Shoulder pain after swimming? Your technique could be the reason.

In this episode, we look at three common freestyle mistakes that can place unnecessary stress on the shoulder: an overly high elbow, crossing over the centre line, and overdoing the catch. Through clear demonstrations and underwater footage, you’ll learn how to make your stroke more natural, efficient, and shoulder-friendly.

A great episode for swimmers looking to improve their freestyle technique while reducing unnecessary strain.

00:10 – Why Your Shoulder Hurts After Swimming

Transform your freestyle to be effortless and smooth with online video analysis:

Try the new Nanoclear Anti-fog Goggles: https://bit.ly/nanocleargoggles

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In this episode, Brenton Ford interviews Jan Prins about freestyle biomechanics, stroke mechanics, and the latest technology used to analyze swimming efficiency. They explore how subtle changes in technique can significantly impact speed and performance.

00:10 Introduction to Jan Prins and his expertise in swimming biomechanics

Transform your freestyle to be effortless and smooth with online video analysis:

Try the new Nanoclear Anti-fog Goggles: https://bit.ly/nanocleargoggles

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In this episode, sports dietitian and researcher Taryn Richardson dives into the science behind red light therapy, exploring its potential for recovery, performance, and overall health. She shares practical advice on device selection, optimal usage, and the science-supported benefits for athletes seeking faster recovery and better performance.

00:39 What is red light therapy and its scientific basis

01:25 Historical research and terminology: photobiomodulation

02:22 Claims and benefits of red light therapy

03:19 Applications in physiotherapy, veterinary, and sports

05:17 How red light interacts with the body and mitochondria

07:37 Mitochondria as batteries and the effect of light wavelengths

08:59 Impact on performance, recovery, and sleep

10:34 Best timing for red light therapy: post-exercise recovery

12:31 Using red light therapy for injury and tissue repair

13:37 Types of devices and market options

16:12 Choosing quality devices and verification

18:01 Optimal distance and wavelength considerations

18:47 Personal routine and practical tips

20:39 Additional light exposure strategies

21:40 Athletes adopting red light therapy

22:37 How to access Taryn’s masterclass

23:31 Infrared vs red light therapy: differences

24:22 Expected benefits and user experiences

Transform your freestyle to be effortless and smooth with online video analysis:

Try the new Nanoclear Anti-fog Goggles: https://bit.ly/nanocleargoggles

Taryn Richardson

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Discover the nutrition secrets that could make or break your next long swim—are you fueling properly?

Swimmers and endurance athletes often overlook crucial aspects of fueling, leading to fatigue, poor recovery, and even injury. In this eye-opening episode, registered sports dietitian Eliza Kelly shares behind-the-scenes insights from a 55-kilometer open water swim, revealing how altitude, heat, and unexpected challenges demand real-time nutritional adjustments. Her experience coaching elite swimmers and triathletes will change how you approach long training sessions and races, ensuring you stay energized and perform at your best.

00:11 Introduction to the episode and guest

Transform your freestyle to be effortless and smooth with online video analysis:

Try the new Nanoclear Anti-fog Goggles: https://bit.ly/nanocleargoggles

Get in touch with Eliza:

https://www.fluidperformancenutrition.com.au/

The post Why You’re (Likely) Under-Fuelling And Under-Performing with Eliza Kelly appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

How To Swim Freestyle With (Almost) Zero Effort

Want to swim freestyle with less effort while moving faster through the water? In this episode, Brenton shares the three key principles that make freestyle feel smooth and effortless: improving your balance and body position, using rotation to maximize efficiency, and timing your stroke and kick so your whole body works together. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced swimmer looking to conserve energy, these simple technique adjustments can help you swim farther, faster, and with much less effort.

00:46 The #1 Secret: Let the Water Hold You Up

01:23 Head Position for Better Balance

02:59 Use Your Lungs to Improve Buoyancy

04:29 Step 2: Rotate for an Effortless Stroke

05:15 Relax Your Recovery

07:40 Step 3: Master Your Stroke Timing

11:53 Beginner vs Faster Freestyle Programs

Transform your freestyle to be effortless and smooth with online video analysis:

Try the new Nanoclear Anti-fog Goggles: https://bit.ly/nanocleargoggles

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 video I’m going to share with you the easiest way to swim freestyle with almost zero effort. If you look at the smoother swimmers at your local pool, you’ll notice that they’re probably not trying harder than you. They might not even be fitter than you. But what they do really well is they know how to let the water support them and balance their body and how to use their catch, their rotation, their kick and their timing to help propel themselves forward with very little effort. So in today’s video I’m going to share with you the three things that will help you swim freestyle for almost no effort, but it’ll make you look smooth, it’ll help you move through the water very comfortably and it might even be a little bit faster than what

you’re currently doing. So the first thing that we want to make sure we get in place is that we let the water hold us up. We let the water balance our body because if we’re swimming in a way where our hips and legs are really low, it takes so much effort to overcome that. And the very first thing I always go to is head position because your head weighs five or six kilos, so how you hold your head in the water can really impact what happens out the back of your body. So the way I like to think of this is we look anywhere from straight down to 45 degrees and more importantly think of your head like an iceberg where just the top of it, 10% or so is above the water, but the majority of it is below. And that’s one thing that will help you balance in the water. Now, the second part of this is how you hold your body. And this is your posture. Now, you may never have thought about posture before when you swim, but posture

is very, very important. And the reason for that is if you have bad posture or poor posture when you swim and the way I think of that is like a teenager lying on the couch, hunched through the shoulders. It’s really hard to firstly use your stronger muscles like your lats. Secondly, your body is going to have this curve through it and it won’t have this tautness through the frame. And we want to be like a needle, not like a noodle in the water. So we need to think about being tall and proud and really long through the body. And the other part of that posture is imagine you’re trying to squeeze into a tight pair of jeans where if you did that squeezing here, you’d suck your tummy and you’d squeeze your butt cheeks together. I’ve got that from Andy Donaldson, which is a good way of thinking about it. Now, with that posture and frame of the body, we have this tautness or this little bit of tension through the body so we’re not wriggling and moving around.

And that is the real key to then being able to use your lungs for balance and buoyancy. Because for most people, your buoyancy will come from your lungs, the air that’s in there. So if you imagine you’ve got a balloon, you try and push it down. It’s really hard to do. It wants to come back up because of all the air. Now, we’ve got a similar thing here in our chest with our lungs. So if we hold our body tall and proud and we apply a little bit of downwards force through the chest, that’s going to help bring the hips up and the legs up because that’s going to change the balance of our body for the better. So we need to do those couple of things to make sure that we are horizontal and not dragging our toes along the surface of the bottom of the pool. Now, the third part there is with our legs. What do we want to do with our legs? They are not necessarily for propulsion, even though you’ll get a little bit from it.

Your legs are more to help you rotate to the other side and to help counterbalance you as well. So the way I see the legs working is it’s not like we’re using them to kick really hard and move ourselves forwards. It’s like if you were to throw a ball, you’ve got something stable to press off of and then you can really throw a ball fast and a long way. But in the water, we’ve got nothing stable to really work with. So our legs out behind us are providing that counterbalance to work with, to be able to press off and help us rotate to the other side. So that’s the main purpose of it. And the key to swimming with almost no effort and making sure your legs do the right thing is I want you to feel like you’re bringing everything into the center, like you’re almost bringing your inner thighs together and we’re just doing this little flick of the foot and that little flick of the foot is going to help you rotate to the other side

as opposed to doing this big kick like you’re riding a bike, for example. So if you can do those three things, that means that you’ll be horizontal. You’ll feel the water supporting you. And that is step number one to swimming with freestyle with almost no effort. So the second step in swimming easy freestyle is using our rotation to help us recover easily and to help us reach and be long in the stroke. So we’ve built the frame of our body. The next step is we’ve got to rotate side to side. Now, we need to rotate enough so that we can comfortably recover our arm over the top of the water. Because if we stay flat, it’s really hard to get the arm over the top because our shoulder just doesn’t work very well that way. So we need to rotate enough to comfortably get the arm over the top. Now, the important thing here with our recovery is that it’s called recovery because we shouldn’t be tense and shouldn’t be stiff.

So I like to think of a relaxed hand or relaxed wrist as I come over the top of the water. And we want to be opening up this underarm here, almost showing this underarm to the side of the pool. And we want to feel like the elbow is the thing that’s almost carrying the rest of the arm over the top. That is how we have this relaxed recovery. Whereas a lot of times people will be very stiff and very tense as they come through. So we want this sense of relaxation over the top. And your arm weighs a couple of kilos. So that means that when we swing this arm forwards, we generate some momentum with it. And if we do this in a relaxed way, we carry that momentum forwards. And then as we enter the water, we want to enter fingers first with our elbow up. Because in that position, we’re going to carry that momentum in and send it out in front of the shoulder. And that’s where we start to get that feeling of like we’re skating through the water

or gliding through the water without much effort. Now, once we enter with our fingers, we want to feel like we are just straightening the arm in front. Don’t feel like you are spearing the arm in because it can cause you to do some funny things. We want to feel like we are just straightening the arm and that will send us out in front. Now, you’ll notice as I rotate, that also gives me a little bit more length in the stroke. I get a little bit further up here. And so generally a longer body is going to be a faster body. So that will help us get an extra few centimeters within the length of our stroke as well. So we want to rotate enough to comfortably recover and enough so that we can get into a good long position and strong position with our arm out in front of us. And a good position there to start is making sure your hand and your fingers are about underarm depth when we finish extending forwards. Because that’s where we’re going to be most streamlined

and that is a really good place to then begin our catch. Because what we don’t want to do is enter and drift up and put the brakes on as we call it. But we drift up and press against that water because that’s going to slow us down. I also don’t like it when swimmers go too deep with the hand because if you’re starting that far below your shoulder, that does create quite a bit of drag on the arm. So I like to teach get to shoulder depth when you finish extending forwards. And so our starting position or our base position every time is arm up here, rotated on the side, that is where we’re going to be very streamlined. And if you can transition from that position here to that position on the other side and you do that on a continuous basis, that’s when you start to get that feeling of this effortless way of moving through the water. But that’s not going to be enough. We need to make sure we do step three.

Step three to swimming freestyle with almost no effort is making sure that we time the stroke correctly and that we do something effective with our arms. So we use them as for propulsion. Now, the timing of our stroke should be what I’d consider front quadrant. Now, all front quadrant means is that if you split the body into four quarters, the front quadrant would be always having an arm above our head or in front of our head if we’re swimming. And the way that we do that is we need to make sure we’re patient with our arm as we’re extending forwards in front. So the last thing we want to do is enter and immediately go down. Even though it feels like we’ve got to get going when we want to pull through, you’re actually better off entering and extending out in front and rotating at the same time because you’ll be longer in the water and you’ll also be more streamlined in the water. And more importantly, it’ll help with your timing.

So if you keep that arm in front a little bit longer as you’re extending out and you give this arm a little bit of a chance to not catch up completely, but catch up almost to it. So we get to this position here where this arm is about to begin what we call the catch and this one is about to pass our head. That will mean you’ve always got something in front of your head. And the reason that’s really helpful for swimming freestyle with almost no effort is because then we get to coordinate all these different parts of our body together. So we first to get to begin the catch here. So we’re starting to press back. The momentum from this arm is going to come over and then we’re going to tie that together with our shoulder rotation where everything goes together. And that means that we’re not just swimming with our arms and our legs separately. It means we get to tie in the whole body. And that’s where you can really start to notice that difference.

So take a little bit of time to reach out. This arm comes through and then we swap. We swap. So almost this arrow position is like your trigger point. That is when we start to swap. So that’s the timing that we need. The next thing is with our arms, we want to make sure that we’ve got a good amount of surface area pressing back on the water. Now, the way that we do that is we want to get a high elbow catch. But rather than thinking of a high elbow catches, your elbow needs to be right up near the surface. That’s not a good way to think of it. Really, it just means the hand’s got to be a bit higher than the fingers. But the way I would think of it is if we’re looking on the side and we were to draw a line from my shoulder to my fingers, that elbow should be somewhere above that imaginary line. And that way we’ve got our hand and forearm, which is our big paddle, that’s going to be pushing backwards. And that means we’re going to move forwards with it.

So the way to do this is to not think of your catch as the power phase of the stroke, but think of it as the setup phase of the stroke. And all that means is we don’t want to muscle that initial movement because we’re not very strong overhead. And our main goal there is to get a high elbow catch, meaning we need the hand and forearm to face backwards. And it’s easier to do it if we go for something like a four or a five out of 10, in terms of the effort and the power through the catch, instead of a 10 out of 10. That’s where a lot of people try and rip hard at the water, which we don’t want to do, particularly at the start of the underwater phase of the arm. So in order to get that high elbow position, there’s two things that I think of. One is we want to get the fingers to point down. And secondly, we want the elbow to bend or fold. So it moves out to the side, it moves a little bit wider than the hand while it’s moving down.

And that gives us a space to be able to set up this high elbow position. Then you end up getting this big armful of water, which you can then accelerate back past the hip, and that is what’s gonna help move you forwards. There’s a number of drills you can do, which we’ve got inside of our membership, and you’ll probably see on this channel as well. But the main thing is we need to point the fingers down, let that elbow go out to the side. Now the last thing that’s gonna help you swim with effortless freestyle, where it just feels very, very easy, is to use our kick the right way. And your kick does not provide that much propulsion for most of the swimmers that I coach, but it’s very important to do it well. The main role of your kick is actually to help you rotate to the other side and provide a little bit of a counterbalance and stability out behind you. So the way that your kick works is when you’re reaching forwards

and you’re about to start your catch. So you’re in this streamlined position on the side. Your kick on that leg that is lowest in the water there, or the side that you’re on, that’s going to, you’re gonna kick down and that’s gonna help you start rotating back onto the other side. And that’s what’s then gonna help you go through your catch and your pull through, and you’ll be rotating back and that will get everything to work together. So if we’ve got something like what we’d call a two beat kick, which is one kick per arm stroke, then that kick is gonna be the thing that will help you initiate the rotation back onto the other side. And that is when you time that well, that is when it becomes really easy. So the way you can think of that, there’s two different ways to think of your kick timing. One is you can think of your opposite hand entering the water when your other leg kicks down. So that might be your left hand

enters the water as your right leg kicks downwards. Now the other way you can think of it is think of your catch happening at the same time. The leg on that side is kicking. So same side kick and catch. Now it doesn’t matter which one you think of, they’re kind of the same thing because if you think about it, your left hand is gonna be entering roughly when your right hand is finishing the catch and you can kick down on that right leg. Same thing, just a different way to think about it. Now that’s a little bit more advanced for a lot of swimmers, particularly if you’re new. But if you can get that right and use that kick to help you rotate back onto the other side, then your freestyle and your timing will feel very easy and that’s where it starts to feel effortless. Now if you’re not sure where to start, we have two courses available. One is our beginner freestyle program. The other one is our eight week faster freestyle program.

I’ll put the links below. If you’re a beginner and you’re struggling to go more than 100 meters, get the beginner course. If you can swim 400 meters without stopping, then the eight week faster freestyle course would be the best option. I’ll include those below. Thanks for watching. Make sure you subscribe. We put out videos every single week to help you swim 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 www.effortlesswimming.com.

The post How To Swim Freestyle With (Almost) Zero Effort appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

Tracey Baumann is back! Learn how better arm recovery can improve your balance, protect your shoulders, and help you swim with less effort. Tracey explains the most common mistakes that lead to shoulder pain, dropped hips, and extra drag, then shares simple drills to make your stroke smoother and more efficient. We also cover wetsuit fit and announce our Melbourne swim clinic on October 25. Tune in now!

00:33 Meet Tracey Baumann

Melbourne Freestyle Clinic with Tracey:

Website: https://swimmasteryinternational.com/

nstagram: https://www.instagram.com/swimmastery/?hl=en

Do you want to work with me personally to improve your technique? Join my swim technique coaching 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.

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.

The post Understanding Arm Recovery and Connection In Freestyle with Tracey Baumann appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

In this episode, I join the TriVelo Podcast to share my approach to swimming faster and more efficiently in open water. We discuss where to focus first when improving your stroke, the differences between galloping and balanced swim styles, why I believe many triathletes kick harder than they need to, and practical ways to stay calm and confident when racing in open water.

We also dive into my thoughts on the Enhanced Games and the journey behind developing NanoClear anti-fog goggles to solve one of the biggest frustrations swimmers face.

A big thanks to Gerard Donnelly and Jordan Donnelly from TriVelo Coaching for having me on the podcast. If you’re a triathlete looking to train smarter and race faster, be sure to check out TriVelo Coaching.

0:11 – The starting priority for your stroke

Transform your freestyle to be effortless and smooth with online video analysis:

Try the new Nanoclear Anti-fog Goggles: https://bit.ly/nanocleargoggles

If you want to learn how to TRAIN SMARTER and RACE FASTER, visit trivelocoaching.com.au.

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, Brenton Ford from Effortless Swimming. Thank you very much for joining us on the podcast for I think a record time, a fifth or sixth time. It’s great to be back. I love chatting to you guys. And look, if I can talk about swimming at any opportunity, I’m here for it. So thanks for having me back. Well, let’s jump straight into it. I won’t go into the nuances of the stroke because, because we’ve got, we’ve got a few key movers of what helps people improve. And the biggest movers seem to be, you know, your entry point, your catch, your pull, your body position and your breathing. And you talk a lot about those aspects throughout all your content, all your courses. But for anyone that’s going, I don’t know where to start or what to do. They’re all just as important as each other. What’s the priority? I, let’s say your breathing is comfortable. I would then always look at head, body and legs to, to start with, because

if you are bending through the hips and through the waist or your hips and legs are dropping, it doesn’t matter how good your catch and pull is you’re going to be working sometimes twice as hard to move through the water. So I always like to look at that. And even with very good swimmers, there’s often things that they’re doing that’s impacting that position. I was doing some analysis of one of the top pros last week, and her head position was too high. Her hips were sitting maybe two, three inches below the surface of the water. And she’s like, she’s been front pack Kona before. And there’s like, even that just head position, I think from just being in a squad, she looks too far forwards. And yeah, and there was room to improve on just that. So no matter how good you get, there’s always things with head, body and legs that we want to start with. Because then if you’ve got that in place, you can start to look at what the arms are doing and the rotation

and things like that. But it’s something that I spend a lot of time with in clinics, or in one on ones as well, because it’s just so important. It’s that fundamental that that base of the pyramid of the stroke that we always want to make sure we get right first. It’s interesting, I was watching the Australian qualifying championships last night and I don’t know if you saw it Brent and the 800 was on. And is it Sam short? I can’t remember the guy’s name. And what an action he had, and his body position to me and the camera work from the television was absolutely brilliant side on underwater. And he’s got this galloping stroke where like he sort of grabs and then when he did that, his head was well under the surface of the water. And it’s like he was swimming downhill and then coming up for a breath and going downhill. Is that kind of something you would try to get across to some of your swimmers? Yes and no, it just depends on the swimmer. So with

Sam, he grew up with a surf swimming background. So he was out in the open water, surf lifesaving. And so he said that’s where that stroke of his came from. And because we find a lot of open water swimmers have that tendency to have more of a gallop and they’re just kind of used to it, especially, I think Aussie surf swimmers because of the waves and things like that just lends itself to that sort of stroke. So for some triathletes, we might lean into that kind of gallop of a stroke if it works for them and then naturally gravitate to it. But for other swimmers, they’re probably better with a more balanced stroke. With Sam, so we, I did some filming with him a couple of months ago where I got to film him at slow speeds at that race pace. And what I noticed, what I noticed when he went fast compared to slow. So slow, he’s got a pretty balanced stroke. He doesn’t have that gallop. But as soon as he picks it up, he has that gallop.

And it’s with his left arm, he initiates that catch quite a bit sooner. And he’s just in the front quadrant, meaning like he’s just got an arm in front of him at that point, but it’s not much. So initiates that fairly quick. That lifts him up. And then he comes through with the other stroke where he’s a bit longer. And then when he sort of goes back down, that’s where he pushes the chest down the head. And he does actually go underneath the surface completely with the with the head. And it’s just, I think it’s just part and parcel with that gallop stroke that he’s that he’s got. But it’s like, yeah, it’s different strokes for different, different folks. And for him, like it doesn’t necessarily look like it doesn’t look smooth, doesn’t necessarily look that efficient compared to your traditional sort of freestyle. But obviously it works. He broke the textile. Yeah, Australian record, the textile record, I think the 800 was broken, you know,

like a full sort of body suit. Yeah. So works really well. And I think for open water, that can be a very good sort of stroke with that, with that gala, especially for a more powerful kind of kind of swimmer. It also points to that body position that you were just talking about is if you keep your head up, naturally, it’s hard work, isn’t it, for your hips and your legs to stay as high as possible. If you got your head up, that would be fundamentally fundamentally the the issue you’re trying to get streamlined position and putting your head down enables you to lift yourself up a little bit more. Would that be right? Yeah. And actually, that I did an analysis for a swim up in Queensland last week. He was under the impression that he had to be like a speedboat in the water. And if you’re thinking like Cam McEvoy, 50 meter freestyle, like in a way, yes. Like I remember hearing Cam McEvoy talk about he actually tries to

press down on the water a bit to help lift him up, to help him sit higher and reduce some of that drag over the course of a 50. But that is just not sustainable for what what we’re training for. And so this swimmer that I was coaching is a triathlete, half Ironman distance. He when I saw his video is just his face was in the water. His back and shoulders were really high out of the water, but he just wasn’t cutting through it very well. So I just spoke about, all right, heads like an iceberg, keep just the top 10 to 20 percent of your head in the water, maybe pressing the chest a little bit to help raise the hips up. And we want to be swimming at them, like basically under the water or just at the surface really, instead of trying to be this uphill. And that just clicked for him and he was swimming about three seconds faster per 100, but much less effort. And it was that difference from thinking he had to be a speedboat to just a normal boat

in the water, just traveling through it. And like I think probably for you guys, for me, that seems really obvious, but for someone who may not have that experience or is sort of dug that deep into technique, that can really be a light bulb moment. And yeah, and it just makes such a such a difference rather than trying to hold yourself up in the water. You must say that you probably see legs sinking and dragging back as one of the most common problems. And you said that getting that body position right first is key. What are the other keys to prevent that when that’s such a common drag that’s happening for a lot of athletes? Sometimes people they know they need to get the hips up, which which is a good thing. But sometimes people try and do it by sticking their bum up in the air to physically try and get that up. But in a way, I think you have to approach it almost the opposite of that where if you think about your posture

as being tall and proud and you have this open chest, so it’s like chest forward. And with your hips, you’re almost trying to tuck them underneath like tuck your tailbone underneath a little bit. Then you will be straighter through the whole body. And then if you apply a little bit of downward pressure through the chest, your lungs are there to where most your buoyancy is. And so when you push that down, that raises the hips because naturally everyone’s going to have low legs because the density of the muscles through your three legs there and because the buoyancy from your lungs. So everyone naturally is going to have their legs lower. So we need to work on that balance by firstly getting the posture right and this little bit of tautness through the body. Then we need to sort of press the chest in a touch. And so when people try and stick their bum up, their legs just drop. So it’s good for their hips, but it’s bad for the legs. They

end up slowing down. So I think sometimes that knowing that can also help them maintain a better body position. Do you see swim stroke as or this is how we see it in running? You know, there’s a lot of argument about what’s the most efficient running style, whereas everyone has such varied styles. And there is a huge, huge argument which we agree with that your go to running style is probably the most efficient for you because it’s how you’ve always run and sometimes trying to change it to quote unquote get more efficient would be counter intuitive because your body’s not used to it. And if the way you’re running is causing injury, that’s a different topic. But we see a lot of the top runners around the world with what you deem horrific running styles, you know, running 201 marathons, for example. And so do you see the same swim style as the same, you know, you see varied swim styles? Or do you think in swimming? No, actually, these

people should be improving their technique and they could go even faster. It’s certainly when more towards what you said, said bears like go with what naturally suits you and what you’ve naturally developed over time. Because, you know, I mean, again, you look at some of the elites from as there’s a guy, Italian guy, Greg Paltrenieri, he has this. It’s a pretty ugly stroke. It’s kind of like Sam short, but much faster rating. He has a bit more of like a crossover out in front under the body. But it works so well for him. And it’s very efficient for him. He doesn’t have the back end speed. So he has to kind of get a lead in the 1500 to win because the other guys come over the top of him because he’s got this big crossover kick. And he just doesn’t have a six beat kick that he can use to bring in that, bring home that last 50. But for him, he’s just developed it over time, super efficient, great for your 5K, your 10K, and obviously really

good in 800 and 1500 still. But he just lacks that back end speed. So but for him, I don’t think he would try and get him to have this like six beat kick even stroke. Like it’s just not what he’s worked towards. So that’s what I try and do. If I’m looking at someone, I want to see naturally what they lean towards and try and just take those good elements, maybe refine some of those things that is that are slowing them down. But people are just built differently. Like I like one of the one of our coaches, we were kind of analyzing my stroke and her stroke. And she’s got she’s got a much better catch than I do. But physically, I just can’t get into as good a position as her. I think just because of like mobility, how she’s built and that kind of thing. So yeah, just working with with what you’ve got and what you go towards is I think a much better way for most people. And then it doesn’t feel like as difficult to change. So that’s what I

normally do 90% of the time. You see a lot of really efficient swimmers with beautiful, nice, slow, controlled strokes, and they sit perfectly flat on the water. And that is where their efficiency comes from because a lot of the time when I’m looking at these videos of these really beautiful strokes, it’s impressive how few strokes they’re taking per lap. And that doesn’t look like they’re trying. And yet they’re swimming possibly, you know, 28 to 30 seconds per per 50. And and they’re not kicking. They’re just, you know, flutter sort of thing. And then you’ve got other people who think, Oh, in order to get my body level, I need to get my feet up. So I need to kick more. Where’s the compromise between those two sort of scenarios? The the pro triathlete I mentioned before. So she

mentioned this because she had her legs were just straightened behind her when she was doing effectively nothing with the legs. And that was limiting her her speed. And so they were just a passenger along for the ride with her stroke. You know, that’s one of the things we who it is.

You don’t have to. Yeah, no, it doesn’t know. It was Chelsea Chelsea Cedaro. Okay, so I’ve done a little bit of work with her last season and then this season. And she so then what we’ve worked on is just being a little bit more active with the kick. So it wins either a two beat or four beat kick most of the time. And it’s just a little bit of a flick of the foot to help her rotate to the other side effectively. And with like, she’s not someone who’s going to be going to a six bit kick with it, but the raising the hips and the legs up by kicking, it’s just like the kicking part is such a minimal part of having good body position that you do not. Yeah, you just don’t need to think about that as the thing to keep your legs up. Just a little bit of a flick of the foot’s going to do the do the job there. And it’s just like our leg muscles are big, they’re strong. But the way that we kick is not an effective use of those muscles. And so we want to

make sure that it’s it’s light. I like to say two out of 10, like maximum for your triathlon or for your triathlon swim any more effort than that with your kick is probably going to cause you to to tire because that speed comes from good body position. And then the right rotation and it’s it’s mostly your arms that are doing the work. So it’s certainly not the kick even though it does assist you. Such a good point because I think a lot of people would be shocked at that two out of 10 statement, you know, to think, oh, wow, is it really that low? You know, people would probably think and I’ve had this experience where, okay, I’m probably kicking too hard. I’m probably kicking a seven or eight out of 10. Let’s dial it back to a five or six or seven. But you’re saying no, two out of 10 is about the limit where you want to be. Yeah. And look, it might come up to a, yeah, maybe three out of 10 or something. If you’re bringing it home and you

wouldn’t really need to bring it home and a triathlon. But you know, if it is a swim race, then you might bring it up to more like a six out of 10 towards the end. But you’re not going to hold that for more than probably 100 meters, 150 meters if you if you’re really fit. So yeah, it’s much less than what you what you’re thinking. If you look at the Australian trials are on at the moment in the pool and most of them in their longer distance events will bring in the legs in the last 50, maybe the last 75 or 100, because you just can’t hold it for much longer than than that when you are kicking hard. And it doesn’t give you that much extra either. Like it might be an extra half second, a second, maybe a little bit more for a 50. It’s just not that much more for the amount of effort you’ve got to put in. I was just wondering, do you think athletes should train the kick triathletes? I’m talking not pool swimmers should try open water swimmers

should they be getting their legs strong so that they so kicking training so that it becomes more easy on race day? Should should that be part of their program? I think for I think for some swimmers that can be that can be helpful. So with a wet suit, you’re hardly going to be kicking at all. So if all your races are with the wetsuit, you may not benefit a lot from it. But for a lot of swimmers, I work with, I do like them to do at least some kick as part of their warmup. One, I can build the leg strength a little bit. But more than anything, it just kind of helps them get used to the, I guess, the feeling of having an effective kick, because you’ll feel and you’ll see how fast you’re moving when you’re doing kick, whether that’s on your side, or your front, or your back, like it, lots of different ways to do it. But I think it’s good to include as part of your warmup for a lot of swimmers who are kind of at that intermediate or

above level. I think it’s a good thing to do. And it doesn’t have to be a lot, because it does take time. It’s pretty slow for most people. It might take them two minutes per 50 to do. So I don’t want them spending 20 minutes doing just kick. But it’s something that I’d do with quite a few swimmers. We have the dilemma, obviously, of a lot of the swimming days where we’re trying to get their legs a little bit rested as a triathlete for the pike and run. So I’m always worried that adding the kick in is going to make it worse another day where you’re actually not giving your legs much of a rest. I mean, it’s with the kick. I like with the sessions that I write for just our local squad, we might do four 100s where we’re going 25 skull, 25 kick, 25 drill, 25 swim for each of those hundreds. And like that’s we’re getting a little bit in there. That’s a total of 100 meters of kick just to kind of warm up the legs, make it a bit more

effective. It doesn’t often have to be more than that unless we’re specifically trying to fix or change something with their kick. Like we often have people who are bending too much at the hips and knees, like they’re riding a bike or kicking a ball. And so we might do a little bit more kick just to work on straightening that out and making it narrower. But no, you’re right, like often you need to rest the legs if they have had a big run, big ride day. So it’s usually not not a lot. What is your experience like watching something like the Australian trials? Are you just can you not are you cursed with not taking your analysis hat off and you’re looking at all the underwater clips going up? What’s that catch that full that that that rotation that body position?

Now, it’s like it’s like Christmas Day for me. I love to I love to watch it.

It’s yeah, like I certainly am looking at their at their technique. But I think more just appreciation for the different styles. And I just use it as learning and education more than anything. Like when the Olympics rolled around, I yeah, like you can kind of see who’s who’s swimming well in the heats and like who you think is going to win. And yeah, it’s just I don’t know, I feel like all the coaching and all the analysis and stuff that I’ve done over the last 16, 17 years. It’s like it all kind of comes to a benefit from that in a way just when you get to watching the Olympics. And I haven’t got insight and knowledge, but like I feel like I’ve got a better sense of that than anything any other sports I watch. So it’s just really cool to kind of see that and then see how it plays out in the finals and all of that. But yeah, I use it as learning because as you say, there’s so many different styles there. And the cool thing with when I

filmed Sam short, I had a bit of an interview with him as well. It’s like he’s just like all the pro traffic. There’s such normal people, just normal normal guys that put in a lot of work and they just continually refine, continually try and get get better. And even those elites and was like Sam said, he has a tendency to lift and throw his head around because of that galloping stroke. He’s got to be very mindful of his head position and not to lift up as he comes up and out of the water. And he made that mistake. I think at World Chance where he got second by hundreds of a second, he came off the wall in that last turn and lifted and and breathe. And so probably cost me. Yeah, it probably cost me the win. So it doesn’t matter how good you get. It’s always fundamentals and basics that it comes down to. It’s interesting, isn’t it? You know, some of those heats, there’s 24 swimmers who are at the elite level in the world, the 24 best

swimmers at the World Championships or the Olympics. And you think, what’s the difference between the 24th swimmer and the first swimmer? I mean, they’re all unbelievably talented swimmers that would win any local swim event in their state or in their country. Yet they’re they’re not quite at the podium level. And and it’s interesting you said with Sam’s breathing. That’s the one thing I noticed last night when I was watching. I couldn’t even believe that he was getting any air in because it was so tucked in. His breath was like the water wave was it was quite a minute area that he had to get some air in. It was absolutely fantastic. I was thinking, wow, what a really good control breathing technique he’s got. It’s funny you just mentioned that that was the thing that he’s probably been working on. Yeah. And he if you slowed down with it with a lot of those distance and is they don’t have that long to get the inhale to get the

breath. They a lot of them won’t come that far out of the water. But I think what you can take from that is that the people think they need this like this big space to not take watering when they’re breathing. But if you’ve got your head in the right position, you’ll get that bow wave that comes down and under your mouth. And it doesn’t actually need to be that long because we’re not taking this big gasp of air. It’s just this little it’s just like a sip of air. And that’s kind of enough to get you through to the next one. So obviously it takes a bit of experience and practice to get to that point where you feel comfortable just getting a small inhale, but it’s all you it’s all you really need and you see it with those elite swimmers. Speaking about distance swimmers and transitioning to open water styles, open water swimming, we really want to talk about transitioning from pool swimming to open water and really dive deep into this topic

because for us as coaches, you know, we would never ask our triathletes to just train on the indoor bike and and do all your sessions indoor and expect to race well on race day on the open road because you haven’t ridden the bike yet that you’ve got no bike skills. Same with running. We wouldn’t ask all your sessions on the treadmill and then go do your first run in the race outdoor. But unfortunately with swimming, it’s just not that many options for a lot of people. For most people to swim in the open water, you have to wait to summer and even then it might not be possible unless they live near a beach. And so how do you how do you think about coaching someone through to being able to transition to the open water, even if they can’t get the experience of actually doing it that frequently? So if we think about triathlon, a half Iron Man and Iron Man even a shorter distance. The there’s a couple of things there that will be different

than what you’ve done in the pool. The first one is going to be perhaps the distance that you’re swimming nonstop. Because most of our swimming in the pool is going to be interval based hundreds, two hundreds, maybe four hundreds. So are you used to and are you comfortable swimming 1500 or 2k or 3.8k without stopping? So I think part of it is just getting used to continuous swimming. And so if you can’t go to open water, then maybe you have to do some longer longer swims without a break as part of your training in the in the pool. So I think that’s one factor. The other thing is it might be a wetsuit. And so you can you can wear your wetsuit in the pool. If you can’t get to the open water. And I think it’s well worth doing that maybe once a week, a couple of weeks leading up to your event, just to get used to it. Because it is like it is different. It feels very different because of how high you see it. You’ve got less mobility through

the arms. It’s a different feeling. So if you get to race day and you haven’t worn your wetsuit, you will feel maybe like you’re constricted with your breath. Maybe like you can’t get the arms out of the water. So you just have to get I think get used to it and do that in the pool. I mean, where I swim in Geelong, there’s a heap of triathletes there who I see with a wetsuit on at least once a week as they’re going towards their towards their races. The other thing there is in the pool, you’ve obviously got the turns. And if you’re in a 25 full, that’s a lot of turns. You know, 1k, that’s 30, was that 39, 40 turns? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that’s like, that’s a, that’s a lot. And so you can get a little bit of a break on the wall. You’ve got the push off. So you get a bit of speed with that as well. Even if you’re not quick or great at turns, you still get that boost in speed. So sometimes people’s perception of what they can hold will

be faster than what it actually is nonstop without turns, because if you’re getting 40 push offs, that’s 40 times where you might be getting a bit of extra speed. So, yeah, if you’re holding 130s in a 25 meter pool, maybe that equates to 135 or maybe slower than that in the open water without the turns. So it’s, it’s worth factoring that in as well. And not necessarily thinking that your 25 meter pool pace that you’re doing, say 10, 100s on is what you could hold for a half ironman swim. It might be several seconds, might be five, maybe 10 seconds slower compared to pool pool time there and and race time. So that’s why I think just wear a wetsuit in the pool, do some longer, longer swims. And if you can, obviously get to the open water. The other thing is obviously going to be siding. You’re going to be siding pretty regularly when you’re racing. And so that can also slow you down. And if you lift up too high, hips will drop. That’ll slow

you down. So we want to get efficient with it. And I know we’ve talked about this on previous podcast, but siding the right way on YouTube, look up how to site, what is it, how to site and breathe effortless swimming. We’ve got an instructional video on that. And that just helps make your siding be a part of your stroke where your rhythm won’t suffer as a result. And and make sure you practice that in the pool as well. If you’re in a 50 meter pool, maybe a site three or four times each lap when you are practicing your siding. Obviously not for a whole session, but you’ve got to get used to that as well, because that is going to slow you down regardless of how good you are at it. But we want to try and minimize how much that will slow you down. The way I see it is there’s a bunch of contradictions happening once you go to the open water, because you’re probably slower because you’re not getting the turns, like you said. But a lot of people find that

with the buoyancy of the wetsuit and salt water, you know, they’re actually a lot more on top of the water than they are in the pool. And so they’re actually better for that reason. So a little bit quicker, but then as counteracted by yet breathing and siding is a lot slower. And if you’re really compromising your stroke, every time you start or breathe, compared to the nice small pocket of window you might have in a smooth pool action, that’s compromising. And so I guess it depends on each person, you know, how much their stroke suffers siding open water. But there’s all these contradictions that might make you a faster or slower swimmer open water. And if you are naturally quite buoyant, a lot of females will have a bit more, they’ll sit higher in the water. Naturally, without a wetsuit. If you put a wetsuit on and you feel like you just sit so high out of the water that like your legs are almost above it, you can have your head a little

bit higher. You can look a little bit further forwards. A lot of athletes kind of have to do that. Or if you’re like a guy, maybe a quite muscular and your legs are pretty heavy and naturally you find they sit low, a wetsuit is going to feel great and you’re probably going to find your speed will increase more even several seconds more per hundred than some others. And so, yeah, you’ve got back to factor in as well. I was going to say, there’s no doubt that when you’re doing ten one hundreds, you know, if you’re swimming in them as the example you gave on the 130, you know, you’ve got that rest, 10 second rest, 15 second rest, 20 second rest. So it’s a false scenario really because swimming 10 by one compared to swimming one case straight, there’s no rest. Even though you are swimming the 10 by ones faster, it will pan out to be, you know, way ahead of what you can do for a continuous swim. And I know you guys I think is it like a one K

time trial, sort of your like measuring stick? Is it what? Yeah, depending on where they’re where they’re out in the season and and how close they are. Yeah. And I know and man’s obviously, yeah, definitely right up to the full distance practice. But yeah, which which is so good, you know, it’s like you’ll get so much better data from that sort of test every every couple of weeks compared to yet something like a 10 100s to see what you can see what you can hold. It’s just and then you can base their pacing and stuff around that, which I which I know you do. So yeah, it’s a much better look at their actual long distance pace. So what’s the difference with with open water stroke? You mentioned that galloping is an example that might be more beneficial open water. What are you what are you saying to athletes about, you know, how to how to ride the open water, especially if there’s a bit of chop? What’s the most efficient kind of stroke for

open water?

I often look at the recovery first, so how you bring your arms over the water. So we sometimes need to go a little bit higher with the arm. So we don’t hit the waves. So a little bit higher with the hand or the arm be a little bit more assertive over the top and swing that hand forwards and carry that momentum over the top and in the water out in front of you. Because I think if you’re trying to be too pretty and perfect with that arm, either you’ll hit the waves or you’ll just kind of be thrown off by any any chopping wave. So I do like to look at recovery as one big factor there. So a bit higher, maybe a bit wider and faster. You will typically have a bit less glide when it is choppy. So you willing to shake the catch a bit, a bit sooner, particularly on one side. And if you breathe to if you breathe bilaterally, it’s you’re less likely to have a gallop. So normally that sort of galloping stroke or a bit more uneven stroke is better suited

to someone breathing on the one side. So if that is you, you’ll normally find that the side that you breathe to, say that’s your left, that left arm will initiate the catch a little bit sooner. And that’s where you’ll kind of get that that gallop. So yeah, we do find that tends to happen a bit more. But that that’s a very efficient way to swim in the open water is having that kind of gallop because it can help you just get into a rhythm that can go with with the chop and the waves. But it’s obviously it’s not for everyone, but it’s it’s worth experimenting a little bit with, especially with a wetsuit on where you have that buoyancy. And if you do come up and out of the water a bit on that earlier stroke, then you will sort of go down. But you’ll also sort of pop back up because that extra buoyancy in the in the wetsuit. Some other things with the with the open water. If you’ve got a wetsuit on, you’re much less likely to be kicking as

much, particularly swimmers who might be around that like 150 two minute mark, their legs might hardly be doing anything. And that’s that can be OK for that as well. Like you you just sit that high, but your legs are hardly, hardly moving. So that’s another thing that tends to happen. And people often go, look, I just my legs aren’t doing anything in the open water with a wetsuit. That’s OK. You know, it’s like, yeah, I mean, if you are sort of around that maybe 140 or faster, we might start to see those legs come in a bit, a bit more. But certainly above that, sometimes they’re not doing much at all. It’s interesting. A lot of swimmers can swim with the pool boy between their legs and they’re just as fast with the pool boy as they are when they don’t have the pool boy, when they’ve got the kick, which is a bit unusual. But I always like your your methodology of that slow to fast sort of

theory that you push on swimmers, which is that glide section. And this is an open water. It is a little bit more difficult, isn’t it, to get that because you’re getting that minute minute, minute, not minute, minute recovery. So when you’re coming over the top of the stroke and you’re reaching out, that’s the slow bit. And then you grab the water and that’s the fast bit. So just get go through that in the open water where, you know, if it’s a chop that it can be cause anxiety when you’re not getting that that slow, fast recovery. Because every kind of half a second really helps, doesn’t it with with you being less anxious, less, less on the stroke the whole time. Yeah, can you talk us through that a little bit? Yeah, so in our catch and pull, we want to think about accelerating through the through the stroke. And it’s a little bit like a car getting traction with the wheels. So if if a car just is stationary, and then you put the foot down

and straight away, you’re applying that power, there’s going to be that moment of spin until it kind of gets traction. And in the in the pool or in the open water, we want to start out that little bit slower. So we’re going to enter, we’re going to reach forwards for a little bit and initiate the catch where it’s we’re not going super quick or super hard. That’s where we’re getting that that traction and that length in the stroke. And then as we go through the back, we can start to accelerate. And it’s not like we’re going really slow to really fast, but we’re just gradually building up. So we need to accelerate to to move ourselves forward. And it’s easier to to do that because by the time your hand comes past your shoulder. And we’ve kind of moved the body past the hand, then it’s easier because we’re not having to sort of press overhead there. So it is easier to accelerate through the through the back end. But we just need

to make sure that we that we do it and we don’t go too hard and fast. I think because someone who’s not a naturally a swimmer or they haven’t grown up swimming, they think I’ve got to go pull harder and faster to go quicker. And that should start from the very get go of when my hands in the water. But what they aren’t accounting for there is the firstly, the streamlined position that you get into when you extend forwards and you’re on your side. So that is where we’re most streamlined in the stroke. And so we need and that’s where actually traveling the fastest. So we don’t want to ever goes like straight into that catch from there because we want to make the most of that more streamlined position. And from there, then if we think about that, the catch, well, that is our setup phase where we need to get our big paddle facing mostly backwards, our hand and forearm facing back so that we’ve got something to actually press back on to move us forwards.

And so we’re not looking to be strong and powerful there because we’re setting ourselves up to them be able to accelerate. And I think a way to keep to feel very comfortable and maintain your speed over a race. The thing I’ve really noticed when I was forming Sam short was that in his recovery and when he enters and extends, he is so relaxed. I’ve never seen us from it be that cruisey with their recovery arm and extension arm. But be able to generate so much speed under the water and so much, I think, unununforced power under the water. So I’ve played around with this a bit myself, my own my own swimming. And when I get it, it just feels really sustainable. It’s like you’re floating through the water. So if you are really forcing that recovery, that reach and catch, like it’s just it’s often too much. So I really like the thought of soft hands is a good cue or just relaxed over and out in front. Then you can build it up and put the power in

when you when it’s necessary. We’re big proponents of training, how you’re going to race. And again, to use the bike example, we don’t care what an athlete does on the bike, on the trainer. If they’re sitting on their road bike, standing up in the saddle, you know, we don’t care what power they’re doing. We want them in the TT position in the aero bike and shows what power you’re doing there. You know, because that’s how you’re going to race. But there’s a fine line, isn’t there between you feel a little bit silly in the pool with a galloping style starting every few strokes, you know, but you do need to replicate the way you go and just swim in the open water. And so this is the fine line we’re trying to ask you about is is you don’t want your open water stroke to be the first time you’re doing it in the race or the last few swims before your race. You know, you need to really practice that and get efficient at it in the pool.

But it just doesn’t feel natural when you haven’t got that rhythm in the flow of the open ocean that kind of feels a bit easier to have that more open style in the ocean, obviously. Yeah, it does. And that’s and I think with that stroke, like we saw with Sam, that when he swims easy, it’s it’s smooth when we when he goes fast, he has that gallop. So I think if you’re doing intervals and you’re going at race pace, where maybe you do naturally have that that gallop, then it is easier to do as well. So you don’t want to try and force like that sort of gallop stroke at a at an easy pace because it might just not not be there. So and that’s why you want to practice how you’re going to race. So those those sets that you’re doing, leading up to three or four weeks out from your race are probably going to be close to that sort of race pace. And that’s where you can you can practice it. Yeah, it’s it’s it’s all of it. It’s it’s that’s where you

what you said, getting in the wetsuit, acting like you’re near open water, getting into your space for one or two K or longer if you’re doing an Iron Man. And and and you end up being afraid to replicate that and teach your body and brain that your muscular connection that you talk about a lot, which is just takes time. And you can’t do it once and expect to just get on race day. Yeah, exactly right. And I think and you’ve probably seen this, too, is

as you start to get better at swimming and more proficient at it, more proficient racing, you like you’ve got to learn how to swim reasonably hard for long periods of time. And obviously, it’s all in balance with the event that you’re doing. But for those more experienced triathletes, they just have to get used to keeping the effort level at a certain pace or effort over that one point nine or that or that three point eight. And I think and it’s like on the bike. So I think of when I did Iron Man, there’s no way that I could keep. I couldn’t keep the foot down on the bike for a whole Iron Man. Like, I just didn’t have that experience. But if I’d continued to race a couple of years down the track, I feel like that’s something that I’d have to develop is the ability to hold a harder, harder effort. But yeah, as you get more experienced, that’s what we want to we want to see. And so what I’ve been doing with a couple of athletes that I coach

or giving them is these like sort of threshold sets where leading up to a main event, we’d want to do something like twenty one hundreds off two minutes if they’re coming in around one fifteen, one twenty and they’re looking to hold best average so as fast as they can hold across the set. So learning how to go hard for longer. Now, obviously, it depends on the athlete you’re talking to. But I’ve seen that with those faster athletes that that’s helped them get get better at racing and holding faster paces come race day. It’s a really great example of what you can do about it. And, you know, you could extend that if you wanted to to two hundreds, I imagine, which which would be, you know, even more difficult to make sure it’s really learning to execute, isn’t that that that average pace that you can do for 10 or 12 or 14 all the way up to 20. It might take a long period of time to get to 20. But the minute you start dropping off, you’ve executed poorly,

haven’t you? You know, you’ve reached your limit. You haven’t executed poorly. You’ve actually reached your limit of durability. And that’s what we’re trying to train here, isn’t holding the same pace. It’s no different to to riding or running in in an Ironman or a half Ironman. Can you find your power or your running pace or your swim pace that you can hold from start to finish? Yeah, that that set that I gave as a young guy who’s doing more like short course stuff. And he he’s like he never hasn’t quite been front pack. He’s just kind of been offered. And like technically was looking really good when I did some filming with him, but he was just missing, I think that sort of threshold piece, the ability to to go hard for longer. And so I think in that set, he was around like one maybe like one 12, one 13, I think long course. And so now he’s a short course is down to like one oh sevens, I think. So maybe like a one oh nine long course.

And like the extra couple of seconds will make the difference with him getting front pack. And yeah, just but he just didn’t have that type of training in his program at that point. And so for him, that’s what what helped. And so and often there’s different things in people’s program that they may have been missing in like they come to you. It’s like, all right, maybe we just need to get more K’s in the arms or maybe we need a bit more speed work, whatever it is. But often there’s gaps or holes in people’s training plans that they just need to fill switching topics to something that we speak about. I had spoken about a few times on on episodes with you, but we want to bring it up every single time because it’s such a constant sticking point and problem for athletes. And that’s swim anxiety. And we have athletes who are brand new, who have a lot of anxiety about the swim, especially they have not had much experience in the open water.

And athletes who have been swimming for a long, long time, you know, sometimes decades, but still get shocked with some some scary conditions with some, you know, news reports from some some not so nice things happening around races around the world. And so it’s a it’s a topic that comes up a lot. And we we go through we’ve gone through the basics a few times about we say at every race to people, don’t be afraid to just swim in your back, breaststroke a bit, catch your breath, settle yourself and then get back into it. It’s OK to take 30 seconds to reset, reset yourself and then get back into things for the swim. But but yeah, it’s a constant thing that comes up. And so what else comes to mind for you with with just dealing with the anxiety of the swim, no matter how, whatever you are, but you know, right through to experience. I normally look at how do we progressively get more comfortable in more challenging conditions?

So if you have the opportunity to swim in the open water, start as safe as you start as safe as you need to. And that might be swimming along the shore. Having other people there is a really good thing to do as well. Then progressively put yourself in more challenging conditions and environments until you sort of comfortable enough. So start small build up. That’s that’s the first thing. The other thing is if you’ve got a wetsuit on and even if you don’t, you can just sort of float on your back, head up to the sky, trade water and just kind of get your breath, your breath back. If you are out there and you’re like, I’m really quite panicked or not comfortable here, move yourself out of the way of the oncoming swimmers and just get your breath back. I think a lot of anxiety or that that feeling of like, I’m not comfortable. I’m starting to feel with with lactic acid. Often it comes from a bit of hyperventilation

where someone isn’t exhaling properly. Like it’s just this short upper chest breath where it’s like, so if you so what we try and get them to do is focus on the exhale. If you just focus on a couple of seconds exhale, mostly through the through the nose as you’re swimming, the inhale will take care of itself. So just focusing on the exhale and then that can help keep you a bit calmer as well. Because I find with a lot of people who even in the pool are not comfortable and they tire after one or two laps. It’s often because they have just sort of breathed in and then they don’t really breathe out. And so they might let out 10% of their air and they go to breathe in again, but they’ve still got that dirty air in the lungs that carbon dioxide. So we’ve just got to focus on the exhale. It’s often the case. A few other things. Oh, sorry. Go, go, go. A few other things is if you have the opportunity to do a little bit of a swim warmup,

that can help too. Because if you go from just heart rates at 60 and then you just jump in and you go for it, it might jump right up and that’s where you start to panic. So if you’re not gonna get too cold by doing a swimming warmup, then I would suggest getting it in swimming 200, 300 meters or more. Or if you can’t do that, even going for a light jog, maybe an exercise band warmup as well, just to get that heart rate up a little bit prior to your race. Just kind of expand the blood vessels, get that blood moving before you get in and start racing. Get yourself off to the start as well. Because if you’re with the pack, you’re probably gonna, you might get swum over if you’re not comfortable. Just give yourself some space and get away from people if you need to. I think that guide with the breathing is really crucial. And a lot of people talk to me about feeling that tightness. And I think sometimes it might be the wetsuit’s too tight.

But I think a lot of the time, it’s actually them basically saying what you just said is not breathing deeply enough and kind of, it’s almost like holding your breath for two or three minutes. And try doing that and see how your anxiety levels are. You need to breathe in and out. And I think that’s a really great piece of advice. And it’s something that I’ve used myself. And look, I’ve, you know, I think I’ve swum, I don’t know, 200 to 250 triathlons over 40 odd years. And I still have periods where I haven’t been breathing properly. And then I’ll go, okay, head up, five or 10 seconds, just breaststroke. Now we’re gonna break my swim because I’ve got a little bit of anxiety. I’m gonna break my swim into, I’m gonna swim for another 400 meters and give myself a reward. And then break it down to six by 400 or four by 400 for the next 1600 meters. And all of a sudden, the anxiety is, you know, your brain’s thinking a little bit differently.

Then don’t keep doing the same thing. Don’t stop breathing, but you need to keep the focus on, if I start breathing normally again, I reckon that anxiety is gonna disappear. And before I know it, I don’t need to stop because I’ve got my breathing back under control. So all the things you’ve said, the warmup, you know, getting away from other people which creates anxiety, breathing, they’re really good tips that, you know, for people who are coming up to their next race or their first race, these are really key things that will make your day so much more enjoyable. Yeah, there’s so many parts of that, Brenton, which are so valuable and starts with the preparation, which you spoke about and it’s slowly building out that preparation so you can get to race day just with a little bit of confidence in the prep you’ve done. And then so many physical things you can do during the swim to try and alleviate those panic symptoms.

But a lot of it comes down to mindset as well, which I really wanted to talk about because your mindset before you go into the water can really help set you up for a successful swim and just understanding that you’re in, only a minority of people are super, super comfortable, you know, most people are feeling the same as you. And that’s really important. And I was just talking to an athlete about this during the week because I had a really bad experience to swim last weekend. The chop was so bad and it was a two lap swim with an Aussie exit and half the race pulled out after the first lap because it was that bad, you know? And she was going, oh, I’m an experienced swimmer. You know, I really want to get back in the water for the second lap. Like it took all of me to get back in and go again because I just wanted to pull out. And I felt like it would be, you know, weak to pull out even though I was kind of terrified.

And I said, hey, if half the race has pulled out, you’ve got nothing wrong with, you know, with what you’re thinking, you know, you’re thinking the same as a lot of other people. And dad, you had this experience last year where again, you’ve been swimming squads since you were eight years old and there’s 60 years of swimming there. And yet you pulled out of a race halfway through for the exact same reason. You just said stuff, but I’m not going back in. And you don’t need to try and think of yourself as a hero. Just remember that everyone else is probably going through the same thing. And that is, there’s a little bit of comfort in that. And going, okay, everyone else is struggling. It’s uncomfortable. It is a little bit scary when you can’t, the water’s murky, you know? It’s a bit of an unknown. And I think just knowing that there is comfort in that and that can help you relax as well. And I think at the end of the day, like,

everything’s gonna be a learning experience. And if that means, all right, I had to pull out in the swim. I didn’t get to do the run and the ride and I’ve come a long way to do this. Well, all right, yes, that sucks. But at the end of the day, all right, I can learn from this. And you’ve always got that option. You’ve always got that option to stop if you have to. And usually those periods or those races or the things that happen to us that at the moment feel like, oh, this is there. This is one of the worst experiences of my life or my triathlon career. Often it’s the lessons that we get from that that help us get to that next level with our sport or in life. And so I think back to the most challenging times personally that I’ve had or even races where I haven’t enjoyed it with things that have happened. It’s like, well, actually that helped me so much, 12 months down the track, because now I know how to deal with it

or I can take a different approach. So yeah, in the moment, it’s no good. But when we look back, it’s often, yeah, I’m glad that happened. But it’s hard to say it at the time. It definitely forces you to think more about your preparation, doesn’t it? Well, why did this experience happen? It could be just the conditions and you haven’t been able to practice in those ridiculous conditions. And look in that scenario, Jordan mentioned with myself, I thought, well, I’m happy to DQ in this race, but I still want to ride and I wasn’t running, but I still wanted to do the ride. So I was happy to be disqualified, but just get on the bike and go and do a training session. And I’m not in the spirit of the event, but at least I didn’t waste the day. And look, it just gives you perspective of, maybe I need to think differently about the training preparation that I’m doing so that I don’t put myself back in this position. If you don’t do anything about that,

you haven’t really learned any lessons, have you? Yeah, exactly right. One of the last mindset shifts I wanted to start showing was this brilliant quote, which is really, really simple, but so, so powerful I think. And it’s focused on what you want and not what you don’t want. And so often we can stand on the beach before and all that’s running through our head is, oh, this is gonna suck. How hard is this gonna be? What’s out in the water? Are there sharks out there? Am I gonna panic? And of course when you start having those thoughts, you already start hopping, ventilating, and you’re starting off on the wrong foot straight away. Whereas if you just focus on what you want to happen, and it really starts with the self talk of, okay, I wanna have this good swim. I wanna ease into my stroke. I wanna get into that pattern. What’s my starting gonna look like? What’s my breathing gonna look like? Which all the things that you want to do,

what side am I gonna look at most? What boy am I going to aim for? What have I done in my preparation to make you feel confident? All these kinds of things. It just relaxes you a little bit more. And although you might still get out there and panic, that’s okay. At least you’re starting from a grounded place and you can do that with all the physical stuff you spoke about, Brenton. But I am curious, as an experience for me yourself, now what do you just say to yourself on the beach or on the start line? What’s your kind of self talk? I think it’s like our mind is it’s a goal oriented thing. We want a target or something to work towards. And especially when we break it into those smaller chunks, like Jay, like you were saying with her, all right, next 400 meters, I’m gonna reward myself. Like we want a mission. We want something to work towards. And so I think that’s a great approach is thinking how do we want this thing to play out?

And if you do have that discomfort or anxiety around the swim, if you have mapped out if this happens, then I do this, like if then. So let’s say, all right, let’s say I am uncomfortable. I feel like I need to stop 200 meters in. If you’ve got a bit of a plan for those different scenarios, then you can just work through them and you can problem solve. So I think that can also make your mind a little bit more at rest there. One of the things that’s helped me through a lot of challenging events loop. And one of those times it was with the Rocknest channel swim, I was 20K swim, it’s about 15K in and started to get hypothermia. And I was just, I was so cold and I probably underfed, but I just wanted to get out because I’ve never been that cold before. But in my mind, I just thought, I’m so lucky to be here. I’m so lucky to be here. How many people get to do this swim? How many people get to be in this situation? I’m so lucky to be here.

So for me having the mentality of just being grateful for the position I’m in, that’s helped me a lot. Even just kind of dealing with nerves prior to a swim. It’s like, how good is this? I get to race, I get to test myself against these other swimmers. I get to see where I’m at. That to me is really worked well. Just being grateful for the opportunity because I’m sure they’ll come a day where I can’t race and maybe I’m not fit or like, yeah, and so I think taking that into account that’s helped me a lot. Understand it’s normal to do as much physical and mental preparation as possible and that will hopefully help a lot of people out there which you set anxiety. And just know that a lot of people are experiencing the same thing. It’s very, very common. And so that’s why we wanna talk about it a lot. To finish off, I almost don’t wanna give this topic the lot of day. It kind of doesn’t deserve it, but I’m just very curious about your opinion

on the enhanced games and how that all played out. What did you think of it?

So I mean, two minds about it. So one is like, people can kind of do what they want if they’re not harming others. And so there’s nothing in my, I guess,

the way I sort of see things is people can do what they want. And so go ahead and have your enhanced games. But for me, like I didn’t honestly pay that much attention to it because I feel like it’s just not that interesting to me. But at the end of the day, it just seemed like it was a play to sell some supplements. And I think that’s all it really was, which has been honest. I didn’t actually see that coming. I was quite shocked with that. But then again, I guess it shouldn’t surprise you that there’s some sort of financial motivation behind it. And yeah, they’re kind of using these athletes for that. And I mean, those athletes that competed in it, some of them had some really good paydays and would have made a lot more than what they had in their say professional swimming career. So good on them for that. And maybe if I was in their position, I’d do the same. But for me personally, like as I’d go, no, there’s no way I’m injecting myself

with all these different drugs and all of that for essentially a good payday. I think long-term health, that’s really the only thing we’ve got. So yeah, to me, I wasn’t that interested. And a couple months back, they put out a promo video for the Enhanced Games and they took some of our YouTube footage of the guy, Dan Smith, and they had this sort of playing in their promo and someone put me onto it. So I did a video about that, just kind of calling them out on it. Not that I really cared about them using it, like it was pretty minuscule, but just a pile on because I wasn’t a huge fan of, yeah, of what they were doing. And yeah, it didn’t interest me that much. And it sounds like you guys were the same. Yeah, I mean, I think results-wise, both swimming and athletics, the results were dismal. So it was kind of, it was laughable. It was actually, yeah, it was the seriously laughable about all this hype about the protocols and stuff.

And that’s a rabbit hole itself, but yeah, the results were especially in 100, just 100 million athletics, so, so slow. And then interestingly with swimming, I didn’t pay too much attention to it to myself, but it seems like, because they all got to wear the illegal suits. It seemed like that made all the difference anyway, you know? And the swims were not much faster due to the performance than anything drugs, but they all just got to wear all those band suits and that got them over the line by 0.02 seconds or whatever. Yeah, yeah, and there’s so much more to it than just the drugs with that. And I like, I saw this guy, Cody Miller, who’s a, for like US breast striker. He was probably one of the, he was one of the guys who was like, probably still at his prime or very close to it, and he joined the Enhanced Games. He went maybe like 0.7 quicker in his 50 breasts, which is a good improvement from the drugs, but also he had the suit on.

So it was like how much difference did either of them make? So yeah, look, I’m sure it helps a little bit for the fifties and yeah, but it’s just, I don’t know, it was a bit of a, it was just such a flop. Yeah. It looked like, yeah. Dad, did you have any thoughts? Yeah, I don’t want to go too deep on it, but I just look, I’m a big believer in loving what you do, not for the end result, but for the fact that you love what you do. And at the end of the day, if you’re improving naturally, that’s really enjoyable. And the majority of us, so you can individualize for Olympics and for world championships. That’s a different community than the rest of the world in their health and fitness. We’re all doing it for different reasons, but normally it’s not that we are being defined by our result. So this is really, you know, all about the result rather than I just love riding my bike and I really enjoy going for a swim and if I could run a little bit more over doing that

because I like doing that and I like training myself to be better than I am last week. And so that really takes away all of that to be just result-based stuff, which I’m kind of not on board with anyway. On the complete flip side of the coin, to finish off, Brenton, you designed your own very legal, very safe and very good new high-tech goggles, nanoclear goggles. So can you just take us through a little bit? The swim goggles you just created and released, which is really exciting for yourself. Why did you create them and what was your goal for? So about 18 months ago, I came across this new way of basically treating goggles so that they fogged way less. I took it, say, last about 10 times longer with the anti-fog. And so when I tried this new technology, I was like, oh my God, this is so much better because I was going away on some swimming camps to like, took them to the Maldives and I was like, oh, this is awesome.

I can see the fish and the sharks and everything. Whereas I’m used to just like lasting about 30 seconds and then having to clear my goggles. So that was kind of the inspiration for coming out with our own goggles is this new technology that was just so much better meant I didn’t have to buy a new pair of goggles every A race that I was doing because that’s what I would do. I’d go out to the shops, get a new pair of goggles and yeah, that way I could actually see clearly for my peer to pub swim or whatever it was that I was doing. So then I wanted to actually create some styles. I have some styles that would be good for open water swimmers and triathletes and that just means slightly bigger lenses than like in socket ones that we would use in the pool racing. And having some different options with tints and lenses and things like that depending on if you’re swimming in the morning and it’s dark or if you’re looking into the sun

and that kind of thing. So yeah, about 12, yeah, I know 12 months ago maybe a bit more developed our own line of goggles and it’s been a bit of a ride since and we’ve actually had at Geelong this year had Yellow Geens, Kat Matthews, Christian Blumenfeld wearing our strike goggles. And not cause like we’re paying them to wear them but they chose to wear them in the race and have continued to do so. And I think cause that it’s a really good design for triathlon and open water swimming and you can just see where you’re going. So it’s been really cool to see that and we’ve just worked on a few different styles being sold out for the last few months with them but yeah, that’s where it sort of came about. And I mean, as a swim coach I didn’t know much about goggle design and manufacture apart from just what I’d used and worn but I’ve had to sort of, yeah, figure that out in the last 12 months. But it’s been cool to see like those top guys wearing it

and yeah, having thousands of athletes wear the goggles and love them. It was interesting, you pointed out at Geelong we happened to be with two of our pros Tom and Roland at the Trivello Tent and Christian was staying with Tom at the time. And he’d grabbed Tom’s girlfriend, Sophie’s goggles off the kitchen beach that morning and cause Tom had been raving about, you could see clearly and there’s no fog and Christian’s going along and I’m going to see what they’re like and they both, they all came out of the water. I said, well, what was it like? He goes, these were unbelievable. I didn’t have to stop. There was no fog. And he was hooked right away from that point on. And I think you contacted him before the race or it was in between the race I did. Was that? I swam with him and Kat a few days beforehand just in a bit of a training session and then, so I sort of met him there for the first time and then he messaged me, I think the day before the race

on the second round and he goes, yeah, he goes, do you believe you have any goggles to sell like before the race or after the race on Saturday or Sunday? I was like, no, but I’ll drop some off at your hotel. So I gave him a delivery and I think he borrowed Sophie’s goggles for the actual race. But that was really cool, you know, just to have that happen. So far exceeded anything that I thought would happen. But even my own experience, I swim at a little lake near where I live, Listerfield Lake and it’s often a bit foggy and it’s just a freshwater lake and I’ve been swimming there for years and I’ve been wearing form goggles for probably the last four years and I can’t swim in that lake for more than four or five minutes of having to stop to see where I am. That’s like being Loch Ness monster, you know, you don’t actually know where you are and because it’s that foggy and the minute I put your horse on, I was able to swim all the way up to the pier and back.

I didn’t have to adjust the goggles once. It was, I was like, oh, this is so much better and my anxiety level was so much lower because I could actually see everything clearly. I could see that the reeds that were touching my hands and my neck that used to scare the hell out of me because I didn’t know whether it was a snake or an eel or, but it, you know, I could actually see and it was, yeah, that’s not me trying to sell goggles but that was my experience, it was fantastic. Yeah, it’s good to hear. We should have put that in the anxiety column of removing goggles. Get me out of clear goggles. Well, they’re very popular obviously because you’ve sold them out already and so by the time this podcast comes out, we’re gonna make sure that you’ve got them back in stock before release the podcast so that people can grab them but there’ll be a link in the description below to grab a discount for the Nano Clear goggles

and get on to them quick because you guys, I think, yeah, sold them out way faster than you expected and they are very popular. So yeah, once this comes out, we’ll have them. We also have a giveaway on Instagram. So we’re about to announce the three winners that was an effort-swimming, thumbs, trivello combination giveaway. And so we’re about to announce the winners for those. And so thank you to everyone who participated in the giveaway. We have three winners from the giveaway who receive a pair of brand new Nano Clear goggles from Brenton and effort-swimming. So I’m gonna read out the username and what I think the name is based on Instagram, three random prize winners. I don’t know where you’re from exactly but please DM us on Instagram and then we’ll figure out how to get the goggles to you, we’ll get you in touch with effort-swimming via email. So the first winner was username Tubera. Have a name, Matthews Brazil, I think Brazil.

So Tubera is the first winner. Second winner is Aturo Jose Garcia. Apologies for my pronunciation if I’ve got any names wrong. And the last was username Roger06Rx. That’s Roger Hirsch. So there’s your three winners. Please DM us on trivello coaching on Instagram and we’ll be in touch to get you your Nano Clear Prize goggles, congratulations. But other than that Brenton, any of the answers you want to say on the goggles? No, no, I was just working on few new models trying to improve the existing ones we’ve got with a sort of slightly softer gasket so they’re more comfortable. And yeah, just continuing to improve those. So yeah, I hope people like them when they try them. And we like to look after people as well. So if you get a style and like it’s not the right one for me, we will send people out a different style to try as well because there’s different faces, different, yeah, different goggles for different people.

So we like to look after people and make sure that they’re happy. A brilliant episode as always. Super packed with heaps of gems and tips which is your whole, everything about the education you do, Brenton is unreal, the amount of tips that you give out online and in your clinics and everything is super valuable. So thanks very much for joining us again. Thank you, appreciate you having me on again. That’s it for this episode. Thank you very much for listening as always. If you want to check out Brenton’s clinics, he does online analysis and the goggles. Go to the links in the description or just search up Effortless Swimming. You’ll definitely find him. He’s probably the number one swimming creator on YouTube so there’s absolute gold content out there. That’s it for this episode and we’ll see you in the next one. 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 post How to Master Open Water Pacing, Swim Anxiety, and Stroke Mechanics with Brenton Ford appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

Most marathon swimmers would overlook the critical role of mental resilience—until they’re fighting waves, exhaustion, and doubt in real time. Tim Denya, an elite coach with over 250 English Channel crossings, reveals the unspoken truth: mental strength is just as vital as physical endurance in conquering ocean swims.

In this episode, Tim unpacks the training secrets behind his staggering success rate, emphasizing how strategic mental preparation and clear communication turn tentative swimmers into ocean conquerors. Discover why long-distance swim training isn’t just about logging kilometers but about pushing the mind and body to new limits—all while maintaining focus, confidence, and calm amidst chaos.

00:00 Introduction to Marathon Swimming and Tim Denya

Transform your freestyle to be effortless and smooth with online video analysis:

Try the new Nanoclear Anti-fog Goggles: https://bit.ly/nanocleargoggles

https://www.redtopswim.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.

The post Lessons From 250 English Channel Crossings with Tim Denyer appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

What separates the fastest triathletes from everyone else in the water?

In this episode, I share the seven biggest swimming lessons I’ve learned from coaching professional triathletes over the past decade. We dive into body rotation, kicking, using your lats effectively, increasing stroke rate, breathing strategies, and the open water skills that can help you outperform faster pool swimmers. Whether you’re training for your first triathlon or chasing a new personal best, these practical coaching insights will help you swim faster while saving energy for the bike and run.

00:25 Rule #1 – Rotate Enough for an Easy Recovery

Transform your freestyle to be effortless and smooth with online video analysis:

Try the new Nanoclear Anti-fog Goggles: https://bit.ly/nanocleargoggles

The post 7 Rules From 10 Years Coaching Pro Triathletes appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

Most people assume ice swimming is just for the crazy or extreme athletes — but what if it’s really a gateway to resilience, mental clarity, and community? In this episode, journalist and ice swimming champion Chris Ballard reveals how daring to step into freezing water can transform your mind, body, and life. Whether you’re skeptical or curious, Chris shares mind-blowing stories of how cold water exposure can push you past perceived limits and build unshakeable confidence.

00:12 The Journey into Cold Water Swimming

Transform your freestyle to be effortless and smooth with online video analysis:

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https://www.chrisballardwritings.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 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

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