may have a three-quarter recovery, throwing that arm out there a little bit more, a la Janet Evans straight arm into the water and you start to learn to work with the athlete and where they're at. You know, as well as I do working with a lot of the adults athletes, shoulder surgeries, maybe they've been sitting at a computer for years and internal rotation is so, so bad. And now you're asking to open up peck major, peck minor and getting those lats engaged, that's going to take time. So I work with the athlete where they're at at that time. How did I learn this? I will tell you, I had the absolute blessing to work with a lot of challenged athletes at a place called Ability 360 in Scottsdale, Arizona. And what I found out as

as much as these athletes want to swim, they have very, there were many strong limitations coming out of wheelchairs, shoulder issues, a lot of military who were injured in Iraq and Iran in the Middle East. And you learn to work with them and saying, here's the vessel I have. Now, if they're more like a tugboat, I'm going to get them as efficient tugboat as I could get them. And that's where my I think my philosophies change. I get yoga coaches, you will do it this way. Another thing, I challenge myself every single day. And I haven't missed a day in well over a year. 18, there's this 18 minute rule. Say, if you study something for 18 minutes, a day at the end of the year, you will know more than 90% of the people in your field. Every day for 18 minutes, I read something on swimming every single, every single day, 18 minutes, whether it's watching one of your videos, watching something, a fascinating book, I literally just finished up. I don't know if you know this one, the biology of swimming. I would recommend any swim coach, any swimmer to buy this book. I read it cover to cover, every word, every word, even the boring words, every word. And I'm reading his second volume right now. If it's swimming, I will learn something. But that's what I do. That's how I change my philosophy. I don't know everything. There's some pretty smart people out there

in this industry who know more than I do. I was very blessed two years ago through U.S. Masters or through ASCA to become a fellow, a fellow of 2023. I was in a room with seven other coaches

and I felt like the dumbest man in the room. And that's what I wanted to be, because I wanted to learn from them, right? Mentor taught me years ago, you go in a room like that. You want to be the dumbest guy in the room. You want everybody smarter than you to learn from them. And they brought in coaches from some names that I don't recall, but a coach from Georgetown, from North Carolina, from Virginia back then, an assistant coach, and they would come and talk to us as fellows to educate us on the project we were working on. So learn, learn, learn, be open, be willing to say, I don't know everything. Be honest with yourself. If you screwed up with a workout, you made a mistake, be honest with yourself. And just as Carol Dweck and her great book Mindset, Have a Growth Mindset versus a Fixed Mindset. No, always done it this way. This is the way we're always going to do it. I don't care what Bretton does, I'm not doing it that way. And then you step back on, damn, Bretton knows what he's talking about. I will try that with my squad. I will try that with my squad. So that's how my philosophy has changed. I think as I've aged, I've become more open

to hear from other coaches. Years ago, I wasn't so open. It's that young man's mentality, a lot of testosterone flowing through my body. Now I look for coaches to talk to, look for these opportunities to be able to collaborate and to share and to get educated. Yeah. Well, Frank, it really shows through speaking to you. The passion shows through. The knowledge shows through and the fact that you're still so interested in it, you're open to new ideas and studying every day. It's really evident from chatting with you. So it's great to hear you're keeping really busy over there in Florida. Doing a lot of different things swimming-wise, which is fantastic. So it just really expands that the breadth of knowledge and working with all these different types of athletes, you have to become really good at everything in a way, the really advanced skills, the more basic skills. And I think having that width of knowledge, it just means you've got so many tools in your tool belt that you can pull out when you need them. So, great to chat again. Those that are listening, so you've written a book which will include in the show notes, which we covered a little bit on the first podcast that we did together, but we'll make sure we include that in the show notes as well. And what's the best way for people to get in touch with you? Well, believe it or not, I don't have an email. I don't have a website anymore. I've gotten to a point where I didn't need it and I was getting too many inquiries in it, but you go right on Instagram and try Soul. If you type in Try Soul and you want to send

me a note, you have a question. I'd be more than happy to do that. Even if you have no problem adding my email address, you can certainly do that. And if somebody wanted to reach out to me and I will always respond back to people because again, the passion to educate and help swimmers to become better at this in this sport. That's my whole goal in life anymore. So, yeah. Fantastic. Well, thanks again, Frank. Great chatting. Always good seeing you, my friend. Always good friend. See you next time. Stay well. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming podcast. If you'd like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

They show me this they basically show me stuff like this and I'm like that really wide if you can't do it on dry land you can't do it in the water welcome to the effortless swimming podcast to show that helps swimmers and triathletes love the water become a better swimmer and live a better life here's your host Brenton Ford welcome to the effortless swimming podcast Sharon welcome back to the podcast it's been a couple months since I've had you on since your Olympic victory and you've made a big transition in that time to now stepping away from the competition side and going into more coaching so I want to dig into that and how that transition has been and some of those things that you've learned over the last six plus months having made that transition so welcome to the podcast first of all thank you for having me again so yeah I think this is the the third time now so it's it's great to have you back on and we're actually running a trip in the Maldives in October a long distance swimming trip so we'll get to explore some of the beautiful coral reefs and islands and adholes and things around there which will be fantastic so I'm looking forward to meeting you in person there which will be which will be great and and then working with the swimmers who are coming along there but first thing I want to jump into is since you've made that transition to coaching what have been some of the key things that you've had to pick up having gone from that competitive swimmer to now having to

teach the stuff that you were able to do yourself basically the main thing is that I've really like a lot of patience for my swimmers and I try to explain it as simple as possible so there was this for example there was this thing that in Rio when I won the Olympics I had this hand that like the elbow was touching the water first and then this hand came and my french coach was saying yeah you have this little hand that comes in and I didn't know how to fix it and then my german coach barred he said well just rotate more and then basically because I didn't know how to fix it myself he just made me well explain it really easy it's in your rotation and so I look at those little stuff people think oh my hand is not going into the water how do I do that but it is by rotating the other shoulder more in the water that you can lift so I always try to give examples of my experience and then explain it as simple as possible to my swimmers and that's I think the thing they like the most about my coaching there's two things that stand out there first one is keeping it simple that that took me a very long time to learn when I started coaching I would give too much information and it would be too complicated and it's just it's very hard to do more than one thing so if you can keep things simple that's I think that's such an important thing for coaching and the second thing

there is that you're not addressing what seems like the obvious issue which is say like let's say your elbow is entering first the cause of it was lack of rotation so it's actually going back a step to the actual cause of it and not the not the the symptom so that I think is again a really important skill when it comes to to coaching is to actually how do you identify what's the the actual cause so we're going to fix it long term yeah you have to go a step back you know like go step back like they always think this is the problem but it's like that's not the problem that's not the thing we're going to fix we're going to fix it by doing another in a different way and it's and the thing that stands out to me as well is it's very swimming can be very simple but it can also be very complicated but when you put it down to the the core fundamentals and the way I see that is like right good head and body position let's just get horizontal there we need to make sure we rotate make sure we recover properly and then we can work on our catch and pull and obviously breathing has got to be in there as well but like you sort of can boil it down to those couple of things and if you take that sort of approach then it is for me that's been the easier way to to figure out what's the what's the cause of some of these issues that we're seeing in the stroke yeah did you have a certain sort of way that you got taught from your coaches or is this stuff that you've had to figure out as you've gone along since you started coaching

yeah well figured it out of course with the german coach my filip luka was more of a coach that was tough and just swim you know and baren barricade was more the coach that was very um perfectionist so i would always be scared not scared but i was like oh he's looking so i need to be like there's one thing that stood out that i learned from him was when i arrived so there was that rotation problem and when i arrived he said but you can finish your stroke much longer you can swim much longer and i was talking about and then at some point so there was this triceps push that i teach people now it's like you can go out here but you have to rotate to go out if you really want to push that triceps up and he was standing there and i remember my first four months my triceps were on fire but if you just correct so i'm not even when people i have clients coming at home i don't even film them on the water yet so i don't even focus on the catch the pool anything on the water the main thing that they will learn in one session is that their push is like 30% longer than before so they already gained maybe let's say 10 centimeters in their stroke by just rotating and like doing a longer triceps push and that's what i got it gave me the feeling in germany or i was trained

with parent that i have to i have all this i have these long arms why am i not using those last 10 centimeters of my push why won't i do that but then i also discovered you have to rotate to do that if i don't rotate i have this i have this click in my arm so i always rotate enough pushing the back and then you can come back and so those are the things that people are really happy with when i teach them it's they see the difference in one session and they are then they have to focus on i give them technique exercise where to focus on in their sessions and and they are trying to do that and if they come back the next session then we will see what we can do underwater or what we can do with the hands if the hands is like this it's easy to fix because you want to have hands like straight so those are all my things that i learned as a swimmer and i experienced myself that i my triceps were burning so that's a good sign but that's that's the basics i really like to teach those parts rotation and longer strokes yeah one one thing so i had a clinic a week and a half ago it was and one of the ladies said to me like i'm so my arms just my shoulders just get so tired my legs my legs get pretty tired as well and like so i just i i just like i'm working too hard and so we filmed her did the analysis and like first thing

she's just swimming so flat and just the amount of effort you've got to put in to get any sort of distance in the stroke well you can't get much distance firstly but just the amount of effort you've got to put into the arms to pull yourself through the water instead of getting into a more streamlined position and getting 10 probably 20 centimeters for her it's it's no surprise that that swimmer is feeling the way that they're feeling when you see what they're they're doing and and i actually got a message from her this morning actually and she said look i knew something was wrong in the stroke but i just i just couldn't put my finger on it and then when i looked at the footage i thought okay there's a lot of stuff wrong here but thanks for breaking it down and making it making it simple and one of the things you mentioned was that that change initially with the triceps right so you didn't have the specific strength there to hold it initially but you built it up over time that's the thing with with these stroke changes is sometimes it can actually feel more difficult and possibly even slower yeah initially but ultimately it's going to be faster and it's going to feel much better once that becomes the new habit and you've got that swim specific strength yeah yeah so um i remember in the sand when i won the olympics i could switch to sort of what i call philip stroke a little bit like the french coach stroke where i go a little bit shorter in the back more frequent and then with the current i would do my long and easy stroke so when those people leave my session they swim the same pace

but much easier which can make them improve the the faster pace at some point i mean a frequency would have won i think the dodgy was there that the olympic she would have won the race but frequency doesn't win it's a proper like a longer i mean i have much more power of course because i give those longer stroke but i also save energy for at the end when i want to put my frequency in i go much faster and you have people for example triad each they only have one frequency so i put my pool really really slow and they say now you have to go with very like a slow motion swing for you very long strokes and they can so they do like their normal pace they stop swimming and then you know normal pace again i think slow strokes and so sometimes it takes a step back so i tell them imagine walking and doing your groceries every day that's your level two walk right so level two to level three walk but no now we're going to do groceries groceries with very big steps and very slow they're going to get tired they're going to create muscle so i want to go that step back by doing sort of a dps stroke and then they're then they can build it up to that level five version five eventually with a nicer stroke yeah it's a good way to approach it and especially you've got a pool where you can change the speeds it's

what's the brand of pool that you've got it's called a swim intelligent pool so it's they are based in the Netherlands for now i think maybe in germany as well but yeah it's uh i have the olympic version so it can go to 55 seconds but if you do that you could surf in my pool um and almost water comes back but basically when i swim myself i put it around 122 to 1 like i don't go any faster and then you can even put some fins and pedals in to make it sometimes it's quite boring because i'm you know i'm looking at the the ground all the time but i put on some music on the side if i have my breaks and drink something but it is really nice because you don't have to go anywhere you don't have to take your car do the changing in a changing room talk to people like you just do your quick thing and then you can work it's like being able to go out for a run from your front door yeah you can do the same things from in from your your back door so uh yeah that's that's a good way to do it have you ever tried with headphones before because i've had i've got a friend who uses them she's training for the computer napoli swims 36ks and she's doing most of her training with them and she loves them and i i i just tried them on and they're uh they're really good in terms of the quality but they just go over the years i contacted a brand if they could send me one and then um

but they didn't answer properly so i was like okay i'll buy one soon but first i'm trying with the radio on the side just using music in my breaks you know yeah yeah it's it's almost a hurdle i don't want to or it's it's it's a step i don't want to take because then i feel like i might become reliant on it yeah so i don't know if that's just like yeah but there's another thing that i make my swimmers do is uh what they don't realize uh is that the warming up is really important and that's because i had a shoulder injury since uh december 2015 and i've got like uh yeah rupture in my biceps and it is still there and as you can hear it's not not everything is fine in that shoulder so if i in the plane i wouldn't sit properly i have sometimes to click it so that it's like it yeah it seems weird but then it hurts less or something and since i am in germany i've discovered how to warm up properly and how to position myself so in the watering basically in in france i was swimming with my shoulder like this so this would be tense and the shoulder would be to the front this way and in in germany i learned how to fix my shoulder to the back but you need to create back muscles you need to to work on your yeah basically your shoulder blades and i wasn't doing that in gym

and so we did all those drylands before and even the last one and a half year with my fissure ring we were doing rotation exercises because i noticed when i rotate more in the water i get less tired and i get less lactate so my arms can go on longer so that's the difference maybe of 2024 where yeah i won the world's and olympics because of the rotation but so i i give them this task to look in the mirror at themselves and i say so show me your stroke show me what you're doing in the water and then i get these people that like they show me this they basically show me stuff like this and i'm like is that really wide if you can't do it on dryland you can't do it in the water so what you want to do is and then i tell them like the basics like i said that i explained easy is that i would say that okay you follow your right like your right eye is following your right hand so this stays on this side and then this one stays in this line of your leg and then doesn't come over the middle line of your body side basically i explain it really easy i love that exercise because often at clinics let's say someone's recovery let's say they're coming over and they haven't got the elbow pointing up towards the sky it's low pointing behind them so they've got this very sort of flat and low recovery

i get into them i say all right let's you know show me your recovery over the water and we're just standing on the on the pool deck and they show the exact same recovery that they're doing in the water and then you know we try and adjust it and manipulate it so that they're coming over in in that better position so their underarm is showing their elbows pointing up and just trying to get them to make that change out of the water and then if someone's trying to demonstrate the stroke out of the water but they're super wide they're not reaching forwards they're not rotating there's a good chance that they're not going to be doing that in the water and so yeah i think it's it's a very especially in the mirror it's a really good way just to to show someone what they're probably doing and then if they've got a few key positions to kind of move through one of those that you sort of touched on a bit before is like that that initial reach up here another coach explained it as reaching for the cookie jar it's like we're trying to just get that cookie jar just on the top shelf we want to get up in that position first and then when we pull through um another coach i learned it from was it we want to trace this outside line of the body pretty much what you just you mentioned there for those couple of things it's like real key things that if you can do that then you're going to be getting a long way with those sorts of things yeah and what i also do with the if i give um if i come to a club visit i say no we also do the dry land before so i don't just come for swimming we do dry land and i give them like these terra bands this elastics and then i show them how to do stuff so for example that

triceps push um that they don't do in swimming i show you with a band and i say well you push out you push out like this and then i try to make them feel what they should do on land to do in the water so that always comes in a in a package because i don't believe i had a client last time that i was giving online coaching and i said but you have to do your dry lands if you don't do your dry lands we don't work together anymore because that's part of my philosophy my philosophy is that you need to do your dry land before or anytime that you have off and you want to do a little quick resistance workout that's when you do that and you have to do it and so we stopped working together basically because it can make the time for it and i said now then then your technique doesn't improve it's part of the technique process yeah yeah those and it doesn't need to be a whole lot either when you're doing the terra band stuff like it doesn't need to be hours and hours it's just a a little bit before you you get into the water effortless swimming our mission is simple make swimming more enjoyable whether you're training for your next race swimming for fitness or just love being in the water we're here to help you swim faster smoother and with more confidence and one thing that can make or break a swim is your goggles if you've ever struggled with foggy lenses mid session you know how frustrating it can be that's why we created the effortless

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reason you can simply return them for a refund don't let foggy goggles ruin another swim try hydro clear today and experience clear vision from start to finish and in terms of the clients that you've been working with are there any particular types of sets that you've been giving them that they weren't necessarily doing but they should be doing and you've seen good results with it I did a speed change it so basically they couldn't do like zone if I give a let's say I give a five times 300 I ask for zone one zone two zone three and four zone five and it's always the part they're gonna do zone four zone three already too fast well zone one is already too fast but their max is going to be like their zone three to four but the last one should be the fastest one and not the middle one so they can't control what they're doing so basically I teach them how to go step back like I said with longer strokes and then I really write down okay this should feel like slow motion swimming second part level two should feel like you're getting more into your normal rhythm three is like frequency higher frequency and level four is starting to kick more with the higher frequency and five is just like give everything you got frequency kick and then sprint at the end or something so I mark down behind the levels what have to do like the steps

and then we get there so that's like and then I also give them sometimes a kick set because like four 100s kick is already a set for them because the most of the triad leads for open water swimmers they sometimes I coach people and it does nothing to us right it's just your normal walking routine your swimming routine so I give them kick sets or technique sets and all of the sudden they get the hard breathing again so see this is where you create lactate this is where you create your cardio so you need to do kick sets and so sometimes I give them like faster kick sets or like some three kick sets a little bit and then they all tell me that they're the last one they can't do it fast because they all lactate before already their legs hurt for from four times 100 and I used to do five times 400 kick sets we did twice on the camps we did twice a week huge kick sets huge kick yeah that's we used to do an 800 time trial every second every every second week I think we're doing it an 800 time trial of kick and so I used to do it as a an 800 medley kick just to mix it up and I was doing medley at the time but man that was that was hard work I got like it helped so much for the 400 medley that I was training for and I mean in a in a triathlon you got a wet suit on people are not necessarily going to be kicking a lot but if you lose the kick

then you lose the rest of your stroke so that kick still has to be effective and done well so that you can the way I see it is it's like it gives you this grounding effect it's like when you throw a ball you've got your feet planted on the ground so you've got something firm to generate that kind of power from and it's the same thing with your kick it helps you rotate sides it gives you that counterbalance and then it really gives you something to derive that power from but if you if your legs are just kind of doing their own thing you're gonna have a hard time making use of your upper body yeah yeah I call it a dance mine is not great just you use mine for a few times but I mean I am doing I am I don't know how I learned it but I am an Olympic champion with it with it but yeah I I crossed them uh yeah I don't know and so we are at the end of micro like the last four years we're trying to fix it in a sprint but I can swim 26 seconds 26 seconds on a 50 I think if I use it but I didn't want to use them so but I was really really good in paddle swimming and arm swimming back in the days but then I got my shoulder injury so then the solution in France was let's do 6k kick sets with shorter starting time so I basically was swimming all the sessions with kick for three or four weeks because I couldn't swim on my shoulder and then I got really good in kicking so then in Germany we did those kick sets and I would

I think my best thousand meter was a 131 average which is a 132 average in kicking but then you see me race I don't use them I don't like I don't use them but there is a for me it's like a dance so it's the opposite way so this one kicks on that shoulder goes there so it would be a pretty nice dance and then on my coach was always saying use them at the end and then you can you know you can win and I was always like lactating too much to use them but I kick more of course but yeah I can do it but I would advise people to to learn it the proper way not the my way and I must also say like the last videos of my swimming career are the ones that I look at it as like okay this is Sharon swimming the best that she can with injuries in her body let's say so now I would be I remember those videos you used once in bikini I was swimming with a really high catch now my angle would be a little bit more wide because of the injury I didn't want to get too close to the body because then in a shoulder hurt so I wanted to not in a straighten way but it was easier for me to hold it in a like not 90 degree way but more like 100 or 110 degree way well that I remember that the video you're talking about swim quite a few years back I think

that your your catch I think was on your right arm was like it was it was I'd never seen anything like it it was so like the angle was was unbelievable so that's a problem it's a problem so I would say now I prefer when people I don't like the close to the body angle at all I like the a little bit bigger angle so 92 more not straight of course only if they're sprinted but that would be also the more like healthy angle in my opinion so that's also things I give because of my experience I give a healthy way of coaching I think it's not like a lifestyle coach but you need to do your warm-ups if you don't want to get injured or and and if you want to be coached by you as well you gotta make sure you do your warm-ups yeah of course yeah the in terms of the catch like I I've had a couple of swimmers that have either come to clinics or sent videos through and they are they've been over doing the the catch like that they're thinking that more is better and you know if I can get it to 90 degrees or whatever then I'm going to be swimming better but for most people they don't have the range of motion through their shoulders or the mobility or the strength really so it's it's that compromise between a better angle which is more vertical but they have a lack of strength there compared to something that might not be be as good but they can apply a lot more power they can use their bigger stronger back and shoulder muscles through there and so

for 99% of people similar to what you mentioned is that's where we need to that's where they they need to be is somewhere that's sustainable they're not going to injure themselves and they can apply that power and use those stronger muscles that's the that's where most people should be and not try and not try to replicate where you are because you are 0.01% but what you can do is that I make them push my hand down on dry land like this and then I explain when they're here now they should try and pull with the lats of the muscle here back so I explain in phases like this is just the part when you feel the water you're not even pushing then there's the part where you do your catch and then when you pass the catch you need to start pulling with the lats so make them feel the muscle so on dry land so that's why I always say dry land plus swimming because then you can feel what you're doing and you can put it into the water or in your stroke yeah it's a really good way to to approach it and the the other thing there too just in terms of the catch is and I'd be curious to get your opinion on this like what I've talked about in videos before is that sort of the shoulders sort of down and back is when you can be strongest through here but sometimes that can get mistaken as you should keep your shoulders down and back the whole time but to be able to get into a good catch you actually need to let your shoulder blade slide up along your ribcage and this shoulder to come up to be able to get into the catch and then here is when it will sort of come

down and back like that's that's what I try and get across is that what you would teach is that what you sort of say or had you explain it differently so when I was swimming I had scratches in my neck so like you know the here because of the swimsuit so that means that when I was swimming I was touching with the swimsuit the shoulder a little bit so that's I mean I think it's a good sign but of course doesn't mean that you have to do this it's a different way so now I say to people that they should be as long as possible in the water and the shoulders the dry land exercises they start by so if you give them external rotation it starts by step one shoulders back that's the position they start in and then they do the the shoulder rotate the external rotation and so when they swim they should do their shoulders back as well and then when they go to the front it's because of the rotating and then the shoulder is allowed to touch at the head at some point if they they have a swimsuit they would scratch right now um and then they rotate back but what I wouldn't recommend is what I did with that catch that this I wouldn't recommend rolling the shoulder forward so that they'd go to the front and so that's why I give a lot of backstroke to my swimmers as well I did a lot of backstroke because it gives you this swing rotation automatically in backstroke and it opens up these muscles which where my injury is so that you get this stretched out basically

before you swim freestyle so I did a lot of back free sets just mixing because then I got the stretch and then I could swim longer freestyle so that would be my opinion on those shoulders and how to get long to the front is also that push in the back so you go you don't only go searching to the front here no it's that backhand also normally is helping you but I also noticed all the Dutch people I coached they breathe one in two so I grew up in France where they teach me one in three so I have this opposition way of swimming and you of course you have a lot of people doing the catch up way of swimming that's more like this so then you have to think like you have to kick more to get there to the front probably when they did a catch up stroke yeah it's um it with the with the finish of the stroke if I'm analyzing someone's video quite often we've got to address the back end of that the finish of their stroke because if they're coming let's say they're probably flat through the hips right so they're not it's not coming out probably so first so we've got to get the hips on the side to go to open up there and finish the stroke on the way back go towards your upper thigh then you'll be able to get the enough reach and get on to the side and then you'll have that length so yeah it's that like where all right where do we need to start here quite often it is chicken or or the egg it's like where we need to figure out what comes first because sometimes it's the opposite for for a different person but

for me that's quite enjoyable trying to figure out what's what's the actual cause of it and just trying to go through their video and different angles and figure out where where's this bottle neck coming from in their stroke and once we remove that bottle neck then that will let everything flow because if you're swimming correct if you're swimming well with everything in time and everything in place then the catch comes a lot easier whereas if you're doing things incorrectly it's very difficult to get a good catch so that's why good swimmers like yourself that looks beautiful to watch because everything's in sync and in rhythm and so to get there sometimes there's this bottle neck that we need to remove or identify and then work on fixing that's like when they when they do open water swimming and they sight or when they do general swimming and they have a hip problem so the hips sink then I always look at the head first because their head is basically like this and then your hips sink automatically although when you make a double chin when you're swimming it already lists to have hip for example so I always look step back step back and then like I said before so I don't even look at the hip problem I'll just look at the face first to the head first yeah so it's all yeah I really like it and also there's one thing that I think a lot of coaches say that they're not allowed to rotate the hips or move the hips which is correct because they're not allowed to do like a snake in the water

like you know but they're allowed to do like first the step one is hip and I call it like hip ribs shoulder hip rib shoulder and that should be at some point when you're a professional swimmer it's like it's a one thing but for amateurs or people who want to get better it's just you explain it hip rib shoulder hip rib shoulder so they open up the hip first and it's something that I teach myself only the last two years with my physio I had to do it on a ball like a swiss ball and then I had to open up with my hip and I couldn't and he said but that's the way you start opening up in the water hip rib and then shoulder so there's a lot of stuff I learned also last two years that I'm already giving to people now so I wish I knew so much when I started swimming or when I was 20 or when I was going to the Olympics but now I'm happy to share it with yeah with everybody just going back to that exercise on the so you're lying down on a swiss ball where like can you explain that exercise so basically you're in this sort of plank position you know like you have your um yeah your hands on the ground basically and this ball is under my hips and then I need to move that ball with my hip and then go to the side so it's basically I'm having this yeah I am on my hands

ball under me my my feet are touching the ground so I'm basically like this I'm not in a real plank position I'm like this and then I need to open up and I wasn't allowed to open up with my hand first so I had to open up my hip and then my ribs and then my shoulder and in Doha we tried it for the first time just two days before the race I couldn't do it so the last six seven months to our experience we just started working on that basically I remember seeing your post videos yeah I think that exercise or something similar so that that makes a lot of sense now and so the the main thing there was to get the sequencing of those yeah of those joints or or bones yeah yeah working in the right order yeah yeah so I wasn't rotating enough and it made me relax it more so get more mobility in my hips or more mobility in here I started every morning by sitting on the ball and checking if my rotation is enough so if I go over the midline in the back that's enough if I didn't have enough rotation I did all the exercise on my program but I think soon I will share it more on my Instagram and make the mobility like show real with mobility exercises for rotation I think that can be a good thing to share I shared it in this like bubble of Doha where we started on my Instagram but I think I should make a real of it

it could be fun I think that'd be good yeah to say it yeah well Sharon thanks so much for being on the podcast again and as I said in October looking forward to meeting in person and for those that are listening if you want to jump in for the long distance camp is there's a minimum of 145 per 100 for three k's in terms of the pacing and in terms of how much swing there's between four to ten k available for swimming each day so if you got any questions just send us a message through the the website and I think there's five or six spots left there at the moment yeah looking forward to that and it's going to be good fun beautiful place to swim and and also it's going to be some some good coaching and and a good group of people so yeah thank you very much for being on the podcast and looking forward to October yeah me too thank you thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast if you'd like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com

I think the one of the things I always try to stress to my athletes is like, yeah, do your homework or like be a student of the sport. You got to have that really learning growth mindset and swimming, like maybe more than cycling and running and other things because it's just, it's so nuanced. You have to try so much to make small improvements. And if you don't really embrace that, then it's like, you know, you're, you'll fizzle out, you know, you're not going to find that improvement. So that's what I really try to stress through, through everything that I teach and talk to people about. You got to love it. It might suck sometimes, but you'll mostly love it. You'll be in a good, you'll be in a good, good path. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here's your host, Brenton Ford. All right. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. Greg, thanks for, thanks for jumping on the podcast with me. I love having someone who comes from a swimming background has transitioned to being a pro triathlete. And then more recently, you led the swim in the half Ironman World Champs. What was that like for you being first out of the water and was that a goal going into that race? Yeah. Well, I appreciate you having me. Just a big fan of everything you do on, on your channel and just preaching the good word about swimming well. But yeah, it was, it was kind of a goal, you know, as my first World Champs and I knew that coming out first would be, I'd get a lot of good press for it. I was prepared to like put in a pretty good effort to, to do that.

And it was so fun, like, you know, all my friends and family were watching the stream like, oh, we saw you. And, you know, it's, it was a lot of fun. So I'm really glad I did. And I was definitely a bit tired running into my bike to start the race. But it was, it was worth it for sure. And yeah, I had a great time out there. And yeah, it's kind of more in your neck of the woods in New Zealand. And yeah, I had a great time in that part of the world and never been down there before. And coming from that pool swimming background, what is it that you had to change about the way that you were swimming or training to become good in open water? Yeah, you know, translating stroke to open water is always, I feel like it's just really different for everyone. I was fortunate enough that I kind of had a gallopy type stroke in a high stroke rate, which allowed me to translate my stroke pretty well to open water. I think one of the things I did, it was not worry about setting my catch like so high, close to the surface, you know, like that long like pool stroke, just kind of, you can be a little more choppy and a little more scrappy in the open water. And I think that's kind of what I leaned into a bit more. And knowing that I didn't have to do a bunch of hard swimming all the time in the pool, you know, I can do some longer aerobic type swimming. And my coming from a swimming background, my speed was good, right? Compared to triathlete. So I didn't have to focus on it that too much, you know.

Yeah, I find it hard to, it's probably hard. To go from being good at open water to then getting back in the pool. That's what I've personally found. Like, over the last, I don't know, 10, 10 plus years, I've just been more open water and I've become quite good at that sort of stroke and style. And whenever I come back to pool racing, it's just like, oh, my God, I just feel like a hack. I just don't have that smoothness and length to the stroke. And I think it would take probably several competitions and meets to be able to get back to that point. But I think going from, yeah, maybe from like being okay in the pool to then going open water and getting scrappier again, I feel like that's an easier transition to make, at least personally is what I've found. Yeah, I definitely would agree. And, you know, you don't have to be as efficient in the open water. Right? I mean, you just, there's so many more variables. You got waves, you got chops, you got current. So, you know, if you look at some of the best triathletes in the world and you, you know, put them in a pool, you're like, that's like a front pack swimmer, you know, because they are, it's not really beautiful. It's not that long, loping stroke you might see in the Olympics. But, you know, when you get in the open water, they can really hold their own.

Yeah, absolutely. And like a couple of years back, I did some filming with Josh Amberger, like, because I wanted to capture some underwater footage and, you know, show his stroke and stuff like that. And we filmed in the pool and it was like, it doesn't look that pretty. Like it's not a good looking stroke, but it's so effective. It is so effective in the open water. And I think he was maybe second, you know, out of the water, maybe behind you at half Ironman World Champs. And yeah, and like to me, that was like, OK, it's not about how it looks. It's like, is it effective and is it going to be good for the open water? So it is almost, it's a requirement almost to be able to get scrappy in your stroke to swim well in the open water rather than being too precise or too perfect and smooth. Like you've got to let things go a little bit. And I think that is a big learning curve for people who have maybe just built up their stroke in the pool, right? That's good. We need to build that technique. But then like having to let that go a little bit in the open water can be a bit like, but I've just worked so hard at getting my technique to, you know, to look good. So how would how would you recommend someone get, you know, get more comfortable in being a scrappy open water swimmer? Yeah, you know, I, a lot of people that I coach and things I stress, doing things in the pool that also get you out of your comfort zone, you know, being a competent, I, you know, summing the other strokes, right? And being able to do some like no breathers, you know, doing some hypoxic work and, and scolding in different ways. Cause in the open water, you just, you never know when you're going to find yourself in a weird position, maybe you get bumped and you kind of like

school to rebalance yourself. And I think all the little things, I say this things to people where you got to learn how to swim like a swimmer before you can get away training like a triathlete. And it's like, you got to do all these things that swimmers do, like kind of the fundamentals to kind of increase your overall awareness and just comfortable in the water. And I think that's kind of how you become a better open water swimmer too. It's like, why don't you do flip turns? Like that's not going to help me in the open water swimming. Well, it's like, well, if you can't hold your breath through flip turn, you're not going to be a good open water swimmer. Like you need to get comfortable doing stuff in the pool. And yeah, I really, I really believe in that stuff will help you become a better open water swimmer.

Yeah, I really like the way that you put it just in terms of if you are like sculling in different positions and just like just finding yourself more comfortable in the water and able to adapt to different scenarios, it happens so much in the open water. And you don't have time to think about it. It's just like, you know, if there's chop and waves, your hands in, you've got to start the catch pretty quickly. And there might be some current and swell or there's people around you and the water is aerated from their kick and all this sort of stuff. And it's just it's got to become this intuition that you've got. And you're right, by mixing things up in the pool and throwing yourself in these different situations, that trains you to be able to just find that hold of the water without having to think about. It makes it subconscious. Yeah, and that's kind of what we're after. It's like, you can't the more you think in the pool, you know, the slower you can end up going sometimes, right? It's we want to train the things specifically sometimes in the pool or, you know, going to practice in the open water. So when we get to a race, we can just race and hopefully our subconscious puts us in the right direction when we have to rebalance or, you know, throw an elbow. No, I'm just kidding. But, you know, the open waters, it's so unpredictable. So I think that keeping you on your toes and training is good. And, you know, one other thing, just.

You talk about it to an open water. I've heard you say this, don't be a victim. And I think it's just so big with the mindset and everything. Like if you're dreading lining up to swim and open water race, it's probably not going to go well. So, you know, just being a more comfortable pool swimmer might be able to help you in that regard, too. But yeah, the mental part is obviously just just huge in that regard. Yeah, I totally agree. And you see it exacerbated a lot more in the open water. You know, if someone's like, I'm not that comfortable in the pool, you are not going to be comfortable in the open water. And there's obviously so many other variables that I think people build up to be bigger than what they need to be in a lot of cases. And I don't mean to like downplay the open water swimming. Obviously, there's bigger risks and things like that. But like in reality, for most people, if you've got a wetsuit on like the worst case, right, like float on your back, get your breath back and start again. Like it like and even if you get swam over like, yeah, there might be people coming, but you could easily you can easily get out of the way. Like it's there's really not that many actual dangers out there. But we build it up like like there is a lot more. So I think like obviously just getting the practice in is very beneficial. But yeah, just getting comfortable in the open water. And I think just trying to throw yourself into these situations where you're like, all right, I've been here before, I can deal with it. And, you know, I know I know what I need to do. And one of it like hypoxic training is is so important.

We do a lot of breath control, whether it's like eight fifties breathing like three on the first one, we might go five, seven, nine. And we do that twice through or even just like trying to go twenty five meters breathing and doing a few repeats of those. Like that sort of stuff. If you can keep your calmness about you when you're holding your breath and not able to breathe, I think that can help a lot a lot too.

But yeah, that's that's really big, I think. And it's also a test of efficiency in your stroke. You know, if you can't swim twenty five, no breath. You know, maybe your breathing is not quite right or you're working too hard on your recovery. It's like you kind of find how to find that ease of your stroke. And that's why. You know, it can be hard from afar. You know, I program some breath control stuff. And sometimes when I'm starting with an athlete, like it's so hard. I'm like, just keep trying because you you will find a way to be more efficient. You know, I can't be there on deck with everyone, but I think there's like interventions like that. Like, hey, if you can try to get comfortable doing four times, no breath. And look, you can do it because I I've taught eight year olds to do it. You know, you're a grown up. You got this, right? So I think that can help with kind of the efficiency. And then, you know, when you miss a breath in the open water, you choke on water. Can you keep your calmness about you and kind of stay composed in the moment, which. And then your mind is OK and you're not freaking out. And this one goes well. And, you know, kind of there's like a snowball effect in the wrong way. But there's also a snowball effect like in the right way. You know, keep your wits about you. Yeah, absolutely. That's it. It's a good way of putting it with a high back doing the hypoxic stuff. It forces you to your body to figure out what it needs to do to make it through. And, you know, quite often, I think people the immediate reaction is I've got to get my turn over faster so I can get through these strokes quicker. If you're doing, say, breathing every seven strokes, it's like, all right, I'm going to rate up. But then it makes you more tired of like a lot quicker.

So what you actually have to do is just maybe slow down a little bit back off the kick, be very relaxed in the recovery and just have a very sort of gradual build up with the power through the through the pool. And you actually just have to sort of soften everything and just kind of switch off slightly. And the way I sort of picture it is like a it's like you're an F1 driver. It's like you're in the driver's seat and OK, you're making the movements, but you're just sort of analyzing everything around you. Like when you're swimming calmly and swimming well, it's almost like you take that step back and you're just kind of looking from a third person view almost where you're just kind of adjusting the knobs. Like how much effort do I need to put in if you're racing? It's like, you know, do I need to try and overtake this person? Where's the buoy? All that sort of stuff. It's like if you can take that back seat or that third person view, then I think that helps with the calmness of it all. Yeah, I really like the way you just said that back seat. It's like you take a little back seat and all of a sudden you're super aware and especially triathletes. I mean, they can get just so hyper focused on this queue and that queue and whatever it is. But then, you know, open water so much about awareness, you know, and in the pro ranks, it's like, oh, yeah, I was on someone's feet and then they let the gap go and I couldn't close. I'm like, well, you weren't aware enough to realize it was starting to open up and to go around and to close that gap, right? So kind of the awareness and everything is it's so big. Yeah, for for comfort, but, you know, also just going on what's around you, like, you know, some people I've never had a problem with it,

but they don't really even know how to draft behind someone when they're swimming, right? You know, it's yeah, you kind of have to take a back seat and just kind of survey to, you know, find out what's really going on, especially in these mass starts like, you know, Ironman, Kona or something like this. It's, you know, that awareness in the open waters is so, so huge. And yeah, I find that people who come from like a water polo background and stuff tend to be good open water Summers because they move their body in weird ways, they're strong, and they're always constantly aware of what's going on around them. And, you know, they kind of have the heads up type of stroke too. So I always find they succeed a lot just for those for those same reasons. Yeah, it's like the like surf life. Well, they call it surf Ironman over here, but like surf life saving where they've got like ski board and swim. And like those those guys are unreal in the open water and you look at them in the pool and most of them actually like they've got their head a bit high, the hips are a bit low in the pool. They've got I generally like a fairly quick turnover and I'm not these super long smooth strokes, but they're like their open water skills are unreal. And like I've raced I've raced some of the best. Yeah, the best surf lifesavers in some some competitions, just in open water. And like it amazes me how good they actually are at that. Like they are just it's almost like they've got a drone and they can just see what's happening in the pack. And, you know, but obviously they're they're in there in the water, but they've just got such a good sense of things and they just know when to turn up the heat, when to back it off.

And like it's it's unreal and they just stick to you like we like they they did not let up. And you know, and I think for a lot of people it's they have and I've had this with some pro triathletes I've worked with as well. It's like OK, on the bike, on the run, I'm happy to like dictate what's happening here in the pack. I'm happy to dictate the pace that we're all going to go. But when it comes to the swim, if they're not like the top four or five guys, they're like, I'm just going to sit back and I'm I'm I'm going to be a bit of a victim here. I'm not going to sort of dictate what's happening in my race. And so I think you're right, the mindset that they need to take into it, that people need to take into it, even if you don't feel like you've earned it or you deserve it, you've got to go out there with this. Like, all right, it's my race and like no one's going to mess with me. Yeah, right. OK, let's say fake it till you make it. Well, and where you come from, you know, in Australia, that whole surf lifesaving, it seems like it's really ingrained like in your culture from a young age. Like, you know, people are very into it, especially maybe if you live on the coast. And, you know, typically Australian track, they seem to have like a high level of open water. And they, you know, actually we talked about Josh and in that 70.3 worlds. I've never battled with someone as hard as I did. And it was with Josh in that race, like just the way that the turn was at the first buoy, I was kind of on the outside and I was like, oh, there's someone I'll just body this person off, you know, just kind of swim into them and take the feet of the person who was leading. And it was Josh and he just came right back at me. And we were just on top of each other for two or three minutes. And I just after the race, I was like, yeah, you don't want to fight

in Aussie in the water. I think they are not going to relinquish those feet very easily. You know, Josh is a small guy, too, but he packed a punch. So I'm always, yeah, I'm always envious of, you know, kind of Australian swim culture, you know, and you think about guys like J.R. who's, you know, he's involved with pro triathletes and stuff. And yeah, it's, it's cool to see because everyone seems aware of the water, water safety, but they just love swimming and love the ocean and just kind of respect the whole sport as a whole. So it's cool to see from, from my perspective, when it's not quite the same as like an American triathlete, I would say. This episode is brought to you by Pillar Performance. Our new sponsors Pillar are a sports micronutrition company. And the easiest way to describe it is that while hydration and carbohydrates products will take you through to touch the wall as fast as possible, Pillar's mission is to get swimmers to the starting blocks in the best condition over and over again. I recently started taking Pillar triple magnesium after a friend had recommended it, and it's been a game changer for my sleep and recovery. I take one scoop 30 minutes before bed each night in the same way that you might start your day with a coffee. I finish it up with the magnesium and recover better for tomorrow's session in the pool. Pillar performance is used by some of the biggest names in swimming and triathlon, including Zach Stavilti Cook, Jan Frodeno, Ben Canute, Ash Gentle, Taylor Nib amongst a host of other well-known swimmers and triathletes. Where Pillar differs from other micronutrition you may have taken before is both the quality of the types of magnesium and the tangible results that I see on my garment each morning.

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Yes, it's certainly much more of a culture here. And like him just learned to swim lessons in Australia. It's like nearly every kid is doing learn to swim. And then obviously we've got a lot of lot of coastline as well. And one thing that I see regardless of age is that there's kind of like this tipping point for people where they eventually get comfortable enough being in the open water that they're not phased by getting pushed under or waves and all this sort of stuff. And I've seen it with my young kids as well. Like they're they're eight and six now. And it's only been the last like probably six months, 12 months where we can go out and it's deep. And they're just like kind of happy to just get smashed by a wave to have to dive under it. But before that, I was like I was really aware of like what's going on. And I cannot leave these guys within less than an arm shot of me because it's just like it's not safe and they're going to panic. But like I've taken them for quite a few years and they've finally got comfortable. But then I've seen that with like ladies in their in their late 60s as well, who were just like they call them tea baggers, where they just go into the water and kind of sit there and chat who have gone from that to then actually like doing these open water races of two kilometers. And like they're very, really proficient and getting really good. Like it doesn't matter what age it is. There's this tipping point where if you just keep going long enough, you'll eventually get there, but you need that consistency. And yeah, just don't don't stop when it gets hard.

Yeah. And I think that's that's super big for triathletes too. It's like, and especially if you have limited time, right? Or maybe you're in a program that's, you know, you're written by just a regular tri coach and, you know, they're not really a swim coach and you're new to triathlon and swimming. And I can see how you get really kind of burnt out or frustrated. And then you never really find the love of the water and swimming. And, you know, that's, that's part of it. You have to love going to the pool. And, you know, most of the time, I mean, we all are not going to always love going to the pool, but I think that's so big. And yeah, it can be at any age, like you say. I mean, I was coaching this older gentleman last year and he was like, Oh, do you think you could get me faster? I'm like, yeah, 100%. Like if you wanted to get faster and you're going to enjoy the process, of course we can make small tweaks to help you get faster. Especially if you haven't been a swimmer your whole life. Yeah, I think it's, it's really, it's really cool to see too. I mean, I'm sure you've helped people who are older, like find love of swimming way later in their life. And it's probably like, wow, that's cool. And they're going to, you know, take that to their, to their grave of their love of swimming. You know what? I remember my, so my dad used to race at master's competitions. So when I was maybe 10, 11, 12, my dad was icing master's comps. And I remember he came back from nationals one year and, and they had it's like the 800 or the 1500 freestyle. And they had someone who was like 99 years old doing this 1500. And it's like, everyone just cheered at the end.

Like that's amazing. Like, well done on doing that. But it also took like an hour and 20 minutes. And like we, we don't have that kind of time, especially when like the way they used to run it was like heats. They're like, everyone had to stop what they're doing for an hour and 15 or however long it took.

Yeah. It's like something you can do forever, which I, which I love. Yeah. In terms of, I know you write the swim portion of some triathletes programs. What, what would you say that you go in and do differently than what some other tri coaches might be doing? And why is that beneficial for people with decimal mean? Yeah, I would say the main difference I do is kind of shorter intervals than a typical triathlete coach and also like a speed focus. I just really think that speed is efficiency. You know, you're not going to be good at an Ironman swim. If you know, you can't swim fast, right? I mean, you don't have to be a world record 100 freestyler, but we need like a baseline level of speed so we can find efficiency at its slower paces. And you know, it's, I'll see a lot of like four, eight hundreds or something. You know, I'm doing an Ironman. I got to do long reps. It's like, you know, I think you can do hundreds with short rest and still get that same aerobic stimulus. And you can just keep your stroke together better. You know, and stay engaged. And maybe you change paces. Just all those little things, I think make a big difference. And I think about it like this, there's, there's protract or pro swimmers out there and their whole existence is trying to keep their stroke together for two minutes, you know, or four minutes. And then triathletes with no swim background can think they can just go in and do 10 minute reps in the pool. And like their stroke is going to be good the whole time. It's like, it's ridiculous. Like you guys aren't pro swimmers and that's okay. We got to work with what we got. But, you know, I'll do a lot of like just aerobic fifties, where

I'll, you know, do 30 fifties, you know, take six to eight seconds rest, but it's like that quick reset. It's like, I can accumulate more time swimming faster, kind of at the same effort. And at the end of the day, I think that's kind of important. Rather, if I was going to do a, you know, it's, I would swim slower relatively, and it's kind of the same aerobic, you know, stimulus or so. So I'm really just, I want to trick people into accumulating more time going faster, essentially. And also just like a lot of like 25s at, you know, 80 to 90%. Kind of like, you might know strides for running a lot of pro runners do them. It's kind of like efficiency and you do them on your easy days. I like to do that on the swim easy days too, where, you know, hey, let's do four 25s at 85 or 90% effort at the end of warmup, just to, like I said earlier, you can hopefully your body will figure out a way to be a little more efficient just through that, that speed intervention. And I think it can be powerful from afar, which is always hard. It's always hard to make big changes when you're not with someone on deck, but I think that can be a powerful intervention as well. I really like what you said there about, like, let's say like 200 swimmer or even 100 swimmer, like if anyone's done a max effort 100 from a dive, we'd like trying to keep you straight together for the last 15 meters. And even as a, yeah, as an elite swimmer, so yeah, that makes that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, it's, yeah, I do not do not enjoy like even 200s or 400s from a dive, like all out, it's just you can't keep

you straight together very well. It takes a lot of work to get to that point. So yeah, no, that's that that makes a lot of sense. Now, in terms of like paddle size, one of things we're talking about before the podcast was bigger is not necessarily better. Can you go into that?

Yeah, I think people think that, you know, the bigger the paddle, like the more strength you have, you know, you're going to build, but for a lot of triathletes, the strength isn't your limiter, you know, it's probably your technique and things like this. And when I, when I put on big paddles, and when I see for people, the stroke rate just really, just really slows down. So if you're in the pool with big paddles doing long, slow stroke rate, and you go to the open water or something in a race, it's like, I want to have a faster stroke rate, and most people should in the open water. There's always exceptions, but I figured the, and I always tell people, I saw with Nathan Adrian in college, and you know, he's an Olympic gold medalist, hunter freestyler. And like his, his fingers would go a little over the edge of his paddles. Like this is the best 100 meter freestyler in the world. Like his hand was actually a little bit bigger than his paddle. And because he wanted to set a really high catch, and he wanted to keep his stroke rate together. And I think with the bigger paddle, it's like, most people don't have the strength to really sustain a really effective high catch or a great stroke rate. Or, you know, and obviously the risk of injury can go up a little bit too. But yeah, I think the stroke rate and kind of like where you can set an effective catch that's sustainable, kind of, yeah, you can, you can get into trouble there, I think, depending on, you know, who you are and where you come from. Yeah, definitely. I agree. Like we've got, we've got our effortless swimming paddles, which is like, it's a fairly sort of standard template, but we've got small, medium, large. I wear the medium ones, which are slightly bigger than my, yeah, just

probably slightly bigger than my hand. And like, if I go, I don't really, I don't wear the large ones because it's just too much load. And I just don't, don't need that. And I think for most people, like it's going to be the smaller, medium size, especially for like most, probably most females, it's probably going to be small, just generally they're a little bit smaller for males, like maybe small to medium. But those large ones, I think just, yeah, there's, and there's no point trying to train those bad habits as well, under load. Like it's just, I see a lot of people who come to our clinics who have shoulder issues. Sometimes it's from how they're sitting at their desk, desk during the day, or how they're using their mouse and keyboard. But nine times out of 10, it's something super obvious in their stroke that they're doing, that when you showed in the video, it's like that position, like this really awkward position, you're doing that 2000 times every morning. It's like, are you surprised that, that your, your shoulder hurts? It's like, yeah, it's pretty clear when you see some of the things that, that you might be doing from on BDA. Yeah, 100%. And it's like, if you have a massive paddle, it's just going to exacerbate that. You know, like, oh, you have a, you're pulling super wide and you're like, oh, my shoulders always soar here. Oh, I also wear these massive paddles. It's like, yeah, that two and two usually will, will go together. And yeah, I just, and triathletes in general, I'm just such a massive fan of just stroke rate. You know, I think when you look at all the best triathletes in terms of, you know, Lucy Charles Barkley and people like that, I mean, she's got the fastest stroke rate in triathlon, essentially. She's also like the fastest female swimmer in the history of triathlon. So those things tend to go

hand in hand, I think. And I think in there's actually in the rougher conditions too. So I think, you know, paddle everything, it all plays a small role, right? You think people think things aren't related, but, you know, taking things, thinking about things critically in the pool and like every little, if you don't know why you're putting on your gear, you know, you should have a purpose, you know, don't just, oh, I'm going to put on my massive paddles to swim aerobic to get to a K today. Well, you probably should have a purpose to what you're doing. I don't know if the big paddles I can quite find a purpose for anyone really, unless maybe you're a professional 53. It's funny you say it like, what's the purpose of it? I was talking to a friend of mine, Ben, who's a coach and he said he went on a national event camp and it was his first one. So he's got, he's there with a breaststroker who was one of his swimmers and then he's got like the best coaches in the country there. And it was his turn to write a set for all the swimmers to do. And so he wrote the set up and he's like really nervous and you know, trying to make it the best possible set he could. And then he had Lee Nugent, who's like the national national team coach and someone else come over and they're like, all right, why did you put that there? And this is like the warmup. It's like, all right, why did you put 450s of like kick there? And he's like coming up with a reason. And then, all right, what about this? What about this? And they just question him on everything, not because it was a bad workout or set, but like they make it, they want him to think about what's the actual purpose of this. And if there's no real reason

behind it, then why are we doing it? So I think it's a really good, good approach. It's like, you need to have a purpose behind everything. And that way you can save a lot of time as well. You can get rid of those junk miles and you can, you know, you can make sure that what you're doing is actually going to help you go forwards. And I think, I mean, I'm sometimes guilty of it. It's like, all right, we want to get 4k done today. All right, how are we going to get there? Yeah, but it does make a good point anyway about yeah, making sure everything's got a purpose. Yeah. And it's, it's easier said than done a little bit. I mean, every single lap doesn't always have a specific purpose, right? And sometimes coaches just put stuff in to put stuff in. But, you know, I always, it's always fun to have a swimmer or something to question you to kind of keep you on your toes like, okay, let me make sure. And I was a little bit of that guy growing up with my coach, you know, he would say something and I'd like, why? And I think we grew together as well. Like, I think I helped him become a little bit better of a coach and he obviously helped me develop into a great swimmer. And it was like, we would sit in his office and just like talk about how we're going to get me to the next level. You know, I'm like, well, Phelps reads every left every stroke. How come I he's like, well, Phelps still rotates evenly. You're not rotating evenly when you do that. And, you know, there's things stick with you over, over the course of your life. So it could be really powerful for a coach and kind of an athlete to get those questions, even though as a coach, sometimes you're like, don't question me, just do the set. Yeah, yeah, yeah, don't question me. That's right. Any terms of, like, favorite sets, do you have any particular favorite sets that you personally like to do?

Yeah, I do. Well, I don't do it as much these days, because I don't have, I don't swim long course, but like 10 400s long course was always like a set growing up that I did. And I really enjoyed it as much as someone could. Like, I was kind of one of those swimmers who was like, yeah, let's get after it. These days, I really, like I said, I like doing shorter aerobic sets on short rest. And I think it's just like, it makes the time go by quickly. And you, I was thinking about what the hardest set was, because I know you've asked some of your guests that before. And it was with this, this woman, and she said, she's a really great swimmer. I think she's Australian. She's like, oh, 10 100s on the two minute as like the hardest set you could possibly do this hour. And I was like, I was thinking that exact same set. So I don't do too much of that these days, but, you know, a five 100s on the five minute. I mean, it, it's awful. But doing a set like that is also kind of a favorite too. And, you know, it's funny. I actually left this comment on one of your Instagrams once and I still get people liking it. So I get like notifications. And I was like, oh, that's one of those sets where you like feel slightly sick after. And that's kind of how you know you did it, right? So I think the five 100s on the five minute is kind of one of those. And that's a fun set for me. But yeah, you don't feel super good when it's over. But maybe 30 minutes down the road, you feel a little bit better. It's so, yeah, so painful. It reminds me of the Jevesi, the all burn spew set, whatever they call it, like the one that Brett Hawke used to do. Yeah. It was basically like, it was like hundreds until you do 100

max effort. And then you scale a Gatorade or Powerade and you keep going until you spew. It's almost like the BMR. But it's a similar thing. But like, again, like, I don't know what the what's the purpose of it. You don't you don't need the Gatorade at the end of each 100. But yeah, that's a hard set. When you see like big coaches like that, just do fun stuff sometimes. I mean, it's fun in a sense. And that's kind of the beauty of swimming. Like I think good coaches keep their athletes engaged in different ways. You know, I saw the ASU coach was posting something the other day and they're jumping up in the middle of the pool doing streamlines and then sprinting. It's like these are some of the best summers in the world and they're still doing weird stuff. And I think that's why, you know, they're successful as well.

Yeah, that's what and it keeps it interesting. Like it just mixes things up and look the distance isn't going to look great on your on your watch or like he might be missing 800 meters from from your workout because you've been doing some funky stuff in the middle of the pool. But I think like it's that stuff that can really help you learn and help your body discover what it needs to do to get a fish in to get fast and all that sort of stuff. And like one one that I've that I really like, we throw it in occasionally for our Wednesday sprint sessions is we do vertical kick, but you actually have to move forwards. So it's hands out, kicking vertically, but you just lean forwards. And I got this one from Andrew Schaeff where it's very hard but you're working that the up kick. So if you don't have a very good up kick, then you're not going to move forwards. So I found that to be hard, but like just an effective way to develop your kick. And then we do, I just call it like bucket skull, but like on your back head or head sort of up and you're just going next here and you're going feet first. It's like feet first skull. Again, really hard and your forearms feel it after 25 meters. So like that stuff is very slow, but it just mixes it up and you still get a lot out of it. So things like that can be. Yeah. And you know, we talked about schooling earlier. I think that's like it's can be pretty powerful. And there's so many different ways to do it too, you know, like there's tens of different ways to school and, you know, putting your body in a weird position and finding out how to move it. It's, you know, it's all part of the, you know, I feel like swimming is a bunch of boxes

and, you know, you got to check as many boxes as you can try new stuff. Some of it, it's not going to click with you and some of it will. And it's so different for everyone. So I think like trying all those things can be just really, really important. I always use the example like okay, if you're trying to teach 10 kids one thing, you're going to have to say it five different ways for it to connect with each, you know, to get it to connect to each one of them, right? Because it's not going to connect with someone in one way and it will with others. And I think that's how you, yeah, it really improves as a swimmer. And I think that's, this is what's missing in triathlon a bit, you know, there's no exploration and not enough curiosity on why people are fast. Like what, oh, I can't swim backstroke. I'm like, well, go on the internet and try to find out a general theme and, you know, practice kicking on your back. You can do it. It's not so hard, you know. Yeah, that's right. And I think if you get better at backstroke and breaststroke and maybe you fly, like there's a lot of similarities there. The catch is the same. You've still got to rotate and backstroke, it just gets the shoulders moving in another way and it helps you. You've got to figure out what's moving forwards there. So yeah, it's really worth doing. And last week, I went on holidays with my family and we were spent heaps of time in the beach and heaps of time in the pool that was at the resort. And so I was in there with the kids and we were in there for a couple of hours a day and we're just playing a game, like keeping off like these sinky toys and like we try

and steal it from each other. And like they're doing all this stuff underwater, kind of like a fish, like just darting around and like just seeing what they can do to get away or to get me. And like that sort of discovery and that sort of play, like you don't need to be stealing sinkies from each other in triathlon training, but like some something like that that's fun. And like and you're not thinking about all right, got to get my like hand entry right and my cat just like I just a little bit of that discovery stuff goes a very, very long way. Yeah, and I just such a big believer in like how resilient our bodies are, you know, you you might pick up something and you didn't even know you did and you might swim more efficient just because you tried something new and you never know what you can learn just by doing. Yeah, listen, we call it we play sharks and minnows. You might call it something different in Australia, you know, where someone's it and they try to get you before you get to their side and your your squirm and your darting and changing direction underwater. And it's I think those things. Yeah, I really really can make a difference. You know, it's not always more yards and obviously swimming a lot is important. But you know, these little things too are. And yeah, very fun and engaging and I like to write workouts that you might have to double check a few times when you're going through it because I don't want it to be hey, you're doing 2200 today. It's Wednesday, you know, I want a little more intention with it. And so people keep people engaged trick them into swimming 4k not read the whole 4k as they're doing it. Yeah, exactly right. And in terms of what's maybe a belief that

you've changed over the last couple of years, as you've gotten to maybe just developed and progressed as a triathlete, having more experience in triathlon, like what's what's something that you've had to change your belief on that comes to mind? Yeah, I think for myself, it's

I don't have to do as much like hard threshold swimming as I once I thought I did. You know, I'm like, oh, two or three times a week, I got to, you know, get in 1500 to 2000 of like, you know, really hard swimming.

I've done so much of it that I can swim a lot of just kind of aerobic volume maybe a teeny bit of speed. And I'm pretty much set. And I don't think it'd be the same with everyone else. But I realize the more I've gotten older, the less quality I have to do to yeah, kind of stay stay where I am. But you can't also neglect the little things as well. But that's something that's kind of changed changed for me. And one thing I will say I've changed for athletes I coach. I always would say like, swim more, swim more, swim more. And I think that's important. You need to swim a lot. But I also think that. Yeah, just I lean more a little bit more into the speed versus like, not versus volume, because, you know, you need volume to support speed work. But I think that getting fast is like, I just think it's so powerful if you want to be efficient. My hundred free time compared to all the pro triathletes is super, super good. That means I'm also a really good case swimmer. And I think those go really go hand in hand with, you know, how fast someone is in 100 versus their Ironman time. I think the correlation would be pretty much direct. And in a lot of people now you can talk about types of athletes, you know, like, oh, he's a sprinter or something. But we're kind of just talking about all aerobic athletes because it's triathletes in general. So, you know, I can't sprint to 4800 meter freestyle, but I can sprint at 55, which is good for triathletes. But it's slow in terms of swimming. I think you need to get that speed up just just for everyone. And most people triathletes have never really done. And it doesn't have to be massive

amounts of it. But I think making sure you're fast and swimming a good amount is something that they've kind of changed a bit.

I did say that was a bit of a controversial take when you posted that on your Instagram about the fast 100 times help with faster longer, longer distance times. And I think yeah, like there's obviously nuance to it. It's like, yeah, you've got people who are sprinters who can produce a lot of lactate that can go very fast. And that's that is certainly not me. I cannot sprint over long, long course. It's yeah, a longer distance. It's it's fine. But yeah, I think like, yeah, generally, okay, if you yeah, if you can do 120 with an all out sprint, then there's a probably a much better chance that you can hold, I don't know, 130 fives for your two case swim compared to someone who's doing a 128 for an all out all out sprint. So I think there's like, yeah, it's got a fairly direct correlation there. And if all you're doing is just aerobic stuff, and you've never like really tried to work on that that speed, you might be missing out there at effortless swimming, our mission is simple, make swimming more enjoyable. Whether you're training for your next race, swimming for fitness, or just love being in the water, we're here to help you swim faster, smoother, and with more confidence. And one thing that can make or break a swim is your goggles. If you've ever struggled with foggy lenses mid session, you know how frustrating it can be. That's why we created the effortless swimming hydro clear anti fog goggles for long lasting crystal clear vision. I've been using

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vision from start to finish. I think I wanted to sort of ask about that I didn't before is in terms of stroke rate. What are some things that you would recommend people do to develop the ability to hold a faster stroke rate? And is it something that they should like go from 60 to 75 on fairly quickly, or just over time progress it? Like if you got a bit of a strategy or way that you approach that? Yeah, you know, if using a tempo trainer can be like a tool, you know, that beeping, you kind of got to know what stroke rate you usually do and maybe progress slowly with it. I just think doing the, you know, kind of mentioned earlier, like, oh, just a few 25s fast, maybe at the end of warm up and at the end of your main set, just like, doing a bit of that speed work, you don't have to crush like DO2 max 50s and 100s and all that. But just like small doses of, hey, let's do half lap like super fast turnover, go for it and like rewiring your brain a bit to hold a higher stroke rate. So then when you do a race, it's not going to be that high, but you're more comfortable because you've you've trained swimming a stroke rate that's faster. So I don't I don't try to get too specific with it. I think if someone came to me with a big plan and they say, I'm actually doing this thing with my buddy right now because he sent me some swim videos and he hasn't progressed too much and he's a pro triathlete. His stroke rate is so slow. So I said, okay, I want you to get in some 40 25s every day at this stroke rate, just to learn how to swim with that stroke rate. And hopefully he can find some efficiency with it. And then when he goes

back to swimming in a race, maybe that intervention helped him. You know, I don't think there's like you said there's always nuance to everything. But I think a little bit of speed and just practicing like, oh, I'm going to some super fast stroke rate. Yes, do we want to shorten our stroke? Intentionally, you know, that could be a slippery slope, of course. But I think the speed is really big. And it's just small doses just to practice that turnover. Yeah, especially for the pro triathletes or top end age groupers, I think that can be a very good strategy. And I've seen it work with, I mean, I had Becky on the podcast and she she said for her that just transformed transformed us her swim leg. Like she was just she was too long, too smooth. So I can't remember who her coach was at the time, but basically just got her to like right up and just just get efficient at that at that speed at that stroke rate. And she said like from then on it took about 12 months to be able to do it. But then from then on she was like she was right up there. But before she just really struggled because she was just going for too much length. And I did a session with a guy who's like who's about to transition to pro and he is relatively stiff, like just through the shoulders. And like he's just he's not going to have that length of stroke. So we did a session and I think he was typically around like a 364 maybe no high 60s. I think when he was racing. And so I did a session where I wanted him to go as fast as he

could with his stroke rate and as fast as he could go for like 25 meters was a stroke rate of like 82 or something like and that felt just so quick. But ideally if he was just like over speed work and going as fast as he could, he should be able to get that to like 90 or 100 like really getting it going. But he just couldn't do it. Like he just wasn't used to it. So just trying to stretch that rubber band or elastic band of like the range he's comfortable in over time, I think will help him long term like the friend that you're talking about. So yeah, I think for athletes at that sort of level it can be very, very useful. And I mean even ones not at that level, but I think more so for the top end age groupers or pro triathletes. Yeah, definitely. Like you said, it's like stretching it. Okay, can you do it for 10 25 school? Let's stretch it to a 50 and like, you know, and that takes a lot of time, of course. And you know, without a coach there on deck and stuff and checking in with someone online every week or so, it really can be tough, you know, and I get it frustrating for a lot of people. But you know, even in the pro triathlon game and you know, age group world type races with mass starts, you got to be fast. I mean, that's everyone sprints the beginning, right? You know, so it's not only like speed can help you find efficiency at slower paces, it's also like, well, you also need to get out and then be able to kind of settle that speed. So yeah, I just I just think it can be so powerful for stroke mechanics, stroke rate. And yes, if you're doing a bunch of speed and you're swimming inefficient or something, maybe you're

reinforcing bad habits, but I would say it might correct some of the bad habits as well. And it's hard to intervene from afar as well. And I think that can be, yeah.

Yeah, those those ways for people to work out what they should be doing without you being there, like that ability for them to self coach. And when one of the course, you know, I think which one was it in our right now five day catch challenge, which is like a five day course, people they're helping with their catch on. I think day two, we work on the beginning of the catch. And one of the exercises we have them do is like do this front kick drill with fingers up, elbows drops like intentionally breaks on position. And then we get them to the right position. And just building up that awareness back and forth, then helps them understand what it should feel like when they're doing it right. And then they can know whether or not they're they're doing it. And there's heaps of different little exercises, like wrong way, right way that you can do to be able to self coach and know what it's like when you're doing it correctly. So yeah, stuff like that, like speed work, the faster you go, the more the drag is multiplied. And like, I think that's what forces you to figure out what you need to do to maintain your speed. It's, it's such a good, good approach because there are very few swimmers on the planet who has someone giving them feedback every session. And like, there's very almost no pro triathletes who are getting that sort of feedback every session either like it's just squads are too big, you often have to do training on your own. So you've you're going to have to self coach it at some point. So yeah, figuring out how to do that, I think is very important. Yeah, student of the sport, I think it's so big and it's something it's like, you know, if you're in a squad or something, you're not getting one on one attention, well,

take a 50 off and watch the fastest swimmer in the pool, you know, like, see what other fast swimmers are doing to and I think that's big. You had this drill I've seen you do where you just you kick out in front with your in your arms just in a catch position, just like holding a high elbow catch to like, learn what it feels like to be in that position. And I've actually prescribed it to people before and it's, I never really thought of it like that, but just holding a high catch and moving through the water can like, Oh, then when they swim, maybe they'll just go right into that position. So yeah, I think you're, you're super good about cool things, I think. And yeah, I mean, people who probably started for your five day catch challenge, probably get faster, which is cool. And yeah, it's cool to see. That one of the drills there, we do one called YMCA, which is like you kick at the start of the catch, kick in the high elbow position, kicking what we call the power diamond, like just hands under shoulders and then kick at the exit. And it's like, I I'd seen something similar before, but I'm like, Oh, look, these that seem to be the main positions that we want people in, like, yeah, but no matter sort of what, whether doing pool racing or open water. So how about we just give them lots of time to be able to get the feeling of it? And then we'll just have them swim after it. And so I was like, Oh, it's a bit of a silly drill, but like, whatever, we'll see if it works. And so, but it's one I've continued to use for for years, since coming, coming up with it, because I think like it can be hard when you're moving through the water and you just

don't sort of get the chance to necessarily like feel or actually being a high elbow catch. So just taking that time to kick in those positions. And the thing is you like, you feel the drag being created in a really good catch and a really good power diamond. And so the message I try and get across for him is like, right, yes, it's slow and it's hard right now to kick through all that drag. But on the other side of that is your propulsion, like that's the big paddle that you're going to work with. So if you're feeling a lot of drag and like this is hard, well, that's good. All right, you're training the right position and not obviously not for everyone, but for a lot of people that that can just help them kind of get the sense of where they need to be through the stroke. So when they do that drill a few times and they swim in between a lot of them start to move closer to those positions. So yeah, just trying things that might look a bit silly, you know, in the pool, that can be can be really helpful 100%. And I, I call I think I know you call it a power diamond. I think before when I I didn't know I called like a half diamond because it's like it's only one arm usually. Yeah. But I think when I see this in triathlete so much, it's like this crazy wide pole. And it's like it's almost a balance. And I think like it's kind of an I see it so much in triathletes. And yeah, you know, it's, it's so weak that wide pole. And it's like sometimes I watch videos of myself and my hands like on my midline, sometimes crossing over it. You know, even if you look at some of the best swimmers in the world, it's like, yeah, some of them have like traditional catches, but some of them are really up on their midline. And you know, some of them even like cross

over slightly. And it's like, when you're a kid, it's like never cross over, you'll go so slow and triathletes get to the like, well, I can't cross over, I'm going to swim super wide. But it's like, I better off crossing over slightly than having this crazy wide pole. I feel like that's kind of a hot take. But it's like, I just, I feel like you can still be powerful when you're really, you know, underneath your body. And it's close to that power diamond shape.

Well, particularly, I saw it in as a coach, Tracy Bown, I saw it in a book, there was like four photos and it's just pictures of like where you are in relation, where your arm is in relation to your body through the catch and pull. And when you look at it, so like you're starting, let's say you're on your side drop here. Okay, so we're in line with the shoulder, then we actually rotate a bit more in our catch. So it's still roughly in line with the shoulder. We almost sort of flat once we get to the diamond here. And again, it's like, maybe slightly wider than the shoulder. But then as you come through, and this was like the, you know, this point kind of clicked for me is we actually like coming into the midline because you're rotating on to the other side. And I see a lot of swimmers get stuck in that second half there. They think they need to keep this high elbow catch position all the way through. And that stuffs them up because there's just no connection through the last half of their pool. So if they can, yeah, if you think of coming into the midline or at least close to it, then you're actually getting that tricep and I press at the back of tricep extension. And you have that connection with the whole body. But yeah, you're right. Like I just see that with like that wideness all the way through because of like a misinterpretation of the catch, trying to do it the whole way through or like trying to not cross over. Yeah. Does that like have you seen that as well? Is that sort of ring true for you too? Yeah, definitely. And that's when I see it on myself when I'm it's turning. It's right at the end where you're like crossing over. But right, it's like your body has shifted. You've rotated and you're just basically like, you know, brushing your hip slightly, right? And getting that tricep extension. And, you

know, if you're if you've been swimming your whole life and your triceps never been so or it's like, well, you're probably not finishing your stroke quite right, you know, because that's those those really are firing at the end. And yeah, it's funny when you're a kid, it's like streamlined behind your head, you know, put your head and, you know, and, you know, pull wide. But it's like sometimes to teach kids you teach them things that seems like and then you realize that that's not quite exactly how I think that's true in life. It's like, don't do all these things. And then you see someone at the top and they're like doing all of these things, right? You know, I have these underwater shots of Nathan Adrian and and Michael Phelps and on their catches. It's like, they're just strict, you know, at the end of the stroke, totally on their midline, their fingertips are probably crossing over on the other side. But it's like, never cross your midline. It's like, these are the best of our generation. And here they are doing that. That's just that same thing. It's funny. Yeah, it's yeah, it's

again, like it comes down to that nuance, I think, where there's like maybe for a beginner, we need to teach them something just to kind of get them moving in the right direction that we might need to refine it. So there's just so much like spread there, like of where you can be and depending on where the person is in there, in their swimming journey. So that's why I think it's just it's worthwhile getting someone who's a coach or even another swimmer who you think can help you like it's just it just can make such a difference. And I like I did a session probably three months ago, four months ago, just where I was getting coached. And I got like one main thing from it. It was just my breath time. It was bringing the head back a bit earlier because I was that was with Tracy, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's I listened to that episode. Yeah. Yeah. So I did the session with her and it was actually it was turning the head a bit earlier so I could get it back earlier and it took me a long time to actually make the change and to see the results of it. But the last couple of open water races I've done, I have felt really, really good. And I've been able to like I got my rating up really high and held it comfortably because like this breath timing was was there. So it took me a good couple of months to be able to do it. But like, yeah, all right, just one thing. And that's made like a huge difference for me. So yeah, I think like most people if they were to just focus on one thing for six months, they would likely see a big improvement as well. Even if it's something as simple as breath timing, like, yeah, you know, I can I can swim one is one 12s for like a half Ironman

swim. And that like, I feel like that could give me like a second or maybe two seconds. If I were to ever race half Ironman again, which I won't, I feel like I'm past it. I can't write I'm too slow. But like, yeah, it's it can make a big difference just that one things. Yeah, I think that's the way to go. And I mean, that's what the podcast roll about is trying to help people improve their swimming. And because we cover so much, sometimes it can be a bit overwhelming. So just trying to always come back to that simplicity. And what about for you? Is there something in your stroke that you've been working on recently or anything that sort of stood out to you? Yeah, I mean, something I'm always working on is making sure I rotate fully to my right side. And I've really been swimming this way since I was 16. It's like, I like to breathe to my left. But I know no matter what I got to throw in a breath to the right, you know, every, you know, six to 10 strokes or something like that, just to keep my body balanced. And, you know, sometimes if I if I forget it, I'll like get this kind of pain in my back, because I'm you know, I'm throwing my thing and I'm galloping a bit when I swim. So if I don't keep my rotation in check, I can even like have a kind of a tweak in my back. You know, I'm like, well, I'm 33. I'm like, oh, I'm getting old. I'm like, no, you just weren't, you weren't alternate breathing. And you can put a little weird strain on yourself in the pool. So that's something I always think about. And just making a little bit point to kick a little bit more in my training this year, just because like when you swim fast, you kick a lot. And you know, if I'm racing some of the best athletes in the world, and, you know, like, oh, I want to go to a big race

and maybe I'll have, I'll get in a scenario where I want to lead out. It's like, well, I'll probably have to get to my legs a little bit. And I want to train that a little bit more this year. So when I get on the bike, my legs aren't, you know, in a place where they haven't been. It's like, no, I did some kick training to prepare and now I can get on the bike and I can push the power that I should push. But one other thing, you know, you're someone who coaches and you look at all this video, but the fact that you can like take a little pointer and your stroke and like, you know, make, make changes is like, I think that really speaks volumes to you. It's like, you're coached, but we're always confined things for their own stroke. And there's always room to grow in swimming, you know, not, you know, Bob Bowman probably learned some stuff, you know, here or there. And it's like that think the good coaches always are have that kind of student mentality as well, because we can always learn from a new swimmer or a new training stimulus. Yeah, exactly right. And even if they're like, if you're, if they're a coach or a swimmer who like may not have been in the sport as long or like may not have had the experience, like there's still a lot of stuff you can learn. Like I've learned great, like great cues or great ways of explaining things from, yeah, from coaches who are even like fairly, fairly new to it. So and that's, and that's to me, that's the real sort of journey is that there's no, there's no endpoint to it. It's like brushing your teeth is like, you got to do it every day. And the same thing with swimming is like, there's, there's no end point to it. You're not going to know everything and every single way to coach and you're not going to have worked

with every swimmer. So yeah, it's that's what's what makes it fun. And I think like, there's not much better feeling in the world than like having a swim or a race really where it all just comes together, where you feel like you've got this great rhythm, you've got the fitness behind you and you're just motoring along like that. That to me is just like, it really puts a smile on my face. And it doesn't happen that often, but when it does, it's like, yeah, that was, that was worth it. And I'm sure you've had some moments like that, maybe a half iron man world chance where you're just like, yes, that was, that was really nice. Yeah, no, I was thinking about that when you said it's, you know, when you're swimming in the open water, you can kind of take a peek behind you when I was like, I'm working hard. And I looked behind me and I realized I had a gap on the field. I was like, this is cool. And like, I felt that flow and it's like, yeah, I was hurting, but I was like, I was perfectly happy just staying on the gas and just finishing well, because it's like kind of everything came together. And that's open water can be tough that way. Sometimes like, you don't know if you're in a good rhythm, but then, you know, and even I'll question it myself, but then I'm looking around like, okay, I'm moving well compared to other people. But, you know, so if you're out there, like, oh, I'll feel perfect rhythm in the open water. I mean, that's the open water in general. You might never feel really that smooth throughout the swim, but it's just a matter of have you done all the little things to put yourself in a position to, yeah, have an efficient stroke during the race.

And Craig, before we wrap up here, is there anything that we haven't covered that you think we we should or anything that you sort of had written down that you thought would be good to cover? No, I think we recovered it mainly. I think one of the things I always tried to stress to my athletes is like, yeah, do your homework or like be a student of the sport. You got to have that really learning growth mindset and swimming, like maybe more than cycling and running and other things, because it's just it's so nuanced. You have to try so much to make small improvements. And if you don't really embrace that, then it's like, you know, you're you'll fizzle out, you know, you're not going to find that improvement. So that's what I really try to stress through everything that I teach and talk to people about just you got to love it. It might suck sometimes, but you'll mostly love it. You'll be in a good, you'll be in a good, good path. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, thank you for being on the podcast and keep putting out your controversial posts and opinions on Instagram. We'll include that in the show notes as well for people that are that are listening to. So I love a bit of back and forth. And it's good to see both sides of it too, right? Like you put it out there and I know probably trying to stir things up a bit. But it's like, it's good to see the different opinions come out. And, you know, it doesn't have to be right or wrong. It's like, you're probably going to learn something there. So it's I love that. And yeah, keep doing it. Yeah, I appreciate it. And yeah, thanks a lot for having me. It was, yeah, it was an honor to be on the show. You're such a such an influential person on the, yeah, the swim space. So I appreciate you having me. Thank you. And if anyone wants to get in touch with you, what's the best way to do it? Yeah, I guess maybe

through Instagram or my handle is G harp. And then Z O R Z G harp is ours. Just an old friend trick of the sorry, it's an old old inside joke with a friend. But yeah, Greg Harper, you can probably search me on Instagram and you'll find me. And yeah, hopefully I'll have some I'm kind of working on this website where I'm going to be putting out some like kind of training plans and things like that. So hopefully I'll get that in the works. And yeah, hopefully people respond to it well. Sounds good. Thanks, Greg. Appreciate it. Thanks, man. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming podcast. If you'd like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

The second thing is, ignore most advice. Most advice is not relevant for you. And I say that from giving so much advice through our Instagram, through our YouTube, through our podcast, I give out a lot of advice. But most of it is probably not relevant for you. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer, and live a better life. Here's your host, Brenton Ford. Over the years, I've had the chance to analyze the strokes of more than 8,000 swimmers and triathletes from beginners all the way to professional triathletes. Over that time, I've learned what really makes a difference between someone who's fast and efficient compared to someone who gets stuck and can't get any faster in their swimming. In this video, I'm gonna share with you the biggest lessons I've learned from analyzing people from all over the world of all different backgrounds, the biggest myths and misconceptions that I hear around pool deck. And what actually makes a difference between someone who is swimming efficiently and smooth to someone who's really struggling their way through the water. The first thing I've learned from coaching 8,000 different people is that strava is a lie. Whenever you're checking your strava and you're looking at the average pace of someone's swim session, there's so many different variables that go into it. When I look at my own pace, well, often we do more than 1,000 meters of a warm-up with fins on. That's going to skew my average pace to be much faster

than I would actually swim if I wasn't using fins. And the same goes for if we are doing shorter intervals of 50s and 100s, where you can go faster. You can take that rest and your overall pace could be a lot quicker than what it would normally be if you're doing intervals of 400 or 200 meters. And then there comes paddles and pool billies which are obviously gonna make your times a lot faster. So when you're looking at other people swimming and their average time on strava, it's very easy to get in your own head and think, I'm just not that good compared to these other people. But I think strava is a way to maybe motivate yourself to try and push yourself to do some bigger or more challenging sessions. But on the other side of that, sometimes we think that we need to do a lot more than what we're actually doing to get better or we compare ourselves in a way that is not actually comparable because the times that people are doing is misconstrued because of all these different variables. So strava is a lie, it can be motivating but it can also make you feel like crap which is not what we wanna do. So it depends on how you use it but I think across the board, strava can really tell a whole lot of lies if we don't break it down and look at the actual stats behind it. The second thing is ignore most advice. Most advice is not relevant for you. And I say that from giving so much advice through our Instagram, through our YouTube, through our podcast, I give out a lot of advice. But most of it is probably not relevant for you.

And that's because whenever, let's say I'm analyzing someone's video inside our membership, I'll give them one thing to think about for the month and that's it. Because for most people, there's one bit of advice. There's something that's slowing them down or stopping them from getting quick outs this one thing that if they can fix that, they'll get better. But if they're thinking about 10 different things, they're not actually gonna move in a forward direction. So I think it's best to ignore most advice and just focus on what's actually gonna make the difference for you. And let's say you've come to a clinic of ours or you've gone to a coach and I said, work on this one thing. You're probably better off just switching everything off and practicing that one thing for one or two months time and down the track, you'll find yourself further ahead. Then if you were looking at all these different videos, trying a million different things and having nothing to stick. So most advice is not relevant to you. The third thing that I've learned from coaching 8,000 different swimmers is that most adults overthink and sometimes the solutions to what they're looking to fix come from unexpected sources or an illogical way of actually approaching the problem. So for example, we have a lot of people who have problems with their breathing. They get tired before they get to the end of the pool and they think the issue is with the breathing itself. But more times than not, it's from doing something that's causing them to elevate their heart rate or even like a mental state,

a way that they're thinking about the pool and the water that's actually stopping them from being able to breathe normally. So it's not that the way that they're breathing in their stroke is the issue. The issue is that maybe they're over kicking and that's causing their heart rate to be high or they're deep down, they're sort of afraid that they're going to sink in the water and they're not comfortable. And so they hold this unnecessary tension in the body. And that's the thing that we actually need to overcome or work on for them to get better and get comfortable in the water. So sometimes the solution comes from unexpected areas or from somewhere where you think the answer might not be. And so often when we're overthinking things, it's good to either get some professional advice or just take a step back and look at what's the main cause, what could be the actual cause of the issue I'm having or the challenge I'm having in my swimming. Number four is that swimming is not like running or riding. If you're a triathlete and you're putting the work in on the bike and in the run, typically you will get faster. But when it comes to swimming, because water is 800 times denser than air, it takes a lot of technique to be able to get quicker alongside doing the work. So often I have people who come to me, they're very fit. Their VO2 max is 55, 60, super high, but they find that they're pretty slow in the water. And it's not because of a lack of fitness or strength, but it's because of a lack of technique.

So in swimming, we've got to do the work, but we've also got to work on the technical side of things. And so you can't just go harder and train more in order to get quicker. That's certainly a part of it, but we really need to focus on the technical aspects of it. Number one, reduce drag. Number two, increase propulsion. Number five is the harder you try and force speed, the further away it's going to get. In swimming, we need this suppleness and this softness about us in order to move well and freely through the water. But if we try and force things, then we get this tenseness and stiffness about us and we don't move through the water nearly as well or as efficiently. So when it comes to getting faster, we need to try and play it cool in a way, like we're not trying too hard to get faster. And typically that's when the speed will come, when we're not trying to force it. Number six is confidence comes from seeing small improvements. So let's say you're a two minute per hundred swimmer for one kilometer and you're a little bit stuck and you feel like I'm not getting any better. I find that let's say someone's come to a clinic and they have one thing to focus on to start with and maybe that's just better body position. If they focus on that for a few weeks and they find that their times are coming down to 157, 156, that gives them this boost of confidence, like actually I can get better and I can see a light at the end of the tunnel.

And so a really good way to approach swimming is to have one thing in mind, test it out, try it for several weeks and hopefully you see an improvement in your times or how you feel and your efficiency in the water. And then you can build on that and you can move on to the next thing. Rarely is it where you go from two minutes per hundred straight down to 130 per hundred nor need to see small incremental improvements over time. But that is the thing that keeps us motivated. So if you can keep things very simple and keep it to one thing, then you're likely to have this confidence about your swimming rather than which we often see is that people get caught in their own head and they're their own biggest doubters. And that's when they really don't enjoy their swimming. Number seven is your catch is the same in all your strokes. So now five day catch challenge, it's specifically for freestyle, but the catch is the same in all four strokes. So if it's butterfly, this is your catch. If it's backstroke, this is your catch. Breaststroke is here and freestyle is here as well. It's the same position, you're just in a different position in the water. So if you can establish a really effective catch in freestyle, that can help you for your backstroke in your breaststroke and your butterfly. So even though they're different strokes, the same things about your technique all apply. When I'm at a clinic and we are looking at someone's stroke, I ask them to give me feedback

on what they see in their video before I talk about what I can see. Now sometimes, especially if someone's seen our videos, often they'll have a pretty good understanding of what they're looking for. And some people get all the things right, which is terrific. But quite often people are looking at not the most unusual things, but things that don't really make a difference to their speed. They're looking at these little one percenters that don't actually make a difference or move the needle for their overall speed. So quite often when we're watching ourselves swim or we're critiquing ourselves, we're looking at the wrong things and not the things that will actually make a difference for us. So when you look at yourself swim, it's worthwhile thinking about what would actually make the difference to my speed. And usually it's those bigger things, the fundamentals. So head and body position, effective kick, the right rotation. Those couple of things there can make a huge difference to our speed. It doesn't really matter. If you, let's say you're coming in like this, at this angle, compared to this, that's probably not gonna make much of a difference because that's a much smaller piece of the overall pie when it comes to your speed. So look at the things that will actually move the needle for you to get faster. At Effortless Swimming, our mission is simple. Make swimming more enjoyable. Whether you're training for your next race, swimming for fitness, or just love being in the water,

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We are our own harshest critic. When people see themselves swim, they are always really harsh on the feedback that they give themselves. So when we're running clinics and I've got someone next to me in there, they're watching themselves swim, normally they're like, oh my God, I can't believe I look this bad. I can't believe I'm doing all these things wrong. But the other people in the clinic, they don't care. They don't care how you look. They're not judging you as a person or as a swimmer. So quite often I find people are so quick to judge themselves and critique themselves and they make themselves feel bad about maybe the way that they're swimming or approaching it. But in reality, no one cares. It's really just you. So the good thing about that though is that if no one cares about how you look or your speed when you're swimming, then it doesn't really matter where or at. We just want to try and improve from there for our own sake, not for anyone else's sake. And the same thing goes for like, when you walk in the pool, you might have a quick glance at the other swimmers there, but in reality, you don't really care what they're doing. It's more about you. And so all the other swimmers who arrive at the pool are thinking the same thing. They're only thinking about themselves. So don't worry about how you look or what you're doing when you swim because no one else does. And I think that can be quite a good thought to have because I know I've sort of felt the same when it comes to other sports. It's like all these people must be thinking about me and judging me, but nobody cares.

Swimming is as much mental as it is physical. Certainly there's a physical aspect of it. We need to have some general fitness and strength and mobility to swim well. But on the other side of that, so much of it is mental, especially for someone who's new to the sport, often they come into it with these mental blocks of, oh, I'm not a good swimmer. I'm kind of afraid of the water. And they carry that in where they have this tension and uncomfortable way of swimming. And it's not until we overcome those where we can just relax and be comfortable in the water that that person can then actually get better. And it also goes for people who are swimming at a more pointy end of the field where sometimes they think, oh, okay, I'm an okay swimmer, but I don't think I can get much better. So the mental side of it is just as important as the physical. And I think one way to really overcome that side of it is to either work with someone who can help you there, like a coach or a friend, but also just seeing these small improvements over time. Let's say it's open water swimming that gives you fear. Just progressively challenge yourself there. If you can progressively do something a little bit more difficult than what you've done in the past and just over time push that comfort zone, then looking back two or three years down the track, you're probably going to find yourself having progressed so much that you can't even recognize a person who was there three years ago. Working on your technique is like watering seeds.

If you have planted some seeds in the garden, you're looking to grow some vegetables, you might water those seeds for weeks and weeks on end and not see anything happening. But under the ground, the seeds are getting watered and they're starting to sprout, but it can take a long time. It can take three, four, five weeks until you see that sprout coming out of the ground. And you might feel like those first couple of days or weeks where you're watering the seeds that nothing's happening. But eventually it's going to sprout. And working your technique is very much like that. So many people who send in videos for our membership and I give them feedback, or so many people who come to clinics, they work away for weeks on end without seeing the results of the work that they're doing. And then usually you say in one session or in one week, they're like, oh my God, like I'm a lot quicker, but nothing was happening before that. So swimming is very much just like watering seeds. You don't know the impact you're having until you do. And if you can have that patience about the work that you're doing on your stroke, then it's more than likely you're going to see the benefit down the track. When people start swimming, it's usually an aerobic challenge first. Then it becomes a more muscular challenge or fatigue. And then it becomes aerobic again. So usually when someone begins to swim aerobically, they're very challenged because they're not used to this intermittent breathing. They're used to breathing whenever they need to.

And they're probably kicking harder. They're trying to keep their hips up and their legs up. They're doing things that are aerobically very challenging for them. When they get cast that point, it becomes much more muscular where they're starting to use their lats and their back and their core and those things more. So they get fatigue there a lot quicker. Then once they get over that hurdle, then it starts to become a bit more aerobic. They've got good technique. They've got a decent amount of swim specific strength. Then it becomes more of an aerobic challenge after that. One of the things we focus on on this channel is technique. But sometimes what you need to get faster is not more technique work. Sometimes you just need to do the work. Sometimes it comes down to having to practice something for longer, see the results of that, make that a habit before you get better. So sometimes it's not just about more technique stuff. You have to do the work alongside it. So it depends where you are in your journey but if you have been practicing something for a week, you might need to spend a solid six to eight weeks on that thing and practice it more before you see the result of it. We need reminding of things more than we need to learn new things. So you probably know you need to have good head position where you're looking mostly down. You need to be horizontal in the water, have a light, consistent kick, 30 to 40 degrees rotation. You probably know that you need those things. When someone sends a new video to our membership

and I'm giving them feedback, a lot of people aren't doing those things and it's not because they don't know to do that. It's because they even need a bit more reminding in order to make that thing a habit in their stroke. So maybe if you are watching our videos, maybe just pick one thing and go about working on that thing rather than looking for the one secret piece of advice that's gonna help you get faster. So often we just need more reminding than we do learning new things about our stroke. Several years ago when I was training for the Rotnist channel, that was the biggest swim that I was training for. It was a 20-kilometer swim across to Rotnist Island in Western Australia. Now, before this, the longest swim I had ever done was 10 kilometers in training. But in the lead-up to that event, I was doing sessions in the pool that were sometimes five to 10 kilometers and I was doing swims in the Bay in Melbourne that were up to 16 kilometers for the furthest one. Now, doing those longer swims made a four-kilometer pool session feel very easy. But the only reason it felt easy was because I changed my mindset. I changed what I thought was actually a long swim. A long swim was something over 10 kilometers. But before that, I was just mostly doing three to four and a half kilometer sessions before it. So in order to make whatever you're doing now feel easy, sometimes we have to push

or go outside of our comfort zone in order to change our approach or change what we're thinking there. So if there's something there you feel like you're stuck with, can you go well beyond that? Actually change how you think about what is challenging right now. Focus on fundamentals before worrying about the finer details. Imagine you were going to buy a car and you were so concerned about the color of that car that it had to be red that you weren't concerned about it having four wheels and an engine. It just wouldn't make any sense. The same thing goes for when we're looking to swim faster and get better. It's about having those really good fundamentals of just swimming rather than worrying about these very small, fine details like how far apart should the gap between my fingers be? Should I be at 125 degrees here or 130? Look at the bigger picture and get those fundamentals right first. It will take longer than you think. It will take longer than you think to get better at swimming, to get faster at swimming and to feel comfortable in the water. So if you set a timeline of say three months for you to really nail this swimming thing, there's a good chance you're not going to achieve it. But if you can set that timeline of I'm going to work this swimming thing for the next two years and not worry too much about where I end up, there's a good chance you'll actually go a lot further

than what you think. But usually it's like building a house or renovating a house. Normally you have to think about, all right, it's double the cost and it'll be double the time to what I actually think. I reckon it's the same thing in swimming. I've certainly seen people progress faster than I expected but more times than not, it actually takes longer. So that being willing to have that patience about the way you approach things, I think is a really good trait to have when it comes to swimming faster. If you want to know what good fundamentals are in freestyle, click this video here to watch me break down the entire stroke.

So more times than not, we're better off focusing on something earlier on in the process, whether that's head, body, rotation, length, like there's just other things that most people need to, to focus on. Um, and I had, I had someone, uh, messaged me the other day and they, they were going through that week course and they're like, well, like, this is, they'd just gone through week one and we, we focus on breathing and like, it's just, it's too basic form. It's too basic, but like, it doesn't matter where you're at with your swimming, like if you can, even if you make a slight change to breathing, you might find that you're actually a little bit more relaxed. You can actually, you know, conserve some energy. So like, if you look at the best in any sport, they are just masters of the basics. And so it's always good to just keep things as, as simple as you can. Welcome to the effortless swimming podcast to show that helps swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here's your host, Brenton Ford.

What if you could go from struggling at two 20 per 100 to cruising at one 55 today's guest, Fraser Hill did exactly that. And he's sharing exactly how he did it. Fraser started swimming as an adult, doubled in triathlons and eventually found himself diving deep into the world of technique, training and open water swimming from joining an effortless swimming camp in the Maldives to refining his stroke using simple, but powerful cues. Fraser has transformed not only his speed, but his entire approach to swimming in this episode, we talk about the key changes that made the biggest impact on his speed. The mental battles of open water swimming and how small tweaks like fixing body position and connecting the stroke led to massive breakthroughs. If you've ever felt stuck in your swimming progress, Fraser's story will give you some practical takeaways to help you break through your own barriers. So, Fraser, tell me a bit about what your, what was your background in swimming, did you like to swim as a child? Did you start as an adult? Like where did swimming start for you? Yeah, I started swimming at university. 42, three years ago, I think I started just swimming in the pool, doing a few links and really enjoyed it. And then when I was working on, I'm a veterinarian, when I started working, I decided to do some of the mini triathlons, which are very popular in the 80s. And so it's like a swim 500 meters practice doing that. Then I've just swum for leisure for the rest of the time. The last two years, I sort of got more focused because someone said to me, do you want to go to a swim class?

I know how to swim, what would I need to do that for? But I went along with Finella Ng, she's here in Hong Kong and we did a four week course and I was like, wow, I can believe the difference. And she put us onto a series of YouTube videos and one of them was your effort of swimming. I started following it and I thought, right, I'll do the five day challenge. You know, that made a difference. And I did the eight week challenge. And then I was making some progress and I watched a lot of your podcasts and see how you analyze other swimmers. And then I did some of my own filming and I realized I'd fallen into a trap. You were talking about earlier where I watched my own videos and criticized myself. I should send them to you. Anyway, I must do that. And I realized, wow, there's a lot more I can do here. So last year I signed up, went to the course in the Maldives. And then, you know, that made another difference. So it's been really the last 18 months, two years. I've just focused, focused, focused on swimming. It's the only thing I've done. And just felt, get some improvement, wanted to do better. And then, you know, felt confident enough. Now I do open water swimming here in Hong Kong in the, in the, um, there are a lot of events, actually. So in the, in the master section, which I'm in the older section do quite well. So it's a lot of, you know, I really, really actually enjoy that. So I'm a new, my new thing. Um, but I'm watching a lot of your videos and podcasts. I've realized some of the problems I have, I've posed everybody has in them in the open water, I get frightened. I had a swim, two swims ago, it was really big chop and it was just terrifying. And I couldn't actually finish it.

So I've managed to overcome that next one was okay. But, you know, just is that variation. And when we trained on Utah taught us about how to swim with the group, but I still find getting swum over, getting booted in the start. I just find that dreadful side trying to hang back a little bit. So, you know, that stuff like that. So, um, but, you know, to be honest, I'm not trying to win a triathlon. I just want to enjoy what I'm doing, keep it going and maybe swim a little quicker.

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Well, in terms of where you start, I think you mentioned before the call, you were around 220 per hundred. Um, you're now down to around sort of 155 and one of your goals was to get to a sub 20 minute one K swim, which I've, I've heard a similar sort of goal from a lot of other people who were around sort of your, your speed to 20. Um, and that's quite a good, good benchmark to, to get to where, what did you change over that time to go from two 20 to 155s?

Yeah, I couldn't crack 20 to 20 minutes until about 80 months ago. And I did that first course and it took me a year of training in the very last day of this, of the season before the pool shop. I managed it. So I was, you know, I can do it now. Basically a distant memory because, um, so many things I've changed, um, in my stroke, I had, you know, many, many things I was doing wrong. And I think I just got some thinking about the Maldives course. There was three, three key areas that I really changed things that I've changed in the last six months since that course. One was body position, which was, you know, far too low in the water. Um, hips are dragging, legs are dragging. And I knew in doing that, but I actually couldn't figure out how to change it, even though I've watched over and over. You're telling us how to do it. I worked with Gary Haring and then some of you, but it was really the other students on the course that we were talking about it. And someone said to me, it's like putting on a type pair of jeans. Kate, I think it was. And then now that I do this abdominal jeans on, which has, has makes a huge difference, plus something I hadn't realized. Gary Haring spoke about this. He said, he, when he started changing his core, it helped his back. And I've always had terrible lower back problems and that has improved as well. So there's a lot of advantages to getting, you know, that core position. Right. Um, and I think even still, I'm not really where I want to be. I'm not sure how to get even higher out of the water. Um, so this, this winter, actually, I've decided to go to the gym and see if I can build up some core strength and work on it that way.

Um, because I think that, um, resistance is a big part of my issue. I'm just got too much stuff hanging out in the back. You know, I've got to try and get it out.

So go ahead. So that was number one. And the, the very last day I, I got you to sort of take me through. You know, I said, you know, give me some more tips cause I thought it was my catch, but you picked up what I was doing wrong was, um, and this has made a big change as well. You call it soft hands or your elbow on a string, I think it is. And I was pulling my elbow out too far out and you got me coming up higher and further forward and coming in a little bit closer to my head. I was reaching too far forward. And I think that made actually a massive difference. I couldn't believe the difference that made. That's that one change. So getting my guts, my bum up, elbows further up. And then since I came back and you had talked about it, but I hadn't really, cause there's a lot of stuff. I couldn't connect all the dots at the time, but having watched a few other videos, you talk about the role of the hips and connecting the core and all that. And I've really tried to figure that out and when I do it, and I can do it occasionally, but I have to be thinking it makes a difference. But as soon as I stopped thinking, you revert back to your old ways. So it's a, so there's a three body position change. We had, what do you call it? Where your elbow comes up on the string thing that you've got to name for it. Yeah. Well, like just the recovery, it's kind of like, um, I mean, it's a high elbow catch, but, uh, in a way where the elbow is pointing up a bit more as opposed to behind you. So, yeah, just being a bit more open through the underarm and, uh, and bringing the shoulder out a little bit more because yeah, we've, we just need to rotate enough so that that shoulder can come out and then we can

get over comfortably because that also, uh, like that also helps kind of get into the next part of the stroke. And I was actually really listening to, um, one of the videos or podcasts we did with Ash Delaney, who was Carl Chalmers coach, and he talks about in the catch, you're like, you almost want to press yourself into the next stroke. So this one's sort of, you know, grabbing the water, pressing, and with this shoulder, you're sort of connecting over the top and driving that one forwards, but you can't do that if this elbow is too low and you're sort of just coming around too low with it or overreaching in a lot of cases as well. So, uh, yeah, there's so many different things that are connected that we kind of need to have all in place for it to get into this really good rhythm. And I do remember that, um, yeah, that like, you just looked a lot smoother with that change in recovery and entry in the, in the male beef. So that was, um, yeah, I remember that, that looking really, really nice in terms of like, sorry, you go. Yeah. Well, I think, you know, you just don't know that until someone tells you because you think in your head, I mean, I spent a lot of time getting my arms going wider and I thought, this is weird. I feel like I'm swimming way out to the side, but it was, if you look at the video, you're only just in the right position. So you really, what your brain is doing under the water and what your body is doing, you've got no idea to be honest, it's where you need an external pair of eyes.

Yeah, that's, that's right. It's just, uh, and it doesn't matter how long you've been in the sport for you, you just need to, you just need that external pair of eyes. And I know that from my own strength, just you need someone else giving you feedback in terms of their sort of, so the confidence you've got in the water, but also how you feel now compared to previously. What's that difference for you? What do you notice when you're swimming? Oh, it's massive difference. Um, before you felt, and when you talked about one time spinning your wheels, I felt like I was swimming my guts out and just not getting any faster. And then, um, but with, with, you know, being a part of this, I realized that just making small changes can make such a big difference. But the thing I struggle with the most is I'm overthinking it. You've got too many things in my head. And I learned something off Gary Hurring. He said, you go through a checklist. You think, right, what's my breathing doing? Work on that for a few strokes. Uh, where's my, where's my hips? Where's my legs? What am I doing here? Where's my hands? And I go through this mental checklist and then I'll spend sort of one length of each trying to do one thing. It's probably, I probably should do the whole session on one thing that I tend to do with this, but I can now think about that, but now think about that. But so it's, um, and when I, I think the one that I struggle the most with and I should think about it more is this, I think you're one of your students had a name for a needle, not noodle. And when I get this kind of very thin feel to myself, you can just feel the difference. You really feel like you're surging ahead. And I've actually forgotten about worrying about the catch, to be honest. I have to figure that. Okay. I think that's okay. If I think work on these other things, I'll probably

make more progress.

Yeah. Yeah, that's right. And quite often there, if, if you're not doing something else, right, then you're not probably going to be getting the, the catch, right? So more times than not, we're better off focusing on something earlier on in the process. Whether that's head, body, rotation, length, like there's just other things that most people need to, to focus on. Um, and I had, I had someone, uh, messaged me the other day and they, they were going through that week course and they're like, well, like this is, they had just gone through week one and we, we focus on breathing. And like it's just, it's too basic form. It's too basic, but like, it doesn't matter where you're at with your swimming. Like if you can, even if you make a slight change to breathing, you might find that you actually a little bit more relaxed. You can actually, you know, conserve some energy. So like if you look at the, the best in any sport, they are just masters of the basics. And so it's always good to just keep things as, as simple as you, as you can.

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And in terms of the open water stuff, so what was that process like for you in like beginning open water swimming and sort of where you are now with it? I was terrifying at the start, to be honest, it was, as soon as you got a bit of a wave and you missed a breath, you thought, I've got to get out of here and I was panicking, but I

can breathe on both sides. So I was just relaxed, maybe do a few breaths to get back into it. And then I finished, actually, finished my first race and I won it. And I thought, oh, wow, that one's a bit after all. And then the next three or four races were very smooth water and it was just a blast. I just had a really great time. And then I hit a big waves again. And I realized, wow, this is a bit scary. I mean, you have been over it before, but when you're out there and the waves of crashing over your head, it's just you. It's just, I don't know, it was a bit of a wake up moment that I think I'll just have to pick my races. I can't afford to be out there and the really big stuff because it's too, just honestly, too terrifying, really.

Do you think you would be able to get to that point where it could be comfortable in those sorts of conditions? No, not, no, no, no, no, race. I mean, I love playing in the waves, but, you know, when you're, when you're swimming out at a distance,

it was, you know, like a one meter, one and a half meter chopper. It was almost like you want to just surf back in and get out. I couldn't go for it. So, you know, 30 centimetres or something, and you can go over and see if you're going, but I couldn't find the boys. You know, you couldn't, if you looked for the boys and you got down under it, and you got on top of it and it was a bit spray. It's like, where am I? So that was, um, I mean, you've been over this before, but that was just really something I couldn't, couldn't actually deal with it, to be honest. I thought, uh, maybe this isn't for me. Then I did the next one and I was okay getting you. Yeah, it's certainly, um, it's certainly a real challenge in the open water and like building, building up to that kind of size of chop and swell, uh, takes, takes quite a bit of practice and experience. And I think, uh, it sounds like you went from level two or three to like level nine, maybe, you know, straight with, with the conditions out there. Um, because yeah, I think like, yeah, what the, what I try and do, uh, yeah, with swimmers is like, all right, let's, let's just try and progressively, progressively build it up if we can. And, um, like most people, um, they, I think, like, with your sort of experience and stuff, I think you could, you could certainly be comfortable out there. It may, do you think it might be more mental than anything? It was mental that day, I lost it. It was actually so bad they cancelled the race because the boys blew away and no one got a time. It wasn't right. They should have

canceled from the start, to be honest. But the thing is here in Hong Kong, genuinely, the water's very calm. When I go back to New Zealand, which I wanted to keep going with, I think, oh, it's often a lot choppier New Zealand. So I'll have to build up to that again. I've done a lot of boogie boarding and, you know, stuff mucking around the ocean. So I'm usually okay going out there. But, um, as soon as you lose a couple of breaths, I think you, you start to, your head starts playing with your head. I can't breathe in it. And then you kind of get to reset yourself. And that day, I just couldn't reset. Most usually I can't. It was an interesting experience to be honest. Yeah. I had someone asking about that last weekend. Some of the advice I gave them, like they said, they were quite anxious at the start and would tend to just kind of panic the first couple hundred meters. The first thing I said to him was just focus on the exhale. So often people are worried about when's my next breath. But for whatever reason, I think just by focusing on the ex exhalation part, the inhale comes a lot more naturally. And it just, I think it's a bit more calming. But the other thing that we often have to do in open water is if you miss that breath, I would just turn and breathe the next stroke. So let's say you go, if your breath on the left, miss it. Next stroke, just like turn to the right, try and get the breath there. If you get really unlucky, just go again. Like just, it's okay to breathe every stroke. If you need to for a point in time, if you do catch some water. And I've had to do that in so many

races, especially where it is choppy. So just quickly sort of throwing it to the other side and doing it that way. Are you okay breathing to both sides? Yeah. I've always breathed to both sides. I know if I look at this one, I'll do one breath, one breath, one breath, but then it gets in your head and you actually stop and you start to breathe stroke and then you sort of go again. So it's all mental. I know it's all mental because I know I can swim and I'm fine, but it's just going to, but I wear one of those form goggles and I can see my heart rate. And it's just absolutely through the roof, you know, it's about 155. And I'm going, wow, how am I going to calm this down?

Might be best not to know what your heart rate is. Yeah. Turn that off. Yeah. I'm going to get that down back. And in terms of the next bit of improvement in your swimming, if you were to get say under 150, where do you feel like that would come from at the moment? Yeah, I've actually got a goal of 145. I can do 145s for about 200 meters and then I've had it.

I'd like to do that all the time. And I think that will come out of the, you call it rock and roll, not rock and not rolling or something like that. So the shoulders and the hip, and I've tried, I watched in a little video, a British lady, she talked about the connecting sort of the body. And when I get the hip drive going, I can actually feel a big difference. And I'm a lot quicker, but I can't do it all the time. And I've just got to concentrate on that. I think I think that's where the next biggest improvement will go. Plus getting the hips up higher again, trying to get those hips higher. Because if I swim with this wet suit, you know, I'm sort of 140 when I've got that weight taken off. But if I swim back in my tugs, I'm back down to 155. So that's presumably where the problem is, is getting the hips up and then getting that connection between the stroke, the shoulder and the hip. And I can kind of feel it coming the odd time, but if I could give it every single stroke, I think that would be the biggest difference.

Yeah, interesting. That's good. Yeah, in terms of like the body position, like one thing that can help with it, like the core sort of switching on with the jeans, the jeans queues quite good. And it's also like a, it's a slight downhill feeling through the chest. And then it's like a drawing up of the belly button in a way. So it's like, and the mistake a lot of people make is they try and get their hips up. And I don't, if you're switching the core and you probably won't be doing this, but it will try and get the hips up by sticking their bum up in the air, but then it drops the legs. Yeah. Yeah. And so it actually makes you slower. So it's almost having to do the opposite of that where the chest presses and you're drawing your core up and kind of leaning on that chest a bit as one thing. And another one that actually can help quite a bit is in the, in the kick, if you think about the, just focus a bit more on the up kick. So the upward movement of the leg. So you've got a bit of active tension or engagement through your glutes and your hammies to draw it up. The down kick generally happens fairly naturally, but it will just kind of lift the legs a bit more because most people are a little bit bent at the, at the hips there. So sometimes that can help as well. So it's one to just, one to try. Because that's exactly what I did. I was pulling the hips out the wrong, completely the wrong way until I went to the course. I was just trying to lift the hips up and actually made it worse. So it wasn't until I learned about this kind of zipping up the jeans thing and that I got an improvement. So that was, that was really

valuable. Yeah, nice. And then the other one, like the rock and roll, like that sort of rhythm and, and tempo. Some, when I think of some of the, the members videos that I have been analysing recently, a few people have sent through videos and their stroke rates, like 48 strokes per minute, maybe 50 strokes per minute. And that's what they'd be just pretty consistently. And let's say they're like two minutes per 100 or they're about, for quite a few of them, they, if they were to just increase their stroke rate by 10%, they could probably do it with the same amount of effort, but their speed would increase along with it. So not to, I don't know what your sort of stroke rate would normally be, but like a lot of people would just, a 59. So that's, that's pretty, that's pretty good there. But it is good to kind of play around with that if you, if you can. Yeah, I was going to try and push it up to 62 this year and see if that could help because I mean, you said it's probably the lowest hanging fruit, increase your stroke rate. If your technique's not too bad, you know, increase your stroke rate, you'll get a bit quicker, but it's then it's getting fit enough to maintain it, I suppose. Yeah, there's certainly an element of fitness and sometimes strength there as well. Are you doing anything with that, like anything with paddles or that sort of thing in training? I used to do paddles and pull boys and all that. I just gave it away, actually. I didn't think it was adding any value, but this winter I'm doing a lot of gym work with a trainer trying to build up my, you know, back and shoulders and see if I can get a little bit more unfit of it while I'm,

while I can't get in the pool because it's cold and get back in the fall and April. But otherwise I just, I basically swim for to be fit and for enjoyment, but I've just become obsessed. Well, that's what I like to hear. I mean, it's a, I can, I think the feeling when you're, when you really get into that, that flow state, it's just, it's just such a, such a good feeling that you just kind of all want to always go back to it. I did a swim last weekend. It's called the rip swim. It's across the heads in Melbourne. So you start at point in the pan, you go to point line style and it's like, it's where all this shipping traffic is for Melbourne, which is one of the busiest ports in the world. And there's only about a hundred people that do this swim each year. And it was beautiful conditions, completely flat, glassy, sun was out and just the color of the water, it's about 50 or 60 meters deep at some points. And it was, it was just magical. Like I just, I was just at the time, it was a race, but I didn't care too much about the result, but I was just trying to enjoy being in the water and I had some good fitness behind me. So I just felt like I could keep going. I just met, I thought this is the best I've ever felt in a race before. And it's just, it's just such a, a great feeling to be able to do that. And I think the only way you can do that is with like, put the work in, do the training and then obviously enter in the event. But yeah, to me, that was such a, such a great feeling that I just want to get more of that into that sort of state.

It was interesting after I came back from the Maldives, because for the, for the Maldives course, I had trained hard up to it so I could be fit enough for the course. So when I came back, there was a race about two weeks later and it was quite, it was a bit windy, but I think I got the same thing on the homeward leg. I still had plenty in the tank. So I just, you know, I just went for it and it was just so much fun. I thought, wow, this is great. I'm really snowing fast and did really well on that race, but it was just having that fitness behind me and, you know, and the new stuff was really, really fun. But I enjoyed it. I really, really enjoyed it. You didn't feel like, oh my God, when's this over? I can, I can actually swim faster than that last third just to try to do a bit better. I think that was fun. At Effortless Swimming, our mission is simple. Make swimming more enjoyable. Whether you're training for your next race, swimming for fitness or just love being in the water, we're here to help you swim faster, smoother and with more confidence. And one thing that can make or break a swim is your goggles. If you've ever struggled with foggy lenses mid session, you know how frustrating it can be. That's why we created the Effortless Swimming Hydro Clear Anti-Fog Goggles for long lasting crystal clear vision. I've been using them myself and the difference is night and day. And I'm not the only one. Deborah swam 36 kilometers down the Derwent River and the entire time her vision stayed crystal clear. No fog, no frustration, just an uninterrupted swim. So what makes a hydro clear goggles different? It's all in the technology. Unlike ordinary anti-fog coatings that wear off over time,

hydro clear super hydrophilic technology is built into the lens material itself. Here's how it works. Instead of fog forming as tiny droplets, water spreads evenly across the lens, creating a thin film that prevents fog from even starting. And the result? Consistently clear vision, swim after swim. And the durability? Our lenses are CNAS certified. Tests show that even after 2000 rubs with a wet cloth under a 200 gram load, the lens stays fog free. No gimmicks, just serious performance that lasts. Using them is simple. Just wet the lenses before putting them on and you're set for a fog free swim. Ready to see the difference yourself? Get 15% off your first pair of hydro clear anti-fog goggles with the code podcast at shop.effortlesswimming.com. That's 15% off your first pair of goggles with the code podcast at shop.effortlesswimming.com. We also have a 30 day money back guarantee. So if you're not happy with the goggles for any reason, you can simply return them for a refund. Don't let foggy goggles ruin another swim, try hydro clear today and experience clear vision from start to finish. In terms of making some of those changes, so were you doing particular drills? Was it just thinking about it? Like what was the process for your each session? Yeah, I would do, I'll just do, I do it at lunchtime, I swim a kilometer one day and then the next day I would do some of the challenges from the eight week challenge where I work on my

sculling or do this or that or the other. Just mix it up that way.

But the thing afterwards was at first there was too much in my head and now I've sort of trying to just do work on one thing that week or one thing the next week.

The thing that's frustrating, like the first 100 meters I'll swim, I can do 129s, 130s and then it just goes downhill from there. So I don't know, just go out too fast. I think you've talked about this, you know, just ripping into it to try to slow down on the first one. But the very first 100, everything seems to click, the technique's good and then it just falls away. So I've got to try it. You've got any tips on how to stop? Is this in training or in a race? Is this in training? Yeah, just swimming, yeah, just every, you know, it's first 100, it's great, wow, this is fantastic. And then it just gets slower and slower and slower. Yeah, I think, because a few people have sort of asked about this, are you getting in the water and then pushing off or you're diving off the edge?

Push off. So there's a few reasons for it. One is when you're doing turns, most people typically are going to be a little bit slower firstly. So like first 100, the first 50 is going to be the fastest one just from that clear push off. But then also when you first start in your, like your heart rates, probably 60, 70 beats a minute. And so you can generally just swim at a good pace, the heart rates down and feel very sort of comfortable. And then it starts to pick up from there. So that's one. But I also think like, for a lot of people at the start of the session, they're just very relaxed, they're not trying to force things. And there's a bit of that going on as well. So whenever I dive in, I try and go through a bit of a body check or a checklist as well where it's like, all right, head position, where's that at? Make sure my body position is good and just sort of pressing the chest in a bit. But then like, my favorite thing is just in the recovery, thinking of my hand or my fingers, my hands, my wrist, just being soft, being relaxed over the top of the water. So it's just hanging. And then on the entry and the extension, just keeping that softness about it. And if I can carry that through a session, I'm usually swimming pretty well by the end of it. And just trying to keep that feeling going. Because yeah, any session that I've got in where I like maybe it's been like a stressful day or there's traffic or whatever it might be, I go in with that tension. And I am working a lot harder

for the same swim speed. So I think we like, I tend to carry some of that stuff into the swim. So if I can just kind of switch off a bit, it tends to tends to help.

Yes, I used to use the swim as a chance just to do, you know, think about other things, and it'll just clear your mind for the day. But now I'm thinking about the swimming the whole time. What am I doing wrong? What can I do better? You know, but the trouble, I mean, probably the good thing and the bad thing about those goggles is giving you real time feedback. So you know, oh my God, that was slower than the last one. What have I done? You know, if I change this, but the best thing is, if you change something, you go a bit quicker, you realize, oh, okay, that works. So I find that quite encouraging.

Yeah. Yeah, someone in the membership asked about that last week as well, and it's like the form goggles worth it. I said, well, it's the fact that I like about it is that you can tell whether or not the change you made was actually quicker. Like that to have that instant feedback is really helpful, especially if you are just focusing on one thing at a time, whether it's your head position or or your kick, you can have that, yeah, that feedback straight away. And that can be a good one because it might, might feel better, but it might not actually be quicker because it feels better because it's just what you used to. So, you know, maybe like you can tell whether that weirdness or strangeness that you feel because of the change is actually a good one. So yeah, I think it's, it's great. They have, I think they're really valuable for that. And in the open water, I don't use the swim straight because I find that confusing, but I just use it for the stroke rate. So I know that if I'm doing 59, then I'll go up to 60 and then come home at a 62. And I think, okay, that's good. So I know where I'm up to up to. Otherwise, you really don't know what you're doing sometimes. I think that that's the best part. Yeah, that's, that's great. And in terms of someone listening to this, let's say they're above that two minute pace per 100. Is there any particular advice or yeah, yeah, feedback or tips that you would have for people who are struggling to break that two minute mark? Yeah, if I mean, if you're in my age, like if you're over 60, and you've got, if you haven't got good technique, the first thing I do is either go to a course or do you do your challenge? But honestly, you get the most value

if you can just get beside someone for a while, even if it's just for an expert for a while, because you really can't. In my, I don't think in my mind, you can tell, work out what's wrong with yourself. You need someone to give you the kick in the ass and show you the right things.

Because I was thinking, I was just watching one of your podcasts before, and I think maybe I should get a coach for a little bit again and sign up with one of the locals and just iron out a few things because you can only go so far. And it was like the course, to me, found things that I wasn't doing right. So that's where I think that's the biggest value, go to the course or go to a coach or get someone, or I should, I should follow my own advice, I should send in my video to you and tell me, that's another way to do it too. But I thought it was all about the catch. And everybody thinks that if you get the catch right, you'll be a fantastic swimmer, but actually it's not. It's about the breathing, which I'm actually, we're all right on, I got that right. And then I think the biggest, my biggest problem was the body position. And if I had to get that core right, there's a few things that changed in the catch. And the other thing I was doing wrong was coming in too close to my head, I wasn't wide enough with my stroke. And once I changed those things, and then got a bit fitter, I can actually swim. I suppose it's hard to say, why am I better? And it's an amalgam of all those things. But the sort of the biggest change that I need to work on this year is getting that core up and getting improved my kit too. So yeah, lots of bits and pieces. But I think when I went to this course, and I learned that my stroke's too wide, and when I bought, too narrow, when I bought the stroke out wider, when I got a bit better angle on the, you know, I got, actually got the catch. And it made more sense. Because I don't know about you,

but in my time when we were taught to swim, you went in front, you made this kind of an S shape. And that's all gone now. And if you're going to get that out of your head, and then you'll go so much better. And then it's just, I think there's no end to the learning because I'm just trying to do this body rotation and hip engagement, which I think will make another big difference if I could just sort that out in my own head.

Yeah, yeah, gotcha. The, in terms of drills for like that, yeah, that rotation and connection and stuff, I think like unco drill or single arm drill with one arm by the side, breathing to your opposite side and wearing fins is a really good one for that. Because it sort of forces you to rotate enough, but not too much. And one key point that if I'm ever sort of coaching someone with that drill, I try and get them to turn their head as one hand's entering. So turn the head, get the breath, and then try and bring your head back down just as you're about to start the catch. So it's actually a bit earlier than what you do when you're swimming, but just get that breath very early and then come, come back with it. And you'll find that you're, it'll just kind of help

sink things up a bit and you'll, you'll be able to get the catch a bit better. But also just making sure you rotate to both sides because most people, when they do that drill, when they first start doing it, they're just like, they'll enter and they'll pull straight through. And there's no extension. There's no reach out there that you've really got to emphasize that. So that's a good one. And then I like the long dog drill as well, like underwater recovery freestyle. But the key point there to work on that connection and timing is don't let, don't let the lead hand pull through until the recovery arms come to about your shoulders here. So it's like, finish the stroke there on your side, bring this arm back through and then switch from there. And that helps you just feel this, this kind of core switching on through this transition at that part. Because again, most people are just like back and forth like that. There's no, yeah, there's no sort of timing with it. So they're two that are, that are often quite good. And whenever I've asked any like Olympic level freestyles, like what drills you do, pretty much all of them have said single arm and long dog. It's like, they're the two main ones, especially if you're working on those like things a bit further on in the stroke, which is like connection and timing and that sort of thing. So yeah, I think they're really good drills for, for that kind of thing. Single arm and long dog run it down. That'll be good to work on.

Yeah, we're just having the, I've just updated those videos in the membership as well with like a more recent version where it's done, done really well. So yeah, they're in the membership there. Fraser, appreciate you jumping on the podcast and sharing how you've gone from 220 down to 155. And I think for so many people that I talked to, that's something that they're aspiring to. And sometimes just feel like they're at a plateau, particularly around that two minute mark. So yeah, looking forward to seeing where you get to from here. And if you can get to that 145, well, that's a, yeah, another really good improvement in benchmarks. So thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast. If you'd like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com

I'm really trying to speak on resilience at the moment. I feel like this next generation is almost like sugarcoating everything. Like, oh, you didn't come first, but here's a participation. Like, no, everyone falls down, you got to get back up. And that's how you learn. Like resilience is like a muscle. The more you train it, the more it grows. And I think there's maybe like a little bit of a lack of resilience in kids and young adults these days. It's like, things don't go to plan. Like, I missed the Olympic team on the first night on 100 Butterfly when that was the plan. I had to get up 48 hours later and make the team. Like, I was absolutely gutted. I spent four hours boiling my eyes out to my coach. But I knew that the next day, if I didn't wake up with a new attitude, I was actually going to miss the team. Like, I was fortunate enough I'll have potential other options I could make it. But that wasn't like a given. Like, my given was almost 100 Butterfly, and that didn't happen. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here's your host, Brenton Ford. Imagine standing behind the blocks knowing that everything, years of training, sacrifice and your Olympic dream comes down to this one race. That was the reality for Brianna Throssel at the 2016 Olympic Trials where she had just one shot to make the team. In this episode, Brianna takes us behind the scenes of her Olympic journey. What it felt like to step onto the world's biggest stage for the first time, the nerves, the lessons

and the moments that shaped her career. From gruelling training camps in Thailand to the mindset shifts that helped her break through, she says an honest and inspiring look at the highs and lows of elite swimming. Plus, we dive into what's next for her. She steps away from the pool for now and explores life beyond full-time training. If you're looking for insights into what it takes to compete at the highest level and the mental resilience that fuels champions, you won't want to miss this one. Let's get into the podcast. So Brianna, take me back to what would be maybe your most nerve-wracking race. When was the time that you've sat behind the blocks and felt like the world was watching you and you thought, I've really got to get this right here? Well, for me, I probably think that would be my 2016 Olympic Trials. At that stage, sort of in my career, all I was known for was a turn to butterfly. So I knew I couldn't make it in any other event. My turn to butterfly was my only shot. And at that stage, we actually did heat semi-finals and finals of every single race. So it was a bit of a bigger program back then. And I remember going into the final and I was like, everything comes down to this one race. Like I don't really have a backup option to make it on the team. Like if I, for some reason, this race doesn't go to plan, like that's it, I'm not going to my first Olympics. So I think that race I'd have to have found, I was probably entering it the most nervous I've sort of ever been. But in that being said, yes, I wanted to make the Olympic team and it would have, you know, it was such an honor,

but I think it's not until you've been to one or two Olympics that you could really carry the weight of trying to qualify for the Olympics. Because that, you know, I found in, say, 2024 Olympic Trials last year, like that was also very nerve-wracking because I knew what an incredible experience the Olympics was and how I wanted to experience that again and represent Australia and where the green and gold. So, but I felt like in 2016, although I only had that one option to qualify, I didn't really know what an honor or how special it would really be. You don't know what you're missing out on if you don't make it right. Exactly. And I mean, I was fortunate enough to go to the World Champs the year before, but that just doesn't compare. And I mean, in terms of the caliber of athletes in the swimming pool itself is, you know, World Championships is equal to the Olympics, but it's everything that comes with the Olympics that makes it that bit more special and just the most incredible experience in general. Is there one of those three Olympics that you swam at? Do any of those stand out for different reasons? I mean, they all stand out for such different reasons. Tokyo, sorry, Rio, sort of my first, I would describe myself as young and dumb. I went in there, I didn't really know what to expect. I mean, I was 20 at the time and it wasn't that I was there to have fun, but I just, I was racing freely, I guess. I had to turn to butterfly, that was it. I think it was midway through the program and after that I was done. And I didn't really understand how pinnacle and pivotal the Olympics were.

They can, you know, they are the highest of, the highest sporting competition in swimming. So I get, but going to the first Olympics is always so special. And back then it was obviously pre-COVID. We got to stay for the next week. We got to go to the closing ceremony. So there are a lot of incredible things that I'm so glad I did get to experience. And then obviously Tokyo is so special because I guess we thought there was a possibility it wouldn't go ahead. So I think the fact that we got there, the Australian swim team got in and out. There was no COVID, we got to race. I think we brought, I feel like the Australian team, not even just swimming, we brought so much joy to the Australians back home. It had been such a rough year and a half or year of lockdowns in and out. So I think for the swim team and everyone else to be able to perform to the equal amount of gold medals was so incredible. And I felt that we brought a lot of joy and hope back home to the Australians, which is obviously a really special and touching moment for us. And then Paris, stepping on the podium for the first time in Paris itself, obviously Paris is a beautiful city and I love Europe so much. So they're all so special for different reasons. And then in terms of going from your first one to your second to your third, did that experience, did you feel like you were able to carry that experience going through the next eight years from qualifying for your first one? And was there a certain moment in your racing

or in your training where you felt like, all right, I reckon I'm of that caliber and that level where I can actually make the Australian team. Like is there a certain moment that stands out for you where you had that belief that, all right, I think I'm a really good shot here and I know that I can be with those other swimmers.

In all honesty, I have had a really pivotal moment but it wasn't really self-belief. So in 2012, I got to go to my first Open Nationals which is in Adelaide and that coincided with the Olympic trials for the London Olympics. So I was 16 at the time, I made my first final in the 100 butterfly and the 200 as well. And I remember on the last night, I sat down, I watched the team get announced that we're going to the London Olympics and I said to myself, I was like, when they announced Rio in four years' time, I wanna be one of the athletes that's announced. That for me, I'd always been passionate about swimming and wanted to take it to the highest level I guess but that was a really pivotal moment in my career that I really set my goal of making an Olympic team. And I think being 16, making finals was also like promising in itself. I mean, I got to race Jess Shipper and Steph Rice and I just remember I was in four of them. So that for me, I was like, wow, like in four years' time, like I would love for that to be me. So that was like a really, I guess, thought-changing moment and it's how, yeah, I remember like my coach at the time, I sort of sat down with him and I was like, I wanna make the Rio Olympics in 2016. Like I wanna be on that team. And so everything from then on was gunning towards making that team in the turn of butterfly. Yeah, but in terms of self-belief and believing I can be up there,

I honestly have really laughed that throughout my career.

Obviously like I'm a butterflyer, Emma is number one, I'm always gonna be second to her and that's kind of how I viewed my whole life. And I mean, she is the goat of swimming. So yeah, it was such an incredible honor to be able to race her every time and to watch her conduct herself on pool deck. I mean, she's such a humble, incredible athlete and just goes about her business.

Yeah, she's a very, very admirable girl, but I feel like I certainly lack a lot of self-belief knowing that I'm always going to finish second to her in the hundred butterfly. So about moving to Dean's squad, like I sort of mentioned when we were chatting before, he's a coach that believed in me so much and that helped me so much as a person both in and out of the water. And I believe that sort of in the last, I guess in 2024, like I would say there were my best results that I've ever had. And I think it took that year and a half working with Dean, working with the support team around him and even all of our teammates to really believe in myself and have like full faith in myself. Can you talk a bit about the change in, like I guess environment culture of moving to Dean's squad two years prior to the Olympics because I can imagine it's like you're pretty much trained, you're training with some of the absolute cream of the crop in terms of swimmers in the world and we were talking about it before, like just Dean is so invested in getting the results for his athletes if they're willing to put in the same effort. So I can imagine like just being in that sort of environment every single day, twice a day that that would have a profound impact on the way that you maybe think about yourself or the way that you approach your swimming when you're surrounded by that level of athlete and so many of them. Yeah, I mean, it was such a big change and the most, the best change ever.

I am from WA and we were lucky if we got two on the team, maybe three. Most of the time we didn't have our coach. So I mean, I felt like such a lone wolf when I was on the team. Like I remember I was 16 and I made my first short course welds. I didn't know a soul, we're going to Turkey and I didn't know a soul on the team. I didn't have a coach, I didn't know any coaches. I was 16, I was from Perth, no one knew me. I kind of just got on a whim because everyone was having a break after the London Olympics. And to look at how that was and compare that to the 2023 World Championships or 2024 Olympics where I'm in Dean's program. He's got 10 athletes on the team. He's also got multiple support staff. I'm a senior athlete now. It just doesn't compare and I too like being able, being on the team with your teammates is the best thing ever rather than being a little lone wolf from WA who's you'd have to do your sets by yourself. You have like a coach that you work with. They might be from Victoria, they might be from Queensland but I always felt like an inconvenience because they had their own kids to worry about on the team. They don't really want to be doing my, having to time me for my sets. But yeah, like you mentioned about Dean's squad, he is the most passionate, enthusiastic, caring, incredible coach that I've ever been fortunate to work with and he will invest 110% in you

provided that you invest 110% back into swimming, into the squad, into your relationship with Dean. And I think that that is so pivotal. I mean, a lot of people ask me like, oh, like, is there a relationship with a coach important or the teammates, 1,000% it is. Like it's what makes or breaks an athlete. Like if you don't trust your coach or your gym coach or whoever it may be, then what is, what are you working with? So I know that I backed Dean, his training, his methods and percent. And I know it's what got me to being able to swim PB is the age of 28. So it was an incredible environment to be in and to be swimming next to Arnie and to for her to be on world record pace and training or Elijah on world record pace and training. Like he'd inspired me so much. And I know that I'm older than them. But like just watching them do what they do, it inspires everyone in the squad to be, to be better. Let's talk training sets. Is there a particular session that stands out to you as being the hardest session you've ever done or a particular set that you just got? Here we go. Time to strap in. I think this, this set is known by other people. Like I obviously, swimming is quite a secretive sport but I think this is where everyone knows that this session that we do. And it's on the Thailand training camp and there's a lot like Thailand training camp

is the hardest training camp I've ever been on. It's three weeks and there's this one session and it's typically a Monday morning. And I know it doesn't sound that hard but yeah, it's a 30 minute relay in either teams of three or if you're lucky four. I've always been lucky and had a team of four

as just a continuous relay in a 25 minute pool. It's just dive in max. And every single person is timed. Every single effort is timed. Every single coach is on pool deck. Every lane is timed. So you are held at the highest of standards. If you drop off point one, point two, you're yelled out, it's intense. So, and everything was obviously like a relay change over. So you're getting out of the pool, getting on the blocks. So down one end, it's like the short rest end and you might get 30 seconds. Nope, less than that, maybe 25 seconds when you touch a wall to get onto the blocks and the other end, you might get 45 seconds rest until a max effort.

25 and like someone like Kai Taylor, he does the whole thing without a breath. Like in the swimming part, obviously. Jesus. Like that is incredible. And every single effort is timed.

It's so high intensity. I think we ended up doing close to 40, 25s, max effort. Actually, no, maybe it was more than that. And I'm talking like they are max. And yeah, I mean, I usually would do like half butterfly, half freestyle. Yeah, that would have to be one of the hardest sessions. And I know it's only 30 minutes, but I remember looking back at my watch data and my heart rate was above 190 for 28 of those 30 minutes. Wow. Wow. And that pool is hot too. Like from, it's- It's very hot. Even though 50 is hot, but the 25 is probably 29 or 30 degrees. Yeah. Literally a bath. And obviously there's like, there's carry on on pool deck, there's music playing, it's like workers that like the resort would walk past and just look at us like what on earth is going on. And then one of my favorite moments, cause you do it every Monday for three weeks. But one of my favorite moments is like when that final time is up and everyone's just flaked out on the pool deck. Cause like everyone has just given 110%. They are so cooked and so exhausted, but you know that everyone has worked so hard. So it's like this feeling of achievement, but also like you're exhausted, but everyone's in the same boat. Like it's quite an incredible feeling, but that would certainly have to be one of the, one of the tougher sessions. And I know it only lasts 30 minutes. I mean, we have to make up like 6K before and after, but yeah, it's tough. It's really tough.

That's such a good way to do it though. As a relay, you've got everyone else there working, you know, you're in there as a team and you're being held accountable with your getting times at 25. And I also felt like it helped my relay changeover so much. Like I just felt so confident. Cause obviously you're getting on the blocks under so much fatigue and to be able to perform. Oh yeah. So you could be disqualified. They watched every changeover and like there would always be extras for DQs or whatever there was, but I felt like it helped my changeover so much. It makes a lot of sense, right? That's unreal. And I think back to when I was swimming competitively, like those shared experiences with other people is how you've really developed those strong bonds and friendships. And it's like, that's what really, I think gels people together. And that's like, there's, it feels like there's something out yet in the ether after you've done that with a group. Like you just feel like there's, it's almost tangible that you can just like that. That's shared pain that you've been through. Yeah. Yeah. It's quite an incredible sort of feeling, quite surreal almost. At Effortless Swimming, our mission is simple. Make swimming more enjoyable. Whether you're training for your next race, swimming for fitness or just love being in the water, we're here to help you swim faster, smoother and with more confidence. And one thing that can make or break a swim is your goggles. If you've ever struggled with foggy lenses mid session, you know how frustrating it can be. That's why we created the Effortless Swimming Hydro Clear Anti-Fog Goggles

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And so that Thailand training camp, how many Ks would you typically be doing through the week?

How many sessions as well? Nine, nine swim, but we wouldn't really go under set. Or under six. And there's a one Wednesday that's at 9K. That's a fun one. Yeah, so between six and nine, six and nine K and nine swim sessions. But I mean, on top of that, we're running around the track. Like it's like three gym, three run.

Three, three or four bike, circuit, yoga, core, med balls. Yeah, it's it's it's incredible that like the facilities are out of this world. Like I love that everything's everything's there. You don't have to get in the bus and wait for everyone to finish to come home. Like, you know, food is there. It's ready for it's like buffet style food. And yeah, like it's it's a very like lock in kind of training camp. You don't really leave. Maybe on a Saturday night, we go down to the town where there's this incredible supermarket and they cook steak and things like that. But apart from that, you don't really leave the resort. Yeah, it's it's great. I did. Jane says it's his favorite place in the world. Yeah, I bet Disneyland Disneyland for Dean. That's awesome. It was I'll try. Yeah, it's 10 years ago, actually, that a friend of mine started working at Tanya Pyro and he said it bring a group over. And so we started running camps there 10 years ago. And we've been there every year, apart from, I think, two through COVID, maybe. But it is it's just so good. Like roll out of bed, walk across the bridge, you're at the pool. And then and then dinner is or breakfast is like right next door. Yeah, it makes it so easy. Yeah, yeah, we yeah, it's a really incredible facilities. And yeah, like I love sort of love my time there. Yeah, it's a very hard work, but yeah, it's a beautiful place to be. Yeah, yeah, that's that's exactly right. And what about getting out of your training environment

like that like your normal training environment? Do you feel like everyone's able to that they're in this different mindset when they're able to just step out of their daily life and head overseas and go on these training camps? Like would you use it in the lead up to a like trials or Olympics? Like what when was it placed throughout the year? So we it was always in January, February sort of period, depending on

like because obviously Dean's very involved in the St. Peter's swimming like the school swimming. So he always had to be back for their school carnival kind of big competition. So it would sort of either be January, February from I mean, when I was in Dean's squad, but we also would always have a camp in May. And that was usually cans or somewhere a little bit warmer. Just so we do those like I guess it's the very point end of the season where a lot of things are done on long rest or there's time trials or that kind of thing. So we'd always go to cans for two to three weeks right before the trials for Worlds or Olympics, whatever it may be. And I mean, that is that's very much to one, get into a little bit warmer environment and two to eliminate all distractions. Like, you know, such a pivotal part, like the last three weeks in the lead up to Olympic trials is like a very sort of stressful time. And it was almost nice to just get away and all we're doing is focusing on swimming. I was really at uni. No one's worrying about, you know, if there's stress in the family or anything like that, like it's a very important time and the focus is 1000% on swimming and performing and training. Do you have a certain way that you'd sort of go into trials and competition in terms of like, is it like no social media or is it like making sure that you don't read at night? Like what's what's your sort of routine look like is when you're in those really sort of pointy end of your season and important parts of it? I'm like, I never shut down my social media.

Like even at the Olympics, like I was still on it. I definitely don't like delve into comments and read articles. Like, God, no, they're just keyboard warriors. But I feel like sometimes just like mindlessly scrolling TikTok. It's like a distraction. I remember at World Championships, literally this time last year, it was when the Super Bowl was on. And I just loved watching. Like the Chiefs of the after parties or whatever it may be. Like I'm going to tell us the answer, like Taylor. And I just like because it's just like mind numbing. It just takes your mind off like racing at the pinnacle of the sport. So I would like totally I definitely stay on my socials. But to look at other things apart from swimming. Just yeah. And I mean, like I'm a pretty big reader as well. Like I've got my Kindle and so if I do need to like, I'm like, OK, no. It's too much Olympics is popping up on TikTok. Like I'll just switch to a Kindle and I'll just read. Or if I know that I'm quite wound up, like I've raced that evening. I've got to race the next morning. Like I might not go on my phone. I'll just like just read because that would just put me to sleep, basically. Yeah. Yeah. It's hard to say I'm asleep within like three pages. If I've trained or something that day, it's like it's very hard to stay awake at night. I've got a book that's taken me three months to get through in my halfway. So it's like it's a slow process. Yeah. In terms of like visualisation or mental rehearsal, I know that's been a big thing for you. What's your your process there? Like sort of step by step, like when do you do it?

What are you what are you visualising like at the start of a race? Like how's that process look for you? Yeah. So in the last sort of six months before Olympic trials, I sort of worked with a performance coach. I've never I'm probably not someone that like I've never really seen a psychologist. I know a lot of people see like psychologist during training and racing, but that I don't know, I just never really worked for me.

Or like, I guess almost I didn't feel the need. So I I found this this lady and she was so fantastic. Like she's actually an ex athlete herself for New Zealand in a completely different sport, but she gets it, you know. And I just felt like I I needed someone who understood how high pressure some of these situations are. And it was fantastic. Like I loved working with her. And yeah, I mean, she taught me so much. And I think the biggest thing is that I wanted to get up on the blocks at a competition or say Olympic trials or Olympics, whatever it is and say, I have done everything I can. So again, like working on that confidence situation is something that I was very pivotal to me is to get up onto the blocks to not be fazed by anything going on. If someone's done some crazy time in the heat, like they're not backing it up again at night. So I just try to let nothing faze me. Get in that very like calm mind state focus on myself and basically get up on the block saying I have left no stone unturned. I could not hand on heart could not have done or given anything more. So I think having that mindset for me was really important. Besides the turn of butterfly and I just always it's myself. No, this is fun. This is just a fun race. This is just helping me because that was just a different race for me that I didn't enjoy doing.

Yeah, it's I don't think so many people have have looked forward to a turn of fly before Lizzie. Lizzie loves it. Lizzie, Lizzie loves the turn of butterfly. And I just I have so much admiration for her that she sticks to her own race plan and just trusts herself one thousand percent, whereas I'm like I get so caught up knowing that like I'm more of a front. Well, I mean, in taking the turn of fly in Australia, like I'm more of a hundred swimmer than a turn of swimmer. So I should be out front of the hundred. And if I'm not, I'm just all over the place. So yeah, for me, like the turn of fly was just such a. I just went into every race sort of in the latest stages of my career. I went into every way, every turn of fly being like, you know what? I'm just doing this to help my hundred butterfly help my back. So that was my mindset on that. It's a way to do it. Yeah. And in terms of technique, like you did you sort of have to develop or change your technique over the last sort of eight years or foundationally, you're quite good, like with a certain things that you you've been focusing on. And if so, how did you go about working on them? Yeah, I feel like I've been so fortunate at my career that technically I'm a very good swimmer and very efficient. Like I have hypermobile shoulders, elbows and like my upper body is very hypermobile. So I was able to get into like crazy catch positions.

And I yeah, that's obviously like a massive advantage when it comes to swimming. So I felt like technically speaking, I've always been very, very good. But my skills have lacked and I felt like I have tried the last like when I sort of moved to Dean, I spent a lot of time on my skills. Like and I certainly found that my like in particular my underwater like got a phobia of holding my breath, so that's never going to work well. But I just I really learned to maximise my time underwater and actually just improve my the power of my kick a lot. And then like apart from that, like my turns and my starts and my finishes, like I guess just small things that were never really drilled into me. Like I would never ever breathe inside the flags. Well, I mean, Dean's what no one ever breathes inside the flags, just small things that are very that they become subconscious over a period of time. But for me, I was like, oh, well, OK, like that's something I think about and make sure I don't do it. Technically speaking, I felt like I've always had a really good foundation. But my skills have certainly been something I have really had a lot of attention to the detail in the last few years. And how did you go about increasing the power of your your kick? Um, a lot more kick and training like we choose that as a morning at like a dedicated kick sets on and like I'm I guess like looking back, like I'm I'm so proud of what I how far my came and then in the gym as well.

Yeah, but like we just did a lot of kick work, which I actually really enjoy. I have always enjoyed doing kick, but that just helped me so, so much. Are you how are you doing it? Are you like kickboard and snorkel or vertical kick? Like what kickboard and snorkels are? Yeah, kickboard snorkel all the time. I just think like for me, 90% of the time I'll do butterfly kick rather than freestyle.

And I just know my like obviously fly kicks quite of like a rhythmic kick. It's very hard to have a head up, so I'd always wear a snorkel. And yeah, like kickboard snorkel and just fly kick most of the time. Gotcha. And what about on your back? Are you doing much on your back or mostly just on the front? Always on my front. Yeah, I just I don't know. I guess like fly kick on your back is quite different. I would think to fly kick on your front. Yeah, I did everything on my front because I guess like I was never, ever going to be on my back in a race, so I always train on my front.

And in terms of what you've learnt as a as a professional swimmer, like some of those maybe a character traits or skills you've had develop, are there any that stand out to you that you feel like will keep you in really good stead in your future after swimming? Yeah, I think there are so many transferable skills. And I mean, it's not even just from swimming. I think like as a professional athlete, there are so many valuable skills that we we embody and that can be brought to later on in life. And I think for me, when you go into a workplace, there are so many skills that can be learnt like Excel, Microsoft, whatever it is. Whereas these skills that we have learnt or not even learnt, but we just there in our nature, like being having time management, being disciplined, listening to others, listening to a coach, having good communication, you know, just having such, you know, autonomy in our sport, like, you know, we are we're motivated. Like they're just things that we as athletes embody and that's just absolutely comes naturally to us. And I think like soft skills like that can't really be taught. Like it's not like teaching someone how to write an essay. It's like they're things that are either within you or they're not. And I feel like that is their skills that can certainly be used for future.

Yeah, it's like, and I think in terms of as if I was going to hire someone, I'd much prefer to hire someone who maybe might lack in the technical skills side of thing, but in terms of their character being on time, those those skills that you develop at a well, I think in a high level, obviously any sport, but like if you've got to dedicate to you, if you're dedicating yourself to the sport for that long, like you've got to be be good at it. And I think that is if you've got that as your call, then the other technical stuff can be can be learned. And I mean, that's what we always had drilled into us. It's like when we're 11, 12, 13, our coach was my dad was my coach for most of my my younger years. And he's just like, which of your friends are up at four a.m. in the morning going, getting up and doing something. And like just would always have that drilled into us. And I think like I look back now and I was like, OK, yeah, yeah. We've heard that. We've heard that. But then like looking back, it's like, well, yeah, absolutely. That was a really, really good skill that I'm glad that I developed and dedicated myself to as a as a teenager. Yeah, absolutely. And I think like, you know, entering the workforce at whatever age people sort of enter like post uni, like I feel like a lot of people go through uni just doing the bare minimum. Whereas in our sport, you have to go above and beyond to get to be on a team to be number one, whatever it may be. So I feel like that's, you know, going those extra miles, not talking like in the pool, but just in general,

is really transferable and can translate for later in life. Like when, yeah, you're willing to literally go above and beyond to get something done or to help someone or whatever it may be. Yeah, absolutely. And you were saying before the call, you're on long service leave from swimming at the moment, you know, you just haven't been in the pool a whole lot post, post the games. What's what's that process been like for you? Having spent, I don't know, what is it? 12 plus years where you haven't had more than a handful of weeks out of the water to now just being in there only just a handful of times. Yeah, it's been interesting. I mean, like off straight off the back of racing, I took a five week holiday in Europe, which was amazing. But I feel like since coming home, like I've obviously swimming is a very, very structured lifestyle routine. So I've had to find structure in other ways, which has been interesting. And I've like enjoyed that. I have just been creating a routine that sort of works for me. But I think like something I've really has is the ability to say yes. I always said, like, you know, after Paris, like, I just want to be a yes girl and say yes to opportunities that, you know, I'd always thought, oh, like, so sorry, I've got training. Like, I was fortunate enough to be invited to such a cool new balance event at one of the one of the, like, really boutique, bougie sort of gyms in Melbourne, like, that's a Saturday. I'd usually just be in the pool being able to say yes to things like that has been so exciting. And obviously just something I'd never been able to do or to go

to the Melbourne Cup on a random Tuesday, usually it's like, oh, no, sorry, I've got training in morning and night during the day. So yeah, just being able to say yes to opportunities. And I mean, yeah, like, tonight I'm going to Luke Holmes and like usually be like, oh, no, like I've got training on Saturday morning and that's the main set, like I can't do anything Friday night. So yeah, just being able to say yes to different opportunities has been like really exciting. But I certainly am ready to like get some like swimming structure sort of back in.

Yeah, it's so funny. I forgot like just how how difficult it is to do anything else when you are swimming full time. You know, it's like, yeah, you've got time during the middle of the day. But like, you're not going to be up until 11 o'clock at night at an event or like you just can't do that. So yeah, God, that must be must be a nice, nice change. So yeah. And in terms of the the change going moving down to to Melbourne, you'll stay there going forward, find a squad. What's the plan? Yeah, I mean, like they're obviously the VIS and I'm good friends with Sam Williamson. So he's based out at Emsack over there. So yeah, I guess like that's kind of the rough plan under like, yeah, Craig Emsack. But yeah, I'm just really just taking my time. I guess also just finding my feet in a new city is another big thing. Like never lived in Melbourne before, never even spent time in Melbourne because there's never any swimming events in Melbourne. So I didn't even I mean, like we always go to Brissie or Adelaide. So I'm like, I feel like I'm fairly used to those places. But yeah, Melbourne is completely different. So yeah, I've just sort of been, I guess, finding my feet here for the past few months. And yeah, it was slowly start, yeah, making my way back into the water. Yeah, well, it's out. Yeah, there's no no no rush. It's like a may as well just enjoy the time that you've actually got off. And in terms in terms of like you've been doing a few keynotes and speaking engagements and things like that. Are there any particular core lessons that seem to come come up in each of those talks that you're doing? So you gave a really big one on Wednesday was to 700 students

and a hundred staff members. So that was probably my biggest one so far. And I I'm really trying to speak on resilience at the moment. I feel like this next generation is almost like sugarcoating everything. Like, oh, you can come first, but here's a participation. But no. Everyone falls down, you've got to get back up. And that's how you learn like resilience is like a muscle. The more you train it, the more it grows. And I think there's maybe like a little bit of a lack of. Resilience in kids and young adults these days. It's like things don't go to plan. Like I missed the Olympic team on the first night and 100 butterfly when that was the plan. I had to get up 48 hours later and make the team. Like I was absolutely gutted. I spent four hours boiling my eyes out to my coach. But I knew that the next day if I didn't wake up with a new attitude, I was actually going to miss the team. Like I was fortunate enough I'll have potential other options. I could make it, but that wasn't like a given. Like my given was almost 100 butterfly and that didn't happen.

Yeah, I just feel like the one thing I'm really trying to chat on at the moment is resilience. Unless obviously there's a key theme that I need to discuss. Was it like International Women's Day coming up? Like obviously women in sport and empowering women. Like I'm very big on that. But yeah, in terms of like a general theme, I really try to talk about resilience and picking yourself back up. And not everything smooth sailing, life isn't linear. So yeah. And quite often, and I think I've probably spoken about this on the podcast a bit, but like quite often, those like real downs are the ones where you look back and go, that happened for a reason. And I'm really glad it did. But right now it's very hard to say it. It's like they are the often the turning points in your life. And I find for me, if I'm working on a certain thing, say for effortless swimming, if I'm really frustrated, I feel like I'm not making progress with it or I'm like, it's a new skill or something I've got to learn. I know this is actually the right thing to be working on because it's hard and it's difficult and I'm getting frustrated. So I just keep with it and it will eventually come through. But to me, that's actually a sign, I'm working on the right thing here because it's difficult. Yeah, absolutely. And I feel like you have whatever it is in life, it doesn't have to be school or sport. But like challenging yourself is so important. I mean, that's why after Paris, I knew I was taking like the rest of that year off swimming and I was like, you know what? I feel like I love exercise and I'm very much about like a healthy lifestyle and fitness and that sort of thing.

But I was like, you know what? I need a little challenge. So like, I've never done more than five K in my life. And I was like, you know what? I'm gonna train for half marathon. And yeah, I did it on Christmas Eve. And yeah, like I just needed something to work towards a goal. And God, it wasn't easy. I'm like, world's worst run. I can't keep my heart right below. And I just think like that's so important is to challenge yourself in whatever way it is, like the personal challenge to you. Yeah, absolutely. Well, Brie, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I really appreciate you spending your time here. I know you've got quite a bit on. So yeah, thank you very much. And congratulations on all of your success over the last eight plus years. And yeah, just I've sort of watched you from afar. I've seen you obviously training with Arnie and I know Kia somewhat. So like just great to watch your progression and journey and watching you competing in Paris was amazing. So congratulations and looking forward to seeing what's to come. Thank you. And thanks so much for having me on the podcast. My pleasure. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. If you'd like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

We tend to focus on parts of the stroke rather than, let's say, take a whole course of swimming and not think about it, just go through and finish the course and improve the whole thing holistically. For someone who ends up looking at your videos, it's probably looking to improve some part of the stroke. And so what I think is important is to find a way to identify actually what you're struggling with. It's not always obvious because if you have been swimming until a certain point, you already feel natural with whatever you're doing. So you should, I would recommend getting feedback from someone, either you send them the videos and then pointing them out to you and then you work on those. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here's your host, Brenton Ford. Imagine teaching yourself how to swim, never having a coach, never training in a pool, just figuring it out by watching others. That was Alex Roman's reality for most of his life. He swam to survive, but certainly not to thrive. But one day, a swimmer effortlessly glided past him in the open water and it sparked something, curiosity, what made them so fast and what was happening beneath the surface that he had never considered. That moment sent Alex on a journey of discovery, one that transformed him from a struggling swimmer with inefficient technique, doing slower than two minutes per hundred, into

someone now who competes at national meets and swims a 50-meter sprint in under 30 seconds. His improvement wasn't just about training harder, it was about training smarter. And in this episode, Alex shares the pivotal moments that fueled his rapid progression, the techniques and the drills that made the biggest impact and why understanding the science behind swimming changed everything for him. If you've ever felt stuck in your swimming or wondered if it's possible to make huge gains as an adult, this episode is packed with insights that could change the way you approach your own training. So let's dive into it. I was always self-taught when it came to swimming. I never had a coach, never swam in a pool until I was, I think it was always in the sea, back in Romania or in France, where I lived for the first time, I saw the first time, and then I picked it up by watching people and just, you know, being able to crawl away. And you could see in that video what the result of that was, but I never improved. It was something that really my teens and then kept me from drowning. And there was a funny event once on a holiday, when I went to work with my wife in Greece, I was swimming away and I didn't think of myself as being a really awful swimmer, but someone just zoomed past me, swimming. I thought I must be wearing fins or some motor or something. They were so fast. And it got me curious. So I looked on the internet to see what happens on the water. They never picked my curiosity. When you look at swimming, you know, at the Olympics and so on, most of the footage is above water and most of the swimming happens on the water, right?

And when I looked it up and I saw the plethora of technique and things that happened and that can be improved. So that got me curious. And I said, fine, let's find a few videos and maybe I can try to mimic those and try to imitate them. And I discovered a few things that blew me away. One, because I'm a mathematician, you know, on my work side, on my professional side, and I discovered that for me, swimming is almost the opposite of mathematics, is that the theory is so simple is you look at a video and it forces your videos when you explain the drills and so on. It looks very intelligible and then very easy and so on. And the moment you try to do it yourself in the pool, it feels horrible because you can't replicate it. And you feel that it's not working as well. Whereas in mathematics, it's sometimes the opposite, is that you see something happening in real life like an experiment. And it just happens. You can see it works. You can see that it's true. And then when you try to prove it mathematically, it can be a horrendously difficult task. So when I was through that journey of learning technique, and I realized that it's an incredibly technical sport and the amount of things that the brain has to coordinate. And as an adult, they found out to be much harder than sports that I learned when I was young, when you rely more on your intuition. So here, my brain was constantly overloaded when I was trying to

do things or trying to focus on one thing. And everything else fell apart. Like my legs were not doing anything correctly anymore because I was focusing too much on the arm and the breathing and rotation. Everything else. So I quickly realized that it's overwhelming as an adult to try to coordinate everything. And you have to focus on things at a time, try to be patient and so on. You don't have the luxury of being a four-year-old and being told, you're doing that wrong. And then change that. And then you go, OK, I'll change it. And it's fine. And then no longer think about it. I was asking my mates at the swim club if they remember learning how to swim. And most of them said, no, I don't remember exactly. I don't remember the process. We just went away. We did it. And now it's muscle memory. So translating that mental effort, the brain effort into muscle memory was an incredibly rewarding journey for me. Maybe I'm a personality or because I'm an academic. But I found the challenge itself to reprogram the body, essentially. You have to fight with your brain at the same time to let go and to allow feeling to take over and then gradually translate into muscle memory if you know what I mean. And I'm sure you've discovered this while working with adults all the time. It's harder for them to change things. In my case, I might have been luckier that I didn't have swimming background to have to change something that I had been doing for a long time.

I kind of started fresh. But still, I have to change that horrible swimming that I have in the series or in my first video into what I'm doing now. It was very rewarding. In my opinion, I don't think humans were born to swim. Almost everything we do optimally in swimming, I found to be done nowhere else in life. And there's nowhere else in life where we do this. And all sorts of movements. You can't breathe whenever you want. That takes up 90-something percent of all of the sports. So it's an interesting challenge that I really, really enjoy the fact that I'm reprogramming my body and trying to teach my brain to let go, translate all that into muscle memory. And I have to trick my brain into doing that because I discovered I can't convince it to let go. And maybe that's just me. But the process in the end, it translates into finding or constructing sets that rely on that process of doing things gradually. So you focus on some things at first, or one or two technique elements, and then you maybe increase effort gradually and so on until your brain can't really keep up, think about it too much and so on, allowing muscle memory to take over. And I can talk about some of my favorite things later on, but that was, let's say that was the process. What actually happened was I progressed very quickly in the first two or three months. I found some more videos that I could give you. I think one or two months after I started with your videos, with your free videos online,

I was already able to swim maybe less than 40 seconds on 50 meters, which was previously unheard of for me. Within maybe four months or so, I was able to swim in the, like you saw me in that second video when I was in the flume. And I went to that flume session to try to discover things that I'm doing wrong and see myself, because in the UK, you're not allowed to swim in public pools. Sorry, you're not allowed to film yourself in public pools. So I had to find other solutions for that. But I would say within four or five months, I went from 230 to minister, put 100 meters down to maybe 130 and I can't say that I remember all the things that helped me improve along the way, but I remember some things very clearly, stuff that I struggled with. And the moment I realized that I can't rely on YouTube videos anymore, I need to see myself and I need other people to see myself and give me more prompt feedback. As in, I can see you're doing this wrong, now go back and do it this way. Rather than having to wait a few weeks, maybe someone sees my video, then come back and so on. The immediate feedback process I found to be extremely rewarding. So I flew out to different countries. I wasn't able to find much help within the UK. Masters clubs have a routine of their own and most of the master swimmers have swimming backgrounds. So coaches are already very full and there wasn't much available camps.

I found to be on the expensive side at first and I was really interested to be working with someone one-to-one and get that immediate feedback and then work together and so on. What you would do in a camp, I would imagine, but even more attention to myself. So I flew to Romania, found the coach. He's a former national champion, 400 meters by the way. His name is Alex Nexu. And brilliant guy, we bonded very quickly and we spent a few days together, but we were a few hours in the pool every day.

And I remember that as being one of the highlights of my swimming journey. The fact that you have that immediate feedback, but that aside, you get someone to see the things,

the biggest things that you're doing wrong or you could improve, telling you how to improve them and so on and going back again. And the other part is adapting to the swimmer, which is something that you talked about in many videos as well. There's no recipe, right? It's every swimmer is different and you have to be able to see what a particular swimmer struggles with and then adapt to be able to help them rather than prescribe things. Like you go through this program and see what you come up with. Because most of us as adults don't start from scratch and are no longer four years old.

So that improved a lot of things at the very beginning, but you learn a lot of lessons along the way, but maybe rather than allowing me to ramble on, we can let the discussion flow and take some questions from you. Because I'm very curious to see what you'd like to find out. Yeah, well, thank you very much for that. That gives me a lot to go with and a couple of questions that come to mind. So what did you first notice when you saw that video of yourself swimming or when you had that moment where you wanted to get better at swimming? What was the first one or two things that you thought you had to do to get quicker? Because that progression, that first three, four months is a very big jump in speed. So what were some of the main things there that you realized you had to change? That's a very good question. You're challenging my memory right now. It's easy to say now what I noticed in that old video, what are the big things that should be improved? But back then, when I looked at my video, I don't think I noticed that many things because I didn't have knowledge about swimming and didn't speak to anyone to tell me what the things should be, what the big things ought to be improved. But I was noticing that my arms were almost completely straight.

So the moment I was entering the water, I was just blotting along. And that was a big difference to what you were showing. So I learned many technical terms from you in the beginning, you know, the high catch and I learned so on, blah, blah, blah, all that. And I realized, well, it makes total sense. You know, you're just getting, first getting to a position, then you want to push water behind you rather than pushing down. Putting pushing down doesn't propel you at all. So I was one thing that I was trying to improve a lot. And I can answer one of your questions is that, I remember struggling with that side of my journey in the first weeks very much. The fact that I got so used to pushing water down, that I was relying on that motion for support to keep my body horizontal. And the moment I was trying to get into your high elbow position, I felt like I was sinking because I didn't have that pushing down in the water feeling and I had to overcome that. And that took a long time to switch from that windmilling, slow windmilling that I was doing to a proper propelling position. Breathing, I don't remember struggling with that much. Kicking was a struggle and still is. And body position still is an issue because now I'm trying to get very fast. And I noticed that I'm still not as horizontal that I would like to be.

But yeah, I think that sinking feeling, the fact I was windmilling and pushing down

rather than trying to push water behind me. And the moment I was trying to push water behind me, I felt like I was sinking because I didn't have the support anymore. And in terms of what you feel like you're doing in the stroke now, how does that change from a year, two years ago? Like what are the things that you're feeling for or trying to do now compared to when you first started? You mean what I'm working on to improve right now, for instance? Yeah, and how you, because one of the things you mentioned is that going from kind of overthinking to having to tune in to how your body feels. So what are some of the things you're working on and what are the sensations that you're trying to work towards that you know is a good stroke? Yeah, that's another very, very good question. So the thing is that the thing that I feel is holding me back a lot right now is body position. So I don't have, let's say, an optimal body for swimming in that my legs are very long. My torso is shorter. So my center of gravity, my center of mass is actually towards the legs. If I try to, let's say, float face down in a cross position where you're neutral and some people are just able to remain horizontal about what and the legs are not sinking. My legs go boom instantly, right? And this is a test that a new friend I made is a former Canadian Olympic triad

and an incredible guy, so he explained this.

Some people have the body for swimming and that helps them more and they don't need to rely on the kick. Those who don't, like me, need to rely a lot more on the kick and on the core to keep you up. You would want to be as horizontal as possible. In my opinion, I think if you were to rank what the most important things are in swimming, I would rank this to be very high. I'm not sure what else could be higher maybe, but being as horizontal as possible because anything else that sinks means you're drag water. You drag yourself through water, so you create drag. So you would want your, let's say, your head and your hips and your heels to break the surface when you're swimming face up and that would ensure a horizontal position. My hips and my legs are sinking and I've been more recently working more on that, trying to find a way to bring those up and to understand why that happens. And in my opinion, the reason why that happens is that I haven't yet developed a good synchronization between my stroke and my kick as well as the rotation. So, you know, that hip-driven stroke, so you would like your kick to drive your stroke and to drive the rotation. I'm trying to get there. Initially, I focused on learning a two-bit kick a lot more than any other type of kicks and I found that to be very hard because I wasn't able to coordinate the two-bit kick either and it's much harder than it maybe is for others. It was very hard for me. But I got there in the end somehow, but now I have this new problem because I don't really like long-distance swimming.

I know you're the opposite, but I like sprinting. And in sprinting, you need to have a very powerful kick and your legs need to be working over time. So, I would like to learn a six-bit kick and that six-bit kick to actually work with my stroke rather than just be erratic. And you need a good coordination. So, I'm trying to learn that coordination. So, what do I do or what I'm in the process of discovering what works for me? I have discovered some things that I think work better for adults than kids. The kind of sets that I've been designing for myself that helps from others is,

let's say you take an hour and I focus for the first 20 or 30 minutes on doing technique work. And I focus on just one or maximum two technique elements at a time. I don't try to do more because then it's too much for the brain. And if I do two elements, then they should be correlated. If it's maybe breathing and catch or stretch and catch, things like that. But if I'm doing kick or rotation, I usually stick to just one. The drills, so you do a lot of drills for the 20 minutes. And I think it's important to take time with the drills. I know some people say that you should do drills at speed in order to start learning. And that didn't work for me very well. But what I do is you work on drills for about 20 minutes. You mix drills with swimming. So you don't just do only drills. Then for the past, for the last 40, 30 minutes, I do, I try to do something that I was mentioning before is where I go gradual. Let's say 25, length of 25 meters or 50 meters.

And I start with them doing as slowly as possible. And I try to hit exact times. If I do 25 meters, I would start from maybe 20 seconds per 25 meter. And I try to hit exactly 20 seconds. So I force myself to go easy so that I can focus on everything I'm doing. But I'm mostly focusing on just that technique element that I worked on for the first 20 minutes. So I do that maybe five, six times. And I take enough rest between the 25s. I don't want my cardiovascular system to become a limiting factor. So I don't want to push myself too much because I'm working on technique skill.

On the next six lengths, I decrease that to 19 seconds. And again, I time myself. I want to hit exactly 19 seconds. It also helps me to learn pace. So what 19 seconds fail and so on. But again, I'm focusing on rotation. For every length, I focus only on just rotation. I don't care about my arms. Maybe my arms are not optimally doing things and so on. But I focus on that or the kick, the kick tempo, kick synchronization. I want to feel the kick driving my stroke and helping the rotation. And then I drop to 18 seconds. And I go to 17 seconds and 16 and 15 and so on until I reach my BB on whatever that length is. And every time I drop one second in swim speed, I also increase my rest time between legs. Again, because I don't want my cardiovascular system to limit me. And I found this to be very helpful for me. I was able to improve a lot with this kind of sense because it kind of tricks my brain. Going from one stage where my brain could think about everything that was happening, especially that technique element, to going full out, but very gradually losing control and allowing muscle memory to take over feeling. And you insist on this for maybe a couple of weeks. I think it's important when you work on drills to insist on things and to allow enough time to this. So that worked for me. That allowed me to progress a lot.

And you take one technique element and you insist on that. And you do just that with this kind of sense. In my case, it was speed because I like to work on speed. If you want to focus on other things, I don't distance swimming and so on. You focus more on efficiency, for instance. You focus on the technique of the stroke or your two-bit kick or no kicking at all if you want to work your core a lot to streamline through and so on.

It worked a lot for me. And even small things like finishing the stroke at the very end of past the hips, I want to still be able to push water, things like that. You shove one second here and there and it's rewarding enough. But yeah, that's one approach that really helped me. The thing I really like about that is when you force yourself to go a specific time, you're really developing those different gears that you can shift between, which a lot of people, especially who are newer, it's something that I see that they tend to struggle with. They have just got that one speed. And so when you're having to be that specific about what pace you're going, then you're going to figure it out what you need to do to get quicker. And especially I think in the early days when technique is usually the worst when you first start and it's going to get better as you progress as a swimmer. But in those early days, technique is such a big aspect of it that it's really worthwhile taking that time. And especially if you're sprinting, so if you're doing longer distance stuff, if you're doing triathlon, you're going to need to have that base level fitness and swim strength to get you through the event. But if you're sprinting, well, it's very much about being refined with your stroke and it's not about doing long, long distances necessarily. So I think that approach can be so much better for sprinting too. So… I like what you touched on just now because it helps during races as well.

So, you know, every race has a certain strategy to it. Unless you're doing a 50 where the focus is not to focus on anything, you just go. But if you're doing anything else from 100 onwards, you have some strategy on each length to follow. Knowing what each pace feels like, you know, having learned that and you can actually strategize better. If you want to go slower or faster and you want to bring your kick into the third part of the race or be more efficient, you have stronger, you know, longer strokes on the first part of the race, whatever you'd like to do, your body already knows how it should feel. So I think it's easy to strategize and it works for longer distances and there's more strategy on longer distances, obviously. For open water, I don't know. I never competed in open water. I just swam open water, but from mates that are doing open water, there's strategy there as well, depending on the race and if it's 5K or more and so on. But yes, I think you're perfectly correct. It's worthwhile teaching your body to know what each pace feels like.

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I would like to peek ahead on more things than this, but yeah, you're totally correct. Also, something that I would want to say is that I'm very enthusiastic about swimming because I'm still learning, you know, and I find it incredibly rewarding. And when I talk about it, it sounds like I'm talking with authority. I have no idea what I mean. I've learned a lot and I love it, but in no way I'm an authority on this, but it's just enthusiasm. I wouldn't want people to confuse it with trying to teach anybody anything I'm still learning myself. It just sounds repetitive, but it's not. I'm just thinking about it. Well, you can speak from your own personal experience, though, having gone from 230 down to 106. I mean, that's a big jump, and I think most people would be pretty happy to have that result in their swimming, so people can take a lot from that. I think it's very, very, very doable. As you probably discovered working with adults as well, there's a mental block as well where they start with the idea that, you know, I'm never gonna be an Olympian or you're never gonna compete against them, and it's fine, it's perfectly fine, but that doesn't mean you can't improve down to maybe even give them a minute. I think it's important not to put any limits when you start. You just discover how low you can go, and that's an incredibly rewarding journey itself, and then you discover that you can actually compete, you can go to meets, and then you meet incredibly gifted and experienced people as well, so you learn a lot. There are things that I would say are important that I would have loved to do or loved to know,

but at the same time, you can't discover everything at first, you know, it's a journey. But I wasn't taking, for instance, I wasn't taking warm-up seriously, not warm-up in the pool. I mean, warm-up, you warm-up your body because, you know, as adults, I think we need more warm-up time, and I developed a little bit of injury from straining my shoulders. I have an anatomy imbalance on my right side, my rib cage is a bit sunk on this side, so it impinges on my shoulder, and so my shoulder anatomy on the right side is a bit odd, and swimming doesn't cause any injuries, but it makes it worse because there's thousands and thousands of rotations in each session, so stretching before sessions I think is important. I think everybody should do that and take it seriously. Muscles are not that big of a problem with age. Apparently they adapt very quickly to age and to effort, depending on the age. The tendons is not the same ballpark. Tendons take a lot longer to warm-up and you want them to be elastic.

Most of the injuries are, I mean, most of the lasting injuries and the problematic injuries are in tendons, and that's where I've been developing. Recuperating, I've been working with physios and so on, so I've been doing that. And also then, besides that, some land training, those kids who started at four years old, they had a lot of land training as well, and they've been developing their shoulder muscles and back muscles a lot for swimming, and the bone structure also evolved with swimming, so it enables swimming in a different way. Someone who takes swimming out like me at 42 years old doesn't have those tendons and muscles already developed to help them, and so on, in my opinion, important to look after them and develop them. So besides swimming, so besides what you do in the pool, I would encourage taking time to work on the shoulder and back muscles, and if you lack the time to do too much, just do pull-ups. In my opinion, everything from all the land training that I've done, pull-ups are the number one exercise that I could do and drop everything else and to still cover a lot of what I need for swimming. And then you reduce the risk of injuries. You have your body there to help you more for swimming because you want to have that strength. You can then focus on the endurance part and develop in your cardiovascular system that swimming can do that for you. I don't think you need to take up running as well, but it helps, things like that. So there are plenty of stuff that I need to talk about.

I'm sure, like I said, I'm very enthusiastic by it, but I will now ask more questions because your questions are more interesting than I have to say. That's good. It's a couple of things you touched on there, like warming up before a session. Like I'll wake up, well, I get up way earlier than I need to before a training session in the morning, but I'll do five, 10 minutes of kind of like a yoga routine just to go through those different movements and warm up the muscles and the tendons and stretch a bit, particularly through the shoulders, hips, back, and I find that that makes a big difference prior to training early in the morning. And then strength training, I think like the last three and a half years I've started to be consistent with gym, two to three sessions a week. And the first six months were quite frustrating because I kept injuring myself from going too heavy, too early, so I didn't build up progressively enough. But then once I had a bit more time under my belt and then I just progressed a bit more slowly with the weights, now it's like I rarely, well, I don't get injured from the gym, but I rarely get like, pull my back, I rarely have those sort of injuries. And I think as we get older, and this is something that I realize now, I'm late 30s, but in your 20s, like generally, if you're active, you've got good strength, you don't get injured, things are good. But I think for adults, it's just, it's something that really should be considered during at least two sessions a week.

And there's science about it as well. It's not just what we experience or personal experience, it's the science that supports all this. In my swim journey, I also like to read a lot. So I like to read science, fix stuff about swimming and technique, but also anatomy, physiology, and biology as well. And one of the articles that I stumbled on was about this aspect, the aging process between, I mean, how the aging process affects muscles, tendons, ligaments, and bones. And they all react differently. And I was surprised to find, I mean, maybe not as surprised because I was already feeling it, but the muscles have the least problem to adapt. Whereas tendons are one of the worst and then require more diligence. And in swimming, you want to make yourself as long as possible. So you want your tendons to be flexible. That means you want your tendons to be warmed up and there's no blood flow for tendons. There's no vascularized. So you need to worm up the muscles around them for that worm to translate into the tendon so they become more flexible. It's all the joints and so on. So the stretching part that you were mentioning, I believe it's really important, especially if you feel that you're developing injuries. Most of the injuries in swimming, as you were saying in many of your videos, they come from some technique element that you were doing improperly. And you're crossing the midline, then you start pulling, you're turning,

you have some outside rotation into an internal rotation, and bam, you start pulling on a tendon somewhere. And when that happens, it's very, it's both strange, but also difficult to fix because you want to continue swimming. You should find whatever you're doing, I can say wrong, the technique in swimming in order to stop doing that, but also work on outside of the pool to strengthen that part of the body. Shoulder is an incredibly complex joint, as you know, they have so many things, but one of the good side, one of the good things about it is the same things, because it's an incredibly complex technique, there are many muscles around it. If you damage one tendon, and again, this is scientifically supported as well, you can use or strengthen the other muscles around it in order to take over functions of the damaged part and continue over.

My physiotherapist was a very funny guy, but also incredibly talented. I showed him the MRI that I had just done a few months ago of my shoulder, and there's so many things happening there. Apparently I have two chronic tendonitis, a ligament that has a quasi-complete rupture. There's a slap tear, which is a labrum tear that started forming that, apparently that's the biggest one. And a few other things and so on. And I was scared, when I read that, I thought I should probably stop swimming, this cap go on, but I didn't feel that bad. But it got to the point where it was hurting during sleep, things like that. So I showed the MRI to my physiotherapist, Alejandro Torres is his name, just a shout out. And then he goes, yeah, don't worry about it, there's so many things happening in everybody's shoulders. Anyone who has an MRI in the shoulder will discover tons of things. Chronic doesn't mean permanent, so we can fix that and so on. Probably the slap tear is the most important. We should work on that. And you work outside the pool, but you have to be very careful what you're doing in the pool because you just bring it back if you continue doing the same things. And you spoke about this in many of your videos. Technique is such an important element in this sport because it's extremely repetitive. So anything that you're doing slightly off adds up and can become a big problem. Whereas many other sports where movements are much more varied, they don't tend to be big problems. And swimming may not cause problems,

but it can certainly make things worse because of that. So yeah, I completely agree with you. I wanted to mention this is I think is important, especially for adults, as you were saying, to take the time. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I mean, in terms of the shoulder blades and those muscles surrounding it, when people tend to fatigue, they lose the control through those movements. Like the shoulder blade starts to go into positions where it's not, they're not as strong and they're having to use these sort of weaker muscles and it puts them in that compromised position. So I think particularly with the TheraBands, if you can just build some strength through those muscles that are supporting the shoulder blades, that's a big one, as well as obviously the right technique. Because there's so many people that I see at clinics and like, I hope my left shoulder's hurting here. Is there anything technically related to that? And we look at their video and nine times out of 10, it's super obvious of like why they're getting that issue. Like it's just, it's in plain sight. So yeah, if you are having issues with the shoulders, yeah, good chance it is technically related. Alex, anything else that you think would be worthwhile for people listening to this in order to either get quicker, improve their swimming, anything that you've picked up along the way? Yeah, I'm looking through my notes because I found the questions to be very good and I made some notes on this. Let me see if there's anything that is worth mentioning now. I would say with adult swimming, we tend to focus on parts of the stroke

rather than, let's say, take a whole course of swimming and not think about just go through and finish the course and improve the whole thing like wholistically or someone who ends up looking at your videos is probably looking to improve some part of the stroke. And so what I think is important is to find a way to identify actually what you're struggling with. It's not always obvious. It's because if you have been swimming until a certain point, you already feel natural with whatever you're doing. So you should, I would recommend getting feedback from someone. Either you send them the videos and them pointing them out to you and then you work on those. But then the next step is when you're changing something, it needs to feel weird. If it doesn't feel weird, you're not changing it. And then I discovered this early on and then you insist on that weirdness for as long as you need until it doesn't feel weird anymore. And maybe with some coupled with feedback, while you're doing it such that you don't come back to what you were doing previously. So one thing was this, just look for the weird feeling and get feedback all the time because we can't see ourselves in water and you need to feel, it needs to feel weird. It shouldn't feel natural whenever you change something. The other part, maybe

when people look for drills. So I wouldn't recommend someone as an adult taking up swimming to do what I did to start with clips and insist on those parts and then find other clips and insist on other parts. That's what I was doing, essentially. I was looking at one technique element and then what in the pool the next day and working on those and so on until it felt a little bit better and then changing it and so on. Suggesting drills and perhaps this is one criticism I have with most clips that are available on YouTube is that a lot of them are suggesting drills and yours are better because you say if this hurts and so on then you might want to work on this and so on. And the aspect that I found I was missing the drill itself is helpful but because I'm a beginner I don't know how to incorporate that drill into a larger set or into a program that then helps me actually develop. So your full program is very good at this because it's very structured and you do this and you have sets to work on but for someone looking to take bits and pieces to improve one part of the stroke it would still need a full set. Don't just work on drills. As a beginner we don't know what else to do besides the drill and you always need to do some swimming between drills after you work on technique you just do some swimming as well to translate it and so on and so forth. I think we talked about this warm up and so on I have a few more notes here but probably running out of time.

Yeah, I think that's great. Yeah, in terms of drills like I think the mistake I see a lot of people making is that they see they do the drills without the thought of what they're actually focusing on and the purpose of it. Like they just do the drill but what am I actually trying to focus on here? But with almost every drill you could have five, six different things that you're working on with it so you wanna make sure that you're working on something that's specific to you. For example, like a six one, six drill or six kick switch, like I use that drill a lot but it depends on the person in terms of what I want them to focus on with it. Like it might just be your alignment. It might just be the position of your hand in front so you're not up too high. It could be the rotation. Like there's so much stuff you can work on with different drills so it's about knowing the purpose of it. Yeah, so the technique and the drills are super important and then in my opinion what I discovered was working and not working don't focus on too many things at a time. If you wanna focus on kick then focus on kick and find drills that focus on kick. The six one, six for instance that you mentioned is an incredible drill. Whenever I was doing just drills in the beginning it always felt okay. I didn't feel like I was doing it but when I was translating and I was trying to do swimming it didn't feel as great anymore so make sure that you're doing

enough swimming between drills and that you have this gradual transition between drills and swimming so that your brain can learn to let go and you rely on the feeling so you learn that

and maybe one other aspect that I would encourage is after you do enough drill with swimming and so on where is the easy part? Do that part where you allow yourself to feel the water very easily, very nicely. Don't do the drills at too big of a speed don't force yourself if you feel that the pace is too high, no doubt but after you're done with that technical part try to actually get into a regime where you are getting tired so swim enough so that your cardiovascular system is being pushed and then focus on the technique because you want to be able to maintain technique when you're tired. That's maybe one of the biggest aspects in racing, right? If you're not dead by the end you touch the wall then you probably haven't given it enough or you had more in the tank and the other part is I feel the learning part happens best when you're tired because that's when the brain can't actually think about coordinating anything anymore you're too tired to do it. So if you can force yourself to still maintain technique when you're tired, well, don't injure yourself obviously but I think the concept of what I'm describing is clear enough. I think it's important to get into a regime where you have to maintain technique when the body is tired as well and then you learn more. It cements the technique better and having the feedback. It's if you can have someone to look at you

and do that, send the video or someone with you in the pool will be even better than the progression would be almost as a given. Yeah, yeah, absolutely agree. Well, thanks so much for sharing your journey over the last couple of years and lots of good takeaways there and yeah, I appreciate you jumping on and reaching out as well because when I saw that before and after video it looks like a different person.

Like a really, really huge improvement. So the fact that someone can do that in a fairly short space of time as an adult is outstanding. So congratulations on that. I think it's doable and I think it's important and what you're doing I think is important. It's also very hard to make adults believe that it's possible. It's very possible. You just have to obsess a little bit, find the time and then keep to a schedule that's also important. If you don't feel like it, then maybe that's the right time to go and actually do it. Keep to a schedule and the improvements are there to be ready to, it's an incredible sport. It's hard, but that's the nice part about it. Yeah, that's right. There's always something to learn and it's always challenging. So Alex, thanks so much for being a guest on here. Thank you very much for having me, but it was lovely to chat to you. Thank you very much for the work you have been doing and thank you very much for the free videos that you're posting, which are incredibly, incredibly useful. That's my pleasure. Listening to the Effortless Swimming podcast. If you'd like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

but the funny thing was when I first started the business I was 21 and like when you’re 21 you’ve really got no idea about the world and you think I don’t know things happen really quick and I thought yeah within 12 months like I’m gonna like I’m gonna be going so well with this business and it took probably 10 years to get to the point where I thought I’d be when I first started yeah that’s that’s just being young and not really knowing how things and how things work but yeah yeah I’m glad I stuck with it welcome to the effortless swimming podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water become a better swimmer and live a better life here’s your host Brenton Ford hey welcome to the podcast this is a rebroadcast of another podcast called the human endurance podcast with two friends of mine Bruna and Fabi I was a guest on there recently and I wanted to share this episode with you because I feel like a lot of key things

were covered that if you’re a swimmer or a triathlete this is going to help you improve whether you want to get better at open water swimming making sure you fuel correctly how you should train what are some common mistakes some foundational skills you need those sorts of things were covered on this episode hope you enjoy let’s get into it yeah in terms of the way I got started my granddad was he used to run a pool in here in Australia and he actually I think he taught me to swim and then he was my coach up until I was about nine or ten years of age and then when he passed away my dad took over and started coaching me and so I swam since I was very young and I made it all the way through to like a national level but I was never good enough to make the Australian team I missed out by I think it was 0.03 per second on making the olympic trials so I was I was a good swimmer but not good enough to make a team but I think that’s why I actually got really interested in technique because I

don’t think I could have trained much harder than what I was doing I was a hard trainer had success but never enough success to kind of make a team so I think that’s where that curiosity came in terms of wondering yeah how can people get faster with with technique rather than just the training side of it and I mean also the Australian team is one of the best teams in the world right when it comes to swimming so it’s already the standard is very high compared to like for example like let me just say the Swiss team yeah it’s um like Australian swimming is probably the equal equal with the US or I mean China is very strong too so it’s a very competitive nation when it comes to to swimming but yeah it’s uh it’s something that I’ve always done growing up and I just I love the sport of swimming it’s something that’s always just stuck with me and a lot of people train a lot as a kid and they get sick of it and they get burnt

out but I’ve just continued to do it ever since I was about four or five years of age and outside of COVID I’d never really missed more than probably seven to maybe ten days of being out of the water like I would get in the water every single week multiple times if I if I can but yeah it’s just something that’s always stuck with me and um I’m very grateful that I can coach and I can be around the pool and always be around the water because I think I’m just naturally drawn to it yeah that’s amazing how how do you think you survived this burnout because I don’t know if you know this about me but I grew up as a tennis player very competitive and I went through the exact same thing that you did because I played really intensely from like ages nine to nineteen and once I was done with it in college I just didn’t grab my racket again for like 10 years I was super burned out so what do you think was the secret for you

I mean I was I was never pushed to do it I trained about eight or nine times a week as a teenager I was falling asleep in school all the time constantly tired constantly hungry but I I don’t know I just I just really enjoyed it and I think I liked being good at something I like having dedicated myself to to to something that I put the time in to get good at and it was something that I naturally enjoyed and gravitated towards so I think that’s part of it like if it was another sport then maybe it wasn’t it wouldn’t be the case but yeah just naturally it’s something that I I really liked so I think maybe it was a bit of fortune and Ben certainly my parents never never pushed me I know my dad when he was coaching we’re driving home one day and he said like was I too harsh on you in that session and I said yes and from then on he never like he never sort of had to go at me at training but I still trained hard like yes I think there was a bit of that I think dad was really

aware to not push push me as a kid because I see it all the time with with a lot of coaching or swimming parents sporting parents in general they they really drive their kids and I’ve really had this more hands-off approach and just try and develop this curiosity among my own kids and as long as they enjoy it I think they’ll stick around and it’s the people that stick around that often have the most success the 10 11 year old champions in any sport yeah absolutely right what why do you think um like why did you get sick of tennis what do you think that was ah that’s a great question um you know I also wasn’t super pushed into it by my parents it wasn’t like I had massive outside pressure or anything but I don’t I I didn’t have great coaches that’s for sure when I was younger they were more on the rough side like there was specifically one head coach like this really old man who was super tough on the kids and I think that brought some some trauma with it and a way of thinking

that was not much about enjoying and a lot about performance and results and stuff and I think I didn’t have the awareness to think about tennis in a different way you know so even when I was out of that specific coach that mentality stuck with me and I just put so much pressure on myself that one day I was just like I cannot do this anymore I cannot handle it I remember being on the tennis court for practice and think oh my god I wish I could be doing anything else other than this right now um so I get a mix of uh yeah I guess a mix of just some bad coaches but also not being mature enough yeah there’s so many different factors that play into it right and and then coming back to what got you into swimming was uh an injury we I think we get a lot of people come to swimming from injury especially from running uh so many people who come to the clinics here in Australia have come from a running injury and they’re like oh I need

this aerobic exercise I need an outlet but I can’t run maybe I can’t ride as well so swimming swimming’s it and so we get to convert a lot of people that way which is also also nice

yeah it’s uh it’s a sport that I feel like if you haven’t been exposed to it as a child it’s harder to get in as an adult because it’s not an inviting thing to go to the pool oftentimes at least here in Europe because I mentioned to you before they’re overcrowded there’s not a system it’s dirty often so it’s often I guess the path of injury or something like that that draws you to it and for me it was not being able to swim at all you know I could hold myself over water but I wasn’t able to actually really swim freestyle um which was also very embarrassing for me because I’m an adult and I couldn’t really swim so that really stopped me from going to the pool and for me was luckily this experience of having this pool in Amsterdam that is made for endurance swimming it’s called swim gym so they specialize on you know it was like a gym that’s a pool and they really had good coaches and then maybe then go but if it was just for average the average public pool I would have never

started swimming actually it’s such a like there’s quite a few hurdles to get over there’s okay I I feel like I don’t know how to swim at all I have to get into this small costume like swim costume um it might be dirty there’s a lot of people there like there’s a lot of hurdles that people have to get over so if you’ve got something like a a really good environment and good coaches that you can that you can learn from it it makes it so much easier and that’s not accessible for everyone you know there’s not um there’s just not many adults learn to swim places around there’s just just not a heap so there are a lot of hurdles so anyone who starts as an adult and can just put their ego to the side and go right I I’m not going to probably look good here I’m not it’s going to be frustrating if they can put that to the side you know it’s um I have a lot of respect for people who take up swimming as an adult and I think

in terms of my coaching approach I’d like to sort of I want to do it with no judgment whatsoever because I know when I’ve started something new like you’ve just got no awareness of your body there’s a there’s a big uh a big sort of skill gap and knowledge gap there so yeah anyone who who wants to learn like I don’t care how people look when they swim I just I want to help them want to help them get better without any judgment because I have had a lot of swim coaches who do have that sort of judgment with people and it’s like well that’s just not helpful yeah it’s not so fair yeah so no exactly exactly right and um same for like parents with their kids who like they might be annoyed that their kids not getting faster in in two months time or like they’re not making this change their stroke it’s like if you get in there and you understand how much work it takes to make a change to your stroke and uh and building that body

awareness like it’s a lot of work and it’s a lot of time and repetitiveness so like there’s that as well it’s just that understanding of what it takes to get to a certain point with your with your swimming yeah yeah absolutely um I think now it’s a good point to ask you specific questions about swimming so I have one that’s been uh on my mind uh when we were thinking about what to ask you so we’re going to open with that so um what’s the most common mistake you see amateurs swimming swimmers make and how to fix it I think it’s really a lot of people are swimming to survive rather than to uh like to just move forwards and and relax through the water so a lot of those things that we see in terms of that more survival instinct for people who are who are new or or even amateur swimmers it’s it’s the breathing it’s the body and the the head position so you can you can hold yourself in a way in the water where

your body’s supported by the water and you’ve got the buoyancy from your lungs where you can hold your body there where you don’t have to put much effort in at all to be horizontal in the water then all of that effort can go into moving yourself forwards but I think a lot of people amateurs or fairly new they’re working on that balance in the water so if you can learn to stay somewhat relaxed and calm and you can just breathe you know in a comfortable way and learn to look in the right position and hold your body correctly that takes care of so many things and it seems seems somewhat simple but it does take a bit of effort and thought and focus to get there so uh yeah that’s why like everyone’s got to go through the same get over the same hurdles when they’re when they’re starting but um that’s where I would always start with people and they’re the main mistakes that I see with with so many swimmers and often people think they’re in the right position like they’re looking in the right

spot they might think their hips and legs are high but when we look at it on the camera it’s often not the case so sometimes that reality is very different than than perception so just either getting something to look at you getting some video taken if you can or just maybe doing a bit of a self-check when you’re swimming can go a really long way because I mean I’m sure you’ve probably had it right you feel like that you’re doing something in your stroke and we look at it and go that’s actually not the case I remember the camp right because we met in your camp in the melodives and you did the first video analysis and I thought my body position is the the one thing that’s good but then we realized that I’m arching my back and that’s kind of messed up a lot of other things and I didn’t realize and now when I go to the pool I actually always focus on that part which I never did before because I wasn’t aware of it so yeah yeah so Brenton would you say that then body position and

head position I guess those go together body position in general is like the most foundational skill that perhaps an amateur swimmer should spend you know few weeks on before moving on to anything more complex like the catch or the pool and stuff like this yeah absolutely it’s worthwhile spending several weeks or months on that as well as the breathing side of things and like you might be fine with the breathing but a lot of people are just breathing too short and shallow and they’ve got this when they go to breathe it’s like this gasp where they’re like where rather than just this now just this small inhale of air and then you release it like I think people are just quite uncomfortable and often with the head position we see that with new swimmers where they’re holding their head quite high in the water and it’s just their face that’s covered but 80% of their head is out of the water so there’s a thing about like when

you knew you want to firstly see where you’re going because that’s just natural and you don’t want to get your ears in the water because sometimes you’ve got water in your ears and that’s not comfortable so those two things I think hold a lot of people back and so if they can just accept that all right I’m going to have to cover my ears I’m going to have to look down and not see much of where I’m going that can help overcome a lot of their the hurdles that they you know would otherwise have to try and get through with those things yeah it’s kind of against a survival instinct right to put your head in the water and then you’re cool

cool um and another question for you um that I’m super curious because I haven’t started swimming as a kid uh is that do you think you can actually really become a good swimmer if you haven’t swam as a kid like with good I mean swim say me very competitive in my age group for for triathlon absolutely I’ve seen it so many times that someone can can learn to become a very competitive swimmer uh particularly in triathlon now not to say it doesn’t take work but yeah it’s certainly possible one of my best mates he is a professional triathlete he wasn’t a swimmer as a kid he could swim a bit but he wasn’t a swimmer as a kid um he’s got himself to the point where he he’s been in the front pack at at world champs and you know it’s consistently up there now sometimes his second pack if he’s not having a good day he might be second pack but when he’s when he’s on he’s able to be in that front pack in the pro field so but he’s put a lot of work in uh that

it hasn’t come easy but then I’ve had other people who I’ve met it I’ve had come to clinics and I’ve met and yeah they’ve they’ve had a couple years of swimming and they’ve really gotten themselves to a pretty good point so the people are some people they swim a bit more naturally they’re a bit more comfortable in it and it takes less time other people it’s not it doesn’t feel so natural for them and it does take more time but yeah I’ve seen it so many times that people can swim really well without having to have a swim as a kid that’s really reassuring

how much work do you think that takes like what would you say is like this friend that you have that you know became swimming first second pack at the world champs and stuff how often is this swimming and what kind of volume like what do you think mid-heb stand out besides probably being talented as well a lot of work I mean I think from when he was mid probably mid mid 20s mid to late 20s he I think he traveled overseas and then he would have been swimming five to six times a week and he started swimming with like a really top really good top triathlon teams overseas and he was he said he was way behind like he was getting lapped in this squad when he first joined and then it took him I don’t know took him my guess four to five years of like a lot of hard work to to get up in the field a little bit and then another couple of years to start to become front pack now is mid 30s and so it’s like a good 10 10 years plus of work

but I think the first like you can get a lot done in three years I think like and that’s even sounds like a long time but you’ve got to just accept the fact that this will take time there’s there’s no necessarily shortcuts to get things done in three months it all takes time but I think when if you just put the work in if you can swim ideally if you can do three times a week to me that’s like the sort of benchmark of being able to improve quite well four’s obviously better two I think you can maintain pretty well you can improve a little bit but three would really be the minimum if you’re really looking to improve so yeah it just depends on the on the person but yeah it takes time it really does good I’m happy you say three because at the moment I swim three times a week and I feel I’m improving but when you said just now putting the work in is that just showing up at the pool doing the volume or is it also having

somebody at the deck that corrects you or like what is what is the key to putting the work in and what you just described yeah I a coach on deck can certainly help especially if they’re a coach that’s going to give you feedback but you there’s no reason why you can’t improve without having a coach on deck I think it’s certainly a combination of doing the work in terms of the training and that’s the the volume that’s the intensity and then also the technique side of it like you they those two things go hand in hand you can’t just be focused on technique without doing the the training as well you’ve really got to match both of them but swimming such a technical sport water is so much thicker than than air you know it’s it’s the technique side of it’s just very very important so there has to be a pretty um you have to sort of lean towards that especially in the early days because yeah if you if there’s things in

your stroke that’s stopping you from getting faster well you’re going to be stuck there for quite a while and I went to New Zealand last week we did two clinics and I was going through all the videos there’s about 30 to 40 videos like different people that I’m looking at and with so many of them there’s like one thing that they’re either doing or not doing in their stroke that’s like this bottleneck it’s the one thing that’s to me it seems like it’s just stopping from getting to that next level with their swimming so like sometimes you need a coach to kind of help you identify that that that can make it a lot easier but I see it all the time like there’s yeah often this one thing that that they’re doing or not doing that is just limiting them to to get to that next step um and you know maybe that’s just like your body position maybe it’s you know rotating enough there’s there’s a lot of different things but to me with all

the videos I’ve done I’ve probably analyzed 8 000 plus different people um like it’s to me it’s really clear on what that bottleneck is for a lot of a lot of people so um I think you can keep it quite simple most of the time like you don’t need to be thinking about five things most people can really dial it dial it down to to one or two at least that time being yeah makes sense so uh for a beginner right if we focus on on that cohort of people that are just starting to swim it’s not like they can expect that they will just show up at the pool not really know what’s work on and improve right I think unfortunately it’s not as simple as maybe like it is with running where you could just show up there’s very little technique just about building building that volume I also tell my athletes to run at least three times a week and that’s usually how you progress with swimming you then need the volume but you also need to be doing some

technique work right otherwise you’re not really improving yeah yeah it’s something that I if I’m swimming if I’m coaching like in every session there’s some components of technique and typically it’s in the warm-up it can be okay through a main set but normally that’s when we want to do the training component of it so if we’re looking at like a if we’re looking at a session let’s say it’s an hour session for someone and a beginner’s probably not going to do an hour but in an hour session we might look at doing 10 to 15 minutes of warm-up and in that we would do some technique work which might be some drills some kick some skull and maybe a little bit of like preparation work in there so something like 450s building one to four to get the heart rate up ready for the main set the main set might be 40 minutes 45 minutes or so and then we might have five minutes of swim down after that so that’s how I’d structure most sessions but if it’s a if

it’s a beginner we might increase that to you know maybe a good like 30 percent of your session would be technique focus and some drills and the intervals would be probably a lot shorter 25s 50s work on good form work on good technique and give yourself that break at the end of the pool so that you can stop you can refresh you can refocus and give your muscles a rest you can get your heart rate back down and just work on that good good technique because if you’re if you’re swimming and it’s like this survival where you’re throwing the head around yeah and really struggling to to make it through you’re probably training some some poor form it’s not that you need every let the stroke to be perfect but yeah we don’t want to be training anything that’s that’s really really bad yeah yeah that makes sense I swam a bit as a kid so I had that advantage and when I started swimming again as an adult really focusing on our first triathlon that Fabi and I signed up for

together um I had no idea about these things and I definitely just showed up at the pool and just swam I never did any drills and I did not improve it was terrible so I took Fabi to get a coach and then teach me no he needs me doing this he needs to be doing that so and definitely feel the pain and I hope listeners that are tuning in will not make the same mistake as me yeah so uh so common right like people approach their swimming like it’s there like it’s right like I’m just gonna go for a jog yeah I’m just gonna go for a swim and it’s like maybe 500 meters or a thousand meters of swimming and it’s just continuous and there’s no real thought to technique it’s just I’ve got to get these laps done but it’s like you don’t know any better so uh yeah but if you’re listening to this and you’re new or you’re thinking about getting into it it’s like yeah just um find find a bit of structure there and you’ll you’ll shortcut that

time to to success uh in a big way yeah actually that’s one thing I really like about swimming is to have like you mentioned before you have your swim set broken up in the warm up which contains the drills and the main set where you do sometimes intervals and then you have the different tools that you use so for me that’s amazing because a swim session goes by and like so it goes by much quicker because in the beginning like bruna I just swim it was swimming the 1k just swimming and I just swim and after 200 meters I was like oh I’m a bit bored and I still have to do 800 meters so kind of breaking the whole set up and now I swim 3k 4k sometimes and it’s really it really helps in the head because you’re you’re like having little chunks of work you do so that’s really helpful it makes it fly doesn’t it yeah just like breaking it up with different intervals different paces maybe you’re using some paddles and taking them off like it’s

it’s about eating an elephant it’s just one bite at a time and it really helps it go go quick I mean I find the same thing with my running when I did a season of triathlon and I had some structured runs in there which I think helped so much and like it helped the like a 12k run go by really quick because yeah it might be five minutes on one minute off and different paces and stuff and I think my running improved a lot then and now my runs are just like 30 minutes aerobic like there’s no structure to it and it seems like a bit of a grind so you know I guess the same thing applies in in running a bit too so I should probably just take some my own advice and structure my runs a bit better there’s some swimming drills in the run and I have a question actually that I’ve always I’ve always had to myself but now I can ask you how what do you think about the resting between the sets because that’s something I often I think I do take too much rests between my hundreds for

example my coach obviously always puts 10 seconds rest and sometimes you know I’m finishing and then I clean up my goggles I drink maybe I talk to the person next to me and I’ve realized when I’ve watched more professional or better swimmers that I was amazed by how little rest they take so I’m wondering what’s your opinion and also what is the advantage of taking a short rest between the set versus like really waiting for a minute or two or so we hope you’re enjoying this episode so far please rate the show and subscribe this keeps the show growing and helps us to reach more people with those amazing stories now let’s get back to the episode

I had a professional triathlete on the podcast on my podcast a couple years ago and he said he was trying he was doing a couple of sessions with I think it was Alistair Brownlee and it was doing some swims and he said that the main thing that I learned from Alistair was that you can get a lot more swimming done in a session if you take less rest like if you just change your rest interval from say 30 seconds down to 10 seconds and like that was the main lesson that he that he got from him now it obviously depends on what you’re training for and the intensity that you’re swimming at so I think the answer is usually it depends but certainly for something aerobic it doesn’t have to be a lot of rest like 10 seconds 15 seconds would be more than sufficient but I think yeah sometimes we just take our time you know we feel like we’ve got we’ve got a bit more time but if it’s a harder set like for me on a Monday we do a threshold

session we would take like 30 seconds sometimes up to a minute between some of the intervals because we’re going to be pushing a bit harder and if we don’t rest enough we can’t get to that level of intensity so it really just depends but certainly for anything aerobic it doesn’t need to be a lot of rest and you can get quite a bit more in especially if you’re time poor you can feel a lot more into some of those sessions so yeah it just depends on on what you’re doing I think yeah yeah that makes sense now Brenton let’s talk drills I’m curious if there is like one specific drill that you find yourself always coming back to with your athletes like is there one or maybe two drills that you’re like oh I actually kind of almost always recommend these drills to my athletes yeah there’s there’s one drill that I always end up giving people like most most people because it covers a lot of the things that we want to achieve

especially early in early in the stroke like for those that are either beginners or like intermediate level swimmers and it’s it’s the six one six drill or six kick switch some people refer to it as that and the reason that I always come back to that one is because where we want to be when we go to start a stroke is on our side it’s called 40 degrees rotation you want to have our arm extended in front with our shoulder near our cheek we want to make sure our fingers are about the same depth as our underarm and we want to get this shoulder out of the water as well so the opposite shoulder just out of the water and the other arm resting on the hip that’s pretty close to the position that you’d start each stroke so we’re just going from here to here basically so if you can have all these kind of things ticked off in that drill to me that’s practicing a really good base position like a position that you’re always going to start start with when it comes

to each stroke and not many people have all of those things ticked off when they swim and what I see when I’m coaching a clinic is that like we’ll film people and analyze them first so we know what they need to work on when they’re doing that drill with all of them they’d like anything that they were doing incorrect in the video will come out in that drill for example if they’re crossing their head right they’re probably going to be kicking like that if they were over or under rotating they’ll be doing that in the drill if they weren’t finishing their stroke then they’ll often be holding their arm up like here with this bent elbow so all these things tend to come out so if they can change that in the drill then to me that’s the first step at changing it when they swim so I love that the 616 drill and then if it’s like maybe a slightly more advanced swimmer the two drills that I say all the like all the Olympic level

swimmers doing it’s single arm freestyle and it’s a long dog paddle or underwater recovery freestyle it’s sometimes called like it’s those two they seem to be the the top two that I say all all top freestyle is doing so yeah I think that can cover most of your bases nice actually the 616 drill is part of my sets all the time actually it’s 636 so I have a stroke in between and then yeah same drill just add a few more strokes but like covers exactly the same things yeah that’s great and the doggy paddle under the underneath stroke so I can be you’ll be making the Olympics in nighttime but that’s good to know and I actually really like the 616 drill because it’s also helping me a bit with relaxing my breathing because if I do it for a long time I feel that I get a bit out of breath you know and then I have to realize to relax and really you know take it easy take my breath and not because it’s I do it without the snorkel so it’s

I get a bit nervous doing the drill of like wow I can’t get enough breathing because that’s one one of my still uh weakness that I always feel getting out of breath rather quickly are you doing that with fins on with fins yeah yeah yeah good I it’s a difficult one to do without fins for most people so I think fins are great and then like what you can do as well just to help with getting the breath comfortably I don’t mind if you do a little bit of like a skull with the hand just to help you get the breath because like sometimes it helps just to support yourself with with that but I love what you said just about kind of relaxing a bit as well often we have this tension especially when we first get in and one of the things I always try and do when I start a session is I try and I think about being soft through my hands and my fingers and my forearms as I’m like entering and extending forwards I think about being soft

and just working on that like getting rid of the tension in the stroke and usually when I do that the stroke starts to lengthen I start to feel a bit better whereas if I’m in there and I’m just like sort of racing it yeah at the start like often it takes me a long time to come good in that session so just by focus focusing on relaxing and being soft that to me helps helps a lot with that that sense of just breathing easy relaxing and getting a good feel of the water early on yeah yeah that’s a good tip I I also find myself like as I enter the water you know it’s cold and I don’t know I still working on swimming more often and every time I’m there I’m always a little bit tense in the beginning so that’s a good one I’m gonna keep that in mind

now on to another question about drills is do you think a specific drill is maybe overrated people do it too much and maybe they shouldn’t be doing it

yeah the one that came to mind when it comes to overrated drills it’s well like zipper drill or also sometimes called it’s not quite fingertip drag but so zipper drills where you’re kicking on the side and you’re dragging your thumb up along the side of the body here now there’s a time and a place and a purpose for pretty much any drill you could make a case for it but I see that one done a lot by people and done in a way where it’s actually making them swim a lot worse because a lot a lot of people tend to be too jammed up in their recovery where the hand and the arm is very close to the body and they restrict themselves through there where they lose a lot of their momentum over the water they might be over rotating as well because of how far up they’re coming here and sometimes it can lead to a few shoulder issues because of that that impingement so that to me is a drill that most people don’t need to be doing and it’s one that’s

probably making things worse so yeah zipper drill or thumb drag drill okay I’ll remember that one

next time my coach tells me to do that one I’m like no no nice and what do you think about turns because that’s something that looks very cool when people do it at the pool and I feel it’s also I guess nice for the flow in swimming but for me I do it sometimes when I’m swimming very easy I never do it when I push because I feel like oh my god I’m already out of breath and now I need to uh like kind of turn in the water so is there an advantage to it by just looking cool or what is the purpose of it that’s the only reason people do it is to look cool no it’s um like it it’s it’s going to be faster that’s the first thing so not that that necessarily is going to help you in a triathlon swim where it’s just one continuous swim without turns but yeah you might find if you get your turns down and you can get really good at them that might save you a couple of seconds per hundred which is always nice to see on the clock

and I think as well like it’s just it does help develop that overall body awareness in the water and like yes a lot of people run out of breath when they’re learning like it’s that’s the thing that they struggle with but it can also help with just like general sort of shoulder

or like the general streamline position so when you tuck you’ve got to be quite tight when you push off the wall you need to make sure you’ve got a good streamline so I think it can just help with that which is which is beneficial and it’s something that I think people like anyone can get good at them it just takes a bit of practice and persistence and a few things that I would recommend for people is it’s totally okay to breathe the last stroke into the turn and the first stroke out of the turn now if you go to any like age group program like 12 to 18 year old kids they’re going to get taught like don’t breathe necessarily into the wall and certainly don’t breathe that first stroke off the turn but we’re not an age group program if you look at the best like if you look at world records especially in a short course pool like a 25 meter pool for an 800 freestyle and 1500 freestyle the world records that the swimmers

are breathing first stroke last stroke into the wall first stroke out and sometimes they’ll breathe like one two and then turn like and that’s completely against what you kind of get taught as a keep growing up so that’s one thing that can help make it a lot easier is it’s okay to breathe yeah in and out of the turn because it does take you yeah take a bit of your breath away there so yeah I think it’s worth practicing and doing it you’ve just got to suck it up for a couple of sessions and yeah except that it’s not going to be not going to be fun but yeah yeah I think everyone can get it okay and you know at what point for a beginner do you think you make sense to invest in that like what are the maybe core competencies you need to have before you try this out I think if you could swim yeah 400 meters without stopping and do that reasonably comfortable then you might want to start looking looking at doing flip turns but I’d say that’s probably

lower on the priority list I mean for someone who’s swimming three or four k’s then I think like yeah do your flip turns so you should do it bro I should be able to do it I can swim 400 meters we can do it tonight nice let’s move to more triathlon specific questions for swimming I guess a lot of people that are listening are also interested in triathlon and practice triathlon obviously pool swimming and triathlon swimming as you do it in open water is quite different can you share a bit what you see as the main drift differences in terms of skill set that you need to have when it comes to pool versus triathlon the open water can feel like a different stroke sometimes in the pool things are calm they’re controlled you know exactly where you’re going in the open water it’s the complete opposite they can be very windy it can be choppy you don’t necessarily know where you’re going so it can feel like a very different stroke to a lot of people and I

think some of the main the main things that are worthwhile getting good at it’s first one’s siding just knowing where to go and most people when they start siding the way that they do it is they just have their head up for multiple strokes and then they bring their head back down and that’s fine for starting with but it’s a very hard way to swim for long distances doing that so it’s worthwhile learning what’s called the rolling like rolling breath or sight and breathe where you look up on one stroke and you turn to the side on the next one so that’s the first thing is siding if you’re confident in the open water draft things a big one but that’s only if you’re comfortable and competent in there you can save 30 percent of your effort by drafting behind someone and doing that well so that’s a good skill to learn if you if you’re a little bit more advanced but then also just I think knowing how to adjust the stroke and one of the models that I’ve

got with the arm over the water it’s it’s higher wider and faster so if you have a wet suit on or if you’re in the open water you may need to bring your hand over a little bit higher because you might be hitting waves or chop if you’re too low you might need to bring it over a little bit wider as well so in the wet suit sometimes we’re a bit restricted and you probably can’t come maybe as close to the body as you normally would you might be a bit restricted so you have to go wider and then the last one’s faster so in the open water we typically have to increase our stroke rate five ten fifteen percent because sometimes the water’s a bit more air rated because you’ve got the waves and chop you might have bubbles from other people so you probably can’t spend as long in the reach and in the catch there sometimes you have to be a little bit quicker with that again depending on conditions so being a little bit

fast over the top and just getting that hand in the water is is what we want to go for so it’s less of a perfect stroke and you have to be okay with getting a bit scrappy yeah compared to what you were doing the pool would you say that you’re also gliding less when you are in open water

typically yeah yeah unless it’s like a pool then it’d be fairly similar but yeah you’ll be you’ll be gliding less you’ll be getting into that catch a bit sooner in in most cases there um yeah and so you not that you want to throw everything out the window that you’ve learned in the pool but you just have to yeah have to get a little bit messy with it I think in a way and and make sure that the stroke rate stays up there for it for a lot of a lot of people yeah again if you’re a beginner not necessarily but yeah I mean I see um I had a had a swimmer he that I was coaching he in the pool I think he was sort of averaging like 56 strokes per minute um at like his his race pace and then in the open water it was like it was about the same maybe it was 60 but it wasn’t quite enough for him to like increase his speed so one thing that we worked on was getting that in like the 65 to 75 range for the open water and that’s so much more effective for him

and so many other people it’s quite high the 70 I feel like because I also am around 50 60 in the pool if I’m having a good day and I feel yeah I feel 70 it’s really you’re basically just turning your arms and then I always feel that I don’t push back enough because I’m already thinking about uh doing the next stroke so how how what do you think about that increasing stroke rate but then you’re doing for or sacrificing for the distance per stroke yeah

yeah it’s like so for me if I’m going at say a race pace in the pool my stroke rate will be 60 about 64 65 strokes per minute in the open water that will come up to around 75 strokes a minute and it’s easier to do that when you’re say in the ocean you got extra buoyancy from salt water and if you’ve got a wetsuit on as well so that’ll just come a bit more naturally and a little bit easier but to hold like for me for example to hold a 75 in the pool that is that’s really hard work so I think some of that just comes naturally with the with the situation or the yeah where you find yourself in the open water with that wetsuit on and and some other factors as well so it’s okay if like if you can’t do that in the pool I you probably don’t want to be training that that high necessarily anyway so I think like you’re probably doing the right thing okay there okay and how how to practice increasing your stroke rate brands and do you also use the

the little beeper thing and in the in the cap to tell you how fast you’re going or do you have another trick yeah there’s there’s two ways you can do it you can either do well no there’s three ways so you’ve got a tempo trainer which can be can be really good that’s going to guarantee you’ll hit the right tempo the other thing you can do is like the form goggles can tell you what your stroke rate is that’s that’s another but one I’ve actually given to a few people recently and is I’ll send them as a song on youtube that I know has got the right the same tempo that I want them to hit and I’ve got I’ve got to think of a song now the during the Iron Man World Champs they posted a video of the top two guys in the swim I’ve forgotten who it was now but they had a back a track to it a song playing through it and oh it’ll come to me anyway but it was matched perfectly to their stroke rate so I think a much better way for people to like

try and hit a certain stroke rate is look up what you want to hit so it’s that 65 strokes a minute 65 bpm songs and it will come up with you know different songs that have got that that beat and I think that’s easier for people to to hold because you know you know the songs you know the beat and you can generally sort of time your strokes to it so I much prefer that that’s a really cool tip to to use a song yeah yeah it’s a good idea how do you do it with your athletes do they have like the like shocks headphones that you can listen to music underwater are you playing that in the pool uh no you could use the the headphones this is actually just like playing the song in your head just thinking about it yeah just thinking about it oh nice yeah that’s smart that’s a little bit more um let’s say yeah endearing than the beeping yeah that’s right now you know swimming so much uh it’s so much like dancing anyway that I think it goes really

well together like the song and then trying to match your tempo like I’ll I’ll usually try and listen to a song on my way to the pool like just before I get there that’s like pretty chill you know it might be like have this sort of 60 tempo um and I find I swim pretty well if I’m doing that as opposed to something that’s like hard and fast and you know nice um very practical question Brent and what are your thoughts on wet suits and how much to spend on them like there’s so many options out there I know we briefly talked about this on the camp but yeah like when you’re starting out it’s so overwhelming all the stuff you need to buy when you’re looking at open water some wet suits can go you know for like over a thousand and stuff like what are your thoughts does it actually make sense to invest on good wet too so they all the same yeah so a good friend of mine he has he’s started a wet suit brand a couple years

ago and he’s he’s developed it with um a guy who worked with a big wetsuit company from about 10 to 15 years years back and so I was chatting to my friend and you know asking him the same question and he said look the difference between like a mid-range wetsuit and a top-range wetsuit is the top-range wetsuit will have thinner material through the shoulders which means that yes it’ll be easier to move in but it’s not going to last as long so for like your very top end consumers like your top 10 percent of athletes that’s probably going to like make a difference and a bit of a difference but for 90 percent of people most mid-range wetsuits are going to last longer because they’re a little bit thicker and not really impact your your speed or like you’re not going to tire anymore if you’re doing events of like one to four k so I found that really you know really interesting and I think yeah for most people most mid-range wetsuits will be will be fine

the like base level like some of the really cheap wetsuits fine for doing like a sprint triathlon in but doing anything sort of longer yeah you might sort of notice that that difference there so I think most people who are taking triathlon somewhat seriously or doing a couple races a year I’d go for a mid-range wetsuit that may cost I mean Aussie dollars that would Australian dollars it might be like 600 700 dollars that might be like 400 500 us thereabouts so yeah yeah I don’t think everyone needs the the top range because it’s like you’re paying a lot more for not that much more for most people not that much improvement and you want to kind of save money where you can because triathlon can be an expensive sport yeah for sure I think I told you I have a custom made wetsuit which I I found very nice because I was in a camp and there this guy from the UK and he makes he measures your

your body measurements and then he also looks at your swimming and he would add a bit more thickness to the wetsuit where maybe on your hips if you’re not floating nicely so and also you can choose the thickness on the arms before I had the the first one that I ever bought and I through time I realized that I can’t really breathe well so I always came out of the water very tired and really stuck and now this one is a bit it’s a bit more loose but it really I feel way more comfortable and I think you got stronger over time for it all right yeah that’s yeah it’s good if you can get if you can get something like that’s really well fitted like that makes it makes a huge difference because you don’t want to be in like an oh well an oversized wetsuit is just going to carry water and an undersized wetsuit is going to be very very restrictive so finding the right fit like is yeah it’s important yeah I have another question about open water versus pool swimming because when

I am training for a race I do most of my swimming in the pool and then maybe the month before the race I slowly go out to the open water some sessions and I was always curious because right we get taught that you need to train specificity in your training to really practice what you’re going to race but I found it interesting that I or in general I also from what I hear from other triathletes we train very little in open water compared to that that’s the thing we race so what are your thoughts about it when should you go to the open water are we in generally triathletes doing too little open water too much pool swimming the same friend who started the wetsuit brand he was on the Australian team for the 25 kilometre um they just had a 25 kilometre open water swim at world champs and um yeah it’s nuts and so I asked him the same the same question and he said like every like all the elite open water swimmers will do

nine nine swims a week in the pool and they’ll do one in the open water in the lead up to their their competition and the reason for that is you can train you can improve your fitness and kind of your technique so much more in the pool because you’ve got to stop watch you know the distance and it’s much more predictable and like for them at least like that’s really the the most important thing is that is that fitness um and then obviously you get the skills of swimming open water when you go open water so I think it depends like it depends on where you’re at with your open water swimming if you’re still a little bit unsure with it and you feel like you’re not as confident as you would like to be then maybe you can hit the open water a little bit more maybe you yeah maybe you go a dozen times in the lead ups of the race if you’ve got the opportunity to but um I think like yeah the fitness is is what you’re building in the pool

and then obviously it’s the open water skills in in the open water so it just depends on where you’re where you’re at with it and yeah and like uh it’s just like I think it’s just because it’s it’s not that accessible for most people right like most people don’t have a good open water swimming spot that’s easier to access safe and reliable that it’s going to be calm enough to to swim in so I think that’s that’s part of it as well but um yeah I think like what I suggest to my athletes is that six weeks out from the race start going to the open water once awake if you can and get that practicing that’s interesting that even open water swimmers go very little considering that it’s their their sport so good to know I have a also another question that’s been on my mind with regards to swimming training um when I think of uh endurance sports in general there is this concept also of progressive overload right we want to you want to build

volume over time and you don’t want to like build the volume too fast so that an athlete gets injured and stuff and that’s really key in running because you obviously like it’s so obvious when you don’t do that right because most people get injured how does that apply into swimming given that there’s no actual impact is that still like kind of a thing um or is it more okay for you to you know kind of some weeks to swim way more than previous weeks or even just jump from you know 2k to 3k in a session how do you see that yeah exactly what you said the the impact is so much lower the one thing you’ve got to be mindful of is is the shoulders and the load on the shoulders especially if your technique isn’t quite there because a lot of people I’ve worked with have had shoulder issues from swimming usually because of something they’re doing in their technique but and then if you load like just load that or put too much volume with that kind of

technique that’s where you can start to have issues but yeah it’s it’s not something that you have to worry about as much although it’s still something that is good to to follow is that progressive overload so when I I’ve done one marathon swim in my life it was to an island over in western Australia it’s called the rottenest channel swim and when I built up for that I just had a spreadsheet of my um of my training and at the bottom I’d just sort of look at the distance of how far I was going and each each week I’d try and build up by

about two to four k I think I started at I probably started at like 12 or 13 k’s and I built up to I think 40 something k’s in the last week so like that that was really helpful to have that gradual you know progressive load um but then for for a lot of people who are doing say distance swimming uh or even Ironman what I try and get them to do is just increase the distance of their long swim each week so let’s say you’re doing an Ironman all right we might want to make our longest session for like four k um eight weeks out 12 weeks out from the race but maybe towards the end we want to get to a session that maybe we’re doing six k’s maybe we’re doing six and a half k’s um so that’s where I’d try and like load it up because you because you could do like maybe at doing five swims a week most people can probably get through three k or four k per session with those five sessions it’s still going to be tough but that

one session a week where we’re increasing the distance that’s what we want to look to gradually increase the most there so that’s how I’d normally approach it if someone’s doing a longer swim that they’re training for that’s quite a long swim like six k I definitely never done that that distance in the pool there’s your challenge it’s um yeah it’s like it is it is long and like depends on what you’re training for you it’s not something that you that you have to do but you might you might surprise yourself with what you’re what you’re capable of like every year before Christmas we do a hundred hundreds and the cycle changes we try and break it into groups of 10 so it’s kind of interesting and I think if most like if you’ve got some swimming under your belt and you’ve got some swim fitness there I think most people if they fuel well and they make sure that they you know have enough nutrition and that kind of thing I think most people can do it not

that it’s going to be that easy but I think it’s people are capable of a lot more than what they expect uh yeah so that’s um that’s what I’ve seen with the hundred hundred you just mentioned fueling I want to quickly jump on on that point how for let’s say I would swim six k session a very long session in a pool how do you recommend fueling before and during the session and after actually so actually in the in the second week of the mildives camp we had a nutritionist speak there so I got a lot out of this talk from from Katie who used to be a new nutritionist and I’ve followed that the last couple of months since the camp and found it really helpful and so what she mentioned there was before a session if you can have a little bit of protein then through the session just making sure you have some electrolytes and then if it’s a session longer than about 75 minutes then you want to make sure that you’re having some sort of carbohydrate

through it but then at the end just making sure you’re replacing well you’re having some protein and carbohydrate and a bit of fat as well afterwards so I mean I would normally swim for about an hour and 15 minutes in the morning so I wouldn’t normally have anything through the session I just have the electrolytes but pretty I always keep some like protein bars and snacks in my bag or in the car for afterwards so one mistake that I made growing up I would train we’d do like a six k session I wouldn’t eat throughout it and then I’d go and coach so this is when I was like 21 I was pretty young and stupid so I’d go and coach for an hour and a half directly after that and I’d only have like a banana and so by the time like I’d be driving home I’d be so hungry because I would have burnt about I don’t know 1500 calories or something and not replaced any of it and so on my way home I’d just be so hungry that I’d either get a six pack of donuts or a full block of

chocolate and eat it in the car on the way and like just so bad and the only reason for that was because I was just like that hungry so yeah it took me such a long time to to figure out nutrition and what you should be doing through the session and directly afterwards and sometimes it’s really tough because there’s so much misinformation out there and well maybe not even I guess misinformation but also just different philosophies of regards to nutrition and and I think to figure out what works for you also takes some time and some practice and some air although for sure the full bar of chocolate afterwards I think that’s probably universal not probably a good one to do but I still sometimes do that actually because I just love chocolate but do you have a particular gel or something that you take during your sessions is it the same brands that are out there for triathlon or is it yeah something different yeah I don’t have a lot of gels because most of my sessions aren’t

like aren’t more than an hour and 15 when I was training for Ironman I was having the hammer nutrition ones but recently I’ve had the oh what’s it called uh no it’s a skate me it’s got like a black packet and it’s got like a yellow red and um anyway I can’t remember what it’s called

yeah it might be precision yeah yeah that’s very popular yeah so I quite like that like that that tastes pretty good it goes down easy and it’s just I think it’s like the plain flavoring I think anything you can sit with stand for a long time is probably going to work for you what do you normally have yeah um we have Morton I don’t you don’t take more than anymore I can handle more I take precision as well uh and I I play around I I don’t want to get too fixed I always change a bit because also I get tired of certain gels at some point like the Morton for example and my stomach didn’t absorb it super well so I like to change and see if it was what’s out there but still I still still feel I haven’t figured nutrition out because when I trained for my Ironman I I realized also a bit in the melodies with this talk with Katie that I was consuming way too much carbs you know I would eat I would go to the bakery buy like a whole focaccia bread

and just eat it and of course you buy this it will make me feel good uh in the moment and but still I was then I started reading more up on nutrition and also because during my race I actually had too much carbs like too much sugar I took during the Ironman so I um the run was horrible and I also had to I had to throw up in the run uh because of too much too much carbs and then I also realized oh it’s it’s really it’s such I mean for Ironman it’s so important nutrition right it’s almost like another discipline so now I’m way more conscious about fueling and how important it is but it’s I still haven’t figured it out I think it’s hard

yeah yeah you live and learn I I had the same thing in my Ironman I went to the shops the day before my event and I saw cliff bars and I’d never had them before and I’m like oh that looks pretty good oh it’s a good amount of energy let me have five of those on the bike and combine that with uh with the coke on the run and yeah I paid the price for that so yeah that was I was young anyways yeah living and learning um cool let’s jump to effortless swimming your company your business a lot of pit listeners don’t know because it really only became super big in the last years but you’ve been doing this for for quite a long time and I’m sure it also evolved a lot from what it when you started to how what it has become now can you share to the listener a bit the what is effortless swimming and how it has evolved over the years yeah so in my last year of university we had the option to either go and work for

another big four accounting firms because I did a bachelor of business entrepreneurship course and you can either go and do a placement at one of the big accounting firms or you can try and start your own business and I had no idea what to what to start but I was coaching at the time and the only thing I knew and had experience in was swimming so I thought I’ll give I’ll give that a try and uh so at the time Sam so friend of mine was uh he was on the Australian team and so I asked him if I could film some videos with him and we’ll put together this course helping people with their freestyle and that’s where it started and initially I didn’t want to be the face of it I didn’t want to like even people even know that I was like kind of not doing this but I didn’t want want me to be involved at all it was just effortless swimming and I think part of that was just like I was thinking who am I who what right have I got to be teaching anyone about swimming like I felt like I had no experience

apart from my own little bit of success but who else is going to who’s going to listen to me so there was some of that in the beginning and I that carried it on for a very long time until I started to get some runs on the board and started to have success with the master’s team I was coaching and I proved myself that I could help people when I started running the clinics and things like that but it took a long time to get that confidence but I think the confidence only comes from actually getting the results you can’t just trick yourself into thinking you know what you’re what you’re doing and so it started it started with that course and then I didn’t really know where I would would go with it but I just stuck with it long enough to like finally see it really take off in the last couple of years but there was a turning point where my wife was we were looking to have a baby and she said look you’re not making

much money at all from this effortless swimming team and you’re not like you’re coaching a squad but you’re like you’re making I don’t know 15 or 20 thousand Australian dollars a year like probably a quarter of a full-time wage with that so like figure it out like you’ve got to make it work or you’ve got to go and get a job and that was about six that was probably like six years into it I think and yeah so I swallowed my pride and then just figured out how to make it work from there so I sort of started to figure out what was working and how I could actually really help people and it was through the online stuff but a lot of the clinics here and then the camps as well so I started running the camps about 10 years ago and we’ve added more locations and started to figure out what’s a good format to follow and that sort of thing so yeah I’ve been going since I think it started in 2008 so whatever that is 16 years or so and yeah and it’s like but there’s been so many times where I’ve

thought of all like this is this is getting tough for you know but I’m glad I stuck stuck with it because it’s just all slowly slowly built up but a lot it’s it’s taken a lot of work and I’ve had a lot of other coaches come up to me and say like oh you know I thought about doing that or like yeah I wanted to do make some content and stuff was like you can make it but you’ve just like it takes a lot of work and you just you’ve got to persist with it and I think a lot of people just give up too soon like if I’d stopped yeah if I’d sort of gone and got a full time job and just stopped effortlessly swimming I would have missed out on on a lot and I think I was like right on the edge of being like of that turning point almost so yeah it’s um it’s been a fun fun ride and I’m just I’m so glad I stuck with it because like the people I’ve met have been amazing the the things I’ve got to do I’m really pleased with uh I just yeah I

couldn’t have envisioned what it sort of would have turned out like but the funny thing was when I first started the business I was 21 and like when you’re 21 you’ve really got no idea about the world and you think I don’t know things happen really quick and I thought yeah within 12 months like I’m gonna like I’m gonna be going so well with this business and it took probably 10 years to get to the point where I thought I’d be when I first started yeah that’s that’s just being young and not really knowing how things and how things work but yeah yeah I’m glad I stuck with it yeah it’s a thing of entrepreneurship right it’s it’s often romanticized as you start and then you’re immediately successful and it’s going to be all this amazing journey but actually it’s a lot of determination continuing when it’s not that it doesn’t look that good it’s not that rosy and then you know we all see the outcome of effortless swimming now is you’re

like how big it is and you kind of think oh it’s been like uh even as an outsider it’s been like a smooth path but it’s uh when you hear also from you it’s not that linear and it’s amazing that you stick to it and we all get to enjoy this amazing content now yeah for sure it’s very inspiring you mentioned these things to us when we are at the camp and I remember going back to the room and just talking to Fabi and being like yeah we gotta continue our podcast you know and just keep going on the journey because as you said I think it’s a lot of just persistence and determination and then with time I think you know strategy is also important make sure you’re going the right way but a lot of times it’s just keep going even when it doesn’t seem like things are particularly going well you know yeah totally and like a few things that have helped that have helped me in my time running effortless swimming one thing is being I’ve had the same

business coach since I pretty much since I started he’s been with me for 15 years now I think so just having someone to bounce ideas off and get advice from like having a sports coach a swimming or running coach that’s made a huge difference and I don’t think like I certainly wouldn’t be where I’m at now without his help and his guides and the other one is like the things that I’ve done have led to different like say like I started my podcast maybe I don’t know 10 or 12 years ago and the YouTube channel a long time ago as well and you kind of don’t know where it’s gonna gonna lead and sometimes it’s just been like one post on Instagram or one video or one one podcast that’s like that’s really taking the business in a different direction in a positive direction but you don’t know when what like what that’s going to be or which one it’s going to be so it’s just about taking a lot of taking a lot of shots like one of the things

that really sort of took the business took off with was that video of Dan Smith it’s like one swimming 110 sorry 100 freestyle in a minute 10 but it looks like he’s going at two minute pace there’s that one video we posted on YouTube a couple years back and like that was one point where like just that really spread they go went viral on on YouTube and so many people saw it

the way he makes that speed of 110 look it’s just it doesn’t seem real like it just doesn’t look like he’s actually going at that pace it just looks like he’s doing half of that pace and so I think like you know it’s a good title it’s a good thumbnail and then it like it delivers on the promise and it was just quite unique at the time I think so that was part of it but then there’s been a few other things like that that have happened along the way that’s sort of helped kind of get the business get the business going so um yeah it’s just had to take a lot of work to to get there and same with like with the camp so the first camp I ran was about 10 years ago and the only reason it started was because a friend of mine was working at a sports resort in Thailand and he said why don’t you bring a group over and I thought yeah I’d love to but like I don’t know who’s going to want to come along so I I booked some rooms I booked like I don’t know 12 rooms or 15 rooms

and I put it out there to the swim as I was coaching at the master’s squat and the um like my small email my small sort of database of people through effortless swimming and we managed to pretty much fill that camp I think we had 15 or 18 swimmers there or something like that and that like that kicked it off and then that’s just led to like other camps overseas and that becoming a something that we do every year and like I just love doing it and it’s become something that we’ve grown over time so it’s just like this one idea or one person like that’s what’s really taking things in a different direction so yeah and you often don’t know which which component that’s going to be um yeah and and Brandon so with effortless swimming you have of course your youtube channel your podcast you have the clinics that you mentioned the camps you also have like the whole effortless swimming uh membership which I have um what do you

consider as like your main business actually is it the online stuff is it the in person stuff like how do you see the whole ecosystem that you put together in terms of like um the different ways you could look at it it could be like yeah how many people we’ve gotten each thing or revenue wise and stuff like that but it’s all like the online components the biggest part of our business um like we have uh I don’t know like probably we’ve got tens of thousands of customers with our courses um that’s amazing and membership included in there so like that’s a really big part of it but then the clinics here in Australia um they fill up a lot from word of mouth and I’ve run those for 12 plus years I think oh no maybe 12 years or so so like that in person stuff I think is really invaluable because obviously the connection you get in person like like we get at the camp it’s hard to go past it so I think they all sort of feed feed each other and for me

just to keep saying in my coaching I need both like I can’t just be online I can’t just be in person I need for me I need both and there’s a I don’t know if you’ve read this book it’s called uh it’s called hell hell yeah or nah by Derek Sivers I think that’s the name of it um and he’s got this very short article in there or it’s even like a page and it’s basically says like you you’re either like like local or international or or sort of a mix of both and I haven’t said that well but basically he said like he moved to this small town and he thought all right I really want to be involved in this community so like we’ll do all this community stuff and get to know people and that was really good but what he was missing was that part where he could sort of share his knowledge and he could impart the things that he’s learnt to a bigger audience so he really needed both so and I resonated a lot with that article because I love to be able to put these like

YouTube videos out put podcasts out reach a lot of people but then I also like to work in these small groups at camps and stuff like that so for me I’ve learnt that I need to have both of those things to kind of be not satisfied but you know to kind of get my fix with the with the coaching yeah that’s really cool and uh yeah I think it’s it’s really nice to see how effortless like what it what it has been come and we’re both huge huge fan and yeah excited to see what’s coming in the future and speaking about the future what do you think are future plans for effortless swimming do you have some something some new things in mind like maybe camp in Europe or what are your plans asking for a friend

it’s on the whiteboard it’s uh it’s uh what to say uh well it says yeah book book the the best centre or just like yeah I need a book at camp in uh yeah in Europe so that’s kind of the next thing on the on the list and and in terms of like yeah with the with the business I mean I like to be sustainable with things I’ve seen a lot of people just go too hard too fast with the things that they do and they just can’t maintain it and so I think the reason I’ve been able to go for 18 years is because it’s just very steady and and manageable so I like I want to add a camp in Europe um and then a few other things that I’m working on but nothing too nothing too crazy that would mean I can’t can’t do it forever cool we’re definitely going to be there in in the look for a team camp very sure I’m curious about the swimming swimming as a whole as a sport um but like zooming out high level how do you think swimming has changed over the past year and is evolving to you feel there has been changes

in the sport do you feel like it’s been the same all the time or what’s about your take on swimming as a whole as a sport so when I was a teenager we would do uh like a gym program that my dad who was a coach had set up and he just read some things from some books and it was like some dumbbells over here we’ll do some you know some seated rows and like it was a very ad hoc approach to it and when I look at the times that like my the people in my age group were doing at you know the national level compared to today like the kids are just so much faster and I think the like the knowledge is a big one and just the specificity of the training and it’s become a lot more about doing the right things and not just doing more so yeah I think that’s what I’ve seen change the most over the last you know 20 plus years is uh people the things that people are doing are just much more specific and they’ve got the technology to help with

the tech technique as well in terms of video analysis and that sort of stuff as well so that’s what I’ve seen change change the most is um is that like we just never we didn’t didn’t have youtube back then so we just didn’t know what was what was out there but so much yeah so much good content that you can just pick up a lot no matter where you are in the world yeah yeah and I can imagine that video now is really uh really changed things too as well right because yeah if you didn’t really didn’t really have underwater cameras how would you know how you’re swimming and I think that’s one of the biggest blockers we used to have a guy come in in a scuba like wetsuit scuba scuba tank and this big bulky camera and he would sit on the bottom of the pool and film us and then we’d look at it on this grainy tv screen and he’s like yep uh like I and I can’t remember a thing from it like I just don’t think I benefited

at all because we didn’t really have anyone to compare it to and like couldn’t really see very clearly at all so that’s a little fun yeah but um amazing and I mean also at the top level right you still see records being broken and I mean all the time right there was the Michael Phelps era and you thought oh my god this was like exceptional and now all his records are broken almost so it’s crazy what’s also happening there well and even with like the super suit era was 2009 there was the world championships in it was Italy in 2009 and something like 29 of the 32 world records got broken at this meet because they had the super suits and it’s just like oh like this is this is crazy and then I think the next year they got rid of them but most of those records have actually been broken there’s very few remaining records so which is incredible like that that people are swimming faster than they did with these like latex suits that set you so high in the water and

like just had no friction whatsoever so yeah it’s pretty amazing what people are what the swimmers are doing these days so nice to to see how it’s going to change in the future okay so let’s go to the last part of questions it’s on fire questions for you very quick and there’s only one short answer possible and let me start with the first one are you ready all right I’m ready

so favorite stroke freestyle uh what’s your least favorite stroke butterfly no Sam wouldn’t be happy I just can’t do it uh open water or pool oh pool nice but like a painful answer so it’s too hard to give one it’s like it depends but I’ll I’ll say pool because that’s what I swim in the most um breathing left or breathing right left a most memorable race uh 400 I am as a 15 year old I visualized this race like for 12 months and I pretty much at the time I visualized 12 months later whoa nice um what’s your fastest time for one and a half k uh 17 something 17 20 I think it might be wow super fast uh what’s the what’s that pace for the 100 meter there might be one uh one oh 12 it might have been like 109s I think amazing one day I’ve never hit the face even when I do sprinting uh favorite pool you’ve ever swam in Andrew Boyd Charlton in Sydney right on the water um right near the city it’s just like just beautiful spot to swim um how about

the best place you’ve ever been for open water swimming or like your favorite spots for open water yeah all right the oh it’s so hard the Galapagos was pretty incredible so I’ll say that and then in Australia um I love swimming at Nusa the yeah their spot in Australia I reckon nice the triathlon and hot spot yes yeah and what’s your maybe what you already answered that in the previous question but what’s your favorite effortless swimming camp that’s different from the previous question yeah and there’s only one right answer is it the melodas Galapagos or Thailand any camp that you’re on all right I thought oh that’s so loaded that question the money you got off well nice that’s that was smart cool that was it thank you so much Brenton for joining our podcast today was really really interesting diving into the technicalities of swimming thank you so much for joining my pleasure thank you I appreciate you have me on and um

and love the work that you’re doing and it was was great to meet you in the metal dives and hopefully in Europe next year if I can get my stuff organized so um yeah I appreciate you have me on thank you so much it was a pleasure thank you thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast if you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com

In terms of, of when to say it, if we go through the technical piece, I give you the cue and let’s say, you know, you’re doing a full length of the pool and you do a few repetitions and then you come back, especially if I’m giving a cue early on, I just want to check and challenge early on just to make sure I don’t let anything run on with the athlete that might be misinterpreted or unproductive. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that helped swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. Have you ever felt like you know what to do, but you’re just not sure how to make it happen. Whether you’re an athlete looking to unlock better performance or a coach wanting to make lasting impact, today’s episode is for you. Our guest is Nick Winkelman, author of The Language of Coaching, a ground breaking book on how the right words can transform how you move, train

and perform. Nick has worked with elite athletes and coaches around the world and today he’s showing the secrets of using cues, analogies and storytelling to spark real lasting change. In this episode, we’ll cover how the words you hear or tell yourself can supercharge your improvement while using the right cues can make your stroke smoother, your technique sharper and your training more effective and the power of storytelling to break down barriers, shift mindsets and help find your edge. And it’s not just for coaches, this is about understanding your own journey. Nick’s insights will help you spot what’s holding you back and how to focus your energy where it really counts. Whether you’re looking to shave seconds off your swim, find more confidence in the way that you’re moving or performing or learn to enjoy the process of getting better. This episode is packed with a heap of takeaways that you can use

in the pool and beyond. Alright, Nick, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining me on here. It’s been hard to organize the right time zones here with you being in Ireland, me being in Australia, but we managed to make it work. So I appreciate you finding the time. Yeah, well, hopefully the lack of the effort it’s taken to do this is in contrast to the effortless swimming, which is the namesake of this podcast. So hopefully make it good here. Well, I wanted to start with where does the interest for you in the language of coaching? Where does that start for you? What sparked your interest in it? You know, I’ve you go back and you look at a lot of different things. I think I’ve always I’ve always had an interest in language and communication and connection. My mom would have said I talked too much as a kid. So maybe that’s where it started. I think I think when it came to coaching, I had an early an early experience with

you can call him a mentor. And he was he was just a personal trainer. And I was I was learning to get my my early cut my teeth doing personal training myself on my way to being a strength coach. And I would I would shadow him. And it was interesting at the time, you know, I’m just I’m taking everything on board. I’m learning about strength training methodology and movement and all the things that kind of go into developing the body. I’m in school at the time. And I remember watching him. And at the time, what stood out is the programming, you know, he would do bench press on Monday, he would do biceps and triceps at the end of the work. He would do all the same normal things programmatically as the other coaches as the other trainers I would see. But he seemed to use language differently. He seemed to really be intentional. And he was a funny guy. And, you know, he would he would make a lot of jokes. But he

was very purposeful in the moment before the movement in saying one thing, and really encouraging the client, the athlete, whoever to focus on that. Something about that moment, that was, you know, gosh, I was probably 2001 2002. Around the time I was doing that, it stood out it stood out to me. And as I progressed through my career, I think that just kind of stood in the background. And as methodology and biomechanics and all the core sciences, theologies that we learn in human performance, started to become standard operating. In terms of my experience level, I found myself saying what’s next, looking for what’s next. And it kept coming back to coaching, and language and how we communicate. And what was funny is when I would ask coaches now we’re talking, you know, 2007 2009, hey, how do you get better at coaching that kind of would look at me so I like what do you mean, which I thought was interesting by itself that there wasn’t a

common understanding of what that question even means. And well, gosh, you know, you read books on strength training on methodology on program design, like no, no, no, no, not about you know, what to do about how to do it. And again, I get this puzzled look, I’m like, literally, you stand in front of people and you talk all day long, how do you get better at that? Like, oh, okay. Well, that’s the art of coaching. Yeah, you just got to practice, you know, there’s no science there. And I wasn’t, I wasn’t satisfied with that. I felt there was and as it turns out there is and hopefully we can talk a bit about that. It’s that’s so interesting. My when I was 19, 20 years of age, my dad said, there’s this guy that I’ve gone to see. He’s a he teaches teachers how to teach. And he’s seen him years ago, like a decade before this. And so he said, like, go to New Zealand where he’s doing this talk, his name’s Rich Allen,

and just go to this three day course and see what you think. And that course was just struck like a light bulb just turned on. And I was like, wow, okay, now I’ve really see what coaching is about. And some of the things that he talked about at that course was similar to some of the things that you talk about in your in your book with cues, using stories, analogies, and it just like it just opened my mind up to what’s possible and how to coach. And it sounds like a very sort of similar realization that like, yes, you got the science, you got the technical things that we all generally know about. But the art of it is is what is I think is really interesting. What were some of the the early things that you started to pick up and take on board and learn in your coaching career? Yeah, so I’ll never forget it was like a lightning bolt hit me when the realization that this was important to smack me in the face. And I was I was coaching probably 10 10 American

football players at the time, preparing them for the NFL Combine. And you can kind of imagine I’m standing on the side of a track. And we’re just doing a basic acceleration warmup. So we’re doing our marching or skipping patterns, dry land type type work for probably many of your listeners. And I have, you know, 10 of them out there. And I all of a sudden just have this this sense, this out of body sense, like I’m watching myself coach, I’m observing myself coach in real time. And I was listening. And I was like, wow, I’m saying, I’m saying a lot of things. I’m talking about, you know, put your drive your knees up, push the ground away, stay tall. And I’m feeling myself with this, you know, I’m saying all these great things, I’m checking all the biomechanical boxes, everything, you know, my interns are getting carpal tunnel, writing down notes of everything. I’m saying this is great. And I’m like, who am I talking to? All of them are moving

simultaneous. I’m yelling out more things that even if they were going one at a time, that any of them could focus on. And even if what I’m saying is accurate, they couldn’t focus all on on at all at the same time, even if they could, I don’t know which things are working and which things aren’t. And so I realized I had no mechanism to really understand the direct as best anyone can impact of what I said, how I said it when I said it on their learning process. Granted, you know, the physical work itself, the physical act of practicing any skill does most of the heavy lifting. We know this. So athletes, especially ones earlier on in their development, are going to get better just by doing activities, independent, or maybe even in many cases, despite the coach. And so I really wanted to tune in to how my role was actually making an impact beyond just designing an environment. And so it was in that moment that I

started to get curious about what to say, when to say it, how to say it. We all know that the same message delivered with a different tone, a different energy, a different way of words either directly, indirectly with story or not changes the feel, even if the core message is the same. And so that whole space just kind of exploded into me. Now, still, if you were to come watch me coach and I have 10 people out there on the field doing marching and skipping. Yes, I’m actually still talking most of the time. But now I realize a lot of what I’m saying is to energize the group for crowd control. I don’t necessarily associate setting a vibe setting a feel and yes, that has an impact. But I’m able to dissociate that from what I’m trying to communicate in a moment to actually make a meaningful change in a movement. In those cases, instead of everybody going together, I might waterfall start them and have them go one at a time, give me myself an opportunity to

say maybe one little sound bite to each. And so ultimately, I started to come into contact with I like music. So if you think of kind of like a DJ soundboard, I started to understand what are the dials to dial in my coaching, to really meet that person where they’re at in that moment to make the most impactful change. I love it. Let’s let’s dig into some of those things that the what the how the why so in terms of cues, you’ve got internal external cues. Can you talk a little bit about the difference between the two and when when to use the different kinds? Yeah. So, so let’s do a few let’s do a few definitions because I think when when you talk about anything what you omit at times people think you are bi omitting it implicitly saying it’s not important. And so let’s go ahead and name a few things outright. We’re talking about communication. It is a huge space. We can’t cover it all. And so the way I like to

think about communication when it comes to coaching is we have our interpersonal communication skills kind of what you and I are doing right now, right? We’re connecting. We’re getting to know we influence motivation. We are extracting information about a person. We’re sharing information about ourselves. Right? It’s it’s it’s the humanistic side of interpersonal communication. Many many courses and books on that. We’re and it’s critically important and everything we’re going to talk about depends at least in part on being an effective communicator generally. What we’re going to specifically focus in on you and I is what I refer to as movement communication. How I use language to specifically communicate to an athlete how to move better. And so that’s where we’re going to focus our time. And so when we look at movement communication then we’re talking about the specific things that we can say influence a movement pattern

and we’re targeting even within that more specifically the moment before the movement. The thing that we’re offering the athlete to think about while they move such that we have the hope that they’ll not only move better in the moment but through the process of understanding the moving better in the moment that will help them learn and transfer those skills to whatever the task is. Whether it be swimming, biking, running, or in my case rugby at present. And so within there this idea of a coaching queue as you rightly say Brenton is I like to think of it as a continuum and it’s a continuum in that I’m trying to have them approach the movement through a lens. So think of it just like you’re going to get glasses you’re trying to give them the right prescription. The right lens with which to look at, feel, examine, and execute the movement. And so you’re right the words oftentimes used here are internal queues and external queues. I like to use a bit of a

thought experiment to explain those and then we can unpack them. And so the thought experiment goes something like this. Imagine you’re you’re in Las Vegas and you walk into a casino and you see this big sign you know let’s make a bet athletic version like okay this is interesting I’m an athlete. You walk in you see a you know a 20 meter track to your right you see an attendant on the left. You walk up to the attendant you’re like what’s this about it’s like very very simple. We have a card here with three queues we’ll call it a queue card and you’re going to read each of these queues and you’re simply going to make a bet on which queue if focused on is going to allow you to run the fastest 10 meter time. You’re like okay I used to do a bit of running in my day I’m going to give this a go. And so you read the first queue and the first queue says okay when you’re sprinting focus on rapidly extending your hips. Folks on rapidly extending your hips so

you’re kind of closing your eyes you’re imagining okay what would that be like you know line up on on the line you’re in a two or a three point start folks on rapidly extending your hips okay how how fast is that going to let me be okay when you read the next queue focus on rapidly pushing the ground away right okay those are kind of similar but then when you start to notice it in your body they do land differently folks on rapidly pushing the ground away. Now I’m sure Breton for you and the listeners you already have one that you didn’t choose it shows you and I think that’s an important thing already to say and if you choose as you you can’t forcibly make yourself like one thing over another you know if you like apple pie over cherry pie you can’t all of a sudden force of will of nature your nervous system to say no I’m going to go with cherry pie no it picks you but then there’s one more and you read the final one fitting for

an Australian audience and that is imagine there is a rattlesnake right behind you beat the bite beat the bite or maybe maybe a brown if we want to add the venom level up and so we have we have three different queues that point at the same thing a b and c so Breton for you which one if you were the one making that bet do you think allows you to run the fastest 10 meters that would be it probably be the third one the third one so most people the vast majority nine out of ten are going to select c in that example if I then said c was gone and you can only select a or b which one do you choose b b okay and so I have I’ve unpublished data we did this with over a hundred athletes or over a hundred college students half of which were athletes half of which were not and we gave them kind of those scenarios and we see just intuitively systematically people choose answers that are more in line with the b and the c so so what’s the difference well the the a example folks on

rapidly extending your hips right it is what we refer to as an internal focus it’s because you are focusing on something internal to your body inside your body so that’s limbs it’s joints it’s muscles typically biomechanical speech that describes what a pattern should be the second you leave the perimeter of the body and we say things like drive the ground back or beat the bite all of a sudden now we’re not asking anyone part of the body to do the heavy lifting we’re treating the body once again as a whole symphony as a oneness and we’re giving it a singular attentional focus which in this case is outside the body so we refer to it as external the third example with the the snake is technically an analogy it’s figurative right it’s moved as if a snake was there even though a snake is not literally there so I oftentimes refer to that as a figurative external cue it’s still external in the way you are mentally orienting yourself

is in terms of something outside of you even if it is not literally there and as I’m sure you and I will get into not only do we find intuitively we’re pointed to external cues and analogies we’re emotionally interested and find it more memorable when it’s an external cue and specifically an analogy but also when we go to the evidence our intuition is not betrayed we would see that objectively those states of mind also tend to result in better movement performance across a whole domain of measures that we can get wow that’s very interesting and so is there ever a time there that you would use an internal cue with someone so this is the this is the big this is the big question everybody wants to know you know so listen any coach knows that you will use a whole host of of language when when you coach my big thing is moving your coaching effectiveness from chance to choice it’s knowing the impact of your language

it’s having the mechanisms to see it reflected accurately in your athletes performance and knowing how to use that as a feedback loop to update and course correct the way you you teach and so when we look at that I’m going to say categorically here it’s an and not an or okay we do not need to kick internal cues off the block okay they can they can stay in the house the key thing is to understand the difference between internal language and external language in terms of the impact it has on a movement and so to do that I always like to to present this back when I’m when I’m when I’m answering this question so Bretton for you have you ever had the experience as a coach or as an athlete where you hear or have said the following I know what to do I just don’t know how to do it yes yes okay it’s the perennial problem it’s the perennial problem for athletes now I don’t know the level you work with or your audience work with but for me for the most part I’ve worked with

professional and elite level athletes but I also coach my my children’s sports team so I get to work with that level as well and what I find especially at the elite level and it’s no different at the younger levels is these individuals don’t have a lack of understanding of what needs to change in terms of skill execution and especially that the sports right you know the swim the bike in the run these are highly technical biomechanically predictable patterns of movement and yes there is individual variation but ultimately swimming looks like swimming running looks like running cycling looks like cycling within a very fixed bandwidth and so what we find then is internal language tends to be our go-to currency when we describe biomechanics right this needs to be there this needs to be there so on and so forth this amount of flexion this amount of rotation at this time point before the water through the water on exit so on and so forth brilliant

so internal language describes what should happen but Bretton where oftentimes fails is it does not lend itself to the energy flow and dynamic nature of movement so it tends to fall short in explaining how to do something now granted with an elite athlete or an athlete that’s very in tune with their body you might be able to say hey you need a little bit more elbow flexion and they can go ahead and solve that but for me that tends to be the exception not the rule and that’s not not the the check I want to cash at the bank it’s going to bounce as often as it gets cashed in and so if I want a more dependable mechanism that’s where external cues start to come in and so forgive me because I’m not a swimming coach I don’t want to falsely try to use those examples so let me stick with the running sprinting example hopefully people can relate to it if I say something like I want you to rapidly extend your hips it’s not a misstatement I do

what athletes when they run fast do rapidly extend their hips so that in itself is not false the challenge is if all I think about is just extending my hips it’s like going to a symphony and having the volume turned up on the flute section higher than all the other instruments it’s just not going to sound good it’s not going to harmonize and so this is why I like the idea of a symphony and the fact that what does a symphony require requires a conductor and that conductor is a singular point of focus for all of the instruments to bring a harmony and oneness that gives this experience whereby right the sum total is greater if you would than the sum of the parts same thing for the body and so now when I bring your attention to push the ground away it allows the entire joint muscular network to work together as it should it needs to to achieve that outcome and so ultimately that results in something being more

effective and so long-winded but it’s important to take people I think on the journey to understand how we arrive here if I’m working with an athlete especially if I’m trying to make a change to something and especially if this is an athlete an elite athlete understands a lot about their body I’m going to respect them and say hey this is what we’re looking to change and it usually is going to be using internal language now I’ll have the dot dot dot to do that to do that I want you to put on these pair of glasses I want you to focus in this way and that’s where I’ll introduce the right external cue push the ground away or the right analogy beat the bite and just systematically do that as I identify errors and I look to correct and ultimately course correct them what I really like about that is that I find a lot of the athletes I work with they want to they want to understand because I work with a lot of intermediate level athletes maybe people have been

swimming for one two three years they don’t have a lot of experience that’s probably the majority of who I work with and they want to understand the what to do let’s say we’re talking about rotation perhaps they’re over rotating as an example and we sort of show them this is how much we need to rotate side to side so that that’s helpful but then giving having the cue the so that okay this is what we want to do but so that we can do that we need to have this in mind this cue this analogy whatever it might be so I find that a really good good approach and my next question there is particularly with these elite athletes like you’ve got the analogy that you’ve you’ve got for them how often are you repeating that to them like it’s at is it a multiple times per session is it like a once a week like obviously it’s going to change but of course and and going back to my mentors this is this Britain is where the art then

comes in and it’s art because there is no objective consistent universal answer right there there’s always an answer but that answer can only be born out of the context that you’re in and so for me I like that I like the term you know what’s what’s your what’s your heuristic what’s your cheat code what’s your shortcut to figure out you know to speak or not to speak to coach or not to coach that’s what we’re asking here and for me in a very pragmatic way is the queue continuing to work without having to repeat it you know and the power of observation comes in here so you know I’m working with you on a skill we code we define it you understand okay this is technically what we’re looking to change and let’s just say Brent not everybody needs the the internal technical description you absolutely have some people that want it but I’ll be honest if if they’re not overly attached to understanding everything inside the under the hood of the bonnet

you know then I’m not going to flood their mind with unnecessary information the ironic thing is when we’re on a podcast we’re talking a lot but the actual expression of what we’re talking about brevity needs to be your best friend it literally is saying the most with with the least because we know that our attention is like a funnel right and it can only handle or a spotlight there’s many analogies for this it can only handle so much information at once and so with the best will in the world and the best intention we can oftentimes author what we’re trying to avoid by giving too much information so we’re trying to give we’re just trying to give the right amount to the athlete and so in that regard I think that’s just an important thing to recognize as a coach that how much we say is critically important in terms of of when to say it if we go through the technical piece I give you the cue and let’s say you know you’re doing a full length of the pool

and you do a few repetitions and then you come back especially if I’m giving a cue early on I just want to check and challenge early on just to make sure I don’t let anything run on with the athlete that might be misinterpreted or unproductive and so I give the cue understand it yep I might have them repeat it back to me what does it mean to you how does that feel depends on how elite they are right how experienced they are there’s a bit of dialogue and then they go do it and now I watch when I watch I’m this is where your coaching experience your biomechanical eye matters I’m looking to get a sense is the cue assuming they’re focusing on it which is which always is an assumption is it working you know you use the example of of rotation am I getting the lift I want out of the water am I getting the extension I want through the push in the run am I am I getting the power you know or the body position on the bike whatever it might be

and if I feel yeah I’m getting some of the change I’m getting some of the essence that I want then I’m gonna have the athlete say how did that feel to you so I observed the outcome I want to know what what the lived experience of expressing that was like for them did they feel a change they either say yes I did no I didn’t or I’m not sure and you get a lot of I’m not sure okay and if I get an I’m not sure did it feel bad like no it didn’t feel bad felt different I was okay difference okay difference okay you know what I saw is looked like we’re getting a bit more lift what do you think about giving it another go for a few more reps yeah let’s give it a go perfect and then I might let that then once I’ve done the check and challenge I’m going through what I’m referring to here I talk about as a coaching communication so Q do debrief Q do debrief I you know we queue or we coat we co-create the Q they do it and then we debrief when we’re debriefing

I’m trying to figure out one of three things which is what I just described that do I repeat the Q do I refine it which means I just tweak the language a little bit maybe from an external Q I go to an analogy or I go from an analogy to an external Q whatever or do I retire it you retire a Q if it’s kind of like the peanuts walk walk walk from the parents they just hurt it too many times lacks its potency or it backfired it did not work it made them worse or didn’t give them a good vibe a good feeling it just wasn’t a healthy mental state for them to execute and we just go through that cycle again and again and so I take early on I probably give them multiple boosters of the Q just to make sure it lands that we get the right dose and then once the dose feels to be at the right level and you tweak it a little bit just like if you’re going to a doctor then we let it we let it ride and we and we watch it and we just check in

every so often and again if you’re working with a group versus one-on-one these things are going to change the biggest cheat code is and it sounds simple is it working is it are you connecting what you said in the intended change that’s meant to be the echo of what you said is it actually happening if it’s not then skillfully figure out a way to come up with the next best Q you know or the next best drill or both to start to institute the change or recognize that hey maybe this thing isn’t changing because it’s not subject to being changed by coaching language you know no q can magically give you more hip or shoulder mobility no q can magically make you exponentially stronger right so if you have a physical impediment to progress this is me putting my strength coach hat on then i need to get those speed bumps those barriers out of the road and so it’s not trivial that actually really effective intentional connected

coaching in the absence of its effectiveness when you’re going through a process like we’re describing it actually can inevitably point to actually the solution might not be available to me directly in the pool or directly on the track there might be additional work i need to do over here which is why having a sound physical program and assessment program at times is is the best friend of a coach that happens a lot in swimming they’re just like overhead range is a big one and the catch this movement here is just as you know a lot of adults can be very stiff through through there through thoracic spine as well so yeah that’s that’s a really important part of it the other thing then is like how do you like keeping the the mental i guess the mindset of the athlete like how do you sort of keep them at that level where they’re not getting down on themselves so let’s say you were trying to q you’re working on a few different things but it’s just not clicking like if

you ever have one of those sessions where nothing seems to stick and the athletes just getting maybe down on themselves like is this ever going to change what do you do there and when’s a good time to to give like the feedback and give that positive reinforcement again where i think we’re starting to venture into the in the art side of it and i say that because you have for one you have people who have different if you want to call personality if you want to call it learning preference all of these characteristics right vary across individuals for anyone who’s coached knows that oftentimes the same you know three different athletes who have a similar error you might need to have three slightly different approaches you’re not not catastrophically different but slightly different approaches to to get the same point across so that’s one thing to say but then we’re also variable creatures from day to day we rock into a session we’re

tired we didn’t eat enough food whatever it might be interacts then with our personality with our learning preferences and so the amalgamation of that is what we see on a day to day basis and some athletes some individuals are very stable and you know what you see is what you get all the time and then we have others that are all over the shop and then everything in between you know one of my favorite quotes is you never step in the same river twice finally you never meet the same person twice even moment to as you said a session could start well they get frustrated and they lose the plot we see that with some athletes who they they can go high high and low low and back again in the same session so we have all these different individuals that we’re working with and sometimes the different individuals are the same individual how do you deal how do you deal with that I like to refer to this generally as what is what kind of learning mood

what kind of learning mood is my athlete in today I only recently came up with that because you know people type of learning styles which is a bit of a misnomer learning styles suggest that you preferentially learn better one way over the other it’s just simply not factual which is a surprise to a lot of people what it what’s more correct to say or what is more accurate would be learning preferences meaning you tend to more readily deploy attention in a complete manner when information is presented visually or analytically or experientially it’s not that you can’t learn in the other ways especially if those other ways are made to be more effective so someone who says I just like to experience things if they’ve only ever had very analytical coaches in the way they communicate let’s say a lot of technical information a lot of internal queuing that athlete might say oh I prefer just to do it well they prefer to do it because they actually didn’t understand or like the

way the person was verbalizing information if they then meet someone who uses a lot of analogy a lot of what I would refer to as verbal demonstration when you give analogy it’s very easy to visualize and feel what that visualization would be like as if I did it and all of a sudden the experiential athlete says oh actually I don’t mind being coached I don’t mind hearing language he’s just I was you know I was eating cherry pie and I wanted apple pie okay and so now I got the apple pie now okay I can learn this way so it’s all to say that people can learn through varied mechanisms and so on a day-to-day basis if you come to me and you are highly anxious you know you’re just you just and you just want to move you just got to get into it I can I can tell that your patience for information and thoughtful discourse is not going to be high today then likely in those sessions I’m going to get you moving and I’m going to coach on the fly I’m going to coach on the fly using

simple language I’m going to use languages more energetic push push drive snap let’s get long single words high high or right energy I should say and I’m going to keep you going and I’m going to try to build the plane in flight and I’m going to energetically match you if you seem to be in a place where you have the space and we’re trying to make a technical change then again I might introduce a little timeout so like when I’m coaching my daughter’s basketball team I took 30 second timeout so I’m already pre-qualifying it’s going to be short 30 second timeout boom boom boom boom boom okay we’re back into it so even how I frame that we’re going to pause and we’re going to talk about things it’s as best I can in a sporting context it puts boundaries on how much I’m going to say and it allows them to know that hey I’m going to have to only focus my attention for a short window of time and then I’m going to get back at it

and so if you’re to come watch me coach I use very tactics and it’s very felt because even in the session I might feel that hey I have their attention I’m going to I’m going to say a few things we’re going to try a few things but then as the session goes on I wanted to become more active more coach on the fly and it doesn’t mean that I’m not being purposeful and intentional but if I’m coaching on the fly I can’t use a lot of detailed information so that the coaching tactics I use when we’re in flow if I was on the side of the pool and they’re actively swimming I can still coach while they’re moving but what I’m saying and how I’m saying it is very different than if they’re on the pool’s edge and I’m going through a few things where we’re trying to make robust technical changes usually if they’re in motion I’m just tweaking the dials on my on my soundboard here right I’m not I’m not trying to put in a new track

I’m not trying to play a different song I’m not trying to give a different cue I’m using things they’re familiar with and making slight modifications that are not intentionally demanding it’s one of the things that you also mentioned the book and you sort of referred to a bit here is the storytelling aspects and one of the ways I’ve had to I’ve found that I can get across to my kids to get them to listen to me anything to do with swimming or even just other things it’s like I say I talk about a different person said this so there’s I’ve got a friend of mine who’s a swim coach and I said his nickname is Big Sam I said Big Sam said and they know he’s a good swim owner good coach I said Big Sam said that if you do this certain movement in freestyle that like that’s what all the fastest swimmers do and then it’s not me telling them what to do because I can not get them to listen to me when it comes to swimming so

just even like that like that is a bit of a story or something that someone else has said sort of takes it away from them being told what to do and I really like that because then they can sort of derive the meaning from that story what they want and it’s not me saying you need to do this so what have you found with with storytelling if you found a similar thing where it’s like people can they sort of take a step back and those barriers or those walls go down and it just allows them to sort of take on maybe a new way of thinking about something or a new approach with whatever you’re trying to teach yeah I think a good a good story allows you to find the meaning in the story right it isn’t necessarily or the moral of the story it’s not necessarily directly stated it’s it’s indirect and therefore a story is like a present that you get to unwrap as it unfolds and only you then get to and so there’s this sense that

even though you told the story they are the one that has the aha moment and that has this sense of curiosity and learning and learning is what learning is a gift if we think about it it is a gift because to learn something means I have something that a moment prior or a day prior or a week prior I did not and so in quite a literal sense it is an offered gift and what a story does a good story has the gift of the aha of I get it I see that and because I found it there is a sense of ownership of autonomy if not possession and that I now possess the secret that was told in this story and in doing that it feels I think good coaches are stewards their servants and their gift givers and the gift is the opportunity to extract the learning because we can’t forcibly right you can bring a horse to water you can’t make him drink but you can put salt in the oats that’s what we’re doing i’m putting salt in the oats

what we’re trying to create offers that encourage certain behaviors but we can’t ever we’re not puppet masters forcibly tell them so I think when you just say do this you take the intrigue you take the curiosity you take the memorability you take the journey you take the aha away a penny doesn’t you know the penny can’t drop for me if I’m the one as the coach dropping the penny every time you know I can’t I or I’m the one trying to click on the light know they have to have the penny drop they have to click on the light or they have to have the light clicked on so to speak and what you’re pointing to in a in a psychological sense is the value in the importance of perceived autonomy perceive that I have causation in my journey that I am authoring my success that’s really important to us as humans to really important because we see a dissociation with outcome if we don’t feel we were actively involved in what it took to get

it and this can leave athletes who for example have a coach that overcoaches them that they’ll they’ll blame the coach at times now I’m not saying that’s an effective mindset to have because the coach is probably doing the best they can but a coach that coaches in a way that really puts the player the athlete in the driver’s seat through using tactics like you’re saying I think gets far more out of the player far more out of the athlete far more ownership and effort and so for me autonomy equals attention autonomy equals attention the more perceived and that’s the keyword perceived autonomy not that you know the I’m not I’m not having them write their own programs necessarily there’s an expertise they’re coming to us for but the more perceived autonomy they have the more attention that they deploy to what that autonomy creates in them because they feel they are the author of it and if I author it I value it if I value it I pay

attention to it because I pay attention to it I believe it’ll lead me to a better place that’s that’s such a good way of explaining it it’s and it’s such a just such a powerful way of getting getting that yeah that that ownership getting the message across and it’s something that I’ve when it’s done well I’ve found that it’s made such a difference in the in the way that I coach in there and the lessons that people take from it now we’ve gone for for about 40 minutes here so I really appreciate your time and I’ve got just one more question in terms of the book so this thing is a this thing is a beast that is it is a massive book what what did you what did you learn in writing the book because this cannot have been fast it could not have been easy to do uh like what what came out of you having to sit down and write all of this stuff down that was up probably just in your head I can only imagine what what goes into it

I don’t know if anyone’s ever asked me that Britain that’s that’s a great the this is going to sound silly but you you hear you hear authors especially fictional authors which I’m actually working on a fiction book I’ve been working on it for a long time the book in a way writes itself and you’re you’re waiting that’s why it’s a long process at times you know it’s like you’re co-authoring the book with your with your many selves because each time you go back to it and you reread something you reread it with a fresh set of eyes new experiences again you don’t step in the same river twice there’s many authors even though there’s one name on the front of the book there’s many authors I can tell you that the Nick that was writing in the fourth year and it took about four years to write the book was not the same Nick that started it the table of contents when I started it was not the final table of contents that you now find in the book and so there are

there that are in that book that came out of the creative process of having to put words on a page so there are now models that I use in my coaching that I learned in writing the book not because they didn’t exist already behaviorally in what I was doing but I had to necessarily put them into words put them into a framework now there’s not many of them but there there are critical aspects of that book that only in the act of writing it and having to tell a story did I learn how to tell that story better and in doing so it actually writing the book made me an even better coach which is was it was just such a joyous a joyous process to to go through hopefully I think next year I’ll start on the second edition of it which I can’t even believe it you know the book’s been out for for nearly five years now it’ll be five years in May of next year but we’ll start working on on a second edition and I’m really excited

to uh to go through albeit it’ll be a different journey hopefully an easier one but the journey again because it uh it’s a learning but the key thing for me is you can’t write a book on coaching let alone coaching language that doesn’t honor the principles the book is about and so for and I’ve had people say this to me for someone who takes the time to go through it what they’ll find is I wrote the book using the same principles the book is about and that’s I’d like to think one of the reasons why it’s been it’s been fairly well well received I try to use story but you’re right the first component of it it’s it’s still meant to be an industry standard text on the topic so it doesn’t shy away from going into the detail in part one but the second someone gets to part two and part three we try to get into the fun stuff and focus on how to do this not just what underpins it the first thing I noticed there was

like a start of each chapter and and throughout the books like story story story there are lots of visual aids and like the don’t know if you call them key cards and stuff but like lots of visual aids and uh yeah like you you live what you preach which is yeah which is always what you want as an as an author right so Nick I’ll really appreciate you jumping on the podcast I love this stuff and like just to someone I can’t remember who it was but someone recommended you and they said get in touch with with Nick because he he’s really into the the language of coaching which I’ve talked a little bit about on the podcast over the last couple of years but I’ve learned a lot today so I’m looking forward to applying some of the stuff that I’ve picked up so appreciate that anyone who is listening grab this book the language of coaching you find on Amazon you can grab it through your website as well which will include in the show notes anything you’d like to sort of leave

with the audience if they are a coach or an athlete anything that we haven’t covered so far no no I think the biggest thing I would say when it comes to this topic is you know looking listening and just just being aware of the echo of your coaching in the way your athlete moves and the way your athlete responds if you’re if you’re in tune with that everything we’ve talked about even if you had never listened to this podcast will inevitably reveal itself to you naturally so that’s it coaching is a two-way street to make sure it is a two-way street fantastic Nick thank you again thanks Brent all the best thank you so much for having me thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast if you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com

she taps into is something that I’ve been very, very sort of conscious of since two years before Tokyo. And it’s that thrive mentality. And, you know, it comes up later, but it’s that we used to believe as coaches that the highest level that we can get an athlete to mentally is mental toughness, right? And that they need to be resilient, and they need to be robust, and they need to be really tough to handle the training and the intensity of the race and so on. But there’s a level above that, right? And a number of people have started doing research in this regard and understanding that and even going into it from a very specific coaching approach. And that’s the thrive mentality. So it’s the mentality that the harder it gets, the more I love it to the point of if this is not hard, I’m not going to perform. Welcome to the effortless swimming podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better

swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. Welcome to the effortless swimming podcast. I’m your host, Brenton Ford. And today I’m thrilled to bring back Bobby McGee, a legendary endurance coach with the knack for unlocking an athlete’s full potential. But before we dive in, let me tell you a story about one of Bobby’s transformative experiences. Imagine this, a room filled with some of the world’s top Olympic coaches from sports as diverse as gymnastics, field hockey and bobsledding. Bobby found himself immersed in conversations that challenged his perspective and sharpened his skills. And it wasn’t just about technique or training plans. It was about understanding people on a deeper level. And this experience opened Bobby’s eyes to the power of emotional intelligence in coaching and performance. It’s something he’s applied ever since. And in today’s episode, Bobby shares some of the lessons he learned in that room, how understanding yourself and your

coach can unlock new levels of performance and trust. And why mastering pacing strategies is crucial for success and how fine-tuning your mechanics can help you move more efficiently. It’s a fascinating conversation filled with a lot of actionable advice. And whether you’re a swimmer, a runner, a triathlete, I’ve got no doubt you’ll take away a lot from this episode with Olympic run coach Bobby McGee. Let’s get into it. Alright, welcome to the Effortless Swimming podcast. Bobby, welcome back. This is episode number 363. And the last episode you’re on was episode 20. And I don’t do more than one a week. So it’s been a long time between drinks, but it’s great to have you back on. Oh, it’s fantastic to be able to talk to you again. You know, I have one athlete that I used to help with the run, but she’s a collegiate runner. So she needed help with the swim mostly. So every time I see something of yours on social

media, I blast it off to her. So you’re in my mind probably a lot more often than I’m in your mind. Well, I appreciate that. I mean, we do make a lot of content and I just love to put that stuff out there. And I know in terms of the coaching side of things, like we have a fairly similar philosophy from memory last time. And one of the reasons I wanted to get you back on was to not only get your take on some things running, but I think we can draw a lot from other sports. So even if you’re a swimmer listening to this and you don’t do any running or triathlon, I find you can take away a lot from that. And before the podcast, we’re just chatting about that idea. And you said that you went to an event with other Olympic coaches from all different sports and got together and sort of shared ideas. Could you talk a bit about that and what you took away from that get together? Absolutely. You know, during the various quads, especially when I was

formally involved with Olympic teams, we would often bring in mediators for the coaches because, you know, in triathlon, you have this situation where the coaches are private and the Federation has to, you know, keep all the athletes going and the coaches going and they can get a little out of hand, you know, things get a little complicated. And what they found was, is if they bring in a coach, a high ranking coach, a successful coach from another sport altogether, they provide a perspective that is a lot broader, a lot more 30,000 foot, a lot more 10,000 meter kind of view. And that helped a lot. And then the United States Olympic Committee started a program called the NTC LEP. It’s been around for a while, but it basically brings in national team coaches. So I was really, really privileged working with, you know, gymnastics coaches who’d won multiple gold medals at multiple games and bobsledding and all sorts of other

sports, field hockey, the whole nine yards. And we did this protracted, very in-depth, very

intense, you know, workshopping over multiple years. And I found that to be probably the greatest coaching insight accelerator that I’ve ever been part of, you know. And as we were talking about before, I think that the thing that was most valuable for me was the whole concept of analyzing both athletes and coach with an analysis tool. We just happened to use disc, which is very well known, the DISC thing, but, you know, you have strength finders and you have a number of other of those tools. So then you analyze the athlete’s style, the athlete’s approach, how the athlete sets about their craft, and then you do the same thing with a coach. And then what was so useful with that was is then the athlete and the coaches, they share that information. And when you talk to me about coaching philosophies and stuff like that, I’ll show you how that comes into play. But funnily enough, as impactful as that was,

a coach understanding how an athlete thinks and an athlete understanding how their coach operates, the thing that really pushed it over the tri-line for me was the whole concept of emotional intelligence also being evaluated and being brought into play. And so we had these wonderful sessions where you could have a coach that would coach Usain Bolt and Serena Williams with a certain approach, but wouldn’t be able to coach, say, Kobe Bryant, who was a more cerebral individual in the same way. You’d have to coach him completely differently. And we discussed examples like that. And then we went into the details of our own athletes and our own sport. And I found that to be overwhelmingly useful in terms of how I approach coaching and my athletes now. And for the athletes who would do that profiling, what would be the outcomes of seeing the way that they maybe learn and respond best, the ones that they don’t like?

The way that they don’t like being coached, what were the outcomes there once they started to understand that a little bit more? Yeah. So the first thing would be trust, right? I think it was quite recently I read that Bill Belichick, the old coach of the New England Patriots, was saying that he was a numbers coach. He was an outcome coach. It was all based on results and Ws and stuff like that. And he was a very average coach at that time of his career until he figured out that he needed to take this approach, understanding each individual in his team and coaching that individual to their approach, right? Did he start becoming successful? So I would say the initial thing is it’s trust based in research, based in the athlete going, okay, this coach has a certain way of doing things. I understand why he does things that way. I know how to ask for him to communicate with me or her to communicate with me in a different way. And the coach also knows that I’m not a visual learner,

I’m a tactile learner, right? So when it comes to skills coaching, I need a lot more hands on work than somebody else who gets it when they see an image and they can go for it straight away. So that’s where it helped me the most. It creates a level of honesty, right? Because you have to be very vulnerable and very open to be able to go and do these analyses anyway, right? It’s a pretty extensive process if you do it properly. And when the athlete does it, they start to realize, my coach is doing this as well. And if my coach is doing this and I’m going to get the same information, now the whole thing opens up. It’s just so much quicker to get to the heart of what’s required for successful coaching. Yeah, very true. And what did you learn about yourself in that process? I was, I had a couple of moments, I must say, especially with the emotional analysis, right? Because I’m an older individual and I’ve been coaching a certain

way for many, many years and I’ve been successful, right? And so you get this kind of

understanding that if something’s not working, it’s probably lying at the foot of the athlete. It’s probably an athlete mistake. You just have to get behind that to realizing, no, no, no, I would just completely blowing this approach. And I wasn’t approaching the athletes correctly in any way, shape or form. If I wasn’t being successful, that athlete, right? So the idea is that you broaden the type of athlete that you can work with, right? So this thing is I work best with kids or I work better with male athletes or I work better with female athletes. That all goes out the window. No, I work with athletes that I understand. And so if you have a principal based and an approach that is with a moral compass, you will run into an athlete that doesn’t feel the same way about you. They might be into drugs, they might be this and might be the other. And it’s so much easier to say, you know, this is not going to work. You’re not going

to get what you want. And I’m not going to be able to work with you. And so it makes that whole process much more transparent. You don’t anguish about the fact that you’ve got an athlete with a VO2 max of 90, and they’re going to rule the world. But you just don’t want to work with that athlete because you just, you’re just not, it’s obvious on paper it’s not going to work. So you can, you can turn them down. Yeah, yeah. One of the stories that comes to mind there was we ran a camp in, I ran a camp recently overseas and we were doing some all out 50s getting times. And one of the summers she was, she didn’t quite crack. I think it was 40 seconds. I think it was 40 seconds for the 50 or whatever it was, 50 seconds. And she was pretty down on herself and being hard on herself. And she was a bit upset about it. And then the next day, one of our coaches, Sam, he like gave her a bit of a pep talk and said,

look, I’m going to coach you. And this was an adult said, I’m going to coach you like I’d coach one of my kids. This is what I want you to do. And then we’ll get up and we’ll go on all out 50 from a dive and we’ll see what you can, you can pull out. And so he got it warmed up properly. He gave her a talking to in terms of like, all right, this is what this is how I want you to do approach it. And long story short, he did a, she did like 45 seconds, broke that time by like five seconds. And she was over the moon about it. And everyone got behind her was cheering. And to me, that showed like, like that style, that sort of somewhat hard ass approach is not the way that I’ve typically coached. But it’s not to say I couldn’t do it. And that I know, maybe I should pull that out at times when necessary for the right person. So to me, that was a little bit of an eye opener, you know, that sometimes I need to get out of my certain style of coaching and be a little bit tougher

for people who like that and who need that. Yep. Yep. No, I’ve never been a real slave driver coach. So I on paper, I was less successful as a high school junior coach than I ever was as an elite senior coach. And the reason was for that was that, you know, I was working with individuals in an education setting. It wasn’t about performance. It was about education through application. And I think that that’s what happens. And nowadays, when I go back and I work with a bunch of juniors, especially a bunch of say 13, 14, 15 year old boys, and they just not even capable of being in the room. And I will go to the coach who invited me and I will say to the coach, look, what we require here is education. And what you might have brought me in here was for performance. But that’s going to be down the line with this particular group. You know, and so working with that group, trying to get those boys to be vulnerable,

right? Especially if they’re girls mixed in is a different story. And so if I had to, if I only had one crack at that kind of scenario, I would basically say to the coach, this is what I suggest. And I don’t think that I should come in here with any kind of technique session or even any kind of training session. I would come in here and start discussing these concepts of vulnerability and trust and and process and discipline and things like that way before we get into the nuts and bolts of trying to break two minutes for the 800, you know. Yeah, yeah, interesting. And that’s then when you get that trust, you get that buying, then everything’s going to happen a whole lot quicker, right? You’re not going to be banging head against the wall for the next two years. Exactly. Well, when I started off coaching African runners with huge amounts of potential, I found it took these athletes a long time for them to trust me as a white guy. But then

once they could trust me, right? And they saw the performances and there wasn’t any glitches with the prize money or anything like that that could lead to some sort of misunderstanding. Then I felt there was too much trust. I knew too much about too many other things that I really didn’t need to know. You know, so that was also an interesting thing, right? When people trust you, you know, I’ve been in combat and I’ve been in the military, right? And they say, you know, the person who shares a trench with you, I was in infantry, right? And a person who’s side by side with you under that immense level of pressure, right? They will be your friends and your connection for life. And it is like that, right? I’m in my late sixties and the two buddies that I was with, closest with are still some of my best buddies, right? We can be away from each other for two years and then we back for 30 seconds and we straight back into it. There’s that complete and

utter trust, you know? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We’ve sort of delved a little bit into it, but in terms of your coaching philosophy or philosophies, what are some of those key things that you’ve developed over the last 30 plus years that you’ve been coaching? Some of those real go to philosophies or principles that drive the way that you do what you do? Yeah, yeah. So coaching, running mechanics and even in the in this technological world, coaching, running differently to how long course coaches, coach athletes, I’ve done a lot of inventing of terminology and approaches because they didn’t really have a name. And then in going into the worlds of psychology, not necessarily sports psychology, but even in sports psychology, there’s not a lot of work done ratio wise in endurance sports, right? It’s mostly in team sports and teamwork and skill sports and things like that. And so it wasn’t until I attended this course that I came across some research that explained to me why

I do things the way I do things. And so I would say that my first approach in coaching, which may be cost me some medals, right at the highest level, but my first approach is humanistic. So I coach, the athlete is the compass in my process. So the athlete says, I want to do this race and I want to do this and I only want to run X amount of kilometers a week and I only want to do this and I only want to do that. And they’re 50 years old and they’ve got all this experience. I’m going, yeah, we’ll work around that. But the athlete is the whole process that I design when I’m working with an athlete is definitely humanistic with the athlete as a compass. The second part of my philosophy and I also learned this from a mentor coaches that I cannot as a coach give anything to an athlete. And it takes an amount of pressure often it puts the owners on the athlete. My job is uncovering. You have a certain potential that I

can see that you might not see. I can see the gold inside you. And it’s all surrounded by a bunch of shit, right? And I can grab the gold and I can shake the shit off. But I never put the gold there. And I think that’s a good way to approach it that your job is to help people uncover the best athlete that they can be from that perspective, right? And then I think the last thing is not want it for the athlete. Rather work on the fire that they already have so that you understand what it is that they want and then go after that. You know, I had a coach mentor who’s passed away now too, but he said basically your first year is you’re a teacher, right? And then as the athlete trusts you and as you guys see success as the athlete see success that same mentor taught me it’s not about we it’s it’s the athlete, you are the coach you can’t do what the athlete does, right? You’re a lucky one you you’ve got a beautiful swim stroke. So you

you know, you can say you can say that I can’t run a sub four minute mile. So I can’t say that. But it’s that that that concept, right? Of where you follow their lead, you know, but they’re the ones that are going to want it. My first great great athlete, when he went to his first major championships, he was a mess because I had I had made him too dependent on me, right? He needed me around and this was in Japan and I was in South Africa, right? And and he was, you know, a man from Africa would never travel internationally. And this was his first experience and he needed me there desperately. And that was a coaching error on my part. He should not have needed, right? And so this mentor coach said to me, thereafter, you become a mentor and even more of a handbrake, you know, you become you hold the athlete back. They are often rolling and your job is is one of mentoring and eventually you just become a sounding board. And so I have a number of athletes that will check in,

Gwen’s an athlete like that. She doesn’t need my daily expertise. She’ll shoot me every now and again, she’ll shoot me a text or a question or she’ll pull me up and she’ll say, well, what do you think about this? You know, so you know, that that’s probably how I built my philosophy now because I certainly can’t build my philosophy on content because in endurance sport approach is changing all the time. Science is exposing errors that we made 10, five years ago that we were we were coaching incorrectly, right? That what you mentioned there with with Gwen, for example, obviously within an athlete that is like much more sort of mid range, midfield or like, say your weekend warrior, for example, there’s so much that they can learn from you. Now, that’s not to say that the elite level Olympic level athletes can’t but obviously that’s a very different dynamic. So what would you say the main differences are between the two

and how those like Olympic level athletes will work with you and what you can impart or how you help them compared to say your weekend warrior triathlete, for example?

Yeah, I think with a weekend warrior or an amateur athlete, you can add so much more nuance and dimension. When they say, I don’t know what went wrong and you offer them two options, they choose the one maybe where they’re not responsible for that, right? It was the heat or it was a heliac course that I thought I hadn’t prepared for that and so on and so forth. But I think if you start to add nuance, they start to understand in their training, right? You always have those two types of athletes, those that hopelessly overestimate what they’re capable of and then those that are hopelessly too timid, all right? And that’s the fear of failure, fear of success that you learn in sports like 101, right? So I think with the amateur athlete is so often, right? You will see that they completely committed to their sport, right? And they show up and they disciplined and so on. But when you ask them the most basic questions

about the sport, they can’t answer those questions. Yet they dentists or lawyers or engineers, they’re very bright individuals, but they’ve seated over all responsibility to the coach, right? And not understanding that the more they understand about their process, the more self-efficacious they can be. And I love that word self-efficacious because it helps with all sorts of things, free race, anxiety and all those sort of things. But I think for the age group athlete is for them to delve into their sport as students, not to become experts, but just to remain inquisitive. Because very often those same questions that the elites ask a lot, the age groupers ask more often. What happens if I do more? What happens if I add two more quality workouts or one more quality workout a week? And they go and experiment with that. And yet the answers are apparent. We have the experience to say, okay, this is a sensible progression rate. If you master this, then we go there, all right? And to explain to

them that you can achieve unbelievable things, but you can achieve them in three or four years. You cannot achieve them within one season. And if you do so, you’re going to make that process six years instead of four or three. And so I think that’s what they can learn. I’ll have two blocks of questions before I start with an age group athlete. And the one block is, how much time do you have available? If somebody says, I want to do X on this amount of commitment, then you can do the math, right? But if somebody says, I think I can run sub 33 for 10K, and you say, well, how much do you run a week? Well, 19K a week is a good week for me. And you go, maybe it’s not going to happen, right? But so that’s the first question. What kind of time do you have available? If you want to do an Ironman in nine hours a week, yeah, it’s doable, but don’t be looking for nine hours. It’s not going to happen, right? And then similarly, on the other side, what are you capable of doing?

What is your true lifetime base of work? How much work have you done on a consistent basis so that we can start you over at a certain point? And those two often differ, right? You’ll have somebody who’s in their fifties, they, they’re a little bit more financially secure, they can give some more work to training, but they’ve spent, you know, 25 years behind a desk. And while they might have been a good high school athlete or even a good student athlete at university, they, they’re going to need four or five years to get their legs underneath them so that they can trade. Otherwise it’s just going to be breakdown to breakdown. I’ve got so many athletes that I start with, right? That are lost when their break phase comes, because they say, I’ve never had a break. I’ve either been injured and be forced to break, or I’ve been ill, but I’ve never had a real break. I don’t know what to do with myself. I’m so fit and now you’re telling me to take a break.

Going on to that point in terms of injury with so, I mean, because a lot of people that like that I know, for example, in their thirties, forties, a lot of them will have this aspiration to do a marathon. So it’s a big bucket listing for many people, myself included, when I was in my twenties. And one of the things that always seems to crop up is over training, going too hard to, to early and injuries come up because it’s such an impact sport and they just increase that load too much. So what, what advice do you normally have for people? Are there certain, certain things that you have them either look out for or make sure that they’re not doing too much of or too little of? Like, what’s your, your view of the landscape there with running injuries for the age group? Yeah, you, you did, you did have me go down a little side road there, right? So it’s very different if somebody wants to run a 10k or a half marathon. The marathon is a whole different ball game. I had a gal talking to me on the phone

yesterday or the day before, right? She’s done an iron man. She’s done multiple 70.3s. And, you know, she wants to do a 50 miler, right? 80k. She said, I had this amount of time available and so on. And I had to break the news to her, right? That if you haven’t run a marathon and the marathon of the bike doesn’t count and she said, well, why does the marathon of the bike not count? I can cover 26 miles. I said, yeah, but you’ve got your legs are so fatigued and you are so beat up after 112 miles, 180k on the bike that you cannot hurt yourself by running a marathon. There will be other limitations other than, you know, your leg strength, your stride length will be so short you’ll be putting yourself down way softer because you don’t have any proprioception, et cetera, et cetera. So there’s a difference between wanting to run a marathon and wanting to say run a half marathon or a 10k really, really effectively.

You can get away with a little bit more if they want to run a half marathon, right? But with a marathon, there’s not only the question of the mileage and how long it takes to get to that mileage. There’s a reason why you can’t take a half marathon time and predict a marathon time without looking at volume, right? You’ve got to add that volume to the equation. Otherwise, you can’t figure it out, right? And that number is normally somewhere 60 miles, 100k a week. If you want to run a marathon anywhere close to what your half marathon or your 15k predicts, you’re going to have to be running in that range of 90 to 100k a week. And that’s a big ask for most people, right? Then there’s one more thing that’s very interesting there. And it’s the hardness factor, right? So you might even do six, eight, 12 weeks of, you know, six, seven, eight hours of running a week, right? Which should be enough, right? But it’s that hardness that’s the only event, right? That and Iron

Man, where you cannot go out and run the full distance in training, not for 99.9% of the time, right? Of the population, you cannot go out and run 42.2k. It’s just not doable, right? And so it’s always, there’s always a fudge factor. And that’s what people don’t understand. It’s that hardness. So what I do is I start off with a very, very dense walking approach. So lots of walking, you might do a half an hour in your first start of buildup, you might do 30 minutes of running, and then do a 90 minute hike or a two hour hike. And that’ll build up until you can run for two hours, but you still got to be able to go and then hike for another two hours, especially if you want to run four hours for the marathon, right? So it’s not just the quality and it’s not just the frequency that adds up to the 90, but it’s the hardness to be able to operate other side of 18k, 20k, 25k, to be able to still keep going at the pace that you’re capable

of. And that hardness factor is the hardest one to coach. So, you know, that’s the difference between the half and anything longer than say 15 miles, 25k, that’s a different kettle of fish altogether. From my own experience, it’s been that 30k mark. That’s where it’s always come apart. It’s, yeah, you can set your time to it, you can set your watch to it. But you never ran 90k a week, right?

No, no. I think in the lead up, no, I didn’t, not at that time. Not consistently. You know, everybody can throw in a 90k week, but six weeks, seven weeks, eight weeks in a row of 90k a week, that’s a big ask. I reckon. And that hardness factor you’re talking in like the athlete’s ability to push, like that’s, that’s what you mean by that hardness factor. Yeah. And the tendons and the ligaments and that ability to understand, like Sebastian Koh’s father said, it doesn’t matter where Seb is. I want him to know he can run a 55 second quarter, no matter what’s going on, right? And it’s that ability to run whatever the pace is, you know, whether it’s five minutes, okay, or four minutes, okay, to run that pace, no matter how you feel. And there’s a deadness that you need to get used to that most people feel in the marathon. And they say, okay, I’m, I’m done. And they not done. And they need to visit that place of deadness with accumulative weeks of running for a long period of time.

Does not have to be fast, where they say, okay, this is the marathon. This is how it feels. It requires an intense amount of focus and incredible ability to withstand this sensation that I’m feeling that the normal human being will say, I’m cooked. You’re not cooked. It’s just going to take a monumental effort. And the only thing by doing that is, is, you know, you’ve got to be in the kitchen all the time and the kitchen is 18 miles, you know, or 30 K. Yeah. I mean, no, no different to long distance swimming, right? It’s like, you just need to have those Ks in the arms. You need to have some of those really long boring sessions under your belt.

And so often you’ll do one of those sessions and maybe six K into a 10 K session, you might feel like, Oh, I am done here. But getting nutrition in, make sure you’re hydrated, you might find by the seventh K, you’re coming out of it, you might start feeling better. It happens all, all the time. Maybe those last four K might, might just hurt. But as long as you know, you can, you can get through it. And even if you’re feeling like absolute frat, you can still push on and get through it. Like it’s, yeah, to the ability to, to withstand those long, boring workouts that are sometimes on your own, it’s solo. That’s, I think that’s when you really sort of find yourself too. It’s, it’s in those workouts. And it’s, that’s where you can get the confidence that when it comes race time, you’re like, Yeah, right. Like, I know I’ve been here before, I can push, push through this. Exactly. And you know, that, that’s the hardness,

right? In that, probably the most famous of all running novels, once a runner, there’s that scene right where he has to run 4400s. And then it starts to get really, really challenging. And he notices his coach in the trees, right? And he finishes the 4400s and he’s wasted, right? And then his coach says, now you have to do another 40. But I’ll do them with you. All right. So now there’s this impetus. Okay, the coach is going to do them with me. So they do another 40. And then it starts pouring down and starts getting dark. And it’s slushy. It’s a dirt track. And the coach says you have to do another 40, but I’m going home to dinner. And it’s, it’s that that’s, there’s nothing physical about that workout. It’s just all mental, right? It’s just managing their sensation. So sometimes when I look at these, now that ultra swimming is, is an Olympic sport, right? You swimming 10ks open water. And I look at a workout like four,

four by four K, you know, in the pool. And I go, Yikes, you know, it’s just.

Well, I had at Sham Brown Rivendale on the podcast, she won the Olympic gold. And she, I’m going to get it wrong. But I think she did like 136k in the pool in a week in the lead up to the Olympics. Like, oh my God, that’s, that’s a lot of swimming. And she said she felt like pretty good after it. And it was that week coming out of that, I think they went into world champs straight after it or something. And like she said, coming out of that, like, I felt good. And I knew when I was racing, but like, I’m going to smash these girls because I have done the work. And I know what I can hold in training. Like it’s, it’s that week where you just get smashed. That yeah, she, she just had that the mindset that helped her win world champs and then win Olympic gold. Yeah. You know, that’s in running, there’s that understanding, right? That if you do really, really well in a very long distance, like a marathon

or longer, in the two week period after that, your system is so primed with that amount of work that you took to get there, as well as that race itself, proving to yourself, that people go and run shorter distances and they break records and they break their personal best, they go run like a 10 mile or what they’re going to run a half mouth on. And they just smash it, you know, and then it’s two weeks after they’ve, you know, run 80k or something like that, that happens too, for the same kind of reason, right? But with her, what she taps into is something that I’ve been very, very sort of conscious of since two years before Tokyo. And it’s that thrive mentality. And you know, it comes up later, but it’s that we used to believe as coaches that the highest level that we can get an athlete too mentally is mental toughness, right? And that they need to be resilient and they need to be robust and they need to be really tough to handle the training and the intensity of

the race and so on. But there’s a level above that, right? And a number of people have started doing research in this regard and understanding that and even going into it from a very specific coaching approach. And that’s the thrive mentality. So it’s the mentality that the harder it gets, the more I love it to the point of, if this is not hard, I’m not going to perform. I need this to be so ridiculously hard. And that’s a principle that Naseem Taleb, the venture cap, no, not a venture capitalist, he was, he was, I don’t know what he does, but he’s created a concept called anti fragility. And one of the things that he said about anti fragility is that if you become anti fragile, you have to be really careful that you don’t hurt people because you become so monstrously effective, right? And so what she was saying, she was saying, I’m just going to crush everybody. Nobody’s done this amount of work. I love

this kind of work. I feel fantastic. I need this to be the hardest race possible. And everybody else is going to die. You know, and that’s the drive mentality is that you have no chance against the person that’s anti fragile, because the harder it gets, the more smack you talk, the worse the conditions are, the tougher the pace is, the better you do because you’ve convinced every cell in your body that that’s what you need to be your best. And you can’t be the person like that, you know? Yeah, that’s right. And that came across a lot chatting to her on the podcast too, it’s like that underneath you can just tell like she’s a real, like real fighter. And it’s like, that’s what it takes to win, win gold. It’s like, that’s what a mentality is. It’s great to say, as like, we’re watching the Olympic trials for the Australian, the Australian swimmers. And yeah, with some of the races, there’s one of the girls we’re

watching and she, she won, she got first, so she qualified. And in her interviews afterwards, it was like, she was pretty, she was disappointed with how she went. She thought it could have done better. Like she wasn’t happy, but she’d made the team did what she needed to do. And my wife was like, like, she’s, I don’t really like her the way she’s coming across here. And I thought, like, I’d totally get you. But I think it’s that personality. That’s why she’s so good, because she’s not happy with the performance. And she knows what she’s capable of. And, you know, you’ve just got a for me, like, I just appreciate that kind of mentality, because that’s what it takes to win sometimes. Yeah, I don’t throw people under the bus. And I’ve been coaching now this my 45th year, right? So I’ve got to meet some amazing characters, you know, Olympic gold medalists, Olympic champions, and, and have some good sit down chats with them. And the honest truth is that those that I end up clicking with and

we really get on really well, and we have a lot of fun together, they not winners. They’re just too nice. You know, there was a, an all black rugby captain, his name, you might not remember this, but his name was Colin Meads. And he was the captain of an all black team that didn’t win a lot. And his biography was called nice guys come second.

So you’re absolutely right, you’ve got to be, you’ve got to have that killer mentality, you know, and when I’ve been, you know, on the road at Olympic Games at World Championships with the athletes that do well, they are killers. They are. And it’s just, it’s just the way it is, it’s just the way it is. And you just can’t access enough of yourself to be a nice guy as well. One of the nicest guys I ever met in the sport was David Murcroft. He was the first guy to run 13 flat for 5k. And you know, David was in the Olympics. He was a fantastic miler, everything like that. But he never won the big one. And I know he was sick when he had a chance to win the big one. But he was just too much of a nice guy to just have that killer instinct about him, you know. If I lesson learned be an absolute asshole, that’s yeah. Yeah. Well, at least if you’re right, if you’re competing for gold, right? So yeah. Like the Kiwi approach, right? There’s a big difference between being an asshole and being

a dickhead and they have a rule, no dickhead. So that’s good. Now, shifting onto another topic here in terms of efficiency in running and technique. So when you’re looking to refine technique for runners, what sort of ways do you identify the inefficiencies in their stroke, in their stride? Yeah. Yeah. No. And sure, to bring it over to stroke is interesting. So I attended a conference just by way of answering this question, great question, where it was also the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee and they brought in all the top endurance coaches and some of the top athletes, right? So I’m trying to think of who this swimmer was that was there. She was a multiple-time Olympian, multiple-time gold medal winner. That’ll come to me. But either way, what struck me in this conference as a global was that the cyclists foremost and then the running community were way more scientific and on top of altitude training and and bloods and and all the biochemistry and that kind of thing

than the swimmers were. And I asked myself the question, why is that the case? You know, and I know running is an old school sport and swimming is an old boys club sport too, right? And I asked myself, but what’s the difference between the runners and the swimmers? And it came down to what I see so often in triathlon. That technique and strong mental capacity is more important in swimming. You see more varied physiological approaches than you would see in running and cycling. That’s almost like more formalized, more set. A lot of the top runners and the top cyclists are doing similar things physiologically, but the swimmers are all over the place, right? So it’s clear that technique is so much more important in the pool than just sheer engine size, right? And you see this all along. So what I wanted to say is that swim coaches are probably more from proficient at teaching technique because swimming is not a first language sport.

You weren’t born in the water swimming, right? But running is primal, right? So you you were born to run so that you could get away from trouble or to catch food. So when you’re looking at technique of runners, the demands of competition

and the demands of the sport are actually superseded by the anthropometry of the runner when it comes to mechanics. So some people, you know, the Kenyans have short torsos and they have long legs. So they have a big back kick, right? And they also have,

you know, longer femurs and they have longer Achilles tendons, right? So there’s a reason why they run like that. The Ethiopians are built a little bit more like Europeans, right? So they have bigger calf muscles. They have a more piston like running style. They’re more muscular. And so that’s the determinant of how they run. So when you’re working with some of these mechanics, you’ve got to remember that running economy is five parts of physiology and training and only two parts, mechanical and neuromuscular, right? So not that either or less or more important. But if you do a comparison in the world of exercise scientists and biomechanists in running, you’ll find that the exercise scientists outnumber the running mechanics by about 100 to one. There’s not a lot of people that you’re running biomechanics. For that reason, people are born to run a certain way. So my approach is to look at those two components and saying, I’m trying to make this person more economical.

It’s sell them more about speed than it is about economy. That’s so, so you, if you look at the two sides of the stride, right? Is the front end of the stride where they hit the ground to mid stance and then the next, you know, from mid stance to full extension. And that front end for most amateurs is about protection and about safety, right? So I’ll find myself sitting with an athlete that’s sort of sub elite, right? So a female athlete that runs 240, 245, which is now sub elite for a marathon runner, right? For a female marathon runner. Because if you don’t run sub 230, you’re not making a shackle and you probably need to be running sub 220 as a woman. If you want to make any kind of living, right? Now that they’re running 209, right? Or one gal ran 209. Wow. Okay. So that’s, so an athlete would be struggling with something. The PT would say they’re not flexing their knee enough. And I’m saying they flexing their knee too much.

And the one is they’re not flexing it enough is a safety thing. It’s a cushioning thing. And flexing it too much is an anti-performance thing, right? They’re dissipating too much elastic energy. They’re dropping their center of mass too much. So what I do is I highly individualize, but when I designed Runform with Matt Pendola, what we try to do was we try to find the major factors that the average runner needs to work on. What are the minimum range of motion requirements? What are the minimum strength and power components? So, when I was going through these questions, that whole question of the difference with swimming being a strength activity, right? It’s an endurance sport, but you need to be really stable and you need to be really strong to hold on to that water and to pull the water not peripherally, but with your core, right? Whereas in running, you don’t need to be strong. You don’t need to be bulky. You don’t need to be big,

but you need to be powerful. You need to be explosive. And that explosiveness, you’re going, okay, but then they sprinted, right? And so, no, no, sprinters can only hang on for nine seconds if they’re males and 10 seconds if they’re females, right? And so, it’s that ability to instantaneously stabilize a joint so that it can load elastically. And that changes the whole reason for you doing strength work to prepare you to do power work, right? And so, watching the next five to 10 years, even just the next five years, the whole approach to conditioning for runners will be isometric holds and plyometrics. That’s going to be the way to go in terms of conditioning. So, this whole conversation started with injuries, right? And injuries in running are typically because of overuse, and they are because of overuse in swimming as well, except running has this eccentric contraction, right? So, you stabilize the joint

as hard and make it as rigid as you possibly can so that the tendon and the muscle and the connective tissue can load, right? If you use something like steroids, sure, you’re going to make the muscle strong, maybe even make it more elastic, but you’re going to make the tendons brittle, right? So, now, you’re going to be counterproductive. So, those athletes are going to break down, right? So, I view each athlete individually, and I’ll view the front end based on having asked them what injuries do you typically get? So, how can I improve that front end so that they don’t get injured? How can I partialize their strike? How can I economize their strike so that their ground contact time is reduced so that the stresses on knees and hips, if they are heel strikers and stresses on arch and ankles, if they are mid-foot strikers, are reduced? Then, from a performance standpoint, I’d look at the back end. It’s like,

how can I get them to be more elastic? How can I get them to have more momentum? How can I let, you know, reduce their ground contact time? So, I’ll view it from those points, but generally, speaking when somebody says, let’s do a course on biomechanics, and I just did that for Ironman University. I’m very excited about that product. It took us a very long time to get to that point, but I want them to actually come to a session. I’m going, oh, this is a great athlete for us to pay attention to X or to Y or to Z, right? And so, if I had to say something more specific, right? So, let’s say a swimmer comes to you and they’ve got a lot of shoulder problems and they got a really, really long stroke, right? And it’s very, very slow, and they can, you know, their stroke per distance is fantastic, but their shoulders just can’t manage the load, right? And so, you would increase their cadence, decrease their catch to protect their shoulders,

right? So, I do the same thing in running. Or this person has got wonderful long levers, but they just, they’re all over the place when they’re coming through the water. They need to get stronger. They need to be more stable. They need to, you know, be able to hold themselves in a better position to utilize these long levers. So, it’s definitely then comes down to individuals, but if people have a solid dynamic mobility drills that they do before quality workouts and after bike rides and after swims, the post swim stuff is easy, right? Just return elasticity, move away from strength, and then just minimize plant deflection and just get them back to dorsiflexion. Those are the post swimming things that I would do so that they would be able to go to running more safely. So, it’s very, very individualistic, and I know I’ve touched on a bazillion things and people are going, wait, wait, wait, say more about that. But,

you know, that’s just like a little overview. It’s a great answer because you’re tied in

why, you know, like why you’ve got that approach. And it’s, it’s really interesting just in terms of the, with running, obviously, like the biomechanics, yep, it’s important compared to swimming, you know, water, 800 times denser than air. So, just the, the form, the technique is such a factor there. And that’s, that’s why I’ve got a, got a job doing what I’m, I’m doing because it’s, it can feel like a hard medium to move through sometimes. Would you say that swimming then is in general that people have got maybe not enough emphasis on the conditioning side, or there’s room to really like look at that even, even in running and in swimming or just what would I see the overlays or just in swimming? So if, you know, like swimming, we know it’s very technical. And look, I know a lot of the coaches are very good on the conditioning side of things. Some of those elite coaches. But would you say that like maybe that’s,

that’s an area where swimmers could look at more because maybe we focus too much on the technical side of things? Yep. You know, the law of holism says that no link on a chain is less important or more important than another link on a chain, right? So I would answer it like that for a start. But I would say that in my experience, and I’ve had the wonderful experience in swimming, right? Because I’ve never been considered an expert, but I’ve got to work with so many swimmers because they came to triathlon, right? So they were brilliant swimmers and I got to learn from them while they were swimming, but I never got to intervene or anything like that. I would just sponge it in, right? And so I would say as a general rule of thumb, A, seeing runners trying to come to the sport of triathlon and learn how to swim and be watching absolutely awesome long distance swimmers come to the world of triathlon, I would say a key factor, not a primary

factor, but definitely a key factor is optimal range of motion. I just think generally in life, life works against the swim stroke in freestyle. And so I think if people, and I’m talking about loaded mobility, I really don’t, I’m not a fan now of mobility work in any way, shape, or form unless it is loaded. So the idea that if you want to lengthen your pecs, you’ve got to load your pecs, right? And you’ve got to teach them how to move eccentrically, right? And I watch you stretching your pecs. Same, the same with lats, right? And the same with the pronators, with the fingers and stuff like that. It’s just, when you see an elite swimmer doing something funky with their arm, you could probably always get back to some sort of injury or some sort of habit or some sort of drill, right? That they over learnt or that they needed to accommodate with. I mean, he’s laughing. Some, some time ago, I was working with Flora and

and Rodafie and she was saying that the athlete that I work with, Victoria Lopez, the Brazilian athlete was saying, I just need to get over this niggle in my hip, you know, and and Flora said to her, does it hold you back from training? She said, no, no, not at all. But I know it’s there. And so Flora said to her, if you get rid of it, tell me because you’ll be the first elite athlete that’s gone through a career without a niggle because we’re all either swimming or biking or running with something going on. It’s never altogether clear, right? So that’s a good lesson again, you know, but I would say probably that loaded mobility, which for most amateur swimmers is actually strength.

You know, very, very primary. And I think that that technique and strength and the ability to hold positions and shapes and forms that the skill goes hand in hand with the strength, you need the strength, then you need the the mobility, then you need the skill. So most people swim the way they do because of a deficit in that domain, not because they don’t have the brain to be able to execute the movement, they cannot execute the movement. You know, that’s what the TPI from Titleist discovered in golf, right? The reason why golfers make such poor swings is not because they’re not athletes and it’s not because they’re not skilled enough and not because they don’t understand what they’re doing. They cannot get into that position. You know, I can’t pick this arm up without this side completely slipping away and falling underwater. You know what I’m saying? I can’t swim with my core and keep my midline straight. I then become the longer my stroke is, the more I

air through the water. All of them range of motion issues. Yeah. Yeah. So, so common. It’s anything overhead like thoracic mobility, often through the hips as well. Like there’s there’s a lot of things that and that can be holding people back. And especially it’s not that funny, but like the yeah, you think of what you need as a triathlete. Well, okay, for your kicking, you want to be pointing your toes for running. Well, you want that to be stiffer the better almost. So you’re kind of fighting that battle between the between the two. Yeah, I asked Tommy is the fairest. He’s he’s a beautiful backward freestyle swimmer. You know, he’s multiple times Olympic qualifier as a swimmer, right? And he’s brilliant swimmer in the sport of triathlon. And I said to Tommy, you know, I wanted to do a video of him swimming freestyle, the going backwards. And I said, how do you do that? He says, I just plant a dorsiflex my feet. That’s all I do.

I kick as hard as I can and I go backwards.

You know, so that’s just a graphic illustration of how that works. And when you look at

people that give exercise to to octogenarians that work with old people, that’s the biggest challenge is everything above the shoulders. You know, that kind of movement is impossible for people, you know, even now I think I’m reasonable. But if I stand against a wall and I put my pelvis against the wall, and I put my back against the wall, there’s no way I can get my head against the wall without lifting my chin up. And that’s the critical piece that I need in my swim stroke. So yeah, it’s fantastic when you can see that as a movement specialist, right? And I’m always fighting against I do what I call anti swim drills and anti bike drills, right? Just because they are so impactful to the run. And so you can imagine running is a disaster. People have been running miles and miles and miles with good running posture and they get in the water. They are just a disaster from a bone density perspective and from a range of motion perspective, they even worse.

Can you so by like anti swim drills, anti bike drills, as in like one like drills that you you’ll do for running, but it’s going to make you worse in the water. Is that right? Yes, exactly. Exactly. So PTs hate triathletes, right? Because triathletes don’t have enough plant deflection and they don’t have enough dorsiflexion. So many have too much plant deflection and no, you know, dorsiflexion at all and vice versa with runners. Runners can’t point their toes, no matter how you try. And so it swings and roundabouts for triathletes. Yeah, absolutely say that. Now, I know we’ve gone on for quite a while here on just a couple of the topics we had planned. We might just go through the next couple, maybe some sort of fire questions if you don’t mind, Bobby. I’ll try and answer in single sentences. You can go more if you like. But yeah, once we get chatting, we don’t stop. So in terms of breathing technique for running, is there anything that you teach your athletes?

So breathing, especially with the internet, right, has become a bit of a woo-woo subject, right? But what people need to remember, we’ve got something called a free bot singer complex in our basal brain, right? And it’s in charge of breathing. So if we need to run away from trouble, it’ll set us up for fight or flight, it’ll, it’ll elevate our breathing rate, make sure they’ve got enough oxygen, it responds to all those needs, all right? But we also know from exercise science that you have ventilatory thresholds. And that’s why swimming is such an hypoxic sport, because you can’t, you can’t follow your ventilatory thresholds. You can’t breathe when you want to. You can only breathe when your body’s in a certain position, right? And so breathing as something that’s moved out of that autonomic field, which is that free bot singer complex that I’ve spoken about, into, no, you have to breathe when your face is out of the water, as you’re going to drown, right? Is already an indication

that you need to work on your breathing when you swim. But I really believe that from a central physiological point, and I’ve got two influences in this case. The one is Matt Pendola, Premier Strength and Conditioning Coach that designed the Runform program with me. And then the other one is a guy by the name of George Dallam, that was a very top Olympic level triathlon coach, right, who did research on nasal breathing for endurance runners. And he did, he did some nice eloquent little studies on that. So, you know, nasal breathing forces you, you’re getting less air in at a time. It causes your overall effort to go down. You can’t run fast if you’re breathing through your nose. You can train yourself to run fast. So that, that’s the part there. So, you know, when you’re going from one step, one breath, which is your VO2 max, right? Two, probably two steps per breath would be your threshold. But these elite runners can take six steps per breath, right? In and out. So that’s the

physiological part of that component. You can work on that. You can learn to make that Bruce Lee-esque kind of approach where you can, you can start manipulating your breathing. It’s very effective. But from an orthopedic standpoint, there’s some interesting stuff coming to the fore, right? You are exposed in terms of hurting organs or hurting your SI or hurting your lumbosacral joint if you always breathe out and land on the same foot. And you always do, unless you train yourself to breathe asymmetrically. So a lot of these de-stress breathing mechanisms are about keeping your exhalation longer than your inhalation. So for example, you go out for a run, you breathe two breaths in, two steps for a breath in, three steps for a breath out. Now you’re always landing left foot and then right foot and then left foot and then right foot. So now you’re stabilizing one side of your body that’s been unstable for a long time. And I think if people

experiment with that, they’ll be really pleasantly surprised. And because you take so many steps when you go and run, it becomes habituated like that. Just two in, two steps in, three steps out. Two steps in, three steps out. So I walk mostly for my aerobic exercise. So I can get to a point where I’m five breaths in, six breaths out. So now I’m taking 11 steps. I’m always starting off left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot instead of always on the same foot.

And within minutes, you are under control. And you guys do the same in the pool. Two strokes and then take a breath and then four strokes and then take a breath. You can mess around with that. Or you could go two strokes, breathe left, three strokes, breathe right. And I think that you will find some really interesting things coming to the fore that are positive. Never thought about that, Ronnie. That’s so interesting. But yeah, never considered. The only thing I’ve considered is, you know, nasal breathing versus mouth breathing. It’s like, very interesting. It’s actually like, I asked Ash Delaney, he coaches Carl Chalmers and he’s a guy who I grew up with and he was a backstriker. And I asked him a question about breathing in backstroke. And now, oh, actually, like, you know, in backstroke, you’ve got your face out, just, I’m sure you just do it like breathe whenever you need to breathe. He’s like,

well, actually, you know, it’s like, maybe you’re going like two strokes in, two strokes out, or you’re breathing each individual stroke. So there’s a, there is some strategy to it. And there’s different ways to, to approach it. So you know, three thresholds. Yep. Two and one. Yep. So you’re swimming a 50 backstroke. There’s just one, one, one, one, one. And that’s what athletes do too, right? Is just they breathe every stroke. So, you know, when you’re not breathing every stroke, then you’re hypoxic. Unless you’re going super easy. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So it’s, it’s a very worthwhile thing to get into because I think I’m going to make a big difference because breathing is tied to fight or flight. When you tell people to bilaterally breathe the first time, they panic.

Okay. And they panic for a good reason. They can’t get air. And what’s right at the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is air, you know? So swimming is right at the very heart of people’s survival instincts, you know? So it’s a, it’s a big deal. Yeah. Yeah. It’s like, whenever anyone asks about, you know, what breathing pattern should I have? The first answer is always, well, as much as you need to, to start with. Like it’s don’t restrict that because you’re being told to breathe every three for the sake of it. So exactly. Right. Yeah. Sorry. That was not even close to a brief answer. That’s all right. Now in terms of a stroke length and stroke rate, so in swimming, it’s like those two things that we can adjust to increase our, our speed. Do you look at something similar? In running, stride length and cadence? No, absolutely. Right. So in running, the mathematics of speed is your stride length multiplied by your stride rate. Absolutely. Right.

But again, running is a first language sport. So you can’t just tell somebody your cadence is too slow. Right. Because then if they manufacture a faster stride length, they’re going to get hurt instantly. They’re going to get hurt. But even more importantly than that, not that getting injured is not important. But even more importantly, the economy goes for out the window.

Right. So you become hopelessly uneconomical if you are jogging along at 160 steps a minute. Right. And you now just move it up to 170 steps a minute. Just, you know, five on a side. You move it up. You’ll start breathing harder. Your heart rate will go up. You’ll feel uncomfortable. You won’t be enjoying yourself at all. So when you work on cadence, you have to work on other factors. Right. That lead to you improving your cadence. So the first thing to understand about cadence is cadence goes up when you go faster. Cadence goes down when you go slower. Same thing in the pool. Right. All right. So as you tell somebody to speed up, their cadence will come up. Right. They start turning the motor over quicker. But when you fatigue, right, and people lose their form and they don’t have a body awareness that they’ve lost their form when they run it, the quickest way for them to regain some modicum of performance is to address the things that they can talk to. Right. If you say to

somebody, go harder, well, I’m an athlete. I’m going as hard as I possibly can. All right. So that’s not a useful piece of information. And the lactates at, let’s say it’s at 6.2 millimoles if they really, really skilled at pushing themselves. Right. They can’t go harder than that. Right. So you’ve got to give them information that will help them regain speed or regain the form that they had up to that point in time. So I work, I’ve got three key principles that I work on. And I used to call it how to turn a bad day on the running corner around. Right. Now I call it the, I call it the Goldilocks drill. Right. And it’s basically, you know, you’ve got to get your posture in attacking mode. So in other words, you’ve got to get your torso ahead. It’s not really ahead. It’s almost ahead of your, of your ground contact. Right. So in other words, you want that forward lean. And I do that mostly with the chest. I connect the chest to the pelvis. So instead of the chest

being backwards and the head being backwards and the pelvis being anteriorly operated, I want them to bring the pelvis back, but I don’t focus on that. I want them to bring the chest down, get a balance between the back and the front. Immediately their cadence will go up. And I use a simple cue. I’m saying where you’re looking. If you’re looking above the trees, if you’re looking into the sky and you’re up here and you’re really straining, all you need to do is look down and your cadence will instantly come up. And the best way to do that is another term that I learned from Matt Pendola in this world where we make up terms, right, is set it and forget it, which is blow out. Now you’re pushing your cyphoid process down. You’re balancing out your chest, your ribs are no longer flaring. You’re not backing into your diaphragm at the back. You’re balancing that out. You’re creating room for your diaphragm to operate. Cadence comes up because of that momentum and because of that

comfort level, right? And the next one is your kinetic chain. It doesn’t matter how hard you try and move your cadence up. If you’re carrying your hands below your waistline and your elbow angles are open, that’s the length of your lever is going to determine how fast you move your feet. That’s what the kinetic chain does. If you move this hand backwards, the opposite leg will be moving backwards, right? And if you swing that lever through with long arms and people confuse this in sprinting, all right, then you’re going to slow your legs down. So you long arms, extended elbows, slow cadence. You’ve got to pick those elbows up. And then the next thing is from a momentum standpoint, you have to pull your elbows back. You can’t be lifting them up in the front. You have to pull them back. That improves your posture and that improves, you know, all of the physics of that whole process. And the last one, and in my opinion,

the king is running is not reaching. Running is driving straight down. But because of momentum, straight down is underneath and away. But your thought is get the feet down, then the knees will come up. The foot strike will soften, but more important than anything is that your cadence will go up. And your stride length will get longer because now your foot’s on the ground without breaking, it’s pulled out the back and your stride length becomes longer where it should become longer. So big time. So in terms of stride length, mid foot strikers or forefoot strikers will have a longer stride length than a lower cadence. They’re more springy, right? And generally people that run on their mid feet, their power to weight ratio is very high. They normally very light individuals with long, springy, sinewy legs, right? So they’ve got a lot of spring. But that means you say you can’t be an incredibly successful runner when you’re a heel striker,

but your heels are closer to your center of mass, all right? So it’s easier to lean forward when you’re a heel striker, okay? They will have a naturally higher cadence, all right? But they’ll have a shorter stride length. And when it comes to stride length, stride length again is determined by speed, all right? But the stronger, the fitter, the higher your level of mobility, the more you can extend your hips backwards, the longer your stride length is. But those two are very, very much intertwined. You can’t be taking giant steps and have a cadence of 100. That’s never going to work, right? All right? But you can have giant steps and have a cadence of 180 or 185, 186, right? When, when I worked with her at a peak show, her stride length was 184, so 92 steps per foot, right? But her stride length was 1.74 meters. So it was massive stride length, right? I had other girls that were trying to make the Olympic team, they

had a cadence of 220. All right? So they were taking 110 steps a minute. You normally see this with small individuals, like the Japanese girls all have this very, very high cadence, because they’re very short individuals with very short legs. All right? But their stride length is only about a meter, 1.2, 1.15 meters. So they taking shorter steps, much faster. But if you do the math, you can get them to be the same. So there’s, you know, there’s girls that run, who haven’t seen one at that level for a while. But there’s been lots of girls that run 219, 218 for the marathon that have a cadence of well over 200. Gebre Selassie was right on 200, you know? Bekele was 196, 198. So the thing to look at with cadence is, what is your cadence at a certain velocity? And if that cadence falls off and you’re trying to sustain the same velocity, you’ve gone into a very un-economical phase, you’re going to start falling back. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, that’s right. So

a lot of parallels there with what you need to do and how you can approach it as well, like the set and forget. It’s like, all right, head position, similar thing, chin comes forward, head comes forward, ribs flare out. It’s like, no, let’s just switch that on, set and forget. I like that. And yeah, and then that can, that’s going to make a big difference. So really interesting. I’m going to go for a run today or tomorrow. And I’m keen to, keen to try those things. Okay. Yeah, that’d be good. Now, in terms of let’s talk about pacing and energy conservation. What’s, there’s sort of general rules of thumb for people when they’re approaching a race like a marathon in terms of how they should go out or does it depend on the athlete? No, the approach is, is definitely one that has to be commensurate with their conditioning and their training. In the old days, a common mistake we used to make with the marathon is we do the quality work, we do the mileage, but we wouldn’t do enough

neuromuscular work at race pace. So that’s very important. So that tempo runs, you can train tempo early on in a phase as a physiological principle. So tempo is the poor man’s lactate threshold, right? You do those tempo runs, but they don’t need to be much more than 60 minutes. You can even do five times eight minutes, six times 10 minutes, that kind of thing. But when you are getting ready for the marathon and you’re going, okay, I need to run six minutes of K or I need to run five minutes of K for the marathon, you need to do protracted running, fatigued and unfatigued at that pace. You need to myelinize your running pattern at that pace, because otherwise you are uneconomical on race day and very, very fit if you don’t do that, right? So at altitude, it’s a problem for me, right? So you either have to use supplemental oxygen, all right, so that people can run at that pace for protracted periods of time, or I have them run on very slight downhills where they can run race

pace, but they’re running slightly downhill. Not as good as supplemental O2 because their mechanics change slightly, but that becomes really, really important that they run at that kind of pace. The next thing that becomes important with pacing, and I teach this to triathletes, I’ll literally have them run, they 10K runners or even 5K runners off the bike, I’ll have them run like 10, 200s without a watch on, okay? Flying start, run through the finish, and then break it down. Let’s say they want to run a 15 minute 5K, that means they need to run 36 seconds for every 200, right? So flying start, run a 36 second 200 with lots of rest in between, but you’ve got to hit 36s, you’ve got to feel 36s in your brain and in your legs and in your body. So you’re literally teaching them how that feels. The other component that is hard is to realise when you’ve tapered for a race, you’re super springy, you’re super ready to go, you’re

super energetic, and your perception of your pace is way off versus getting up in the morning, forcing down a cup of coffee, you exhausted, you got to go to work later in the day and you slog your way through a six mile at the perfect pace because you can’t go any faster, right? So it’s really a zone to run, right? Now you’re fresh, you’re excited, the adrenaline’s going, there’s people around you running fast, you don’t know if they run 30 minutes faster or 30 minutes slower than you for a marathon, there they are and they’re going fast and I’ve got to keep up, right? So what I teach there, there are two things that are important. One is there is no banking in running, just like in swimming, there’s no putting pace in the bank,

all right? It’s just the interest rate is minus 14. The harder you go out, the slower you will go at the end, it’s just, that’s the bottom line. And it’s a mental thing too and I learnt this as a track coach, right? Again, let’s go back to the 5000, you have to run 5000 meters in 15 minutes, that’s your goal, you’re physiologically ready to do that, you’re mechanically ready to do that. You run the first 234, you run the first lap in 68, all right? You’ve got four seconds in the bank and this goes on for eight or nine laps but each lap you’re losing a bit more time. So by the time you get to lap 10, all right, you’re running 74s, which is two seconds too slow but you’re right on time. But the coach who’s not experienced says you’d stay right there but the trend has been slowing for 10 laps. So staying right there means slow down a bit more.

All right? So I teach something that I call a crescendo mindset. If you want to run five minutes of K, the first Ks need to feel, to be five minutes, they need to feel like six minute Ks and then they will be five minute Ks, right? And then in the middle, a five minute K will feel like a five minute K. But pretty soon, 75 to 90% into that run, a five minute K will feel like a four minute K. So your mindset has to be crescendo for your pace to be even. It’s got to get harder and harder to hold the same pace. And so the trick is go out easy. Lorraine Moller, the famous marathon runner from New Zealand who won the bronze medal in the 92 Olympics, her coach used to say to her in a marathon, go out at what feels like the right pace and then back off that. And that’s really good advice because what feels like the right pace is nine times out of 10, hopelessly too fast. Yeah. Yeah. That’s great advice. That makes me think of the

the half Ironman that I did a few years back. First K was like 340 or 350. And I’m like, wow, that felt like 430 or five, five minutes back right off here. That’s, that is not going to be sustainable. And, and I mean, the same thing happens in those longer distance events too. It’s just like, you’ve got to make it feel very comfortable. You’ve got to keep that heart rate under control because. Yeah. And then the other thing is your mindset changes, right? When you start struggling, you say, I just want to finish this. All the plans for a pace go out the window. And that’s wrong. You’ve got to be antifragile saying everybody else is now just hanging on and saying, let this be over. Let me just get to the finish. You need to be racing. When you get to 30K, you need to say the race has just started. I had this fun adventure for 30K. And now the next 12K is where the race is. Now I switch on. Now everything

starts to happen, but you have to practice that mindset. One of my favorite workouts is that

easy 30K and then a 5K time trial. That’s perfect for marathon training. You can’t do it every week for sure, but you can do that a couple of times in a season. You go for your long run and then at the end of that long run, boom, you’re on a little time trial.

And that gives you a much better idea of what you capable of in the marathon. Definitely. One of the things that Andy Donaldson said, he’s broken two world records in marathon swimming, very good distance swimmer. And he said in the six weeks leading up to a marathon swim that he’s going to do, what he tries to do is just get very efficient at holding 112 pace per 100. A lot of his session is just swimming at that pace that he plans to hold for the swim. And I know one of the mistakes I made when I was training for a marathon swim I did a couple of years back was my longer swims were, especially leading up to the race, they were too slow. I was probably swimming 125 pace, I reckon, and it should have been, well maybe even 125 to 130 possibly, and it should have been more at the round 120 or slightly faster. Like I just went too slow and paid for that, paid for that race day. Yep. Yep. So yeah. So I like the idea of no, there’s no banking

in a race. So yes, that is so true. And when you see someone trying to bank that time, you always see them pay for that later on. Exactly. Exactly. There’s no way it works ever. The best, the best I remember there was in the 10k at the Rio Olympics in 2016, an Aussie swimmer Jared Port was out by himself. He was like 200 meters ahead and then with about 2k to go, the group just swallowed him up. But it was awesome. It was like, man, if you could have pulled that off, it would have been amazing. But yeah, the group just swallowed him up from there. You can hold it. Yeah. And I remember that swim very well, because the night before, the entire swim course was blown away. It was blown onto the shore and the buoys got buried under the sand. The pontoon got buried under the sand. They had to dig it out. I think they changed the course slightly because of it. And I remember in the women’s race, there was a

hectic finish for the lower medals. I think one girl hit the side instead of the top and lost the medal because of it. It was a great open water race. I was sitting in the hotel watching it on TV because it wasn’t as easy to watch on the beach. But the beach was literally 150 meters away. I could have watched it on the beach, but I watched it on TV right there.

It was pretty choppy too. I don’t think you would have been able to see much.

Yeah. Now let’s have a look here. So we’ve actually talked about a lot of the other things that I had listed here. Maybe to finish off with visualization. Do you ever use that with your athletes? Yeah. No, no, I do. I work very closely now with a very, very fine sports psychologist by the name of Cory Rife. And I’ll just say the name here. He wrote an incredible book recently called The Transformational Power of Pure Intelligence. And I can highly recommend that people go and read that. But Cory doesn’t like to use the word visualization because we all visualize in some way, shape or form every day of our lives, right? What he likes to talk about is mental rehearsal. So you formally visualize yourself doing the race and the processes around the race. And this is what the scientist Albert Bandura came across in the 70s, right? Came up with this concept of self-efficacy. So you visualize the training that you have done,

what the processes were, and what the processes are that you’re going to require in the race, and you add in the timing. So you actually mentally rehearsing. So it’s like going to address rehearsal in your head. You’re doing all the things that you would do. It sounds like semantics, but it makes a big difference, right? So now you can say, okay, if something goes wrong, this is what it looks like. And this is how I’m going to respond to that. All right. But generally, if it goes, well, this is what I’m going to do. This is what I’m going to do. It gets people out of their heads in terms of self-confidence. I need my ego needs to feel ready to do the race. You know, you’re going, I am ready. My body is ready. I know how to execute the bits and pieces of this race. I know how to start. I know how to dress myself. I know how to eat. I know how to travel to the event. And I can see all those things happening in my head,

and I can see myself doing them effectively, right? And so when I go into the race, I’m not thinking about, don’t let yourself down. Don’t let your coach down. Don’t let your folks down. Don’t make a fool of yourself. Don’t make this mistake. Don’t make that mistake. No, you’re thinking about, you have the skills and you need to execute the skills, and it helps a lot with pacing, right? It’s like you looking at your watch saying, I can’t run the whole race at this speed. So you’re using your brain and you’re going, I know what it’ll look like if I run at this speed because this is not sustainable for me. This is great for 10K. Can’t do a half at this speed. You know what I’m saying? So that whole concept of whatever you do must be seen as rehearsal. And the more realistic you make it and the more sensors you add to it, the taste, the sight, the sounds. Swimming is big with taste, right? And swimming is big with smell. There’s a very different smell when you go to a lake swim

than when you go to an ocean swim, right? So if you do all your open water training in a lake and you do all your majority of your training in a pool, and it’s a heavily chlorinated pool, when you show up at the ocean, there’s the connections aren’t being made. People don’t know what it is to swim and salt. Their body position is off. They’re floating higher. They haven’t rehearsed it. So to me, from a visualization standpoint, I would change the word to rehearsal. I would formalize it. And even with swimming, I would put a watch on it. So start visualizing yourself doing a tough set in the pool that your sendoff is, I don’t know, 115s or whatever the case might be, right? And then you start your watch and you close your eyes and you stop your watch when you touch the wall. And if those two match, now your imagery is involved with your body clock as well. You’re starting to feel and it’s easy for swimmers to do because if they swimming

properly, they can count their strokes. And when you count in your strokes, there’s no way to be more present and in the moment than that was one stroke. That was two strokes. That was three strokes. So the only way I finished my long course race was I was left out alone. I stood on the beach and we were told you swim out until you can’t see the shark nets anymore underneath you. Then you turn left, swim all along the shark nets, pass two piers and then make a left turn and then you finished with your Iron Man swim, right? And I’m out there on my own. The only way I got through that swim was two things. Sharks always get caught on the inside of the shark nets. All right, I’m on the outside of the shark net. So they’re going to pass me by, all right. And the other one was counting strokes. That was 100, next 100, next 100, next 100. If I’m losing count of my strokes, I’m losing focus. Get back to focusing on my

stroke count, you know, makes all the difference in the world. Yeah, that’s,

I like the timing aspect of it too. It’s like if you can, if you can get really close to it, then, you know, you’re visualizing it really well. And previously, as like growing up when I was competing at a national level, we would do quite a bit of it. And I got 400 medley, you know, I got within, I’d say about 10 seconds of the actual time there, most times by the time I was ready for race season. And it’s, yeah, very, very good tool. What was the name of the book again? The name of the book is the transformational power of pure intelligence. And his name is Corey, C-O-R-Y, right, R-E-I-C-H. Gotcha. Yeah, right. Excellent. Well, Bobby, thank you so much for your time and for being back on the podcast. I’ve picked up a lot from that. I love chatting to someone with the experience and the breadth of athletes that you work with and constantly learning, not stuck coaching the same way you did 15 years ago, I’m sure.

So I really appreciate you being on the podcast and sharing that. For those that are listening, where’s the best place to get in touch with you? You’ve mentioned Runform as well.

Where can people find that? Yeah, they can just look up Pandola Training and they’ll find Runform on there or they’ll find Runform on my website, bobbymugi.com. We are linked straight through to that. All right. And then I haven’t done much on Instagram. I do a lot of interacting, but I haven’t written a lot on Instagram lately. But that’s Bobby McGee running. On Instagram. Fantastic. We’ll put that in the show notes as well.

We’ll put all those things in the show notes so people can find it easily. Thanks again, Bobby. Appreciate it. All right. Take care, man. Lovely to see you again, Brenton. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

I’m related to kayaking a little bit because I’ve kayaked a fair amount and you can gain much more power in the kayak if you concentrate on the side that you’re pushing on. So if you just gain purchase with the paddle, the paddle holds the water and you push on the other side, that movement will give you much more power than just to pull on the paddle. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. I’m your host, Brenton Ford, and in today’s episode, I’m speaking with Dudley Duncan, a seasoned coach and author of the art of swimming and the game of racing. Dudley has spent years refining his approach to swimming and he’s sharing some incredible insights that will help you improve both your mindset and your technique in the water.

We cover stroke mechanics, the power of visualization to boost your performance and strategies to build confidence so that you feel stronger and more capable every time you swim. Dudley also talks about how to balance hard work with mental toughness, giving you practical tips to stay motivated and achieve your goals. Whether you’re training for a big race or just looking to swim smoother and faster, this episode is packed with ideas to help you take your swimming to the next level. Let’s dive in. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. My guest today is Dudley Duncan, the author of the Art of Swimming and the Game of Racing, Reflections of a USA Swimming Club Coach. On today’s podcast, I want to chat about several topics that I think will be useful for adult swimmers and triathletes to improve the performance of their swimming and get your take, Dudley, on things that you believe would help this type of swimmer because you’ve been around the pool

for many, many years and I think having to condense your thoughts in a book and spend the time sitting down, writing and editing and refining your thoughts gives you a lot of knowledge and wisdom to work from aside from all of the years that you spent on pool deck. So welcome to the podcast. Thanks a lot. It’s great to be with you. How amazing we can talk this way across continents. Well, you’re over there in Florida. I’m here in near Melbourne and I appreciate you jumping on the podcast and just to sort of kick things off. Where does swimming start for you in your life? How did you originally get into the world of swimming?

Well, I guess my first thing to say is I failed beginner swim lessons. So once I failed, I was committed to doing better from then on. But also my father died actually when I was 11. And my mother moved us to a community that had a swimming pool. And the idea of that was so that we would have somebody taking care of us in the summers while she was working. So got started swimming there, went to military school and swam there, you know, during this during this swimming season, finished high school, coached a little bit before I got drafted into the service, which was late 60s. So rather than go in the draft, I joined the Air Force and I fell into a situation where I was stationed in Fayetteville, North Carolina at an Air Force base there. And I was my career field was changed from radio operations to security police.

I was investigating vandalism at a Colonel’s house on the base. He had five kids and most of them swam. So they needed an assistant coach at that time for the club team on the base. And so I raised my hand and said, I can do that. And by the time I was through doing that, I was committed to life of coaching. And I went to college, majored in fiscal education, was coaching the club team while I was in college and one of the families paid for a graduate assistantship so I could stay on another year and just kept coaching from there.

I did apply for two jobs, which I failed to get. One was at the university where I was going. And the other one was at this place about a couple of hours up the road. And I didn’t get them. So I went down to a junior nationals and was handing out resumes on the deck. And I happened to get a job with a coach named Jim Montrella, who was a 1972 Olympic coach and worked with him for 10 months before I went back to Virginia. Actually, so that job was here in Viral Beach. So that’s the connection that brought me back here eventually. But it was 10 months and he really changed my consciousness, I think, elevated it. And one of the jobs that I did not get fired the guy that they hired instead of me. And they called me and asked me if I come back. So I came back, went back to Virginia and coached there from then on. And in terms of that, I would have coached a lot of swimmers over your over your time. I know one of the things that you focus a lot on is their personal growth

and development of your of your swimmers outside of the physical development and strength development, which I think is a huge, a huge part of developing any athlete, especially one that’s going to be able to stick around long term. And it’s going to be able to have the mental, the mental toughness to be able to race well and train well. What were some philosophies or strategies that you developed over time to help with that personal growth side of things and develop that in your swimmers?

Well, I think one really important thing, it’s a chapter on it early in my book. It’s on developing team consciousness. And I think it’s very important to educate people all along the way to develop that team consciousness. And hopefully that team consciousness will be an elevated team consciousness as well, where you’re really trying to improve yourself to whatever level you can reach. And that starts with imposed discipline. Of course, when you’re kind of letting everybody know what you want and how you want them to do things, but if you present it well and you educate well, then I think there’s self-discipline that comes out of that eventually. And that’s what you want is ideally is a team where the discipline and the approach to swimming is building on itself. And the swimmers, the parents, the community are all committed to what you’re doing with that team consciousness. And from then on, it can grow.

It’s slow growth. Generally, I think it takes about three years to actually change a consciousness of a team. And so it’s probably a decade of time before you get them to where you want them to be on the basis of self-discipline rather than imposed. How did you set the standards with your team early on? Do you get everyone together? The parents, the swimmers, sit them down and talk about these are the standards. This is what we require or is there a different strategy that you would use?

Yeah, there’s a fair amount of talk that starts out with the swimmers, of course, dependent on their ages and with the families as well because the families are a very important part of it and the coaching staff as well. So when you’re all kind of coming together and everybody understands what you’re intending for

the team itself and for the groups within the team and for the individuals within the groups, then you have a pretty strong basis to work with.

And then how do you go about pulling people back into line? There’s always swimmers who like to push the boundaries of beard or maybe aren’t fitting in with the team consciousness. What were any sort of strategies or maybe examples of times where someone wasn’t quite playing ball? Yeah, a good example, I guess, is the beginning of practice, to start practice.

I always wanted to start the practice with the group all there and to start the groups with take your mark, go a really great start to start the practice. So there would be swimmers that would not do a great start or lag a little bit, not be on time, those kinds of things, think it was okay, be average or whatever. And I tended not to accept that. So the least you could do is start practice on time and have a good start to my command. And if you did that, the practice was great. And if you didn’t do that, you weren’t in the practice. That was the day you would miss.

I wasn’t loud about it or anything. I just called it out that if somebody was late, I said, come back tomorrow. Somebody did a poor start or wasn’t paying attention.

Either have them do it over, have the group do it over or talk to them about it. Inevitably, I wanted to win that exercise. Is that something that you had to develop over time? Not assertiveness, but that willingness to commit to standards? Or is that something that you found you had straight away when you started coaching?

Probably took about a month to get everybody to where they were

doing what I wanted them to do in the beginning. You know, once everybody understood that it was necessary to be on time and to do that technique well, make it a difference maker in a race potentially, then yeah, it wasn’t too hard to do after that.

And in terms of pushing athletes, I think Swimmers have got to be one of the hardest working athletes on the planet with the amount of training they do, some of the sessions that are involved with it in the early mornings, those sorts of things.

How did you find that balance between pushing athletes to their limit, but not going over the top where they suffered mentally as a result of it? Yeah, it’s really an important element with club kids, especially and I guess with adults too, especially at a master’s level, a lot of them are coming back to swimming and they’ve had a wide variety of experiences with different coaches and that, you know, so yeah, it’s something that you just

have to attend to sort of the way that you do yourself as a coach. So I mean, you’re there the same hours, if not more, probably more. When I owned a business, it was a lot more.

But yeah, so the important thing I think is to keep it in perspective, to understand that it’s not always. I mean, you hear Swimmers describe what they do, they’ll go like, you know, we practice every morning and every afternoon and we do dry land and, you know, we practice and go to meets on the weekends and, you know, we don’t have time for anything else. And that’s really not the case. It’s not quite true. So you have to keep it in perspective. There are periods of time where you’re doing that kind of training possibly.

The one thing that makes you appreciate it is if you don’t have the pool time and you don’t have the opportunity to do it, you start worrying about whether you’re going to perform or not. And I’ve had that situation too. So yeah, but you keep it in perspective. You don’t feel sorry for yourself. Talk to them about that. There’s no need for it. If you want to be competitive, that’s the nature of the competitive development as you come along. So yeah, I think it’s just a matter of, you know, you’ll have an individual or maybe even a few that are feeling sorry for themselves, you know, and not responding the way you want them to, and you pull them out and you go, you know, you’re feeling kind of sorry for yourself. You need to cut it out. You know, if you don’t want to do this, you can go home. You don’t have to. Nobody’s forcing you, you know, but if you want to do it, then do it well. You know, so that’s kind of the approach that I use.

And going on to stroke mechanics and developing that in athletes, what was your philosophy in developing good technique and efficiency with swimmers and marrying that up with the hard work as well? Because they’re both really important. You can’t have one without the other. But sometimes I find that can be a bit of a challenge because you want to get the work done. You want to train them hard. But we also need to make sure that the technique is up to scratch as well. So what was your approach there and philosophy in developing that?

Yeah, so the first thing that we would do is to create a system of nomenclature or terms that we used, you know, to be able to swim well. So the first one is balance. And we define balance as a leveraging process rather than, you know, the head altogether doing it. So we want the head in line with the spine, but the balance points surround the lungs. So you can press in at the balance points that surround the lungs that, you know, depending on where you are in the stroke, and it sort of leverages the lower body up. So you don’t have to, you know, like lift the head for breath or pull yourself up for breath or over kick, you know, to keep the body up. You can leverage yourself in the water. It’s kind of counterintuitive. Most people do have the instinct to lift the head or press downward on the water to be able to

get themselves to breath. But if you learn to balance well, then you can do it without that. We generally start balance on the back for new swimmers. And new swimmers would be people I haven’t coached before as well, even if they’ve been swimmers for a long time. But we can find that balance pretty easily pressing the back of the head and the back into the water and feeling the hips and the legs come to the surface. Likewise, if you’re in balance and then you lift the head or lift your body up, you’ll feel your body go down. So, you know, balance is a very important element. We have a statement that we make all the time, which is a longer vessel is faster than a shorter vessel. And we show them how if they’re balancing on kicking on their backs, and they rotate to the side, keeping their arms at the side, and then lengthen the arm, then right away, they can feel the difference in speed. So a longer vessel faster than a shorter vessel to the extent that you

to the extent that you can make it as long as can be dependent on the stroke.

And then it’s the third thing is to coordinate the hips to that recovering arm and that lengthening arm so that it’s driving that part of the body forward. Swimmers tend to instinctively pull on the water, you know, think I’ve got to pull hard or pull fast. But we take the other side to try to create efficiency and speed as well as we can without the pull being the primary factor. We do talk about feel for the water, you want to hold the water again, purchase on it, and then let it move at the speed of your hand or your hips and your body to create that that efficiency and timing. As long as you’ve got the hips in the right place at the right time and you initiate the movement at the right place at the right time for freestyle, we do that in what we call the front quadrant. And that’s as you know, you’ve got the

the arm that’s lengthened out in front of you and you wait until the recovery comes to the entry point and then you’re in the front quadrant and you put it all together right there.

I’m related to kayaking a little bit because I’ve kayaked a fair amount and you can gain much more power in the kayak if you concentrate on the side that you’re pushing on. So if you just gain purchase with the paddle, paddle holds the water and you push on the other side, that movement will give you much more power than just to pull on the paddle. So I liken it to that and they seem to understand that. And then the last thing, and once you’ve got yourself balanced and timing, then you can start working on the combination of stroke length and stroke rate to find the optimal balance between the two for speed. And that takes a while for some swimmers, not so much for the really great swimmers naturally, which is probably about 2% of people. But the 98% of us, you know, take time and if we forget about it and go back to our instincts, we’ll lose it as well. So it needs to be reinforced. I just want to go back to the

kayak section that you’re talking about there. So for those that are that are listening to the podcast, you’re saying if you’re kayaking, you’ve got your paddle, let’s say on your right side, it’s in the to the right of you. And then you’re talking about on, so you’ll let the left side of your body trying to drive that forwards or you’re talking about the right side. So yeah, so most people will just pull on the paddle, you know, right and left or right and left. But if you rather think about putting the paddle into the water at the place where you put it, and rather than thinking about pulling on the paddle, you use your hip that’s on the other side and that arm to push the paddle forward, then you create and generate a lot more power. Likewise, too, you can feel the length of vessel, too. If you have a longer kayak, it moves faster than a shorter kayak. I have a 19 foot and a 13 and a half foot. And I had I lived on a reservoir in Virginia, and it would take me two hours to

kayak from one end of the reservoir to the other and the 13 and a half foot, it would take me an hour and 40 minutes and an 18. Yeah, interesting. That’s a great analogy with the kayak, because obviously, I say that a lot when I’m coaching with swimmers who have very little connection in their stroke where the arms are moving through, but it’s not connected to the body. And trying to train that and develop that in people who don’t have a swimming background as a kid is one of the challenges that we work on people with and hopefully help them with. Are there any particular drills or strategies you had there to help them with that side of things?

Yeah, like with freestyle, we’re starting on the back and then rotating to the side and kicking, and then we’ll do what we call a triple switch where without a breath, we’ll go three strokes and try to feel that movement in the three strokes and then go to breath because breath usually interrupts things. So it’s a little bit easier if you can take a few strokes and then get your breath. And then once you get your breath started again, regain your balance, then three strokes. If it’s backstroke, we like to watch the recovery too. I believe in visual awareness. And if you can see what you’re doing and you have a purpose, then you can develop timing a lot more easily than just trying to feel it. So for backstroke, we’ll focus on the recovery arm as it’s coming over and try to time the hips so it’s moving with the recovery arm as we see it come through our field of vision. And that really creates a timing and we’ll do

a similar thing, a three kick switch, or we’ll do single arm where we’re turning the hip and rotating and seeing the recovery arm, that kind of thing. Yeah, with breaststroke and butterfly, we want the hips high as the arms are extended, you know, so that’s kind of our starting point. And then a lot of it has to do with first getting the hips in the right place at the right time, but the second thing is breath. So with butterfly, you don’t want to interrupt the flow of the stroke by having a high breath or lifting the chest up to breathe, just extend the chin to the water surface, you know, and try to keep your line going with the rhythm of the stroke. And for breaststroke, it’s most important that you breathe as the arms are coming on the end sweep so that it naturally the end sweep brings you to the breath, you’re not lifting the head to get to the breath, you’re taking the breath as your arms bring you to it. And then the other part of timing

in breaststroke is to try to get the feet to recover as the hips are moving downward. So it’s not you pulling your feet up, it’s letting them come to you as a result of the hips

depressing in the water. So once you’ve got the timing on it, it’s really,

it feels miraculous really, you know, because breaststroke I think is the hardest stroke to time. Well, we do drill in the deep end, we call seahorse, where we’ll just lay flat, you know, with the upper body flat on the surface of the water and the head down and the high knee sort of the butt at the surface. And then we’ll let the arms sweep out slowly and then take a fast end sweep, drive the hips and just feel the feet come to you, you know, the recovery of the feet. So you’re not, you know, having to work to get them up, they’re coming up on their own. This episode is brought to you by Pillar Performance. Our new sponsors Pillar are a sports micronutrition company. And the easiest way to describe it is that while hydration and carbohydrates products will take you through to touch the wall as fast as possible, Pillar’s mission is to get swimmers to the starting blocks in the best condition over and over again. I recently started taking Pillar triple magnesium after a

friend had recommended it, and it’s been a game changer for my sleep and recovery. I take one scoop 30 minutes before bed each night in the same way that you might start your day with a coffee, I finish it up with the magnesium and recover better for tomorrow’s session in the pool. Pillar Performance is used by some of the biggest names in swimming and triathlon, including Zach Stubble to cook, Jan Frodeno, Ben Canute, Ash Gentle, Taylor Nib amongst the host of other well known swimmers and triathletes. Where Pillar differs from other micronutrition you may have taken before is both the quality of the types of magnesium and the tangible results that I see on my garment each morning. If you’d like to try Pillar today, head to pillarperformance.shop and enter code effortless for 15% off. That’s effortless for 15% off all first time purchases or for anyone in North America, enter the same code at thefeed.com. And you mentioned you sort of like to train things visually. In terms of

visualization, was that something that you used with your swimmers in their race preparation, in their stroke development? Yeah, it is a lot, quite a bit really. We used to, I’ve done a lot with it, had some interesting stories that go with that too. It’s really a powerful element. I had, we did, going into a YMCA Nationals, I was coaching a team that was YMCA at the time, and we did visualization for five minutes before every practice for a season, you know, the short course season going into YMCA Nationals. And I did it five minutes and I would call out every 30 seconds and I would have them, you know, ask them to visualize.

We of course get into a relaxed state first and, you know, have it very quiet and everything. So, it was all set up to visualize. And we had some interesting things happen. I had a boy that wanted to go under two minutes for 200 a.m. And he visualized 158 all the time. And he was like a 205, 200 a.m. or, you know, so big drop. He didn’t actually break two minutes. He went two minutes plus. But he got under the flags right at the end of the race and his freestyle stroke just stopped for a, you know, just a blink of an eye. Yeah, you could see him, his stroke interrupted because that’s where he had visualized that to happen. That was pretty cool. And yeah, another swimmer had actually made the Olympic team and swam in Australia. And when she made the team Olympic trials, she said, you know, she swam for Auburn. She was swimming for Auburn at the time. But she had been with me from eight to 18 years old. And she had done a lot of visualization

stuff. And after she made the team, she called me and she said, I just got to tell you something. And she goes, I really, I swim every single race, the preland, the semifinal and the final exactly like I wanted to swim it. And I made the team and I didn’t know if I would make the team. And it didn’t matter really, as long as I swam, my race is the way that I had visualized it and thought about it. She goes, I thought about that race every day for a year, just in my mind. And so I made the team. I was happy. So then I got into the Olympic procedures and also we went, you know, from Indianapolis to California to Hawaii to Australia. And I was with all these heroes of mine that I had known growing up and stuff. And we were getting all this uniform and everything. She goes, it happened so fast. The next thing I knew, I’m walking out for the semifinals. And I realized I had not thought about this race even one time, that whole time. And she said, I would then

announce me, I was put taking off my uniform. And I was more tired at that moment than I was all the way through Olympic trials. I never felt that. And she didn’t swim well. She went out, she said, I was dead tired at 75 meters. She says, just because I didn’t pay attention to what I was supposed to do, you know, and they did a visualization at Auburn. So, you know, she was used to it, but the Olympic staff or whoever she had coaching her, I don’t remember who it was, during the preparation for the Olympics, didn’t do it. You know, and she didn’t think about it. It’s pretty fun. I remember when I was 15, we were doing a lot of visualization, usually once a week. And I would visualize swimming the 400 medley at Nationals. And I wanted to go, I think I wanted to go a 441. That was my goal. And I ended up swimming a 443 in the finals at Nationals. But that was a big stretch from what I thought up was possible. And I think the visualization for me, just when I was in the race, I’ve

been here before. I know what to expect. I know how it should feel, how it should look. And I found it’s such a useful process in my training and in my development. I would go to bed as well a lot of nights and just kind of picture or visualize parts of the race as well. And in a session, if it’s like a breaststroke set, I’d be picturing myself in that race again, just trying to put myself there as much as possible. And I credit the visualization to having my best result ever in the in a competition. Like it was just it helped help that much. And it’s something that as an adult, you know, we have other responsibilities and things where I don’t don’t really visualize much these days. But it’s something that I should, I think, you know, it’s just sometimes we just get distracted by by other things. But it’s just so so powerful when I think back to when I have used it previously in life. It’s been very beneficial.

Yeah, I think I think it needs to be combined also with your goal setting. So when your goal setting that needs to be very detailed, I think. And you need to know, have a good idea at least for how you want to swim the event, you know, ultimately, whether you want to build the event and split it or whether you want to, you know, take it out fast and hold on, or whether you’re going to just flow with the race or whatever. But you need to practice that way every day, I think. And that sort of strengthens the visualization as well. You know, as if you’ve got that firmly in your head from your practice, from your deliberate practice, it’s things to like, you know, you’re going to really try to win the turn, you’re going to be great underwater, you want to take, you know, eight kicks underwater, whatever, you know, you need to be doing that, you know, in your practice. And when you’re doing it in your practice, and then you visualize on top

of that, and you see it in your mind, the two go together, you know, so they come out a really dynamic duo. So it’s been, I think, you know, really gives you a good effort, you know, when it comes to race time. And even things like knowing, thinking about how you’ll maybe feel in the moment, what you’ll be wearing, what you’ll be smelling, what you’ll be seeing, just trying to make it as visual as tangible as possible. And adding those other elements in too can really help as well. And I did a, I did a couple of talks recently to some schools. And I, like just on sort of just I’m talking about effortless swimming and things like that, like different career paths for people. And this is, this is out of my comfort zone. I can talk freestyle, I can talk swimming all day, but talking about something that’s kind of a bit different, I was quite nervous about it. So I made sure to write everything down, rehearse it several times and just picture myself giving this

talk and just just rehearsing and practicing. And so by the time I got there, it pretty much went to went to plan, because I’d rehearsed it and, and it kind of visualized what it, what I hope it would, how I hope it would go. And, and then like it, and it was quite fun. It was quite enjoyable. But anytime where I have not prepared, it’s just like, it just, it doesn’t go well. It’s just, it’s not a fun experience. So yeah, it’s stuff that can be used in, in other elements of, of life as well. And I think I just have to remind myself, you know, whatever, whatever those goals are that I’ve got one year, three years out, just remember to like visualize them too. Because yeah, it’s easy. I think it’s easy when you’re in the system, you know, you’ve got a coach there who’s helping you guide you through this. But then when we, we don’t have for someone else to kind of answer to or giving us direction, that’s when it can,

can fall the way a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. It’s a very powerful tool when used along with everything else you’re doing. And in terms of developing confidence in, in swimmers and, and in athletes, how, what are some strategies that you’ve used for to help develop that in, in swimmers? Because you can see when someone’s on fire, like an athlete who’s on fire, let’s like Leon March on, for example, like he just, he was on fire at the Olympics. When someone’s got that confidence in themselves, they, they can really perform well. But then, you know, people can go through the opposite of that where they’re just really struggling to get up and race and hit their times. Was there any sort of strategies that you would use to help develop that confidence in your swimmers? Well, yeah, I think the first one is to learn to think about what you want, not what you don’t want. So a lot of swimmers, I mean, it’s probably

human nature. Some people will tend to, you know, think about what they want to happen and focus on the positive. And others will be afraid of what they don’t want to happen. You know, unusually, if they’re concentrating on the wrong thing, then that’ll affect their performance, you know, they’ll be, you know, sort of holding back, so to speak, because they’re thinking about the wrong things. And did you ever see the movie Point Break? Yeah, the, the, yeah, the original one? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So there’s a point in the movie where, you know, Counter Reeves is, he’s going to jump out of the airplane, they’re flying an airplane, and he’s going to jump out, he has to jump out. And he’s standing at the opening and Patrick Swayze says to them, don’t think about what you’re afraid of. Your worst fears will come to, you know, come true if you do. Think about what you want, you know, and I thought, golly, well, that’s profound, you know. And so he goes ahead and he jumps out of the plane,

everything happens, you know, as it happens. But that’s really, I mean, that’s really what it’s all about, you know, you can’t be afraid of what you don’t want to happen. You just have to keep your focus on what you want. Everybody can do a start, everybody can swim, everybody can do a turn, everybody can finish, you know. Usually people don’t have any fears when they’re swimming against people they know are slower than them. And they don’t really have much fear when they’re swimming with their equals and they know it, you know, but when you’re swimming with people you don’t know or you think might be faster than you, that’s when it comes in, you know. So you got to, you know, keep your mind on what you want. And the other thing I think is important is how you deal with failure. And it’s necessary to fail.

Everybody’s going to fail at one time or another either in practice or in, you know, a meet or whatever. But I think of failure as a positive attempt. You know, if you’re trying to do what you want to do and you can’t quite do it, you know, for one reason or another on a given day or, you know, you’ve tried a number of days and it’s not happening. All of those are really positive attempts that allow your body and your nervous system to release itself to a higher level of performance. And you have to kind of go through that. And we call it overcoming neurological inhibition. It’s just your body kind of having a governor on it, like for a car or something, you know, and you have to overcome that. And it’s going to probably require some failure for that to happen. It’s not a negative thing. It’s a very positive thing. It’s just depending on how you perceive it. A coach that he does a little bit of coaching it out at our camp.

So Gary Hurring, he would talk about the pit of discomfort that you go through. Whenever you make any changes to your stroke, you’re going to be in this zone and this place that it’s uncomfortable. It’s awkward. It doesn’t feel good. But if you persist long enough, you will come out the other side of it having changed those habits and improved your stroke. But just knowing what to expect when you’re looking to make those changes can help you stick with it and push through because we just it’s like a rubber band. We just want to kind of go back wants to go back to its original shape. But if you just continue to stretch it and be comfortable doing that, then it’s going to stay stay stretched out for afterwards, right? So it’s, yeah, it’s something that I think is good to let people know about as they’re going to go through any any stroke changes or they’re looking to develop themselves as a swimmer.

But it’s kind of like climbing a mountain with a yo-yo. They’ll be ups, they’ll be downs. But if you just continue on, that trajectory is going to be in an upwards direction. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. I really believe in that and try to help my swimmers believe in same thing. And in terms of advice you would give to say new new coaches or so even if it’s not coaching, but just some a couple of lessons that you look back on your your career with that you’d want someone to know if they were starting out in that in coaching. Well, I think to research and to study and learn as much as you can is the most important thing. And it’s been my observation, not only of a lot of coaches on the deck, but myself as well, that when I was not very knowledgeable, I tended to be a lot more emotional in how I was acting on the deck and that. And I recently was described as being a man who seemed to be stoic when the

swimmers were swimming. And I didn’t really think about myself that way. But I think that the more you know, the more you’re watching, the more you’re studying the performance as it happens. So, you know, when you’re trying to cheer them on when you’re younger and you don’t know very much. And by the time you’ve got some years of experience and some knowledge behind you, then you’re watching the performance to see how those things are playing out. And it’s a busy time because you might have, you know, three people in the water and you’re watching their mechanics, you’re watching the flow of the race, you’re watching the time on the splits, you know, you’re watching turns and what happens in and out of those and the finish. And there’s a lot to pay attention to in a given race. And oftentimes you’re watching more than one person. So there’s really not a lot of time to run up and down the deck and cheer for

people. You know, they know, they don’t hear it anyway, you know, they know you’re doing it maybe, but, you know, if they’ve seen you do it with other swimmers or whatever. But for the most part, it’s a waste of time, I think it’s better to study and then to have something to give them, you know, some important feedback afterward. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely agree. Well, Dudley, thank you so much for being on the podcast. For those that are listening, we’ll link to your book in the show notes, The Art of Swimming and the Game of Racing and it’s available through Amazon and we’ll link to your website there. So Dudley, thank you very much for being a guest. Anything we haven’t covered so far that you’d like to add?

No, I think the questions were really excellent. And, you know, we talked about things that matter. The book is obviously a lot more detailed. The information is, I think, of a broader nature than just competitive swimming, things like team consciousness and deliberate practice and the mental game. We have a saying, no brain, no game, you know, that we use all the time. So I’ve written all over the place, you know, so, I mean, it’s things that really apply in other fields other than swimming as well. So yeah, I hope everybody will enjoy reading it. Awesome. Thank you very much, Dudley. Talk to you soon. Appreciate the time. Thank you.

I think what is fascinating and I think the more people that see what happened, we posted on Instagram a little interview and some shots of you swimming and stuff, is that there’s everybody can always learn something and I think having you in the pool was so great to see that there’s always something to find and you could get in the pool with me for the next 30 years and we’d always at least find something to work on to improve on and I think that’s it’s such a great way to feel because there’s never any end to this journey you know I get it sometimes and I have the coaches look at me and you know I’m like you know I’ll play and yes I need to do that welcome to the effortless swimming podcast to show that helps swimmers and triathletes love the water become a better swimmer and live a better life here’s your host Brenton Ford welcome to this week’s episode of the effortless swimming podcast my guest today is four-time guest Tracy Bowman on this episode we’re talking

about the speed equation your combination of stroke length and stroke rate and how to find that sweet spot for whatever distance or whatever effort you’re doing this is really the art of it this is the art of swimming where we want to develop good technique but then in order to swim faster we need to make sure that we maintain that technique but we consider the stroke rate side of the equation so on this episode Tracy and I talk about how to find that sweet spot some sets and some ways that you can practice this and find this in training and some ways that you can develop gears in your swimming if you find that you’re stuck and you can’t get faster and you’ve only got this one speed that you’re always stuck in how can you actually go about developing those different gears so let’s jump into the episode with Tracy Bowman welcome to the effortless swimming podcast my guest today is someone who’s been in

the podcast three times before this is the fourth time Tracy welcome back to the effortless swimming podcast lovely to be here again thank you for inviting me back we’ve just got back from me visiting you up in Brisbane at your studio there we did a bit of what you did a bit of coaching in the endless pool there which was which was terrific be good to talk a little bit about that session the setup that you’ve got and then what I want to get into after that is something that we didn’t get to cover in the third episode of our series which is the speed equation stroke length stroke rate how do we find that sweet spot in between and how do we start to move the needle on either of those so that we can ultimately get faster so let’s just talk about that well that session there so I came up that’s great swimming the pool for about an hour and just had you doing some filming and coaching on on my stroke which was really bizarre because I do it

all the time for other people and then to be on the other end of it it was just weird and I found myself smiling and laughing underwater because I’m just like this is just this is such a bizarre thing to be getting at myself so and maybe what did you what did you first notice when you’re watching me swim just about aside from how good I looked when I was swimming you know just aside from all of that not yeah of course I think I think what is fascinating and I think the more people that see what happened we posted on Instagram a little interview and some some shots of you swimming and stuff that there’s everybody can always learn something and I think having you in the pool was so great to see that there’s there’s there’s always something to find and you could get in the pool with me for the next 30 years and we’d always at least find something to work on to improve on and I think that’s it’s such a great way to feel because there’s never any end to this journey

you know I get it sometimes and I have the coaches look at me and you know and I’m like you know halfway and yes I need to do that I didn’t notice that so I think it was just another reminder of this whole journey to mastery which is why I named my company it is that by definition you never reach it and that just really stuck out when you you got in the pool swim absolutely beautifully and yet when we dialed it down and looked at the timing and stuff we could find things that could make you feel even better in the water yeah it’s uh what I what I really liked about it was obviously just having someone give me feedback because I’ve seen myself swim a bit here and there I noticed a few things but it’s so good to get someone else to to look at it and the first thing that you notice was my well my breath timing was a little bit late and so I was lifting my head a bit and it was just throwing the stroke out in particular my catch on my right side

which I I sort of had a feeling about like I sort of felt like and I’ve seen it before that my catch when I breathe is often just not very good and uh but I yeah it’s something that I just hadn’t really been told or sort of noticed myself when I’d seen it um do you want to talk about maybe the what we went through there just to help yeah work on that and what was what is really fascinating is that you know when you when you watch somebody swim you know you first of all kind of go big picture and then you you’re able to zone in and what I kind of do is I do a kind of big picture scan zone into where the what’s happening and then scan out again and kind of see the direction of energy so the movement that the swimmer is is making and that was really um with your um breath it was really obvious how it was diverting your direction of the energy that was kind of the first thing that um I really noticed and in the endless pool it just accentuates

eights it because obviously you’ve got the currents like having your own little studio and inbuilt you know scientific experiments so you know when when we notice that and then we make the changes not only did I see more fluidity in your stroke but you felt less bumpiness in your stroke so both from what I was seeing and what you were feeling as we changed the timing of that breath because yeah it was almost like you would you were performing the stroke and it was I mean I’m exaggerating a lot because you’re an excellent swimmer but just as as a way of thinking about it you were performing the stroke and then going oh yeah I know what it is I forgot to turn my head to the breath kind of thing and as soon as we pointed that out and got you to go earlier earlier earlier still you could feel the fluidity in your stroke within the current and so it kind of gave you I I think the confidence to know that that was

improving your your your technique and therefore direction of it yeah what I noticed there was when I did get it I could really tell it just felt in sync felt very in tune and very smooth and I also felt like my catch was just a lot but was a lot better that just happened naturally when I got it right and the other thing I noticed too is I did have to exaggerate it a lot and I talk about that with a lot of the swimmers when we run clinics is is a great chance you’re gonna have to dial it up two three five times how much you think you need to to make the change and that was certainly the case with just turning my head before and I don’t know if I got this exactly right but this is kind of what stuck with me is the the head leads the hand or the head leads the arm there’s something along those lines that you use so so what you want to what you want to try and do and it’s it’s always interesting when coaching people is making sure that the words

the words that I say are not going to cause any long-term problems so I have to be really mindful of what I’m saying because as you rightly pointed out it often has to be a purposeful exaggeration to begin with because it’s so different I mean how many hundreds and thousands of strokes have you taken in the past doing that breath timing and so we have to go wacky to to break the kind of interrupt the pattern if you like however a pattern interrupt has to be something that’s going to interrupt a pattern but not cause a problem so you know what what I always do is because what we want to make sure is that the the turn of that head is going with the whole body rotation so we want to try not necessarily connected up to arms because that goes outside in and we want to make sure we stay coaching from the inside out so what we want to do is time it with the rotation but I give so so what like I did with you is I get you to exaggerate exaggerate

more exaggerate more and tell me how it feels and then you’ll tell me which one felt the best and I think with you um the earlier still was the one that was better so you didn’t you had to go quite far and then eventually you you’ll be able to back off to just early and eventually it’ll just be what what your stroke is but timing it to the rotation is going to keep you connected as you go through this kind of almost recalibration of your spirit level is kind of how I just and the other thing that I was doing was looking a little bit far behind me instead of going to the side and when you have me work on it the first breath that I took you stood where you wanted me to look and yeah and I remember you waved and I was like that made me laugh but I’m like damn it like I remember that I like you got me that that that really made it stick so like so that’s it just that in itself I thought was a really yeah it’s just such a useful way of having me remember it and actually

no I know where to look as well yeah it’s a really great thing you can do in like if you’re doing workshops as partner people up and have them just do sort of six strokes three breaths to one side and have them walk next to each other and show a number with their fingers so it could be two four five whatever and then they have to stand up and it just just keeps the focus but it also gives them a way to observe the other person as well so if they’re doing the fingers they’re observing what the other person is and then they have a go and look at the fingers it’s just some lovely fun ways you can help people to know where they’re going and where they should be going and then the other one was or the other sort of cue or phrase you used was fingernails forward from from memory yeah so do you want to talk a bit about that that and what the the purpose behind that was yeah so the reason why I was getting you particularly and you know each

each one to one lesson is going to be personalized and so for you I could see that your right catch wasn’t as effective as your left catch so your left catch is amazing as this most incredible pathway and the right catch you were slightly collapsing at the elbow going wide and you know long-term that’s not going to be great for your shoulder but it’s also not as effective so as I was sorting out the breathing timing I was just wanting to take the streamline if you like along for the ride so that we could maintain the joint mechanics as you recalibrated your your breath timing because obviously you know the brain is always connecting what’s happening all the time and if we move one thing then the other one that’s kind of like going well what does that mean for me and so giving it a job means that you keep everything going together so I had you doing that so essentially you know from if you’ve read the book it’s

essentially maintaining the middle and in your case middle and right trident prongs so that we maintain the whole unit going forwards during that breath so that it can tap into the perfect um catch mechanics once you’ve done the breath yeah that’s it yeah yeah it was and it was it was really good and when I got it all sinking together like there was some some strokes that just felt really really good and you just flew through the machine right like I was on the button going whoa I can’t keep up with you yeah being able to just make sure you’re going to actually see that you’re going faster because you can set the speed was a was a big one and I mentioned this before our call but um there’s been moments in some sessions since that where the stroke has felt really really good and yeah so I’m excited to just keep working you know working with those couple of things and then just seeing that seeing where that takes me so it’s

and it’s just so funny being on the other side of it because like it’s been a couple weeks since our session I’ve had some swims or parts of sessions where I like well okay this is feeling great other ones where I’m just it’s not quite clicking because I’m maybe fatigued there’s a lot of people in the lane or it’s just it’s one of those sessions but it’s getting more consistent and like it’s just it’s not it’s not going to happen all the time so of course yeah and how’s the breath stroke going because we popped a little brushstroke in there because you mentioned that you were having a little bit of pain have you managed to do any of that just that pain gone hopefully yeah yeah no so with the breath stroke occasionally I would get some pain in my most of my left shoulder in the out sweep and what you noticed was I was turning my hands out too much and putting too much pressure on in the out sweep so the the phrase you used was like like flattening out a

tablecloth yeah tablecloth which was which was a really good visual cue for me and it’s been been really good since so it’s like I’m starting to get used to that I don’t really do much time stuff with breath stroke but in terms of like pain no there’s nothing there and I’m actually applying that to my butterfly because typically my fly yeah typically my fly I think I just put too much pressure on when my hands are overhead or above my head so I’ve just been yeah just reducing that and trying to only really put the pressure on once my hands are a bit below my shoulders yeah fantastic so um yeah that was yeah very very helpful so I appreciate that it was really no worries anytime let’s get into the the speed equation so when you when you think about something when you talk about something it can be very simple if we go it’s just a combination of stroke length and stroke rate so let’s just improve each of those and we’ll be going faster which is true

but there’s a lot more that that goes into it what’s how do you sort of typically look at the speed equation and what’s your approach to it so the first thing that I do is I add one more metric to the speed equation so I have stroke rate stroke count SPL and so let’s I we tend to talk in words tempo and SPL strokes per length and then something we call RPE rate of perceived effort and it’s the the combination of those three the best possible combination of those three for any given distance that everybody’s looking for and once they’ve got those then the byproduct of that will always be sweet speed because it’s a maths equation but we have to bring in RPE to that because otherwise it might not be sustainable depending on what what the distance is that you that you want to swim yeah so that uh rate of perceived exertion very important fact of it and how what are some common mistakes or pitfalls that you

see when people are considering each of these different parts of it well I find it fascinating is and you you know I think just in life in general we often feel this you can I can say to you you know and ring a ring of rosies or something to you and whatever I say to you is going to go through your filters or your patterns your this and you might hear something like come to you don’t just have to know I don’t know and and and I find it really fascinating when we start talking about metrics in in the pool that that really happens a lot so I can say so what I want you to do is I want you to find your best possible stroke um SPL for for the length and at your fastest possible tempo with your best RPE and we’re going to find that magic number and we’re going to work on it and all they hear best possible SPL and they go to the pool and they do everything to try and get down to zero guys no we don’t want to get down to

zero we’re finding it’s it’s got to be a combination of all of them and equally so you know if they hear the word stroke rate and then they’re in in the pool just trying to up their stroke rate and but nothing else is involved in that equally one will cause over gliders and the other one’s going to cause cause spinners and we don’t want either we want that beautiful happy medium in the middle where we have people with who are swimming with perpetual motion at their they’re at their most efficient and therefore hopefully they’re fastest once they get their math so I think that’s the biggest common error I see when people start working with this stuff yeah I think I think it tends to always skew to people trying to increase their stroke length like if they just always like tend to go too far with that how to swim at a clinic on the weekend and he he was an over glider he was he was rotating way too far he was losing his balance each side because he was

of the opinion okay I need to get my stroke count down as low as I as low as I can and when we just sort of got rid of that misconception then he start like he’s like okay this is how much we generally want to be rotating side to side we don’t want to go so far where you’re losing your balance and your legs are playing and such a better stroke like just and it floats so much so much better and he actually ended up traveling further with each stroke because he wasn’t losing his balance right yeah yeah so um that’s yeah that’s usually where it’s uh where it tends to to go first and in terms of like a minimum stroke rate or tempo is there sort of a magic number where like okay this is this is just too low and we always just want to look at bringing it up because I have seen people who might have a stroke rate of like 40 two individual strokes 43 individual strokes per minute but they just lose so much speed and momentum that they’re like we kind of

have to work on that first yeah do you sort of have a magic number there or anything that you think of again the magic number is individual and because everything and and you can’t even go by height or wingspan because you know every single person’s body makeup is completely different they have a longer torso shorter legs longer feet shorter feet shorter arms you know whatever it is that they have that they bring to the table is is just personal to them and so so it’s very difficult to put out some kind of generic charts and say oh you should fit within this because often people don’t necessarily fit within it and then we’re sort of almost putting them into a container that doesn’t allow them to actually be the best swimmer and the fastest swimmer that they can be so the way we always practice it is if you’re always working on stroke count and tempo with a tempo trainer then you can’t ever go too slow or with a too low stroke count because

the beat of the tempo trainer will work we always work on mode one so that we can that in order to minimize these risks and if you’re always doing that you can’t go wrong you can only get better so if you just do one of them in isolation then you then you can create errors but together it’s really difficult to create errors because you’ve got accountability with one or the other keeping you on track so to speak this podcast has brought you by great ocean wetsuits an up and coming Australian performance wetsuit brand for triathletes and open water swimmers the wetsuits are designed and tested in Melbourne Australia for fast easy and enjoyable swimming for athletes of all levels they’re worn in and raced by Olympians triathletes and open water swimmers from all over the world and you can currently get 20% off either the gold or silver wetsuit models using our own code f at 20 at checkout at greatoceanwetsuits.com

and no matter where you are in the world if you’re in Australia, the US, Europe there’s free shipping worldwide so get yourself a great ocean wetsuit I personally use the gold model of the wetsuit it just depends on what your goals are I know you’ll like them in terms of sets and things like that is there a certain is there a particular set or style of set that you would use with people to help them work out where that sweet spot is depending on the effort and distance yeah so there’s not a particular one so I have here I was talking to you earlier this this book that I created with a colleague of mine and Pam and we created this set book this is a book of 12 sets with all different things and you can just see baby as I’m showing here the different color coding are pointing to different parts of the metrics different types of metrics so what we’re doing the whole time is we’re working through we’re working people through all of the metrics and we we work on

six we’ve got six metrics that we that we work on all together and we want to make very well-rounded swimmers and the only way to do that is to obviously work on the technique as a whole and then work on all the metrics as as a whole so we have we have baseline test swims we have higher low tempo threshold kind of things to find out where their their tempo ranges for now find out where their stroke count ranges are for them and then the idea is is that whatever sets they do from there on in is about learning how to push those ranges because obviously the bigger the range that they can use on both the stroke count and the tempo with rpe always as a measure the faster that they are going to be able to swim because it is just a math equation and so when you’re talking about having them swim with a bigger range talking in terms of like both right like 60 strokes a minute up to 70 strokes a minute but also like being able to not spin the wheels but just be able to sort of

shorten your stroke a little bit and just maybe put a little bit less pressure on the water and then taking longer longer bigger strokes with a bit more power that sort of thing is that what you’re referring to yes so so absolutely and like I say we always use the tempo trainer on mode one so we always talk about seconds per stroke so we’ll take you know for some of my clients you know and it’s very dependent on the person i have them swimming anywhere from 0.85 stroke every 0.85 seconds to anything to 1.7 and everything in between and counting their strokes and some can’t do that range some some have a very small range to begin with and and the whole thing is is how low can you go how high can you go and how can you push those barriers with with the RPE because there’s so much to learn at both ends of the spectrum you know I had a lesson with well not a lesson we just went for a swim with a colleague the other day and they were like oh I don’t want to do these

really slow tempos like I can do fast tempos why would I do slow tempos so I went that’s always a challenge for me if someone questions them like well let’s have a go have a go and then let’s have a have a conversation so we went through the low tempos I got it going down to to 1.6 165 17 and it was fascinating all the the the parts of her stroke that suddenly be she became much more aware of them because she had more time but also it’s harder to maintain your body position at the lower tempo so it highlights where the errors are that this the faster tempos mask so so at the lower tempos we can learn lots about our whether we are actually connected inside or not because if we’re not we’re not going to be able to do them and the RPE is going to shoot through the roof to be able to maintain the correct stroke length and equally so at the faster tempos it also teaches me stuff because if I suddenly put the tempo trainer on it I don’t know

let’s just say for argument sake one so that’d be 60 strokes per minute and my stroke count goes through the roof then I know it’s somewhere at that tempo I’m spinning wheels and I need to go back to my synchronization points and figure out what that is so that I can learn how to do a better stroke count at 60 strokes per minute and watch the RPE come down as a result yeah we we have a set that’s that’s 700s and basically going through I think off the top of my head I think we start at maybe 56 strokes per minute and then we ramp it up or maybe we start at 52 but then we ramp it up by four and so you end up being around like quite high like 84 88 strokes a minute towards the end which is very high for most people but like and just sort of charting it charting the the effort charting the times and the stroke counts and like you can you can see it when people when people hit there hit the top of it the efforts way up there but the strokes are way up

there and the times are either the same or they might actually be getting slower because they’ve really started to often they’re slower yeah yeah and so it’s quite interesting just to track that and to see where that point is that they do that they do drop off in terms of the the tempo trainer what are you using on mode one instead of mode three the reason is is because then my clients or the people who are working in this way can make changes on every single stroke they take because they know what is happening so what I so a couple of things I challenge my students and my swimmers to do is never they’re never allowed to use the watch so they’re not allowed to use stroke counting on the watch they have to count in their head and they have to get so great at counting in their head that they can push off and they can recognize tiles on the floor and know where they should be at that time and know whether they have to make adjustments in their stroke

in the moment and the only way that you can do that is if you have the tempo trainer on mode one and telling you exactly at what point you should beep and you’ve got you’ve learned your stroke count then you’re much more able to change things while you’re going so for example we we do some sets where we say to the swimmers okay I want you to do the same stroke count for the next 10 50s whatever you have to do and you’ve got five seconds rest so I’m putting a rest period in there for example you have to maintain the same stroke count and so what do you have to do in your body and in your stroke to be able to maintain 10 50s on this tempo with five seconds rest on for 10 v’s and they get so good at being able to do that because they’re in the moment often I find when when we’re setting the tempo at something like 50 you know 56 or something they get that it’s they’re getting the data afterwards that they’re not getting the data in the

moment because it’s because the equation is the other way around so that’s the reason so we can make changes during the lap and not just afterwards yeah gotcha and then in terms of say stroke rate changes for open water swimming changes in conditions do you teach your swimmers anything in relation to that or is it more just about like finding finding what fits in the moment like because like I personally find in the open water if I’ve got a wet suit on and I’m in the ocean I’ve got that extra buoyancy I tend to have my stroke rate come up more more more than it does in the pool for say a one kilometer two kilometer race um are you sort of training anything with that or are you just sort of letting it happen once you you start to master that in the pool yeah so I think what we try and what we try and teach the swimmers is to learn how to have different gear gears we call it gears and we give them the different gears

so that when they go into open water situations or race situations they know exactly what to do to tap into those different gears that they may or may not need for example if the water is a bit more choppy they definitely might want to up the stroke rate a little bit and back off on on the pressure on the pressure that they’re applying and they know how to do that um so for sure we want to give them lots of different strategies to be able to deal with different situations I also do a lot of coaching in the open water where I’m coaching the student so obviously they they’ve done all the technique work and they have an idea of tempo and stroke count and and stuff and then we teach them how to work with the water you know if the waves are coming this way we do we swim into them along them around them back from you know with them behind us and stuff and really have them learn how to go with the water rather than try and climb over it so and then we can bring the tempo

into that as well because if you know if the waves are sort of more loping then the tempo will slow down if they’re a little faster you need to speed it up so you can fit into the rhythm of the water so you’re kind of being with the water so that’s a lot of fun in the water camps yeah and it can feel like a fifth stroke in a way the open water swimming and just getting used to getting used to that so it’s you just I find you just can’t be the experience in open water swimming like you just need you need to get out there and do it and get used to that because very there’s not you just can’t do it in the pool it’s just so so different now in terms of developing gears I think that’s one of the like once someone’s got the fundamentals down I think that the ability to be able to change speeds and have more than one speed is just so critical to any sort of progression with your fish swimming yeah so are there types of

like a particular set that comes to mind or a way of approaching that for people yeah um so so we have a couple of sets that that we um tend to build on for for swimmers around gearing one is and this is another reason why we use the tempo trainer on mode one is because if I can if I can start say for I’m going to say come in a 50 meter pool and I’m going to push off and I know that my usual stroke count in it in a 50 is 37 strokes just picking numbers out of a hat and I’ve got the tempo trainer on let’s say keep it some keep the math simple is on one one second per stroke I know that if I can then swim that next lap because I’ve made some changes in my technique um you know any of the changes that I know is going to give me a little bit more stroke length than I can then hit the wall in 36 strokes then I already know I don’t ever have to look at the pace clock I already know I’ve swung that length one second faster because the

tempo trainer’s on mode one it’s telling me I know because I know because of my stroke count and then if I was to push off from all and typically this is the case when you push off and you come back typically we tend to add a stroke and if I’ve lost focus or something and I suddenly do 38 strokes I know that I’ve swung the lap now two seconds slower than the one before and one second slower than the one previous but teaching teaching your student how to really recognize the power of being able to find your stroke count maintain your stroke count and play around with your stroke count at different tempos really get allows them the opportunity to tap in into the gears and then teaching them the sensations of what that feels like when they’re doing it with the tempo trainer take the tempo trainer away and make them repeat it without the tempo trainer and then they use the tempo as the trading chip on how on how to achieve the different gears

because obviously in a race or something they can’t have a tempo trainer and all the while we’re doing this you’re ignoring the pace clock like we never look at the pace clock because it’s just a maths equation I take one stroke less the same tempo I know I’m going faster I take more I know I’m going slower so we kind of we kind of work at it from the other way around so rather than making it all about the pace clock we make it nothing about the pace clock and work towards that being a by-product of getting better at doing these tasks if you like and you know this this is so much of this I was so lucky to learn from from Terry Lachlan for sure you know he was he was the most genius swimmer he could get in a pool and he could say what he was going to do for an hour session and he would just nail it the control and power he had over his mind and his stroke was second to none and my whole life is to try and impart that knowledge and

help other people to achieve what I used to observe Terry achieving it was it was hmm wow I love I do I love the simplicity of of that and having used like use the tempo trainer and then just just stroke count to to get them to almost switch off from thinking about the the speed part of it because one of the things you mentioned on an earlier podcast is we don’t want to chase speed and that’s when people really start to shorten up and they get tense and they rush and they just don’t swim as well and so you know that just really puts them in their mind and in their body about what they need to do to get faster so that’s yeah that’s a really good good approach to it how often would you recommend someone do a set like that is it weekly is it every other week is there so again you know everything is is always I seem to say the same same answer it’s dependent on their journey so somebody who is just starting out learning the technique and there’s

you know if everyone watching this goes back to podcast number one then kind of spend some time working on that stuff and then podcast number two spend some time working on that stuff and then podcast number three I would kind of have them probably start doing some a few sets towards the back end of podcast number two and then once they’ve sort of started working on podcast number three that you and I have done that’s when I would get them to do regular sets so you know the clients that have done that been through that process they’ve really imprinted the new techniques I have them doing two to three sets a week with check-ins you know I do virtual coaching and we do check-ins once a month and I send them sets that I want them to swim over and over again to see where they’re at and push the boundaries you know and and and it’s so fun because never once do I talk about time and you know after a period of time and it’s

different for everyone I start getting messages going oh my gosh it doesn’t matter what I do I can’t swim a hundred slower than one you know than one piece and before they were kind of in the ways and it’s just like oh my gosh I can’t believe it so that’s that’s that’s the idea so you want to build up to be able to do this two to three times a week but starting slowly learning how to do it first like it’s all about learning how to focus the mind and then you can add in the difficulty as you become more attuned to it yeah my my next question was going to be on uh you know if that you get an intermediate swimmer they’re frustrated that they’re not getting quicker what yeah what can they do from there but by the sounds of it it’s well kind of if you go through each the technical things that we spoke about on these on these four episodes and towards the end of that you’re starting to to build in some of these swim sets

sets and sessions and work on those different gears but you really need that the foundation in place before that uh before we start to to look at doing those things. You can add in you can certainly start with stroke counting like having students start learning how to stroke counting in itself because I don’t let people use the watch because it’s meaningless until they can download it so having people learn how to stroke count in the moment is a skill in itself so I like to introduce that metric first because it also gives us a measure kind of gives us a measure of their starting point albeit without the other metrics to start off with and then you know once I can see that they they’re able to stroke count and maintain focus on a cue hard like not easy to begin with that’s that would be for me the measure where I can start work you know giving giving them the set so it will be different for for everybody because it will depend on their mindset largely

rather than their skill. Yeah and in terms of what you’ve learned over the years with this this aspect of it what’s what’s something that you wish everyone would know something that you think like people come into it I’ve got a little bit of an idea okay stroke length stroke rate what’s what’s something that you think most people don’t know but they should. I think that how important working on stroke length and stroke count is over looking at the pace clock I think if swimmers can could wrap when swimmers my experience shows that when swimmers can wrap themselves around that notion to let go of the pace clock then they start going faster and for some people that takes forever some people they can’t stop looking at the pace clock and some people can do it straight away if we could bottle that up and sell it I think people would go faster much much more quickly because we’re terrestrial mammals as soon as we try and go faster as

as you said people just go slower because they disconnect and they start pulling and kicking as fast as they can and just turning up the water and they just see the you know they just see bigger numbers on on the pace clock all the time so I think that would probably be the one thing that’s great one thing that kind of marries up with that too is something you mentioned on the last podcast that was like thinking about what moves me forwards like what like even with the kick and I’ve been doing a little bit of this in in our clinics is if we get someone who we go from a float into just a forward kick or a front kick and I might get one or two swimmers who are kicking and they’re not going anywhere perhaps they’re moving backwards yeah and then just having them think think about and explain well okay the thing that moves you forwards think of your the top of your foot when it kicks down and back that’s that sort of movement that flick is is actually sending you forwards and so

having them think about that and then the thought of okay I want to go forwards here it does something quite magical for a lot of people just like it’s pretty cool yeah that way yeah and you’re not chasing the speed that way but you’re just thinking about the the thing we actually want to do but we don’t actually think about it is going forwards it’s just yeah that to me was a big a big eye opener and a good way to get people to think differently about how they’re approaching this I mean and setting that intention it’s it’s the intention setting it sounds it sounds a little crazy but the intention setting of everything I do in the pool is because I want to go that way faster faster and more efficiently and safely like if we just remember that then everything we do becomes purposeful and not just something we’re trying to execute because we’ve read it in a book or listen to it on a podcast or something but all of these movements will move you forward if you intend them to and allow

them to yeah that was a really a really good one anything we haven’t covered so far that you think could be important to to cover on this topic there’s probably it’s probably done so I think I think we’ve done a really good overview I think what will be really interesting is to hear what questions this brings up with people it’s been so great over the last three podcasts to read the questions that people have been posting and I think it’ll be really interesting to hear the questions that come up from this podcast because that might spark more more opportunities for more discussions going going forwards but I think that’s a really nice sort of introduction I could speak for hours on on this topic and you know we could we could go into the nuts and bolts of of each of those and maybe there’s opportunity to do that in the future but I think for now that’s a really good overview of of some possibilities I’d like to say I

put a link to a book with a discount for you guys and for anybody I think at the moment in Australia located in Australia or UK we will post you one it’s not currently on ebook form but it will be at some point but for now if you’re in Australia or UK we can get those out to you so we can put a link maybe at the end great you’ll put that in the in the show notes if you’re listening and if you are watching this on YouTube or from Spotify or elsewhere jump on to the YouTube if you have any questions put that in the comments below and we can do another episode early next year and we’ll we’ll answer some of those questions whether it’s about this part or anything else from the other other episodes I think that’s a good way to cover off number five yeah there’s so many great questions in in those those last podcasts I keep meaning to find time to go actually and pull out some of the really like and that’s how I learn I learn from people asking

questions because it makes you think and there’s some really great ones in the the last podcast so yeah excited to see these ones Tracy thanks again for for being on love chatting with you and appreciate the the time a few weeks back in in Brisbane so we will put we can put that in the show notes as well just how fantastic to see you there so uh Tracy thanks again my pleasure thank you and have a lovely Christmas with your family thank you you too and thank you for all the opportunities that you’ve given me to be on your podcast this year it’s been so much fun really loved it I’m really glad we got got introduced because all these like opportunities all these like things are just like where my sort of coaching brain tends to go so I got just some of it’s intentional but some of it’s just luck and being introduced to different people and I’m really really glad that we did get introduced because I’ve learnt so

much from uh and ditto right back at you yeah me too awesome thanks Tracy thank you all right thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast if you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

Hello and welcome to the Effortless Swimming podcast. This week we are featuring some of the best bits from 2024. We had dozens of different guests on and we’ve picked out what we think are some of the highlights, some of the best bits from some of those episodes. So it’s like a highlights reel for 2024. And if you have listened to this show once or 100 times, if you haven’t left us a review in the Apple App Store or on Spotify, it would mean a lot to me if you could do that. It helps us out and helps us get in front of more people. I’m looking forward to 2025. We’ve got some big plans for the podcast, our YouTube channel, and then also the clinics and the camps that we run. So if you haven’t joined us on any of those things and you’d like to, you can head to EffortlessSwimming.com. If you’re in Sydney, we’ve added a bunch of more clinic dates for freestyle and fly back and breast through late December and

early January. So if you are in Sydney at that time, come and check us out there and you can find that on our website as well at EffortlessSwimming.com. Let’s get into this week’s episode highlights from 2024. Our first guest is James Lawrence who completed 101 Ironman events in 101 days. I think that’s one of the biggest problems with the distractions of social media. It’s just drawing all of our attention. And it’s funny, I saw a hilarious thing online the other day where someone was like mindfulness. We’re now in a society and a time where we have to intentionally seek out and be mindfulness, meaning like inside of our own thoughts and contemplate and meditation. I’m turning 48 and the person doing the video is about the same age and they were like, back in our day, that was like going to the bathroom. Like you were you were mindfulness. It was like walking outside. It was like, I had to get from point A to point B. Like there

wasn’t anything to really distract us. And so we were mindfulness all the time. And the word didn’t even exist back then is because normal life in society by as a byproduct of it, you had to become mindfulness. There was so many opportunities and moments where you’re just like sitting by yourself in your thoughts, being mindful of who you are, what you’re doing, dreaming. Like, I talk about this from stage like as a society, we have forgotten how to dream. Because we’re so busy, fixated on what other people are doing. And we’re experiencing life through them that like we don’t we’ve we’ve we’ve stopped dreaming. Next up is Sharon Van Roevendale. This was recorded before she won gold at the Olympics in the 10 kilometer open water event. Yeah, I think so sometimes in a race, I have not I don’t have the guts to put the six kick in because if you didn’t use them a lot, sometimes they’re stiff. And then just my feeling says

you’re gonna lactate so much. So I’m training on it. I’m like, so I switched to Germany. And I have a very good kick because I’ve also kicked in France with the shoulder injuries and it kick sets and kick sets and other kicks. So my kick is really good. And I have still those sort of backstroke legs that are really strong. So we’re like, wow, are you not using it? And I said, Yeah, but when I learned swimming, it was like this dance, I went to crossover kick. It’s my it’s my dance. It’s my momentum. How do you want to do like a normal six kick? So when I do the normal six kick, I’m like in slow motion and I still don’t have the rhythm. I can’t find the momentum. It’s just something I can’t find. But when I do the speed now, there’s this sort of, it feels like a sort of motor behind that really kicks. So I’m super fast in sprints. And also when I build it, I can do the crossover and I build it to a six kick. But in the race, still after long distance, because I

can lactate on it, it’s still very hot with the six kick. But I have a very strong kick, even in Doha now, you can see that there is a strong kick in it. Just sometimes there is a six kick sometimes not. But I think I’ve worked a lot on my speed. And I mean, and on that kick, so that made me very strong. On the 5k, you can see that there’s very long strokes and looks almost looks like straight arms. But there is a lot of power there in the last 200 meters of that race. And that’s where I worked on for the last three years to get that also momentum with the kick and just yeah, the power in the arms and then passing the competitors. Next up is Holly Björkner who did her masters in shoulder injuries for swimming. What are the kinds of exercises would you often prescribe people just to develop that control through their those different shoulder movements? Yeah, so we’ve got another one and it’s called like the YTA.

So you’re laying in a like a prone position so laying straight down face like face and ground. And then you’ve got your thumbs like this and you’re going to go up until Y like that and you lift so it’s kind of squeezing the scapula together and you’re lifting your arms up into the air about 10 reps. And you go into the same thing with your thumbs out and you go into a T position and you lift up and you’re squeezing your scaps together. And then you go down into an A so your arms are beside you, maybe this far away from or about this far away from like the middle of you. And you’re doing that same kind of pulse and you do it 10 times. So you’re going to go in and out. Yeah, a fair few times just to really train from those scaps and they get them kind of moving in the right position. So that’s another great one that you can do before you then hop in the pool so that you’ve got that kind of my muscle connection to those scapules

because a lot of the time was swimming. It’s when you become a lazy swimmer that your shoulder starts to hurt. You kind of stop thinking about how your arms moving, stop thinking about if you’re pulling your scapula together, maybe you’re hunching over in the water, or you’re just throwing the arms into the water instead of kind of placing them in the water. And then that’s where a lot of injuries can start to occur because you just you start to compromise instead of using your muscles, you kind of start to use the joint. Next up is Jared Briffer. I’ve done some work with Jared on breathing and breath control. He’s a freediver and freedive instructor. And on this episode, we talked about how swimmers can utilize some of those techniques to their advantage. Now, what about some exercises either on dry land or exercises in the pool that would help swimmers feel like they can breathe more effectively, whether that’s not

needing to breathe as much or just feeling like they’re more relaxed and more comfortable in the water? What are some of those things that that we can do as swimmers? Yeah, I think I think at first, like it depends on your level, right? So like, if you’re starting at a level like, let’s say like that beginner level with CO2 tolerance, where maybe the bolt score is like 15 seconds or less. Okay, so do the bolt test. What did you get? Okay, 15 seconds or less. Someone in this range, they’re going to become breathless very quickly. So I would start off with like awareness of the breath. So trying to make sure that when they are breathing, they’re getting a full breath in and also they’re getting a full breath out. And just being aware of how often they’re breathing. Okay, so I’m trying to like make it more rhythmic and getting more familiar with like, you know, are they breathing every two strokes? Are they breathing every

three strokes, that sort of stuff. And then definitely like trying to focus on nasal breathing when they’re at the wall. So whenever they come to the wall, trying to focus on nasal breathing for the recovery is a really good one for beginners and people that are having trouble with this stuff. This is going to like, during the swim, you will have increased the CO2. And if you breathe through your nose at the wall, you’re going to maintain that higher level of CO2 for longer. And this is going to help to build up your tolerance to it. And then like any sort of kicking drills that they do, do that with your face in the water. So have your face in the water you’ll be on breath over a bit and then take breaths when you need to take breaths. But try not to do your kicking drills with the face out of the water. So that would be a really good way to incorporate those in for beginners. Next up is Dan Eisenhart, the CEO of Form

Goggles. You can only focus on one you can control then try and be inspired by something that you think, you know, is this training method that will that you can also adopt right maybe tweak it. But yeah, I couldn’t agree more, I think, you know, going forward, believing in yourself, of course, saying humble and open to input and feedback. But you know, nothing gets done unless you sort of act with conviction. You could just keep overthinking stuff. And, and the best thing to test whether you have a good idea or not is to actually go and do it. And then just start home, you know, low low ambitions, and then you can actually always add on to it with with customer feedback, right? And when it comes to products, of course, some, some products are hard to get to that minimum, minimal viable product level, right? Like our product took two years and years to develop. But we didn’t go out and launch a product that had all the features that we have

today, right? Even though back then we had envisioned most of them. And because we knew, okay, let’s start with something that we know is easy to communicate and measure and message around. And, and then we can go from there based on customer feedback. Next up is Dean Summers who swam 95.6 kilometers from Newcastle to Sydney. The articles that was written about the swim about that. What was it? 10, 10 plus hours where dark sky, it’s just you’ve got the Milky Way out there. The bioluminescence as well. What was the night time some experience like? Well, for the previous two or three years, I live on Cougis at night, you can see the sea, you can hear. I’ve been dreading is not the right word, but I’ve been a little anxious about a whole night swimming out in the ocean because it’s past the horizon from where I live. And I know soon I’m going to be out there in the water on my own with a kayak and it’s going to be a tough night. I

thought maybe I’ll get a full moon so I can see things, but the full moon wasn’t there. There was only what’s called a thumbnail moon, just a tiny slither of moon, but not enough to give any light. The sun was going down. The water was okay. It was just a little, a little bit of chop and a big lazy rolling swell. So that was quite okay. The kayakers were set. We’re all ready for the night time. I’d been in the water already for 12 hours, but I wasn’t feeling tired. I was feeling good. Okay, this is the next stage and I’m ready for it. Let’s do it. So the sun goes down, goes down behind the the mountains. I can see way off in the distance to the land side and it was getting darker in the water, but then all of a sudden night fell and the water just switched to black, just completely black. Okay, I’m ready to go the kayaks next to me and I’m looking up and I can see the milky way starting to shine and it was just

sort of at nine o’clock, I suppose you’d say an o’clock and it looked beautiful, but really, really bright. So bright you could read a book off I’d say. There were no other lights around me. We designed it in the back of the kayaks. We just put this tiny little red glowing light in the well of the kayak so there was no direct light. It was just a loom and that’s what I could follow. The big boat, the pilot boat was quite a way off, maybe half a kilometer away, so that had no ambient light to it at all. So it was just essentially me in the black ocean with a nice guy at night. Beautiful and as this milky way started to shine, all the stars started to come out too like little suns and so, so bright, so clear. I put my hand in the water soon after it got black and I was so happy to see bioluminescence and I don’t know if you swam with it, but when your fingers go it’s like shooting little stars at the end of your

fingers. It lights up these little pingy lights and they just all around you then your other arm goes in. Same happens there and you create a little cloud of stars that just gently as you move through the water, ping into your goggles and explode gently into your goggles in this beautiful bioluminescence color of blue and green and so you’ve got the milky way up here, you’ve got the stars that seem to be so low you could almost reach out and touch them and underneath you’ve got the bioluminescence giving a same sort of look as stars so no horizon too dark for that, but and there’s nothing on the horizon or you can see stars all around you. It was the most beautiful beautiful mind. This episode is brought to you by Pillar Performance. Our new sponsors Pillar are a sports micronutrition company and the easiest way to describe it is that while hydration and carbohydrates products will take you through to touch

the wall as fast as possible, Pillar’s mission is to get swimmers to the starting blocks in the best condition over and over again. I recently started taking Pillar triple magnesium after a friend had recommended it and it’s been a game changer for my sleep and recovery. I take one scoop 30 minutes before bed each night in the same way that you might start your day with a coffee, I finish it up with the magnesium and recover better for tomorrow’s session in the pool. Pillar Performance is used by some of the biggest names in swimming and triathlon including Zach Stubble to cook, Jan Frodeno, Ben Canute, Ash Gentle, Taylor Nib amongst a host of other well-known swimmers and triathletes. Where Pillar differs from other micronutrition you may have taken before is both the quality of the types of magnesium and the tangible results that I see on my garment each morning. If you’d like to try Pillar today head to PillarPerformance.shop and enter code effortless

for 15% off. That’s effortless for 15% off all first-time purchases or for anyone in North America. Enter the same code at thefeed.com. Next is Tracy Bowman who we’ve had on the podcast multiple times and she is a swim technique expert. She has huge background and history in studying and teaching freestyle technique and I think this is probably one of the most popular episodes that we had throughout the year. I’ve used some similar sort of cues I’ve talked about like I just I’ve I have called it an open recovery compared to a closed recovery where we’re thinking like closed armpit we want we need open up or underarms under the water we need open underarms under the water at the front as well and that in terms of the like the momentum that you get over the water your arm weighs a couple of kilos and then when you’re swinging it around over the top you can really get good good momentum over the water and carry that through

it’s that free free speed and when you see someone who’s not getting it who throwing themselves off balance and they’re coming way behind their body like you really notice it and it just it does impact how well they flow in the water so yeah it is if you get it if you get it right you notice a big a big difference and I’ve I’ve tried to turn that thought of a high elbow recovery into like the point that’s high it’s like I think if the elbow is pointing mostly to the sky as you come through in that that middle part okay that’s that’s what I’d think of as a high a classic high elbow recovery but yeah certainly not coming literally high over the water with next up is Nick Jankowski from Mets performance the things we learned from Mellied Athletes are useful it’s because like they’re the best in the world and they’re like we’re finding ways to improve them if if those little things improve them there’s probably parts of that that we can take and implement to the newbie

who is then going to get significantly better as a result like it’s not going to turn you into a pro overnight and we some of the really refined stuff probably still we go okay we might not use some of that because that’s a bit advanced or complex particularly on the training side of things like I’m not going to ask a brand new athlete to go and do like fight like 30 seconds at 500 watts on a bike like straight out the gap like yeah you’re probably going to work our way to that but like some of the basic stuff is like just keep in a zone two like you keep in a zone two that is actually your zone two not just one that Garmin told you it’s like well we actually assessed it and here’s the marker and the threshold well you go and implement that for three months you’re going to be significantly better off so like that is kind of an overall principle is the way I approach it like it’s no like real one thing it’s it’s just embracing the fact that

yes sport sport science is is far bigger than just Olympic level world championship type stuff it’s like yeah it plays a big role there but what we can learn from those people is is just as important to then apply to someone who’s getting into it for the first time because if you can if you can train a little bit more effectively I can guarantee if you’re an amateur who’s got to work a nine to five and you go I can’t do 300k’s a week like a professional marathon runner can but I can do 50k’s a week well how do we make that 50k’s as effective as possible so that you can still rock up to work and not be exhausted and then get home and see your kids and not be exhausted like there’s other factors at play like best in the world sometimes all they have to worry about is wake up train eat sleep go again but yeah that’s where that the sports science side just helps dial it in a little bit you don’t have to go overkill but it’s just like

taking those little bits and and just really like trying to learn the little tips and tricks that’ll make you significantly better at your level with the realistic expectation it’s like okay yeah we can probably gain a fair bit out of this but it’s not going to mean it’s not going to turn me into a pro athlete and I don’t have to be a pro athlete to go and do it um but all I’m trying to do is find ways to get me better next up is Jamie Fuller from EO labs who designed and developed the swim better handsets which measure your force and direction most hand paths I see most hands pass I see go out come in and then go straight back your first move is in and then out a little bit so you’re coming in and then pushing back from here but there are nothing stands out here and it’s and there’s no that’s the other thing mate that everybody says to me is oh can you give me Kyle Chalmers hand path and I’ll just copy that it doesn’t work that way

right I mean we’ve all we all need to find our own hand path and whilst you know at a very surface level you might think well you know if I’ve just got to have my hand pushing back I just need it to be straight that’s not the answer either because it’s about how we how we switch on our muscles and the best place for our arm to go and our hand to move in order to be able to switch on the muscles in the shoulder and the arm and the and down on the lats that’s what gives us our power and drive and that combined with the ability to hold that water and drive the body that’s the holy grail next up is marathon swimmer and coach Craig Lewin I was going to ask in terms of the marathon swimming is it is it an important factor there is it just being able to hold your hold your stroke rate hold your tempo aside from when you need to pick it up like is that uh something that’s you’d sort of look at a little bit more rather than stroke length which obviously we can’t

measure in the open water but like is it is it tempo yeah I mean stroke rate is pretty important you’ll see a lot of swimmers will have their crew with whiteboards and one of the numbers they’re writing down is stroke rate I think it’s also a number that observers for colder swims will often watch because it’s a if it drops below if it’s dropping rapidly and the swimmer can’t pick it up it’s a sign of hypothermia and it might be time to call a swim but stroke rate is one because it’s it’s that consistent motion throughout the swim mainly because if you start getting stretched out too much or you start revving up and you’re slipping you know if you’re in salt water it’s less dense than a pool it’s more aerated so you you need the turnover because even if you had if you had a seam stroke rate in a pool or over water you’re not going to go as far with every pull in the open water because it’s less dense water because it’s

aerated because there’s chop as well so that’s why the stroke rate does does tend to matter but everyone’s different like you’ll see people like adam adam walker i don’t know if you’ve ever talked to him but he’s a ocean seven swimmer and he has probably one of the longest strokes i’ve seen and it works so like everyone’s different but you know for average average people it’s generally the stroke keeping that tempo throughout and that consistent three consistent these consistency throughout is going to be a really important factor in their success next up is sharon van rovendal and malisha johnson who got first and second at the Paris Olympics in the 10 kilometer open water swim i think for me it’s going to be very different to sharon because i was the underdog i was a dark horse i wasn’t in any predictions whatsoever like i i believed in myself that i could do it but i am still developing my open water experience so you know i just had

to you know i had to get an individual podium and i didn’t know whether it would be this year or in the years to come but that was my goal um but yeah definitely this race like sharon said it was uh i i enjoyed it um because we were battling the conditions of the course the environment not the the pack of girls around us so you actually just got to put your training on display in my opinion um and i think that’s that was how it showed in the end it was it was your training tactical your endurance your your speed all the things that sharon mentioned and you didn’t have have had the big pack of girls that you know that were holding or pulling you back or bumping into each other and yeah so i think you know it was definitely a race that i like yeah to get my first international medal individually at an olympics like it was unbelievable and obviously with australia being on such a different time zone the amount of

the public back home who actually got the chance to watch my sport you know sometimes it’s a bit of an underrated sport and um it’s just been fantastic the the support and the the messages and just even the people still today who are coming up to me and just talking about the the iconic swim that i did and yeah you know i think yeah it’s definitely been a bit of a journey i’ve done a bit of an alternative route as an australian swimmer to get to get here um so yeah it was definitely yeah a fantastic feeling on that finishing line like to like i’ve actually done it you know like my my my big decisions that you know might have been debated at the time like they’ve paid off so for me like it was like i only had the pressure that i put on myself going into that race i didn’t have anyone else’s pressure i don’t think even the commentary knew how i was until halfway through the race like i think i didn’t know what to say like my mum just kept saying i think

they handed him notes on you halfway through the race because suddenly all these facts came out you know so i had a very like a very different probably thing to what shine’s going to explain next up is beck keith who is a former professional triathlete and now triathlon coach whatever works is what happens under the water like you got to get it in the right spot what happens under the water is so important that’s where i was obsessed with your videos because i try to get videos of my athletes and i couldn’t have an underwater camera i was like watch this guy because this is a free thing the catch is everything and they look at it they’re like can’t keep my elbow up what’s the thing and i make them watch your videos because what’s happening under the water is way more important than over it it can look yucky above the water but it has to be like a strong pull through right yeah yeah it’s exactly right and i’ve got a similar approach where it doesn’t

matter what’s happening over the water as long as that’s not impacting you under the water in a negative way so it can be quite scrappy over the top and when i was the i did a season of triathlon i did it for one year just as a bucket list to do an Ironman and what did you do which one well i was booked in for Melbourne Ironman and this that was the year that they cancelled it so i had to i traveled over to Taupo and did it there instead that’s a lot too yeah the like i’m glad i did it though because the swim was mass start flat conditions in a lake and i had how tiny did you go like 49 or 48 or something uh 47.01 i did oh my god record that’s insane next up is Sandra Howell who has a background in swim specific strength and you know a general guideline that i tell all of my athletes and my clients is that like you don’t see any there there’s not any notable strength gains until about six to eight weeks

of consistent strength training and consistent strength training would mean you’re lifting at least twice a week not even once a week so if you’re just lifting once a week the amount of work required to see progress is going to take probably double the time right you’re just not building breaking down muscle at a consistent and steady enough pace to see change quick enough but if you’re lifting at least twice a week so maybe even three times a week you’re going to see those gains a lot quicker and so typically i tell my athletes you know who are consistent give yourself about eight weeks give yourself two months okay of being consistent stick to it keep progressing and then you’re gonna really see notable performance differences after that especially when you are consistent with it because the first you know one to two months of lifting a lot of that is just you know tearing down your muscles you’re just super sore super stiff all the time especially if you haven’t

lifted in some time right and so that’s you know and yeah so that’s the thing people think that oh i lift you know working out means i’m building muscle actually it’s quite the opposite you work out and you actually break down muscle that’s why you get sore you you get micro tears in your muscles so the more you train the harder you train the more you’re breaking down muscles you’re in more of like a catabolic state and so that’s where nutrition comes in right nutrition is the thing that helps build muscle it puts you in an anabolic state and that is what helps you rebuild your muscle helps with muscle protein synthesis is really making sure you’re eating enough protein for your particular physique you know for your body weight next up is New Zealand swimmer and coach laura quilter is how would you describe say a 50 sprint technique to someone one of those things that you’re feeling for or trying to achieve when you are

sprinting it’s it’s like calculated chaos in a weird way so you need to be performing with the most amount of aggression and power that you can but it has to be funneled through an effective mechanics and i quite like i think it was Cameron McAvoy he talks about the fact that swimming is a cyclical sport and basically as long as you get that one cycle correct all you have to do is replicate that for 20 to 30 seconds so when i started to change my stroke primarily it was focused on my hips staying a little bit more level in the water and a lot more rotation it through the upper body and the shoulders i did notice that in the early stages i’ve got quite limited thoracic mobility and that kind of felt like i was jammed up a bit so i did have to spend a bit of time on mobility as well to actually even swim like that and with the sprint style pulling a lot straighter under the water was a new concept to me and that came that comes with a whole lot of other

challenges i wouldn’t go tell most people to swim a 50 style because it does put so much more pressure on the shoulder which really emphasized the need to get a lot stronger in the gym so the three key aspects that i did start to train with i was using resistance training a lot more than i had formerly so that was you know your parachutes fins and socks which i’d never use i really like drag socks actually more than the parachute i actually really detest the parachute so a lot more resistance training a lot more work on the dive mechanics and then just that you know still hips with a big kick and the power coming through the shoulders and and with the socks so the drag socks for people listening it’s not just normal socks these are like special sort of swimming next up is cap matthews who got second at the iron man world championships in nice this year and i think again like i’ve one of the biggest things i’ve learned this year this is me summarizing my

waffley story is that i really love learning like the sort of psychology from books and then trying to sort of you know implement it in myself i guess um so yeah the book itself was called the reality slap from ross harris it was like um he also wrote the happiness trap which i think i tried to read and i was like not interested in it’s quite a big seller though and whereas yeah the reality slap was it’s about radical acceptance and again just like things like that like this i feel like is a self-development thing that i actually find really sort of fascinating which was sad um and then another book i was really at the time was called perform under pressure by kerry evans so again like reading them both or listening to one and reading one was actually really nice to sort of you don’t just get obsessed with one sort of fad like thought processing you can you can see um a bigger a bigger picture perhaps and like take different elements of it

so yeah i think that’s something that i’ve learned as a sort of again as like whole is like that ability to cope with unexpected um problems which sounds mad but it took a cough injury after the big accident um and i guess like yeah like being calm more calm in situations that are out of my control so for example in nice like having the the cramping issues i looking back on it i actually realized that yeah it was quite good that i was able to be like okay i’m cramping what can i do about it you know remove myself look at it from the outside assess the situation and i i think like you just sort of do that without realizing but those are the processing steps that these books sort of actually go through and i wonder whether i learned that from reading for example like ah okay so this is either my muscles aren’t strong enough or you know simple things but when you’re under pressure the cognition is often much harder to deal with and then obviously the emotion of it

all so yeah took on some fuel did a bit of walking did what i could just cracked on so i think yeah i think that’s a big sort of lesson that that ability to deal with um mishaps and next up is ryan evendon who worked very closely with andy donelson in terms of his strength training and ryan teachers and coaches swim specific strength in perth and it’s up to us as this s and c provider to manage their load so they’re not going into the next session soar because at the end of the day you’re only going to get better from what you recover from this is you know i’m an s and c provider who works with swimmers my job is to make sure they can swim in the water to the best of their ability every time they get in the water my job is not to kick people in the butt and make them soar for weeks in in my own way of trying to fulfill my own needs as an s and c coach to make myself feel relevant my job is to make sure that these guys get in the water

do and can continue to perform in the water yes sometimes they’re going to get soar and that does happen but that’s not the goal i don’t want anyone to be soar we have a rule with my gym program if they’re so if they do a session and they’re soar they’ve got to tell us because we don’t allow we don’t want it to happen twice we want to just make sure that they’re doing what they can and they’re maximizing every swim session they can do and there’s a lot of ways that you can do that one might be okay the volume isn’t very high the intensity wasn’t very high so what did you do in terms of recovery like how’s your nutrition what’s your sleep like did you hydrate effectively do we need to bring in some recovery aids just to help speed up that process for you or is this going to just be something that we’re going to have to take okay this happened this week we’ll make a quick adjustment for your second session in the week

and then we’ll come back to that session at same light and see what what happens because it might have just been it’s a lot of new stuff in the program the adaptation process was your body just freaked out of it but you’ve got to also go okay well we don’t want that to happen too often because then they’ve had two crap sessions that week oh in two weeks and i don’t really want that i want people feeling fresh because at the end of the day they need to swim fast in the water to get faster in the water they don’t need to lift heavy in the gym to get faster in the water necessarily it does help though gotcha so the reason you don’t want them coming or leaving a session a gym session sore is because it’s obviously going to impact their performance in the pool and if you’re doing that too much you’re just not going to get the gains from the from the swim what’s the risk reward ratio on that if that makes sense like

if i’m belting someone in the gym you know twice a week and they’re turning up every after every session they have with me to the next session in the water and they’re sore they’re going to have a crap session you know at least twice a week if they get 48 hours of doms they’re going to have maybe three crap sessions what ends up six crap sessions a week but maybe they only had one good session that week they’re probably not getting what they need out of those swim sessions thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast if you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

Are you struggling with the unpredictability of open water swimming? I used to hate every second of it until I learned these tips, which completely changed the way that I thought and went about open water swimming. In this video, you’ll learn how to transform your swimming from feeling anxious and uncomfortable in the open water to feeling confident and at ease.

I’m Brenton and I used to dread every second of open water swimming until I learned these couple of tips. And I went on to break the age group course record at the New Zealand Ironman in a 47 minute swim. I help adult swimmers and triathletes improve their swimming, become more efficient through our online courses, our camps and our clinics. The first thing you need to know about open water swimming is the mindset. One thing that I got taught by Chris McCormack, the legendary Ironman athlete, was that you shouldn’t be a victim. Don’t be a victim when you go to the open water. The swimmers that are timid in their approach are often the ones that get swum over and are really uncomfortable. Now, I know it takes a little bit of confidence and proof that you can be comfortable in the open water, but having that mindset of I’m not going to be a victim can really help you have a lot more success. So you don’t need to be overly assertive or

aggressive to the other swimmers, but you’ve got to make sure that you don’t take a complete back seat because they are the swimmers that tend to get thrown around, pushed under the water more and don’t do quite as well in the open water. So that mindset piece is a really important one.

I’ve coached athletes who have swum 10 to 20 percent further than what they needed to in an open water race. And not only does that slow them down, but it means that they’re taking longer to do the race. They’re having to use a lot more effort and then sometimes they’re going to miss the pack on the bike if they’re doing triathlon. So making sure that we sight well and we don’t lose our speed when we do it is one of the most important things that you’ve got to develop as an open water swimmer. Now, the mistakes that I see people making when it comes to sighting, the number one thing is that they tend to lift their head up, take some strokes and then they put their head back down. And when they lift their head up and do that, their hips and their legs drop significantly. And it’s not only slows them down, but they lose their stroke rhythm. The way that I like to teach people to sight is to use the rolling breath or the sight and breathe

method. And that method is you should lift up and sight on one stroke and then you’re going to turn to the side to breathe on the next stroke. So it’s like a rolling breath. Now, you can see here in this video when Andy Donaldson is doing this, he doesn’t break his rhythm. You can hardly notice that he’s getting this look forwards as just a part of his stroke. And my benchmark, my way of sort of establishing whether or not someone’s doing this well is if you do a fast hundred and you get your time, then you do another fast hundred and you get your time, but you sight every 12 strokes. If you are within one to two seconds of that time from the first one, then you’re probably sighting and breathing quite well. So you shouldn’t be much slower than that when you introduce your sighting. Now, another way to sight is to raise your head a little bit. Think about getting crocodile eyes and take a few strokes where you’ve got to

lift your elbows up. You’ve got to increase your stroke rate, increase your kick to get a good look at where you’re going. That’s another way to do it if you didn’t get a very good look at the first time. So you can use these two types of sighting wherever you need to in your race, depending on what conditions are like, but we just want to make sure that we don’t lose our rhythm and we don’t slow ourselves down when we introduce sighting into our stroke.

A few ways you can sight better as well. One thing that’s good to do in a race is to make sure you do a course recce. You want to make sure that you know where you’re going. What does a course look like and are there any landmarks that you can line up with when it comes to doing the boy turns? So if you get a chance to do a lap of the course before the race, then you can see if the boys line up with anything on the shore and that way you don’t have a very small boy to look for. Because sometimes if it’s wavy and choppy and you’ve got the boys there, very hard to see. But if you can line up maybe a tree or a building or a landmark on the land, then you have a much better idea of where you’re going. So that’s the first thing that you will need to do. The other part of making sure you sight well is making sure you’ve got a good pair of goggles. Open water goggles are usually a little bit bigger with the lenses and I find

that to be quite helpful just to give you a bigger field of view and making sure that you either buy a new pair of goggles for the important races that you’re doing, but test them before you use them. But a new pair of goggles so they’re clear or just get a really good anti fog goggles so that you don’t have these foggy goggles where you can’t see anything. So something like the Maritania Hydro clear goggles are really good but goggles that either don’t fog up or sometimes I would buy new pairs of goggles for races. So I didn’t run into that problem. Some of the stroke changes that you might need to make when you’re going from the pool to the open water motto that I’ve got is higher wider faster. When you think about your arm coming over the top of the water, sometimes your hand needs to be a little bit higher than in the pool. Sometimes it needs to be a little bit wider because you might have a wetsuit on or you might not be able

to get as close to the body as you would in the pool and sometimes you got to be a little bit faster and a little bit more assertive over the top so you carry a speed over and just get that hand in. So higher wider faster is a general way of improving your stroke for the open water if you’re used to swimming in the pool.

The other thing you might note when you go from the pool to the open water, especially if you’ve got a wetsuit on, is you might find you kick a lot less. With the buoyancy of a wetsuit, with the buoyancy of salt water, often your legs don’t need to do too much, especially if you’re going at a slower pace or you’re doing a longer distance event. Generally you keep going to be there to support you, not to propel you. But in the open water and with a wetsuit on, sometimes you don’t have to do a whole lot with the legs, which is absolutely fine as long as they’re still working in coordination and rhythm with the rest of your stroke. That’s what you’ll often find will happen with the legs. For swimmers that like to breathe every two strokes when they’re swimming, I find that they tend to go for a little bit more of a loping sort of freestyle, where you’ll be a little bit longer on one side and a little bit shorter on the other.

It’s that loping or galloping sort of stroke that tends to work a bit better in the open water, especially if you are going fast. So if you find that you naturally gravitate to that sort of stroke when you’re swimming at speed in the open water, then lean into it and sometimes that can work really well. So it’s worth just practicing that and seeing what feels best for you and what feels efficient for you when it comes to racing in the open water.

You’re likely to have less glide as well. When there’s chop and there’s waves, you probably don’t have the same sort of time as you have in the pool. As you’re extending and reaching forwards in the pool, you don’t have anything moving around. So normally we’ll find that in the open water that you’re going to get into your catch a little bit sooner and you’re not going to have the time to extend out quite as much, especially for those shorter, faster events like a 500 meter swim or a one K swim or even maybe a two K swim. You won’t have the time to glide quite as much. Now, if you are swimming more marathon distance, the longer distance swims, then maybe maybe you will, but it really just depends on the event that you’re doing. But a lot of times people will get caught out by trying to over glide in the open water when it gets choppy. Now, not to say you can’t extend out, you look at someone like Andy Donaldson swing and he maintains his length

really well, but for many people, they just need to start the catch a little bit sooner than what they used to compared to in the pool. The other thing I see people doing when they go from the pool to the open water is they’re trying to be too pretty with their stroke. You need to allow yourself to get a little bit scrappy. Get that hand over, get it in the water. Don’t try and be too perfect and controlled with it when the conditions are not great. So allowing yourself to rate up to get your stroke up a bit, to be a little bit scrappy with it, that’s in a way to overcome those difficult conditions is to just move away a little bit from that classic perfect pool technique and just allow yourself to not be perfect, allow yourself to get scrappy. And the last thing there is is the stroke rate. Typically, people will increase their stroke rate compared to in the pool because in the open water, the water is typically more aerated from

people’s bubbles, from the chop and the waves. So it’s not as as thick, which means that you’re probably going to be increasing your stroke rate to account for that. And you’re probably going to be increasing your stroke rate as well, because with a wetsuit on and insult water, you sit a lot higher in the water. And that also just means that you can comfortably get your stroke rate up a little bit higher as well. So for me, my stroke rate will typically be about 10 percent higher when I’m going at the same speed in the open water compared to the pool. I’ll normally be a 65, 66 stroke rate in the pool, but then I’ll be around a 75 stroke rate when I’m racing in the open water for the same speed. And I find a lot of athletes similar with that. A question I get a lot is why am I slower in the open water compared to the pool? Now, there’s a number of reasons for that. The first one being you don’t have the walls to push off of.

You get a lot of speed and acceleration off the walls. Even if you’re not very good at your turns, you’re still getting some extra push from them. So that’s one reason why you might be a bit faster in the pool compared to the open water, especially if you’re in a 25 meter pool or a 25 yard pool. That’s lots of push-offs. That’s lots of speed that you gain each time you make a turn. That’s the first thing. The other thing is in the open water, you haven’t got any rests. You’re always going to be swimming. It’s continuous. And so sometimes without that rest or without those intervals, your speed is just naturally going to be a little bit lower. But then you’ve also got chop and you’ve got waves and you’ve got other things to deal with. So they are other reasons why you might be slightly slower. Now, it doesn’t mean that you can’t be just as fast in the open water as you are in the pool, taking into account with the terms, especially if you’re wearing a

wetsuit and you’re swimming in salt water. That extra buoyancy from those two things can allow you to be a lot quicker. For me, I did a wetsuit test in the pool and drown that I was significantly quicker wearing a wetsuit. So there are ways to make sure that you do swim faster when you make that transition, but I find it does take quite a bit of practice and getting used to swimming in a wetsuit, get used to swimming in the open water to be able to get to that point where your speed is essentially the same. One thing that it took me a long time to learn was how to draft. Drafting an open water swimming can save up to 34 percent of your energy. And if you can draft well, then not only will you be swimming faster, but you’re going to save a lot of effort as a result. Now, there’s two different ways to draft. One is on the hip, one is on the feet. Now, I prefer and I teach most of my swimmers to draft at the feet directly behind the other person

because this is where you’re going to impact the person in front of you the least. And this is also where it’s typically a little bit easier to draft as well. So drafting on the feet, try to stick as close to the other person as you can without constantly tapping their feet. If you’re annoying them, they’re going to get annoyed and they might look to retaliate as a result, but they are also going to kind of get a bit annoyed. So if you can just sit behind someone, avoid touching their feet as best as possible and just kind of sit in there without them knowing, then you’re likely to get a much better draft and pull along as you’re as you’re doing it. Now, you might need to adjust your hand entry. If you do get too close and you’re likely to hit them. So maybe you just got to be a little bit wider with the entry and extension. But you can save so much energy doing that. For example, in a pool, I used to train in a 25 metre pool and I could

I could do my four hundreds 15 seconds faster when I was drafting straight behind a faster swimmer. No extra effort. It was actually easier when I sat right behind him. And sometimes it can be even more than that. So it’s worth practicing drafting. Now, the other way is drafting on the hip and you can get a really big pool along drafting right next to someone. So your shoulder is kind of just behind their hip and you’re sticking pretty close to them because you can see when someone’s swimming, especially a fast swimmer, they have this wake coming off their hips. So it is very coming off it. You can almost ride that wake and get a really good pull along. The downside to that is that if you’re right next to someone, you can take their water, you can almost sort of pull through where they would be about to pull through so you can take their water and slow them down and it feels really heavy

if you’ve got someone drafting off your hip. So it’s good if you’re looking to maybe overtake someone trying to tie them out. But if you’re looking to gain an advantage, I think it’s better in most cases to try and sit at the feet rather than trying to slow that swimmer down, unless maybe you’re looking to finish a race and make that make their swimming feel really heavy. A big part of open water swimming is pack swimming, getting used to swimming with others around you. And this is something that takes quite a bit of practice to do. And with the more you do, the easier it’s going to get. Now, when you are swimming with other people around you, you might need to adapt or change your stroke to account for that. For example, if someone’s really close to you, maybe it’s hard to get your arm out comfortably. Maybe you can’t recover over the water as well as you normally would. So sometimes I’ll find you have to come over somewhat

straight, maybe enter kind of straight as well, or maybe you have to enter wide to avoid hitting someone. So you will have to make these changes to the way that you’re swimming if you are surrounded by a lot of people. And that’s OK. The main thing is do not stop. So let’s say someone maybe tries to swim over the top of you or they push you down. Don’t stop because if you’ve got 15 swimmers behind you, they’re just going to swim into and that’s that whole part of don’t be a victim. So just make sure you always keep swimming. Just a stroke if you have to and just get used to being surrounded by other people. Maybe you will cop an elbow. Sometimes that happens. People aren’t necessarily trying to to do that. But sometimes that will happen. So you just have to be prepared to be bumped around a little bit. Now the other part of that as well is if you find you’re really stuck with someone maybe in front of you, it’s OK to kind of roll over the top

of them, meaning let’s say someone’s here, you’re slightly behind them and you need to get over in this direction. You can kind of lift your chest up a bit and just slide over the top of their legs or over their hips to get across them. It’s a pretty common technique, especially if you’re going in towards a a boy turn and you need to change your position, you can get used to sliding over the top of someone. Now I’d suggest practicing that with a with a friend or someone that you know, but that is a very valid way to change your positioning, especially as you’re going into a turn. This podcast has brought you by Great Ocean Wetsuits, an up and coming Australian performance wetsuit brand for triathletes and open water swimmers. The wetsuits are designed and tested in Melbourne, Australia for fast, easy and enjoyable swimming for athletes of all levels. They’re worn in and raced by Olympians, triathletes and open water swimmers from all

over the world. And I personally use Great Ocean Wetsuits even before they became a sponsor of the podcast. I’ve personally found that the buoyancy, the freedom through the shoulders and the fit are the best that I’ve ever had in a wetsuit. So I highly recommend them and you can currently get 20 percent off either the gold or silver wetsuit models using our own code effort 20 at checkout. So enter the code effort 20 at checkout at greatoceanwetsuits.com and no matter where you are in the world, if you’re in Australia, the US, Europe, there’s free shipping worldwide. So get yourself a great ocean wetsuit. I personally use the gold model of the wetsuit. It just depends on what your goals are. So greatoceanwetsuits.com effort 20. Me at checkout, I know you’ll like them. The right equipment can make the difference between being a 140 swimmer compared to a 150 swimmer. So equipment that you might need when it comes to open water, a wetsuit,

especially down here in Victoria where where I live. So a good wetsuit goes a long way. The difference in the high level wetsuits and the cheaper wetsuits is typically the material that they use and sometimes the cups of the wetsuit as well. Now, depending on what pace you’re at and how seriously you’re taking a swimming in your triathlon, a mid-range wetsuit might be more than enough. So sometimes the mid-range wetsuits will have slightly thicker material, which means that they’ll actually last a bit longer than the more expensive wetsuits, because the more expensive wetsuits have thinner material, usually through the shoulders. So they’re more flexible, but they won’t necessarily last as long. So there’s a sweet spot there. And I think the majority of people can do really well with a mid-range wetsuit, especially one that’s designed well that has good freedom through the shoulders. It’s got a good cut of the wetsuit, something like

the Great Ocean Wetsuits Silver range is more than enough for most people. So make sure you get yourself a good wetsuit. When I’ve done testing between sleeved and short sleeve wetsuits, I’ve been a little bit quicker with the long sleeve wetsuit. I don’t know the difference that it makes for most people, but personally, when I have tested it, I’ve been a couple of seconds quicker per 100 with a long sleeve wetsuit. And my guess as to why that that is, is because you’ve got a little bit more thickness here. So you’ve got a slightly bigger paddle. You’ve also got a little bit more buoyancy as well. So it might just sit you up a little bit more. And sometimes the material on the inside of the arms can provide a bit of surface drag, so a bit more grip. So that’s why I think it can be slightly faster with a long sleeve wetsuit. But if you find that you need tire through the shoulders a lot, well, yeah, maybe better off going with a

short sleeve wetsuit. The other thing is a good pair of goggles. So making sure that you’ve got goggles with good view, they don’t leak. Make sure they’ve got some rubber around the outsides. So if you do cop an elbow, then you’re not going to finish up with a black eye and making sure that you’ve got goggles that’s got good anti fog to them. Or they’re a fairly new pair of goggles. So they’re not going to fog up because I’ve been in races where I couldn’t see where I had to go because I was wearing an old pair of goggles without good anti fog. And that just ruins the race because if you can’t see where you’re going, you might be seeing 20% extra when you don’t need to. If you prefer to breathe to one side, that is totally fine. But you might want to develop your bilateral breathing, your ability to breathe the other side comfortably and submit the same paces when you’re breathing to your preferred side because when it comes to open water swimming,

you never know where you’re going to be getting waves and wind and chop from. And if you are used to breathing on the left, but you’ve got this swell coming in and hitting you in this direction, you might have to turn to the right. You might have to breathe to that opposite side, at least for part of the race. So you don’t want to get out there and find that you just stuck because you can’t breathe to the opposite side. So it’s worth developing that skill as part of your swimming. It’s not to say you have to do 50% to your left, 50% to your right. For me, I’ll do 20 or 30% of my swim session to my non-preferred side, but the rest will be to my preferred side. So it’s a skill worth developing if you are doing any kind of open water swimming. One tip I learned when it comes to swimming in cold water is to if you can’t get in and do a pre-race warm-up, make sure you get some water and splash your face before you get in. That takes away that cold shock

that you’ll often get where it takes away your breath when you hit the cold water. So just making sure that you wet your face and wet your cheeks with that water before you get in and race. Just to get rid of that shock factor. And if you can, try to do some sort of land-based warm-up before you’re about to race, even if it’s like a bit of skipping or a light jog or some arm swings. Just something to kind of get the blood moving to warm you up that little bit before you go into this cold water. Now, if you’re doing something long like an English channel swim, well, that’s going to be a different type of event and you need to make the changes to allow for that. But for anything that’s a shorter distance and has some cold water, there are those ways to get rid of that cold shock factor. Depending on where you swim, there’s going to be currents and tides affecting the flow of the water. And we see this happen a lot here in Australia.

Many of our races are on open beaches or they’re in bays where there is a lot of current. So it’s worthwhile testing that out. If you can get into the water before a race and see which way the water is moving and maybe looking at the boys and seeing if they’re at an angle. So let’s say you’ve got a boy and it’s veering off in one direction. You know the water is flowing that way. Or if you’ve got waves of swimmers before you, you can see which way they’re getting pushed. So for example, the Nusa Tri a couple of years ago, there was pretty wild weather, pretty wild conditions and a lot of waves. And there was people who were leaving from the start line and trying to get out to the first boy. There was a heap of current going down the beach. So a lot of them didn’t even get to the first boy because they got swept so far. When it came time for the pros to race, they ended up running 150 meters down the beach, getting in at that point

and then they kind of got pushed across the first boy. But there’s nothing that they could do to swim at the same speed that the current was going. So sometimes it’s worthwhile just seeing what the waves are doing before you. And for a lot of the races here where I swim, quite often there is a bit of current. So I’m looking at which way of people veering when it comes to that first swim out to the boy. So knowing that, being prepared for that can help you place a lot higher in your swims than what you might used to be doing. If you’re quite new to open water swimming and you’re not quite comfortable amongst other people and in the open water, try to place yourself when you’re entering the water, just away from the pack, away from the masses. Give yourself five or 10 meters so you’re not getting slumber over the top of. Now, if you are looking to be competitive and have a good race, you wanna make sure that you’re positioning yourself

so that you can hopefully get to the boy first. But if you’re not very comfortable, give yourself some space, take a slightly wider birth until you get comfortable being amongst other people. Now, I’ve heard stories of people getting swam over and pushed under and things like that. It does happen, but the good swimmers, if you know you’ve got good swimmers coming up behind you, they’re not trying to swim over the top of you. They would prefer to just go alongside you or just go around you because that’s gonna make them faster. So they’re not looking to try and push you down and get you under the water or swim over the top. Now, yes, it does happen sometimes, but people aren’t always out for that. So just know that, all right, if you do hold your line, yes, maybe people will pass you and it’s likely that if you are getting pushed under, well, look, maybe they just saw you at the last minute. Okay, but just keep swimming, keep moving

and as best you can, try to not be a victim. Just keep it going and get your breath back if you need to. One thing that I find is good to know for people who aren’t that comfortable out there is if you get tired and you’re starting to run out of breath, maybe you’re starting to panic a bit, just roll onto your back. Just be on your back, have your head out of the water, have a light kick or a light scull if you need to, get your breath back, slow your breathing down and then you can go again. So, and that way you can also see what’s coming behind you. That’s a good way just to reset and start again if you find that you maybe got uncomfortable or starting to panic a little bit in the open water. When you’re finishing a race, you might be coming onto the beach and a good marker to know when should I stand up is roughly when your fingers start to hit the sand because that way you know, okay, well, that’s gonna be slightly shallower

than waist step and that’s the time where you can start to stand up and then start to run through the water. Now, if you’re more elite level, if you have a rough idea of where, the depth of the water, then you can start to stand up slightly before that and you can start to duck dive but that’s probably a slightly more advanced skill. So, when your fingers hit the sand, that’s when you should start to stand up for most people. Now, I’ve seen people slow themselves down by 30 seconds coming out of triathons because they start to stand up when they’re this deep and because they can see the bottom, I think, all right, I’m just gonna stand up, I’m just gonna walk through the water. If you can just keep swimming until those fingers hit the sand, you’re gonna be at the beach or at the shore much quicker. So, if you find yourself just wading through the water from here on, it’s too much, you’re probably gonna be a lot slower.

So, when you sit at the sand, that’s when you start to stand up. If you don’t have access to a lake or a beach and you can’t get to the open water much at all to practice, you can practice a lot of the skills that lead to good open water swimming in the pool. You can practice your sighting. If you’ve got friends or other people that you swim with, you can practice your pack swimming and you can also practice your drafting. So, a couple of things that we’ll do in the squad that I swim in is we’ll do a little bit of pack swimming, especially in the lead up to our race season. So, we’ll do something like 850s where we’ll get the slowest swimmers at the front, fastest swimmers at the back and we’re all going fast for that 50. Now, the lead swimmers have to try and keep their lead, fastest swimmers have to try and move through and just getting used to being really tight, having other people around and just making sure

that we learn how to adapt our stroke and change it with the other people really close. The other thing is drafting. So, a set that I love is what we call LA Freeway. So, we’ll do it in groups of three and we’ll swim 50 meters where the first two swimmers will push off directly behind one another. The third person will push off and then they’ve got to overtake those other two swimmers. They’ve got to make their way around. By the end of the 50, they need to have overtaken them and you get a really good draft at the start and then you get a bit of a draft as you’re coming up the side of them but then you’ve got to work really hard to get in front. But it’s a good way to practice drafting, practice swimming close and also just to get used to drafting from the hip and drafting from the feet as well. So, those things you can practice in the open water. Sometimes you can practice your boy turns in the pool as well if you take out a couple of lane ropes.

So, many of the skills you can get used to in the pool but the one thing you can’t get used to is those choppy conditions. That is where experience and practice really pays dividends. If you can get yourself to the open water once a week for six weeks leading up to your open water swim. That can make such a difference and if you’re not comfortable in the open water or you’re going by yourself just play it safe. Maybe you have to stick by the shore. Maybe you can’t go too deep but there are usually ways to get that open water swimming for most people depending on where you live. When it comes to race strategy and knowing how to pace yourself the biggest mistake most newcomers make is that they go out too hard. They get really excited and really nervous and maybe a bit anxious for the first two or 300 meters and they go straight to that top end speed where the heart rate is 180 when in reality it really should be 140 or 150 for the race.

So, the main thing that I like to make sure my swimmers do for that first part of the race is go out strong but we’re looking for easy speed. We’re looking to go out with good speed but keep that heart rate under control. If you feel like it’s, you’re starting to get too out of breath where you couldn’t hold this pace or you couldn’t settle the heart rate back down by the time you’re into the thick of the race then you’ve gone too hard. So, I want you to go out and just always think about keeping that heart rate just below that level where you know it’s going to be too much. So, just looking for that effort level and keeping it there. So, the first two or 300 looking to go strong and then as soon as you can just settle into that rhythm and tempo that you know you can hold for the rest of the race. And depending on whether it’s a triathlon or just an open water swim the speed will change within the race. In an open water race

you’re probably going to bring it home hard the last 100 or 200. So, you’re looking to have that extra push at the end. In a triathlon may not be the case maybe you’re just looking to be consistent throughout it and you might just want to bring your legs into the last 100 meters of the swim just to get a little bit of blood flying again so that you’re ready for the transition and ready for the bike. So, your pace and your strategy might change depending on the event that you’re doing but just make sure you don’t go out too hard. That is the number one mistake that I see most people making when it comes to their open water swims. If you want hands-on experience and coaching with your open water swimming come and join us at one of our swimming camps. We run them in the Galapagos Islands, Maldives, Thailand and the Whitsundays plus a bunch of other locations. So, I’ll put the link in our description below. Thanks for watching.

Here is another video where I talk about how to transform your freestyle technique in 33 minutes. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

I think people, when they’re trying to search for a range of motion, benefits trying to force it too much rather than letting it relax into the position. And once we have relaxed and we’ve got a bit more range of motion opened up, we’ll then apply some strength training to reinforce it. So the body then goes, sweet, we have this range of motion. Now we’ve done some strength training through this range of motion to make it feel safe, secure, and it learns that that is okay. So we don’t keep regressing backwards and we can kind of make better gains as we move forwards. I think a lot of the time, you know, people put these massive programs out there because they want to show their value. But showing your value is actually doing what’s best for each individual athlete and their circumstance and making sure that you can adjust their program and be flexible with your plan. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help

swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

Ryan Evendon is the founder behind formidable strength and conditioning, a coaching service that’s reshaping how swimmers integrate strength training into their routines, helping them power through the water with more speed and resilience while safeguarding against injuries. Today, Ryan will share his insights on essential strength exercises for swimmers, how to prevent common swimming injuries and some truly inspiring success stories from the athletes he’s worked with. Whether you’re a competitive swimmer looking to enhance your performance or a recreational swimmer aiming to swim smarter and stronger, Ryan’s expertise is sure to provide valuable guidance. Let’s get into the episode.

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. My guest today is Ryan Evendon. And Ryan, I first heard about you from Andy Donaldson when I had him on the podcast talking about his marathon swimming and he talked about how important strength training was and he talked about how important you were as a part of his strength training in the build up to those big swims and making sure he doesn’t get injured.

He can withstand those tough conditions over many, many hours. And then I’ve seen you quite regularly on Instagram and popping up in my feed and on a few other podcasts as well. So I wanted to get you on the podcast to talk about strength training for swimmers because it’s a component that is super important for anyone, but I think particularly as we get older, it only gets more important. So firstly, welcome. And how did you veer into swimming strength training for swimmers? Well, mate, originally I was a swimmer myself. So I was a 200 breaststroke swimmer. I got to about 6th in the country for the 200 breasts.

And I was often really injured. Like I got injured all the time and it was probably a lot of, a lot to do with over training, but my body wasn’t able to handle the loads that we were doing.

So I always thought I’d actually become a swim coach, like on pool deck coach. But when I was doing all my rehab and stuff like that, I kind of fell into the gym side of things a little bit more and thought I can probably make more of an impact here, trying to keep people in the water as long as possible and having them have a longer time period in the water. So that’s kind of why I fell into the gym side of things. From there, like for the last eight years, I’ve worked with swimmers in the gym. So a long time now compared to how long, you know, S&C for swimmers has kind of become popular in the last couple of years.

But it’s been a wild ride, man. We’ve done everything from, you know, in terms of formidable strength and conditioning, we’ve had guys go to the Olympics, but the guys that I think we’re truly passionate about nowadays is that older generational group that are trying to do more open water swims, the channel swims, and it breeds more into our philosophy of trying to create swimmers for life. And that’s through strength training for injury prevention to make sure they can handle more load in the water. And just enjoy it. Like I think a lot of the time, everyone gets so caught up in the performance aspect of things that they forget that, you know, this was something that everyone got into because they enjoyed it and they want to keep enjoying it for as long as possible. And you’re not enjoying it if you’re busted with a shoulder all the time. So, you know, as much as we don’t, well, we do do rehab now. We’ve just brought on a physiotherapist,

but as much as we’ve always been focused, we want to prevent as many injuries as possible through strength training because we believe that if you’re in the water, you’re going to actually get better at swimming. So our job is to keep you in there and build some capacity and the performance aspect of, you know, strength training for swimmers will then come from there. And how’s your philosophy evolved over the years that you’ve been a strength coach? Because I’m sure you’ve worked with a lot more athletes over that time. You’ve come across different demographics and people training with different goals. So I imagine your philosophy has probably shifted or taken a bit of a turn at some point. I think it’s probably more of a circular. I think we’ve started off just really focusing on nailing the basics.

Then, you know, you get caught down a little bit of a rabbit hole of, you know, all the stuff that matters, like, you know, the velocity you’re using in your strength training and all those kind of things. But then I think over the last two years, we’ve just come right back around to the basics. What’s, you know, ensure that range of motion is there. That’s the first one. And range of motion isn’t just stretching. There’s a huge component of, you know, being able to be strong enough to hold the range of motion that you need to worry about. Then from that point of, from range of motion, we want to look at stabilizing the joints so you can actually apply force. Because a lot of people, even, especially in the older populations, to go back to point one, they don’t get into the right position so they can never actually get the technical aspects that the coaches are trying to get them to have because they just physically can’t get in

without compensating somewhere else. But once we can get into those positions, we need to really make sure that they’re strong enough to be able to hold and maintain those positions as they’re pulling through their strokes and going through their races or their swims. So that would be the two main points. And then we can get whatever performance adaptations that we like through strength training and, you know, working on those other factors. Like, you know, there’s more specific aspects for me. Hmm. So is there a way that you assess someone’s mobility or their range of motion? Yep. So the first way that we probably look into that would be, you know, range of motion for the shoulder is quite important. Overhead range of motion is our number one

that we normally consider top of the… That’s the first one we’re looking at because if you can’t get your head up, if you can’t get your arms above your head in swimming, you’re in a bit of a pickle.

It’s pretty hard to catch them freestyle or swim any of the strokes if your arms don’t go above your head. So that’s number one. How do you assess that? Yep. So there’s a few ways we can do it. We use a bit of the vault technology for our in-house assessments, but for the online guys, we get them just to lie on their back, arms straight up above their head. So if you lie on your back, arms straight up and then you just fold those arms back. And if you can get your arms on the floor without your lower back popping up or seeing anything else change, we’re in a pretty good position there to move forward. So we can make a pretty clear assumption that that’s going to be…

You’ve got enough overhead range of motion there. And with that, I mean, I see it all the time with a lot of their triathletes that will come in from being on the bike and running. They’re very stiff through the shoulders and don’t have that overhead range of motion.

How do you… What are some ways to get started on improving that? Because I imagine it’s not about building the strength to start with. It’s about just expanding that range of motion and it’s probably starting very light. Like what is it for you that you would start to move on to from there? So we always start from the most proximal aspect and then we work our way out. So what I mean by that, especially if we take the shoulder, we work from the trunk, so your body, and then move out towards your limbs. So number one thing that we always assess if someone’s coming in with a very tight upper thoracic area, chest and back, is their breathing.

We probably solved more shoulder issues for just breathing mechanics, especially in older populations where they’re more likely to have more stress in their lives, where they start breathing for those upper traps a little bit more than actually having a full diaphragmatic breath. But that’s step one, because we’ve got to sort that out. If we don’t focus on that, everything else we try and do is probably just going to regress back at some point. So we start there. Then what we do, we work towards the thoracic spine. So that’s the top region of your spine just before you get to your neck. And we make sure you’ve got at least 10 degrees of range of motion there. If you don’t have that, your scap function, your scaps won’t function correctly. What is this next point that we look at? We look at scap functions. So we go, breathing is good, T spine is good, scap function is good. Then we’ll move actually into the shoulder joint itself

and we’ll look, okay, can you now get 90 degrees of glenal-humual joint range of motion there? And if you’re ticking all those boxes, it adds up to 180 degrees. And then we can go from there. In terms of how we manage that, we obviously do the breathing first.

What we generally see is if you work from proximal to distal, you solve a lot of issues going forward. So if we solve the breathing issue and that becomes a regular and normal thing that they’re doing, it will then relieve some of the tension going out. But especially with your triathletes and your cyclists, they’re generally very weak upper back because they spent a lot of time in that their shoulders are forwards because they want to get over the bike and hold that position. So just strengthening up that upper back is a huge component of the stuff what we would focus on. Things like band pull-aparts, your rowing mechanics, making sure that you’re actually getting your shoulder to move forwards and backwards while you’re rowing and you’re not just using your arm to do it. Making sure the scapula is gliding across that ribcage nicely and functioning well would be really good and building strength through that area. Once we’ve done that,

we see this kind of cascade effect of the range of motion starting to open up with, of course, some mobility aids and stuff like that. So if anyone is in my program, they know that we love a little peanut. So it’s the two tennis balls that are kind of put together, goes up your spine. Combine that, find the really tight spot, go for your breathing mechanics. That’s why breathing is also really important because it allows us to open up these ranges a little bit better.

And then we take it from there with some just breathing in that position, releasing it, try not to force things. I think people, when they’re trying to search for a range of motion, benefits try to force it too much rather than letting it relax into the position. And once we have relaxed and we’ve got a bit more range of motion to open up, we’ll then apply some strength training to reinforce it. So the body then goes, sweet. We have this range of motion. Now we’ve done some strength training through this range of motion to make it feel safe, secure. And it learns that that is okay. So we don’t keep regressing backwards and we can kind of make better gains as we move forwards.

It’s really great to hear you talk about your approach there because it’s so similar in the technique approach that we like to take. It’s start from the inside, move out from there. And it makes sense. There’s no point in thinking about what your hands or your wrists are doing because it’s connected to your elbows and your shoulder. And it doesn’t work that way. So you’ve got to start inside out. And just that range of motion, I think even if people didn’t build or increase their strength that much, but just worked on that range of motion, for many people, that’s going to help them swim a lot faster and more efficiently because being able to get into the positions is, I’d say for probably 40 to 50% of the people that I coach who come to clinics, they just can’t physically, or can’t simply get into those positions that we want them to. So really some basic stuff can go a long, long way. Yeah. We really see two types of people here

with this. So we have one side of the group that’s that. They can’t get into the position. And then we have the other side of the group where they can’t stabilize in that position. And they’re both problems. Everyone thinks about, I think a lot of the time, everyone goes, oh, you’ve got heaps of range of motion that should be great. But this is where we’ve got to find a balance. It’s all about balance with your body and performance and swimming. You can’t be one side or the other too much. You’ve got to meet somewhere in the middle to get that balance so you can get into position like you’re talking about. What’s a huge issue that we see in adult populations.

But you’ve also got to be able to stabilize and actually control yourself in those end ranges of motions and not go too far. You can’t overextend on a catch position and lose everything the same way that you would not be able to get into the position. And I think the way that you’re talking about swim technique, it’s kind of the same as what I came from. So before I got into S&C coaching, I was a swim coach. I was a swim coach while I was competitive swimming as well. And that was always the approach that I would take when I was taught to take is you’ve got to work its head position, hip position, feet position, rotation, and then work your way out. So body position is key. If you can float well, you’re solving most of your problems. So for us in the S&C side of things, it’s the same or it should be the same. If you can’t get them into the right position, they’re never going to be able to actually apply

any of the technical teaching or it’s going to be very difficult without compensation for them to apply the technical teaching that the swim coach is trying to get them to do. So I think that’s where we really worked. And it’s another reason why I’ve really loved working with older populations now because I feel like the impact we can make on those guys who are really tight and are really struggling to get in position and just feel like their technique is not going to get better. Like we have so many people come to us and say, I just, I will never, I’m probably never going to get a high elbow catch. And I’m like, really? It’s like, well, I’ve been trying for years and we’ve done all the drills. I’m like, mate, let’s assess, let’s see where your shoulders at and let’s go from there. And needless to say, they couldn’t get their arm above their head. And we go, okay, this is going to take some time because it takes longer to fix you.

Once you get a bit older, your body’s learned this position is comfortable here. It will take some time and your swimming might feel a bit icky, but stick with it because this is, we’ll get you, if you, if you can get it, if you can get your arm above your head, we can get this catch position. So we’ve just got to get your arm above your head now. Yeah, I love it. And in terms of the swimmers that are doing the longer distance events, even if it’s an Iron Man, maybe a Rotnest Channel swim, which is 20 kilometers. What approach are you taking there? Because it’s obviously not about that explosive power that we’re looking for. It’s about being able to be strong throughout the race and maintain it. Someone like Andy Donelson, for example. What’s your philosophy behind building the strength required for the longer distance stuff?

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Okay, so with this, this is a very interesting point because would you agree that if you could get faster in the water, your ability to swim longer distances will probably get better because you’ve got a stronger threshold? Yeah. That makes sense? Yeah. You know what I’m saying? So for example, if you’re holding a 130 pace, but you make yourself fast enough to swim a 120 pace, 130 becomes easy.

Does that make sense? Yeah. Or will it come in as long as you’re doing the training required for it? So that’s the easiest concept to go with. This is where I go with strength training. If you could, and we don’t really work in the world of what you can lift and stuff like that, it’s very much just watch the trend. But if you are lifting at this level, be like at a certain level before say, you could let’s put a number on it, even though we don’t really care about the numbers, you could only RDL 40 kilos before and now you can RDL 60 kilos.

40 is going to be real easy for you.

And you’ll be able to do a lot more reps at 40 than you would would have before when 40 was really hard. So the essence is really still, like we don’t necessarily go into so much of like the explosive jumping, throwing work that we do with the sprint guys and the pool swimmers and stuff like that. But we don’t cut it out completely either because it’s still important. Like we still need to make people,

speed is still what gets people across the line and a lot of these ultra marathon swims.

And something that has become very apparent to us, especially working with Andy and working with the other guys like Josie, Max, Robbie Bonsall and all those boys. You know, the ones that can get faster, give themselves less risks for weather and other things to come into play and ruin that swim for you. So speed is still even an endurance, something that I think very strongly

is very critical still. I think if you just try and become, I think if you just try to become this endurance animal, but you’ve got no speed improvement, I think you just leave yourself in a big risk window of like, okay, well, I could swim 40 kilometers, but if the weather turns bad, especially in rotto and port to pub, for example, especially port to pub because it’s a little bit later in the year, we see this all the time, the fastest, the cutoff time might come in and they might have to move that forwards because of weather conditions and stuff like that. So you can’t just sit back and go, okay, well, we just need to make them endurance animals. I think that’s an aspect of speed is involved. A lot of that is determined by the swim coaching side of things as well, but we need to help facilitate that by giving them the opportunity to have that extra strength and power at the disposal. And if we can make them a little bit stronger,

they then become a little bit more efficient at their previous bests, that’s going to help them a long way. But the main thing for these endurance guys is just making sure that they can get in the water as much as possible for me. And if we get them stronger, the stronger they are and the more balanced their body is, the less likely they are to break. As long as we’re managing recovery in terms of sleep, hydration and nutrition, well, that’s something that we’ve got to really focus on. And then the strength work that comes from that and that opportunity for them to become faster in the water because they get stronger, they have more disposable force that they can use in the water. They’ll feel better in the water, what will be a massive confidence boost. Their stroke efficiency will increase because they can pull more efficiently each time because they’ve had technical improvement because we can get them in range of motion.

But they’re also just stronger each stroke so they can then get on top of it. So I think I’ve seen this before, especially in the endurance sport arena where everyone’s just like, you just need to do high reps, high volumes, all these things. But I also think, well, that’s what they’re doing in the water anyway. So why don’t we take a little bit of a different approach and make them and work on some of the stuff that they’re not going to get in the water, strength, power, speed, and just give their body that opportunity when they do go in the water and that transfer when they do go in the water to be able to go a little bit faster in their training sessions and build a higher threshold. I think that’s kind of where we’ve gone in terms of essence for these endurance guides. And I think that’s why we have such a great success record. We’ve not just the elite guys because people are going to say that Andy is an animal

because he’s super fast anyway. But even the guys who aren’t as fast as Andy, they’ve had these improvements in speed in the water that have helped them because they can sit at that threshold that was a little bit faster, would have been too hard for them before for longer and get themselves across the line quicker.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And would you, in terms of fitting it in each week, where would you suggest people try and fit their strength workouts in relation to their swim sessions? Because I know personally, if I do a hard gym session Tuesday night, swimming Wednesday morning, I’m usually going to feel it. So I try to do it at least 24 hours before a swim session. Otherwise, I just come in feeling pretty heavy. And obviously it depends how much you’re training. But do you have a preference there and what have you seen work well for people? This is the hardest thing, I think, for a lot of swimmers, is how do I fit it in,

especially the older guys who also got huge work commitments and all those other things, right?

Because it becomes tough. You’re trying to balance your pool sessions that you have to do. You’re not going to get better at swimming without swimming.

The gym’s great, but if you’re not in the water, you’re not going to go faster in the water. So that’s your specific time where you get faster in the water. So where do you fit it in? How do you fit it in? And it really is a question of what works best for you. There is obviously my opinion in terms of what is optimal. I wouldn’t have you come in if it was completely up to me and you’re a professional athlete, yada, yada, yada. Well, we don’t work with professional athletes. I don’t think there’s many in swimming, but we’re not an institute or sport or anything like that. We work with the real people in the real world. And it’s just very tough. So what we try to do is we look at their schedule and say if they’ve got a double on a Monday, a single on a Tuesday, a double on a Wednesday, a single on a Tuesday, on a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, they might do one swim on Saturday and a Sunday. For example, we might get them in

on a Tuesday, Thursday morning or the Tuesday, Thursday night just to balance it out so they are getting enough time. However, when we run into issues with that, especially with the guys who work, is like, you know, or they have families Tuesday and Thursday night, but they don’t only time to hang out with the family. So what do we do then? Well, we normally would pick the most, the lightest intensity swimming sessions that we can and try and pair it up with that. And it’s up to us as this S&C provider to manage their load so they’re not going into the next session sore. Because at the end of the day, you’re only going to get better from what you recover from. This is, you know, I’m an S&C provider who works with swimmers. My job is to make sure they can swim in the water to the best of their ability every time they get in the water. My job is not to kick people in the butt and make them sore for weeks in my own way of trying to fulfill my own needs

as an S&C coach and make myself feel relevant. My job is to make sure that these guys get in the water, do and can continue to perform in the water. Yes, sometimes they’re going to get sore. And that does happen. But that’s not the goal. I don’t want anyone to be sore. We have a rule with my gym program. If they do a session and they’re sore, they’ve got to tell us because we don’t want it to happen twice. We want to just make sure that they’re doing what they can and they’re maximizing every swim session they can do. And there’s a lot of ways that you can do that. One might be, okay, the volume isn’t very high. The intensity wasn’t very high. So what did you do in terms of recovery? How’s your nutrition? What’s your sleep like? Did you hydrate effectively? Do we need to bring in some recovery aids just to help speed up that process for you? Or is this going to just be something that we’re going to have to take? Okay, this happened this week.

We’ll make a quick adjustment for your second session in the week. And then we’ll come back to that session at same light and see what happens because it might have just been it’s a lot of new stuff in the program. The adaptation process was your body just freaked out a bit. But you’ve got to also go, okay, well, we don’t want that to happen too often because then they’ve had two crap sessions that week or in two weeks and I don’t really want that. I want people to feel fresh because at the end of the day, they need to swim fast in the water to get faster in the water. They don’t need to lift heavy in the gym to get faster in the water necessarily. It does help though.

Gotcha. So the reason you don’t want them coming or leaving a session, a gym session saw is because it’s obviously going to impact their performance in the pool. And if you’re doing that too much, you’re just not going to get the gains from the swim. What’s the risk reward ratio on that if that makes sense? Like if I’m belting someone in the gym

twice a week and they’re turning up

after every session they have with me to their next session in the water and they’re sore, they’re going to have a crap session at least twice a week if they get 48 hours of doms, they’re going to have maybe three crap sessions, what ends up six crap sessions a week, but maybe they only had one good session that week. They’re probably not getting what they need out of those swim sessions. So like pull it back in like, you know, let’s give you what you can handle at this stage and where you’re at with your life and what’s going on in the world and what can you, what can your body manage because there’s no point in wasting your time because you don’t have a lot because we’re on this schedule. There’s no point in me wasting your time,

giving you these massive gym sessions where I could probably get more improvement out of you in 20 minutes than an hour because that’s all your body is willing to give me at this point in time. But the best thing about the body is it adapts over time if you give it the opportunity to. So may start at 20 and we may build that up over time and we may need to drop back every now and again if you’re training spikes, that’s fine. But we can consistently just increase incrementally over a course of, you know, a longer period of time and we will get you to an hour and it will be fine and your body will be adapted to it and then you’re getting more out of it but your body’s actually improved and we’ve decreased your risk of injury what would obviously be very bad if you got injured because then you know in the water and then we’re modifying your gym anyway. So we’ve kicked ourselves in the face there.

So it’s just, you know, what is the reward from that risk? You know, if I’m not able to take myself out of it and say, what is the best for the swimmer? The best thing for the swimmer is for the swimmer to swim and be able to swim well. Also, their coaches stop sending like, don’t want you going to, don’t want their swimmer is going to an S&C provider when their kids always, or their adult swimmers always turn up sore the next day and they’re getting frustrated on pool deck going, why am I, why can’t you do a bloody aerobic A1 cycle?

I lift my arms above my head. Well, that’s bloody useful, isn’t it? Like, so, you know, it’s just, I think a lot of the time, you know, people put these massive programs out there because they want to show their value, but showing your value is actually doing what’s best for each individual athlete and their circumstance and making sure that you can adjust their program and be flexible with your plan. Again, I’m an S&C provider. I’m a supplementary service to these guys like a dietitian or a physio is. I’m not the primary thing that’s going to make them better. The primary thing that’s going to make them better is them in the water.

So my job is to make sure they can get in the water and swim really well.

And in terms of people who start with you, they’re quite new. What are some of the common misconceptions that they come in with?

Which one? It’s changed a lot. This is probably the thing that’s changed the most because when we first started, my primary goal when talking to coaches was this is going to be a benefit to your athletes, not something that’s going to make them slower because a lot of people used to think that. I think now that it’s evolved a bit more and people have caught up. So I don’t have to deal with that much at the moment. But one of the main…

Just trying to think of the most common one at the moment. We… I think we do such a good job in our positioning now on our website how we enter conversations with people that we don’t get a lot of that many objections once people have signed up. But I think one of the main ones is people don’t value the rest periods enough.

That’s probably resting…

Resting and recovery is probably the thing that we have to work on the most with people at this stage. And that would be in terms of people thinking they can just blast through their program because in the water a lot of the time it is just get your main set, talk to her. Here’s your cycles, away you go. You’re getting like 10 to 15 seconds, 20 seconds rest. Especially when you’re doing more endurance work or a minute maybe. We’re in the gym, it’s like, okay, well, we’re probably going to have a minimum rest of a minute plus because it’s a different style of working out and we need to deal with different things and stuff like that. So really getting people to understand and buy into rest periods is probably the number one thing I have to deal with.

We still get the question about

injury risk in the gym. And I just kind of say all sport has risk of injury. My job is to mitigate your risk of injury as much as possible by making you stronger.

But at the end of the day, you’re probably more likely to get injured at swimming than you are in the gym based on the stats that we’ve got and the people that have been injured with us. And the other one would probably what we talked about earlier in terms of like the endurance swimming thing, in terms of not putting enough emphasis on getting these guys stronger and pushing that threshold up a little bit higher so they can have a better performance in the water. I think that’s probably the main one. People still think that just being a robically,

being a robic animal is the way to go where I think having a bit more speed is a key aspect of that now. It’s interesting here you talk about the rest intervals or recovery intervals. I find it’s the same thing in the pool with endurance athletes. Whenever we do sprint sets, having them be okay with being on the wall for a minute while they rest up before they go a fast 50, right? Like it’s just like, no, we got to go. We got to go. It’s like, no, just let’s take this minute rest. Then we can actually go, you know, much, much faster and much harder in this 50 and actually hit a much higher speed and use a different energy system.

People just, they want to go to the pool, want to get their workout done, but if they can be okay with being on the wall for more rest, long-term it’s going to help them a lot. And obviously same thing for strength training. Yeah, I think it’s something that’s coming.

It’s coming around, I think. I think the only way this is kind of going to trickle down is the more coaches that talk about it and actually implement it.

I think as I’ve mentioned a few times, I think for these endurance athletes, speed is key.

Being fit enough is important, but I think you can get so fit and then you probably didn’t need to get any fitter. But if you got faster, you’d make your life for the hell of a lot easier getting across. And you need rest period for that to happen because otherwise you’re training the wrong adaptation.

And that’s, I think it’s great to hear because that’s the process that we take with our swim program because we also own a swim program as well is we’re going to train the specific adaptation and we’re going to do that. And speed is a big part of that. Endurance is a big part of that. Everything in between is a big part of that that you need. And there’s different levels to what athletes are. If you’re a master’s 50 sprinter, there’s something you’re doing different training than a Andy Donaldson training for Manhattan Island. But there still has to be elements of everything for everyone to get. It’s just the ratio of what you give them changes. And getting people to actually sit and rest is a huge one that I especially find with the trifle crew, the open water crew especially, because they’re so used to being in the water and just churning out kilometers that they don’t really take that step back. Good story for you.

I think you’ve had Josie on the pod before, yeah?

No, I haven’t had Josie on. Just Andy. Anyway, Josie is a great story. Josie also did Manhattan with Andy. So she was the fifth fastest overall now and missed out on the female record. But when she first came to us like five years ago, she was famous for getting her sets done in like 20 minutes. These are our long view sessions. And she would be done. It would be finishing the warm-up and Josie would be walking out the door. And it was two years ago, I think. Roughly two years ago where we kind of made that switch for her and kind of sat her down and went, look, you’re the fittest person in the program by far. You’re so fit. You’re always so fit. And I know that your thing that you hold on to is you’re like, I’m the fittest here. That will get me across the line. But you need to get faster now. So we need to change how you’re training. And she moved programs and the coach that she was with was obviously much into that as well

and saw that opportunity. And it’s great with the collaboration between S&C and the swim coach. And now she’s off crushing it. And she’s the first one to tell you, you know, speed is something that I want to prioritize. It’s something that you need to prioritize. Getting faster is important. It just makes your life easier.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And in this time, so you work with a wide range of people, how many times a week are the competitive guys, like the younger sort of age group swimmers, getting going to the gym compared to the older crew and do you have a suggestion or recommendation for most people? What would be a minimum for you for the age group triathlete? The minimum or maximum? Pretty much the same at the moment for us. And it comes, it’s realistically a matter of time. And the time dictates it too. It’s probably where we’re at for most of these guys. Majority of the athletes that we see with us, they’re on too.

You know, the way that I set up is works is, you know, we give you as many sessions is going to be best for you. So they could have four if we thought it was going to be the best for them. But most of the time, there’s no way they’re going to recover enough or have enough time to do that. So two is where we’ve sat with a lot of people. And a lot of the time, I don’t think you have enough time or the athlete is trained enough to go to free and get much of a benefit out of it.

Over like peak season with the like the open water season over here where people are doing open water events like every weekend, we go to free sessions. But the third sessions is a primer slash recovery session to get them ready for the weekend. There’s no real emphasis on trying to get them stronger or anything like that. It’s come in warm up, sit in boots, sit in your arm sleeves, do your recovery, make sure your range of motion is ready to go. And then a bit of priming work. So some med bull slams and stuff like that. And yeah, we do priming work for the open water guys as well, because it’s still important. Like you still want to have that go when you get there, right? So that’s when that competitive start of the year turns up, we go to free. But the third session is really like 30 minutes, just come in and do some stuff and they can do it at home as well. It’s a session that’s kind of designed that they can do wherever they most comfortable.

They can come in and do it if they want, they can do it at home if they want. But most of the time we sit around too

just because of the time constraints that we have because they need to be in the water more.

Yeah, yeah, makes sense.

Thanks so much for being on the podcast. I know you’ve got, we got based in Perth in Western Australia. But I think you’ve also got online resources as well. So what’s the best place for people to get in contact with you or your team and find out more about what you do? So you’ve got a few options here. You can just contact us directly through our social media. Instagram is probably the most accessible. I’m down as swimming under school strong. And then there’s obviously formidable strength and coaching. But the swimming strong is the one I’m going to be on most of the time. So that’s probably the easiest way to get in contact with us that way. Or head to the website. What’s www.formidablestrength.com.au and just put an enquiry there and the sales team will get to you. Good stuff. Well, thanks, Ryan. I’d love to see what you’re doing with. I think like having that niche of working with swimmers, purely swimmers is great because while general strength training

for people is important, I think there are some specific things that swimmers really need like the overhead range of motion, the thoracic rotation, like some really specific things that can go a long, long way. And I love your approach as well. So thanks for sharing some of that with me on the podcast. And anyone who’s listening to this, get in touch with Ryan and his team and we’ll put those links in the show notes. Awesome, mate. Thank you very much. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

If you know you’ve done a really good set, you know, a few days before I try and be like, right, this is how good I am at swimming. And I focus my attention and confidence off that. I try really hard not to let any of those race swims affect my confidence. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

All right, welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. Kat, this is your second time on the podcast. I actually checked and it was all a little bit over a year ago that I had you on. So welcome back. And one of the reasons I’ve got your back is because you’re coming off a second place at the Ironman World Champs in Nice. So big congratulations. Thank you so much. Yeah, thanks. It’s cool to feel like a regular. I mean, it’s only the second time, but to feel part of the show is pretty special. So thanks for having me again. Well, and actually another fun fact is that I think you’ve got like we sort of reposted a video that I think Ironman shared a view swimming. I think that’s had the most views on our Instagram. It’s had like five million views, that video of you swimming. So you’re a big hit in that in the Effortless Swimming World. So congratulations on that as well. That’s mad, isn’t it? I think like a smooth, smooth swim strokes is one of those sort of

like skiing or snowboarding, you know, when it’s like a sunrise or something. It’s that mesmerizing sort of goodness, I just call myself mesmerizing. Generally, in general, they’re like a mesmerizing good video just to watch, aren’t they? And I guess the playtime must be so high. It’s just such a lovely video of you swimming and like it just it looks so graceful and mesmerizing. It’s like, I think I can see why it’s had so many people watch it and share it and things like that. So yeah, I thought that was that was really, really cool. And talking about your Ironman World Championship race for the Ironman, I was looking at the swim times and I saw that you did a 49 minute swim. But oh my god, like that is that is quick. And that in the front pack with the top, I think 11 girls there, which which I thought she’s got to be stoked with that she’s got to be so pleased with that swim. Because, you know, out with the people who grew up swimming who come from that

swimming background and had a really good swim. So I want to dig into that a little bit, just to get your maybe what you’ve done over the last six to 12 months to continue to improve your swimming and what it took to make that front pack and maybe any differences that you had seen in your stroke or in the way that you’re racing. Because I know a lot of people can swim quite well in the pool, but I really struggled to put it together in the open water. I get that all the time with the people that I’m coaching. So in terms of the lead up to the world champs, was there any sort of change here training or how you were swimming or how was your swimming feeling leading into it? Yeah, I mean, it’s going to take us the full podcast of dissect isn’t it? But um, yeah, really happy with that swim. Firstly, like, it feels you don’t often get the rewards for your efforts. And that just really felt like a really great sort of cherry to have had. And you can’t, you know, lose that it’s not,

you can’t fluke swimming or anything like that. So I just feel really satisfied with the swim generally. And then coming into the race, I guess, I guess it comes off just the consistency of training. Ultimately, that’s, you know, that’s all we know that swimming sort of builds off. But I think maybe the sort of specifics of keeping that structure really importantly this year. So because I’ve raced, I think it was like my eighth or ninth race of the year already by the time we hit the world champs, I’d had one race before. And so every time you’re racing, you’re traveling, you’re finding a new swimming pool, so you’re losing a couple of days and then at least, I don’t know, three to six K of swimming that week, perhaps, depending on how motivated you are the day after the race to, you know, get back in the pool and things like that before you travel home. So it was really easy this year to have like lost

that consistency. And I think I just really forced it, like I made travel plans around the year. And specifically that summer, so I would have a swim in the morning before, hopefully before I could do a travel day, then I’d make sure I was forcing myself to swim before I traveled home, you know, just like keeping the consistency.

My biggest training partner here in Loughborough actually was traveling a lot as well with our other friend, Indy, because he’s coaching her now, Indy Lee, Sam Proctor. And so I lost a little bit of company. And I am, I guess quite proud that I maintain the consistency. So even though he wasn’t there, I was like, right, it’s Tuesday, I’m going to do VO two today. And I sort of really kept that structure and doing solo VO two is a bit sad. And you get a bit of, you know, a few weeks before the race, the lifeguard actually came over to me because I had to get out after the session, you know, just I couldn’t maintain my composure in the water. I’d finished the session. I was just having a little breather on the side before I did a, you know, another 400 meters or something to cool down. He’s like, are you okay?

So I pride myself on keeping the consistency and in the sort of intensity. And the same with, I guess, all through the different intensities of the swim. So that was the biggest thing for me. And then, yeah, I was just swimming really well before the race. So I was really confident, which is a bonus, I guess.

And what does VO two set look like for you? Like what are those sets like where you’re doing them solo? Because I know the ones that we do, I do in a squad on a Friday, and there’s like 20 of us in there. And it’s easy when you got like someone to race and you’ve got other people there turning through it, it flies like, but it’s such a hard set. So yeah, what are those sets look like for you? Yeah, I mean, I base it off a session, like program session that I’ve been doing with Sam under IntelliTry. And it looks like a few 25s, a few fifties, the hundreds of the killers. And then it and then I go back to 25s, and then fifties. And I feel like that’s a really nice sort of way of doing it. And I guess I just keep the discipline of it’s off this time, just go, just go. And I started using if the clock’s not there right in front of me, I’ve started using like a clock in the goggles. And that keeps me focused, but I’ve only used those for a couple

of sessions in the summer. Obviously, before that is just desperately looking up for the clock. And I actually find it quite nice, like I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s like, desperately hard. But I much prefer it to 200s, which I did a few of, I guess, in the preseason, it was like six 200s for you to with a really long rest, but that in a 50 meter pool. And that’s, that’s the worst that’s worse I’ve ever felt. And I’m not sure I couldn’t do that without someone else. I don’t think whereas like fifties, even hundreds, you can thrash yourself. And it’s okay. Just yeah, it’s manageable. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. And so I think that’s such a such a key thing is that you’re right that consistency in in swimming because you tend to lose the feeling of the water very, very quickly. And I think like personally, you know, for me, if I in the lead up to summer, if I’m doing some races, if I can get in the water five times a week,

then I’m feeling pretty good leading into the races. If it’s three times a week, it’s okay. But it’s just not it’s not nearly nearly enough. And especially with the amount of travel that professional triathletes do, especially yourself, you’ve had a pretty busy year. That’s that’s got to be such a tough thing to to keep is that is the habits and the training calendar. And so how do you manage to fit that into the to the travel? Like, did you just kind of look ahead and go, right? I know there’s a pool here. I’m going to be flying out in the afternoon. Like, was this did a lot of planning go into that? Yeah, I mean, it’s sort of simple. Like, um, for the T 100 races, we often have to be there for days before. So it’s like on a Tuesday. And I, I if it’s a, you know, a long travel, I can only swim at 11am generally, because it’s the public lanes. So I have to plan an afternoon trip or plan to have a, you know, a different airport that’s closer to a pool. So I can swim in the morning

or just scrap that and just make sure when I get there, because obviously America, like you get a time difference, like I just get in the pool that day. And I think I’ve got better at that. Like I used to travel and be so stressed out by the travel that I couldn’t tolerate training at all. Whereas actually, I now sort of want to swim. I think it’s a different mindset, perhaps of like, I know how good I’ll feel during the week or on race day if I swim. So I get this sort of secondary motivation, knowing that it will make me feel better, even though it’s a bit of a faff and planning it in. Yeah. Yeah, I am.

I, I’ve had a couple of camps recently. We had one in the Maldives and one in Thailand. And like, it’s not a huge flight. It’s like probably door to door. It’s probably 12 or 14 to 16 hours. But and the time difference isn’t too bad. But the first thing I want to do is just get in the water and swim. Because I think in terms of that, how your body just tends to

tense up and get a bit stiff from the travel, there’s nothing better than a swim just to loosen up. And I try to put no pressure on myself at all. It’s just like this. I’m just going to roll up and down times. I’m not even going to look at, but I’m just going to knock out whatever it is, like 2K or something. And usually it starts to feel really good towards the end of it. Did you find anything like that? Like, did you have any pressure to perform in those training sessions, or were they just like to roll the arms over? Oh, yeah, no, definitely no pressure. I think I actually, maybe during the week, I’ll have a couple of those swims anyway, which is just no, no pressure swims just like volume. And I think, yeah, definitely not necessarily before travel, I don’t give myself that courtesy. But after travel, and even the day after, you don’t know quite what that pulls like everyone’s sort of always this pull fast, this pull slow as well. So even the day of the

travel or the day after, even the whole race week, to be honest, like no pressure. If you know you’ve done a really good set, you know, a few days before, I try and be like, right, this is how good I am at swimming. And I focus my attention and confidence off that. I try really hard not to let any of those race swims affect my confidence. And if being more like maintenance, maintenance, maintenance, doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter. It doesn’t mean that I’m suddenly a rubbish swimmer because I can’t swim a 120, you know, I don’t know, 26 yard pull or something stupid. So yeah, definitely, definitely no pressure and just consistency. And also just race week intensity. You don’t have to do as much anyway, so you naturally feel better.

And in terms of your technique, is there anything in the last six months, 12 months that you’ve put particular attention on?

Yeah, so I know we talked about technique quite a lot in the last podcast, like with terms of like body position and kicking and things like that. And I think a lot of this year has just been the consistency. It’s a bit boring really that there’s no there’s less secret sort of big improvements. But I think we talked about head position, using the snorkel sort of body position, like feeling the water, kicking, I’ve definitely been a bit more consistent with my kick. You mentioned that I, you know, like, committing to an actual kick set, like with purpose and focus and intensity would be, you know, a good idea, or you said it on the podcast. And I think I’ve started sort of racing my, my friends in the swimming pool now. So

they’re a bit annoyed at that. But it’s definitely helped with, yeah, the change of pace. And I think maybe it’s not a technique bit, but it’s more like the intense, like, I feel like I have gears now in swimming, like, before it was just, you can just swim at intensity and like tolerate it. And now it’s like, Oh, okay, I can now go harder, and I can back off. And I feel like that is given me the control to be able to, well, it just that feeling of control to be able to recover, and not just die and just and then get worried about dying. So going too easy.

That’s a bit convoluted. So yeah, having the sort of technique, I guess, of being able to go harder and slower. And I think both our skills, not just being able to go faster, I think being able to swim slowly is also perhaps like a sort of a technique that you can learn as well. So we are like to be able to give yourself that time to recover. And yeah, sorry, maybe that was off tangent, the technique side as well. I think things like just solidifying, like hand entry,

and working on utilizing my lats and sort of coordinating my hip movement. I think things like that I have focused on as well. And I go through maybe, I don’t know, a few weeks at a time where I’ll be like, Oh, this is my my limiting factor. And I’ll then just focus on that for the two or three weeks until I get a bit bored. And I don’t feel like it’s affecting me anymore. And then something else will crop up and it’ll be like, well, I’ll have one bad swim where I feel like my core is weak and then I’ll be like, right, I’m going to now focus on my core for three weeks. So yeah, there’s this sort of the levering through lats and like the connection with the other hip. I think that’s something I’ve really worked on specifically on my left side. I think I’ve always sort of felt a bit weak on one side compared to the other. I think most people do. And I definitely think during some of the harder like VO2 or threshold sessions I’ve been doing, I’ve got out and

I’ve been like clutching my lats, like they’ve been so sore. And I see that as like such a success. Whereas I never, I would just get sore shoulders before. Massive lats.

You struggle to get out the door when you leave the pool at the area, working them that much. That’s that’s great. And I have quite a few swimmers who maybe come to a clinic or they come to a camp or something. And they say, Oh, I’m so like I’m really sore through my lats and kind of through like the back of the shoulder here as well. And it’s like, that’s great. Keep doing what you’re doing because they’re the muscles you want to be using when you’re swimming. And it’s interesting about what you say there about like you’ll focus on something for a couple of weeks, move on to another thing. I find myself very similar with that. Like I might hear an idea from someone and I’ll practice that for a while or I’ll feel like something’s just not quite clicking. So I’ll just I’ll put some attention on that. I think I’m very much the same with you. And and something that I’ve been working on just the last sort of week or so is is thinking about like you want to swim from the inside

out. I heard this from I think as an Australian coach, I think it might have been Dennis, Dennis Cottrell, who like coached Grant Hackett and Sun Yang, something like the really good distance freestylers. So you want to swim from the inside out. And in terms of the arms, I’ve been thinking about thinking about the shoulders, get those right in terms of the rotation, think about the elbows, and then it almost takes care of the hands in a way because, you know, swimming from the inside out. So the shoulders, elbows are closer to that than the hands. So I’ve just really been trying to work on shoulders and elbows, and then let the hips kind of just stabilise behind, let the legs stabilise behind and do that. And it’s been feeling really good. So I’ve just been leaning into that sort of leaning into that kind of feeling and sensation. And it’s working quite well at the moment. Because one of the things I’ve,

I think that sort of stuffed up my stroke over the last couple of years is since I started surfing and surfing more, my recovery and the way that I swim has gotten a lot uglier. And especially when I swim in the pool, I kind of feel like I just don’t recover over the water as well as I normally would. So I’m trying to like get that back a little bit. And I feel like this is helping. So yeah, taking these little like side quests and just trying different things and seeing how it affects the stroke and the times. And yeah, it’s a good way to discover I think what’s working for you and what’s not. And just working those kinks out in the stroke. Cool. You’ve given me the next few weeks of focus. I think it also keeps you interested in the sport, doesn’t it? Like that wanting to develop something like very small little things rather than thinking, I need to get better at swimming. It’s like, I’m going to focus on this. I think that that’s

especially when you’re doing this sort of longer term, or like you committed to doing it professionally, that you need those little things to like break up a season.

Yeah. Oh, that’s right. And it keeps swimming really interesting as well, doesn’t it? Because it can get monotonous going up and down the pool. But if you’ve got even one thing to focus on that might be kind of new, it can really help. And I want to dig into the race itself. So what were the conditions like? Was it fairly choppy out there? It looked quite choppy. Yeah, all week it had been really warm. So that’s the first point is that it was meant to be a swim skin, non wetsuit for pros. I think it was always going to be wetsuit for the amateurs. I’m not entirely sure what they’re cut off, but it’s always too high, I think. Same for us. It’s always too high. But it was sort of the day before someone mentioned, oh, it might be a wetsuit swim. It was a bit ridiculous, but it was then pretty certain if the temp, you know, it’s not going to drop overnight. It’s not going to increase overnight. So yeah, wetsuit swim, but very borderline. And I was really nervous about

getting too hot because I generally get too hot in a wetsuit, let alone at the actual borderline sort of limit for being illegal to wear one. But that’s potentially a caveat to some of this is that I think people think that the weaker swimmers benefit from a wetsuit fact like more than a better swimmer. But I don’t necessarily think that’s true. I mean, you’re way more experienced, but I think different swimmers and different styles benefit differently. It’s not just how fast you are. And I know recently that I haven’t needed, oh, I felt like I haven’t needed a wetsuit and my body position feels better. Whereas in the past, I definitely sort of use the buoyancy to help my hip position. But the actual conditions, I think I don’t think because it’s so dark in the nice race is only is you actually start right on sunrise. So you’re warming up in the dark. I don’t really remember thinking it’s super choppy or thinking oh, it’s really choppy. I don’t remember that. From the whole week,

I remember that as you get further out, it feels like it gets more choppy. But I think that’s just a classic sea swim. So I’m not sure I would say oh my goodness, it was super choppy because it to me, it just felt like a sea swim. But I think that’s the feedback is that it was really hard conditions. It also might have been that I was swimming in a pack and I definitely was not at the front of the race. So you naturally get a little bit of shelter from the front of the sort of conditions, I guess. And so yeah, I had a really good start. I think something that’s recently come to me is that I have earned to be at the front of the swim start. As in, I am trying to win this race. I’m going to be on the front line, even if I’m not the best swimmer, you know, it’s a very, very, very wide start line ish that you had to have. And therefore, if I want to be, I’m going to get to the front of this, no matter who’s just sprinted

off this sort of the beach to get to the open water start. So I made sure I was at the front, which was, it sounds silly and obvious, but I don’t like that sort of boistery get to the front element of the swim before the gun goes. And then there’s the

natural creep of the race. As in, there’s no physical start line. I asked at the briefing the day before like, where is the start line? And it was like, we’re sort of here ish between these two boys don’t don’t go in front. And I’ve had many experiences in the last couple of years where people just creep and it’s not penalized. And to me, that’s it’s not a good part of the Ironman pro racing. But again, like it was happening. And instead of being, you know, goody two shoes, Sally, I, I crept with everyone else. And so I don’t have any regret about that. That was just the nature of the swim start, which meant I got a good start. So I didn’t really notice too much about who was around me. Just that I felt really good, I felt really confident, it wasn’t super aggressive, which it has been in the T 100 races, in terms of speed, like initial speed and just like people around you, because it was a C so spread out, it meant that you could really find your own line in a way and just attack

as best as you felt like you could. So yeah, it started really well. And I think that’s pretty fundamental to most swims. This podcast is brought to you by Great Ocean Wetsuits, an up and coming Australian performance wetsuit brand for triathletes and open water swimmers. The wetsuits are designed and tested in Melbourne, Australia for fast, easy and enjoyable swimming for athletes of all levels. They’re worn in and raced by Olympians, triathletes and open water swimmers from all over the world. And I personally use Great Ocean Wetsuits even before they became a sponsor of the podcast. I’ve personally found that the buoyancy, the freedom through the shoulders and the fit are the best that I’ve ever had in a wetsuit. So I highly recommend them. And you can currently get 20% off either the gold or silver wetsuit models using our own code effortless20 at checkout. So enter the code effortless20 at checkout at greatoceanwetsuits.com and no matter where you are in the

world, if you’re in Australia, the US, Europe, there’s free shipping worldwide. So get yourself a great ocean wetsuit. I personally use the gold model of the wetsuit. It just depends on what your goals are. So greatoceanwetsuits.com, effortless20 at checkout. I know you’ll like them. Yeah, absolutely. One thing you mentioned there was the attitude or the mindset you had on the start line is I’ve earned my place to be at the frontier. One thing I remember Chris McCormack said a long time ago was don’t be a victim. And I’ve always remembered that. It’s like in the open water, if you let someone swim over the top of you or you get upset that that happens, then it’s your race done. You don’t want to be aggressive, but you have to be assertive out there. You have to take control because on the other side of that, it’s just not a way to swim well in the open water. So I think that kind of mindset goes really well for being able to be around people and just not take any of their crap

that they’re going to dish out at you. And whether that’s creeping at the start line, whether that’s trying to swim over the top, it’s like you have to be the assertive one. So I love that. That rings home for me with some of the stuff that I’ve heard of the years and really taken on board. And in terms of your stroke in the open water, you mentioned prior to the podcast that you feel like you’re pretty comfortable in choppier conditions. Yeah, I think another stereotype is that people think the weaker swimmers are going to be therefore worse in the choppier conditions. So it might spread out a bit more. But I don’t see myself firstly now as a weaker swimmer. But I mean like I have come into the sport also doing adventurous activities and being confident in the water. So I’m bodyboarding a tiny, tiny token bit of surfing. And so in Wales, in the UK, the waves are unforgiving and it doesn’t bother me. I don’t get any of the fear or the negative effects that

perhaps a weaker swimmer might get from that. So it actually felt really good during the race week to sort of practice in the sea and just to sort of feel the currents and feel the waves. And yeah, I don’t know, maybe it’s just luck. And I also don’t want to big this up too much because it might be that I now spend another 12 months of swimming quite poorly. And it was just a one off. On this race, I didn’t feel like the waves were a problem. But equally, my mindset was obviously so positive because I was in the front group, which to me is really cool. And it was a new and I was staying there and they weren’t getting away. And I so many times recently I’ve lost them on a buoy like a boy or I’ve looked up and I’ve got my sighting slightly wrong and suddenly I’m losing them. And that didn’t happen until I don’t know, maybe 800 meters or something before the finish, where I think there was a bit of a surge to try and

get the swim bonus, whatever some people have for getting out the water first. And I started zigzagging a bit and getting a bit tired. But I think generally my I was so focused on making sure that I covered every boy, every surge, you know, tactically, I just, there was definitely some luck there. But I think I worked really hard on staying present in that swim the whole time, maybe so much so it affected the rest of my race, who knows.

Let’s talk about the rest of the race. So talk me through the bikes. I think you were maybe 30 seconds down in the swim to the first the first person. But then like did it take long to bridge the gap? And then how do you how do you proceed for the rest of the bike? Yeah. So for the triathlon fans, I, yeah, I’d lost the front sort of feet or pack for that last little stretch back into the shore. And I was totally fine with that, I could actually see them getting out, which was pretty cool. And worked hard for transition and thinking I would be able to catch them quite easily. There’s about a 10k stretch, I think, to like on the seafront on the promenade to start before you start climbing.

And I thought it would be much easier to catch them. And I was working quite hard, but equally as an Iron Man, so I didn’t want to just destroy myself, because I knew the hills were coming. So it wasn’t, it wasn’t going to be necessarily an advantage to be with them for the hills, because I confidently thought I could overtake them anyway. So I was working hard to catch, but equally not doing what I would maybe in other flatter races. But I didn’t catch them until we’ve just until we got to the very base of these like spiky sort of hills to start the race. And then just overtook them. But I had, I then found out that Marjolaine, the French girl who’s very local to Nice or lives in Nice, she had been swimming with me as well, but she had somehow already got ahead. I still don’t really understand where she, how she went, and I didn’t see her at some point, I don’t know, transition maybe. And she was like miles ahead. So I was

like, Oh, okay, wow, fair play. She’ll be the Lucy for the day, you know, the character chase. And, and yeah, I just, I thought I was climbing really well. I was really conservative. I, I wasn’t pushing anywhere near the power I had hoped to be pushing up the hills. So it’s about two hours or so of like, sort of steady, some climbs flats climbing and

and yeah, I, I mean, I was fine, but I wasn’t doing excellently. I got told that Laura wasn’t catching me Laura Phillip. And then honestly, about 30 seconds later, she came flying past me. So I was a bit shocked by that. But equally, I didn’t have, I didn’t have the, I don’t know, I don’t know what it was. I, I didn’t go with her. I’d made the, I made the decision to not go because obviously at that point in time and you physically can, it’s just whether it’s appropriate for your pace, sort of model mindset at the time. So yeah, let her go ahead and then caught back up on the hour of the flat bit. And then she got a head on another bit of the climb and caught back on the descent. And so we came into transition together with that last 10k that I had, I’d been in front. I’m, I’m keeping this as like a well done cat. So ignore the statement of like, I pulled her along the flat bit into the headwind for that last 10k of the bike.

And why that’s important is because on the run, she was getting annoyed at me for letting her do the 10, like the headwind on the run. So I was like, I’ve just done a whole load of this headwind on the bike. So short-term. But yeah, it was very, very cool, if I’m honest. And I still, I genuinely talk about it with excitement for the future. I hope there’s more chances that coming into transition with somebody who I, I honestly believed I could outrun because I had twice already this year that I was like, in transition, I was going to run for the win. Like it was a dream already. So I think maybe there’s a bit of like crushing spirits there of like, you don’t, I honestly thought this was it.

It’s a marathon, obviously take it really seriously. And I felt really great. I was so surprised that my legs felt so good. And then I ran maybe about 15k with Laura. I started dropping off because she was getting really annoyed at me, like I said with the wind. So she put in a massive effort and I was like, sweet, you know, in a way I was like, she’s, she’s blown it. I always finished stronger if she, even if she gets two minutes out of me now, she’s now running sub 240 pace. There’s no way. Like I’m going to, I’m going to keep at this pace, which was like 240, I don’t know what it was, low 240s, which is what I had planned to run. And I genuinely still believe that I have, I had that in me in a different day. And then I, and then I got the most bizarre like episode of cramping, like lower back, then hamstring, then the other quad and then the cut. And so clearly, I just, I, I overestimated my ability

on the day. Anyway, came second, happy to be there.

Yeah, that’s, I mean, you also mentioned, prior to the call, like, you go from like, I don’t know if I can complete this thing to, okay, I came second, like that’s glad to get to the finish line. But that’s the thing about an Ironman, an Ironman, right? It’s just so, it’s just such a long day out that anything can, can happen. But yeah, what a great result. And in terms of the last six to 12 months, has there been any, any lessons that you’ve learned in the sport or in your training about yourself? Because we haven’t really spoken since the last podcast. So just curious as to anything that you sort of realized or reflected on in the last 12 months? Yeah, I think it’s been a challenging couple of years, generally. Two years ago, I had this big accident, and then I sort of got back into triathlon. And I think the last 12 months have been just as sort of challenging, but for very different ways. I had a really big calf injury in March in the first race of the season at T100 Miami.

And I am a bit embarrassed by this. Like it, it mentally challenged me more, I think, than that massive accident I had where I broke like multiple bones. So I think I like really, and it’s because, it’s because I couldn’t come to terms with the why of it. Like with, you know, some car hits you. Well, that’s why you’ve got a broken bone. But I couldn’t dissect anything from my training that suddenly I had this quite significant. And it was like a moderate calf, like muscle tear, but also into the tendon. You know, prognosis is like eight to 12 weeks off running sort of thing. Or a return to play for NFL players or something. That’s where the research is. And I think, yeah, that that uncertainty and lack of any insight or control really, really, I really struggled with. And I actually reached out to a psychologist

or a council of sports counselor about it. And the only good thing that have come in from that,

well, I cut two good things. One, I realized that I’m actually really good at processing on my own. And I don’t necessarily need to talk to anyone else, especially if they’re not quite the personality that fits with me. And the second one is she pointed me to she pointed me to a really good book. And I think again, like I’ve, one of the biggest things I’ve learned this year, which is me summarizing my waffley story is that I really love learning like the sort of psychology from books and then trying to sort of, you know, implement it in myself, I guess. So yeah, the book itself was called The Reality Slap from Russ Harris. It was like, he also wrote the Happiness Trap, which I think I tried to read and I was like not interested in. It’s quite a big seller though. Whereas yeah, The Reality Slap was about radical acceptance. And again, just like things like that, like this, I feel like is a self development

thing that I actually find really sort of fascinating, which was sad. And then another book I was reading at the time was called Perform Under Pressure by Kerry Evans. So again, like reading them both or listening to one and reading one was actually really nice to sort of, you don’t just get obsessed with one sort of fad, like thought processing, you can, you can see a bigger picture perhaps and like take different elements of it. So yeah, I think that’s something that I’ve learned as a sort of, again, as like whole is like that ability to cope with unexpected problems, which sounds mad, but it took a calf injury after the big accident. And I guess like, yeah, like being calm, more calm in situations that are out of my control. So for example, in Nice, like having the the cramping issues, I looking back on it, I actually realized that, yeah, it was quite good that I was able to be like, okay, I’m cramping, what can I do about it? You know, remove myself, look at it from

the outside, assess the situation. And I think like you just sort of do that without realizing, but those are the processing steps that these books sort of actually go through. And I wonder whether I learned that from reading, for example, like, okay, so this is either my muscles aren’t strong enough, or, you know, simple things, but when you’re under pressure, the cognition is often much harder to deal with them and obviously the emotion of it all. So yeah, took on some fuel, did a bit of walking, did what I could, just cracked on. So I think,

yeah, I think that’s a big sort of lesson, that ability to deal with

mishaps. And then I think another thing as well, maybe is that I, I feel like this is the first time in my life, that I’ve lived in the same place for more than two years, as my childhood, I was static, but throughout my whole sort of adult life, me and my husband, because if he’s been in the military, we’ve moved around every, like, six to, I don’t know, 24 months, like, often less than that. So for the first time ever, we’ve actually created a sort of, yeah, static training environment. And I think that’s important for me as a human, like as a person outside of what I do every day. It’s made me a lot more sort of, okay, so this is real life, you know, it’s not just like, playing at the sport or, you know, doing this every so often, like I feel comfortable in this environment now. And maybe that sort of self development, you know, like, who am I? What do I want to be as an adult? That sort of thing.

Yeah. And I guess alongside that sort of performance wise, we’ve created an environment that I can train like a training camp in. So having a full time swan, yeah, you know, I’m, I, we have a coffee, we chat about the day. And then I get on with the day, Mark, he sometimes often doesn’t join me for any of the training. But at 620 or 630 on the dot, you know, there’ll be a well, really well balanced nutritious meal. And then we’ll just hang out in the evening. So I think I’m in bed for 10 hours a day, back again, two or three sessions. I think it’s really sort of optimized that sort of side of performance as well. Which is the reason for moving here. And the reason for him, like leaving the military. So yeah, I think those are big things from this year. But I’m on it. I’m on one now. There’s, there is another thing. Go on. I’ll jump in afterwards. I think, and I don’t know when this really started, but I think I’ve started fueling

properly for sessions, which sounds mad because I’ve been doing this for four or five years. But I now like, don’t go to a swim session without at least 25 grams of carbs in my water bottle. And I think I’ve spent my whole life thinking that, oh, it’s just a swim. Oh, it’s just a swim. You know, like, I’ve already, I’ve already had at least 50 to, I don’t know, 60 grams or something of carbs that day in my bottles for the bike. So I’m not going to, I’m not going to drink more sugar during the swim. Whereas now it’s like every session is just as important. And if anything, the swim’s the focus of every day. It’s like quality swim, quality swim, quality swim. So yeah, fueling the sessions more. And that goes across all three sports, which means that I’m not coming off the back of a session being that hungry, which before I used to be sort of more hungry. And I think, Oh, I need an extra bit of car. I need

an extra size of toast before this or I need, I need an extra protein shake or I need, I don’t know, another, another meal or let’s go out for dinner because I’m really hungry. It’s like things like that. I am now eating much less during the day, but making sure that I’ve got the sugar during the sessions, which again, like sounds so simple, but it’s, it’s been massive.

It’s, it’s funny to mention that we had someone do a like an hour chat on our Maldives camp. She kind of used to be a, used to be a nutritionist has sort of moved into different areas now, but she just gave her a chat to the group and I’ve heard a lot of nutrition talks before and that sort of thing. But sometimes it like, it doesn’t click or like, for whatever reason, like you don’t take on board the information. And so she was talking about what to have before a session, during a session, after a session, as you know, some general rules and similar thing. Like I’ve started to have a little bit of food, a bit of protein before my swim sessions in the morning. I’ll have some electrolytes during the session and, but basically just fueling before after, before during and after, and I’m recovering so much better. I’m not starving at like 10 o’clock in the morning and I’m starting to swim a lot better

as well. So you’re right, it’s just like these simple things, like having a bit of home base, fueling correctly, like it’s simple, but it’s like, it’s so important, right? Like it’s just, it’s often the little things like that that makes such a, such a difference is not like these groundbreaking seismic shifts that, that, that make a difference. It’s the consistency and that sort of thing. So that’s kind of what I’ve, what I’m getting from these, these lessons that you’ve, you’ve learned. Yeah, definitely. And I think it’s hard. You always want to see what you can learn from someone else. And I think sometimes we want a quick fix, don’t we? I mean, sometimes always we want to fix or like a quick cue or what can you focus on? But I think it is just making the best of that situation around you and optimising for that. That’s a fad word of like, of those little things. And it, all it, all it takes, like, sure, some people don’t need to eat as much sugar because they’re, they’re eating a

lot more during the day. But then it’s like, well, what’s your choice? Would you prefer to swim better? Or would you prefer the meal out in the evening? And yeah, sure. Sometimes I prefer the meal out in the evening, but it’s just, you’ve got to find your own balance and like, optimise as you, as you want and need to throughout your life, I guess, to make those progressions.

Yeah. And I think as well, with like, with advice from other people as, as well, like I

advice that you get from other people is it’s only drawn from their experience. And so, like, it’s good to get different takes and, you know, hear what people have to say. But then at the end of the day, it’s just about you making a decision on what you want to action and just figuring out what works best for you because you could have someone who might be just as good and they’re not fueling in their swims. But for them, that works, right? Like, it’s just you’ve got to, you’ve just got to make a decision and decide what’s best for you. And one thing I’ve, I’ve learnt a lot from coaching is that I try to not tell people, like what to do. I like to give them either like give them some options from what I’ve seen work for other people and or like maybe use a story or an analogy and then they can just draw what they want from it. Because I know personally, if I get told, like, you need to do this, my brain goes,

I’m not doing that. Like, I find that getting told directly what to do is not that helpful, at least for me. So I think it’s good to just kind of give people options and just never say directly, you need to do this because more than likely enough going to do it. So yeah, just something I’ve learnt coaching over the last sort of 10 years or so. I don’t know what you’re like with that. But if I get told I need to do something, no, I’m not doing it. Just out of principle. Yeah, no, I think that’s fair. I think it depends on my mood. I’m often like, just tell me what to do. I don’t want to make any more decisions. But no, I think you get more out of it, especially long term, if you worked out that answer for yourself. Like, I, I, I feel like I’ve worked out, which is not, you know, clever, that I need to do X amount of swimming or I need to do at least a VO2 session. So therefore it’s in my control. I’m deciding this, I’m going to implement

this. So I feel like that empowerment is, is crucial rather than necessarily the lesson, like being told it. So yeah, totally with you.

Yeah. Kat, I said we’ll go for about half an hour. We’ve gone for about 45 minutes here. So I appreciate you sticking around and I love catching up and just sort of congratulating you first of all on your results. It’s so good to see you having that kind of result in your swim, especially. That’s what I’m really like. Yeah, obviously I love the swimming side of things. And we’re going to be able to catch up hopefully in a couple of weeks time. By the time this gets out, it’ll be about that November, I think. So looking forward to meeting you up in Queensland and catching up there. But thanks so much for being on the podcast again. It’s been great. Yeah, I’m really excited about the trip to Australia. Very cool to hopefully, yeah, meet you in person and actually get eyes on rather than me and my sort of sporadic, I don’t know if this feels right, this feels wrong. So yeah, thanks. And hopefully the podcast has

been useful for lots of other people as well. I’ve got no doubt. I’ve got, I’ve taken a lot from it. So thanks so much for sharing and looking forward to meeting you in a couple of weeks time. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

I’d much prefer just to connect with the water early and then focus on that channel that I’m pulling through and making sure that my hand is pulling inside the line of the elbow. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

Have you ever wondered how someone can go from very little swimming experience to becoming competitive in the pro triathlon field and consistently swimming under 115 per 100 in the Half Iron Man event? Welcome to our channel. Today we are diving into the inspiring journey of Mitch Kibbey, a professional triathlete and coach. Mitch will share how he was able to go from being a non-simmer to top 16 in the world at the Half Iron Man distance, focusing on the technique and the strategies that got him there. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to up your game, Mitch’s story and tips will show you how he was able to transform from being a novice swimmer to a pro level swimmer and competitor. Yeah, so anyone who’s spent time in the water with me coaching probably knows I’ve got a phrase for everything or plenty of cues, so there’s probably too many to reel off, but some of my favourite ones are balance before power,

and I think what I see quite commonly is we want to go in there and give really strong effort to our swimming, but we’re applying force before our body’s ready to control it, and that’s where we see energy wastage and inefficient technique, so balance before power is one of those ones that just allows us to control where we’re applying our force, and it’s a powerful thing for the swimmer to have in their mind because that balance component gives you the composure and the power gives you the control to know that you’re swimming on your terms rather than being dictated to. So the kick’s really important. I think for me it’s probably been one of the last pieces of the puzzle that I’ve pulled into my freestyle stroke. One of the important things that I consider is just the tension that you’re holding around your knees. I often find that if you can keep the knees tight together, that helps to connect through the core

and just bring the upper body and the lower body together, so holding a level of tension between the knees helps keep the kick tight, which also assists your stroke rate. I find that if you can keep the kick nice and narrow, the arms will turn over a little bit freer, and you won’t notice that same dead spot in your stroke as the kick splays and comes back together. So I think one of the really valuable things to work on is just your kick with a kickboard. While it can be quite different to swimming and kicking during the freestyle stroke, but I think just learning how to kick and basically how not to exhaust yourself with the kick is really valuable. So I think it’s really important to be able to breathe to both sides when you’re swimming. Not necessarily just for the mechanics of the right side versus left side swimming, but I think more so just for your composure. So I’d prefer to look at it breathing as managing the air in

versus air out balance. So that way it doesn’t matter what your stroke cycle is, whether it’s two strokes, three strokes or more. It’s much more about just being able to manage the pressure in your chest basically and being able to reset any time you need. So I think one of the problems is if you get stuck in a breathing pattern, quite often that means we’re going to hold our breath and that’ll end up exhausting us in the water. So having access to release that air either on the right side or the left side I think is really important. And for me, when I’m swimming it’s very much I’m just aware of what that balance is and I want to make sure that I can release and reset any side, any time. But typically in the pool I’d much rather breathe to the left-hand side and in the open water I’d prefer to breathe to the right-hand side where I find it a little bit easier to sight off that left lead arm. But I haven’t met too many other people

that have that same preference so if you are let us know in the comments. So I think it’s quite typical to rotate a little more to the side that you’re breathing on. So that’s something that I’m quite aware of. And if I’m breathing right side quite often I’ll try and drive that right side back through the stroke. So as I’m moving forward I’ll drive to reset rather than just trying to always lock out that rotation which again you will try and do. So long as you’re driving back through the stroke I think you’re going to find that you’re getting that sort of equal counter rotation on each side. So catch and pull are probably the two marquee terms used in swimming and it’s what we all want to focus on and I think for me the way that I would define it is certainly with the catch the starting catch position is really important so there’s many things that come into that which is your mobility and your posture in the water

but I think having a starting catch as high as comfortably possible or sustainably possible for you is really important so you can access that first part of the water and then it just gives you that little bit more to connect with at the top of the stroke. This episode is brought to you by Pillar Performance Our new sponsors Pillar are a sports micronutrition company and the easiest way to describe it is that while hydration and carbohydrates products will take you through to touch the wall as fast as possible Pillar’s mission is to get swimmers to the starting blocks in the best condition over and over again I recently started taking Pillar triple magnesium after a friend had recommended it and it’s been a game changer for my sleep and recovery I take one scoop 30 minutes before bed each night in the same way that you might start your day with a coffee I finish it up with a magnesium and recover better for tomorrow’s session in the pool

Pillar Performance is used by some of the biggest names in swimming and triathlon including Zack Stubble to cook, Jan Frodeno, Ben Canute, Ash Gentle, Taylor Nib amongst a host of other well-known swimmers and triathletes Where Pillar differs from other micronutrition you may have taken before is both the quality of the types of magnesium and the tangible results that I see on my garment each morning. If you’d like to try Pillar today head to pillarperformance.shop and enter code effortless for 15% off that’s effortless for 15% off all first-time purchases or for anyone in North America enter the same code at thefeed.com and then I think what I’m really looking to do is have the fingertips trigger the movement so first part of the movement comes pressing the fingers down and then as I move into the catch I’m really mostly trying to get the channel that I’m pulling through to be as effective as possible so I think typically if you haven’t

given yourself time to set up through the catch you’ll end up pressing down and wide and then being left in a position that’s not as powerful through the pull phase so setting up through the catch is really important to stabilize this is where it’s balanced before power and then I think for me over the years I’ve spent so much time working both with TheraBands and SwimCords to try and get that movement of the elbow to get that fold through the elbow and so that’s something that I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about now because it should just be happening automatically I think you could probably always do it better but I’d much prefer just to connect with the water early and then focus on that channel that I’m pulling through and making sure that my hand is pulling inside the line of the elbow so if we’re pulling outside the line I’d say you’re moving someone else’s water so you’re going to be in a much more powerful position

if you’re catching inside the line of the elbows so I think swimming fast is something that hasn’t always been particularly natural for me and the way I’ve developed as a swimmer has been really developing that sort of aerobic style of swimming which is that more distance based sort of sustainable, continuous style of swimming so when I’m moving towards speed I’ve always had the tendency to muscle up a little bit and get quite tense in the water but one of the most important things is just staying free through the shoulders being able to relax and trying to keep that catch nice and narrow and a little bit shallower than what I feel like I need to so just making sure I’m folding and then I’m really just trying to trust that technically I’ll hold up and then really just work on the rating, the breathing your breathing rate needs to match your intensity so you can’t just be locked in a distance breathing pattern

when you’re trying to swim fast so really trying to make sure I’m releasing air fast enough and then keeping the chin tucked in and basically just going for it I’ve been really lucky to work with some great triathlon and swim coaches and I think one of the most important things they’ve taught me is just to understand the time that it takes to get what you want out of swimming for someone who would always really judge the day swim or sort of be a little bit too emotional about how I was in the water and I think they’ve taught me just to sort of take a longer term approach and just accept the bad days in the water just get through the set smile about at the end and just make sure you’re able to turn up the next day and go again the biggest lesson that I could share with any swimmer who’s starting out their journey is just to accept the amount of time that it will take and there’s no one swim set that’s going to give you a breakthrough

it’s really the sum of many that adds up and I think the company you keep in the water is so important so you need to find yourself a good coach find yourself some mates to swim with and it needs to be part of your lifestyle it’s not something that you’re just going to be able to do for a few weeks and breakthrough because the better you get the better you’re going to want to get so you’re always going to want more so it’s about making swimming sustainable and enjoying the journey

One thing that people get taught is a high elbow recovery, but the way that gets interpreted is if the hand is very close to the body, people tend to jam themselves up. So we need to make sure that our high elbow recovery isn’t this here. I see it more as have the elbow pointing to the sky. A good position to enter the water in is anywhere from about your elbow to about your knuckles. So in this sort of range is where we’d want the hand to be. If you’re entering before that, let’s say where your elbow is. It’s too close to the head. That’s a long way for your arm to travel forwards as you’re going through. It’s going to create excessive drag. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

I’ve coached more than 8,000 swimmers from beginners up to pro triathletes. In this video, I’m going to share with you everything I know about freestyle that will take you from feeling like you’re stuck in the mud with your swimming to gliding effortlessly through the water. The very first thing we always have to do when we swim is make sure that we are relaxed. And a big part of our relaxation comes down to breathing. When people are new to swimming, they have this tension. They have this disease with the water where they just don’t feel comfortable and they end up changing the way that they breathe. So we need to make sure that our breathing is natural. Now, what makes it not natural is when people have this fear or panic of either putting their head completely in the water or just feeling like they are going to sink down to the bottom. Now, when that happens, they tend to breathe very shallow. Their breathing becomes

almost like hyperventilating, a short, shallow upper chest breathing. And when we do that, we don’t absorb the oxygen from the air that we take in. So what we always need to start with is making sure that our breathing is relaxed, comfortable and natural. Now, part of that means that we need to breathe using our diaphragm, which is this dome-shaped muscle at the base of our lungs here. And that just means drawing our breath in somewhat deep as opposed to short and shallow. Now, that doesn’t mean that when we swim, we want to have these really big inhales where we’re filling up everything. But it does mean that we can start our session. We can, when we’re at the pool, when we’re going to begin, we need to make sure that we are relaxed. So what I’d recommend to people is that if they just focus on breathing in for three to five seconds, using their diaphragm, so we feel like we’re filling up sort of through our tummy and then

down lower, and we just have this deeper breath. So in for three to five seconds, out for three to five. And that can help just comfort them and keep their heart rate down low and making sure that we’re not hyperventilating when we’re swimming. So we’ve always got to start with breathing. And sometimes that can take several sessions for someone who’s afraid of the water to get to the point where they can breathe comfortably. But we’ve always got to start there. Now, after that, we want to go to reducing drag because water is 800 times denser than air. So anything we do to create unnecessary drag is going to slow us down. And I find that people have a bit of a tendency to not either press their chest or their head deep enough in the water to raise their hips or their legs when they’re first starting. They want to hold their head up kind of high. They want to hold their chest up kind of high because they’re not comfortable putting their

head in. So one thing that we can do is that if you push off the wall, if we see that when you push off that you are going like this and your legs are dropping straight away, you’re probably not pressing your chest and head down into the water enough. Really good swimmers when they push off the wall, they’ll sink down to about that far under the water and then they will push off with their chest head underneath the water and they’ll have a nice trajectory going forwards because they’ve got that level of comfort. So the first thing we can see there and we can work on is just making sure that you are comfortable enough pressing this deep enough down in the water because your body needs to be horizontal when you swim. So the three touch points that we want to work on are head, hips and heels all at the surface. That means you’re going to be horizontal which means you’re going to be very streamlined in the

water. Now quite often I’ll have swimmers who come to our clinics or send me videos online and they think and they feel like they are swimming in that position but more times than not their hips are low and their legs are low. So it’s always a good thing to check in with. So if you can feel like maybe you’re carrying a lot of water on your lower back, a lot of water on your hips and if you can’t feel your heels tapping the surface of the water when you’re moving your legs then there’s a good chance that you’re sitting too low in the water creating unnecessary drag and that’s going to be slowing you down. Now in terms of holding a good body position it’s not as simple as just looking straight down. There’s a lot of other factors that go into it. So the thing I always start with is well let’s get the posture right, how you hold the body. So the way I think about holding the body is feel like you’re long and tall. Feel like you’re getting your head away from your toes

away from your feet so we’ve got this long line from our head, neck, spine all the way through our legs. If we hold our body that way then we’ve got this tautness to it as opposed to being loose and floppy. So if we’ve got this tautness to the body we’re somewhat firm and rigid here which means that we can coordinate things a lot better. So we’ve always got to start with just holding the body correctly. Now the other part of that is your head position. So where you look can determine what your legs are doing at the back. It’s a big part of it. So what I’ve seen when I’ve analysed or I’ve coached on the best fromers in the world, eyes are anywhere from looking straight down to about 45 degrees in front but what they do with their head and their neck is they lengthen it, they tuck their chin in slightly and that allows them to hold this good posture and that allows them to maintain good body position. What we very rarely see is that they’re sticking

their chin a long way forwards where they’ve been kinking the back of the neck. We rarely see that. So we need to make sure that we’re looking in that 0 to 45 range, long neck, tucking the chin ever so slightly. Now the other part of that, the third thing there is what we do with our legs and our core. Now a lot of times people will think that they need to move themselves forwards with their legs. So they end up having this really big kick out the back where they’re bending their knees and they’re doing this big kick that’s almost coming out of the water and coming well below their body line. We’ve got to make sure that our legs are supporting us and we’re not creating unnecessary drag with them. And what creates that unnecessary drag is when we’ve been from the hips and been too much from the knee and our legs come below our body line. That creates a lot of unnecessary drag. So the way I picture holding our lower half of the body

and I’ve got to credit Andy Donson for this one. I heard this from him is you want to imagine that you’re trying to squeeze into a tight pair of jeans. One of the tricks was imagine you’re pulling on a tight pair of jeans and you’re really having to suck in as you zip up and get your jeans on and that’s sort of subconsciously I think that’s what you want to be doing. And what happens when you do that, you suck your tummy in a bit, squeeze your butt cheeks together a bit and that gives you this core and the hips that are kind of engaged and switched on. And when you hold it like that, then your whole body is straight. Whereas if you’re not holding it like that, then your hips and legs will bend and you’ll tend to drop through there. So there’s this tautness and this length that we need all the way through the body just to start with. And I’ve had some of those who have gone from whatever they were doing before

to just thinking about those couple of things and switching them on when they swim to where they’ve taken off three to five strokes per 25 meters. So going from maybe 25 strokes a lap down to 20 strokes a lap just by changing those things. So don’t discount the the impact that those couple of things can have on your stroke, especially if you are slower than two minutes per 100 at an average pace. If you are not faster than that two minutes per 100 you’re probably doing something that’s causing unnecessary drag. So it’s as simple as that stuff can seem. If you spent a couple of months just focused on that, I can promise you that you will be swimming a lot faster if that is something that might be an issue for you at the moment. Now with the legs as I mentioned before we don’t want to be thinking about kicking ourselves forwards because that kind of that can feel like we’re trying to ride a bike or kick a ball

or something like that where we are kicking and it’s not working for us. So our legs are there to support us and I’ve got to create a Tracy Bowman for this one. If you think about your legs and your kick, feel like you’re bringing the top part of your legs like your femur bones, your thigh bones there back and forth from the hips. Just back and forth from the hips and that creates this flutter with the legs out behind you. So it’s not a kick, it’s a flutter and with that flutter you get this downwards press and upwards press there and what that does for your legs is it creates this counterbalance out behind you and it’s this counterbalance that actually allows you to then feel like you’ve got something to hold and press against as you’re swimming because the water just doesn’t have the stability that we do on land but the stability comes from an effective movement with the legs that creates this counterbalance that you can

then feel like you can hold and press against and rotate your body with when you’re using your legs effectively and when the legs go when the legs aren’t working in that way then everything starts to fall apart. So while the kick isn’t that important for propulsion it’s really important for helping create this counterbalance to then be able to coordinate the stroke with. So it’s worthwhile just working on that effective flutter at the back that’s just press up, press down and that is what allows you to feel like you’ve got good balance and control and stability all the way through the stroke. The next thing we go on to is the rotation and in freestyle we should be rotating if we’re looking directly in front of the swimmer somewhere between 30 to 40 degrees if we measure that angle with the shoulders at maximum rotation with the surface of the water. Now if you’re a sprinter we normally find that sprinters will

keep their hips a little bit more stable and their shoulders will do most of the rotation. Most of the people that I coach are middle to long distance swimmers so we find that typically their hips and torso are going to rotate a similar amount side to side 30 to 40 degrees through the hips and torso and the reason that rotation is important is because there’s a lot of power that we can tap into through our hips and through our core. If you think about someone throwing or pitching a baseball if they had to stand straight on with their feet even and they would throw a ball they wouldn’t be making any major league teams they can’t throw it very far or fast. As soon as they can go one foot forward one foot back and they can open up through their chest their body their hips they can throw it a lot further and faster because there’s a lot of power through this cross connection in the body so we want to make sure we’re tapping into that by rotating the right

amount. Now the incorrect amount is either too flat or over rotating it’s a really common thing that we see usually when someone takes a breath is when they will typically over rotate sometimes close to 90 degrees sometimes they’re a little bit more and that’s when they lose their balance and control. So a good thing to check in with is when you take a breath are you rolling all the way on your side and if you are what can you do to adjust it how can you bring that back to that 30 or 40 degrees so got to make sure of rotating evenly to both sides and within that 30 to 40 degree range. Now I’d recommend for people try and feel like that rotation is originating from your hips feel like it’s starting from the hips and from the core because we’ve got to swim from the inside out we can’t think about our fingers and our wrists and our hands we really should think about things from the inside out so from the core through the through the body to the

extremities we’ve got to work from that way so feel like your rotation originates from the hips or from the core and that’s where we should start that rotation and I like to think of it as though imagine you’ve got like your hips on hydraulics like a hydraulics machine where you’re not just twisting and you’re really loose with things it’s this nice drive this nice sort of hydraulic drive left to right that we can then use that to help with our even rotation because sometimes I’ll see people thinking about rotation and they’re really just twisting with no sort of stability or control so our movements need to have some control to them when we swim and there’s a lot of ways to develop that rotation and quite often we’ll do drills in our clinics or in our courses where the rotation when we when we doing drills often that’s going to be a little bit more than what we do when we swim for example if we do like a full body rotation drill put fins on

arms by the side I’d actually have you rotating to 90 degrees in that drill now that’s going to further than what you need to do when you’re swimming but the purpose behind that is you’re going to get really good control over your muscles and your balance and your core if you’re rotating past that point so there’s times where you do want to go further than that that’s usually within the drills now when we look at your breathing when you swim freestyle breathing what all coaches see is that that’s the thing that’s normally going to cause your stroke to fall apart if we could swim in the snorkel at all times or we didn’t have to turn our head to breathe most people would be fairly even fairly well balanced and be swimming a lot better than when they turn their head to breathe so what we want to aim for with the breath is it should be fast it should be low and it shouldn’t impact our stroke in a negative way and what can happen in a negative way there

is that often people will cause their hips and legs to drop because they might lift their head up they might roll too far where they’re looking up to the sky which they can throw their balance off so i’ve got to make sure that with our breathing that it’s fast it’s low and it’s working with our stroke so a couple of cues that i’ve found to be really helpful there is we want to turn to the so we want to turn our head with the rotation of our body so we want to time it together so as you turn to breathe turn the head with the shoulder roll come back with a shoulder roll now if you rotate the 30 or 40 degrees you’re going to have to turn your head a bit further because eyes need to be directly to the side which would be 90 degrees so just get comfortable turning your head that little bit more than you are with your shoulders but you want to time it together with it and that way it’s working together with your stroke as opposed to separately

because quite often we’ll see people with their timings off where they might turn their shoulders and then their head goes last and then they bring it back late so that breathing is out of sync with the rest of the stroke so we’ve got to make sure we time it together the other thing which is really common is people will lift their head up and then turn and the heads way out of the water and your head weighs a couple of kilos if you lift that up out of the water it’s probably going to drop the back end so that’s a big factor that come that plays into body position is how you’re breathing so i want to make sure we’re looking directly to the side now in the pool we usually want to try and keep part of that bottom goggle in the water but sometimes we see that that’s not always a case especially with sprinters and some distance from us where they are looking directly to the side but their head’s actually a little bit higher

out of the water because they’ve got either this more of a loping stroke where they sort of bounce a little bit in the water so the main thing that i look for there is that as long as you’re looking directly to the side your head can be a little bit higher it is good to work towards a bit of split vision breathing half the head in half the head out but it doesn’t have to be perfect necessarily and if you’re also bringing the open water and it’s choppy well adjust the conditions you might have to turn a little bit further to avoid taking that water in so just adjust the technique depending on the events that you’re doing this podcast has brought you by great ocean wetsuits and up and coming Australian performance wetsuit brand for triathletes and open water swimmers the wetsuits are designed and tested in Melbourne Australia for fast easy and enjoyable swimming for athletes of all levels they’re worn in and raced by Olympians triathletes and open

water swimmers from all over the world and i personally use great ocean wetsuits even before they became a sponsor of the podcast i’ve personally found that the buoyancy the freedom through the shoulders and the fit are the best that i’ve ever had in a wetsuit so i highly recommend them and you can currently get 20% off either the gold or silver wetsuit models using our own code effort20 at checkout so enter the code effort20 at checkout at greatoceanwetsuits.com and no matter where you are in the world if you’re in australia the us europe there’s free shipping worldwide so get yourself a great ocean wetsuit i personally use the gold model of the wetsuit it just depends on what your goals are so great ocean wetsuits.com effort20 get checkout i know you’ll like them the recovery part of your stroke is when you bring your arm over the top of the water and in your recovery it’s called recovery because you should be relaxed

there’s no need to use excessive tension or effort to bring your arm over the water because that’s not where we’re applying force so use it as a as a bit of a recovery so i like to think about the hand the wrist being relaxed as you come over the top of the water you’ll have a little bit of tension through your shoulder you might feel like your elbow is really driving that recovery but we want to stay generally relaxed as a part of it and i think one thing that people get taught is a high elbow recovery but the way that gets interpreted is if the hand is very close to the body people tend to jam themselves up so we need to make sure that our high elbow recovery isn’t this here i see it more as have the elbow pointing to the sky as you swing your arm over the top elbow should be pointing mostly upwards as opposed to behind you because that’s how your arm and your shoulder moves a lot better if your elbow is there

as opposed to if your elbow is here that’s not as comfortable but that is a lot easier so elbow pointing up to the sky instead and another good way to think about that is feel like you’re swinging your elbow over the top of the water almost in like a rainbow sort of shape over the top there as opposed to some people are very wide and flat and very low but we need to come over the top a little bit there and so i like to think of this open sort of swing with the arm not swing where you’re too wide somewhere in between this classic high elbow position to that wide position somewhere through there go with what feels comfortable and what feels natural for you so that’s our recovery now that leads on to the entry position and what you see with most elites from us and there’s always exceptions but most elites from us tend to enter with their fingers first so it’s good to think about that middle finger coming over hitting the

water entering first with our elbows somewhat elevated it’s almost like this triangle position when we see it from the side if you enter fingertips first and then you extend forwards underneath the water that’s going to get rid of a lot of the bubbles and the turbulence on the hand by the time you start your catch now we’re not looking for a completely clean no bubbles catch if you’re going at speed very likely you’re going to have some bubbles on your hand as you’re going through the stroke but if you enter fingers first elbow up and you extend forwards from there that last little bit of reach happening in the water then you’re going to get rid of most most of those bubbles so you’ll be a bit more effective with your catch and press

now one thing that that we see there is a good position to enter the watering is anywhere from about your elbow to about your knuckles so in this sort of range is where we’d want the hand to be if you’re entering before that let’s say where your elbow is it’s too close to the head that’s a long way for your arm to travel forwards as you’re going through it’s going to create excessive drag if you enter so far out in front and the first thing to enter is your elbow and you’re entering like this then you’re starting your catch from a dropped elbow position which is not what we want so I always like to teach my swimmers a good fingertips first entry where it feels like the elbow is just being held up in the water because from that position then it’s you can just extend forwards and a really simple way to develop that and practice that is hold a kickboard hold the back of it and you’re sewing a one arm freestyle drill

through here that kickboard is going to force you to enter early enough because if you overreach you’re going to hit that kickboard so that drills a really good way just to help dial in that sort of entry position and I’ve had a lot of swimmers who have dropped their times by a couple of seconds per hundred just from fixing their entry I think probably because it helps them not drop the elbow straight away and it also just helps make their reach and catch a little bit more effective and cleaner so even something as simple as a better entry position can really help you going forwards when you enter the water and you’re reaching forwards we need to make sure that we’re swimming in line with our shoulders so the good water is out in front of the shoulders it’s not crossing over now a really common mistake that we see is that people are entering and they cross the centerline really sending all of that

momentum in that direction but we need to go from here to here we need to go forwards so I’ve got to make sure that momentum keeps going forwards so I talk about this is swimming on train tracks as you got these train tracks in line with your ears we want to enter in line with our ear or shoulder and go straight forwards each and every time and if you look at footage of the best swimmers in the world from their bird’s eye angle they’re all heading in that direction really important to get that right but it’s very common to cross over now with that train track position another part of it that we need to get right is the timing of the stroke so one angle that we film people in at our clinics and camps is this bird’s eye view and good freestyle is typically done what we call front quadrant meaning if we split the body into four quarters so you’ve got four quarters the front quadrant would be from the head above

that’d be the front quadrant and we see with best swimmers in the world with a few exceptions sometimes sprinters aren’t quite in this range but majority of elite swimmers particularly distant swimmers they are in this front quadrant where they always have something in front of their head so good timing in freestyle is front quadrant so when we look from above we should always see at least a hand or a forearm or an elbow out in front of the head at all times through the stroke now it doesn’t mean we want to do this full catch up that’s not good either but we do want to make sure there’s always something in front and a lot of times people who are maybe struggling with their breathing or people who are sinking a lot quite often it’s their timing is out so it’s good to think about always keeping something in front and a cue that I’ve used for that and I find this helpful for most people is the cue of slow to fast so our movement should be a little bit slower through here out in front

and a little bit quicker through the back so slower in front faster out the back and if you take your time just reaching forwards now you’re not stopping as you go here but you’re just going to take a little bit more time slow that down that gives the other arm a little bit of time to start to catch up so then you can switch once you’re in this position whereas a lot of people tend to just rush it in the front so if you’re not in that front quadrant you’re probably just rushing the arm in front of you so a little bit slower be a bit more patient that can help you be in that front quadrant and that can help you feel like you’re much better balanced and in control of your stroke as opposed to feeling like you’re sinking and things are a ration you’re on this treadmill but there’s no pause button too so you want to make sure we swing front quadrant the next part of the stroke and one of the last things we start to work on is what’s happening with your arms under the water your catch and pull

or your catch and press this is where most of your propulsion is going to come from so we’ve always got to start with minimize drag that’s number one then once we’ve started to minimize the drag and we’ve got good head and body position and effective legs we can then start to work on the catch and pull now the thing with the catch and pull is it can feel a bit of a challenge to be good at this and be effective at it and it does take time if you’re new to the sport you’re not going to get this on day one this will take some time but i find that this is the 80 20 of the stroke it’s that 20 percent of the stroke that can make 80 percent of the difference so it’s worthwhile investing the time into a really effective catch and hold of the water as long as you’ve got those other things in place first so the catch i consider the catch to be once you’re out in front and you’re on your side down to here where your fingers are

pointing down and your arms at about 45 degrees so this initial movement this is your your catch here this is not the power phase of your stroke if we think about overhead movements we’re not that strong especially compared to movements here more underneath us so the catch is not the power phase it’s the setup phase of your stroke if you can moderate the power that you’re putting in and have more of a focus on setting up a good position which i’ll explain in a moment then you’re going to be much better off through the rest of the stroke too often people are trying to muscle their way from here through there but if you’re putting a lot of force in most that force is just going to go in a downwards direction because you’re not set up to effectively press back because if we want to move forwards we’ve got to make sure our big paddle which is our hand and forearm is facing mostly backwards that’s how we need to move forwards but from here if you’re

going for a break and you’re ripping hard there most of it’s going to go down which will lift your chest and your head up but it’s going to drop your legs so we need to make sure that the catch okay might feel like a three or four or five out of ten in terms of effort so we’re not just going completely limp with it putting a little bit of pressure on but more power more pressure will come as we’re coming under the body so our catch it’s a setup phase two things i like to see there fingers need to point down at the end of it and the elbow needs to bend quite often we’ll see as soon as they’re going through their catch they are straight with their arm this elbow gets locked out and they have no bend in it whatsoever so we need to point the fingers down bend at the elbow now when we do that and we do that effectively then we end up having it’s almost like this big ball underneath us we could fit a big ball under there and that just means we’ve got

this big surface area that we can use to hold the water and then move ourselves forwards so those two things now part of that and i see this is like it’s an L plate versus a P plate in Australia L plate is a 615 or 16 years of age when you can first get your license so when people first get their license they get taught 10 and 2 on the steering wheel elbows down here now this is a good position for driving there’s not a good position for swimming this is external rotation of your arms that’s the same as what we call a dropped elbow catch you haven’t got much of a paddle to work with there a P plate so when you get your license your full license you can drive by yourself 18 years of age a lot of guys start to drive like this right here and this is internal rotation of the arm not as good for driving but great for your catch when you have this internal rotation of your arm that creates this fingers down elbow bent position that’s what

gives us a nice big paddle to work with so we want to make sure that we’re doing our catch like a a P plate a driving so this little bit of internal rotation of the arms now a mistake that a lot of people make there is they really internally rotate their shoulder to an uncomfortable position that is not strong this is loading up the front of my shoulder right here so it’s more of the arms internally rotating the shoulders not doing much of it because this is going to compromise our strength so it’s about finding that right amount of internal rotation and doing it in the right position so once we’ve got that position we then want to make sure from there that we are holding this arm firm holding this arm strong now from here people then feel like they need to pull their arm back to their hip to move forwards but there’s no point just pulling your arm backwards in the water because it means that your arm will move but your body is not going to move

forwards so a good distinction to make is once you’re here feel like you are almost anchored in the water like you’re holding your arm there and if you just go from here where you’re on your side and you rotate on to the other side well your body’s going to move past that point and naturally that hand will just exit past the hip because it’s anchored and your body’s moving past it that’s a much better approach at moving yourself forwards as opposed to thinking from here I’ve got to pull back as hard as I can and get my hand past the hip because what moves us forwards is that connection from our arm in the water through our shoulder through our body our core and our hips and a bit with our legs right it’s that coordination of that movement so if you imagine like a ladder underneath you that ladder is going to have rungs on it now when you’re swimming freestyle think about reaching forwards placing your hand on that rung anchoring

and moving your body past that point and then you do it again place it on the rung move past it now it’s not going to happen exactly like that your arm will move backwards a bit even the very best swimmer in the world their arm does move backwards a bit as they’re going through the stroke but that sort of concept helps you get the feel for holding the water rather than just pulling your arm through it and that’s something that takes a bit of practice and if i’m working with some is let’s say in our our clinics or if i’m doing any any sessions with them in person we go through some drills and you know there’s some drills in like a five day catch challenge where we go through this where we work on that concept of holding rather than pulling so that takes time it’s not something that you’re going to get in the early days but the more you get the feel and the coordination of it the better return you get you’re going to get

on the effort that you’re putting in so it’s a good thought or a good cue to keep is once you have your catch so you want to point the fingers down bend the elbow and hold and move past there so that’s the majority of what happens underneath you now where should you exit good swimmers they’ll typically exit just past their hip almost near their upper thigh so you don’t want to come out early you don’t want to finish the stroke and be coming out before the hip because you missed out on about that much water now you don’t get a heap out of this last part of the stroke but if you finish off the stroke well it gives you that last five or ten percent of your propulsion and that helps you reach and extend forwards and then roll into the catch so we want to make sure we’re finishing just pass the hip near the upper thigh if you are not sure where you’re going just see if you can feel your thumb brushing your upper thigh

you don’t want to do that all the time but just as a way to get a feel for it that’s a good way to make sure you’re finishing just past your hip so that’s your catch and your pull now quite often I’ll get asked about how often should I breathe should I breathe every two and should I breathe every three it’s a very individual thing I personally like to breathe every two strokes especially when I’m racing and just to the one side but I do think it’s a good skill to be able to breathe to both sides so in your session maybe you do 20 to 30 or 40 percent of your session breathing to your non-preferred side because if we only breathe the one side we tend to develop our stroke in a very uneven way tend to get a lot more powerful on our usually on our breathing side here and a little bit weaker on on the non-breathing side so it is worthwhile breathing to both sides in training and the way you can do that maybe you do breathe

into the left on the way down breathe into the right on the way back so it’s a skill worth developing especially if you’re swimming open water you’re going to likely have to breathe to your non-preferred side at some point if there’s waves and wind and chop on your preferred side well how it makes it hard to breathe so sometimes you have to breathe to the opposite side in terms of the how often you should breathe it’s very individual and it comes down to what you train so you look at someone like Ariane Titmus she goes two four two four when she’s when she’s racing and she trains that most people can’t do that effectively but she trains that and it works for her a lot of distance from us a lot of them will go every two some every three but most will be every two strokes so it really just depends on the event that you’re training for because number one like it’s got to be you’ve got to get enough air in if you’re not getting enough

air or enough oxygen you’re not going to last very long so we’ve got to make sure we’re getting enough air in so don’t try and breathe every three or every four because you heard it’s a good thing to do you’ve got to make sure that you’re breathing enough to get enough oxygen in but then just find whatever feels best for your rhythm and tempo now the final piece of the puzzle is looking at the rhythm and the timing of the stroke and this is that dance part of the stroke this is that that part of the stroke that is a little bit more about how you feel in the water and it’s this kind of beat or you know drum beat in the back of your mind that you get in tune with as you swing so with the rhythm and the tempo sometimes this can come down to your breathing pattern your kick tempo whether it’s a two beat kick a four beat kick or a six beat kick and that can change within a race as well and then it’s also just about practicing that sort of uh rhythm and

tempo when you’re when you’re racing for example if you look at say like a 1500 freestyle you look at some of the best rooms in the world they might do 1400 meters with a two beat kick now when it comes down to the last 100 meters they’re going to pick it up to likely a six beat kick now that six beat kick can be harder to maintain because it uses a bit more effort but they’d bring it in because it can help increase their speed in that last 100 with that six beat kick so your rhythm and tempo and your kick can change depending on the speed that you’re going so it’s worth worthwhile developing these different gears and different speeds and different strokes in a way for the different aspects of your race if you’re racing but that’s really further down that towards the end of the line if you’re fairly new to swimming start with the basics get your breathing right good head position good body position get the legs right

those things can carry you very very far in your swimming so there’s no need to go to the very end if you’re around maybe that 145 or slower per 100 just at an average pace get those fundamentals right that can carry you very very far all the way past that 145 pace per 100 and then start to look at those other things thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast if you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com

I use like ice skating as an analogy, but it’s the same concept because someone’s not, you don’t look at ice skaters and they’re going like this to move forward. It’s like they travel on the left skate, travel on the right skate. And when you’re swimming comfortably, you’re swimming well and you’re looking at really nice, it’s what you see. I get that little bit of travel time and not travel time where they’re just stopping here. It’s that perpetual motion, it’s that rhythm. It’s almost like a waltz. You really want to go one two, or you want to, and you get into it. It’s almost like you’re creating this dance and each part of the stroke that you build up are just parts or steps of the dance that you are creating. And once you bring in all the synchronization parts, that’s where the dance comes together and you just dance the dance if you like. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love

the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

Have you ever felt like your swim stroke was missing that something extra? Like it could be more efficient, more connected, but you just don’t know how? In this episode, I sit down with Tracy Bowman to unlock the secrets behind a truly synchronized and powerful swim stroke. Tracy has transformed the way she coaches by focusing on something most swimmers overlook, connecting the whole body from the fingertips to the toes and building the stroke from the inside out. We’re breaking down six key synchronization points that can take your swimming to the next level, including some game changing tips like how rotating your fingernails can improve your streamline and why sinking your leg movement with your catch can unlock a fluid and powerful stroke. But it’s not just technique. Tracy dives into the importance of filling the water, using sensory cues to truly connect with it and power your way through the pool. We’ll also explore why short interval training,

focused on technique, beats long, continuous swims every time, whether you’re looking to improve efficiency or just curious how correct joint mechanics can revolutionize your swimming. This episode is packed with insights that will change the way you think about your stroke. Tune in for a deep dive into the art and science of swimming and let’s make your stroke smoother, stronger and more connected than ever. And if you’re someone who loves their swimming and wants to improve and get better at it, we’re running a whole bunch of swimming camps next year. We’ve got camps in the Whitsundays, Galapagos Islands, Maldives and Thailand. So you can explore all those dates and camps that we’ve got for 2025 on our website at effortlesswimming.com forward slash camps and we’ll put the link in the show notes below. Tracy Bowman, welcome back. This is your third episode in probably the same in about three months. I think you’ve had the most recent two popular episodes and I was just talking to

you before the podcast that the last episode that we did has had 40,000 Gs on YouTube, which is unheard of for a podcast that we’ve posted on there. And I think one of the reasons there is the topics are resonated with a lot of people, but the way that you explained a lot of those concepts really drove home some of the things that people are trying to achieve in their swimming and how they can go about it. So I think you’re so good at explaining some of these things and making it really clear on what people need to do. So I wanted to get you back on to talk about some different topics. And today we’re going to talk about how you can synchronize your stroke, how you can connect things up, and also just the speed side of it, the speed equation, stroke length, stroke rate, and how people can approach that. So welcome back, Tracy. Thank you so much for having me on again. The response has been overwhelming and very encouraging. And yeah, it’s just been so great to get the information

out to lots of people and to see lots of people making changes in their stroke and positive changes and hopefully changes that more than anything will prevent or minimize injury in the stroke, but also to help them swim better and faster. And yeah, I get to learn from you and from all the questions that I’ve had from all the people as well. So it’s been a fantastic few months reading everyone’s comments and questions and chatting with you. So thank you for having me on again. It’s my pleasure. I picked up so many things that I’ve started to use in different scenarios with people. So it’s just helped me add a lot of things to my toolbox when I’m coaching, which I really appreciate. So the first topic I want to cover is the synchronization of the stroke and the way that I often approach it when I’m working with people in clinics is we go through our normal process and order of things. And then almost one of the last things we really then start

to drill into is the connection side of it and making sure that things are coordinated. And for people who are new to the sport, it takes a lot to firstly just feel comfortable and balanced in the water. And so that connection or synchronization can feel like it’s a long way off sometimes. And they feel like they’re very wobbly and unstable. So where do you sort of begin with the synchronization of things? And I know we’ve covered previous topics with the balance and catch and those sorts of things. But yeah, if you’re listening to this and you haven’t heard the first two podcasts, I’d recommend go back to those because we covered the earlier parts of the stroke. Now we’re starting to get more towards the tail end of it. So yeah, synchronization, what do you sort of think around there? Yeah, so it’s a really interesting question. And it’s an interesting part of the stroke because yes, we come to it and we address it

much later in the stroke. But the real reality around it is that we’re actually addressing it from day one. And when we’re thinking about building the frame and putting the connector torso to the legs and making that first connection and then putting the connecting the arms via the scapula to that unit, that’s actually our first synchronization point that we’re talking about. And then when we start to add in the arm recovery, we’re already talking to the students and talking to the body because that’s how I like to coach a lot is how can we connect with the client’s body about the synchronization of the stroke from there. So when we get to the part of the stroke where we’re bringing synchronization, stroke synchronization in as a topic, what we’re hoping to already see is that the streamline is happening. So the arm recovery to streamline synchronization point is already happening because we built the stroke up like that from the inside out

from the get go. And then what we can do is we can then start to synchronize how that part of the stroke happens. So they go from their arm recovery to their streamline, and then how do they connect the other arm recovery on the other side to that. So it’s really this idea of building up the points that we’ve talked about in the last two podcasts. So we talk a lot about the streamline position, getting people to imagine, and I think I mentioned this on what about the conversations, getting them to imagine that they’re sliding along a cross-country ski in their streamline position. So they get into their streamline position and that the moment that they get their whole body onto that ski, they’re really focusing on sending the arm recovery forwards at exactly that moment. So it almost becomes that ski and open the wing or ski, open the gate or whichever queue, send the tattoo forward, whichever queue it is that they’re going to think about,

that would be the first two parts of the stroke that we would connect. And making sure that happens really fluidly so that we can iron out any dead spots at the back end of the catch. So we’re not creating any any breaks at the back end of the catch. It just goes straight through to opening the gate open tattoo opening wings. That’s where I would start. I just wanted to go to the like the back of the stroke there, what things the people do there that creates a dead spot, what do you often say? Yeah. So I mean, a lot of things, I think a lot of people sometimes spend a lot of time in the pool drilling. And so they spend a lot of time in drill positions and often saggy in positions that actually don’t fit into the freestyle stroke. And our bodies are incredible. The human body is incredible at remembering positions. So when they then take the drill into the full stroke, they have that dead spot because they’re hitting the drill

position hitting the drill because let’s say for argument sake, streamline, they hit that position and then they’re like, okay, I’ve got there now. So now I’m going to stop for a moment because that’s now got to tell my brain that I’ve put that drill into my body kind of thing. So that’s one of the reasons that can cause a dead spot. So we tend to never really do anything more than two or three meters of a drill because we want to just get that instant integration into whole strokes that we don’t create dead spots by drilling too much. So that’s one reason. The other reason is they could be over cooking the catch. So the thing we hear all the time is people saying you have to accelerate through the last part of the catch and really push up over your hip. I’m mindful of someone’s comment in YouTube that if I’m going to show you anything, make sure that it’s in the video. So I’m doing that. So I’m going

to show you and just really pushing back here then creates a dead spot because now that locks my joint. So now my shoulder joint is stuck here behind the shoulder girdle and I can’t actually do that beautiful release forward that I’m looking for in that synchronization point. So then I have to clear the joint and come forward and that takes a minute or two. So it interrupts that beautiful synchronization and perpetual motion that we’re looking for. So those are probably the two biggest things I could go on and on that that’s there with those two for now.

Yeah, great. And it’s I like their cross-country scheme analogy because and I use like ice skating is analogy but it’s the same concept because yeah someone’s not you don’t look at ice skaters and they’re going like like this to move forward. It’s like they travel on the left skate travel on the right skate and when you’re swimming comfortably, you’re swimming well and you’re looking at really nice and that’s what you see. I get that little bit of travel time and not travel time where they’re just stopping here. It’s that perpetual motion. It’s that rhythm and I always a couple years back we ran a camp in Hawaii and had one of the local coaches that one of our other coaches you came in and just spoke to our guys for a couple of minutes and I remember he he said freestyle or swimming it’s all about rhythm in the hips rhythm in the legs rhythm in the arms and so that that rhythm always just sort of stuck with me.

Yeah, it is about rhythm. They don’t want to be stopping and pausing completely. Yeah, it’s always like I told to this the students or the coaches when I’m doing coach training or the students that it’s really there’s almost like a waltz. You really want to go one two, sorry, one two, sorry and you get into it’s almost like you’re creating this dance and each part of the stroke that you build up are just parts or steps of the dance that you are creating and once you bring in all the synchronization parts that’s where the dance comes together and you just dance the dance if you like. So I love that idea of bringing the ice skating in and the rhythm and it’s a really good way of thinking of that. Yeah, in terms of having things coordinate and connect, I know you’ve got a few different ways to approach it or for people to think about that side of things. So I’d be curious to get your couple of ways that people can think about this coordination piece.

Yeah, so the very first one, so we have, I’ll go through six. I have many because I remember when I first wrote our first coach training program, when we first started about four or five years ago, I was writing the synchronizations manual. They got very carried away with all the synchronization. I mean, it is so exciting how the body is connected and I got so excited. I had about 15 or 20 different synchronization points that we could put in and my partner, business partner at the time looked at it and said, this is way too much for people. So you need to put it back a bit. I was like, okay, so there’s so many opportunities to synchronize different parts of the body because our bodies are just asking for it. They are made for it. They work. We do it all the time. It’s walking, like freestyle is basically just walking. And I often say to people, I want you to walk along and for everyone listening, it’d be really

interesting for you to push pause right now and jump up and walk across the room and ask yourself what part of your body is moving fast when you take, when you walk. And often people that I can imagine people have pushed pause and stood up now and they’re walking across their room and they’re going, oh, there’s definitely my knee. No, it’s definitely my chest. Oh, it’s my arm. It’s my pelvis and coming up with all the answers and the reality around it is there’s no answer. It’s a trick question because everything moves together. And I use that always as an analogy when bringing in the synchronization, assuming because it’s exactly the same thing. I don’t want any one thing to start any one thing because what I’m looking for is whole body movements, whole body connections and continual motion. And so everything has to move together always. So I’ll choose six. The first one is always the end of the arm recovery. So once

you’ve opened your wings, sent your tattoo forward, whichever cue that you’re going to use, it’s from there using whole body rotation. So shoulder to feet as one unit. It’s that rotating the fingernails forwards into streamline. So that’s the first synchronization point that I will obviously the other arm is doing its thing. I can’t rotate and do that all at once because I’m not in water, but that would be the first. So rotating the fingernails to streamline, so using whole body to rotate. That would be the first. The second one would be ending those two things together. So the first one is starting those two things together. So end of recovery, i.e. entry. I try never to use the word entry. You may have noticed that I’ve probably until now never mentioned that I don’t say it because it takes everyone’s attention to the hand is the last place I want their attention because they’ll lift and do and put. As soon as they do that,

they’re going to disconnect the arm from the scapula. So I’m always trying to take their attention to the scapula in the upper arm. I call it their wing bones. I think I mentioned that. So the first one is the start. The second one would be the ending. So the point where they finish rotation and their fingernails or they get hit the ski position. So start, finish. Those are the first two. Then what we would have is we would have the idea of at the moment that they hit the ski position, open the wing. So at the moment they hit the ski position, open the wing. So we lose that, that dense spot. So that would be three. Then what I’m going to get them to start thinking about for much more advanced swimmers is we, and notice how we start from the inside. So we’re always working. And I think I’ve mentioned this on each of the calls that we’ve had so far. We’re always working from the inside out. We’ve never started the

extremities. We start at the extremities. We lose the access to the core. We lose those major connections that we spend all of this time building up. So then when we get into the next part of the equation is when we then introduce the idea of timing or synchronizing the catch to the stroke. So we have rotated into streamline. We’ve opened our wing. Now we’re ready for the next stroke. So as I’m opening my wing, I’m just going to use that for ease. I’m going to be catching at the same time, keeping my rotation stable. So I’m still skiing along my ski as I’m doing this. So I’m just going to hook my fold, my arm over the end of the ski. Then when I get to here, then I’m going to rotate. And at the same time, mindful of that guy’s comments, I want them to be able to see the same time as I rotate, I’m going to apply pressure to this whole line here. And I’m going to apply pressure. And I’m going to send my head and my fingernails forward at exactly the

same time that I apply pressure. So I applied pressure on the catch at the start of my whole body rotation. So if I just did the catch, it would be rotate

at exactly the same time. Then the next one is the end. So the end of my rotation is timed with the end of my catch, which finishing is in front of my body line here, not here. So then it would look like this. So at the moment that I hit streamline on this side, I’m finishing my catch on this side in front of my body line, ready for the next stroke. Then I’m going to bring in the timing of the legs. And this would be the sixth one. And when I’m first introducing this, I just make the legs work together. So I don’t isolate one leg from the other. I make them work both at the same time. So what happens is, is the whole body rotates. I have my legs already in this scissor position, this counterbalance position, that we have taught the students back when we learned streamline. As the whole body rotates, all that simply needs to happen is at the moment that they rotate, they are going to press themselves into streamline and end up

in counterbalance on the other side. And then at the next rotation, they’re going to press themselves forward into streamline and end up in counterbalance on the other side. Then they’re going to a little bit more detail on the legs. I don’t know if you want me to do that now, but that would be where I would get up to you with synchronizations, the simple ones.

Yeah, no, I like it. I’d like you to keep going if you’re happy to. Yeah, sure. So with the legs, when I bring in the synchronization of the synchronization of both the touch and the legs, this is where I start to talk about pressures. So I think I’ve mentioned either when you and I have talked personally or in the podcast that it’s very seldom that I need to teach catch and very seldom that I need to really teach a really well timed leg movement because what often happens is when you set up the body from the inside out and it’s connected, it’s going to take the anchors from the water that it needs. In order for the body to work, it needs a floor if you like. So if you think about all other sports, we do them on land and we have a floor which closes our joint mechanic chain. But in water, obviously it’s open chain mechanics until you learn to connect with the water. And when you can connect with the water, then you can use your joints in a very similar way to how you use them on land

because you use the water as your floor if you like. So when I start to bring in the synchronization points for catch and to be pressed, I’m using the pressure as a way for the swimmer to tap into something physical to hold onto so that their joints and therefore their muscle systems can work in the way that they work when we run or walk or do anything. So I start this process by having them feel pressure on the streamline side. So as they are sending their books and fingernails forward, that’s always a moist thinking middle and less trident prongs or books and fingernails. I’m getting them to start tuning into the pressure that they’re feeling as they are moving forwards. So at no point in my coaching, do I ever talk or say the word back except for one place, then I’ll talk about that in a moment. But at the front end, it’s always about going forwards is what can we do to make this swimmer move forwards and then tune into what they feel when they move forwards. And if they’re really

good at it and they get really good at proprioception and body awareness, they start to be able to feel the water almost coming and hitting their sort of ride riding up their fingernails, hitting their cuticles and then kind of riding up the hand over the wrist up the arm. And I try and make it very sensory for them because the more that they can tune into it, the more they’re going to be going along their ski without me telling them to go along their ski. Because if I tell them to go along their ski, they’re going to go into holding that arm up and I don’t want them to I want to be lengthening forwards, because then they’re going to tap into different muscle systems. So I make it very sensory and I get them to feel that first. Once they can tell me that they can feel the water doing that, and they can only feel it if they’ve got their streamlined position correctly. If they’re feeling this, that nothing going up here,

then you know that their hand is like this. If they’re feeling pressure here, then you know their hands like this. If they’re feeling pressure here, you know, they’re stretching or reaching because the water’s going to hit them here. And it’s such a great way to get people into their bodies and really asking themselves, wow, how do I, what am I feeling? And if I am feeling all of those other things, what if I just used the bottom of my scapula, my shoulder blade to send my fingernails, what changes in where I feel the pressure of the water. So it’s just, it’s a great way to do that. And then to teach people how to transfer that pressure from going along the fingernails and up here as soon as they feel it on their fingers to transfer it to the inside of the arm. And that then helps when we bring the synchronization into the stroke, because when they can transfer the pressure they felt here so that we keep the front end of

the stroke doing what it needs to do, and then transfer it to the inside of the arm at the moment that we rotate, then we know they’re getting an anchor, they’re getting an arm full of water by holding on because they’re feeling the pressure. And then with this, at the same time, giving them the thought process, the moment you feel pressure here on the inside of the arm, you’re sending the middle card into your books or your head and the other fingernails past it. And that creates a beautiful synchronization point for them by building up and using pressures as a way to do that, because that makes sense. Yeah, it does. It’s great. I’m just sitting back and enjoying it. It’s like some really interesting ways to think about it. And like what I was thinking of there was that whenever, like, I put out a lot of videos on YouTube and the couple that I’ve done on the, I guess the concept of softening the hands over the water and then as you’re extending out in front,

for whatever reason, a lot of people have resonated with that and they’re like, oh my god, I’m swimming a bit faster. It feels so much easier. It feels smoother and I guess better connected. And like what I was thinking there is if a lot of people are just way too tense as they’re going through those motions, as they reach out, yeah, they come up and drift up. But when I’ve filmed really good swimmers, they’ve got this softness to their hands. And as they extend out there, they’re feeling those things that you’re mentioning over there. I sort of talk about over there, you’ll feel it over the knuckles as you’re extending through. And yeah, it’s such a subtle part of the stroke. But I think it helps open the door or lead the way to the rest of it, to the catch and that connection piece. Yeah, I mean, with your absolutely without correct because without it, the joint mechanics, the joints are actually not in the correct place

to create a catch. And so if they’re not in the correct position, then anything they do after that is going to be compromised. And it may be that they’re just trying to look for an aesthetic, but they’re not actually allowing their joints to put them into the correct position. So it may aesthetically look okay, but they’re not able to tap into the power that they could tap into if they have the joints in the right place. And obviously it increases the possibility for a which we definitely don’t want to do. So yeah, absolutely softening everything softening. I love the word softening. I ended up putting the word we have a swim mastery swear word book. And there’s quite a few words in the swim mastery swear word book. And one of them has the newest one that has made its way into the swim mastery swear word book is very surprising to a lot of the coaches that work with me is the word relax or a relax

stroke or relax this relax that because at the end of the day, I think that doesn’t allow people to connect with the water. They turn it’s almost like they’re turning themselves into cook spaghetti and they’re not connecting with the water at all. And you have these aesthetically great looking swimmers going nowhere with lots of dead spots because they’re not connecting. And what we want is we are great looking swimmers going somewhere and as fast as they can because they’re connecting with the water. So we don’t want raw spaghetti. We don’t want tension. We don’t want cook spaghetti when they’re relaxed. We want somewhere in between. So I’ll tell you let’s say and so we’re always looking for tone not tension. It’s sport after all. So we have to have tone in the muscles to be able to use them for sure.

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Yeah, and it’s like the subtlety that you’ve got with words and yeah, and I’ve started to sort of check myself a bit on some of the words that I’m using when coaching because it’s yeah, I can if we use the wrong words, it can convey something that we’re trying to avoid. So yeah, I think it’s I think it’s important that’s terrific and and that that tone as well as that shape in that that form. I think I mentioned this on the last podcast, but like picking up a glass of water, you had just the right just enough sort of turn and form to it to do it. Yeah. And it’s the same thing when we swim just enough, enough tension to keep the shape but anymore and it’s wasted effort. And so I think someone like listening to this podcast from just to sort of like summarize the last 15 minutes because you went into a lot of detail there. But like one thing that I’ve found just to help so much and I try and do this when I get into the water and I’m going through my warmup,

he’s that that softening of the hands as I’m coming over entering and reaching out and just being really aware of what you’re feeling through there and trying to get it to come over your fingertips and knuckles and over the top of the hand and just setting that up well. And then I find that helps me obviously with the catch part of it, but it just develops that feel that we need to have in in any swim or in any session. And so for me that’s like a really good just easy way to get that to happen early on in a swim. Yeah, fantastic. Because it puts you inside your body, right? And I think the more we can as swimmers ourselves, but for certainly for our the people that we work with the more quickly we can get them into their bodies and feeling what’s happening rather than thinking everything, the quicker they’re going to tap into their bodies because we can’t think our bodies to move, we have to feel them to move and we have all these beautiful sensory

perceptions on our sensory receivers on every part of our body that we can tap into and make the most of when we’re swimming. So it’s a great way to get them into their bodies for sure. And the grounding aspect of it that you talked about like we’ve on land we’ve got something to connect everything to, whereas in the water we don’t have that sort of stability unless we are you’ve built the frame and you’re in the right position and you’re moving the legs sort of in opposition to each other. And that’s like it’s really obvious for coaches and I think for swimmers when they’re feeling it it’s really obvious when we see someone who doesn’t have that grounded aspect to their stroke where there’s lots of movement happening, but they’re not going anywhere. And but then once people make that change like for many people that can be 20 seconds quicker per 100 and they feel like this is a different sport to them.

This is something that can be enjoyable. And so what what do you for someone who feels like lots of things are moving but they’re not going anywhere? Yeah. What what are some of those things that they are trying to do or thinking of that’s causing them to to not be moving forward much at all? I think that’s a really great question and I think this will resonate with a lot of people listening because I think a lot of people they kind of follow books or follow YouTube videos I’m not going anywhere and I don’t know why and I think a lot of the reasons is because of how humans think about swimming. So I think is the one thing we can do is to help people understand that swimming is not about pulling and ticking it’s about creating a beautiful long vessel and then holding and sending holding on to water and sending energy forwards. We’re going to help those people already but then when we can get them to feel into the pressures and start feeling and applying

pressure to the catch and then and using and transferring that pressure that they feel into forward momentum. So I think a lot of the sets that you can download from online are okay let’s do 400 meters pull. Well that in itself is teaching humans to be even more human and humans aren’t really very good at swimming and our human instincts aren’t very good for swimming because all we’re doing is we’re moving water around but we’re not actually going to go anywhere. So when we look at that set we look at the set and we think okay how can I turn that set into something that’s going to transform forward the swim movies going nowhere into going somewhere. Well let’s just tell them to go somewhere and it seems really simple and it almost seems silly that this is my answer but it makes such a difference and I see it in the endless pool. I’ve had the benefit of having my own science lab for so many years and you

simply just tell someone to do the same thing whatever it is and then tell them when you do this I want you to imagine you’re going forwards through the propulsion unit and they go faster because just that very one thought process of saying do this and send your energy when you do it forward makes their bodies connect and I like the word you use ground find that grounding aspect and then to have them do the same thing with the legs so often they have spent time doing kick sets and you probably are getting to know that kick is one of the swear word books and one of the swim mastery swear words in our book and because kicking is not what we want to be doing in swimming it uses the wrong muscles it’s the wrong movement and it’s up and down and if I go up and down and I look I think about these third law of motion for every action equal opposite reaction if I’m kicking up and down then the opposite and equal reaction

to my kick is going to be the opposite up and down it’s never forwards and actually where I want to go when I swim and it doesn’t matter where I want to swim I want to start at this end of the pool this end of the channel this end of the lake this end of the river and I want to go over there I don’t want to stay here I’m swimming because I want to go to the other end of the pool or something so therefore whenever I do anything that’s got to be my intention then I can start to turn the movement patterns that I’ve been practicing into forward momentum so if I use the legs as a really good example so I want to as my last and final synchronization point I want to use my whole body rotation and I want to press with my legs to send my head and let’s just keep it simple my head or my books forwards in order to do that when I press with my legs I have to press behind me and that’s all I say I said all I’m I need to do is feel pressure and send imagine that you’re

finding that pressure and you’re sending that piece of water for want of a better and that’s not grammatically correct that a hose that piece of water you’re sending it and pushing it to the back wall of the pool and using that to send your head to the front wall of the pool and that action creates the perfect leg mechanics because the only way they can do it is correctly otherwise they can’t send water behind them they can only send it down so in in the queue I’ve created the correct joint mechanics and I’ve given them the instruction of where to send the energy so they connect they get the joint mechanics and they travel so it starts to help people to turn these movements into forward momentum more and more as they learn how to do it and short repeats like if they get it use the wall that’s the best way push off the wall use the momentum of the wall to do maybe two two of these where you’re just thinking okay so feel

pressure here I’m going to transfer it to the inside of my arm and I’m going to rotate my whole body past it and I’m going to see the tiles kicking over and I’m going to do that one more time to stand up because then I’m using the momentum off of the wall to feel the sensation that I’m looking for and then I want to stand up on that amazing sensation so that I can internalize it into my body and go oh my gosh I just did that so if I did that it means I can do it if you carry on for the rest of the length and you lose the momentum off the wall and then you start the pulling thing again because you haven’t quite learned how to do it and you stop after that then your body’s here but can’t do it because now look I’m not doing it so it’s a very different way of practicing as well so then I get them to stand up after those two strokes go back to the wall and do it again and do it again and then after a little while it’s like

learning how to ride a bicycle your body now knows how to do it if if I if you went in the water and I said try and swim disconnected you couldn’t do it I’ve tried to do it for videos to show people how not to do this I can’t do it it’s the most fascinating thing and it feels ridiculous in my body and I’m sure the same would be true for you because it’s internalized in your body and there’s a quick way to find that and there’s a slow way to find it I love it there’s in terms of the short interval short repetitions there’s a fear for people coming into the sport that if they can swim somewhat already it’s no I’m better off just doing two k straight and getting my fitness in and they take it like they’re running they take it like a running session where yeah yeah that’s it but I find just that short rest on the wall you get to number one get a little bit of recovery let the muscles recover and then you get to reset all right what’s my focus here

and I get to go again and as silly as it seems that short 10 15 20 second break after your interval of 25 or 50 or 100 whatever it is it’s like that can make that can be the difference between a really good 100 and a totally rubbish 100 it’s and fitness wise while swimming so technical the technical part of it’s so important that you’re better off that better off doing these short intervals and obviously there’s time and place for longer ones we want to do those if we’re working towards some events but when we’re thinking about technique short intervals are the really the way to go and yeah it’s so great to hear you say that for me less is more like less great stuff is going to give you more amazing stuff and our swimmers get to spend so little time in the water in their daily lives realistically we cannot possibly compare what the elites are doing to what the swimmers that we’re working with are doing because maybe they can get to the pool three

four times a week maybe maximum some people not even that so I always say to them use the time that you’ve got really smartly and get fit in the gym because you that’s the place you build your cardio engine in the gym and yeah I remember Michael Phelps doing an interview I think was after the London Olympics and that’s what he said he said I use all Michael time and that’s at that level for doing technique and I get fit in the gym and I think that is a much safer way to to to do these long swims and build up your technique than doing your two or three k just to get swim fitness for sure so it’s lovely it’s really lovely to hear you say that yeah I had the George Freel who’s a legendary triathlon coach had him on the podcast and he said a very similar thing he when he runs a couple day camps he’s having the swimmers do mostly just repeat 25s for that reason brilliant and I think a lot of people heard that and they’re

like all right good that’s kind of gave him permission to do that and do that any different right they know running and that’s okay and we can put the information out there to show them that they’re there’s that what in water it’s different and that’s okay so yeah it’s really great to hear that I the last question I want to finish with here and we haven’t even touched on the speed the speed topic but we just seem to go forever or so I’ll get you back on again Tracy too so talk about that component but I just want to go into where for you did you start talking about making a switch to talking about like bones and and that sort of thing because I know you’re very much about the sensory aspect of it but very much about the the bones and that sort of thing like where did that come from for you and yeah what were you doing before that if you had a different way of coaching before that yeah it’s that’s a really interesting question

I think it was something that evolved at quite quite a long period of time so I am forever learning I’m always on one course or another because I just love to learn and I love to improve yeah we say to the coaches when we start our coach training that I’m going to tell you what I know today and hope that I learn more today so tomorrow what I tell you may be different because I want to learn from today and that’s kind of my philosophy and I want to keep making things better so that was part of that journey and I was very lucky I did this fantastic course in Germany all about primitive reflexes and it was so and I did over a couple of years and it was such an interesting journey to learn about the start of movement and how movement starts in you in you how the babies learn to do x y and z through these reflexes for example and it got me so interested in in in the body and why people do what they do and how and then I went down the

journey of doing some anatomy and motion courses and working with a very good friend of mine Helen Hall if any of you are runners out there please find go and have a look at Helen Hall’s book even with your shoes on it’s called she is amazing and her and I spent a lot of time working together with the primitive reflexes and her knowledge immense knowledge of joint mechanics and we were putting together these courses I said that was probably where I started to change my thought process of thinking about bones and joints rather than muscles and really understanding and feeling she has a fantastic 4d scanner machine and so we would use some cues and we would scan and then re-scan and it gave us the kind of before and after of how if you think about moving joints how many how much it affects the entire body then if you just target one muscle so using the glutes is a really good example if I just engage my glutes I have very little effect on my whole body but if I

move my pelvis into a position I have effect on my entire body and so that was probably where it started so probably eight nine ten years ago sort of my back end of obviously I worked with total immersion for a long time so probably at the back end of my time there and it was so great to be able to take this knowledge and other things and put it into a system where we can tap into this from a different way different perspectives and really work from the inside inside so literally from the inside spine out to the extremities when it was a game changer it’s evolving still it’s still evolving but coaches always oh we can’t give up with you and I’m like that’s exactly how it should be I want to learn every day and make what we know today into what we know tomorrow so yeah that’s fantastic yeah it’s yeah it’s little things like that can have such an impact on the people that you’re coaching because they can connect to it they can

make that change I can think about the pelvis and yeah yeah adjust what the entire legs are doing and things like that so it’s yeah I was really curious to hear that and I think you might have mentioned it on the first podcast but we did and I thought okay that’s an interesting way to think about I’m gonna explore that a little bit more so fantastic we’ll um Tracy we time flies when we’re chatting like the love happening on you’re gonna have to come back if that’s all right with you so you’ll really appreciate it where can people get in touch with you or find out more about what you’re doing so my website is swimmastery.online so they can find me there and then Instagram and Facebook I think are at swimmastery or one one word and yeah I’ll put out the injury prevention course view I was going to put out a set book today for your listeners but we’ll hold on to that for when we do the speed thing because it will be way more relevant

to them one thing they can do is they go onto our website they can download a free ebook I know you’d be putting out a lot of stuff in the last couple weeks on breathing and we have a free ebook on our website that they can download and read if if they want so just a couple of things and we’ll do the set book next time yeah sounds good we’ll put that in the show notes and yeah Tracy every time it is great haven’t you yeah not my pleasure so I’m sure the people listening or watching this are gonna get a lot from it so Tracy thank you for your time I appreciate it and I’ll see you in another couple of months awesome thank you so much thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast if you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com

This actually came from Ken McEvoy years and years ago, but he’s like having a super long neck and like keeping your neck extended. You don’t want to be crouched down. You don’t want to be looking too far down. You don’t want to be looking too far up. I think the biggest thing on recovery is just being relaxed. You don’t want to be bringing your arms over and being super tense and throwing them into the water super stiff. You know, that’s your chance to recover before you actually work that part of the stroke. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. Kim Elverton is a former world record holder, Olympian and world championship silver medalist. She’s been coached by Dean Boxle and trained alongside Ariane Titmus, Milo Callahan and a host of other athletes. I caught up with Kia to ask her about

her freestyle technique. What are the most important elements to focus on and how can others develop a fast and efficient stroke? Head and body position when I’m thinking about freestyle is this actually came from Camp Mackable years and years ago, but it’s like having a super long neck and like keeping your neck extended. You don’t want to be crouched down. You don’t want to be looking too far down. You don’t want to be looking too far up. So like keeping that long elevated neck and then we do, I do a lot of body position kicks. So arms by my side with a snorkel on and just making sure my shoulders are back and I’m like in that nice tight position. And then I can like replicate that in my swimming. So long neck and like nice and shoulders back through my body position. Yeah. Did you ever change the way that you kicked? Yeah. So in terms of kicking on my freestyle, I had a bit of like a lazy four beat kick in like an 800

or 1500, but then come to a 200, 400 and six beat kick the whole way. And I think that when you’re doing those shorter events and you’ve got that kick going, you can keep your hips way more stable and you’re way more centered through the, like the middle of your stroke, you know, you’re holding a bit more water, your legs going the whole time, hips aren’t moving everywhere. Whereas in 800 or 1500, I found it a lot easier to let my legs float every now and then because that was kind of giving me the recovery that I needed in those longer events where I could like sit on my stroke a little bit longer, give myself a bit more time to get through the water. And, you know, I’m not having to waste that extra energy kicking full stop. 200, 400 you’re flat out on the legs the whole way. And what about when it comes to rotation? Yeah. So I did actually end up doing a lot of work on rotation in my stroke with my biomech.

I was really, really bad at flicking my hips everywhere. So I kind of breathe and then let my hips drop and my legs would roll out and my leg would flip out to the side. And, you know, it was all over the place. So a lot of swimming with a snorkel on, slow swimming with a snorkel on, continuous kick. And you can really feel that your hips are locked in and then taking that snorkel off and adding in the breath and just trying to keep those hips still as possible. So like when the right hand enters, your hips are still, you know, you’ve got to make sure that like, you’re not over rotating, you’re not reaching, just really keeping those hips locked in as you go through the stroke. And I think like putting a snorkel on and doing some easy swimming, which is just a soft six beat kick. Like it doesn’t have to be a hard six beat kick. You’re not, you know, putting a snorkel on and doing easy arms and your legs

are going crazy. You know, you’re just kind of floating those legs behind you, but keeping those hips really still and centered was one of the things that I worked on all the way up until I retired. And when you changed distance, did your rotation change or that was always pretty constant? My rotation probably changed when I did change distances. So in the 200, I’m way more stable. If you filmed me front on doing a 50 at 200 pace, I would be way more stable, way more strong through my, through my core, through my hips. And if you filmed me doing 1500 pace, there’d be a lot more flow and rotation. And I think that’s just the variables and the races, right? So 200 free, you’ve got to be holding a lot of water, super strong. Your kick’s going full speed. Whereas a 1500, you’re probably, your rate’s probably a little bit higher, but you’re holding less water. So you’re like kind of almost spinning your arms a little bit more. You’re not holding as much water. It’s a bit

more of an easier stroke. You’re really trying to just like settle into that comfortable, comfortable rhythm compared to a 200 free where you can literally only hold that pace for 450s. Whereas in a 1500, you know, you’re holding it for 30, 50s. It’s got to be a bit more comfortable. The hips are swaying a bit more. You’re getting a bit more rotation. You’re getting a bit more length. And what did you think about with your recovery over the top of the water? Yeah. So recovery wasn’t necessarily a huge focus for me, but I think having done a little bit of coaching now too, I think the biggest thing on recovery is just being relaxed. You know, you don’t want to be bringing your arms over and being super tense and throwing them into the water super stiff, you know, that’s your chance to recover before you actually work that part of the stroke. So making sure your recovery is super relaxed. You’re not wasting energy. You’re not throwing your arms forward and like being super tense in

that position. And did you have any particular cues or things that you were aiming for with your catch and pull? Yeah. So when I was working on my catch and pull when I’m swimming, it’s making sure that I’m coming down the center of my body. I’m not crossing over the midline. I wasn’t swinging out wide. You know, my hand isn’t floating out to the side as I pull. It’s not floating in as I pull. And I did a lot of work with my biomech, like filming myself front on and making sure my hand was coming down like this, you know, couldn’t see my pink, like my palm on that side, palm on this side coming straight down that center line. And I think you can get a lot of feedback doing skull or single arm or like a long dog where you’re like in that position, you can really feel it. And then the other thing is like at the back of the stroke, making sure I’m finishing all the way through the back of the stroke.

You know, I’m not pulling my arm out early. I’m not just flinging through the stroke and pulling it out early. I’m making sure I’m getting a length the whole way through. So I’m like settling into it at the front of the stroke, up shoulders up, you know, getting that pull my elbows up and then all the way through the end of my stroke. And was there anything that you thought about with the rhythm and connection in your stroke? Yeah. So for like rhythm and connection, all that stuff. I’m a little bit funny. I’m probably one of the few people that breathes to the left on one way and to the right on the other. You know, I kind of swap my sides of breathing, but I always breathe every two or every four. So the shorter races, like the hundred free, two hundred free. I try to get breathing four in because I just think I was a lot more stable in that position, but the longer events I’m breathing every two. And I used to always practice in training, breathing to the left one way and

breathing to the right so that no matter who I was racing, I could breathe facing them. I think that’s something that people can play around with, you know, breathing to each side. And I think that also allows you the ability to work on your hip position. You don’t just get used to breathing to the left and then you’re really great at breathing to the left. And then all of a sudden you have to breathe to the right and your hips are all over the place. So you know, switching it up every now and then I think helps.

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model of the wetsuit. It just depends on what your goals are. So greatoceanwetsuits.com effort20 at checkout. I know you’ll like them. Were there any cues that you used when you were racing? So the biggest cue for me when I was racing, I would kind of stand behind the blocks and I would always say to myself either lengthen extend. So that’s like lengthening at the front of the stroke, extending at the back of the stroke, or it would be rate and power. So especially on those shorter races where I’m having to swim fast, I knew I had to get my rate up. But I didn’t want to get my rate up and slip through the water and just pull half happily and just hope for the best. I was making sure I still had the power in that stroke. So getting my rate up but maintaining that power and the length and the extension through my stroke, not shortening up that stroke because you want to be faster, making sure you’re

actually holding water the whole way through the stroke. How much focus did you put on your technique throughout your career? I’ll admit when I was younger it wasn’t really a focus. You know, I was kind of thrown in to doing more K’s and more and more and more. And then as I got older, I realized that there was so much more to gain out of putting focus on my technique rather than just doing more work. There’s a certain amount of work that you can do that gets you somewhere. But if you have poor technique and you’re just doing K after K with poor technique, you’re not going to get anywhere. You know, those technical gains can make such a big difference. Such little things can make such a big difference in your swimming. So the older I got and the wiser I got, the more I figured out that technique has to take a priority in my training. What were the main things that you worked on throughout your career?

Yeah. So in terms of like my own technical focus, when the things that I was working on are my elbow position at the start of my catch. So making sure I’m really strong in this position. I’m not sweeping out. I’m not crossing over with my body. I’m really strong pulling under. And a big thing for me that Dean actually picked up on was that I was breathing backwards. So I used to take my stroke and breathe under my arm pit. And so I’d spend all this energy and almost over rotate and I’d breathe under my arm pit. So it’s keeping that head like nice and still one goggle out of the water, one goggle. And you know, kind of the things that they tell 10 year olds, but it’s still up the cool when you’re like way later in your career. So that was a big thing for me being very aware of my breathing, my hip position and my catch at the front of my stroke. Talk to me about the best race that you ever had and why it was your best race.

Yeah. So I think for me, my best ever race looking back is probably my 800 freestyle at the world champs in 2022. I ended up second to Katie Ledecky, but 24 hours before that race, we spun the heats to the 800 and I qualified in eighth. And it was a shocking swim. I didn’t want to do it. I went to Dean. I pulled my eyes out. I was like, there’s no way I’m doing this 800 freestyle final. I don’t want to do it. Let me pull out and Dean kind of sat me down and gave me this big speech, this big motivating speech. And I had 24 hours to turn it around. I got up behind the blocks in that final and I was like, screw it. In my head, I was like, you’ve already screwed up your heats. Like who cares what happens in the final? It doesn’t matter anymore. So my first 100 turn looked across the pool and all I could see was Katie. There’s me and Katie and no one else was there. And I just thought, oh crap. And then

just went for it for the rest of the race and ended up touching the wall second. And it’s like, probably still one of the proudest things that I’ve done in my career. And what’s the best advice that you’ve ever received for your swimming? The best advice I’ve ever received in my swimming is probably just enjoying it. I think it’s like the biggest thing and learning off the people around you and like putting yourself in an environment where you can learn and have people of support around you. You know, there’s a saying that like your reflection of like the five people that you spend most of your time with. And I think being in an environment that I was in where it’s such a high performance environment and being able to learn off people like Arnie and Elijah and Molly and Shayna and Dean and, you know, that kind of environment, you get to pick up on little nuances that not only are reflected in your training and your training styles and your

technique and how much work you’re putting in, but just like little things outside of the pool, like how you talk to people, how you communicate with people, how you respect people. And I think like that’s super important advice that’s not in the apical world of swimming, but things in the outside world as well. And what about the worst advice you’ve ever received? Worst advice I’ve ever received. I don’t know. I think for me, the worst advice is when people start throwing numbers at me, like, you’ve got a 200 freestyle, make sure you’re at 28 and then a 29 and then 29 and then a 30. And in my head, that just doesn’t work. And I have always hated when people do that. And I think like someone just telling me like, you know, you’ve put in all the work, you’ve put in all the effort, like just go out there and have fun. That’s always a way better way for me in like to approach things. And I think like a lot of people actually work that way, you know, you start throwing numbers at them and

you over complicate things, like especially on race day, not so much in training and training. It’s fine. You need that kind of feedback, but come to race day, you’ve done all this work you don’t need to then sit down and think about the numbers, you know what you’ve got to do. You’ve just got to get in and do it. So yeah, I think probably that’s the only situation where it’s been worst advice. And what are the hardest sets you’ve ever done and some of your favorite sets that you’ve done? Hardest set I’ve ever done. Dean’s thrown a few big ones at me, but one that stands out and like one that I haven’t done in years and years, but it’s super hard. And I think a lot of people can probably try this set or do this set. It’s 10 ones best average on two minutes and it doesn’t seem like anything odd. You think like 100 meters, like two minutes, like I’ll get plenty of rest. But if you’re actually going like full

effort for those 10 ones on two minutes by the time you hit that 10th one and touch the wall, it’s like, thank God that set is over. So it’s such a simple set, but it ends up being super, super hard. Favorite sets for me are sets where I can work on hitting my stroke count and hitting times. I find that super valuable in my training. It’s a big thing that I use was hitting stroke counts. So I like sets where say, like just off the top of my head, for example, there’s like three sets of 850s and I’m descending my times, like 800 pace, 400 pace, 200 pace, but I’m trying to hold my stroke count. So whatever stroke count I’m taking when I’m doing 800 pace and I’m a little bit slower, I’m trying to replicate that when I’m doing 200 pace. And so how can I do that when I’m hitting 200 pace and having to be a bit faster? Do I need to up my kick? Is it more power in the stroke? Am I holding enough water? Things like that that

just give me a lot of feedback without having to like, do this big crazy set, but you’re getting a lot of like very specific feedback. That’s like what I found most, or that was like most effective in my swimming. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

Don’t chase speed. Speed will come to you if you get your technique right and you’re really in tune with how you’re feeling in the water rather than trying to muscle it and force it. You’d be surprised at the results that you can get in three years time if you dedicate yourself to that rather than looking at the results that you might want in three months time. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. I’ve dedicated my career to one thing, helping adults become better swimmers. In this video, I’m going to share with you everything I’ve learned in my 25 years of swimming and coaching thousands of different people from beginners all the way through to pro triathletes, that if you are feeling slow and frustrated in the water, what can help you get to being fast, efficient and feeling effortless as you

move through the water? The first thing is that swimming is a dichotomy between tension and relaxation, and we’ve got to find the optimum balance between the two. It’s like if you were to pick up a glass of water, you’re not going to grab it with as much force as you possibly can. You’re going to pick up that glass of water with just enough tension to hold the shape, but no more from than that. And it’s exactly like swimming. We want to apply enough force and pressure on the water to help move us forwards, but we don’t want to muscle it. We don’t need to put in any more power than that. So finding that sweet spot between tension and relaxation is something that can really help you apply just enough force to move forwards without wasting any extra effort. Reality versus perception is a really big issue in swimming. Whenever I film someone and when we do underwater filming, people will look at their stroke and think that can’t be me.

That is not how I look in the water, but it is obviously how they’re swimming, and there’s a big disconnect from what they think they’re doing to what they’re actually doing. So if you can get video of your swimming and you can actually see what you’re doing, that’s often the first step at actually making some changes. Because for whatever reason, when we’re face down, we’re lying flat in the water and we can’t see much of what’s going on, it’s very hard to tell exactly what’s happening. And if we don’t know what’s happening, then it’s hard to make a change. So one thing I always recommend to people is get some footage. Even with a phone recorded above the water, that can help you make some of the first changes to your stroke that will help you swim faster and swim more efficiently. If you’ve watched any swimming competition or triathlon, you’ll see that there’s so many different strokes. And even in the Olympic finals,

you’ll see that swimmers that are touching within a second of each other swim with very different styles. So there’s not one perfect stroke for every swimmer. It’s going to change depending on your height, your arm span, your experience, your strength, the event that you’re doing. There’s so many different factors when it comes to swimming. And there’s not one perfect style. There is a perfect style for you that you can work with. And it basically goes down to what you currently use, how you currently swim, and just looking to tweak and perfect that. Because if you’re trying to swim like Ian Thorpe or Michael Phelps, but you are five foot six and you’ve got shorter legs and limbs and you’re a stockier build, well, you probably can’t swim with that same sort of style. So it’s about finding the right style for you. There’s certainly fundamentals across the board that we want to work towards, but there’s nuance in that. So trying to copy one certain style of swimmer, if you’re not necessarily

built for that or you don’t naturally gravitate to it, might actually make you slower rather than faster. Effort doesn’t necessarily correlate to more speed if your technique isn’t in place. One of the frustrating things that I see that a lot of triathletes come to me for is they put the effort in on the bike, they put the effort in in the run, and they tend to get faster. But the same thing doesn’t hold true when they go to the pool. They actually sometimes get slower, the harder they work. So the first step there is making sure that you’ve got good foundations with your technique. So we need to have good, good technique to start with. Then as we put a little bit more effort in, you can start to go a little bit faster. But just trying to muscle your way through the water with brute force isn’t the way to actually get quicker. Because swing such a technical sport, we actually need to make sure we’ve got the right timing and coordination and rhythm in the stroke,

as opposed to just trying to put more force in. So it’s almost like a dance. We’ve got to find our rhythm and our tempo, and we’ve got to still keep the coordination in it and hold good technique as we put a little bit more effort in. So sometimes that goes against what people have been used to doing when it comes to things like running or biking. But swimming is such a technical sport that we need to focus more on the rhythm and timing and coordination instead of the pure force aspect of it. When a lot of people start swimming, they find that they need to kick really hard to move forwards and they rely on that kick to propel them forwards, as opposed to using their arms and their upper body and their rotation to help drive most of that propulsion. Now your legs have the biggest muscles in the body. So if you’re kicking very, very hard for long periods of time, your heart rate is going to go up, and it’s very hard to

sustain that. So your kick is not necessarily there to propel you forwards, it’s there to support you. So if you find that you’re tiring quickly, it’s always good to make sure that what your legs are doing is helping support you and balance you, but not necessarily propel you forwards. It’s a part of it, but the kick is something that will tie you very quickly. Even some of the fittest and the best swimmers in the world, if they’re kicking as hard as they can for 100 meters as part of their swim, they can’t sustain that. If you look at say a 1500 freestyle, you’ll find they really start to bring the legs in the last 75, the last 50, but they’re certainly not holding that for 1500 meters. So your kick is there to support you, not necessarily to propel you forwards. When adults start swimming, we try to intellectualize it. We try and think about our stroke with great detail, and we try and make sure we’re doing things

perfectly. Now it’s certainly good to think about your technique, because that’s one way that we’re going to get faster, but adults have a tendency to overthink. And sometimes kids have a tendency to underthink when they’re swimming. We want to find that sweet spot in between. And one thing that I suggest and recommend whenever I’m coaching someone is, okay, we want to think about whatever it is we’re working on, but then we want to move to the place where we’re just starting to feel for it. Because swimming is very much about feel and your awareness in the water. So if you can switch off that thinking brain a little bit, just keep it in the background, but tune more into that feeling brain. And that is a way that you can really start to notice the changes and feel for the stroke more. And I find that people who have grown up swimming, kids, teenagers who have done thousands and thousands of laps in their teenage years,

they’ve become really good at being hyper attuned and hypersensitive to how they’re feeling in the water. And so they can make those changes generally a little bit better because they’ve got that better feeling for the water. So sometimes as adults, we need to make sure we’re doing enough repetitions, first of all, but we also need to make sure that we’re just able to switch off a little bit from our thinking, switch off a little bit from the data and just be almost kind of at one with the water and just be present in there. Because especially in today’s day and age, with the amount of technology that’s there, we can get distracted. So we just want to make sure that we are being attuned to that feel of the water and not just trying to think about every little thing that we’re doing. In order to swim faster, we have to swim softer. Now, I don’t know how true this is, but I use this all the time. I use this way of thinking is

you can only put five kilos of force on the water. You can’t put 20 kilos of force on it. So the way I interpret that is you can only put so much pressure and force on the water that if we go any harder than that, you’re going to slip and your hand is going to slip through the water. So you’re not going to be holding the water. So in order to go faster, we can’t try and muscle our way through there. We need to think about coordinating things well, finding the optimum amount of pressure and force and not trying to go above that. And you’ve probably felt this at times. If you’ve gone from swimming at an easy pace to then sprinting, you probably feel there’s a lot of slippage going on. So trying to apply that right amount of force, approximately five kilos of force, I think is a good way to approach it. And if you’re trying to really just pull as hard as you possibly can, well, it’s not the way to get faster. So swim softer to go faster.

In swimming, consistency is king. And for me, a general of thumb is with two sessions a week, you can generally stay where you are. Three sessions a week or more, you’re really going to start to notice the improvements that come with that. So getting in the water three times a week or more gives you enough consistency to really make some good gains and improvements. Whereas if you’re swimming once a week, it’s probably not enough to really see the improvement that you’re looking for. So trying to get in the pool three times a week, at least for a period of time, can give you a much quicker and bigger improvement than just two sessions a week. And another part of that too, we got taught this growing up was that if you have one week out of the pool, it often takes two weeks to get back to where you were. Now, if you are a fairly new swimmer, that may not necessarily be the case. But certainly at the highest level, taking one week out takes two weeks to get back.

And similar, if you go two or three weeks, well, that could be four to six weeks to get back to that same level of feel and fitness and aerobic fitness. So trying to limit the amount of time that you do have out of the pool can be a good way to approach it. So making sure that you’re consistent with your training. It’s not about doing a huge session once a week. It’s about doing maybe some smaller or medium sized sessions a couple of times a week. And that is a good way to make sure that long term you see good improvement. This episode is brought to you by Pillar Performance. Our new sponsors Pillar are a sports micronutrition company. And the easiest way to describe it is that while hydration and carbohydrates products will take you through to touch the wall as fast as possible. Pillar’s mission is to get swimmers to the starting blocks in the best condition over and over again. I recently started taking Pillar triple magnesium after a friend had recommended it

and it’s been a game changer for my sleep and recovery. I take one scoop 30 minutes before bed each night in the same way that you might start your day with a coffee. I finish it up with the magnesium and recover better for tomorrow’s session in the pool. Pillar Performance is used by some of the biggest names in swimming and triathlon, including Zack’s Double T Cook, Jan Frodeno, Ben Canute, Ash Gentle, Taylor Nib amongst the host of other well-known swimmers and triathletes. Where Pillar differs from other micronutrition you may have taken before is both the quality of the types of magnesium and the tangible results that I see on my garment each morning. If you’d like to try Pillar today head to pillarperformance.shop and enter code effortless for 15% off. That’s effortless for 15% off all first-time purchases or for anyone in North America enter the same code at thefeed.com. A mistake that a lot of people make when they first start swimming is they

approach their swim training like they’re going for a run. They get in the pool and they go on swim one kilometer straight with no change in pace, no drills, no mixing it up at all, it’s just one kilometer straight just like they would if they were going for a run. Now it can be okay to do that at times but if you look at the best swimmers in the world, you look at the best swimmers in triathlon, they’re not going in the water and just going three, four, five kilometers straight with no changes. If you can structure your sessions with a warm-up and a main set where there might be some change of pace and shorter and longer intervals and you have a bit of cool down at the end, that is going to help you get faster and actually develop your swimming so much better than just doing a kilometer straight. So what I’ve seen there is that a lot of people, they struggle to get out of their one gear or their one pace so a lot of times people will come to clinics and they’ll say look I’ve only got

one speed, there’s no fast, there’s no slow, there’s just one pace medium and often that’s because they haven’t developed their different gears. So we’ve got to make sure that when we do train that we’re doing different intervals, there might be 50s, 100s, 150s, 200s and we’ve got to make sure that there is some sort of change of pace. Whether that be progressively building, for example a set of five 200s where you just progressively get faster each one or maybe you’re just doing some easy zone two work and then maybe some sprints so just seeing some sort of change of pace and what you’ll find there is that when you go faster you tend to feel any drag, any additional drag that you’re creating because the faster you go the more that drag is multiplied. So at those faster paces we really start to notice where we’re slowing ourselves down and we also start to develop those neural pathways better when we go at

faster speeds so it’s really important to make sure that we’re not approaching our training sessions like we are going for a run and we just get in and go through okay. Now if you’re looking to just swim and go for enjoyment go for it but if you’re looking to progress then you’ve got to make sure you’re mixing things up. When I first started coaching I came from a swimming background and I was of the purest mentality that anything that’s not pure swimming is cheating. For example pool boys and buoyancy shorts. Those two things a lot of triathletes swim with and my initial thought when I started coaching was that is cheating okay that’s not pure swimming but the thing is most triathletes are racing in a wetsuit and the pool buoy and the buoyancy shorts replicate some of that buoyancy that you’re going to have when you’re wearing a wetsuit so I don’t see those things as necessarily cheating especially

if you are going to the pool because you enjoy your swimming more because these things give you the assistance and the aid that make you enjoy it more. So if that helps get you to the pool and you enjoy it more you end up training a bit harder that’s probably going to make you a better swimmer than you not enjoying it and hating it and going to the pool once a week instead of two or three times. So there’s different rules I find for different people and if you are happy to use those tools and they are very specific to what you’re training for then that might be the right approach. Now that said I have had a lot of swimmers and a couple of pro triathletes who have managed to win themselves off those tools and they’ve actually progressed their swimming because they’ve they felt like they can develop their swimming because then they get a sense of what they’re truly doing with their body and their hips and their legs and so on. So it’s good to try

the different things and just go with whatever works best for you. I’ve coached thousands of different people and there’s so many different approaches that work for different people so it’s very much an individual approach depending on what you’re training for. When it comes to developing your stroke I see it as like you are going on a date with someone you don’t go straight for marriage you don’t ask them to marry you straight away. So in swimming we don’t want to go straight for the catch we need to work through the stroke in the right order there’s a there’s an order of things. So in in swimming the way that we would normally approach that is we’ve got to start with the head and the body to begin with because any amount of drag that we create any additional drag is going to make it very hard to work on those other parts of the stroke. So head and body has got to be number one. Now sometimes before that we’ve got to start

with the breathing if your breathing is not there everything else is going to fall apart. So really I guess it’s breathing then we go head and body then we want to work on the legs then we can go to rotation and then we can go to our recovery over the top of the water then we can go to what our arms are doing under the water and we can then sort of start to look at rhythm and timing after that and for pretty much all the strokes it’s going to follow the same or a very similar order of things. So if you’re sitting there listening to this video and you’re thinking I don’t know what to work on next it’s always good to start at the very beginning. Start with your breathing make sure that’s in place then progress to head and body and so on. And if you want the order that I would go through things in to help develop your freestyle I’ll include a link at the bottom of this video about our freestyle checklist

where you can just go through each part of the stroke make sure you’re doing it right and just tip those boxes along as you go. I’ll often get swimmers come up to me and they want to make a rapid change their stroke where by tomorrow they’re swing faster and they’re swimming more efficiently. Now that’s certainly possible you can make changes and you can do that but we really want to be thinking long term and you’ll be surprised how far you can get in your swimming in three years rather than three months. So the swimmers that I find really improve are the ones that have this long term thinking where they’re not thinking about where can I get to in three months time it’s like where can I get to in three years time because everyone develops at different speeds and some people do progress really nicely in three to six months time some people might take a year or two years but as long as you’ve got that long

term approach and you’re willing to just put in the work and not be too worried about when that speed comes that is what I see across the board is being a consistent thing with those people that really do make good improvements. Now along those lines a good phrase that I heard I really like I heard this from Tracy Bowman was don’t chase speed. Speed will come to you if you get your technique right and you’re you’re really in tune with how you’re feeling in the water rather than trying to muscle it and force it. So don’t go chasing the speed. The speed comes when you get the technique and the amount of effort right and so again in terms of that long term versus short term if you’re happy just working away at your stroke okay every session maybe in your warm-up you’re doing a couple of drills and you’re working on one specific thing if you do that several weeks in a row several months in a row that’s going to accumulate and

that’s going to build and that is going to help you become a much better swimmer and if you’re not worried about well when am I going to get faster with this one day it will click one day you’ll get this session where you’re like wow okay this feels good and my times are actually quicker but it’s very hard to know exactly when that will be so don’t chase speed. I’ve done a bit of work with physios in my time some physios who have been a part of the Australian swim team being a part of the Australian triathlon team and one thing I’ve learned from them is that if you can’t do it out of the water you can’t do it in the water so some of the positions that we’re often asking people to get into physically they can’t get there comfortably because they’re too tight or they may not have the strength to be able to hold it so anything you can’t do on land you’re not going to be able to do in water because water doesn’t have

that stability that we do on land so it’s always worth looking at and considering your strength and your mobility and if there’s holes there if there’s things that you find physically challenging to hold out of the water it might be worthwhile either looking at some sort of strength or conditioning program or even mobility program to help address it and I’ve coached a lot of masters athletes I coached eight years at a masters swim club and we won five national titles we had a lot of very good swimmers in the masters category and what I saw there was that often those swimmers that did some strength training particularly in their older years because we lose our strength and mobility as we get older so those that did some strength training alongside their swimming and even those that did some yoga or pilates those sorts of exercises or activities that can help maintain your mobility they often did really well in the water because

they could move a lot better and they had good coordination so if you find that you just feel very stiff and rigid when you swim it might be worthwhile considering what’s happening and what’s going on outside of the water a phrase that I use all the time when coaching is slow to fast when we’re swimming our movements should be slow to fast they’re not done at the same speed so unlike riding a bike where we’ve got this fairly constant turnover in swimming our movements are slow to fast so for example in freestyle when we enter the water and we’re reaching forwards and we’re setting our catch that movement is a little bit slower than when we are finishing the stroke at the back our limb needs to accelerate through the stroke to really help propel us forwards so it’s a good thing to keep in the back of your mind when you’re swimming that we don’t want to feel like we’re on this treadmill where there’s

no pause button and it’s just hard work we need to have this slow to fast element to our swimming we’re a little bit slower out the front a bit quicker out the back so we get that acceleration and even if you’re sprinting if it’s a 50 meter sprint there’s still going to be a little bit of that change in speed not quite as much as a distance swimmer but there will be that change in speed so keeping that slow to fast element in your swimming can help keep the heart rate and the effort level down for the return that you get back on your speed when we think of swimming it’s very simple the two things that make up your speed is your stroke length and your stroke rate it’s the combination of those two things but it doesn’t mean that that’s easy to change or achieve there’s a lot of different things that go into stroke length and stroke rate now we’ll usually for I’d say for most people we want to work on length before

rates with the exception being that if somebody has a really slow stroke rate let’s say they’re taking 40 individual strokes per minute that’s going to be too low we’d need to up the rate probably to high 40s maybe low 50s to really get them going so unless it’s too high or too low like really in these extremes we yes we’ll work on stroke rate but usually for most people we want to work on stroke length now what what makes up stroke length all right well number one it’s going to be the profile of your body how you’re holding yourself in the water so we need to make sure that we’re doing everything we can to minimize drag which means horizontal with our body position making sure that we’re well aligned with our arms in front of our shoulders and making sure that we’re holding the body long and tall so our our body is very streamlined in the water so we want to work on minimizing drag first of all then we want to work on

increasing propulsion and a big part of your propulsion most of it is going to come from what your arms are doing through the water and then how you coordinate that with your rotation and your hips and your body and your kick so if we keep things simple let’s work on stroke length good body position minimize and drag increasing propulsion then we can start to look at stroke rate and finding that optimum balance between the two and those things will change depending on the speed that you’re going in the effort you’re putting in so sprinters will have a much faster stroke rate than long distance swimmers and they’ll but they’ll have a much shorter distance per stroke so you don’t want to keep the longest stroke possible when you’re sprinting you’re going to have to compromise some of that but it’s about finding the the sweet spot between that but that’s something that’s going to change depending on what pace and what speed that you’re going for it’s always worthwhile training for the

specific event that you’re training towards for example if you look at cam macaboy at the Paris Olympics he had one goal in mind and that was to win the 50 freestyle and all of his training was geared towards that he wasn’t worried about his aerobic fitness he wasn’t worried about getting in as many cases he could it was very specific training now if you’re a triathlete and you’re training for an open water swim that might be two kilometers in length and you know you’re going to be wearing a wetsuit the conditions might be quite choppy and you’re going to have lots of people around well let’s train for that specific event so that might mean that okay you’ve got to work on your upper body strength a little bit because sometimes with a wetsuit we have to we feel like we have to use the shoulders a little bit more and we’re a bit more restricted there so we’ve got to make sure our strength is up so we want to make sure

maybe we’re doing some pool buoy and paddles work in the water and we want to make sure that we’re getting some open water practice and we’re practicing those open water skills so making sure that you’re training for the specific event and that also means just allowing your stroke to be suited to that event so if you’re going to be swimming in the open water with very choppy conditions your stroke does not have to be perfect it’s about adapting your stroke to the conditions and it follows into the next point of open water is almost like a different stroke to swimming in the pool when i first started swimming open water there was a friend that i’d trained with i’d always been in the pool events he’d never beat me we get to the open water and he’d beat me by three minutes in our first open water swim and the reason was i had no idea about siting in the open water i had no idea about drafting i didn’t know how to adapt my stroke to

water that wasn’t completely still and it took me several years to be able to learn that and figure that out and actually be effective in the open water so i can feel like it almost a different sport in many ways so the open water is a is a different beast to swimming in the pool so if your goals and the things that you’re working towards are focused mostly on that open water make sure you get that experience and it’s hard to get that experience outside of swimming in open water or being in a squad that might be doing some pack swimming or some drafting so just getting as much experience as you can in the thing that you’re training towards if you’re used to wearing a watch when you swim i’d recommend taking the watch off once a week at least and it goes back a little bit to the point that i was speaking about earlier which is just being at one with the water and getting out of your head if you look at the best roomers in

the world a lot of them are not wearing any technology when they swim now they might use it just to maybe track their heart rate through a session and just to help sort of measure that that load that they’re taking on but i think it’s worthwhile taking off the watch every once in a while just allowing yourself to switch off from the data and switch off from the the thinking side of things and i find that when i take my watch off and there’s no technology there it’s much easier to tune yourself into how you’re feeling and how you’re moving through the water and some of that is just how you feel the water rushing over your body what you’re hearing when you’re swimming the beat and the tempo to your stroke there’s a lot of things that you can really tune into if you switch off from technology at least once a week in those sessions so if you’re used to always tracking everything you probably know how far you’re swimming anyway you probably know roughly what your times are if you’re using the

stop clock at the pool so you can still track your training sessions without the watch and if you haven’t done that before just try it try it for a month and see how you go and look i’m a big advocate for technology and swimming i use the form goggles i use the swim better devices i track a lot of my swims with the garment but i also don’t use that technology for a lot of the sessions as well and i find that balance between the two is something that has helped me personally and for a lot of the athletes that i coach improve their swimming in a way where now sometimes they were stuck before because they were just too focused on the data rather than just being at one with the water there’s a lot of content around swimming there’s so much advice there that you could take on board and implement into your stroke and in reality we can only focus on one thing at a time we can’t focus on three four five different things if you find that you are getting

distracted from the thing that you were originally focused on because you watched a video heard a podcast and thought okay i’m gonna try this i’m gonna try this there’s a good chance that you may not make any progress forwards because you are distracting yourself and you’re trying too many different things without sticking to the one thing so whenever someone comes to a clinic and they have said they’ve watched a lot of videos and they’ve tried a lot of different things but it’s not quite clicking the advice i give to them is okay we we can see exactly how you’re swimming we’ve taken some video we can see that the first thing you have to work on is your head position don’t distract yourself with anything else just focus on this head position for the next four weeks or six weeks and let’s make that change become a habit then we can move on to the next thing so a lot of times people stall their progress because they are

distracted by too many things and they don’t stick with it but if you have the patience to be able to dedicate yourself to one thing for several weeks or a couple of months very good chance you’re actually going to see results with that but if you try something different every single week you’re spreading yourself too thin and you’re not going to give yourself enough time to make any significant changes so turn off the distractions get some professional coaching or get someone who you find that can can help you with the swimming and work with them and just be patient pick one thing work at that move on to the next thing and you’ll be surprised at the results that you can get in three years time if you dedicate yourself to that rather than looking at the results that you might want in three months time so these are all the things that I’ve learned in my 25 years of coaching be curious to hear what you’ve learned in your time as a

swimmer or as a coach put it in the comments below thanks very much for watching thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast if you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com

I think the biggest downfall outside of over like the confidence issue and doing too much is they can’t let go of the pace. Like these are triathletes who care about time or master servers who care about time or people doing one mile, two mile swims. So like when and they just get so that I’m going to do five hours and I’m going to hold this pace and that’s not that’s not how it works. So you want to find a coach that you really connect with because they’re not a coach, they’re a mentor. If you find the right person and they want you to succeed for all the reasons you want to succeed. So I always encourage people like, don’t be afraid to reach out. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast, Craig Lewin. Welcome to your founder of endurance swimming. You’re a swimmer, past triathlete, but really into marathon swimming and coaching marathon swimmers. So I’d love to get you on the podcast today and just chat about what someone needs to consider when they’re going from maybe doing shorter distance swims or doing triathlon and venturing into the marathon swimming world. So welcome to the podcast, Craig. Thank you. Happy to be here. Very excited. We’re watching for quite some time, so it’s cool to be on this side of it. Yeah. Well, I’d love to get a little bit of just your background and your journey into marathon swimming and endurance swimming and ultimately coaching as well, because I mean, for my journey, it was I started off as a swimmer, a pool swimmer, started to do some open water swimming and really loved it. And then I started to do some coaching as well

and just found I loved working with other people. And it sounds like you have a somewhat similar journey as well. Yeah, it’s a it’s very similar to that. I started I started a little later. I didn’t start swimming till I was 13, which our pool swimmer is like way too late. But that’s the way I started in the pool. And then I think freshman year of college, I was swimming collegiately and I read Lin Cox’s book, Swimming to Antarctica. I’m like, I want to do that. And I started venturing into the open water worlds and just signed up for a 25 K swim with like outside of pool swimming. No real open water swimming experience. And I liked it, but I think I didn’t have the right resources at the time or knowledge and finished the collegiate years and transition to triathlon. And I really enjoyed my time doing triathlon. And I think that’s what led me into coaching, mainly because for me, going from pools, open water and realizing there’s a really large

discrepancy and difference in the pool and the open water swim. Like there’s just so much, so much more going on. And even within the open water worlds, you have lakes and rivers and ponds like freshwater and then you have the ocean. So for me, that’s what led me into coaching where I wanted to bridge that gap and kind of take my knowledge and and use that to help, I would say, adult onset swimmers make the transition into triathlon and feel comfortable, have good, good experiences coming from that first triathlon and then, you know, moving up the ranks through performance. And my time in triathlon was cut short. I was riding, I was hit by a car while riding a bike and training. As this one does these days, I feel like with texting and driving took some time off, just coached full time or not full time. But my free time and then about seven years ago, I said, all right, it’s time for me to do something cool.

Like all my all my athletes are doing Ironman. I was like super motivated by them. And I was like, all right, I gotta, I gotta get out there. I gotta do something big. I got to do something that I can do everything right and still fail. And that’s what started kind of a marathon swim journey where I attempted the Catalina channel and kind of got the bug from there. And then from there went to 20 bridges, Sinkless Channel. And then handful of other swims, which then as I developed into a different type of swimmer, I wanted to now bring that experience to coaching and started focusing my efforts on open water swimmers and marathon swimmer specifically. So it’s similar, similar journey to you, it sounds like. Well, you’ve done a lot more marathon swims than I have. They are my one hit wonder at the moment. But the thing I like about open water swimming and then sort of doing the solos of these different channels and things is it look tight.

Yeah, time’s a part of it, but it’s more just about the challenge of yourself. And it’s not about your competitors. It’s just about you setting a goal and working towards it and trying to overcome the physical challenges of it. But I think the mental challenges of it as well. That’s a big part of it. It’s a lot of time in the water. It’s a lot of time, just like solo time, just training and having to do the work that’s involved. So what was that process like for you? Was that something that you enjoyed or did you struggle with that at any point? So I actually thought that was my favorite part. I think having been a collegiate swimmer where everything is based on time and performing like coming in for a second, depending if you’re doing collegiate races or master’s swimming or or club swimming. It’s always about a time or making your cut. And I knew coming out of college, I wasn’t going anywhere like to the Olympics. I wasn’t that fast.

And I still wanted to to do something and try to kind of fill that with competition. But then for me, moving into marathon swimming, it was about like just doing something big and getting to the other side was enough. It had nothing to do with the time. Like when you talk to people in the math and swim world and they ask you, oh, what swims have you done? You say, oh, I’ve done, you know, English Channel or this. They never ask your time because there’s literally the difference between someone who’s done it in eight hours and someone who’s done it in 20 hours. Like they’re both English Channel swimmers. So for me, I think that was a big driver of why I took to the sport because I didn’t care about peace. I didn’t have to be the swimmer I once was. I’m a whole different and I would say probably stronger, more confidence over now than I was ever like in high school or college. Yeah, it’s fantastic. And now that you’re working with a lot of people to help them

train for these sort of events and by getting, I guess, a really good feel and understanding of what someone goes through when they transition from shorter swims or triathlon to these longer swims. What are some things that people should consider if they’re thinking about making that transition across? Yeah, it’s a jump. You know, I think the number one thing for me that I am part of my swimmers is building a support network. And, you know, as a coach, coaching for distance is very easy, right? Like if the swimmer is doing the work, the workouts or workouts, like most people don’t fail. Like if you’re doing a, you know, a 10K up to 20, 25 miles swim, it’s not usually the distance that gets you. It’s something else. And a lot of the times it’s not having the right support network. So for me, that’s always the first is like, who who’s your crew? Like, do you know who’s going to be in your crew? Because they’re going to be along for the whole journey.

As you’re doing your long swims, as you’re doing your training, you need those people there with you so that they know who you are as a swimmer. They know when you’re in trouble. They know when you’re just being kind of cranky and tired. And they can find ways to keep you safe and get you through the tough spots. But the support network is not just like who’s in your boat. It’s it’s your coach. It’s your strength and conditioning specialist. It’s your nutritionist. Like there’s a huge amount of of like time and resource that are going to go into you for doing one of these largest now and at a 10K level, less so. But you still want to find those people that understand what you’re doing because I think a big, big difference in pool versus open water is distance per stroke, right? You go with I grew up at least and it was always distance per stroke. Like is what you you need in the in the pool. But when you start getting into an open water environment,

some of the better swimmers are doing, you know, 60 or just 30 stroke cycles a minute, 35, 40 stroke cycles a minute. So they’re getting up there. Whereas a pool coach will look at that, be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you doing? Like that’s that’s way inefficient. But when you get into the open water world, it’s not. So it’s more about surrounding yourself with with knowledgeable people. And then on top of that, like I said, it’s I think anyone, you know, who understands basic physiology can coach someone for the distance. So you really do need to find a mentor. So I urge any all my athletes to reach out to people that, you know, who’ve done these swims that they want to do. Some of them English channel, some are more common, but then I have other swimmers who are, yeah, there’s only been six people who’ve ever done this swim or two people have ever done this swims. I’m like, well, reach out to those two because they’re going to know

everything you need to know about logistics and planning and what what are the pitfalls? Where are the weird currents that you need to plan for? So it’s really about building information and building a really strong network for making that jump from like the, I say, 5K, 10K distance up to 15 mile, 20 mile, but it also doesn’t happen overnight. So a lot of people will come and they’ll say, oh, great. I want to do an English channel next year. Well, that’s not possible for a handful of reasons. Mainly if you don’t have your pilot, then it’s definitely not happening. You know, it depends on your background and what you’ve been doing in the water. Some it’s possible, some it’s not, but it’s they need time to develop and they need time to get out into tough conditions and really challenge themselves as an open water swimmer because. A suitable day is not a good day. A suitable day just means they feel comfortable bringing you out

and it’s safe enough, but it can be five, you know, it’d be five foot swell or, you know, a meter or two meter swell. That’s sort of a fun day for anyone. It could be, you know, it could be pouring out. It’s not fun, but you’re swimming in it. You need to figure out how to get through. So it’s really about just finding the right people to guide you along.

And that’s like for you, who of those people being for you? I’m sure you’ve had a lot over the journey, but who’s your support crew being so for me, when I started taking it more seriously post college, like when I found the right resources, there’s a coach out of California. His name is Dan Simonelli. He’s basically, he knows the Catalina channel inside and out. And to me, I needed a coach that would give me accountability, but I also wanted someone who knew those waters and they knew people in the area with Catalina, you need to also have a kayaker. So some of these swims they require just a boat. Summer, a boat and a kayaker. So he knew all the rules. He knew all the observers. He knew everyone. So as I had questions along the way, it wasn’t just coaching. It was it was that mentoring. It was saying, OK, this is what it’s going to be like the last mile. So, you know, really chill. We know you’re excited on the first mile and you’re nervous, but like chill

because that last mile is going to be the hardest mile of your life. So for me, it started with him and then from there, it just, you know, he was very supportive in the same way that I try to be with my athletes. And he’s like, reach out to this person, reach out to that person. So I started meeting a lot of different swimmers along the way. He encouraged master swimming. So I was swimming with a group out of MIT, the tech master’s group. So I had developed a couple, you know, good, I guess, swim relationships with people. So I had like swim buddies that knew what I was doing. So there were all these like different people that you just kind of pick up along the way. And then in terms of like crew and the bow, I like to keep a lean crew. And my dad has kind of been the person who’s seen me through triathlon and my early days of marathon swimming. So he knows me inside and out. And in terms of like kayaking, going to the beach, making sure I was safe

in training, it was him and my mom were like, literally in the kayak all weekend. Like I was lucky to have to, you know, my parents is that, which can go inside out with me. They’d know, you know, when you’re really cranky, when it’s just, you know, if you’re just hungry or tired, exactly. I just did a podcast with Sharon VanRivendale and Melisha Johnson, who got one and two in the 10k at the Olympics. And they were saying that in the in that swim, like they’re training buddies and they’d live together for like the year leading into Paris. And they said, like, they’re either one and two, right? I think Sharon led the first relapse, Melisha led the last relapse. And like Sharon was looking around and she’s like, all right, they’re sort of gaining on us. So she’d like sort of tap Moe’s feet and just be like, all right, we’ve got to get going now. And they’d like, they’d know what each other was thinking. It’s just like all these things that like, there’s no words spoken,

but just these little like, yeah, these little actions, they like, they know what they meant just because they got to know each other so well. So it’s, you know, when you live with someone or your parents have raised you, it’s just like they have a good idea of whatever even like little grimace means, right? Like they pick up on that stuff. Yeah, they know when you’re in trouble, type of Serbia, they know all of it. Like, so it’s, it’s nice to have. Yeah, absolutely. Now, in terms of the training side of things, how do you find people manage the volume and what about the recovery side of it? Do you find that people over train or they go too hard too early in the lead up to an event that they’re training for? Like, what, what are some common things that you find there with people? Yeah, I think it’s, it comes down to confidence. So no matter how good of a server you are, if you’ve never done anything in any sport, you tend to overdo it.

So I’ll get a lot of people and I, and in my training, it works since it’s a four week cycles. So it’s different each week is a different focal point. The volume builds, it caps off with like your two culminating long swims for the week. And then the next week is a recovery because I need them to like, no, no, you need to chill. You need to fix your technique. You need to go up your massage. Like, there’s all these things I need you to do. And if I let you kind of go on your own, you’re literally probably going to do like 50 K every single week and then occur in two months and not make it. So in my plans, I’ll give people a ring of volume range. And I say, if you’re feeling OK, it’s OK to go to the upper range. And if you’re not feeling great, it’s OK to be in the lower range. Because in the end, it’s about the aggregate and getting the long swims in. And it takes a lot of time because a lot of these people are triathletes.

They are they are people who’ve done Iron Man and they’re looking for like the next challenge, like, OK, I’ve done Iron Man, English channels, like the next on my list, it’d be really cool. Sounds awesome, impressed people, whatever. So it’s like kind of the natural progression for a lot of triathletes. And in their head, they’re they’re very type A and they’re very driven. And but they also the ones I’ve I’ve I’ve worked with they they know they can go for a long time, but they don’t know how they’re going to handle the cold. They don’t know how they’re going to handle certain elements. So they start like trying to do everything at once. And that’s just like when you’re learning to swim or you’re doing technique, you can’t fix four things at once. You got to fix one at a time. So it’s the same thing is adding it in, you know, into the progression and into the training plan at the right time. And by the end of it, they feel like they’re in a good place.

So I think more than anything, people they just will do way too much because they don’t have the confidence and they are trying to make up for it by saying, oh, if I swim a lot of the time. And yeah, they end up hurt. Yeah, yeah, exactly right. It’s like a phrase that I just sort of tell myself if I am training for like something something bigger, it’s like there’s no hero sessions, no hero efforts. Like you don’t want to just absolutely kill yourself in one session or within a week because like it’s it’s the aggregate that we’re going for. We’re not just trying to have these amazing efforts in individual sessions because like if you have two or three weeks out of the water because you’re injured and you’ve overdone it, it might take you six weeks to get back to where you you were. So you’re better off just having this sort of steady base. And I heard a good quote from the runner. I think it’s Yuck of Ingebrootson.

He something along the lines of like, think of yourself as a farmer where you’ve planted these carrots. And if you put the carrots too soon, you can’t replant them. So the longer you can just wait for these things to grow and then you pull them out down the track. Well, that’s that’s when you’re going to have so much more success and you’re going to have these these bigger carrots. And it’s like if you can take that philosophy, especially into your training, but your technique, like if you can just work on one element of your stroke for four weeks or eight weeks and not be concerned with the time, not be concerned with your pace that that’s giving you. It’s like that’s going to help you so much more down the track in the long run. So just planting these seeds, just working on them and not looking at when they once they have not pulling them up. Then you will find yourself six months, 12 months down the track

and you’ll be swimming better. You’ll be swimming faster and they’ll be a part of your stroke. But I think people are just wanting to see the results straight away or they’re not willing to wait longer to see it.

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Yeah, I think the biggest downfall outside of like the confidence issue and doing too much is they can’t let go of the pace. Like these are triathletes who care about time or master servers who care about time or people doing one mile, two mile swims to like win. And they just get so that I’m going to do five hours and I’m going to hold this pace and that’s not how it works when you start doing these very, very long swims. Like and I’m not talking 5K, 10K Olympic level. We’re talking about average person, you know, 30s, 40s, 50s, have a family, have a job. Like it’s it’s a different it’s a different mentality. Like these are people training crazy hours, but they have to let go of the time and like the pace. And there’s a lot of, you know, it’s kind of like like Zen, you know, it’s like going, it’s like that flow state of really just going with it and letting the conditions dictate how you are swimming and really is not feeling good,

because you’re not going to put in 80 percent effort for 11 hours. It’s just it’s not going to help. You might feel like 80 percent, but, you know, compared to like your threshold effort in the pool, you’re not holding that pace. So it’s more, you know, I’m assuming with the 5 and 10 care like in the Olympics, where there’ll be like attacks and the pace will the jump randomly and then slow down than jump. It’s the same thing in the open water for a solo marathon swim, because there might be a current or this might or or a wind shield or something might change. Or you’re in the shipping lanes of the English Channel and they’re like yelling, you got to you got to move, you got to sprint, you got to sprint. And that’s four hours in. But then once you get to that hour, you can, you know, just chill or, you know, go back to your normal pace. But you need to have those gears. And if you are so bent out of shape about what the watch says,

that’s very detrimental, I think, to a lot of people’s training early on, but by the end, they start to to accept it and really enjoy just swimming and getting in that that mental state of like, just, you know, go with the flow versus I’m holding this piece. And this is the time I want to be. Yeah, you don’t want to be chasing speed or times. You want to be chasing that feeling of flow and just being present in there and like almost being able to switch off, you know, in a way where you just, you know, half an hour passes and you blink and it’s yeah. And you’re like, OK, that was that was half an hour or an hour. Like, that’s kind of what you want to get into in a way. And you have to just like, let kind of have to let things go. Right? You have to just like, yeah, no worry about the pace. One question I was going to ask in terms of the marathon swimming is that is an important factor there? Is it just being able to hold your, hold your stroke rate,

hold your tempo, aside from when you need to pick it up? Like, is that something that’s you’d sort of look at a little bit more rather than stroke length, which obviously we can’t measure in the open water, but like, is it is it tempo? Yeah, I mean, stroke rate is pretty important. You’ll see a lot of swimmers will have their crew with whiteboards and one of the numbers they’re writing down is stroke rate. I think it’s also a number that observers for colder swims will often watch because if it drops below, if it’s dropping rapidly and the swimmer can’t pick it up, it’s a sign of hypothermia and it might be time to call a swim. But stroke rate is one because it’s it’s that consistent motion throughout the swim, mainly because if you start getting stretched out too much or you start revving up and you’re slipping, you know, if you’re in salt water, it’s less dense than a pool. It’s more aerated. So you you need the turnover because even if you had if you had

a same stroke rate in a pool or open water, you’re not going to go as far with every pull in the open water because it’s less dense water because it’s aerated because there’s chop and swell. So that’s why the stroke rate does does tend to matter. But everyone’s different. Like you see people like Adam, Adam Walker, I don’t know if you’ve ever talked to him, but he’s an ocean seven swimmer and he has probably one of the longest strokes I’ve seen and it works. So everyone’s different. But, you know, for average, average people, it’s generally the stroke keeping that tempo throughout and that consistency throughout is going to be a really important factor in their success.

And now in terms of the mental side of things and building that confidence, what do you see some important things to help people develop that in themselves so that they get to their crossing or get to their longer swim where they’re like, all right, I I’m confident that I’ve done the work. I’m confident that I can withstand the cold and all those sorts of things.

It’s it’s the long swims. So in just like you do marathon training, I mean, training, you have progressively longer bikes, longer runs is the same thing in swimming. So you’re going to see a lot of swimmers, they get their training plan and their first long swims are like two or three hours. And they’re like, oh, that’s really long. But when I give plans, they’re seeing their whole plan. Like I want them to see what they’re what the next like, you know, six months, seven months of their life is going to look like because they understand the commitment, they’ll see two or three hours and then they’re going to get to the end and they see back to back like eight, nine hour swims in their head. They’re like, there’s no way I’m ever going to get there. And it’s kind of really scary. But then every week or not every week, but every cycle that long swim gets a little longer. So it’s like two, three hour swims. And it’s, you know, a four hour and a two hour than a five.

So it’s progressively gets longer. But every one of those swims is a dress rehearsal. Because that’s the time you’re learning what to eat, when to eat, how Austin, how are you getting fed? You know, how do you like the food you were eating, you know, two hours in versus six hours in because these are all important things. So it’s it’s about basically making the long swims, just another routine. So when you get to the day of, you’re like, I’ve done the work. I’ve done the long swims. I know not every hour, every half hour is going to feel good. And I know how I’m going to dig deep and get to the next half hour. And it’s those long swims where you build those mental, like your mental toolbox, right? That’s where you’re learning what your motivation is. What are your coping mechanisms? What do you need to hear? What do you not want to hear? Like, for example, like when my crew asked how I’m feeling, like eight

hours into a swim, like, how do you think I’m feeling? I’m cold, I’m tired. This doesn’t feel great. Like I want to be done, you know, so like knowing what sets you off and communicating that clearly to your crew. But basically it’s those long swims or your dress rehearsal so that you’ve literally done that, that big attempt 50 times, you know, before because you’ve just every long training. So you’ve had a chance to practice and refine. So by the time you get to the end, like, oh, this is just like another training day and you don’t really, it doesn’t make you nervous. I think it’s a lot of, I’m sure, you know, you’ve entered into a lot of Olympians and elite swimmers and triathletes and they have that routine, and I think that routine is what helps them. It’s like, no, that’s like what gets them in the mental space. They do the visualization because they’re like, well, I’ve visualized it. I’ve practiced it in theory thousands and thousands of times.

So this is no different. And that’s, I think the key is doing those long swims and controlling training for what you can control. The other stuff you can’t worry about. You can’t worry about the weather. You can’t worry about certain factors. You focus on what you can control. You save the energy for that and you don’t worry about the rest. Yeah. And you just walk in your routine. And I think that’s what people get the confidence and end up being successful.

I love it. I was listening to someone talk about like public speaking and how that’s it’s a really hard thing for people to do. They get really nervous and yeah, and then they get nervous and they sort of stumble on their words and those sorts of things. And he was saying a similar thing. It’s like, well, if you’ve rehearsed and you’ve rehearsed that talk a thousand hundred times, well, you’re probably not going to be that nervous. And you’re not going to be worried about what the different things you’re going to be saying. You’re not going to be worried about what people are thinking because you’ve just been through that in your head so many times. And if you can do that same thing with with your swimming, where it’s like, well, I’ve done an eight hour swim. I’ve done a 10 hour swim. Yeah, I’m used to it. Then it’s just it’s not new and it’s like anything new. It takes a lot of brain power to understand what’s happening and to be

able to feel comfortable. But if we’re just in that zone where it’s like, you know, all right, I’ve done this before. I’ve got these neural pathways developed where I don’t have to think too much about it, then you can save all that energy for the things that you can’t control. So yeah, it’s it’s it’s simple, but I think it’s often overlooked because it’s it’s that simple, just that progressive buildup and progressive increase in whatever it is you want to do. And I heard a similar thing about like someone who’s scared of spiders. It’s like, well, all right, what I have to do, right? Well, let’s start with a small spider that’s in another room. And then we’ll take away that little that window that you can see the spider through and they’ll go bigger and like same thing, just progressively build it up. So yeah, I really, really like it. And I remember when I trained for my one and only marathon swim, we ended up building up to maybe doing 16 Ks out in the open water

before the swim. And if I looked at that six months beforehand, I’m like, there’s no way I’m doing 16 Ks, just with me and a friend in the Bay for whatever it was for five hours. But at the time, it’s like, oh, this is kind of easy. It’s actually not that hard, but it’s because each week we just built it up, you know, started with 4K, that’s six, eight and so on. So yeah, lots to be said for it.

Yeah, I think the other pieces, at least when you get to the least any any real open water ocean swim is you want to train in the conditions you’re going to experience. And that doesn’t mean like what you’re going to experience on a perfect day. So I always recommend like the days where you look out and you know, it’s safe to swim, but I don’t want to swim because it’s windy, it’s rainy, it’s choppy. Like those are the days like no one wants to swim. But those are the days you have to swim because those are swimmable, like if it’s safe and you have the right, you know, support ever can place to make sure you stay safe.

You could get that day and you don’t want your swim day to be your big attempt day to be the first day you experience it like that is nothing new on race day if you can, you know, avoid it. So so like I always, you know, I focus more on suffering training or, you know, it’s like suffering training or suffering on the day. I like myself and my athletes suffer and suffer in training because you want to enjoy that day. That’s like your victory. Hmm. Yeah, definitely. Is there anything anything else that comes to mind that feel like people should know if they are looking to do these longer swims? Yeah, I mean, like I said, I think it’s about finding the right people to help guide you. I think there’s ladies in this world with social media, like there’s just like a lot of people who are good at marketing and can talk, but, you know, haven’t necessarily been there, don’t have the right accolades and are in it for a different reason.

So I always tell athletes, like when you’re looking for a coach and even when they come to me as a coach, I tell them before they work with me, I’m like, I want you to talk to three or four other coaches, here’s some names. Like I want you we’re in this together. Like I’m committed as you are committed. Like if you you don’t succeed on this on one of your attempts, like I’m in it with you, we’re going to figure it out. Like they’re in tears. I’m in tears. If they’re celebrating, I’m celebrating. So you want to find a coach that you really connect with because they’re not a coach. They’re a mentor and if you find the right person and they want you to succeed for all the reasons you want to succeed. So I always encourage people like don’t be afraid to reach out. Don’t be afraid to ask questions like open water swimmers is like triathletes and any other sport. They like talking and they want to help people. So, you know, if you go reach out to that person,

you’re you know, you’re following on, you know, who’s done all these swims, like email them. They are probably more than happy to talk to you and give you some pointers or ways that you can at least get started and where you should be looking for resources. So that would be my only advice. Like don’t be afraid to have questions and like talk to several people before settling on like your coach and trust your trust the training, trust the process. Those are like the main main keys outside of some of the stuff we’ve already talked about today. It’s it’s really and enjoy it. It’s fun. It’s transformative. You’re going to be a different person on the other side of it. So I think it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done. Yeah, well, I mean, just I can tell that you that you love that you love this sport, love the coaching side of it to you. So it sounds like you’re where you need to be, where you should be. And yeah, that’s that’s terrific.

And I mean, especially with the coaching side of things, you know, most most coaches are going to be like they’re going to ride that way with you up or down and and then to pass on the details of someone else who can might be a better fit for you, whatever you’re training for. So yeah, and it is it’s a quite a small world as well. Like everyone generally sort of knows each other. And so, you know, just talk to different people. Everyone’s always happy to help, especially in this in this kind of world. I reckon it’s yeah, everyone’s so you because it’s not competitive necessarily. It’s just everyone’s there to challenge themselves and help others. So in terms of people who want to get in touch with you, whether that’s for coaching, I know you’ve got sort of a conference coming up. So what’s what have you got coming up and what’s the best way for people to get in touch with? Oh, yeah. So in November, I decided to, you know,

try to make a bigger impact with more people and starting an open waterson focus conference called Beyond the Breakers. It’s going to be right outside Boston Mass in November, November 9th and 10th. The website for it is swimbeyondthebreakers.com. And we have a really great lineup of speakers. I think for my own journey, I really what I’ve really first started, I struggle to find the right people. And they’re really easy to find once you know where to look. So that’s what this conference is all about is about connecting people in the open water world. So whether you’re a triathlete, one mile swim, two mile swim, Olympians, I think 10 K, we’re looking to make the jump to like the big marathon swims. And even winter swimming, we have some winter swimming speakers. We have we have people there that can that are going to be giving presentations to really help guide. So we have some some great names, but really it’s all about

connection, helping drive some innovation in this for and really just helping people achieve their goals, whether they’re just getting in the open water for the first time or doing some like crazy long, you know, 48 hour swim. So, yeah, so that’s a website. And then for my own business, the website’s liquid try.com. It’s endurance swimming is a company, you know, very original name, but does the does the trick. That’s what we do. And then on Instagram, I’m just at endurance swims so you can always reach out anywhere. People have questions. I like putting people on the right path and I urge people to reach out and ask questions. Like I said, if I’m not the right person, I will help find the right person so that you can, you know, do what you set out to do. Fantastic. Well, Craig, thanks so much for being on the podcast. Looking forward to seeing what you do in the future in terms of your swims, but also, you know, great to see someone who’s active in the in the industry

and in the sport that’s looking to grow it and help other people. So I appreciate being on the podcast. Thank you for having me. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

Have you ever wondered what the coach of an Olympic gold medalist and world record holder would say about freestyle technique? I caught up with current coach of Kyle Chalmers, Ash Delaney, who’s an Australian Olympic silver medalist and former Australian record holder himself to get his take on freestyle technique. What does it take to become fast and efficient? And what are the key areas of freestyle technique that he looks to develop with his athletes? I think body position relates so much to head for me. So I’ll connect those two together. But you’re always looking at nice long neck, I think is the key. And then that one that helps then your body can rotate around your spine much better. And that helps you obviously with your rotation and your length. I think that’s that’s that’s a big key and then making sure those hips are actually up. And if you’re looking down at the bottom of the pool with a nice long neck and really

good posture, then you’re setting up your good body position from that. You’re looking for a nice tight kick, depending on if you’re going for more distance or if you’re then going more sprint freestyle, but sprint freestyle, you’re looking at constant tight kick, which then helps helps lock in the hips. We want to make sure we’re generating a lot of torque through your core by keeping those hips locked on. And then that relates to the kick being nice and tight. So if you can do that, then you’ve got something to like initiate the catch from to the opposite hip, you create that torque in your body. And like kick only, it probably only contributes to between maybe 10 and 15 per pole propulsion. But then if you lose your legs, you lose your hips, you lose the core, you lose the connection of the stroke, and that’s where it goes. So it’s so important to be conditioned in kick for those types of sprint events, probably 200 down, but

making sure that you are conditioned with your kick because if that goes at the end of your race, the connection goes. I then asked us about Kyle Chalmers and Isaac Jones, two of his athletes who made the Australian Olympic team. Kyle’s stroke is if you look on top of the water, it can be can be a little bit messy. And he’s got a really big kick but kick up above the water. But nothing ever if you then look underneath the water is almost perfect. The kick doesn’t go below his body line. So there’s no drag at the back. He uses his kick for connection of the stroke and timing. And then he’s got that loping stroke where he just connects on and he just drives through the water with his rotation. So our goal is to connect right at the top there. And then he’s got this amazing catch from top to halfway down. And then he’s got another press out the back where he holds amazing water. And then all of that sets up with really good length. He tries to go

connecting on his left for rotation and then length right. So they’re his cues to his stroke. And you can see that the way that he swims that loping stroke. But he’s just so powerful through the water. You go Isaac who’s twenty one six for fifty three. He’s very much straight arm over the top of the water for the fifty three. And then he’s he’s recovery really starts from he’s really driving out the back. Doesn’t want to be flicking the water and continuing out but it’s a drive underneath the water. And then it’s around the side of his. He finds that that just balances him out and all momentum moving forward. As where Karl is a bent arm freestyler of in the recovery. And we work on really trying to have that relaxed hands or with anyone in freestyle should be it’s called recovery should be nice and relaxed as soon as you start to tighten up using way more energy than you need to. And then you’re probably going to

overreach or you’re going to drive in too hard because you’re not relaxed. Your hands should be nice and relaxed the whole way through until you just start to put a little bit of tension on it when you start your catch. So that’s what I look for nice and recovered. Nice and relaxed recovery. You’re definitely looking at for your entry is soft hands and again but depending on the stroke it all depends where those hands enter. So again crossing over or entering in wide that’s not what we want. Everything’s got to be in line with your shoulder because when you start that press that’s where you’re going to be strongest. If you start to lose or you’re a little bit wide or your press starts to go out wide then you’re already in a weak position one it can compromise your shoulder for injuries but two you’re just missing all of the good water right in front of your shoulder where you’re the strongest. That way you can utilize your lats and making sure

that’s all in line. Easier said than done because when you’re you’re laying down in position and your hands above your head so that’s where the coach comes in or video feedback comes in really important because it always feels like you’re in line. You look at the camera and your way out here so I think that’s really important. Definitely get that video footage. So when you’re setting up your catch the very basic is again your hand in line with your shoulder and fingertips. We’re talking about freestyle. Fingertips point into the bottom of the pool and then because you’re getting maximal force going backwards as soon as you start to move your hand out of the way or swivel out of the way then you’re letting go of that water but then looking at the top catch and then you’re looking at a second press using your forearm for that end of the stroke. You really want to feel like you’re pushing to your ankles then you come up into that recovery position but

what I then go to the next level is more about connection. So if you could have the best catch in the world but if it’s not connected to your rotation connected to your core connected to your hip you’re just doing everything with your arms and you’re disconnected so you’re really trying to find the connection of the stroke and that’s how you set it up to being the full connection with your catch and that’s when you’re going to have a much smoother freestyle and be more efficient. I then asked Ash if he has any favorite drills that he likes to give his squad. Call it freestyle timing drill but easy to do with fins it’s one arm out in front and then the other arm just sits up here so you rotate over you’re kind of trying to hold your good body position constant kick and then the catch here out in front has to initiate this arm coming through because if you just bring this over you’re already stuck in the three quarter catch up and then this one

just gets out of the way but if you actually set it up all right you’ve got pressure on the water and then you pull yourself into that next rotation and then that’s the timing of the stroke. So again it’s that one the arm out in front leads it so you’re pulling yourself in and then talk about the catch pulls this shoulder in the arms just connected to it so when you actually do it and you extend your arm that shoulder comes in at the same it’s leading that arm and then because obviously your shoulder is connected to your trunk and then that’s where you start to build that connection a little bit more yeah if you go no breath you go no breath very easy to do then you need to work out the timing of the breath as well. This podcast has brought you by Great Ocean Wet Suits an up-and-coming Australian performance wetsuit brand for triathletes and open water swimmers. The wetsuits are designed and tested in Melbourne Australia

for fast easy and enjoyable swimming for athletes of all levels. They’re worn in and raced by Olympians triathletes and open water swimmers from all over the world and I personally use Great Ocean Wetsuits even before they became a sponsor of the podcast. I’ve personally found that the buoyancy the freedom through the shoulders and the fit are the best that I’ve ever had in a wetsuit so I highly recommend them and you can currently get 20% off either the gold or silver wetsuit models using our own code Effort20 at checkout so enter the code Effort20 at checkout at GreatOceanWetsuits.com and no matter where you are in the world if you’re in Australia the US Europe there’s free shipping worldwide so get yourself a Great Ocean Wetsuit I personally use the gold model of the wetsuit it just depends on what your goals are so GreatOceanWetsuits.com Effort20 get checkout I know you’ll like them. The timing of the breath for what I want my guys to do

is as your hands coming through you should start to turn your head so your hands entering while you’re taking your breath and then it should be nice and quick and it initiates back when you actually start to apply pressure there your severe common mistake is you see the other arm coming over and then your head has to get out of the way of that other arm coming over and that’s going to be a little bit more sprint model but if you’re then pulling yourself back in you’re pulling it back in and then your eye your hand should be in front of your eyes as this starts to come through so then and again that’s probably more sprint model than it would be for for distance but that’s definitely the same concept you probably just a little bit later if you’re doing distance in terms of breathing patterns I think again it comes down to the individual and you can go you can go twos for rhythm you can go fours because it creates more

length more length to your stroke because you’re allowed to keep your head down and you can feel the length and the rotation going through but and then like I said it goes to more the individual because then you can go on the flip side you can breathe twos but then they might start to lose their length because of it and shorten up but then what do they need then for rhythm so you’ve got a whole different the whole lot of different models that you can sort of go off I know some people breathe two two fours you can go fours on the way down twos on the way back it’s all how you find your your breathing model yeah so I don’t I don’t have a particular one that is that I would teach the most but I do like breathing fours for a hundred I don’t know why I just I for me when I was swimming that’s what I liked but then there’s you’ve got someone like Aaron Titmus that breathes two two four in a 400 freestyle so but it’s actually it’s how you train so you

need to condition that if you want to breathe fours you’ve got to do it every time you do a pace 50 then that’s where you’ve got to do so you’ve got to condition that and you can do it easy you could do it sixes if you really wanted to but it’s got to be it’s got to be what you think is the optimal right for you and what about favorite cues or phrases that he likes to use when he’s coaching I think one of the phrase I would use the most is length I’m very big on efficiency and counting your strokes so I’m always looking for length because what happens when people tighten up at the end of the race what do you see them do they start to just chop in so the more you can keep practicing holding your length and that’s length out in front and then length through the catch that’s sort of what I’m talking to them about a lot yeah I think when you’re working on your technique I think it should be done slow but very thoughtful

so you don’t want to rush your way through it because then that starts to mask mistakes so it’s like you’re hiding all the imperfections by just rushing through it so I always try and get my eyes to slow down slow down think about it then you can balance a little bit more or if you’re unbalanced you can start to feel that so it’s more about feel I mean I’ve had the best of both worlds right like I was a swimmer on the Australian team and then now coaching and getting getting kind of close to that level as well I feel like I’ve been able to transfer a lot of my knowledge or at least my feel as a swimmer to then now coaching sort of being able to explain it really well but there’s been a lot still that I need to learn as a coach I think that’s really important to be aware of but it just gives me an advantage knowing how it feels and knowing what the sets are like and like if they’re hurting or where the pain comes on and then trying to

communicate that to the swimmers as well so I think that’s where it’s been really good but yeah like I said still plenty of still plenty to learn in the coaching space but I think if we’re not constantly improving then then we’re kind of just staying still so I think that’s really important to think about are there any common mistakes that you see being made when coaching high-performance athletes? I think the biggest one for me probably is overtraining you’ve got to make sure like I think about when I’m thinking about speeds and you’ve got to make sure you can actually hit your top speed so if you’re tired or being overtrained then you don’t have the ability to go when the coach wants you to go so I think that that’s a really important one for me so if you’re too tired and you can’t hit the top speeds then you’re probably not going to hit the speeds that you need and then that’s then going to transfer over you’re going to be stuck in that zone of

just a little bit down and you’re going to start to shrink it right down your slow is going to be too fast and then your fast is going to be too slow and then you’re stuck in right in that threshold middle level. What’s the hardest set that you’ve ever done? I’ve got two that I sort of go to about that one is one that I did a lot with Rowan Taylor but it was 450s on two minutes and then it was probably about four or five hundred meters of removal and I’d do that three to four times but it was the the 50s were best average but like my lactate would get well over 20 well over 20 lactate in that sort of set even though I’m just swimming basically it was just 100 pace making sure I was hitting 100 stroke rate 100 count so I was quite specific in that sense but it just accumulated and it was just by the third or fourth set it was just an absolute grind but not not not difficult to ride or anything like that it was it’s pretty basic set but it’s probably the level of detail

you put into it. The other one was more of a hypoxic one that I did with Vince Rayleigh but we would do eight two hundreds eight two hundreds backstroke but we progressed to go 15 underwater off the first wall 20 underwater on the second wall 25 underwater on the third wall and then 30 underwater on the last one and the time the time cycle was 330 I couldn’t make all those underwater but it was the time cycle that ended up getting you and it was just a hard mental grind by the because you could get through the first two it was the middle ones that was just insanely hard and then you were just so out of breath by the last couple that it was yeah that was tough I’d have to say my best ever race was probably my 200 backstroke in 2009 where I broke the Commonwealth record and went 155.8 it just was everything just came together in that race I just executed it really well the process was spot on we made a shift

two years before to say I was going to start focusing on the 200 backstroke and all that kind of led to that led to that moment so I even I look back now and I look back at the video and it probably wasn’t necessarily oh there’s 10 things I could pick apart of it as a coach now but it was still my best performance because of how well I put the process together oh yeah the worst ever race I did was actually it was when we had this hard training camp it was part of a national camp that we did with swimming Australia and we had to come and race a Grand Prix in Brisbane and it was also the 200 backstroke but the it was more because I didn’t really want to do it and it was so terrible and I thought I was putting in the effort but I swam it a little bit slower which means I sunk down the water and it still hurt so much even though I didn’t really want to do it but it was just terrible mindset going into the race and then it was a terrible race attached to it so

you have to be 100% in and if you’re going to be a professional athlete or even an athlete that just wants to take ownership don’t even have to be professional you’ve just you’re there for you and you’ve got to do what you need to do and doing a sub pass swim like that is just not good enough so and that was but again maybe being a little bit younger and immature but you’ve got to have those mistakes or failures to learn from them I think the best ever advice I’d been given or it’s probably actually more of like I guess a way of learning but Kaizen have you heard of that before where it’s continual learning I think if you take that into anything anything into life and Rowan Taylor was a big one on this being my coach and now the national head coach I really took that on board and I think that is if you’re continually learning you continually bettering yourself I think that just becomes you’re always progressing and you’re never saying still I said that before but

I think that’s a really important bit of advice and a good way to live your life thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast if you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com

The next day I got this really lovely message from the Chinese thanking me for the tech because Pan Zhan Li, who not only won the race, but smashed it, you know, he won by over a second and smashed the world record. They let me know that he’d been using it regularly in preparation for the games and they even sent me some screenshots of some of his data.

The big opportunity I think is with the distance guys, because the whole point about these things is they can help you identify areas to improve your stroke and, you know, it’s self-explanatory that if you can improve your stroke and then you’re swimming one, two, three kays, whatever, that little improvement on every stroke really builds significant. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

In an electrifying turn of events at the Paris Olympics, Pan Zhan Li shuttered the men’s 100 freestyle world record, clocking in at a blistering 46.4 seconds. The buzz didn’t stop at the edge of the pool. It rippled all the way to Jamie Fuller’s inbox. Shortly after Pan’s victory, his coaches reached out to Jamie with a note of gratitude, acknowledging the instrumental role that EO’s innovative swim better devices played in this achievement. These cutting edge gadgets provide precise feedback on the force and direction of a swimmer’s hand movements, offering insights that are nothing short of revolutionary. Caught somewhat off guard, but immensely proud, Jamie reflected on the fact that the Chinese swim team had been integrating these tools into their training regime. However, he hadn’t realized that Pan himself had been harnessing the technology to refine his strokes to world record perfection. I reached out to Jamie and invited him to join us on this episode

of the podcast to dive deeper into the story behind EO’s swim better devices and cover Pan’s journey to the top and even pinpoints and tips for swimmers of all levels looking to enhance their performance. How exactly do the EO swim better devices dissect and improve a swimmer’s technique? Can amateur swimmers and triathletes benefit from similar technology? And what should they look for? And what are some common pitfalls in freestyle that even experienced swimmers can overlook? Welcome to the effortless swimming podcast. My guest today is Jamie Fuller from EO Lab. He is a big part of the team that brought the swim better devices into into production, something that I’ve had a little bit of a hand in and I’ve been testing and using over the last probably 18 months now. I think Jamie and no big deal with me using it. But what we saw of the Olympics was that some of the fastest swimmers will be fastest swimmer in the world over 100 freestyle

was actually using the device in his training leading up to the Olympic. So I want to get you, Jamie, on to the podcast today to talk a little bit about that and what you’re seeing and how people are using these swim better devices to improve their swimming. Sure. Thanks, Brenton. So we have a partnership with Col Chalmers. And when Kyle won the silver, of course, I was overjoyed for him for three consecutive Olympics medal, but a little bit disappointed that he didn’t hit the gold. And then the next day I got this really lovely message from the Chinese thanking me for the tech because Pan Zhang Li, who not only won the race, but smashed it, you know, he won by over a second and smashed the world record. They let me know that he’d been using it regularly in preparation for the games and they even sent me some screenshots of some of his data. So that was particularly pleasing. And then it was followed up a couple of days later

from an order with an order from David Popovich, who came third. So we had a we had a very good games and coupled with that, the 50 as well, because we’re done a little bit of work with Cam McAvoy and Ben Proud and purchase them too. But I got to say is as great as that is with the sprinters, the big opportunity I think is with the distance guys because the whole point about these things is they can help you identify areas to improve your stroke and, you know, it’s self-explanatory that if you can improve your stroke and then you’re swimming one, two, three kays, whatever, that little improvement on every stroke really builds significant. Yeah, it’s exactly right. The if you’re taking 4000 strokes in your Ironman swim, well, then you’ve got a lot more opportunity to, you know, get 5%, 10%, probably more for most people to be able to increase their propulsion and just get more out of every stroke. So that and that’s why I love working with needed to long distance swimmers

is it’s we’ve just got a lot more time to be able to improve the stroke where in the sprint, things just go so quickly. So I can tell you from my personal experience and I’m not I’m not a swimmer, but it got me into the pool and it got me it challenged me sufficiently intellectually to not just understand the process and understand how they work but to apply it. And so I went through the journey and I took eight minutes off my 800 time. So for and don’t get me wrong, I went from being like ultra shit to shit. But but still, you know, and we know that when we talk about the triathlon world, you know, and I don’t want to be disparaging to the majority of the people that are listening to this, who might be triathletes, but the reality is the swim is their weakest leg. And I might add not only was I able to take eight minutes off my time, but in doing that, I was able to reduce my stroke rate from 29 strokes a minute down to about 23.

So in applying the changes that these things had revealed, I was able then to be able to dramatically reduce my stroke rate, dramatically increase my distance per stroke. So my distance per stroke was gone from to 1.4 metres to 2.2 metres. So my effectiveness and my efficiency is so much better and carving off eight minutes. So that sort of for my mind, that’s the holy grail when it comes to triathlon, that if you can get out of that water feeling fresher and ideally faster and get onto the bike, then it’s happy. And what stood out to you over the last 12 to 18 months of working with different people across all different sports, right? Like very top level swimmers, people like yourself for almost almost very new to swimming. What are some things that you’ve seen across the board in terms of what the devices are showing you? Like, is there anything that sort of surprised you or you think that would be good for people to know?

So there’s a whole bunch of things. And if we’ve got four hours, I can walk you through a whole heap of stuff because I’ve engaged at the highest level with like literally Olympic gold medalists down to through NCAA swimmers at college in the US down to working with swim clubs and triathletes. And I’m seeing a whole bunch of stuff. But primarily what I tend to see is way too much downward force that’s going on with swimmers because we’re able to present the data. So let me I’ll just give you a 30 second overview.

So these things work on the principle of Newton’s Third Law. And Newton’s Third Law says for every force or action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. And in swimming terms, that means if I want to swim forward in that direction, I need my hand pushing backwards in that direction. It’s really very simple. So when you think about it, if my hand is doing this laterally or doing a lot of this either down or at the back end of the stroke pushing up, that’s not sending me forward. So not only do we measure the amount of force that you’re pushing through the stroke, but we’re able to apply it and tell you what directions you’re pushing that force in. We can split that stroke up, that lap up, that swim up. We can split the data up and tell you not only that, we can give you some goals to work towards. So for example, for distant swimmers, we think and I say we think because we don’t have years of research

because these things haven’t existed before. But we think that a distant swimmer should be 70 to 75 percent propulsive and it’s not unusual to see swimmers or athletes who are only like 35, 40 percent propulsive. And primarily, yeah, I think we’re going to look at some of your data soon. But primarily the challenge is that it’s pushing. There’s a lot of downward force being applied. And when I say distant swimmers at 70 to 75, it’s different to sprinters. So a sprinter, we’d probably want to see at 55 to 60 percent. And the reason is we know with a with a distant swimmer, we’ve got the high elbow catch and we want to go from this position at the end of the glide into that position quickly and effectively and efficiently so that we can become as propulsive as we can. The sprinter, on the other hand, has got a straight arm and because of their straight arm, they’re going to generate a lot more downward force.

And so I see a lot of distant swimmers with this straight arm and they’re wasting all that energy and wasting all that force because they’re getting no benefit from the hand pushing down. And then you couple with that as well. What I also see is a lot of them. The first move is the drop of the elbow and the moment you drop that elbow like that, that hand has got to travel further down and you will generate a huge amount of downward force totally unnecessarily before you get into that propulsive position that’s going to push you forward. So it’s it’s really quite a basic thing but done incredibly cleverly and intelligently and then presented so you can analyse the data yourself. What screens do you like to look at the most like for you, maybe for your own swimming? What’s most useful for you? And then what are you seeing other coaches or athletes using with the with the data? So easily the most important one is the force field

because the force field is where we apply those forces in the six directions. And the beauty about it is you can look at it with both hands combined and then you can separate the left and the right hand because again, it’s not unusual and particularly with triathletes. The left hand and the right hand are on two completely different journeys. And so when it comes to diagnosing where you are, it’s very simple. And so once you what you do is you take your your baseline or your benchmark. Where am I? Where’s my data? And I look at that and then I have an idea of where I want to get to. And then I can look at, OK, so what changes do I need to make? And then the other critical, really critical thing that I’ve learnt the hard way is you can only change one thing at a time. You can only focus on one thing at a time. You know, it’s such a difficult sport, there’s so much going on. And we’re only talking about the propulsive component

through the hands and the forearm. We haven’t talked about kick. We haven’t talked about body roll. We haven’t talked about drag head position. So there’s a whole bunch of other stuff. But the biggest contributor to propulsion is the hand and the arm. And that’s why we started with this. So it’s the force field for me. And I’ve got to tell you the best coaches and the best results we’re seeing is when the athlete puts this at the end of the lane at the shallow end. So they put their mobile phone at the end of the lane. They do two laps and they stand in the shallow end and they download the data while standing in the pool. And within 10 seconds, you’ve got the force field there and you’re seeing where your force application is. And then you say, OK, well, I’m, you know, 42 percent propulsive. Now I’m too much down. OK, I’m going to make a change. And you go and do another two laps and you download it and you’ll see you’ve gone from 42 to 45.

Oh, OK. That worked well now, but I’ve got to go more. And you get that fast feedback loop and very quickly you will see the changes that you’ve that you’ve been making with your technique. Instantly, you’ll see it as objective data on your phone.

That’s what I was thinking when I recorded this morning. I recorded and then I had to get back home to the kid drop off and everything. And then I was looking at my data and I thought, man, that’s like I wish I just stuck around and just downloaded it quickly to the phone to check it and then try and work on it. Because particularly with my left hand, which we’ll go through in a moment, I’ve got so much opportunity there to just to press back more. Like it’s it’s coming into the center too much. It’s pressing down too much. And I think and it’s very quick to download to the phone. Like it takes no time at all. It’s a really simple process. And I know it’s gotten quicker since it since your first launch. Like it’s it’s very quick now. So yeah, so that’s that’s what I feel like I need to do to start to really see some of those better or higher numbers for the propulsive forces, because they’re they’re a lot lower

than than what they should be. And one thing I actually noticed when I filmed myself and another guy, Sam Shepard, so we were doing a video for some wetsuits. And he was I was drafting off him and he was drafting off me for some of these videos. And he’s like he was just off making the Olympic team for long distance for like the 10 K or 20 K. And I was looking at our footage and I’m like he’s just working so much easier than I am because he’s just a bit more relaxed through the reach. And then he gets a better angle, whereas I’m just I’m putting too much force on in the beginning. And a lot of that’s going down. It was so obvious with the videos. And then obviously it’s coming through in the data and saying it there. And you’ll see I mean, you ask about what are the key ones that I look at, certainly the force field is the first one. But then the consistency. And I look at the consistency as opposed to the hand pass.

And particularly when we’re dealing with triathletes. I mean, if you’re dealing with someone like Kyle Chalmers, you’re going to get a consistent stroke so you can analyze and look at some interesting stuff from one stroke. When you’re dealing with triathletes, you’re going to get a bit of variation happening across the lap anyway. So the consistency chart is where we add. We literally stick every stroke of that lap on on top of each other. And there you can get a very clear indication and and there are a lot of things that you can see. So, for example, it’s it’s not unusual to see the left hand doing a normal sort of a question mark, sort of reverse question mark and goes out a little bit, then comes in and push back. And the right hand might be sweeping completely across the right hand side of the body.

And that tends to happen with the breathing, you know, because as the breathing goes to the left, the right shoulder twists around and it also dips and you suddenly see huge asymmetries both looking at it from side on as well as from top down. And you can read into that exactly what’s going on. Because we know the objective with breathing is to have the smallest rotation of the head you can do. And that’s why when you see the best swimmers in the world, they’ve only got the corner of their mouth sticking out of the water because it’s all about how do I get that breath and keep my shoulders straight and keep my body straight? I don’t want to be rotating or twisting. I just want to be turning my head slightly. And it’s one of the big things that I see very regularly with triathletes. And then finally, we’ve got this other screen, the last chart, which combines everything, which combines the whole data split

with the hand path and with the timer. And you can move the timer down and you can see exactly where the hand is at and where you’re losing your propulsion and you can read into it. It becomes very, very easy to read. And one of the other things, Brenton, that’s important is if anything, people get a little bit daunted, they find there’s so much data and they think, oh, it’s a bit daunting. How do I interpret this? I do one-on-one sessions with people who buy the system and we do a teams or a Zoom call. We spend an hour going through it and I show them exactly how to go chart to chart and read through. Because it’s just all new stuff, right? Like, we’ve just never been able to see this sort of information. And yeah, and I think that’s what I love about the front screen, that initial screen with the force field where you’ve got your percentage of forces in different directions. Like, that’s just a good overview to see

generally where the strike’s going and you can kind of just break it down and get into as much or as little detail as you want from there. So, yeah, really, like, it’s, yeah, it’s really impressive what you’ve been able to do with with these things. So, I would be interested to, if we can go through my data here. I will. And just before I go on, just for any coaches that are listening, where we’re getting some great results, particularly with triathletes, is the ability to remote coach. Is the ability for a swimmer or a triathlete to use these anywhere in the world and a coach to be anywhere in the world and they share their data a bit like what we’re doing. We’re going to do with you now and the coach can then either do a session, a real time session and go through the data with the athlete. Alternatively, the coach can record it, do a screen recording and walk it through and then send them the link and they can see it.

And with the feedback we’re getting from coaches and athletes in the United States, I was on a call the other day with a coach in Boston and he was talking about how sensational the times have been for his guys that he’s coaching on the West Coast when he’s been able to walk them through this.

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And while you’re bringing that up, Jamie, one of the things that I heard Mike Bottom, he’s a legendary swim coach, I remember he mentioned on a call there was like a training call for the coaches was that it’s like if you tied him with the video because you can sync up underwater footage with the data. He said you can see when you’re getting a really effective stroke, right? So it’s not just about seeing where the gaps are and where the holes are. You can see when you’re doing a good stroke and we can see what you did in that moment and then looking to replicate that. So I thought that was an interesting way to look at it as well, because my mind typically just goes to what are the faults? Where can we improve with people? But we also want to look at, well, at times you might be taking some really effective strokes with high percentage of propulsive forces. So what do you do in that moment? And then how can we do more of those?

Absolutely, and the ability and I’ve got a file up here I can check up in a bit if you want to see it where we can easily sync video and data. And you can see exactly on the charts what the hand’s doing. And you can see that replicated on the video. And it’s important for some coaches, I know, because a lot of coaches I work with tell me that one of the beauties about the system is they speak to their athletes until they’re blue in the face and the athlete either just says, I don’t believe you. I’m not changing or they nod their head, but they internalize that this guy’s full of crap. And so when you see the data, then suddenly the light goes on in the in the athlete and they say, OK, but occasionally you’ll get one that even says, I don’t believe the data. And then when you put the video on as well and say, this is what I’ve been telling you, this is what the data shows and look, you can see it in the video.

Then there’s no way they can. Yeah, that’s exactly right. So this is from a swim this morning. So if you are listening to this podcast, we also post these podcasts on to why actually it’s going to be a video on Spotify and YouTube. So you should be able to see the data here that we we’re pulling up. So this is a hundred meter swim that was around about threshold pace for me. So time wise, it was I think about a one thirteen one fourteen from start to finish there. So I think it might say one twenty three here. It was a recording time. So yeah, so that’s that that time that we show is from hands going into the water to hands coming out. So if you’ve got a period of time, if you put the hands in and you take five seconds or whatever before you push off, then it doesn’t it doesn’t necessarily recognize the push off. It recognizes where the hands go in. And likewise, when you finish, if your hands stay in the water,

it’ll keep the clock will keep ticking up.

So this is the the first screen we see. It’s just a quick summary of the two laps, as you can see here. And the orange is your left hand, the blue is your right. So as you can see, Brenton, you’re pushing a little bit more through your right hand than you are through your left. It’s total force. And this is your stroke rate. So lap one, you were thirty two point seven and lap two, you were thirty one point two. So you can see your stroke rate slowed down a bit. And if you want, you can click on this little icon and you know you can look at your stroke rate, how it fluctuates across the lap running across the top there. And you can see every stroke, the amount of force that you’re pushing. But that’s just average force per stroke in every direction. It’s total force. This is the force field we were talking about, mate. This is where the six directions that the hand can move in the water, as you can see. And this is your opportunity here, buddy, a thirty seven point two percent

repulsive and, you know, that should be over sixty. You know, that should be pushing seventy percent. And when we look at where you’re losing it, you’ve got a big chunk of hand drag. And hand drag is at the front end. If when you’re gliding, you’re dropping your wrist a bit and you’re presenting the palm of the hand to the water in front of you, which obviously acts as a break. So you don’t want to have that. This is your big opportunity. You’re downward. You’ve got a good almost twenty. You’ve got between twenty and twenty five percent, probably twenty five percent that you’re able to shave off that downward force. And if you’re able to get that down to seventeen, your propulsive will then be at sixty percent, right? That’s. And so when I was talking about, you want to you want to focus on one thing, you prioritize them because you’ve got a bit you can take out of your lateral stuff, too, because laterally, you’ve got eighteen percent there.

And ideally, you want to have eight percent between the two for each. So you’ve got ten percent there. So you could you could immediately looking at this, you could take four percent out of your hand drag or sorry, or prioritize. You could take your twenty twenty to twenty five out of downward. You’ve got about ten percent you can take out of your laterals. And you’ve got four percent out of hand drag. And hand rate, mate, should be the easiest because it’s literally just those fingers aiming slightly downward during the glide phase.

But this is the big performance improvement is coming out of the down. And I’m sure you’re going to probably I’m probably jumping ahead here. But when I was looking at it between the left and right hand, that hand rate was really only on one. I think there’s your right hand. You’ve got almost no hand drag on the right. You’ve got eight and a half percent on your left. And that’s why when we look at this little graphic here, you’ve got that going forward here. That’s your left hand. That’s your hand rate. Anything north of this dot this point here, anything north is bad. Ideally, this graphic, what you’re looking for is you want it to be narrow and you want it to be deep because this is a two dimensional graphic. A quick snapshot of where those forces are going. And you can see that here you’ve got all this stuff sticking up above that center point. You don’t want to have there. And that’s primarily that hand.

Yeah, if I go back to your left, she’s Brenton.

Yeah, am I doing anything with some left arm? It’s just along the ride. You get twenty two percent propulsive and forty seven percent downward. You know, that’s a that’s a lot. And then you’ve got that eight percent hand rate. You’ve got a big opportunity there. And then you’re right, you’re fifty percent propulsive and thirty six down. So you’ve got the only thing you’d work on with your right hand is getting some of that downward out. And there’s, you know, fifteen percent you can pull out of there. And that’ll take that into your sixty five plus almost seventy percent. Yeah, if you get fifteen to twenty percent out of your downward, but your left hand is the one that you want to focus on. Yeah, it’s a lot hanging fruit there. Yeah, I mentioned consistency and consistency is where we get to look at your hand path for all the strokes in that lap.

You’ve you’ve you’ve got great consistency in your depth. That means you’re not getting a rotation of your shoulders. You’ve not got one hand going deeper than the other, which is terrific. You’ve got a similar a similar hand path going on in here between your left and your right. Interestingly, Brenton, it’s sort of the opposite of most most hand paths I see most hands pass I see go out, come in and then go straight back. Your first move is in and then out a little bit. So you’re coming in and then pushing back from here. But there are nothing stands out here. And it’s and there’s no that’s the other thing that everybody says to me is, oh, can you give me Kyle Chalmers hand path? And I’ll just copy that. It doesn’t work that way, right? I mean, we’ve all we all need to find our own hand path. And whilst, you know, at a very surface level, you might think, well, you know, if I’ve just got to have my hand pushing back,

I just need it to be straight. That’s not the answer either, because it’s about how we how we switch on our muscles and the best place for our arm to go and our hand to move in order to be able to switch on the muscles in the shoulder and the arm and the and down on the lats. That’s what gives us our power and drive. And that combined with the ability to hold that water and drive the body for that’s the holy grail. And so there’s no such thing as saying, well, you know, Brent, and you’ve got to change your hand path because this is wrong. There’s no wrong or right. The only thing that I really look for when it comes to wrong and right is asymmetry. And as I said before, if you’ve got, you know, one where the left hand’s going out and then coming in and the right hand’s coming in and across or vice versa or something very, very asymmetrical. That then means you need to question is this is an injury? Is it is it a breathing fault?

Is it some other technique? And again, breathing very, very easy to diagnose, put a snorkel on and then do it again with a snorkel. Take the head rotation out. Take the breath out and see what happens. Yeah, interesting. That’s something I should do, I think, because I mean, I breathe to my left. I was breathing almost every two for this hundred. And I think that’s why you see a little bit more power on that right hand is when I bring my head back, I tend to add a little bit more power and connection that way. So it’d be interesting to see what it does without with the snorkel on. So that’s something I’ve got to test. Yeah, very easy to do. And like I said, if you particularly if you if you’re standing in the pool and you and you do two laps and then download it and have a look, you can see this chart straight away and you’ll see it instantly what your what your symmetry looks like. And I have I have seen I’ve seen guys, particularly triathletes,

they’ve been able to then go and see a physiotherapist or a or a PT and then find out that they’ve got flexibility issues or injury. They’ve got an injury on the shoulder and that’s reflected in a different hand path between each hand. Yeah, interesting. Yeah. I’ll jump to force versus time because it’s important when you consider all these other ones that we’ve been looking at. These are all summaries. So this is showing us a summary of what’s going on, either a summary of the lap or a summary of the stroke. Again, just quickly, if I go back to the force field, you can even click on this button and we can look at the every single stroke. We can look at what’s going on with your forces, you know, left, right, so on. So this is this is a summary, even this is a summary of what’s going on with the stroke. Whereas when we get to the force versus time, this is the first time we get to be able to look at what’s happening inside that

stroke. And you can see instantly, Brenton, because the blue is your right hand and the gold is your left hand. There’s three things that stand out for me straight away. First of all, the absolute force you’re pushing on your right versus your left. Look, you’re right speaking up here, you’re six to seven and your left is peaking down here between two and three. So there’s immediately something there. The second thing that I see is what we call these double peaks. And because we’re looking at the propulsive view, we’re seeing the propulsion start to generate and then something’s happening and you’re losing it and then you’re finding it again and you’re finding a big peak, the second peak on the particularly on your left hand, where you’ve got that difference in the peaks. Oh, sorry, right hand on your left hand, you’ve still got the double peaks going on, but you’re not getting that second peak as high on the on the left as you are on the right.

The other thing that I noticed straight away is, and I’ll just turn the right hand off and we’ll look at the left hand, your hand glide, your hand drag, sorry, which is happening during the glide, and it’s very easy to see the three phases on in here, right here, that little straight line on zero, the hands out of the water. It’s not detecting any force. So it’s in recovery. So right there is where the hand is exiting the water. Right here, it’s entering and this is your glide. And look, you’re going negative in your glide. That’s because that left hand is doing that scoop motion. And you can see it’s on every single one of these. You’ve got a big, big glide challenge there. And then at the end of the glide here, now you’re starting to get propulsive and you’re generating your propulsion, it’s dropping off and it’s going again. So you’ve got a very clear hand drag that you can resolve. The beauty about this chart, when we look at it on the

platform, and you can do this on the on the platform, not in the app, in the app, you can see it just like what we’re looking at, but on the platform, we can look at multiple vectors simultaneously. So what I’ve done here is I’ve selected lateral as well as propulsive. So we’re looking at, I’ll blow it up a bit. And it’s no surprise to me that we’re seeing, it’s almost like a mirror between the lateral force and the propulsive force, Brenton. So you can see your propulsion goes up, comes down and goes up again here. And this red line, this is your lateral force. And the lateral forces are very easy to read. When it’s positive, such as here during the glide, that means the hands are facing outwards. Where it’s negative, which is happening down here after you start pulling, the hands are facing inwards. So we can instantly see in here as you’re gliding, you’ve got the hand drag happening here. But at the same time, that hand is facing outwards.

So your left hand, when it comes into glide, it comes in thumb first. It’s not coming in flat. It’s coming in like that facing outwards as you go through. And then it squares up here. And then you’re starting to pull and you’re catching here. And as you’re catching, you’re also generating this negative force, which is coming inwards, right? So that’s inward force that’s going on there. And then look here, you see down here where it’s bottoming out, that bottom out, that’s an indication that that hand is changing directions. And it’s no coincidence that where that’s changing direction, you’re falling off the cliff propulsively. See that here, here. And then here, where it changes direction again, it bottoms out propulsively. So you can see very clearly on here, Brenton, very clearly, like I said, it’s like a mirror, isn’t it? You know, all these little moves that you’ve got in your propulsion are a mirror of a reflection of

what’s going on laterally. So that whole, which and what it falls down to is this, in fact, let me just go to, we’ll go to your next chart, because this is the one where we bring it together. And so if we pick a stroke here and we’ll go for your overhead view and I’ll put on your lateral, let me see what we got. And then what we can do here is we can move this slider. And so that red dot moves to show you your hand position on your hand path and the red line moves to show you what forces are being generated. So if I go straight to here, you’ve got this thing happening right here, buddy, where your hand at this point, which is coming straight through pretty much is suddenly changing and it’s changing here. It’s so in this initial part right here, where it’s generating some inward force, that’s telling me that your hand isn’t pushing directly back or it’s pushing back, but it’s not facing back. It’s slightly angled.

And because it’s angled, you’re getting some lateral force as well as propulsive. And then when we get to this point, it’s now rotating that way and that rotation, that slight rotation is causing this propulsion to fall off the cliff. And then when we come through to here, and this is where you now are going to push straight back where you’re getting very little lateral force, but you’re getting that second peak and it should show up even more on the right hand. Right. And so here you’ve actually got this physical move inwards into the centre line. It’s only a small shift inwards, which is generating a bit. And then right here, right here, that hand is now going to rotate a little bit. And as it rotates, it comes off the cliff. And then here it changes again and it pushes straight back and you get it. So you can effectively look at your hand path and you can look at the forces that you’re generating and you can see exactly

where in that hand path you’re getting those changes.

Yeah, it’s pretty obvious that I think from that transition to maybe a slight, it’s almost like an in-sweep there, isn’t it? So yeah, the transition sort of between the different phases of the stroke, I’m really losing that hold of the water there. So. And that’s where you’re going from pulling to push sprinting. That’s exactly it as you’re transitioning. So you’re pulling and then as you’re pushing, you’ve got that hand rotated. And there’s a very good reason, mate. And it’s this.

If you think about it, if you’re pushing maximum force directly down or directly back to your feet, if you get to a point where your muscles can’t cope, something has to give. Either your muscle explodes, which doesn’t happen, or your hand slips. And the moment it rotates and slips, now it can now it can get through the water easier. And that’s exactly what happens. You know, your hand can rotate a little bit. It can now slide through the water. It backs off the force or the pressure that’s on your shoulders and on your muscles. And then it enables you to complete the stroke without it blowing up, which then can come back to, well, what do I do about it? Well, dry land. You know, how do I build my muscles up and how do I get stronger in the gym so that I can take that extra pressure and force?

I think what I feel and see in any underwater footage I’ve done as well is that I could, I probably try and force it a little bit much through the front end of the stroke. And on those times where I do just back off the force by maybe or power by 10, 15 percent, then I can typically hold better positions. I can hold it easier. And, you know, while I may not have as high a peak force there, the impulse would be, I’m imagining would be would be greater, which is kind of what we’re going for that sort of field in area under that, that blue line, right? Like, that’s kind of what we want to maximise the impulse. Exactly. Under here, because the amount of force of the impulse you generate is the square area under this little blue double peak. And so, and obviously made this two ways of increasing that, you can either go higher or you can go wider. Now, there’s a limit to how wide you can go because you can’t hold the water for that long, obviously,

particularly at a higher stroke rate. But what you can see is this valley, that’s lost propulsion. That’s purely lost propulsion. On the on the other side, though, you’ve got your downward force, which is what’s below here, the negative in the purple is actually quite low on the right hand. Whereas when we look at the left hand, you’ve got a lot more downward force that’s been generated. Look at this, right? You’ve got and here you’re not only generating this hand drag. You’re also generating a lot of downward force through that glide as well. So I would suggest your left hand as well as being angled where your wrist is dropped. You’re also dropping like that. So it’s generating hand drag and it’s also generating downward force as you’re going through.

Yeah, so it’s amazing that I can swim at all looking at that, right? Like that I’m moving forward. But that’s the thing that I love about this is to me, it just shows me how I’ve got a huge opportunity to get a lot more out of my existing stroke. And, you know, and the thing with it too, like it’s it’s all sort of relative, I find, to the to the person because, you know, someone who would have higher percentage propulsive forces doesn’t necessarily mean that they will be faster than someone who has low percentage forces because there’s a lot of other factors there. But if you just use it based on your own data, based on that benchmark swim that you’d start with, then you can really start to tweak and refine your own stroke. And I think going about it that way is what I’ve seen can work really well. And look, you make a great point, mate, because the idea of and you make the point that this is about your data comparing you

with you. It’s not about comparing you with somebody else. So if we talk about triathlete

mindset where effectively, you know, you could call this system, it’s like a power meter for swimmers and every triathlete knows about power meters for bikes and you can compare your power output on the bike in terms of watts per kilo. Right now, you can’t do this with this because you’re the amount of power that you produce. It’s not just a function of the kilopascals that we’re measuring. It’s also the square area of your hand. So here, this is actually going through right now. We’re developing through machine learning a calculation of hand size, i.e. your paddle. And so then we’ll be able to combine it because with the pad, with the amount of force that you’re generating with the size of your paddle. And then we’ll be able to tell you how many Newtons you are pushing yourself. And then you can start to compare with others or what’s that you’re pushing because you can appreciate a big guy with huge hands and a small girl with small hands.

They might hit the same amount of force, but because he’s got hands that are like dinner plates, he’ll be pushing a huge amount more force compared to a small girl or woman. So it’s important that our next step is to combine the two. And then you’ll be able to talk about, OK, how do I, how do I compare? Yeah, exactly. Well, Jamie, that’s really helpful. Thanks for the coaching session for myself. I’m always grateful for that. But I’m sure that those that are that are listening as well, it’s probably just giving them a good insight into maybe some opportunities that they have in their own technique. Is there anything that we’ve covered that we haven’t covered so far that you think it’d be worth mentioning? Look, there’s a couple of things if I can and I’m mindful about timing, Brenton, but we’re just launching a new program right now, which we’re starting with the super elite in in swimming and it will work its way through

to age group and then to try athletes. And the whole purpose of this is to accumulate data for particular distance, gender and stroke. So we’re starting with 100 meters, men’s and women’s. And we’re going to collect their data to qualify. You’ve got to meet a certain criteria. So in in this one, it’s it’s men’s got to swim under 53. They’re going to have a PB under 53 100 and women is under 58 100. And so what we’re going to do is we’ll get all that data and it’ll be conducted under specific circumstances. So everybody’s got to start the right same way, stop the same way, wear their race suits, not use fins or pull boys or that sort of stuff. Right. They’ve got to have the hands go in the water at the same way and come out the same way. What they will do is that will give us a whole bunch of really interesting data that we can then rank from fastest through to slowest and then look at all these key metrics and then pump it through some

interesting machine learning software and find what’s the weighting of each of the different metrics, whether it’s I mean, you could already get distance for stroke and stroke rate. But what we’re really keen to look at is absolute force in conjunction with percentage propulsive. And so to be able then to look at that and then what we’ll be doing is we’ll be then providing that back to our partners who participate. They will then get all that data or all that global data set, but it’ll be anonymized. So if there are 100 athletes in there, they’ll go from fastest down to the slowest at 100 and then you’ll be able to track all of those different metrics across and within that anonymized data set, you’ll see your own identified. So you might be the seventh fastest swimmer on there, but you might have the third highest level of absolute force, force, you know, that the 15th distance per stroke and the ninth of percentage propulsion

and all that sort of stuff. And so we really believe that this has got the capacity to provide intelligence and insight that hasn’t been done before that will build out across all the distances from fifty three to fifteen hundred and strokes as well for butterfly and backstroke, which we already do. And then we’ll do age groups. And once we come down the age groups, then we’ll get into triathletes as well. And so as we build that out, that in itself, I think will be really insightful because you’ll be able to see where I sit in context to people who are in the same sort of range. The other piece as well that we’re building is intensity factor and training stress scores, TSS, because ideally what I’d like to do is to be able to work with someone like training peaks and to integrate so that you can do an eye for a TSS swim and you can upload that data into training peaks because we know with training peaks, they do a great job of

displaying your your data for running and cycling, but there’s very little for swimming. So if we can have that common language, which then becomes an entryway into with training peaks into the rest of the stuff, I think that will be quite powerful as well. Unreal. That’s exciting. I remember when I first found out about the technology and start to see how it could be used. I was thinking down the track with data analytics and just being able to use all this machine learning type stuff, it’s like to be able to pull in that that data and then like spit out what’s really important here. That was something that I thought that’s really exciting. So it sounds like you’re heading down that path now. And the key the key thing, as you know, is if you want to be comparing, you’ve got to make sure it’s all captured under the same circumstance. That’s why we’re having to be very anal about these are the rules. This is so, for example, they’re all pushing

off. It’s not a dive start. And like I said, when the hands go in the water, the clock starts. So it’s got to be hands in and go instantly. And likewise, when you finish, touch the wall, hands come out of the water instantly. So we then collect the data so that you can truly relate all of the data time wise and rank them and then look at all the other stuff. Because there’s no doubt in my mind, and I know again, we’re not talking about kick and we’re not talking about drag, but just propulsively and certainly, you know, Panjan Lee in the hundred meters to to win up by 1.08 seconds, you know, for the first time since 1928, but there’s been a more than a one second gap. We will see some pretty amazing stuff. And I’m all of the elite coaches that I’m talking to in the National Federations that so far they’ve all been really positive about wanting to see what that global data set looks like and what their people look like within.

Yeah, yeah, and I can imagine why, you know, it’s just an amazing swim to to see that. So, yeah, looking forward to seeing what’s to come. So, Jamie, I appreciate you jumping on the podcast. I know you’re a busy man. So thank you very much. And for anyone who’s interested in getting a set of these devices, I’ll include the link in the show notes. And yeah, Jamie, thanks again. Good on you, Britain. Thanks, buddy. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

I think now I was the most, the full package swimmer, like I could do the pacing, I can do the sprint, I can hold back, I can take somebody’s hip. So it showed now I’m good in open water, and that was for me, everything. This was my dream race, and to do it was like, those two girls was fantastic. I think for me, it’s going to be very different to Sharon because I was the underdog, I was the dark horse, I wasn’t in any predictions whatsoever, I believed in myself that I could do it. I’ve come to the Effortless Swimming podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer, and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. The women’s 10 kilometre open water race at the Paris Olympics was a thrilling and gruelling event that saw Sharon Van Rivendale of the Netherlands and Moesha Johnson of Australia showcase extraordinary endurance and strategy. Sharon and Moesha were housemates and training partners in the lead up to the Olympics.

And I wanted to find out, did they strategize before the race to work out a plan to try and come first and second? Did they work together within the race to stop others from overtaking them? And was there anything that they did prior to the race that gave them an advantage over some of their other competitors? And what I learned on this podcast was really interesting to dig into the finer details of what goes behind Olympic silver and gold. So join me on today’s podcast episode with Olympic gold and silver medalist Sharon Van Rivendale and Moesha Johnson. Moesha, Sharon, welcome to the podcast. I was really excited to put this one together to dig into the details of the amazing race that you had over in Paris because I haven’t cheered that loudly for an open water swim event for a very long time seeing you girls go head to head. So welcome to the podcast, first of all. Thank you. I’d love to know, just leading into the race as teammates, did you plan any sort of strategy

together before the race? Not at all. We didn’t really talk as much the last few days because, you know, you’re going through race focus and everyone keeps asking us and it was not any part of the plan. Well, Barron, our coach, the German coach, asked me, oh, I want to waste your team up with Moesha and I can monitor from four. And I said, well, I don’t need anybody. It was like, no, I can swim every tactic I want. I can stay down and pass or something. So I said, I don’t need anybody and we’ll see in the race. But then during the race, she was fantastic. Did you know where each other were throughout the whole race? Well, I knew that she was in front of me when she was leading and I knew it was probably her behind me when I was leading. There wasn’t really many people around. So, yeah, I was pretty aware where Sharon was. Did either of you have a certain strategy going into the race and did it play out how you thought it would?

Yeah, so in April, like the Dutch coach asked me, what would be your ideal podium? And I said, well, my dream podium would be with Moesha and Tadoci. So they tell him because I like they take a lot of initiative in the race and they push it and they try and they always get passed at the end. And which I got passed after 2016 and passed so many times. And it’s so frustrating. So I always appreciate women that take the lead and just go for it. I think I always assume on my feelings, since I do open water, I swim with different plans. But the first lap I was trying, just seeing where people would go. And I found myself at place 19 for 18th in the first corner. And then it went everywhere. I knew that we had to go against the wall to not get the current. And I was on position four from the wall. I got all the current. I got all the people in my head was like the hardest lap ever to swim. And so I thought, OK, this is not what we’re going to do.

We have to change this tactic. We have to lead because that’s the easiest thing. And at this point. And so well, we discussed something the day before we checked the course. And I said, maybe it’s better not to show them the good way. At the finish, at the gate, because there is a good way. And that’s all the way on the right side for as long as possible. And then you only cross to the gates. And then the first nap, I did my little trick against what’s it called, reshutter the bridge pillars. Yeah, the pillars. Yeah, and then there’s 20 meters without current. So I went from the wall to the pillars and then I went back. And then I passed like 10 or 16 people by doing that. So I found myself on position four all the way on the wall side, on the boat side at the gate. And I see people on the left just trying to go in the middle of the the sand in the middle against just going to the gate straight. And I’m like, didn’t you try it yesterday?

Like, and I laughed so hard. And I was like, now it’s getting interesting. It was so fun. Like I had fun in the race. And then I was already in Moesha’s speed or third or fourth. I took time to drink. And then I was like, oh, here we go. I’ll lead. And then I saw it’s just people are struggling to follow us. And then Moesha came. Yeah. So my, from my perspective of the race, I’m always told not to lead. And after that, we went under the bridge on the first lap. I looked to my left, I looked to my left again. I was like, oh, no one’s there. I looked to my right. Oh, no, I’m leading within 400 meters of Thoremese. This is not good. I’m going to be in so much trouble that I just had a really good start and I’m not as good. Sometimes maybe it’s sitting back. I don’t know, but I didn’t like the first turn. I knew that it would be probably a bit chaotic because some people weren’t going to know how to turn around that boy.

And so I wanted to be in the first little group so I could get a efficient line. But I was leading when I wasn’t intending to be leading. And then obviously coming back against it, like I let the Italian girls go on that first lap. Then like Sharon, you know, we came under that bridge and no one knew where they were going because I was just going to follow. Like Sharon said, I was just going to let them lead and go their direction. But we went straight into the head on of the current and we just stopped moving. And at some point I think we started moving. We were like, we’re fine, do this. This is not going to work. So then I had to then cut over and you see like I cut back to where kind of Sharon is. And that’s where Sharon got my feet again. Because then I start going up the edge of the course and everyone, you can just see, they all start looking at me because I start moving up and I start going up and I start going up and then we cut across

and then people kind of figured it out. But no one really had any idea where they were kind of going. And I think me and Sharon both had a personal realization at that point is like, this is going to be a very different race. Not environmentally to like the conditions we were swimming against, but maybe against our competitors because it just seemed like everyone was a little bit scattered in their preparations for where they were going. And is this what you figured out the day before when you got to get in there and do a bit of a test swim? Like, is this something that you had thought about in the lead-up to it or just something that you got to work out when you got to do the test swim beforehand?

So yeah, like my mother said, I hope it’s not in the sand with the streaming and you’re going to get hurt or something. And I said, let it be as hard as possible. And already like half of the woman would be insecure and like, and I know I can just switch off. And even if it’s hard, it’s just like, I like it. And so the day before we could train in open water and very weird men came with me. So they didn’t pick a champ of 2016 and we swam together, so he swam in my sheet. And then against the current, we tried a few things. So at the bridge, we tried something. We let each other go and see where the current came from, which current is stronger. So under the bridge on the left side, definitely stronger. It’s in the middle of the sand. But we tested it out. And I did a few times that I let myself go and again, against the gate, okay, this is not working. And I just let myself go, okay, against the boats, against the wall.

Then I was like, I think this is easier. Okay, and then there was the, you pass the gate and then you have the pontoon. If you’re just a little on the right side, maybe it’s easier. And then I was like, I really liked it. I did two laps, but then I thought, tomorrow it’s six, but let’s see. And then I knew my biggest competitors like Anna Marcela or Liam, they didn’t train. And I find that so not intelligent to not train. Like you’re doing seven or eight hour work years long for this race, like a day per day, seven hours a day for this race. And then the last training session, you don’t do or try the course. Are you just thinking you’re gonna win by following me? And then at the end passing me? Well, that’s not gonna happen. You have to train on the, against the current. And that’s what we did. And then we knew exactly where to swim. So this was something that everyone had access to. Everyone could do this swim,

but they, for whatever reason, they chose not to. I think it’s because they thought maybe they get sick.

I think this is where like, we’re not exactly sure why they weren’t there, but maybe they just let the hype of it get to them. But it was, for us, it was the Olympics and we wanted to prepare ourselves as best as possible. In Australia, we had a great medical team. So I felt safe to get in the water no matter what. But at the end of the day, that they’re not gonna let you swim if the water quality’s bad. So that was my thinking. It was pretty black and white. We’re allowed to swim, we swim. If not, well, then we don’t. And you took on antibiotics as well. I actually prevent you. Yeah, so we both took on antibiotics. I think it was from Monday on for me. So Thursday was the race. Mine was from training day on. So might’ve been a different one. But yeah, through my Australian Olympic Committee, I was very well cared for.

And in terms of in the swim itself, what was it like going against the current and then going with it? Like, did your effort have to change? What did it feel like for you going in either direction? Like, was it, I was obviously so much quicker and you could see that, but how did that feel for you in either direction? So for me, I trained it a bit the week before. I tried to do very long relaxing strokes. And then sometimes I tried to be like shorter, like when I was swimming in France or swimming, like not finishing the triceps. I was like just finishing it like this. And that’s what we did. I think with the current, we swam like really long, long strokes. And then you’re on the corner and it was like, it was so fun actually. Like you’re on your side. And then you just do short strokes and barb against the wall. And like I’m not finishing my strokes and just, so I adapted my technique all the time. And I think it showed like I can just have a spritz.

I can have a slow swimming. I can like swim good technique-wise. I can swim short. I think this was everything together over the last 10 years felt together on this race for me. And I think for Moisha was just great that we can just break away because it’s so hard to break away sometimes. And now we break away because of the current. Yeah, what was it like for you, Moisha, with the, well firstly with like being a bit of a surprise being out in the front, leading when you weren’t necessarily trying to, but you just find yourself there. Like in your mind, your race strategies, not going out the window, but it’s like, okay, this isn’t what I was expecting. What’s it like for you when you’re out the front leading going, okay, do I stay out here? Do I just like wait for someone to pass? Like where was your head at when you found yourself out there? Yeah, so in terms of like, yeah, where I was sitting in the race, I always try and fall back a little bit.

And once Sharon took the lead and I was sitting behind her, I really used that opportunity to see what was happening behind us. So I kept looking back, you know, I knew Sharon would, you know, I could trust her sighting and all that. So I was having a look back at the girls and there was some really distinct points in which the group would stretch, break and then come back together and stretch and break and come back together. So I think it was around that. You led two laps or something, three laps. I didn’t build three. Yeah. And so around the lap number three, I thought to myself, okay, like I’m going to try and stretch it out and maybe just reduce the amount of leading girls and then maybe sit back again and then do it again. Because my strength is just like, I have quite a higher aerobic level. I can hold a higher pace. It’s just sometimes it’s heavy. So I have to be careful. And so I pushed it out and then, because it was the river,

they had the TV screen on the side of the river for the audience. And I could actually see that we’re breaking away. So I decided not to slow down. I was like, well, I’m comfortable at this pace. And if it’s just going to break away to just the three of us, like it was looking on the screen, well, then I can hold this pace all day. But if there was a group of maybe 10 girls, it might have been different. So I actually used the TV screen a lot in my race. It was the best thing ever. Cause normally, you know, that’s the hardest thing. You don’t know that you’re breaking away. So you get insecure or maybe, and you don’t, you know, don’t push away with confidence. But that for me was definitely part of it. And I felt strong and comfortable and fit the entire way. And, you know, I think even even towards the end, when we, I don’t, I don’t even know, picked up the pace when I look at the splits. But yeah, I definitely,

I felt comfortable on the current. And I think my, my feeling in the current was definitely a little bit different to how Sharon described it then. Like I just felt the same with the current and against the current. It just felt like the water might have felt a little different because you were moving with it. But you know, we swim in a flume. So kind of my brain was kind of already a little adjusted to that water moving feeling. But it was just the top turn and the bottom turn, like the feeding station and the bottom one that you just, you know, you had to pick it up then and whatnot. But it was kind of, yeah. What I really liked is that the third lap you took over and I was still drinking, you know, like it came in your sheet. And I had a great drink. There’s like, there, there was like 10 year gap with the force. And then I was like, I wanted to, like my arms came into your legs, you know, I wanted to like make contact with you.

Like, this is the moment now, like, and then we paced it up. But you turn around, but I couldn’t say anything. But I think you knew like, this is, I was like, okay, now I need to go. And then we turn the corner and actually there we paced already turned the lap with the stream we paced. So it was not like, and then we turned the corner and then there was like a 20 second gap. So like a 10 second gap against the current, maybe. And that’s where things were decided against, yeah. That’s interesting to hear that you could get a sense of what you were thinking. And I mean, surely some of that’s got to come down to living together, training together. Like you get a really good sense of one another. And then you’re spending all day just swimming up and down with each other. You probably get a pretty good idea of those sorts of things. Do you feel like that came into play in the race? My goal is to defend the place. So I also descend more.

So the thing is, if I’m second, nobody is allowed to pass me, but he’s also not allowed to pass mode. So I make it sure that the third doesn’t pass us. And sometimes I give a little, like we have to go a little faster or, and I look around for us, like I look around a lot to check it. They’re coming back or not. Otherwise I would give more by tapping on the sheet or something. Yeah, so this last lap, Mo was lit on the right side. We could have gone more and aimed the sand to get more streaming. The Italian went and paced, I think everything she got to try to pass us. And my position was on the hold there because she was on my level already. Like Mo wasn’t trying, I was here. She was the F. And I was like, okay, I’m gonna trust Mo. Let’s go and Mo, come on. It goes faster. I wanna get to second spot when we turn over there. And so I could just, I put more pressure on her, but I defend the feet as well. So not that if somebody would be on my hip,

I would do everything to get second. So Mo is still first. I think that’s describes a little bit of arm. Yeah, I think like, but you do that regardless of who I was a little bit as well. Because you just want, you want to hold your second position. You lately wear it. Yeah, and so, yeah, I don’t know. I know just as athletes, so in training we’re completely, like my strengths are completely different to Sharon’s strengths. And so yeah, when it does come to racing, we both just swim what strengths are. And obviously we know what each other’s strengths in the race are and it just plays out. But we don’t bother each other. Like at the finish, we don’t take each other’s hip or anything. It’s a chair swim or like chair swim, but as fast as she merwins, like, yeah. Yeah, we just like it, we like a clean race because it can get ugly sometimes. Like when I passed her, I passed her from one and a half from Duraway. Not to, if I would pass her here,

I would slow her down and then the Italian would have been on my feet or maybe on her feet. So I passed her like here.

Yeah, that’s the difference. And because you, I mean, you feel it when someone’s on your hip, don’t you? Like it just, it’s heavy. It’s really, it can really slow you down. Yeah. And so Moisha for you, like leading those last couple of laps, I was like, I was rooting for you, wanting you to get that second place once Sharon was in the lead. And I thought, I don’t know how you’re gonna hang on because you’ve just led the last three laps or so of the race. Did you feel like quite heavy at that point? Like, how are you in the last two, 300 meters? This podcast is proudly brought to you by Form Smart Swim Googles. The Smart Swim 2 is the next generation of Form’s award-winning augmented reality technology. They have an integrated heart rate monitor for constant real-time heart rate monitoring, which allows you to accurately train your heart rate zones, which is the first time that you can do this in the pool. Something we’ve had when biking and running,

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and the new straps and anchor points have been moved and adjusted so that it has a more stable fit. There’s additional features which I haven’t mentioned like the head coach workouts, training plans, as well as integrations with training picks, Strava and more. This is something for all abilities and levels of swimmer and available worldwide from formswim.com forward slash effortless. And to get 10% off the smart swim one goggles, use the code effortless swim on checkout. That’s formswim.com forward slash effortless and use the code effortless swim on checkout for 10% off the smart swim one goggles. Well, I obviously like coming onto the bridge, I knew I was coming in first at that point. And then I knew under the bridge that Sharon would go the way that I didn’t choose to try and pass me because that’s the best passing point. And then, you know, from there, I just like, you know, I was just like, I tried to swim my decision.

I didn’t probably practice it as well as Sharon. Sharon did, I stuffed it up the lap before, sorry. And I was like, I’m not doing that move again. You know, I ran into the edge of the force. So, you know, I came in swimming and I just wanted to go strung into it. But it was also, it was really hard to decide if I, you know, should Sprint was, you know, try and keep my spot in front of Sharon because the current was so strong that it’s like 100 meters could be like 250 meters, you know? And so you had to be really careful with choosing your timing on things. And, you know, once Sharon got the lead, I was like, just sit on her feet and just, you know, see what you’ve got for the last couple hundred meters. And, you know, Sharon’s got that speed at the end that I’m still trying to develop. And I knew the Italian was there. And, you know, once she kind of came into the finishing shoot, I was like, oh, she can’t pass me now

because we have a very, very similar 1500, very similar last hundred, 1500. So, I knew that I had locked in my silver medal.

And, Sharon. Yeah. For me, I did the tactic where I go. I’m on the bridge on the left. We’re on the left behind the pillar. The first lap, the second lap. And then I followed more. Now, in the third lap, I didn’t do it on purpose to see if I just go against the wall on the boat. And then Mo was in front and Mo did it the fourth lap and the sixth lap. You know, fourth lap, she did the side. Shift lap, she jumped over to the bridge. And I didn’t, on purpose, to make her think this would be the faster way. That’s the one she didn’t even cross my mind though. I just crashed and I was like. Six laps. I made her, well, for me, I thought I made her insecure. She goes on the right side. I think the left one. No. Honestly, for me, more pressure. So, but for me, this was the tactic as well. I thought, well, if Mo goes to the left, I’ll go to the right lap before, just to make her think maybe it’s even fast enough. But I pushed a little more when I go on the right.

No, for me, that wasn’t even my thinking. I just crashed and I was like, I shouldn’t do that again. Let’s go with the safe option and just trying to stop. Yeah, it’s the safe option. Yeah, that’s why, yeah. You just, I don’t know if you saw it, but like, yeah, I ran, when I crossed over, I just got my angle wrong and I ran straight into the edge. Oh yeah. And I was like, oh no, like they might think I pulled on the edge. I didn’t, I just fully ran into it and my arm got stuck. And I was like, just a bit wobbly or something. And I was like, okay, no, that’s it. No, no.

Oh man. It can go wrong pretty quick. So because you come again, you don’t have current and not in all of the sudden, you have a lot of current, but you have to choose your position and mode it at once. And then went on against the wall more like. I just went angled too sharp. And then it just, I just,

I don’t even know what happens. Like it’s just like, okay, that’s it. No more.

Do you, do you find the, in terms of like race strategy compared to most open water swims because you’ve only really, you’ve got to stick to the side that you don’t have these bigger packs necessarily forming three, four or five across. Like it’s just, it was just really one or two. There wasn’t often many like three across because as you said, Sharon, you felt you could really feel that. Like, so was that quite different for you compared to most races that you’re in? Yeah, so when I started with open water I was like more, I’m just going to swim in front and pace and I’m super good at pacing. And then all of a sudden people pass me and go in my hip and then I was like, why is it so heavy? So I really, this was my favorite race ever because this is the race I dream of. Just break away and do it on your own and not on the hip. And of course the last years I’ve got experience to swim on somebody’s hip and you can hold the brushy back.

I know how to do that now. But it was just to show that also like where the fastest we merge now. And yeah, like I think now I was the most, the full package swimmer. Like I could do the pacing. I can do the sprint. I can hold back. I can take somebody’s hip. So it showed now I’m good in open water swim. And that was for me everything. Like this was my dream race. And to do it was like those two girls was fantastic.

And Moisha, for you, your first Olympic medal, the highest that any Australians ever placed in an open water event at the Olympics. How’s it for both of you crossing that finish line when you’ve got all this built up? Cause I can only imagine the pressure that is put on from other people that you put on yourself the amount of work that goes into it. And then to finally cross the finish line and just see that look of joy relief on your faces. It was amazing to see. So what was it, what did it feel like for both of you crossing that finish line? I think for me it’s going to be very different to Sharon cause I was the underdog. I was the dark horse. I wasn’t in any predictions whatsoever. Like I believed in myself that I could do it but I am still developing my open water experience. So, you know, I just had to, you know I had to get an individual podium and I didn’t know whether it would be this year or in the years to come, but that was my goal.

But yeah, definitely this race, like Sharon said, it was I enjoyed it because we’re battling the conditions of the course, the environment, not the pack of girls around us. So you actually just got to put your training on display in my opinion. And I think that’s, that was how it showed in the end. It was, it was your training tactical, your endurance, your speed, all the things that Sharon mentioned. And you didn’t have, have had the big pack of girls that, you know, that were holding or pulling you back or bumping into each other. And yeah, so I think, you know it was definitely a race that I like, yeah to get my first international medal individually at an Olympics, like it was unbelievable. And obviously with Australia being on such a different time zone, the amount of public back home who actually got the chance to watch my sport, you know sometimes a bit of an underrated sport. And it’s just been fantastic, the support

and the messages and just even the people still today who are coming up to me and just talking about the iconic swim that I did. And yeah, you know, I think, yeah it’s definitely been a bit of a journey. I’ve done a bit of an alternative route as an Australian swimmer to get, to get here. So yeah, it was definitely a fantastic feeling on that finishing line. Like I’ve actually done it. My big decisions that, you know might have been debated at the time, like they’ve paid off. So for me it was like, I only had the pressure that I put on myself going into that race. I didn’t have anyone else’s pressure. I don’t think even the commentary knew why I wasn’t halfway through the race. Like I think they didn’t know what to say. Like my mom just kept saying, I think they handed them notes on you halfway through the race because suddenly all these facts came out, you know. So I had a very, like a very different probably thing to what Sharon’s gonna explain.

Well, so for me, I was to time world champ in Dola. I think we had a very hard time in December, both of us. And that’s where I went to my parents for she days. And then I was like, why am I still doing this? I hate it. Like, I don’t have to do this. Like then there’s where it is on a 110 to your touch is not good. You lose on 110 and then it’s just annoying. So in two co-occas, I lost on 110. Well then though I came and then you two time world champion and then everything paid off. I’m always world champion on the relay. So everything went well. And yeah, then I was thinking, well, I was just Paris and going in as the favor, but I don’t care, let’s do it. April, I got my new house and I was like thinking, oh, it’s everything I want. But then my dog died and for me, that’s my everything. So actually I didn’t want to swim. Moisha went with me to the Netherlands at that moment that I heard he died on my mother’s lap

going into the vet because he had an operation two days before. And yeah, she went to the cremation with me that the children stopped training. She stopped training two, three days. And I stopped training for, I think eight, nine days. I wasn’t in the water. I didn’t want to swim. Actually, I didn’t care about Olympics and I wanted to don’t care about medals. What’s a medal compared to the love I got in my life from my dog at some point because a medal is just a momentum cheating. That’s why I was thinking and my dog skin, you know, cheating all the time. But then my dad or like my parents say, well, you’re already seven and eight years because he was seven, you’re already seven years from him. Why don’t you finish it and do it for him? Because you didn’t see him a lot. So it needs to be worse that you didn’t see him a lot. Okay, well, I, okay. So three days, two, one day after the cremation, I said, I have to have something.

So I got the tattoo of his paw which he could make at the cremation on a paper and then she just showed it tattooed by. So I had him a little bit closer to me. I got it on a necklace as well with the ash in it. And then I started to train one week each for the World Cup. It’s the one today that didn’t go so well was just swimming slow, didn’t want to. But I was with my Dutch physio and a Dutch coach and they make me laugh a lot like in jokes and try to relax me. And all of a sudden I’m leading in that race, the last lap and I don’t know how I was leading. I was first, I was 40th somewhere. And then I just got four of one, one second. And I think that made me think I can still win Paris if I do the training camp in Sierra Nevada. And there I was listening to the radio in the morning that makes me laugh as well. I’m just doing what I have to do. So I didn’t cry anymore. I just focused on one thing, one swimming every day at least two times

without crying or thinking of my dog. Or you think of your dog all the time but just trying to swim. And then you see you get some good sessions in, stable sessions, you’re still there. You still do the tige on Doha. And then I said tomorrow 28 days for the race. I mean, yeah, I told her and she said, what change? I said, I got the setting again, like the mind.

And she’s like, I’m back in Doha mode. And I was like, oh yeah. And I’m not losing enough. That’s why I posted I’m more determined than ever. And then I also like, you know, you read stuff. People say like, they bet on, you know where they say, I’m gonna win or Laney Beck’s gonna win or I’m a setup’s gonna win. Then you read stuff like you can reclaim the goal. And so I didn’t care about anything like I could handle the pressure. But the day off the race, I felt I had so much pressure for myself or my dog. So I was at breakfast sprouted. I had my breakfast, vomit, everything out.

I went to the course. Well, I went to do my warm-up, tried to do a gel, some cashine,

bicarbonate, vomit, everything out.

That’s the first side before the race. I want, sometimes I vomit during a race because it goes off the race itself or something. And I’m thinking it’s impossible to swim at 10K without shoe.

That’s what the doctor said to you. She’s your ass to the race. Technically it’s impossible. And so then I take off my necklace and I can see them and I’m starting to cry because I feel that’s the pressure from the last three months I gave myself because I thought you’re such an idiot, you can’t even eat how you’re gonna swim 10K so you’re gonna lose it now. Yeah. But when I walked into the, we walked together before the race and I said, I’m shitting my pants. Why are we doing this? Me too. And like, there’s a picture of us that we’re talking. And then in the water, everything changed and you never think of that breakfast again. And I think of drinking enough and taking the gels that are in my drinks. And I got everything. And I think if mentally you’re prepared to do something out of your, like that your body is not, well, I don’t know, I can do something in my head. That’s why I consume two back for free. I think in my head I wanted something so badly

that I just switched off something. And I think that’s what happened. And then I’m out, and then when I touched the plate first I turned around, I’m hanging there against the stream because I’m watching one, watch her touch. And then I’m shouting, yeah. And then I turned around, we’re all happy. And then I knew that moment would come because I planned it, if I would win someday I would show this, but when you plan it then you start feeling everything. And that’s where all the shootings came out. And then we happy again, but it’s like, yeah. So that was my experience. So it shows that if you have the adrenaline and the determination and maybe some angels somewhere you can do a race, your dream race even if your preparation for the day of the race doesn’t work out. Well, even in the lead up to it several months out it’s not perfect preparation at all when all of that stuff happens. But I mean, I think that the mental side of things

like if you can be strong enough mentally that has so much to do with winning or getting silver. Like it’s just that’s such an important part at elite level sports, which I think you’ve proved. And I remember it like that photo. I think it’s quite an iconic photo now. This one or the other one? That one, yeah. Like it’s only been maybe a month or a couple of weeks but I feel like that’s a very iconic photo. Already I’ve seen it posted so much and so often and on so many different pages. And I think it really just takes a really big event to a moment in someone’s life and further than to do what you did to make that become iconic. So that’s amazing. I didn’t know the backstory of it. And to hear what you went through is it’s amazing that you’re able to do what you did. And Moisha, you weren’t wrong. Very different mentalities going into the race, right? But everyone’s got their own different reasons. And what’s it been like since the event?

I’m sure it’s been a whirlwind of interviews and different things and family and friends getting in touch. But yeah, what’s it been like the last couple of weeks? So for me, well, you just got, I had severe jet lag, I reckon for two weeks. So you had jet lag, you’ve got, yeah, media and then you’ve got family and friends wanting to catch up whilst you’re trying to have a break in a holiday to recover and rejuvenate for the next 12 months. Cause you know, you just gotta do it all again now. So for me, it’s been pretty hectic and I haven’t even been trying to, you know I’m not even trying to put myself out there a lot but obviously you gotta take the opportunities with media and stuff when it comes because you know, it’s on to the next very soon. But yeah, it’s been, it’s been a really special time. The messages and the people who have reached out to me it’s been, there’ve been really special messages especially from people who’ve seen my journey

cause my journey is a little bit different to a lot of athletes coming into this sport a bit later at a high level. And so people who saw me younger, you know I’m Mr. Farm Girl at heart. So, you know, there’s a lot of just, a lot of people who’ve been on my little journey and yeah, it’s, I think that’s what’s been the most special thing to me is having those people get in contact and just sharing that moment with them.

Andrea, how about if you share? Yeah, so for me, like when you win, it’s not for me like I just think of all my parents are crying or like they’re gonna be so proud you get all the messages and then all the messages started about the dogs and like the rewrite dog account like he has 1.3 million likes on a picture like 20,000 comments and then all those people start messaging me directly in my DM and I think I’m still not halfway but I’m, and they send like, thank you we made us cry and they send a picture of their dog who died recently and it shows how much a dog can mean and like if she can’t have children that it can be your child or stuff like that. So I wanna thank all those people and I’m still getting back to you guys. And then of course I plan already one and a half year, one year, a little bit of my future that I’m gonna have clinics with ocean man or clinics in Mallorca and clinics from the weekend in the Netherlands.

Yeah, so I’ve been not treating my body well that’s why you hear my voice after working in a cold clinic. So yeah, and I got a lot of meetings every day also just to try, well, do my story like today also good causes that like contacted me for shelter in China for dogs and then like all types of things I wanna do but I didn’t take a break yet and I’m not going to because this is my moment to build something as well. I’m taking a break. I’m not swimming and I’m not doing sports but I wanna do that but swimming. I don’t know when I’m gonna start or if I’m gonna start like, but yeah, in November I’m inviting Tahiti. I have to be there for a race or look at a race and I’m gonna then take 10 days holiday and the rest is just work. But yeah, there’s a lot, I’m making programs. I need to make warm up videos and to make stretching videos and each of my technique videos for my people I’m coaching online already and some people are gonna start September

or September is in a few days. So there’s tonight I’m giving a clinic for 50 people somewhere in a city. So for me, there’s no rest and then I have a house that the floor came, the kitchen came, the furniture, it’s hectic but I’m taking it in and I’m doing it at all because I just want to do it all at the moment.

Yeah, you’ve just finished the Olympics and gone and started doing everything. New house, yeah, new clinics, camps, and Moesha, you’ve gone back to New South Wales on the farm, just enjoying the peace and quiet. So just- Trying to enjoy the peace and quiet but people still keep finding me here, yeah. I must say in my street as well, like this is a little village and they decorated my garden when I arrived and now everybody’s passing. Congrats, congrats, congratulations, shops and like, but that’s what I liked about it. So also this takes time, right? A neighbor comes 15 minutes, another neighbor comes 15 minutes. And here it goes, yep. As soon as someone starts saying hello then everyone starts going, oh, who’s that? Who’s that? Then everyone starts saying hello. So yeah, sometimes I go out prepared and sometimes I just try and sneak out but yeah, no, it’s definitely, it’s definitely being fun.

Well, it was such an amazing race to watch. I enjoyed it so much having sort of got to know you a bit, Sharon and then Moesha with you being an Aussie, like it was just, it couldn’t have been a better finish and the fact that your friends had lived together, all of it just comes together to an amazing race and amazing story. So I appreciate your time on the podcast and sharing it here. It’s been great to chat with both of you. So thank you very much. And I know Sharon, you’ve got a lot going on with the clinics and stuff like that. So for you, where would you like to pivot ahead if they want to get in touch with you in terms of coaching or clinics and those sorts of things? So they can go to my email address. I’m making a website as well but I want to make it come online when everything’s ready, not just half of it. But they can go to Sharon Van Ruindal at shimel.com and they can just write, you know, like how old they are, where they’re from,

their level and why they want to be coached by me. So, you know, the coaching by me is like they get three sessions a week and they get, like I said, the warming ups, the stretching, the technique videos. They can send voice messages after their swim to me about how it was and then I make notes and then I prepare the next training for them. So yeah, they get three sessions a week so they can contact me by Gmail and they get an answer sort of in a week. And that’s saying, not in a day.

I remember, we’ll put that in our show notes as well. And how about Fumo? Is she for anyone who wants to get in touch? What’s the best way to get in touch with you? If you want anyone getting in touch or if you prefer. Probably just, you know, through my Instagram, swimmermoe and then there’s an email link there or you can send me a message. Excellent, well, thank you both again. I love the chemistry between you two and the race strategy and just seeing you work together there. So yeah, thank you very much. I’ve really enjoyed the podcast. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

What happens under the water is so important. That’s where I was obsessed with your videos because I try to get videos of my athletes and I don’t have underwater cameras. I was like, what’s this guy because this is everything. The catch is everything. And they look at it and they’re like, can’t keep my elbow up. What’s the thing? And I make them watch your videos because what’s happening under the water is way more important than over it. I really like perceived effort stuff as well, like just tuning into how you’re feeling. Amen, brother. Amen. You’re preaching. You’re not going to be checking your pace in a race. Like it’s just all based on that perceived effort. So you’ve got to be in tune with it. I think welcome to the effortless swimming podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

And welcome to today’s episode. My guest today is Rebecca Keith. She’s a six time Ironman distance champion, two time world record breaker and three time national champion. She is also a triathlon coach and has previously retired from professional triathlon. And on today’s episode, we get stuck into how you can adapt your stroke from the pool to the open water. What sort of changes does a triathlete need to make to their stroke when it comes to swimming effectively in the open water? Where there’s chop, there’s waves, there’s other people you need to site. There’s a lot of different factors when it comes to that versus the pool. So Beck and I get stuck into that topic, as well as talking about some of the lessons that she learnt along her journey as a professional triathlete going into coaching and some of the lessons that she learnt from her coaches over the years as well. So let’s get stuck into today’s episode with Rebecca Keith.

My guest today is former triathlete and triathlon coach, Beck Keith. Welcome to the podcast. Hi, thanks for having me. I’m a big fan of yours, Brenton. Well, I really appreciate you saying that. I’ve known about you for a long time. I’ve seen you with competing in triathlon for a very long time. And obviously coaching for a long time, too. And have just sort of seen your name everywhere. So to hear that is really nice. So I appreciate it. Yeah, we have very similar theory when it comes to swimming. So it’s always easy to talk to someone that you respect and admire and have similar philosophy. So well, I’d love to dig into your your philosophy when it comes to swimming for triathlon, because we’re sort of chatting off air just about the difference between pool versus open water and how some of those things can differ from someone who’s just traditionally pool swimming. And I know when I first started coaching, I came from a pool swimming background

and I thought it was it’s all about swimming a certain way in order to get faster. But when you throw people in the open water with wetsuits on, hundreds of other people around and often very choppy conditions, sometimes the smoother stroke isn’t necessarily the best stroke for many people. So I’d like to maybe get started with that. What sort of things do you like to pass on to your athletes when it comes to what they should know when it comes to open water versus the pool? Yeah, I love getting athletes that haven’t had a swim background, although it’s definitely an advantage if you have. But the adults, it’s a little they’re a little harder to teach than kids because although they haven’t had that, they don’t get, you know, told about the pool stroke, which I think is a little different. The strip long distance swimmer tend to like lean at leave a little bit of like pause out the front, more of not a catch up,

but a pause out the front for catch and more of a high elbow recovery. And I just found with my open water swimming in triathlon with the chop, like you said, with the people around you and also newbie adults learning to swim, they just have they struggle to get that feel. And they can get it, but it takes a long time to get that feel if you haven’t had it as a kid, as you know. And so I don’t have them pause out the front, their strokes kind of quicker. The catch is still really important. The entry pull through an exit phase is really important. We do more of an open arm, not like high, high elbow, but more of an open arm rather than straight arm. I was more straight arm swimmer, but open arm where it’s where it’s kind of a I don’t know if you know, Brent Hayden, but he has that similar philosophy where it’s more of a rotation recovery because they have to get it over the wave, over other swimmers. And then I want them to keep their hand out as far as as far as possible in front.

And when I try to teach that I realized when I try to teach the high elbow recovery, they were entering here and then extending out the front. And just for adults that didn’t know how to swim or hadn’t learnt to swim, that was something I was picking up that they really struggle with. So we do more open arm, faster stroke rate, and then the siding. Like you don’t really have to sit in a pool. You can kind of like look up for the wall. But the siding, I think, is so important to have that momentum and not lose that streamlined position, which is really hard to do also for a newbie swimmer to learn to sit while you’re breathing. That’s even a different ball game altogether. So it’s a lot that I love like teaching it like you do. And I love teaching triathletes in open water. And it can be it can be tough to get that into their head because they look at the pool swimmers and they’re like, oh, they stretch long

and then they’ve got the nice high elbow catch. And I’m like, oh, I don’t know if that’s going to work for you. And it does sometimes. Some people just clicks and then most of the time they just want to sink. So and eyes down more, right? Because you bring your feet up. So the eyes down thing in the pool, you wouldn’t really stick your head right down, but in open water, sometimes you have to, especially for those body types that are long or really muscular triathletes can be quite heavy and muscular and they just want to sink. And they see the swimmers with their head like, you know, it’s a little in front, but it’s not right down like this. And I try to get in with their heads down and they’re like, I’m going to hit the wall. I’m like, but you want to get your legs up. So it’s like a fine line.

Yeah, I love working with adults as well. A lot of people come to our clinics and so many people will say, this is the first swim lesson I’ve ever had. And and they’re like, I like, I’m kind of scared because I’ve never had a lesson and I’m not sure what to expect. But the good thing about that is they’re coming in with a fairly blank slate. And then you can, you know, you can still some of those things that are hopefully going to make them faster and more effective in the water. And one of the things you mentioned there with the recovery is a more open arm recovery. And I like that description of it because I see it as it’s like opening up the underarm. You want to open that underarm up over the water and similar thing through your catch is like, if you can have this nice big open underarm as opposed to a closed underarm, then you’re going to hold more water. So that concept of being more open as opposed to closed, I think

that’s that’s a good one for people to carry in because you do see a lot of beginner swimmers swim like swim small and swim short. And that yeah, yeah. And that like recovery where they’re close to the body and they’re very small and short, it’s like, no, just open up, free yourself up. And it’s going to be so much easier when you when you swim in. Yeah. And then I think there’s less risk as adults to, you know, when you get to sort of 40, 45 and a lot of my age group is a 45, 50. Even older, they get impingement so easily, especially women menopausal. They’re always getting like, you know, low estrogen, low progesterone. They have much more chronic issues with tendons and impingements and Achilles and shoulders and bursatus and doing that Hyoba, someone can’t even do that. But they also, some of them can’t like do a full rotation. So they kind of swing out. I’m like, hey, whatever works is what happens under the water.

Like you got to get it in the right spot. What happens under the water is so important. That’s where I was obsessed with your videos because I try to get videos of my athletes and I’ve been have underwater cameras like watch this guy because this is everything, the catch is everything. And they look at it and they’re like, Kim, what’s the thing? And I make them watch your videos because what’s happening under the water is way more important than over. It can look yucky above the water, but it has to be like a strong pull through. Right? Yeah. Yeah, it’s exactly right. And I’ve got a similar approach where it doesn’t matter what’s happening over the water as long as that’s not impacting you under the water in a negative way. So it can be it can be quite scrappy over the top. And when I was I did a season of triathlon, I did it for one year, just as a bucket list to do an Ironman and know that what did you do?

Which one? Well, I was booked in for Melbourne Ironman. And that was the year that they cancelled it. So I had to I traveled over to Taupo and did it there instead. So if. Yeah. The like this I’m glad I did it because the swim was mass start, flat conditions in a way. Can I tiny to go like forty nine or forty eight or something? Forty seven. Oh, one. I did my record. That’s insane. Well, it was so is the record for my age group of twenty five to twenty nine and one second off the like overall age group record. So yeah, I was a bit annoyed about missing that overall age group record. But look, the thing was like I went hard in that swim because I wanted to win it, which I which I did. And then it was a steady stream of people coming past me for the next five hours passed on the bike. So, you know, forty seven. I don’t know. I don’t think I know anyone that’s one of them. Pro men that is one forty seven. That’s impressive.

Yeah, thank you. It was I love the swim and I’ve got my lost my train of thought now. But I was just the forty seven. I’m like, I think I went under 50 a couple of times. But I was in Roth. I was super fast. Like it’s always not a fast swim. So that’s impressive. Like, yeah. Well, what I was saying there was my yes. And my wife would come down and watch me do these races and stuff and she’s like, I can spot you from a mile away because you’ve got this this one arm that sort of swings around a bit and your other arm comes over really high and it looks like looks really scrappy. It’s not a not a pretty looking stroke above the water. But it was but it was effective. And that looks not to a try. No, that’s that. Yeah, that’s the thing. But it’s not like just not that traditional pool stroke. It changed a lot in the open open water. So yeah, whatever whatever sort of works, you know, that’s that’s the main thing if you get from A to B as fast as you can

in the least amount of effort. That’s kind of what we’re going for. Yeah. And that’s why I tell my guys like you can watch the pool swimming but you want to watch like, I mean, like the Kai Hurst, like the Ironman series. You want to watch those those Ironman, the Ironman series in Australia if you can like the surf lifesaving stuff because those guys their open water stroke is very different. And so is the open water swimming stroke, obviously, but the surf guys like they got it and it is it’s like that chop chop. It doesn’t look beautiful like Thorpey or I’m throwing out old names here, but they’re still here, right? It doesn’t look like the Thorpey stroke, but like I remember Thorpey. No, it was Phelps went and talked to my wife at a convention one day and we’re talking about triathlon swimming. And he goes, those triathletes kicked my ass in open water. And Siri’s like, what? And but she was kind of like, I kind of get that.

And he’s like, no, my stroke does not work in open water. Like these triathletes, he went swimming in open water race. And apparently they beat him even in his heyday. So I was like, there’s something to that because it is really. Wow. Yeah, he had mad respect because I guess he wasn’t used to deciding or the chop. Or I was like, dad, we’ll take that. That’s awesome, isn’t it? Wow. Yeah. That’s so cool. I did a talk at a school yesterday. And yeah, I’m thinking of yeah, I’m thinking of us. Think of some as like from the early 2000s, you know, it’s like Thorpey and and Michael Clem. And I said, you know, he here knows Michael Clem. And I had about three hands out of 120 go up. Like, I’ve got to I’ve got to change my reference points here. Yeah, you get used to this. You got watching like he’s was just like it was an open recovery. Like he had that big like, like it was almost whack. Like it was almost like a butterfly arm.

Like he’s butterfly and freestyle look similar. And he was like he was almost there was almost revolutionary. Like maybe I’m wrong. But he was the first guy to start doing that big open arm. Like yeah, yeah, totally. He was the first from memory. He was really the first sort of straight arm sprinter. Unlike, dude, he’s the best in the world. Like don’t back you stroke. Like he’s clearly it doesn’t matter what it’s he’s it’s working for him. And then everyone started doing it. Yeah, how how fast that changes. Hey, now what majority of the sprinters are more that straight arm recovery. So what? Yeah, there you go. In terms of working with some is so is there a bit of a process that you like to go through? Where do you generally start with people when you’re when you’re coaching them? Yeah, it depends on what they’re a lot of them come in where they have released one at all. So fortunately, I coached for the Rackley swim school for many, many years.

And I had to do their actual coaching, which was good. They’re a good technique and a good process. But I taught kids to swim. And so I always start with the breathing because the breathing is the hardest thing. Some of them don’t even add that they’re supposed to blow out with their head down. I’m like, OK, we’re going to just stand on the second pool, blow bubbles. They’re like, oh, I thought we held our breath and then breathe out and in on the same side. I’m like, no, no, no, you got to blow out when you head step and stuff like that. You’ve got to go back to the basics. It’s like, oh, OK, and you’ve almost got to teach them to swim as kids and teach them the breathing first. So I teach them this sounds crazy, but I literally have it in the pool, blowing bubbles, rolling their head, blowing bubbles, rolling their head. And then they do what I kick for. Then they do strokes on the kickboard with breathing

and then we get rid of the kickboard. And then some of the adults don’t like this, but I make them hold my hands and they swim like catching my hands. And I really like that because they’re adults. And I forget sometimes I don’t want to. I don’t want to do that in front of all these kids that are kicking my butt. But yeah, and it just it really goes back to like that beginner mindset and teaching them how how did I teach my kids to breathe? Like it’s sometimes it’s that simple. You’ve got to go back to that basic and some of them are more progressed. But a lot of the time they’ve got to get that breathing right. And then I noticed they’re holding their breath and I’m like, no, you’d breathe out with your head down. So and it sounds crazy, but that can be like that can just click when they when they realize that that’s what they’ve got to do. Yeah. And the thing is, no matter what level you get to those guys

are still often working on some of the basics and fundamentals. Now, not something as simple as breathing, obviously, but like even just alignment when they’re breathing. So I was chatting to this girl, Kay Malton, who just missed the Olympic team this year, but she was made it for Tokyo. She was saying that like the main thing for her that she was sort of working on with a freestyle was that when she turned to breathe, her head would shift off to the side and she’d look a little bit behind her and she’d lose her body alignment and her arm would cross over. And she’s second at World Champs in 800 free behind Ledecky a couple of years back. So it’s like, you know, those those basics, those fundamentals apply all the way up and down the ladder. So yeah, I mean, the stuff that we teach at clinics, we always just start with breathing, body position, head position because most people don’t have that in place and they can always improve it.

And if that’s not in place, then it’s really hard to work on the catch and the hold and all this sort of stuff. Because, you know, you just you happen to work up here otherwise. So yeah, those fundamentals, you can spend so much time in them. And I think people should be OK with spending time on the boring, sort of simple stuff, because that goes a lot further than than the fancy stuff. Really? Yeah, exactly. They’re trying to think about their catch and it’s like, no, you can’t even breathe yet. So let’s work for them. Yeah, it’s important to breathe, especially when you’ve got a ride and run after. Yeah, exactly. Exactly right. And you know, if someone’s like, you know, over over a two minute pace per hundred, unlikely that you need to start working on your catch yet. It’s like those basics are probably not in place quite yet. Like if you’ve got decent basics, well, yeah, then then you’re probably going to be swimming faster than that two minute pace.

So let’s always go back to there. That’s a good point. It’s very true. Yeah, most of the guys I get the newbies are definitely about two minutes or so or so. I know as a swimmer, it’s like, like, oh, damn, say this to him. It’s like, how could you be that slow? But if you haven’t learned as a kid, you just it’s it’s just not there. Like, I feel so blessed that my mom threw me in Frankston Heights Primary School into swim lessons because I hated it. I hated it. I have so much like respect for swimmers because we think triathlons higher, but getting in the fricking pool when it’s like five o’clock and it’s so cold, even if the water’s like not that cold, but it’s awful. It is like the least thing you want to do at five o’clock in one is get in the bloody pool. So like, I didn’t like it, but I’m so glad my mom made me do it because I think I would suck. I wasn’t a great rates for my triathlon, but I turned into one

because I just became good at open water. But that was another thing. But I’m just glad I learned to swim as a kid because and most of these do, you know, like we grew up with. It’s like one of key. Most whenever I get someone from the from the UK come to a clinic, most of the time they say didn’t learn to swim as a kid. Like, but obviously there’s a lot of the Australians do. It’s just a cultural sort of thing. And just, you know, what people used to. Yeah, yeah, it’s right. I know I taught in the UK with my sister for a little while and like, they were scared to even like put their head under the water. I was like, wow, this is a whole new thing for me. Like at least the Aussies were going to serve and they’re not scared to get under the water. But they were scared to even put their head under the water. So they’re going to drown. I’m like, but you’re touching the bottom. Like your feet are on the bottom.

You’re not going to drown. Like it’s crazy. Yeah. Yeah. And when you see an adult, you know, someone who’s learning as an adult, the way I try and the way I try to sort of remember what it’s like to be brand new at at something. It’s like when I like I learned to surf and I was 18. And I remember the first time I was out in the water with a surfboard. I was actually just sort of body surfing out there. I was out with a friend about a surfboard. He said, here, like take this and have a go. And I remember being on this thing and just like going, I’m scared to hell because this thing’s got this pointy nose. It’s like I’m wobbling all over the place and the nose is sticking right out of the water. And I felt, I felt so scared out there. And like, I just felt like, yeah, this foreign object, I don’t know what to do with it. And then like it took months and months to figure out how to stand up and be balanced. And it took a very long time to get to that point.

And it’s the same thing when you’re out in the water because you just don’t have that stable surface. And I’m just trying to control the body and balance that takes time. So just trying to remember what it’s like to be brand new at something, especially something as foreign as swimming or being in water. I think, yeah, you know, it’s easy to forget how challenging it can be sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. It’s very daunting as an adult to learn to swim. So thankfully they have people like us, right? That’s exactly right. But in terms of your career as an athlete and as a coach is there, any certain like turning points or like lessons you learned along the way that have really stuck with you. This episode is brought to you by Pillar Performance. Our new sponsors Pillar are a sports micronutrition company. And the easiest way to describe it is that while hydration and carbohydrates products will take you through to touch the wall

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I think with regards when it comes to swimming, I remember I went to Brett Sutton and he was like, he’s still one of the best coaches in the world. He’s coached multiple champions, a little bit mentalist. And he actually funnily enough, and he’s gonna be like, I don’t know why I did that, because he doesn’t do it anymore, but he tried to actually get me to swim like a pool swimmer. He’s like, you’re gonna go long and strong, long and strong. And I’m like, what? That’s not typical open water swimming. But he actually tried to change my stroke. He thought, oh, you catch is so beautiful. I’m gonna get you going long and strong. So it was like this long stroke and he wanted me to slow right down and do like, it was ridiculous. My stroke count was so low. And for me, because I used to like breathing every stroke and I still did in open water. It would change a little bit, but it kind of worked to an extent, but I just didn’t have that feel

that swimmer is hard. I just could never really get it. And I was doing okay. Like I come out just on the back of the front pack, like sometimes on a good day. And that was so important in triathlete coming out on the front pack. If you’re the second pack with the way that races are these days, you’re kind of screwed. And then I went to Siri Linley, my wife now, and she said, I’m gonna change your stroke rate. And I’m gonna change your stroke altogether. I’m like, oh God, here we go. I’m like, what was I then? Like 33, two years old and she’s changing my stroke. As best thing we could have done. It was like fast stroke rate, fast turnovers. We would do like 125, like 100 times 25s. And I was really fit. So it was flat out. Every single one, obviously it wasn’t flat out, flat out. But we’d be going like, you know, well, not that fast, but 15, 16 seconds for 25, leaving every 30. And we’d do a hundred of them. And she then she started doing it with a band only.

So I’d have a band around my legs. Just like get your stroke rate up. I’m like, I can’t hold this for 3.8K. Like, what are you doing? It’s just, it’s all about the stroke rate. Trust me on this. And so we do every week, 125s, 125s band only. And Leanne Decay was the world champion at the time and that she changed her stroke as well. And I ended up coming out of the YI men world champs in 2000 and it goes a long time ago. Still like 13, I think it was. And I led the swim with the great British girl who was a former swimmer and made like the Olympic trials as well in distance swimming. And I came out with her. We were nudging each other for the lead. And it was because I completely changed my stroke. And I give that cutoff to my wife. And that was, I think a real turning point because then I was coming out at the front in the swim. And it changed the whole game because you weren’t playing catch up the whole time.

So yeah, that was definitely a pivotal point in my career with my swim. I was already a really good runner, but coming out in the front in the swim for me was big. It was a big change. Big difference. And did you, what do you feel the difference in your stroke was like that in terms of effort? Like what was the difference in effort? Because obviously like longer, powerful, longer, more powerful strokes with a slower rating can be quite tiring because you’re having to use more, more power basically each time. Whereas you can kind of back it off. You can kind of go from that big gear. You can drop it down a little bit and just rate up. Yeah. What was it? What was the feeling like for you as the person doing that? Good question. I think like at first on my fitness, I just felt like it was really hard, cardiovascularly because I felt like I was just breathing out my throat the whole time. Like, because I’d have to kick,

like, well with the band, we weren’t, but I’d have to get the kicking as well. And I was like, you’re not supposed to kick in open water. Like you should just be doing like a four beat at the most, right? Or even a two beat. And I’d have to kick a lot to get out, to get that fast stroke rate. But then I learned to do it with a fast stroke rate and a lot less kick. And it was more about like streamline position and getting my hips up and everything like that and my body position. And I could hold the stroke without having to kick. So yeah, it was, first it was really hard, Cody had asked me like that. I felt like I had to, and I probably helped my swim fitness a lot because we did a lot of speed work as well, which sounds crazy for Ironman, but we did. And we changed the whole, even the swim sessions were completely different with Siri. Like it was like, I mean, we did a lot of max 50s and max 25s and flat out hundreds flat out.

I’d never done that. I always just did like, you know, a little bit of speed, but mostly endurance swimming. And so that was a game changer. I bought my swim fitness up and then I could just hold that eventually after a year if I could just hold that stroke rate. And it probably wasn’t as fast as I felt like it was. It felt like it was super fast, but I didn’t even know what it was, but it wasn’t, yeah, it was more just, yeah, the right sessions as well, the right training for open water and just having that strong catch with the band only. If you don’t have a fast stroke rate and you don’t have a good catch, like you’re just gonna sink. So yeah. Yeah, well, did you have a rough idea of what your stroke rate would have been? God, I’m trying to think. Siri would know, cause she had a stroke. I’m trying to remember. It’s measured per minute, right, normally? Yeah. So I mean, if you take it as like individual strokes,

you know, my guess, just without obviously seeing it, but my guess is you’d probably be up between 80 and 90 or maybe like low nineties, perhaps as a guess, you know? It was definitely above 90. I know that it was, I’m not that short. Like I think for shorter athletes, I’m a little taller. Like I’m, well, not that tall, five, what am I, five, seven and a half, five, eight. But yeah, it was definitely above 90. I know that 90 per minute, yeah. Yeah, yeah, wow. And in terms of cardiovascular effort, do you think in the beginning, it was more because you had to kick a lot harder and you had to sort of figure that out or was it just an overall effort? Yeah, I think both. And I think I had to change my breathing because I was always like long and slow and breathe every stroke, but I had that long stroke so I could afford to breathe every stroke. With the fast stroke, it was one, two, three, four. Like I was breathing two and four and two and four

and most, a lot of the time just four. Yeah, and that’s hard because it’s like, yeah, and I’d felt harder like on my lungs to like do four strokes and I felt like just my breathing was all stuffed up. But then when I started doing another thing she changed was bilateral, complete bilateral breathing, whereas Brett was always like one side because I felt so good breathing, God, I’m telling you, my right always, my right handed, but my right felt so good and I never reached my left and I used to think like, God, if the boys are on my left, I’m stuffed because like I could still look up inside, I could sight pretty well, but I’d rather be able to see them just while I’m breathing. So she changed to bilateral and that was like once I got the stroke rate going, like a bilateral for me worked really well. Like even though in a race, I wouldn’t always stick to that, I’d end up, so I don’t know what I did in a race, it wasn’t whatever felt good,

but in the pool, the bilateral really helped even up my stroke too, because I’d get a sore back from just breathing to the right and really sore back. And so the changing to bilateral to even up my stroke or either on the right and the way down, left on the way back, but bilateral for me seemed to work really well too with that faster stroke. Yeah, so it was bilateral in the terms of just one lap down, one lap the other way or? I breathe every three pretty much a lot of the time. Yeah. Yeah, gotcha. Yeah, but that’s how we would get into it. My left was terrible and it hurt my neck, but to practice it, she’d have me always right on the way down, left on the way back. So I was bringing the same position, but I’m always trying to do each side like each time to practice the left, because my left was shit. Mm, yeah. You should be able to breathe both, because if you do have like, you just never know what’s going to happen over water,

which way this one’s going to go, where the cans are, people around you, I think everyone should at least be able to practice by that trilly and whether they use it or not. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And a lot of people at least feel like they’re slower, breathing to one side and usually less comfortable to one side, but most will be surprised, I think. Like, if you do 100 meters, bring to your left, all right, get your time, then do 100 meters to your right and see if there’s a difference in time. Some people, a lot of people will surprise themselves, I think, in how either it’s the same pace, sometimes it’s actually faster, even though it doesn’t feel like it. Now that’s obviously not always the case, but yeah, I’ve seen that with a few summers and the thing about breathing to the other side, I try and get people to just see if they can feel what the difference is from one side to the other. And quite often it’s maybe where they’re breathing,

like they might be looking behind them or up high or the timing of their breath as well, they might be late to turn their head or just the rotation is different. Yeah, so can you figure out why you’re rubbish on the other side and see if you can even it up? Yep, so you teach that to a lot of bilateral? Yeah, well, I mean, like my general rule of thumb is whatever works for racing go with that and a lot of people that’s breathing to the one side, but I would definitely recommend being able to breathe to the other side and doing 20 to 40% of your session to that other side in training and just have that as a skill, have that as an option and that balance in strike, like I get a sore right shoulder if I’m just only breathing to the one side. So I’ll quite often do like, I’m in a 50 meter pool so I’ll go 25 left, 25 right most of the time and just even it up that way. And yeah, but I’d say 60, 70% of my sessions to the left,

but then I will mix in some right breathing strokes as well. I’ve got a question for you, funny question. But in the pool, I’ve never really watched it and observed it. For the top 1500 meter swimmers, did that breathing every stroke into to one side? Normally how do they switch it up and go, like, what do they usually do? What does he like, that he do? I wanna know, I’m gonna have to check it out. I’ve never really actually looked to see if she’s, I guess she’s looking at everyone else probably like checking them out anyway. Yeah, I’m not sure about Katie. I would imagine she’s like, she’d be probably doing one lap down, one side, one lap the other because there’s no way she’s doing like 15K a week just to the one side. And she probably did quite a bit of bilateral too, I reckon, especially for her more aerobic work. And then when it comes to like a race pace stuff or probably more threshold stuff, she’s probably just getting into that rhythm and tempo

that she’d do in a race, which is typically every two from memory. Yeah, but then I mean, you saw like Daniel Wiffen who won the 800 freestyle at the Olympics. He was breathing left on the way down, right on the way back for the race just to keep an eye on his competition. So that was quite unusual. And I think Titmus might have done that further, 800 as well from memory. So yeah, and it can change like, yeah. So, and I mean, her normal breathing pattern for the 400 is two four, two four. So you might have been the original there if you were doing two four in the early days. So… Well, I was half as fast as her. Yeah, there was… See triathletes can’t swim compared to swimmers. I’m just saying, like, they’re just got like nothing. Like, I mean, no disrespect at like our straight swimmers at just another level. It’s impressive. Well, one of the things that I found when I started, I did my season of triathlon was that

I got tighter through the shoulders just from running and riding and so my mobility just wasn’t the same. And then my legs were just heavier and stiffer through the hips and through the ankles. And I was like, yeah, okay, I get it. I can see why you’re moving the way you are in the water with the athletes I’m coaching because they’re just, it’s different. Like your body just changes. So you kind of have to adapt for it. So I ended up doing a lot more work with a pool boy, paddles and just kind of building that strength for open water. And yeah. Yeah, it’s just, it’s different. So that was a real eye-opening for me. Having always just swum a lot, being really mobile and flexible and then just getting tighter and stiffer. Yeah, couldn’t do the same things. When you like this for freaking like five hours on a good day, like that is not normal, right? It’s like, you’re like forward. You’re swimming like this, you’re biking like this.

Like, oh, you got, and you try not to run like that, but you’re up a back and you’re lower back. It’s just your thoracic, just gets a hammering. Oh, it gets, yeah, it gets so tight. Did you ever do any mobility work when you were in your professional phase? Not enough, but right now, like Erin Karrison who got actually, she’s amazing. I should set you up on a call with her. She’s brilliant. She was voted USA strength conditioning coach of the year. Two years in a row. She’s amazing. She was just in Paris with all the Olympic athletes and she’s really a giver. Like she would just, she would give back to the community and she’s just an amazing UMB, but she would coach our athletes with their mobility strength and still does. I didn’t do enough, but she does a lot of the Vipers staff and the mobility. And that was a game changer because if I’m losing my thoracic, especially for the run, because the run was my strength,

like if I’m losing my thoracic, I know I can run my three hour marathon. But if I was like tight, like too tight in my thoracic, your whole breathing, same with swimming, your breathing is all here. And we would do a lot, I didn’t do enough, but a lot of mobility stuff with her. And I think it’s so important. And it’s something that I don’t think enough adult triathletes and newbies do. It’s really, especially because like you said, you’re just stiff. And like if you’re new to the sport, you’re gonna be even more stiff because you’re not used to it. I think it’s a really something that’s, people don’t focus on enough. That’s interesting with the thoracic mobility because like it plays a huge part in your swimming and we see that a lot with people, like in their 40s, 50s, if they’re working at a desk job and doing triathlon, like they just have very limited rotation there. And then with the breathing, so I’ve found this, if I’ve been tight through my thoracic,

if I’ve ever done any breathing exercises where like I’m trying to get as much air in as I can, you can feel it through like the bottom of your ribs. You can feel it through there, where you just, you’re not able to expand as much, like if you’re doing this sort of deep breathing stuff. And I’ve actually like tweaked my back as a result of just doing breathing exercises because you don’t have that like, yeah, just don’t have the ability to expand through there because it’s too tight. So, which is ridiculous. Like you’re just breathing, but you think about your lungs just pushing those ribs out and if you can’t expand properly. Yeah, I’ll have to set you up with Aaron because I think that’s something that would help every triathlete. And I get a lot of like tradies that will come. I don’t even have to ask, I’m like, I want some swimming, they’re tough. They’re bad asses. And I’m like, duty you’re a tradie. And he’s like, yeah, so I can tell my,

you are just so tight in your pecs and your shoulders and those parts cause they’re building all day. Like, and they’re so tight. Like I’m like, you gotta do some mobility. You gotta stretch out those pecs, stretch out those lats. Like, yeah, it’s important. What do we think? Yeah, absolutely. And I think like swimming is just the best exercise for loosening up as well. Like even if they just throw in a little bit of backstroke here and there for recovery, just get those shoulders moving in the other direction. It goes a long way. And I’ll find if I’ve been in the water for a week, I tend to get pretty, pretty stiff. But as soon as I get like a good session in, that’s a couple of K and I’ve worked hard. Like you just feel a lot more mobile. You feel a lot looser. It’s really good because it’s your body weight supported by the water. And I always do like with our programs, they do their long bike or brick sat day,

long run Sunday, try to do legs off Monday. And that’s come from like Siri and Brett’s coaching because even though we swim hard on Monday, I used to hate it because we swim so hard, but you’re really not putting that weight bearing on your legs. So you can kind of get away with it even if you’re exhausted. I hated doing Monday hard swim, but it’s much better than doing a Monday hard, bark or hard run. And I see, even though it doesn’t feel like you’re recovering cardiovascularly, like the legs are still recovering really, no matter what they should do at a kick set or something. But that was kind of our go to that, the hard Monday swim, unless you’re totally screwed and stuff, but yeah, the hard Monday swim after a big leg day on sat day Sunday. Yeah. Yeah, and that’s pretty consistent across most swim squads that I’ve seen as well. It’s like Monday morning, that’s when we do our 10, 400s, that’s when we do our big session

or our threshold session. And it makes the rest of the week seem somewhat easy if you’ve done your big session then. But yeah, that’s right. It’s like great, great time to do it for most athletes who are doing their big sessions sat day Sundays. Yeah, I think that’s the way to go. Is there any other sort of lessons that you’ve learned along the way or things that you’ve picked up and you find apply to most people? God, I feel like there’s a lot, and you’re gonna laugh at it, but there’s a lot of like fit influencers out there, people that are like swim coaches or Ironman coaches. And some of them are really good, but a lot of the time like, and I’m not saying you have to have done Ironman or like Brett Sutton or being like in the sport, like actually competitive in the sport, but like, I feel like you gotta have some skin in the game in a sense that you’ve at least had like several years experience. So you can just do your Ironman certificate,

you can coach, like there’s nothing better than having like that. And for you, you’re a perfect example, like you swim for so many years and there’s very few swim coaches that can actually teach triathlon swimming. So you’re one of them. And I think it’s hard sometimes when you look at social media, you’re like, oh my God, what are you doing? What are you teaching? So I always say to my guys, and they’ll go, oh yeah, my mate did Ironman last year. He’s been doing it for 12 months. And he told me that I should on like, stop, stop. And then they’re spending like $3,000 on a Wahoo kicker and they don’t even know what power is. And I’m like, do you know what 400 watts means? Like it’s all powered away. It doesn’t matter what you’re pushing. Like, what do you weigh? And they’re like, I don’t know. And like just stop worrying about FTP right now in the first couple of years of your sport because like, yes, there is a time and a place

for an exoscience background, but like they’re so focused on metrics and data and numbers and I’m like, and heart rate. And I’m like, okay, let’s just get to the basics. Let’s go back to the basics and just stop listening to the noise and like focus with one coach. And yeah, that’s probably my biggest advice. Yeah, that’s such an important one. And I mean, I think we’ve all been guilty of it at times, you know, I’ve tried so many different things. I guess when it comes to maybe mobility for me or strength and stuff like that, like we just, we hear an idea and we think, oh, that could work for me. And we try a dozen different things in the space of six months. But if we never really stick with something, then we’re not gonna see the results of it. So it’s so easy to get sidetracked. And I think we put out a lot of videos and content. So, yeah, I like people who have seen like all of our videos, all of our, listened to all of our podcasts

and tried everything that I’ve talked about. And like I had someone come to a clinic maybe three weeks ago that said, yeah, I was trying this that you mentioned and this that you mentioned and like they’re all over the shop. And I said, look, all right, you’ve come to a clinic. These are the like three things that we’ve identified in the video. I want you to, this first one, all right, let’s just focus on that for a month. Like switch off your Instagram, switch off your social media in terms of like what you’re viewing and just focus on this and then move on to the next one from there because it’s just so easy to get distracted. And if you’re not spending enough time on those fundamentals and just like, just learning the real basics, then you long-term you’re gonna really stop yourself from improving short-term. Yeah, you might make a bit of an improvement, but long-term it’s just like consistency, fundamentals and just get really good at that.

Yep, yep. And I guess with swimming too, I guess the good thing is you don’t have like, there’s not a lot of like, well, there it’s a lot of innovation with swimsuits and goggles and stuff like that and the way people train, but triathlon is crazy because you can get like these bikes, these like $20,000 bikes, but you can’t even ride like more than like 15 miles an hour and you see them sitting up on their hoods with an aero holo. Don’t waste money on that. Let’s like gain like 10 minutes of the swim first and then spend 20 grand on a bike. But I mean, if you can afford to do it, but then you see them sitting up, no aero position, I’m like, whoa, what’s going on here? So yeah, fundamentals, so important. Yeah, absolutely. And the thing is it’s not sexy and it doesn’t sell, but it’s like, it’s the only thing that really counts in the long run. So that’s just how it is. But I think once you’ve got an athlete and you’ve sold them on your way of your approach

and they trust you and believe in you and the way that you’re going to work with them, then you can really just go, look, this is what we’re going to do. And if you stick with this for six months, I guarantee you’re going to see the results from it, but there’s a lot of noise and yeah, it can be hard to just not be sidetracked by it, I think. Yeah, what sort of metrics would you, do you use for swimming? Cause I just say like, let’s just think like swimmers use the pool clock cause a lot of the time my guys, they don’t even know what time they’re coming in on cause they’re using their garment all the time. And I’m like, firstly, you hit it like two seconds after you hit the wall, it’s probably inaccurate. Your heart rate is probably inaccurate cause you’re not wearing a chest strap. Like let’s forget it. Let’s just swim like swimmers and like use the pool clock. Like you need to learn to use the pool clock and know your times and know what you’re coming in on.

Like what’s your approach there with like the garment and stuff like that? So I’ve never, I’d never really used the garment at all. And the last couple of weeks I’ve just, for any, for some sessions, I’ve just hit start and then just done the auto stop and start feature. And it’s been so, it’s been so inaccurate with like counting my laps and stroke counts and like times and stuff. And so I just like, I don’t even look at it until the end cause I just want to track my distance and get a rough idea of my distance for the, for my like, you know, weekly volume. But I’m not using it for anything productive. It’s just like, I want to see what it spits out for me. I’m glad it raises pages me. Yeah, yeah. Like, so, and I wear the form goggles once or twice a week and that’s much more accurate. And it gives you, it gives you an accurate pace and all that sort of stuff. So I, if you’re looking at metrics with any electronic device

that I think forms actually accurate. Whereas garments not cause it’s just obviously on the wrist goggles are a lot more accurate cause it’s on your head. But yeah, in terms of like times and stuff, yeah, use the, use the pull clock. And I really like perceived effort stuff as well. Like just tuning into how you’re feeling. Amen brother. Amen. You’re preaching.

Cause it’s, yeah. It’s just like, cause you’re not going to be checking your pace in, in a race. Like it’s just all based on that perceived effort. Right. So you’ve got, yeah. You’ve got to be in tune with it. I think like, I love the perceived effort stuff over anything else. Music to my ears. And it is, it’s way harder in the pool to get it right. Cause I remember we used to get that thing. You probably did too. Back in the day, I don’t know what they do with heart rate now. I guess they have some fancy. I think it would literally be like, I don’t know, even Dennis Kothra would use it and he’d drop it in the pool and it had like a sponge on it. And we just hold it to our heart, to get our heart rate. Oh yeah. Yeah. It’s going back. Isn’t it? Wow. I know. In the 2000s. But yeah, I mean, take it manually if you don’t like that. Really the most accurate way is to honestly take it manually. I said to my guys, kind of for 10 seconds at times it by six.

But yeah, but I’m a big perceived effort person because I mean, looking at your watch, look at your heart rate and your time, like in a race in the swim, firstly you can’t do it and he’s looking at actually going to make you swim faster. Just go as hard as your bloody can and looking at your watch is not going to make you go any faster. So yeah, I’m all for a rate of perceived effort, listen to your body, know how, know how it feels. I think once you’re in tune, you know what pace you’re on. Like I can, I could pretty much, you would to guess almost exactly what time I’m on without even looking at the clock. So yeah. Yeah, yeah, it’s exactly right. And so yeah, though I’m a big fan of that. And then yeah, with the form goggles, like I have converted quite a bit with them over the last few years, like they sent me a pair a couple of years back and I was like, I doubt I’m going to use these because I’m anti-tech and just traditional swim background.

But I have, I really like the, like just seeing my pace when I hit the wall, especially if we’re doing like a, like a VO2 set or a heart rate set where it might be like, you know, say 10-1’s best average on two. I can see what I’m going out in. I can see what I do when I touch the wall and that’s accurate. So there’s really good uses for that. But yeah, the garment is just so inaccurate. And if people are giving their stroke counts. We’d love you, but we just don’t, not advocates. Yeah, at least not for swimming. You know, it’s not. So when I did a post one day and I wrote get rid of the garment and everyone’s like, what are you talking about coach? But Siri, like coach and athlete, this is a real quick funny story on metrics, right? Training peaks, you know, training peaks. So we knew the founder of the company and they were at Hawaii. Miranda Coffrey had won the world championship and she’s going back to one again.

She won again the second time Siri had coached a three world championship titles in the Hawaii Ironman. Everyone knows Miranda Coffrey, if you don’t, we need to know her. She’s retired now, but she was the best Australian athlete in Ironman that there was. And she did like she had just her, she had her garment on her bike and they said, they said, holy cow, Miranda’s like splits, well, like her power numbers was so even, like she held 210 the whole way. Like that was maybe 250 kilos or something. Maybe it was a little less cause, but anyway, it was about 3.5 watts per kilo, which for a female pro is about right. You got the man away a little more now, but he said, how did the training peaks were all right? And so how does she do it? How does she do it? She’s so evenly paced and Siri’s like, she wasn’t looking at her power. And they were like, she wasn’t looking at her power. She was looking at her cadence. And yes, it changes with heels

and you gotta be, but the main time when it was like, she would try to stick exactly 80 cadence, 80, 82, I think it was. And that was a game changer. And they were like, they were, she was laughing cause they were expecting this like scientific answer onto how she had this even power. And it was all just cadence. She just looked at her cadence all the time. So. Wow. Yeah, it’s interesting, isn’t it? Yeah. And it just goes to show you can do, you can just, you get, we’ve gone so far with just like out but perceived effort for so long that like there’s, there’s time and a place for using data, but you can get so far with just tuning into your body and how you feel. And yeah, cause I think it’s so easy to get distracted by other things. And like one thing that I’ve, I’m really trying to advocate for people who, if they’re in a bit of a rut with their swimming or they’re in a plateau, like just get rid of any tech, go for a swim,

don’t even worry about your times. Just feel what it’s like to be in the water and just moving through there and enjoying it. And just like, remember how fun or how good it can feel to just have that water flowing over your head and your ears and your shoulders and just, you know, moving freely through the water. It’s like, if I’m just in a bit of a, bit of a rut with my swimming, it’s like, yeah, I’ll go and do a K, K and a half, just roll the arms over, maybe just do some drills and some kicking and stuff. And it’s like, all right, I’m kind of getting there, getting just used to being supported by the water and that feel, that feel of it. I think that’s a really good way to go because it’s easy when you, if you’re in a squad, if you’re always like looking at your watch, it’s just like, you don’t appreciate what you’ve got. And I think just being able to appreciate it, being kind of grateful for it and just having a bit of like playtime in the water,

that goes a long way. Yeah, I agree. I haven’t been doing that on the bike in the run too. The long runs, I’m like, hey, get rid of your garment on a long run. Like, I just want you to go easy. You should be able to torque the whole time, time in the legs. Like, yes, if you, there’s times to run hard. Like, obviously we would do really hard sessions throughout the week. The long run day, like most of the time I’m like, go out and get a two hour easy run in the legs. And it’s still a two hour run. It’s still hard. But like don’t want to hold like seven, 30 mile pace in your long run because when you want to have it in the bank in the reserve for your hard run sessions through the week, like it’s not going to be there because you’re running a 160 heart rate for your long easy run. That’s not easy. It’s in the gray zone the whole time. So yeah, I’m totally with you on that. Yeah. And that like that long run, if that’s a run where,

if you can get out into nature, go exploring some trails or just like, like it’s just so good mentally too. You know, I try and just find new places to run and explore and get lost a little bit. And yeah. I love just finding new trails. Like anyone, like there’s so many amazing places to run where you are too. Like there’s some great places to go. But I try to get my guys to get, get off the treadmill. You are not running a tour, I run on the treadmill. Like get the oxytocin, get outside. And you feel different when you’re finished too, don’t you? When you’ve done it outside. Yep. Yep. You need to make a comeback. I think Brent needs to do another Ironman. I think Siri and I should cope in. Getting to Hawaii.

The one thing I said to my wife as soon as I crossed that finish line was, never let me do that again.

No matter what I tell you, never let me do that again. Absolutely.

But then two days later, did you go, you have to probably do another one. Yeah, but I just, it was so vivid that feeling. And what I said to my wife at the end, I’m like, yeah, no, don’t convince yourself because I say it happened all the time for people. But like I know it was, it was the bike I, I didn’t ride enough in the lead up to it. I spent way too much time swimming because I wanted to win the swim. And so I just was under prepared for the bike. Yeah. And the run was okay, but yeah, third lap of the, the last lap of three, it just like, yeah, a truck, a truck hit me. And I was all smiles and high-fives for the first two laps. I’m like, what? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, just the, yeah. That’s about a truck hits everyone about about 10K to go. So don’t worry, you’re not alone. Yeah, that was not fun. But I’m so glad I did it. Like I love the process. I was down to like 78 kilos and I’m normally around like 84, 85.

And I just didn’t notice it like dropping away. And my wife was like, yeah, your arms were so skinny. And like, I didn’t notice it at the time. Do you notice it in the pool for like buoyancy and stuff? Or not really? Like, cause you had less body fat or? I wasn’t conscious of it. I just felt like I wasn’t swimming like I used to. Like I just felt, because of that stiffness and all of that, I don’t think I paid attention to it. But that’s an interesting point. Like if having lost six kilos of fat and a little bit of muscle like it, yeah, that’s quite a lot. That’s quite a bit to not have me to, you know, to float. So yeah. That’s interesting. But that’s the good thing. Like we’re pretty fortunate in triathlon. Most of the time on the speed suit does help. But the wetsuit, I mean, I joke with my athletes. So I was like, I just gotta get you stroke, right? You could fart and like float along the water. Like don’t worry.

Like the wetsuits now, like they’re amazing. Like I was sometimes like eight seconds per 100, like on a sprint. Not, it’s crazy. Like it’s really lucky that we are able to use them a lot of the time. So they’re super fast. It takes care of a lot of those fundamentals in the stroke, doesn’t it? It’s like it keeps you pretty long, keeps you quite taught through the middle. Good buoyancy. Your legs don’t have to do a whole lot. So yeah, it does cover a lot of those bases. And that’s why I think for many people, that higher rating that you were talking about goes a long way. And if you’ve got the strength and the fitness to hold that rating for a lot of people that, you know, your speed comes from that because you’ve got good body position and everything. So yeah, that’s interesting. That’s why I had to change my approach as a swim coach going to coaching triathletes. I had to be okay with them not looking perfect in the water, which was a good change.

And they love the buoy. And, you know, they love the pool boy. So they call it buoys here, but they love the pool boy. And I don’t let them use it all the time, but I also like say we do it in a three K set. I would let them use it for a kilometer or some of the warmup because like in the, in the most of the time open water you’re in a swimsuit in a wetsuit. And it does feel a little bit like having a buoy between your legs. Totally. Yeah. Same with the buoyancy shorts. Same with the floating pants. It’s like… How good of those? I bet you was a swimmer. You put them out and thought, they’re bloody cheating. What’s going on? Well, I’ve never used them yet, but half my swim squad is wearing them now. So they’re just, they’re running through the swim squad and I’m getting beaten by these guys now. So… They’re going to be, I don’t know, I reckon like three or four seconds per hundred. Sure. Yeah, right. Especially for anyone who seems like it’s just,

it’s going to help you even more. So yeah, I’m just reluctant to give in because I know I’m going to have a hard time getting rid of them. That’s going to be addictive. So it’s like drugs. It’s like, yeah, never, I’m never going to try it because, you know, I feel like that’s not, I just can’t get started. So same thing with the buoyancy shorts. Yep. Yep. Good point. Don’t begin. Bec, for anyone who’s listening to this, we’ll obviously include your Instagram and all that sort of stuff in our show notes, but for anyone listening, what’s the best way to get in contact with you and reach out? Yeah, it would be my Instagram. I just changed it. Oh my God, I don’t even remember what it’s called. Let me see. I think it’s just bec underscore keat because most of people know me as Bec keat, not Rebecca keat, because my name’s spelled R-E-B-E-K-A-H. So it’s just bec underscore keat, which is B-E-K underscore keat. Feel free to follow my non-profit too, guys.

I think when triathletes, the hardest thing for me was retiring and because I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was like, what do I do now? Like I can coach, but it really didn’t, I wanted more. So we ended up going into a non-profit and we rescue horses from slaughter and all the money I make in coaching triathlon and in my fitness group goes towards something greater than myself, which is saving horses from abuse and neglected slaughter. So check out my Believe Ranch and Rescue as well. We’ve saved 311 horses now. And I think when you have that why, you know, I know it’s crazy we have 32 we take care of, but who would have thought of triathlete would be doing this? But it really, it’s like, it’s very fulfilling and I love it even more than coaching. So you can check that out too. That’s awesome. Well, we’ll include those links as well in the show notes. Bec, it’s been great having you on. I feel like we’ve just been able to have a yarn,

have a chat about swimming and triathlon, which I love and I feel like we could go for a lot longer as well. So I appreciate you being on. I’ll absolutely have you back on as a guest down the track as well, because we’ve only just touched the surface, I think. So thank you so much for being a guest on the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

Summers don’t necessarily take strength training as seriously, nor do they think that they have to because, you know, they think, well, I’m in the water anyway, working out in the gym doesn’t necessarily transfer those same skills in the pool. And that’s far from the truth. The best lessons learned are the ones that you go through the process of. Like you have to figure it out yourself and it’ll always be a part of you. I can tell all of my athletes like, hey, strength training is going to turn your life, turn your swimming career around and they’ll hear it. But yeah, it’s always those that like take that step and they’re like, all right, I actually want to improve my swimming. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

In this episode of the Effortless Swimming Podcast, we dive deep into the world of injury prevention, strength training and performance optimization with none other than Dr. Sandra Harrell, a five-time All-American swimmer and expert in physical therapy. With over 25 years of experience and a keen eye for biomechanics, Dr. Harrell has a wealth of knowledge to share, not just about staying injury free, but also about how to maximize your potential in and out of the water. Are you making the most of your strength training routine or could your current habits be setting you up for failure? Dr. Harrell breaks down why consistent strength training is non-negotiable for swimmers and triathletes and how nutrition plays a critical role in muscle recovery and the secrets to building a routine that sticks. Plus, she reveals how to leverage technology to track your progress and ensure that your training smarter, not harder.

If you’re serious about swimming, triathlon, or you just want to stay fit as your age, you don’t want to miss Dr. Harrell’s insights on how to maintain longevity in your sport and keep your body performing at its best. Tune in to discover actionable tips that could transform the way you train and recover. Sandra Harrell, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for jumping on with me. Thank you so much for having me today. So where does this story start for you, your background in swimming? But what caused the transition to come across and start working with athletes on their strength and rehab? Was there a certain moment in your career or in your life where you started to make that transition and thought, this is what I really want to do? Absolutely. I always feel like it starts with personal experience, right? And so I competed and I swam at UC San Diego for four years in my college there and there I was a five time NCAA All-American

and a former two time pull record holder there. And but during those four years, you know, it was a lot of tough swimming but also a lot of injuries and going into college. Actually, I was already injured with the shoulder issue and, you know, I never really got the right treatment. I never sought the right care out. I didn’t know who to look for really. And this was, you know, over a decade ago. So it’s not like social media was a big thing. You really just had to go and look into like the medical directory to figure out what provider you’re even supposed to look for. And so I didn’t get I didn’t have the resources that I needed to compete at my best. So I competed, you know, all four years in college injured and it kind of tainted my experience in swimming. You know, quitting wasn’t really an option. I didn’t want to give up a sport that I love to do. But at the same time, the sport gave me so much pain day in and day out.

And so that’s kind of what I realized near the tail end of my swimming career that, you know, I don’t want future youth athletes. And, you know, collegiate athletes are really any type of athlete, right? You’re a weekend warrior or professional to have to deal with pain while wanting to train at the level of their preference. So I went into physical therapy and rehabilitation. I ended up getting my doctorate there. I also got my master’s in exercise science and health promotion. And so with that, I actually took a step, a big step away from swimming. I kind of forgot about it, actually, during my graduate studies and went into, you know, the clinical aspect and health care and worked in the hospitals for a while. And it just, you know, I just was burning out really quickly in a career that I had just began. And it took a lot of introspection and self reflection for me to realize or remember why I went into the field to begin with.

And so I took about like a year or two off from just seeing patients from working in hospitals and outpatient clinics and realize that, hey, I really missed swimming. That’s still something I was really passionate about. You know, I no longer was competing at that point, but I always looked forward to the chance to swim, you know, whenever I got the chance to and at the time I was lifting a lot more just to help continue maintenance of like my own rehab at one dot. And so, oh, I guess to backtrack, I ended up getting hip surgery because of labral tear in college. And so that’s kind of what led me down the rehab track.

And yeah, so, you know, kind of a long winded story. But ultimately, I came back to swimming and realized like, hey, why not treat the population and kind of give back to the sport that gave me so much, you know, joy in my youth and, you know, give back to these athletes that are super dedicated. But, you know, maybe they don’t have the right provider who understands, you know, the demands of physical and emotional and mental demands of swimming and the sport of swimming. So that’s where we’re at here. Well, hindsight’s always 20-20. When you look back at your own injuries that you had through swimming, what would you do differently now that you’ve got the experience that you have? If I if I had known, I would have looked at my nutrition much differently. I would have integrated strength training much earlier as well as, you know, taking some even minor injuries more seriously because minor injuries tend to be indicative of potentially future

and or reoccurring injuries. So somebody who, you know, may have a, for example, you know, a constantly sprained ankle, right, as a kid. They tend to respray that ankle over and over over time, you know, due to lax ligaments, right, and prior history of injuries, making those ligaments more susceptible to re-injuring. And so that same mindset and that same, you know, idea is, you know, transfers over to swimming as well, you know, somebody who has, quote, unquote, Summers’ Shoulder, which actually is a little bit misleading. You know, most people think, oh, I have Summers’ Shoulder. It’s one singular thing, but it really is just kind of a general name for shoulder pain. And, you know, somebody says, I have shoulder pain. That is not a diagnosis. There’s there’s nothing about it that tells me what you have. And so it can be various things like rotator cuffed hairs. It can be bursitis. It can be labral tears.

It can be impingement. It can just be a whole, a whole host of different injuries and conditions. And so, you know, somebody with, quote, unquote, Summers’ Shoulder. It can be one thing, but now it leads to other things down the line. And so I think, you know, having taken seriously of those things and making sure my nutrition was better, hydration, sleep, you know, stress management and strength training, starting a strength program in high school, you know, would have probably saved a lot of headache and heartache down the line. And I think that that’s still something swimming as a sport, you know, in the world of swimming. That’s still something that isn’t common, I think. Most Summers don’t necessarily take strength training as seriously, nor do they think that they have to, because, you know, they think, well, I’m in the water anyway. Why does the, you know, working out in the gym doesn’t necessarily transfer those same skills in the pool.

And that’s far from the truth.

Yeah, exactly right. But one of the things you mentioned there was nutrition. So what mistakes were you making with your nutrition back then? Was it in terms of the recovery? Was it in terms of having enough protein after you? Oh, you weren’t really probably doing much strength training. But what were those mistakes that you were making early on? It was both, you know, I think as a youth and even well into college to our college university at the time, we didn’t have a dietitian. You know, we didn’t really have any nutrition coaching specifically for our team. And so, you know, with training anywhere from three to six hours a day, you know, between lifting weights in college and swimming, you know, who knows how much yardage and how much distance as well as in the youth, you know, and being also, you know, and unfortunately, being a female, right, we tend to have these societal and cultural pressures to be thin.

And the problem is, you know, being thin and being an athlete, it’s it’s hard to do both. You cannot, you know, be a very strong and high performing athlete if your goals are to remain thin and, you know, just societal pressures of like girls not wanting to bulk up, girls not wanting to eat, you know, because they’re afraid of, say, getting fat or gaining weight. All of those pressures, you know, affected me as well as many of my female teammates. And so a lot of us were, you know, under eating, under eating in terms of maybe calories, but maybe overeating in terms of various macronutrients, right? We maybe were overeating carbs and fats and under eating protein. And it’s making sure that we are having the right ratios of each macronutrient. And that’s what kind of helps best fuel athletes.

Yeah, it’s something that I, when I look back on my early swimming career, I was certainly not having enough fuel during the session, during those bigger sessions where it might be five, six, maybe seven Ks. And we’re working, I think back to how, how hard some of the sessions were, like, it’s like seven or eight, two hundreds of butterfly. We’re doing like some 400 medleys. And it’s just like, it was massive training. And I don’t recall ever having anything during a session. It’s like, and it’s like, but that, as you said, with like social meter and the internet, like it’s just, knowledge has really just, it’s abundant. And I think we can, can be a lot better educated these days and it’s so much easier. So that’s a huge advantage that we have these days. But I think the other, the downside to that is information overload. And it can just feel like it’s too much. So sometimes when we have that information overload, we don’t do anything with it

because we’re afraid to make a decision. I think it might be the wrong decision, but a decision is better than no decision in many cases. So have you seen anything in relation to that in terms of the strength training, in terms of the nutrition where someone comes to you and they’re like, well, I’ve tried this, I’ve tried this, I’ve tried this, but none of it seems to work. Maybe it’s because they haven’t stuck to it for long enough. Like what are you seeing on your end when you have people come to you? Oftentimes, so I’m going to categorize my youth versus my my youth versus like my adult clients and athletes, right? So my youth, in terms of nutrition, they tend to under-consume what they need in terms of energy. These are also these are also the athletes that are consistently swimming two to four hours a day, right? Because they’re on a team, they have the time and the energy to do so. Usually my adult athletes, unless they’re, you know, training for a triathlon,

unless they’re a professional athlete, then they don’t. They really just train like once a day for like maybe an hour with masters, for instance. So for my youth, you know, they tend to be under-consuming in terms of what they should be eating and they are under-hydrating, which will negatively affect their performance as well as cognition and how they do in school too, right? In terms of strength training, you know, it’s it’s non-existent to see a youth athlete’s lift. And that is something that I’m working to change. That is something that I want to integrate into my club team and that I’ve started this year. And that’s something that I want to help and educate to other, you know, swim clubs as well, youth swim clubs that, you know, strength training is just as vital as the amount of hours and the quality of your sets in the pool, you know, it’s people tend to think it’s a supplement if they even include it, but especially for, you know, somebody who’s a sprinter.

So in terms of my very young youth swimmers, you know, who are, you know, say 12, 13 and under, I don’t expect them to specialize. They should probably get some reps swimming the mile as well as the 50 free, you know, as well as the 400 I am. They they need to learn to be versatile. I think that’s really important in terms of just general development as an athlete in terms of mental and physical resilience, right? To be able to do the mile versus like sprinting a 50. But it’s also important in terms of like development of motor control, endurance and, you know, the ability to minimize repetitive stress injuries over time. So it’s crucial there with strength training for them. And that’s something that I want to integrate. And, you know, especially for the maybe teenage swimmers that are 13 and up, where now they start to specialize. And maybe they’re looking into swimming in college, you know, and especially sprinters, you know, strength training

is an equal part in pool training because you don’t necessarily need to be training, you know, 10,000 meters a day as a sprinter, right? You need to be you need to have more specialization in your training. You need to have more power training. And that’s something that, you know, lifting proper strength program and a performance program is going to help you do that without having to add too many repetitive stress injuries, right? And so for my adult athletes and my adult clientele, they tend to, you know, maybe over consume their nutrients, their macronutrients, and they’re not prioritizing the right ones. So they tend to under consume protein and over consume carbohydrates, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but that will affect some goals that they would have. You know, should it be weight loss, fat loss, optimizing performance and muscle development? So that’s where I see issues in terms of nutrition for my adult.

As for strength training, I think, you know, it’s fantastic that our society now is embracing lifting a lot more, you know, into your 80s, 70s and 80s, right? And I think that’s fantastic. And it’s embraced now in women as well. So that’s great. But there again is still that stigma that, oh, you know, lifting will make you bulky, you know? And that’s something that I still have to remind and educate many of my female clientele, you know, and athletes that like, hey, you’re going to have to have like a very specific bodybuilder program and lift like seven days a week and lift like two to four hours a day to have that concern for the general population. Absolutely. You get the word to lift seven days a week, you know, and most people don’t. Even if you were to lift seven days a week an hour a day, that is not enough to make you bulky by any means. So those are some of the things that, you know, I enjoy educating my clients with.

And I think that it seems to be always so liberating, you know, when they realize that there are areas that they have yet to maximize to hit their potential. So, yeah. And when you say lifting, are you talking about a certain group of exercises or just you referring to general strength training? General strength training, yes. Gotcha. And where should the average adult start when it comes to strength training? Would it require gym equipment? Could they do body weight work? Where would you tend to start people? So it depends on the age group, right? So for example, if we’re talking about adults in their 20s, most of them tend to be, you know, if we’re talking about the male population, most of them tend to be relatively strong. So you can start with calisthenics and body weights. Sure. Same with women. However, you know, in our younger adult population, they tend to be fairly strong already. So I actually would recommend, you know, doing weights, using free weights,

using machines, something that will provide more resistance than your typical body weight because, you know, you can do as much body weight work as you want. Over time, your body adapts to it. So at some point, it’s like, say, the equivalent would be, say, you know, you haven’t swam in like five years and now you’re doing 10 100s on the 130 meters, 10 100 meters on 130. And that’s tough to do, right? Having not swam for five, you know, five years or so. But then you do that same set day in, day out. You do that for about two years. You know, that’s going to be super easy. It’s the same set, right? But your body has adapted to it. So now, you know, two, three years in doing the same set in the same interval at 130, you’re actually slowing down eventually, right? Because you’re not being challenged. And that’s the same analogy I would provide to, you know, my 20s and 30 year olds who are lifting maybe light weights and body weight because it’s like, you’re strong.

You know, the body is super resilient. Even if you were starting in your 50s and 60s, you’d be surprised with how strong you’d be. You know, you are. So generally, I would say like, you need to lift some sort of weight, whether it’s, whether it’s five, 10 pounds to start off with. And then progressing to more barbell work, doing more compound lifts, you know, getting under heavier weights, you know, that is, it’s loaded. It’s progressive loading, right? Just progressively increasing the load to fit your current capacity. But to challenge it just one step ahead. So your body isn’t adapting necessarily to your current workload.

So yeah, that’s kind of where I would start when it’s critical, especially as we hit 30 for women, because bone density decreases a percentage for every year, starting at 30 for women. And so you run into issues like osteopenia, osteoporosis for women. And then that tends to start for men as they enter their 40s with various changes in their hormones. So very important to start lifting the earlier the better, but it’s never too late to start.

Yeah, definitely. I’ve seen that across the board with athletes or swimmers and triathletes that that have actually started doing some strength training that have gone from essentially none. And the first couple of months, like it’s, I don’t see them get a huge benefit in the first couple of months because they feel a bit heavier, like their body is sort of changing. But then once they get accustomed to it and they get used to it, then we start to see the progression from there. And I’ve got some friends who are going through that now. They’ve just started some strength training, time for a bit slower. They’re a bit sluggish in the water, but as long as I stick through it, they stick to it, they’re going to see some really good results from that. And you know, a general guideline that I tell all of my athletes and my clients is that like you don’t see any there. There is not any notable strength gains until about six to eight weeks of

consistent strength training and consistent strength training would mean you’re lifting at least twice a week, not even once a week. So if you’re just lifting once a week, the amount of work required to see progress is going to take probably double the time, right? You’re just not building, breaking down muscle at a consistent and steady enough pace to see change quick enough. But if you’re lifting at least twice a week to maybe even three times a week, you’re going to see those gains a lot quicker. And so typically I tell my athletes, you know, who are consistent, give yourself about eight weeks, give yourself two months, OK? Of being consistent, stick to it, keep progressing. And then you’re going to really see notable performance differences after that, especially when you are consistent with it. Because the first, you know, one to two months of lifting, a lot of that is just, you know, tearing down your muscles.

You’re just super sore, super stiff all the time, especially if you haven’t lifted in some time, right? And so that’s, you know, and yeah, so that’s the thing people think that, oh, I lift, you know, working out means I’m building muscle. Actually, it’s quite the opposite. You work out and you actually break down muscle. That’s why you get sore. You get micro tears in your muscles. So the more you train, the harder you train, the more you’re breaking down muscles. You’re in more of like a catabolic state. And so that’s where nutrition comes in, right? Nutrition is a thing that helps build muscle. It puts you in an anabolic state. And that is what helps you rebuild your muscle and helps with muscle protein synthesis is really making sure you’re eating enough protein for your particular physique, you know, for your body weight. So for someone who is doing gym, what would you recommend they do to make sure that they can can eventually build that muscle

and that they’re refueling with the right macronutrients afterwards? And when should they take that? So for the general population, I would think that most people are under consuming protein. But if somebody is particularly training hard, both in the pull on and the gym, they really need to prioritize protein. And, you know, research shows that, you know, you need about 30 grams of protein in a single sitting for your body to start that process of muscle building. And it’s not just protein that you need. You also need carbs to help with activating and synthesizing protein to get that process started. So it’s not like I’m saying like cut out carbs, cut out fats. All you need is protein. You need all three macronutrients. It’s all very, very important. The protein is what’s going to help with rebuilding your muscle fibers and helping you to become stronger and whatnot. In terms of how often we should be consuming meals, right?

You you definitely want to train or you don’t want to train when you’re in a catabolic state, meaning, you know, you’re kind of hungry, you haven’t had anything to eat. So the great prime example is training first thing in the morning, right? We wake up and simmers are notorious to go and swim at five in the morning and not eat anything, right? Because who wakes up at three and eats a full on breakfast? Most of us don’t. So they tend to wake up, you know, maybe have some water or and then they head to the pool. And so you are training in a very, you know, a catabolic state and you’ve already been fasting for who knows, six to eight hours of sleeping, right? So your body is further breaking down. You’re not maximizing your training session. And then after that, sometimes, you know, people don’t have an appetite after training so hard, right? And so now you’re further going into a catabolic state and kind of degrading the muscle that you do have, right?

The body, the physique that you had to have. So, you know, I do recommend, you know, having something maybe easy to consume, whether it’s a protein shake, whether it’s, you know, fruit pouches or applesauce, you know, or even like a glass of chocolate milk, something to fuel yourself during practice. And then after practice, you know, as soon as you can have like a solid meal, you know, with protein, with carbs, with fat.

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And one of the things that I’ve found to be most helpful, not just with nutrition, but also training is having making things as easy as possible. And for me, it’s like I buy these protein bars fairly natural. They’re not too bad. They’re wide in bulk and I’ve just got a couple in the car. I’ve got some of my swim bags so that whenever I’m driving home from training, which might take 20, 25 minutes, I’ve got something there all the time. So it’s just easy and I don’t need to think about it. So same thing with going to training, pack my bag the night before. Put it by the door so I can wake up at 430 in the morning. I’m half asleep, but I don’t have to think. And it’s just this you make things as easy as possible. And then the similar with gym training, I’ll typically do things at the same time on the same days. So I’ve got this routine and the gym that I go to, I’ve got a program that I follow. And it’s just been this incremental buildup in terms of the weights

that I’m doing. So again, I don’t have to think a lot about it. I can just go there and do it. And it sounds silly, but it’s like it’s those little things that make it easier to do that’s going to actually make you follow through with it, because even like I can’t remember where I read it, but it was in a book that it’s like, even if you put like a, if you’ve got a rower or a treadmill and that’s in a room that might be downstairs compared to upstairs where you spend most of your time, even that small thing of having it in a room that’s a little bit further away means you’re 50 percent less likely to use it. It’s like those. Yeah, it seems silly, but you’ve got to make things as accessible, as easy as possible if you’re going to follow through with them. Exactly. Reduce the barriers to entry, right? And this is for anything, whether it is to go to practice, whether it is to eat, it’s just, you know, making it so easy

that it’s, you know, it’s just second nature, just grab something, you know, and not have to plan. So I I highly encourage meal prepping. I think that’s the best way, right? To make sure that you are fueling properly. Does it take a little bit extra effort? Absolutely. But you don’t necessarily have to, like, create a whole new meal, you know, just maybe make a lot of one meal before. And then if you’re open to leftovers, that is your, you know, meal. That is what you consume the next day for lunch and whatnot. And, you know, protein, protein bars are great. You know, they’re a great supplement, especially when, you know, you’re on the go. So I think I think that’s great. Yeah. And in terms of the programming that you’re doing for athletes, how do you make it so that they are progressively overloading so they know exactly what to do? Are you using types of software or apps? Like what’s your standard process there?

Yeah. So currently I’m on Train Heroic. And so that is an online coaching app. And what I do with my athletes is that, especially if I do a lot of one-on-one work with them, right? I the first week that I have with them, you know, well, I get them on boarded, you know, I send them an intake form and I kind of get their baseline level of what I believe or what they think they do, you know, and how they, you know, compete and train and how much they lift. Because most often people tend to overestimate their abilities and that’s OK, you know. And so but I’d like to see where they are mentally and what they, how they perceive themselves, you know, because that’s going to play into how they push themselves later on as well. And then so the first week, I’ll customize a program for them specifically to whatever their goals are, whether it’s athletic, whether it’s health related, whether it’s weight loss, you know,

and I get a list of all the activities that they want to do as well. You know, if they’re just a summer, then my program is going to be specifically strength and mobility. OK, if they’re a triathlete, you know, same thing, you know, if their goals are more, say, health related and weight loss, then I’d be programming some strengths, some mobility and some form of cardio, whether it’s swimming, running, cycling. And if somebody is injured and they’re coming to me for more of like physical therapy or like rehab coaching for an injury, then their program is going to look really different, right? Because it’s going to be very much involved with improving their current condition before I transition them into a full body performance program. But regardless, the first week is always going to be a measure of their baseline of I’ll put in weights of what I believe they are capable of doing just based on what the intake,

what they filled out in the intake. And so and then from there, what’s great about the app is for every session, it calculates a readiness score for me. So I’m able to kind of measure their stress, their mood, their energy, their sleep, their workload and kind of gauge, you know, like if they’re also swimming and training on top of what I’m doing, if they’re overtraining, right? If they’re burning out, if they’re at risk for injuries or illness, especially when they score very low consistently, right? And so that gives me information that like, hey, I need a taper down when I progress you each week, right? I’m going to take all of that data. I’m going to progress you a bit slower or maybe just maintain, all right? That way your body can catch up. You know, maybe we don’t work as hard with me because, you know, maybe during practice or when you’re training with your triathlon club or with your some team, you know,

they’re not going to have one workout and you follow it, right? But if you’re coming to me, I have a more customized approach. I can tailor it to your needs. So if this week you need a little bit more recovery, I tone down the intensity of lifting and I wrap up more mobility, more recovery work, give you more tips and cues on how to increase your nutrition, your hydration and sleep and sleep hygiene, right? And stress management skills. If you’re scoring high on the readiness score, then I know I can push you a little bit the following week, right? Because I know that like, OK, this is way too easy for you. I’m going to push you a little bit harder. Maybe the lifts are a little bit heavier, right? Maintaining still mobility is just as important because mobility and strength training go hand in hand with performance and just general health. And so that’s how we progress from there. So I make note of the weights they use and then I manually progress each

and every one of them so that I know that, you know, they are capable doing those specific weight weights. I don’t blanket just regardless of whoever the athlete that I’m training or coaching, everybody goes up, you know, 50 pounds, for instance. It’s very much tailored to your specific capacity. Yeah. And that’s one thing I’ve found. And I like Joe Frill, he allegedly legendary triathlon coach. He for older athletes, I think he sort of refers to him as anyway, sort of 50 or older. He says it’s like two weeks on one week off. So like one one recovery week with two harder weeks and I’m late 30s. So for me, I think I can probably get away with about three weeks of hard work and one recovery. But I’ve always found that in terms of the gym work, I if I’m going pretty consistently for four, five, six weeks, I start to plateau quite a bit. But then if I say go away on a camp or I’m travelling and I don’t get to the gym for five days or seven days, that recovery time,

I come back and I tend to be able to up the weights. And it’s like my body just needed that rest that needed that recovery time to be able to catch up and then get to the next the next level. So I have to always remind myself. It’s like, all right, just it’s OK to have a lighter week where maybe not going as often or I’m just I drop it down because then the body catches up and then I can start to get to that next level. And the same thing obviously applies in your swim training, too. You don’t want to be going hard every single week. You need to just have a have a recovery week in there. Yep, absolutely. I 100 percent agree. And that’s something that people just totally disregard, right? People just don’t think about or don’t emphasize the importance of recovery. Recovery is just as important as training. It is part of your training, you know, you train what two to four to maybe six hours a day, right? What do you do the other hours of the day?

What do you do the other 20 hours, 18 hours of the day, right? That is just as important, you know, if not arguably more important because quantity wise, right, there’s just more of those hours. So what are you doing with your sleep? Are you prioritizing it, you know, is the quality of your sleep good? Are you getting maybe 10 hours of sleep? But really you’re asleep for like four of those hours because say you have an infant, right, and they’re screaming all the time, right? What are you doing with your nutrition? Are you prioritizing protein for your current age, for your current training requirements and then like hydration, stress management, work, life balance, all these things come into play in those other 18 to 20 hours. And so, yeah, I 100% agree with you, you know, recovery sometimes like recovery is maybe even more important, especially for somebody who is constantly training at a high intensity week on week on week on,

you know, then you’re you should actually probably prioritize recovery a little bit more and then you’re going to see a huge improvement in your performance as opposed to just keeping, keep pushing on, you know, which tends to be the tendency, I think, for a lot of triathletes and summers. I think it’s just that mentality that these athletes have. I think it takes a very specific athlete to go into these types of sports. And unfortunately, we tend to think that more is better when that’s not necessarily the case sometimes. Yeah, that’s exactly right. That’s the typical like a tight personality, like just go, go, go. And if I’m, yeah, if I’m stopping, then I’m going backwards. So, yeah, I can see how it happens. It resonates a lot with what one of our previous guests said, Jared Briffer, he’s a free diver. He coaches people on breathing technique. And one of the things that he mentioned was that he started doing

some breathing training to help with his free diving. But that was only for an hour to two hours a day at max. And he was getting a little bit better, but not much at all. And it was the other 22 hours of the day that he wasn’t looking at. So one of the big issues he had was when he was sleeping, is that he was a mouth breather and he just wasn’t sleeping or resting well. So when he eventually switched to nose breathing, he just taped his mouth. He found that over the course of the next couple of weeks, he just started to really improve in his ability to do what he needed to in free diving, because that was eight to nine hours taken care of with better breathing. And then when he focused on it, when he was awake as well, just having that the nasal breathing really just progressed in massively. And as you said, similar thing for swimming. It’s like there’s he might swim for most adults, right? They might only swim for one hour, two or three times a week.

And you’ve got so many more hours in the day. So how do you what are you doing outside of that strength training? How do you move? What’s your mobility like? There’s so many other other factors there that it’s easy to to ignore. But when you look at it in terms of just quantity of hours, the time they’re actually in the pool is as adults, it’s not a whole lot. So we have to consider those other things. Absolutely. Yeah. And in terms of people you’ve worked with, does anyone stand out in terms of someone who’s either come to you injured and they’ve been able to rehab that and come back stronger or anyone who has just come to you wanting to build their strength and they’ve seen really good results from it? Yes, I have right now. I’ve got a fair number of youth athletes who have found me on Instagram because their parents have been following me and their kids have been hurt. Just repetitive stress injuries, you know, rotator cuff issues,

some tears, some strains. And because this person is a youth, I don’t want to disclose his name. But it’s he’s made significant strides in his program. We’ve been working for about three months now and three to four months now. And he came with very severe shoulder pain. He had pretty severe, you know, like biceps tendonitis, some rotator cuff, some supraspinatus issues as well, as well as other issues, too. There are other medical conditions that he’s dealing with that are contributing to how slow his recovery is. But once we found kind of what the culprit was, he’s he stopped swimming back in December. He started again in June and he has gone PRs in every event that he’s swam. And he hasn’t been swimming. He had to stop swimming for several months because his shoulder just could not tolerate it. And he’s been lifting instead. So just that’s something that people don’t realize that like just because you’re injured, right?

And it’s not the end of your career. You don’t have to push through in the pool, you know, and just to get a PR. In fact, he did quite the opposite. You know, we had talked about not swimming as much and maybe slowly ramping up your yardage, you know, 400 meters at a time for practice. He started swimming like 400 meters to begin with and maybe was just swimming 2000 at the end. And Granite is also a sprinter, right? So it makes it a little bit not easier, but you can kind of get away with doing more strength training outside of the pool to complement what you’re doing in the pool, right? So this would be different for somebody who swims a mile or are endurance swimmers. So with him, he’s just he’s been messaging me and just sharing that he’s been shocked and pleasantly surprised with his capacity and what he’s been able to achieve in the short time that we’ve worked together, even though he’s barely just getting back in the pool.

So it’s, you know, stories like that. It really warms my heart and it’s it’s kind of like a lightbulb that goes off, right? The best lessons learned are the ones that you go through the process of, like you have to figure it out yourself and it’ll always be a part of you. I can tell all my athletes like, hey, strength training is going to turn your life, turn your swimming career around. And they’ll hear it and they some might even agree. And they’re like, yeah, absolutely. But until you do it and realize the potential, it’s always just going to be, you know, I’ll get to it. Yeah, it sounds like a good idea. But yeah, it’s always those that like take that step and they’re like, all right, I actually want to improve my swimming and I want to integrate like a good strength and performance program. And, you know, those the results speak for themselves and they’re happy. I’m happy, you know, I just I just want them to have that tool

in their belt that like our generation of swimmers and generations before us didn’t have, right? Strength training wasn’t that big of a deal. If anything, it was de-emphasized, right? Because we were afraid that we were going to get too bulky and heavy in the pool and we would be swimming slower. And so how far from the truth was that?

Yeah, exactly right. Yeah, so, you know, I think this next generation of swimmers they definitely are embracing more strength training now. And I think that’s great on multiple levels in terms of performance, but just general like learning how to move your body under weight, under resistance is important now. It’s and it’s so much it’s so much easier to to sell the cure. Rather than the prevention. And that’s why, you know, someone who’s come to you with an injury, they’re like, just tell me what to do. I just I don’t care what it is. Just tell me what to do. And someone who’s just looking to maybe prevent injuries, they’re not in that pain. So they’re less likely to to stick to it as diligently is someone who who is injured. But, you know, you learn lessons the the hard way many times. And I mean, the reason I really started to do more strength training was because I kept injuring my back and it was happening every two to three months.

And it would put me out for a couple of days and get really frustrated about it. And then when I actually started to do strength training, I was on this back extension machine. I think I was moving, I need to look back, but I have a feeling it was like 60 to 80 pounds. I think it was on this back extension machine. And now I’m up to almost double that. I’m at more than double that at maybe one one thirty or one forty. And that’s taken nearly two years to get to to that point. But when I look back at how weak I was when I first started strength training on how how did I it was like no wonder I was getting injured. It’s like I was just I thought I was strong because I was I was fit in the pool. But actually looking at what I can move now and what I can do now far beyond what I used to used to be able to do. And that’s two years. You know, it’s a fair it’s a fair fair while, but that time is going to go by regardless of whether I’m in the gym or not.

And if I want to I’m looking forward to the next five, 10, 15 years, like I just I don’t want to get injured because I hate not being able to train. I hate not being able to surf or go for a run. So I just want to be able to do those things that I love. And because I work with a lot of adults who have either taken up swimming because they were running and they’ve gotten injured and they can’t run anymore. Yeah. And I just it just happens. It just happens as we get older. So I’m trying to I’m trying to just prevent that as much as is possible. Because yeah, exactly. That’s what it’s all about. It’s you know, making sure that you are able to do the things you love, like surfing, hiking, running, swimming, competing, you know, like those are all really important things that bring a lot of joy to people’s lives. And that’s what makes up, you know, quality of life as we age to be able to have the independence to do those things.

When we want to, however we want to, you know, and how often we want to end, you know, the sad thing is that for every day and year that goes by, we’re all only getting older, right? That means we all are all also getting a little bit weaker each year. The amount of work to lift, like a barbell, 45 pounds is going to take a lot more for somebody in their 40s than somebody in their 30s, given that they’re equal in terms of training. So somebody who is super fit in their 40s and somebody who is not fit in their 30s. Obviously, that’s going to be different. It’s going to be easier for the 40 year old because they’ve been training. But say the 30 and the 40 year old or the 40 and the 50 year old who is both training, 45 pounds is still going to feel a little bit heavier for the 50 year old. And that’s just because of natural aging processes and something that you brought up that kind of reminded me was that,

like you said, you’re very, you know, most summers are very fit in the pool. They can some laps around the general population. No problem, you know, even without training, right? But when it comes to the gym, you know, we tend to be much weaker, not necessarily than the general population, but we tend to be weaker. And there is a reason why, you know, when you’re swimming, you’re actually anti-gravity. There’s no gravitational pull that you have to deal with. There is no gravitational forces. That your bones and your joints and your body have to, you know, combat against because of that. That increases your risks of osteopenia, osteoporosis. You are losing bone density. So swimmers and cyclists actually are notorious for having less bone density than, say, runners, because runners tend to have that compact, that compact force going into their joints. That builds bones. But as swimmers, when you’re anti-gravity throughout your whole training

and that is all you do, you’re actually putting yourself at risk for developing some of those bone diseases over time. And so which makes it even more important for you to be lifting as we age, especially if you are a swimmer, especially if you’re a triathlete, to fight those fight against normal aging cross and to build longevity and building stronger bodies so that you can do more of the things you love for longer periods of time. So, yeah. Yeah. And that’s what I feel that I’ve transitioned over the last couple of years to that where, you know, before it was about winning races and, you know, doing as best as I possibly could. And now, yeah, it’s just more about I just want to keep doing this. I want to be able to keep doing it as long as I can. So, yeah, so I think I think it’s a great, it’s a great sales pitch for getting people into strength training. Because I think and I’d say like the reason you see a lot of posts on

on Instagram and things like that of people, especially when they first like take something up with it’s going to the gym or something like there’s often a lot of posts there because it’s it’s a good feeling. It’s really addictive. And I think once you get into it, you go, I don’t know how I how I went without this. So it’s really, really important and I think you’re a really important person in that space for people who are doing swimming or triathlon to either overcome those injuries, rehab them or just to keep them strong, keep them going for for life. So for anyone listening to this, what’s the best way to get in touch with you or find out more about what you’re doing? Yes, please either check me out on Instagram and my handle is at the Summers Doc. And if you want to learn more about me, my website is www.thesummersdoc.com. And if you want me to send me a message through Instagram or you can contact me through my website as well.

Sandra, it’s been great having you on. Thank you so much for sharing your experience in the strength and conditioning. So I’m looking forward to having you back on in the future because I’m sure there’s a lot more we can can talk about and get into maybe some of the the nitty gritty, some of the details of strength training. So thank you very much. Absolutely. It has been such a pleasure. Thank you for having me. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

So you’re swimming with your shoes on, you’re running with a wetsuit, so it definitely has a little bit of a unique, you know, some, some might call it dork factor to some of the gear, but it has a unique gear piece to it. But yeah, it’s really just an endurance event, a multi sport endurance event where you’re alternating between running and swimming. Another way to really summarize swim run is sort of like amphibious trail running, where, you know, most of these races are on trails, you get to the water and you just keep going. After you do one transition or two, I mean, Brenton, I’m sure you’ll appreciate this while when you did your swim run, it’s just like, well, isn’t this just like the weirdest thing I’ve ever done? Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

Chippert and Chris are the duo that make up the low tide boys. Based in Northern California, this dynamic swim run team is dedicated to growing the sport of swim run. They also host their own podcast called the low tide boys. And on this episode, we talk about why a lot of endurance athletes are transitioning across the swim run, why it’s one of the fastest growing endurance sports. And we talk about all the ins and outs that you need to know to get started in swim run. My guests today is Chris and Chippert, the low tide boys. These are the number one swim run experts in the world. They were just telling me how good they, how much they know about swim run. So Chris and Chippert, welcome to the podcast. You’ve got your own podcast on swim run and really sort of well, well followed podcast, but also highly entertaining with some of the content you put out. And just two people who really enjoy swim run. So today on the podcast, I wanted to chat about what swim run is all about

and what got you guys into it and why you’re so hooked on swim run. So welcome to the podcast. Yeah, thanks for, thanks for having us. Of course. Well, it’s, it’s sort of Chris’s story to tell. I was not his original partner, but all that Chris tell that story and then I’ll join in once, once I enter the picture. Yes. So I think it was 2015 or 2016. My wife gave me, you know, a Christmas gift. Essentially, it was this coffee table book called the world’s toughest endurance challenges. And I was into triathlon. Chipper and I were already good friends, training buddies have done a bunch of adventures together, endurance adventures together. And I read about this race called Attila. And it seemed ridiculous to me. I started doing a little bit of research, found the YouTube channel, which is, I think most people’s first entree into swim run or some just crazy hype movies that Attila and other race directors put out. And essentially found that there was this race in Casco Bay. So

I asked a friend of mine, not Chipper, if he wanted to do it. And he said yes, but I ended up being injured. So passing on that first year of that race. And then a few years later in 2018, I still wanted to do it. By that point, Chipper and I had done 200, 200 mile double century bike rides. We’ve done turkey trots. We’ve done ultra marathons, just all kinds of random activities. So I was like, Hey man, what do you think about doing this? Basically, the rest is history. In 2018, we did two races. Yeah, exactly. We did two races. We did California swim run as our first swim run that I was in San Diego. Super funky race, started at like two 18 in the afternoon after the last regatta race or something. And all leading up to Casco Bay 2018, which was really our first like legit swim run. And Chipper, so how do you feel not being the number one pick there? Have you gotten over that? Yeah, lots of therapy. I

finally moved beyond it. But no, Chris and I, like you mentioned, I mean, we had, we had done your triathlons. We were, we had been great training partners for probably five or six years at that point. And it was, Hey, I’m going to, you know, it would be Friday night. We’d be texting. He’s like, Oh, I’m going to do, you know, a 20 mile run in the Marin Headlands. You went in, I’m like, Sure, let’s do it. You know, we would always kind of have these training things. And the swim run just to me seemed like, Oh, that was another, another thing to do. Another way I get to hang out with Chris, basically, and we both had our first children. So we were kind of in the, we were really struggling with finding all the time to do the triathlon training with spending so much hours on the bike and running. So swim run kind of fit like a little, okay, we don’t have to dedicate so much to the bike training. You know, we’ll kind of stay a little bit fresh in the pool and we run,

you know, ultra marathons. So we’ll be fine. It was sort of how we approached that first race at Casco Bay. And, you know, we were, we were rocked. We were, we were, we were humbled, I guess is the best way to put it. Yeah, we were certainly rocked, but at the end of it, we were like, Oh, well, wasn’t that a thing? And when’s the next one? And that pretty much started off on our journey. I’d also really started the journey of the podcast, because as Chipper mentioned, we’re training buddies. And, you know, we’ve had these, these texts threads going is like, Hey, who’s doing what over the weekend? And it was basically fighting your endurance date. And we would also do these race report rides where it’s like, Hey, if anyone did a crazy endurance challenge, it’d be like, you get with your training buddies, and you just like regale them with the saga, you know, whether it doesn’t matter if you won or lost, just like, tell us a story. And we would, you know, invariably, there’d be

some communications like, okay, what was swim run? What’s happening? Like, I don’t understand. Like, well, you know, all the things that we still hear actually, and, you know, fast forward a little while, and we were like, Hey, we’re signed up for Attila Catalina, which was the first time that Attila was coming to do a race in the US. And that was on Catalina Island in California. So we were really excited about that race. A bunch of our friends were asking us what was going on. And Chipper, who already had some previous podcast experience, because he had a show with, with another buddy of his, he was like, why don’t we just do a podcast and just explain what we’re doing and educate some people? Because there really wasn’t anyone in the space with our sort of professional backgrounds. We were like, Hey, we could actually do something that would be useful for the sport that we think it’s cool that nobody knows about.

And kind of the rest is history. And so Chipper, for those that are listening, there might be people who don’t actually know what swim run is all about. It sounds self explanatory, but there’s a little bit more to it than, than yeah. So for someone listening who doesn’t know what swim run is, what would be your sort of 60 seconds on that explaining what it is? What’s the elevator pitch on the swim run? So I’ll start with what it is. And it’s definitely not a triathlon just minus the bike. It’s way more than that. So I think the best way to think about it is it originated in Sweden where there’s a lot of islands there. And they literally would run across the island. They would get to the water. They would swim to the next island, run across that one swim. So you’re alternating between running and swimming. It originally was like a point to point sport, but you do it all in the same gear. So you’re swimming with your shoes on, you’re running with a wetsuit. So it, it definitely has

a little bit of a unique, you know, some, some might call it dork factor to some of the gear, but it has a unique gear piece to it. But yeah, it’s really just an endurance event, a multi-sport endurance event where you’re alternating between running and swimming, where you literally, you get to the water and you hop in, you swim to the next bit of land, you run across there, you get to the water and repeat, rinse and repeat until, until you’re done.

Sowed it well. And the dork factor is 100% there. I can say it because I’ve done one before. And, you know, it’s hard to get away with training, you know, anywhere in public when you’ve got a, you’ve got runners on and you’re jumping in the water swimming, you’ve got a pool billy attached to your hip. That dork factor is certainly there. Certainly. Yeah. I think most people, we usually get three reactions when, when people see us sort of like in the wild training is people think we’re like Navy SEALs or special forces or something and they leave us alone or people just look really confused or the really confused people actually stop us and then be like, Hey, what are you guys doing? So, and of course, chipper, chipper is usually on cons with this is like, well, we’re the low type boys and this is a swim right? You don’t drop that we’re Navy SEALs. This is what we can’t talk about. I don’t think anyone would believe it after seeing us in wet season. In terms of the, the equipment, how’s

that changed and evolved over the last couple of years that, that the sport has evolved because it’s a very fairly new sport and there’s certainly some innovations that are coming out of it. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, from the origin, origination of the sport to where we’re at today, it’s tremendously changed for the first Attila, which means island to island and Swedish was a 70 kilometer race and it used to take folks 24 hours to finish the race. Now the world records like seven hours and they were bringing no joke inflatable air mattresses to lay on to swim in between the islands in, in the Stockholm Archipelago and they would, you know, take their shoes off every time, put them in a bag, you know, they had like more kind of a venture racing style. But once they started kind of figuring out the wetsuit component on chopping the wetsuit off at the knees and then, you know what the elbows and kind of making it a little bit easier to

run and really freeing up the running capabilities, that’s when the times of like the race times really started to drop. And that’s where the gear started to play a bigger factor in it really kind of around the wetsuit. The wetsuit technology really started changing. Then they really started getting much thinner with the neoprene on the on the front panels, not having any neoprene on the lower half. So it’s really almost like a kind of like a swim skin style fabric or textile on your bottom half and then a very thin, you know, two millimeter neoprene kind of upper and that’s pretty much the suit it zips in front. So it’s very, very nimble. You could be very quick in it. In addition to, you know, you use hand paddles and a pull buoy to kind of offset some of the drag of swimming with your shoes. But yeah, the, I would say in the probably the last six years, the technology has really shifted and that’s

with the technology shift and the gear and the equipment, the speed has just come right along with that. And what about the size of the paddles, size of the buoy? Like, has that changed as well over the years? Because there’s some, there’s some huge looking pull buoys, huge paddles. What’s the, what do most people tend to gravitate towards?

Well, I think, you know, the way the sports been evolving and one of the cool things about it, it’s like, there’s still a lot of room for self-expression and a lot of room for iteration in terms of the technology. I think we’re really kind of in the golden age of swimmer right now with people figuring out what’s the optimized kit. And what we’re seeing now as an optimized kit is paddles as big as you can handle and then a pull buoy that allows you to maintain optimal sort of body composition in the water to compensate for swimming and shoes and all the drag that creates. So the pull buoys are pretty big. They’re super buoyant. They’re essentially like flotational devices. You know, no one’s sinking in these things. I mean, if you jump in a pool with one between your legs, you’re like popping out like a, like a dolphin or something. They’re so buoyant. So that’s basically, you know, it’s as big as you can handle. Uptalaw, which is really sort of like the governing body of the sport,

they have a maximum size of a pull buoy and it’s plenty big. It’s plenty big. And our advice is always like, get whatever pool, use as big a pull buoy as you can, as you can handle or as you need. But there’s plenty of options these days. And what about the strength required to swim with really big paddles? Like, is that something you’ve had to develop over time and train? Are you doing anything outside of the pool to develop that strength like that? Because they’re huge paddles. And I know even just swimming with like something as big as your hand or slightly bigger, like you can kind of feel that if you’re overloading. So what, what do you guys do to be able to handle that size paddle? Yeah, I mean, Chris and I aren’t, aren’t swimmers by, you know, by nature, we’re sort of adult onset swimmers that’s like, Oh, we got to swim. There’s a swim like for a triathlon. So we got to like make sure we don’t drown.

And then we’ll get to the bike was sort of always my motto on the swim piece. But I’ve since adjusted my mindset on that. But what we do specifically and kind of the advice that we give to folks is start with what you’re already using. So if you’re already kind of mixing paddles in your normal swim sets and routines, just stick with that same size. You don’t need to go get the big garbage can lid size ones and you know, worry about that. You know, for Chris and I, it’s something that usually kind of in the off season might cycle off a little bit of the paddle work just to maybe focus a little bit more on technique there. But once the season starts up, you know, you will kind of, we have sort of the size of paddles that we normally been using, but you know, doing a little bit of film and underwater analysis with different size paddles, I was able, we were able to tell like, Hey, when we step it up from the medium to the large,

your stroke actually really breaks down. So the largest too big. So, you know, maybe hit the hit the weights a little bit more in the off season or with the with those stretch, stretch bands as well. So yeah, like strength, strength training is something that we’ve been pretty diligent on this year and mobility that definitely helps maintain and helps you hold good, good tension on your, on your stroke there with the, with the bigger paddles. But yeah, go, go with what you can handle is, is our real advice on that piece. Some people, if you’ve never used paddles and you have a race coming up, just no need to, your hands will work just fine. How much of your swimming are you doing with the equipment on versus with, with no equipment? And does that change the close you get to a race? Well, I think, you know, that the way the way we kind of approach it is like, Hey, we’re, we’re swim runners and we’re

training for swim run swimming. So because we’re in season now, I would say a good percentage of our work is using paddles and buoy just to, you know, longer sets at tempo, you know, 400s 500 stuff like that, 800s even just to really get used to sort of the strengths that’s required. I mean, for swim run, you’re not really going ballistic for 23 seconds. A lot of the swims are longer. So it’s really about trying to keep a low heart rate and a good stroke rate to just like keep it in zone two while you’re moving as quickly through the water. So a lot of it is really optimized for that. I mean, could, could we probably do a better job working on technique by not using as much gear for sure. But I think during the season, we’re just optimizing for what we’re going to be doing. Well, that’s the thing. Swims are so long, right? Like it’s not, these are not short events that you’re doing. Yeah. I mean, to a lot of the world

championship there that Chris and I have done the past two years, it’s coming up here. It’s the first Monday in September, but a total of 10 kilometers swimming and about 60 kilometers running between 26 different islands. So the first swim of the day is a cool 1600 meters to start you off. And then there’s a swim that’s, you know, as short as 25 that you’re really just, you know, we don’t even put our goggles on for that one. You just kind of jump in, you get wet and you hop right out and everything in between the mile and the 25 meters. So yeah, it’s really the variance of it is part of kind of what makes the sport really exciting and fun to do. This episode is brought to you by Pillar Performance. Our new sponsors Pillar are a sports micronutrition company. And the easiest way to describe it is that while hydration and carbohydrates products will take you through to touch the wall as fast as possible. Pillar’s

mission is to get swimmers to the starting blocks in the best condition over and over again. I recently started taking Pillar triple magnesium after a friend had recommended it and it’s been a game changer for my sleep and recovery. I take one scoop 30 minutes before bed each night in the same way that you might start your day with a coffee. I finish it up with the magnesium and recover better for tomorrow’s session in the pool. Pillar performance is used by some of the biggest names in swimming and triathlon, including Zack Stubble to Cook, Jan Frodeno, Ben Canute, Ash Gentle, Taylor Nib amongst the host of other well-known swimmers and triathletes. Where Pillar differs from other micronutrition you may have taken before is both the quality of the types of magnesium and the tangible results that I see on my garment each morning. If you’d like to try Pillar today, head to pillarperformance.shop and enter code effortless for 15% off. That’s effortless

for 15% off all first-time purchases or for anyone in North America. Enter the same code at thefeed.com. Was there an aha moment where you fell in love with Swimrun for either of you?

Yeah, and I think it’s probably the same story for a lot of people. It’s the same thing for a lot of people. Once you do your first transition, another way to really summarize Swimrun is amphibious trail running where most of these races are on trails, you get to the water and you just keep going. After you do one transition or two, I mean, Brenton, I’m sure you’ll appreciate it as well. When you did your Swimrun, it’s just like, well, isn’t this just like the weirdest thing I’ve ever done? And there’s this sort of magic to it, which is just like, wow, that was really something. And then we’ve done a bunch of Swimruns at this point. And that transition is really being able to transition well. That’s really when you’re not swimming, then running, then swimming, then running. You’re swim running because moving through nature as seamlessly as possible is just something really, really cool like that. Yeah, but that aha moment, I think, and we mentioned a little bit earlier that Casco Bay

2018 was our first big Swimrun. That one took us seven hours probably. And we were,

yeah, I mean, we were, we looked at each other before the last swim and I’m like, well, my shoulders are pretty blasted. Chris, your feeling blasted like, just go until you can’t and then I’ll take over. So we were like physically challenged and conquered actually, to be honest. But yeah, once we got across that finish line, it was like, oh my God, I’m glad we’re done. But it was just like, we got to do this again. It was just such

magical experience doing that, that it instantly wanted to go back and do it again. You know, and I think to that point, Chipper, I think we haven’t really talked about it, but really one of the most unique aspects of Swimrun and what we really think is the best part of it is really the partner aspect where, you know, I’ve done, Chipper and I have done 19 Swimruns together. We do a lot of training. We’ve done 50 mile, like I mentioned, all sorts of things together. But this is something that we do together is really good friends and we’ve experienced and we’ve gone to all these places. We’ve gone to Sweden and everywhere else, right? And crossing that finish line with Chipper and not having to be a time trial like a triathlon or anything else, you know, that really adds to sort of like the magic of it. And, you know, taking care of your partner, your partner’s taking care of you. You’re really bringing out, you know,

you’re more than the sum of your parts in many ways. And it’s just really, it’s a beautiful thing. I’m obviously like a Chief Swimrun Evangelist. Yeah, we’re kind of biased, I guess.

Oh, that element of team though, in sports where, you know, typically it’s very individual if it’s triathlon, if it’s swimming, you know, you see it in the Olympics at the moment, you’ve got, I’m watching the swimming, we’ve had one relay so far. And just, and whenever I’ve spoken to people who have made it to that level, they’re always like it, like the relays, that is what really drive them. And that’s when they can pull out these amazing performances because they’re doing it for other people. So the fact that every race for you is with someone else, I think that’s a huge benefit. And when I train for a long distance from that, I did a couple of years back, I did a lot of my training with a friend and obviously the race wasn’t as a team, but the training was and that made those long, you know, 10, 15 K swims pretty easy to do because I had someone there with me. So it makes that time really fly. And you’re not going to miss a training session

if you know the other person’s going to be there. So I think it makes it a lot easier. Yep. In terms of any races, can you share an unexpected challenge that you faced and how you overcame it? Because over the course of 19 races, I’m sure there’s been a few moments where something didn’t go as planned. And that’s every race. Pretty much. Every, I can imagine. And that’s, I think that’s part of the, part of the beauty of it as well is that because nothing is fixed and you’re really just approaching nature as it exists, there’s no, oh, we have to make this bike length, you know, 25 miles or whatever. You just are approaching it how it is. You sort of have to be really, if you do a lot of Sormons, you start to be really good about sort of rolling with the punches and knowing when, when there’s a, when there’s a, you know, an issue or an obstacle to overcome, like how are you going to do that? I mean, I would say probably every race we, we’ve had something come up that was,

that was an obstacle, but I think one race that really sticks out. And this is, you know, this was in Washington state. So the Pacific Northwest and the United States here off the, on the Orcas Islands and the San Juan Islands, just an amazing bit of country up there. And literally part of the race, you think you’re in like the return of the Jedi, you’re just in the forest. There’s no one around. But I, and you’re running in a wetsuit. With your friend attached to you, but I, I mismanaged my, my fueling pretty, pretty, pretty well. So I had a solid four hour bonk on my hands and that wasn’t great for me at the time, but, you know, using the sum of your parts and Chris really, you know, got the gold star for the day on that one, but really took the charge, let all the swims, let all the runs really drag my ass all over Washington there. But although I was in the cellar for a good part of it, like still we had a lot of great learning experiences and a lot of good memories from that race,

despite it being a difficult one, but it was still a really amazing shared experience that we had. That was in 2021. That was, yeah, that was 2021. Yeah. And I think, you know, what that race really taught us, and that was really the, I would say that was the one where we faced the most adversity, except for maybe the first one where we were just like, oh my God, this thing’s crazy. It’s really this, this idea that, you know, you can’t prepare for every possibility that’s going to happen in a swim run. I mean, so much of it is just being comfortable with ambiguity and then also kind of trusting that you’re going to make the best decision you can with information you have at that moment. So whether that’s like, let’s, you know, the longer the race, the more problem solving you have to do, similar in triathlon, like, you know, you can get, you can feel good, you can feel bad, you feel great again, you can, you know,

as long as you’re both not feeling bad at the same time, then you have, you stay in the chance. But yeah, as Chipper mentioned, I think like every race, there’s something where it’s like, oh, I kind of screwed that one up, or I forgot to put my earplugs in, or I forgot to zip up my wetsuit for the super cold swim, you know, I dropped my paddle. There’s always something, and it’s, that’s kind of the sort of the ambiguity of not knowing when it’s going to go sideways. It’s just kind of the fun of it as well.

Yeah, that unpredictability where, yeah, anything could happen. That’s kind of a reason, like I love to surf. And one of the things I like about it is like, you don’t know when the set’s going to come, you don’t know how they’re going to break. It’s like, that’s kind of like, not gambling in a way, but it’s kind of like rolling the dice. It’s like, you don’t know what’s going to happen. And it sounds like there’s a lot of that in, in swim runs. So that can be, that makes it, makes it quite interesting. Yeah, in terms of your, your training routine, is there anything unconventional or surprising that you believe gives you an edge in races? Well, I don’t know. I think as a team, I would say doing our hard sessions together. We haven’t done it as much this year, but in the, you know, when we were training for world champs and stuff like that, like every time we had to do like the eight by 10 hill repeat

or the track workout or the five hour swim run practice, anything that was just like, all right, it’s time to show up. Like we would always try to do those together because again, as you mentioned, Brenton, like it’s, you’re showing up if your partner’s showing up. And that was always great for us for a couple of reasons that would, we’d motivate each other, but then we also kind of knew where each other was. So in a race, we could sort of calibrate our effort. So I think that’s probably something that, that we didn’t realize how useful that was in races where it’s like, okay, you know, chipper is really crushing the swim. So I got to make sure that I’m on top of what I’m doing other swim or if I’m feeling really strong on the run and chipper, chipper isn’t, then it’s like, okay, well, where’s he at? Because that’s the level I want to be at so we can perform better as a team kind of thing. So in terms of swim run, from what I understand, it’s a very tight knit community.

Is there any stories or things that come to mind where you’ve, you’ve seen this well represented and maybe being at different races where like, I’m sure a lot of people know who you are when you turn out to races. So have you got any examples of that sort of community that swim run has? Well, we got a Rolodex full of them. But yeah, I think one that really, that really highlights the community aspect was at this Catalina in 2020, literally a week before the pandemic struck in March. And there was, it’s an island off Southern California there. And one of the swim sections is this really rough water swim. They had like, for a 400 meter swim, they probably had like six kayaks out there, like they were really concerned about people. But someone had lost their goggles, or they had, you know, float, float, and another team that someone came out like, Oh my God, I lost my goggles. Another team gave them their goggles off their head and just said, here you go,

because both people had lost their goggles. So one team went off with just one pair. And then the other other team had had another pair to go with. So like just literally giving your goggles off. You’re missing a key feature of that story. Okay, finish it, finish it. You’re missing the keyest feature. So the team that lost the goggle, they were they were probably they were probably going to win the race. The team that gave them a goggle was actually the husband of the person who lost the goggles. So in his chivalry as his husband, he gave the goggles to his wife so that she could continue her race. And yeah, so, you know, that’s a husband of the year award for that. That’s a lot of branding points. That’s yeah, yeah, but that’s the right, that’s the right move for sure. What about any sort of surprising or unexpected outcomes of starting the low tide boys podcast? You sort of referred to a few things before, but what’s what’s been

some of the best things for you having started that podcast and built a community around it? Well, honestly, for us, it’s it’s all kind of been a surprise. To be honest, like when we started this, we thought we were doing it for our friends. And you know, we wanted to do a good job. We love the sport. We think it’s we think it’s really fun. And we want people to try it. Our initial goals for the show were to grow the sport and help grow the sport in the US and try to have as much fun as possible, sort of chronicling our own journey within the sport. You know, now it’s, it’s, you know, people are listening to it all over the world. For a while, we were the only podcast. Now there’s some more, which is amazing. And I think the fact that we kind of did it, we held ourselves to sort of our own standard. And I think the fact that people really appreciated that and were super supportive of us, you know, we had guests on that at first we were like, thank you so much for returning our email

type of thing. You know, now now it’s like, I kind of feel like we can get whoever we want, which is kind of funny. Or before it’s like, do you think they’re going to respond now? It’s like, you know, for the most part, people want to be on the show, right? So I think the fact that it started from that and the fact that so many people appreciate it and ask us, you know, send us their questions and, you know, buy our merch or get our stickers in the mail, whatever it is and come up to us at races and thank us. I mean, every single time that happens, I know I can speak for Chipper, we’re just like kind of gobsmacked, which is like, wow, we’re so happy it helped, you know, and that you’re here and you had a great time. Because that’s really what we’re trying to do. Yeah, it is really, yeah, we were just at a race in Folsom, California, a little local, the Folsom swim run. And yeah, whenever someone comes up and they’re like, Oh, well, thanks so much for your videos.

I learned how to do my buoy. What do you think? Like look at my paddles. It’s like, Oh, you helped me so much. And that kind of stuff is just so, you know, really just fills Chris’s eye, like refills our gratitude cup up. And we’re like, okay, yeah, like that’s kind of what keeps us motivated to keep doing it now is the positive community and the reinforcement and how people really seem to get a lot of value out of what we’re doing. And we see them enjoying the sport the way that we’re enjoying it as well. And that’s, that’s why keeps us keeps us going, I think, from the community aspect. Sure. And if you imagine some running 10 years, what sort of innovations and changes do you see happening in the future with the sport? Wow, that’s a really good question. That’s a really good question. I think I’d like to tell you one thing that I don’t think will change. And that’s really this community feel. I think, you know, we’ve got erasers all over the place

and the community vibe is the same. And I think it’s on all swim runners to maintain that and not turn it into, you know, I don’t know, like, whatever, like some some measure is sick or whatever, what might have you. So I don’t think that’s going to change. I think what we will keep seeing is swim runs in new locations, different formats, we’re already seeing some super short course formats, which are sort of like heat based and really fun to watch. We’re seeing these like ultra swim runs, like the one water race, which is happening in a couple of weeks. It’s a 250 kilometer swim run, you know, it’s just it’s the hours bonkers. So last year, only one team finished out of like 10 teams or something. It was crazy, you know, so they’re all these different formats that I think people keep trying to find new ways to do it. And because swim run is unique to the environment that you’re in, you know, as Chipper mentioned, Orcas Island, it’s like a mountain island swim run where

you’re swimming in mountain lakes and the ocean. It’s ridiculous. Casco Bay, you’re swimming across the Portland Sound, like around all these islands. You know, there’s one in Austin, Texas where you’re swimming in the Colorado River and they’re making it work. So because you have to use the environment that you’re in, really the options are kind of limitless. If you can just see it from the perspective of a swim runner, which Chipper does this all the time, every time we’re on a trail run or something, he’s like, Hey, we could probably swim across that and do this and do that. And that’s just, you know, it’s one of the cool things of it for sure. Yeah, yeah, definitely. It’s always like, you know, if you go for a run somewhere new, look on the Strava map and it’s kind of cool to see where you’ve gone. And I think, especially with the options that the swim run opens up, I can only imagine what you’re

looking at there on there on the maps and going, Oh, yeah, we could, we could do this, we could go here. So that’s, that’s really exciting. And what are either of you both looking forward to the most in the next six to 12 months in terms of your own racing, what you’re doing with the podcast? Like what are you guys really looking forwards to? Yeah, we got, we got, we have a full calendar of races this year. We’ve already done three,

I think, and we have three or four more, including one that was actually took a break last year, a swim run in sea for North Carolina, which is again, another really unique swim run. And I think that’s what keeps the sport. And, you know, you know, we’ve been doing this for, for a couple of years, but you really don’t get that tired of doing the races because every race is so different and it’s in a different location. And there’s some a little bit of flavor difference on it. But yeah, the Casco Bay race we have literally coming up in the first week of August off in Portland, Maine. And that’s one that Chris and I have been doing every year since, since 2018 every year they’ve offered it. So that always has like a special place in our heart and we’re always loved to win the line at that one. And, you know, getting, getting a few more races in this year is, is really what we’re looking forward to. We’re not doing the world

champs this year. We’re taking a break, but Chris and I are already having a FOMO over the race. We already know we’re going to be missing it for sure because that’s quite an experience. We certainly have race FOMO, but we don’t have the training FOMO. I’m totally fine not doing that volume of training for a year. How many hours would you typically try and for if you’re trying towards world champs? Yeah, I think, I think we were topping out with some of the big swim run weekends, probably at like 12 to 15 hours, especially on some of those big, big weeks. But I think on average, probably closer to eight to 10. Yeah. And that’s a lot because you’d like, you think of maybe a professional triathlete, they might be doing somewhere in the mid teens in terms of hours, maybe up to, up to 20 hours possibly, but a lot of that’s on the bike and that’s not necessarily easy. But when it’s all swim and run, that is, that’s some pretty solid training.

Yeah, we’re, you know, we’re a couple of dads too. So we got families and we got jobs as well. But yeah, some of those big weeks, I think peak, we were probably 50 miles out running on the trails and 20, 25 K in the pool over, you know, 10, 12 hours for, for some of the higher weeks there. But yeah, but you know, there’s 40 or 60 Ks of, of running there between those islands on that world championship race. So you really need to kind of be trained up like an ultra marathoner from a run perspective. Hmm. And yeah, but I will say, you know, there’s a bunch of shorter swim runs. So you know, if you’re listening to this and you’re a triathlete, you’re already prepared to do a swim run, you just have to borrow a suit from a buddy and do it. Tons of shorter races, it’s super accessible. I think the world champs, it’s a magical course. And if you want that to be on your sort of, you know, side quests as an endurance athlete,

can’t recommend it enough. It’s an amazing experience. But, but yeah, by no means, by no means do you need to be training that much for the sport. Yeah, scaring too many people, you might be attracting more people that way, probably. That’s true. Do you, in terms of someone looking to get started, is there a good resource that you have or podcast or video where you sort of detail the basics of what someone needs to get started in swim run? So in terms of resources, so on our website, low tide boys.com, and this is really chippers, you know, chippers area, we have a resource guide, we have gear guides, we have how to videos, we have all sorts of stuff, we have, you know, a page that just explains what swim run is. So, you know, that’s a good place to start, I think, not not to be so, you know, shamelessly self promoting. But yeah, our website has everything you need to know about the sport, local races, everything.

Yeah, it’s really, really listener driven, because we’ll get people send us an email, Hey, what’s the, what sock shall I wear? Am I going to get blisters or what’s the shoes? And we’re like, Hey, well, let’s do a video about that. It’s really listener driven from what we, what we get questions about or what we hear about at swim runs or what we kind of observe people doing and just, you know, or thinking on it. A lot of it has evolved as, you know, we’ve had, we’ve had a lot of reps, I guess, in the swim run game. So things have kind of evolved for us and the sport has changed even since we’ve been in it. But yeah, we try to, we try to have a lot of useful, we got audio, video, written word, whatever your, whatever your method is, we got it all for you.

Slam poetry, any, any way you want to. Actually, Chris did write a poem once, I will say. I did. I hope that’s on the website.

Chris Chippart, thank you so much for being on the podcast. It’s, it’s a sport that I’ve seen grow a lot over the last couple of years. I think the one and only one I did was back, I’d need to check dates now, but probably like 2017 or something like that. But yeah, a really good experience, kind of like you guys had no idea what I was doing when I first got into it. When my buddy told me what I needed, it’s like, you need to have shoes and you’re not going to take them off and you’re going to have this cool billy attached to your hip and I’m just like, what, this, what are we doing here? But for all the reasons that you’ve sort of talked about a really fun, enjoyable, challenging sport to do. So I can see why it’s why it’s growing. So thanks so much for sharing your experience on the podcast. Go check him out. The low tide boys have a podcast. I want your content as well. So go give them a follow. Guys, thanks very much for being a guest on the podcast.

Of course, thanks for having us. Thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

Muhammad Ali was asked once, you know, how many sit-ups do you do in a session? 500. He said, I don’t know. I don’t start counting until it hurts because it’s only the ones that’s hurts that count. And I think that’s a good sign. If you can just do it, then you’re not getting better. It’s the ones that make you go, oh, I’m not sure. How do you do that? It’s the ones that push whether that’s pushing you mentally or pushing you physically. It’s pushing you past your current boundaries. We find ourselves saying to ourselves that, you know, I really struggle with my swimming. I really struggle with my catch. The things we’ve got to remind ourselves is we don’t. We’re struggling with our catch at that moment. And make it about a point in time rather than a description of ourselves. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life.

Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

Welcome to today’s podcast episode. On today’s episode, my guest is James Anderson. He’s an Australian based international speaker, author and educator who’s passionate about helping people become better learners. And one thing that I’ve been really interested in as, as I’ve been a coach and as I’ve seen thousands of different people learn and grow as swimmers is how can we actually become better learners? It’s a skill that people can develop and how can someone do that so that they see faster progression and more long term progression in their swimming? So that’s why I brought James on the podcast today and James actually attended a clinic a couple of months back and we’ve been going back and forth. And I thought it’d be great to get him being an expert in how people learn to share some of the things that he’s learned over his time. Where he has seen people go from having this fixed mindset where they’re set as they are and there’s no way they can change to becoming what he calls agile learners.

People who see themselves as not being in this steady state that’s fixed but being a state where they can actually get better and they can grow and how they can develop into an agile learner. So let’s get into the episode with James Anderson. Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the Effortless Swimming Podcast. My guest today is someone who recently attended a clinic and we’ve just been in touch and this guest today is actually an expert in how people learn. And one thing I’ve been interested in over the last couple of years as a coach is how do people learn and how can I as a coach teach things in a way that people will retain information, be able to use it and be able to improve their swimming. And so just looking through what you teach James and those things that you do on a day to day basis, I thought it’d be great to get you on so that the listeners can actually become better learners so that they can improve their swimming.

I think there’s a really big connection between those things. So welcome to the podcast James. Thanks Britain. It’s great to be here. It’s what we just said about learning. A lot of people sort of come to coaching sessions, whether they’re for swimming or for whatever they’re learning about and they expect to be taught like it’s the teacher’s role to teach you to do stuff. And the whole idea that, you know, we’ve got quality teachers like we’ve got people like you out there doing great jobs, you can organize structure things, talk about what, identify what needs to be done and all the rest of it. And the idea a lot of people bring to learning is that they’re just the consumers. They’re just going to do it. And one of the ideas that really struck me when I started my work around what I call Learnership was a quote by a guy by the name of John Holt who said, learning’s not the product of teaching. I’m just going to pause there for a second.

Learning’s not the product of teaching. Just think about that for me. That puts us out of a job. Okay. We both teach for a living, but learning’s not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of learners. And when you realize that, that when I come to you as a as a student to be coached, it’s not just your expertise that I’m leaning on. It’s how I engage in that process as well. That’s so important.

Yeah, it’s such a great point because if, yeah, if someone’s just sitting like, the way I think of it is like, if they’re, if the bum is, if this is a phrase I got taught, it’s, if the bum is numb, the mind is too. And so if someone’s just sitting there, it’s like, just teach me. They’re not going to retain much of that information. You need to, you need to be quite active in that, in that learning process. So what are some of the, I guess, fundamental things that we should sort of know about being someone who’s looking to get taught to then being someone who’s, who’s looking to learn? Like what, what are the differences there? And, and for, and maybe how did this originate for you? Like where did you, where did this all start for you? And, and why did it become a topic of interest? Oh, yeah. Look, I suppose there’s a few questions in there to start off with to talk about the people that are coming to your clinics and stuff.

The first thing to recognize is that learning itself is a skill. All right. It’s not just something you do. It’s not something you receive, but it’s something people can get good at. And when I defined this idea of Learnership, which is the title of my book, Learnership is the skill of learning. I took the word craftsmanship and learning and sort of put them together that way. And I like to think what we’re trying to achieve as teachers, as coaches, it’s like Torvalandine. You know, I’ve got a couple of years on you. Do you know who Torvalandine are?

No.

I do know Torvalandine, the Olympics coming up now. We’re recording this just before the Olympics. Torvalandine were ice skaters, partners to ice skaters in the 84 Olympics and they blew the place away. They did a routine to Belero, the music Belero, and they were the, you know, the icons of the 84 Olympics, Winter Olympics. And what they did in the ice skating, the ice dancing is that Jane Torval and Christopher Dean both did different things. They’re both out there partner dancing, but Jane Torval did the jumps, Christopher Dean did the catches and those sort of things. And I think of the teaching and learning process in the same way that we’ve got expert teachers by and large in our systems and they’re out there doing their thing. But if we’re going to achieve maximum growth for our learners, a lot of our learners are doing that awkward, you know, feet going sideways, seeing on the ice and we’ve got to develop that skill.

And like I said before, some of our learners, you know, they stay with the easy stuff. You know, they just do what comes easily to them. Others will stretch and challenge themselves. And so I developed this sort of hierarchy of learning, if you like, what I call my Learnership Matrix. And it starts off with a non learner who basically doesn’t participate in learning, just doesn’t do anything at all. But then a beginning learner, a beginning learner is someone who always takes the path of least resistance, always looks for the easy task. But then learning is just a series of activities and in the pool, it’s like you jump in, jump out and you’re done. But there’s no stretch. There’s no challenge. There’s no focus. There’s no intention.

Then there’s what I call a performance learner and the performance learner is the one who loves to show off what they can do. They’re always doing their best. But they’re always doing their best at the expense of not getting better because we don’t get better by doing our best. We get better by stretching, challenging ourselves to be just a little bit better than our best going into what I call the learning zone.

Directed learners do what they’re told. These are the people that you and I would design to teach, you know, they listen to us, they follow our instructions. But when we’re not there, they don’t know what to do. The directed learner is the learner that takes charge of the learning process. For the first time, there’s someone that can actually identify their own areas for growth, seek out what they need to do, look for the right resources and opportunities for that growth to happen. But an agile learner, this is my top level of learner, is someone who embraces a challenge in the style of JFK when you said, you know, we do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. They know that when they take on challenges are really difficult things that it brings about not just the goal they’re seeking, but it brings about other growth as well. They grow as a person. These are people that can tailor their feedback.

They can design mistakes and they invest their effort. We’re talking about effortless swimming. They invest their effort in continuous growth. And so once you realize that learning itself is a skill, we’ve got to go through a process and ask ourselves. Well, how well do I engage in that skill? And I think for a lot of us, what we end up doing is just the bare minimum. And how do you see that tying into let’s say someone someone swimming? Maybe they’ve got a coach. How does that kind of tie into like what kind of feedback we should be receiving? And one thing that just sort of springs to mind there is in your book, you were talking about some of the different kinds of mistakes that that people make and say. So some mistakes are very acceptable mistakes. Some mistakes are ones that are not necessarily ones we want to make. So what sort of mistakes should we be looking to be making? Yeah, look, again, a few questions in that look that in terms of the mistakes stuff that you’ve brought up, a lot of us sort of talk about mistakes as if mistakes are part of learning and they’re OK.

Well, that’s not true. Some mistakes have really serious consequences and other mistakes do actually help us learn. And so when we talk about mistakes in learning, we’ve got to realize that there are some sloppy mistakes and what we call careless mistakes. The sort of mistakes that when you point them out to me, I’m going, yeah, I knew that already.

You didn’t tell me anything. I didn’t already know. I just made it out of carelessness. Then there are mistakes that you make that are performance mistakes and then the mistakes that shouldn’t happen. They’re the ones that have the serious consequences. The sort of mistakes we should be trying to make happen in what I described before as the learning zone. And they’re the mistakes that happen while we’re trying to get better, not trying to do our best. We’re trying to improve. Now, sometimes when we make those mistakes, it’s just simply because we’ve tried to do something we can’t do straight away. And of course, we make mistakes. And the idea there is that we sort of like interrogate that mistake. We go, well, why did that go wrong? And we conduct an autopsy on it and go, don’t do that again. But the sort of mistakes that really skillful learners make are what I call design mistakes. And their mistakes that are designed, you do them deliberately.

You say, look, I don’t know if I’m going to be better doing A or doing B. But I’m going to go out there to do B knowing that if that makes me worse, it must be A. So we’re deliberately trying to create the circumstances to give us the information we want.

The way I look at that in relation to what I see coaching is as and you might have experienced this at the clinic is as we’re trying to make some changes to the stroke. You are going to not do it. You’re not going to get it right every time, but hopefully you start to get an idea of when you do get it right and when you’re not. So, yes, you will hopefully make a positive change, but then you probably can’t do that on repeat 100% of the time. So you can hopefully identify that. And then the other side of that, too, is that you might actually get a little bit slower initially when you make some of these changes. And you might see that as a mistake. It’s like, I haven’t gotten faster. But in order to learn, in order to change, you may have to take that backward step in a way. But if you see that as being an acceptable and OK thing to be doing in order to continue to grow, then it’s going to be OK to to repeat it.

And I think you’ve struck on something here that a lot of people get wrong with practice. And look, I haven’t 100% guilty of this in my swimming. It’s when we practice and when we’re making mistake or we should be making mistakes and trying to refine it and try to improve. We jump into the water without a focus, without an intent. Like we don’t practice with purpose, I talk about. And when I came to the clinic, I’m not sure if you remember, when I came to the clinic, you took the video of me, we had to talk about it. And you identified something I was doing with my right arm. And I just went, oh my God, like I had no idea I was doing that wrong. Like if you if you’d asked me before and I would say my left arm was rubbish, my right arm was good. And it was the other way around. Yeah. But then from then I went away and we did the drills and stuff at the clinic. And I went back into the water and every swim since then, I’ve been able to have a focus.

I’ve got into the water with the intention of like, I’ve got to pay attention to my body position, which is making that right arm do that thing. And and what that means is that every hour I’ve swum since the clinic has had a purpose. But when I look back at the hundreds of hours I’ve done before the clinic, I wasted hours largely. Like they’re just doing the swimming. They were in what I would call my comfort zone. And you know, someone would say, oh, James, you’ve done hundreds of hours swimming. And the truth is I haven’t done hundreds of hours swimming. What I’ve actually done is the same hour of swimming over and over and over again. And this is what I’ve heard you talk about that, you know, slow incremental growth, that idea of, you know, infinite game, always improving. Just getting into the pool and swim, swim, swim, swim, swim might make you a little bit fitter, but it doesn’t make you a better swimmer.

And you need that focus, that intentionality, that, you know, information to focus on when you’re in the pool. And that’s what, you know, I draw on the work of Anders Ericsson when he talks about the three Fs of practice. You see, you’ve got to focus, you know, so you’re going to know what it is you’re practicing. So when I’m in the pool now, after listening to you, I’m focusing on that right arm and making it feel like it’s touching the bottom of the pool instead of my chest like it pretty much was. You’ve got to have feedback. You’ve got to have a source of information to say, am I getting it right? Am I getting it wrong? And that’s why I’m going to come back to the clinics because I need you to. I haven’t got a camera that I can see that well. I’m only going by my own proprioception. And then you’re going to go back and fix it. And if you’re not doing those steps, if you’re just swimming, or if you’re just, you know, practicing at work or whatever it is you’re practicing without the focus, without the feedback, without going back and trying to fix it, then you’re never going to grow.

You’re never going to improve.

Yeah, it’s, it’s something that I hear quite a bit from people who have maybe done a similar thing to you. They’ve been swimming for quite a while, but they’ve never had that coaching or that technical coaching. And I think it can be like a real light bulb that goes off. It’s like, oh, there’s, there’s so much to it and there’s so much that I can get better. Yeah. So many things I can improve and I can, I can see how I can get faster now. So yeah. So that’s what can really make that, that incremental progress happen. And one, one question that sort of comes to mind in terms of getting feedback and I sometimes see this as swimming, but I think it could be more related to like, say, say work life or something else. It’s like, it can be hard to receive feedback to actually want to, to hear some things that maybe you’re not very good at or maybe you’re not doing very well and, and possibly deep down, you know that, but it can be hard to sort of take that to hear and then take it on board and then, and then make a change.

Are there any sort of strategies or how can we, how can we view that? How can we be okay with getting feedback that we know might show us where our shortcomings are, but in the long run, that’s going to, to help us. So there’s two parts of that question. I’ll answer it in two parts. The first part is your emotional reaction of that feedback. And I think that speaks to your mindset. Yeah, this is the work of Carol Dweck that, you know, when you see your abilities as fixed, you know, I’m just the way I am. Then feedback gets viewed as criticism. Like if you, if you can’t change yourself, you don’t think you can change yourself very much. Then any feedback you’re given is just here are the things you can’t do. Yeah, you tend not to listen to it very much. And we grew up in a world where, you know, we were left with, we might, we might outwardly say, I’ve got a growth mindset. I want to improve, but we’ve got these beliefs that we grew up with from childhood.

You know, you were the smart one in the family and your sister was the athletic one and your little brother was, you know, the other one. And, you know, we went through school and we identified ourselves as, you know, I’m the language kid or the maths kid or I’m an A student or I’m a B student. And we categorized ourselves. And so at some level, a lot of us, when we come to any learning situation, think that learning situation is some sort of test to work out how good we are rather than a way to get better. And there’s some tricks we can use to help us with that. Like it’s a big topic that I spent years talking to with the organizations. But the first thing to recognize is that you don’t have a fixed mindset. You don’t have a growth mindset. It’s actually a continuum. And what we need to do is move along that continuum. We need little nudges. So when we find ourselves saying to ourselves that, you know, I really struggle with my swimming or I really struggle with my catch.

One of the things we’ve got to remind ourselves is we don’t. We’re struggling with our catch at that moment and make it about a point in time rather than a description of ourselves. And that speaks to that gradual improvement sort of thing. When we look at experts in the field, whether they’re swimmers, whether they’re other people, what we’ve got to recognize is they’re all beginners. They all had this backstory at some point where they went, now I’m this good, now I’m better, now I’m improving. And they see themselves as that continuous growth. Lane Beachley is a great example. When Lane Beachley became the best female surfer in the world, she didn’t sit there and go, well, I’m the best. Thanks very much. She went and surf with the men. She went and surfed for a challenge that would push her to the next level. And that then put a huge gap on the rest of the female surfers in the world at that point in time.

And we all know the story of her dominating. So the first thing I think you’ve got to understand yourself as a learner, someone who can improve and grow. And that’s the mindset issue. The second part of the question you asked was about how do we get really good feedback? The first thing I say about that is not to wait. Most people wait until after they’ve performed, after they’ve demonstrated, after they’ve done the thing and then come up to someone like you and say, well, what did you think?

That’s a very reactive way to work with feedback. A skillful learner will take charge of that process and tailor the feedback to meet their needs. So when they start the process, first off, they’ve got their focus. All right. So next time I come to one of your clinics, I’m going to say, look, Breton, I’ve been working on this right arm. What I’ve been doing is really thinking about reaching deep because I know I have a habit of bending the right elbow right up to my chest. And I’ll tell you what I’ve been doing. And I say, I want you to look at this. So what I’m doing is I’ve got my focus and now I prime you to look at the right thing. Because if I don’t prime you to start with, you might come back and say, James, look, I really notice something about your head position or about your hips or about your kick. And I go, well, that might be really true, but not what I’m focusing on. It doesn’t fit me. So before it starts, I prime you with what I need.

And that gives you the opportunity to give me really focused, really meaningful feedback. But most people, when they think about feedback, it’s something that happens afterwards. But it’s something you should take charge of before as well, I think. And the other part is, I’d say too, is that, and I learnt this from Adam Grant. If you know Adam Grant’s book, he’s just written something called Hidden Potential. Fantastic book. But he says we should stop asking for feedback.

And he says what we should do instead is ask for advice. And the difference he says is that feedback tends to be, and looks a little bit somatic, but feedback tends to be looking backwards and be critical. Advice tends to look forward and be action-orientated. And I think that’s a really good way to think about it, that I’m not looking back and saying this is what you did wrong. I’m looking forward and saying, this is how you can get better. This is how you can improve.

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I like that way of thinking about it because it can be hard to not take feedback personally if you haven’t asked for it. For example, it makes me think of Ariane Titmuss and her coach, Dean Boxle. You’re hearing a lot of interviews if she’s ever asked about Dean. She said he does not let me get away with anything in training. If he says I’m not doing something right, he’ll let me know. And he’s a very hard taskmaster in that respect. But they have so much respect between each other because she knows he’s got the right intentions and that’s what she’s signed up for. That’s what she needs and that’s what she wants. And so he’s just always keeping on top of those little things if you notice that her streamline, her pushoff, something’s just slipped out of place. He’s able to give her that feedback immediately. And that compounded over time makes such a huge, huge difference. And now us as swimmers, we’re not going to have that sort of feedback from a coach

because we’re not in that sort of environment. But any little bit that we can get that feedback, the faster you’re going to be able to make those improvements and see those better results. Yeah. And I suspect what she’s doing too is that she’s decided before she receives the feedback how she’s going to respond to it. So she’s jumped into the pool and she goes, I know he’s not beating up on me. He’s not going to, he’s not really being critical, even if he’s yelling at me or whatever it might be going on. I’m going to take it on board as something I need to improve. And I think that’s something to, to manage your own emotional response to feedback before you get it. Yeah. As I get to the end of the pool, there’s Brett and standing there. I go, right, I’m just going to take this as information that’s not personal and I’m going to use it to improve myself. And it doesn’t fit me. I’m going to work on something else.

Okay. You take that control of the feedback yourself. That’s, that’s an interesting point because I recently, I just sent out a survey to some of our members who have gone through like our AS squad workout. So we’re providing three workouts a week for people to go through. It’s the first month that we’ve just started doing this. And because it’s so, because it’s all new and I just want to make it as good as we possibly can and as, as useful as we possibly can. I’m with the mindset of like, I don’t care if they say, look, it was rubbish and like, they were no good at all. You know, I think you should change this and this and this. And if, if they said that, I wouldn’t take it personally at all because I’m going in with the mindset of, look, I want to make this as good as I can and I’m, I just want your advice. I want you, I want you feedback to help us just continue to improve this. But if I see it as, this is a review of how good you are as a coach

and how good your workouts are, then that to me, I would take quite personally. So that’s, yeah, an interesting distinction and, and just a slight change and I guess mindset about how, how you review the, the feedback that they’re providing. So, you know, I’ve taken it in both ways before if someone’s giving that a clinic review or a camp review, you know, and, and maybe even if it’s like a four out of five, I still take that. I find that personal. It’s like, I could have done better. You know, what, what’s not right there. So yeah, it’s just, it’s a different way of seeing things. And I think that mindset issue you’ve touched on, it’s, we need to recognize our mindset and the guy, I’ve got a, a model I can share with you if you’ve got a show notes, we can connect it here. But just to recognize where do you fall on this continuum? Cause it’s not fixed or growth. It’s not like I love feedback all the time.

I hate it all the time. It’s like, I’m prepared to take this much feedback for these reasons, but then I start feeling like it’s critical and, and to ask yourself, why do I have that response? Like, what is it that leaves me there? Because it plays out, not just in feedback. It plays out in the amount of effort you’re prepared to put in it plays out in the goals you set. Like if you’ve got a relatively, you know, fixed mindset and you’re trying to prove yourself all the time rather than improve yourself. The goals you set tend to be achievable. Like the goals you know you can achieve because they’re already within your abilities rather than goals that are a bit audacious. Yeah. We’re talking before I’ve entered the new 24 swim and it’s an audacious goal like there was an option for a 12 K swim or a 24 K swim. And I was talking to a mate of mine and I, and we’re talking about it. We both sort of said, you know, I reckon we can do 12 Ks.

Like I reckon if we just did the training, we could do 12 Ks and it would just be a swim. Like it’d be a good swim. And yeah, but I got no bloody idea how to do 24 Ks. Like how do you do 24? And there’s going to be all that challenge, all that, you know, what am I going to learn from this? Like I don’t even know what I don’t know yet starting to scare me with less than 200 days to go. But that, that idea of when you’re towards the growth end of the continuum, you take on challenges that you don’t know the answers to that make you grow. And that’s I think really important. And I was funny in preparing for today. I was looking at, you know, your business effortless swimming, which is, you know, fantastic. And I get what you’re doing when you talk to people about effortless swimming, I’m watching the examples and they look effortless. But for someone at a fixed mindset, end of the continuum, they look at someone swimming effortlessly and they go,

Oh, you bastard, I’ve got to work so hard.

For someone at the growth end of the continuum, they recognize that it takes a lot of effort to make something look effortless. And they ask, what’s the backstory? What was all the work that’s gone in there? What have they refined? What have they done to get to that stage? And so if you’re looking at some of those people and going, Oh, God, they’re so lucky or they’re just naturally gifted or whatever it is. Yeah, you’re separating yourself. You’re saying, I can never do that. But if you’re looking at those people and going, Jeez, they used to be a beginner once. Like they got their 25 minute certificate and they thought they were champions when they got it. And they got it better and better and better. I’m just behind them at the moment and I can keep growing and keep improving. And then that’s what you want to come back and, you know, work on your stroke and do the, you know, set the goals that really stretch you,

not find your limits, extend your limits.

Yeah, it’s just, you took the words out of my mouth. Like that’s, I call it effortless swimming because that’s what it looks like and in a way it can feel like when you’re swimming really, really well, but it takes a hell of a lot of effort and practice to get to that point. And let’s say someone that you don’t necessarily, someone that you don’t like, for example, if you have a look at their, their backstory, it’s like, you can kind of see how they’ve arrived where they are, like whether that’s their attitude or their mindset or where they are in life. Like if you, if you know someone’s story, you can generally sympathize a lot with where they’re currently at, but taking that to swimming, it’s like, well, if you knew how many laps that they had done, how much focus and attention they had put on their stroke, how much feedback they’ve received, it’s not a surprise that they are doing, that they’re swimming, how they’re swimming.

So, you know, everything is a, it’s a learnable skill. We can all get better at that. And I think the mentality of just knowing that swimming is a learned skill, that in itself can make a hell of a difference to people because I do, you know, you do sometimes just get people to come, they come and they’re like, yeah, I’m not a swimmer cycle. Just even just saying that, you know, you’re not doing yourself a moment. It’s a constant. You’re not a swimmer at the moment, but neither was Phelps, neither was, you know, they weren’t swimmers, they became that. Yeah, exactly right. Exactly right. And yeah, even with like younger kids who like might be very good at a young age, it’s like, well, they’re not all, they’re not the ones that are always going and become world champions. It’s like, there’s so many swimmers who were average as kids or Michael Jordan, you know, missing the high school basketball team or whatever it was, it’s like, yeah,

nobody’s path is fixed and set. It’s this ongoing process that we’ve got to just be willing to go through. And just thinking about this U24 for you. So what’s your process now that you’re training for this event that feels like it’s right on the edge of that like, is it doable? Is it not? You know, I think that’s such a great level of where to sort of set your targets. How are you incorporating the stuff that you teach and talk about into this whole process? Yeah, well, it’s a good question because I’m just starting off and just starting to realize what it is I need to focus on. So the first thing I’ve done is I’ve said that to myself, I need to make every session purposeful. So when I get into the pool, get into the water, it’s not to have a swim. I’m not just going to swim 3Ks or 5Ks or whatever I swim, there’s got to be a focus. There’s got to be purposeful practice. So that means I need to know what I’m focusing on

and it’s not just technique. You know, I’ve started to realize that and I’m hoping we’re going to have a conversation about where the rest of my focus might be. But there’s all the things from, you know, feeding from rest from, you know, all these other elements that every time I make, get into the water, I’ve got to know what it is I’m practicing today. If I just get in, swim and get out, why bother? Like maybe I’m getting a couple of Ks under my belt, getting a little bit fitter maybe, but I’m really not. And so, you know, tying it into what we’re talking about before, about coming back to the clinics. When I come back to the next clinic to get you to look at my stroke and see if I’ve actually made those improvements, I’ll get, I’ll do it twice. I want to get into the pool and this is me taking charge of my feedback and we’ll do the, like we did before, we’ll do a quick warm-up and then do the, the swim and you can have a look at it.

And then I want to say, look, Ren, before we actually go into the, you know, analysis of this, I was going to jump over into the other lane. I’m going to swim one or two Ks fairly solid because I actually reckon that’s where my need is. Getting my stroke right when I’m fresh, I’m probably okay. It’s getting my stroke right when I’m tired because that’s what I’m going to be doing most of the time. I think of that 24K swim, I’ll be tired for a lot of it and that’s where I probably need the feedback. So I know what it is I’m starting to focus on. I’m certainly getting help from people like you and reading things and other stuff about what are the elements I’ll need to do, even just swimming with a paddler, like I haven’t swum with a paddler before. I’ve got a suspicion that, you know, swimming with a paddler, I’ll look at them and I know if I’m looking at something to what I’m reading, that actually changes my head and my body and stuff.

So I’ve got to, I’m going to have to practice just noticing them rather than looking at them. So this is all a long-winded way of saying what I’ve done is I’ve set a goal that is in what I call my learning zone. It’s beyond my current abilities. I’ve recognized that to do that requires struggle. You know, there are things I don’t know. I’m going to need support. It’s not like the 12K swim. I could have just swum on my own, got the distance up and done it. But I’ll need extra support. I’ll need to take control of that because I may have overstretched. We’ll see. Time will tell. Can I get to that stage to be fitter than I’ve ever been in my life in the next 200 days, which is the time I’ve got involved? And so knowing that it’s that sort of goal, you set particular expectations. If it was an easy goal, just do it and you tick it off and it’s like a task. But you set this goal knowing that you’re going to learn things not just about swimming, but about yourself,

about your mental state, about a whole lot of other things, which pays off not just for the swim, but will pay off in other areas of my life as well. And then I’ve got to identify specifically what do I need to do for these goals? Tailor that feedback to match. And I think looping back to that conversation about effort, when I talk about effort with the clients that I work with, I talk about it as being the currency of growth and most people don’t understand it. Most people think effort is the amount of time and energy you spend on something. And I know this is a podcast, not everyone will get this, but it looks sort of like constipation. But it’s not the amount of time and energy you spend. It’s how that time and energy is spent that’s important. And that time and energy can be wasted. Like you just don’t show up to the pool at all. It can be spent just going up and down, up and down, up and down. And you know, all you get is up and down,

up and down for it. Or it can be invested. And when you invest it, you’ve got that focus. You’ve got that feedback. You’ve got that fix it part. You actually come out of the pool, not just having done the 3K or whatever you’re swimming, you get out of the pool having grown yourself. Either your strokes changed a little bit or your ability to stay focused has changed a little bit or your knowledge about how you respond to consuming certain foods before or after, whatever it is you’re focusing on, you’ve changed. And that’s what I said before that, you know, in recent history, you know, you’d say James you’ve swum a couple hundred kilometers in the last six months and I hadn’t. I’d swum one kilometer a couple hundred times over. But between now and February 9 or whenever it is when I do this year, 24 swim, I am going to swim hundreds of hours because each hour we design to improve an investment. Yeah. And you know,

when you’ve done a session like that, you like you come out of it and just like, man, all right, I was really tested in that session in terms of my my ability to hold the pace or like I was really tested with my technique. I was starting to fall apart and I got back on top of it. Like I when I’m driving home from the pool after a session, I really can really kind of acknowledge the sessions where it’s where I was in that that learning sort of phase and I’ve really gotten something something from it where there’s been sessions where it’s just been pure survival, just getting to the end and maybe my mind or my body wasn’t quite there. But yeah, the more of those types of learning sessions you can have, the better off you’re going to be. One of the ways you can recognize that in my work, I talk about learning zones. There’s a learning expert. A lot of people think learning is just learning, but there’s what we call your comfort zone and people

for me with the idea of the comfort zone, but often people think your comfort zone is just things you can already do, but your comfort zone is things you can do easily, but it’s also what we call the easy things you haven’t done yet and the world is full of easy things you haven’t done yet. If you asked me to go and swim 3Ks, okay, I can go to swim 3Ks, I’ve swum back course before, but you know, I’ve done it and that’s where people get mixed up when they said, when people say, get outside your comfort zone, try something new. Not everything new is outside your comfort zone and being in your comfort zone, it feels like a task. It feels confident, it feels secure, it feels like just tick it off and I can do it. And I think if you’re practicing, training and it feels like a tick box, you’re probably in your comfort zone, then there’s your performance zone. That’s when you’re doing your best and your best is when you’re focused,

like you’re really intentional about it, but you’re repeating, you’re consolidating, you’re doing your best at the expense of not getting better. And so I sometimes talk to people about the difference between comfort and performance that you can multitask in your comfort zone because you’ve got resources available to you, but you can’t multi-perform. Performance takes everything you’ve got. You know you’re in the sort of zone where you grow, what I call your learning zone or your growth zone. When what you’re doing makes you feel how I’m not sure what exactly is this going to cost me? And when you feel that uncertainty that a little bit of confusion, a little bit of that’s the sign of growth. And I think there’s a lot of stories and analogies we can use, but one that’s just sprung to mind. Muhammad Ali was asked once, how many sit-ups do you do in a session? Do you know what he said? How many do you reckon he does in a session?

500. He said, I don’t know. I don’t start counting until it hurts because it’s only the ones that hurts that count. And I think that’s a good sign. If you can just do it, then you’re not getting better. It’s the ones that make you go, oh, I’m not sure how do you do that? It’s the ones that push, whether that’s pushing you mentally or pushing you physically, it’s pushing you past your current boundaries, not way past. Yeah. Sorry. I just had a memory of pushing myself way past my boundaries. When Kieran Perkins did the 1,515 minutes, I was swimming with a squad and we decided we were going to do it. Yeah, we were going to swim 1,515 minutes, but we’re going to do it as a relay, diving in from each end, and with fins. Now, I was swimming with some, you know, semi-elite, triathletes at the time. I wasn’t way anywhere means the fastest. We couldn’t keep up. We’ve been diving in. It was unbelievable. Anyway, so the point I’m trying to make is that,

you know, pick where you’re going to focus. If you’re just going to get things done, well, okay, that’s all right. Sometimes you’re going to get things done, but you’re not going to get better. And I think what a lot of people confuse is we get busy instead of getting better. And when you look back at your training, when you look back at your work, whatever you’re trying to get better at, whatever you’re trying to learn, if you’re taking the path of least resistance, if you’re doing the stuff that you know you can do, setting the goals that are within reach, but they’re just going to take a bit of time, then you’re getting busy. You’re not getting better. And yeah, I think that’s probably said enough of that. That what you made me think of there is for things that aren’t physical. So let’s say it’s like a work related thing or maybe something you’ve, I don’t know, got to do around the house. It’s like that learning zone for me,

I find if I’m feeling frustrated about something, like let’s say it’s something like new or different that I’ve got to do for effortless swimming. I get this real sort of frustration because I’ve never done it before and I’ve got to like, I’ve got to think very hard and just like, you know, work it out. And it’s like, there’s a lot of time spent on just the, not the doing it, but just like the figuring out how it’s got to be done and how it’s going to work. And I find that when I’m frustrated, I’m actually kind of growing there. Like, you know, you don’t want to keep that through frustration, but yeah. And it’s so to me that’s like, and I have to think, I have to maintain the mindset of this is actually a, this is when I’m, this is when I’m growing. This is when I’m, I’m learning and it’s not, and not stop at that point because it’s just, it’s easy to go off like, what’s the point? This is just like, I’ll just go back to what I’m used to,

but anytime that I’ve pushed through that frustration, finish the task, it’s then whenever I do it, it’s easy and it’s like, yeah, it’s that comfort zone. So yeah, it’s just always just being willing to, to go through that frustration zone for anything that’s, for me, that’s not physical. You know, if it’s, if it’s swimming and I’m doing a challenge, it’s like, I’m not frustrated cause I’m just physically exhausted and like, I much prefer that feeling than that, the frustration, but it just depends on the task. I find. And I think too, what happens after you go through that struggle, after you go through and do the hard work and you invest that effort, you grow, you’re better. And that thing that used to be hard becomes easy. See someone with it, we’re talking about mindset before and how they see effort. Someone with a fixed mindset says, well, if that steps hard, the next step will be harder. And the step after that will be really hard.

The step after that will be bloody impossible. They go, I’m not doing that. But someone with a growth mindset that recognizes that effort is the cost of growth and that struggle produces growth, goes hard, invest the effort. Oh, now it’s easy. And they go to the next step, which is also hard. It’s not harder until you make it easy. And it’s the growth that is hard. It’s not the standard that’s hard. And the more we start understanding that, the more we’ve prepared to go through that struggle. And I encourage people, sometimes people sort of talk about that growth phase when they’re in their learning zone, they go, I’ve just got to put up with it. Yeah, it’s just hard work. Like, I don’t do that. Celebrate it. Recognize that when you’re feeling that frustration, that’s where the growth is happening. It’s like when you get out of the pool or get out of the gym and you go, oh, that hurt. But you say it with a smile because you know that little

bit of hurt made you stronger. It made you fitter. You get out of the pool and you go, oh, yeah, well, that was an easy set. And you sort of go, well, what did I do that for? Like, you know, I haven’t changed at all. I’ve just burned some calories. Maybe I’ll lose 100 grams in a big deal. And tying that back to swimming, I find that anything technical, yeah, at the clinics, there is, you can, I can see it on people’s faces. There’s some of that frustration, like, oh, am I getting it? It’s like, I’m finding it hard to stick to the position that I’m trying to do here. It’s like, you see that frustration. So, yeah, if you can know that there’s a purpose behind it and you’re actually in, that’s a good thing, then you’re much more willing to stick with it. I think that’s really important with the work I do with schools. I didn’t like my work with schools. One of the things we tell teachers like you and me is to tell the kids you’re going into your learning zone.

You will feel frustrated. You won’t know the answer. You will need to have some support, some help, some resources. You won’t know exactly how long it’s going to take to do it. Other times, in your performance zone, get it right. Do it well. Feel confident about it. It’s actually different. But if people are jumping into the pool expecting to just get it right, just be told what to do and it’ll happen. And then they actually find themselves in their learning zone and they go, this is not happening. I can’t work this out. I’ve stuffed it up again. Like, it’s still not working. They tend to give up if they’re not expecting it. I think one of the things coaches and teachers can do is actually prepare the people we are teaching by saying, these are the emotions you are about to experience. They are normal. They are not a sign of deficit. They’re not a sign of you not being a good swimmer. They are a sign that you are becoming a better swimmer

and it’s the same thing that everyone goes through. Whether it’s Phelps or you or whatever it might be, they all went through those feelings. That you’ve just, I’m making a mental note to make sure to let people know that that’s what they’re going to be going through. And one thing that I’ve sort of, I had it in quite a few years ago and I may have told this on the podcast before, but quite a few years ago, I had someone email me on a Monday morning after a Sunday clinic and they said, Oh, I did my font of time trial and I was like two seconds slower and it’s just like, I’m really, I’m really annoyed about that. Like I’m not swimming faster straight away. And so what I got from that was like, I’m not telling people what they should expect after this clinic. So that’s on me. I need to preface this with like, you may get faster but you very much may well actually get a little bit slower initially because you’re going to be going

through these, yeah, through these different things. So yeah, just letting people know what to expect can make a big difference to that. And I, you’re the expert on the swimming coaching, but I would imagine that you should expect to get slower because I can’t imagine as you’re still trying to work out, whatever it is you’re trying to work out, body position or whatever it is, you have to go slower to manage that. If you’re pushing, doing a time trial, how could you? I don’t know how you can do that. Yeah, it depends on what they need to work on. Like some people there, let’s say just looking really far forwards and I’ve got really low hips and legs. Sometimes if they just fix that look, they’ll be faster straight away because it’s an easy fix, easy to remember and it just naturally lifts their, their legs. So there’s things that people can get fast with straight away, but many times they do have to get slower because it’s, it takes a lot of repetitions

to drill in that new movement pattern or get used to that feeling and different rhythm and timing and things like that. So it does just, just depend on the person really. Yeah. Well, James, so for someone listening to this, if someone was to ask you for, for advice on what, what they could do to become a better learner, I know we’ve sort of covered a few things here. Is there anything that we’ve missed or you think would be beneficial to a swimmer listening to this that we haven’t covered so far? Oh, look, I think we could talk all afternoon. I suppose as I sort of go back over the key ideas, first off an understanding that you’re capable of growth and that’s the mindset part that once you’ve got, if you’ve got a fixed mindset, you’re sort of thinking, well, how good am I? A growth mindset is saying, how good can I get? Fix is about proving, growth is about improving and recognizing where you’re there, you know, where

you find yourself on that continuum, then allows you to sort of move yourself up. And like I’ve said, attach time stamps. Don’t say I struggle with this. I’m struggling at the moment. Don’t even say I’m good at this. You know, this is how good I am at the moment. I was thinking with another part when we were talking before, you know, how do you become the fastest swimmer in your lane? Change lanes.

But seriously, I mean, if you want to feel good about yourself, just drop down into a lower lane, you know, but that’s not the point. You’re not going to get there, but not going to get better by being the fastest swimmer in the slow lane. You want to go and be pushed by being the slowest swimmer in the fast lane. And that that’s the next part I would sort of talk about that. Once you understand your capable of growth, you want to seek out those opportunities to grow. And actually, you know, like, like I said before with the JFK quote, do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. There is no growth without challenge. So look for where you’re going to find the challenge and the growth.

Once you’re there and you understand your capable of growth, well, just challenging yourself isn’t enough to grow. You’re going to know how to behave when you’re in that learning zone. And that involves, you know, cultivating what I call habits of mind that we haven’t really spoken about much today. But tailoring feedback, designing mistakes and making sure that effort is invested by doing the right sort of practice, having that focus, getting that feedback, making sure you’re fixing it. And I think that applies whether you’re swimming, whether you’re doing any other physical thing, but more importantly for my most of my work, it’s the work you’re doing in your workplace or in your profession or in your job, like you’re talking about the stuff you do outside of the pool and stretching and challenging yourself to get better, you know, and from a business perspective, looking out on your business, you do a great

job, like the way you have obviously pushed yourself into, you know, the whole space of doing it online and doing the coaching the using the technology, all that stuff. You know, for someone outside may not realize how much work is involved to get there. Like we said, a lot of effort to make something look so effortless. And so the advice, you know, in terms of the big picture here, understand you’re capable of growth, then go about working out and talk to me if you want about how to actually achieve that growth.

I love it. James, thanks so much for sharing all this on the on the podcast. It’s a topic that’s really fascinated me since I first became aware of it in my, I guess would have been late teens, maybe early 20s, just about learning how people learn and and then trying to learn learn better myself. But then also how can I teach and coach in a way that people are going to be able to take that stuff on board? And it’s such a such a fascinating topic where there’s no end in sight. It’s that infinite game where it’s just like, yeah, there’s you’re not one and done. You are just always looking to to get better at it. And it’s the same thing with swimming where there’s just no no endpoint. We’re always going to be looking for these small improvements. So thank you so much for sharing your all these things that you’ve studied and taught over the years. For those that are listening, we’ll put the links to your book and your website in the show notes,

but grab a copy of it. Learn a ship. Yeah. Learn a ship set. Yep. There we go. And if anyone is interested in reaching out to you, what’s the best way to get in touch? Jump on the website, jamesannison.com.au or shoot me an email James at jamesannison.com.au Fantastic. Thank you. Thanks, Brendan. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

There’s so many cues out there on YouTube and coaches telling people to look down and it’s fascinating how just that cue in looking down in the water can really break that entire whole what I call non-negotiable hull of your boat position and so you know helping people to really understand that they just have to be long rather than put their head in any position is I think makes such a difference and that’s the best way we can keep people’s shoulders safe but also to allow them to tap into those larger muscle groups that I talked about. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. My guest today is someone who I had on only a couple of episodes ago Tracy Baum and welcome back you are on episode 338 and we got a really good response from your episode because I think we talked about a lot of topics that are relevant to the majority of swimmers out there and how they can be more comfortable, more relaxed and just more efficient with their swimming so I wanted to get you back on to go a little bit further into some of these topics and on today’s episode I want to talk about how people can work on the connection and the rhythm in their stroke the different kick types and also looking at cadence and stroke rate and when and how to increase it so firstly welcome back Tracy. Thank you so much for having me back it was a lot of fun last time so I’m looking forward to some more learning between the two of us today. I want to start with connection

and timing because this is one of the pieces of the puzzle that can be hardest to put together I think for a lot of people and you know you can have a maybe a good kick and a good catch but if they’re not connected very well you’re going to be missing out on a huge a huge opportunity there to swim with ease and speed and grace so this is a really important topic that ties everything together so how how do you see the connection and timing and freestyle kind of working together what are some of the key components for you? I think that the first thing that I always say to people who start swimming with us is when we look at swimming we have to and I think I touched on this on the last episode is we have to think about building the body up from the inside out so when we come to looking at connection and certainly connection between catch and the legs I try I try to stay away from the word kick for I think I explained in the last episode but

we’ll get on to that later on in today’s episode is if the middle isn’t connected and if the engine like I like to say that the body is actually the engine that we need and the limbs are kind of like propellers then then the propellers can’t work so that you have to have both working together and so the connection really comes from making sure that you have firstly attached that torso to the legs and you’ve got that in place so talk about kind of knitting together the the area around the pelvis to attach the legs to the torso and then doing the same through the scapula with the arm again knitting them together and through doing that and making the whole body move as one unit one single connected unit then what happens with the the catch and the press the lengths pressing at the back will always be connected and synchronized then to the whole body rotation if we try and separate those out then what happens is we have these singular body parts that we’re trying to kind of connect

up from the outside in and it’s it’s not always as successful and it certainly can not be as powerful because we tap into smaller muscle groups whereas if you are able to use the engine of the whole body you’re able to tap into the largest sling systems out through throughout the body which it’s really used to using in everyday life and it reduces the risk of of injury so you have suffering the inside out always I say to people you want to learn the timing and connection well first of all let’s get your body into one unit and when we’ve got it into one unit then you can really time those those things to it yeah you’ve got to always be holding or holding the body correctly or switching things on through the center first else there’s going to be that that disjointed movement from the top half to the bottom half so that’s always such a great place to start and when we run clinics we always just start with that all

right let’s let’s hold this midsection of the body correctly let’s make sure we got good posture a big part of that is what you talked about last time getting the head away from the the toes and just yeah maintaining good good posture and an example of this is had a swimmer at a clinic recently who had been trying lots of different things and like really just struggled to keep her heart rate down to move forwards much at all and we filmed her and her head and shoulders were 15 20 centimeters below the water so she’s really just trying to bury her head down to get her hips up so hips are up high but then her legs were down quite low so it was like this you know like a triangle or a pyramid the shape of her body and so what we worked on was just getting that connection holding holding the body straighter and just trying to get that to work together because then the connection became so much easier for her

and not only did her body position overall improved then she’s starting to feel these things these things work together so let’s say someone’s got that part of the the puzzle where would you then start to work with them to help them to feel that that connection are there certain drills or are there certain cues or things that you would have them think about yeah for sure so you know just just on that just to go back slightly to that the person that you had in your clinic with bearing the head I think this is such a really important um topic and just want to touch on it because I touched on it this in this week’s mastery Monday that we do on on Mondays is this so there’s so many cues out there on YouTube and and coaches telling people to look down and it’s fascinating how just that cue in looking down in the water can really break that entire whole what I call non-negotiable hull of your boat position and so you know helping people to

really understand that they just have to be long rather than put their head in any position is I think makes such a difference like you say so if I was then to go on to starting to teach them how they connect up with the with the catch per se you know timing synchronization with the catch I tend to get them to get in touch with the with the feel for the water we do have drills that we use to break down the movement of the catch and the timing of the catch so we’ll get them into a streamlined position making sure that their rotation is absolutely perfect so we want to always make sure that the rotation is never more if you were to get a protractor help them like 30 degrees because otherwise if they rotate any further off of that point they push the scap back into the into the spine and they actually then can’t get it physiologically on it anatomically can’t get a catch because of where they’ve put their where their scapular is ended up by over

rotating so they’ll always lead to either a dropped elbow catch or it will lead to injury because they’re still trying to get a high elbow catch with a compromised scapular position so we start off with the correct rotation and then we have them really so seeing sending their fingers their fingernails forward so they’ve got the the correct connection if you like that lego piece between the arm and the torso being across the scapula then we have them just think about folding and it just having them feel that they have to maintain if I do it in in in this angle here in this plane sorry here we want to be able to maintain this angle here as they fold over a ball and while they’re folding over a ball they want to literally have this ball but the most important thing we get them to think about in this position is that they maintain that 30 that 30 degrees level of rotation I never talk about degrees but for want of a better

way of describing it today and then when they are ready to do the synchronization point that they’re already in that point of applying pressure at the moment that they engage their engine which is their rotation because what we’re trying to teach the the swimmers is that their engine is not the pull which is why for us we have a swim mastery swear word book and pull is number one on the swear word book because the movement or the connotation in the brain connected to the word pull is that I’m going to grab something I’m going to pull it and look at what my happens to my elbow it does the complete opposite of what we want the elbow to do in swimming it actually drops the elbow and the brain connotates if that’s even a word pull with that movement so if I tell the swimmer to pull I’m always telling the brain to do the wrong thing so then the swim is getting mixed messages okay you’ve got to pull but you’ve got to have a

high elbow and the swim is going your butt and the brain is going your butt so we kind of take the words that confuse the swimmer’s bodies out of the equation which why we call it catch and hold and so we get them into that position they catch and hold and then at the moment the moment the rotation starts we’re sending a message to the body that the rotation is the engine and this is just a holding tool it’s just holding and applying pressure to the water in order for the whole body to rotate past that set point if you like so that’s how we start building building it up but the amount of rotation is the key if they over rotate it can’t happen lots of lots of good points there so one that you mentioned there and for those that are just listening Trace was demonstrating with the with the arm extended and you’re going to set the catch so you’re bending or you’re folding at the elbow just with the upper part of the arm

and the and the body you’re saying you don’t want that angle to to change so that angle of the shoulder and I really like that point because if I’m demonstrating on video what I want someone to do at that point we just want that little bit of a movement where the upper part of the arm doesn’t move much like it’s just it doesn’t move much at all and you’re getting that bend at the elbow and people will look at that and go I just don’t have the mobility to be able to do it and yes maybe you’re really tight because we see people like that but I think like everyone can still get some sort of movement in that sort of position and it might not be perfect but it’s going to be sufficient to still get a decent hold of the water and yeah and I think the most important thing about this position and it’s it’s the thing that I’m one of the things that I’m most passionate about you know in terms of injury prevention which is you know what what swim

mastery is all about on that note I have a discount code for all your listeners for our injury prevention course so I must remember to give you that at the end is the fact that when you get into that position and I will remember this is a podcast so getting into my rotated position and I’m demonstrating it standing up so I have my streamline up in the air and as I fold I literally imagine I’m folding over a ball or over over a wall if you like but it’s a really high and what happens is as I fold over that that it’s not it only is it okay but join mechanically my hand must come inside of my my shoulder line and what if we keep the hand on the shoulder line we’re putting the the shoulder joint the shoulder go to lintel compromise position so it’s about understanding that we start in our streamline position down one line as we fold over the ball this elbow as it as the arm internally rotates the elbow

goes slightly outside the line and the hand actually comes slightly inside the line which makes the catch pathway happen kind of I always say thumb goes along the same line as the eyeball down the pecs down the inside of the the front side of the hip rather than trying to keep that catch pathway in line with the shoulder which then will create definitely impingement so and and send the swimmer in the wrong direction because it it’s not what the joints want to do so you want to think about what position we would put our arms in if we were going to climb a really high wall and we would automatically go into that exact same position that I’ve just talked through and demonstrated and that’s the best way we can keep people’s shoulders safe but also to allow them to tap into those larger muscle groups that I talked about so it’s safe and stronger therefore we’ll end up being faster once they’ve figured it out yeah well an exercise that I’ll

sometimes have people do at clinics is we’ll get them into to partner up and go into a good catch position and we’ll get what the other swimmer to just hold their forearm and then we’ll have them them press against that nice and they can feel their lats working and then we’ll have them drop the elbow you know in that in a poor position and then they’ll sort of press against them and they really feel the top of their shoulder load load up and so you can see with that mechanically better position then they can actually use those stronger muscles and they can feel it and that’s such a fantastic way to get people to have that that contrast of feeling what what you want them to do versus what you don’t want them to do and it really gives that that’s a really great way of giving them that picture and I love the the concept of you know holding and just moving your body past it or the concept of of anchoring because it’s very common to see people

trying to muscle their way through the water or pull their arm through but it’s not that the concept that we’re going for it’s that and I think you may have mentioned it last time but I love the the cue of a ladder on the bottom of the pool and you got rungs on that ladder and we’re just placing a hand on it moving past it and you’re always going to have some slippage you know you’re not going to be perfectly anchored with the arm or holding it in the exact same spot but we want to work a little bit towards that and that’s what you see the best rooms in the world the world do and especially when they when you feel like you’ve got that hold and then you initiate that rotation you really get a get a sense of it where does the kick come into that for you what do you do you have or the the legs where do the legs come into that for you this episode is brought to you by pillar performance our new sponsors pillar

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magnesium and the tangible results that I see on my garment each morning if you’d like to try pillar today head to pillar performance dot shop and enter code effortless for 15% off that’s effortless for 15% off all first time purchases or for anyone in north america enter the same code at the feed dot com so so kick happens to be a now freestyle swear word book and we do all four strokes so the only stroke that I actually use the word kick is breaststroke all the rest of of the the strokes kick is on this one marty swear word book just because again and I think I mentioned this in the last podcast but just for anyone who didn’t listen to that again the brain’s connotation with the word kick the movement pattern that the brain wants to do and I can imagine that 90% of everyone who is listening to this is has the image of picking something probably a ball and pulling the heel back and you know winding the foot through and and picking the ball or

something and obviously that’s exactly the movement that we don’t want in swimming what we want is to have the legs just as an extension of that frame that starts at the shoulders and that we’ve knitted together at the pelvis and the legs are just part of that however they also are have to and are anchors and they also act as a counterbalance to the rotation so it was interesting I’m in the middle of doing several different coach trainings at the moment and I was doing one coach training call last night and we were talking about flutter and and and what it’s for and obviously there’s a lot of information out there that would suggest that your legs or the kick is there to keep the legs up and whilst whilst the legs if you do nothing with the legs they will sink I was explaining to to the new coaches who are who are training with me at the moment I was explaining that we have to have a leg action in order to press or connect at

the back end with the water so that we can use our engine and and using again the analogy of the outboard motor you’ve got the engine and you’ve got the propeller propeller on its own I eat catch and kick doesn’t do anything and the engine on its own without propeller doesn’t do anything just so so it’s this really this marriage of these two parts that that have to go together so when I talk about legs I talk about using them as a tool to press and counterbalance so it and it doesn’t matter which kind of movement or how many movements necessarily they are doing with their legs so long as that’s their job and that’s their intention is that they’re staying behind the body they are pressing water behind them in order to send them forwards and they are never together they’re always a part to be a counterbalance for the rotation and the other the recovering arm on the other side that’s that’s great I think

a one thing you mentioned there was you said they’re always either behind you or behind the body so you know picturing filming someone from the side they’re not obviously you know below you and I was I was talking to the guy Ash Delaney the other day who’s just started coaching Carl Chalmers and he said if you look at Carl’s kick he actually comes out of the water quite a bit because he’s sprinting and his feet actually come out quite high but you look below the water below his body line no not it’s just it’s all staying within that body line so he’s very streamlined very very efficient and that counterbalance action is yeah that’s you see someone who rotates too far the legs will will splay and like you see it splay because it’s it’s trying to stop you from going even further it’s trying to counterbalance you at the back but obviously that’s not a good movement below yeah and it’s just like this big parachute that just

goes out behind you each time and for anyone who’s doing that it’s just such free speed to gain when you make that that change we had a few summers at our clinics on the weekend where they were going really wide and going really far on their side and and I said it’s the only thing you take from today is you know you make that change your flatter keep the kick together you could be five or ten seconds quicker if that’s all you took but there’s always more than that so yeah it’s uh yeah exactly right and you mentioned it doesn’t matter not necessarily how many kicks or what your your bait is like it’s and obviously that can can change can you talk a bit about the the two four six baits what do you like to sort of do in terms of teaching that or recommending a certain style for a certain person where’s that fall for you so first and foremost so I don’t I don’t sit on any I kind of sit on the fence with this a little bit because I’m not

in any one camp what I’m about is what is best for the swimming in front of me and for some swimmers who are in front of me it’s definitely going to be a flattensill and I think there’s there’s so much information now out there on youtube and people spend a lot of time watching youtube and going to the pool and trying to do things in their stroke that they’ve watched on youtube right and then they come to you for lessons I’m sure you’ve experienced this so much yourself and haven’t quite got the message and so they come with this like oh I’m doing let’s say a two and two beat we call it a two beat press and you know it’s this real huge massive scissor scissor the literal kick because it actually actually is a kick because they’re using quads and hamstrings and they’re just winding themselves up and doing this massive kick in order to rotate and then ending up in this streamlined position that the legs pin together behind them and

they’re like oh it’s going so great and I’m going in it’s not going so great because you have got no counterbalance you’re putting that parachute like you were talking about up and putting the brakes on it’s like it’s like riding your bike holding the brake on and you’re disconnecting your entire body and just loading up tiny and smaller muscles so you get enough fatigue quicker you’re gonna risk injury and so so for people like that I would absolutely definitely recommend that they break it down and start learning a really well integrated well timed flutter first even if they want to do the two beat I think the only way through to a really great two beat is if they can do a very well timed and connected six beat so flutter and I I don’t go in the middle I don’t touch four beat at all because it puts the legs into the wrong place and then if you do four you haven’t got the pressing leg in the right place

because it’s on the other side so a four beat only really I think one of the Olympians they doesn’t have to mind right I think Sun Yang Sun Yang did a one two three which ended up being a four which ended up with the legs in the right place for the next one but if they just did because a true four beat is one two and then one two but then they don’t have the pressing leg in the right in the right place so it doesn’t become connected that really can only work if the cage and pelvis isn’t connected and they’ve got a bit of a twist and therefore then the legs can kind of do their own thing but if they’re connected all the way down the body and they have that shoulder to feet one unit then a two or a six is what I what I go for so I’m having that and it’s really interesting because when you connect the body up and you have them send their head away from their feet and you get that long line like you were talking about

you doing with your client this weekend at the clinic and you start to observe their legs with the connection through the body it’s fascinating to to to watch because their legs start to just fall into place because they kind of can’t not because they’re now connected from the inside out I was doing a lesson yesterday with with one of our fetches in the studio and she got in in the pool and she started sewing and her legs what literally all of us quite normal in the endless pool where people will start off they’ll get a bit flustered because they’re a bit not used to it and after sort of 20 seconds and I was videoing her and we have all yeah over and I know what cameras on the swimmer at any one time and it was so fascinating that once I gave her just send your books or your head away from your feet through the machine and that’s all I said to her and then we filmed her again and she went from this crazy undisconnected

discombobulated leg movement behind her to this most amazing well-timed two-beat press and I hadn’t even talked to her about legs and said anything about it legs I just gave her back her middle line so I feel very much that if we get people connected from the inside and then give them the instruction of really sorting the legs out from the thigh bone then they will start to develop what’s best for them either a six-beat or or a two-beat and I often find that sometimes they can switch they should be able to easily switch between the two so when I come on to what I recommend to to answer the last part of your question it very much depends on the the technique of the person executing the the flutter or the two-beat press so for marathon swimmers and long-distance swimmers if they have a really well connected well-timed two-beat press absolutely that’s going to use less energy no there’s no two ways about it that that’s

going to use less energy if they don’t if they have a really discombobulated two-beat press is probably going to use more energy than if they just did a really great flutter so what I say to people is be open to exploring both ends of the spectrum and and through that exploration of both ways so if you’re really into a flutter try a two-beat and if you’re really into a two-beat try a flutter and there’s so much learnings to be had from your from your own body for your own body to learn from practicing those those two and feeling the connections and really making sure that whatever happens is that every time you rotate you’re pressing on the correct leg backwards whether it’s a two four six ten twelve eight twenty I don’t know it doesn’t matter how many so long as you’re always pressing water back at the moment that you are rotating and not using the press to rotate so those are kind of some of the key messages that I talk about when when talking

about how many yeah good so you mentioned going from two to six and and playing with that it’s not a continuum but playing playing with those different ways to kick and I think that’s such a good way to do it especially for the longer distance swimmers because as you said a two-beat is going to be more efficient if you do it well and in the ocean you’ve got the salt water and you’ve got that extra buoyancy similar with the wetsuit on and a lot of people will just gravitate naturally to a two-beat kick if they’re swinging those those longer events so they might not necessarily use that in the pool so that’s where you can have this slightly different stroke from when they go from pool to open water so it’s good to be able to you know to mix that up and then depending on the speed and the effort that you’re putting in that can change as well and it can change within a race as well so just giving people these different

gears that they can shift shift between adds a lot of different yeah different ways for them to be able to change their speed within a race and yeah you might not start with that if someone’s learning to swim but for someone who’s got some experience you can you can certainly give them these different things to try and exactly for triathletes I think it’s so important that they you know certainly if they’re doing anything more than an olympic distance so olympic carve or iron man you know they they really want to be doing really great stuff with their legs because they could have a lot of stuff to do with their legs after them after the swim swim bit so they don’t want to be have getting their legs in the way in in that water and at the same time they’re also racing and they they want to you know they want to use their strongest discipline to you know make up make up the numbers so being able to give them the tools to you know so the large

part of the the swim part of the race to to have a nice relaxed connected to beat and then when they just want to kind of take over some people just at the end of the race or at that beginning to have them be able to turn on that that six beat and really make it into something that applies pressure in the right direction and kind of just gives them this kind of outboard motor to send them past without going into the quads and hamstrings which are really oxygen heavy muscles is such a powerful tool for triathletes so yeah learning both this is excellent for them for sure

and in terms of the four beat for some people i’ll have them try and develop it and the way i would normally teach it would be rather than like the you know one two one two i find that can be can be hard for a lot of people and and what i’ve seen doing some filming with with some high level swimmers is especially at that like 800 1500 sort of pace if they’re using a four beat a lot of them will just will do one two three four so it’s one kick and then three kicks yeah with the strokes so that has worked with some people that i’ve that i’ve coached and like i had a young kid who i was working with he triathlete and he had was kind of like a three or semi like four beat four beat kick that he was using before that it was but it was just kind of all over the place it wasn’t well connected so we got that rhythm and and that timing to be better where we went to the one two three four and actually the way it sort of ended

up was and the way i had him think about it when he was going fast was actually it was one two three four one two three four so it’s it’s the same thing but just in his mind that’s what helped him sort of connect it and he ended up like taking off two or three strokes per 50 and it was about a second and a half quicker so just like kind of using what he was he was doing for getting that to be better timed and better connected and and you mentioned at the end there with the with the with the last you know using that to help help with the rotation so just timing it with the rotation so could you talk a bit more to to that and how that works in for people yeah so so and i think this is probably exactly what the the student you were just talking about probably felt so in the UK used to work a lot with competitive swimmers and they used to come to the embers pool they used to do all their training with their club

they used to come for technique sessions in the embers pool and they would come with this i don’t know i don’t even know what to call it this there were lots of lakes going there were lots of lakes happening at the back of their body lots of splash and i would be filming because i don’t have all the cameras on them and under the water i’m seeing the the back end of their body is just kicking up and down i’ll just use the words that they were actually doing they were kicking up and down and the front end of their body was rotating because they’d been told to use their shoulders to rotate so they had this completely disconnected body so this front half was rotating the back half was doing can’t make my hands do that up and down and nothing was talking to anything else but everything was working really really hard and they were effective they they were you know that some of them were the the best in it you know nationally and they were they were really really effective and when when i

spoke to them about the idea of the whole body being being one unit and that the legs are simply used to as as if so so how i teach it is i have them stand on the floors upright and i have them just go on to their fronts of their feet their balls of their feet and just swivel and then i have them as they swivel i have them send their head up to the ceiling as they swivel so they can just feel that kind of anchor as they swivel but it’s the whole movement of the swivel of the whole body i.e the rotation in in the water that is pressing off of the water at the back end in order to send the head forwards so when we then play around with that and we go okay so one two three and what i do is always click i go one two three and it doesn’t matter how many numbers you count after that but so long as the one is on that rotation one blah blah blah one blah blah blah and they get that idea that at that moment that they’re rotating they’re always

pressing with the leg that’s on them underneath them if you like it’s behind them and underneath them on the bottom and then they get this beautiful anchor where as they rotate they press they press on the water here and they press the water behind them and send their head and fingers forward and they get this amazing amount of propulsion by by finding that thickness in the water that as swimmers get better and better they start to understand and start to think about and then if you key that with the catch at the front end with the rotation then they’ve got these amazing almost concrete blocks that they can press on hold on and push on at the back end in order to rotate and generate and send and direct the energy forwards so i think that it’s it’s it’s a really important thing to help the students understand what it is that we’re looking for and then what happens is it it just be it just happens often what i do is i will say to them right so that i

for for the next swim i want you to do i don’t know six to eight strokes just with my breathing just focusing on whole body rotation so and shoulders to feet and just rotate your head and fingers forward and i’m just going to observe what happens and it’s the only time i’ll say to them don’t use your legs and because i just want to observe what happens and then i video and i have them just do that but the whole focus is in whole body sending head and finger nails forward and i video it and they i said did you use your legs and they’re like no they were just pinned together for sure and then i played the video straight back to them and they’ve got this most amazing either two beat or this very well timed flick flick press press on that rotation because the body if it’s connected will always look and find an anchor and if we can rely on the body to find it rather than trying to instigate it it’s going to be better and well timed more

better well timed because we’re not trying to break up body parts so that’s kind of how i how i try to let it evolve as a default or byproduct of great connection down the body and pressure that ties in really well with what i’ve with what i’ve seen coaching and especially when it comes to the legs so if someone’s thinking about their legs you know if they’re thinking much about them the rest of the stroke tends to fall apart and it’s just like it’s too much going on so we we don’t want to have to really think about the legs at all we want that just to naturally come into its own yeah so if you do those other things you’ve talked about if you if you get those in place first generally it will come into its own we’re not having to be thinking about what’s what’s happening at the back so yeah it’s interesting to hear your take on that because i just see that so so often so i love to yeah love to see it explained in a in a different way

because yeah yeah we all we’re all working with similar people and we just yeah and so we’re going to see this the same things so that’s yeah a great way because we’re we’re all what i love about swimming is we’re all human and for the most part we all have 206 bones in our body and for the most part we all have 360 working joints and the the body and the skeleton and the joints are so amazing they they they they work and if we allow them to work we tap into allowing them to work in the right way and kind of don’t get in the way of that natural process they they do beautiful things and they do amazing things and i think i think if we can really trust the skeleton to do what it’s designed to do it it just does amazing things and i see that all the time especially with the legs it’s fascinating it fascinates me every time all these years later it still fascinates me i was blown away yesterday when i when i saw that it just is so cool i love it one thing that’s

that’s somewhat related to it is when i was talking to astra kahl’s kahl charmers cage one thing he mentioned that i that just like a small yeah a small sort of just offhand comment that he made that i found was really helpful was that when he’s working with his swimmers he he gets and it’s very similar to your pros actually he says you get some to think about their shoulder and then connecting that with with the hips so there’s cross-body connection through here but yeah you know provide they’ve they’ve set their catch you know they’ve got that hold you know don’t think about like holding through the the arm necessarily it’s like if you can stabilize that shoulder if you think about the shoulder and connection with the the hip and the rotation so it’s just that’s easier to think about because obviously the arms connected to the to the shoulder if you get the shoulder right you’ve got that stability

then you can get that connection so these little small like comments that i get from different coaches i yeah i just sort of add them to my my teaching toolbox and yeah use use them if necessary so yeah that’s that was an interesting just offhand comment that i heard him heard him say and just to sort of finish up here we’ll just talk a little bit about stroke rate and cadence what’s what’s your general approach to to work with people there and increasing speed and all that sort of stuff yeah so it’s and this has been this is a another huge battle this is such a big world when we when when we come on to this it’s like a massive topic and i have literally spent the last two weeks or three weeks talking about non-stop because i’ve been doing an advanced coach training course where we introduce the metrics and tempo and stroke counting in gears and and everything and to the coaches so it’s been it’s been a wonderful exploration of all

of these things in these things in depth the last few weeks and it’s been really exciting to watch the coaches get really excited about how how speed can evolve and it was something that i always learned from from terry amongst many many other things is speed happens as a by-product of doing the right things with your stroke and then increasing tempo without losing form and i sweep you know as i’ve gone through the years and that and played with that that thought process and and played around with the the increase in tempo and stroke count it’s been a really interesting process and i think that through the years there’s been some very very mixed messages that have come out yeah all over the place and you know what i want to say more than anything else is stroke count SPL is important for sure tempo is important for sure it was permitted important for sure the all these things are really really important that they are dangerous

in isolation so if we just focus on tempo or strokes per minute in isolation we are asking for trouble in our stroke if we just focus on strokes per length in isolation we are asking for trouble in our stroke because one’s going to create these these swimmers who are creating massive dead spots because they’re trying to get their stroke count down to zero or you know silly numbers that they just shouldn’t be doing and just focusing on tempo or strokes per minute creates these windmillers that are becoming more and more inefficient because they’re after just tempo rather than figuring out what that’s actually doing to their stroke so say for me it’s always building on this happy equation of of three things strokes per length tempo and rpe and if i can work with my client and i can start to play around with stroke count i can start to play around with increasing and decreasing tempo because there’s things to learn for us in both ends of that

spectrum and always get them to tell me what their rpe is ready to perceive as which is obviously their own measure then i’m going to have a byproduct of speed so i’ve been doing lots of virtual coaching since since COVID since lockdown and it’s blown my mind i’ve worked with people that i’ve still never met and i’ve been sending them sets and i’ve been virtually coaching them and i’ve been writing you know all sorts of gear sets and tempo sets and stroke count sets and with these these two people in particular that i’m i’m thinking about it was only after two years that i started to add any time into their sets so i never gave them time as a measure we could always work out time because it’s just a maths equation yeah if you’ve got the length of the pool you know that bush else then SPL and tempo is going to give us the time but i never asked them to look or think about time in all that in all in over the two year period and what was

really fascinating is that when they started with me they had their watch that i don’t let my students use stroke counting with the watch because it’s completely inaccurate and they’re not in there in their heads there it means nothing is that and all what’s happening in that length so they have to count their own strokes and what started happening they looked at their watch at the beginning they were doing like 157 100s you know just over an Ava and then two years later they started looking at their watch and they were doing sub 140 so they couldn’t swim they all their things it didn’t matter whether it was just a warm-ups were more anything all of their 100s were sub 140 and and we hadn’t even talked about speed so for me speed is something that is a byproduct of getting great getting great technique getting great connections in your body and then playing around with increasing tempo and seeing what happens and incrementally increasing

that equation because that equation will always result in speed if we do the opposite and we go and chase speed then sadly we turn into terrestrial mammals again and you watch someone it’s fascinating you watch someone who you have them do I don’t know three repeats 350s if you like the first one slow medium fast and you give them that instruction and it’s fascinating to watch what happens differently and if you video them on the fast one their stroke completely changes and their arms and legs disconnect from their body because they now suddenly going to go fast and they lose all of that beautiful connection and therefore they just become exhausted and start just turning the water rather than moving through it so we want to have speed but with great connection and great rte rate of perceived effort so that a keep the shoulders safe most importantly but also so they can swim further and further and further for longer and longer and longer both in terms

of distance but also in terms of age lots of stuff there that’s a great way to think of it because we there’s no point focusing on the the results it’s about the inputs and and they are the three things that that’s just it’s kind of as simple as that it’s like when we look at speed you know it’s just it’s the history things that are going to to make the difference and I think yeah I’ll see about this this today it’s let’s say someone’s a two-minute swimmer and they want to get down to let’s say they want to get down to that 150 like they’ve just got this goal of 150 in mind but you know long term but they could be like a 140 or a 130 swimmer in terms of pace it might be they might be able to get to a 150 quicker just by like you know maybe maybe going harder and spinning the wheels and just like you know going for it but and that can happen quicker but long term if they just focus on the right things there’s good connection

good technique the right stroke they will then be able to get to the 140 or the 130 but if we just kind of yeah exactly but if we’re just chasing that that speed and that certain result well you might be doing some things that will long term you’re not gonna you’re gonna have worse connection and a worse stroke so if you can have that patience of just being able to keep chipping away and chipping away and not worry about what your times are doing then like that again just when I see swimmers who have done clinics it’s those swimmers who have had the patience just to keep working at it and they come back six months later 12 months and they’re the ones that have improved not often the ones who are just like who are chasing a certain certain time they’re doing willing to do whatever it takes to to get that even if it means just like getting a getting too scrappy with the stroke so it’s a really interesting mindset thing for me I think I might have

mentioned on the on the last podcast I had I’ve had someone who had been working with the last two years and the focus has been totally on on getting faster getting faster getting faster and with their hundred time they in two years I have taken maybe one second off like nothing then they did some work with with me and literally all I worked on was their their frame their streamline position their amount of rotation and nothing else we didn’t even talk about any of the propulsive phases of the stroke nothing and then they went back to their club and sent me a text and said I’ve just done five consecutive 100s on 123 seconds after you know just fixing their frame like really simple stuff and yes I spoke to them a few weeks later and they still they’re still doing 123 123 24 but two years they could take only one second off and for me that was it was I think the difference was is that they surrendered to the fact that they have to

not going to pull certain kick sets they have to actually work on the connection of their their frame and what’s important and it was really fascinating to hear the difference in the outcome when the mindset changed yes absolutely I see that a lot when if we ever do stroke count work where we might like sometimes I’ll get people to do just normal swimming swimming how you’ve always swam all right but takes you 25 strokes for a 25 all right now let’s just work on the the frame the head position body position that’s usually when the biggest reduction in stroke count comes yeah as we work on catch and pull yet sometimes but that’s I think a bit more of a long-term play but the biggest improvement can come from the really fundamental and basic things like you like you just mentioned there so Tracey for anyone listening what is the best way to get in touch with you where can they find you what do you how can they they work with you

yeah so my website is swimmonstery.online I think that this discount code that I gave last time for the book the swim mastery way that I’ve written is still in place perhaps we can just link that and keep that going for a bit so they can find that on amazon or the link that hopefully you’ll put under this podcast and then I also have we’ve done a swim mastery prevention injury prevention course and I would like to offer your listeners a 10 cent discount code off of that which I’ll send you the details for so the code will be effortless 10 all in capitals but I’ll send you the details for that and then there’s opportunities to virtual coaching that they can sign up for online and we have some camps coming up we have turkey and grease coming up we have some exciting things happening down in Sydney that we’re going to release at the end of this week we have a clinic happening in Boston in October so if anyone in

America come and find us there and yeah hopefully we’ll see some of you around fantastic thanks again Tracey we’ll chat again on another podcast there’s still a lot more we can cover so thank you again my pleasure thank you so much thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast if you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com

If you find that your arm drops, particularly when you take a breath, more than likely you are over rotating.

The thing with body position is it’s somewhat tied to your head position, but it’s not the only factor. The biggest factor is how you hold your body and it’s your posture. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

Today is more of a Q&A episode where I’ve had people submit questions through our Instagram. If you’re not following us on there, go to ateffortlessswimming and we post a lot of regular content on there and from time to time we’ll put out stories where I’ll get you to submit questions for our Q&A episode of the podcast. Now, our first question comes from Nick and Nick said, I tried adjusting my head position, but I feel like my legs sit too low. Any recommendations? The thing with body position is it’s somewhat tied to your head position, but it’s not the only factor. The biggest factor is how you hold your body and it’s your posture. So if you have really poor posture where you’re hunched over and rounded through your shoulders, you’ve got a big bend through your waist and you put your head down. It’s not going to lift your legs up. You’ve got to have this connection through the middle of your body first to then really have any impact on what your legs are

doing. So the way that we would normally teach this is think about getting your head away from your toes. So you’re long through the spine and through the neck.

You want to suck your belly in a little bit, squeeze your butt cheeks together slightly. So there’s a little bit of tautness through the midsection. If you do that and then have your head in the right position, which I would normally teach as being 0 to 45 degrees and keeping your head like an iceberg, 10 or 20% of it above the water, the rest of it below. Then you will generally have quite good body position. So you need to make sure that you actually have the right posture and hold your body right first. I just from a recently at a clinic who had very low legs. I’m talking like 40 centimetres, 50 centimetres below the surface of the water because she was pushing her head down super deep and her shoulders really deep as well. And the hips are up high, but the legs are low because she was like this is this pyramid or this triangle in the water because there was no connection through the midsection. So then when we change that up, we got that posture, right?

Then the head position was able to impact the rest of the body. So it’s not just about the head. There’s other factors there that we need to consider. So we always really just want to work on those few things together. It’s head and body together. The next question comes from Domo Ag who said, how do you keep your hand up and gliding during the reach phase? Now if you find that your arm drops, particularly when you take a breath, more than likely you are over rotating. It’s difficult if not impossible to keep your arm extending and reaching forwards. If you’ve over rotated because it puts too much strain on your rotator cuff and just physically it’s very hard to keep that arm extended. So you always want to make sure that you’ve got the right rotation and something that might be causing you to over rotate is how you’re breathing. So if you’ve got a big lift and turn of the head and you’re looking up to the sky, that might be causing you to

over rotate. So we need to consider the breathing in that as well and trying to look directly to the side, maybe keeping part of that bottom goggle in the in the water as well and keeping the head centered. So imagine you’ve got this skewer through your head, neck and spine. And when we go to breathe return the skewer so the head turns, but it’s not coming much off that line if at all. So that’s often the main cause of someone struggling to keep their arm extended. Another thing that I often see there too is that if you are entering at with at full extension. So you’re coming over the water reaching out as far as you possibly can and entering with your elbow first you’ve kind of got nowhere else to go and you’re just going to drop that arm down. So I would teach most people to enter with their fingers first have that elbow bent so it’s raised above the water. So they’re entering at about wrist length is good.

You know if you’ve got your other arm in front you’d be entering somewhere about in line with your wrist and then having that last bit of extension or reach happen in the water. So sometimes how you enter as well can be a factor and the drill I’d normally do there and the one that we teach on the first day of the five day catch challenge our online course is we get them to do one arm freestyle with a kickboard and that kickboard that you’re holding the back of out in front will force you to enter fingers first because if you overreach you’re going to hit the kickboard and struggle to get the hand in the water. So that’s a good way to just get that dialed in and force yourself to enter in the right position. So that’s another factor to consider. So there’s certainly other things but if you follow the right process if you’re going through the stroke and say our five core principles that we’ve got inside of our membership.

You know we want to start with breathing making sure we’re relaxed and breathing properly. But then we go on to posture head position body position and go through these things and then everything else can come together because you know if we just look at while my arms dropping down so I’ve got to focus on the catch. There’s probably other things causing it. We’ve got to go through them in the right order. The next question comes from Lou one Leo. See she said he or she said how do I ensure I feel my lats during a workout rather than my traps and upper back to me. It sounds like you’re probably hunching your shoulders too much so I’ll come across some swimmers who are trying to really hunch their shoulders up around their ears and they’re trying to cover their ears as they’re going through their reach and their catch. So that’s just it’s not putting your shoulders in the in the right position. So if you’re not feeling your lats it’s probably

just again that posture or what you’re doing with your your shoulders through the reach and catch. So think about that length first get your posture right get that right number one then as you’re reaching forward your shoulder will sort of come up near the side of your face just near your cheek. So your shoulder blade is just going to slide along your rib cage and that shoulder should stay near the side of the face but not covering your ears. I see some people teaching this like cover your ears with your shoulder as you go through your catch but it’s it’s just not where you see the best swimmers in the world and it causes you to use your upper traps way too much so that to me is a pretty common cause of that happening. It’s just how you’re how you’re holding your shoulders through that part of the stroke. So just look to try and keep try and keep yourself relaxed free mobile and not hunching too much through the stroke.

The next question comes from Derdan H. She said I went from 145 to 132 pace in four months thanks to you now hitting a wall any general advice. So there’s a couple things with that you having made that improvement in four months it could likely either be you’ve improved your technique and that’s helped you make that change. Perhaps you’ve increased your fitness but I’m saying I’m guessing if you’ve said it’s been thanks to maybe our videos that’s probably more to do with technique more than anything else. So what you might look to do from there is just lock in those improvements in technique build some fitness around that and then depending on what your goals are to but and then looking at what would be next. So what did you work on what did you change if it was better head and body position that could account for a pretty big improvement in a short space of time then you might need to look at the the next thing.

So making sure that your kick is effective and not causing you to slow down maybe you need to look at making sure you’re rotating correctly then the recovery and then the catch and pull. So I would follow those five core principles follow that same order and and go through the stroke that way but then you want to just make sure that you’re building some some fitness around that too. So if you’re swimming once a week then maybe you look to increase that to two maybe three times a week but it all just depends on your goals. If your goal is to doing all that hundred as fast as you can it’s going to change in if you’re doing a triathlon and looking to hold a one thirty two pace across a fifteen hundred meter swim. So really just just depends but that’s like that plateau is very normal especially if you’ve taken thirteen seconds per hundred off your times you’re going to probably stick to that for a little while before

seeing the next round of improvement. So being okay with that and expecting that to happen like that you just need to sort of be okay with that now not to say you can’t get faster keep working on some things and and keep trying to find areas of improvement but knowing that it’s it’s very normal to hit a bit of a plateau for while before making that next improvement. I think that mentality and mindset around it’s a big a big factor. The next question comes from S. Chalek they said can you explain the timing for rotation and catch phase. So on your as you’re reaching forwards and you’re on your side and you’re about to begin your catch we want to make sure we’re rotated 30 or 40 degrees number one. Now while you’re still on your side you’re going to go through the catch so you’re going to you’re going to bend at the elbow you’re going to have your fingers pointing down and then you’ve set yourself to be able to hold

or anchor in the water at that point. Now from there we’ve then got a good hold of the water where we can then begin the rotation back onto the other side and connect everything up now with the timing of that it’s going to be timed with a kick on that same side that you’re doing the catch on. So when you’re let’s say you’re on your right side your right arms in the water you you’ve set your catch around that time we should see your right foot doing this small movement down and that’s going to help you move on to the other side and we want to feel like we’ve got this connection from our arm and our shoulder across our body through to our opposite hip as we go on to the other side so we want to make sure that’s our that’s our timing. The mistake I see people making with their their timing is that they will be say on their side and they go through their catch and they’ve gone and they’ve gone through their their pull and their arms almost back

towards the hip before they start rotating back so we want to get really good at that sort of timing where we’ve just finished our catch then we’ll have this small kick as we then go back onto the other side. So that’s what we kind of think of as like a three-quarter catch up where we’ve always got something in front of our head a very common thing I see with 30 40 percent as we come to clinics is they’ve got nothing in front of their head so they don’t have that three-quarter catch up or front quadrant timing so I think just generally a few ways to think of that is you want to be a little bit slower out the front as you’re reaching forwards and then you want to accelerate a little bit out the back so it’s slower and out in front quicker out and back so that we get this change in speed we don’t have this constant steady turnover of the arms it’s going to be slower once we’re in the water and reaching through and just beginning to catch and then

it will speed up a little bit that can help you have the timing that we’re after in the stroke this podcast is proudly brought to you by form smart swim goggles the smart swim to is the next generation of forms award winning augmented reality technology they haven’t integrated heart rate monitor for constant real time heart rate monitoring which allows you to accurately train your heart rate zones which is the first time that you can do this in the pool something we’ve had when biking and running but the first time that you can now do it in the pool another huge feature that they have released is the swim straight feature this is something that allows you to swim in a straight line without needing to site it’s a digital compass in the Google display and it’s race approved by world triathlon USA triathlon as well as other leading race organizers and athletes are already shaving valuable time off their swims by swimming straighter I’m a huge

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now the next question comes from Richard Richard nearly says how long does it take to go from being a leisurely to highly competent swimmer this is different for everyone depending on what their sporting background is their age how much time they’re spending in the water so I’d say like with with intentional practice if you’re swimming an hour a session three times a week you could expect to make some really good improvements in the space of 6 to 12 months going from being leisurely to to very competent 6 to 12 months for some people that will take longer for some people that will be shorter but I think having a you know giving it at least 12 months is is what you should expect and for many people that that can take longer and it depends on what you mean by highly competent so you know if we’re talking like two minute pace down to maybe 145 okay maybe that’ll take you might take you 6 to 12 months or if you’re thinking highly

competent is being like a 130 pace while that might take that might take a bit longer that might take two years if you’re coming from a two minute pace obviously depending on the on the swimmer so it normally takes longer than what you think it will you know most people are coming into things whether it’s like you know whether it’s like starting a business whether it’s at swimming and you know expecting to see this huge change and it certainly can be relatively quick but if you are just if you are happy to just work on the process and the stroke and not actually worry too much about your times the times will come anyway that’s a consequence of the imports as a consequence of you doing the training putting in the the effort and focusing on those things so if your time focused that’s not always the best approach I think it’s best to just work on perfecting and improving your stroke and feeling this this connection and then looking at you know looking at becoming

that highly competent swimmer so yeah it’s it’s different for everyone and you know for some people that it can take three or four years and a big part of that too is just how often you’re swimming as well so if you’re swimming once a week for an hour it’s going to take you a while it’s going to take a long time to I think see see those improvements because if you’re doing three sessions a week instead of one well you’re going to fast-track that if it ends up being four again you’re going to fast-track that so it just depends on how much you yeah how much you’re committed to it how much you you really want it and how much time you you can spend on on improving your swing the next question comes from Gigi to lad he said how do you improve the skill of feeling the water so in terms of feeling the water there’s two main things I’ll be thinking of there it’s that connection and feel that you have on the hand and on the forearm of the water

so it’s that that proprioception and and that feeling of connection through the hand and forearm which is your main paddle in the stroke so that’s one factor the other factor I think is the is the timing and connection through the body how everything sinks together so we need both of those things how you can develop the the feel is a lot of either sculling drills or like short dog paddle or doggy scoop drills I think they can be some of the best ones to to help develop that sensation of pressure on the hand and forearm so front scale is where you’d have your arms directly out in front you want to point your fingers down at about 45 degrees make sure your elbows are bent and you should be scaling out outwards and inwards with the hands now a mistake that people make here is they try to do a breaststroke skull or a breaststroke pull it’s not a breaststroke pull it’s like a little figure eight with each hand so you’ll you’ll make this little figure eight

sort of sculling or scooping motion with your left hand and the same thing with your right hand and the concept that we’re going for is you want to try and keep that same piece of water on your hand and your forearm outwards and inwards so it’s like you wouldn’t lose that same piece of water and that way you’ll develop this pressure constant pressure on the hand outwards and inwards now a lot of people will just be pushing I’m turning the hands outwards turn the hands inwards and they’re going to be losing that pressure so you’ve got to have this very subtle figure eight or it’s like infinity sign with each hand as you’re doing the skull so that’s that’s one way to do it the doggy scoop drill is where you’ll have your arms fully extended in front and then you’ll go through this catch motion with your left hand where you’ll do this scooping catch motion down to underneath your shoulders and you’ll come back through the middle of the body

and you’ll do the same thing on the right so you’re going left right left right and that that’s a similar thing where we want to try and have that constant pressure either on your left hand either on your right hand but they would be my to go to drills to develop that connection and that feel now the other part of that that feel is having everything connected and working together and a big part of that comes down to what I mentioned at the start with the posture making sure we get that right first but then just making sure that we connect up the the movement of the catch and our shoulder with the rotation of our body which I referred to a bit before so that’s the other element of it because if things are disjointed and disconnected through the middle of the body where you feel like your legs are doing one thing and your arms are doing another thing there’s no concept of feel there we have to try and you have to work things together

so that’s that’s how you can improve on on each of those things so if you are slower than a 150 to 2 minutes per 100 if you if you’re around that pace or slower you might want to work on the second element of that which is the sort of connection and the posture and then if you are like a sub 145 average swimmer maybe 130 then you can work more on the feel for the water aspect with this with the drills you can do both no matter where you are but that’s like that’s where the more low hanging fruit would be depending on on your pace now the next question is from liar Bill he said when I push hard on on the pool it speeds up my entire process how do I keep the cadence regular my guess and you know being a triathlete Bill I reckon you might be going too hard within your within your catch and pull so I don’t know I don’t know how true this is but I heard this from from another coach you said you can only put five kilos of pressure

on the water any time so if you’re trying to muscle your way through and you’re putting 10 pounds of pressure or force on the water five that is wasted effort because you’re going to be slipping through the water so there’s only so much force we can apply until we actually slip through the water so we need to be somewhat measured with how much force we’re putting in and where we apply it as well so your catch needs to be the setup phase of the stroke where we’re just looking to to press on the water get a bit of feeling a pressure there but then we will start to build up the pressure as we our hand comes underneath our shoulders so that’s where it will be the most as we’re coming underneath our shoulders and then we need to accelerate out past the hip but not too much either so just being somewhat measured with it think alike swinging a golf club if you do your happy Gilmore and whack as hard as you can you’re probably not going to be as in control of it

so it’s more about the technique and the control of it and making sure it follows a good line that’s more important than the pure force that we that we put into it so a couple of things I always keep in mind with that is the slow to fast that I mentioned earlier so we’re slower in front a bit quicker out the back use the catch as the setup phase and the pool or the press is more of the power phase and also just making sure that we don’t look at that in isolation we don’t want to just be thinking of the arms it’s how does that connect with the rest of your body because we need to make sure that we’re that we’re rotating at the right time and connecting our catch without with our hips and the rest of our body there so it’s not just all separate we need to work those things together I remember talking to to someone who used to work I think it was for speed and she knows used to work for I think swimming USA and she said they did a test where they measured the force output of elite swimmers compared to

like mid range swimmers and they found that the more elite swimmers were actually putting less power or force on the water than some of these mid range swimmers and the reason that they were faster is because they had better angles with their catch and pool they’re holding more water but they had a little bit less force and it was better connected as well and they had less drag because better body position better alignment and those sorts of things so force is one element of it which is important but there’s so much more that goes into it so we need to consider those things as well now the next question here is so Peter said I’m an amateur self-taught adult swimmer first focus priority kick or catch and self-taught so I would just go back to the five core principles and I keep mentioning it but just go back to the five core principles go through it in that order so number one we start with breathing we want to make sure that we can be relaxed and comfortable in the water

so if you have this short shallow panicked upper chest breathing it’s very hard to progress from there so we just want to get comfortable breathing first of all then we start then we go on to the head posture and body position okay so we get that dialed in making sure we’re reducing drag we can float and balance well in the water then we can start to move on to the the kick and the rotation after that then we can look at the recovery over the top of the water and then the catch and pool and then we can look at rhythm and timing and connection so just follow that order and actually we’ve got the we’ve got this freestyle check list that you can go through that covers things in that order so we’ll put a link to that in the show notes the freestyle technique checklist and you can download a copy of that that’s kind of got the right order so focus things on things there all right now the next question is why swimming focused on rep time cycles

instead of work to rest ratios 90 to 30 seconds rest I think with swimming because we’ve got the the pace clock and we’re often doing yeah we’re often working off the pace clock it’s pretty common to know roughly what would be coming in on and that way we can just hold a an interval of say like let’s say we’re coming in on 120 and we’re leaving on 130 it’s easier to hold that on the pace clock whereas if we are looking to do say a minute 20 of of work and we want to take 10 seconds rest well if you come in on 122 or 123 and then you’re leaving on the 132 or 133 that’s just that gets a little bit a little bit messy that way so I think that’s probably probably why there are sort of like depending on the set you do you will have some like work to rest ratios but yeah more times than not it’s it’s just going to be based off intervals instead now the last question is from TPH 4M said my stomach drops but head and legs are up resulting in this weird U shaped form

how do I fix it so some of that comes down to posture and I think core strength as well so when it comes to posture you’re probably sticking your chest your belly too far out we want to try and be relatively straight through the body so head away from the toes lengthen through there like I’ve mentioned a few times on the podcast so we need to try and be straight rather than just really going chest out and I like that I like to think tall and proud but I’ve had some swimmers take that too far where they do go chest forwards and they create this big lower back arch the other aspect of that too can just be head position if you’re looking too far forwards and your chin comes forwards your lower back will typically have this big lumbar curve in it so that’s another thing to consider just make sure you’re looking in the right position the other factor there is is core strength so the water is this unstable surface that we that we’re operating in

and so it takes a good amount of core strength to hold ourselves flats and so straight in the water and not that you need to be like big and muscly but it takes it takes a certain amount to sort of hold that over a long period of time and your core is not just your your six pack it’s all these muscles around there as well so all of that comes into your core strength so looking to develop that and build that is is another important thing to to look at so there’s sort of them they’re the main things that I’d consider when it comes to yet your body position so posture get that right get the head position right and then maybe you are just lacking some specific core strength to hold that over over time so there are all the questions for today’s episode if you’re not following us on Instagram go to at effortless swimming and you can follow us there and if you’ve got any questions you want me to answer on another Q&A episode

then either send it through to our support desk support at effortless swimming dot com or just send it through on Instagram and I’ll make sure to answer it on our next episode thanks very much for listening I’ll see you next week on another episode we have another guest Tracy Bowman she was on a few episodes ago great feedback from her episode so I’m getting her back on to talk about a few of these things that we’ve covered a bit today with the connection the timing and the rhythm as well as what type of kick to use and when so that’ll be in next week’s episode of the effortless swimming podcast thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast if you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com

I think it was Cameron McAvoy, he talks about the fact that someone’s a cyclical sport. And basically, as long as you get that one cycle correct, all you have to do is replicate that for 20 to 30 seconds. I don’t know what made me start this habit. I do every training session, I do a lap of dolphin dive, and that’s like two parts to remember to just enjoy and, you know, have a bit of fun, and also just relax my breathing. But I definitely think the enjoyment has to be there. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast, the show that helps swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer, and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. Hi, and welcome to today’s podcast episode. How do you get faster as you get older? That’s a question that we ask on today’s episode with our guest Laura Quilter. She is a former New Zealand swimmer, and she is a swim coach. She was on the 2014 Commonwealth Games team.

She has been New Zealand champion in the 50, the 100, and the 200 freestyle at different times of her career, as well as the 50 butterfly. Now recently, Laura set a lifetime PB in the 50 freestyle at 31 years of age, and that has come with about a third of the training that she was doing in her younger years. So I asked Laura about how she’s managed to swim faster than ever before with less training and what she’s done to achieve that, as well as what she’s doing now with some challenging things with ice swimming. So if you’re looking to find some different challenges in the water, if you’re looking to get faster as you get older, and if you’re looking to improve your technique, we have got a lot in store in today’s episode. So let’s get into it with Laura Quilter. My guest today is Laura Quilter from AuraMood in New Zealand. Laura, thanks for jumping on the podcast. I’m keen to talk about quite a few topics today because just saying from your socials

and chatting to you before some of the things you’ve been doing lately, not out of the box, but they’re just really challenging things to do, and pushing yourself mentally and physically. And also seeing you go swim some PBs as you get older is a really incredible thing to see. So I want to dig into some of those things and just get your take on how you’re managing to do it. So firstly, welcome to the podcast. Yeah, it’s awesome to be here. Thanks for having me on. So for those that are listening, what’s a little bit about your background? You’re a very well accomplished swimmer and life saver. For those that are listening, a bit of background on your swimming history. So I’m a I’m a lifetime swimmer. I was chucked in as a as a baby from mum and dad, grew up in quite a small city on the east coast of New Zealand. And then just I was the kid that always loved training. And that did did help me as I grew older in terms of swimming.

I did compete for New Zealand at the Commonwealth Games in 2014. And also that was three world championships for surf lifesaving. And those were some awesome experiences. I did it quite crack the Olympics. I had to go a couple of times, but then now one of my 32 years old, I’ve kind of had this almost second hack at competition again, which I’d never had expected. And that all came out of doing a master’s swimming event in 2023. So it’s been quite the journey. And I feel very lucky that I am one of, you know, a lot of my friends who swim at a high level, they don’t enjoy swimming anymore. And I’m an absolute fanatic, I think. Swimming is one of the coolest activities. And it’s it equips you for so much more than just let some in. So yeah, it’s been awesome. And why do you think you have stuck around or you’ve got this renewed passion for swimming? You said you did the master’s competition. What did that spark inside of you?

It was actually quite a contradictory feeling. So I swam off the back of almost no training in a tri-squad, which was not sprint specific. And I threw down a couple of times that weren’t too far off my best. And so I was like simultaneously quite like amazed and then also frustrated being like, well, is there, you know, another way that I could do this? So the context when I was swimming in my early 20s, I was training about 16 hours a week in the water. And then this year I’ve been training about three to five. And you did a PB in the 50 free, the 50 fly this year at Olympic trials. And you were only 0.6 of a second off qualifying to the 50 free, which is a huge achievement. Talk a bit about what you’ve changed in your training from now to back then and maybe what you wish in you back then compared to what you know now.

I think it’s a few things. I’m a lot more fascinated in what swimming is all about. And that’s both physically and mentally. So I picked apart the stroke and I’ve done a lot more research and looking at elite athletes and how different people swim. And I didn’t even know, you know, the stroke changes so much for the 50 freestyle versus the longer distance events. And then really manipulating my stroke to kind of reflect that sprint styles. You know, a surprising one for me is more flexion at the knee for the kick. And that’s for extra propulsion, whereas in your longer distance things, you know, swims, you’re not kind of bending as much. So it was this obsession with technique on the one side. Another side is I’m just so much more relaxed. Like I’ve got I’m working full time nursing at the moment, got, you know, a relationship. So I was actually told, I remember by one of my first the high performance coach in Auckland, he said, I live and die by my training

sets, which just basically meant if I had a good set, I was, you know, on top of the world, I was really positive, laughing. And if I had a bad training day, I was down in the dump. So I felt like I was, you know, I was one of those summers that tied my identity to swimming. So I was going, well, I was happy if it wasn’t going well, I wasn’t. And having that time away, I’m a lot more. I enjoy the whole process, even if it’s a really shocking training day. It doesn’t affect me globally in my life anymore. So the obsession with the technique, I think, been a lot more chill and then getting way stronger. So my I really enjoy the gym and my partners are physiotherapists. So I’ve been very lucky in throwing myself into understanding how the body works, especially around different training modalities and methodologies and being very lucky in this position, being a bit older to actually put the brains of different coaches

around New Zealand. And that was something that, you know, when you’re a bit younger, you’re you’re with that one coach. And there are some amazing coaches, but I was in a very fortunate position that I could chat to a few different ones. So that’s probably the three key differences. And what about the sprint strike? So you said you started to understand some of those differences. How would you describe, say, a 50 sprint technique to someone? One of those things that you’re stealing for or trying to achieve when you are sprinting? It’s like calculated chaos in a weird way. So you need to be performing with the most amount of aggression and power that you can. But it has to be funneled through an effective mechanics. And I quite like I think it was Cameron McEvoy. He talks about the fact that someone’s a cyclical sport. And basically, as long as you get that one cycle correct, all you have to do is replicate that for 20 to 30 seconds.

So when I started to change my stroke, primarily, it was focused on my hips, staying a little bit more level in the water and a lot more rotation through the upper body and the shoulders. I did notice that in the early stages, I’ve got quite limited thoracic mobility and that kind of felt like I was jammed up a bit. So I did have to spend a bit of time on mobility as well to actually even swim like that. And with the sprint style, pulling a lot straighter under the water was a new concept to me. And that came that comes with a whole lot of other challenges. I wouldn’t go tell most people to swim a 50 style because it does put so much more pressure on the shoulder, which really emphasised the need to get a lot stronger in the gym. So the three key aspects I did start to train with, I was using resistance training a lot more than I had formally. So that was, you know, your parachutes, fins and socks, which I’d never use.

I really like drag socks, actually. More than the parachute, I actually really detest the parachute. So a lot more resistance training, a lot more work on the dive mechanics and then just that, you know, still hits with a big kick and the power coming through the shoulders. And with the socks, so the drag socks for people listening, it’s not just normal socks. These are special sort of swimming socks. D-R-A-G-S-O-X. Is that trying to think of that’s the brand? But like, they’re things that kind of drop around you just while you’re calves, right? Yeah, so you can actually, if you’re more beginner, you can do them up just below the knee or you can have them around the ankle. And the reason I really like the drag socks is I feel that my stroke is affected. So like my body position is still the same with the parachute. I do feel like it drags me a little bit lower in the water. So my mechanics are slightly altered versus, say, a bungee,

which I didn’t use because I didn’t have training partners in that very often. But the bungee, because of where it’s anchored, or same with the power stacks, you know, it’s anchored above you versus dragging down. So there were all these kind of minute changes that I don’t think I would have even noticed when I was younger. But I feel that one of the reasons I love swimming is it’s just such a mindful activity that I could start to actually just really feel what one body was doing and how it was changing depending on the training set or even the different tools I was using. And one thing I found coaching is that the sprint stroke is it’s the techniques. I wouldn’t necessarily say harder to coach, but it’s all happening so quickly that it’s very much like, yes, you need the power. You need the strength, but it’s like it’s you just got less time to sort of think about it, having to to tune into that feel

throughout that calculated chaos, as you mentioned. So I’ve found that like a challenging thing to sort of coach for sprinting. I find like I really enjoy coaching more, you know, middle to long distance swimming as the triathletes, because there’s just a bit more time to to work through that stuff. So what have you found there? Because you like you do a lot of coaching, you provide a lot of advice and tips for people. And like, what have you found in terms of coaching those sort of different styles and getting that message across and getting people to take it on board? Yeah, that the speed is definitely one of the more challenging aspects. And also just I think the biggest thing with coaching is the frustration that it feels like you’re going backwards initially. Any change to your mechanics, whether that’s how you walk, run or particularly when you swim, often that change will make you feel worse. And I think psychologically, one of the key parts of the coaching

is actually just setting realistic expectations that you’re probably going to feel pretty awful, but just give it a bit of time to actually see whether it’s going to make a change. So that was probably the key aspect. In terms of that, you know, changing the stroke at speed and technique, one of my favorite tools was kind of this mindful approach to technique. And so I would focus on or get my athletes to focus on one limb at a time. So the first thing would be working from kind of the center out to be all about the core. So that’s not just, you know, your ads. It’s trying to think about like how you lengthen. I mean, when you breathe, so say that the athlete is breathing once or twice in the 15, making sure that even though it’s fast, it’s coming deep and the diaphragm still being used. So you’d say, for an example, for the central approach, you do 825s. The first lap of sprint, you consider what is my trunk doing?

Like is my core engaged? The second lap, you’d think about the shoulders. How much are they rotating? The third lap, you wouldn’t think about anything. You’re just sprint. Fourth lap, going down to the hips. Fifth lap, thinking about the left hand. Sixth lap, thinking about nothing and so on and so forth. You basically only think about one aspect of the body at a time. Going through this really intense focus period, really understanding how the water pressure feels. I think understanding how you can generate pressure is one of the key aspects. But then also allowing the mind to relax and just enjoy the swimming because ultimately you need to combine this, you know, thoughtful process with just being in the moment and swimming with the water. So that was kind of this flow between heavy thinking and just swimming. I think that’s such a great point that you make there. I often talk about you’ve got the thinking brain and the feeling brain

and we just need to go between the two of them. And when we ski too far one way or another, that’s when we tend to not see improvements because an adult really tender, especially who I think listen to, say the podcast or maybe watch, you know, watch a lot of content. They can tend to ski too far inside the thinking side of things and just not enjoy being in the water and not just feel for those things. But swimming is so much about that feel and that pressure and being aware of it. And I think as lifelong swimmers, if we started young, we are very good at that feeling aspect of it because that’s really, I think talking for myself here, but I’d be curious to get your perspective on this. But like drying up, yeah, I thought about my stroke, but it was very much about feel. You’re doing that much volume, that much training and you just become very attuned to how you’re moving through the water. And that’s how you tend to improve.

And then as we get older, we look for other ways to get better and we start to think about things a lot more. So I think a balance between the two is really key. What are your thoughts on that in terms of as a youngster? Yeah, was it all about sort of feel for you or were you thinking about your technique as at a young age?

Yeah, on that, I think one of my favorite podcasts from you, actually, because I am also an avid listener. You talk about the paralysis by analysis and as a coach. And I think you would have experienced that too. You can see it happen in live time. The whole body, it’s like so tense. When I talk about swimming, it’s kind of like you’re engaged, but it’s fluid, right? So if you’re sat on the couch watching TV, you’ve got zero engagement in your muscles. Ten, you’re about to do your max deadlift. The whole body is engaged. You want to be sitting around that seven, where, yes, you’re using your muscles, but you’re able to kind of move with the water. And in terms of how much I thought about my stroke growing up, on reflection, I actually do think that I was considering technique the whole way through. I used to have my stroke used to be too long. I used to flick my bum because the stroke would kind of come out

so far that the hand would flick and then come over. But I do actually remember quite interestingly when I did go up one level in squad swimming, my stroke fell apart because suddenly I went from leading the group to coming last. And it got really scrappy and short. And I had this amazing coach called Pat and Gizbin, and she did a couple of one-to-ones with me, just focusing on maintaining that length, not so far that I was pushing that far back. And I think that was actually really helpful. And I was often the last person in the drill set because I didn’t care about how fast I was doing 25s. I was actually thinking about when I’m sculling, what I can feel and what happens if I move my wrist in a certain way or, you know, whether I’m rotating through the whole body and whatnot. So I did consider swimming my whole life. But as you see, I think as a kid, you also have lots of fun. And some of my favorite sessions, we pretended to be animals, right?

Like dolphin dives for two hours. So yeah, I think you’ve got an asset growing up as a swimmer because you’ve got so much more time to embed as long as it’s done well, embed those good technical aspects. One thing you touched on there was the fun aspect of it. And I think it’s easy to take things too seriously as an as an adult and having that element of play and fun, even in your swimming and even in your racing, that makes such a big difference. Because I think not the less you care, the better you can do. But I think it’s like you talked about now, you not putting so much pressure on yourself to perform in training or in the races and being able to enjoy things and just not have that unnecessary stress. Then I think you can we can really just do a lot better. And I find that now I’m just not as competitive as I used to be. I don’t care as much as I used to in terms of the places that I get and things like that.

But it doesn’t mean that I don’t train hard or I don’t do do well. It’s just that I’ve got other priorities. But I think that can help you in a lot of ways that you can just be really enjoy just the racing and the training. And now I use it more as like a physical outlet. It’s more of a challenge just to see how well I can contest myself. But if they were bad session, have a bad race, it’s like, well, all right, let’s move on to the next one. But as a kid, it’s probably a bigger part of your your life. And as adults, we’ve got other things dying on. And we see what the real what’s really important there. So yeah, I think that’s a really important part of it. This episode is brought to you by Pillar Performance. Our new sponsors Pillar are a sports micronutrition company. And the easiest way to describe it is that while hydration and carbohydrates, products will take you through to touch the wall as fast as possible.

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Yeah, there are two things I really liked about what you just said. The first about having fun, I feel like we almost get this fear that if you’re joking around, you’re not being serious. But I actually don’t know what made me start this habit. I do every training session, I do a lap of dolphin dive. And that’s like two parts to remember to just enjoy and, you know, have a bit of fun and also just relax my breathing. But I definitely think the enjoyment has to be there. And then the second part you said about not being as competitive. It’s interesting. My competitive drive is now so isolated on an obsession with the execution of skills. So even at trials this year, I had my own goals. But instead of being, you know, outwardly focused, how I used to look at my other competitors and probably think too much out of what was outside of my control and trying to beat other people. I was absolutely obsessed with, you know,

getting a quick reaction time of getting my six kicks underwater and that first breakout about really getting the arm free and seeing that last little T on the bottom to be like, OK. That’s where we lift the stroke rate a little bit. And it was quite funny. I didn’t really think about that until we just brought it up that my competitive focus is now shifted quite significantly onto the execution of skills and those things that are inside of my own control. Yeah, that’s that’s so interesting. I what I find when I’m racing is and especially being a coach, I want other people to do well, especially if I may have coached the people I’m racing or I know them like, I really want them to do well. So to be like, I’m going to I’m going to really beat this person. Or that’s not fair. But yeah, you’re right. It’s the pressure you put on yourself to to want to perform to to what you know is possible. And yeah, not not worrying about the the others.

That’s yeah, it’s interesting. Yeah, I think I think what helped with motivation as well because a lot of people are like, oh, how do you stay motivated? Or, you know, and I think discipline is definitely a key aspect. But I think curiosity was one of the key elements about consistency for me. So if I was having, you know, a day where I was like, so tired, I think the curiosity about what my body could do on a set day or during a specific training set, that was actually quite fun because I felt like I approached this whole return to something as an experiment. And I think having that curiosity in the gym and also in the pool was quite a cool, I suppose, reframing of how to approach training. Yeah, I like that. And a couple of things there. So the first one is, with longer you can go without expecting to see a return on it, I think you can set yourself up really well to have have great success. So whether that’s with your technique or your strength training,

it’s like I’m not trying to get results within two months. Like I’m just going to use this as an experiment and just practice it and just see what happens. So just being willing to delay the payoffs, I think is a big part of it. And then just back to the sort of fun and play aspect. One thing I’ve started to do with the squad that I train with and I set the programs for, especially on a Wednesday, which is our sprint morning, we like we do a couple of things like yesterday we did some partner toes. So we do like 50 meters where you grab onto someone’s foot for 25 meters. They’re tying you along and then they’ll tow for 25 and then they’ll sprint for 15 and go easy to the end. And you’ll just alternate doing that. So you’ll swap that around. Then we do some, you know, a couple of fifties or go 15 front scale, 15 bucket scale, just on your back, feet forwards, scone, feet forwards. And then swim into the end, some dolphin dives.

We sometimes do just partner up and race. But that you can make sessions challenging and fun and you still get the benefit from it. And it’s often a lot more enjoyable. But I remember coming out of yesterday’s session where we were doing that stuff like that was I’m really glad. I’m really glad I went and did that because I kind of felt I’d been a kid again and we still got just as much benefit from it. And it was just it was it was a lot of fun. So I think if you can work that into your sessions, then you’re going to have a much longer career in the sport and you’re not going to be dreading going to the pool much at all if you’re doing those sorts of things. Yeah, couldn’t agree more. Now, you’ve you’ve recently returned from the ice swimming championships and New Zealand ice swimming championships. For those that don’t know what that is, could you explain what ice swimming is for them? And then what spurred you on to to enter these events

because you don’t get the full context just watching videos until you’ve experienced actually how cold sub five degrees is. So yeah, what is ice swimming for those of the listening? Yeah, if you had told me even a month ago that I was going to be doing ice swimming, I would have told you you’re absolutely insane. I’ve never enjoyed the cold, which was part of the motivation to get into it. So essentially, ice swimming is like a sport that started in 2009 and it involves people competing in water that’s less than five degrees Celsius and just a standard swim costume and silicon cap. So all the people out there are thinking they’re going to wrap up in a wetsuit or a wetsuit cap or even rub yourself in fat. All of those aren’t allowed. There are events ranging from 50 metres all the way up to the most coveted event, which is the ice mile. So that’s 1.6 kilometres in sub five. And I’ve only just realised there’s also something called an extreme ice mile.

So that’s 1.6 kilometres under two degrees, which is pretty wild. But yeah, I’ve also had an interesting challenge because I live in Auckland, which is not known for its freezing cold temperatures. So I basically went in with some mindset of as frequent exposure to cold water as I could, realistically. And some of the other unique sorry, aspects about ice swimming, there’s no dives and there’s also no tumble terms and that’s just for safety. And you also race in a belt. So if you pass out, the safety team can pull you out.

There’s a lot of people will probably think this sport like absolutely nuts, but there is a lot that goes on into the background to keep athletes safe. And I found it really interesting talking to the medical team because they have got a whole bunch of things they’re looking at as swimmers are competing. And one of the more interesting ones is the mouth. So when you get really cold, well, sorry, normal swimmers will roll to breathe and they will open the mouth to breathe. When you get really cold, you can get a jaw retraction and the carotids get really cold. So often the summer will roll and the mouth will be fixed open. If the medical team noticed that, they’ll just tap you on the head, ask a couple of questions, check your cognition. And if they deem you safe, you can continue swimming. And if you’re not, you know, they’ll drag you out. So yeah, it’s a pretty, pretty wild sport. And it was such a cool experience.

Did you experience any of that? Could you feel your jaw starting to be sort of fixed or you didn’t get to that point? When I first started training, I had a good friend’s ice bath that I was doing most of my sessions in. When I started with the face in, I it was it was quite pronounced for me. Like I did notice that and I found it challenging to speak because almost not what my throat was closing, but all that muscle, all the muscles were going quite tense for me. The because I only originally was going to do the hundred meters thinking, you know, this is a good challenge, but it’s not too out of the box. And then, you know, with a bit of encouragement from a friend, I decided to put my head in and I did do the 500 and then been a little bit competitive at the actual event. I went all the way up to the thousand meters and it was 2.1 degrees at the nationals. So, you know, 15 minutes of that kind of temperature was wild.

And when you say about, did I experience that there’s flip cards like you would have in the 1500 meter race at 10 laps to go? I did take a moment because I felt like that was getting quite uncomfortable. And in my head, I thought, you know, if this gets any worse over the next two laps, I’ll pull pin and it didn’t get any worse. I still felt my breathing and my mental status felt 100 percent. So I was like, you know, I got this in the bag at that point. But in terms of the actual statistics, that was pretty wild. So my fastest 50 was 34 seconds and my slowest was 51.

And my stroke count went from something like, I think it was 14 or 15 up to 19 strokes, which for me is if you told me to go do that in a pool today, I’d struggle to swim that slow with that many strokes.

And was that was the first like the fastest one? And then progressively started to slow up as you got colder? Yeah. So we were given a bit of advice before we jumped in about how to approach that because I was, you know, that is probably the most nervous I’ve ever been for an event. And the person that it was giving us a bit of education said to approach it like a negative split. She said, physically, you’re unlikely to negative split, but psychologically, you should start comfortable, not actually super slow, because then it’s difficult to raise the pace. So that was kind of how I went in. 34 is actually still relatively fast for how relaxed I felt. But the only kind of like scary part is in the last 100 ish meters when I was rolling to breathe, I could see rain. But logically, I knew that it was definitely not raining. So I did have a couple of like somewhat mild hallucinations, and that kind of did carry on after the event.

I got myself out of the pool, but I couldn’t I couldn’t stand upright. So I kind of had two people under my armpits taking me into the medical. And do you know what? Like the recovery was actually so much harder than the actual event, which, you know, I didn’t really expect. I thought I was going to bite through my tongue with a shivering, but it was such a such a wild ride. Like, yeah, talking about the recovery. So are you talking about the post two hours or post 24 hours? And what did you do to warm up after that? So the focus is mainly you just strip all the wet stuff off and then you want to get warm centrally. So I had to be assisted to kind of get changed. I had my eyes closed the whole time because I was really nauseous. So they, you know, walls the first layer because that wicks away moisture, but it also heats you at the same time. So I think I had three layers of wool, a synthetic layer, a big jacket.

I had polyprop on the legs, ski jacket. And then I was laid on a bed with like four or five blankets. And then they just pack hot water bottles around you. So like had one on top of my head, which in one of the videos you can see like shaking. And I think the reason I I enjoyed was probably a weird word, but I enjoyed the experience is you just have no control. You just have to sit with this just absolutely intense reaction. So they and I mean, they do talk to about an after drop, which is where the body continues to cool even after you’ve exited the water. And that can be quite a dangerous thing if you’re not prepared for it. And that’s something to do with like the the cold water that’s kind of the more sorry, the cold blood in your extremities recirculating centrally. So what happened for me is I kind of I was shaking a little bit and then it got really violent and then you get loaded to this false sense

security because you’d stop shaking, you could talk, you’d feel OK. And then you just plunge back in and have this uncontrollable shaking. So that process was probably 40 minutes of that kind of wild shaking and recovery. And then I was completely warm, happy as two hours later. But then what I didn’t expect, you know, I’m about a week on or just under a week on from the event, I didn’t train for like two days. Like it was the most intense full body fatigue I’ve had. And I do wonder whether the physiological after that event was a lot more than I had anticipated to the next day. I did like a light gym session, but that Monday and Tuesday, I got home and I slept for three hours after my nursing shift. I was so tired. Well, that’s so interesting. It makes sense, right? Like it’s just what you put your body through to be that cold all the way through to then have to reheat. And yeah, that’s that’s really, really interesting.

And I’m kind of similar to you. I’ve started to do a little bit more cold water stuff this winter for the reason of I wasn’t good in the cold. And I just wanted to prove to myself that I could actually train myself to get get better in it. So we I mean, it’s about 13 degrees, maybe 14 degrees here. So I’ve been going for a couple of swims just out to the boy and back. So not far, but it’s just I like that physical challenge of your standing on the edge. It’s cold. You got to strip down and then get in. And I say to myself, I’ll stay in until I get to that point where I go from being like, this is uncomfortable. Man, I can’t breathe to when I then relax because you only get to that point where it’s like, this is actually quite nice. So I just always say to myself, stick around until you get to that point. And then you kind of want to stay in anyway. And by the time the swims over, actually, that was I wouldn’t mind to keep keep going for a bit,

depending on how long you’ve been in for, obviously. But yeah, it’s it’s actually been quite enjoyable. And I can see the appeal. I can see why people get addicted to that kind of feeling because it that endorphin release and the way that you feel afterwards is a is a really, yeah, really nice thing. And I feel if I don’t do it for a few days, I kind of need my fix again to go out into that cold water. Yeah, I had no idea why people would do this before before I got into it. Like, as I said, I’ve just got zero interest in the cold before I decided to try. And just like you, I feel like I’ve jumped on the bandwagon and that whole like cold water exhilaration is an actual true experience. So when somebody asked me about, like, did I have any health benefits from that thousand? I don’t think so. I think that was just a hard graft. But I tell you what, the 50s and the 100s, they were so fun because you get out and you’re like cold,

but you just absolutely buzz in. So the 50s and the 100s, gosh, they were so fun. But the the 500 and the K for me, that’s probably close to my limit. But you know, what’s interesting is it was actually there was a competitor from Australia and when I saw her after the thousand, honestly, she could have just done that in a regular pool. She wasn’t shaking at all. She was so relaxed. She got herself changed and I was standing there be like, Oh, oh, that’s amazing. Like, you know, people are just so different. And I think one of the the best things about this whole experience has been that true reflection of how much the mental game matters, because when I was just doing the ice bath theme and I was gradually building up the duration and the submersion times, if I wasn’t prepared mentally, my tolerance for that cold was so diminished. Like I couldn’t tolerate, you know, half of what I normally could. And that was quite I enjoyed that challenge of being like,

I feel tired. I’ve just finished a busy shift. You know, I’ve got to do all this stuff at home. But being like, no, we’re here right now. Get it done. Couldn’t always do that. But I quite like the fact that the exposure was so reliant on the mental state. It’s such a huge part of it. One thing that I’ve noticed with that is I so the grip that I strummed with, we did a like a winter mock race down here where I knew where I live. It’s about 1.2 Ks and we start from the pier and we swim into the into the beach. And everyone else wore wetsuits this year and I went without. And I think just that, like, you sort of convince yourself, like, no, it’s fine. And you and I sort of see myself as like, now I’ll be like, I don’t I don’t need a wetsuit. You kind of train yourself to be a bit tougher and to like the way the way you sort of want to see yourself or the way that you sort of mentally see the cold can make a huge, huge difference.

So now I see it as like, it’s actually not that bad. Whereas had I done this last year, I’d be like, there’s no way I’m getting in the water without a wetsuit on. So such a big part of it is part of it mentally. Now, you’ve you’ve been doing quite a bit of coaching over the last last couple of years and doing a lot of content and things like that. What what would you say some of the things that you’ve learned over the last few years that maybe five years ago, 10 years ago, you either didn’t know or like any perspectives that have changed since you’ve been doing a lot more coaching and putting out content and studying the stroke and things like that. Yeah, I feel like I’m such a different coach from five years ago. I was very binary in my thinking. A few years ago, you know, like everyone had to some like even thought they had to be long, they had to be a perfect high elbow. And I think one reason I really enjoy working with adults

is understanding them in the context of their own capacity. So, you know, are they carrying injury? What’s their history with swimming and particularly what are their goals? So five years ago, I would have wanted everyone swimming 50 meters with under 30 strokes, having a nice solid kick. But, you know, that suits a competitive swimmer doing, you know, two 400 meter. I think my perspective now has been really focused on getting the most out of the person in front of me. So having the patience to and the creativity to, I suppose, help them develop a stroke that’s the most effective for them if they say can’t get a high elbow. And I’m sure my partner won’t mind me saying, you know, he’s a kaiakon, he’s really strong anteriorly, but it also means he’s got really reduced range of motion through the shoulders. So he can’t effectively get a high elbow catch when he swims. So to offset that, because when I first saw him swimming,

you know, I thought in my head, I was like, I’m stumped. Like, I don’t know what I would do. So this was, you know, six, seven years ago. And now it’s like, well, the first point of call would be to try and improve that mobility. But the second immediate one is, well, you’re strong. So we’re just going to have to offset that high elbow by increasing the stroke rate and getting as effective kick as we can. And, you know, just developing the fitness with the style that he can manage. And so I think that’s probably been the biggest growth point is knowing what excellent technique looks like, but not being afraid to adapt that based on the capacities of the person with me. I’m also, you know, quite like, in terms of that wanting to see change straight away, I’ve had to be a lot more patient with how quickly people progress. I think swimming isn’t, you know, an overnight fix. And I did have to, you know, take my level of understanding

in my own, you know, understanding of how it feels to swim down to what people can understand. And particularly that was kind of highlighted when teaching people to tumble turn. You know, I’ve done this, I’ve done this skill since I was probably 10, if not younger, and to actually break it down and understand the pain points and what people struggle with was really fun. So, you know, I’m probably telling a wordy person and having to get a lot more concise with my education and developing ways of coaching either through description. So, you know, some people work off metaphors, other people want to blend off mechanics, understand exactly how the body works. So that’s probably been also another challenge is learning different ways to educate but in a simple, concise way. Yeah, I see a lot of parallels with my journey as a coach as well. And yeah, especially when you start working with adults who don’t have this great range of motion a lot of the time,

you just can’t get into some of those positions. So you just got to work with what people have got. And it doesn’t mean they’re not going to swim fast either. Like I’ve done a lot of filming with a lot of very good triathletes who either front pack or second pack and like some of them, like the stroke doesn’t look that good, but they’re really quick. So to me, that’s been, it’s like, all right, well, how are they actually this quick when their stroke doesn’t look that nice? So what actually matters here? And that’s something I’ve really had to learn as well. So Laura, thanks so much for being on the podcast. I really enjoyed chatting about these types of things and even just watching you compete over the last sort of six to 12 months and seeing you hit PBs in your early 30s. And I’m looking forward to seeing where it, where you can go with that to see if you can continue to get faster. And I’ve got no doubt that the commitment’s there

and the thought about how to do it is there. So I’m really looking forward to seeing what that brings. So thank you so much for being on the podcast. And for those that are listening, go and follow Laura on Instagram, we’ll include the links in the show notes here. So it’s at or remove NZ, is it on Instagram? Yeah, it will include those links there. Anything you want to finish with Laura? Stay persistent, stay consistent and enjoy the process. I love it. Well, I’ll be sure to get you back on and yes, it’s been great having you on. Thanks Laura. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. My guest today is someone who was on a couple of years back and we’re talking about fueling and how to test physiology for endurance sports. And I’ve got Nick from Mess Performance back on the podcast because they’ve recently got some new equipment in the lab where they can test things in a little bit more detail and get better numbers around what’s required for fueling when it comes to doing Ironman events, doing any sort of long distance events. And so I want to get stuck into the details and the data with what you’re looking at at the moment. So Nick, welcome back to the podcast. Now, good to be back on. So tell me about the recent upgrade in equipment that you’ve got in the lab and how

does that improve the ability for you guys to look at what’s required in terms of fueling for these long distance events? Yeah, so I guess the simple explanation is that the really major change is we just can measure carbon dioxide. So for those who don’t really understand the capability of that, it’s all of our old equipment and most metabolic devices or all metabolic devices have a capability to measure option consumption, which is great and tells us a lot of information around training zones, what we can implement in terms of training strategy, etc. But it doesn’t tell us necessarily about the breakdown of fuel utilization. It can tell us how much energy is required, but we don’t know what’s the percentage fat versus carb or how many grams an hour of carbohydrate, for example, are we expending at a particular intensity? And that’s where being able to measure someone’s carbon dioxide production can be really, really critical

because now we can have a look at what’s the ratio between carbon dioxide being produced and oxygen consumption being taken in, basically take that CO2 number divided by VO2, we then get an understanding of what’s the breakdown versus fat versus carb. And essentially, that comes from more carbon dioxide being produced is an indicator that more carbohydrates been being utilized. So that really is just kind of an add on to what we’re already able to look at to then enable us to be a bit more refined in, or how do we understand and assess someone’s ability to utilize different fuels at different intensities and how do they do that? But then also off the back end, how can we manipulate or utilize some of that data to best inform how an athlete would be able to fuel up for a race? We’ve already been able to be pretty good at understanding maybe their pacing in the past and relative percentage of physiology, but now it’s

taking it that one step further to just open up that last little bit, which we know a lot of insurance athletes, they train the house down, they race pretty well, but then just fall over on the fueling side of things. And this is a way for us to get a clearer insight on how could we maybe get ahead of that and be able to ultimately prevent a little bit of that bonking effect or fuel flat, that most people sort of feel middle to back end of races. Like, can we eliminate that as a bit of a factor so that the race can go as best you can the whole way through. And in particular, we’re really talking the long distance stuff. So most of this data is only really going to be massively important for those events that go for two, two and a half, three hours plus. Think shorter than that, not as massive requirement in terms of the fueling. And most people intuitively know, like if you’re a 10k runner, probably not going to need to take much fuel if your

race is done in 40 odd minutes. Whereas when you’re out there for four, five, seven, 10, 15 hours, however long, yeah, it’s pretty important we get the fuel back in and we do it in a way that it’s going to mean we get the most out of ourselves, but maintain as much of our performance as we can. So what are the issues that you would come across when someone’s not fueling correctly? Like you talk about overfueling, underfueling, the maybe having taking out on the wrong type of fuel as well. So like, what are those issues that people do run into? Yeah, the classic, the classic ones are like gastrointestinal upset is that is the classic one, like a feeling of sickness, vomiting, whatever it might be, that can come from a few different, few different means. It can be set up by what you ate in the days leading in. So what was your, what was your fueling strategy leading into the event? Are you more sensitive to certain types of foods

that day to day in your training, probably it’s needed here or there, but in a race circumstance, when the pace is on your working hard, you then trying to smash in something quite potent, like a gel or, or lots of sports drinks, whatever it might be, you might have already delivered a bit of gut damage there. So heading into the race, you kind of already you’re kind of setting yourself up for a little bit of failure there. So that can be part of it. But then the other ones are like significantly overfueling, never really ends well. And also significantly overfueling, like there’s probably an argument to say, if you’re taking it a bit much on the bike and then a little less on the run, it kind of can balance it out a little bit. But if you consistently weigh over a good example, just arbitrary numbers, he would be like, if someone only needed 80 grams of carbs an hour, but they were trying to take 120 just because it’s more doesn’t necessarily

mean it’s better in your individual circumstance for other athletes, it might, but you might not. And then what you end up with is a bunch of carbs sitting in your gut. We get redistribution of blood flow away from your digestive system in endurance. So the more you work, the more you start sweating, blood flow goes away from the guts. Okay, it’s harder to break down. So what’s it going to do? It’s just going to sit there. And that’s that sick feeling you’re starting, you’re starting to get. We just aren’t able to break it down. So over over can be an issue. The other side of things is maybe not necessarily from a gastrointestinal upset, but significant underfueling is the one that probably most of us at some point in time of experience of hitting the wall. And you just go, I just feel like I can’t. I don’t feel too bad, but I just feel like I can’t produce the intensity. Workload drops. Why we’re running out of carbohydrate, we don’t have

we don’t have the capacity to get enough back in. So we have to start utilizing fat as more of a fuel source. What does that mean? Well, if we’re doing that, requires more and more option, it takes a longer time to break down to get the same energy requirement. So our intensity has to drop. So you feel not too bad. You just have that that sensation of just can’t keep going at the same pace I was before. That’s probably the other side of it. When you get that fueling wrong more so from an underfueling perspective, rather than the over, but then it also comes down to like, well, what was the combination? And you point out there like taking sports drinks, gels, like those who can, like you ask most athletes, like that typically go, gels and fluids is a bit easier. And yeah, the more simple the source or the more liquid, I guess, if you want to put on a scale of solids through the liquids, more liquid, typically the

easier it is to get down. But I mean, some athletes can take bars and solids. That’s great. What’s within that? Even in the more highly or the easier stuff to get down, like fluids and gels, like what’s the mix? The classic one that’s been around for a number of years at most to be aware of is, well, a bit of research showed that 60 grams of glucose was all we can really absorb in an hour. So how do I get 80 or 90 and will I have to use something like a fructose or a different, like a different method of transporting that carbohydrate or a different kind of carbohydrate, which is where we start to see the multidections of sucrose, like different combinations, these two to one mixes in gels now. But positive in that regard, we can get more in. Negative, like if you’ve got an intolerance to fructose, gels that have a high amount of fructose in them are going to be no good. Like, so there’s this, there’s a lot of individuality that has to come

into play here to get that fueling aspect right. And as we mentioned before, I mean, like that’s where some of the testing can come into it to understand, well, how much do you actually need to dial in the amount of fuel to put back in, which makes it then a little bit easier to navigate that, like it can help prevent you from significantly overfueling. Or if you need a lot of carbs, well, what is actually the best method? What ratio for you is going to be a little bit better? What sits best in your guts practicalities, like some guys might want to go all fluids, but if you’re in an Ironman, you’re on the bike and you can only carry maybe two, maybe a third bottle, is that going to be enough of your own customized nutrition to get you through the bike leg? Or are you going to have to pick up on course and how does that change the dynamic? So that individual aspect plays a big role in terms of then getting that right. And as a result, we’ve

got all these factors laid out so many more. You can see why a lot of athletes do often get it wrong. Yeah, exactly right. There’s just so many different factors, right? So how do you recommend someone figure out what works for them? So obviously the testing, I want to talk about how you do the testing in a moment, but how would you recommend that someone say in training, I guess to figure out what what they can hold, what what tastes good, what they can keep down, that sort of thing. Well, the obvious thing is you have to practice what you’re about to race with, at the very least at an equal amount in the exact nutrition. Like four, six weeks before, ideally, so the latest it’s like you should have a couple of times in your training gone out, practiced exactly what the race nutrition is going to look like because you’ll find out really, really quickly in a training session if that’s going to work or not. The number of times I’ve had

conversations where an athlete and it might not even been their own foal in terms of I lost a gel out the back of my pocket, coming off the bike and so I got onto the run and I had to pick up a different brand on course and I had no issues in training and then on the day I just had a gastrointestinal upset because the gel was a different brand, it was a different mix. So something like that can be a bit of an issue. So going and practicing it like anything else in your acts, like you practice your swim bike run, you go and practice your transitions, you practice being aero, like those things we need to practice, but you need to practice what does your nutrition look like because then you can also you’ll get a pretty good feel of what feels about right. You don’t have to initially go and completely race your whole race four weeks out to then go oh it’s the exact intensity I’ve done, what was that like it some practicalities involved as

getting it close to but for the most part you’ll have a pretty good idea of well can I tolerate like 10 gels across a three hour ride for example you’ll know pretty quick because you get pretty sick pretty quick. This sits with it a bit but if it’s constantly an issue of okay after the seventh gel I have issues but anything seven gels or less I don’t okay maybe the additional source of carbohydrate has to come through fluids. So there’s a bit of trial and error of what your body responds to, tolerates what you like things like flavor fatigue are big like you want to do this a couple of times but don’t use your favorite gel all the time because then when you get to race day like if you’re sick of it by the before you even start probably not going to want to take it in like how do you respond to caffeinated gels versus non-caffeinated gels is a good example. Some people don’t have really any difference, some people find

they get a different response when you add caffeine into their mix. So like first and foremost go out train practice it start pretty cautiously so I’d probably if you’re doing this practically with no data inside it’s like I’d start on the lower side take a little bit less than you think train through train through and you can gradually sort of raise that and sort of see where that limit is of okay I’m probably tipping the limit of feeling a bit sick here versus like well what do I need and you typically going to find a pretty good mark. Like often you find most people are going to be pretty okay pending the type of event like we want to use iron man as an example most people should be pretty okay somewhere between 70 to 90 grams an hour and this is regard like if we’re taking in most people’s body size like that that all plays a factor most males in particular going to be like 70 to 90 you’re probably going to be okay as an

amateur. It’s still a broad range and that’s why you just need to go and do a bit of trial and error if you don’t have any data. If you do have the data though then it’s easier because we can pinpoint well what are we trying to raise that as an intensity well what does that mean as a grams of carbohydrate being used per hour as an example so that it’s a little bit more plug-and-play to narrow that target or even start looking at we know and people here all the time it’s like well the pros are using 120, 130, 140 grams an hour potentially or higher well okay there’s a reason for that because they’re writing average or normalised powers of like 320 watts for 90 k like it’s it’s significantly greater when the average amateur can cold so there’s an added energy expenditure in that most of us who are writing mid to low 200 as an example in in a 70.3 probably don’t need to be fueling at 120 grams an hour you just probably not expending that much

energy so well there’s a way that maybe we could keep the energy expenditure down by just focusing on a different part of our performance but baseline point is like you just have to go and practice it and then probably the second part to that is once you get a bit of a strategy and you go okay I reckon this is going to be pretty good let’s say that was 80 grams an hour the one I like to do is go out a couple of times with some more difficult sources than what you’re going to take on race day so training session might be instead of taking all my stuff through gels and fluids like I’m going to do on race day I’m going to try and do a couple of those gels and some of that fluids as some solids so maybe take some bananas with you or bars choose whatever might be not with any intent to use them on race day but just to get you a little bit a little bit more comfortable with some gut tolerance whether it has a significant effect or not it’s a bit

debatable which was but arguably it’s like most of the anecdotal evidence is most people go out they train with a bit more difficult source body gets a little bit better or they feel a little bit better at breaking it down and take and keeping it down so that when they take the gels and the fluids it’s like this feels nice and easy I can get it down it’s not an issue on race day and the icing on the cake to that would be if you’re going to race at 80 grams an hour if you could train maybe at 85 or 90 grams an hour a couple of times just to give you a taste of that harder stuff you then go back on race day and you race a little bit lower you’re pretty good there’s sort of some practical ones you can use before you get into the details of testing and what about how regularly you should be taking it in do you have a sort of rule of thumb does it differ for people what’s that timeline look like yeah it’s going to differ it’s going

to differ a little bit and then ultimately it’s going to differ a bit based on the source you’re taking in so something like a like if you’re going solids and bars of course they’re going to take a bit longer to break down so you’re clearly not going to have to take it in as frequently like you probably don’t need to put a bar a power bar for example down every 20 minutes you’d make yourself sick really quick typically gels like again pending the race and how much you’re trying to get back in and what the size of the gel is like the precision like 90 gram gels now like the massive ones you might you might want to take a third of that every half hour for example like that that might work often like we tend to say gels sort of every 20 to 30 minutes is a pretty typical window for most athletes are pretty comfortable with fluids is kind of a floating one of it plays a bit into your hydration so

how much fluid are you taking on is probably going to be a little bit linked to how thirsty you feel as well

some days you might be taking more fluids more regularly other days you might take bigger bigger blocks of fluid like every 30 to 40 minutes tip it like something like a gel like if you worked off a strategy of I’m going to take it roughly every 30 odd minutes in a race as an example probably isn’t going to be too much of an issue it’s then more looking at like well what’s the big picture like if I’m going to be on the bike for four four or five six hours have a long or I’m out there running for three hours four hours whatever might be what is my total energy requirement likely to be what do I need to get overall to kind of manage that deficit and then ultimately like how much do I need to put in an hour to kind of keep me in the range once you get that like and this is where the testing is useful it’s like now you can start to go well that does probably mean a gel every a gel at least every 40 minutes and so you can now go okay

if a gel’s got 24 grams you can start to calculate it out and work out that spacing but then the individual plays like if you’re if you’re feeling like you’re needing a bit of extra fuel like you’re going to start a fade a little here back into the back end of Iran or whatever it might be like top yourself up like it’s probably a pretty clear sign no difference to when you see from a dehydration perspective if you feel thirsty drink like that that’s not that’s not a bad thing like your body’s telling you a needs more fluid so if you can tune yourself to understand that sort of change as well like you’re probably going to be able to adjust that on the fly but I I’ve never been a big fan nutrition or hydration wise of here is the exact you cannot deviate from every 20 minutes you have to take this gel every 20 but it’s like there’s a lot more play to that and what happens in the race circumstance that you need to be a little bit more

flexible with something as simple as aid stations like okay we know where they are in an Ironman course but we get to race day and there’s a howling headwind so it’s going to take you 10 minutes longer to get to that aid station you don’t want to run out of gels 20 minutes ago you still got another 10 minutes you now you got nothing to get through for half an hour till you get to the aid station and you’re like now I have to pick something up and it’s probably a bit late near you scrambling your best plan might have been great but it gets thrown out the window because of a headwind so like there’s there’s a little bit of back and forth so I always encourage a little bit of flexibility with that have a clear idea of where you roughly want to be but then it’s a case of be flexible with what happens on race day how it plays out and be flexible with okay if things go wrong well what’s my backup plan or if I lose a bottle what’s my backup plan

that how much am I going to pick up or how can I make that up or substitute it which that’s where I’ve always liked some of the brands that have very seamless nutrition like a good good example is like back when I think they’re still around performance was a thing it’s like on the the side of their gels and their like drink mix it was like the same combination so how it like can’t remember the exact numbers but like how many scoops of your drink mix meant it equal to gel etc like if you can know that kind of math and a lot of brands had that near but like if you know that kind of mass it gives you more of that flexibility when things go wrong to then make decisions on the fly to then either get back on track or or make up for something you’ve lost but for me from the psychological stress of I didn’t take a gel like my race is blown up like no yeah used to gel on the 20-minute mark and you took it on the 23 like it’s

it’s probably going to be pretty insignificant yeah absolutely and and what about with training sessions so is there kind of a with with training sessions let’s say it goes for an hour is that something that you should be fueling for and then if not what sort of point should someone start to take on some sort of nutrition with their with their training sessions depending on the duration because most people are probably swimming for I’d say 45 minutes to an hour some some people would then be going an hour to an hour 30 and then if you’re doing some probably more endurance based swimming or longer distance swimming you’ll have some sessions that are in the two hours possibly more if you’re training for you know doing a solid 8k to 10k session but what’s it what are your thoughts there with the duration of sessions and when you should start to take fuel on yeah I think it’s a really interesting one from a training perspective and definitely like there’s

there’s a little bit more noise around it I reckon particularly from what the Norwegian triathlon program’s doing like and they put it really well they talk about like a calorie budget so everything that we do is essentially governed by energy in versus energy out like so if you look at us like a swimmy a tibial swimming week of I don’t know if you had you’ll keep it simple if you swim every day of the week so seven days a week seven sessions within that you’re probably gonna have some sessions of the longer sessions of the shorter more intense less intense realistically like across that whole week there is there’s an amount of energy you are going to have to expend to get through all seven of those sessions as long as you are fueled up appropriately for that and can balance that out effectively you should get to the end of the week and like the calories that were expended were were pretty much met by the calories that you put back in

so where it starts to become interesting is some sessions you probably won’t have to feel you go and do a nice easy 30 40 minute sort of recovery swim cool you’re probably not going to need to take a lot there having said that if you had a like an hour and a half swim in the morning big long endurance set we just accumulating some volume you probably want to fill up within the back end of that if you had to jump back in the pool later that day and double up into a second session because there’s only so many opportunities for you to get that fuel back in okay it’s a low intensity you’re you’re not expending a lot at the time and you could probably make that up pretty well immediately afterwards by you jump in first thing in the morning you have a bit of a meal afterwards you’re probably okay but what we’re actually looking for there is the fueling during that session is probably actually just trying to get you ahead for the next one

where you’re going to jump in and do some hard hundreds fifties whatever it might be intensities up energy expenditures up so we’re not initially fueling for now we’re kind of fueling for that that future as well if you approach your week kind of like that you’ll start to see opportunities where it’s like yeah probably do need to maybe top up a bit more here you might get through and go yeah okay all I’ve got today is a an hour pretty easy tomorrow is going to be a rest day well yeah you can have more than enough time to fuel up off the back of that hour the rest of that day the rest of the following day big hard session on the following day after that you go okay I’m pretty topped up ready to go for it but I know this is going to be a big energy cost so what is then coming up after that do I now need to fuel in that big hard session for then the day after that but I think yeah that perspective of looking at the whole week and going

well I’m going to need fuel for everything here but where the more important sessions where I definitely need a lot where I’m going to be expending a lot more aka longer more intense typically and as a result you can start to play around with like a session leading into that probably need to take a little bit more having said that as well like you then look at some opportunities in the week where you’re like probably okay to be on pretty low fuel if I if I don’t have if I had a solid day yesterday I fueled up though have a kind of rest day and then I’m going into like an hour of just cruising like volume building aerobic k’s maybe some technique work you can potentially go into that session off of the back of a rest day where you’ve fueled up heaps you can then go to sleep overnight basically be 10 hours fast to jump in the pool to an hour and not have any issues fuel up afterwards and go so you can start to build this sort of undulation throughout the week and

plan for it in terms of so that kind of looks at less traditionally then often it would normally be where you fuel in your long sessions because you’re in there for a long time like you get past an hour you’re going to be start you’re going to be starting to need maybe a little bit anyway if it’s sort of less than 40 minutes you’re probably more often than not don’t need to take much or anything at all maybe tiny bits like from a sport performance perspective recommendation on nutrition typically it’s like anything less than 60 minutes most of the time we you don’t really worry about like if you want to take something it’s pretty minimal like you might like one that gets thrown around in different environments probably not the swimming side of things but like team sport would be like carbohydrate rinsing so if it’s a short intense game basketball you might not want to actually drink a lot of calories or eat a lot but you might just

swirl some Gatorade in the mouth and spit it back out and we actually get a little like sort of neurological stimulus from that that can aid a bit of performance we get out to 90 minutes okay you probably want to take a little bit two two and a half hours plus is more the length of session we’re looking at where it’s like you kind of have to be taking something now if you had a time trial pretty much as solid as you could go for 90 minutes

pretty fair to say by the end of that 90 you’re pretty much going to be out of carbohydrate so like that if the intensity is down you go a bit longer it’s like yeah I’m probably gonna have to fuel if the intensity is up but it’s a bit shorter yeah maybe I need a bit as well they’re the kind of levers we can start to pull but often anything really 60 minutes or less it’s kind of like there’s going to be a low need to put carbs in at the time but that doesn’t mean you don’t then finish the session jump out and don’t don’t take anything in for hours it’s like well you would just have to make sure you’re taking in something immediately post to top up what you expended but as I said before like if you’re doing like double training days like that’s probably the one that for me where I go a lot of athletes who do a session don’t take fuel during just try and top up afterwards and then get into another session might be missing out a little bit there

it might just be an opportunity get some extra fuel early bank that you’re still expending at the time finish that session have a bit of rest sure you can get some in but based on time pressures etc you might have have a huge amount of time get to the second session you just want to make sure that you’re meeting the requirements enough because it’s pretty easy when the case go up or volume goes up weight to weight most injurious athletes and it’s pretty easy to then start see start seeing the weight come down pretty quickly on the scales and really a lot of that is why I’m in a deficit typically like I’m taking in not enough calories for what I’m expending

which if you’re trying to get the weight down not too bad if you’re trying to maintain performance and in the session and you don’t really want the weight down well clearly we’re not putting enough back in so are we missing an ability to push harder in those sessions because you don’t have the fuel to do it maybe yeah yeah it’s I think in swimming in particular it’s like helping the tourists for not really fueling within sessions and I’m guilty of that as well and

towards the end of a session if you are trying for an hour and a half and you’re doing some pretty solid work in there yeah you’re likely to start to fill it in that last 15 to 20 minutes but yeah it’s just something that I think because we’re in the pool we haven’t really got you do have options to fuel but it’s just something that’s probably less considered than it is for the running or the or the riding I think so it’s I’ve told this on the podcast quite a few times but every year we do 100 hundreds we do a 10k swim prior to Christmas and it’s only been the last two three years that I’ve actually fueled properly and I’ve gotten faster through that 100 hundreds because I’ve kind of loosened up gotten into the groove and I’ve got that fuel to to use whereas 10 years ago when we were doing that I would fade so hard in those last 30 100s and it’s all no surprise because I’ve I’ve had probably 30 grams maybe 40 grams of carbs an hour when it really had to be

probably twice that so yeah just that is a realization that came really late to to me but in hindsight it’s just so obvious but it’s just one of those things that I’ve never really considered because it wasn’t you know with swimming it’s lots of intervals our events are very short but the training sessions are often quite long so I think it’s just something as a as a kid we never really considered a whole lot of it was are you drinking enough but not really about the fuel side of it yeah and that that’s where like 100 hundreds it’s a great example of like it’s probably an extreme end of no one’s really going out doing that session as a regular session but you think about that principle of you get to that same point you feel like you’re starting to fade from a training perspective if you get into that point in training sessions and you feel like you’re starting to fade just think about the the difference of well if I can prevent my if I can prevent that

fading effect or enhance my ability to maintain the quality through that back end of the session

logically it has to have a better training stimulus doesn’t it it’s like if there was if you get through or 100 hundreds out of that or you get through 60 or 70 of them pretty good and then you start fading in the last 30 if that was actually a training stimulus as the example I go imagine the difference consistently if you were able to hit those extra 20 even extra 20 or 30 typically 30 of those efforts more consistently all the way through like because you’ve got the energy to do it well if you were then applying that to a race circumstance we had to be on do at 10k or or you were racing if your race was 100 hundreds as a race quickly could then it’s kind of like or as consistent as you could you go I’m going to be better serve because I’ve got better training stimulus because I’m not fading I could keep the same pace up for another 20 reps which means the muscular endurance component has got a far greater stimulus like we’re influencing these other factors

as well and that’s the important bit so if you’ve got the fuel there your training quality typically when that volume is up there it’s just going to be a bit higher and if any any way we can get your training quality higher largely is going to mean we’re going to recover like if you’re going to recover better from that you’re probably going to perform better off the back and I’d even say too probably without the sports as well but for swimming you’re going to maintain your form and your technique a lot better because you can hold those positions and hold that technique which is going to be training training better technique but on the other side of that too is when you do fatigue and you might be rotating more and you’re dropping your arm and you’re compromising some of those positions so that can lead to injury as well so I think it’s got benefits outside of what you mentioned as well

yeah definitely now just in terms of the like the testing where should someone start so someone who’s an endurance athlete whether that’s long distance swimming or triathlons long distance running what would you say would be necessary things for them to do if they are considering their their fueling as in when they come to someone like you what are what are those couple of tests that you think this is what you need to do

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yeah so there’s kind of like the way we sort of split it up is for the most part you need you need pretty long periods of time to assess like specific intensity so we’ve identified as like we really want at least sort of five minutes at a particular intensity so often that can look a bit like a step test like traditionally where we looked like things like VO2 max you know one minute or three minute step tests and things like that you probably want a bit longer time to steady state to look at it we sort of provide that as a bit of a starting point for most amateur athletes in particular if we’re looking really at the refined end though I go for the elite and pro side of things you can go much longer and you can be as much you can kind of get as specific as you like in terms of and we have a discussion with guys around do we want to come in and do half an hour of race intensity or do we want to get you on the trainer for like we’re discussing this

the other day with guys like do we want to get you on the trainer for three hours like not put anything on and then we’ll start assessment at the end of that three hours because we’ve put you in a very specific state so like you can go quite extreme with that I guess the the purpose is well what are we trying to look for

but then it’s also like we’ll practicalities I mean not everyone’s got the time to be able to come in ride say ride for three hours on the bike at race intensity and then be able to go and assess what is their fuel utilization look like at the end of that so we sort of look at a bit of like a five-minute step test go very gradually in intensity not trying to get you to max at all like as I mentioned right at the start that fat carb contribution really kind of is only important to us until about well until we get what a we call a value of one as a respiratory quotient so that would indicate 100% carbohydrate that pretty much lines up with most people’s threshold so that like that traditional like 40 to an hour so anything above that 100% carbohydrate so it’s it’s kind of like it’s not really relevant to us we want everything from below that to look at that percentage split so yeah we’ll put some on the bike say five minutes at something really low

maybe like 100 watts and then every five minute blocking like over 20 or 30 watts very gradually until we get up to that that’s what a threshold point call the test there because that gives us more than enough scope to look at those refined intensities but then where I see these working really effectively is doing this is as part of that lead-up preparation so you might have six or eight or so weeks before a key event you’ve got a pretty good idea of where you’re going to be sitting like it there might be some added little fitness you might gain on the top but we’re not talking you’re going to be 20% better in that time you might be a couple of percent better over that last six weeks

so a good example would be from a triathlon sense like on the bike okay you’re pretty we’re pretty confident based on your training based on all of your other data and some assessment we might have done previously at the start of your prep it’s pretty clear you might be able to hold roughly between 200 let’s call it 220 to 250 watts throughout the Ironman like that that’s kind of the range you’re going I reckon it’s somewhere there let’s try narrow it in this is where that this testing becomes really useful because then we can look really specifically at well what do you like at 200 what do you like at 220 what do you like at 240 what do you like at 260 that there is going to be very clear as to the energy requirement the fat versus carb utilization at each of those intensities to then also make a clear picture of 200 watts yeah like you might be 70 30 split in favor of fat utilization awesome like he’s super effective you get the 220

it’s like yeah it’s still pretty good you got a 240 watts and now it’s kind of 70 30 the other way like that’s a bit of a break point for you okay pretty clear that if you’re going to try and race on that limit of 240 to 50 is that doable from a carbohydrate utilization maybe maybe not whereas say 220 could be really effective like based on how many grams an hour you’re utilizing what’s like armetry numbers let’s say it was like 120 grams an hour you’re using it at that intensity 110

a lot of people can sort of put that back or get close to putting that back in especially on the bike so you go we could kind of be not net zero completely because you’ll never be but pretty close to minimizing how much we’ve actually expended or got left by the time we’ve expended and put it back in by the end of the bike you go up that stage up 20 30 watts it’s like well now this is becoming unrealistic for us in terms of what we can carry how much we can actually put in and tolerate so

looking at that at that timing as I said like six to eight weeks then gives you that scope to take that information and as we mentioned before go and practice it and go and actually say well how does this work practically what do I have to carry with me how much how often you can plan out that does that now mean it’s 20 30 40 minutes apart those gels or so it gives you that ability to go and play with it we’re still enough time before race day to still tweak and refine some of that that individual adjustment or that that sort of trial and error aspect that you have to do with some parts of it at least we’ve narrowed the gap really really close to go this is pretty much where we’re at

go and jump in training sessions see how that plays around then we can make some further adjustments so then you’re not going straight into a race off oh well we tested we tested on Monday and I was feeling a little bit fatigued because I hadn’t fully finished my taper yet like oh okay Nick said I’d probably need to take about 85 grams now but I’ve been training at 60 races on Sunday the first time I’m going to do it is race day terrible idea so that that’s where I sort of see that part of it working really effectively the bonus of our new equipment though is like at the beginning of a preparation you could still assess that to then have a look at well what has changed over a training block so over a 12 week block at 220 watts have we become less reliant on carbohydrate as a result of our significant increase in aerobic form or fitness like how is that that profile slight slightly shifted you can get some insights there and we can get some of that

little bit of insight from our

typical testing protocols that we do when we look at things like VO2 max like we’re still assessing that covered off so production in the background it’s just most accurate when you get those longer periods to let it really stabilise and steady statement intensity and and ultimately that’s what you’re doing on race day like most of these events we’re talking two and a half three hours four hours plus you’re not going to be very volatile in your intensity it’s it’s going to be pretty consistent pretty constant so we want to lock in and get a really accurate representation of where you’re out there so yeah there’s no ways you can do it but the the way we’re finding is going to be quite effective and practical to then come in do a session and get some pretty close numbers is is doing something like a five minute little step test to then get some get some more clarity and really zone in and I think that’s that’s an important one to remember here is like

we’re not we’re not necessarily claiming to be able to 100% be like bang this is the number this is exactly what you need to take and it’s going to be foolproof it’s not like it’s it’s narrowing narrowing the focus as close as we can because we understand that there are so many other little variables like hot conditions most people expend more calories in hot conditions so we can talk about these numbers great for a Melbourne based race but if you then head up to Cairns later in the year or the next year and go on race and try and utilize that exact combination of numbers it probably is going to be slightly different because you’re utilizing more just because it’s hot like so we it gives us that ability to narrow it in and eliminate some of the big error

that subtle refinement still is a bit of the art behind it of how it works for you and actually like okay do we need to go five five grams up five grams down like is it more bottles less bottles more gels less gels like that type of stuff is then you just have to kind of work with the numbers to then get to well what is the exact outcome for you because that the numbers on paper could look very similar athlete ABC but then what that translates to on course on race day could look a little bit different because of those individual differences and what about a swimmer who maybe listen to this and they’re not not doing triathlons but they’re into the longer distance from being how how does the testing apply to them so you said it’s on the on the bike does that still apply like you’re looking at you’re looking at heart rate and then how many carbs they’re burning at a certain heart rate like what’s how’s that work for swimmers yeah it’s it’s an interesting one

because it it’s it’s just difficult to test right so the the optimal scenario would be fine for us to find a way that we could test in the water which most of the text not really water friendly but like where we’ve done a bit before with particularly some of the open water swimmers on the bikes probably the getting into the lab and looking at some things on the bike as much as it’s not exactly the same you can then have a look at well there’s going to be some similarities around well what’s maybe a heart rate response or your total energy expenditure what does that sort of break down to the major difficulty you’re always going to find from a swimming perspective of some of this testing unless you can specifically test at a pool or in the water or at the very least on some form of swimming erg so to speak like I’ve seen them you were saying and like that’s the pool hand pool handle things that that look a bit ridiculous but like that’s at least closer to mimic it

that like the specificity aspect is is pretty key in terms of like how well you move through the water because swimming is a really great example right similar no different to I guess cycling aerodynamics where you move through the water really well your energy cost is probably going to be a little bit lower for the same speed as someone who moves through the water poorly so that then plays into total calories which plays into fat best carb percentage and ultimately grams of carbs per hour I’ve played around a little bit with some more portable devices like that don’t measure the carbon dioxide but oxygen consumption at the pool and I think that’s potentially one further that I want to keep looking out to get some comparisons of well what does that oxygen consumption look like from a swimming perspective it’s a bit tricky and it’s a bit estimated but you can get kind of close but then how do we take some of those numbers and compare that to

say how the same person would react in a bike test look at the oxygen consumption the energy the energy cost and try and overlay and match that a bit to get it a bit closer that’s definitely something I’d like to be exploring a bit more in the future I think that’s kind of the practical way to look at it I mean you’re going to get a good indication but like like I said like the difference the difference between say 160 beats per minute in the pool and 160 beats per minute on the bike for the same person could actually still have quite a bit of variance in how to utilize and fuel again talking about a sport that’s very low body dominant versus up body dominant and that specificity is going to throw it out a touch so that’s where it does like in all honesty it does become hard like is it something that yeah if we had unlimited budget it would be nice if we could have an endless pool or a or an ability to be able to test guys in the water

because I think that would be that would be perfect but also the reality I think as well from a swimming perspective

you can ask this probably better for me it’s like

for most people other than if you’re going and swimming like an English channel right is it fair to say that like most swimming events most even like long distance swimming events would be two hours and less

yes

yeah I’m thinking like a a 10k swim which is kind of the start of what you consider a marathon swim for most people that’s the elite guys will do that just under two hours yep so most people will take yeah three probably somewhere in the sort of three hours there I’d think so but yeah most most of the events would be would be pretty well under that two hour two hour mark unless they’re starting to do marathon swims yeah and so that’s where I go like the marathon swims become significantly different but those most of those events under sort of like two hours as we said before like you’ve probably got about 90 90 to two hours of carbohydrate at a solid intensity if you’re swimming at a pretty low intensity relative to be sustainable enough you go you might want to top up 30 40 grams an hour maybe 50 grams an hour if you feel like you need a bit more you probably get away with that if you went higher like if you’re a bigger bigger athlete

you feel like maybe you don’t move through the water as effectively as someone else like you just sort of powering along you might want to go a bit higher to 60 or 70 but

within that that’s kind of like if across that two hour period like if you took say four typical gels so that’s that’s going to be like 24 25 grams an hour and maybe you had a way of getting some liquid carbs in like if you could get 250 mils down of a carbohydrate mix in a bottle partway through that or even across the event you get through a whole 500 mil bottle of carbohydrate you might get another 40 to 60 there okay that would typically for me probably be more than enough and again the time duration is your big saviour so like unless you’re going to go swim for six hours like that that’s where it probably becomes far more relevant to really be pumping up really specific amounts but if you if you’re swimming for say like an hour hour and a half solid distance major things have made sure you got enough fuel in you before you start and then if you’ve got an ability to take something during it’s going to be useful probably no different to

like an olympic distance triathlete like it’s for most people it’s too too in a bit out it’s like you can get away with taking a couple of gels but you don’t probably don’t need to plan it as as specifically because of the duration requirement like you might be expending a lot but the duration requirement dictates that you’ve probably got enough to get you through that kind of event but yeah I mean optimal scenario would be like if you’re doing something longer like that’s definitely you got four or five six marathon swim type stuff six hour plus like yeah you you probably want to be having a look at like what are you specifically utilising at different intensities as best you can because there’s just much more risk of you running out of fuel

yeah definitely and I mean I can I know a lot of and coach quite a few people who are doing those longer longer swims and it’s just yeah something that they’ve got a they’ve got a really consider and yeah I was curious about the testing and the relevance of it if they’re they’re on the bike and whether that just like looking at the heart rate and the oxygen consumption how how well that ties in but as you said it’s it’s very it’s quite a different sport being on the bike compared to swimming so and then you’ve also got the factor of sometimes they’re in cold water sometimes they’re in in warm water and that can obviously play a part of it too so yeah and it’s it’s kind of like you know what’s the you know how how does someone swim fastest like it’s just so different right it’s like it’s why you come get a swim analysis because what you need to work on is very different than another person same with the nutrition requirements so yeah a lot of different

different factors there and just to sort of finish off here I mean you’ve you’ve done what you’ve done for a very long time work with a lot of different athletes what any sort of lessons or things that you’ve come to learn over the last couple of years where is common knowledge for you and you’re like well everyone would know this right but when you see someone who’s sort of brand new and you’re talking about this stuff they’re like my god I can’t believe like I never knew this before and I know I’ve talked about a few things already but does anything else spring to mind? in terms of like fueling specifically or or anything else that comes to mind as well yeah I think like if you if you’re talking sort of brand new like you make the assumption that we’ve sort of got like an amateur there and I go most most of the time most people are getting into it think a lot of the stuff that we do and I I do in particular is exclusively pro and elite at lowest

at lowest level if you like top and age group and it’s like well no like the same principles we get from what the pro and elite guys do we’re looking at maybe can I find half a percent so

great example is take some of the best swimmers in the world like

the one that always sticks in my mind when I talk swimmers always Michael Phelps because I grew up watching him and unbelievable but you go yeah there’s probably a few things we could talk to him about about swim technique but the end of the day is the fastest bloke on the planet like maybe he’s doing something pretty well oh like we might be able to find we want to find half a percent but like he’s already right up there the bonus of working with somebody who’s brand new is a lot of the stuff that we do to find that half a percent in that top end athlete will give the brand newbie amateur like 15 20 percent because it’s easy wins right we’re looking at on your side the technique aspect I go like yeah teach someone to swim properly like is it such a fundamental part of the sport to make them swim better like we can talk about training sessions and zones and all that but like if you can’t swim you can’t swim triathlon and that no different like

cycling wise the number of amateur athletes who go who come in and like we put them through so testing we’re like gee you can punch in pretty good numbers and then you look at their race time and then you look at a photo of their race and you’re like on the bike

they move they’re like their movement and flexibility is pretty good but they just have never even considered well what could I do to be a bit more aero because I actually punched them pretty I can punch them good power and I feel okay and I don’t have any issues in a race pretty okay but like they didn’t even consider that aerodynamics was something they have to worry about like choice of skin suit like how many of us as amateurs in the past you go I’ll just get the one that’s on sale it’s like well if you spent the extra 50 bucks like that could have actually been a time saver of a minute two minutes like so like things like that I think not like making sure that even as the amateur is like you’re not necessarily showing away from some of these things that seem complex and sports science he’s like oh it’s just for professionals because quite often like some of the little things that we can take from that those learnings will then make big differences

like number of times we’ve seen people have just got into running or triathlon and they come in they do a test and then six months based on those zones that they’ve got they just implement really a simple training strategy but they’ve refined it because of the numbers in the lab they come back in six months time they’re miles ahead like it’s that’s the type of thing that we’re just trying to help accelerate for you by using these principles like there’s a reason the things we learned from elite athletes are useful it’s because like they’re the best in the world and they’re like we’re finding ways to improve them if if those little things improve them there’s probably parts of that that we can take and implement to the newbie who is then going to get significantly better as a result like it’s not going to turn you into a pro overnight and we some of the really refined stuff probably still we go okay we might not use some of that because that’s a bit advanced

or complex particularly on the training side of things like I’m not going to ask a brand new athlete to go and do like fight like 30 seconds at 500 watts on a bike like straight out the gate like yeah probably going to work our way to that but like some of the basic stuff is like just keeping a zone two like he keeping it and in a zone two that is actually your zone two not just one that Garmin told you it’s like well we actually assessed it and he is the marker and the threshold well you go and implement that for three months you’re going to be significantly better off so like that is kind of an overall principle is the way I approach it like it’s no like real one thing it’s it’s just embracing the fact that yes sport sport science is is far bigger than just Olympic level world championship type stuff it’s like yeah plays a big role there but what we can learn from those people is is just as important to then apply to someone who’s

getting into it for the first time because if you can if you can train a little bit more effectively I can guarantee you if you’re an amateur who’s got to work a nine to five and you go I can’t do 300 k’s a week like a professional marathon runner can but I can do 50 k’s a week well how do we make that 50 k’s as effective as possible so that you can still rock up to work and not be exhausted and then get home and see kids and not be exhausted like there’s other factors at play like best in the world sometimes all they have to worry about is wake up, train, eat, sleep go again yeah but yeah that’s where that the sports science side just helps dial it in a little bit you don’t have to go overkill but it’s just like taking those little bits and just really like trying to learn the little tips and tricks that’ll make you significantly better at your level with the realistic expectations it’s like okay yeah we can probably gain a fair bit out of this

but it’s not going to mean I was not going to turn me into a pro athlete and I don’t have to be a pro athlete to go and do it but all I’m trying to do is find ways to get me better like if you look at like that that’s that’s the best way to approach it yeah I remember listening to like yesterday the day before I was listening to a guy who used to be a personal trainer and he was talking about how over like the like 10 years you know he’d just get people in the gym they wanted to lose weight and you know for them it’s just like it feels like it’s a really big thing but he’s like well look if you just yeah if you eat less eat better food start moving more it’s like it’s just it’s really straight forwards right and so he’d have thousands of different people come in get these results and he’s just like yeah like obviously that’s gonna gonna happen but for that person it can feel like you know really really big deal kind of thing and like it’s hard for them

to achieve the results that they see with others but I think the benefit that like we see working with a lot of different kinds of people it’s like well if you implement these things it’s like it’s gonna it’s gonna happen it’s like it’s not surprising if you follow these these steps and have good good fundamentals and just follow the basics and you might not know what the basics are right now but it doesn’t mean that you can’t you can’t learn them and take them on board and yeah you know give it enough time with following those things and you’re gonna you’re gonna see the results it’s just not not a surprise anymore so that’s it’s really good point and and for those that are listening I mean you’re you guys are primarily based in in Melbourne how can people get in touch with you go through the tests that we’ve talked about if they’re looking to perhaps work on their their fueling or just know what training zones to stick to and that kind of thing

yeah so easiest way to get in contact my email nickatmetsperformance.com you can find us on social media so atmetsperformance Instagram from the easiest or or on my personal account but yeah it’s like click as an email get in touch yes we are primarily based in Melbourne we have thought and maybe at some point we’ll try and get interstate a little bit but it’s just difficult with a few other commitments but but yeah get in touch even if you are interstate and you’re able to get access to maybe to a university nearby and and do some testing more than happy to to tee up something online to have a chat through the data because like sometimes just the way that it is explained or or broken down can be the key difference like whether you’re in our specific lab and do the test like says a lot of people who’ve reached out about setting up their own labs whether it’s overseas interstate and it’s sort of like well running the test is the easy bit but like how do you know

all this data stuff it’s like a lot of it just takes time in terms of we spend a lot of time looking at a lot of data over the years but but breaking down that data and understanding how it applies is the key bit so even if you’ve got some data you’re able to go to somewhere that’s that’s not us and you want us to have a look at it like yeah feel free to get in touch as well because like that can that can be a really good way especially for anyone who’s listening overseas I’ve had that a few times go and get a test and then get in contact with us and we can help break it down because as well we know sometimes you go to a university it’s like they’ll do the test what you did as a research study but it’s not really their job or or role to explain it because they’re they’re worried about just the data collection like that’s cool yeah if you’re able to if you want to send through some data and us to have a look at it yeah more than happy to do that

but if you are in Melbourne yeah coming up to the lab I’d love to get people in there to test it and keep collecting some more data on our end to keep understanding how different people respond I think that’s going to be a key one for us over the next little while is continuing to say well what patterns can we find and different kinds of athletes or similar athletes and then how can we further utilize some of that data to to make better decisions on our end as well

Fantastic Nick thanks again for being on the podcast I said we’ll go for 30 or 40 minutes but as always we know how to go over we’ve got lots to talk about so I appreciate being on the podcast again thanks mate all good thanks for having us Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast If you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlessswimming.com

I don’t like to do many drills, I hate them, but I know that it’s just learning how to write. It doesn’t feel natural at first, it doesn’t feel okay sometimes, but once you get the steps, the little steps, it’s much easier. And once you understand the importance of it, it’s much better to to progress. So this helps a lot because these little details in the end of the day, they make a big difference. Swimming is about technique and power. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

A goal for many seasoned Ironman athletes is to swim under the 60-minute mark for their Ironman swim. On today’s episode, we have a guest who managed to swim 56 minutes in his first ever attempt at a full-distance Ironman. And this person wasn’t a swimmer as a youngster, didn’t have a swimming background. When he first started training for triathlons only a couple of years ago, he was around the two-minute mark per hundred. Now in his Ironman event, he averaged less than one minute 30 per hundred. So on today’s episode, I wanted to dig into what he did to improve his fitness to get to that point. But more importantly, how did he manage to improve his technique and his comfort in the water to be able to swim at that speed for that long? Let’s get into the episode with Philip Tellers. My guest today is an athlete who did his first Ironman swim in the time of 56 minutes, which is just under one minute 30 pace per hundred, which is a huge achievement for

not only your first Ironman swim, but for someone who really only started a couple of years ago. And we exchanged messages for quite a while. We’ve gotten to know each other, we’ve worked together a bit. And I remember three years ago, you started off at two minute pace per hundred and you’re now obviously down to under one 30. So I wanted to get you on the podcast to talk about how you did that, because I think there’s going to be a lot of lessons there for anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation. So Philip, welcome to the podcast. Dave Redman, thank you for having me. And it’s been an awesome journey to get to this point. And of course, you’re a great part of it. I’m very happy to be here talking to you about. Tell me a little bit about where you started with your swimming and your triathlon. What was your background in in swimming, if you had any at all? So when I was a kid, I had a little background in swimming. My parents used to take me to the

pool and have some classes, but nothing crazy or serious, maybe like three months at a time, like four or five times during my childhood and teenage years, just to get a feel for the water and not to drown myself. I always go to the beach. So it’s important to to learn how to swim. But other than that, I never been a good swimmer or practice for a long time. And I got into triathlons before because I wanted to lose weight. I was in a journey to lose weight and three years ago I said, okay, in three years I’ve been doing an Ironman. And so the journey had to start somewhere. And I didn’t know how to swim with the proper technique or fast or anything. I was over a week and I was living in a city that we didn’t have a coach or a teacher to get alongside with us in the water. So I had to teach myself how to swim. And then from there, I picked up their videos or classes, I was swimming analysis and everything got better from from there on. I did like five 70.3 Ironman distances with great

results, always improving my swimming. And almost a month ago, I did my first Ironman, and I wasn’t expecting it at all. I was doing about one hour of swimming. I just got there and it’s been like I used to do every every week. And I was very happy to get out of the water 56 minutes. What was that feeling like when you looked at your watch after you came out of the swim? So in Ironman Brazil, the one I did, the twin is divided into two parts. The first part you go out into the ocean and you come back and you go again in the sand. And then you go back to the ocean and go back and then you go to the tradition area. So the first 2000 meters, I look at my watch when I arrived at the sand and I looked it was like 30, 30 something minutes. And I was very happy. I knew I could swim an hour. It was something I planned. So but I know that the current in the second leg of the swim, the second part was in favor of our destination.

So I thought myself, okay, I can swim faster because now the current will help me. And then I could stay on the feet of some people that were a little bit faster than me. I could visualize the buoys very well. So I knew that I was swimming very well and it wasn’t make a lot of effort to do it. And so when I arrived at the beach, just passing the marker, and I looked at my watch, I was really, really happy. I knew it was going to be a good day. And take me back to when you first started swimming and training for triathlon, what were you experiencing when you were swimming? What were some of the maybe the frustrations that you had? How did your stroke feel back when you first started those first couple of months? Yeah, so it felt like something that’s not natural. I always tried to push myself. I’m a very dedicated person. So I always got into the water and looking at my times, I felt very frustrated because I know I knew some other people, of course, they were much more

experienced, but they were swimming much faster than me. And I knew I wasn’t making progress. So I knew that just making an effort without technique wouldn’t be enough. So I’m a person that likes to learn about things. I’m always looking at forums, at videos, at what people are doing, new techniques. So I found some videos on YouTube on our channel teaching how to swim properly. Just very basic technique, like, okay, how to breathe, write, how to kick your legs, how to position your body on the water. So these techniques, I started to put my to put them into my swim and I could see that I was improving little by little because it’s really frustrating when you go to swim and you cannot swim like 50 meters without guessing out or having to get out of the water because you’re not feeling well or not having making any progress. So when I started to learn these things, I knew that my effort was was less and I was swimming faster. So I tried to

reach for more knowledge and I knew that it was possible if I learned the right technique to be better and to reach my goals. So I always try to improve, but not only improve, but learn how to do it right. It’s the most important thing is swimming, not just making the effort, but how to make the effort. And were there any key parts of your technique that you had to focus on over the last couple of years that you felt made the biggest difference for you? Yes. One thing that when I started to swim was that when I was breathing, I was moving my body to the side like this. So I was breaking every time my body, my head went out of the water. So I knew that this was something that I must stop. You know, of course, it’s not easy. You have to control your muscles. You have to position yourself from the water. You have to be comfortable in the water for do that. So it took me a lot of time, but after learning that everything is connected like

that. How your hands goes into water, how you push the water and how you kick, everything comes in a chain and you start to get straight. You know, you don’t have to push yourself. You don’t have to push your body too much to a dream right. You don’t have to make an effort, a big effort to stay without turning yourself. So everything was much better when I started to understand this. And the most important thing I think it was how to get my hands in the water and start to pushing like that. And I could feel that I was going faster. I was making an effort. And if I focus on that and how to be stronger with that, I know that my swing could be better. One thing you brought up there was you said you don’t have to do as much. And that’s something that I see a lot of is that whenever I’m analyzing people, they’re usually doing too much of something. They’re kicking too much. They’re rotating too much. They’re lifting their head too

much to breathe. So often the change that people have to make is to do less and to relax and hold the body right. And often it’s going to be a lot easier that way. So it’s not about adding more things. Usually it’s just about taking them away or reducing the amount of something that you’re doing. And that for a lot of people, I think can be a moment of realization that if they just allow themselves to relax and think about being long and smooth, then it’s not only a lot easier, but it’s just so much faster as well. But I mean, a part of that too is if you knew, then you don’t have that balance and stability in the water and it takes a little while to develop that and that level of comfort. But once you get past that point, then you can really make some big inroads to faster times and to a better stroke by just learning what are the key fundamental things that will help you be smoother in the water.

Did you do any drills when you were training or was it more just about just practicing those things when you were swimming? Yes, I don’t like to do many drills. I hate them. But I know that it’s just learning how to write. It doesn’t feel natural at first. It doesn’t feel okay sometimes. But once you get the steps, the little steps, it’s much easier. And once you understand the importance of it, it’s much, much, much better to progress. Because just like your channel says, effortless, if you’re trying too hard, if you’re swimming like, okay, I must do this, but I have to try really hard to put the hand. I have must try really hard to put the body in the water, then it doesn’t become natural. You suffer a lot. And imagine doing this in an RMM or 70.3 distance that you’re at least half an hour more than that in the water, you’re going to feel really tired after that. So doing the drills, you learn how to be natural.

It will start to feel natural for you. And the drills also, especially in the five day catch challenge, I think it really helped because one of the most important things that I felt doing during this course that I always recommend to people, I have over 50,000 people follow me on Instagram, and I always recommend that people always come to me and say, okay, really help. Because the drills makes you realize what you have to do right, and especially what you’re doing wrong. Because if you’re like pushing on the other way or your elbow is not working right, you’re going to start to feel it during your stroke. So drills are very important because of that. They not only teach you how to do it right, but they will show you what you’re doing wrong, and you’re going to fix it much faster.

That’s so many people that I come across don’t enjoy doing drills because they feel like they’re wasting their time. They want to get a good session in. They want to feel like they’re working hard. But sometimes it’s a necessary thing to do to develop those skills. Like you said about writing. My kids are young and they’re learning to write and read, and we’ve got to do these exercises in order for them to have that base level of understanding. I don’t think you need to do a whole lot of drills, but if you do just a handful of them correctly, then you can really make some big improvements from there. So I’d like to get it. Some people that swim with me and what I realized after some times that they don’t have as much as progress as I did. Not because of many things, but some people they just want to go there in the class and suffer a lot and do all the training. But sometimes you feel dedicate like 5-10 minutes each session to go in the water and do the right thing, position your body,

like pay your toll. You know, learn how to do things right. You improve like the same as you would in six months during just during the strengthening exercise or doing the pull exercises. Yeah, I totally agree. And tell me about the type of training that you’re doing leading into the Iron Man. How often were you swimming? What was the distance of those sessions and was there a certain type of session structure that you’d have each week? Just tell me a little bit about that. Okay, so my first year and a half swimming, I used to swim by myself and my wife, we used to go to the pool together. It was a really small town, we didn’t have a coach. So I’m gonna say it was really hard. I hated swimming because it was cold and we didn’t have anybody to put ourselves to push and to talk and to play sometimes, you know, to raise them. So it’s really hard. I really congratulated people that can’t swim by themselves. Not that common

here in Brazil. We have lots of spring clubs. So during the first year and a half, many things I used to swim like three times a week. And after my first 70.3, I wanted to swim sub 30. So I was talking to a friend of mine and he said, okay, if you want to swim above 30 minutes, maybe you should start swimming more. So I tried to swim more four or five times a week.

It was hard. I didn’t swim much. Maybe like 80% of the weeks I could do that. But then I moved to a bigger studio and here we had a swimming club that was the same as my triathlon court. He was doing classes. So I started swimming with the people. We have a very big class. Sometimes we have like 20 people in the pool with us. So it’s really nice to swim with them. And things got much easier. After that, I start to swim four times a week, every week from a year and a half now. And our sessions are usually like 20 minutes warm-up. Then we do freestyle, whatever we want. Usually I try to swim a thousand meters, but sometimes a little less than 15 minutes with technique and breathing. And after that, a lot of pushing and racing and various fast sessions, depending on the schedule, of course. And after that, usually the class, we go for an hour and a half. The last 20-30 minutes is just swimming around and opening your volume. Yeah, yeah, nice. And did you start to notice the

benefits, the fitness benefits to doing that? Did you start to feel like you could hold your pace longer, like you were stronger? Did it take long for that to kick in or to feel that? No, actually, I don’t consider myself like a swimmer. In the pool, I have many, maybe it’s an ego problem. I swim faster than me and try to catch up with them. But there’s people that swim like, for their professionals, triathletes, swimming with me. So it’s not a fair comparison. But I tried to swim five, six times before a week. But when I started to do that, I felt really tired and I felt that the sessions were really good quality. So I started to swim less. And now it’s swimming four times a week. I know that I have to control myself not to push so hard in the warm-up or after the sessions, because I know that the next day, my session is not going to be a very good quality. So you have to be smart, not to push yourself all the times. You have to control. It’s really important for endurance

sports, you know, how to maintain your endurance zone all the time, not to push yourself so hard. So it took a while for me to get in a pace that I felt relaxed, maybe six months of swimming with everybody in this swimming club. But I’m always having to control myself and try not to push so hard because I know that I will suffer in the next session. Yeah, that’s something that’s taken me a long time to understand and realize as well. It’s about winning the war, not the battle. And those battles are the sessions. And you want to train your best, but you also don’t want to push every session to the point where you’re just are going to either get sick or get injured or that you just have one or two sessions that are total rubbish because you’ve pushed so hard the session before. And there is a time and a place for those harder, harder sessions, but especially for endurance sports, whenever I’ve listened to some of the best pro triathletes, often that realization that they have later

on in their career is that it’s about just being steady and consistent, not having these big spikes up and up and down. It’s about that consistency. And then you are much better prepared for your racing and you’ve got better fitness as well because you haven’t got weeks away from training because you’ve pushed too hard. Yeah, especially when you think about Ironman, you’re going to swim almost four kilometers. It’s going to be at least an hour and five minutes. You’re not going to push yourself, you’re not going to be cast out. You have to swim in a comfort of pace and to swim in a comfort pace, in fast in a comfort pace, you have to really be in the space. A lot of time doing your training because you have to train your body to adapt to it.

And if you’re swimming three to four times a week and you’re training for an Ironman,

you really want to be doing some good volume within those sessions. And you’re doing probably three and a half to four kilometers in those hour and a half sessions, maybe a little bit more at times. And that I think can make a big difference because if you’re stopping your sessions at two kilometers rather than four, well, you know, those four sessions you might be getting a total of eight Ks done instead of 16 kilometers. So that’s a big difference over many months. You have to know that especially when you’re first Ironman or even if you’re a really experienced athlete, Ironman training is not easy. You’re going to bike, you’re going to run a lot. So you’re going to go into pool and start to feel tired. You’re not being 100% of the time. So you have to push yourself sometimes to swim 4K, three and a half. You have to, I’m always one of the first in the water and sometimes most of the time one of the last to get out. And I know that it pays off because I’m swimming

much faster than some people that been swimming for more time than me. But it’s really a discipline consistent strategy, you know, of course you don’t have to be every day inside the pool or sacrifice everything. But sometimes those 10, 15 minutes that you put yourself a little, they’re push yourself a little bit, they make a big time in the end, you know. Yeah, it can really add up, especially if you are busy and look, you’re going four times a week. Well, if you can squeeze in that extra 10 minutes, that’s, you know, it adds up a lot. And one of the things you mentioned was just your session structure. So you said you would normally do like 1000 meters, maybe a little bit less of just easy swimming and warm up, then you do another 10 minutes or so with some drills and skills work. And then you have your main set. That’s very similar to what we do in our squad. It’s often just 600 meters with fins on,

just choice. And then we go into some, some drills, some kicking, maybe some breath control. And then the end of the warm up will do some either building efforts, just to get the heart rate up something like 3 100s, build one to three, or 450s, build one to four, just to get the heart rate up. And then we’ll go into our main set, which might be anywhere exactly. And it might be 2k to 3.5k for the main set, depending on what we’re doing. But that, like to me, that’s like, that’s a very simple structure that can work for 90% of people. And there’s no, you know, I think it is important how you structure your workouts. But if you are doing in the, if you’re in the pool for an hour and 15 an hour and a half, and you’re doing something a bit like that, I think that’s going to get most people a long way to those goals that they want to achieve. Yes. And I mean, okay, people may be maybe listening to this and think, okay, it’s too much

one 15, one 30 minutes. But once you realize how much time it takes for you to get in the pool and change and take a shower, sometimes you can be a little fast. And these things, you know, and squeeze a little time in the pool, but and also people care too much sometimes with the bike and with the run, but some they forget about the swimming. Very commonly in Brazil, and maybe some other parts of the world as well, they say, okay, why, why would you care so much about swimming? It’s the, the, the smallest part in the triathlon, you’re going to be one hour, one hour and 20 minutes into a big Ironman in like 10 hours, 11 hours, even more than that. But what most people don’t realize is that this first hour, it really sets the pace for everything. If you get out of the water, really tired, if it’s really a big effort for you to swim the far, for almost park kilometers in the Ironman swim, you want to be in a rough spot going to the bike and also just going to translate that into

around. And I mean, it’s sometimes these little details add up and you’re having, you’re going to have a bad day in the end, you know, people said to me, why you waste so much time swimming? And I said, I feel much better in the water. I don’t feel panic. And I like to be in the water. I know that the people that are in my age group, they are suffering much more than I am, because I know that I’m putting more work than that than them. And also going to the bike and they run after that’s much easier. You want to get a very fast group. You want to keep up with them. It’s very, very easy mentally to keep up with them. And you’re going to have a very, very much more easy racer. You know, of course, it’s not that simple, but it helps a lot. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you also get like in the pool, it’s not hard on the body. It’s, it can be good recovery. You get great aerobic training as well with it too. So it’s not like

the swimming is only improving your swimming. I think it can help your cardiovascular system a lot as well. And it’s just, it doesn’t have that. Yeah, it’s just a lot easier on, on your muscles being in the, in the water as well. So it’s, it’s got benefits outside of that too, I think. And for you, with your catch, you said that was a big aspect of your stroke that you had improved and you felt like it made a big difference. What were some of the things that you changed to be able to improve your catch?

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I personally use the gold model of the wetsuit. It just depends on what your goals are. So greatoceanwetsuits.com effortless20 at checkout. I know you’ll like them. It’s really doing the drills that help you understand what you should do and what you shouldn’t do in the beginning. So you start to understand, you start to feel your muscles, you start to feel your back, start to feel your shoulders, how they should feel. Once you get used to it, it’s much easier to try to feel the water and how can you swim faster? Like, okay, I’m going to do a really 50 meter really fast. So I know how hard I can push, I know how my frequency of the strokes must be. And also you start to change a little bit from time to time to get a little faster. So one thing that I’m always looking for, sometimes there’s this guy that’s swimming next to me, I know that he’s faster than me. So I know that I relax with my catch or I relax with my stroke. He will pass me. So he’s a good test for me to know

if I’m doing good at my technique, or if I’m lazy and my catch is not really that good. Sometimes just changing a little bit or just like pushing a little harder or put my arms a little to the side. I know that we’re observing him that these things make a difference because sometimes you’re swimming by yourself, you cannot see your watcher, you don’t have that feedback. But if you have someone that is next to your side and it’s faster and you know that you have to put everything to pass this person or at least to keep up, it’s much easier to understand how these little things can help a lot. And if you do it right, you’re going to feel in the end of this session, your muscles going to be sore, but you really feel that you made some improvements regarding your technique. It’s a great way to know whether or not you’re catching, pulling correctly is what muscles do you feel towards the end of a session. And

if you are pulling quite well, you’ll likely feel it in your in your lats and a little bit around the back of the shoulders as well. And usually when people make a significant change to their catch, rather than pushing down on the water, they roll over a ball and they get their fingers down and they’ve got a good catch. Usually they really notice that and they notice for my lats are starting to feel this a bit more. Okay, great. Keep working at that because that is where you should be starting to really feel it. So if you feel it through the front of your shoulders in a painful way, well, you’re probably not moving correctly. Or if you are feeling it in your upper traps as well, that’s that’s probably not great either. So yeah, there’s and there’s ways that you can correct it. And usually and probably what you know, you may have been doing at the start as well is often people are they drop their elbow,

their fingers point forwards when they’re moving their hand through the first part of the stroke, rather than going over that ball. And when you have your arm and it’s very small and narrow position, you’re just you’re not opening up through your underarms and your lats. So if you think about being very open through your underarms, that can help a lot as well because then you’ve got a much bigger paddle to to work with. And it sounds like you and you know, thinking back to your videos as well, like you’ve made a big change to what you were doing there. Yeah, it’s not hard. I mean, it’s not natural in the beginning, but once you get two or three sessions doing that, it’s gonna be gonna feel natural. And you’re gonna miss it when you are not doing it too right, because you’re gonna be so much slower. But after you get it, it’s game changing. You’re gonna do it all the time and you’re gonna be faster.

And when I think back to like when I’m working with people who are around that two minute mark, usually they’re like their body position, head position and alignment’s not great. And their catch and pull isn’t very good either. So if they do improve their their body position, usually by fixing their head position and breathing, then they will often be swinging a bit faster. But if they’re still stuck around that like 150 to two minute mark, it’s likely that their catch and pull is not very effective. So if you know, if that’s if that’s you, then you might want to look at the catch and pull after that. But we always want to get the head and body position right first like you talked about, and the alignment, and then we can start to work on the catch and pull after that. But if I was to think of what’s like that, what’s the bottleneck for people at these different paces? It’s usually head and body position around the two minute mark 150, it’s probably catch and pull if you’ve corrected

those other things. Does that’s how does that with where you were with your with your pace? Well, exactly. You were describing me. And I see with with other people as well, people that have trouble that their legs are too deep in the water or they have trouble getting their butts up. And it’s I mean, it doesn’t you imagine it’s very hard once if you’re not doing it. But once you start to realize that your head position changes a lot, and you start to put your leg a little bit just by changing your body position. Of course, being in the pool with swimming, we also strength your muscles. So your core is going to help these things improve. So it’s a little bit of everything. And that’s exactly what I felt. Once I start to improve my body position. And after that, the catch, my paces are worth more getting faster. Now, talk to me a little bit about the power aspect of the catch and pull, because one thing,

like with it with the catch challenge, we work a lot on their position and getting a good catch and our power diamond and exit getting all these positions right. But if someone goes slower after improving that, I find that the thing that they’re usually lacking is power. And maybe their stroke rate has gone down too much. Their cadence has dropped too much. So I think a really important aspect after getting the catch and pull right is is figuring out how much power you can apply and how to speed up the stroke. So can you tell me a little bit about the power aspect of it? Where do you feel like you put in power and it works well? And when you end up swimming at the same speed as that swimmer next to you? Yeah. So it’s hard to describe, but unless you get into the water and you’re just going like, this is the water and this is your hand, you start to feel like that. It’s hard to describe, but I think paddles and help they help a lot realizing what you should do with your arms and

how much power you use, you know, it’s really, it’s really important to understand how much power you should put in where to put it. Otherwise, you’re going to waste a lot of energy doing the wrong stuff. So it comes down to be the water and really try to feel how your energy is using the right way. Because sometimes if you pull just like, oh, when your arms are almost in the end of the stroke, of course it helps, but not so much as in the beginning. So these little things, these details, of course, just like you said, they made a lot of difference for me. And sometimes you have to be in the water, be conscious about it like, okay, this time I’m going to go to the water, go to the viewpoint, the first 15 minutes, I’m going to change a little bit how my force has been applied to, okay, I’m going to try this, I’m going to try that and see how I feel. And of course, one thing that helped me a lot was watching the videos just before going into the pool or

sometimes even inside the pool, because we had the pools for ourselves. And so you used to watch the videos in the pool. So this helps a lot because these little details in the end of the day, they make a big difference. 20 minutes about technique and power. And it’s much easier to get this technique right when you’re watching someone explaining to you right, right before you do it, then just imagining how you’re going to feel, you know. A lot of swimmers that I’ve spoken to will do that. I’ll watch a video or listen to a video on the way to the pool as they’re driving or they might just watch it before they get in. I like to watch a video of a top level swimmer and just visualize what that would feel like, how it would look if I was to be swimming like that. And to me, that has a huge positive impact on my swimming. And then with the power aspect of it, I heard a coach mention this last week and I don’t know how

true exactly it is, but it makes a lot of sense. You said you’ve only got about, you max out at about five kilos of force in the water with your catch or pool. So if you go any harder than that, you’re going to be flipping and it’s wasted effort, but if you go less than that, well, you’re not maximizing it. So I’d like to think as your hands are passing from just in front of your shoulders to just past your shoulders, that middle section of your, of your catch and pull, that is where you want to have four to five kilos of force. Now that’s very hard to judge, right? We’re not going to be measuring it, but, but you know, if you’re putting too much into it.

Yeah, exactly. You know, we’re going for just one kilo, which is very, very light, and we’re not going for 10 kilos where we’re just really trying to muscle our way through it, but there’s that sweet spot where you feel like you’re not slipping. You’re just, you’ve got your hand in the water and you’re moving your body past it because you’ve got the right amount of force. You’ve got a strong position with your arm and you, the more you can repeat that kind of stroke there, the better off you’ll be. So I think it’s worth experimenting a bit with the power aspect of it, like, like you did. And one drill that I’ve started to get people to do now is it’s like, it’s called power pulls. So if you’re kicking face down, you’ve got both hands in front and when you’re ready, you pull through with both arms towards the hip, just like if you’re doing a butterfly stroke under the water. And your aim is to get as far as you can with each of these pulls. So pull through,

see how far you can travel with your body once your hands are at your hip. And what you start to figure out is where you need to apply the power. Because if you try and go too hard at the start, you like, you don’t get a good catch and you slip. But if you gradually build it up and you get your fingers pointing down, like you’re getting over over a ball or a barrel, and then you really put most of the force in under the shoulders and you accelerate through the back. That’s when you notice that you travel the furthest. So I think that can be a really good drill to do to kind of figure that out as well, which we’ve started to do. Yes. And one way to get faster is to stop doing the things that make you lower. So

once you apply pressure to the right spot, it’s much easier. You don’t have to make power. You don’t have to make an effort all the way. You don’t have to kick all the way. You don’t have to breathe hard. I mean, you have to take it easy. Swimming should be, surely it should feel easy, natural, effortless, just like I said a certain time I said, but it’s true. Once you’re in the water and once you’re doing the laps, it’s going to be feeling natural after sometimes if you’re doing it right. If it’s a big effort, maybe you have to change something.

And is there anything that we haven’t talked about on this podcast that you think could be helpful for other triathletes who are out there around that two minute mark who wanted to try and get quicker with their swimming? Yes. Just like I said in the video, watch the courses, make the video analysis. This every time I did the analysis, I draw two to three seconds. It really helps a lot. It’s very, very small things that you do that help you go faster. Just like I said, sometimes it takes three months training to go down two seconds, but sometimes a small technique change will help a lot. Also, strength training for me helped a lot. I don’t know if in the beginning it’s much necessary, but after sometimes I felt that my game changed a little after I started to hit the weights, especially for running and biking also. They helped get out of the injuries, but triathletes don’t have to be afraid of the water and don’t have to

be scared of going to the pool more than two or three times a week. It makes our life so much easier during the races. I think triathlon, it’s going to take a lot of our time. It’s a long day racing, so it should be enjoyable and going to the water feeling that you’re going to have a good time and enjoying it. It’s much easier. Swimming is a really nice sport. It’s a really fun sport once you know how to do it. If you’re going to the water panicking or don’t know how to do it, it’s not so pleasant. Take some time. You don’t have to spend hours in the pool. Sometimes a little bit of technique change, a little tip that you get helps a lot. It happened to me in one month using the five-day catch challenge. My swimming drops, my swimming time is dropped after the video analysis also. If you want, you can watch my other podcast, you see what I’m talking about. That’s what I have to say. Work or swimming,

you’re really going to appreciate it in the end. I appreciate that. It sounds like I set you up to promote the catch challenge. You converted me because me and my wife, we got so much better and it was so much easier. Just like I said, I used to go to the pool without a coach, without a teacher. In the middle of nowhere, I imagined myself that I had no background or really how to swim fast or really how to do things. Just watching videos on the internet, getting faster. One of the things that I love to do is teach people how to enjoy the sport. I got into this part to lose weight, to have a better life and many people are following that.

If I can make better lives easier, and one step that I know that helps and surely helped me was your courses. Of course, you didn’t say anything, people, the Brenton didn’t say anything in the beginning of the video. He never mentioned, okay, talk about core courses like that. The video now is what I’m doing because I’m really grateful for what he has taught me in his videos and everything. I mean, what, $10, the five-day couch challenge?

Yes, like going to take a coffee after you go swimming. It’s really worth it. Well, Felipe, thank you so much for sharing all of this on the podcast. For those that are listening, and a lot of I’ve seen that before and after video, I think, of you maybe running when you first started to where you are now, just look like a different person. I’m sure you probably feel like that as well. Day to day, you probably just feel like you’ve got so much more energy and you’ve just transformed yourself in a couple of years. Where can people follow you on Instagram? They might need to use the translation tool on some of your posts, as I’ve had to do, but where can they go and follow you on Instagram? Yeah, my name is Felipe Mendoza. It’s Felipe, F-E-L-I-P-E, and Mendoza, it’s N-E-N-D-O-N-C-A. I’m trying to make some content in English, but if you’re listening to this and you don’t speak Portuguese, you can dare me in English. I’m glad we will answer to you.

I love to talk to people, love to help people and I’m really grateful for speaking to my experience. This is a very happy day for me. I couldn’t imagine myself three years ago being here talking about this. Yeah, well, you were on our podcast two years ago, it was April 2022 that you’re on to the first episode. So I will also link to that in the show notes if anyone wants to go back to that. There we got really into the technique that you’ve changed and improved. And I love saying two years later that you’re able to go under 60 minutes for an Iron Man swim, which is a big goal for a lot of people. And it’s no small feat to be able to have done that. So that time I wanted to swim 140, I remember that, you know, half hour or so while 30 in a full, it’s a big improvement. Absolutely. Well, I know you’ve got New Zealand, the Iron Man World Champs, half Iron Man World Champs in New Zealand in December. So good luck for that. And yeah, everyone listening,

go give Felipe a follow and follow his journey. Thanks again. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

15 months of staring frustratingly at 130 on my watch every 100 yards, I said I got to fix that core weakness because it’s either just plain old weakness or it’s a lack of attention span through folk fully through the strokes. And long story short, the attention to that paid instant dividends. Developing that kind of cue for me has been fantastic because I could do that every lap. I could do it two or three times a lap. I could do it every kick if I wanted to. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. My guest today is someone who was on the podcast in late 2021 and I wanted to get him back on the podcast to talk about a recent breakthrough he’s had in his speed and his times with his freestyle because we’ve been working together for the last couple of years and the swimmer who I’ve had on has hit a bit of a plateau, but managed to break through. So I thought it’d be great to dig into that because I know a lot of people listening to this experience the same thing. They get stuck at a certain pace and they’re just banging their head against the wall trying to figure out what they can do to see a breakthrough. So Chris Scott, welcome back to the podcast. Well, thank you. I’ll start by correcting you. We’ve been working together for six years now. Six years, isn’t that crazy? It was 2018 when I first started in triathlon and after my first horrible race, I figured I needed a coach and I found you. So we’ve been at it

quite a while. It’s been great too. It sure does.

In terms of the recent breakthrough you’ve had, could you dig into the details there, like what pace you’re stuck at or that kind of thing? Yeah, for sure. So just a sort of a brief total history started six years ago doing triathlons. First time I was competitive swimming ever in my life. Not first time swimming by any means, but first time competitively swimming. And I had one pace, 210, 215, somewhere in that neighborhood. And when I started with you, we took a whole bunch up right away. That’s perfectly normal, you know, big jump downward. And then I was on this really steady progress trajectory down to 150s, down to 140s. And then leading up to about 15 plus months ago, I had hit a plateau at 130. And I found my top end speed and my all day speed sort of compressing, right? And instead of everything dropping, I was getting to this point where my top end speed was was not much better than 130, but I could cruise at 132 for a really

long time. It was really bizarre that everything wasn’t coming down together. Now, if I went all out, I could, my best at that point was 117. So like gas, fully gas, I could get down into that fast. But, you know, any tempo work, any race, pace work, whatever, what it was, every time I looked at my watch 130, 130, 130, 129, 131, it was just so beyond frustrating. And we were working on a lot of stuff. And I was not like I wasn’t putting in the time I was swimming at least four times a week, sometimes five or six. And I was doing, I’m focusing on at the time, primarily stroke rate, and a mild amount of strength training and stretching. Because I had, I had sort of recognized that those were weaknesses of mine. But in terms of in the pool swimming, I had been focusing on stroke rate. Because as, as you’ve said to me many times, like there are two variables here, there’s stroke rate, and there’s distance per stroke. And whatever you’re doing

needs to be attending to one or both of those. And, and the more directly, the better. So you and I were working on some, you know, some small things and focused things. But the real focus for my, for my work during that time period was stroke rate. And I had had a really slow stroke rate when I started in the fit, like mid fifties, maybe, and I was gradually working it up. But here I am working it up, I’m getting to be comfortable with 64, 65, 67, 68, pushing it a little bit. And the pace isn’t moving. It’s, it’s hard to work, but I’m not going any faster. And it, it ultimately ended with, I think, for lack of a better phrase, sort of an aha moment. The, the videos that I was taking myself and sharing with you, I would replay those all the time, you know, partly out of frustration. I’ve got, I’ve got to figure this out. There’s got to be something that’s holding me back. And it’s two variables. What is it that’s in the

way? And what really has resonated in my mind since the, the new succamp that I went to with you guys was something that one of your other coaches said to me, that’s rattled around in my head since he said it. And it was your back end looks like it’s along for the ride. And in the front view, you can see the back end wiggling. And in the side view, you can see it undulating. And enough, not a pretty undulation either. It’s not like a, it’s not like a combo of a butterfly stroke and a freestyle stroke. It was more like what, what it looked to me in hindsight was, it was, I’m taught as I’m going through the catch and the pull, as soon as a pull is done, my back end just sort of gives up. And that was causing this undulation of the back end. And the mind is a funny thing when you’re, when you’re watching yourself, or anybody else, for that matter, when you’re watching a video, you see what you want to see. And you overemphasize

in many cases, good things, and you sort of overlook some of the bad things. And the more I looked at it, the more I slowed it down. The more I freeze framed it, took snapshots. I finally got to the point where I took a snapshot and I sent it to you and I said, look, this is really bad. It was a pun fair snapshot because it was the worst possible undulation where if these are the hips, you know, the legs were like that.

But that was the low point of the undulation. And in a freeze frame, it really highlighted not a big problem. Even if it’s coming back up real quickly, you’re dragging your legs like a seahorse through the water. For some period of time, a half a second, a quarter of a second doesn’t matter. You are a dead weight anchor pulling through water for part of your stroke, every single stroke, because you’re not keeping your body taut. And that was the light bulb that went off. And so I took that and I coupled it with two things, stroke rate, distance per stroke, I put aside all the work on stroke rate, and that drag through the water has to be, I figured, has to be affecting distance per stroke. So winding back a little bit to come back to where I am now, I have always felt since the day I started swimming competitively that I’ve had a weak core and a weak upper body. But in this particular case, it’s the weak core

that matters. And so my 15 months of staring frustratingly at 130 on my watch every every 100 yards, I said, I got to fix that core weakness, because it’s either just plain old weakness, or it’s the lack of attention span through folk fully through the stroke. It’s one or the other or maybe both. And long story short, the attention to that paid instant dividends. And I was giddy. The next time I pinged you, and so I just, I just did, you give me a workout to do. Whenever 12, somewhere between 12 and 20, 100, whatever you can do, out of VO2 max pace, 30 second rests, tell me what you’re going to hold. And I went and I nailed it at like 124. 12, I think I did 12 in a row. I was a bit winded after that, but I figured 12 in a row. And staying in a narrow window 124, 124 and a half, whatever, I think it was a home run. And I thought, this is it, this has to be what caused the problem. And so, you know, long, long story, eventually the Aja bulb goes off,

you realize what it is, it’s been staring me in the face probably for 15 months. And once you sort of admit what that big problem is, and, and focus all your attention on it, you know, the other mechanics were decent. So it’s not like something else is going to be a problem. Once I focused on that, and it just, it just clicked and I took 345 seconds off that kind of aggressive, but not, not overly aggressive pace.

And was it, was it a combination of strength training for the core or just more about what you focused on in the, in the water? Well, initially it was simply paying attention. So there’s another thread here I can talk about in a minute, which is the ongoing works I’m doing to improve the body line in the water or the core strength, et cetera. There’s a program set there now that hopefully will continue to pay more dividends. But in the short term, it was simply, I can tell from the video that I’m letting go of the back end as my pull finishes. But before the next one starts, just simply staying focused on that and, and trying to try to discover cues in the water that allow me to know that I’m paying attention. It’s not, it’s not, I’m not losing it. Now, there’s no rear view mirror in swimming when you’re in the pool. You can’t see your legs. And so depending on how good your appropriate assumption is, and your awareness of, of how

you’re sitting in the water. And I don’t think mine was that good. I could sort of feel the undulation as it was recovering, but I wouldn’t feel it as it was, as I was going into it. So I’ve, what I’ve done since this aha moment was every few strokes, I will make sure that my, my legs, my feet, my heels are not that far from the, from the waterline. And all it takes is a little bit of a bend. Oh, it should take is a little bit of a bend in the knee for the heel to pop out of the water. If I had to bend the, a lot to feel the air, then I know that I’d let it go. And developing that kind of cue for me has been fantastic, because I could do that every lap. I could, you know, I could do it two or three times a lap if I, I could do it every kick if I wanted to. Periodically, I will, I will exaggerate the slap of the, of the foot to really feel like I’m out of the water and slapping it just to make sure that as I’m swimming, I’m not losing that connection between

the head, hip and heels. It’s been fantastically helpful because I catch myself losing that connection to the back end every once in a while. And it over time, you do it whatever every last trip every hundred several times, you’re eventually going to get to this point where it’s baked in to the muscle memory and your feet are never dive bombing, like they have meant in the past. I find, I find it, you know, the numbers don’t lie. I didn’t magically get faster or stronger. I changed this one variable and the pace dropped several seconds. So it’s, it’s been the easy cause and effect relationship. So it’s really interesting to hear, but like the only thing essentially you’ve changed is that body awareness and making a change to, to how you hold the body so that you’re just reducing drag. Because whenever I’ve spoken to, whenever I’ve had elite swimmers or really good swimmers who are triathletes on the podcast, they often talk about that body awareness and

just recognizing when they’re out of position. And so if that’s what the very top athletes are doing, I think for those that aren’t at the top, those that are maybe age group triathletes or whatever it is, it’s like, you probably need to do that times two or three, like you really need to have, try and build that, that body awareness because it can go so easily. And I mean, I’ve been doing a few analysis sessions with, with a couple of pro triathletes lately. And now you would think at the very top level, they generally would have quite good technique and be aware of the head position and all of that. But there’s a lot of them who still just have to get the head position right. Like we’re looking at it and going, okay, you’re lifting your head up too high as you go to breathe, probably just a consequence of swimming open water and siding. But you can see the hips dropping a lot. So it doesn’t matter what level

you’re at. It’s just the basics. I think if you can get those right first, have those front of mind, then you can build from there. But body positions should always really be number one. Yeah. And speaking as an adult onset competitive swimmer, a category of people that need some sort of support group, I think body awareness is terrible in the, in the water. Right. And walking around, running, cycling, perfect body awareness. But put yourself in the water and legs drop, the hips drop. And if you know, no, no offense to coaches out there who are, who have been doing this forever. But when you say things like engage the core, those of us that are adult onset swimmer is just sort of nod and say, yeah, sure, whatever. I have no idea what you mean, but I don’t want to, I don’t want to say that I don’t because I’ll be embarrassed. So there’s this to me that, that other thread that I talked about before of the, the strength training, the flexibility training, et cetera, that’s become

an extremely important part. And I think as importantly for the body awareness as for the pure strength and flexibility that it delivers, and to in, in air, rather than water, to be able to control the, the hips and the heels in, in air, being able to do that through various exercises, what one of which I’m focusing on right now is handstands of all things. If you look at somebody doing a perfect handstand, you would say, if only that dude looks like that in the water, that would be great. You know, it’s perfect shoulders, hips, heels in a vertical line. And when you’re really bad at that proprioception and that control of the hips and the heels in air, where gravity is way more your enemy than water, you get on the wall and you can’t even pull your feet away. You don’t, you don’t have the muscle awareness to even pull your heels off the wall, gently, like for a quarter in a handstand position you’re talking in a handstand position.

Right. So over the last several months, as I’ve been doing this more and more, I can feel that, that core engagement getting so much better. And if I can do it in 100% gravity, then I can certainly do it in the water where, you know, what a one-tenth your weight or something like that. I don’t remember the number, but you know, you’re a lot less your total weight and it’s so it seemingly should be a lot easier on the muscles to be able to manipulate the heels and the hips to the position that you’re after. But it’s just, it’s trying a lot of different things, both in and out of the pool, cues in the pool, using certain new muscles, feeling them as you’re using them to bring the heels up and it’s doing it out of the water in various calisthenic type activities to just continue to build that awareness. So I think I have to imagine that a lot of adult onset swimmers who just don’t have that experience

have never had to use those muscles in that way, that, you know, they, like me, they didn’t realize they had a problem there until it stared them facing the video. And they had to try to do something about it. And 15 months of being stuck at 130 finally finally made me shake it up. Talk to me about where you have picked up some of these dryland exercises. So one thing that I find quite funny is we had another athlete, somebody who’d been to one of our clinics who had done Jay Mueller on the podcast and he’d made some really good improvements in a pretty short space of time. And he said one of the things that helps him was hanging, just dead hangs off a bar. So now we’re into handstands. We’re just getting people to go, yeah, all in all different directions. There’s no shortage of directions you can be hanging. Yeah. This podcast is proudly sponsored by Form Smart Swim Goggles. Form have recently released their new Gen 2 version of the product, which includes an

integrated heart rate monitor, as well as a swim straight digital compass for open water navigation. They’ve also updated the ice seal. So they’ve got a new proprietary ice seal that accommodate a wider variety of facial structures and they ensure for a more comfortable and secure fit. I’ve been testing these new goggles for the last couple of months and I’m a huge fan of the new heart rate monitor. This is the first time that I’ve been able to see my heart rate in real time when I’m swimming. And that’s allowed me to adjust my effort and my output based on my training zones. So if you’re a triathlete or someone who wants to make sure that they’re not going too hard or too easy within a session, this is a really good way to do it. You can see your heart rate in the top corner of the goggles. So it’s always there right in front of you. And that can make sure that you are actually training in the right zone where I find a lot of swimmers do go either too hard or too easy.

So this has been a real revelation for me in terms of the effort that I’m actually putting in when I’m going at certain speeds and certain paces. So if you’d like to grab yourself a copy of the new Gen 2 version of the Form Smart Swim Goggles, go to formswim.com forward slash effortless to get yourself a pair of the new Gen 2 goggles. If you’d like to get the Gen 1 goggles, you can save 10% going through that link at formswim.com forward slash effortless. I have been doing dead hangs too. Based on your suggestion, I’ve always had an upper body strength, not problem, but just lack of lack of upper body strength. Prior to swimming six years ago, my endurance activity was running and cycling only. No swimming. I ran for 20 years. I never needed upper body. In fact, I wanted less upper body mass to be really good at running. So even before the 15 months of frustration, I knew this was a problem and I started doing

a little bit about it. I was kind of dabbling. It’s called program surfing. You find one guy’s program on YouTube and you do that for a while and you go do something else. It’s so horribly inefficient way to do this. And finally, I stumbled on this book called Overcoming Gravity, a well-known huge multi-inch thick book by a guy named Stephen Lowe and a bit of a biblical text for calisthenics. And I just built a program, just push exercises, pull exercises, some flexibility, and then a group of handstand related things. I stumbled on the handstand thing not for swimming. I just thought it would be cool if I could do it. I knew that it would help with shoulder strength for sure. It’s a little hard to be upside down on your shoulders for a minute at a time. That’s not easy work. So I figured it would be beneficial, but I was just doing it because I was intrigued by it. And he leads his book by saying people

that are the best at calisthenics are the ones that are the best at handstand. It was a lucky confluence of activities. The general calisthenics, calisthenics instead of, say, weights because I can do it at home. I don’t have to drive 20 minutes to the gym. And I’m so weak with my upper body. I don’t need weights. So just body weight was plenty for a while. And to put that in perspective, for the first 59 years of my life, I couldn’t do a single pull-up ever, not one time ever. And as part of this training, now I’m doing five sets of six. So not lightning the world on fire, but that’s a big jump in a small amount of time for an old guy. Yeah, it was just sort of lucky the connection between swimming. And I figured that calisthenics and weight training in general couldn’t hurt. Muscle mass is a predictor of longevity. And I’m not getting younger. So I might as well make sure I still have some muscle mass before it all wastes away. So I figured it would just be generally

healthy. And it turned out to be ideal with certain groups of exercises, ideal for swimming. Yeah. And it seems like it’s paying off big time. And it makes so much sense that just that control, especially through the core, the phrase that I, for the cue that I heard was you’ve got to swim from the inside out. And to me, that just means strong core. If you haven’t got control over your core and your hips, then everything else is going to be operating without much connection to everything else. So I think that strong core makes a huge, huge difference there. And I just want to shift gears a little bit here because you had a race recently where those good swim times were reflected in training in a race. And, you know, you’ve only had sort of one race since then. So you’ve got another race coming up soon. Just make sure it wasn’t a fluke, but talk to me about that race, how it went, how you paced it, because there was a couple of interesting things that you

mentioned in our coaching thread that stood out to me that would be useful.

Yeah. So it was us, Half Ironman in Chattanooga, Tennessee. And it’s a river swim. So I wasn’t going to be happy or sad at the time because I don’t know how strong the current was going to be or what have you. I was judging performance solely versus the rest of the field. And lead from six years ago to today, I’ve been making steady progress as a place within the field that do a little better in local races, obviously, do a little more mediocre in some of the either national or big time Ironman events. But it was steady progress down as a percentage of the world field. And I surprised myself with this, where I finished in the top 5% of a field that based on overall finishing times was very strong. 124 finishers, I finished seventh out of 124 in the swim. I’ve struggled, and this goes back to like two and a half years ago, the focus of our previous podcast, I’ve struggled with open water swimming. I’ve generally done

significantly worse per 100 in open water than the pool. And I think out of frustration, I’ve said a few things like, I don’t think I can swim slow in the pool if I tried. So to have a good result in open water was great. To be top 5% in a really top field was just over the moon. The hindsight 2020 criticism I’ll give myself for previous open water problems is not quite panic, but tension, I guess. And so this time around, job number one, chill out. Chill out a lot. There was going to be no warm up based on the logistics of the start. It was just you’re going to get in and go. And so I had to clear your mind. Think about nothing. Don’t think you’re not right. It’s just a casual swim in a river. Casing wise as part of that, I’m going to, I’m going to start at a pace that’s a little bit richer than all day. And I’m going to gradually turn it up. Because I got in hindsight, in prior performances, if I start too fast, I don’t recover from that. Even if I slowed out, even if I break into a

backstroke, whatever, I never recover from going out too hard. So I had to definitely dial back the beginning, make sure I wasn’t going too hard. If I, if I nail it perfectly, I’ll get to that point where it’s just a little bit faster than the all day pace, and it’ll ratchet up to somewhere north of the temple pace. But I’m done. And so clear the mind, chill out, laugh a couple of times, make jokes with some people, just relax, that’ll work great. The next, the next decision was where do I seed myself? It was seeding by your estimated time in a normal 70.3. So they said, you know, whatever you would normally do in 1900 meters, seed yourself there, you’re going to go faster than that per per 100. But, you know, the current is the current and it will be different depending on what they it is. So anyway, my strategy for seeding is put myself in the proper seeding. If I think I’m going to do 32 that I’m going to put myself in the 31 to 33 group or whatever it is,

don’t overseed yourself and don’t significantly underseed yourself. And there’s a reason for that, that became really obvious during the swim. And that is, there’s a tendency for other participants to oversee themselves. Some people didn’t go to the course talk and hear the instruction, seed yourself by your normal 1900 meter pace. They said, oh, this is a river swim, I’m going to be really fast. And they got themselves in the 25 minute group, right? But other people, they generally think I’m having a great day. And I’m going to, I’m going to out swim my, my, my times, you know, so I better, I better put myself up in the two, two pods ahead of myself, whatever. And if you, if you do that, people will pass you all day long and it gets really depressing. You don’t have a maybe with form goggles you do now, but without without form goggles, you don’t have any indication how fast you’re going, except relative to other people. So by seeding myself properly, if I’m having a decent day, I

should be passing way more people than are passing me because I’m having a good day. And I’m probably doing a little bit better than my seeding, but everybody else is overseeding themselves. And I’m not in the water. And it was a 20 to one ratio of people that I passed to pass to me. And it felt fantastic. I felt like I was flying. It’s annoying. When you, you know, you get into this, you hit a wall of three people swimming side by side and you have to decide that I’m going to go around them or even go over them, whatever. That’s not fun, but that only happens a few times when you carry on. But to me, that strategy works great because like I said, mentally, looking back on old performances, it’s a mental problem. It’s not a physical problem. I can, I can swim way faster than I have at races. But I get tense. I get pissed at myself. I, you know, all the, all things go wrong. So to, to try to maximize things going right, I don’t want to be passed a lot because then I’ll feel

like I’m having a bad day. So that was, that was number two. So stay calm, seed yourself properly, pass people all day long. I pushed for negative splits. So just gentle increases in pace every time I watched buzzed and my watch would buzz every, I think I had it set for like every 200 yards or something where it would buzz. And you feel most of them, you don’t always feel it, but it’s sort of a cue for, okay, you can pick it up a little bit as long as you’re not feeling really tight in the chest, you’re not, you’re not breathing too hard whenever. And looking back on my, the race was actually longer than 1900. It was 2,500 yards. And a negative split, the whole thing, every, every 500 yards was faster than the previous one, except for the very last where there was a traffic jam at the exit. So it was a really well executed race. The mental strategy during the race was one, the pool cue that I talked about with my, with my feet coming out. So it’s harder to feel

the wind on your bum when you’re lifting your hips out of the water with a wetsuit on. But your heels are still bare. So every once in a while, I would just lift my heel up. Am I close to the water and close to the water? Obviously I got some help with the wetsuit. But I just, like, I liked that cue. It works in the pool. I’m used to it. I’m comfortable with it. And it’s comforting mentally to know that, yep, I’m not letting go. I’m doing fine. So that was part one of the, of the swim mechanics. Part two was just metronome. Just get into a rhythm, full reach, catch, pull all the way through, and just keep doing it and doing it and doing it. And it worked out great. And I had another benefit with the sighting. We were swimming under bridges so you could sight off of the bridge instead of buoys that are barely above the surface. And it was a straight line race down the river. So it was really easy to stay straight, really easy to sight.

And I got into that metronome, passed the people left to right, feeling really good about the swim and gone out of the water. And, oh my God. To put it in perspective, the current must have been really strong because I did, my fastest 100 yards in the pool is 117. And my average pace was 112. So there was no doubt a really strong current. I’m comparing myself against everybody else. Everybody else swam in the same current and I beat all but six of them. So it was just a phenomenal result. And for the other two disciplines, at least for me, I end up doing way worse on the bike and the run if I have a bad swim, no matter the reason. Beat just gets in my head. But if I have a good swim, then I come out, I feel great. I can chill out a little bit at the beginning of the bike and recover the heart rate a little bit. And everything goes better after a good swim. It really sets the tone for the rest of the race.

Oh, there’s so many good things you mentioned there. One of them is just in terms of comparing yourself from previous races. Events are different distances, conditions are different. So I think you’re best just to use your general rankings against everyone else as a way to figure out where you’re at. But I think the mental thing is a huge one. I have, I work with a lot of different swimmers and they either go one of two ways. Sometimes they’re too tense and they tend to panic a bit in races. Then sometimes people are just too relaxed and they go too easy where they haven’t even gotten out of zone one really for their swim.

And we kind of want to meet in the middle somewhere there. And I think certainly that’s the, it’s almost like a, you just get this boost of energy. Every time you pass someone, you’re going, yeah, I’m swimming well. Like I feel good. You probably feel like you’re going faster than you are just whenever you’re overtaking someone. That’s a really sort of nice boost to have. So I’ve given the advice in the past, you know, see yourself up a bit to try and hold times. But in terms of mentally, well, that’s a, that’s a really good way to go about it. Yeah, I think if I were, if I were a lot faster, if I were way up towards the pointy end, I would say, yeah, put yourself up further because that’s where you’re going to find people that you can actually latch on to and draft off of. But further back, and it’s, I mean, I’m not, I’m not back in the pack if I’m finishing seventh out of 124, seeing my age group, but in terms of the overall race,

I’m probably, I don’t know, 30, 30% of from the front, they’re probably another four or five groups ahead of me, maybe more, I don’t know, but in any event, if I were faster, I would say stay, go up further because you’re going to draft. But where I am, you have no idea if the people that you’re starting with are draftable, they’re probably going to swim slower, and you’re going to leave them in the dust right away. And so it’s just a, if you’re looking for somebody to draft off of, it’s a coin toss in that sort of 30 to 35 minute range and a half Ironman, and you’re, you’re better off, my opinion, at least I’m better off going with feeling good about my swim. And if I get some drafting benefit, as I’m passing people great, but I’m not, I’m not looking to latch on to somebody’s legs and hang on for 500 yards. And the thing is too, you actually get, you do get some sort of drafting benefit from about

like a tiny bit, about eight to 10 meters away. But yeah, if you’re, if you’re coming up behind someone, I’d recommend, you know, come up like right behind them, get that draft, and then just as you’re about to overtake them, you can just kind of go around the side of them, because you are going to get that, you know, that draft off them. If you think about pushing off in the pool, if you’re going five seconds behind, you might be about five, six meters away from them, you still get pulled along quite a bit. So, you know, if you’re getting that little bit of draft every single time you’re going to overtake someone, that adds up as well. So, let’s say almost a way to actually get some draft as opposed to other times where you might not get any if you’re setting yourself higher. So, I think that, I mean, there’s so many, so many good things there and I love to dig into what’s caused a breakthrough for someone.

And for you, it sounds like it was the thing that was staring, I guess, both of us in the face was this body position, that undulation and just then addressing the problem and going about making a change there. What do you see as being, what do you foresee in the next six to 12 months as being the thing that will sort of help you continue to progress?

Yeah, that’s a really good question. I’m going to ask my coach. Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, if we’d sit in six years, we’d been working on a couple things at a time for at any one time. And I’m going to keep that strategy because I think it works. There’s a second coaching phrase that’s stuck in my head for all these years besides the one that Mitch told me in Nusa. And that’s one that you told me, which is, if it sounds innocuous, you’re going to be really disappointed that this is when it’s stuck over six years. But there’s a lot going on in freestyle. You said that to me once and that’s been in my, so there is a lot going on there. And it’s easy to focus on one thing and then let something else suffer or type, digress, regress. So I have to keep reminding myself, you know, check in on all those other things that I’m supposed to be doing well. Am I breathing right? Am I rotating enough or too much? Et cetera, et cetera. So I have to keep sort of going back and focusing

on those things. But in terms of what’s next, once I’ve eliminated that undulation, I just think it’s, all right, it’s back to blank drawing board. It’s time to look at new video and see where I am and see what the biggest bang for the buck is. And maybe it’s back to stroke rate. Maybe I, maybe we’ve got some room there. I think the leading candidate though, now that I think about it, is the first thing that you corrected in my stroke six years ago was front quadrant. I was horribly not front quadrant. And true to form, I overdid it. I got too good at it. And to the point where I have a pause out at the front of the stroke and, you know, it’s not bad. It looks good. It looks like a nice stroke. I think it looks like a really nice stroke, except for the back end and the undulation part. But in terms of the front end, it looks really good. And I had been working on fixing the cues that will fix that. So I think I’ll be heading back there. My guess is I’ll be

heading back to that, if not trying to incorporate it at the same time I’m keeping, keeping my hips and heels at the surface. The cue that I adopted to get front quadrant was keep your hand out until your, your pulling arm is doing its recovery. And there’s not to be too late. So what I’m trying to do is switch that to you need to start your catch as you’re finishing the exit. So it’s sort of counterintuitive. If you’re thinking front quadrant, you know, like, you should exaggerate it so that there’s definitely an arm out there. But it causes too much of a pause. And so there’s this, this speed up during the pull and then a slow down from not having any stroke going on at all for a fraction of a second. And then you speed up again, you slow down. And it’s, it’s not super perceptible, but it’s there. You can, you can see it. And I think eliminating that cause is going to be really important next. That would be my prediction. But again, we’ll look at the video, we’ll figure it out

and see what the biggest return ends for either stroke rate or distance per stroke. I think you’re right on there. Because the undulation there is still some undulation, as you know, like it’s not, it’s not completely eliminated. So I think that’ll take a while to really iron out completely. But already those results are great to see. So when you get that even better, there’s still another couple of seconds there, I think. So that certainly should be number one, just working on better body position. And one thing that I was thinking about recently was we posted that footage of, I posted that footage of Dan Smith a couple of years ago. And most, most people have probably seen that if you haven’t just look up Dan Smith effortless swimming, he does a really easy one minute, 10 hundred freestyle looks like he’s going about two minute pace. And I heard him talking the other day, because he’s doing a little bit of

coaching with some junior swimmers. And he was really focused on their, on their body position. So he was talking about the downwards pressure through the chest, drawing the belly button into the, in towards the spine. And just, yeah, he talks about that, like downhill swimming. And I’ve always kind of avoided that term because whenever I’ve seen someone thinking about it, they tend to bury their chest and head too deep. But everything’s got its right place and time. And that pressing down the chest to help raise the hips can be a really useful tool for a lot of people. And I’ve, I’ve been thinking about that as well. What, what is the cue there that works for me? I think everybody mentally processes those cues differently. And for some people, they’re slowing down, you know, that sounds dumb. I’m not going to do that. For me, I’ve been thinking of it in terms of finding the right balance point in my body.

So I think that the goal of saying swimming downhill is, is really to affect the, the balance point. Because I think there, at least for me, there was a tendency to have my, my head pointed a little too high, which would bring the hips and the heels down. And if, and by telling somebody who’s doing that swim downhill, they’re actually going to swim straight. So it’s sort of, it sort of depends on where the person’s coming from. And, and if you’re in that adult onset club, then, you know, that phrase swim downhill could actually work, not because they really are swimming downhill, they might overcraft and sink their head in the water. But there’s this natural tendency to, to be swimming just a little bit upright. At least that’s been my experience. And I’ve been thinking about just, just get the balance point further back so that, so that your hips and heels are coming up a little bit more naturally. And if you focus on that in the water, you can, you can feel, you know,

like you’re coming up with that no effort at all, just because you, you’re adjusting ever so slightly to change that balance point.

Yeah, absolutely. The most adult swimmers that I’ve worked with who are, who are really new, they hold their chest and hold their head like their face is just in the water. They’ve got to have their head like an iceberg, 10%, 20% out, but the rest needs to be in. And for whatever reason, I think it’s just comfort and not fear necessarily, but it’s just, it’s uncomfortable for them to be that much submerged in the water with their head or even, even just having their ears out. I think it’s like sometimes it’s that too. They don’t want to have their ears in the water because maybe they get a bit of water in there and it’s uncomfortable. But yeah, that, that useful cue of just sinking downhill can, can rise the hips. Yeah. Well, well, we, we don’t walk sideways. We don’t walk backwards. You know, our silly little eyes are always wanting to be focused on where we’re headed and swimming is different in that regard. And it’s just a, it’s a hard thing to fight. And I think it’s,

it’s just a matter of finding the right cue that works for you to get you to the right balance. And I’m, I’m bullish up on swimming downhill as a cue because I know what it’s trying to achieve and I know what it’s not trying to achieve as well. But yeah, I just, I just play around with the different cues and see what works and, and whatever sticks, sticks and it sort of doesn’t happen. Once you’ve, once you’ve equated the cue with the immediate physical changes necessary to achieve what you’re after, it doesn’t matter what the cue is anymore. It should be banana and, you know, be great. Swim like a banana. As long as you’re getting the results out of it. And, and I think that’s why so many different cues for the same thing have, have evolved because they just speak to people differently. Yeah, totally agree. Although I can’t believe it’s, it’s been six years, how time flies. I haven’t given up yet.

Hopefully look back in another, another six years and you’re just getting, you’re getting fitter, you’re aging backwards and you can tell you’re going to get faster. So yeah, thanks so much for being on the podcast. This has been terrific just to get your experience because I know how much you think about your stroke and your swimming and you’re looking for different avenues to find speed in, in all three sports. And you’ve been able to convey that I think to, to people listening. So I’ve got no doubt that this will be helpful for people. So thanks again. And it’s been, been great work with you. Well, thanks. It’s been fantastic work with you and let’s keep doing it.

So what I’ve recommended to a lot of swimmers lately is to experiment with those couple of things. How do we play around with those three components to find the right amount of each of them and the right amount for you? Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. Hello and welcome to this week’s episode of the Effortless Swimming Podcast. On today’s episode, I want to cover a couple of things that’s going to help you increase your speed. Now, in a lot of videos that I’ve done in our course, like the five-day catch challenge, we focus a lot on the position of the arms, how to get a high elbow catch, how do you move through the power diamond, all those technical positions, which are very important. That really determines the size of the paddle that you’re working with. One thing that we

don’t cover in a lot of detail in that course, and often in some of the videos, is what are the other steps to generating propulsion? After doing some underwater filming with Annie Donetson, the Ultramarathon Swimmer, who we featured on last week’s episode of the podcast, and also just hearing a few things from Coach Andrew Schafe, I realized that I was neglecting two key things that can really help increase your speed. When we think about what generates propulsion, it’s a combination of things, but primarily it’s what your arms are doing underneath the water. That is where most of your propulsion comes from, and how do you tie that in with your rotation and your kick and the timing of the rest of the stroke? That is what primarily generates your propulsion. Now, there’s three main things that we want to consider when it comes to that. The first one being the size of your paddle. Making sure you’ve got your hand

and forearm facing mostly behind you as you move through the underwater phase of the stroke, so having that big surface area that’s pressing back. We cover that in the five day catch challenge. I’ve covered that in quite a few videos, making sure we get into something that resembles almost a high elbow catch. The way I’d normally think about doing that is after we finish reaching forwards and we’ve rotated onto our side, we then want to do two things, which is point the fingers down and get the elbow to bend a little bit, almost hinging at the elbow. We get this little bit of internal rotation of the arm where it’s like the elbow is going out to the side, so we need to set up our catch in that way. Another way you can think of it, and a friend of mine who’s a coach, Ben Gidd, talks about this. He says that you want to think about getting your arms around a swiss ball, one of those big blow-up exercise balls, a swiss ball. Get your arms around it like you’re giving in a big hug,

but your arms are over the top of it. That’s how your arms should be when you’re at the end of the catch. So we need to make sure we’ve got a big paddle to work with. A mistake that a lot of people often make there is that they will try to pull straight back when they’re moving through that catch. So they don’t move downwards with the arm, they just pull straight back, but quite often they’re not getting deep enough to get enough surface area to work with. Now, on the other side of that though, a lot of people pull through with a very straight arm and they’re too deep. So it’s good to maybe watch the arms and just see where you think you might be with it, but we want to make sure at the right depth. So not too shallow, not too deep, but somewhere in between. And it’s probably, just think about that now, the depth of it would be something like probably 50, 50 centimeters, 60 centimeters with your fingers below the

body. That would be about the distance away from your body. So we need to make sure that we set up our catch and power down and get our hand and forearm angling in a way where we’re pressing back towards our feet. Now, that’s the first thing. That’s the size of the size of the paddle. But outside of that, what else generates your propulsion? Well, it’s the power that you’re applying and it’s making sure that you accelerate through the stroke. So with the power of it, we want to make sure we’re not overpowering the beginning of the stroke. So as you move through the catch, that’s not the power phase. That is the setup phase. So as you’re going from reaching out in front, being fully extended to then getting your fingertips to point down, I would think about that as being usually like a three or four out of 10 in terms of effort, the amount of power I’m putting into it three or four out of 10 in that initial phase of the stroke. So we’re not going really soft and really gentle,

but we certainly don’t want to put too much into it because that overhead movement is not that strong. We’re not using our primary muscles there, our stronger muscles. So that’s the first thing is the catch is a setup phase. We put a bit of power into it, but not too much. Where the power really comes in is under the body. As your hands moving through the catch and moving underneath the body, so your hands are passing under your shoulders to moving just past that. So it’s that middle section underneath the body where it’s out. That’s our main power phase of the stroke. And the more power that you put into it, the faster you’re going to go to a degree. So we want to make sure that power is just gradually built up. It’s the most as our hands are going underneath our shoulders through there. And then it will just ease off a little bit out the back. So we don’t want to rip super hard out the back because firstly, we’re really just using our triceps in that last

movement. We don’t get a whole lot out of the exit. So we want to make sure that we press back past the hip, but we’re not going super powerful out the back. We just get it going past the hip and release it. We let it go from there. So we need to increase the power as we go to increase our speed. But that’s very incremental. And speaking with Annie Donson from last week’s podcast, what he was mentioning is that when he thinks about going faster, he’s looking to add just that little bit more power to it. And I think a good way to picture it and something that’s really helped me in the last two weeks, I’ve been, I’ve been swimming the last two weeks and hitting some really good times. Whereas for the six weeks, seven weeks before that, I was, I was going quite slow. I’d been sick. I’d hurt my back and I could hardly swim for a while. And then the last two weeks, I’ve been really, really good. And for me, it’s been a

combination of thinking about the size of my paddle, just being more mindful of that, because when I was watching and filming Andy, what I noticed is what he’s just very good with his catch and pull. He’s not trying to force it in any, any way. He’s just keeping that big hand forearm underarm there, just underneath the water. So that’s helped a lot. And particularly the power, just making sure that I’m applying the right amount of power and just increasing that as I’m looking to go faster. So being really measured with that power, but the mistake that I, I see and the reason I really wanted to make this podcast was that because we quite often focus so much on the positions, the high elbow catch and the power diamond, often we neglect the power side of it. So if we’re going very slowly and weakly through those movements, it doesn’t matter how good the movements are, if we’re not putting anything into them. So we have to make sure we balance it with,

with the right amount of power. This podcast is proudly sponsored by Form Smart Swim Goggles. Form have recently released their new Gen 2 version of the product, which includes an integrated heart rate monitor, as well as a swim straight digital compass for open water navigation. They’ve also updated the ice seal. So they’ve got a new proprietary ice seal that accommodate a wider variety of facial structures and they ensure for a more comfortable and secure fit. I’ve been testing these new goggles for the last couple of months and I’m a huge fan of the new heart rate monitor. This is the first time that I’ve been able to see my heart rate in real time when I’m swimming and that’s allowed me to adjust my effort and my output based on my training zones. So if you’re a triathlete or someone who wants to make sure that they’re not going too hard or too easy within a session, this is a really good way to do it. You can see your heart rate in the top corner of the goggles.

So it’s always there right in front of you and that can make sure that you are actually training in the right zone where I find a lot of swimmers do go either too hard or too easy. So this has been a real revelation for me in terms of the effort that I’m actually putting in when I’m going at certain speeds and certain paces. So if you’d like to grab yourself a copy of the new Gen 2 version of the FormSmart swim goggles, go to formswim.com forward slash effortless to get yourself a pair of the new Gen 2 goggles. If you’d like to get the Gen 1 goggles, you can save 10% going through that link at formswim.com forward slash effortless. So that’s the second one. Now the third one is go to accelerate through the stroke. So in order to generate that propulsion, we need to start slow, finish fast. We need to have that gradual acceleration through the stroke. And again, we’re not looking to go so fast out the back that our hand flicks

out back behind us and sends all this energy back that way and out the water. Now again, just more, you want it to be measured, gradual acceleration. So what I’ve recommended to a lot of swimmers lately is to experiment with those couple of things. How do we play around with those three components to find the right amount of each of them and the right amount for you. So in training, if you’re going to the pool this week, and you’re doing some hundreds or 200s and you’re getting timed or you’re looking at your times and you’re tracking that, play around with each of those things and see what helps you move the needle with your speed. And I think a really good way to do this is to do some build or descend sets. For example, maybe you’re doing three, two hundreds and you’re going one at 70%, one at 80% effort and one at 90% effort. It’s kind of like easy, medium, hard. See what you need to do to make sure your speed increases

across those. And I would imagine that it’s going to be a combination of adding a little bit more power to those strokes, that stroke rate coming up slightly and perhaps a little bit more acceleration through it. So if you keep the same catch and pull, so the same number one aspect of it, that’s important, but it’s really the power that’s going to change. And with that, the stroke rate will probably come up a little bit as well, but really it’s just more force. And I was doing this, I was on a webinar for coaches and Michael Sage, who’s coached Chelsea Gubeca, who’s on the Australian team,

a lot of really good distance swimmers. One of the things that he mentioned was that someone asked how to think about the catch when you’re thinking about when someone’s going faster. And he says, I think they just put a little bit more power into it. They put a little bit more pressure on the water. And if you play around with that, you’ll probably find that you start to really get that dialed in knowing how much you need to put in. And if it’s too much and you are gassing out after 50 meters, then obviously you need to back that off. So it’s very incremental. So finding that ability to just move the needle a little bit each time is what can really help make the difference. A couple of drills that I think can help you work on each of these things. One drill I really like is what I call keyhole drill. Now this is typically a butterfly drill, but it applies really well for freestyle. And in this keyhole drill, I’ll get swimmers to be faced down in the water. If they’ve got a

snorkel, I’ll get them to put that on. So faced down the water, you push off the wall, you’ve got your hands in front of you, just shoulder width apart. And then when you’re ready, you pull through from the front all the way to the back. Now it’s called keyhole drill because your hands will make the shape of an old style keyhole where it’s kind of circular at the top. And then it’s almost like they’re a bit of a triangle at the back. So make it circle as it goes from out in front of your head to just past your shoulders. And then as you’re going past your navel, that’s where it will come in near the body and then finish out a little bit wider at the hips there. So that old school keyhole shape. Now when you go through one of those pull-throughs, you will be able to experiment and find what’s the most effective way at sending myself forwards. How do I shoot myself forwards and cover the most, cover the most distance

with each pull through that I’m doing. So if you repeat that for 25 or 50 meters, experiment with where your arms are. Make sure one mistake I see people do here is they’re starting in front and they go out really wide with their hands like a breaststroke stroke. But when you do that, you’re not getting your fingers to point down. You’re not getting your hand and forearm to be this big surface area underneath you. So when you’re going from out in front, get the fingers going down, get those elbows to bend out to the side, move in that keyhole shape. So it’s a little bit of a cool with each arm or a semi-circle with each arm and play around with those things. And whichever gives you the most amount of distance forwards is probably going to be the best possible path. Now the other things you can experiment with there is the power. You’ll find that if you try and go too hard in the beginning, it’s not very comfortable and you don’t shoot yourself forwards very well. So you’ll

need to when you do that, start somewhat gentle and then build into it so that the maximum power is coming from when your hands are coming underneath the shoulders and not at the very beginning. And you’ll also find that you’ll need to build up in speed. So I find that’s a really good way to train that in the stroke and get a sense of it. So next time you go to the pool, play around with the power that you’re applying. And if you really focus on the catch in the pool, make sure that you’re not focused just on the shape of the arms but also the power and the acceleration. I’ve found it’s helped a lot with my own stroke in the last couple of weeks and I’m looking forward to just continuing to develop that. And one thing I’ve actually noticed that this happened this morning, we were doing some stroke count 50s. I actually had my lowest ever stroke count in a 50 freestyle. So in this side I normally set

the rules as three underwater kicks and not stopping and pausing with the arm in front but just having a very light either two or kind of six-beat kick. But three underwater strokes, three underwater kicks I should say and yeah seeing how fewer strokes I can do for a 50. And I got down to 20, well 22 strokes with a big light at the end but that was the least I’ve ever done by I think two strokes maybe three strokes. And that was a combination of these couple of things we’ve just been talking about. And also just making sure that I’m keeping my hips and my legs high by just pressing my chest in the water and then engaging my core just sucking my tummy and drawing that belly button into the spine. Keeping some tension through my backside and hamstrings just to make sure I maintain that horizontal body position. And it worked really, really well. So I’m excited to see where this goes over the next few weeks

and next few months because it’s been a while since I feel like I’ve had a breakthrough in my stroke and this has certainly been one. So I’d like to see where this this goes with some fitness behind it because I’m probably not that fit at the moment as well. So I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did enjoy it, one way you could help is if you listen on Spotify or listen on Apple iTunes, if you could leave a review, that helps a lot. And if you know anyone who’s looking to improve their swimming, please share this podcast with them if you feel like it’s going to be helpful for them. So thanks so much for listening. I’ll see you next week with another episode. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

Some of the drills that we were doing was single-arm freestyle, really just breaking it down, swimming with one arm in freestyle and allowing you to really focus on that hand entry, gliding forward, initiating the catch and starting your pull and then really maximizing. Getting a feel for the water because that traction is so important on the catch so that you can pull as much water as possible and gain that portion. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. Hi and welcome to this week’s episode of the Effortless Swimming Podcast. My name is Brenton Ford and today I’ve got an episode that’s a little bit different than usual but it’s on the topic of freestyle technique and you’re going to hear it from one of the best. I caught up with Andy Donaldson who’s a three-time world record holder.

He completed the Ocean 7 in under 12 months which is swimming across seven of the world’s toughest channels and he also holds the world record for crossing the Cook Strait between the north and south islands of New Zealand. He did that in 4 hours and 33 minutes and averaged 1 minute 12 pace per 100. So incredibly quick. Now if you’ve been a podcast listener for a while you know that we’ve had Andy Donaldson on the podcast twice. Now this is a slightly different episode because we’re talking purely technique. I wanted to get it from the horse’s mouth about what he is thinking about in his stroke. So let’s jump into it. If you want to get some footage and see how he swims underwater and in the open water, we’ve got some great footage as well. So I teamed up with Sam Sheppard from Great Ocean Wet Suits. He did some really good drone footage of Andy swimming and I captured some underwater footage of him at the pool that I normally swim at.

So that’s on our YouTube page. If you want to check that out we posted a video last week with that footage. So go and check out that episode there too. And if you want to get all of the footage that I took with him and a full breakdown by me of his technique, I’ve posted all of that footage inside our Elite Swimmers section in the Effortless Swimming Membership. So I’ll put the link to join that below as well. If you do enjoy this episode there is two ways that would really help me out. That’s either showing this episode with a friend. If you know anyone who’s looking to get faster like this would be a good place for them to start, please pass on this episode to them. And if you are listening on Spotify or Apple iTunes, leaving a review helps us out more than you know. Thanks so much. Let’s jump into the episode. Where is your head position? With my head position I’d say it’s usually looking slightly forward tilted up

and when I’m turning to breathe, it almost follows the body rotation around turning my head to breathe but it’s not an over rotation. So I’d say the waterline is perhaps halfway across and I don’t want to be rotating any more than that because it’s putting straight on my neck. I’ll usually breathe every two. My preference is breathing to my left. I make sure that I do try balance it out and what I’ll try to do is in training I’ll breathe to the same side. So if I’ve gone down one length to breathing to say for example the dive pool I’ll make sure that I’m coming back and breathing to that direction as well. Just making sure there’s balances in my stroke. One of the reasons for breathing every two is just to get more oxygen into the body especially in the longer distances where you’re swimming in a aerobic zone and you need as much oxygen coming in to keep the body pumping. With posture I mean obviously in swimming we want to be as streamlined as possible.

You know if we think of ways to get faster we can put more water, get more propulsion or we can be more efficient in having a good posture. Good streamlined position helps with that efficiency. So one thing I remember learning when I was growing up was engaging your core and one of the tricks was imagine you’re pulling on a tight pair of jeans and you really haven’t as sucking as you zip up and get your jeans on and that’s to sort of subconsciously I think that’s what you want to be doing. Obviously not creating too much tension because that is using energy but in that position that’s nice, tall, good posture, engaging your core and you’re nice and rigid for when you’re pushing through the water. How do you use your kick? In the longer swims tend to kick less. Your thighs, your leg muscles are big muscles so they use up a lot of energy. So I’m using my kick less for propulsion and more for stability and the timing of the stroke, keeping the rhythm.

So I probably have a 2B kick in my longer swims, just means I kick twice per stroke and I’m not thinking about trying to create propulsion I’m not trying to drive forward using my legs. It’s more just feel for the water, keeping the body nice and balanced especially when you’re in the open water and you’re in conditions that might be thrown you around. Legs can certainly help with that stability and keeping you in a good position. What does your recovery look like? So with my recovery I’m wanting to get my arms back to the front as easy as possible. When you think of swimming that’s not where propulsion comes from the propulsion is everything under the water so if I can expend the least amount of energy to bring my hand from my hip back to the front then that’s really good and for me the most relaxed way is a nice high elbow and I’m just really letting the arm glide forward over the surface of the water

and comes with timing of the stroke so the other one’s going and cooling under the water and the opposite side of the body is coming across and in sync with that and placing your hand into the water we were talking about efficiency and I find that my nice high elbow allows me to place my hand into a position and get it into a position of catch where I can really anchor and initiate the pull section of the stroke. I find I can do that easier with a high elbow and find that position where I can really create traction I can find that easier with a nice clean hand entry. One of the reasons why we want a clean hand entry is because when those bubbles it’s harder to get that traction on the water you’re not pulling on clean water where you can create more propulsion if it’s disturbed and it’s got bubbles in it so clean entry as you set up for your catch and really get that traction to maximise your pull and catch and pull.

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I personally use the gold model of the wetsuit it just depends on what your goals are so greatoceanwetsuits.com, effortless20 at checkout I know you’ll like them what is the end of your strike like? after my hand entry I’m really trying to maximize the length in each stroke so I do glide quite a lot everyone’s different my stroke I really try to stretch out because I want to maximize the length of from the top of the stroke where I’m pulling all the way to where my hand gets to the hip that’s where my propulsion is coming from so I’m really gliding forward and it comes in conjunction with your body rotation so if we have our hands out here if I rotate, I’ve gained an extra whatever that is, 10cm that I can use to pull on each stroke and when it comes to marathon swimming and ultra marathon swimming and one stroke, small differences tiny margins in each stroke you do thousands of strokes and one of these marathon swims it all adds up

and makes a difference over time what about your rotation? my rotation, I’m a predominantly left hand reaver so I probably rotate more on my left because that’s where I breathe I don’t tend to rotate as well on this side personal preference, I think there’s maybe it is something I could do better but at the same time if it’s going to cost me more energy thinking about it then is it a change that I should make or not perhaps not, so I’m quite comfortable with having better rotation on this side when I breathe to my left because I’ll predominantly breathe left on race day and in a marathon swim how did you develop your catch? my catch and pull was something that I perhaps developed a bit later in life I actually wasn’t very good at pull growing up it was more when I got into distance swimming and distance freestyle that I was really forced to work on my catch, my pull and make it more efficient and then really get more out of each stroke

so some of the drills that we were doing was single arm freestyle really just breaking it down allowing you, swimming with one arm in freestyle and allowing you to really focus on that hand entry gliding forward initiating the catch and starting your pull and really maximising getting a feel for the water because that traction is so important on the catch so that you can pull as much water as possible and gain that propulsion so single arm freestyle was a good one and for those that are comfortable doing it and quite confident I think things like really doing a lot of pull and only work that certainly helped me to become quite efficient with your freestyle because your legs are sinking you really have to rate up and maximise each stroke in order to get that lift in the back and stop your hips from sinking How much power are you putting into each stroke? I would say in terms of pressure when we’re talking about catching through the pull

it’s increasing to about here and then slowly decreasing towards the back for me the way I think about it you’re getting most bang for buck or you’re getting most returns for your effort here and you’re recruiting and using stronger muscles here than you are at the back end of your underwater pull I’d say this would be at the peak and then easing off slightly again here as you come through the back and then bringing it forward through recovery What do you do to increase your swim speed? To increase speed there’s a couple of things that I’ll try to do to go through the gears creating more propulsion so that could be either by increasing your stroke rate more strokes per minute or really trying to create more power with each arm pull so I’ll probably emphasise more power per stroke great I feel more comfortable with that and I’ll just really try to tidy up and get more traction in my catch and really try to power through each stroke

swimming in a more efficient manner so we’re talking about efficiency being tighter and more streamlined so I’ll think about my body position in the water my hand entry making sure that it’s clean engaging my core and really trying to be quite tight and streamlined through the water and then if I really want to pick up the speeds and this will be mostly for short distances and sprints I’ll start to really bring in the legs and get that extra drive in propulsion through my kick How do you like to train? So if I’m training for a big marathon swim or a channel swim I’ll typically do a bit less then I suppose many people out there might do I’ll swim 30km in a week and really focus on working the right energy zones and working quality with good technique so for me I’m a big believer of if I want to swim at a certain pace I need to be training at a higher intensity so that I’m more comfortable up here I’ve expanded my zone of comfort

so that something down here is a little bit easier and more sustainable over a longer period of time if those longer swims are in places that are with rough conditions or I can expect it to be quite cold I’ll obviously make sure I acclimatize and do some practice in there but a lot of my training is done in the pool I’m more controlled and we can measure our training in those environments What pace do you aim for? For me the target pace I want to be holding is around 1,1200m a low heart rate so for me if I can get that to become a 2 pace so 140 beats per minute that would be something I’d look to sustain over a longer period of time and if I do happen to drop off on the day, on race day it’s still a pretty handy pace to be holding for those periods of time What strike are you aiming for? When I’m doing longer distance swims I try to have my team on my boat communicate key statistics to me so things like time time elapsed, distance covered

but a big one is stroke rate so my coach and I have been working really hard to hold around 60 strokes per minute we find that that’s a very efficient stroke rate and enables me to hold a good solid pace of around that 1,1200m speed Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast If you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlessswimming.com

I see a couple of big shivers of stingrays, which are a beautiful sign and if you’ve ever seen them, they’re just 100 stingrays fly around in the water as even one and they were beautiful. And just as I was appreciating that, I got smacked on the arm with a blue sting and I thought, oh man, I hope there’s not another one of those around. But over the next 31 hours, I was stung constantly. I reckon every 20 minutes just stung, stung, stung. It was just essentially me in the black ocean with a nice guy at night. Beautiful. And as this milky way started to shine, all the stars started to come out too, like little suns, and so, so bright, so clear. I put my hand in the water soon after it got black and I was so happy to see bioluminescence. And I don’t know if you swam with them, but when your fingers go, it’s like shooting little stars out the end of your fingers, it lights up these little pingy lights and they just all around you. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast

to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer, and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. In the early hours of March 13, 2024, an adventure was set to begin from the sandy shores of Newcastle’s Nobby’s Beach. A lone swimmer, Dean Summers, stood facing the ocean’s vast expanse. His mission? To break the record for Australia’s longest ever unassisted swim, charting a course all the way to Palm Beach, Sydney. A staggering 95.6 kilometres through some of Australia’s most treacherous waters. But Dean wasn’t just battling the distance. The ocean here is alive with dangers that read like something out of a mariner’s nightmare. From the stinging embrace of blue-bottle jellyfish to the unpredictable whims of the sea itself, every stroke through these cold, dark waters was a test of will. Now, if that wasn’t daunting enough, let’s talk about the mental game.

Hours into his swim, as the shore became just a distant memory, Dean began to experience hallucinations. The isolation and the rhythmic, monotonous motion of swimming can play tricks on the mind, blurring the lines between reality and illusion. And let’s not forget, this swim had beaten back challenges before. In the 80s and 90s, two other swimmers tried to conquer this same route. One of them was the legendary Australian swimmer, Des Renford, whose attempt ended in high drama when his shark cage sank after hitting treacherous conditions. So here was Dean, every stroke pulling him deeper into what could be described as the abyss, facing not just physical fatigue, but the ghosts of past attempts whispering doubts as the miles stretched on. Will Dean make it to Palm Beach? Or will the ocean claim another dream? What drives a man to face such perilous odds alone? Stay tuned and let the story of Dean Summers remind you.

Some of the most fascinating stories are those where humans meet the raw, untamed forces of nature head on. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. My guest today is Dean Summers. Dean, you recently completed an incredible swim from Newcastle to Sydney, 95km, which is on its own a huge distance to swim. But the fact that you’re in the water for 31 hours, you did it successfully. We just spoke before that you felt the best you’ve ever felt coming out of a swim. That to me is quite, quite remarkable. So firstly, congratulations on the swim. And I can’t wait to hear about it and just the experience of it and how much preparation went into it. Because to me, that is something that just seems unfathomable to think of answering for that long and that far. Thanks, Brendan. And even now, a few weeks afterwards, it’s quite unfathomable to me too. But, you know, my head was in the place and it paid off. And now my head’s drifting away from that. So I’m happy to record this.

You’re right. Talk to me about the, where did that idea originate from? I mean, I know that there’s been two Summers who have attempted it, and you’re the first person to ever do it. So where did that idea originate from for you and how long has it been sort of, you know, nagging at you that this is something that would be good to do? Well, it hasn’t really been nagging at me for very long, but I’ve been aware of it the whole time I’ve been swimming international channels and it’s in Australia and it kind of felt like unfinished business for a very long time. Dez Renford, who was the ultimate showman and did a fantastic job of promoting himself and swimming in Australia at one stage, the king of the channel and just a local in Kuchy as well, where I swim. He had the idea of trying and he tried a whole lot of other swims. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the technology. He didn’t have the forecasting and whatever else he didn’t make it. And that was in the early 80s. In the 90s,

Susie Maroney, a household name in Australia, a champion swimmer, just a wonderful person as well. She tried it, but the weather packed him behind her and she couldn’t get it. So it was kind of unfinished business, just sitting there in the ether. And I thought one day I’ll get around to her looking at that.

Because you’ve completed a lot of other very well known swims before this, doing six of the ocean seven, you’ve got the triple crown as well. So quite a, I’d say quite a history in long distance. I mean, but this is not something that you did all through your life. I know you swam early on, but there was a big, a long period there where you weren’t really seeing much at all in my life. That’s right. So I was a swimmer as a kid in Fremantle. I’m reminded that we swam in the Fremantle Aquatic Center, no heating. And at first with no goggles either in a chlorinated pool. So we spent a great deal of, I spent a great deal of my time in the ocean of Selateland, Port Beach. So I loved it. Like everybody around was just lit for the water, but then I gave it away at maybe 18. So 16 to 18. And just work to work a life got in the way. I never really came back to it until about 12 years ago. I just fell in with Vlad,

notorious coach in Sydney and you know, it’s Vlad. And he’s enthusiasm and he’s vibrancy caught me up in the, in the squad sessions. And I started looking at those international channels. So I had a big break from swimming.

And so with the, I went and swam with that Vlad once or twice when I was up there just for some, some coaching and a lot of very say unassuming swimmers. So we went out to the cafe, you know, just got the coffee afterwards and got introduced to yourself. And a few of the other summers there and a lot of the swimmers, they’re doing some very big swims, crazy swims. And you were very, Vlad, you castled it to Sydney. No, no big deal kind of thing. It’s just a lot of amazing swimmers that aren’t doing it for you know, to big nut themselves and I think just looking to, looking for challenges, looking to see how they can push themselves. And I think that’s, that’s remarkable. Just that I love that sort of attitude and just to get out there, let’s do it. And you’ve obviously got a love for swimming, looking to promote open water, long distance swimming here in Australia, because I know I’ve talked about big swims overseas, but in Australia, there’s nothing really iconic, no, no long

distance swims that are necessarily that iconic right compared to the English channel and some of those other ones. That’s exactly right. And what Vlad’s done is created a group at an environment in the pool in ABC and Summer in Victoria Park in Sydney in winter, where it’s normalized and at any time you could have 10 English channel swimmers training in the squad. And it’s just completely normalized. They don’t stand out. They’re just done it and they come back into training. They might take off another tangent or they never come back to the pool again, but newcomers come in and are quite taken away by it. And it is pretty impressive, I think. And then they just get into that slide into that normality of it. And then before long, he’s off training someone else for another English channel. It’s only just under 80 people that he’s personally trained, given programs to and cross success with the English

channel. It’s incredible. It’s a great stable. And it’s a good environment. That’s amazing. And all those things you say are correct. People have different takes on what it actually means. For me, it’s a progression through the ocean seven. Now, I think it’s probably the ocean six because Japan’s out of reach for just about everybody. But there’s a progression and people are taking it in all different directions. I think, and I agree with your comments, Australia offers some of the most beautiful conditions that are accessible to everybody. You know, the rottenness channel is a good example of how much encouragement, enthusiasm is around for open water swimming, which in itself has increased over the COVID years. But there’s got a thousand people in the water at any time. That’s an incredible swim. And it should be. Timmy Garrett’s champion, the Palm Beach to Shelly swim here in Sydney. That’s a beautiful swim. 26 kilometers,

open water race, I think would have to be the longest open water race in the world now. And I just think there are other opportunities as well. I hope someone takes up the challenge of Newcastle to Sydney because that is a beautiful safe stretch of water. If you couldn’t shizzle out that time to find a window, it’s certainly doable.

So it talks to me about how you went about getting the team around you because so the swim’s unassisted, meaning you’re not touching a boat or anything like that. But you’ve obviously got a support team there to help you through it. So how do you go about getting the right people on board for that? Well, this is the biggest challenge and I’m reminded that I first started talking about this swim five years ago. So it hasn’t taken five years to pull together because we had a couple of years of COVID, of course. We had some other family problems that we had to deal with and come back after that. But everything’s very positive, but five years and slowly I planned it. But it’s different than all the other swims because any of the channel swims you roll up, you pay your money, well, very increasingly a high amount of money, and you go into the swim with all the logistics taken care of, the weather windows taken care of, everything else,

and you just do your bit and that’s to swim. And after which you come out and pat in the back is great. This one we had to create it. So where are we going to even take off from? Dez took off from the inside of the channel. I’m told because there was a camera crew there. Dez loved the camera crews and who doesn’t? Susie took off from Merriweather, I think. So there was nowhere. So I thought if we’re going to establish this swim and I was sure I was going to be successful, then start at Nobby’s. That’s the first beach just outside of the heads of Newcastle Harbour and under English Channel rules. I’m assisted as you said. So English Channel rules is what you wear, what you can’t touch, what you can feed, all of those things that we all know now. But that’s sort of setting the standard and the next person that takes that I hope will take it from the same place, try to beat my time, beat my distance,

whatever else, but I’ve kind of established that. So the difficulty for me was to bring together some people and I know plenty of people in their own rights, but bring them all together looking at the same objective on the same page was quite difficult. The first thing I did and was highly successful was to appoint what I call an expedition leader. And it really was an expedition for 100 different reasons. Calling an expedition got people’s interest, perked their interest. Everybody I came close to wanted to be part of the expedition and were very excited to donate generously their time, their resources, their energy and everything else. It was just a great feeling. So I’ve got an expedition leader in Warwick Norman, a man from the maritime industry from which I’m from. And Warwick knows everything there is to do about big ships, everything. I mean, the guy is an encyclopedia. He’s a yachtie, he’s a navigator, he’s a merchant seafarer,

he’s like I am. So he was a good guy for it, but he knew nothing about swimming. So okay, he’s okay with the boat. Then I found I was very lucky to find Dino, Doug and Queen in New Castle who donated their time and a very large boat, a 60 foot steel boat, and had to bring them, they knew nothing about swimming at all. And they’d known, in fact, the guy who wanted the boat, his brother of all was the pilot for Des Renford in the 80s. What a remarkable coincidence. And so I spoke to Des as pilot from the 80s. And he was just, it was like speaking about it was yesterday, it was fascinating. And he said no one’s as strong as Des, no one can be Des. Des just had it all, gutsy strength, determination. And he was just so enthralled with Des, you know, 50 years later, it was a beautiful thing. That’s awesome.

And in terms of the, like, it’s a big commitment to anyone who’s looking to get involved and help out because obviously the preparation, that’s a big part of it. But then the swim itself, it’s 31 hours, you’re going through the night, you’ve got kayakers, I’m assuming that are sort of changing in and out. It’s a big thing for them too. I remember when I did the rotten ass swim, just like trying to get to convince my mate to come over, kayak with me the whole way. It’s like, you’ve got to be good salesman. You’ve got to be able to pull these people in and get them to help out there. So what about the team as well? Well, again, I was lucky. A lifetime in the maritime industry gave me access to meteorologists, gave me access to professionals in the field, ships captains, engineers, crew members. So they will come on board without any sort of hesitation. And in the swimming world, I had access to all the people who understood kayaking.

Of course, I had Vlad on, it wouldn’t have been a swim without the coach and observer on there. So Vlad came along. I had four kayakers, including my daughter, and they rotated three hour shifts around for 31 hours. They were exhausted. It was hard getting on the boat. It was really hard to retrieve them after their three hour shift. You can imagine at midnight with a dimmest, dimmest amount of light, trying to get on a pitching boat. And the boat was rolling and pitching and it was just so difficult for them. I’ve seen some videos, oh my God. Our focus all the time was on safety for the crew. The swimming stuff, we know that will come second, but we had to have nine people on that boat safe at all times. And that was a challenge. But again, Warwick knows about safety. We pulled together a safety case and some threat analysis or whatever else we needed to put together. And it came together very, very well.

So four kayakers, two captains, an expedition doctor. His life is an expedition doctor. So that was fantastic to have him on board. He flew himself up from Tasmania for the event. We had two observers, Vlad and one other observer. So a crew of nine and then three shore-based crew, including my wife who was following us down, maintaining radio contact all the time, making sure everything was on track. And in terms of the swim itself, tell me how it played out. How are the conditions? How did you feel throughout? What was that story of the swim? Well, the first part is the weather window, as you know, for any swim. The weather window is critical. And we’re looking at a 40. So I’m budgeting for 40 hours. And it was really hard to identify that. And the weather on this coast over the last little while has been all over the place, rain, storm. This year is better than the last three years together. So that sort of come together. We had two false starts where we thought we had a good weather.

And then right at the last minute, we had to abandon those. So we had people flying from Melbourne, Tasmania, driving up from Sydney, the boat ready to go. And then we had to step down twice. So it was getting pretty tough. And I didn’t want to keep the crew on tent hooks for another week, for example. So I was getting time. I had to expand the parameters. One thing I wanted to do is keep away from the Northwest wind because that brings in blue bottles. But in the end, I just had to say, look, we’ll lift the wind limits. We’re not going to get a perfect day. Lift the wind with the direction, the temperatures, the waves, everything else. And so we decided we’re ready to go. Got to go ahead. And in we went on the 13th of March out of Nobby’s Beach. And that was an incredible time because I’ve walked all through my head a hundred times. But I’m thinking, I didn’t consider that at one stage, everyone’s off

to the boat. And I’m standing on the beach with my son, just him and I, looking out to see, ready to start this big swim. And he was going to follow down in his car as well. So I’m standing on the beach just after six o’clock in the morning. It’s dark. I don’t know this beach. Someone’s told me that there’s a reef to the left, a reef to the right. And if you go just in this direction, you should be okay on a low tide. So I dive in very lonely, cold beach with just a red light on the back of my goggles. And I dive in and got smashed by a set of waves because I couldn’t see him coming in the dark.

Made my way through the reef without any problems at all to the light where I thought it was the boat, but there was a couple of guys fishing. So I got to the wrong boat and eventually come around and found my boat and joined that probably three k’s off the coast. And we started the course down. The navigators had organised a route that they thought we could come out a long way off the coast and were designed to come a long way off the coast to get away from natural gyres, whirlpools and other things because it’s quite a craggy coast and the water coming up and down from tides will develop different whirlpools and different shapes. So if we get that far enough, then we could have a long shot straight down to Sydney and get away from all the waterways and confused water. And that worked pretty well.

Wow. And what about your feeding strategy throughout? It was you were, how awesome are your seeding? Do you have a certain kind of hydrates you’re trying to get in each feed? How does that play out for you? I’ve been working with Samantha Lewis, who’s a sports star of the bone, right? And also a nutritionist in Sydney that we had arrived at a 40 hour feed plan. Okay, new for me because the longest I’ve ever swam was 20 hours in Molokai. And you can just sustain yourself with carbohydrates, I think. But over 24, everything changes and everything has to be reconsidered and put in a different sort of time frame. So mainly carbohydrates in the form of just cheap multidextrin with cordial. And so that’s the backbone of my feeding plan. Every 45 minutes, maybe an hour for the first, probably 12 hours. And then some protein on the way through, I had rice, bits and pieces. It wasn’t really scientific, but it was enough to keep me going. And my stroke rate

incredibly stayed at 64 strokes a minute from the first to the last, which Vlad was pretty impressed. I’m happy to impress my coach. That just signals that the nutrition, even though it wasn’t very tasty at times, was spot on because it kept my energies up, didn’t dip. And the best thing about nutrition for me is to make sure you don’t dip because then it’s hard to get back up on top of that again later. Yeah, very hard to get back on top. And did you practice with that in training with that sort of the rice and that kind of thing? Or you just thought, I’ll be right to do it? Yeah, I didn’t do that distance in training. So I thought rice would be okay. And my wife was arguing that it should be savory. I thought sweet. In the end, of course, she was right. I don’t know why I have a question to her, but it could have been savory because sweet was just too much all the time. There’s an interesting factor that

because it was such a community expedition and everyone wanted to be part of it. The local restaurant in Kujih, where I come after some swims, donated beef cheek ragu with gnocchi. So that was pretty bougie for the swim. And the crew were going to have all that. But when I was swimming at night and thinking, what am I drinking sugary water for? Well, I know there’s beef cheek ragu on board. So I asked for some of that. And every now and then I was rewarded with some warm beef cheek ragu. And just before I was going to feed it every time a wave would wash into it. And so I got a bit salty and a bit, but it was good. And the important thing that I sort of stayed in my mind this time that I hadn’t really picked up and it’s a no brainer is that those feeds should always be core temperature, your core temperature. In the cook straight, I was caught out because I had them cold off the deck. And that was maybe 20 or less than 20 degrees.

And eventually that made me cold. So I didn’t want it hot. I don’t want to artificially warm me. I just want it as core temperature and that paid off in spades.

So so 36 degrees, you always try and get it around there. How did they do that? Did they have a microwave on board or like what was their strategy to do that? So it was very deliberate. They kept them warm on board at the temperature in warm water. And then they would put them in an esky because it was a three hour feed cycle that had to take three hours of feed out in the kayaks. And the last one had been sitting in a tiny esky for three hours. So just put a heat back in the bottom of that. And it kept it around the temperature I needed.

Interesting. Okay, there you go. I guess every little bit counts, especially over that distance at that time. Now you said you had to lift the wind direction restrictions that you put on your plan to leave. And so that northwest wind you said would bring in blue bottles. And I know that was a big thing to you this swim where you encountered blue bottles. When did you when did the first one start to start to hit? I reckon the first one hit me within within an hour. So I was swimming out. The dawn was just breaking. So I’m swimming along as the sun’s just coming up. It’s beautiful. The water’s clear. I see a couple of big shivers of stingrays, which are a beautiful sign. And you have seen them, they just a hundred stingrays fly around in the water as evil as evil one. And they were beautiful. And just as I was appreciating that, I got smacked on the on the arm with a blue sting. And I thought, Oh man,

I hope there’s not another one of those around. But over the next 31 hours, I was all stung constantly. I reckon every 20 minutes just stung, stung, stung. And the thing I was trying to get away from the worst thing for me when people say, what about sharks? What about this? That’s, you know, you can avoid them. You can sort of, you can mitigate those. But there’s nothing you can do with a blue bottle. And you just have to swim through it, peel it off. Although I have found through experience, if you stop and swear very loudly, it kind of helps a little bit. I did plenty of that. Yeah. At least, at least the creamy that you’ve been here by blue bottle at that point. I woke him up a few times. I was complaining. And does it get, is it the same every time that you get stung that it’s just as painful? It’s like, just like a new one, or do you just start to get used to the pain or you, you know, stung in the same spot? So it’s not as bad. What’s, what’s it like?

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So it’s always there right in front of you. And that can make sure that you are actually training in the right zone where I find a lot of swimmers do go either too hard or too easy. So this has been a real revelation for me in terms of the effort that I’m actually putting in at when I’m going at certain speeds and certain paces. So if you’d like to grab yourself a copy of the new Gen 2 version of the FormSmart swim goggles, go to formswim.com forward slash effortless to get yourself a pair of the new Gen 2 goggles. If you’d like to get the Gen 1 goggles, you can save 10% going through that link at formswim.com forward slash effortless. It’s hard to describe. They sting and they sting bad every single time. I worry about the buildup of toxins and they’re designed to disable muscles. So I didn’t have that. So maybe I was just lucky in that time of their life cycle or something, but they weren’t disabling me

and they weren’t going to my muscles, but they were just, it was just the pain and an interruption every 20 minutes. I like to get into a swim and just lose myself in the swim. And I’ve done it before. I’ve told the story in the North Channel that I’ve lost an hour of the time and just getting in this beautiful Zen-like state. But then you don’t have an electric shock every 20 minutes, reminding you that you’re in the ocean and they come across your face, their tentacles come around your neck, around your body. They get stuck on your swim line of your bathers. And so you just have to take a couple of minutes to peel them off. At night, when you can’t see them, you have to hold your hand up to the stars and try to find those little tentacles and think you’ve peeled them off. Vlad came up with an ingenious idea, and he just had a little chups wipe on a rope. And so every time I go stung, they’ll throw me the chups wipe, and I’ll try to wipe the tentacles off. And so that

helped a little bit. It’s almost like if you’re trying to get to sleep and you’re just about to doze off and someone just talks to you and just, yes, wake up. Yeah, as soon as you’re about to get into that really nice place when you’re swimming, that Zen-like state. Yeah, that’s no good. That’s right. I was reading in one of the articles that was written about the swim, about what was it, 10 plus hours where dark sky, it’s just you, you’ve got Milky Way out there, the bioluminescence as well. What was the night time some experience like? Well, for the previous two or three years, I live on Kujizu at night, you can see the sea, you can hear it. I’ve been, dreading’s not the right word, but I’ve been a little anxious about a whole night swimming out in the ocean because it’s past the horizon from where I live. And I know soon I’m going to be out there in the water on my own with a kayak, and it’s going to be a tough night.

I thought maybe I’ll get a full moon so I can see things, but the full moon wasn’t there. There was only what’s called a thumbnail moon, just a tiny sliver of moon, but not enough to give any light. The sun was going down. The water was okay. It was just a little bit of chop and a big lazy rolling swell, so that was quite okay. The kayakers were set. We’re all ready for the night time. I’d been in the water already for 12 hours, but I wasn’t feeling tired. I was feeling good. Okay, this is the next stage, and I’m ready for it. Let’s do it. So the sun goes down, goes down behind the mountains. I can see way off from the distance to the land side, and it was getting darker in the water, but then all of a sudden night fell, and the water just switched to black, just completely black. Okay, I’m ready to go. The kayak’s next to me, and I’m looking up, and I can see the Milky Way starting to shine, and it was just sort of at nine o’clock, I

suppose it’s seven o’clock, and it looked beautiful, but really, really bright. So bright you could read a book off, I’d say. There were no other lights around me. We designed it in the back of the kayaks. We just put this tiny little red glowing light in the well of the kayak, so there was no direct light. It was just a loom, and that’s what I could follow. The big boat, the pilot boat, was quite a way off, maybe half a kilometer away, so that had no ambient light to it at all. So it was just essentially me in the black ocean with a nice guy at night. Beautiful. And as this Milky Way started to shine, all the stars started to come out too, like little suns, and so, so bright, so clear. I put my head in the water soon after it got black, and I was so happy to see bioluminescence, and I don’t know if you swam with them, but when your fingers go, it’s like shooting little stars at the end of your fingers.

It lights up these little pingy lights, and they’re just all around you. Then your other arm goes in, same happens there, and you create a little cloud of stars that just gently, as you move through the water, ping into your goggles and explode gently into your goggles in this beautiful bioluminescence color of blue and green. And so you’ve got the Milky Way up here, you’ve got the stars that seem to be so low, you could almost reach out and touch them, and underneath you’ve got the bioluminescence, giving a same sort of look as stars. So no horizon, too dark for that, but, and there’s nothing on the horizon, or you can see the stars all around you. It was the most beautiful, beautiful night. The crew say it was a little choppy, a little uncomfortable. I didn’t feel that. All I felt was beautiful stars and just the universe helping me along with this swim. And I wasn’t hallucinating, it was just 12 hours, a little

tired. But for the next 10 hours, every stroke was rewarded by bioluminescence. Beautiful. That’s not good. That’s got to be one of those things that you’ll look back at 20 years from now and just go, well, it wasn’t that a magical moment, a magical time. And I mean, people would pay big money to get on some sort of drug to have that sort of experience, right? That’s amazing just to have all of that sort of come together. And probably I’m guessing like the further you’re getting into a swim, the more you’re just getting into the groove, but you’re also, I mean, obviously lucid, but the longer these events go, the more you tend to, the more you tend to just, you’re not fully there kind of thing, like you’re really just in the moment, right? Is that what you, what you felt and experienced? You give yourself over to it, don’t you? You give yourself over to feeling, this is the universe, this is my environment. You are just flying through the stars

in a good pace, but not a breathtaking pace. Everything’s there for you. It was beautiful. You’re right. I shall remember that forever. And I’ve, I’m an emergency for myself and I know plenty of other guys who go to sea and very few have seen 10 hours of bioluminescence in the water. And I don’t know anybody else who’s seen that, but man, what a, what a reward if the clouds had to be, you know, we had been a bit more clouds that would have blocked out the line. How I got a full night of bioluminescence was just like a reward from the universe. It was just came together wonderfully. So the only thing that was upsetting that was getting stung by bloody blue bottles. And that was interrupting. I had imagined that I could get into that zen state you mentioned before and just proofed away, get into the rhythm, listen to your own bubbles, feel your own rocking back and forth, bioluminescence. And I could have just gone on forever that way, but the stinginess and

it chipped away as death by a thousand cuts. Talk to me about when the sun started to come up. So you started at six o’clock in the morning, you’re getting to six o’clock the next morning, so 24 hours into it. What was that experience like? And are you getting updates on how far along you are? Or are you just sort of going with the flow? You probably can see some landmarks here and then maybe like, what was that like for you coming into the next day? The second sunrise, I was 16 kilometres at sea, so I couldn’t see anything, any land.

And the land has a very clear operational requirement not to tell swimmers where they are. And that works perfectly well for channels. The English channel can be so deceiving sometimes. Molokai, you think you’re nearly there and you’ve only got 20 kilometres to go. So it’s a good idea not to, but we had discussions afterwards. And for me, I would want to know where I am in future. It settles my mind down, and it doesn’t matter if you’ve got 24 hours more to go, as long as it’s in my head. I think every swimmer will be different. And I think it’s a conversation that coaches should have with their swimmers before they take off. It could work forward, it could work against, but for me, I desperately wanted to know how far I had to go, where I was, am I making way? Because sometimes the currents are with you, sometimes they’re against you, 16 kilometres at sea, and you’re into your 25th hour of swimming. So that was okay. It was not a bad sunrise. It was okay. You’re tired,

sunrise is the excitement’s wearing off a little bit by the second one. The water’s still very clear. The stingers are still there every 20 minutes, and I can feel it starting to get a little bit lumpier. Our weather window would have suggested that there was a front, a subtly front coming up, and it should have been 24 hours away, but it was coming up much quicker. That was coming up to meet me. I was still 16 kilometres out at sea, and I’m making a decision I’m going to swim through this front, but 16 kilometres at sea, he’s been swimming for at this stage 28 hours. What are we going to do? They made a decision to bring me closer to the coast so that if I needed to get out earlier, I could have been closer to the coast rather than having another five hours in.

I did, and the front kept on coming, and I kept on coming in, and I’ve seen weather maps after it. It’s just like I nicked in front of that, and I didn’t have to go through that front. They steered me directly to Palm Beach, that’s the Sydney beach, so that would have achieved, and it certainly did achieve my objective to swim from Newcastle to Sydney, and it was still a very, very long way to go. My daughter was kayaking for me, and even she was listening to Vlad rather than her own father. I said, how far to go? It’s just there. It wasn’t just there. It was still four or five more hours, and at one stage I got the captain, and I swam towards the boat, and I said, you tell me how far I’ve got to swim. This was just before daybreak. He said, I think you’ve got another 12 hours to go. I thought, oh, God, so I have it all tanned, I just wore underwater, but as long as you’ve got that 12 hours in your head,

you’ve got 12 hours. That’s all I needed to get my head around something, but with all the stings, with the weather starting to close in, I’ll start to hallucinate. The sun had risen, it was probably nine o’clock in the morning, on my way into Palm Beach, and I started to imagine that there were crash rails on a highway either side, and they said, swim towards that. I’d swim towards that, but the current would take me somewhere else, and it’s just outside of a big waterway, so the waterway was emptying, the current was coming out, the tide was coming out, but water was confused. I was confused. I’ll start to hallucinate. That was probably the toughest part. Of course, I always had my little blue friends to shock me back into reality, and that didn’t just become harder and harder. Something I did experience is hallucinations aren’t rainbows and unicorns, every swimmer knows. There’s something much different, and it’s a state of mind more than

anything. My state of mind was telling me that, sure, you’re getting stung and getting stung across the face, but everybody’s getting stung across the face. Sure, I’m tired. Everybody’s tired. Sure, I’m just feeling like I’ve had enough of this ocean going up and down, but I imagined everybody was in the water with me. It was like a big training swim. I don’t know why, but it kind of helped a little bit and stopped me complaining about the stings, and I just needed a direct line. At one stage, I could see the beach. I thought, now I’m getting closer. Now I know exactly where I’m going. Things started to settle down. The kayaking crew was sort of putting up with a bit of grumpiness from me. That was great. I wasn’t feeding or taking water as much as I should, but I still felt all right just starting to lose concentration a lot. At that stage, I thought, this swim isn’t over, because if I lose it, I’m not going to get to the beach, and it’s not going to be a swim.

I just lobbed in on the kayak, and I thought, the kayak’s here. I’m swimming here. All I had to do is follow that big orange thing, and so that helped me get through the worst of the hallucinations. Then you’re heading towards Sydney. Could you see the big headland there as you’re sort of making your way? Is Palm Beach, is that the very top of Northern Beaches? Yeah, it is. It’s near Barron Chilling Lighthouse.

Could you see that landmark? You’re like, okay, I know where I am now? No, I could. It’s a bit hazy. I think there were some bushfires or whatever. I couldn’t see it, still in kind of a hallucinogenic state. I just got closer. Vlad was telling me, this is where you’ve got to go. My daughter’s telling me the boat, so crash rails, everything sort of will leave me to the right way. As I get closer, I could see a lot of white water in front of me. The swell really started to pick up, and that was like a big sand bank, maybe a kilometer out of the beach. That was picking right up. I know now that the entire beaches were closed because the swell was so big it was dangerous for anybody to swim or surf. All those beaches were closed. What I could see was the white water getting picked up as it was smashing directly onto the sand. That was the least of my problems. The crew, Warwick, had contacted the lifeguards and said,

we’ve got a swimmer coming in. No one’s to touch him. No one’s to get in front of him. All the rules that we know. And I didn’t know, but this guy, this young guy paddled out and said, Dean, the best way is to go towards those trees. It’s going to be rough as hell, but those trees will offer you the least resistance coming in. Stay away from here because it’s breaking, net breakers on the beach. Okay, so I was famous. I wonder how that bloke randomly knew my name. Of course he’s been talking to the crew. My daughter who’s been with me, I know a lot of swims jumped in and she wanted to come in behind me and finish the swim with me. Vlad was the same, so they were having a great time just crashing through the surf. And then I tell my daughter, it’s a bit tongue-in-cheek, but I was posed with a question, should I save my daughter when she gets tumbled by the waves and risking losing the swim? Or, you know, will she understand? Well, she’ll understand. But she was rescued by

we can look at lifeguard. So she wasn’t unhappy about the result. But I come to sure, and just before I could see the white waves crashing, I can hear it crashing. I kind of know that it’s going to be a rough finish. But I see all these people with clothes on up and down the beach. And it wasn’t a beach day. It was a terrible day for visiting the beach. And I thought they must have been some corporate meeting or something and then come down for lunch or afternoon tea. I think it was around two o’clock. What are those people doing? And as I changed course, as they’re directed by the lifeguard, all these people ran down the beach. They looked so out of place. I thought it might have been a religious ceremony or something was going on. And I thought, look, I’ve changed course. And now they’re all going to get in the way where I’m going to stand. This is really rude. Can they just get out of my bloody way? And I don’t want to touch anybody right at

the end. Anyway, the waves come. I got tumbled over a few times. My daughter was getting looked after. Vlad looked after. That was fine. Got to my feet and walked ashore. And I felt good. I felt good. I threw my arms in the air. My wife was there. It was a strong finish, I think. Wow. And those people on the beach, that was there? Was that media? Was that people would come out to see you? They’d heard the swim was finished? It was all my friends. They came from Koogy. They came from the northern beaches. All the people I’ve swam with over the last five, sometimes 10 years, came from everywhere to welcome me ashore. And they’d been following the tracker down. And they’d been exchanging emails and texts and everything else. So it was a real buzz. But I didn’t think that. I had it in my head. Oh, okay. How am I going to get these kayaks back to my home? How am I going to pack the boat up? What’s the boat crew going to do? Oh, God, I hope there’s something left in the

fridge. I’m hungry as hell. I think I could really slam some soda water because my face, my nose has burned 31 hours from the salt. The throat was burned. And just as I was coming in, I missed this bit, just as I was coming in, a blue bottle got me right across the face and sort of swung its whole body up my nostril. And that was like 20 meters away from the end. So I’m cuddling in the turn trying to pull this thing out of my nose. They just didn’t let me go. But I was so surprised that they were all my friends. And it was just a really beautiful thing. And how would you say you were when you finished? Did you start to come to a bit more because it’s finished? Were you quite lucid and able to recognise what was going on? I saw I recognised someone with a bottle of champagne and that felt very good down my burnt throat. But I gave a television interview. There was one TV camera there. I gave an interview within four or five minutes. So I felt good. Apparently I could speak okay to them.

I spoke to everybody around the place. I was lucid. The hallucinations were at a time. I think I came out of those before I came to the beach. The crashing beach and the white surf sort of made me refocus my attention. I was fine. It was strong finish. I was standing up talking to everybody. I felt good. And I remember consciously feeling my shoulder because I had a reconstruction less than two years ago. And even as weary as I was in my mind, I could put all my body weight on the shoulder and that was a great feeling too.

And what about six weeks after the swim now? What’s it been like since you’ve set this big goal? You’ve trained for it? You’ve accomplished it? Is there a sense of, obviously a sense of satisfaction with it, but are you already sort of looking at what’s the next thing? Where are you at in terms of goals and what’s next? What a crazy sport we’re involved in. Everybody says, well done. What’s next? That’s good. You’ve set an Australian record 95 kilometres, but you’re not going to sit on that for a while. It’s been six whole weeks.

But it does. The things are going through my mind. I’ve still got a high level of fitness, I think. What is next? I don’t know. I’ve got some ideas. I’m talking to people about it, but I picked up a lot of things. One of the most important things for swims over 24 hours is to analyse how you’re going to manage fatigue. We can’t, and I’ve talked to a lot of people, Phil Rush and I had a couple of conversations about this, and he’s a triple English channel swimmer, so he knows about fatigue. He’s a great mentor and he’s got a wealth of information. So we spoke about fatigue in general, and you can’t build up a bank of sleep. So you can’t sleep for two days before and then don’t need to sleep for two days. Anybody who goes out the pump knows that. But you can rest up and make sure you’re as rested. I do some meditation before a swim. If you can chisel at that time and have sometimes very, very quiet, like 24 hours before you swim, that helps a hell of a lot. I’d played for that,

but because of the nature of the window and the rushed logistics right at the end, I didn’t get a chance to do that. And in fact, the pub where we stayed across the road from the marina where I was joining the boat had karaoke night that went until three o’clock in the morning, and I had the room directly above the pub, the karaoke machine. But lucky me, I didn’t get to sleep till probably three o’clock and we were out by 4.30. So that’s just the way things happen. If I, when I do something else, it’ll be very, very deliberate to get a lot of rest beforehand. And of course the effects of constantly getting stung have a mental aspect to them as well, not only physiological. As in, as in now, still having an effect or just throughout the swim you’re talking about? Throughout the swim. So if, if I could swim without jellyfish or getting stung, I think you can preserve the time where you’ll have onset of hallucinations or critical fatigue

if I can do that. Rest up first, try to swim when there’s no jellyfish. So two very important takeaways for me. For me, I had, you know, my neck was really swollen because the jellyfish were sort of gathering there and the skin had really swollen and the skin had worn away, so it was really bare flesh. My tongue had pealed out completely, didn’t sort of peel out of my mouth until I went to sleep the first night. I don’t know what happened to it. I looked suspiciously at my cat, but I’m not going to blame it, but my tongue was like a socket come out and there were, were just stings over my body, but there were any, you know, flesh wounds that weren’t significant. I didn’t hurt any part of my body and I felt great better than I had felt on any of the other big swims.

It’s amazing. It must also be nice finishing at home or close to home, right? Like you just, you’re not overseas, not in hotels. Like you just get to come home, you know, go to sleep in your own bed. You’ve got friends, you’ve got family around you. That’s got to be a good feeling too. Oh, that is the best feeling. That was really easy. You know, there was no packing up and even though it’s been the last couple of hours of that swim, wondering how I’m going to get kikes, you get the boat done, get these people. Of course, I shouldn’t know. Everybody could fix all that up and it was just hitting the car. Here’s some champagne. Here’s some kulebus and let’s go back to, let’s go back to Koji. That was good. But I think, and I’m talking about how well I felt afterwards. Vlad, I don’t think as coach, why no, hasn’t coached anybody to swim over 24 hours before. So he gave me a plan where he called it a swim week and I just took that away between Christmas and New Year.