Effortless Swimming

Mitch Kibby is a professional triathlete who’s placed 16th in the 70.3 World Championship. He began his triathlon career without a swimming background, and has gone on to compete with some of the strongest swimmers in the pro field. This is how he did it.

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I’d much prefer just to connect with the water early and then focus on that channel that I’m pulling through and making sure that my hand is pulling inside the line of the elbow. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

Have you ever wondered how someone can go from very little swimming experience to becoming competitive in the pro triathlon field and consistently swimming under 115 per 100 in the Half Iron Man event? Welcome to our channel. Today we are diving into the inspiring journey of Mitch Kibbey, a professional triathlete and coach. Mitch will share how he was able to go from being a non-simmer to top 16 in the world at the Half Iron Man distance, focusing on the technique and the strategies that got him there. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to up your game, Mitch’s story and tips will show you how he was able to transform from being a novice swimmer to a pro level swimmer and competitor. Yeah, so anyone who’s spent time in the water with me coaching probably knows I’ve got a phrase for everything or plenty of cues, so there’s probably too many to reel off, but some of my favourite ones are balance before power,

and I think what I see quite commonly is we want to go in there and give really strong effort to our swimming, but we’re applying force before our body’s ready to control it, and that’s where we see energy wastage and inefficient technique, so balance before power is one of those ones that just allows us to control where we’re applying our force, and it’s a powerful thing for the swimmer to have in their mind because that balance component gives you the composure and the power gives you the control to know that you’re swimming on your terms rather than being dictated to. So the kick’s really important. I think for me it’s probably been one of the last pieces of the puzzle that I’ve pulled into my freestyle stroke. One of the important things that I consider is just the tension that you’re holding around your knees. I often find that if you can keep the knees tight together, that helps to connect through the core

and just bring the upper body and the lower body together, so holding a level of tension between the knees helps keep the kick tight, which also assists your stroke rate. I find that if you can keep the kick nice and narrow, the arms will turn over a little bit freer, and you won’t notice that same dead spot in your stroke as the kick splays and comes back together. So I think one of the really valuable things to work on is just your kick with a kickboard. While it can be quite different to swimming and kicking during the freestyle stroke, but I think just learning how to kick and basically how not to exhaust yourself with the kick is really valuable. So I think it’s really important to be able to breathe to both sides when you’re swimming. Not necessarily just for the mechanics of the right side versus left side swimming, but I think more so just for your composure. So I’d prefer to look at it breathing as managing the air in

versus air out balance. So that way it doesn’t matter what your stroke cycle is, whether it’s two strokes, three strokes or more. It’s much more about just being able to manage the pressure in your chest basically and being able to reset any time you need. So I think one of the problems is if you get stuck in a breathing pattern, quite often that means we’re going to hold our breath and that’ll end up exhausting us in the water. So having access to release that air either on the right side or the left side I think is really important. And for me, when I’m swimming it’s very much I’m just aware of what that balance is and I want to make sure that I can release and reset any side, any time. But typically in the pool I’d much rather breathe to the left-hand side and in the open water I’d prefer to breathe to the right-hand side where I find it a little bit easier to sight off that left lead arm. But I haven’t met too many other people

that have that same preference so if you are let us know in the comments. So I think it’s quite typical to rotate a little more to the side that you’re breathing on. So that’s something that I’m quite aware of. And if I’m breathing right side quite often I’ll try and drive that right side back through the stroke. So as I’m moving forward I’ll drive to reset rather than just trying to always lock out that rotation which again you will try and do. So long as you’re driving back through the stroke I think you’re going to find that you’re getting that sort of equal counter rotation on each side. So catch and pull are probably the two marquee terms used in swimming and it’s what we all want to focus on and I think for me the way that I would define it is certainly with the catch the starting catch position is really important so there’s many things that come into that which is your mobility and your posture in the water

but I think having a starting catch as high as comfortably possible or sustainably possible for you is really important so you can access that first part of the water and then it just gives you that little bit more to connect with at the top of the stroke. This episode is brought to you by Pillar Performance Our new sponsors Pillar are a sports micronutrition company and the easiest way to describe it is that while hydration and carbohydrates products will take you through to touch the wall as fast as possible Pillar’s mission is to get swimmers to the starting blocks in the best condition over and over again I recently started taking Pillar triple magnesium after a friend had recommended it and it’s been a game changer for my sleep and recovery I take one scoop 30 minutes before bed each night in the same way that you might start your day with a coffee I finish it up with a magnesium and recover better for tomorrow’s session in the pool

Pillar Performance is used by some of the biggest names in swimming and triathlon including Zack Stubble to cook, Jan Frodeno, Ben Canute, Ash Gentle, Taylor Nib amongst a host of other well-known swimmers and triathletes Where Pillar differs from other micronutrition you may have taken before is both the quality of the types of magnesium and the tangible results that I see on my garment each morning. If you’d like to try Pillar today head to pillarperformance.shop and enter code effortless for 15% off that’s effortless for 15% off all first-time purchases or for anyone in North America enter the same code at thefeed.com and then I think what I’m really looking to do is have the fingertips trigger the movement so first part of the movement comes pressing the fingers down and then as I move into the catch I’m really mostly trying to get the channel that I’m pulling through to be as effective as possible so I think typically if you haven’t

given yourself time to set up through the catch you’ll end up pressing down and wide and then being left in a position that’s not as powerful through the pull phase so setting up through the catch is really important to stabilize this is where it’s balanced before power and then I think for me over the years I’ve spent so much time working both with TheraBands and SwimCords to try and get that movement of the elbow to get that fold through the elbow and so that’s something that I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about now because it should just be happening automatically I think you could probably always do it better but I’d much prefer just to connect with the water early and then focus on that channel that I’m pulling through and making sure that my hand is pulling inside the line of the elbow so if we’re pulling outside the line I’d say you’re moving someone else’s water so you’re going to be in a much more powerful position

if you’re catching inside the line of the elbows so I think swimming fast is something that hasn’t always been particularly natural for me and the way I’ve developed as a swimmer has been really developing that sort of aerobic style of swimming which is that more distance based sort of sustainable, continuous style of swimming so when I’m moving towards speed I’ve always had the tendency to muscle up a little bit and get quite tense in the water but one of the most important things is just staying free through the shoulders being able to relax and trying to keep that catch nice and narrow and a little bit shallower than what I feel like I need to so just making sure I’m folding and then I’m really just trying to trust that technically I’ll hold up and then really just work on the rating, the breathing your breathing rate needs to match your intensity so you can’t just be locked in a distance breathing pattern

when you’re trying to swim fast so really trying to make sure I’m releasing air fast enough and then keeping the chin tucked in and basically just going for it I’ve been really lucky to work with some great triathlon and swim coaches and I think one of the most important things they’ve taught me is just to understand the time that it takes to get what you want out of swimming for someone who would always really judge the day swim or sort of be a little bit too emotional about how I was in the water and I think they’ve taught me just to sort of take a longer term approach and just accept the bad days in the water just get through the set smile about at the end and just make sure you’re able to turn up the next day and go again the biggest lesson that I could share with any swimmer who’s starting out their journey is just to accept the amount of time that it will take and there’s no one swim set that’s going to give you a breakthrough

it’s really the sum of many that adds up and I think the company you keep in the water is so important so you need to find yourself a good coach find yourself some mates to swim with and it needs to be part of your lifestyle it’s not something that you’re just going to be able to do for a few weeks and breakthrough because the better you get the better you’re going to want to get so you’re always going to want more so it’s about making swimming sustainable and enjoying the journey

The post Try This Pro Triathletes Top 5 Swim Tips with Mitch Kibby appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

With experience coaching over 8,000 swimmers, I’m sharing what really works to improve your freestyle—from finding a relaxed, efficient stroke to mastering the catch and pull. Tune in now!

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One thing that people get taught is a high elbow recovery, but the way that gets interpreted is if the hand is very close to the body, people tend to jam themselves up. So we need to make sure that our high elbow recovery isn’t this here. I see it more as have the elbow pointing to the sky. A good position to enter the water in is anywhere from about your elbow to about your knuckles. So in this sort of range is where we’d want the hand to be. If you’re entering before that, let’s say where your elbow is. It’s too close to the head. That’s a long way for your arm to travel forwards as you’re going through. It’s going to create excessive drag. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

I’ve coached more than 8,000 swimmers from beginners up to pro triathletes. In this video, I’m going to share with you everything I know about freestyle that will take you from feeling like you’re stuck in the mud with your swimming to gliding effortlessly through the water. The very first thing we always have to do when we swim is make sure that we are relaxed. And a big part of our relaxation comes down to breathing. When people are new to swimming, they have this tension. They have this disease with the water where they just don’t feel comfortable and they end up changing the way that they breathe. So we need to make sure that our breathing is natural. Now, what makes it not natural is when people have this fear or panic of either putting their head completely in the water or just feeling like they are going to sink down to the bottom. Now, when that happens, they tend to breathe very shallow. Their breathing becomes

almost like hyperventilating, a short, shallow upper chest breathing. And when we do that, we don’t absorb the oxygen from the air that we take in. So what we always need to start with is making sure that our breathing is relaxed, comfortable and natural. Now, part of that means that we need to breathe using our diaphragm, which is this dome-shaped muscle at the base of our lungs here. And that just means drawing our breath in somewhat deep as opposed to short and shallow. Now, that doesn’t mean that when we swim, we want to have these really big inhales where we’re filling up everything. But it does mean that we can start our session. We can, when we’re at the pool, when we’re going to begin, we need to make sure that we are relaxed. So what I’d recommend to people is that if they just focus on breathing in for three to five seconds, using their diaphragm, so we feel like we’re filling up sort of through our tummy and then

down lower, and we just have this deeper breath. So in for three to five seconds, out for three to five. And that can help just comfort them and keep their heart rate down low and making sure that we’re not hyperventilating when we’re swimming. So we’ve always got to start with breathing. And sometimes that can take several sessions for someone who’s afraid of the water to get to the point where they can breathe comfortably. But we’ve always got to start there. Now, after that, we want to go to reducing drag because water is 800 times denser than air. So anything we do to create unnecessary drag is going to slow us down. And I find that people have a bit of a tendency to not either press their chest or their head deep enough in the water to raise their hips or their legs when they’re first starting. They want to hold their head up kind of high. They want to hold their chest up kind of high because they’re not comfortable putting their

head in. So one thing that we can do is that if you push off the wall, if we see that when you push off that you are going like this and your legs are dropping straight away, you’re probably not pressing your chest and head down into the water enough. Really good swimmers when they push off the wall, they’ll sink down to about that far under the water and then they will push off with their chest head underneath the water and they’ll have a nice trajectory going forwards because they’ve got that level of comfort. So the first thing we can see there and we can work on is just making sure that you are comfortable enough pressing this deep enough down in the water because your body needs to be horizontal when you swim. So the three touch points that we want to work on are head, hips and heels all at the surface. That means you’re going to be horizontal which means you’re going to be very streamlined in the

water. Now quite often I’ll have swimmers who come to our clinics or send me videos online and they think and they feel like they are swimming in that position but more times than not their hips are low and their legs are low. So it’s always a good thing to check in with. So if you can feel like maybe you’re carrying a lot of water on your lower back, a lot of water on your hips and if you can’t feel your heels tapping the surface of the water when you’re moving your legs then there’s a good chance that you’re sitting too low in the water creating unnecessary drag and that’s going to be slowing you down. Now in terms of holding a good body position it’s not as simple as just looking straight down. There’s a lot of other factors that go into it. So the thing I always start with is well let’s get the posture right, how you hold the body. So the way I think about holding the body is feel like you’re long and tall. Feel like you’re getting your head away from your toes

away from your feet so we’ve got this long line from our head, neck, spine all the way through our legs. If we hold our body that way then we’ve got this tautness to it as opposed to being loose and floppy. So if we’ve got this tautness to the body we’re somewhat firm and rigid here which means that we can coordinate things a lot better. So we’ve always got to start with just holding the body correctly. Now the other part of that is your head position. So where you look can determine what your legs are doing at the back. It’s a big part of it. So what I’ve seen when I’ve analysed or I’ve coached on the best fromers in the world, eyes are anywhere from looking straight down to about 45 degrees in front but what they do with their head and their neck is they lengthen it, they tuck their chin in slightly and that allows them to hold this good posture and that allows them to maintain good body position. What we very rarely see is that they’re sticking

their chin a long way forwards where they’ve been kinking the back of the neck. We rarely see that. So we need to make sure that we’re looking in that 0 to 45 range, long neck, tucking the chin ever so slightly. Now the other part of that, the third thing there is what we do with our legs and our core. Now a lot of times people will think that they need to move themselves forwards with their legs. So they end up having this really big kick out the back where they’re bending their knees and they’re doing this big kick that’s almost coming out of the water and coming well below their body line. We’ve got to make sure that our legs are supporting us and we’re not creating unnecessary drag with them. And what creates that unnecessary drag is when we’ve been from the hips and been too much from the knee and our legs come below our body line. That creates a lot of unnecessary drag. So the way I picture holding our lower half of the body

and I’ve got to credit Andy Donson for this one. I heard this from him is you want to imagine that you’re trying to squeeze into a tight pair of jeans. One of the tricks was imagine you’re pulling on a tight pair of jeans and you’re really having to suck in as you zip up and get your jeans on and that’s sort of subconsciously I think that’s what you want to be doing. And what happens when you do that, you suck your tummy in a bit, squeeze your butt cheeks together a bit and that gives you this core and the hips that are kind of engaged and switched on. And when you hold it like that, then your whole body is straight. Whereas if you’re not holding it like that, then your hips and legs will bend and you’ll tend to drop through there. So there’s this tautness and this length that we need all the way through the body just to start with. And I’ve had some of those who have gone from whatever they were doing before

to just thinking about those couple of things and switching them on when they swim to where they’ve taken off three to five strokes per 25 meters. So going from maybe 25 strokes a lap down to 20 strokes a lap just by changing those things. So don’t discount the the impact that those couple of things can have on your stroke, especially if you are slower than two minutes per 100 at an average pace. If you are not faster than that two minutes per 100 you’re probably doing something that’s causing unnecessary drag. So it’s as simple as that stuff can seem. If you spent a couple of months just focused on that, I can promise you that you will be swimming a lot faster if that is something that might be an issue for you at the moment. Now with the legs as I mentioned before we don’t want to be thinking about kicking ourselves forwards because that kind of that can feel like we’re trying to ride a bike or kick a ball

or something like that where we are kicking and it’s not working for us. So our legs are there to support us and I’ve got to create a Tracy Bowman for this one. If you think about your legs and your kick, feel like you’re bringing the top part of your legs like your femur bones, your thigh bones there back and forth from the hips. Just back and forth from the hips and that creates this flutter with the legs out behind you. So it’s not a kick, it’s a flutter and with that flutter you get this downwards press and upwards press there and what that does for your legs is it creates this counterbalance out behind you and it’s this counterbalance that actually allows you to then feel like you’ve got something to hold and press against as you’re swimming because the water just doesn’t have the stability that we do on land but the stability comes from an effective movement with the legs that creates this counterbalance that you can

then feel like you can hold and press against and rotate your body with when you’re using your legs effectively and when the legs go when the legs aren’t working in that way then everything starts to fall apart. So while the kick isn’t that important for propulsion it’s really important for helping create this counterbalance to then be able to coordinate the stroke with. So it’s worthwhile just working on that effective flutter at the back that’s just press up, press down and that is what allows you to feel like you’ve got good balance and control and stability all the way through the stroke. The next thing we go on to is the rotation and in freestyle we should be rotating if we’re looking directly in front of the swimmer somewhere between 30 to 40 degrees if we measure that angle with the shoulders at maximum rotation with the surface of the water. Now if you’re a sprinter we normally find that sprinters will

keep their hips a little bit more stable and their shoulders will do most of the rotation. Most of the people that I coach are middle to long distance swimmers so we find that typically their hips and torso are going to rotate a similar amount side to side 30 to 40 degrees through the hips and torso and the reason that rotation is important is because there’s a lot of power that we can tap into through our hips and through our core. If you think about someone throwing or pitching a baseball if they had to stand straight on with their feet even and they would throw a ball they wouldn’t be making any major league teams they can’t throw it very far or fast. As soon as they can go one foot forward one foot back and they can open up through their chest their body their hips they can throw it a lot further and faster because there’s a lot of power through this cross connection in the body so we want to make sure we’re tapping into that by rotating the right

amount. Now the incorrect amount is either too flat or over rotating it’s a really common thing that we see usually when someone takes a breath is when they will typically over rotate sometimes close to 90 degrees sometimes they’re a little bit more and that’s when they lose their balance and control. So a good thing to check in with is when you take a breath are you rolling all the way on your side and if you are what can you do to adjust it how can you bring that back to that 30 or 40 degrees so got to make sure of rotating evenly to both sides and within that 30 to 40 degree range. Now I’d recommend for people try and feel like that rotation is originating from your hips feel like it’s starting from the hips and from the core because we’ve got to swim from the inside out we can’t think about our fingers and our wrists and our hands we really should think about things from the inside out so from the core through the through the body to the

extremities we’ve got to work from that way so feel like your rotation originates from the hips or from the core and that’s where we should start that rotation and I like to think of it as though imagine you’ve got like your hips on hydraulics like a hydraulics machine where you’re not just twisting and you’re really loose with things it’s this nice drive this nice sort of hydraulic drive left to right that we can then use that to help with our even rotation because sometimes I’ll see people thinking about rotation and they’re really just twisting with no sort of stability or control so our movements need to have some control to them when we swim and there’s a lot of ways to develop that rotation and quite often we’ll do drills in our clinics or in our courses where the rotation when we when we doing drills often that’s going to be a little bit more than what we do when we swim for example if we do like a full body rotation drill put fins on

arms by the side I’d actually have you rotating to 90 degrees in that drill now that’s going to further than what you need to do when you’re swimming but the purpose behind that is you’re going to get really good control over your muscles and your balance and your core if you’re rotating past that point so there’s times where you do want to go further than that that’s usually within the drills now when we look at your breathing when you swim freestyle breathing what all coaches see is that that’s the thing that’s normally going to cause your stroke to fall apart if we could swim in the snorkel at all times or we didn’t have to turn our head to breathe most people would be fairly even fairly well balanced and be swimming a lot better than when they turn their head to breathe so what we want to aim for with the breath is it should be fast it should be low and it shouldn’t impact our stroke in a negative way and what can happen in a negative way there

is that often people will cause their hips and legs to drop because they might lift their head up they might roll too far where they’re looking up to the sky which they can throw their balance off so i’ve got to make sure that with our breathing that it’s fast it’s low and it’s working with our stroke so a couple of cues that i’ve found to be really helpful there is we want to turn to the so we want to turn our head with the rotation of our body so we want to time it together so as you turn to breathe turn the head with the shoulder roll come back with a shoulder roll now if you rotate the 30 or 40 degrees you’re going to have to turn your head a bit further because eyes need to be directly to the side which would be 90 degrees so just get comfortable turning your head that little bit more than you are with your shoulders but you want to time it together with it and that way it’s working together with your stroke as opposed to separately

because quite often we’ll see people with their timings off where they might turn their shoulders and then their head goes last and then they bring it back late so that breathing is out of sync with the rest of the stroke so we’ve got to make sure we time it together the other thing which is really common is people will lift their head up and then turn and the heads way out of the water and your head weighs a couple of kilos if you lift that up out of the water it’s probably going to drop the back end so that’s a big factor that come that plays into body position is how you’re breathing so i want to make sure we’re looking directly to the side now in the pool we usually want to try and keep part of that bottom goggle in the water but sometimes we see that that’s not always a case especially with sprinters and some distance from us where they are looking directly to the side but their head’s actually a little bit higher

out of the water because they’ve got either this more of a loping stroke where they sort of bounce a little bit in the water so the main thing that i look for there is that as long as you’re looking directly to the side your head can be a little bit higher it is good to work towards a bit of split vision breathing half the head in half the head out but it doesn’t have to be perfect necessarily and if you’re also bringing the open water and it’s choppy well adjust the conditions you might have to turn a little bit further to avoid taking that water in so just adjust the technique depending on the events that you’re doing this podcast has brought you by great ocean wetsuits and up and coming Australian performance wetsuit brand for triathletes and open water swimmers the wetsuits are designed and tested in Melbourne Australia for fast easy and enjoyable swimming for athletes of all levels they’re worn in and raced by Olympians triathletes and open

water swimmers from all over the world and i personally use great ocean wetsuits even before they became a sponsor of the podcast i’ve personally found that the buoyancy the freedom through the shoulders and the fit are the best that i’ve ever had in a wetsuit so i highly recommend them and you can currently get 20% off either the gold or silver wetsuit models using our own code effort20 at checkout so enter the code effort20 at checkout at greatoceanwetsuits.com and no matter where you are in the world if you’re in australia the us europe there’s free shipping worldwide so get yourself a great ocean wetsuit i personally use the gold model of the wetsuit it just depends on what your goals are so great ocean wetsuits.com effort20 get checkout i know you’ll like them the recovery part of your stroke is when you bring your arm over the top of the water and in your recovery it’s called recovery because you should be relaxed

there’s no need to use excessive tension or effort to bring your arm over the water because that’s not where we’re applying force so use it as a as a bit of a recovery so i like to think about the hand the wrist being relaxed as you come over the top of the water you’ll have a little bit of tension through your shoulder you might feel like your elbow is really driving that recovery but we want to stay generally relaxed as a part of it and i think one thing that people get taught is a high elbow recovery but the way that gets interpreted is if the hand is very close to the body people tend to jam themselves up so we need to make sure that our high elbow recovery isn’t this here i see it more as have the elbow pointing to the sky as you swing your arm over the top elbow should be pointing mostly upwards as opposed to behind you because that’s how your arm and your shoulder moves a lot better if your elbow is there

as opposed to if your elbow is here that’s not as comfortable but that is a lot easier so elbow pointing up to the sky instead and another good way to think about that is feel like you’re swinging your elbow over the top of the water almost in like a rainbow sort of shape over the top there as opposed to some people are very wide and flat and very low but we need to come over the top a little bit there and so i like to think of this open sort of swing with the arm not swing where you’re too wide somewhere in between this classic high elbow position to that wide position somewhere through there go with what feels comfortable and what feels natural for you so that’s our recovery now that leads on to the entry position and what you see with most elites from us and there’s always exceptions but most elites from us tend to enter with their fingers first so it’s good to think about that middle finger coming over hitting the

water entering first with our elbows somewhat elevated it’s almost like this triangle position when we see it from the side if you enter fingertips first and then you extend forwards underneath the water that’s going to get rid of a lot of the bubbles and the turbulence on the hand by the time you start your catch now we’re not looking for a completely clean no bubbles catch if you’re going at speed very likely you’re going to have some bubbles on your hand as you’re going through the stroke but if you enter fingers first elbow up and you extend forwards from there that last little bit of reach happening in the water then you’re going to get rid of most most of those bubbles so you’ll be a bit more effective with your catch and press

now one thing that that we see there is a good position to enter the watering is anywhere from about your elbow to about your knuckles so in this sort of range is where we’d want the hand to be if you’re entering before that let’s say where your elbow is it’s too close to the head that’s a long way for your arm to travel forwards as you’re going through it’s going to create excessive drag if you enter so far out in front and the first thing to enter is your elbow and you’re entering like this then you’re starting your catch from a dropped elbow position which is not what we want so I always like to teach my swimmers a good fingertips first entry where it feels like the elbow is just being held up in the water because from that position then it’s you can just extend forwards and a really simple way to develop that and practice that is hold a kickboard hold the back of it and you’re sewing a one arm freestyle drill

through here that kickboard is going to force you to enter early enough because if you overreach you’re going to hit that kickboard so that drills a really good way just to help dial in that sort of entry position and I’ve had a lot of swimmers who have dropped their times by a couple of seconds per hundred just from fixing their entry I think probably because it helps them not drop the elbow straight away and it also just helps make their reach and catch a little bit more effective and cleaner so even something as simple as a better entry position can really help you going forwards when you enter the water and you’re reaching forwards we need to make sure that we’re swimming in line with our shoulders so the good water is out in front of the shoulders it’s not crossing over now a really common mistake that we see is that people are entering and they cross the centerline really sending all of that

momentum in that direction but we need to go from here to here we need to go forwards so I’ve got to make sure that momentum keeps going forwards so I talk about this is swimming on train tracks as you got these train tracks in line with your ears we want to enter in line with our ear or shoulder and go straight forwards each and every time and if you look at footage of the best swimmers in the world from their bird’s eye angle they’re all heading in that direction really important to get that right but it’s very common to cross over now with that train track position another part of it that we need to get right is the timing of the stroke so one angle that we film people in at our clinics and camps is this bird’s eye view and good freestyle is typically done what we call front quadrant meaning if we split the body into four quarters so you’ve got four quarters the front quadrant would be from the head above

that’d be the front quadrant and we see with best swimmers in the world with a few exceptions sometimes sprinters aren’t quite in this range but majority of elite swimmers particularly distant swimmers they are in this front quadrant where they always have something in front of their head so good timing in freestyle is front quadrant so when we look from above we should always see at least a hand or a forearm or an elbow out in front of the head at all times through the stroke now it doesn’t mean we want to do this full catch up that’s not good either but we do want to make sure there’s always something in front and a lot of times people who are maybe struggling with their breathing or people who are sinking a lot quite often it’s their timing is out so it’s good to think about always keeping something in front and a cue that I’ve used for that and I find this helpful for most people is the cue of slow to fast so our movement should be a little bit slower through here out in front

and a little bit quicker through the back so slower in front faster out the back and if you take your time just reaching forwards now you’re not stopping as you go here but you’re just going to take a little bit more time slow that down that gives the other arm a little bit of time to start to catch up so then you can switch once you’re in this position whereas a lot of people tend to just rush it in the front so if you’re not in that front quadrant you’re probably just rushing the arm in front of you so a little bit slower be a bit more patient that can help you be in that front quadrant and that can help you feel like you’re much better balanced and in control of your stroke as opposed to feeling like you’re sinking and things are a ration you’re on this treadmill but there’s no pause button too so you want to make sure we swing front quadrant the next part of the stroke and one of the last things we start to work on is what’s happening with your arms under the water your catch and pull

or your catch and press this is where most of your propulsion is going to come from so we’ve always got to start with minimize drag that’s number one then once we’ve started to minimize the drag and we’ve got good head and body position and effective legs we can then start to work on the catch and pull now the thing with the catch and pull is it can feel a bit of a challenge to be good at this and be effective at it and it does take time if you’re new to the sport you’re not going to get this on day one this will take some time but i find that this is the 80 20 of the stroke it’s that 20 percent of the stroke that can make 80 percent of the difference so it’s worthwhile investing the time into a really effective catch and hold of the water as long as you’ve got those other things in place first so the catch i consider the catch to be once you’re out in front and you’re on your side down to here where your fingers are

pointing down and your arms at about 45 degrees so this initial movement this is your your catch here this is not the power phase of your stroke if we think about overhead movements we’re not that strong especially compared to movements here more underneath us so the catch is not the power phase it’s the setup phase of your stroke if you can moderate the power that you’re putting in and have more of a focus on setting up a good position which i’ll explain in a moment then you’re going to be much better off through the rest of the stroke too often people are trying to muscle their way from here through there but if you’re putting a lot of force in most that force is just going to go in a downwards direction because you’re not set up to effectively press back because if we want to move forwards we’ve got to make sure our big paddle which is our hand and forearm is facing mostly backwards that’s how we need to move forwards but from here if you’re

going for a break and you’re ripping hard there most of it’s going to go down which will lift your chest and your head up but it’s going to drop your legs so we need to make sure that the catch okay might feel like a three or four or five out of ten in terms of effort so we’re not just going completely limp with it putting a little bit of pressure on but more power more pressure will come as we’re coming under the body so our catch it’s a setup phase two things i like to see there fingers need to point down at the end of it and the elbow needs to bend quite often we’ll see as soon as they’re going through their catch they are straight with their arm this elbow gets locked out and they have no bend in it whatsoever so we need to point the fingers down bend at the elbow now when we do that and we do that effectively then we end up having it’s almost like this big ball underneath us we could fit a big ball under there and that just means we’ve got

this big surface area that we can use to hold the water and then move ourselves forwards so those two things now part of that and i see this is like it’s an L plate versus a P plate in Australia L plate is a 615 or 16 years of age when you can first get your license so when people first get their license they get taught 10 and 2 on the steering wheel elbows down here now this is a good position for driving there’s not a good position for swimming this is external rotation of your arms that’s the same as what we call a dropped elbow catch you haven’t got much of a paddle to work with there a P plate so when you get your license your full license you can drive by yourself 18 years of age a lot of guys start to drive like this right here and this is internal rotation of the arm not as good for driving but great for your catch when you have this internal rotation of your arm that creates this fingers down elbow bent position that’s what

gives us a nice big paddle to work with so we want to make sure that we’re doing our catch like a a P plate a driving so this little bit of internal rotation of the arms now a mistake that a lot of people make there is they really internally rotate their shoulder to an uncomfortable position that is not strong this is loading up the front of my shoulder right here so it’s more of the arms internally rotating the shoulders not doing much of it because this is going to compromise our strength so it’s about finding that right amount of internal rotation and doing it in the right position so once we’ve got that position we then want to make sure from there that we are holding this arm firm holding this arm strong now from here people then feel like they need to pull their arm back to their hip to move forwards but there’s no point just pulling your arm backwards in the water because it means that your arm will move but your body is not going to move

forwards so a good distinction to make is once you’re here feel like you are almost anchored in the water like you’re holding your arm there and if you just go from here where you’re on your side and you rotate on to the other side well your body’s going to move past that point and naturally that hand will just exit past the hip because it’s anchored and your body’s moving past it that’s a much better approach at moving yourself forwards as opposed to thinking from here I’ve got to pull back as hard as I can and get my hand past the hip because what moves us forwards is that connection from our arm in the water through our shoulder through our body our core and our hips and a bit with our legs right it’s that coordination of that movement so if you imagine like a ladder underneath you that ladder is going to have rungs on it now when you’re swimming freestyle think about reaching forwards placing your hand on that rung anchoring

and moving your body past that point and then you do it again place it on the rung move past it now it’s not going to happen exactly like that your arm will move backwards a bit even the very best swimmer in the world their arm does move backwards a bit as they’re going through the stroke but that sort of concept helps you get the feel for holding the water rather than just pulling your arm through it and that’s something that takes a bit of practice and if i’m working with some is let’s say in our our clinics or if i’m doing any any sessions with them in person we go through some drills and you know there’s some drills in like a five day catch challenge where we go through this where we work on that concept of holding rather than pulling so that takes time it’s not something that you’re going to get in the early days but the more you get the feel and the coordination of it the better return you get you’re going to get

on the effort that you’re putting in so it’s a good thought or a good cue to keep is once you have your catch so you want to point the fingers down bend the elbow and hold and move past there so that’s the majority of what happens underneath you now where should you exit good swimmers they’ll typically exit just past their hip almost near their upper thigh so you don’t want to come out early you don’t want to finish the stroke and be coming out before the hip because you missed out on about that much water now you don’t get a heap out of this last part of the stroke but if you finish off the stroke well it gives you that last five or ten percent of your propulsion and that helps you reach and extend forwards and then roll into the catch so we want to make sure we’re finishing just pass the hip near the upper thigh if you are not sure where you’re going just see if you can feel your thumb brushing your upper thigh

you don’t want to do that all the time but just as a way to get a feel for it that’s a good way to make sure you’re finishing just past your hip so that’s your catch and your pull now quite often I’ll get asked about how often should I breathe should I breathe every two and should I breathe every three it’s a very individual thing I personally like to breathe every two strokes especially when I’m racing and just to the one side but I do think it’s a good skill to be able to breathe to both sides so in your session maybe you do 20 to 30 or 40 percent of your session breathing to your non-preferred side because if we only breathe the one side we tend to develop our stroke in a very uneven way tend to get a lot more powerful on our usually on our breathing side here and a little bit weaker on on the non-breathing side so it is worthwhile breathing to both sides in training and the way you can do that maybe you do breathe

into the left on the way down breathe into the right on the way back so it’s a skill worth developing especially if you’re swimming open water you’re going to likely have to breathe to your non-preferred side at some point if there’s waves and wind and chop on your preferred side well how it makes it hard to breathe so sometimes you have to breathe to the opposite side in terms of the how often you should breathe it’s very individual and it comes down to what you train so you look at someone like Ariane Titmus she goes two four two four when she’s when she’s racing and she trains that most people can’t do that effectively but she trains that and it works for her a lot of distance from us a lot of them will go every two some every three but most will be every two strokes so it really just depends on the event that you’re training for because number one like it’s got to be you’ve got to get enough air in if you’re not getting enough

air or enough oxygen you’re not going to last very long so we’ve got to make sure we’re getting enough air in so don’t try and breathe every three or every four because you heard it’s a good thing to do you’ve got to make sure that you’re breathing enough to get enough oxygen in but then just find whatever feels best for your rhythm and tempo now the final piece of the puzzle is looking at the rhythm and the timing of the stroke and this is that dance part of the stroke this is that that part of the stroke that is a little bit more about how you feel in the water and it’s this kind of beat or you know drum beat in the back of your mind that you get in tune with as you swing so with the rhythm and the tempo sometimes this can come down to your breathing pattern your kick tempo whether it’s a two beat kick a four beat kick or a six beat kick and that can change within a race as well and then it’s also just about practicing that sort of uh rhythm and

tempo when you’re when you’re racing for example if you look at say like a 1500 freestyle you look at some of the best rooms in the world they might do 1400 meters with a two beat kick now when it comes down to the last 100 meters they’re going to pick it up to likely a six beat kick now that six beat kick can be harder to maintain because it uses a bit more effort but they’d bring it in because it can help increase their speed in that last 100 with that six beat kick so your rhythm and tempo and your kick can change depending on the speed that you’re going so it’s worth worthwhile developing these different gears and different speeds and different strokes in a way for the different aspects of your race if you’re racing but that’s really further down that towards the end of the line if you’re fairly new to swimming start with the basics get your breathing right good head position good body position get the legs right

those things can carry you very very far in your swimming so there’s no need to go to the very end if you’re around maybe that 145 or slower per 100 just at an average pace get those fundamentals right that can carry you very very far all the way past that 145 pace per 100 and then start to look at those other things thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast if you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com

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In this episode, we sit down with Tracey Baumann to explore swim stroke synchronization and body connection for a more efficient swim. We discuss six key synchronization points, the importance of feeling the water, and the role of joint mechanics in creating a powerful stroke. Tracey shares her coaching evolution toward focusing on technique and sensory cues, emphasizing the benefits of short-interval training. Tune in now!

00:08 Introduction

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I use like ice skating as an analogy, but it’s the same concept because someone’s not, you don’t look at ice skaters and they’re going like this to move forward. It’s like they travel on the left skate, travel on the right skate. And when you’re swimming comfortably, you’re swimming well and you’re looking at really nice, it’s what you see. I get that little bit of travel time and not travel time where they’re just stopping here. It’s that perpetual motion, it’s that rhythm. It’s almost like a waltz. You really want to go one two, or you want to, and you get into it. It’s almost like you’re creating this dance and each part of the stroke that you build up are just parts or steps of the dance that you are creating. And once you bring in all the synchronization parts, that’s where the dance comes together and you just dance the dance if you like. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love

the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

Have you ever felt like your swim stroke was missing that something extra? Like it could be more efficient, more connected, but you just don’t know how? In this episode, I sit down with Tracy Bowman to unlock the secrets behind a truly synchronized and powerful swim stroke. Tracy has transformed the way she coaches by focusing on something most swimmers overlook, connecting the whole body from the fingertips to the toes and building the stroke from the inside out. We’re breaking down six key synchronization points that can take your swimming to the next level, including some game changing tips like how rotating your fingernails can improve your streamline and why sinking your leg movement with your catch can unlock a fluid and powerful stroke. But it’s not just technique. Tracy dives into the importance of filling the water, using sensory cues to truly connect with it and power your way through the pool. We’ll also explore why short interval training,

focused on technique, beats long, continuous swims every time, whether you’re looking to improve efficiency or just curious how correct joint mechanics can revolutionize your swimming. This episode is packed with insights that will change the way you think about your stroke. Tune in for a deep dive into the art and science of swimming and let’s make your stroke smoother, stronger and more connected than ever. And if you’re someone who loves their swimming and wants to improve and get better at it, we’re running a whole bunch of swimming camps next year. We’ve got camps in the Whitsundays, Galapagos Islands, Maldives and Thailand. So you can explore all those dates and camps that we’ve got for 2025 on our website at effortlesswimming.com forward slash camps and we’ll put the link in the show notes below. Tracy Bowman, welcome back. This is your third episode in probably the same in about three months. I think you’ve had the most recent two popular episodes and I was just talking to

you before the podcast that the last episode that we did has had 40,000 Gs on YouTube, which is unheard of for a podcast that we’ve posted on there. And I think one of the reasons there is the topics are resonated with a lot of people, but the way that you explained a lot of those concepts really drove home some of the things that people are trying to achieve in their swimming and how they can go about it. So I think you’re so good at explaining some of these things and making it really clear on what people need to do. So I wanted to get you back on to talk about some different topics. And today we’re going to talk about how you can synchronize your stroke, how you can connect things up, and also just the speed side of it, the speed equation, stroke length, stroke rate, and how people can approach that. So welcome back, Tracy. Thank you so much for having me on again. The response has been overwhelming and very encouraging. And yeah, it’s just been so great to get the information

out to lots of people and to see lots of people making changes in their stroke and positive changes and hopefully changes that more than anything will prevent or minimize injury in the stroke, but also to help them swim better and faster. And yeah, I get to learn from you and from all the questions that I’ve had from all the people as well. So it’s been a fantastic few months reading everyone’s comments and questions and chatting with you. So thank you for having me on again. It’s my pleasure. I picked up so many things that I’ve started to use in different scenarios with people. So it’s just helped me add a lot of things to my toolbox when I’m coaching, which I really appreciate. So the first topic I want to cover is the synchronization of the stroke and the way that I often approach it when I’m working with people in clinics is we go through our normal process and order of things. And then almost one of the last things we really then start

to drill into is the connection side of it and making sure that things are coordinated. And for people who are new to the sport, it takes a lot to firstly just feel comfortable and balanced in the water. And so that connection or synchronization can feel like it’s a long way off sometimes. And they feel like they’re very wobbly and unstable. So where do you sort of begin with the synchronization of things? And I know we’ve covered previous topics with the balance and catch and those sorts of things. But yeah, if you’re listening to this and you haven’t heard the first two podcasts, I’d recommend go back to those because we covered the earlier parts of the stroke. Now we’re starting to get more towards the tail end of it. So yeah, synchronization, what do you sort of think around there? Yeah, so it’s a really interesting question. And it’s an interesting part of the stroke because yes, we come to it and we address it

much later in the stroke. But the real reality around it is that we’re actually addressing it from day one. And when we’re thinking about building the frame and putting the connector torso to the legs and making that first connection and then putting the connecting the arms via the scapula to that unit, that’s actually our first synchronization point that we’re talking about. And then when we start to add in the arm recovery, we’re already talking to the students and talking to the body because that’s how I like to coach a lot is how can we connect with the client’s body about the synchronization of the stroke from there. So when we get to the part of the stroke where we’re bringing synchronization, stroke synchronization in as a topic, what we’re hoping to already see is that the streamline is happening. So the arm recovery to streamline synchronization point is already happening because we built the stroke up like that from the inside out

from the get go. And then what we can do is we can then start to synchronize how that part of the stroke happens. So they go from their arm recovery to their streamline, and then how do they connect the other arm recovery on the other side to that. So it’s really this idea of building up the points that we’ve talked about in the last two podcasts. So we talk a lot about the streamline position, getting people to imagine, and I think I mentioned this on what about the conversations, getting them to imagine that they’re sliding along a cross-country ski in their streamline position. So they get into their streamline position and that the moment that they get their whole body onto that ski, they’re really focusing on sending the arm recovery forwards at exactly that moment. So it almost becomes that ski and open the wing or ski, open the gate or whichever queue, send the tattoo forward, whichever queue it is that they’re going to think about,

that would be the first two parts of the stroke that we would connect. And making sure that happens really fluidly so that we can iron out any dead spots at the back end of the catch. So we’re not creating any any breaks at the back end of the catch. It just goes straight through to opening the gate open tattoo opening wings. That’s where I would start. I just wanted to go to the like the back of the stroke there, what things the people do there that creates a dead spot, what do you often say? Yeah. So I mean, a lot of things, I think a lot of people sometimes spend a lot of time in the pool drilling. And so they spend a lot of time in drill positions and often saggy in positions that actually don’t fit into the freestyle stroke. And our bodies are incredible. The human body is incredible at remembering positions. So when they then take the drill into the full stroke, they have that dead spot because they’re hitting the drill

position hitting the drill because let’s say for argument sake, streamline, they hit that position and then they’re like, okay, I’ve got there now. So now I’m going to stop for a moment because that’s now got to tell my brain that I’ve put that drill into my body kind of thing. So that’s one of the reasons that can cause a dead spot. So we tend to never really do anything more than two or three meters of a drill because we want to just get that instant integration into whole strokes that we don’t create dead spots by drilling too much. So that’s one reason. The other reason is they could be over cooking the catch. So the thing we hear all the time is people saying you have to accelerate through the last part of the catch and really push up over your hip. I’m mindful of someone’s comment in YouTube that if I’m going to show you anything, make sure that it’s in the video. So I’m doing that. So I’m going

to show you and just really pushing back here then creates a dead spot because now that locks my joint. So now my shoulder joint is stuck here behind the shoulder girdle and I can’t actually do that beautiful release forward that I’m looking for in that synchronization point. So then I have to clear the joint and come forward and that takes a minute or two. So it interrupts that beautiful synchronization and perpetual motion that we’re looking for. So those are probably the two biggest things I could go on and on that that’s there with those two for now.

Yeah, great. And it’s I like their cross-country scheme analogy because and I use like ice skating is analogy but it’s the same concept because yeah someone’s not you don’t look at ice skaters and they’re going like like this to move forward. It’s like they travel on the left skate travel on the right skate and when you’re swimming comfortably, you’re swimming well and you’re looking at really nice and that’s what you see. I get that little bit of travel time and not travel time where they’re just stopping here. It’s that perpetual motion. It’s that rhythm and I always a couple years back we ran a camp in Hawaii and had one of the local coaches that one of our other coaches you came in and just spoke to our guys for a couple of minutes and I remember he he said freestyle or swimming it’s all about rhythm in the hips rhythm in the legs rhythm in the arms and so that that rhythm always just sort of stuck with me.

Yeah, it is about rhythm. They don’t want to be stopping and pausing completely. Yeah, it’s always like I told to this the students or the coaches when I’m doing coach training or the students that it’s really there’s almost like a waltz. You really want to go one two, sorry, one two, sorry and you get into it’s almost like you’re creating this dance and each part of the stroke that you build up are just parts or steps of the dance that you are creating and once you bring in all the synchronization parts that’s where the dance comes together and you just dance the dance if you like. So I love that idea of bringing the ice skating in and the rhythm and it’s a really good way of thinking of that. Yeah, in terms of having things coordinate and connect, I know you’ve got a few different ways to approach it or for people to think about that side of things. So I’d be curious to get your couple of ways that people can think about this coordination piece.

Yeah, so the very first one, so we have, I’ll go through six. I have many because I remember when I first wrote our first coach training program, when we first started about four or five years ago, I was writing the synchronizations manual. They got very carried away with all the synchronization. I mean, it is so exciting how the body is connected and I got so excited. I had about 15 or 20 different synchronization points that we could put in and my partner, business partner at the time looked at it and said, this is way too much for people. So you need to put it back a bit. I was like, okay, so there’s so many opportunities to synchronize different parts of the body because our bodies are just asking for it. They are made for it. They work. We do it all the time. It’s walking, like freestyle is basically just walking. And I often say to people, I want you to walk along and for everyone listening, it’d be really

interesting for you to push pause right now and jump up and walk across the room and ask yourself what part of your body is moving fast when you take, when you walk. And often people that I can imagine people have pushed pause and stood up now and they’re walking across their room and they’re going, oh, there’s definitely my knee. No, it’s definitely my chest. Oh, it’s my arm. It’s my pelvis and coming up with all the answers and the reality around it is there’s no answer. It’s a trick question because everything moves together. And I use that always as an analogy when bringing in the synchronization, assuming because it’s exactly the same thing. I don’t want any one thing to start any one thing because what I’m looking for is whole body movements, whole body connections and continual motion. And so everything has to move together always. So I’ll choose six. The first one is always the end of the arm recovery. So once

you’ve opened your wings, sent your tattoo forward, whichever cue that you’re going to use, it’s from there using whole body rotation. So shoulder to feet as one unit. It’s that rotating the fingernails forwards into streamline. So that’s the first synchronization point that I will obviously the other arm is doing its thing. I can’t rotate and do that all at once because I’m not in water, but that would be the first. So rotating the fingernails to streamline, so using whole body to rotate. That would be the first. The second one would be ending those two things together. So the first one is starting those two things together. So end of recovery, i.e. entry. I try never to use the word entry. You may have noticed that I’ve probably until now never mentioned that I don’t say it because it takes everyone’s attention to the hand is the last place I want their attention because they’ll lift and do and put. As soon as they do that,

they’re going to disconnect the arm from the scapula. So I’m always trying to take their attention to the scapula in the upper arm. I call it their wing bones. I think I mentioned that. So the first one is the start. The second one would be the ending. So the point where they finish rotation and their fingernails or they get hit the ski position. So start, finish. Those are the first two. Then what we would have is we would have the idea of at the moment that they hit the ski position, open the wing. So at the moment they hit the ski position, open the wing. So we lose that, that dense spot. So that would be three. Then what I’m going to get them to start thinking about for much more advanced swimmers is we, and notice how we start from the inside. So we’re always working. And I think I’ve mentioned this on each of the calls that we’ve had so far. We’re always working from the inside out. We’ve never started the

extremities. We start at the extremities. We lose the access to the core. We lose those major connections that we spend all of this time building up. So then when we get into the next part of the equation is when we then introduce the idea of timing or synchronizing the catch to the stroke. So we have rotated into streamline. We’ve opened our wing. Now we’re ready for the next stroke. So as I’m opening my wing, I’m just going to use that for ease. I’m going to be catching at the same time, keeping my rotation stable. So I’m still skiing along my ski as I’m doing this. So I’m just going to hook my fold, my arm over the end of the ski. Then when I get to here, then I’m going to rotate. And at the same time, mindful of that guy’s comments, I want them to be able to see the same time as I rotate, I’m going to apply pressure to this whole line here. And I’m going to apply pressure. And I’m going to send my head and my fingernails forward at exactly the

same time that I apply pressure. So I applied pressure on the catch at the start of my whole body rotation. So if I just did the catch, it would be rotate

at exactly the same time. Then the next one is the end. So the end of my rotation is timed with the end of my catch, which finishing is in front of my body line here, not here. So then it would look like this. So at the moment that I hit streamline on this side, I’m finishing my catch on this side in front of my body line, ready for the next stroke. Then I’m going to bring in the timing of the legs. And this would be the sixth one. And when I’m first introducing this, I just make the legs work together. So I don’t isolate one leg from the other. I make them work both at the same time. So what happens is, is the whole body rotates. I have my legs already in this scissor position, this counterbalance position, that we have taught the students back when we learned streamline. As the whole body rotates, all that simply needs to happen is at the moment that they rotate, they are going to press themselves into streamline and end up

in counterbalance on the other side. And then at the next rotation, they’re going to press themselves forward into streamline and end up in counterbalance on the other side. Then they’re going to a little bit more detail on the legs. I don’t know if you want me to do that now, but that would be where I would get up to you with synchronizations, the simple ones.

Yeah, no, I like it. I’d like you to keep going if you’re happy to. Yeah, sure. So with the legs, when I bring in the synchronization of the synchronization of both the touch and the legs, this is where I start to talk about pressures. So I think I’ve mentioned either when you and I have talked personally or in the podcast that it’s very seldom that I need to teach catch and very seldom that I need to really teach a really well timed leg movement because what often happens is when you set up the body from the inside out and it’s connected, it’s going to take the anchors from the water that it needs. In order for the body to work, it needs a floor if you like. So if you think about all other sports, we do them on land and we have a floor which closes our joint mechanic chain. But in water, obviously it’s open chain mechanics until you learn to connect with the water. And when you can connect with the water, then you can use your joints in a very similar way to how you use them on land

because you use the water as your floor if you like. So when I start to bring in the synchronization points for catch and to be pressed, I’m using the pressure as a way for the swimmer to tap into something physical to hold onto so that their joints and therefore their muscle systems can work in the way that they work when we run or walk or do anything. So I start this process by having them feel pressure on the streamline side. So as they are sending their books and fingernails forward, that’s always a moist thinking middle and less trident prongs or books and fingernails. I’m getting them to start tuning into the pressure that they’re feeling as they are moving forwards. So at no point in my coaching, do I ever talk or say the word back except for one place, then I’ll talk about that in a moment. But at the front end, it’s always about going forwards is what can we do to make this swimmer move forwards and then tune into what they feel when they move forwards. And if they’re really

good at it and they get really good at proprioception and body awareness, they start to be able to feel the water almost coming and hitting their sort of ride riding up their fingernails, hitting their cuticles and then kind of riding up the hand over the wrist up the arm. And I try and make it very sensory for them because the more that they can tune into it, the more they’re going to be going along their ski without me telling them to go along their ski. Because if I tell them to go along their ski, they’re going to go into holding that arm up and I don’t want them to I want to be lengthening forwards, because then they’re going to tap into different muscle systems. So I make it very sensory and I get them to feel that first. Once they can tell me that they can feel the water doing that, and they can only feel it if they’ve got their streamlined position correctly. If they’re feeling this, that nothing going up here,

then you know that their hand is like this. If they’re feeling pressure here, then you know their hands like this. If they’re feeling pressure here, you know, they’re stretching or reaching because the water’s going to hit them here. And it’s such a great way to get people into their bodies and really asking themselves, wow, how do I, what am I feeling? And if I am feeling all of those other things, what if I just used the bottom of my scapula, my shoulder blade to send my fingernails, what changes in where I feel the pressure of the water. So it’s just, it’s a great way to do that. And then to teach people how to transfer that pressure from going along the fingernails and up here as soon as they feel it on their fingers to transfer it to the inside of the arm. And that then helps when we bring the synchronization into the stroke, because when they can transfer the pressure they felt here so that we keep the front end of

the stroke doing what it needs to do, and then transfer it to the inside of the arm at the moment that we rotate, then we know they’re getting an anchor, they’re getting an arm full of water by holding on because they’re feeling the pressure. And then with this, at the same time, giving them the thought process, the moment you feel pressure here on the inside of the arm, you’re sending the middle card into your books or your head and the other fingernails past it. And that creates a beautiful synchronization point for them by building up and using pressures as a way to do that, because that makes sense. Yeah, it does. It’s great. I’m just sitting back and enjoying it. It’s like some really interesting ways to think about it. And like what I was thinking of there was that whenever, like, I put out a lot of videos on YouTube and the couple that I’ve done on the, I guess the concept of softening the hands over the water and then as you’re extending out in front,

for whatever reason, a lot of people have resonated with that and they’re like, oh my god, I’m swimming a bit faster. It feels so much easier. It feels smoother and I guess better connected. And like what I was thinking there is if a lot of people are just way too tense as they’re going through those motions, as they reach out, yeah, they come up and drift up. But when I’ve filmed really good swimmers, they’ve got this softness to their hands. And as they extend out there, they’re feeling those things that you’re mentioning over there. I sort of talk about over there, you’ll feel it over the knuckles as you’re extending through. And yeah, it’s such a subtle part of the stroke. But I think it helps open the door or lead the way to the rest of it, to the catch and that connection piece. Yeah, I mean, with your absolutely without correct because without it, the joint mechanics, the joints are actually not in the correct place

to create a catch. And so if they’re not in the correct position, then anything they do after that is going to be compromised. And it may be that they’re just trying to look for an aesthetic, but they’re not actually allowing their joints to put them into the correct position. So it may aesthetically look okay, but they’re not able to tap into the power that they could tap into if they have the joints in the right place. And obviously it increases the possibility for a which we definitely don’t want to do. So yeah, absolutely softening everything softening. I love the word softening. I ended up putting the word we have a swim mastery swear word book. And there’s quite a few words in the swim mastery swear word book. And one of them has the newest one that has made its way into the swim mastery swear word book is very surprising to a lot of the coaches that work with me is the word relax or a relax

stroke or relax this relax that because at the end of the day, I think that doesn’t allow people to connect with the water. They turn it’s almost like they’re turning themselves into cook spaghetti and they’re not connecting with the water at all. And you have these aesthetically great looking swimmers going nowhere with lots of dead spots because they’re not connecting. And what we want is we are great looking swimmers going somewhere and as fast as they can because they’re connecting with the water. So we don’t want raw spaghetti. We don’t want tension. We don’t want cook spaghetti when they’re relaxed. We want somewhere in between. So I’ll tell you let’s say and so we’re always looking for tone not tension. It’s sport after all. So we have to have tone in the muscles to be able to use them for sure.

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Yeah, and it’s like the subtlety that you’ve got with words and yeah, and I’ve started to sort of check myself a bit on some of the words that I’m using when coaching because it’s yeah, I can if we use the wrong words, it can convey something that we’re trying to avoid. So yeah, I think it’s I think it’s important that’s terrific and and that that tone as well as that shape in that that form. I think I mentioned this on the last podcast, but like picking up a glass of water, you had just the right just enough sort of turn and form to it to do it. Yeah. And it’s the same thing when we swim just enough, enough tension to keep the shape but anymore and it’s wasted effort. And so I think someone like listening to this podcast from just to sort of like summarize the last 15 minutes because you went into a lot of detail there. But like one thing that I’ve found just to help so much and I try and do this when I get into the water and I’m going through my warmup,

he’s that that softening of the hands as I’m coming over entering and reaching out and just being really aware of what you’re feeling through there and trying to get it to come over your fingertips and knuckles and over the top of the hand and just setting that up well. And then I find that helps me obviously with the catch part of it, but it just develops that feel that we need to have in in any swim or in any session. And so for me that’s like a really good just easy way to get that to happen early on in a swim. Yeah, fantastic. Because it puts you inside your body, right? And I think the more we can as swimmers ourselves, but for certainly for our the people that we work with the more quickly we can get them into their bodies and feeling what’s happening rather than thinking everything, the quicker they’re going to tap into their bodies because we can’t think our bodies to move, we have to feel them to move and we have all these beautiful sensory

perceptions on our sensory receivers on every part of our body that we can tap into and make the most of when we’re swimming. So it’s a great way to get them into their bodies for sure. And the grounding aspect of it that you talked about like we’ve on land we’ve got something to connect everything to, whereas in the water we don’t have that sort of stability unless we are you’ve built the frame and you’re in the right position and you’re moving the legs sort of in opposition to each other. And that’s like it’s really obvious for coaches and I think for swimmers when they’re feeling it it’s really obvious when we see someone who doesn’t have that grounded aspect to their stroke where there’s lots of movement happening, but they’re not going anywhere. And but then once people make that change like for many people that can be 20 seconds quicker per 100 and they feel like this is a different sport to them.

This is something that can be enjoyable. And so what what do you for someone who feels like lots of things are moving but they’re not going anywhere? Yeah. What what are some of those things that they are trying to do or thinking of that’s causing them to to not be moving forward much at all? I think that’s a really great question and I think this will resonate with a lot of people listening because I think a lot of people they kind of follow books or follow YouTube videos I’m not going anywhere and I don’t know why and I think a lot of the reasons is because of how humans think about swimming. So I think is the one thing we can do is to help people understand that swimming is not about pulling and ticking it’s about creating a beautiful long vessel and then holding and sending holding on to water and sending energy forwards. We’re going to help those people already but then when we can get them to feel into the pressures and start feeling and applying

pressure to the catch and then and using and transferring that pressure that they feel into forward momentum. So I think a lot of the sets that you can download from online are okay let’s do 400 meters pull. Well that in itself is teaching humans to be even more human and humans aren’t really very good at swimming and our human instincts aren’t very good for swimming because all we’re doing is we’re moving water around but we’re not actually going to go anywhere. So when we look at that set we look at the set and we think okay how can I turn that set into something that’s going to transform forward the swim movies going nowhere into going somewhere. Well let’s just tell them to go somewhere and it seems really simple and it almost seems silly that this is my answer but it makes such a difference and I see it in the endless pool. I’ve had the benefit of having my own science lab for so many years and you

simply just tell someone to do the same thing whatever it is and then tell them when you do this I want you to imagine you’re going forwards through the propulsion unit and they go faster because just that very one thought process of saying do this and send your energy when you do it forward makes their bodies connect and I like the word you use ground find that grounding aspect and then to have them do the same thing with the legs so often they have spent time doing kick sets and you probably are getting to know that kick is one of the swear word books and one of the swim mastery swear words in our book and because kicking is not what we want to be doing in swimming it uses the wrong muscles it’s the wrong movement and it’s up and down and if I go up and down and I look I think about these third law of motion for every action equal opposite reaction if I’m kicking up and down then the opposite and equal reaction

to my kick is going to be the opposite up and down it’s never forwards and actually where I want to go when I swim and it doesn’t matter where I want to swim I want to start at this end of the pool this end of the channel this end of the lake this end of the river and I want to go over there I don’t want to stay here I’m swimming because I want to go to the other end of the pool or something so therefore whenever I do anything that’s got to be my intention then I can start to turn the movement patterns that I’ve been practicing into forward momentum so if I use the legs as a really good example so I want to as my last and final synchronization point I want to use my whole body rotation and I want to press with my legs to send my head and let’s just keep it simple my head or my books forwards in order to do that when I press with my legs I have to press behind me and that’s all I say I said all I’m I need to do is feel pressure and send imagine that you’re

finding that pressure and you’re sending that piece of water for want of a better and that’s not grammatically correct that a hose that piece of water you’re sending it and pushing it to the back wall of the pool and using that to send your head to the front wall of the pool and that action creates the perfect leg mechanics because the only way they can do it is correctly otherwise they can’t send water behind them they can only send it down so in in the queue I’ve created the correct joint mechanics and I’ve given them the instruction of where to send the energy so they connect they get the joint mechanics and they travel so it starts to help people to turn these movements into forward momentum more and more as they learn how to do it and short repeats like if they get it use the wall that’s the best way push off the wall use the momentum of the wall to do maybe two two of these where you’re just thinking okay so feel

pressure here I’m going to transfer it to the inside of my arm and I’m going to rotate my whole body past it and I’m going to see the tiles kicking over and I’m going to do that one more time to stand up because then I’m using the momentum off of the wall to feel the sensation that I’m looking for and then I want to stand up on that amazing sensation so that I can internalize it into my body and go oh my gosh I just did that so if I did that it means I can do it if you carry on for the rest of the length and you lose the momentum off the wall and then you start the pulling thing again because you haven’t quite learned how to do it and you stop after that then your body’s here but can’t do it because now look I’m not doing it so it’s a very different way of practicing as well so then I get them to stand up after those two strokes go back to the wall and do it again and do it again and then after a little while it’s like

learning how to ride a bicycle your body now knows how to do it if if I if you went in the water and I said try and swim disconnected you couldn’t do it I’ve tried to do it for videos to show people how not to do this I can’t do it it’s the most fascinating thing and it feels ridiculous in my body and I’m sure the same would be true for you because it’s internalized in your body and there’s a quick way to find that and there’s a slow way to find it I love it there’s in terms of the short interval short repetitions there’s a fear for people coming into the sport that if they can swim somewhat already it’s no I’m better off just doing two k straight and getting my fitness in and they take it like they’re running they take it like a running session where yeah yeah that’s it but I find just that short rest on the wall you get to number one get a little bit of recovery let the muscles recover and then you get to reset all right what’s my focus here

and I get to go again and as silly as it seems that short 10 15 20 second break after your interval of 25 or 50 or 100 whatever it is it’s like that can make that can be the difference between a really good 100 and a totally rubbish 100 it’s and fitness wise while swimming so technical the technical part of it’s so important that you’re better off that better off doing these short intervals and obviously there’s time and place for longer ones we want to do those if we’re working towards some events but when we’re thinking about technique short intervals are the really the way to go and yeah it’s so great to hear you say that for me less is more like less great stuff is going to give you more amazing stuff and our swimmers get to spend so little time in the water in their daily lives realistically we cannot possibly compare what the elites are doing to what the swimmers that we’re working with are doing because maybe they can get to the pool three

four times a week maybe maximum some people not even that so I always say to them use the time that you’ve got really smartly and get fit in the gym because you that’s the place you build your cardio engine in the gym and yeah I remember Michael Phelps doing an interview I think was after the London Olympics and that’s what he said he said I use all Michael time and that’s at that level for doing technique and I get fit in the gym and I think that is a much safer way to to to do these long swims and build up your technique than doing your two or three k just to get swim fitness for sure so it’s lovely it’s really lovely to hear you say that yeah I had the George Freel who’s a legendary triathlon coach had him on the podcast and he said a very similar thing he when he runs a couple day camps he’s having the swimmers do mostly just repeat 25s for that reason brilliant and I think a lot of people heard that and they’re

like all right good that’s kind of gave him permission to do that and do that any different right they know running and that’s okay and we can put the information out there to show them that they’re there’s that what in water it’s different and that’s okay so yeah it’s really great to hear that I the last question I want to finish with here and we haven’t even touched on the speed the speed topic but we just seem to go forever or so I’ll get you back on again Tracy too so talk about that component but I just want to go into where for you did you start talking about making a switch to talking about like bones and and that sort of thing because I know you’re very much about the sensory aspect of it but very much about the the bones and that sort of thing like where did that come from for you and yeah what were you doing before that if you had a different way of coaching before that yeah it’s that’s a really interesting question

I think it was something that evolved at quite quite a long period of time so I am forever learning I’m always on one course or another because I just love to learn and I love to improve yeah we say to the coaches when we start our coach training that I’m going to tell you what I know today and hope that I learn more today so tomorrow what I tell you may be different because I want to learn from today and that’s kind of my philosophy and I want to keep making things better so that was part of that journey and I was very lucky I did this fantastic course in Germany all about primitive reflexes and it was so and I did over a couple of years and it was such an interesting journey to learn about the start of movement and how movement starts in you in you how the babies learn to do x y and z through these reflexes for example and it got me so interested in in in the body and why people do what they do and how and then I went down the

journey of doing some anatomy and motion courses and working with a very good friend of mine Helen Hall if any of you are runners out there please find go and have a look at Helen Hall’s book even with your shoes on it’s called she is amazing and her and I spent a lot of time working together with the primitive reflexes and her knowledge immense knowledge of joint mechanics and we were putting together these courses I said that was probably where I started to change my thought process of thinking about bones and joints rather than muscles and really understanding and feeling she has a fantastic 4d scanner machine and so we would use some cues and we would scan and then re-scan and it gave us the kind of before and after of how if you think about moving joints how many how much it affects the entire body then if you just target one muscle so using the glutes is a really good example if I just engage my glutes I have very little effect on my whole body but if I

move my pelvis into a position I have effect on my entire body and so that was probably where it started so probably eight nine ten years ago sort of my back end of obviously I worked with total immersion for a long time so probably at the back end of my time there and it was so great to be able to take this knowledge and other things and put it into a system where we can tap into this from a different way different perspectives and really work from the inside inside so literally from the inside spine out to the extremities when it was a game changer it’s evolving still it’s still evolving but coaches always oh we can’t give up with you and I’m like that’s exactly how it should be I want to learn every day and make what we know today into what we know tomorrow so yeah that’s fantastic yeah it’s yeah it’s little things like that can have such an impact on the people that you’re coaching because they can connect to it they can

make that change I can think about the pelvis and yeah yeah adjust what the entire legs are doing and things like that so it’s yeah I was really curious to hear that and I think you might have mentioned it on the first podcast but we did and I thought okay that’s an interesting way to think about I’m gonna explore that a little bit more so fantastic we’ll um Tracy we time flies when we’re chatting like the love happening on you’re gonna have to come back if that’s all right with you so you’ll really appreciate it where can people get in touch with you or find out more about what you’re doing so my website is swimmastery.online so they can find me there and then Instagram and Facebook I think are at swimmastery or one one word and yeah I’ll put out the injury prevention course view I was going to put out a set book today for your listeners but we’ll hold on to that for when we do the speed thing because it will be way more relevant

to them one thing they can do is they go onto our website they can download a free ebook I know you’d be putting out a lot of stuff in the last couple weeks on breathing and we have a free ebook on our website that they can download and read if if they want so just a couple of things and we’ll do the set book next time yeah sounds good we’ll put that in the show notes and yeah Tracy every time it is great haven’t you yeah not my pleasure so I’m sure the people listening or watching this are gonna get a lot from it so Tracy thank you for your time I appreciate it and I’ll see you in another couple of months awesome thank you so much thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast if you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com

The post How To Coordinate Your Freestyle Stroke with Tracey Baumann appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

Kiah Melverton, an Olympian, former world record holder, and World Championship silver medalist, joins us in this episode. Kiah offers advice on improving freestyle technique, highlighting key areas swimmers should focus on to achieve a faster, more efficient stroke. Tune in now!

00:30 Meet Kia Malverton

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Watch the episode on YouTube:

This actually came from Ken McEvoy years and years ago, but he’s like having a super long neck and like keeping your neck extended. You don’t want to be crouched down. You don’t want to be looking too far down. You don’t want to be looking too far up. I think the biggest thing on recovery is just being relaxed. You don’t want to be bringing your arms over and being super tense and throwing them into the water super stiff. You know, that’s your chance to recover before you actually work that part of the stroke. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. Kim Elverton is a former world record holder, Olympian and world championship silver medalist. She’s been coached by Dean Boxle and trained alongside Ariane Titmus, Milo Callahan and a host of other athletes. I caught up with Kia to ask her about

her freestyle technique. What are the most important elements to focus on and how can others develop a fast and efficient stroke? Head and body position when I’m thinking about freestyle is this actually came from Camp Mackable years and years ago, but it’s like having a super long neck and like keeping your neck extended. You don’t want to be crouched down. You don’t want to be looking too far down. You don’t want to be looking too far up. So like keeping that long elevated neck and then we do, I do a lot of body position kicks. So arms by my side with a snorkel on and just making sure my shoulders are back and I’m like in that nice tight position. And then I can like replicate that in my swimming. So long neck and like nice and shoulders back through my body position. Yeah. Did you ever change the way that you kicked? Yeah. So in terms of kicking on my freestyle, I had a bit of like a lazy four beat kick in like an 800

or 1500, but then come to a 200, 400 and six beat kick the whole way. And I think that when you’re doing those shorter events and you’ve got that kick going, you can keep your hips way more stable and you’re way more centered through the, like the middle of your stroke, you know, you’re holding a bit more water, your legs going the whole time, hips aren’t moving everywhere. Whereas in 800 or 1500, I found it a lot easier to let my legs float every now and then because that was kind of giving me the recovery that I needed in those longer events where I could like sit on my stroke a little bit longer, give myself a bit more time to get through the water. And, you know, I’m not having to waste that extra energy kicking full stop. 200, 400 you’re flat out on the legs the whole way. And what about when it comes to rotation? Yeah. So I did actually end up doing a lot of work on rotation in my stroke with my biomech.

I was really, really bad at flicking my hips everywhere. So I kind of breathe and then let my hips drop and my legs would roll out and my leg would flip out to the side. And, you know, it was all over the place. So a lot of swimming with a snorkel on, slow swimming with a snorkel on, continuous kick. And you can really feel that your hips are locked in and then taking that snorkel off and adding in the breath and just trying to keep those hips still as possible. So like when the right hand enters, your hips are still, you know, you’ve got to make sure that like, you’re not over rotating, you’re not reaching, just really keeping those hips locked in as you go through the stroke. And I think like putting a snorkel on and doing some easy swimming, which is just a soft six beat kick. Like it doesn’t have to be a hard six beat kick. You’re not, you know, putting a snorkel on and doing easy arms and your legs

are going crazy. You know, you’re just kind of floating those legs behind you, but keeping those hips really still and centered was one of the things that I worked on all the way up until I retired. And when you changed distance, did your rotation change or that was always pretty constant? My rotation probably changed when I did change distances. So in the 200, I’m way more stable. If you filmed me front on doing a 50 at 200 pace, I would be way more stable, way more strong through my, through my core, through my hips. And if you filmed me doing 1500 pace, there’d be a lot more flow and rotation. And I think that’s just the variables and the races, right? So 200 free, you’ve got to be holding a lot of water, super strong. Your kick’s going full speed. Whereas a 1500, you’re probably, your rate’s probably a little bit higher, but you’re holding less water. So you’re like kind of almost spinning your arms a little bit more. You’re not holding as much water. It’s a bit

more of an easier stroke. You’re really trying to just like settle into that comfortable, comfortable rhythm compared to a 200 free where you can literally only hold that pace for 450s. Whereas in a 1500, you know, you’re holding it for 30, 50s. It’s got to be a bit more comfortable. The hips are swaying a bit more. You’re getting a bit more rotation. You’re getting a bit more length. And what did you think about with your recovery over the top of the water? Yeah. So recovery wasn’t necessarily a huge focus for me, but I think having done a little bit of coaching now too, I think the biggest thing on recovery is just being relaxed. You know, you don’t want to be bringing your arms over and being super tense and throwing them into the water super stiff, you know, that’s your chance to recover before you actually work that part of the stroke. So making sure your recovery is super relaxed. You’re not wasting energy. You’re not throwing your arms forward and like being super tense in

that position. And did you have any particular cues or things that you were aiming for with your catch and pull? Yeah. So when I was working on my catch and pull when I’m swimming, it’s making sure that I’m coming down the center of my body. I’m not crossing over the midline. I wasn’t swinging out wide. You know, my hand isn’t floating out to the side as I pull. It’s not floating in as I pull. And I did a lot of work with my biomech, like filming myself front on and making sure my hand was coming down like this, you know, couldn’t see my pink, like my palm on that side, palm on this side coming straight down that center line. And I think you can get a lot of feedback doing skull or single arm or like a long dog where you’re like in that position, you can really feel it. And then the other thing is like at the back of the stroke, making sure I’m finishing all the way through the back of the stroke.

You know, I’m not pulling my arm out early. I’m not just flinging through the stroke and pulling it out early. I’m making sure I’m getting a length the whole way through. So I’m like settling into it at the front of the stroke, up shoulders up, you know, getting that pull my elbows up and then all the way through the end of my stroke. And was there anything that you thought about with the rhythm and connection in your stroke? Yeah. So for like rhythm and connection, all that stuff. I’m a little bit funny. I’m probably one of the few people that breathes to the left on one way and to the right on the other. You know, I kind of swap my sides of breathing, but I always breathe every two or every four. So the shorter races, like the hundred free, two hundred free. I try to get breathing four in because I just think I was a lot more stable in that position, but the longer events I’m breathing every two. And I used to always practice in training, breathing to the left one way and

breathing to the right so that no matter who I was racing, I could breathe facing them. I think that’s something that people can play around with, you know, breathing to each side. And I think that also allows you the ability to work on your hip position. You don’t just get used to breathing to the left and then you’re really great at breathing to the left. And then all of a sudden you have to breathe to the right and your hips are all over the place. So you know, switching it up every now and then I think helps.

This podcast has brought you by Great Ocean Wetsuits, an up and coming Australian performance wetsuit brand for triathletes and open water swimmers. The wetsuits are designed and tested in Melbourne, Australia for fast, easy and enjoyable swimming for athletes of all levels. They’re worn in and raced by Olympians, triathletes and open water swimmers from all over the world. And I personally use Great Ocean Wetsuits even before they became a sponsor of the podcast. I’ve personally found that the buoyancy, the freedom through the shoulders and the fit are the best that I’ve ever had in a wetsuit. So I highly recommend them. And you can currently get 20% off either the gold or silver wetsuit models using our own code effort20 at checkout. So enter the code effort20 at checkout at greatoceanwetsuits.com and no matter where you are in the world, if you’re in Australia, the US, Europe, there’s free shipping worldwide. So get yourself a Great Ocean Wetsuit. I personally use the gold

model of the wetsuit. It just depends on what your goals are. So greatoceanwetsuits.com effort20 at checkout. I know you’ll like them. Were there any cues that you used when you were racing? So the biggest cue for me when I was racing, I would kind of stand behind the blocks and I would always say to myself either lengthen extend. So that’s like lengthening at the front of the stroke, extending at the back of the stroke, or it would be rate and power. So especially on those shorter races where I’m having to swim fast, I knew I had to get my rate up. But I didn’t want to get my rate up and slip through the water and just pull half happily and just hope for the best. I was making sure I still had the power in that stroke. So getting my rate up but maintaining that power and the length and the extension through my stroke, not shortening up that stroke because you want to be faster, making sure you’re

actually holding water the whole way through the stroke. How much focus did you put on your technique throughout your career? I’ll admit when I was younger it wasn’t really a focus. You know, I was kind of thrown in to doing more K’s and more and more and more. And then as I got older, I realized that there was so much more to gain out of putting focus on my technique rather than just doing more work. There’s a certain amount of work that you can do that gets you somewhere. But if you have poor technique and you’re just doing K after K with poor technique, you’re not going to get anywhere. You know, those technical gains can make such a big difference. Such little things can make such a big difference in your swimming. So the older I got and the wiser I got, the more I figured out that technique has to take a priority in my training. What were the main things that you worked on throughout your career?

Yeah. So in terms of like my own technical focus, when the things that I was working on are my elbow position at the start of my catch. So making sure I’m really strong in this position. I’m not sweeping out. I’m not crossing over with my body. I’m really strong pulling under. And a big thing for me that Dean actually picked up on was that I was breathing backwards. So I used to take my stroke and breathe under my arm pit. And so I’d spend all this energy and almost over rotate and I’d breathe under my arm pit. So it’s keeping that head like nice and still one goggle out of the water, one goggle. And you know, kind of the things that they tell 10 year olds, but it’s still up the cool when you’re like way later in your career. So that was a big thing for me being very aware of my breathing, my hip position and my catch at the front of my stroke. Talk to me about the best race that you ever had and why it was your best race.

Yeah. So I think for me, my best ever race looking back is probably my 800 freestyle at the world champs in 2022. I ended up second to Katie Ledecky, but 24 hours before that race, we spun the heats to the 800 and I qualified in eighth. And it was a shocking swim. I didn’t want to do it. I went to Dean. I pulled my eyes out. I was like, there’s no way I’m doing this 800 freestyle final. I don’t want to do it. Let me pull out and Dean kind of sat me down and gave me this big speech, this big motivating speech. And I had 24 hours to turn it around. I got up behind the blocks in that final and I was like, screw it. In my head, I was like, you’ve already screwed up your heats. Like who cares what happens in the final? It doesn’t matter anymore. So my first 100 turn looked across the pool and all I could see was Katie. There’s me and Katie and no one else was there. And I just thought, oh crap. And then

just went for it for the rest of the race and ended up touching the wall second. And it’s like, probably still one of the proudest things that I’ve done in my career. And what’s the best advice that you’ve ever received for your swimming? The best advice I’ve ever received in my swimming is probably just enjoying it. I think it’s like the biggest thing and learning off the people around you and like putting yourself in an environment where you can learn and have people of support around you. You know, there’s a saying that like your reflection of like the five people that you spend most of your time with. And I think being in an environment that I was in where it’s such a high performance environment and being able to learn off people like Arnie and Elijah and Molly and Shayna and Dean and, you know, that kind of environment, you get to pick up on little nuances that not only are reflected in your training and your training styles and your

technique and how much work you’re putting in, but just like little things outside of the pool, like how you talk to people, how you communicate with people, how you respect people. And I think like that’s super important advice that’s not in the apical world of swimming, but things in the outside world as well. And what about the worst advice you’ve ever received? Worst advice I’ve ever received. I don’t know. I think for me, the worst advice is when people start throwing numbers at me, like, you’ve got a 200 freestyle, make sure you’re at 28 and then a 29 and then 29 and then a 30. And in my head, that just doesn’t work. And I have always hated when people do that. And I think like someone just telling me like, you know, you’ve put in all the work, you’ve put in all the effort, like just go out there and have fun. That’s always a way better way for me in like to approach things. And I think like a lot of people actually work that way, you know, you start throwing numbers at them and

you over complicate things, like especially on race day, not so much in training and training. It’s fine. You need that kind of feedback, but come to race day, you’ve done all this work you don’t need to then sit down and think about the numbers, you know what you’ve got to do. You’ve just got to get in and do it. So yeah, I think probably that’s the only situation where it’s been worst advice. And what are the hardest sets you’ve ever done and some of your favorite sets that you’ve done? Hardest set I’ve ever done. Dean’s thrown a few big ones at me, but one that stands out and like one that I haven’t done in years and years, but it’s super hard. And I think a lot of people can probably try this set or do this set. It’s 10 ones best average on two minutes and it doesn’t seem like anything odd. You think like 100 meters, like two minutes, like I’ll get plenty of rest. But if you’re actually going like full

effort for those 10 ones on two minutes by the time you hit that 10th one and touch the wall, it’s like, thank God that set is over. So it’s such a simple set, but it ends up being super, super hard. Favorite sets for me are sets where I can work on hitting my stroke count and hitting times. I find that super valuable in my training. It’s a big thing that I use was hitting stroke counts. So I like sets where say, like just off the top of my head, for example, there’s like three sets of 850s and I’m descending my times, like 800 pace, 400 pace, 200 pace, but I’m trying to hold my stroke count. So whatever stroke count I’m taking when I’m doing 800 pace and I’m a little bit slower, I’m trying to replicate that when I’m doing 200 pace. And so how can I do that when I’m hitting 200 pace and having to be a bit faster? Do I need to up my kick? Is it more power in the stroke? Am I holding enough water? Things like that that

just give me a lot of feedback without having to like, do this big crazy set, but you’re getting a lot of like very specific feedback. That’s like what I found most, or that was like most effective in my swimming. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

The post Olympian Reveals Her Freestyle Technique with Kiah Melverton appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

I’ve spent 25 years helping adults become better swimmers, from beginners to pro triathletes. In this podcast, I’ll share what really works to go from feeling slow and frustrated to swimming fast, efficiently, and effortlessly.

00:00 Introduction

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

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Watch the episode on YouTube:

Don’t chase speed. Speed will come to you if you get your technique right and you’re really in tune with how you’re feeling in the water rather than trying to muscle it and force it. You’d be surprised at the results that you can get in three years time if you dedicate yourself to that rather than looking at the results that you might want in three months time. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. I’ve dedicated my career to one thing, helping adults become better swimmers. In this video, I’m going to share with you everything I’ve learned in my 25 years of swimming and coaching thousands of different people from beginners all the way through to pro triathletes, that if you are feeling slow and frustrated in the water, what can help you get to being fast, efficient and feeling effortless as you

move through the water? The first thing is that swimming is a dichotomy between tension and relaxation, and we’ve got to find the optimum balance between the two. It’s like if you were to pick up a glass of water, you’re not going to grab it with as much force as you possibly can. You’re going to pick up that glass of water with just enough tension to hold the shape, but no more from than that. And it’s exactly like swimming. We want to apply enough force and pressure on the water to help move us forwards, but we don’t want to muscle it. We don’t need to put in any more power than that. So finding that sweet spot between tension and relaxation is something that can really help you apply just enough force to move forwards without wasting any extra effort. Reality versus perception is a really big issue in swimming. Whenever I film someone and when we do underwater filming, people will look at their stroke and think that can’t be me.

That is not how I look in the water, but it is obviously how they’re swimming, and there’s a big disconnect from what they think they’re doing to what they’re actually doing. So if you can get video of your swimming and you can actually see what you’re doing, that’s often the first step at actually making some changes. Because for whatever reason, when we’re face down, we’re lying flat in the water and we can’t see much of what’s going on, it’s very hard to tell exactly what’s happening. And if we don’t know what’s happening, then it’s hard to make a change. So one thing I always recommend to people is get some footage. Even with a phone recorded above the water, that can help you make some of the first changes to your stroke that will help you swim faster and swim more efficiently. If you’ve watched any swimming competition or triathlon, you’ll see that there’s so many different strokes. And even in the Olympic finals,

you’ll see that swimmers that are touching within a second of each other swim with very different styles. So there’s not one perfect stroke for every swimmer. It’s going to change depending on your height, your arm span, your experience, your strength, the event that you’re doing. There’s so many different factors when it comes to swimming. And there’s not one perfect style. There is a perfect style for you that you can work with. And it basically goes down to what you currently use, how you currently swim, and just looking to tweak and perfect that. Because if you’re trying to swim like Ian Thorpe or Michael Phelps, but you are five foot six and you’ve got shorter legs and limbs and you’re a stockier build, well, you probably can’t swim with that same sort of style. So it’s about finding the right style for you. There’s certainly fundamentals across the board that we want to work towards, but there’s nuance in that. So trying to copy one certain style of swimmer, if you’re not necessarily

built for that or you don’t naturally gravitate to it, might actually make you slower rather than faster. Effort doesn’t necessarily correlate to more speed if your technique isn’t in place. One of the frustrating things that I see that a lot of triathletes come to me for is they put the effort in on the bike, they put the effort in in the run, and they tend to get faster. But the same thing doesn’t hold true when they go to the pool. They actually sometimes get slower, the harder they work. So the first step there is making sure that you’ve got good foundations with your technique. So we need to have good, good technique to start with. Then as we put a little bit more effort in, you can start to go a little bit faster. But just trying to muscle your way through the water with brute force isn’t the way to actually get quicker. Because swing such a technical sport, we actually need to make sure we’ve got the right timing and coordination and rhythm in the stroke,

as opposed to just trying to put more force in. So it’s almost like a dance. We’ve got to find our rhythm and our tempo, and we’ve got to still keep the coordination in it and hold good technique as we put a little bit more effort in. So sometimes that goes against what people have been used to doing when it comes to things like running or biking. But swimming is such a technical sport that we need to focus more on the rhythm and timing and coordination instead of the pure force aspect of it. When a lot of people start swimming, they find that they need to kick really hard to move forwards and they rely on that kick to propel them forwards, as opposed to using their arms and their upper body and their rotation to help drive most of that propulsion. Now your legs have the biggest muscles in the body. So if you’re kicking very, very hard for long periods of time, your heart rate is going to go up, and it’s very hard to

sustain that. So your kick is not necessarily there to propel you forwards, it’s there to support you. So if you find that you’re tiring quickly, it’s always good to make sure that what your legs are doing is helping support you and balance you, but not necessarily propel you forwards. It’s a part of it, but the kick is something that will tie you very quickly. Even some of the fittest and the best swimmers in the world, if they’re kicking as hard as they can for 100 meters as part of their swim, they can’t sustain that. If you look at say a 1500 freestyle, you’ll find they really start to bring the legs in the last 75, the last 50, but they’re certainly not holding that for 1500 meters. So your kick is there to support you, not necessarily to propel you forwards. When adults start swimming, we try to intellectualize it. We try and think about our stroke with great detail, and we try and make sure we’re doing things

perfectly. Now it’s certainly good to think about your technique, because that’s one way that we’re going to get faster, but adults have a tendency to overthink. And sometimes kids have a tendency to underthink when they’re swimming. We want to find that sweet spot in between. And one thing that I suggest and recommend whenever I’m coaching someone is, okay, we want to think about whatever it is we’re working on, but then we want to move to the place where we’re just starting to feel for it. Because swimming is very much about feel and your awareness in the water. So if you can switch off that thinking brain a little bit, just keep it in the background, but tune more into that feeling brain. And that is a way that you can really start to notice the changes and feel for the stroke more. And I find that people who have grown up swimming, kids, teenagers who have done thousands and thousands of laps in their teenage years,

they’ve become really good at being hyper attuned and hypersensitive to how they’re feeling in the water. And so they can make those changes generally a little bit better because they’ve got that better feeling for the water. So sometimes as adults, we need to make sure we’re doing enough repetitions, first of all, but we also need to make sure that we’re just able to switch off a little bit from our thinking, switch off a little bit from the data and just be almost kind of at one with the water and just be present in there. Because especially in today’s day and age, with the amount of technology that’s there, we can get distracted. So we just want to make sure that we are being attuned to that feel of the water and not just trying to think about every little thing that we’re doing. In order to swim faster, we have to swim softer. Now, I don’t know how true this is, but I use this all the time. I use this way of thinking is

you can only put five kilos of force on the water. You can’t put 20 kilos of force on it. So the way I interpret that is you can only put so much pressure and force on the water that if we go any harder than that, you’re going to slip and your hand is going to slip through the water. So you’re not going to be holding the water. So in order to go faster, we can’t try and muscle our way through there. We need to think about coordinating things well, finding the optimum amount of pressure and force and not trying to go above that. And you’ve probably felt this at times. If you’ve gone from swimming at an easy pace to then sprinting, you probably feel there’s a lot of slippage going on. So trying to apply that right amount of force, approximately five kilos of force, I think is a good way to approach it. And if you’re trying to really just pull as hard as you possibly can, well, it’s not the way to get faster. So swim softer to go faster.

In swimming, consistency is king. And for me, a general of thumb is with two sessions a week, you can generally stay where you are. Three sessions a week or more, you’re really going to start to notice the improvements that come with that. So getting in the water three times a week or more gives you enough consistency to really make some good gains and improvements. Whereas if you’re swimming once a week, it’s probably not enough to really see the improvement that you’re looking for. So trying to get in the pool three times a week, at least for a period of time, can give you a much quicker and bigger improvement than just two sessions a week. And another part of that too, we got taught this growing up was that if you have one week out of the pool, it often takes two weeks to get back to where you were. Now, if you are a fairly new swimmer, that may not necessarily be the case. But certainly at the highest level, taking one week out takes two weeks to get back.

And similar, if you go two or three weeks, well, that could be four to six weeks to get back to that same level of feel and fitness and aerobic fitness. So trying to limit the amount of time that you do have out of the pool can be a good way to approach it. So making sure that you’re consistent with your training. It’s not about doing a huge session once a week. It’s about doing maybe some smaller or medium sized sessions a couple of times a week. And that is a good way to make sure that long term you see good improvement. This episode is brought to you by Pillar Performance. Our new sponsors Pillar are a sports micronutrition company. And the easiest way to describe it is that while hydration and carbohydrates products will take you through to touch the wall as fast as possible. Pillar’s mission is to get swimmers to the starting blocks in the best condition over and over again. I recently started taking Pillar triple magnesium after a friend had recommended it

and it’s been a game changer for my sleep and recovery. I take one scoop 30 minutes before bed each night in the same way that you might start your day with a coffee. I finish it up with the magnesium and recover better for tomorrow’s session in the pool. Pillar Performance is used by some of the biggest names in swimming and triathlon, including Zack’s Double T Cook, Jan Frodeno, Ben Canute, Ash Gentle, Taylor Nib amongst the host of other well-known swimmers and triathletes. Where Pillar differs from other micronutrition you may have taken before is both the quality of the types of magnesium and the tangible results that I see on my garment each morning. If you’d like to try Pillar today head to pillarperformance.shop and enter code effortless for 15% off. That’s effortless for 15% off all first-time purchases or for anyone in North America enter the same code at thefeed.com. A mistake that a lot of people make when they first start swimming is they

approach their swim training like they’re going for a run. They get in the pool and they go on swim one kilometer straight with no change in pace, no drills, no mixing it up at all, it’s just one kilometer straight just like they would if they were going for a run. Now it can be okay to do that at times but if you look at the best swimmers in the world, you look at the best swimmers in triathlon, they’re not going in the water and just going three, four, five kilometers straight with no changes. If you can structure your sessions with a warm-up and a main set where there might be some change of pace and shorter and longer intervals and you have a bit of cool down at the end, that is going to help you get faster and actually develop your swimming so much better than just doing a kilometer straight. So what I’ve seen there is that a lot of people, they struggle to get out of their one gear or their one pace so a lot of times people will come to clinics and they’ll say look I’ve only got

one speed, there’s no fast, there’s no slow, there’s just one pace medium and often that’s because they haven’t developed their different gears. So we’ve got to make sure that when we do train that we’re doing different intervals, there might be 50s, 100s, 150s, 200s and we’ve got to make sure that there is some sort of change of pace. Whether that be progressively building, for example a set of five 200s where you just progressively get faster each one or maybe you’re just doing some easy zone two work and then maybe some sprints so just seeing some sort of change of pace and what you’ll find there is that when you go faster you tend to feel any drag, any additional drag that you’re creating because the faster you go the more that drag is multiplied. So at those faster paces we really start to notice where we’re slowing ourselves down and we also start to develop those neural pathways better when we go at

faster speeds so it’s really important to make sure that we’re not approaching our training sessions like we are going for a run and we just get in and go through okay. Now if you’re looking to just swim and go for enjoyment go for it but if you’re looking to progress then you’ve got to make sure you’re mixing things up. When I first started coaching I came from a swimming background and I was of the purest mentality that anything that’s not pure swimming is cheating. For example pool boys and buoyancy shorts. Those two things a lot of triathletes swim with and my initial thought when I started coaching was that is cheating okay that’s not pure swimming but the thing is most triathletes are racing in a wetsuit and the pool buoy and the buoyancy shorts replicate some of that buoyancy that you’re going to have when you’re wearing a wetsuit so I don’t see those things as necessarily cheating especially

if you are going to the pool because you enjoy your swimming more because these things give you the assistance and the aid that make you enjoy it more. So if that helps get you to the pool and you enjoy it more you end up training a bit harder that’s probably going to make you a better swimmer than you not enjoying it and hating it and going to the pool once a week instead of two or three times. So there’s different rules I find for different people and if you are happy to use those tools and they are very specific to what you’re training for then that might be the right approach. Now that said I have had a lot of swimmers and a couple of pro triathletes who have managed to win themselves off those tools and they’ve actually progressed their swimming because they’ve they felt like they can develop their swimming because then they get a sense of what they’re truly doing with their body and their hips and their legs and so on. So it’s good to try

the different things and just go with whatever works best for you. I’ve coached thousands of different people and there’s so many different approaches that work for different people so it’s very much an individual approach depending on what you’re training for. When it comes to developing your stroke I see it as like you are going on a date with someone you don’t go straight for marriage you don’t ask them to marry you straight away. So in swimming we don’t want to go straight for the catch we need to work through the stroke in the right order there’s a there’s an order of things. So in in swimming the way that we would normally approach that is we’ve got to start with the head and the body to begin with because any amount of drag that we create any additional drag is going to make it very hard to work on those other parts of the stroke. So head and body has got to be number one. Now sometimes before that we’ve got to start

with the breathing if your breathing is not there everything else is going to fall apart. So really I guess it’s breathing then we go head and body then we want to work on the legs then we can go to rotation and then we can go to our recovery over the top of the water then we can go to what our arms are doing under the water and we can then sort of start to look at rhythm and timing after that and for pretty much all the strokes it’s going to follow the same or a very similar order of things. So if you’re sitting there listening to this video and you’re thinking I don’t know what to work on next it’s always good to start at the very beginning. Start with your breathing make sure that’s in place then progress to head and body and so on. And if you want the order that I would go through things in to help develop your freestyle I’ll include a link at the bottom of this video about our freestyle checklist

where you can just go through each part of the stroke make sure you’re doing it right and just tip those boxes along as you go. I’ll often get swimmers come up to me and they want to make a rapid change their stroke where by tomorrow they’re swing faster and they’re swimming more efficiently. Now that’s certainly possible you can make changes and you can do that but we really want to be thinking long term and you’ll be surprised how far you can get in your swimming in three years rather than three months. So the swimmers that I find really improve are the ones that have this long term thinking where they’re not thinking about where can I get to in three months time it’s like where can I get to in three years time because everyone develops at different speeds and some people do progress really nicely in three to six months time some people might take a year or two years but as long as you’ve got that long

term approach and you’re willing to just put in the work and not be too worried about when that speed comes that is what I see across the board is being a consistent thing with those people that really do make good improvements. Now along those lines a good phrase that I heard I really like I heard this from Tracy Bowman was don’t chase speed. Speed will come to you if you get your technique right and you’re you’re really in tune with how you’re feeling in the water rather than trying to muscle it and force it. So don’t go chasing the speed. The speed comes when you get the technique and the amount of effort right and so again in terms of that long term versus short term if you’re happy just working away at your stroke okay every session maybe in your warm-up you’re doing a couple of drills and you’re working on one specific thing if you do that several weeks in a row several months in a row that’s going to accumulate and

that’s going to build and that is going to help you become a much better swimmer and if you’re not worried about well when am I going to get faster with this one day it will click one day you’ll get this session where you’re like wow okay this feels good and my times are actually quicker but it’s very hard to know exactly when that will be so don’t chase speed. I’ve done a bit of work with physios in my time some physios who have been a part of the Australian swim team being a part of the Australian triathlon team and one thing I’ve learned from them is that if you can’t do it out of the water you can’t do it in the water so some of the positions that we’re often asking people to get into physically they can’t get there comfortably because they’re too tight or they may not have the strength to be able to hold it so anything you can’t do on land you’re not going to be able to do in water because water doesn’t have

that stability that we do on land so it’s always worth looking at and considering your strength and your mobility and if there’s holes there if there’s things that you find physically challenging to hold out of the water it might be worthwhile either looking at some sort of strength or conditioning program or even mobility program to help address it and I’ve coached a lot of masters athletes I coached eight years at a masters swim club and we won five national titles we had a lot of very good swimmers in the masters category and what I saw there was that often those swimmers that did some strength training particularly in their older years because we lose our strength and mobility as we get older so those that did some strength training alongside their swimming and even those that did some yoga or pilates those sorts of exercises or activities that can help maintain your mobility they often did really well in the water because

they could move a lot better and they had good coordination so if you find that you just feel very stiff and rigid when you swim it might be worthwhile considering what’s happening and what’s going on outside of the water a phrase that I use all the time when coaching is slow to fast when we’re swimming our movements should be slow to fast they’re not done at the same speed so unlike riding a bike where we’ve got this fairly constant turnover in swimming our movements are slow to fast so for example in freestyle when we enter the water and we’re reaching forwards and we’re setting our catch that movement is a little bit slower than when we are finishing the stroke at the back our limb needs to accelerate through the stroke to really help propel us forwards so it’s a good thing to keep in the back of your mind when you’re swimming that we don’t want to feel like we’re on this treadmill where there’s

no pause button and it’s just hard work we need to have this slow to fast element to our swimming we’re a little bit slower out the front a bit quicker out the back so we get that acceleration and even if you’re sprinting if it’s a 50 meter sprint there’s still going to be a little bit of that change in speed not quite as much as a distance swimmer but there will be that change in speed so keeping that slow to fast element in your swimming can help keep the heart rate and the effort level down for the return that you get back on your speed when we think of swimming it’s very simple the two things that make up your speed is your stroke length and your stroke rate it’s the combination of those two things but it doesn’t mean that that’s easy to change or achieve there’s a lot of different things that go into stroke length and stroke rate now we’ll usually for I’d say for most people we want to work on length before

rates with the exception being that if somebody has a really slow stroke rate let’s say they’re taking 40 individual strokes per minute that’s going to be too low we’d need to up the rate probably to high 40s maybe low 50s to really get them going so unless it’s too high or too low like really in these extremes we yes we’ll work on stroke rate but usually for most people we want to work on stroke length now what what makes up stroke length all right well number one it’s going to be the profile of your body how you’re holding yourself in the water so we need to make sure that we’re doing everything we can to minimize drag which means horizontal with our body position making sure that we’re well aligned with our arms in front of our shoulders and making sure that we’re holding the body long and tall so our our body is very streamlined in the water so we want to work on minimizing drag first of all then we want to work on

increasing propulsion and a big part of your propulsion most of it is going to come from what your arms are doing through the water and then how you coordinate that with your rotation and your hips and your body and your kick so if we keep things simple let’s work on stroke length good body position minimize and drag increasing propulsion then we can start to look at stroke rate and finding that optimum balance between the two and those things will change depending on the speed that you’re going in the effort you’re putting in so sprinters will have a much faster stroke rate than long distance swimmers and they’ll but they’ll have a much shorter distance per stroke so you don’t want to keep the longest stroke possible when you’re sprinting you’re going to have to compromise some of that but it’s about finding the the sweet spot between that but that’s something that’s going to change depending on what pace and what speed that you’re going for it’s always worthwhile training for the

specific event that you’re training towards for example if you look at cam macaboy at the Paris Olympics he had one goal in mind and that was to win the 50 freestyle and all of his training was geared towards that he wasn’t worried about his aerobic fitness he wasn’t worried about getting in as many cases he could it was very specific training now if you’re a triathlete and you’re training for an open water swim that might be two kilometers in length and you know you’re going to be wearing a wetsuit the conditions might be quite choppy and you’re going to have lots of people around well let’s train for that specific event so that might mean that okay you’ve got to work on your upper body strength a little bit because sometimes with a wetsuit we have to we feel like we have to use the shoulders a little bit more and we’re a bit more restricted there so we’ve got to make sure our strength is up so we want to make sure

maybe we’re doing some pool buoy and paddles work in the water and we want to make sure that we’re getting some open water practice and we’re practicing those open water skills so making sure that you’re training for the specific event and that also means just allowing your stroke to be suited to that event so if you’re going to be swimming in the open water with very choppy conditions your stroke does not have to be perfect it’s about adapting your stroke to the conditions and it follows into the next point of open water is almost like a different stroke to swimming in the pool when i first started swimming open water there was a friend that i’d trained with i’d always been in the pool events he’d never beat me we get to the open water and he’d beat me by three minutes in our first open water swim and the reason was i had no idea about siting in the open water i had no idea about drafting i didn’t know how to adapt my stroke to

water that wasn’t completely still and it took me several years to be able to learn that and figure that out and actually be effective in the open water so i can feel like it almost a different sport in many ways so the open water is a is a different beast to swimming in the pool so if your goals and the things that you’re working towards are focused mostly on that open water make sure you get that experience and it’s hard to get that experience outside of swimming in open water or being in a squad that might be doing some pack swimming or some drafting so just getting as much experience as you can in the thing that you’re training towards if you’re used to wearing a watch when you swim i’d recommend taking the watch off once a week at least and it goes back a little bit to the point that i was speaking about earlier which is just being at one with the water and getting out of your head if you look at the best roomers in

the world a lot of them are not wearing any technology when they swim now they might use it just to maybe track their heart rate through a session and just to help sort of measure that that load that they’re taking on but i think it’s worthwhile taking off the watch every once in a while just allowing yourself to switch off from the data and switch off from the the thinking side of things and i find that when i take my watch off and there’s no technology there it’s much easier to tune yourself into how you’re feeling and how you’re moving through the water and some of that is just how you feel the water rushing over your body what you’re hearing when you’re swimming the beat and the tempo to your stroke there’s a lot of things that you can really tune into if you switch off from technology at least once a week in those sessions so if you’re used to always tracking everything you probably know how far you’re swimming anyway you probably know roughly what your times are if you’re using the

stop clock at the pool so you can still track your training sessions without the watch and if you haven’t done that before just try it try it for a month and see how you go and look i’m a big advocate for technology and swimming i use the form goggles i use the swim better devices i track a lot of my swims with the garment but i also don’t use that technology for a lot of the sessions as well and i find that balance between the two is something that has helped me personally and for a lot of the athletes that i coach improve their swimming in a way where now sometimes they were stuck before because they were just too focused on the data rather than just being at one with the water there’s a lot of content around swimming there’s so much advice there that you could take on board and implement into your stroke and in reality we can only focus on one thing at a time we can’t focus on three four five different things if you find that you are getting

distracted from the thing that you were originally focused on because you watched a video heard a podcast and thought okay i’m gonna try this i’m gonna try this there’s a good chance that you may not make any progress forwards because you are distracting yourself and you’re trying too many different things without sticking to the one thing so whenever someone comes to a clinic and they have said they’ve watched a lot of videos and they’ve tried a lot of different things but it’s not quite clicking the advice i give to them is okay we we can see exactly how you’re swimming we’ve taken some video we can see that the first thing you have to work on is your head position don’t distract yourself with anything else just focus on this head position for the next four weeks or six weeks and let’s make that change become a habit then we can move on to the next thing so a lot of times people stall their progress because they are

distracted by too many things and they don’t stick with it but if you have the patience to be able to dedicate yourself to one thing for several weeks or a couple of months very good chance you’re actually going to see results with that but if you try something different every single week you’re spreading yourself too thin and you’re not going to give yourself enough time to make any significant changes so turn off the distractions get some professional coaching or get someone who you find that can can help you with the swimming and work with them and just be patient pick one thing work at that move on to the next thing and you’ll be surprised at the results that you can get in three years time if you dedicate yourself to that rather than looking at the results that you might want in three months time so these are all the things that I’ve learned in my 25 years of coaching be curious to hear what you’ve learned in your time as a

swimmer or as a coach put it in the comments below thanks very much for watching thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast if you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com

The post Every Adult Swimmer Should Know These This appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

Today, we’re joined by Craig Lewin, founder of Endurance Swimming, who discovered his passion in the open water. Though he started as an average swimmer in the pool, Craig found his stride in marathon swimming, where endurance and mindset matter more than speed. In this episode, he shares his journey and insights on tackling challenging open water swims.

01:24 Journey into Marathon Swimming

Conference Name: Beyond The Breakers

Check out Endurance Swimming at Liquidtri.com and follow their  Instagram @enduranceswim!

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I think the biggest downfall outside of over like the confidence issue and doing too much is they can’t let go of the pace. Like these are triathletes who care about time or master servers who care about time or people doing one mile, two mile swims. So like when and they just get so that I’m going to do five hours and I’m going to hold this pace and that’s not that’s not how it works. So you want to find a coach that you really connect with because they’re not a coach, they’re a mentor. If you find the right person and they want you to succeed for all the reasons you want to succeed. So I always encourage people like, don’t be afraid to reach out. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast, Craig Lewin. Welcome to your founder of endurance swimming. You’re a swimmer, past triathlete, but really into marathon swimming and coaching marathon swimmers. So I’d love to get you on the podcast today and just chat about what someone needs to consider when they’re going from maybe doing shorter distance swims or doing triathlon and venturing into the marathon swimming world. So welcome to the podcast, Craig. Thank you. Happy to be here. Very excited. We’re watching for quite some time, so it’s cool to be on this side of it. Yeah. Well, I’d love to get a little bit of just your background and your journey into marathon swimming and endurance swimming and ultimately coaching as well, because I mean, for my journey, it was I started off as a swimmer, a pool swimmer, started to do some open water swimming and really loved it. And then I started to do some coaching as well

and just found I loved working with other people. And it sounds like you have a somewhat similar journey as well. Yeah, it’s a it’s very similar to that. I started I started a little later. I didn’t start swimming till I was 13, which our pool swimmer is like way too late. But that’s the way I started in the pool. And then I think freshman year of college, I was swimming collegiately and I read Lin Cox’s book, Swimming to Antarctica. I’m like, I want to do that. And I started venturing into the open water worlds and just signed up for a 25 K swim with like outside of pool swimming. No real open water swimming experience. And I liked it, but I think I didn’t have the right resources at the time or knowledge and finished the collegiate years and transition to triathlon. And I really enjoyed my time doing triathlon. And I think that’s what led me into coaching, mainly because for me, going from pools, open water and realizing there’s a really large

discrepancy and difference in the pool and the open water swim. Like there’s just so much, so much more going on. And even within the open water worlds, you have lakes and rivers and ponds like freshwater and then you have the ocean. So for me, that’s what led me into coaching where I wanted to bridge that gap and kind of take my knowledge and and use that to help, I would say, adult onset swimmers make the transition into triathlon and feel comfortable, have good, good experiences coming from that first triathlon and then, you know, moving up the ranks through performance. And my time in triathlon was cut short. I was riding, I was hit by a car while riding a bike and training. As this one does these days, I feel like with texting and driving took some time off, just coached full time or not full time. But my free time and then about seven years ago, I said, all right, it’s time for me to do something cool.

Like all my all my athletes are doing Ironman. I was like super motivated by them. And I was like, all right, I gotta, I gotta get out there. I gotta do something big. I got to do something that I can do everything right and still fail. And that’s what started kind of a marathon swim journey where I attempted the Catalina channel and kind of got the bug from there. And then from there went to 20 bridges, Sinkless Channel. And then handful of other swims, which then as I developed into a different type of swimmer, I wanted to now bring that experience to coaching and started focusing my efforts on open water swimmers and marathon swimmer specifically. So it’s similar, similar journey to you, it sounds like. Well, you’ve done a lot more marathon swims than I have. They are my one hit wonder at the moment. But the thing I like about open water swimming and then sort of doing the solos of these different channels and things is it look tight.

Yeah, time’s a part of it, but it’s more just about the challenge of yourself. And it’s not about your competitors. It’s just about you setting a goal and working towards it and trying to overcome the physical challenges of it. But I think the mental challenges of it as well. That’s a big part of it. It’s a lot of time in the water. It’s a lot of time, just like solo time, just training and having to do the work that’s involved. So what was that process like for you? Was that something that you enjoyed or did you struggle with that at any point? So I actually thought that was my favorite part. I think having been a collegiate swimmer where everything is based on time and performing like coming in for a second, depending if you’re doing collegiate races or master’s swimming or or club swimming. It’s always about a time or making your cut. And I knew coming out of college, I wasn’t going anywhere like to the Olympics. I wasn’t that fast.

And I still wanted to to do something and try to kind of fill that with competition. But then for me, moving into marathon swimming, it was about like just doing something big and getting to the other side was enough. It had nothing to do with the time. Like when you talk to people in the math and swim world and they ask you, oh, what swims have you done? You say, oh, I’ve done, you know, English Channel or this. They never ask your time because there’s literally the difference between someone who’s done it in eight hours and someone who’s done it in 20 hours. Like they’re both English Channel swimmers. So for me, I think that was a big driver of why I took to the sport because I didn’t care about peace. I didn’t have to be the swimmer I once was. I’m a whole different and I would say probably stronger, more confidence over now than I was ever like in high school or college. Yeah, it’s fantastic. And now that you’re working with a lot of people to help them

train for these sort of events and by getting, I guess, a really good feel and understanding of what someone goes through when they transition from shorter swims or triathlon to these longer swims. What are some things that people should consider if they’re thinking about making that transition across? Yeah, it’s a jump. You know, I think the number one thing for me that I am part of my swimmers is building a support network. And, you know, as a coach, coaching for distance is very easy, right? Like if the swimmer is doing the work, the workouts or workouts, like most people don’t fail. Like if you’re doing a, you know, a 10K up to 20, 25 miles swim, it’s not usually the distance that gets you. It’s something else. And a lot of the times it’s not having the right support network. So for me, that’s always the first is like, who who’s your crew? Like, do you know who’s going to be in your crew? Because they’re going to be along for the whole journey.

As you’re doing your long swims, as you’re doing your training, you need those people there with you so that they know who you are as a swimmer. They know when you’re in trouble. They know when you’re just being kind of cranky and tired. And they can find ways to keep you safe and get you through the tough spots. But the support network is not just like who’s in your boat. It’s it’s your coach. It’s your strength and conditioning specialist. It’s your nutritionist. Like there’s a huge amount of of like time and resource that are going to go into you for doing one of these largest now and at a 10K level, less so. But you still want to find those people that understand what you’re doing because I think a big, big difference in pool versus open water is distance per stroke, right? You go with I grew up at least and it was always distance per stroke. Like is what you you need in the in the pool. But when you start getting into an open water environment,

some of the better swimmers are doing, you know, 60 or just 30 stroke cycles a minute, 35, 40 stroke cycles a minute. So they’re getting up there. Whereas a pool coach will look at that, be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you doing? Like that’s that’s way inefficient. But when you get into the open water world, it’s not. So it’s more about surrounding yourself with with knowledgeable people. And then on top of that, like I said, it’s I think anyone, you know, who understands basic physiology can coach someone for the distance. So you really do need to find a mentor. So I urge any all my athletes to reach out to people that, you know, who’ve done these swims that they want to do. Some of them English channel, some are more common, but then I have other swimmers who are, yeah, there’s only been six people who’ve ever done this swim or two people have ever done this swims. I’m like, well, reach out to those two because they’re going to know

everything you need to know about logistics and planning and what what are the pitfalls? Where are the weird currents that you need to plan for? So it’s really about building information and building a really strong network for making that jump from like the, I say, 5K, 10K distance up to 15 mile, 20 mile, but it also doesn’t happen overnight. So a lot of people will come and they’ll say, oh, great. I want to do an English channel next year. Well, that’s not possible for a handful of reasons. Mainly if you don’t have your pilot, then it’s definitely not happening. You know, it depends on your background and what you’ve been doing in the water. Some it’s possible, some it’s not, but it’s they need time to develop and they need time to get out into tough conditions and really challenge themselves as an open water swimmer because. A suitable day is not a good day. A suitable day just means they feel comfortable bringing you out

and it’s safe enough, but it can be five, you know, it’d be five foot swell or, you know, a meter or two meter swell. That’s sort of a fun day for anyone. It could be, you know, it could be pouring out. It’s not fun, but you’re swimming in it. You need to figure out how to get through. So it’s really about just finding the right people to guide you along.

And that’s like for you, who of those people being for you? I’m sure you’ve had a lot over the journey, but who’s your support crew being so for me, when I started taking it more seriously post college, like when I found the right resources, there’s a coach out of California. His name is Dan Simonelli. He’s basically, he knows the Catalina channel inside and out. And to me, I needed a coach that would give me accountability, but I also wanted someone who knew those waters and they knew people in the area with Catalina, you need to also have a kayaker. So some of these swims they require just a boat. Summer, a boat and a kayaker. So he knew all the rules. He knew all the observers. He knew everyone. So as I had questions along the way, it wasn’t just coaching. It was it was that mentoring. It was saying, OK, this is what it’s going to be like the last mile. So, you know, really chill. We know you’re excited on the first mile and you’re nervous, but like chill

because that last mile is going to be the hardest mile of your life. So for me, it started with him and then from there, it just, you know, he was very supportive in the same way that I try to be with my athletes. And he’s like, reach out to this person, reach out to that person. So I started meeting a lot of different swimmers along the way. He encouraged master swimming. So I was swimming with a group out of MIT, the tech master’s group. So I had developed a couple, you know, good, I guess, swim relationships with people. So I had like swim buddies that knew what I was doing. So there were all these like different people that you just kind of pick up along the way. And then in terms of like crew and the bow, I like to keep a lean crew. And my dad has kind of been the person who’s seen me through triathlon and my early days of marathon swimming. So he knows me inside and out. And in terms of like kayaking, going to the beach, making sure I was safe

in training, it was him and my mom were like, literally in the kayak all weekend. Like I was lucky to have to, you know, my parents is that, which can go inside out with me. They’d know, you know, when you’re really cranky, when it’s just, you know, if you’re just hungry or tired, exactly. I just did a podcast with Sharon VanRivendale and Melisha Johnson, who got one and two in the 10k at the Olympics. And they were saying that in the in that swim, like they’re training buddies and they’d live together for like the year leading into Paris. And they said, like, they’re either one and two, right? I think Sharon led the first relapse, Melisha led the last relapse. And like Sharon was looking around and she’s like, all right, they’re sort of gaining on us. So she’d like sort of tap Moe’s feet and just be like, all right, we’ve got to get going now. And they’d like, they’d know what each other was thinking. It’s just like all these things that like, there’s no words spoken,

but just these little like, yeah, these little actions, they like, they know what they meant just because they got to know each other so well. So it’s, you know, when you live with someone or your parents have raised you, it’s just like they have a good idea of whatever even like little grimace means, right? Like they pick up on that stuff. Yeah, they know when you’re in trouble, type of Serbia, they know all of it. Like, so it’s, it’s nice to have. Yeah, absolutely. Now, in terms of the training side of things, how do you find people manage the volume and what about the recovery side of it? Do you find that people over train or they go too hard too early in the lead up to an event that they’re training for? Like, what, what are some common things that you find there with people? Yeah, I think it’s, it comes down to confidence. So no matter how good of a server you are, if you’ve never done anything in any sport, you tend to overdo it.

So I’ll get a lot of people and I, and in my training, it works since it’s a four week cycles. So it’s different each week is a different focal point. The volume builds, it caps off with like your two culminating long swims for the week. And then the next week is a recovery because I need them to like, no, no, you need to chill. You need to fix your technique. You need to go up your massage. Like, there’s all these things I need you to do. And if I let you kind of go on your own, you’re literally probably going to do like 50 K every single week and then occur in two months and not make it. So in my plans, I’ll give people a ring of volume range. And I say, if you’re feeling OK, it’s OK to go to the upper range. And if you’re not feeling great, it’s OK to be in the lower range. Because in the end, it’s about the aggregate and getting the long swims in. And it takes a lot of time because a lot of these people are triathletes.

They are they are people who’ve done Iron Man and they’re looking for like the next challenge, like, OK, I’ve done Iron Man, English channels, like the next on my list, it’d be really cool. Sounds awesome, impressed people, whatever. So it’s like kind of the natural progression for a lot of triathletes. And in their head, they’re they’re very type A and they’re very driven. And but they also the ones I’ve I’ve I’ve worked with they they know they can go for a long time, but they don’t know how they’re going to handle the cold. They don’t know how they’re going to handle certain elements. So they start like trying to do everything at once. And that’s just like when you’re learning to swim or you’re doing technique, you can’t fix four things at once. You got to fix one at a time. So it’s the same thing is adding it in, you know, into the progression and into the training plan at the right time. And by the end of it, they feel like they’re in a good place.

So I think more than anything, people they just will do way too much because they don’t have the confidence and they are trying to make up for it by saying, oh, if I swim a lot of the time. And yeah, they end up hurt. Yeah, yeah, exactly right. It’s like a phrase that I just sort of tell myself if I am training for like something something bigger, it’s like there’s no hero sessions, no hero efforts. Like you don’t want to just absolutely kill yourself in one session or within a week because like it’s it’s the aggregate that we’re going for. We’re not just trying to have these amazing efforts in individual sessions because like if you have two or three weeks out of the water because you’re injured and you’ve overdone it, it might take you six weeks to get back to where you you were. So you’re better off just having this sort of steady base. And I heard a good quote from the runner. I think it’s Yuck of Ingebrootson.

He something along the lines of like, think of yourself as a farmer where you’ve planted these carrots. And if you put the carrots too soon, you can’t replant them. So the longer you can just wait for these things to grow and then you pull them out down the track. Well, that’s that’s when you’re going to have so much more success and you’re going to have these these bigger carrots. And it’s like if you can take that philosophy, especially into your training, but your technique, like if you can just work on one element of your stroke for four weeks or eight weeks and not be concerned with the time, not be concerned with your pace that that’s giving you. It’s like that’s going to help you so much more down the track in the long run. So just planting these seeds, just working on them and not looking at when they once they have not pulling them up. Then you will find yourself six months, 12 months down the track

and you’ll be swimming better. You’ll be swimming faster and they’ll be a part of your stroke. But I think people are just wanting to see the results straight away or they’re not willing to wait longer to see it.

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Yeah, I think the biggest downfall outside of like the confidence issue and doing too much is they can’t let go of the pace. Like these are triathletes who care about time or master servers who care about time or people doing one mile, two mile swims to like win. And they just get so that I’m going to do five hours and I’m going to hold this pace and that’s not how it works when you start doing these very, very long swims. Like and I’m not talking 5K, 10K Olympic level. We’re talking about average person, you know, 30s, 40s, 50s, have a family, have a job. Like it’s it’s a different it’s a different mentality. Like these are people training crazy hours, but they have to let go of the time and like the pace. And there’s a lot of, you know, it’s kind of like like Zen, you know, it’s like going, it’s like that flow state of really just going with it and letting the conditions dictate how you are swimming and really is not feeling good,

because you’re not going to put in 80 percent effort for 11 hours. It’s just it’s not going to help. You might feel like 80 percent, but, you know, compared to like your threshold effort in the pool, you’re not holding that pace. So it’s more, you know, I’m assuming with the 5 and 10 care like in the Olympics, where there’ll be like attacks and the pace will the jump randomly and then slow down than jump. It’s the same thing in the open water for a solo marathon swim, because there might be a current or this might or or a wind shield or something might change. Or you’re in the shipping lanes of the English Channel and they’re like yelling, you got to you got to move, you got to sprint, you got to sprint. And that’s four hours in. But then once you get to that hour, you can, you know, just chill or, you know, go back to your normal pace. But you need to have those gears. And if you are so bent out of shape about what the watch says,

that’s very detrimental, I think, to a lot of people’s training early on, but by the end, they start to to accept it and really enjoy just swimming and getting in that that mental state of like, just, you know, go with the flow versus I’m holding this piece. And this is the time I want to be. Yeah, you don’t want to be chasing speed or times. You want to be chasing that feeling of flow and just being present in there and like almost being able to switch off, you know, in a way where you just, you know, half an hour passes and you blink and it’s yeah. And you’re like, OK, that was that was half an hour or an hour. Like, that’s kind of what you want to get into in a way. And you have to just like, let kind of have to let things go. Right? You have to just like, yeah, no worry about the pace. One question I was going to ask in terms of the marathon swimming is that is an important factor there? Is it just being able to hold your, hold your stroke rate,

hold your tempo, aside from when you need to pick it up? Like, is that something that’s you’d sort of look at a little bit more rather than stroke length, which obviously we can’t measure in the open water, but like, is it is it tempo? Yeah, I mean, stroke rate is pretty important. You’ll see a lot of swimmers will have their crew with whiteboards and one of the numbers they’re writing down is stroke rate. I think it’s also a number that observers for colder swims will often watch because if it drops below, if it’s dropping rapidly and the swimmer can’t pick it up, it’s a sign of hypothermia and it might be time to call a swim. But stroke rate is one because it’s it’s that consistent motion throughout the swim, mainly because if you start getting stretched out too much or you start revving up and you’re slipping, you know, if you’re in salt water, it’s less dense than a pool. It’s more aerated. So you you need the turnover because even if you had if you had

a same stroke rate in a pool or open water, you’re not going to go as far with every pull in the open water because it’s less dense water because it’s aerated because there’s chop and swell. So that’s why the stroke rate does does tend to matter. But everyone’s different. Like you see people like Adam, Adam Walker, I don’t know if you’ve ever talked to him, but he’s an ocean seven swimmer and he has probably one of the longest strokes I’ve seen and it works. So everyone’s different. But, you know, for average, average people, it’s generally the stroke keeping that tempo throughout and that consistency throughout is going to be a really important factor in their success.

And now in terms of the mental side of things and building that confidence, what do you see some important things to help people develop that in themselves so that they get to their crossing or get to their longer swim where they’re like, all right, I I’m confident that I’ve done the work. I’m confident that I can withstand the cold and all those sorts of things.

It’s it’s the long swims. So in just like you do marathon training, I mean, training, you have progressively longer bikes, longer runs is the same thing in swimming. So you’re going to see a lot of swimmers, they get their training plan and their first long swims are like two or three hours. And they’re like, oh, that’s really long. But when I give plans, they’re seeing their whole plan. Like I want them to see what they’re what the next like, you know, six months, seven months of their life is going to look like because they understand the commitment, they’ll see two or three hours and then they’re going to get to the end and they see back to back like eight, nine hour swims in their head. They’re like, there’s no way I’m ever going to get there. And it’s kind of really scary. But then every week or not every week, but every cycle that long swim gets a little longer. So it’s like two, three hour swims. And it’s, you know, a four hour and a two hour than a five.

So it’s progressively gets longer. But every one of those swims is a dress rehearsal. Because that’s the time you’re learning what to eat, when to eat, how Austin, how are you getting fed? You know, how do you like the food you were eating, you know, two hours in versus six hours in because these are all important things. So it’s it’s about basically making the long swims, just another routine. So when you get to the day of, you’re like, I’ve done the work. I’ve done the long swims. I know not every hour, every half hour is going to feel good. And I know how I’m going to dig deep and get to the next half hour. And it’s those long swims where you build those mental, like your mental toolbox, right? That’s where you’re learning what your motivation is. What are your coping mechanisms? What do you need to hear? What do you not want to hear? Like, for example, like when my crew asked how I’m feeling, like eight

hours into a swim, like, how do you think I’m feeling? I’m cold, I’m tired. This doesn’t feel great. Like I want to be done, you know, so like knowing what sets you off and communicating that clearly to your crew. But basically it’s those long swims or your dress rehearsal so that you’ve literally done that, that big attempt 50 times, you know, before because you’ve just every long training. So you’ve had a chance to practice and refine. So by the time you get to the end, like, oh, this is just like another training day and you don’t really, it doesn’t make you nervous. I think it’s a lot of, I’m sure, you know, you’ve entered into a lot of Olympians and elite swimmers and triathletes and they have that routine, and I think that routine is what helps them. It’s like, no, that’s like what gets them in the mental space. They do the visualization because they’re like, well, I’ve visualized it. I’ve practiced it in theory thousands and thousands of times.

So this is no different. And that’s, I think the key is doing those long swims and controlling training for what you can control. The other stuff you can’t worry about. You can’t worry about the weather. You can’t worry about certain factors. You focus on what you can control. You save the energy for that and you don’t worry about the rest. Yeah. And you just walk in your routine. And I think that’s what people get the confidence and end up being successful.

I love it. I was listening to someone talk about like public speaking and how that’s it’s a really hard thing for people to do. They get really nervous and yeah, and then they get nervous and they sort of stumble on their words and those sorts of things. And he was saying a similar thing. It’s like, well, if you’ve rehearsed and you’ve rehearsed that talk a thousand hundred times, well, you’re probably not going to be that nervous. And you’re not going to be worried about what the different things you’re going to be saying. You’re not going to be worried about what people are thinking because you’ve just been through that in your head so many times. And if you can do that same thing with with your swimming, where it’s like, well, I’ve done an eight hour swim. I’ve done a 10 hour swim. Yeah, I’m used to it. Then it’s just it’s not new and it’s like anything new. It takes a lot of brain power to understand what’s happening and to be

able to feel comfortable. But if we’re just in that zone where it’s like, you know, all right, I’ve done this before. I’ve got these neural pathways developed where I don’t have to think too much about it, then you can save all that energy for the things that you can’t control. So yeah, it’s it’s it’s simple, but I think it’s often overlooked because it’s it’s that simple, just that progressive buildup and progressive increase in whatever it is you want to do. And I heard a similar thing about like someone who’s scared of spiders. It’s like, well, all right, what I have to do, right? Well, let’s start with a small spider that’s in another room. And then we’ll take away that little that window that you can see the spider through and they’ll go bigger and like same thing, just progressively build it up. So yeah, I really, really like it. And I remember when I trained for my one and only marathon swim, we ended up building up to maybe doing 16 Ks out in the open water

before the swim. And if I looked at that six months beforehand, I’m like, there’s no way I’m doing 16 Ks, just with me and a friend in the Bay for whatever it was for five hours. But at the time, it’s like, oh, this is kind of easy. It’s actually not that hard, but it’s because each week we just built it up, you know, started with 4K, that’s six, eight and so on. So yeah, lots to be said for it.

Yeah, I think the other pieces, at least when you get to the least any any real open water ocean swim is you want to train in the conditions you’re going to experience. And that doesn’t mean like what you’re going to experience on a perfect day. So I always recommend like the days where you look out and you know, it’s safe to swim, but I don’t want to swim because it’s windy, it’s rainy, it’s choppy. Like those are the days like no one wants to swim. But those are the days you have to swim because those are swimmable, like if it’s safe and you have the right, you know, support ever can place to make sure you stay safe.

You could get that day and you don’t want your swim day to be your big attempt day to be the first day you experience it like that is nothing new on race day if you can, you know, avoid it. So so like I always, you know, I focus more on suffering training or, you know, it’s like suffering training or suffering on the day. I like myself and my athletes suffer and suffer in training because you want to enjoy that day. That’s like your victory. Hmm. Yeah, definitely. Is there anything anything else that comes to mind that feel like people should know if they are looking to do these longer swims? Yeah, I mean, like I said, I think it’s about finding the right people to help guide you. I think there’s ladies in this world with social media, like there’s just like a lot of people who are good at marketing and can talk, but, you know, haven’t necessarily been there, don’t have the right accolades and are in it for a different reason.

So I always tell athletes, like when you’re looking for a coach and even when they come to me as a coach, I tell them before they work with me, I’m like, I want you to talk to three or four other coaches, here’s some names. Like I want you we’re in this together. Like I’m committed as you are committed. Like if you you don’t succeed on this on one of your attempts, like I’m in it with you, we’re going to figure it out. Like they’re in tears. I’m in tears. If they’re celebrating, I’m celebrating. So you want to find a coach that you really connect with because they’re not a coach. They’re a mentor and if you find the right person and they want you to succeed for all the reasons you want to succeed. So I always encourage people like don’t be afraid to reach out. Don’t be afraid to ask questions like open water swimmers is like triathletes and any other sport. They like talking and they want to help people. So, you know, if you go reach out to that person,

you’re you know, you’re following on, you know, who’s done all these swims, like email them. They are probably more than happy to talk to you and give you some pointers or ways that you can at least get started and where you should be looking for resources. So that would be my only advice. Like don’t be afraid to have questions and like talk to several people before settling on like your coach and trust your trust the training, trust the process. Those are like the main main keys outside of some of the stuff we’ve already talked about today. It’s it’s really and enjoy it. It’s fun. It’s transformative. You’re going to be a different person on the other side of it. So I think it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done. Yeah, well, I mean, just I can tell that you that you love that you love this sport, love the coaching side of it to you. So it sounds like you’re where you need to be, where you should be. And yeah, that’s that’s terrific.

And I mean, especially with the coaching side of things, you know, most most coaches are going to be like they’re going to ride that way with you up or down and and then to pass on the details of someone else who can might be a better fit for you, whatever you’re training for. So yeah, and it is it’s a quite a small world as well. Like everyone generally sort of knows each other. And so, you know, just talk to different people. Everyone’s always happy to help, especially in this in this kind of world. I reckon it’s yeah, everyone’s so you because it’s not competitive necessarily. It’s just everyone’s there to challenge themselves and help others. So in terms of people who want to get in touch with you, whether that’s for coaching, I know you’ve got sort of a conference coming up. So what’s what have you got coming up and what’s the best way for people to get in touch with? Oh, yeah. So in November, I decided to, you know,

try to make a bigger impact with more people and starting an open waterson focus conference called Beyond the Breakers. It’s going to be right outside Boston Mass in November, November 9th and 10th. The website for it is swimbeyondthebreakers.com. And we have a really great lineup of speakers. I think for my own journey, I really what I’ve really first started, I struggle to find the right people. And they’re really easy to find once you know where to look. So that’s what this conference is all about is about connecting people in the open water world. So whether you’re a triathlete, one mile swim, two mile swim, Olympians, I think 10 K, we’re looking to make the jump to like the big marathon swims. And even winter swimming, we have some winter swimming speakers. We have we have people there that can that are going to be giving presentations to really help guide. So we have some some great names, but really it’s all about

connection, helping drive some innovation in this for and really just helping people achieve their goals, whether they’re just getting in the open water for the first time or doing some like crazy long, you know, 48 hour swim. So, yeah, so that’s a website. And then for my own business, the website’s liquid try.com. It’s endurance swimming is a company, you know, very original name, but does the does the trick. That’s what we do. And then on Instagram, I’m just at endurance swims so you can always reach out anywhere. People have questions. I like putting people on the right path and I urge people to reach out and ask questions. Like I said, if I’m not the right person, I will help find the right person so that you can, you know, do what you set out to do. Fantastic. Well, Craig, thanks so much for being on the podcast. Looking forward to seeing what you do in the future in terms of your swims, but also, you know, great to see someone who’s active in the in the industry

and in the sport that’s looking to grow it and help other people. So I appreciate being on the podcast. Thank you for having me. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

The post How To Get Started In Marathon Swimming with Craig Lewin appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

00:13 Introduction

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

Have you ever wondered what the coach of an Olympic gold medalist and world record holder would say about freestyle technique? I caught up with current coach of Kyle Chalmers, Ash Delaney, who’s an Australian Olympic silver medalist and former Australian record holder himself to get his take on freestyle technique. What does it take to become fast and efficient? And what are the key areas of freestyle technique that he looks to develop with his athletes? I think body position relates so much to head for me. So I’ll connect those two together. But you’re always looking at nice long neck, I think is the key. And then that one that helps then your body can rotate around your spine much better. And that helps you obviously with your rotation and your length. I think that’s that’s that’s a big key and then making sure those hips are actually up. And if you’re looking down at the bottom of the pool with a nice long neck and really

good posture, then you’re setting up your good body position from that. You’re looking for a nice tight kick, depending on if you’re going for more distance or if you’re then going more sprint freestyle, but sprint freestyle, you’re looking at constant tight kick, which then helps helps lock in the hips. We want to make sure we’re generating a lot of torque through your core by keeping those hips locked on. And then that relates to the kick being nice and tight. So if you can do that, then you’ve got something to like initiate the catch from to the opposite hip, you create that torque in your body. And like kick only, it probably only contributes to between maybe 10 and 15 per pole propulsion. But then if you lose your legs, you lose your hips, you lose the core, you lose the connection of the stroke, and that’s where it goes. So it’s so important to be conditioned in kick for those types of sprint events, probably 200 down, but

making sure that you are conditioned with your kick because if that goes at the end of your race, the connection goes. I then asked us about Kyle Chalmers and Isaac Jones, two of his athletes who made the Australian Olympic team. Kyle’s stroke is if you look on top of the water, it can be can be a little bit messy. And he’s got a really big kick but kick up above the water. But nothing ever if you then look underneath the water is almost perfect. The kick doesn’t go below his body line. So there’s no drag at the back. He uses his kick for connection of the stroke and timing. And then he’s got that loping stroke where he just connects on and he just drives through the water with his rotation. So our goal is to connect right at the top there. And then he’s got this amazing catch from top to halfway down. And then he’s got another press out the back where he holds amazing water. And then all of that sets up with really good length. He tries to go

connecting on his left for rotation and then length right. So they’re his cues to his stroke. And you can see that the way that he swims that loping stroke. But he’s just so powerful through the water. You go Isaac who’s twenty one six for fifty three. He’s very much straight arm over the top of the water for the fifty three. And then he’s he’s recovery really starts from he’s really driving out the back. Doesn’t want to be flicking the water and continuing out but it’s a drive underneath the water. And then it’s around the side of his. He finds that that just balances him out and all momentum moving forward. As where Karl is a bent arm freestyler of in the recovery. And we work on really trying to have that relaxed hands or with anyone in freestyle should be it’s called recovery should be nice and relaxed as soon as you start to tighten up using way more energy than you need to. And then you’re probably going to

overreach or you’re going to drive in too hard because you’re not relaxed. Your hands should be nice and relaxed the whole way through until you just start to put a little bit of tension on it when you start your catch. So that’s what I look for nice and recovered. Nice and relaxed recovery. You’re definitely looking at for your entry is soft hands and again but depending on the stroke it all depends where those hands enter. So again crossing over or entering in wide that’s not what we want. Everything’s got to be in line with your shoulder because when you start that press that’s where you’re going to be strongest. If you start to lose or you’re a little bit wide or your press starts to go out wide then you’re already in a weak position one it can compromise your shoulder for injuries but two you’re just missing all of the good water right in front of your shoulder where you’re the strongest. That way you can utilize your lats and making sure

that’s all in line. Easier said than done because when you’re you’re laying down in position and your hands above your head so that’s where the coach comes in or video feedback comes in really important because it always feels like you’re in line. You look at the camera and your way out here so I think that’s really important. Definitely get that video footage. So when you’re setting up your catch the very basic is again your hand in line with your shoulder and fingertips. We’re talking about freestyle. Fingertips point into the bottom of the pool and then because you’re getting maximal force going backwards as soon as you start to move your hand out of the way or swivel out of the way then you’re letting go of that water but then looking at the top catch and then you’re looking at a second press using your forearm for that end of the stroke. You really want to feel like you’re pushing to your ankles then you come up into that recovery position but

what I then go to the next level is more about connection. So if you could have the best catch in the world but if it’s not connected to your rotation connected to your core connected to your hip you’re just doing everything with your arms and you’re disconnected so you’re really trying to find the connection of the stroke and that’s how you set it up to being the full connection with your catch and that’s when you’re going to have a much smoother freestyle and be more efficient. I then asked Ash if he has any favorite drills that he likes to give his squad. Call it freestyle timing drill but easy to do with fins it’s one arm out in front and then the other arm just sits up here so you rotate over you’re kind of trying to hold your good body position constant kick and then the catch here out in front has to initiate this arm coming through because if you just bring this over you’re already stuck in the three quarter catch up and then this one

just gets out of the way but if you actually set it up all right you’ve got pressure on the water and then you pull yourself into that next rotation and then that’s the timing of the stroke. So again it’s that one the arm out in front leads it so you’re pulling yourself in and then talk about the catch pulls this shoulder in the arms just connected to it so when you actually do it and you extend your arm that shoulder comes in at the same it’s leading that arm and then because obviously your shoulder is connected to your trunk and then that’s where you start to build that connection a little bit more yeah if you go no breath you go no breath very easy to do then you need to work out the timing of the breath as well. This podcast has brought you by Great Ocean Wet Suits an up-and-coming Australian performance wetsuit brand for triathletes and open water swimmers. The wetsuits are designed and tested in Melbourne Australia

for fast easy and enjoyable swimming for athletes of all levels. They’re worn in and raced by Olympians triathletes and open water swimmers from all over the world and I personally use Great Ocean Wetsuits even before they became a sponsor of the podcast. I’ve personally found that the buoyancy the freedom through the shoulders and the fit are the best that I’ve ever had in a wetsuit so I highly recommend them and you can currently get 20% off either the gold or silver wetsuit models using our own code Effort20 at checkout so enter the code Effort20 at checkout at GreatOceanWetsuits.com and no matter where you are in the world if you’re in Australia the US Europe there’s free shipping worldwide so get yourself a Great Ocean Wetsuit I personally use the gold model of the wetsuit it just depends on what your goals are so GreatOceanWetsuits.com Effort20 get checkout I know you’ll like them. The timing of the breath for what I want my guys to do

is as your hands coming through you should start to turn your head so your hands entering while you’re taking your breath and then it should be nice and quick and it initiates back when you actually start to apply pressure there your severe common mistake is you see the other arm coming over and then your head has to get out of the way of that other arm coming over and that’s going to be a little bit more sprint model but if you’re then pulling yourself back in you’re pulling it back in and then your eye your hand should be in front of your eyes as this starts to come through so then and again that’s probably more sprint model than it would be for for distance but that’s definitely the same concept you probably just a little bit later if you’re doing distance in terms of breathing patterns I think again it comes down to the individual and you can go you can go twos for rhythm you can go fours because it creates more

length more length to your stroke because you’re allowed to keep your head down and you can feel the length and the rotation going through but and then like I said it goes to more the individual because then you can go on the flip side you can breathe twos but then they might start to lose their length because of it and shorten up but then what do they need then for rhythm so you’ve got a whole different the whole lot of different models that you can sort of go off I know some people breathe two two fours you can go fours on the way down twos on the way back it’s all how you find your your breathing model yeah so I don’t I don’t have a particular one that is that I would teach the most but I do like breathing fours for a hundred I don’t know why I just I for me when I was swimming that’s what I liked but then there’s you’ve got someone like Aaron Titmus that breathes two two four in a 400 freestyle so but it’s actually it’s how you train so you

need to condition that if you want to breathe fours you’ve got to do it every time you do a pace 50 then that’s where you’ve got to do so you’ve got to condition that and you can do it easy you could do it sixes if you really wanted to but it’s got to be it’s got to be what you think is the optimal right for you and what about favorite cues or phrases that he likes to use when he’s coaching I think one of the phrase I would use the most is length I’m very big on efficiency and counting your strokes so I’m always looking for length because what happens when people tighten up at the end of the race what do you see them do they start to just chop in so the more you can keep practicing holding your length and that’s length out in front and then length through the catch that’s sort of what I’m talking to them about a lot yeah I think when you’re working on your technique I think it should be done slow but very thoughtful

so you don’t want to rush your way through it because then that starts to mask mistakes so it’s like you’re hiding all the imperfections by just rushing through it so I always try and get my eyes to slow down slow down think about it then you can balance a little bit more or if you’re unbalanced you can start to feel that so it’s more about feel I mean I’ve had the best of both worlds right like I was a swimmer on the Australian team and then now coaching and getting getting kind of close to that level as well I feel like I’ve been able to transfer a lot of my knowledge or at least my feel as a swimmer to then now coaching sort of being able to explain it really well but there’s been a lot still that I need to learn as a coach I think that’s really important to be aware of but it just gives me an advantage knowing how it feels and knowing what the sets are like and like if they’re hurting or where the pain comes on and then trying to

communicate that to the swimmers as well so I think that’s where it’s been really good but yeah like I said still plenty of still plenty to learn in the coaching space but I think if we’re not constantly improving then then we’re kind of just staying still so I think that’s really important to think about are there any common mistakes that you see being made when coaching high-performance athletes? I think the biggest one for me probably is overtraining you’ve got to make sure like I think about when I’m thinking about speeds and you’ve got to make sure you can actually hit your top speed so if you’re tired or being overtrained then you don’t have the ability to go when the coach wants you to go so I think that that’s a really important one for me so if you’re too tired and you can’t hit the top speeds then you’re probably not going to hit the speeds that you need and then that’s then going to transfer over you’re going to be stuck in that zone of

just a little bit down and you’re going to start to shrink it right down your slow is going to be too fast and then your fast is going to be too slow and then you’re stuck in right in that threshold middle level. What’s the hardest set that you’ve ever done? I’ve got two that I sort of go to about that one is one that I did a lot with Rowan Taylor but it was 450s on two minutes and then it was probably about four or five hundred meters of removal and I’d do that three to four times but it was the the 50s were best average but like my lactate would get well over 20 well over 20 lactate in that sort of set even though I’m just swimming basically it was just 100 pace making sure I was hitting 100 stroke rate 100 count so I was quite specific in that sense but it just accumulated and it was just by the third or fourth set it was just an absolute grind but not not not difficult to ride or anything like that it was it’s pretty basic set but it’s probably the level of detail

you put into it. The other one was more of a hypoxic one that I did with Vince Rayleigh but we would do eight two hundreds eight two hundreds backstroke but we progressed to go 15 underwater off the first wall 20 underwater on the second wall 25 underwater on the third wall and then 30 underwater on the last one and the time the time cycle was 330 I couldn’t make all those underwater but it was the time cycle that ended up getting you and it was just a hard mental grind by the because you could get through the first two it was the middle ones that was just insanely hard and then you were just so out of breath by the last couple that it was yeah that was tough I’d have to say my best ever race was probably my 200 backstroke in 2009 where I broke the Commonwealth record and went 155.8 it just was everything just came together in that race I just executed it really well the process was spot on we made a shift

two years before to say I was going to start focusing on the 200 backstroke and all that kind of led to that led to that moment so I even I look back now and I look back at the video and it probably wasn’t necessarily oh there’s 10 things I could pick apart of it as a coach now but it was still my best performance because of how well I put the process together oh yeah the worst ever race I did was actually it was when we had this hard training camp it was part of a national camp that we did with swimming Australia and we had to come and race a Grand Prix in Brisbane and it was also the 200 backstroke but the it was more because I didn’t really want to do it and it was so terrible and I thought I was putting in the effort but I swam it a little bit slower which means I sunk down the water and it still hurt so much even though I didn’t really want to do it but it was just terrible mindset going into the race and then it was a terrible race attached to it so

you have to be 100% in and if you’re going to be a professional athlete or even an athlete that just wants to take ownership don’t even have to be professional you’ve just you’re there for you and you’ve got to do what you need to do and doing a sub pass swim like that is just not good enough so and that was but again maybe being a little bit younger and immature but you’ve got to have those mistakes or failures to learn from them I think the best ever advice I’d been given or it’s probably actually more of like I guess a way of learning but Kaizen have you heard of that before where it’s continual learning I think if you take that into anything anything into life and Rowan Taylor was a big one on this being my coach and now the national head coach I really took that on board and I think that is if you’re continually learning you continually bettering yourself I think that just becomes you’re always progressing and you’re never saying still I said that before but

I think that’s a really important bit of advice and a good way to live your life thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast if you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com

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Jaimie Fuller is the founder of EO, the creators of the SwimBetter device, which measure the force and direction of a swimmer’s hand movements. These devices were used by gold and silver medalists in the 100m freestyle, Pan Zhang Lee and Kyle Chalmers, in the lead-up to the Paris Olympics. Tune in now!

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The next day I got this really lovely message from the Chinese thanking me for the tech because Pan Zhan Li, who not only won the race, but smashed it, you know, he won by over a second and smashed the world record. They let me know that he’d been using it regularly in preparation for the games and they even sent me some screenshots of some of his data.

The big opportunity I think is with the distance guys, because the whole point about these things is they can help you identify areas to improve your stroke and, you know, it’s self-explanatory that if you can improve your stroke and then you’re swimming one, two, three kays, whatever, that little improvement on every stroke really builds significant. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

In an electrifying turn of events at the Paris Olympics, Pan Zhan Li shuttered the men’s 100 freestyle world record, clocking in at a blistering 46.4 seconds. The buzz didn’t stop at the edge of the pool. It rippled all the way to Jamie Fuller’s inbox. Shortly after Pan’s victory, his coaches reached out to Jamie with a note of gratitude, acknowledging the instrumental role that EO’s innovative swim better devices played in this achievement. These cutting edge gadgets provide precise feedback on the force and direction of a swimmer’s hand movements, offering insights that are nothing short of revolutionary. Caught somewhat off guard, but immensely proud, Jamie reflected on the fact that the Chinese swim team had been integrating these tools into their training regime. However, he hadn’t realized that Pan himself had been harnessing the technology to refine his strokes to world record perfection. I reached out to Jamie and invited him to join us on this episode

of the podcast to dive deeper into the story behind EO’s swim better devices and cover Pan’s journey to the top and even pinpoints and tips for swimmers of all levels looking to enhance their performance. How exactly do the EO swim better devices dissect and improve a swimmer’s technique? Can amateur swimmers and triathletes benefit from similar technology? And what should they look for? And what are some common pitfalls in freestyle that even experienced swimmers can overlook? Welcome to the effortless swimming podcast. My guest today is Jamie Fuller from EO Lab. He is a big part of the team that brought the swim better devices into into production, something that I’ve had a little bit of a hand in and I’ve been testing and using over the last probably 18 months now. I think Jamie and no big deal with me using it. But what we saw of the Olympics was that some of the fastest swimmers will be fastest swimmer in the world over 100 freestyle

was actually using the device in his training leading up to the Olympic. So I want to get you, Jamie, on to the podcast today to talk a little bit about that and what you’re seeing and how people are using these swim better devices to improve their swimming. Sure. Thanks, Brenton. So we have a partnership with Col Chalmers. And when Kyle won the silver, of course, I was overjoyed for him for three consecutive Olympics medal, but a little bit disappointed that he didn’t hit the gold. And then the next day I got this really lovely message from the Chinese thanking me for the tech because Pan Zhang Li, who not only won the race, but smashed it, you know, he won by over a second and smashed the world record. They let me know that he’d been using it regularly in preparation for the games and they even sent me some screenshots of some of his data. So that was particularly pleasing. And then it was followed up a couple of days later

from an order with an order from David Popovich, who came third. So we had a we had a very good games and coupled with that, the 50 as well, because we’re done a little bit of work with Cam McAvoy and Ben Proud and purchase them too. But I got to say is as great as that is with the sprinters, the big opportunity I think is with the distance guys because the whole point about these things is they can help you identify areas to improve your stroke and, you know, it’s self-explanatory that if you can improve your stroke and then you’re swimming one, two, three kays, whatever, that little improvement on every stroke really builds significant. Yeah, it’s exactly right. The if you’re taking 4000 strokes in your Ironman swim, well, then you’ve got a lot more opportunity to, you know, get 5%, 10%, probably more for most people to be able to increase their propulsion and just get more out of every stroke. So that and that’s why I love working with needed to long distance swimmers

is it’s we’ve just got a lot more time to be able to improve the stroke where in the sprint, things just go so quickly. So I can tell you from my personal experience and I’m not I’m not a swimmer, but it got me into the pool and it got me it challenged me sufficiently intellectually to not just understand the process and understand how they work but to apply it. And so I went through the journey and I took eight minutes off my 800 time. So for and don’t get me wrong, I went from being like ultra shit to shit. But but still, you know, and we know that when we talk about the triathlon world, you know, and I don’t want to be disparaging to the majority of the people that are listening to this, who might be triathletes, but the reality is the swim is their weakest leg. And I might add not only was I able to take eight minutes off my time, but in doing that, I was able to reduce my stroke rate from 29 strokes a minute down to about 23.

So in applying the changes that these things had revealed, I was able then to be able to dramatically reduce my stroke rate, dramatically increase my distance per stroke. So my distance per stroke was gone from to 1.4 metres to 2.2 metres. So my effectiveness and my efficiency is so much better and carving off eight minutes. So that sort of for my mind, that’s the holy grail when it comes to triathlon, that if you can get out of that water feeling fresher and ideally faster and get onto the bike, then it’s happy. And what stood out to you over the last 12 to 18 months of working with different people across all different sports, right? Like very top level swimmers, people like yourself for almost almost very new to swimming. What are some things that you’ve seen across the board in terms of what the devices are showing you? Like, is there anything that sort of surprised you or you think that would be good for people to know?

So there’s a whole bunch of things. And if we’ve got four hours, I can walk you through a whole heap of stuff because I’ve engaged at the highest level with like literally Olympic gold medalists down to through NCAA swimmers at college in the US down to working with swim clubs and triathletes. And I’m seeing a whole bunch of stuff. But primarily what I tend to see is way too much downward force that’s going on with swimmers because we’re able to present the data. So let me I’ll just give you a 30 second overview.

So these things work on the principle of Newton’s Third Law. And Newton’s Third Law says for every force or action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. And in swimming terms, that means if I want to swim forward in that direction, I need my hand pushing backwards in that direction. It’s really very simple. So when you think about it, if my hand is doing this laterally or doing a lot of this either down or at the back end of the stroke pushing up, that’s not sending me forward. So not only do we measure the amount of force that you’re pushing through the stroke, but we’re able to apply it and tell you what directions you’re pushing that force in. We can split that stroke up, that lap up, that swim up. We can split the data up and tell you not only that, we can give you some goals to work towards. So for example, for distant swimmers, we think and I say we think because we don’t have years of research

because these things haven’t existed before. But we think that a distant swimmer should be 70 to 75 percent propulsive and it’s not unusual to see swimmers or athletes who are only like 35, 40 percent propulsive. And primarily, yeah, I think we’re going to look at some of your data soon. But primarily the challenge is that it’s pushing. There’s a lot of downward force being applied. And when I say distant swimmers at 70 to 75, it’s different to sprinters. So a sprinter, we’d probably want to see at 55 to 60 percent. And the reason is we know with a with a distant swimmer, we’ve got the high elbow catch and we want to go from this position at the end of the glide into that position quickly and effectively and efficiently so that we can become as propulsive as we can. The sprinter, on the other hand, has got a straight arm and because of their straight arm, they’re going to generate a lot more downward force.

And so I see a lot of distant swimmers with this straight arm and they’re wasting all that energy and wasting all that force because they’re getting no benefit from the hand pushing down. And then you couple with that as well. What I also see is a lot of them. The first move is the drop of the elbow and the moment you drop that elbow like that, that hand has got to travel further down and you will generate a huge amount of downward force totally unnecessarily before you get into that propulsive position that’s going to push you forward. So it’s it’s really quite a basic thing but done incredibly cleverly and intelligently and then presented so you can analyse the data yourself. What screens do you like to look at the most like for you, maybe for your own swimming? What’s most useful for you? And then what are you seeing other coaches or athletes using with the with the data? So easily the most important one is the force field

because the force field is where we apply those forces in the six directions. And the beauty about it is you can look at it with both hands combined and then you can separate the left and the right hand because again, it’s not unusual and particularly with triathletes. The left hand and the right hand are on two completely different journeys. And so when it comes to diagnosing where you are, it’s very simple. And so once you what you do is you take your your baseline or your benchmark. Where am I? Where’s my data? And I look at that and then I have an idea of where I want to get to. And then I can look at, OK, so what changes do I need to make? And then the other critical, really critical thing that I’ve learnt the hard way is you can only change one thing at a time. You can only focus on one thing at a time. You know, it’s such a difficult sport, there’s so much going on. And we’re only talking about the propulsive component

through the hands and the forearm. We haven’t talked about kick. We haven’t talked about body roll. We haven’t talked about drag head position. So there’s a whole bunch of other stuff. But the biggest contributor to propulsion is the hand and the arm. And that’s why we started with this. So it’s the force field for me. And I’ve got to tell you the best coaches and the best results we’re seeing is when the athlete puts this at the end of the lane at the shallow end. So they put their mobile phone at the end of the lane. They do two laps and they stand in the shallow end and they download the data while standing in the pool. And within 10 seconds, you’ve got the force field there and you’re seeing where your force application is. And then you say, OK, well, I’m, you know, 42 percent propulsive. Now I’m too much down. OK, I’m going to make a change. And you go and do another two laps and you download it and you’ll see you’ve gone from 42 to 45.

Oh, OK. That worked well now, but I’ve got to go more. And you get that fast feedback loop and very quickly you will see the changes that you’ve that you’ve been making with your technique. Instantly, you’ll see it as objective data on your phone.

That’s what I was thinking when I recorded this morning. I recorded and then I had to get back home to the kid drop off and everything. And then I was looking at my data and I thought, man, that’s like I wish I just stuck around and just downloaded it quickly to the phone to check it and then try and work on it. Because particularly with my left hand, which we’ll go through in a moment, I’ve got so much opportunity there to just to press back more. Like it’s it’s coming into the center too much. It’s pressing down too much. And I think and it’s very quick to download to the phone. Like it takes no time at all. It’s a really simple process. And I know it’s gotten quicker since it since your first launch. Like it’s it’s very quick now. So yeah, so that’s that’s what I feel like I need to do to start to really see some of those better or higher numbers for the propulsive forces, because they’re they’re a lot lower

than than what they should be. And one thing I actually noticed when I filmed myself and another guy, Sam Shepard, so we were doing a video for some wetsuits. And he was I was drafting off him and he was drafting off me for some of these videos. And he’s like he was just off making the Olympic team for long distance for like the 10 K or 20 K. And I was looking at our footage and I’m like he’s just working so much easier than I am because he’s just a bit more relaxed through the reach. And then he gets a better angle, whereas I’m just I’m putting too much force on in the beginning. And a lot of that’s going down. It was so obvious with the videos. And then obviously it’s coming through in the data and saying it there. And you’ll see I mean, you ask about what are the key ones that I look at, certainly the force field is the first one. But then the consistency. And I look at the consistency as opposed to the hand pass.

And particularly when we’re dealing with triathletes. I mean, if you’re dealing with someone like Kyle Chalmers, you’re going to get a consistent stroke so you can analyze and look at some interesting stuff from one stroke. When you’re dealing with triathletes, you’re going to get a bit of variation happening across the lap anyway. So the consistency chart is where we add. We literally stick every stroke of that lap on on top of each other. And there you can get a very clear indication and and there are a lot of things that you can see. So, for example, it’s it’s not unusual to see the left hand doing a normal sort of a question mark, sort of reverse question mark and goes out a little bit, then comes in and push back. And the right hand might be sweeping completely across the right hand side of the body.

And that tends to happen with the breathing, you know, because as the breathing goes to the left, the right shoulder twists around and it also dips and you suddenly see huge asymmetries both looking at it from side on as well as from top down. And you can read into that exactly what’s going on. Because we know the objective with breathing is to have the smallest rotation of the head you can do. And that’s why when you see the best swimmers in the world, they’ve only got the corner of their mouth sticking out of the water because it’s all about how do I get that breath and keep my shoulders straight and keep my body straight? I don’t want to be rotating or twisting. I just want to be turning my head slightly. And it’s one of the big things that I see very regularly with triathletes. And then finally, we’ve got this other screen, the last chart, which combines everything, which combines the whole data split

with the hand path and with the timer. And you can move the timer down and you can see exactly where the hand is at and where you’re losing your propulsion and you can read into it. It becomes very, very easy to read. And one of the other things, Brenton, that’s important is if anything, people get a little bit daunted, they find there’s so much data and they think, oh, it’s a bit daunting. How do I interpret this? I do one-on-one sessions with people who buy the system and we do a teams or a Zoom call. We spend an hour going through it and I show them exactly how to go chart to chart and read through. Because it’s just all new stuff, right? Like, we’ve just never been able to see this sort of information. And yeah, and I think that’s what I love about the front screen, that initial screen with the force field where you’ve got your percentage of forces in different directions. Like, that’s just a good overview to see

generally where the strike’s going and you can kind of just break it down and get into as much or as little detail as you want from there. So, yeah, really, like, it’s, yeah, it’s really impressive what you’ve been able to do with with these things. So, I would be interested to, if we can go through my data here. I will. And just before I go on, just for any coaches that are listening, where we’re getting some great results, particularly with triathletes, is the ability to remote coach. Is the ability for a swimmer or a triathlete to use these anywhere in the world and a coach to be anywhere in the world and they share their data a bit like what we’re doing. We’re going to do with you now and the coach can then either do a session, a real time session and go through the data with the athlete. Alternatively, the coach can record it, do a screen recording and walk it through and then send them the link and they can see it.

And with the feedback we’re getting from coaches and athletes in the United States, I was on a call the other day with a coach in Boston and he was talking about how sensational the times have been for his guys that he’s coaching on the West Coast when he’s been able to walk them through this.

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And while you’re bringing that up, Jamie, one of the things that I heard Mike Bottom, he’s a legendary swim coach, I remember he mentioned on a call there was like a training call for the coaches was that it’s like if you tied him with the video because you can sync up underwater footage with the data. He said you can see when you’re getting a really effective stroke, right? So it’s not just about seeing where the gaps are and where the holes are. You can see when you’re doing a good stroke and we can see what you did in that moment and then looking to replicate that. So I thought that was an interesting way to look at it as well, because my mind typically just goes to what are the faults? Where can we improve with people? But we also want to look at, well, at times you might be taking some really effective strokes with high percentage of propulsive forces. So what do you do in that moment? And then how can we do more of those?

Absolutely, and the ability and I’ve got a file up here I can check up in a bit if you want to see it where we can easily sync video and data. And you can see exactly on the charts what the hand’s doing. And you can see that replicated on the video. And it’s important for some coaches, I know, because a lot of coaches I work with tell me that one of the beauties about the system is they speak to their athletes until they’re blue in the face and the athlete either just says, I don’t believe you. I’m not changing or they nod their head, but they internalize that this guy’s full of crap. And so when you see the data, then suddenly the light goes on in the in the athlete and they say, OK, but occasionally you’ll get one that even says, I don’t believe the data. And then when you put the video on as well and say, this is what I’ve been telling you, this is what the data shows and look, you can see it in the video.

Then there’s no way they can. Yeah, that’s exactly right. So this is from a swim this morning. So if you are listening to this podcast, we also post these podcasts on to why actually it’s going to be a video on Spotify and YouTube. So you should be able to see the data here that we we’re pulling up. So this is a hundred meter swim that was around about threshold pace for me. So time wise, it was I think about a one thirteen one fourteen from start to finish there. So I think it might say one twenty three here. It was a recording time. So yeah, so that’s that that time that we show is from hands going into the water to hands coming out. So if you’ve got a period of time, if you put the hands in and you take five seconds or whatever before you push off, then it doesn’t it doesn’t necessarily recognize the push off. It recognizes where the hands go in. And likewise, when you finish, if your hands stay in the water,

it’ll keep the clock will keep ticking up.

So this is the the first screen we see. It’s just a quick summary of the two laps, as you can see here. And the orange is your left hand, the blue is your right. So as you can see, Brenton, you’re pushing a little bit more through your right hand than you are through your left. It’s total force. And this is your stroke rate. So lap one, you were thirty two point seven and lap two, you were thirty one point two. So you can see your stroke rate slowed down a bit. And if you want, you can click on this little icon and you know you can look at your stroke rate, how it fluctuates across the lap running across the top there. And you can see every stroke, the amount of force that you’re pushing. But that’s just average force per stroke in every direction. It’s total force. This is the force field we were talking about, mate. This is where the six directions that the hand can move in the water, as you can see. And this is your opportunity here, buddy, a thirty seven point two percent

repulsive and, you know, that should be over sixty. You know, that should be pushing seventy percent. And when we look at where you’re losing it, you’ve got a big chunk of hand drag. And hand drag is at the front end. If when you’re gliding, you’re dropping your wrist a bit and you’re presenting the palm of the hand to the water in front of you, which obviously acts as a break. So you don’t want to have that. This is your big opportunity. You’re downward. You’ve got a good almost twenty. You’ve got between twenty and twenty five percent, probably twenty five percent that you’re able to shave off that downward force. And if you’re able to get that down to seventeen, your propulsive will then be at sixty percent, right? That’s. And so when I was talking about, you want to you want to focus on one thing, you prioritize them because you’ve got a bit you can take out of your lateral stuff, too, because laterally, you’ve got eighteen percent there.

And ideally, you want to have eight percent between the two for each. So you’ve got ten percent there. So you could you could immediately looking at this, you could take four percent out of your hand drag or sorry, or prioritize. You could take your twenty twenty to twenty five out of downward. You’ve got about ten percent you can take out of your laterals. And you’ve got four percent out of hand drag. And hand rate, mate, should be the easiest because it’s literally just those fingers aiming slightly downward during the glide phase.

But this is the big performance improvement is coming out of the down. And I’m sure you’re going to probably I’m probably jumping ahead here. But when I was looking at it between the left and right hand, that hand rate was really only on one. I think there’s your right hand. You’ve got almost no hand drag on the right. You’ve got eight and a half percent on your left. And that’s why when we look at this little graphic here, you’ve got that going forward here. That’s your left hand. That’s your hand rate. Anything north of this dot this point here, anything north is bad. Ideally, this graphic, what you’re looking for is you want it to be narrow and you want it to be deep because this is a two dimensional graphic. A quick snapshot of where those forces are going. And you can see that here you’ve got all this stuff sticking up above that center point. You don’t want to have there. And that’s primarily that hand.

Yeah, if I go back to your left, she’s Brenton.

Yeah, am I doing anything with some left arm? It’s just along the ride. You get twenty two percent propulsive and forty seven percent downward. You know, that’s a that’s a lot. And then you’ve got that eight percent hand rate. You’ve got a big opportunity there. And then you’re right, you’re fifty percent propulsive and thirty six down. So you’ve got the only thing you’d work on with your right hand is getting some of that downward out. And there’s, you know, fifteen percent you can pull out of there. And that’ll take that into your sixty five plus almost seventy percent. Yeah, if you get fifteen to twenty percent out of your downward, but your left hand is the one that you want to focus on. Yeah, it’s a lot hanging fruit there. Yeah, I mentioned consistency and consistency is where we get to look at your hand path for all the strokes in that lap.

You’ve you’ve you’ve got great consistency in your depth. That means you’re not getting a rotation of your shoulders. You’ve not got one hand going deeper than the other, which is terrific. You’ve got a similar a similar hand path going on in here between your left and your right. Interestingly, Brenton, it’s sort of the opposite of most most hand paths I see most hands pass I see go out, come in and then go straight back. Your first move is in and then out a little bit. So you’re coming in and then pushing back from here. But there are nothing stands out here. And it’s and there’s no that’s the other thing that everybody says to me is, oh, can you give me Kyle Chalmers hand path? And I’ll just copy that. It doesn’t work that way, right? I mean, we’ve all we all need to find our own hand path. And whilst, you know, at a very surface level, you might think, well, you know, if I’ve just got to have my hand pushing back,

I just need it to be straight. That’s not the answer either, because it’s about how we how we switch on our muscles and the best place for our arm to go and our hand to move in order to be able to switch on the muscles in the shoulder and the arm and the and down on the lats. That’s what gives us our power and drive. And that combined with the ability to hold that water and drive the body for that’s the holy grail. And so there’s no such thing as saying, well, you know, Brent, and you’ve got to change your hand path because this is wrong. There’s no wrong or right. The only thing that I really look for when it comes to wrong and right is asymmetry. And as I said before, if you’ve got, you know, one where the left hand’s going out and then coming in and the right hand’s coming in and across or vice versa or something very, very asymmetrical. That then means you need to question is this is an injury? Is it is it a breathing fault?

Is it some other technique? And again, breathing very, very easy to diagnose, put a snorkel on and then do it again with a snorkel. Take the head rotation out. Take the breath out and see what happens. Yeah, interesting. That’s something I should do, I think, because I mean, I breathe to my left. I was breathing almost every two for this hundred. And I think that’s why you see a little bit more power on that right hand is when I bring my head back, I tend to add a little bit more power and connection that way. So it’d be interesting to see what it does without with the snorkel on. So that’s something I’ve got to test. Yeah, very easy to do. And like I said, if you particularly if you if you’re standing in the pool and you and you do two laps and then download it and have a look, you can see this chart straight away and you’ll see it instantly what your what your symmetry looks like. And I have I have seen I’ve seen guys, particularly triathletes,

they’ve been able to then go and see a physiotherapist or a or a PT and then find out that they’ve got flexibility issues or injury. They’ve got an injury on the shoulder and that’s reflected in a different hand path between each hand. Yeah, interesting. Yeah. I’ll jump to force versus time because it’s important when you consider all these other ones that we’ve been looking at. These are all summaries. So this is showing us a summary of what’s going on, either a summary of the lap or a summary of the stroke. Again, just quickly, if I go back to the force field, you can even click on this button and we can look at the every single stroke. We can look at what’s going on with your forces, you know, left, right, so on. So this is this is a summary, even this is a summary of what’s going on with the stroke. Whereas when we get to the force versus time, this is the first time we get to be able to look at what’s happening inside that

stroke. And you can see instantly, Brenton, because the blue is your right hand and the gold is your left hand. There’s three things that stand out for me straight away. First of all, the absolute force you’re pushing on your right versus your left. Look, you’re right speaking up here, you’re six to seven and your left is peaking down here between two and three. So there’s immediately something there. The second thing that I see is what we call these double peaks. And because we’re looking at the propulsive view, we’re seeing the propulsion start to generate and then something’s happening and you’re losing it and then you’re finding it again and you’re finding a big peak, the second peak on the particularly on your left hand, where you’ve got that difference in the peaks. Oh, sorry, right hand on your left hand, you’ve still got the double peaks going on, but you’re not getting that second peak as high on the on the left as you are on the right.

The other thing that I noticed straight away is, and I’ll just turn the right hand off and we’ll look at the left hand, your hand glide, your hand drag, sorry, which is happening during the glide, and it’s very easy to see the three phases on in here, right here, that little straight line on zero, the hands out of the water. It’s not detecting any force. So it’s in recovery. So right there is where the hand is exiting the water. Right here, it’s entering and this is your glide. And look, you’re going negative in your glide. That’s because that left hand is doing that scoop motion. And you can see it’s on every single one of these. You’ve got a big, big glide challenge there. And then at the end of the glide here, now you’re starting to get propulsive and you’re generating your propulsion, it’s dropping off and it’s going again. So you’ve got a very clear hand drag that you can resolve. The beauty about this chart, when we look at it on the

platform, and you can do this on the on the platform, not in the app, in the app, you can see it just like what we’re looking at, but on the platform, we can look at multiple vectors simultaneously. So what I’ve done here is I’ve selected lateral as well as propulsive. So we’re looking at, I’ll blow it up a bit. And it’s no surprise to me that we’re seeing, it’s almost like a mirror between the lateral force and the propulsive force, Brenton. So you can see your propulsion goes up, comes down and goes up again here. And this red line, this is your lateral force. And the lateral forces are very easy to read. When it’s positive, such as here during the glide, that means the hands are facing outwards. Where it’s negative, which is happening down here after you start pulling, the hands are facing inwards. So we can instantly see in here as you’re gliding, you’ve got the hand drag happening here. But at the same time, that hand is facing outwards.

So your left hand, when it comes into glide, it comes in thumb first. It’s not coming in flat. It’s coming in like that facing outwards as you go through. And then it squares up here. And then you’re starting to pull and you’re catching here. And as you’re catching, you’re also generating this negative force, which is coming inwards, right? So that’s inward force that’s going on there. And then look here, you see down here where it’s bottoming out, that bottom out, that’s an indication that that hand is changing directions. And it’s no coincidence that where that’s changing direction, you’re falling off the cliff propulsively. See that here, here. And then here, where it changes direction again, it bottoms out propulsively. So you can see very clearly on here, Brenton, very clearly, like I said, it’s like a mirror, isn’t it? You know, all these little moves that you’ve got in your propulsion are a mirror of a reflection of

what’s going on laterally. So that whole, which and what it falls down to is this, in fact, let me just go to, we’ll go to your next chart, because this is the one where we bring it together. And so if we pick a stroke here and we’ll go for your overhead view and I’ll put on your lateral, let me see what we got. And then what we can do here is we can move this slider. And so that red dot moves to show you your hand position on your hand path and the red line moves to show you what forces are being generated. So if I go straight to here, you’ve got this thing happening right here, buddy, where your hand at this point, which is coming straight through pretty much is suddenly changing and it’s changing here. It’s so in this initial part right here, where it’s generating some inward force, that’s telling me that your hand isn’t pushing directly back or it’s pushing back, but it’s not facing back. It’s slightly angled.

And because it’s angled, you’re getting some lateral force as well as propulsive. And then when we get to this point, it’s now rotating that way and that rotation, that slight rotation is causing this propulsion to fall off the cliff. And then when we come through to here, and this is where you now are going to push straight back where you’re getting very little lateral force, but you’re getting that second peak and it should show up even more on the right hand. Right. And so here you’ve actually got this physical move inwards into the centre line. It’s only a small shift inwards, which is generating a bit. And then right here, right here, that hand is now going to rotate a little bit. And as it rotates, it comes off the cliff. And then here it changes again and it pushes straight back and you get it. So you can effectively look at your hand path and you can look at the forces that you’re generating and you can see exactly

where in that hand path you’re getting those changes.

Yeah, it’s pretty obvious that I think from that transition to maybe a slight, it’s almost like an in-sweep there, isn’t it? So yeah, the transition sort of between the different phases of the stroke, I’m really losing that hold of the water there. So. And that’s where you’re going from pulling to push sprinting. That’s exactly it as you’re transitioning. So you’re pulling and then as you’re pushing, you’ve got that hand rotated. And there’s a very good reason, mate. And it’s this.

If you think about it, if you’re pushing maximum force directly down or directly back to your feet, if you get to a point where your muscles can’t cope, something has to give. Either your muscle explodes, which doesn’t happen, or your hand slips. And the moment it rotates and slips, now it can now it can get through the water easier. And that’s exactly what happens. You know, your hand can rotate a little bit. It can now slide through the water. It backs off the force or the pressure that’s on your shoulders and on your muscles. And then it enables you to complete the stroke without it blowing up, which then can come back to, well, what do I do about it? Well, dry land. You know, how do I build my muscles up and how do I get stronger in the gym so that I can take that extra pressure and force?

I think what I feel and see in any underwater footage I’ve done as well is that I could, I probably try and force it a little bit much through the front end of the stroke. And on those times where I do just back off the force by maybe or power by 10, 15 percent, then I can typically hold better positions. I can hold it easier. And, you know, while I may not have as high a peak force there, the impulse would be, I’m imagining would be would be greater, which is kind of what we’re going for that sort of field in area under that, that blue line, right? Like, that’s kind of what we want to maximise the impulse. Exactly. Under here, because the amount of force of the impulse you generate is the square area under this little blue double peak. And so, and obviously made this two ways of increasing that, you can either go higher or you can go wider. Now, there’s a limit to how wide you can go because you can’t hold the water for that long, obviously,

particularly at a higher stroke rate. But what you can see is this valley, that’s lost propulsion. That’s purely lost propulsion. On the on the other side, though, you’ve got your downward force, which is what’s below here, the negative in the purple is actually quite low on the right hand. Whereas when we look at the left hand, you’ve got a lot more downward force that’s been generated. Look at this, right? You’ve got and here you’re not only generating this hand drag. You’re also generating a lot of downward force through that glide as well. So I would suggest your left hand as well as being angled where your wrist is dropped. You’re also dropping like that. So it’s generating hand drag and it’s also generating downward force as you’re going through.

Yeah, so it’s amazing that I can swim at all looking at that, right? Like that I’m moving forward. But that’s the thing that I love about this is to me, it just shows me how I’ve got a huge opportunity to get a lot more out of my existing stroke. And, you know, and the thing with it too, like it’s it’s all sort of relative, I find, to the to the person because, you know, someone who would have higher percentage propulsive forces doesn’t necessarily mean that they will be faster than someone who has low percentage forces because there’s a lot of other factors there. But if you just use it based on your own data, based on that benchmark swim that you’d start with, then you can really start to tweak and refine your own stroke. And I think going about it that way is what I’ve seen can work really well. And look, you make a great point, mate, because the idea of and you make the point that this is about your data comparing you

with you. It’s not about comparing you with somebody else. So if we talk about triathlete

mindset where effectively, you know, you could call this system, it’s like a power meter for swimmers and every triathlete knows about power meters for bikes and you can compare your power output on the bike in terms of watts per kilo. Right now, you can’t do this with this because you’re the amount of power that you produce. It’s not just a function of the kilopascals that we’re measuring. It’s also the square area of your hand. So here, this is actually going through right now. We’re developing through machine learning a calculation of hand size, i.e. your paddle. And so then we’ll be able to combine it because with the pad, with the amount of force that you’re generating with the size of your paddle. And then we’ll be able to tell you how many Newtons you are pushing yourself. And then you can start to compare with others or what’s that you’re pushing because you can appreciate a big guy with huge hands and a small girl with small hands.

They might hit the same amount of force, but because he’s got hands that are like dinner plates, he’ll be pushing a huge amount more force compared to a small girl or woman. So it’s important that our next step is to combine the two. And then you’ll be able to talk about, OK, how do I, how do I compare? Yeah, exactly. Well, Jamie, that’s really helpful. Thanks for the coaching session for myself. I’m always grateful for that. But I’m sure that those that are that are listening as well, it’s probably just giving them a good insight into maybe some opportunities that they have in their own technique. Is there anything that we’ve covered that we haven’t covered so far that you think it’d be worth mentioning? Look, there’s a couple of things if I can and I’m mindful about timing, Brenton, but we’re just launching a new program right now, which we’re starting with the super elite in in swimming and it will work its way through

to age group and then to try athletes. And the whole purpose of this is to accumulate data for particular distance, gender and stroke. So we’re starting with 100 meters, men’s and women’s. And we’re going to collect their data to qualify. You’ve got to meet a certain criteria. So in in this one, it’s it’s men’s got to swim under 53. They’re going to have a PB under 53 100 and women is under 58 100. And so what we’re going to do is we’ll get all that data and it’ll be conducted under specific circumstances. So everybody’s got to start the right same way, stop the same way, wear their race suits, not use fins or pull boys or that sort of stuff. Right. They’ve got to have the hands go in the water at the same way and come out the same way. What they will do is that will give us a whole bunch of really interesting data that we can then rank from fastest through to slowest and then look at all these key metrics and then pump it through some

interesting machine learning software and find what’s the weighting of each of the different metrics, whether it’s I mean, you could already get distance for stroke and stroke rate. But what we’re really keen to look at is absolute force in conjunction with percentage propulsive. And so to be able then to look at that and then what we’ll be doing is we’ll be then providing that back to our partners who participate. They will then get all that data or all that global data set, but it’ll be anonymized. So if there are 100 athletes in there, they’ll go from fastest down to the slowest at 100 and then you’ll be able to track all of those different metrics across and within that anonymized data set, you’ll see your own identified. So you might be the seventh fastest swimmer on there, but you might have the third highest level of absolute force, force, you know, that the 15th distance per stroke and the ninth of percentage propulsion

and all that sort of stuff. And so we really believe that this has got the capacity to provide intelligence and insight that hasn’t been done before that will build out across all the distances from fifty three to fifteen hundred and strokes as well for butterfly and backstroke, which we already do. And then we’ll do age groups. And once we come down the age groups, then we’ll get into triathletes as well. And so as we build that out, that in itself, I think will be really insightful because you’ll be able to see where I sit in context to people who are in the same sort of range. The other piece as well that we’re building is intensity factor and training stress scores, TSS, because ideally what I’d like to do is to be able to work with someone like training peaks and to integrate so that you can do an eye for a TSS swim and you can upload that data into training peaks because we know with training peaks, they do a great job of

displaying your your data for running and cycling, but there’s very little for swimming. So if we can have that common language, which then becomes an entryway into with training peaks into the rest of the stuff, I think that will be quite powerful as well. Unreal. That’s exciting. I remember when I first found out about the technology and start to see how it could be used. I was thinking down the track with data analytics and just being able to use all this machine learning type stuff, it’s like to be able to pull in that that data and then like spit out what’s really important here. That was something that I thought that’s really exciting. So it sounds like you’re heading down that path now. And the key the key thing, as you know, is if you want to be comparing, you’ve got to make sure it’s all captured under the same circumstance. That’s why we’re having to be very anal about these are the rules. This is so, for example, they’re all pushing

off. It’s not a dive start. And like I said, when the hands go in the water, the clock starts. So it’s got to be hands in and go instantly. And likewise, when you finish, touch the wall, hands come out of the water instantly. So we then collect the data so that you can truly relate all of the data time wise and rank them and then look at all the other stuff. Because there’s no doubt in my mind, and I know again, we’re not talking about kick and we’re not talking about drag, but just propulsively and certainly, you know, Panjan Lee in the hundred meters to to win up by 1.08 seconds, you know, for the first time since 1928, but there’s been a more than a one second gap. We will see some pretty amazing stuff. And I’m all of the elite coaches that I’m talking to in the National Federations that so far they’ve all been really positive about wanting to see what that global data set looks like and what their people look like within.

Yeah, yeah, and I can imagine why, you know, it’s just an amazing swim to to see that. So, yeah, looking forward to seeing what’s to come. So, Jamie, I appreciate you jumping on the podcast. I know you’re a busy man. So thank you very much. And for anyone who’s interested in getting a set of these devices, I’ll include the link in the show notes. And yeah, Jamie, thanks again. Good on you, Britain. Thanks, buddy. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

The post The Technology Behind The Men’s 100m Freestyle World Record with Jaimie Fuller appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

The women’s 10km open water race at the Paris Olympics was a thrilling and grueling event that saw Sharon Van Rouwendaal of the Netherlands and Moesha Johnson of Australia showcase extraordinary endurance and strategy. Taking out the gold and silver medals, Sharon and Moesha put together a race for the ages. In this episode, we dive into the details of the race and how it played out. 

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I think now I was the most, the full package swimmer, like I could do the pacing, I can do the sprint, I can hold back, I can take somebody’s hip. So it showed now I’m good in open water, and that was for me, everything. This was my dream race, and to do it was like, those two girls was fantastic. I think for me, it’s going to be very different to Sharon because I was the underdog, I was the dark horse, I wasn’t in any predictions whatsoever, I believed in myself that I could do it. I’ve come to the Effortless Swimming podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer, and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. The women’s 10 kilometre open water race at the Paris Olympics was a thrilling and gruelling event that saw Sharon Van Rivendale of the Netherlands and Moesha Johnson of Australia showcase extraordinary endurance and strategy. Sharon and Moesha were housemates and training partners in the lead up to the Olympics.

And I wanted to find out, did they strategize before the race to work out a plan to try and come first and second? Did they work together within the race to stop others from overtaking them? And was there anything that they did prior to the race that gave them an advantage over some of their other competitors? And what I learned on this podcast was really interesting to dig into the finer details of what goes behind Olympic silver and gold. So join me on today’s podcast episode with Olympic gold and silver medalist Sharon Van Rivendale and Moesha Johnson. Moesha, Sharon, welcome to the podcast. I was really excited to put this one together to dig into the details of the amazing race that you had over in Paris because I haven’t cheered that loudly for an open water swim event for a very long time seeing you girls go head to head. So welcome to the podcast, first of all. Thank you. I’d love to know, just leading into the race as teammates, did you plan any sort of strategy

together before the race? Not at all. We didn’t really talk as much the last few days because, you know, you’re going through race focus and everyone keeps asking us and it was not any part of the plan. Well, Barron, our coach, the German coach, asked me, oh, I want to waste your team up with Moesha and I can monitor from four. And I said, well, I don’t need anybody. It was like, no, I can swim every tactic I want. I can stay down and pass or something. So I said, I don’t need anybody and we’ll see in the race. But then during the race, she was fantastic. Did you know where each other were throughout the whole race? Well, I knew that she was in front of me when she was leading and I knew it was probably her behind me when I was leading. There wasn’t really many people around. So, yeah, I was pretty aware where Sharon was. Did either of you have a certain strategy going into the race and did it play out how you thought it would?

Yeah, so in April, like the Dutch coach asked me, what would be your ideal podium? And I said, well, my dream podium would be with Moesha and Tadoci. So they tell him because I like they take a lot of initiative in the race and they push it and they try and they always get passed at the end. And which I got passed after 2016 and passed so many times. And it’s so frustrating. So I always appreciate women that take the lead and just go for it. I think I always assume on my feelings, since I do open water, I swim with different plans. But the first lap I was trying, just seeing where people would go. And I found myself at place 19 for 18th in the first corner. And then it went everywhere. I knew that we had to go against the wall to not get the current. And I was on position four from the wall. I got all the current. I got all the people in my head was like the hardest lap ever to swim. And so I thought, OK, this is not what we’re going to do.

We have to change this tactic. We have to lead because that’s the easiest thing. And at this point. And so well, we discussed something the day before we checked the course. And I said, maybe it’s better not to show them the good way. At the finish, at the gate, because there is a good way. And that’s all the way on the right side for as long as possible. And then you only cross to the gates. And then the first nap, I did my little trick against what’s it called, reshutter the bridge pillars. Yeah, the pillars. Yeah, and then there’s 20 meters without current. So I went from the wall to the pillars and then I went back. And then I passed like 10 or 16 people by doing that. So I found myself on position four all the way on the wall side, on the boat side at the gate. And I see people on the left just trying to go in the middle of the the sand in the middle against just going to the gate straight. And I’m like, didn’t you try it yesterday?

Like, and I laughed so hard. And I was like, now it’s getting interesting. It was so fun. Like I had fun in the race. And then I was already in Moesha’s speed or third or fourth. I took time to drink. And then I was like, oh, here we go. I’ll lead. And then I saw it’s just people are struggling to follow us. And then Moesha came. Yeah. So my, from my perspective of the race, I’m always told not to lead. And after that, we went under the bridge on the first lap. I looked to my left, I looked to my left again. I was like, oh, no one’s there. I looked to my right. Oh, no, I’m leading within 400 meters of Thoremese. This is not good. I’m going to be in so much trouble that I just had a really good start and I’m not as good. Sometimes maybe it’s sitting back. I don’t know, but I didn’t like the first turn. I knew that it would be probably a bit chaotic because some people weren’t going to know how to turn around that boy.

And so I wanted to be in the first little group so I could get a efficient line. But I was leading when I wasn’t intending to be leading. And then obviously coming back against it, like I let the Italian girls go on that first lap. Then like Sharon, you know, we came under that bridge and no one knew where they were going because I was just going to follow. Like Sharon said, I was just going to let them lead and go their direction. But we went straight into the head on of the current and we just stopped moving. And at some point I think we started moving. We were like, we’re fine, do this. This is not going to work. So then I had to then cut over and you see like I cut back to where kind of Sharon is. And that’s where Sharon got my feet again. Because then I start going up the edge of the course and everyone, you can just see, they all start looking at me because I start moving up and I start going up and I start going up and then we cut across

and then people kind of figured it out. But no one really had any idea where they were kind of going. And I think me and Sharon both had a personal realization at that point is like, this is going to be a very different race. Not environmentally to like the conditions we were swimming against, but maybe against our competitors because it just seemed like everyone was a little bit scattered in their preparations for where they were going. And is this what you figured out the day before when you got to get in there and do a bit of a test swim? Like, is this something that you had thought about in the lead-up to it or just something that you got to work out when you got to do the test swim beforehand?

So yeah, like my mother said, I hope it’s not in the sand with the streaming and you’re going to get hurt or something. And I said, let it be as hard as possible. And already like half of the woman would be insecure and like, and I know I can just switch off. And even if it’s hard, it’s just like, I like it. And so the day before we could train in open water and very weird men came with me. So they didn’t pick a champ of 2016 and we swam together, so he swam in my sheet. And then against the current, we tried a few things. So at the bridge, we tried something. We let each other go and see where the current came from, which current is stronger. So under the bridge on the left side, definitely stronger. It’s in the middle of the sand. But we tested it out. And I did a few times that I let myself go and again, against the gate, okay, this is not working. And I just let myself go, okay, against the boats, against the wall.

Then I was like, I think this is easier. Okay, and then there was the, you pass the gate and then you have the pontoon. If you’re just a little on the right side, maybe it’s easier. And then I was like, I really liked it. I did two laps, but then I thought, tomorrow it’s six, but let’s see. And then I knew my biggest competitors like Anna Marcela or Liam, they didn’t train. And I find that so not intelligent to not train. Like you’re doing seven or eight hour work years long for this race, like a day per day, seven hours a day for this race. And then the last training session, you don’t do or try the course. Are you just thinking you’re gonna win by following me? And then at the end passing me? Well, that’s not gonna happen. You have to train on the, against the current. And that’s what we did. And then we knew exactly where to swim. So this was something that everyone had access to. Everyone could do this swim,

but they, for whatever reason, they chose not to. I think it’s because they thought maybe they get sick.

I think this is where like, we’re not exactly sure why they weren’t there, but maybe they just let the hype of it get to them. But it was, for us, it was the Olympics and we wanted to prepare ourselves as best as possible. In Australia, we had a great medical team. So I felt safe to get in the water no matter what. But at the end of the day, that they’re not gonna let you swim if the water quality’s bad. So that was my thinking. It was pretty black and white. We’re allowed to swim, we swim. If not, well, then we don’t. And you took on antibiotics as well. I actually prevent you. Yeah, so we both took on antibiotics. I think it was from Monday on for me. So Thursday was the race. Mine was from training day on. So might’ve been a different one. But yeah, through my Australian Olympic Committee, I was very well cared for.

And in terms of in the swim itself, what was it like going against the current and then going with it? Like, did your effort have to change? What did it feel like for you going in either direction? Like, was it, I was obviously so much quicker and you could see that, but how did that feel for you in either direction? So for me, I trained it a bit the week before. I tried to do very long relaxing strokes. And then sometimes I tried to be like shorter, like when I was swimming in France or swimming, like not finishing the triceps. I was like just finishing it like this. And that’s what we did. I think with the current, we swam like really long, long strokes. And then you’re on the corner and it was like, it was so fun actually. Like you’re on your side. And then you just do short strokes and barb against the wall. And like I’m not finishing my strokes and just, so I adapted my technique all the time. And I think it showed like I can just have a spritz.

I can have a slow swimming. I can like swim good technique-wise. I can swim short. I think this was everything together over the last 10 years felt together on this race for me. And I think for Moisha was just great that we can just break away because it’s so hard to break away sometimes. And now we break away because of the current. Yeah, what was it like for you, Moisha, with the, well firstly with like being a bit of a surprise being out in the front, leading when you weren’t necessarily trying to, but you just find yourself there. Like in your mind, your race strategies, not going out the window, but it’s like, okay, this isn’t what I was expecting. What’s it like for you when you’re out the front leading going, okay, do I stay out here? Do I just like wait for someone to pass? Like where was your head at when you found yourself out there? Yeah, so in terms of like, yeah, where I was sitting in the race, I always try and fall back a little bit.

And once Sharon took the lead and I was sitting behind her, I really used that opportunity to see what was happening behind us. So I kept looking back, you know, I knew Sharon would, you know, I could trust her sighting and all that. So I was having a look back at the girls and there was some really distinct points in which the group would stretch, break and then come back together and stretch and break and come back together. So I think it was around that. You led two laps or something, three laps. I didn’t build three. Yeah. And so around the lap number three, I thought to myself, okay, like I’m going to try and stretch it out and maybe just reduce the amount of leading girls and then maybe sit back again and then do it again. Because my strength is just like, I have quite a higher aerobic level. I can hold a higher pace. It’s just sometimes it’s heavy. So I have to be careful. And so I pushed it out and then, because it was the river,

they had the TV screen on the side of the river for the audience. And I could actually see that we’re breaking away. So I decided not to slow down. I was like, well, I’m comfortable at this pace. And if it’s just going to break away to just the three of us, like it was looking on the screen, well, then I can hold this pace all day. But if there was a group of maybe 10 girls, it might have been different. So I actually used the TV screen a lot in my race. It was the best thing ever. Cause normally, you know, that’s the hardest thing. You don’t know that you’re breaking away. So you get insecure or maybe, and you don’t, you know, don’t push away with confidence. But that for me was definitely part of it. And I felt strong and comfortable and fit the entire way. And, you know, I think even even towards the end, when we, I don’t, I don’t even know, picked up the pace when I look at the splits. But yeah, I definitely,

I felt comfortable on the current. And I think my, my feeling in the current was definitely a little bit different to how Sharon described it then. Like I just felt the same with the current and against the current. It just felt like the water might have felt a little different because you were moving with it. But you know, we swim in a flume. So kind of my brain was kind of already a little adjusted to that water moving feeling. But it was just the top turn and the bottom turn, like the feeding station and the bottom one that you just, you know, you had to pick it up then and whatnot. But it was kind of, yeah. What I really liked is that the third lap you took over and I was still drinking, you know, like it came in your sheet. And I had a great drink. There’s like, there, there was like 10 year gap with the force. And then I was like, I wanted to, like my arms came into your legs, you know, I wanted to like make contact with you.

Like, this is the moment now, like, and then we paced it up. But you turn around, but I couldn’t say anything. But I think you knew like, this is, I was like, okay, now I need to go. And then we turn the corner and actually there we paced already turned the lap with the stream we paced. So it was not like, and then we turned the corner and then there was like a 20 second gap. So like a 10 second gap against the current, maybe. And that’s where things were decided against, yeah. That’s interesting to hear that you could get a sense of what you were thinking. And I mean, surely some of that’s got to come down to living together, training together. Like you get a really good sense of one another. And then you’re spending all day just swimming up and down with each other. You probably get a pretty good idea of those sorts of things. Do you feel like that came into play in the race? My goal is to defend the place. So I also descend more.

So the thing is, if I’m second, nobody is allowed to pass me, but he’s also not allowed to pass mode. So I make it sure that the third doesn’t pass us. And sometimes I give a little, like we have to go a little faster or, and I look around for us, like I look around a lot to check it. They’re coming back or not. Otherwise I would give more by tapping on the sheet or something. Yeah, so this last lap, Mo was lit on the right side. We could have gone more and aimed the sand to get more streaming. The Italian went and paced, I think everything she got to try to pass us. And my position was on the hold there because she was on my level already. Like Mo wasn’t trying, I was here. She was the F. And I was like, okay, I’m gonna trust Mo. Let’s go and Mo, come on. It goes faster. I wanna get to second spot when we turn over there. And so I could just, I put more pressure on her, but I defend the feet as well. So not that if somebody would be on my hip,

I would do everything to get second. So Mo is still first. I think that’s describes a little bit of arm. Yeah, I think like, but you do that regardless of who I was a little bit as well. Because you just want, you want to hold your second position. You lately wear it. Yeah, and so, yeah, I don’t know. I know just as athletes, so in training we’re completely, like my strengths are completely different to Sharon’s strengths. And so yeah, when it does come to racing, we both just swim what strengths are. And obviously we know what each other’s strengths in the race are and it just plays out. But we don’t bother each other. Like at the finish, we don’t take each other’s hip or anything. It’s a chair swim or like chair swim, but as fast as she merwins, like, yeah. Yeah, we just like it, we like a clean race because it can get ugly sometimes. Like when I passed her, I passed her from one and a half from Duraway. Not to, if I would pass her here,

I would slow her down and then the Italian would have been on my feet or maybe on her feet. So I passed her like here.

Yeah, that’s the difference. And because you, I mean, you feel it when someone’s on your hip, don’t you? Like it just, it’s heavy. It’s really, it can really slow you down. Yeah. And so Moisha for you, like leading those last couple of laps, I was like, I was rooting for you, wanting you to get that second place once Sharon was in the lead. And I thought, I don’t know how you’re gonna hang on because you’ve just led the last three laps or so of the race. Did you feel like quite heavy at that point? Like, how are you in the last two, 300 meters? This podcast is proudly brought to you by Form Smart Swim Googles. The Smart Swim 2 is the next generation of Form’s award-winning augmented reality technology. They have an integrated heart rate monitor for constant real-time heart rate monitoring, which allows you to accurately train your heart rate zones, which is the first time that you can do this in the pool. Something we’ve had when biking and running,

but the first time that you can now do it in the pool. Another huge feature that they have released is the swim straight feature. This is something that allows you to swim in a straight line without needing to site. It’s a digital compass in the goggle display. And it’s race-approved by World Triathlon, USA Triathlon, as well as other leading race organizers. And athletes are already shaving valuable time off their swims by swimming straighter. I’m a huge fan of these goggles. I’ve used them for the last couple of years and it’s something that I use each and every week. And even just the simplest features of being able to see your splits after every turn makes a huge difference to not only the way that you train, but the enjoyment that you can have in the pool. And the new smart swim too has a reduced tech pack size by 15%, making them slightly smaller. The new ice seals fit a wider variety of facial structures

and the new straps and anchor points have been moved and adjusted so that it has a more stable fit. There’s additional features which I haven’t mentioned like the head coach workouts, training plans, as well as integrations with training picks, Strava and more. This is something for all abilities and levels of swimmer and available worldwide from formswim.com forward slash effortless. And to get 10% off the smart swim one goggles, use the code effortless swim on checkout. That’s formswim.com forward slash effortless and use the code effortless swim on checkout for 10% off the smart swim one goggles. Well, I obviously like coming onto the bridge, I knew I was coming in first at that point. And then I knew under the bridge that Sharon would go the way that I didn’t choose to try and pass me because that’s the best passing point. And then, you know, from there, I just like, you know, I was just like, I tried to swim my decision.

I didn’t probably practice it as well as Sharon. Sharon did, I stuffed it up the lap before, sorry. And I was like, I’m not doing that move again. You know, I ran into the edge of the force. So, you know, I came in swimming and I just wanted to go strung into it. But it was also, it was really hard to decide if I, you know, should Sprint was, you know, try and keep my spot in front of Sharon because the current was so strong that it’s like 100 meters could be like 250 meters, you know? And so you had to be really careful with choosing your timing on things. And, you know, once Sharon got the lead, I was like, just sit on her feet and just, you know, see what you’ve got for the last couple hundred meters. And, you know, Sharon’s got that speed at the end that I’m still trying to develop. And I knew the Italian was there. And, you know, once she kind of came into the finishing shoot, I was like, oh, she can’t pass me now

because we have a very, very similar 1500, very similar last hundred, 1500. So, I knew that I had locked in my silver medal.

And, Sharon. Yeah. For me, I did the tactic where I go. I’m on the bridge on the left. We’re on the left behind the pillar. The first lap, the second lap. And then I followed more. Now, in the third lap, I didn’t do it on purpose to see if I just go against the wall on the boat. And then Mo was in front and Mo did it the fourth lap and the sixth lap. You know, fourth lap, she did the side. Shift lap, she jumped over to the bridge. And I didn’t, on purpose, to make her think this would be the faster way. That’s the one she didn’t even cross my mind though. I just crashed and I was like. Six laps. I made her, well, for me, I thought I made her insecure. She goes on the right side. I think the left one. No. Honestly, for me, more pressure. So, but for me, this was the tactic as well. I thought, well, if Mo goes to the left, I’ll go to the right lap before, just to make her think maybe it’s even fast enough. But I pushed a little more when I go on the right.

No, for me, that wasn’t even my thinking. I just crashed and I was like, I shouldn’t do that again. Let’s go with the safe option and just trying to stop. Yeah, it’s the safe option. Yeah, that’s why, yeah. You just, I don’t know if you saw it, but like, yeah, I ran, when I crossed over, I just got my angle wrong and I ran straight into the edge. Oh yeah. And I was like, oh no, like they might think I pulled on the edge. I didn’t, I just fully ran into it and my arm got stuck. And I was like, just a bit wobbly or something. And I was like, okay, no, that’s it. No, no.

Oh man. It can go wrong pretty quick. So because you come again, you don’t have current and not in all of the sudden, you have a lot of current, but you have to choose your position and mode it at once. And then went on against the wall more like. I just went angled too sharp. And then it just, I just,

I don’t even know what happens. Like it’s just like, okay, that’s it. No more.

Do you, do you find the, in terms of like race strategy compared to most open water swims because you’ve only really, you’ve got to stick to the side that you don’t have these bigger packs necessarily forming three, four or five across. Like it’s just, it was just really one or two. There wasn’t often many like three across because as you said, Sharon, you felt you could really feel that. Like, so was that quite different for you compared to most races that you’re in? Yeah, so when I started with open water I was like more, I’m just going to swim in front and pace and I’m super good at pacing. And then all of a sudden people pass me and go in my hip and then I was like, why is it so heavy? So I really, this was my favorite race ever because this is the race I dream of. Just break away and do it on your own and not on the hip. And of course the last years I’ve got experience to swim on somebody’s hip and you can hold the brushy back.

I know how to do that now. But it was just to show that also like where the fastest we merge now. And yeah, like I think now I was the most, the full package swimmer. Like I could do the pacing. I can do the sprint. I can hold back. I can take somebody’s hip. So it showed now I’m good in open water swim. And that was for me everything. Like this was my dream race. And to do it was like those two girls was fantastic.

And Moisha, for you, your first Olympic medal, the highest that any Australians ever placed in an open water event at the Olympics. How’s it for both of you crossing that finish line when you’ve got all this built up? Cause I can only imagine the pressure that is put on from other people that you put on yourself the amount of work that goes into it. And then to finally cross the finish line and just see that look of joy relief on your faces. It was amazing to see. So what was it, what did it feel like for both of you crossing that finish line? I think for me it’s going to be very different to Sharon cause I was the underdog. I was the dark horse. I wasn’t in any predictions whatsoever. Like I believed in myself that I could do it but I am still developing my open water experience. So, you know, I just had to, you know I had to get an individual podium and I didn’t know whether it would be this year or in the years to come, but that was my goal.

But yeah, definitely this race, like Sharon said, it was I enjoyed it because we’re battling the conditions of the course, the environment, not the pack of girls around us. So you actually just got to put your training on display in my opinion. And I think that’s, that was how it showed in the end. It was, it was your training tactical, your endurance, your speed, all the things that Sharon mentioned. And you didn’t have, have had the big pack of girls that, you know, that were holding or pulling you back or bumping into each other. And yeah, so I think, you know it was definitely a race that I like, yeah to get my first international medal individually at an Olympics, like it was unbelievable. And obviously with Australia being on such a different time zone, the amount of public back home who actually got the chance to watch my sport, you know sometimes a bit of an underrated sport. And it’s just been fantastic, the support

and the messages and just even the people still today who are coming up to me and just talking about the iconic swim that I did. And yeah, you know, I think, yeah it’s definitely been a bit of a journey. I’ve done a bit of an alternative route as an Australian swimmer to get, to get here. So yeah, it was definitely a fantastic feeling on that finishing line. Like I’ve actually done it. My big decisions that, you know might have been debated at the time, like they’ve paid off. So for me it was like, I only had the pressure that I put on myself going into that race. I didn’t have anyone else’s pressure. I don’t think even the commentary knew why I wasn’t halfway through the race. Like I think they didn’t know what to say. Like my mom just kept saying, I think they handed them notes on you halfway through the race because suddenly all these facts came out, you know. So I had a very, like a very different probably thing to what Sharon’s gonna explain.

Well, so for me, I was to time world champ in Dola. I think we had a very hard time in December, both of us. And that’s where I went to my parents for she days. And then I was like, why am I still doing this? I hate it. Like, I don’t have to do this. Like then there’s where it is on a 110 to your touch is not good. You lose on 110 and then it’s just annoying. So in two co-occas, I lost on 110. Well then though I came and then you two time world champion and then everything paid off. I’m always world champion on the relay. So everything went well. And yeah, then I was thinking, well, I was just Paris and going in as the favor, but I don’t care, let’s do it. April, I got my new house and I was like thinking, oh, it’s everything I want. But then my dog died and for me, that’s my everything. So actually I didn’t want to swim. Moisha went with me to the Netherlands at that moment that I heard he died on my mother’s lap

going into the vet because he had an operation two days before. And yeah, she went to the cremation with me that the children stopped training. She stopped training two, three days. And I stopped training for, I think eight, nine days. I wasn’t in the water. I didn’t want to swim. Actually, I didn’t care about Olympics and I wanted to don’t care about medals. What’s a medal compared to the love I got in my life from my dog at some point because a medal is just a momentum cheating. That’s why I was thinking and my dog skin, you know, cheating all the time. But then my dad or like my parents say, well, you’re already seven and eight years because he was seven, you’re already seven years from him. Why don’t you finish it and do it for him? Because you didn’t see him a lot. So it needs to be worse that you didn’t see him a lot. Okay, well, I, okay. So three days, two, one day after the cremation, I said, I have to have something.

So I got the tattoo of his paw which he could make at the cremation on a paper and then she just showed it tattooed by. So I had him a little bit closer to me. I got it on a necklace as well with the ash in it. And then I started to train one week each for the World Cup. It’s the one today that didn’t go so well was just swimming slow, didn’t want to. But I was with my Dutch physio and a Dutch coach and they make me laugh a lot like in jokes and try to relax me. And all of a sudden I’m leading in that race, the last lap and I don’t know how I was leading. I was first, I was 40th somewhere. And then I just got four of one, one second. And I think that made me think I can still win Paris if I do the training camp in Sierra Nevada. And there I was listening to the radio in the morning that makes me laugh as well. I’m just doing what I have to do. So I didn’t cry anymore. I just focused on one thing, one swimming every day at least two times

without crying or thinking of my dog. Or you think of your dog all the time but just trying to swim. And then you see you get some good sessions in, stable sessions, you’re still there. You still do the tige on Doha. And then I said tomorrow 28 days for the race. I mean, yeah, I told her and she said, what change? I said, I got the setting again, like the mind.

And she’s like, I’m back in Doha mode. And I was like, oh yeah. And I’m not losing enough. That’s why I posted I’m more determined than ever. And then I also like, you know, you read stuff. People say like, they bet on, you know where they say, I’m gonna win or Laney Beck’s gonna win or I’m a setup’s gonna win. Then you read stuff like you can reclaim the goal. And so I didn’t care about anything like I could handle the pressure. But the day off the race, I felt I had so much pressure for myself or my dog. So I was at breakfast sprouted. I had my breakfast, vomit, everything out.

I went to the course. Well, I went to do my warm-up, tried to do a gel, some cashine,

bicarbonate, vomit, everything out.

That’s the first side before the race. I want, sometimes I vomit during a race because it goes off the race itself or something. And I’m thinking it’s impossible to swim at 10K without shoe.

That’s what the doctor said to you. She’s your ass to the race. Technically it’s impossible. And so then I take off my necklace and I can see them and I’m starting to cry because I feel that’s the pressure from the last three months I gave myself because I thought you’re such an idiot, you can’t even eat how you’re gonna swim 10K so you’re gonna lose it now. Yeah. But when I walked into the, we walked together before the race and I said, I’m shitting my pants. Why are we doing this? Me too. And like, there’s a picture of us that we’re talking. And then in the water, everything changed and you never think of that breakfast again. And I think of drinking enough and taking the gels that are in my drinks. And I got everything. And I think if mentally you’re prepared to do something out of your, like that your body is not, well, I don’t know, I can do something in my head. That’s why I consume two back for free. I think in my head I wanted something so badly

that I just switched off something. And I think that’s what happened. And then I’m out, and then when I touched the plate first I turned around, I’m hanging there against the stream because I’m watching one, watch her touch. And then I’m shouting, yeah. And then I turned around, we’re all happy. And then I knew that moment would come because I planned it, if I would win someday I would show this, but when you plan it then you start feeling everything. And that’s where all the shootings came out. And then we happy again, but it’s like, yeah. So that was my experience. So it shows that if you have the adrenaline and the determination and maybe some angels somewhere you can do a race, your dream race even if your preparation for the day of the race doesn’t work out. Well, even in the lead up to it several months out it’s not perfect preparation at all when all of that stuff happens. But I mean, I think that the mental side of things

like if you can be strong enough mentally that has so much to do with winning or getting silver. Like it’s just that’s such an important part at elite level sports, which I think you’ve proved. And I remember it like that photo. I think it’s quite an iconic photo now. This one or the other one? That one, yeah. Like it’s only been maybe a month or a couple of weeks but I feel like that’s a very iconic photo. Already I’ve seen it posted so much and so often and on so many different pages. And I think it really just takes a really big event to a moment in someone’s life and further than to do what you did to make that become iconic. So that’s amazing. I didn’t know the backstory of it. And to hear what you went through is it’s amazing that you’re able to do what you did. And Moisha, you weren’t wrong. Very different mentalities going into the race, right? But everyone’s got their own different reasons. And what’s it been like since the event?

I’m sure it’s been a whirlwind of interviews and different things and family and friends getting in touch. But yeah, what’s it been like the last couple of weeks? So for me, well, you just got, I had severe jet lag, I reckon for two weeks. So you had jet lag, you’ve got, yeah, media and then you’ve got family and friends wanting to catch up whilst you’re trying to have a break in a holiday to recover and rejuvenate for the next 12 months. Cause you know, you just gotta do it all again now. So for me, it’s been pretty hectic and I haven’t even been trying to, you know I’m not even trying to put myself out there a lot but obviously you gotta take the opportunities with media and stuff when it comes because you know, it’s on to the next very soon. But yeah, it’s been, it’s been a really special time. The messages and the people who have reached out to me it’s been, there’ve been really special messages especially from people who’ve seen my journey

cause my journey is a little bit different to a lot of athletes coming into this sport a bit later at a high level. And so people who saw me younger, you know I’m Mr. Farm Girl at heart. So, you know, there’s a lot of just, a lot of people who’ve been on my little journey and yeah, it’s, I think that’s what’s been the most special thing to me is having those people get in contact and just sharing that moment with them.

Andrea, how about if you share? Yeah, so for me, like when you win, it’s not for me like I just think of all my parents are crying or like they’re gonna be so proud you get all the messages and then all the messages started about the dogs and like the rewrite dog account like he has 1.3 million likes on a picture like 20,000 comments and then all those people start messaging me directly in my DM and I think I’m still not halfway but I’m, and they send like, thank you we made us cry and they send a picture of their dog who died recently and it shows how much a dog can mean and like if she can’t have children that it can be your child or stuff like that. So I wanna thank all those people and I’m still getting back to you guys. And then of course I plan already one and a half year, one year, a little bit of my future that I’m gonna have clinics with ocean man or clinics in Mallorca and clinics from the weekend in the Netherlands.

Yeah, so I’ve been not treating my body well that’s why you hear my voice after working in a cold clinic. So yeah, and I got a lot of meetings every day also just to try, well, do my story like today also good causes that like contacted me for shelter in China for dogs and then like all types of things I wanna do but I didn’t take a break yet and I’m not going to because this is my moment to build something as well. I’m taking a break. I’m not swimming and I’m not doing sports but I wanna do that but swimming. I don’t know when I’m gonna start or if I’m gonna start like, but yeah, in November I’m inviting Tahiti. I have to be there for a race or look at a race and I’m gonna then take 10 days holiday and the rest is just work. But yeah, there’s a lot, I’m making programs. I need to make warm up videos and to make stretching videos and each of my technique videos for my people I’m coaching online already and some people are gonna start September

or September is in a few days. So there’s tonight I’m giving a clinic for 50 people somewhere in a city. So for me, there’s no rest and then I have a house that the floor came, the kitchen came, the furniture, it’s hectic but I’m taking it in and I’m doing it at all because I just want to do it all at the moment.

Yeah, you’ve just finished the Olympics and gone and started doing everything. New house, yeah, new clinics, camps, and Moesha, you’ve gone back to New South Wales on the farm, just enjoying the peace and quiet. So just- Trying to enjoy the peace and quiet but people still keep finding me here, yeah. I must say in my street as well, like this is a little village and they decorated my garden when I arrived and now everybody’s passing. Congrats, congrats, congratulations, shops and like, but that’s what I liked about it. So also this takes time, right? A neighbor comes 15 minutes, another neighbor comes 15 minutes. And here it goes, yep. As soon as someone starts saying hello then everyone starts going, oh, who’s that? Who’s that? Then everyone starts saying hello. So yeah, sometimes I go out prepared and sometimes I just try and sneak out but yeah, no, it’s definitely, it’s definitely being fun.

Well, it was such an amazing race to watch. I enjoyed it so much having sort of got to know you a bit, Sharon and then Moesha with you being an Aussie, like it was just, it couldn’t have been a better finish and the fact that your friends had lived together, all of it just comes together to an amazing race and amazing story. So I appreciate your time on the podcast and sharing it here. It’s been great to chat with both of you. So thank you very much. And I know Sharon, you’ve got a lot going on with the clinics and stuff like that. So for you, where would you like to pivot ahead if they want to get in touch with you in terms of coaching or clinics and those sorts of things? So they can go to my email address. I’m making a website as well but I want to make it come online when everything’s ready, not just half of it. But they can go to Sharon Van Ruindal at shimel.com and they can just write, you know, like how old they are, where they’re from,

their level and why they want to be coached by me. So, you know, the coaching by me is like they get three sessions a week and they get, like I said, the warming ups, the stretching, the technique videos. They can send voice messages after their swim to me about how it was and then I make notes and then I prepare the next training for them. So yeah, they get three sessions a week so they can contact me by Gmail and they get an answer sort of in a week. And that’s saying, not in a day.

I remember, we’ll put that in our show notes as well. And how about Fumo? Is she for anyone who wants to get in touch? What’s the best way to get in touch with you? If you want anyone getting in touch or if you prefer. Probably just, you know, through my Instagram, swimmermoe and then there’s an email link there or you can send me a message. Excellent, well, thank you both again. I love the chemistry between you two and the race strategy and just seeing you work together there. So yeah, thank you very much. I’ve really enjoyed the podcast. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

The post The Real Story Behind The Women’s 10km Open Water At Paris with Sharon van Rouwendaal and Moesha Johnson appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

Join former 6x Ironman Distance Champion and high-performance triathlon coach, Bek Keat, as she shares her insights on adapting your swimming stroke from the pool to the open water. Discover the changes triathletes must make to swim effectively in challenging conditions such as chops, waves, and crowded environments. Beck also reflects on her journey as a professional triathlete, discussing the lessons she learned and the transition into coaching. Tune in now!

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What happens under the water is so important. That’s where I was obsessed with your videos because I try to get videos of my athletes and I don’t have underwater cameras. I was like, what’s this guy because this is everything. The catch is everything. And they look at it and they’re like, can’t keep my elbow up. What’s the thing? And I make them watch your videos because what’s happening under the water is way more important than over it. I really like perceived effort stuff as well, like just tuning into how you’re feeling. Amen, brother. Amen. You’re preaching. You’re not going to be checking your pace in a race. Like it’s just all based on that perceived effort. So you’ve got to be in tune with it. I think welcome to the effortless swimming podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

And welcome to today’s episode. My guest today is Rebecca Keith. She’s a six time Ironman distance champion, two time world record breaker and three time national champion. She is also a triathlon coach and has previously retired from professional triathlon. And on today’s episode, we get stuck into how you can adapt your stroke from the pool to the open water. What sort of changes does a triathlete need to make to their stroke when it comes to swimming effectively in the open water? Where there’s chop, there’s waves, there’s other people you need to site. There’s a lot of different factors when it comes to that versus the pool. So Beck and I get stuck into that topic, as well as talking about some of the lessons that she learnt along her journey as a professional triathlete going into coaching and some of the lessons that she learnt from her coaches over the years as well. So let’s get stuck into today’s episode with Rebecca Keith.

My guest today is former triathlete and triathlon coach, Beck Keith. Welcome to the podcast. Hi, thanks for having me. I’m a big fan of yours, Brenton. Well, I really appreciate you saying that. I’ve known about you for a long time. I’ve seen you with competing in triathlon for a very long time. And obviously coaching for a long time, too. And have just sort of seen your name everywhere. So to hear that is really nice. So I appreciate it. Yeah, we have very similar theory when it comes to swimming. So it’s always easy to talk to someone that you respect and admire and have similar philosophy. So well, I’d love to dig into your your philosophy when it comes to swimming for triathlon, because we’re sort of chatting off air just about the difference between pool versus open water and how some of those things can differ from someone who’s just traditionally pool swimming. And I know when I first started coaching, I came from a pool swimming background

and I thought it was it’s all about swimming a certain way in order to get faster. But when you throw people in the open water with wetsuits on, hundreds of other people around and often very choppy conditions, sometimes the smoother stroke isn’t necessarily the best stroke for many people. So I’d like to maybe get started with that. What sort of things do you like to pass on to your athletes when it comes to what they should know when it comes to open water versus the pool? Yeah, I love getting athletes that haven’t had a swim background, although it’s definitely an advantage if you have. But the adults, it’s a little they’re a little harder to teach than kids because although they haven’t had that, they don’t get, you know, told about the pool stroke, which I think is a little different. The strip long distance swimmer tend to like lean at leave a little bit of like pause out the front, more of not a catch up,

but a pause out the front for catch and more of a high elbow recovery. And I just found with my open water swimming in triathlon with the chop, like you said, with the people around you and also newbie adults learning to swim, they just have they struggle to get that feel. And they can get it, but it takes a long time to get that feel if you haven’t had it as a kid, as you know. And so I don’t have them pause out the front, their strokes kind of quicker. The catch is still really important. The entry pull through an exit phase is really important. We do more of an open arm, not like high, high elbow, but more of an open arm rather than straight arm. I was more straight arm swimmer, but open arm where it’s where it’s kind of a I don’t know if you know, Brent Hayden, but he has that similar philosophy where it’s more of a rotation recovery because they have to get it over the wave, over other swimmers. And then I want them to keep their hand out as far as as far as possible in front.

And when I try to teach that I realized when I try to teach the high elbow recovery, they were entering here and then extending out the front. And just for adults that didn’t know how to swim or hadn’t learnt to swim, that was something I was picking up that they really struggle with. So we do more open arm, faster stroke rate, and then the siding. Like you don’t really have to sit in a pool. You can kind of like look up for the wall. But the siding, I think, is so important to have that momentum and not lose that streamlined position, which is really hard to do also for a newbie swimmer to learn to sit while you’re breathing. That’s even a different ball game altogether. So it’s a lot that I love like teaching it like you do. And I love teaching triathletes in open water. And it can be it can be tough to get that into their head because they look at the pool swimmers and they’re like, oh, they stretch long

and then they’ve got the nice high elbow catch. And I’m like, oh, I don’t know if that’s going to work for you. And it does sometimes. Some people just clicks and then most of the time they just want to sink. So and eyes down more, right? Because you bring your feet up. So the eyes down thing in the pool, you wouldn’t really stick your head right down, but in open water, sometimes you have to, especially for those body types that are long or really muscular triathletes can be quite heavy and muscular and they just want to sink. And they see the swimmers with their head like, you know, it’s a little in front, but it’s not right down like this. And I try to get in with their heads down and they’re like, I’m going to hit the wall. I’m like, but you want to get your legs up. So it’s like a fine line.

Yeah, I love working with adults as well. A lot of people come to our clinics and so many people will say, this is the first swim lesson I’ve ever had. And and they’re like, I like, I’m kind of scared because I’ve never had a lesson and I’m not sure what to expect. But the good thing about that is they’re coming in with a fairly blank slate. And then you can, you know, you can still some of those things that are hopefully going to make them faster and more effective in the water. And one of the things you mentioned there with the recovery is a more open arm recovery. And I like that description of it because I see it as it’s like opening up the underarm. You want to open that underarm up over the water and similar thing through your catch is like, if you can have this nice big open underarm as opposed to a closed underarm, then you’re going to hold more water. So that concept of being more open as opposed to closed, I think

that’s that’s a good one for people to carry in because you do see a lot of beginner swimmers swim like swim small and swim short. And that yeah, yeah. And that like recovery where they’re close to the body and they’re very small and short, it’s like, no, just open up, free yourself up. And it’s going to be so much easier when you when you swim in. Yeah. And then I think there’s less risk as adults to, you know, when you get to sort of 40, 45 and a lot of my age group is a 45, 50. Even older, they get impingement so easily, especially women menopausal. They’re always getting like, you know, low estrogen, low progesterone. They have much more chronic issues with tendons and impingements and Achilles and shoulders and bursatus and doing that Hyoba, someone can’t even do that. But they also, some of them can’t like do a full rotation. So they kind of swing out. I’m like, hey, whatever works is what happens under the water.

Like you got to get it in the right spot. What happens under the water is so important. That’s where I was obsessed with your videos because I try to get videos of my athletes and I’ve been have underwater cameras like watch this guy because this is everything, the catch is everything. And they look at it and they’re like, Kim, what’s the thing? And I make them watch your videos because what’s happening under the water is way more important than over. It can look yucky above the water, but it has to be like a strong pull through. Right? Yeah. Yeah, it’s exactly right. And I’ve got a similar approach where it doesn’t matter what’s happening over the water as long as that’s not impacting you under the water in a negative way. So it can be it can be quite scrappy over the top. And when I was I did a season of triathlon, I did it for one year, just as a bucket list to do an Ironman and know that what did you do?

Which one? Well, I was booked in for Melbourne Ironman. And that was the year that they cancelled it. So I had to I traveled over to Taupo and did it there instead. So if. Yeah. The like this I’m glad I did it because the swim was mass start, flat conditions in a way. Can I tiny to go like forty nine or forty eight or something? Forty seven. Oh, one. I did my record. That’s insane. Well, it was so is the record for my age group of twenty five to twenty nine and one second off the like overall age group record. So yeah, I was a bit annoyed about missing that overall age group record. But look, the thing was like I went hard in that swim because I wanted to win it, which I which I did. And then it was a steady stream of people coming past me for the next five hours passed on the bike. So, you know, forty seven. I don’t know. I don’t think I know anyone that’s one of them. Pro men that is one forty seven. That’s impressive.

Yeah, thank you. It was I love the swim and I’ve got my lost my train of thought now. But I was just the forty seven. I’m like, I think I went under 50 a couple of times. But I was in Roth. I was super fast. Like it’s always not a fast swim. So that’s impressive. Like, yeah. Well, what I was saying there was my yes. And my wife would come down and watch me do these races and stuff and she’s like, I can spot you from a mile away because you’ve got this this one arm that sort of swings around a bit and your other arm comes over really high and it looks like looks really scrappy. It’s not a not a pretty looking stroke above the water. But it was but it was effective. And that looks not to a try. No, that’s that. Yeah, that’s the thing. But it’s not like just not that traditional pool stroke. It changed a lot in the open open water. So yeah, whatever whatever sort of works, you know, that’s that’s the main thing if you get from A to B as fast as you can

in the least amount of effort. That’s kind of what we’re going for. Yeah. And that’s why I tell my guys like you can watch the pool swimming but you want to watch like, I mean, like the Kai Hurst, like the Ironman series. You want to watch those those Ironman, the Ironman series in Australia if you can like the surf lifesaving stuff because those guys their open water stroke is very different. And so is the open water swimming stroke, obviously, but the surf guys like they got it and it is it’s like that chop chop. It doesn’t look beautiful like Thorpey or I’m throwing out old names here, but they’re still here, right? It doesn’t look like the Thorpey stroke, but like I remember Thorpey. No, it was Phelps went and talked to my wife at a convention one day and we’re talking about triathlon swimming. And he goes, those triathletes kicked my ass in open water. And Siri’s like, what? And but she was kind of like, I kind of get that.

And he’s like, no, my stroke does not work in open water. Like these triathletes, he went swimming in open water race. And apparently they beat him even in his heyday. So I was like, there’s something to that because it is really. Wow. Yeah, he had mad respect because I guess he wasn’t used to deciding or the chop. Or I was like, dad, we’ll take that. That’s awesome, isn’t it? Wow. Yeah. That’s so cool. I did a talk at a school yesterday. And yeah, I’m thinking of yeah, I’m thinking of us. Think of some as like from the early 2000s, you know, it’s like Thorpey and and Michael Clem. And I said, you know, he here knows Michael Clem. And I had about three hands out of 120 go up. Like, I’ve got to I’ve got to change my reference points here. Yeah, you get used to this. You got watching like he’s was just like it was an open recovery. Like he had that big like, like it was almost whack. Like it was almost like a butterfly arm.

Like he’s butterfly and freestyle look similar. And he was like he was almost there was almost revolutionary. Like maybe I’m wrong. But he was the first guy to start doing that big open arm. Like yeah, yeah, totally. He was the first from memory. He was really the first sort of straight arm sprinter. Unlike, dude, he’s the best in the world. Like don’t back you stroke. Like he’s clearly it doesn’t matter what it’s he’s it’s working for him. And then everyone started doing it. Yeah, how how fast that changes. Hey, now what majority of the sprinters are more that straight arm recovery. So what? Yeah, there you go. In terms of working with some is so is there a bit of a process that you like to go through? Where do you generally start with people when you’re when you’re coaching them? Yeah, it depends on what they’re a lot of them come in where they have released one at all. So fortunately, I coached for the Rackley swim school for many, many years.

And I had to do their actual coaching, which was good. They’re a good technique and a good process. But I taught kids to swim. And so I always start with the breathing because the breathing is the hardest thing. Some of them don’t even add that they’re supposed to blow out with their head down. I’m like, OK, we’re going to just stand on the second pool, blow bubbles. They’re like, oh, I thought we held our breath and then breathe out and in on the same side. I’m like, no, no, no, you got to blow out when you head step and stuff like that. You’ve got to go back to the basics. It’s like, oh, OK, and you’ve almost got to teach them to swim as kids and teach them the breathing first. So I teach them this sounds crazy, but I literally have it in the pool, blowing bubbles, rolling their head, blowing bubbles, rolling their head. And then they do what I kick for. Then they do strokes on the kickboard with breathing

and then we get rid of the kickboard. And then some of the adults don’t like this, but I make them hold my hands and they swim like catching my hands. And I really like that because they’re adults. And I forget sometimes I don’t want to. I don’t want to do that in front of all these kids that are kicking my butt. But yeah, and it just it really goes back to like that beginner mindset and teaching them how how did I teach my kids to breathe? Like it’s sometimes it’s that simple. You’ve got to go back to that basic and some of them are more progressed. But a lot of the time they’ve got to get that breathing right. And then I noticed they’re holding their breath and I’m like, no, you’d breathe out with your head down. So and it sounds crazy, but that can be like that can just click when they when they realize that that’s what they’ve got to do. Yeah. And the thing is, no matter what level you get to those guys

are still often working on some of the basics and fundamentals. Now, not something as simple as breathing, obviously, but like even just alignment when they’re breathing. So I was chatting to this girl, Kay Malton, who just missed the Olympic team this year, but she was made it for Tokyo. She was saying that like the main thing for her that she was sort of working on with a freestyle was that when she turned to breathe, her head would shift off to the side and she’d look a little bit behind her and she’d lose her body alignment and her arm would cross over. And she’s second at World Champs in 800 free behind Ledecky a couple of years back. So it’s like, you know, those those basics, those fundamentals apply all the way up and down the ladder. So yeah, I mean, the stuff that we teach at clinics, we always just start with breathing, body position, head position because most people don’t have that in place and they can always improve it.

And if that’s not in place, then it’s really hard to work on the catch and the hold and all this sort of stuff. Because, you know, you just you happen to work up here otherwise. So yeah, those fundamentals, you can spend so much time in them. And I think people should be OK with spending time on the boring, sort of simple stuff, because that goes a lot further than than the fancy stuff. Really? Yeah, exactly. They’re trying to think about their catch and it’s like, no, you can’t even breathe yet. So let’s work for them. Yeah, it’s important to breathe, especially when you’ve got a ride and run after. Yeah, exactly. Exactly right. And you know, if someone’s like, you know, over over a two minute pace per hundred, unlikely that you need to start working on your catch yet. It’s like those basics are probably not in place quite yet. Like if you’ve got decent basics, well, yeah, then then you’re probably going to be swimming faster than that two minute pace.

So let’s always go back to there. That’s a good point. It’s very true. Yeah, most of the guys I get the newbies are definitely about two minutes or so or so. I know as a swimmer, it’s like, like, oh, damn, say this to him. It’s like, how could you be that slow? But if you haven’t learned as a kid, you just it’s it’s just not there. Like, I feel so blessed that my mom threw me in Frankston Heights Primary School into swim lessons because I hated it. I hated it. I have so much like respect for swimmers because we think triathlons higher, but getting in the fricking pool when it’s like five o’clock and it’s so cold, even if the water’s like not that cold, but it’s awful. It is like the least thing you want to do at five o’clock in one is get in the bloody pool. So like, I didn’t like it, but I’m so glad my mom made me do it because I think I would suck. I wasn’t a great rates for my triathlon, but I turned into one

because I just became good at open water. But that was another thing. But I’m just glad I learned to swim as a kid because and most of these do, you know, like we grew up with. It’s like one of key. Most whenever I get someone from the from the UK come to a clinic, most of the time they say didn’t learn to swim as a kid. Like, but obviously there’s a lot of the Australians do. It’s just a cultural sort of thing. And just, you know, what people used to. Yeah, yeah, it’s right. I know I taught in the UK with my sister for a little while and like, they were scared to even like put their head under the water. I was like, wow, this is a whole new thing for me. Like at least the Aussies were going to serve and they’re not scared to get under the water. But they were scared to even put their head under the water. So they’re going to drown. I’m like, but you’re touching the bottom. Like your feet are on the bottom.

You’re not going to drown. Like it’s crazy. Yeah. Yeah. And when you see an adult, you know, someone who’s learning as an adult, the way I try and the way I try to sort of remember what it’s like to be brand new at at something. It’s like when I like I learned to surf and I was 18. And I remember the first time I was out in the water with a surfboard. I was actually just sort of body surfing out there. I was out with a friend about a surfboard. He said, here, like take this and have a go. And I remember being on this thing and just like going, I’m scared to hell because this thing’s got this pointy nose. It’s like I’m wobbling all over the place and the nose is sticking right out of the water. And I felt, I felt so scared out there. And like, I just felt like, yeah, this foreign object, I don’t know what to do with it. And then like it took months and months to figure out how to stand up and be balanced. And it took a very long time to get to that point.

And it’s the same thing when you’re out in the water because you just don’t have that stable surface. And I’m just trying to control the body and balance that takes time. So just trying to remember what it’s like to be brand new at something, especially something as foreign as swimming or being in water. I think, yeah, you know, it’s easy to forget how challenging it can be sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. It’s very daunting as an adult to learn to swim. So thankfully they have people like us, right? That’s exactly right. But in terms of your career as an athlete and as a coach is there, any certain like turning points or like lessons you learned along the way that have really stuck with you. This episode is brought to you by Pillar Performance. Our new sponsors Pillar are a sports micronutrition company. And the easiest way to describe it is that while hydration and carbohydrates products will take you through to touch the wall

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I think with regards when it comes to swimming, I remember I went to Brett Sutton and he was like, he’s still one of the best coaches in the world. He’s coached multiple champions, a little bit mentalist. And he actually funnily enough, and he’s gonna be like, I don’t know why I did that, because he doesn’t do it anymore, but he tried to actually get me to swim like a pool swimmer. He’s like, you’re gonna go long and strong, long and strong. And I’m like, what? That’s not typical open water swimming. But he actually tried to change my stroke. He thought, oh, you catch is so beautiful. I’m gonna get you going long and strong. So it was like this long stroke and he wanted me to slow right down and do like, it was ridiculous. My stroke count was so low. And for me, because I used to like breathing every stroke and I still did in open water. It would change a little bit, but it kind of worked to an extent, but I just didn’t have that feel

that swimmer is hard. I just could never really get it. And I was doing okay. Like I come out just on the back of the front pack, like sometimes on a good day. And that was so important in triathlete coming out on the front pack. If you’re the second pack with the way that races are these days, you’re kind of screwed. And then I went to Siri Linley, my wife now, and she said, I’m gonna change your stroke rate. And I’m gonna change your stroke altogether. I’m like, oh God, here we go. I’m like, what was I then? Like 33, two years old and she’s changing my stroke. As best thing we could have done. It was like fast stroke rate, fast turnovers. We would do like 125, like 100 times 25s. And I was really fit. So it was flat out. Every single one, obviously it wasn’t flat out, flat out. But we’d be going like, you know, well, not that fast, but 15, 16 seconds for 25, leaving every 30. And we’d do a hundred of them. And she then she started doing it with a band only.

So I’d have a band around my legs. Just like get your stroke rate up. I’m like, I can’t hold this for 3.8K. Like, what are you doing? It’s just, it’s all about the stroke rate. Trust me on this. And so we do every week, 125s, 125s band only. And Leanne Decay was the world champion at the time and that she changed her stroke as well. And I ended up coming out of the YI men world champs in 2000 and it goes a long time ago. Still like 13, I think it was. And I led the swim with the great British girl who was a former swimmer and made like the Olympic trials as well in distance swimming. And I came out with her. We were nudging each other for the lead. And it was because I completely changed my stroke. And I give that cutoff to my wife. And that was, I think a real turning point because then I was coming out at the front in the swim. And it changed the whole game because you weren’t playing catch up the whole time.

So yeah, that was definitely a pivotal point in my career with my swim. I was already a really good runner, but coming out in the front in the swim for me was big. It was a big change. Big difference. And did you, what do you feel the difference in your stroke was like that in terms of effort? Like what was the difference in effort? Because obviously like longer, powerful, longer, more powerful strokes with a slower rating can be quite tiring because you’re having to use more, more power basically each time. Whereas you can kind of back it off. You can kind of go from that big gear. You can drop it down a little bit and just rate up. Yeah. What was it? What was the feeling like for you as the person doing that? Good question. I think like at first on my fitness, I just felt like it was really hard, cardiovascularly because I felt like I was just breathing out my throat the whole time. Like, because I’d have to kick,

like, well with the band, we weren’t, but I’d have to get the kicking as well. And I was like, you’re not supposed to kick in open water. Like you should just be doing like a four beat at the most, right? Or even a two beat. And I’d have to kick a lot to get out, to get that fast stroke rate. But then I learned to do it with a fast stroke rate and a lot less kick. And it was more about like streamline position and getting my hips up and everything like that and my body position. And I could hold the stroke without having to kick. So yeah, it was, first it was really hard, Cody had asked me like that. I felt like I had to, and I probably helped my swim fitness a lot because we did a lot of speed work as well, which sounds crazy for Ironman, but we did. And we changed the whole, even the swim sessions were completely different with Siri. Like it was like, I mean, we did a lot of max 50s and max 25s and flat out hundreds flat out.

I’d never done that. I always just did like, you know, a little bit of speed, but mostly endurance swimming. And so that was a game changer. I bought my swim fitness up and then I could just hold that eventually after a year if I could just hold that stroke rate. And it probably wasn’t as fast as I felt like it was. It felt like it was super fast, but I didn’t even know what it was, but it wasn’t, yeah, it was more just, yeah, the right sessions as well, the right training for open water and just having that strong catch with the band only. If you don’t have a fast stroke rate and you don’t have a good catch, like you’re just gonna sink. So yeah. Yeah, well, did you have a rough idea of what your stroke rate would have been? God, I’m trying to think. Siri would know, cause she had a stroke. I’m trying to remember. It’s measured per minute, right, normally? Yeah. So I mean, if you take it as like individual strokes,

you know, my guess, just without obviously seeing it, but my guess is you’d probably be up between 80 and 90 or maybe like low nineties, perhaps as a guess, you know? It was definitely above 90. I know that it was, I’m not that short. Like I think for shorter athletes, I’m a little taller. Like I’m, well, not that tall, five, what am I, five, seven and a half, five, eight. But yeah, it was definitely above 90. I know that 90 per minute, yeah. Yeah, yeah, wow. And in terms of cardiovascular effort, do you think in the beginning, it was more because you had to kick a lot harder and you had to sort of figure that out or was it just an overall effort? Yeah, I think both. And I think I had to change my breathing because I was always like long and slow and breathe every stroke, but I had that long stroke so I could afford to breathe every stroke. With the fast stroke, it was one, two, three, four. Like I was breathing two and four and two and four

and most, a lot of the time just four. Yeah, and that’s hard because it’s like, yeah, and I’d felt harder like on my lungs to like do four strokes and I felt like just my breathing was all stuffed up. But then when I started doing another thing she changed was bilateral, complete bilateral breathing, whereas Brett was always like one side because I felt so good breathing, God, I’m telling you, my right always, my right handed, but my right felt so good and I never reached my left and I used to think like, God, if the boys are on my left, I’m stuffed because like I could still look up inside, I could sight pretty well, but I’d rather be able to see them just while I’m breathing. So she changed to bilateral and that was like once I got the stroke rate going, like a bilateral for me worked really well. Like even though in a race, I wouldn’t always stick to that, I’d end up, so I don’t know what I did in a race, it wasn’t whatever felt good,

but in the pool, the bilateral really helped even up my stroke too, because I’d get a sore back from just breathing to the right and really sore back. And so the changing to bilateral to even up my stroke or either on the right and the way down, left on the way back, but bilateral for me seemed to work really well too with that faster stroke. Yeah, so it was bilateral in the terms of just one lap down, one lap the other way or? I breathe every three pretty much a lot of the time. Yeah. Yeah, gotcha. Yeah, but that’s how we would get into it. My left was terrible and it hurt my neck, but to practice it, she’d have me always right on the way down, left on the way back. So I was bringing the same position, but I’m always trying to do each side like each time to practice the left, because my left was shit. Mm, yeah. You should be able to breathe both, because if you do have like, you just never know what’s going to happen over water,

which way this one’s going to go, where the cans are, people around you, I think everyone should at least be able to practice by that trilly and whether they use it or not. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And a lot of people at least feel like they’re slower, breathing to one side and usually less comfortable to one side, but most will be surprised, I think. Like, if you do 100 meters, bring to your left, all right, get your time, then do 100 meters to your right and see if there’s a difference in time. Some people, a lot of people will surprise themselves, I think, in how either it’s the same pace, sometimes it’s actually faster, even though it doesn’t feel like it. Now that’s obviously not always the case, but yeah, I’ve seen that with a few summers and the thing about breathing to the other side, I try and get people to just see if they can feel what the difference is from one side to the other. And quite often it’s maybe where they’re breathing,

like they might be looking behind them or up high or the timing of their breath as well, they might be late to turn their head or just the rotation is different. Yeah, so can you figure out why you’re rubbish on the other side and see if you can even it up? Yep, so you teach that to a lot of bilateral? Yeah, well, I mean, like my general rule of thumb is whatever works for racing go with that and a lot of people that’s breathing to the one side, but I would definitely recommend being able to breathe to the other side and doing 20 to 40% of your session to that other side in training and just have that as a skill, have that as an option and that balance in strike, like I get a sore right shoulder if I’m just only breathing to the one side. So I’ll quite often do like, I’m in a 50 meter pool so I’ll go 25 left, 25 right most of the time and just even it up that way. And yeah, but I’d say 60, 70% of my sessions to the left,

but then I will mix in some right breathing strokes as well. I’ve got a question for you, funny question. But in the pool, I’ve never really watched it and observed it. For the top 1500 meter swimmers, did that breathing every stroke into to one side? Normally how do they switch it up and go, like, what do they usually do? What does he like, that he do? I wanna know, I’m gonna have to check it out. I’ve never really actually looked to see if she’s, I guess she’s looking at everyone else probably like checking them out anyway. Yeah, I’m not sure about Katie. I would imagine she’s like, she’d be probably doing one lap down, one side, one lap the other because there’s no way she’s doing like 15K a week just to the one side. And she probably did quite a bit of bilateral too, I reckon, especially for her more aerobic work. And then when it comes to like a race pace stuff or probably more threshold stuff, she’s probably just getting into that rhythm and tempo

that she’d do in a race, which is typically every two from memory. Yeah, but then I mean, you saw like Daniel Wiffen who won the 800 freestyle at the Olympics. He was breathing left on the way down, right on the way back for the race just to keep an eye on his competition. So that was quite unusual. And I think Titmus might have done that further, 800 as well from memory. So yeah, and it can change like, yeah. So, and I mean, her normal breathing pattern for the 400 is two four, two four. So you might have been the original there if you were doing two four in the early days. So… Well, I was half as fast as her. Yeah, there was… See triathletes can’t swim compared to swimmers. I’m just saying, like, they’re just got like nothing. Like, I mean, no disrespect at like our straight swimmers at just another level. It’s impressive. Well, one of the things that I found when I started, I did my season of triathlon was that

I got tighter through the shoulders just from running and riding and so my mobility just wasn’t the same. And then my legs were just heavier and stiffer through the hips and through the ankles. And I was like, yeah, okay, I get it. I can see why you’re moving the way you are in the water with the athletes I’m coaching because they’re just, it’s different. Like your body just changes. So you kind of have to adapt for it. So I ended up doing a lot more work with a pool boy, paddles and just kind of building that strength for open water. And yeah. Yeah, it’s just, it’s different. So that was a real eye-opening for me. Having always just swum a lot, being really mobile and flexible and then just getting tighter and stiffer. Yeah, couldn’t do the same things. When you like this for freaking like five hours on a good day, like that is not normal, right? It’s like, you’re like forward. You’re swimming like this, you’re biking like this.

Like, oh, you got, and you try not to run like that, but you’re up a back and you’re lower back. It’s just your thoracic, just gets a hammering. Oh, it gets, yeah, it gets so tight. Did you ever do any mobility work when you were in your professional phase? Not enough, but right now, like Erin Karrison who got actually, she’s amazing. I should set you up on a call with her. She’s brilliant. She was voted USA strength conditioning coach of the year. Two years in a row. She’s amazing. She was just in Paris with all the Olympic athletes and she’s really a giver. Like she would just, she would give back to the community and she’s just an amazing UMB, but she would coach our athletes with their mobility strength and still does. I didn’t do enough, but she does a lot of the Vipers staff and the mobility. And that was a game changer because if I’m losing my thoracic, especially for the run, because the run was my strength,

like if I’m losing my thoracic, I know I can run my three hour marathon. But if I was like tight, like too tight in my thoracic, your whole breathing, same with swimming, your breathing is all here. And we would do a lot, I didn’t do enough, but a lot of mobility stuff with her. And I think it’s so important. And it’s something that I don’t think enough adult triathletes and newbies do. It’s really, especially because like you said, you’re just stiff. And like if you’re new to the sport, you’re gonna be even more stiff because you’re not used to it. I think it’s a really something that’s, people don’t focus on enough. That’s interesting with the thoracic mobility because like it plays a huge part in your swimming and we see that a lot with people, like in their 40s, 50s, if they’re working at a desk job and doing triathlon, like they just have very limited rotation there. And then with the breathing, so I’ve found this, if I’ve been tight through my thoracic,

if I’ve ever done any breathing exercises where like I’m trying to get as much air in as I can, you can feel it through like the bottom of your ribs. You can feel it through there, where you just, you’re not able to expand as much, like if you’re doing this sort of deep breathing stuff. And I’ve actually like tweaked my back as a result of just doing breathing exercises because you don’t have that like, yeah, just don’t have the ability to expand through there because it’s too tight. So, which is ridiculous. Like you’re just breathing, but you think about your lungs just pushing those ribs out and if you can’t expand properly. Yeah, I’ll have to set you up with Aaron because I think that’s something that would help every triathlete. And I get a lot of like tradies that will come. I don’t even have to ask, I’m like, I want some swimming, they’re tough. They’re bad asses. And I’m like, duty you’re a tradie. And he’s like, yeah, so I can tell my,

you are just so tight in your pecs and your shoulders and those parts cause they’re building all day. Like, and they’re so tight. Like I’m like, you gotta do some mobility. You gotta stretch out those pecs, stretch out those lats. Like, yeah, it’s important. What do we think? Yeah, absolutely. And I think like swimming is just the best exercise for loosening up as well. Like even if they just throw in a little bit of backstroke here and there for recovery, just get those shoulders moving in the other direction. It goes a long way. And I’ll find if I’ve been in the water for a week, I tend to get pretty, pretty stiff. But as soon as I get like a good session in, that’s a couple of K and I’ve worked hard. Like you just feel a lot more mobile. You feel a lot looser. It’s really good because it’s your body weight supported by the water. And I always do like with our programs, they do their long bike or brick sat day,

long run Sunday, try to do legs off Monday. And that’s come from like Siri and Brett’s coaching because even though we swim hard on Monday, I used to hate it because we swim so hard, but you’re really not putting that weight bearing on your legs. So you can kind of get away with it even if you’re exhausted. I hated doing Monday hard swim, but it’s much better than doing a Monday hard, bark or hard run. And I see, even though it doesn’t feel like you’re recovering cardiovascularly, like the legs are still recovering really, no matter what they should do at a kick set or something. But that was kind of our go to that, the hard Monday swim, unless you’re totally screwed and stuff, but yeah, the hard Monday swim after a big leg day on sat day Sunday. Yeah. Yeah, and that’s pretty consistent across most swim squads that I’ve seen as well. It’s like Monday morning, that’s when we do our 10, 400s, that’s when we do our big session

or our threshold session. And it makes the rest of the week seem somewhat easy if you’ve done your big session then. But yeah, that’s right. It’s like great, great time to do it for most athletes who are doing their big sessions sat day Sundays. Yeah, I think that’s the way to go. Is there any other sort of lessons that you’ve learned along the way or things that you’ve picked up and you find apply to most people? God, I feel like there’s a lot, and you’re gonna laugh at it, but there’s a lot of like fit influencers out there, people that are like swim coaches or Ironman coaches. And some of them are really good, but a lot of the time like, and I’m not saying you have to have done Ironman or like Brett Sutton or being like in the sport, like actually competitive in the sport, but like, I feel like you gotta have some skin in the game in a sense that you’ve at least had like several years experience. So you can just do your Ironman certificate,

you can coach, like there’s nothing better than having like that. And for you, you’re a perfect example, like you swim for so many years and there’s very few swim coaches that can actually teach triathlon swimming. So you’re one of them. And I think it’s hard sometimes when you look at social media, you’re like, oh my God, what are you doing? What are you teaching? So I always say to my guys, and they’ll go, oh yeah, my mate did Ironman last year. He’s been doing it for 12 months. And he told me that I should on like, stop, stop. And then they’re spending like $3,000 on a Wahoo kicker and they don’t even know what power is. And I’m like, do you know what 400 watts means? Like it’s all powered away. It doesn’t matter what you’re pushing. Like, what do you weigh? And they’re like, I don’t know. And like just stop worrying about FTP right now in the first couple of years of your sport because like, yes, there is a time and a place

for an exoscience background, but like they’re so focused on metrics and data and numbers and I’m like, and heart rate. And I’m like, okay, let’s just get to the basics. Let’s go back to the basics and just stop listening to the noise and like focus with one coach. And yeah, that’s probably my biggest advice. Yeah, that’s such an important one. And I mean, I think we’ve all been guilty of it at times, you know, I’ve tried so many different things. I guess when it comes to maybe mobility for me or strength and stuff like that, like we just, we hear an idea and we think, oh, that could work for me. And we try a dozen different things in the space of six months. But if we never really stick with something, then we’re not gonna see the results of it. So it’s so easy to get sidetracked. And I think we put out a lot of videos and content. So, yeah, I like people who have seen like all of our videos, all of our, listened to all of our podcasts

and tried everything that I’ve talked about. And like I had someone come to a clinic maybe three weeks ago that said, yeah, I was trying this that you mentioned and this that you mentioned and like they’re all over the shop. And I said, look, all right, you’ve come to a clinic. These are the like three things that we’ve identified in the video. I want you to, this first one, all right, let’s just focus on that for a month. Like switch off your Instagram, switch off your social media in terms of like what you’re viewing and just focus on this and then move on to the next one from there because it’s just so easy to get distracted. And if you’re not spending enough time on those fundamentals and just like, just learning the real basics, then you long-term you’re gonna really stop yourself from improving short-term. Yeah, you might make a bit of an improvement, but long-term it’s just like consistency, fundamentals and just get really good at that.

Yep, yep. And I guess with swimming too, I guess the good thing is you don’t have like, there’s not a lot of like, well, there it’s a lot of innovation with swimsuits and goggles and stuff like that and the way people train, but triathlon is crazy because you can get like these bikes, these like $20,000 bikes, but you can’t even ride like more than like 15 miles an hour and you see them sitting up on their hoods with an aero holo. Don’t waste money on that. Let’s like gain like 10 minutes of the swim first and then spend 20 grand on a bike. But I mean, if you can afford to do it, but then you see them sitting up, no aero position, I’m like, whoa, what’s going on here? So yeah, fundamentals, so important. Yeah, absolutely. And the thing is it’s not sexy and it doesn’t sell, but it’s like, it’s the only thing that really counts in the long run. So that’s just how it is. But I think once you’ve got an athlete and you’ve sold them on your way of your approach

and they trust you and believe in you and the way that you’re going to work with them, then you can really just go, look, this is what we’re going to do. And if you stick with this for six months, I guarantee you’re going to see the results from it, but there’s a lot of noise and yeah, it can be hard to just not be sidetracked by it, I think. Yeah, what sort of metrics would you, do you use for swimming? Cause I just say like, let’s just think like swimmers use the pool clock cause a lot of the time my guys, they don’t even know what time they’re coming in on cause they’re using their garment all the time. And I’m like, firstly, you hit it like two seconds after you hit the wall, it’s probably inaccurate. Your heart rate is probably inaccurate cause you’re not wearing a chest strap. Like let’s forget it. Let’s just swim like swimmers and like use the pool clock. Like you need to learn to use the pool clock and know your times and know what you’re coming in on.

Like what’s your approach there with like the garment and stuff like that? So I’ve never, I’d never really used the garment at all. And the last couple of weeks I’ve just, for any, for some sessions, I’ve just hit start and then just done the auto stop and start feature. And it’s been so, it’s been so inaccurate with like counting my laps and stroke counts and like times and stuff. And so I just like, I don’t even look at it until the end cause I just want to track my distance and get a rough idea of my distance for the, for my like, you know, weekly volume. But I’m not using it for anything productive. It’s just like, I want to see what it spits out for me. I’m glad it raises pages me. Yeah, yeah. Like, so, and I wear the form goggles once or twice a week and that’s much more accurate. And it gives you, it gives you an accurate pace and all that sort of stuff. So I, if you’re looking at metrics with any electronic device

that I think forms actually accurate. Whereas garments not cause it’s just obviously on the wrist goggles are a lot more accurate cause it’s on your head. But yeah, in terms of like times and stuff, yeah, use the, use the pull clock. And I really like perceived effort stuff as well. Like just tuning into how you’re feeling. Amen brother. Amen. You’re preaching.

Cause it’s, yeah. It’s just like, cause you’re not going to be checking your pace in, in a race. Like it’s just all based on that perceived effort. Right. So you’ve got, yeah. You’ve got to be in tune with it. I think like, I love the perceived effort stuff over anything else. Music to my ears. And it is, it’s way harder in the pool to get it right. Cause I remember we used to get that thing. You probably did too. Back in the day, I don’t know what they do with heart rate now. I guess they have some fancy. I think it would literally be like, I don’t know, even Dennis Kothra would use it and he’d drop it in the pool and it had like a sponge on it. And we just hold it to our heart, to get our heart rate. Oh yeah. Yeah. It’s going back. Isn’t it? Wow. I know. In the 2000s. But yeah, I mean, take it manually if you don’t like that. Really the most accurate way is to honestly take it manually. I said to my guys, kind of for 10 seconds at times it by six.

But yeah, but I’m a big perceived effort person because I mean, looking at your watch, look at your heart rate and your time, like in a race in the swim, firstly you can’t do it and he’s looking at actually going to make you swim faster. Just go as hard as your bloody can and looking at your watch is not going to make you go any faster. So yeah, I’m all for a rate of perceived effort, listen to your body, know how, know how it feels. I think once you’re in tune, you know what pace you’re on. Like I can, I could pretty much, you would to guess almost exactly what time I’m on without even looking at the clock. So yeah. Yeah, yeah, it’s exactly right. And so yeah, though I’m a big fan of that. And then yeah, with the form goggles, like I have converted quite a bit with them over the last few years, like they sent me a pair a couple of years back and I was like, I doubt I’m going to use these because I’m anti-tech and just traditional swim background.

But I have, I really like the, like just seeing my pace when I hit the wall, especially if we’re doing like a, like a VO2 set or a heart rate set where it might be like, you know, say 10-1’s best average on two. I can see what I’m going out in. I can see what I do when I touch the wall and that’s accurate. So there’s really good uses for that. But yeah, the garment is just so inaccurate. And if people are giving their stroke counts. We’d love you, but we just don’t, not advocates. Yeah, at least not for swimming. You know, it’s not. So when I did a post one day and I wrote get rid of the garment and everyone’s like, what are you talking about coach? But Siri, like coach and athlete, this is a real quick funny story on metrics, right? Training peaks, you know, training peaks. So we knew the founder of the company and they were at Hawaii. Miranda Coffrey had won the world championship and she’s going back to one again.

She won again the second time Siri had coached a three world championship titles in the Hawaii Ironman. Everyone knows Miranda Coffrey, if you don’t, we need to know her. She’s retired now, but she was the best Australian athlete in Ironman that there was. And she did like she had just her, she had her garment on her bike and they said, they said, holy cow, Miranda’s like splits, well, like her power numbers was so even, like she held 210 the whole way. Like that was maybe 250 kilos or something. Maybe it was a little less cause, but anyway, it was about 3.5 watts per kilo, which for a female pro is about right. You got the man away a little more now, but he said, how did the training peaks were all right? And so how does she do it? How does she do it? She’s so evenly paced and Siri’s like, she wasn’t looking at her power. And they were like, she wasn’t looking at her power. She was looking at her cadence. And yes, it changes with heels

and you gotta be, but the main time when it was like, she would try to stick exactly 80 cadence, 80, 82, I think it was. And that was a game changer. And they were like, they were, she was laughing cause they were expecting this like scientific answer onto how she had this even power. And it was all just cadence. She just looked at her cadence all the time. So. Wow. Yeah, it’s interesting, isn’t it? Yeah. And it just goes to show you can do, you can just, you get, we’ve gone so far with just like out but perceived effort for so long that like there’s, there’s time and a place for using data, but you can get so far with just tuning into your body and how you feel. And yeah, cause I think it’s so easy to get distracted by other things. And like one thing that I’ve, I’m really trying to advocate for people who, if they’re in a bit of a rut with their swimming or they’re in a plateau, like just get rid of any tech, go for a swim,

don’t even worry about your times. Just feel what it’s like to be in the water and just moving through there and enjoying it. And just like, remember how fun or how good it can feel to just have that water flowing over your head and your ears and your shoulders and just, you know, moving freely through the water. It’s like, if I’m just in a bit of a, bit of a rut with my swimming, it’s like, yeah, I’ll go and do a K, K and a half, just roll the arms over, maybe just do some drills and some kicking and stuff. And it’s like, all right, I’m kind of getting there, getting just used to being supported by the water and that feel, that feel of it. I think that’s a really good way to go because it’s easy when you, if you’re in a squad, if you’re always like looking at your watch, it’s just like, you don’t appreciate what you’ve got. And I think just being able to appreciate it, being kind of grateful for it and just having a bit of like playtime in the water,

that goes a long way. Yeah, I agree. I haven’t been doing that on the bike in the run too. The long runs, I’m like, hey, get rid of your garment on a long run. Like, I just want you to go easy. You should be able to torque the whole time, time in the legs. Like, yes, if you, there’s times to run hard. Like, obviously we would do really hard sessions throughout the week. The long run day, like most of the time I’m like, go out and get a two hour easy run in the legs. And it’s still a two hour run. It’s still hard. But like don’t want to hold like seven, 30 mile pace in your long run because when you want to have it in the bank in the reserve for your hard run sessions through the week, like it’s not going to be there because you’re running a 160 heart rate for your long easy run. That’s not easy. It’s in the gray zone the whole time. So yeah, I’m totally with you on that. Yeah. And that like that long run, if that’s a run where,

if you can get out into nature, go exploring some trails or just like, like it’s just so good mentally too. You know, I try and just find new places to run and explore and get lost a little bit. And yeah. I love just finding new trails. Like anyone, like there’s so many amazing places to run where you are too. Like there’s some great places to go. But I try to get my guys to get, get off the treadmill. You are not running a tour, I run on the treadmill. Like get the oxytocin, get outside. And you feel different when you’re finished too, don’t you? When you’ve done it outside. Yep. Yep. You need to make a comeback. I think Brent needs to do another Ironman. I think Siri and I should cope in. Getting to Hawaii.

The one thing I said to my wife as soon as I crossed that finish line was, never let me do that again.

No matter what I tell you, never let me do that again. Absolutely.

But then two days later, did you go, you have to probably do another one. Yeah, but I just, it was so vivid that feeling. And what I said to my wife at the end, I’m like, yeah, no, don’t convince yourself because I say it happened all the time for people. But like I know it was, it was the bike I, I didn’t ride enough in the lead up to it. I spent way too much time swimming because I wanted to win the swim. And so I just was under prepared for the bike. Yeah. And the run was okay, but yeah, third lap of the, the last lap of three, it just like, yeah, a truck, a truck hit me. And I was all smiles and high-fives for the first two laps. I’m like, what? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, just the, yeah. That’s about a truck hits everyone about about 10K to go. So don’t worry, you’re not alone. Yeah, that was not fun. But I’m so glad I did it. Like I love the process. I was down to like 78 kilos and I’m normally around like 84, 85.

And I just didn’t notice it like dropping away. And my wife was like, yeah, your arms were so skinny. And like, I didn’t notice it at the time. Do you notice it in the pool for like buoyancy and stuff? Or not really? Like, cause you had less body fat or? I wasn’t conscious of it. I just felt like I wasn’t swimming like I used to. Like I just felt, because of that stiffness and all of that, I don’t think I paid attention to it. But that’s an interesting point. Like if having lost six kilos of fat and a little bit of muscle like it, yeah, that’s quite a lot. That’s quite a bit to not have me to, you know, to float. So yeah. That’s interesting. But that’s the good thing. Like we’re pretty fortunate in triathlon. Most of the time on the speed suit does help. But the wetsuit, I mean, I joke with my athletes. So I was like, I just gotta get you stroke, right? You could fart and like float along the water. Like don’t worry.

Like the wetsuits now, like they’re amazing. Like I was sometimes like eight seconds per 100, like on a sprint. Not, it’s crazy. Like it’s really lucky that we are able to use them a lot of the time. So they’re super fast. It takes care of a lot of those fundamentals in the stroke, doesn’t it? It’s like it keeps you pretty long, keeps you quite taught through the middle. Good buoyancy. Your legs don’t have to do a whole lot. So yeah, it does cover a lot of those bases. And that’s why I think for many people, that higher rating that you were talking about goes a long way. And if you’ve got the strength and the fitness to hold that rating for a lot of people that, you know, your speed comes from that because you’ve got good body position and everything. So yeah, that’s interesting. That’s why I had to change my approach as a swim coach going to coaching triathletes. I had to be okay with them not looking perfect in the water, which was a good change.

And they love the buoy. And, you know, they love the pool boy. So they call it buoys here, but they love the pool boy. And I don’t let them use it all the time, but I also like say we do it in a three K set. I would let them use it for a kilometer or some of the warmup because like in the, in the most of the time open water you’re in a swimsuit in a wetsuit. And it does feel a little bit like having a buoy between your legs. Totally. Yeah. Same with the buoyancy shorts. Same with the floating pants. It’s like… How good of those? I bet you was a swimmer. You put them out and thought, they’re bloody cheating. What’s going on? Well, I’ve never used them yet, but half my swim squad is wearing them now. So they’re just, they’re running through the swim squad and I’m getting beaten by these guys now. So… They’re going to be, I don’t know, I reckon like three or four seconds per hundred. Sure. Yeah, right. Especially for anyone who seems like it’s just,

it’s going to help you even more. So yeah, I’m just reluctant to give in because I know I’m going to have a hard time getting rid of them. That’s going to be addictive. So it’s like drugs. It’s like, yeah, never, I’m never going to try it because, you know, I feel like that’s not, I just can’t get started. So same thing with the buoyancy shorts. Yep. Yep. Good point. Don’t begin. Bec, for anyone who’s listening to this, we’ll obviously include your Instagram and all that sort of stuff in our show notes, but for anyone listening, what’s the best way to get in contact with you and reach out? Yeah, it would be my Instagram. I just changed it. Oh my God, I don’t even remember what it’s called. Let me see. I think it’s just bec underscore keat because most of people know me as Bec keat, not Rebecca keat, because my name’s spelled R-E-B-E-K-A-H. So it’s just bec underscore keat, which is B-E-K underscore keat. Feel free to follow my non-profit too, guys.

I think when triathletes, the hardest thing for me was retiring and because I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was like, what do I do now? Like I can coach, but it really didn’t, I wanted more. So we ended up going into a non-profit and we rescue horses from slaughter and all the money I make in coaching triathlon and in my fitness group goes towards something greater than myself, which is saving horses from abuse and neglected slaughter. So check out my Believe Ranch and Rescue as well. We’ve saved 311 horses now. And I think when you have that why, you know, I know it’s crazy we have 32 we take care of, but who would have thought of triathlete would be doing this? But it really, it’s like, it’s very fulfilling and I love it even more than coaching. So you can check that out too. That’s awesome. Well, we’ll include those links as well in the show notes. Bec, it’s been great having you on. I feel like we’ve just been able to have a yarn,

have a chat about swimming and triathlon, which I love and I feel like we could go for a lot longer as well. So I appreciate you being on. I’ll absolutely have you back on as a guest down the track as well, because we’ve only just touched the surface, I think. So thank you so much for being a guest on the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

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