Effortless Swimming

In today’s episode, Dr. Sandra Harrell, a former 5-time NCAA All-American swimmer and physical therapy expert, shares her insights on injury prevention, strength training, and performance optimization. With over 25 years of experience, Dr. Harrell covers the importance of consistent strength training, nutrition, and recovery. Her tips are valuable for athletes and those looking to stay fit as they age. Tune in now!

Website: https://www.theswimmersdoc.com/

This podcast is brought to you by NanoClear — our own range of anti-fog swim goggles, designed by Effortless Swimming with the anti-fog treatment bonded into the lens itself (not sprayed on, so it doesn’t wear off after a few swims). Check out the NanoClear range here and use code PODCAST15 for 15% off.

Summers don’t necessarily take strength training as seriously, nor do they think that they have to because, you know, they think, well, I’m in the water anyway, working out in the gym doesn’t necessarily transfer those same skills in the pool. And that’s far from the truth. The best lessons learned are the ones that you go through the process of. Like you have to figure it out yourself and it’ll always be a part of you. I can tell all of my athletes like, hey, strength training is going to turn your life, turn your swimming career around and they’ll hear it. But yeah, it’s always those that like take that step and they’re like, all right, I actually want to improve my swimming. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

In this episode of the Effortless Swimming Podcast, we dive deep into the world of injury prevention, strength training and performance optimization with none other than Dr. Sandra Harrell, a five-time All-American swimmer and expert in physical therapy. With over 25 years of experience and a keen eye for biomechanics, Dr. Harrell has a wealth of knowledge to share, not just about staying injury free, but also about how to maximize your potential in and out of the water. Are you making the most of your strength training routine or could your current habits be setting you up for failure? Dr. Harrell breaks down why consistent strength training is non-negotiable for swimmers and triathletes and how nutrition plays a critical role in muscle recovery and the secrets to building a routine that sticks. Plus, she reveals how to leverage technology to track your progress and ensure that your training smarter, not harder.

If you’re serious about swimming, triathlon, or you just want to stay fit as your age, you don’t want to miss Dr. Harrell’s insights on how to maintain longevity in your sport and keep your body performing at its best. Tune in to discover actionable tips that could transform the way you train and recover. Sandra Harrell, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for jumping on with me. Thank you so much for having me today. So where does this story start for you, your background in swimming? But what caused the transition to come across and start working with athletes on their strength and rehab? Was there a certain moment in your career or in your life where you started to make that transition and thought, this is what I really want to do? Absolutely. I always feel like it starts with personal experience, right? And so I competed and I swam at UC San Diego for four years in my college there and there I was a five time NCAA All-American

and a former two time pull record holder there. And but during those four years, you know, it was a lot of tough swimming but also a lot of injuries and going into college. Actually, I was already injured with the shoulder issue and, you know, I never really got the right treatment. I never sought the right care out. I didn’t know who to look for really. And this was, you know, over a decade ago. So it’s not like social media was a big thing. You really just had to go and look into like the medical directory to figure out what provider you’re even supposed to look for. And so I didn’t get I didn’t have the resources that I needed to compete at my best. So I competed, you know, all four years in college injured and it kind of tainted my experience in swimming. You know, quitting wasn’t really an option. I didn’t want to give up a sport that I love to do. But at the same time, the sport gave me so much pain day in and day out.

And so that’s kind of what I realized near the tail end of my swimming career that, you know, I don’t want future youth athletes. And, you know, collegiate athletes are really any type of athlete, right? You’re a weekend warrior or professional to have to deal with pain while wanting to train at the level of their preference. So I went into physical therapy and rehabilitation. I ended up getting my doctorate there. I also got my master’s in exercise science and health promotion. And so with that, I actually took a step, a big step away from swimming. I kind of forgot about it, actually, during my graduate studies and went into, you know, the clinical aspect and health care and worked in the hospitals for a while. And it just, you know, I just was burning out really quickly in a career that I had just began. And it took a lot of introspection and self reflection for me to realize or remember why I went into the field to begin with.

And so I took about like a year or two off from just seeing patients from working in hospitals and outpatient clinics and realize that, hey, I really missed swimming. That’s still something I was really passionate about. You know, I no longer was competing at that point, but I always looked forward to the chance to swim, you know, whenever I got the chance to and at the time I was lifting a lot more just to help continue maintenance of like my own rehab at one dot. And so, oh, I guess to backtrack, I ended up getting hip surgery because of labral tear in college. And so that’s kind of what led me down the rehab track.

And yeah, so, you know, kind of a long winded story. But ultimately, I came back to swimming and realized like, hey, why not treat the population and kind of give back to the sport that gave me so much, you know, joy in my youth and, you know, give back to these athletes that are super dedicated. But, you know, maybe they don’t have the right provider who understands, you know, the demands of physical and emotional and mental demands of swimming and the sport of swimming. So that’s where we’re at here. Well, hindsight’s always 20-20. When you look back at your own injuries that you had through swimming, what would you do differently now that you’ve got the experience that you have? If I if I had known, I would have looked at my nutrition much differently. I would have integrated strength training much earlier as well as, you know, taking some even minor injuries more seriously because minor injuries tend to be indicative of potentially future

and or reoccurring injuries. So somebody who, you know, may have a, for example, you know, a constantly sprained ankle, right, as a kid. They tend to respray that ankle over and over over time, you know, due to lax ligaments, right, and prior history of injuries, making those ligaments more susceptible to re-injuring. And so that same mindset and that same, you know, idea is, you know, transfers over to swimming as well, you know, somebody who has, quote, unquote, Summers’ Shoulder, which actually is a little bit misleading. You know, most people think, oh, I have Summers’ Shoulder. It’s one singular thing, but it really is just kind of a general name for shoulder pain. And, you know, somebody says, I have shoulder pain. That is not a diagnosis. There’s there’s nothing about it that tells me what you have. And so it can be various things like rotator cuffed hairs. It can be bursitis. It can be labral tears.

It can be impingement. It can just be a whole, a whole host of different injuries and conditions. And so, you know, somebody with, quote, unquote, Summers’ Shoulder. It can be one thing, but now it leads to other things down the line. And so I think, you know, having taken seriously of those things and making sure my nutrition was better, hydration, sleep, you know, stress management and strength training, starting a strength program in high school, you know, would have probably saved a lot of headache and heartache down the line. And I think that that’s still something swimming as a sport, you know, in the world of swimming. That’s still something that isn’t common, I think. Most Summers don’t necessarily take strength training as seriously, nor do they think that they have to, because, you know, they think, well, I’m in the water anyway. Why does the, you know, working out in the gym doesn’t necessarily transfer those same skills in the pool.

And that’s far from the truth.

Yeah, exactly right. But one of the things you mentioned there was nutrition. So what mistakes were you making with your nutrition back then? Was it in terms of the recovery? Was it in terms of having enough protein after you? Oh, you weren’t really probably doing much strength training. But what were those mistakes that you were making early on? It was both, you know, I think as a youth and even well into college to our college university at the time, we didn’t have a dietitian. You know, we didn’t really have any nutrition coaching specifically for our team. And so, you know, with training anywhere from three to six hours a day, you know, between lifting weights in college and swimming, you know, who knows how much yardage and how much distance as well as in the youth, you know, and being also, you know, and unfortunately, being a female, right, we tend to have these societal and cultural pressures to be thin.

And the problem is, you know, being thin and being an athlete, it’s it’s hard to do both. You cannot, you know, be a very strong and high performing athlete if your goals are to remain thin and, you know, just societal pressures of like girls not wanting to bulk up, girls not wanting to eat, you know, because they’re afraid of, say, getting fat or gaining weight. All of those pressures, you know, affected me as well as many of my female teammates. And so a lot of us were, you know, under eating, under eating in terms of maybe calories, but maybe overeating in terms of various macronutrients, right? We maybe were overeating carbs and fats and under eating protein. And it’s making sure that we are having the right ratios of each macronutrient. And that’s what kind of helps best fuel athletes.

Yeah, it’s something that I, when I look back on my early swimming career, I was certainly not having enough fuel during the session, during those bigger sessions where it might be five, six, maybe seven Ks. And we’re working, I think back to how, how hard some of the sessions were, like, it’s like seven or eight, two hundreds of butterfly. We’re doing like some 400 medleys. And it’s just like, it was massive training. And I don’t recall ever having anything during a session. It’s like, and it’s like, but that, as you said, with like social meter and the internet, like it’s just, knowledge has really just, it’s abundant. And I think we can, can be a lot better educated these days and it’s so much easier. So that’s a huge advantage that we have these days. But I think the other, the downside to that is information overload. And it can just feel like it’s too much. So sometimes when we have that information overload, we don’t do anything with it

because we’re afraid to make a decision. I think it might be the wrong decision, but a decision is better than no decision in many cases. So have you seen anything in relation to that in terms of the strength training, in terms of the nutrition where someone comes to you and they’re like, well, I’ve tried this, I’ve tried this, I’ve tried this, but none of it seems to work. Maybe it’s because they haven’t stuck to it for long enough. Like what are you seeing on your end when you have people come to you? Oftentimes, so I’m going to categorize my youth versus my my youth versus like my adult clients and athletes, right? So my youth, in terms of nutrition, they tend to under-consume what they need in terms of energy. These are also these are also the athletes that are consistently swimming two to four hours a day, right? Because they’re on a team, they have the time and the energy to do so. Usually my adult athletes, unless they’re, you know, training for a triathlon,

unless they’re a professional athlete, then they don’t. They really just train like once a day for like maybe an hour with masters, for instance. So for my youth, you know, they tend to be under-consuming in terms of what they should be eating and they are under-hydrating, which will negatively affect their performance as well as cognition and how they do in school too, right? In terms of strength training, you know, it’s it’s non-existent to see a youth athlete’s lift. And that is something that I’m working to change. That is something that I want to integrate into my club team and that I’ve started this year. And that’s something that I want to help and educate to other, you know, swim clubs as well, youth swim clubs that, you know, strength training is just as vital as the amount of hours and the quality of your sets in the pool, you know, it’s people tend to think it’s a supplement if they even include it, but especially for, you know, somebody who’s a sprinter.

So in terms of my very young youth swimmers, you know, who are, you know, say 12, 13 and under, I don’t expect them to specialize. They should probably get some reps swimming the mile as well as the 50 free, you know, as well as the 400 I am. They they need to learn to be versatile. I think that’s really important in terms of just general development as an athlete in terms of mental and physical resilience, right? To be able to do the mile versus like sprinting a 50. But it’s also important in terms of like development of motor control, endurance and, you know, the ability to minimize repetitive stress injuries over time. So it’s crucial there with strength training for them. And that’s something that I want to integrate. And, you know, especially for the maybe teenage swimmers that are 13 and up, where now they start to specialize. And maybe they’re looking into swimming in college, you know, and especially sprinters, you know, strength training

is an equal part in pool training because you don’t necessarily need to be training, you know, 10,000 meters a day as a sprinter, right? You need to be you need to have more specialization in your training. You need to have more power training. And that’s something that, you know, lifting proper strength program and a performance program is going to help you do that without having to add too many repetitive stress injuries, right? And so for my adult athletes and my adult clientele, they tend to, you know, maybe over consume their nutrients, their macronutrients, and they’re not prioritizing the right ones. So they tend to under consume protein and over consume carbohydrates, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but that will affect some goals that they would have. You know, should it be weight loss, fat loss, optimizing performance and muscle development? So that’s where I see issues in terms of nutrition for my adult.

As for strength training, I think, you know, it’s fantastic that our society now is embracing lifting a lot more, you know, into your 80s, 70s and 80s, right? And I think that’s fantastic. And it’s embraced now in women as well. So that’s great. But there again is still that stigma that, oh, you know, lifting will make you bulky, you know? And that’s something that I still have to remind and educate many of my female clientele, you know, and athletes that like, hey, you’re going to have to have like a very specific bodybuilder program and lift like seven days a week and lift like two to four hours a day to have that concern for the general population. Absolutely. You get the word to lift seven days a week, you know, and most people don’t. Even if you were to lift seven days a week an hour a day, that is not enough to make you bulky by any means. So those are some of the things that, you know, I enjoy educating my clients with.

And I think that it seems to be always so liberating, you know, when they realize that there are areas that they have yet to maximize to hit their potential. So, yeah. And when you say lifting, are you talking about a certain group of exercises or just you referring to general strength training? General strength training, yes. Gotcha. And where should the average adult start when it comes to strength training? Would it require gym equipment? Could they do body weight work? Where would you tend to start people? So it depends on the age group, right? So for example, if we’re talking about adults in their 20s, most of them tend to be, you know, if we’re talking about the male population, most of them tend to be relatively strong. So you can start with calisthenics and body weights. Sure. Same with women. However, you know, in our younger adult population, they tend to be fairly strong already. So I actually would recommend, you know, doing weights, using free weights,

using machines, something that will provide more resistance than your typical body weight because, you know, you can do as much body weight work as you want. Over time, your body adapts to it. So at some point, it’s like, say, the equivalent would be, say, you know, you haven’t swam in like five years and now you’re doing 10 100s on the 130 meters, 10 100 meters on 130. And that’s tough to do, right? Having not swam for five, you know, five years or so. But then you do that same set day in, day out. You do that for about two years. You know, that’s going to be super easy. It’s the same set, right? But your body has adapted to it. So now, you know, two, three years in doing the same set in the same interval at 130, you’re actually slowing down eventually, right? Because you’re not being challenged. And that’s the same analogy I would provide to, you know, my 20s and 30 year olds who are lifting maybe light weights and body weight because it’s like, you’re strong.

You know, the body is super resilient. Even if you were starting in your 50s and 60s, you’d be surprised with how strong you’d be. You know, you are. So generally, I would say like, you need to lift some sort of weight, whether it’s, whether it’s five, 10 pounds to start off with. And then progressing to more barbell work, doing more compound lifts, you know, getting under heavier weights, you know, that is, it’s loaded. It’s progressive loading, right? Just progressively increasing the load to fit your current capacity. But to challenge it just one step ahead. So your body isn’t adapting necessarily to your current workload.

So yeah, that’s kind of where I would start when it’s critical, especially as we hit 30 for women, because bone density decreases a percentage for every year, starting at 30 for women. And so you run into issues like osteopenia, osteoporosis for women. And then that tends to start for men as they enter their 40s with various changes in their hormones. So very important to start lifting the earlier the better, but it’s never too late to start.

Yeah, definitely. I’ve seen that across the board with athletes or swimmers and triathletes that that have actually started doing some strength training that have gone from essentially none. And the first couple of months, like it’s, I don’t see them get a huge benefit in the first couple of months because they feel a bit heavier, like their body is sort of changing. But then once they get accustomed to it and they get used to it, then we start to see the progression from there. And I’ve got some friends who are going through that now. They’ve just started some strength training, time for a bit slower. They’re a bit sluggish in the water, but as long as I stick through it, they stick to it, they’re going to see some really good results from that. And you know, a general guideline that I tell all of my athletes and my clients is that like you don’t see any there. There is not any notable strength gains until about six to eight weeks of

consistent strength training and consistent strength training would mean you’re lifting at least twice a week, not even once a week. So if you’re just lifting once a week, the amount of work required to see progress is going to take probably double the time, right? You’re just not building, breaking down muscle at a consistent and steady enough pace to see change quick enough. But if you’re lifting at least twice a week to maybe even three times a week, you’re going to see those gains a lot quicker. And so typically I tell my athletes, you know, who are consistent, give yourself about eight weeks, give yourself two months, OK? Of being consistent, stick to it, keep progressing. And then you’re going to really see notable performance differences after that, especially when you are consistent with it. Because the first, you know, one to two months of lifting, a lot of that is just, you know, tearing down your muscles.

You’re just super sore, super stiff all the time, especially if you haven’t lifted in some time, right? And so that’s, you know, and yeah, so that’s the thing people think that, oh, I lift, you know, working out means I’m building muscle. Actually, it’s quite the opposite. You work out and you actually break down muscle. That’s why you get sore. You get micro tears in your muscles. So the more you train, the harder you train, the more you’re breaking down muscles. You’re in more of like a catabolic state. And so that’s where nutrition comes in, right? Nutrition is a thing that helps build muscle. It puts you in an anabolic state. And that is what helps you rebuild your muscle and helps with muscle protein synthesis is really making sure you’re eating enough protein for your particular physique, you know, for your body weight. So for someone who is doing gym, what would you recommend they do to make sure that they can can eventually build that muscle

and that they’re refueling with the right macronutrients afterwards? And when should they take that? So for the general population, I would think that most people are under consuming protein. But if somebody is particularly training hard, both in the pull on and the gym, they really need to prioritize protein. And, you know, research shows that, you know, you need about 30 grams of protein in a single sitting for your body to start that process of muscle building. And it’s not just protein that you need. You also need carbs to help with activating and synthesizing protein to get that process started. So it’s not like I’m saying like cut out carbs, cut out fats. All you need is protein. You need all three macronutrients. It’s all very, very important. The protein is what’s going to help with rebuilding your muscle fibers and helping you to become stronger and whatnot. In terms of how often we should be consuming meals, right?

You you definitely want to train or you don’t want to train when you’re in a catabolic state, meaning, you know, you’re kind of hungry, you haven’t had anything to eat. So the great prime example is training first thing in the morning, right? We wake up and simmers are notorious to go and swim at five in the morning and not eat anything, right? Because who wakes up at three and eats a full on breakfast? Most of us don’t. So they tend to wake up, you know, maybe have some water or and then they head to the pool. And so you are training in a very, you know, a catabolic state and you’ve already been fasting for who knows, six to eight hours of sleeping, right? So your body is further breaking down. You’re not maximizing your training session. And then after that, sometimes, you know, people don’t have an appetite after training so hard, right? And so now you’re further going into a catabolic state and kind of degrading the muscle that you do have, right?

The body, the physique that you had to have. So, you know, I do recommend, you know, having something maybe easy to consume, whether it’s a protein shake, whether it’s, you know, fruit pouches or applesauce, you know, or even like a glass of chocolate milk, something to fuel yourself during practice. And then after practice, you know, as soon as you can have like a solid meal, you know, with protein, with carbs, with fat.

This podcast is proudly brought to you by Form Smart Swim Googles. The Smart Swim, too, 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 sight. 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 2 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 peaks, 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 1 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 1 goggles.

And one of the things that I’ve found to be most helpful, not just with nutrition, but also training is having making things as easy as possible. And for me, it’s like I buy these protein bars fairly natural. They’re not too bad. They’re wide in bulk and I’ve just got a couple in the car. I’ve got some of my swim bags so that whenever I’m driving home from training, which might take 20, 25 minutes, I’ve got something there all the time. So it’s just easy and I don’t need to think about it. So same thing with going to training, pack my bag the night before. Put it by the door so I can wake up at 430 in the morning. I’m half asleep, but I don’t have to think. And it’s just this you make things as easy as possible. And then the similar with gym training, I’ll typically do things at the same time on the same days. So I’ve got this routine and the gym that I go to, I’ve got a program that I follow. And it’s just been this incremental buildup in terms of the weights

that I’m doing. So again, I don’t have to think a lot about it. I can just go there and do it. And it sounds silly, but it’s like it’s those little things that make it easier to do that’s going to actually make you follow through with it, because even like I can’t remember where I read it, but it was in a book that it’s like, even if you put like a, if you’ve got a rower or a treadmill and that’s in a room that might be downstairs compared to upstairs where you spend most of your time, even that small thing of having it in a room that’s a little bit further away means you’re 50 percent less likely to use it. It’s like those. Yeah, it seems silly, but you’ve got to make things as accessible, as easy as possible if you’re going to follow through with them. Exactly. Reduce the barriers to entry, right? And this is for anything, whether it is to go to practice, whether it is to eat, it’s just, you know, making it so easy

that it’s, you know, it’s just second nature, just grab something, you know, and not have to plan. So I I highly encourage meal prepping. I think that’s the best way, right? To make sure that you are fueling properly. Does it take a little bit extra effort? Absolutely. But you don’t necessarily have to, like, create a whole new meal, you know, just maybe make a lot of one meal before. And then if you’re open to leftovers, that is your, you know, meal. That is what you consume the next day for lunch and whatnot. And, you know, protein, protein bars are great. You know, they’re a great supplement, especially when, you know, you’re on the go. So I think I think that’s great. Yeah. And in terms of the programming that you’re doing for athletes, how do you make it so that they are progressively overloading so they know exactly what to do? Are you using types of software or apps? Like what’s your standard process there?

Yeah. So currently I’m on Train Heroic. And so that is an online coaching app. And what I do with my athletes is that, especially if I do a lot of one-on-one work with them, right? I the first week that I have with them, you know, well, I get them on boarded, you know, I send them an intake form and I kind of get their baseline level of what I believe or what they think they do, you know, and how they, you know, compete and train and how much they lift. Because most often people tend to overestimate their abilities and that’s OK, you know. And so but I’d like to see where they are mentally and what they, how they perceive themselves, you know, because that’s going to play into how they push themselves later on as well. And then so the first week, I’ll customize a program for them specifically to whatever their goals are, whether it’s athletic, whether it’s health related, whether it’s weight loss, you know,

and I get a list of all the activities that they want to do as well. You know, if they’re just a summer, then my program is going to be specifically strength and mobility. OK, if they’re a triathlete, you know, same thing, you know, if their goals are more, say, health related and weight loss, then I’d be programming some strengths, some mobility and some form of cardio, whether it’s swimming, running, cycling. And if somebody is injured and they’re coming to me for more of like physical therapy or like rehab coaching for an injury, then their program is going to look really different, right? Because it’s going to be very much involved with improving their current condition before I transition them into a full body performance program. But regardless, the first week is always going to be a measure of their baseline of I’ll put in weights of what I believe they are capable of doing just based on what the intake,

what they filled out in the intake. And so and then from there, what’s great about the app is for every session, it calculates a readiness score for me. So I’m able to kind of measure their stress, their mood, their energy, their sleep, their workload and kind of gauge, you know, like if they’re also swimming and training on top of what I’m doing, if they’re overtraining, right? If they’re burning out, if they’re at risk for injuries or illness, especially when they score very low consistently, right? And so that gives me information that like, hey, I need a taper down when I progress you each week, right? I’m going to take all of that data. I’m going to progress you a bit slower or maybe just maintain, all right? That way your body can catch up. You know, maybe we don’t work as hard with me because, you know, maybe during practice or when you’re training with your triathlon club or with your some team, you know,

they’re not going to have one workout and you follow it, right? But if you’re coming to me, I have a more customized approach. I can tailor it to your needs. So if this week you need a little bit more recovery, I tone down the intensity of lifting and I wrap up more mobility, more recovery work, give you more tips and cues on how to increase your nutrition, your hydration and sleep and sleep hygiene, right? And stress management skills. If you’re scoring high on the readiness score, then I know I can push you a little bit the following week, right? Because I know that like, OK, this is way too easy for you. I’m going to push you a little bit harder. Maybe the lifts are a little bit heavier, right? Maintaining still mobility is just as important because mobility and strength training go hand in hand with performance and just general health. And so that’s how we progress from there. So I make note of the weights they use and then I manually progress each

and every one of them so that I know that, you know, they are capable doing those specific weight weights. I don’t blanket just regardless of whoever the athlete that I’m training or coaching, everybody goes up, you know, 50 pounds, for instance. It’s very much tailored to your specific capacity. Yeah. And that’s one thing I’ve found. And I like Joe Frill, he allegedly legendary triathlon coach. He for older athletes, I think he sort of refers to him as anyway, sort of 50 or older. He says it’s like two weeks on one week off. So like one one recovery week with two harder weeks and I’m late 30s. So for me, I think I can probably get away with about three weeks of hard work and one recovery. But I’ve always found that in terms of the gym work, I if I’m going pretty consistently for four, five, six weeks, I start to plateau quite a bit. But then if I say go away on a camp or I’m travelling and I don’t get to the gym for five days or seven days, that recovery time,

I come back and I tend to be able to up the weights. And it’s like my body just needed that rest that needed that recovery time to be able to catch up and then get to the next the next level. So I have to always remind myself. It’s like, all right, just it’s OK to have a lighter week where maybe not going as often or I’m just I drop it down because then the body catches up and then I can start to get to that next level. And the same thing obviously applies in your swim training, too. You don’t want to be going hard every single week. You need to just have a have a recovery week in there. Yep, absolutely. I 100 percent agree. And that’s something that people just totally disregard, right? People just don’t think about or don’t emphasize the importance of recovery. Recovery is just as important as training. It is part of your training, you know, you train what two to four to maybe six hours a day, right? What do you do the other hours of the day?

What do you do the other 20 hours, 18 hours of the day, right? That is just as important, you know, if not arguably more important because quantity wise, right, there’s just more of those hours. So what are you doing with your sleep? Are you prioritizing it, you know, is the quality of your sleep good? Are you getting maybe 10 hours of sleep? But really you’re asleep for like four of those hours because say you have an infant, right, and they’re screaming all the time, right? What are you doing with your nutrition? Are you prioritizing protein for your current age, for your current training requirements and then like hydration, stress management, work, life balance, all these things come into play in those other 18 to 20 hours. And so, yeah, I 100% agree with you, you know, recovery sometimes like recovery is maybe even more important, especially for somebody who is constantly training at a high intensity week on week on week on,

you know, then you’re you should actually probably prioritize recovery a little bit more and then you’re going to see a huge improvement in your performance as opposed to just keeping, keep pushing on, you know, which tends to be the tendency, I think, for a lot of triathletes and summers. I think it’s just that mentality that these athletes have. I think it takes a very specific athlete to go into these types of sports. And unfortunately, we tend to think that more is better when that’s not necessarily the case sometimes. Yeah, that’s exactly right. That’s the typical like a tight personality, like just go, go, go. And if I’m, yeah, if I’m stopping, then I’m going backwards. So, yeah, I can see how it happens. It resonates a lot with what one of our previous guests said, Jared Briffer, he’s a free diver. He coaches people on breathing technique. And one of the things that he mentioned was that he started doing

some breathing training to help with his free diving. But that was only for an hour to two hours a day at max. And he was getting a little bit better, but not much at all. And it was the other 22 hours of the day that he wasn’t looking at. So one of the big issues he had was when he was sleeping, is that he was a mouth breather and he just wasn’t sleeping or resting well. So when he eventually switched to nose breathing, he just taped his mouth. He found that over the course of the next couple of weeks, he just started to really improve in his ability to do what he needed to in free diving, because that was eight to nine hours taken care of with better breathing. And then when he focused on it, when he was awake as well, just having that the nasal breathing really just progressed in massively. And as you said, similar thing for swimming. It’s like there’s he might swim for most adults, right? They might only swim for one hour, two or three times a week.

And you’ve got so many more hours in the day. So how do you what are you doing outside of that strength training? How do you move? What’s your mobility like? There’s so many other other factors there that it’s easy to to ignore. But when you look at it in terms of just quantity of hours, the time they’re actually in the pool is as adults, it’s not a whole lot. So we have to consider those other things. Absolutely. Yeah. And in terms of people you’ve worked with, does anyone stand out in terms of someone who’s either come to you injured and they’ve been able to rehab that and come back stronger or anyone who has just come to you wanting to build their strength and they’ve seen really good results from it? Yes, I have right now. I’ve got a fair number of youth athletes who have found me on Instagram because their parents have been following me and their kids have been hurt. Just repetitive stress injuries, you know, rotator cuff issues,

some tears, some strains. And because this person is a youth, I don’t want to disclose his name. But it’s he’s made significant strides in his program. We’ve been working for about three months now and three to four months now. And he came with very severe shoulder pain. He had pretty severe, you know, like biceps tendonitis, some rotator cuff, some supraspinatus issues as well, as well as other issues, too. There are other medical conditions that he’s dealing with that are contributing to how slow his recovery is. But once we found kind of what the culprit was, he’s he stopped swimming back in December. He started again in June and he has gone PRs in every event that he’s swam. And he hasn’t been swimming. He had to stop swimming for several months because his shoulder just could not tolerate it. And he’s been lifting instead. So just that’s something that people don’t realize that like just because you’re injured, right?

And it’s not the end of your career. You don’t have to push through in the pool, you know, and just to get a PR. In fact, he did quite the opposite. You know, we had talked about not swimming as much and maybe slowly ramping up your yardage, you know, 400 meters at a time for practice. He started swimming like 400 meters to begin with and maybe was just swimming 2000 at the end. And Granite is also a sprinter, right? So it makes it a little bit not easier, but you can kind of get away with doing more strength training outside of the pool to complement what you’re doing in the pool, right? So this would be different for somebody who swims a mile or are endurance swimmers. So with him, he’s just he’s been messaging me and just sharing that he’s been shocked and pleasantly surprised with his capacity and what he’s been able to achieve in the short time that we’ve worked together, even though he’s barely just getting back in the pool.

So it’s, you know, stories like that. It really warms my heart and it’s it’s kind of like a lightbulb that goes off, right? The best lessons learned are the ones that you go through the process of, like you have to figure it out yourself and it’ll always be a part of you. I can tell all my athletes like, hey, strength training is going to turn your life, turn your swimming career around. And they’ll hear it and they some might even agree. And they’re like, yeah, absolutely. But until you do it and realize the potential, it’s always just going to be, you know, I’ll get to it. Yeah, it sounds like a good idea. But yeah, it’s always those that like take that step and they’re like, all right, I actually want to improve my swimming and I want to integrate like a good strength and performance program. And, you know, those the results speak for themselves and they’re happy. I’m happy, you know, I just I just want them to have that tool

in their belt that like our generation of swimmers and generations before us didn’t have, right? Strength training wasn’t that big of a deal. If anything, it was de-emphasized, right? Because we were afraid that we were going to get too bulky and heavy in the pool and we would be swimming slower. And so how far from the truth was that?

Yeah, exactly right. Yeah, so, you know, I think this next generation of swimmers they definitely are embracing more strength training now. And I think that’s great on multiple levels in terms of performance, but just general like learning how to move your body under weight, under resistance is important now. It’s and it’s so much it’s so much easier to to sell the cure. Rather than the prevention. And that’s why, you know, someone who’s come to you with an injury, they’re like, just tell me what to do. I just I don’t care what it is. Just tell me what to do. And someone who’s just looking to maybe prevent injuries, they’re not in that pain. So they’re less likely to to stick to it as diligently is someone who who is injured. But, you know, you learn lessons the the hard way many times. And I mean, the reason I really started to do more strength training was because I kept injuring my back and it was happening every two to three months.

And it would put me out for a couple of days and get really frustrated about it. And then when I actually started to do strength training, I was on this back extension machine. I think I was moving, I need to look back, but I have a feeling it was like 60 to 80 pounds. I think it was on this back extension machine. And now I’m up to almost double that. I’m at more than double that at maybe one one thirty or one forty. And that’s taken nearly two years to get to to that point. But when I look back at how weak I was when I first started strength training on how how did I it was like no wonder I was getting injured. It’s like I was just I thought I was strong because I was I was fit in the pool. But actually looking at what I can move now and what I can do now far beyond what I used to used to be able to do. And that’s two years. You know, it’s a fair it’s a fair fair while, but that time is going to go by regardless of whether I’m in the gym or not.

And if I want to I’m looking forward to the next five, 10, 15 years, like I just I don’t want to get injured because I hate not being able to train. I hate not being able to surf or go for a run. So I just want to be able to do those things that I love. And because I work with a lot of adults who have either taken up swimming because they were running and they’ve gotten injured and they can’t run anymore. Yeah. And I just it just happens. It just happens as we get older. So I’m trying to I’m trying to just prevent that as much as is possible. Because yeah, exactly. That’s what it’s all about. It’s you know, making sure that you are able to do the things you love, like surfing, hiking, running, swimming, competing, you know, like those are all really important things that bring a lot of joy to people’s lives. And that’s what makes up, you know, quality of life as we age to be able to have the independence to do those things.

When we want to, however we want to, you know, and how often we want to end, you know, the sad thing is that for every day and year that goes by, we’re all only getting older, right? That means we all are all also getting a little bit weaker each year. The amount of work to lift, like a barbell, 45 pounds is going to take a lot more for somebody in their 40s than somebody in their 30s, given that they’re equal in terms of training. So somebody who is super fit in their 40s and somebody who is not fit in their 30s. Obviously, that’s going to be different. It’s going to be easier for the 40 year old because they’ve been training. But say the 30 and the 40 year old or the 40 and the 50 year old who is both training, 45 pounds is still going to feel a little bit heavier for the 50 year old. And that’s just because of natural aging processes and something that you brought up that kind of reminded me was that,

like you said, you’re very, you know, most summers are very fit in the pool. They can some laps around the general population. No problem, you know, even without training, right? But when it comes to the gym, you know, we tend to be much weaker, not necessarily than the general population, but we tend to be weaker. And there is a reason why, you know, when you’re swimming, you’re actually anti-gravity. There’s no gravitational pull that you have to deal with. There is no gravitational forces. That your bones and your joints and your body have to, you know, combat against because of that. That increases your risks of osteopenia, osteoporosis. You are losing bone density. So swimmers and cyclists actually are notorious for having less bone density than, say, runners, because runners tend to have that compact, that compact force going into their joints. That builds bones. But as swimmers, when you’re anti-gravity throughout your whole training

and that is all you do, you’re actually putting yourself at risk for developing some of those bone diseases over time. And so which makes it even more important for you to be lifting as we age, especially if you are a swimmer, especially if you’re a triathlete, to fight those fight against normal aging cross and to build longevity and building stronger bodies so that you can do more of the things you love for longer periods of time. So, yeah. Yeah. And that’s what I feel that I’ve transitioned over the last couple of years to that where, you know, before it was about winning races and, you know, doing as best as I possibly could. And now, yeah, it’s just more about I just want to keep doing this. I want to be able to keep doing it as long as I can. So, yeah, so I think I think it’s a great, it’s a great sales pitch for getting people into strength training. Because I think and I’d say like the reason you see a lot of posts on

on Instagram and things like that of people, especially when they first like take something up with it’s going to the gym or something like there’s often a lot of posts there because it’s it’s a good feeling. It’s really addictive. And I think once you get into it, you go, I don’t know how I how I went without this. So it’s really, really important and I think you’re a really important person in that space for people who are doing swimming or triathlon to either overcome those injuries, rehab them or just to keep them strong, keep them going for for life. So for anyone listening to this, what’s the best way to get in touch with you or find out more about what you’re doing? Yes, please either check me out on Instagram and my handle is at the Summers Doc. And if you want to learn more about me, my website is www.thesummersdoc.com. And if you want me to send me a message through Instagram or you can contact me through my website as well.

Sandra, it’s been great having you on. Thank you so much for sharing your experience in the strength and conditioning. So I’m looking forward to having you back on in the future because I’m sure there’s a lot more we can can talk about and get into maybe some of the the nitty gritty, some of the details of strength training. So thank you very much. Absolutely. It has been such a pleasure. Thank you for having me. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

The post Building Swim-Specific Strength The Smart Way with Sandra Harrell appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

We’re thrilled to have Chipper and Chris, the powerhouse duo behind the Löw Tide Böyz, join us. Based in Northern California, this dynamic SwimRun team is on a mission to grow the sport of SwimRun and bring it to the forefront of endurance athletics. In this episode, we’ll explore why many endurance athletes are making the transition to this sport. We discuss the reasons behind its rapid growth and provide valuable insights for those interested in getting started with SwimRun. Tune in now!

00:54 Introduction to Chipper and Chris, the Löw Tide Böyz

Website: https://lowtideboyz.com/

Change your technique and swim a smoother, easier freestyle with the Effortless Swimming membership:

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

View our freestyle clinic schedule around Australia:

Try PILLAR today, head to pillarperformance.shop and enter code EFFORTLESS for 15% off, or for any North American listeners, enter the same code at TheFeed.com.

Watch the episode on YouTube:

So you’re swimming with your shoes on, you’re running with a wetsuit, so it definitely has a little bit of a unique, you know, some, some might call it dork factor to some of the gear, but it has a unique gear piece to it. But yeah, it’s really just an endurance event, a multi sport endurance event where you’re alternating between running and swimming. Another way to really summarize swim run is sort of like amphibious trail running, where, you know, most of these races are on trails, you get to the water and you just keep going. After you do one transition or two, I mean, Brenton, I’m sure you’ll appreciate this while when you did your swim run, it’s just like, well, isn’t this just like the weirdest thing I’ve ever done? Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

Chippert and Chris are the duo that make up the low tide boys. Based in Northern California, this dynamic swim run team is dedicated to growing the sport of swim run. They also host their own podcast called the low tide boys. And on this episode, we talk about why a lot of endurance athletes are transitioning across the swim run, why it’s one of the fastest growing endurance sports. And we talk about all the ins and outs that you need to know to get started in swim run. My guests today is Chris and Chippert, the low tide boys. These are the number one swim run experts in the world. They were just telling me how good they, how much they know about swim run. So Chris and Chippert, welcome to the podcast. You’ve got your own podcast on swim run and really sort of well, well followed podcast, but also highly entertaining with some of the content you put out. And just two people who really enjoy swim run. So today on the podcast, I wanted to chat about what swim run is all about

and what got you guys into it and why you’re so hooked on swim run. So welcome to the podcast. Yeah, thanks for, thanks for having us. Of course. Well, it’s, it’s sort of Chris’s story to tell. I was not his original partner, but all that Chris tell that story and then I’ll join in once, once I enter the picture. Yes. So I think it was 2015 or 2016. My wife gave me, you know, a Christmas gift. Essentially, it was this coffee table book called the world’s toughest endurance challenges. And I was into triathlon. Chipper and I were already good friends, training buddies have done a bunch of adventures together, endurance adventures together. And I read about this race called Attila. And it seemed ridiculous to me. I started doing a little bit of research, found the YouTube channel, which is, I think most people’s first entree into swim run or some just crazy hype movies that Attila and other race directors put out. And essentially found that there was this race in Casco Bay. So

I asked a friend of mine, not Chipper, if he wanted to do it. And he said yes, but I ended up being injured. So passing on that first year of that race. And then a few years later in 2018, I still wanted to do it. By that point, Chipper and I had done 200, 200 mile double century bike rides. We’ve done turkey trots. We’ve done ultra marathons, just all kinds of random activities. So I was like, Hey man, what do you think about doing this? Basically, the rest is history. In 2018, we did two races. Yeah, exactly. We did two races. We did California swim run as our first swim run that I was in San Diego. Super funky race, started at like two 18 in the afternoon after the last regatta race or something. And all leading up to Casco Bay 2018, which was really our first like legit swim run. And Chipper, so how do you feel not being the number one pick there? Have you gotten over that? Yeah, lots of therapy. I

finally moved beyond it. But no, Chris and I, like you mentioned, I mean, we had, we had done your triathlons. We were, we had been great training partners for probably five or six years at that point. And it was, Hey, I’m going to, you know, it would be Friday night. We’d be texting. He’s like, Oh, I’m going to do, you know, a 20 mile run in the Marin Headlands. You went in, I’m like, Sure, let’s do it. You know, we would always kind of have these training things. And the swim run just to me seemed like, Oh, that was another, another thing to do. Another way I get to hang out with Chris, basically, and we both had our first children. So we were kind of in the, we were really struggling with finding all the time to do the triathlon training with spending so much hours on the bike and running. So swim run kind of fit like a little, okay, we don’t have to dedicate so much to the bike training. You know, we’ll kind of stay a little bit fresh in the pool and we run,

you know, ultra marathons. So we’ll be fine. It was sort of how we approached that first race at Casco Bay. And, you know, we were, we were rocked. We were, we were, we were humbled, I guess is the best way to put it. Yeah, we were certainly rocked, but at the end of it, we were like, Oh, well, wasn’t that a thing? And when’s the next one? And that pretty much started off on our journey. I’d also really started the journey of the podcast, because as Chipper mentioned, we’re training buddies. And, you know, we’ve had these, these texts threads going is like, Hey, who’s doing what over the weekend? And it was basically fighting your endurance date. And we would also do these race report rides where it’s like, Hey, if anyone did a crazy endurance challenge, it’d be like, you get with your training buddies, and you just like regale them with the saga, you know, whether it doesn’t matter if you won or lost, just like, tell us a story. And we would, you know, invariably, there’d be

some communications like, okay, what was swim run? What’s happening? Like, I don’t understand. Like, well, you know, all the things that we still hear actually, and, you know, fast forward a little while, and we were like, Hey, we’re signed up for Attila Catalina, which was the first time that Attila was coming to do a race in the US. And that was on Catalina Island in California. So we were really excited about that race. A bunch of our friends were asking us what was going on. And Chipper, who already had some previous podcast experience, because he had a show with, with another buddy of his, he was like, why don’t we just do a podcast and just explain what we’re doing and educate some people? Because there really wasn’t anyone in the space with our sort of professional backgrounds. We were like, Hey, we could actually do something that would be useful for the sport that we think it’s cool that nobody knows about.

And kind of the rest is history. And so Chipper, for those that are listening, there might be people who don’t actually know what swim run is all about. It sounds self explanatory, but there’s a little bit more to it than, than yeah. So for someone listening who doesn’t know what swim run is, what would be your sort of 60 seconds on that explaining what it is? What’s the elevator pitch on the swim run? So I’ll start with what it is. And it’s definitely not a triathlon just minus the bike. It’s way more than that. So I think the best way to think about it is it originated in Sweden where there’s a lot of islands there. And they literally would run across the island. They would get to the water. They would swim to the next island, run across that one swim. So you’re alternating between running and swimming. It originally was like a point to point sport, but you do it all in the same gear. So you’re swimming with your shoes on, you’re running with a wetsuit. So it, it definitely has

a little bit of a unique, you know, some, some might call it dork factor to some of the gear, but it has a unique gear piece to it. But yeah, it’s really just an endurance event, a multi-sport endurance event where you’re alternating between running and swimming, where you literally, you get to the water and you hop in, you swim to the next bit of land, you run across there, you get to the water and repeat, rinse and repeat until, until you’re done.

Sowed it well. And the dork factor is 100% there. I can say it because I’ve done one before. And, you know, it’s hard to get away with training, you know, anywhere in public when you’ve got a, you’ve got runners on and you’re jumping in the water swimming, you’ve got a pool billy attached to your hip. That dork factor is certainly there. Certainly. Yeah. I think most people, we usually get three reactions when, when people see us sort of like in the wild training is people think we’re like Navy SEALs or special forces or something and they leave us alone or people just look really confused or the really confused people actually stop us and then be like, Hey, what are you guys doing? So, and of course, chipper, chipper is usually on cons with this is like, well, we’re the low type boys and this is a swim right? You don’t drop that we’re Navy SEALs. This is what we can’t talk about. I don’t think anyone would believe it after seeing us in wet season. In terms of the, the equipment, how’s

that changed and evolved over the last couple of years that, that the sport has evolved because it’s a very fairly new sport and there’s certainly some innovations that are coming out of it. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, from the origin, origination of the sport to where we’re at today, it’s tremendously changed for the first Attila, which means island to island and Swedish was a 70 kilometer race and it used to take folks 24 hours to finish the race. Now the world records like seven hours and they were bringing no joke inflatable air mattresses to lay on to swim in between the islands in, in the Stockholm Archipelago and they would, you know, take their shoes off every time, put them in a bag, you know, they had like more kind of a venture racing style. But once they started kind of figuring out the wetsuit component on chopping the wetsuit off at the knees and then, you know what the elbows and kind of making it a little bit easier to

run and really freeing up the running capabilities, that’s when the times of like the race times really started to drop. And that’s where the gear started to play a bigger factor in it really kind of around the wetsuit. The wetsuit technology really started changing. Then they really started getting much thinner with the neoprene on the on the front panels, not having any neoprene on the lower half. So it’s really almost like a kind of like a swim skin style fabric or textile on your bottom half and then a very thin, you know, two millimeter neoprene kind of upper and that’s pretty much the suit it zips in front. So it’s very, very nimble. You could be very quick in it. In addition to, you know, you use hand paddles and a pull buoy to kind of offset some of the drag of swimming with your shoes. But yeah, the, I would say in the probably the last six years, the technology has really shifted and that’s

with the technology shift and the gear and the equipment, the speed has just come right along with that. And what about the size of the paddles, size of the buoy? Like, has that changed as well over the years? Because there’s some, there’s some huge looking pull buoys, huge paddles. What’s the, what do most people tend to gravitate towards?

Well, I think, you know, the way the sports been evolving and one of the cool things about it, it’s like, there’s still a lot of room for self-expression and a lot of room for iteration in terms of the technology. I think we’re really kind of in the golden age of swimmer right now with people figuring out what’s the optimized kit. And what we’re seeing now as an optimized kit is paddles as big as you can handle and then a pull buoy that allows you to maintain optimal sort of body composition in the water to compensate for swimming and shoes and all the drag that creates. So the pull buoys are pretty big. They’re super buoyant. They’re essentially like flotational devices. You know, no one’s sinking in these things. I mean, if you jump in a pool with one between your legs, you’re like popping out like a, like a dolphin or something. They’re so buoyant. So that’s basically, you know, it’s as big as you can handle. Uptalaw, which is really sort of like the governing body of the sport,

they have a maximum size of a pull buoy and it’s plenty big. It’s plenty big. And our advice is always like, get whatever pool, use as big a pull buoy as you can, as you can handle or as you need. But there’s plenty of options these days. And what about the strength required to swim with really big paddles? Like, is that something you’ve had to develop over time and train? Are you doing anything outside of the pool to develop that strength like that? Because they’re huge paddles. And I know even just swimming with like something as big as your hand or slightly bigger, like you can kind of feel that if you’re overloading. So what, what do you guys do to be able to handle that size paddle? Yeah, I mean, Chris and I aren’t, aren’t swimmers by, you know, by nature, we’re sort of adult onset swimmers that’s like, Oh, we got to swim. There’s a swim like for a triathlon. So we got to like make sure we don’t drown.

And then we’ll get to the bike was sort of always my motto on the swim piece. But I’ve since adjusted my mindset on that. But what we do specifically and kind of the advice that we give to folks is start with what you’re already using. So if you’re already kind of mixing paddles in your normal swim sets and routines, just stick with that same size. You don’t need to go get the big garbage can lid size ones and you know, worry about that. You know, for Chris and I, it’s something that usually kind of in the off season might cycle off a little bit of the paddle work just to maybe focus a little bit more on technique there. But once the season starts up, you know, you will kind of, we have sort of the size of paddles that we normally been using, but you know, doing a little bit of film and underwater analysis with different size paddles, I was able, we were able to tell like, Hey, when we step it up from the medium to the large,

your stroke actually really breaks down. So the largest too big. So, you know, maybe hit the hit the weights a little bit more in the off season or with the with those stretch, stretch bands as well. So yeah, like strength, strength training is something that we’ve been pretty diligent on this year and mobility that definitely helps maintain and helps you hold good, good tension on your, on your stroke there with the, with the bigger paddles. But yeah, go, go with what you can handle is, is our real advice on that piece. Some people, if you’ve never used paddles and you have a race coming up, just no need to, your hands will work just fine. How much of your swimming are you doing with the equipment on versus with, with no equipment? And does that change the close you get to a race? Well, I think, you know, that the way the way we kind of approach it is like, Hey, we’re, we’re swim runners and we’re

training for swim run swimming. So because we’re in season now, I would say a good percentage of our work is using paddles and buoy just to, you know, longer sets at tempo, you know, 400s 500 stuff like that, 800s even just to really get used to sort of the strengths that’s required. I mean, for swim run, you’re not really going ballistic for 23 seconds. A lot of the swims are longer. So it’s really about trying to keep a low heart rate and a good stroke rate to just like keep it in zone two while you’re moving as quickly through the water. So a lot of it is really optimized for that. I mean, could, could we probably do a better job working on technique by not using as much gear for sure. But I think during the season, we’re just optimizing for what we’re going to be doing. Well, that’s the thing. Swims are so long, right? Like it’s not, these are not short events that you’re doing. Yeah. I mean, to a lot of the world

championship there that Chris and I have done the past two years, it’s coming up here. It’s the first Monday in September, but a total of 10 kilometers swimming and about 60 kilometers running between 26 different islands. So the first swim of the day is a cool 1600 meters to start you off. And then there’s a swim that’s, you know, as short as 25 that you’re really just, you know, we don’t even put our goggles on for that one. You just kind of jump in, you get wet and you hop right out and everything in between the mile and the 25 meters. So yeah, it’s really the variance of it is part of kind of what makes the sport really exciting and fun to do. This episode is brought to you by Pillar Performance. Our new sponsors Pillar are a sports micronutrition company. And the easiest way to describe it is that while hydration and carbohydrates products will take you through to touch the wall as fast as possible. Pillar’s

mission is to get swimmers to the starting blocks in the best condition over and over again. I recently started taking Pillar triple magnesium after a friend had recommended it and it’s been a game changer for my sleep and recovery. I take one scoop 30 minutes before bed each night in the same way that you might start your day with a coffee. I finish it up with the magnesium and recover better for tomorrow’s session in the pool. Pillar performance is used by some of the biggest names in swimming and triathlon, including Zack Stubble to Cook, Jan Frodeno, Ben Canute, Ash Gentle, Taylor Nib amongst the host of other well-known swimmers and triathletes. Where Pillar differs from other micronutrition you may have taken before is both the quality of the types of magnesium and the tangible results that I see on my garment each morning. If you’d like to try Pillar today, head to pillarperformance.shop and enter code effortless for 15% off. That’s effortless

for 15% off all first-time purchases or for anyone in North America. Enter the same code at thefeed.com. Was there an aha moment where you fell in love with Swimrun for either of you?

Yeah, and I think it’s probably the same story for a lot of people. It’s the same thing for a lot of people. Once you do your first transition, another way to really summarize Swimrun is amphibious trail running where most of these races are on trails, you get to the water and you just keep going. After you do one transition or two, I mean, Brenton, I’m sure you’ll appreciate it as well. When you did your Swimrun, it’s just like, well, isn’t this just like the weirdest thing I’ve ever done? And there’s this sort of magic to it, which is just like, wow, that was really something. And then we’ve done a bunch of Swimruns at this point. And that transition is really being able to transition well. That’s really when you’re not swimming, then running, then swimming, then running. You’re swim running because moving through nature as seamlessly as possible is just something really, really cool like that. Yeah, but that aha moment, I think, and we mentioned a little bit earlier that Casco Bay

2018 was our first big Swimrun. That one took us seven hours probably. And we were,

yeah, I mean, we were, we looked at each other before the last swim and I’m like, well, my shoulders are pretty blasted. Chris, your feeling blasted like, just go until you can’t and then I’ll take over. So we were like physically challenged and conquered actually, to be honest. But yeah, once we got across that finish line, it was like, oh my God, I’m glad we’re done. But it was just like, we got to do this again. It was just such

magical experience doing that, that it instantly wanted to go back and do it again. You know, and I think to that point, Chipper, I think we haven’t really talked about it, but really one of the most unique aspects of Swimrun and what we really think is the best part of it is really the partner aspect where, you know, I’ve done, Chipper and I have done 19 Swimruns together. We do a lot of training. We’ve done 50 mile, like I mentioned, all sorts of things together. But this is something that we do together is really good friends and we’ve experienced and we’ve gone to all these places. We’ve gone to Sweden and everywhere else, right? And crossing that finish line with Chipper and not having to be a time trial like a triathlon or anything else, you know, that really adds to sort of like the magic of it. And, you know, taking care of your partner, your partner’s taking care of you. You’re really bringing out, you know,

you’re more than the sum of your parts in many ways. And it’s just really, it’s a beautiful thing. I’m obviously like a Chief Swimrun Evangelist. Yeah, we’re kind of biased, I guess.

Oh, that element of team though, in sports where, you know, typically it’s very individual if it’s triathlon, if it’s swimming, you know, you see it in the Olympics at the moment, you’ve got, I’m watching the swimming, we’ve had one relay so far. And just, and whenever I’ve spoken to people who have made it to that level, they’re always like it, like the relays, that is what really drive them. And that’s when they can pull out these amazing performances because they’re doing it for other people. So the fact that every race for you is with someone else, I think that’s a huge benefit. And when I train for a long distance from that, I did a couple of years back, I did a lot of my training with a friend and obviously the race wasn’t as a team, but the training was and that made those long, you know, 10, 15 K swims pretty easy to do because I had someone there with me. So it makes that time really fly. And you’re not going to miss a training session

if you know the other person’s going to be there. So I think it makes it a lot easier. Yep. In terms of any races, can you share an unexpected challenge that you faced and how you overcame it? Because over the course of 19 races, I’m sure there’s been a few moments where something didn’t go as planned. And that’s every race. Pretty much. Every, I can imagine. And that’s, I think that’s part of the, part of the beauty of it as well is that because nothing is fixed and you’re really just approaching nature as it exists, there’s no, oh, we have to make this bike length, you know, 25 miles or whatever. You just are approaching it how it is. You sort of have to be really, if you do a lot of Sormons, you start to be really good about sort of rolling with the punches and knowing when, when there’s a, when there’s a, you know, an issue or an obstacle to overcome, like how are you going to do that? I mean, I would say probably every race we, we’ve had something come up that was,

that was an obstacle, but I think one race that really sticks out. And this is, you know, this was in Washington state. So the Pacific Northwest and the United States here off the, on the Orcas Islands and the San Juan Islands, just an amazing bit of country up there. And literally part of the race, you think you’re in like the return of the Jedi, you’re just in the forest. There’s no one around. But I, and you’re running in a wetsuit. With your friend attached to you, but I, I mismanaged my, my fueling pretty, pretty, pretty well. So I had a solid four hour bonk on my hands and that wasn’t great for me at the time, but, you know, using the sum of your parts and Chris really, you know, got the gold star for the day on that one, but really took the charge, let all the swims, let all the runs really drag my ass all over Washington there. But although I was in the cellar for a good part of it, like still we had a lot of great learning experiences and a lot of good memories from that race,

despite it being a difficult one, but it was still a really amazing shared experience that we had. That was in 2021. That was, yeah, that was 2021. Yeah. And I think, you know, what that race really taught us, and that was really the, I would say that was the one where we faced the most adversity, except for maybe the first one where we were just like, oh my God, this thing’s crazy. It’s really this, this idea that, you know, you can’t prepare for every possibility that’s going to happen in a swim run. I mean, so much of it is just being comfortable with ambiguity and then also kind of trusting that you’re going to make the best decision you can with information you have at that moment. So whether that’s like, let’s, you know, the longer the race, the more problem solving you have to do, similar in triathlon, like, you know, you can get, you can feel good, you can feel bad, you feel great again, you can, you know,

as long as you’re both not feeling bad at the same time, then you have, you stay in the chance. But yeah, as Chipper mentioned, I think like every race, there’s something where it’s like, oh, I kind of screwed that one up, or I forgot to put my earplugs in, or I forgot to zip up my wetsuit for the super cold swim, you know, I dropped my paddle. There’s always something, and it’s, that’s kind of the sort of the ambiguity of not knowing when it’s going to go sideways. It’s just kind of the fun of it as well.

Yeah, that unpredictability where, yeah, anything could happen. That’s kind of a reason, like I love to surf. And one of the things I like about it is like, you don’t know when the set’s going to come, you don’t know how they’re going to break. It’s like, that’s kind of like, not gambling in a way, but it’s kind of like rolling the dice. It’s like, you don’t know what’s going to happen. And it sounds like there’s a lot of that in, in swim runs. So that can be, that makes it, makes it quite interesting. Yeah, in terms of your, your training routine, is there anything unconventional or surprising that you believe gives you an edge in races? Well, I don’t know. I think as a team, I would say doing our hard sessions together. We haven’t done it as much this year, but in the, you know, when we were training for world champs and stuff like that, like every time we had to do like the eight by 10 hill repeat

or the track workout or the five hour swim run practice, anything that was just like, all right, it’s time to show up. Like we would always try to do those together because again, as you mentioned, Brenton, like it’s, you’re showing up if your partner’s showing up. And that was always great for us for a couple of reasons that would, we’d motivate each other, but then we also kind of knew where each other was. So in a race, we could sort of calibrate our effort. So I think that’s probably something that, that we didn’t realize how useful that was in races where it’s like, okay, you know, chipper is really crushing the swim. So I got to make sure that I’m on top of what I’m doing other swim or if I’m feeling really strong on the run and chipper, chipper isn’t, then it’s like, okay, well, where’s he at? Because that’s the level I want to be at so we can perform better as a team kind of thing. So in terms of swim run, from what I understand, it’s a very tight knit community.

Is there any stories or things that come to mind where you’ve, you’ve seen this well represented and maybe being at different races where like, I’m sure a lot of people know who you are when you turn out to races. So have you got any examples of that sort of community that swim run has? Well, we got a Rolodex full of them. But yeah, I think one that really, that really highlights the community aspect was at this Catalina in 2020, literally a week before the pandemic struck in March. And there was, it’s an island off Southern California there. And one of the swim sections is this really rough water swim. They had like, for a 400 meter swim, they probably had like six kayaks out there, like they were really concerned about people. But someone had lost their goggles, or they had, you know, float, float, and another team that someone came out like, Oh my God, I lost my goggles. Another team gave them their goggles off their head and just said, here you go,

because both people had lost their goggles. So one team went off with just one pair. And then the other other team had had another pair to go with. So like just literally giving your goggles off. You’re missing a key feature of that story. Okay, finish it, finish it. You’re missing the keyest feature. So the team that lost the goggle, they were they were probably they were probably going to win the race. The team that gave them a goggle was actually the husband of the person who lost the goggles. So in his chivalry as his husband, he gave the goggles to his wife so that she could continue her race. And yeah, so, you know, that’s a husband of the year award for that. That’s a lot of branding points. That’s yeah, yeah, but that’s the right, that’s the right move for sure. What about any sort of surprising or unexpected outcomes of starting the low tide boys podcast? You sort of referred to a few things before, but what’s what’s been

some of the best things for you having started that podcast and built a community around it? Well, honestly, for us, it’s it’s all kind of been a surprise. To be honest, like when we started this, we thought we were doing it for our friends. And you know, we wanted to do a good job. We love the sport. We think it’s we think it’s really fun. And we want people to try it. Our initial goals for the show were to grow the sport and help grow the sport in the US and try to have as much fun as possible, sort of chronicling our own journey within the sport. You know, now it’s, it’s, you know, people are listening to it all over the world. For a while, we were the only podcast. Now there’s some more, which is amazing. And I think the fact that we kind of did it, we held ourselves to sort of our own standard. And I think the fact that people really appreciated that and were super supportive of us, you know, we had guests on that at first we were like, thank you so much for returning our email

type of thing. You know, now now it’s like, I kind of feel like we can get whoever we want, which is kind of funny. Or before it’s like, do you think they’re going to respond now? It’s like, you know, for the most part, people want to be on the show, right? So I think the fact that it started from that and the fact that so many people appreciate it and ask us, you know, send us their questions and, you know, buy our merch or get our stickers in the mail, whatever it is and come up to us at races and thank us. I mean, every single time that happens, I know I can speak for Chipper, we’re just like kind of gobsmacked, which is like, wow, we’re so happy it helped, you know, and that you’re here and you had a great time. Because that’s really what we’re trying to do. Yeah, it is really, yeah, we were just at a race in Folsom, California, a little local, the Folsom swim run. And yeah, whenever someone comes up and they’re like, Oh, well, thanks so much for your videos.

I learned how to do my buoy. What do you think? Like look at my paddles. It’s like, Oh, you helped me so much. And that kind of stuff is just so, you know, really just fills Chris’s eye, like refills our gratitude cup up. And we’re like, okay, yeah, like that’s kind of what keeps us motivated to keep doing it now is the positive community and the reinforcement and how people really seem to get a lot of value out of what we’re doing. And we see them enjoying the sport the way that we’re enjoying it as well. And that’s, that’s why keeps us keeps us going, I think, from the community aspect. Sure. And if you imagine some running 10 years, what sort of innovations and changes do you see happening in the future with the sport? Wow, that’s a really good question. That’s a really good question. I think I’d like to tell you one thing that I don’t think will change. And that’s really this community feel. I think, you know, we’ve got erasers all over the place

and the community vibe is the same. And I think it’s on all swim runners to maintain that and not turn it into, you know, I don’t know, like, whatever, like some some measure is sick or whatever, what might have you. So I don’t think that’s going to change. I think what we will keep seeing is swim runs in new locations, different formats, we’re already seeing some super short course formats, which are sort of like heat based and really fun to watch. We’re seeing these like ultra swim runs, like the one water race, which is happening in a couple of weeks. It’s a 250 kilometer swim run, you know, it’s just it’s the hours bonkers. So last year, only one team finished out of like 10 teams or something. It was crazy, you know, so they’re all these different formats that I think people keep trying to find new ways to do it. And because swim run is unique to the environment that you’re in, you know, as Chipper mentioned, Orcas Island, it’s like a mountain island swim run where

you’re swimming in mountain lakes and the ocean. It’s ridiculous. Casco Bay, you’re swimming across the Portland Sound, like around all these islands. You know, there’s one in Austin, Texas where you’re swimming in the Colorado River and they’re making it work. So because you have to use the environment that you’re in, really the options are kind of limitless. If you can just see it from the perspective of a swim runner, which Chipper does this all the time, every time we’re on a trail run or something, he’s like, Hey, we could probably swim across that and do this and do that. And that’s just, you know, it’s one of the cool things of it for sure. Yeah, yeah, definitely. It’s always like, you know, if you go for a run somewhere new, look on the Strava map and it’s kind of cool to see where you’ve gone. And I think, especially with the options that the swim run opens up, I can only imagine what you’re

looking at there on there on the maps and going, Oh, yeah, we could, we could do this, we could go here. So that’s, that’s really exciting. And what are either of you both looking forward to the most in the next six to 12 months in terms of your own racing, what you’re doing with the podcast? Like what are you guys really looking forwards to? Yeah, we got, we got, we have a full calendar of races this year. We’ve already done three,

I think, and we have three or four more, including one that was actually took a break last year, a swim run in sea for North Carolina, which is again, another really unique swim run. And I think that’s what keeps the sport. And, you know, you know, we’ve been doing this for, for a couple of years, but you really don’t get that tired of doing the races because every race is so different and it’s in a different location. And there’s some a little bit of flavor difference on it. But yeah, the Casco Bay race we have literally coming up in the first week of August off in Portland, Maine. And that’s one that Chris and I have been doing every year since, since 2018 every year they’ve offered it. So that always has like a special place in our heart and we’re always loved to win the line at that one. And, you know, getting, getting a few more races in this year is, is really what we’re looking forward to. We’re not doing the world

champs this year. We’re taking a break, but Chris and I are already having a FOMO over the race. We already know we’re going to be missing it for sure because that’s quite an experience. We certainly have race FOMO, but we don’t have the training FOMO. I’m totally fine not doing that volume of training for a year. How many hours would you typically try and for if you’re trying towards world champs? Yeah, I think, I think we were topping out with some of the big swim run weekends, probably at like 12 to 15 hours, especially on some of those big, big weeks. But I think on average, probably closer to eight to 10. Yeah. And that’s a lot because you’d like, you think of maybe a professional triathlete, they might be doing somewhere in the mid teens in terms of hours, maybe up to, up to 20 hours possibly, but a lot of that’s on the bike and that’s not necessarily easy. But when it’s all swim and run, that is, that’s some pretty solid training.

Yeah, we’re, you know, we’re a couple of dads too. So we got families and we got jobs as well. But yeah, some of those big weeks, I think peak, we were probably 50 miles out running on the trails and 20, 25 K in the pool over, you know, 10, 12 hours for, for some of the higher weeks there. But yeah, but you know, there’s 40 or 60 Ks of, of running there between those islands on that world championship race. So you really need to kind of be trained up like an ultra marathoner from a run perspective. Hmm. And yeah, but I will say, you know, there’s a bunch of shorter swim runs. So you know, if you’re listening to this and you’re a triathlete, you’re already prepared to do a swim run, you just have to borrow a suit from a buddy and do it. Tons of shorter races, it’s super accessible. I think the world champs, it’s a magical course. And if you want that to be on your sort of, you know, side quests as an endurance athlete,

can’t recommend it enough. It’s an amazing experience. But, but yeah, by no means, by no means do you need to be training that much for the sport. Yeah, scaring too many people, you might be attracting more people that way, probably. That’s true. Do you, in terms of someone looking to get started, is there a good resource that you have or podcast or video where you sort of detail the basics of what someone needs to get started in swim run? So in terms of resources, so on our website, low tide boys.com, and this is really chippers, you know, chippers area, we have a resource guide, we have gear guides, we have how to videos, we have all sorts of stuff, we have, you know, a page that just explains what swim run is. So, you know, that’s a good place to start, I think, not not to be so, you know, shamelessly self promoting. But yeah, our website has everything you need to know about the sport, local races, everything.

Yeah, it’s really, really listener driven, because we’ll get people send us an email, Hey, what’s the, what sock shall I wear? Am I going to get blisters or what’s the shoes? And we’re like, Hey, well, let’s do a video about that. It’s really listener driven from what we, what we get questions about or what we hear about at swim runs or what we kind of observe people doing and just, you know, or thinking on it. A lot of it has evolved as, you know, we’ve had, we’ve had a lot of reps, I guess, in the swim run game. So things have kind of evolved for us and the sport has changed even since we’ve been in it. But yeah, we try to, we try to have a lot of useful, we got audio, video, written word, whatever your, whatever your method is, we got it all for you.

Slam poetry, any, any way you want to. Actually, Chris did write a poem once, I will say. I did. I hope that’s on the website.

Chris Chippart, thank you so much for being on the podcast. It’s, it’s a sport that I’ve seen grow a lot over the last couple of years. I think the one and only one I did was back, I’d need to check dates now, but probably like 2017 or something like that. But yeah, a really good experience, kind of like you guys had no idea what I was doing when I first got into it. When my buddy told me what I needed, it’s like, you need to have shoes and you’re not going to take them off and you’re going to have this cool billy attached to your hip and I’m just like, what, this, what are we doing here? But for all the reasons that you’ve sort of talked about a really fun, enjoyable, challenging sport to do. So I can see why it’s why it’s growing. So thanks so much for sharing your experience on the podcast. Go check him out. The low tide boys have a podcast. I want your content as well. So go give them a follow. Guys, thanks very much for being a guest on the podcast.

Of course, thanks for having us. Thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

The post The Ins And Outs Of SwimRun (& Why It’s One Of The Fastest Growing Endurance Sports) with The Löw Tide Böyz appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

James Anderson is an Australian-based international speaker, author, and educator passionate about helping people become better learners. In today’s episode, we cover how to fast-track our improvement as swimmers, when and how to use feedback on our technique, as well how to develop the skill of learning for better results in our swimming, work and family lives.

This podcast is brought to you by NanoClear — our own range of anti-fog swim goggles, designed by Effortless Swimming with the anti-fog treatment bonded into the lens itself (not sprayed on, so it doesn’t wear off after a few swims). Check out the NanoClear range here and use code PODCAST15 for 15% off.

Muhammad Ali was asked once, you know, how many sit-ups do you do in a session? 500. He said, I don’t know. I don’t start counting until it hurts because it’s only the ones that’s hurts that count. And I think that’s a good sign. If you can just do it, then you’re not getting better. It’s the ones that make you go, oh, I’m not sure. How do you do that? It’s the ones that push whether that’s pushing you mentally or pushing you physically. It’s pushing you past your current boundaries. We find ourselves saying to ourselves that, you know, I really struggle with my swimming. I really struggle with my catch. The things we’ve got to remind ourselves is we don’t. We’re struggling with our catch at that moment. And make it about a point in time rather than a description of ourselves. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life.

Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

Welcome to today’s podcast episode. On today’s episode, my guest is James Anderson. He’s an Australian based international speaker, author and educator who’s passionate about helping people become better learners. And one thing that I’ve been really interested in as, as I’ve been a coach and as I’ve seen thousands of different people learn and grow as swimmers is how can we actually become better learners? It’s a skill that people can develop and how can someone do that so that they see faster progression and more long term progression in their swimming? So that’s why I brought James on the podcast today and James actually attended a clinic a couple of months back and we’ve been going back and forth. And I thought it’d be great to get him being an expert in how people learn to share some of the things that he’s learned over his time. Where he has seen people go from having this fixed mindset where they’re set as they are and there’s no way they can change to becoming what he calls agile learners.

People who see themselves as not being in this steady state that’s fixed but being a state where they can actually get better and they can grow and how they can develop into an agile learner. So let’s get into the episode with James Anderson. Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the Effortless Swimming Podcast. My guest today is someone who recently attended a clinic and we’ve just been in touch and this guest today is actually an expert in how people learn. And one thing I’ve been interested in over the last couple of years as a coach is how do people learn and how can I as a coach teach things in a way that people will retain information, be able to use it and be able to improve their swimming. And so just looking through what you teach James and those things that you do on a day to day basis, I thought it’d be great to get you on so that the listeners can actually become better learners so that they can improve their swimming.

I think there’s a really big connection between those things. So welcome to the podcast James. Thanks Britain. It’s great to be here. It’s what we just said about learning. A lot of people sort of come to coaching sessions, whether they’re for swimming or for whatever they’re learning about and they expect to be taught like it’s the teacher’s role to teach you to do stuff. And the whole idea that, you know, we’ve got quality teachers like we’ve got people like you out there doing great jobs, you can organize structure things, talk about what, identify what needs to be done and all the rest of it. And the idea a lot of people bring to learning is that they’re just the consumers. They’re just going to do it. And one of the ideas that really struck me when I started my work around what I call Learnership was a quote by a guy by the name of John Holt who said, learning’s not the product of teaching. I’m just going to pause there for a second.

Learning’s not the product of teaching. Just think about that for me. That puts us out of a job. Okay. We both teach for a living, but learning’s not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of learners. And when you realize that, that when I come to you as a as a student to be coached, it’s not just your expertise that I’m leaning on. It’s how I engage in that process as well. That’s so important.

Yeah, it’s such a great point because if, yeah, if someone’s just sitting like, the way I think of it is like, if they’re, if the bum is, if this is a phrase I got taught, it’s, if the bum is numb, the mind is too. And so if someone’s just sitting there, it’s like, just teach me. They’re not going to retain much of that information. You need to, you need to be quite active in that, in that learning process. So what are some of the, I guess, fundamental things that we should sort of know about being someone who’s looking to get taught to then being someone who’s, who’s looking to learn? Like what, what are the differences there? And, and for, and maybe how did this originate for you? Like where did you, where did this all start for you? And, and why did it become a topic of interest? Oh, yeah. Look, I suppose there’s a few questions in there to start off with to talk about the people that are coming to your clinics and stuff.

The first thing to recognize is that learning itself is a skill. All right. It’s not just something you do. It’s not something you receive, but it’s something people can get good at. And when I defined this idea of Learnership, which is the title of my book, Learnership is the skill of learning. I took the word craftsmanship and learning and sort of put them together that way. And I like to think what we’re trying to achieve as teachers, as coaches, it’s like Torvalandine. You know, I’ve got a couple of years on you. Do you know who Torvalandine are?

No.

I do know Torvalandine, the Olympics coming up now. We’re recording this just before the Olympics. Torvalandine were ice skaters, partners to ice skaters in the 84 Olympics and they blew the place away. They did a routine to Belero, the music Belero, and they were the, you know, the icons of the 84 Olympics, Winter Olympics. And what they did in the ice skating, the ice dancing is that Jane Torval and Christopher Dean both did different things. They’re both out there partner dancing, but Jane Torval did the jumps, Christopher Dean did the catches and those sort of things. And I think of the teaching and learning process in the same way that we’ve got expert teachers by and large in our systems and they’re out there doing their thing. But if we’re going to achieve maximum growth for our learners, a lot of our learners are doing that awkward, you know, feet going sideways, seeing on the ice and we’ve got to develop that skill.

And like I said before, some of our learners, you know, they stay with the easy stuff. You know, they just do what comes easily to them. Others will stretch and challenge themselves. And so I developed this sort of hierarchy of learning, if you like, what I call my Learnership Matrix. And it starts off with a non learner who basically doesn’t participate in learning, just doesn’t do anything at all. But then a beginning learner, a beginning learner is someone who always takes the path of least resistance, always looks for the easy task. But then learning is just a series of activities and in the pool, it’s like you jump in, jump out and you’re done. But there’s no stretch. There’s no challenge. There’s no focus. There’s no intention.

Then there’s what I call a performance learner and the performance learner is the one who loves to show off what they can do. They’re always doing their best. But they’re always doing their best at the expense of not getting better because we don’t get better by doing our best. We get better by stretching, challenging ourselves to be just a little bit better than our best going into what I call the learning zone.

Directed learners do what they’re told. These are the people that you and I would design to teach, you know, they listen to us, they follow our instructions. But when we’re not there, they don’t know what to do. The directed learner is the learner that takes charge of the learning process. For the first time, there’s someone that can actually identify their own areas for growth, seek out what they need to do, look for the right resources and opportunities for that growth to happen. But an agile learner, this is my top level of learner, is someone who embraces a challenge in the style of JFK when you said, you know, we do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. They know that when they take on challenges are really difficult things that it brings about not just the goal they’re seeking, but it brings about other growth as well. They grow as a person. These are people that can tailor their feedback.

They can design mistakes and they invest their effort. We’re talking about effortless swimming. They invest their effort in continuous growth. And so once you realize that learning itself is a skill, we’ve got to go through a process and ask ourselves. Well, how well do I engage in that skill? And I think for a lot of us, what we end up doing is just the bare minimum. And how do you see that tying into let’s say someone someone swimming? Maybe they’ve got a coach. How does that kind of tie into like what kind of feedback we should be receiving? And one thing that just sort of springs to mind there is in your book, you were talking about some of the different kinds of mistakes that that people make and say. So some mistakes are very acceptable mistakes. Some mistakes are ones that are not necessarily ones we want to make. So what sort of mistakes should we be looking to be making? Yeah, look, again, a few questions in that look that in terms of the mistakes stuff that you’ve brought up, a lot of us sort of talk about mistakes as if mistakes are part of learning and they’re OK.

Well, that’s not true. Some mistakes have really serious consequences and other mistakes do actually help us learn. And so when we talk about mistakes in learning, we’ve got to realize that there are some sloppy mistakes and what we call careless mistakes. The sort of mistakes that when you point them out to me, I’m going, yeah, I knew that already.

You didn’t tell me anything. I didn’t already know. I just made it out of carelessness. Then there are mistakes that you make that are performance mistakes and then the mistakes that shouldn’t happen. They’re the ones that have the serious consequences. The sort of mistakes we should be trying to make happen in what I described before as the learning zone. And they’re the mistakes that happen while we’re trying to get better, not trying to do our best. We’re trying to improve. Now, sometimes when we make those mistakes, it’s just simply because we’ve tried to do something we can’t do straight away. And of course, we make mistakes. And the idea there is that we sort of like interrogate that mistake. We go, well, why did that go wrong? And we conduct an autopsy on it and go, don’t do that again. But the sort of mistakes that really skillful learners make are what I call design mistakes. And their mistakes that are designed, you do them deliberately.

You say, look, I don’t know if I’m going to be better doing A or doing B. But I’m going to go out there to do B knowing that if that makes me worse, it must be A. So we’re deliberately trying to create the circumstances to give us the information we want.

The way I look at that in relation to what I see coaching is as and you might have experienced this at the clinic is as we’re trying to make some changes to the stroke. You are going to not do it. You’re not going to get it right every time, but hopefully you start to get an idea of when you do get it right and when you’re not. So, yes, you will hopefully make a positive change, but then you probably can’t do that on repeat 100% of the time. So you can hopefully identify that. And then the other side of that, too, is that you might actually get a little bit slower initially when you make some of these changes. And you might see that as a mistake. It’s like, I haven’t gotten faster. But in order to learn, in order to change, you may have to take that backward step in a way. But if you see that as being an acceptable and OK thing to be doing in order to continue to grow, then it’s going to be OK to to repeat it.

And I think you’ve struck on something here that a lot of people get wrong with practice. And look, I haven’t 100% guilty of this in my swimming. It’s when we practice and when we’re making mistake or we should be making mistakes and trying to refine it and try to improve. We jump into the water without a focus, without an intent. Like we don’t practice with purpose, I talk about. And when I came to the clinic, I’m not sure if you remember, when I came to the clinic, you took the video of me, we had to talk about it. And you identified something I was doing with my right arm. And I just went, oh my God, like I had no idea I was doing that wrong. Like if you if you’d asked me before and I would say my left arm was rubbish, my right arm was good. And it was the other way around. Yeah. But then from then I went away and we did the drills and stuff at the clinic. And I went back into the water and every swim since then, I’ve been able to have a focus.

I’ve got into the water with the intention of like, I’ve got to pay attention to my body position, which is making that right arm do that thing. And and what that means is that every hour I’ve swum since the clinic has had a purpose. But when I look back at the hundreds of hours I’ve done before the clinic, I wasted hours largely. Like they’re just doing the swimming. They were in what I would call my comfort zone. And you know, someone would say, oh, James, you’ve done hundreds of hours swimming. And the truth is I haven’t done hundreds of hours swimming. What I’ve actually done is the same hour of swimming over and over and over again. And this is what I’ve heard you talk about that, you know, slow incremental growth, that idea of, you know, infinite game, always improving. Just getting into the pool and swim, swim, swim, swim, swim might make you a little bit fitter, but it doesn’t make you a better swimmer.

And you need that focus, that intentionality, that, you know, information to focus on when you’re in the pool. And that’s what, you know, I draw on the work of Anders Ericsson when he talks about the three Fs of practice. You see, you’ve got to focus, you know, so you’re going to know what it is you’re practicing. So when I’m in the pool now, after listening to you, I’m focusing on that right arm and making it feel like it’s touching the bottom of the pool instead of my chest like it pretty much was. You’ve got to have feedback. You’ve got to have a source of information to say, am I getting it right? Am I getting it wrong? And that’s why I’m going to come back to the clinics because I need you to. I haven’t got a camera that I can see that well. I’m only going by my own proprioception. And then you’re going to go back and fix it. And if you’re not doing those steps, if you’re just swimming, or if you’re just, you know, practicing at work or whatever it is you’re practicing without the focus, without the feedback, without going back and trying to fix it, then you’re never going to grow.

You’re never going to improve.

Yeah, it’s, it’s something that I hear quite a bit from people who have maybe done a similar thing to you. They’ve been swimming for quite a while, but they’ve never had that coaching or that technical coaching. And I think it can be like a real light bulb that goes off. It’s like, oh, there’s, there’s so much to it and there’s so much that I can get better. Yeah. So many things I can improve and I can, I can see how I can get faster now. So yeah. So that’s what can really make that, that incremental progress happen. And one, one question that sort of comes to mind in terms of getting feedback and I sometimes see this as swimming, but I think it could be more related to like, say, say work life or something else. It’s like, it can be hard to receive feedback to actually want to, to hear some things that maybe you’re not very good at or maybe you’re not doing very well and, and possibly deep down, you know that, but it can be hard to sort of take that to hear and then take it on board and then, and then make a change.

Are there any sort of strategies or how can we, how can we view that? How can we be okay with getting feedback that we know might show us where our shortcomings are, but in the long run, that’s going to, to help us. So there’s two parts of that question. I’ll answer it in two parts. The first part is your emotional reaction of that feedback. And I think that speaks to your mindset. Yeah, this is the work of Carol Dweck that, you know, when you see your abilities as fixed, you know, I’m just the way I am. Then feedback gets viewed as criticism. Like if you, if you can’t change yourself, you don’t think you can change yourself very much. Then any feedback you’re given is just here are the things you can’t do. Yeah, you tend not to listen to it very much. And we grew up in a world where, you know, we were left with, we might, we might outwardly say, I’ve got a growth mindset. I want to improve, but we’ve got these beliefs that we grew up with from childhood.

You know, you were the smart one in the family and your sister was the athletic one and your little brother was, you know, the other one. And, you know, we went through school and we identified ourselves as, you know, I’m the language kid or the maths kid or I’m an A student or I’m a B student. And we categorized ourselves. And so at some level, a lot of us, when we come to any learning situation, think that learning situation is some sort of test to work out how good we are rather than a way to get better. And there’s some tricks we can use to help us with that. Like it’s a big topic that I spent years talking to with the organizations. But the first thing to recognize is that you don’t have a fixed mindset. You don’t have a growth mindset. It’s actually a continuum. And what we need to do is move along that continuum. We need little nudges. So when we find ourselves saying to ourselves that, you know, I really struggle with my swimming or I really struggle with my catch.

One of the things we’ve got to remind ourselves is we don’t. We’re struggling with our catch at that moment and make it about a point in time rather than a description of ourselves. And that speaks to that gradual improvement sort of thing. When we look at experts in the field, whether they’re swimmers, whether they’re other people, what we’ve got to recognize is they’re all beginners. They all had this backstory at some point where they went, now I’m this good, now I’m better, now I’m improving. And they see themselves as that continuous growth. Lane Beachley is a great example. When Lane Beachley became the best female surfer in the world, she didn’t sit there and go, well, I’m the best. Thanks very much. She went and surf with the men. She went and surfed for a challenge that would push her to the next level. And that then put a huge gap on the rest of the female surfers in the world at that point in time.

And we all know the story of her dominating. So the first thing I think you’ve got to understand yourself as a learner, someone who can improve and grow. And that’s the mindset issue. The second part of the question you asked was about how do we get really good feedback? The first thing I say about that is not to wait. Most people wait until after they’ve performed, after they’ve demonstrated, after they’ve done the thing and then come up to someone like you and say, well, what did you think?

That’s a very reactive way to work with feedback. A skillful learner will take charge of that process and tailor the feedback to meet their needs. So when they start the process, first off, they’ve got their focus. All right. So next time I come to one of your clinics, I’m going to say, look, Breton, I’ve been working on this right arm. What I’ve been doing is really thinking about reaching deep because I know I have a habit of bending the right elbow right up to my chest. And I’ll tell you what I’ve been doing. And I say, I want you to look at this. So what I’m doing is I’ve got my focus and now I prime you to look at the right thing. Because if I don’t prime you to start with, you might come back and say, James, look, I really notice something about your head position or about your hips or about your kick. And I go, well, that might be really true, but not what I’m focusing on. It doesn’t fit me. So before it starts, I prime you with what I need.

And that gives you the opportunity to give me really focused, really meaningful feedback. But most people, when they think about feedback, it’s something that happens afterwards. But it’s something you should take charge of before as well, I think. And the other part is, I’d say too, is that, and I learnt this from Adam Grant. If you know Adam Grant’s book, he’s just written something called Hidden Potential. Fantastic book. But he says we should stop asking for feedback.

And he says what we should do instead is ask for advice. And the difference he says is that feedback tends to be, and looks a little bit somatic, but feedback tends to be looking backwards and be critical. Advice tends to look forward and be action-orientated. And I think that’s a really good way to think about it, that I’m not looking back and saying this is what you did wrong. I’m looking forward and saying, this is how you can get better. This is how you can improve.

This podcast is proudly brought to you by Form Smart Swim Googles. The Smart Swim 2 is the next generation of Forms 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 sight. It’s a digital compass in the Google display. And it’s race-approved by World Triathlon, USA Triathlon, as well as other leading race organisers. 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 2 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 peaks, 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 1 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 1 goggles.

I like that way of thinking about it because it can be hard to not take feedback personally if you haven’t asked for it. For example, it makes me think of Ariane Titmuss and her coach, Dean Boxle. You’re hearing a lot of interviews if she’s ever asked about Dean. She said he does not let me get away with anything in training. If he says I’m not doing something right, he’ll let me know. And he’s a very hard taskmaster in that respect. But they have so much respect between each other because she knows he’s got the right intentions and that’s what she’s signed up for. That’s what she needs and that’s what she wants. And so he’s just always keeping on top of those little things if you notice that her streamline, her pushoff, something’s just slipped out of place. He’s able to give her that feedback immediately. And that compounded over time makes such a huge, huge difference. And now us as swimmers, we’re not going to have that sort of feedback from a coach

because we’re not in that sort of environment. But any little bit that we can get that feedback, the faster you’re going to be able to make those improvements and see those better results. Yeah. And I suspect what she’s doing too is that she’s decided before she receives the feedback how she’s going to respond to it. So she’s jumped into the pool and she goes, I know he’s not beating up on me. He’s not going to, he’s not really being critical, even if he’s yelling at me or whatever it might be going on. I’m going to take it on board as something I need to improve. And I think that’s something to, to manage your own emotional response to feedback before you get it. Yeah. As I get to the end of the pool, there’s Brett and standing there. I go, right, I’m just going to take this as information that’s not personal and I’m going to use it to improve myself. And it doesn’t fit me. I’m going to work on something else.

Okay. You take that control of the feedback yourself. That’s, that’s an interesting point because I recently, I just sent out a survey to some of our members who have gone through like our AS squad workout. So we’re providing three workouts a week for people to go through. It’s the first month that we’ve just started doing this. And because it’s so, because it’s all new and I just want to make it as good as we possibly can and as, as useful as we possibly can. I’m with the mindset of like, I don’t care if they say, look, it was rubbish and like, they were no good at all. You know, I think you should change this and this and this. And if, if they said that, I wouldn’t take it personally at all because I’m going in with the mindset of, look, I want to make this as good as I can and I’m, I just want your advice. I want you, I want you feedback to help us just continue to improve this. But if I see it as, this is a review of how good you are as a coach

and how good your workouts are, then that to me, I would take quite personally. So that’s, yeah, an interesting distinction and, and just a slight change and I guess mindset about how, how you review the, the feedback that they’re providing. So, you know, I’ve taken it in both ways before if someone’s giving that a clinic review or a camp review, you know, and, and maybe even if it’s like a four out of five, I still take that. I find that personal. It’s like, I could have done better. You know, what, what’s not right there. So yeah, it’s just, it’s a different way of seeing things. And I think that mindset issue you’ve touched on, it’s, we need to recognize our mindset and the guy, I’ve got a, a model I can share with you if you’ve got a show notes, we can connect it here. But just to recognize where do you fall on this continuum? Cause it’s not fixed or growth. It’s not like I love feedback all the time.

I hate it all the time. It’s like, I’m prepared to take this much feedback for these reasons, but then I start feeling like it’s critical and, and to ask yourself, why do I have that response? Like, what is it that leaves me there? Because it plays out, not just in feedback. It plays out in the amount of effort you’re prepared to put in it plays out in the goals you set. Like if you’ve got a relatively, you know, fixed mindset and you’re trying to prove yourself all the time rather than improve yourself. The goals you set tend to be achievable. Like the goals you know you can achieve because they’re already within your abilities rather than goals that are a bit audacious. Yeah. We’re talking before I’ve entered the new 24 swim and it’s an audacious goal like there was an option for a 12 K swim or a 24 K swim. And I was talking to a mate of mine and I, and we’re talking about it. We both sort of said, you know, I reckon we can do 12 Ks.

Like I reckon if we just did the training, we could do 12 Ks and it would just be a swim. Like it’d be a good swim. And yeah, but I got no bloody idea how to do 24 Ks. Like how do you do 24? And there’s going to be all that challenge, all that, you know, what am I going to learn from this? Like I don’t even know what I don’t know yet starting to scare me with less than 200 days to go. But that, that idea of when you’re towards the growth end of the continuum, you take on challenges that you don’t know the answers to that make you grow. And that’s I think really important. And I was funny in preparing for today. I was looking at, you know, your business effortless swimming, which is, you know, fantastic. And I get what you’re doing when you talk to people about effortless swimming, I’m watching the examples and they look effortless. But for someone at a fixed mindset, end of the continuum, they look at someone swimming effortlessly and they go,

Oh, you bastard, I’ve got to work so hard.

For someone at the growth end of the continuum, they recognize that it takes a lot of effort to make something look effortless. And they ask, what’s the backstory? What was all the work that’s gone in there? What have they refined? What have they done to get to that stage? And so if you’re looking at some of those people and going, Oh, God, they’re so lucky or they’re just naturally gifted or whatever it is. Yeah, you’re separating yourself. You’re saying, I can never do that. But if you’re looking at those people and going, Jeez, they used to be a beginner once. Like they got their 25 minute certificate and they thought they were champions when they got it. And they got it better and better and better. I’m just behind them at the moment and I can keep growing and keep improving. And then that’s what you want to come back and, you know, work on your stroke and do the, you know, set the goals that really stretch you,

not find your limits, extend your limits.

Yeah, it’s just, you took the words out of my mouth. Like that’s, I call it effortless swimming because that’s what it looks like and in a way it can feel like when you’re swimming really, really well, but it takes a hell of a lot of effort and practice to get to that point. And let’s say someone that you don’t necessarily, someone that you don’t like, for example, if you have a look at their, their backstory, it’s like, you can kind of see how they’ve arrived where they are, like whether that’s their attitude or their mindset or where they are in life. Like if you, if you know someone’s story, you can generally sympathize a lot with where they’re currently at, but taking that to swimming, it’s like, well, if you knew how many laps that they had done, how much focus and attention they had put on their stroke, how much feedback they’ve received, it’s not a surprise that they are doing, that they’re swimming, how they’re swimming.

So, you know, everything is a, it’s a learnable skill. We can all get better at that. And I think the mentality of just knowing that swimming is a learned skill, that in itself can make a hell of a difference to people because I do, you know, you do sometimes just get people to come, they come and they’re like, yeah, I’m not a swimmer cycle. Just even just saying that, you know, you’re not doing yourself a moment. It’s a constant. You’re not a swimmer at the moment, but neither was Phelps, neither was, you know, they weren’t swimmers, they became that. Yeah, exactly right. Exactly right. And yeah, even with like younger kids who like might be very good at a young age, it’s like, well, they’re not all, they’re not the ones that are always going and become world champions. It’s like, there’s so many swimmers who were average as kids or Michael Jordan, you know, missing the high school basketball team or whatever it was, it’s like, yeah,

nobody’s path is fixed and set. It’s this ongoing process that we’ve got to just be willing to go through. And just thinking about this U24 for you. So what’s your process now that you’re training for this event that feels like it’s right on the edge of that like, is it doable? Is it not? You know, I think that’s such a great level of where to sort of set your targets. How are you incorporating the stuff that you teach and talk about into this whole process? Yeah, well, it’s a good question because I’m just starting off and just starting to realize what it is I need to focus on. So the first thing I’ve done is I’ve said that to myself, I need to make every session purposeful. So when I get into the pool, get into the water, it’s not to have a swim. I’m not just going to swim 3Ks or 5Ks or whatever I swim, there’s got to be a focus. There’s got to be purposeful practice. So that means I need to know what I’m focusing on

and it’s not just technique. You know, I’ve started to realize that and I’m hoping we’re going to have a conversation about where the rest of my focus might be. But there’s all the things from, you know, feeding from rest from, you know, all these other elements that every time I make, get into the water, I’ve got to know what it is I’m practicing today. If I just get in, swim and get out, why bother? Like maybe I’m getting a couple of Ks under my belt, getting a little bit fitter maybe, but I’m really not. And so, you know, tying it into what we’re talking about before, about coming back to the clinics. When I come back to the next clinic to get you to look at my stroke and see if I’ve actually made those improvements, I’ll get, I’ll do it twice. I want to get into the pool and this is me taking charge of my feedback and we’ll do the, like we did before, we’ll do a quick warm-up and then do the, the swim and you can have a look at it.

And then I want to say, look, Ren, before we actually go into the, you know, analysis of this, I was going to jump over into the other lane. I’m going to swim one or two Ks fairly solid because I actually reckon that’s where my need is. Getting my stroke right when I’m fresh, I’m probably okay. It’s getting my stroke right when I’m tired because that’s what I’m going to be doing most of the time. I think of that 24K swim, I’ll be tired for a lot of it and that’s where I probably need the feedback. So I know what it is I’m starting to focus on. I’m certainly getting help from people like you and reading things and other stuff about what are the elements I’ll need to do, even just swimming with a paddler, like I haven’t swum with a paddler before. I’ve got a suspicion that, you know, swimming with a paddler, I’ll look at them and I know if I’m looking at something to what I’m reading, that actually changes my head and my body and stuff.

So I’ve got to, I’m going to have to practice just noticing them rather than looking at them. So this is all a long-winded way of saying what I’ve done is I’ve set a goal that is in what I call my learning zone. It’s beyond my current abilities. I’ve recognized that to do that requires struggle. You know, there are things I don’t know. I’m going to need support. It’s not like the 12K swim. I could have just swum on my own, got the distance up and done it. But I’ll need extra support. I’ll need to take control of that because I may have overstretched. We’ll see. Time will tell. Can I get to that stage to be fitter than I’ve ever been in my life in the next 200 days, which is the time I’ve got involved? And so knowing that it’s that sort of goal, you set particular expectations. If it was an easy goal, just do it and you tick it off and it’s like a task. But you set this goal knowing that you’re going to learn things not just about swimming, but about yourself,

about your mental state, about a whole lot of other things, which pays off not just for the swim, but will pay off in other areas of my life as well. And then I’ve got to identify specifically what do I need to do for these goals? Tailor that feedback to match. And I think looping back to that conversation about effort, when I talk about effort with the clients that I work with, I talk about it as being the currency of growth and most people don’t understand it. Most people think effort is the amount of time and energy you spend on something. And I know this is a podcast, not everyone will get this, but it looks sort of like constipation. But it’s not the amount of time and energy you spend. It’s how that time and energy is spent that’s important. And that time and energy can be wasted. Like you just don’t show up to the pool at all. It can be spent just going up and down, up and down, up and down. And you know, all you get is up and down,

up and down for it. Or it can be invested. And when you invest it, you’ve got that focus. You’ve got that feedback. You’ve got that fix it part. You actually come out of the pool, not just having done the 3K or whatever you’re swimming, you get out of the pool having grown yourself. Either your strokes changed a little bit or your ability to stay focused has changed a little bit or your knowledge about how you respond to consuming certain foods before or after, whatever it is you’re focusing on, you’ve changed. And that’s what I said before that, you know, in recent history, you know, you’d say James you’ve swum a couple hundred kilometers in the last six months and I hadn’t. I’d swum one kilometer a couple hundred times over. But between now and February 9 or whenever it is when I do this year, 24 swim, I am going to swim hundreds of hours because each hour we design to improve an investment. Yeah. And you know,

when you’ve done a session like that, you like you come out of it and just like, man, all right, I was really tested in that session in terms of my my ability to hold the pace or like I was really tested with my technique. I was starting to fall apart and I got back on top of it. Like I when I’m driving home from the pool after a session, I really can really kind of acknowledge the sessions where it’s where I was in that that learning sort of phase and I’ve really gotten something something from it where there’s been sessions where it’s just been pure survival, just getting to the end and maybe my mind or my body wasn’t quite there. But yeah, the more of those types of learning sessions you can have, the better off you’re going to be. One of the ways you can recognize that in my work, I talk about learning zones. There’s a learning expert. A lot of people think learning is just learning, but there’s what we call your comfort zone and people

for me with the idea of the comfort zone, but often people think your comfort zone is just things you can already do, but your comfort zone is things you can do easily, but it’s also what we call the easy things you haven’t done yet and the world is full of easy things you haven’t done yet. If you asked me to go and swim 3Ks, okay, I can go to swim 3Ks, I’ve swum back course before, but you know, I’ve done it and that’s where people get mixed up when they said, when people say, get outside your comfort zone, try something new. Not everything new is outside your comfort zone and being in your comfort zone, it feels like a task. It feels confident, it feels secure, it feels like just tick it off and I can do it. And I think if you’re practicing, training and it feels like a tick box, you’re probably in your comfort zone, then there’s your performance zone. That’s when you’re doing your best and your best is when you’re focused,

like you’re really intentional about it, but you’re repeating, you’re consolidating, you’re doing your best at the expense of not getting better. And so I sometimes talk to people about the difference between comfort and performance that you can multitask in your comfort zone because you’ve got resources available to you, but you can’t multi-perform. Performance takes everything you’ve got. You know you’re in the sort of zone where you grow, what I call your learning zone or your growth zone. When what you’re doing makes you feel how I’m not sure what exactly is this going to cost me? And when you feel that uncertainty that a little bit of confusion, a little bit of that’s the sign of growth. And I think there’s a lot of stories and analogies we can use, but one that’s just sprung to mind. Muhammad Ali was asked once, how many sit-ups do you do in a session? Do you know what he said? How many do you reckon he does in a session?

500. He said, I don’t know. I don’t start counting until it hurts because it’s only the ones that hurts that count. And I think that’s a good sign. If you can just do it, then you’re not getting better. It’s the ones that make you go, oh, I’m not sure how do you do that? It’s the ones that push, whether that’s pushing you mentally or pushing you physically, it’s pushing you past your current boundaries, not way past. Yeah. Sorry. I just had a memory of pushing myself way past my boundaries. When Kieran Perkins did the 1,515 minutes, I was swimming with a squad and we decided we were going to do it. Yeah, we were going to swim 1,515 minutes, but we’re going to do it as a relay, diving in from each end, and with fins. Now, I was swimming with some, you know, semi-elite, triathletes at the time. I wasn’t way anywhere means the fastest. We couldn’t keep up. We’ve been diving in. It was unbelievable. Anyway, so the point I’m trying to make is that,

you know, pick where you’re going to focus. If you’re just going to get things done, well, okay, that’s all right. Sometimes you’re going to get things done, but you’re not going to get better. And I think what a lot of people confuse is we get busy instead of getting better. And when you look back at your training, when you look back at your work, whatever you’re trying to get better at, whatever you’re trying to learn, if you’re taking the path of least resistance, if you’re doing the stuff that you know you can do, setting the goals that are within reach, but they’re just going to take a bit of time, then you’re getting busy. You’re not getting better. And yeah, I think that’s probably said enough of that. That what you made me think of there is for things that aren’t physical. So let’s say it’s like a work related thing or maybe something you’ve, I don’t know, got to do around the house. It’s like that learning zone for me,

I find if I’m feeling frustrated about something, like let’s say it’s something like new or different that I’ve got to do for effortless swimming. I get this real sort of frustration because I’ve never done it before and I’ve got to like, I’ve got to think very hard and just like, you know, work it out. And it’s like, there’s a lot of time spent on just the, not the doing it, but just like the figuring out how it’s got to be done and how it’s going to work. And I find that when I’m frustrated, I’m actually kind of growing there. Like, you know, you don’t want to keep that through frustration, but yeah. And it’s so to me that’s like, and I have to think, I have to maintain the mindset of this is actually a, this is when I’m, this is when I’m growing. This is when I’m, I’m learning and it’s not, and not stop at that point because it’s just, it’s easy to go off like, what’s the point? This is just like, I’ll just go back to what I’m used to,

but anytime that I’ve pushed through that frustration, finish the task, it’s then whenever I do it, it’s easy and it’s like, yeah, it’s that comfort zone. So yeah, it’s just always just being willing to, to go through that frustration zone for anything that’s, for me, that’s not physical. You know, if it’s, if it’s swimming and I’m doing a challenge, it’s like, I’m not frustrated cause I’m just physically exhausted and like, I much prefer that feeling than that, the frustration, but it just depends on the task. I find. And I think too, what happens after you go through that struggle, after you go through and do the hard work and you invest that effort, you grow, you’re better. And that thing that used to be hard becomes easy. See someone with it, we’re talking about mindset before and how they see effort. Someone with a fixed mindset says, well, if that steps hard, the next step will be harder. And the step after that will be really hard.

The step after that will be bloody impossible. They go, I’m not doing that. But someone with a growth mindset that recognizes that effort is the cost of growth and that struggle produces growth, goes hard, invest the effort. Oh, now it’s easy. And they go to the next step, which is also hard. It’s not harder until you make it easy. And it’s the growth that is hard. It’s not the standard that’s hard. And the more we start understanding that, the more we’ve prepared to go through that struggle. And I encourage people, sometimes people sort of talk about that growth phase when they’re in their learning zone, they go, I’ve just got to put up with it. Yeah, it’s just hard work. Like, I don’t do that. Celebrate it. Recognize that when you’re feeling that frustration, that’s where the growth is happening. It’s like when you get out of the pool or get out of the gym and you go, oh, that hurt. But you say it with a smile because you know that little

bit of hurt made you stronger. It made you fitter. You get out of the pool and you go, oh, yeah, well, that was an easy set. And you sort of go, well, what did I do that for? Like, you know, I haven’t changed at all. I’ve just burned some calories. Maybe I’ll lose 100 grams in a big deal. And tying that back to swimming, I find that anything technical, yeah, at the clinics, there is, you can, I can see it on people’s faces. There’s some of that frustration, like, oh, am I getting it? It’s like, I’m finding it hard to stick to the position that I’m trying to do here. It’s like, you see that frustration. So, yeah, if you can know that there’s a purpose behind it and you’re actually in, that’s a good thing, then you’re much more willing to stick with it. I think that’s really important with the work I do with schools. I didn’t like my work with schools. One of the things we tell teachers like you and me is to tell the kids you’re going into your learning zone.

You will feel frustrated. You won’t know the answer. You will need to have some support, some help, some resources. You won’t know exactly how long it’s going to take to do it. Other times, in your performance zone, get it right. Do it well. Feel confident about it. It’s actually different. But if people are jumping into the pool expecting to just get it right, just be told what to do and it’ll happen. And then they actually find themselves in their learning zone and they go, this is not happening. I can’t work this out. I’ve stuffed it up again. Like, it’s still not working. They tend to give up if they’re not expecting it. I think one of the things coaches and teachers can do is actually prepare the people we are teaching by saying, these are the emotions you are about to experience. They are normal. They are not a sign of deficit. They’re not a sign of you not being a good swimmer. They are a sign that you are becoming a better swimmer

and it’s the same thing that everyone goes through. Whether it’s Phelps or you or whatever it might be, they all went through those feelings. That you’ve just, I’m making a mental note to make sure to let people know that that’s what they’re going to be going through. And one thing that I’ve sort of, I had it in quite a few years ago and I may have told this on the podcast before, but quite a few years ago, I had someone email me on a Monday morning after a Sunday clinic and they said, Oh, I did my font of time trial and I was like two seconds slower and it’s just like, I’m really, I’m really annoyed about that. Like I’m not swimming faster straight away. And so what I got from that was like, I’m not telling people what they should expect after this clinic. So that’s on me. I need to preface this with like, you may get faster but you very much may well actually get a little bit slower initially because you’re going to be going

through these, yeah, through these different things. So yeah, just letting people know what to expect can make a big difference to that. And I, you’re the expert on the swimming coaching, but I would imagine that you should expect to get slower because I can’t imagine as you’re still trying to work out, whatever it is you’re trying to work out, body position or whatever it is, you have to go slower to manage that. If you’re pushing, doing a time trial, how could you? I don’t know how you can do that. Yeah, it depends on what they need to work on. Like some people there, let’s say just looking really far forwards and I’ve got really low hips and legs. Sometimes if they just fix that look, they’ll be faster straight away because it’s an easy fix, easy to remember and it just naturally lifts their, their legs. So there’s things that people can get fast with straight away, but many times they do have to get slower because it’s, it takes a lot of repetitions

to drill in that new movement pattern or get used to that feeling and different rhythm and timing and things like that. So it does just, just depend on the person really. Yeah. Well, James, so for someone listening to this, if someone was to ask you for, for advice on what, what they could do to become a better learner, I know we’ve sort of covered a few things here. Is there anything that we’ve missed or you think would be beneficial to a swimmer listening to this that we haven’t covered so far? Oh, look, I think we could talk all afternoon. I suppose as I sort of go back over the key ideas, first off an understanding that you’re capable of growth and that’s the mindset part that once you’ve got, if you’ve got a fixed mindset, you’re sort of thinking, well, how good am I? A growth mindset is saying, how good can I get? Fix is about proving, growth is about improving and recognizing where you’re there, you know, where

you find yourself on that continuum, then allows you to sort of move yourself up. And like I’ve said, attach time stamps. Don’t say I struggle with this. I’m struggling at the moment. Don’t even say I’m good at this. You know, this is how good I am at the moment. I was thinking with another part when we were talking before, you know, how do you become the fastest swimmer in your lane? Change lanes.

But seriously, I mean, if you want to feel good about yourself, just drop down into a lower lane, you know, but that’s not the point. You’re not going to get there, but not going to get better by being the fastest swimmer in the slow lane. You want to go and be pushed by being the slowest swimmer in the fast lane. And that that’s the next part I would sort of talk about that. Once you understand your capable of growth, you want to seek out those opportunities to grow. And actually, you know, like, like I said before with the JFK quote, do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. There is no growth without challenge. So look for where you’re going to find the challenge and the growth.

Once you’re there and you understand your capable of growth, well, just challenging yourself isn’t enough to grow. You’re going to know how to behave when you’re in that learning zone. And that involves, you know, cultivating what I call habits of mind that we haven’t really spoken about much today. But tailoring feedback, designing mistakes and making sure that effort is invested by doing the right sort of practice, having that focus, getting that feedback, making sure you’re fixing it. And I think that applies whether you’re swimming, whether you’re doing any other physical thing, but more importantly for my most of my work, it’s the work you’re doing in your workplace or in your profession or in your job, like you’re talking about the stuff you do outside of the pool and stretching and challenging yourself to get better, you know, and from a business perspective, looking out on your business, you do a great

job, like the way you have obviously pushed yourself into, you know, the whole space of doing it online and doing the coaching the using the technology, all that stuff. You know, for someone outside may not realize how much work is involved to get there. Like we said, a lot of effort to make something look so effortless. And so the advice, you know, in terms of the big picture here, understand you’re capable of growth, then go about working out and talk to me if you want about how to actually achieve that growth.

I love it. James, thanks so much for sharing all this on the on the podcast. It’s a topic that’s really fascinated me since I first became aware of it in my, I guess would have been late teens, maybe early 20s, just about learning how people learn and and then trying to learn learn better myself. But then also how can I teach and coach in a way that people are going to be able to take that stuff on board? And it’s such a such a fascinating topic where there’s no end in sight. It’s that infinite game where it’s just like, yeah, there’s you’re not one and done. You are just always looking to to get better at it. And it’s the same thing with swimming where there’s just no no endpoint. We’re always going to be looking for these small improvements. So thank you so much for sharing your all these things that you’ve studied and taught over the years. For those that are listening, we’ll put the links to your book and your website in the show notes,

but grab a copy of it. Learn a ship. Yeah. Learn a ship set. Yep. There we go. And if anyone is interested in reaching out to you, what’s the best way to get in touch? Jump on the website, jamesannison.com.au or shoot me an email James at jamesannison.com.au Fantastic. Thank you. Thanks, Brendan. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

The post How To Cut Your Learning Time In Half with James Anderson appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

Today, we’re excited to welcome Tracey Bauman back to the podcast! She was a hit on episode 338, where we discussed making swimming more comfortable and efficient. In this episode, we’ll dive deeper into building a strong connection between your torso, legs, and arms, and the importance of good posture and alignment. We’ll also explore the benefits of experimenting with different kicking techniques, how body rotation affects propulsion, and finding the right balance between stroke rate and stroke count. Tune in now!

01:33 Building the Body from the Inside Out: The Key to Connection and Timing

Website: https://www.swimmastery.online/tracey-baumann

Buy the book (The Swim Mastery Way) and save 10% using the discount code SWIM10:

Get SwimMastery’s Minimising Shoulder Injury in Freestyle course for 10% off with the code EFFORTLESS10:

Change your technique and swim a smoother, easier freestyle with the Effortless Swimming membership:

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

View our freestyle clinic schedule around Australia:

Try PILLAR today, head to pillarperformance.shop and enter code EFFORTLESS for 15% off, or for any North American listeners, enter the same code at TheFeed.com.

Watch the episode on YouTube:

There’s so many cues out there on YouTube and coaches telling people to look down and it’s fascinating how just that cue in looking down in the water can really break that entire whole what I call non-negotiable hull of your boat position and so you know helping people to really understand that they just have to be long rather than put their head in any position is I think makes such a difference and that’s the best way we can keep people’s shoulders safe but also to allow them to tap into those larger muscle groups that I talked about. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. My guest today is someone who I had on only a couple of episodes ago Tracy Baum and welcome back you are on episode 338 and we got a really good response from your episode because I think we talked about a lot of topics that are relevant to the majority of swimmers out there and how they can be more comfortable, more relaxed and just more efficient with their swimming so I wanted to get you back on to go a little bit further into some of these topics and on today’s episode I want to talk about how people can work on the connection and the rhythm in their stroke the different kick types and also looking at cadence and stroke rate and when and how to increase it so firstly welcome back Tracy. Thank you so much for having me back it was a lot of fun last time so I’m looking forward to some more learning between the two of us today. I want to start with connection

and timing because this is one of the pieces of the puzzle that can be hardest to put together I think for a lot of people and you know you can have a maybe a good kick and a good catch but if they’re not connected very well you’re going to be missing out on a huge a huge opportunity there to swim with ease and speed and grace so this is a really important topic that ties everything together so how how do you see the connection and timing and freestyle kind of working together what are some of the key components for you? I think that the first thing that I always say to people who start swimming with us is when we look at swimming we have to and I think I touched on this on the last episode is we have to think about building the body up from the inside out so when we come to looking at connection and certainly connection between catch and the legs I try I try to stay away from the word kick for I think I explained in the last episode but

we’ll get on to that later on in today’s episode is if the middle isn’t connected and if the engine like I like to say that the body is actually the engine that we need and the limbs are kind of like propellers then then the propellers can’t work so that you have to have both working together and so the connection really comes from making sure that you have firstly attached that torso to the legs and you’ve got that in place so talk about kind of knitting together the the area around the pelvis to attach the legs to the torso and then doing the same through the scapula with the arm again knitting them together and through doing that and making the whole body move as one unit one single connected unit then what happens with the the catch and the press the lengths pressing at the back will always be connected and synchronized then to the whole body rotation if we try and separate those out then what happens is we have these singular body parts that we’re trying to kind of connect

up from the outside in and it’s it’s not always as successful and it certainly can not be as powerful because we tap into smaller muscle groups whereas if you are able to use the engine of the whole body you’re able to tap into the largest sling systems out through throughout the body which it’s really used to using in everyday life and it reduces the risk of of injury so you have suffering the inside out always I say to people you want to learn the timing and connection well first of all let’s get your body into one unit and when we’ve got it into one unit then you can really time those those things to it yeah you’ve got to always be holding or holding the body correctly or switching things on through the center first else there’s going to be that that disjointed movement from the top half to the bottom half so that’s always such a great place to start and when we run clinics we always just start with that all

right let’s let’s hold this midsection of the body correctly let’s make sure we got good posture a big part of that is what you talked about last time getting the head away from the the toes and just yeah maintaining good good posture and an example of this is had a swimmer at a clinic recently who had been trying lots of different things and like really just struggled to keep her heart rate down to move forwards much at all and we filmed her and her head and shoulders were 15 20 centimeters below the water so she’s really just trying to bury her head down to get her hips up so hips are up high but then her legs were down quite low so it was like this you know like a triangle or a pyramid the shape of her body and so what we worked on was just getting that connection holding holding the body straighter and just trying to get that to work together because then the connection became so much easier for her

and not only did her body position overall improved then she’s starting to feel these things these things work together so let’s say someone’s got that part of the the puzzle where would you then start to work with them to help them to feel that that connection are there certain drills or are there certain cues or things that you would have them think about yeah for sure so you know just just on that just to go back slightly to that the person that you had in your clinic with bearing the head I think this is such a really important um topic and just want to touch on it because I touched on it this in this week’s mastery Monday that we do on on Mondays is this so there’s so many cues out there on YouTube and and coaches telling people to look down and it’s fascinating how just that cue in looking down in the water can really break that entire whole what I call non-negotiable hull of your boat position and so you know helping people to

really understand that they just have to be long rather than put their head in any position is I think makes such a difference like you say so if I was then to go on to starting to teach them how they connect up with the with the catch per se you know timing synchronization with the catch I tend to get them to get in touch with the with the feel for the water we do have drills that we use to break down the movement of the catch and the timing of the catch so we’ll get them into a streamlined position making sure that their rotation is absolutely perfect so we want to always make sure that the rotation is never more if you were to get a protractor help them like 30 degrees because otherwise if they rotate any further off of that point they push the scap back into the into the spine and they actually then can’t get it physiologically on it anatomically can’t get a catch because of where they’ve put their where their scapular is ended up by over

rotating so they’ll always lead to either a dropped elbow catch or it will lead to injury because they’re still trying to get a high elbow catch with a compromised scapular position so we start off with the correct rotation and then we have them really so seeing sending their fingers their fingernails forward so they’ve got the the correct connection if you like that lego piece between the arm and the torso being across the scapula then we have them just think about folding and it just having them feel that they have to maintain if I do it in in in this angle here in this plane sorry here we want to be able to maintain this angle here as they fold over a ball and while they’re folding over a ball they want to literally have this ball but the most important thing we get them to think about in this position is that they maintain that 30 that 30 degrees level of rotation I never talk about degrees but for want of a better

way of describing it today and then when they are ready to do the synchronization point that they’re already in that point of applying pressure at the moment that they engage their engine which is their rotation because what we’re trying to teach the the swimmers is that their engine is not the pull which is why for us we have a swim mastery swear word book and pull is number one on the swear word book because the movement or the connotation in the brain connected to the word pull is that I’m going to grab something I’m going to pull it and look at what my happens to my elbow it does the complete opposite of what we want the elbow to do in swimming it actually drops the elbow and the brain connotates if that’s even a word pull with that movement so if I tell the swimmer to pull I’m always telling the brain to do the wrong thing so then the swim is getting mixed messages okay you’ve got to pull but you’ve got to have a

high elbow and the swim is going your butt and the brain is going your butt so we kind of take the words that confuse the swimmer’s bodies out of the equation which why we call it catch and hold and so we get them into that position they catch and hold and then at the moment the moment the rotation starts we’re sending a message to the body that the rotation is the engine and this is just a holding tool it’s just holding and applying pressure to the water in order for the whole body to rotate past that set point if you like so that’s how we start building building it up but the amount of rotation is the key if they over rotate it can’t happen lots of lots of good points there so one that you mentioned there and for those that are just listening Trace was demonstrating with the with the arm extended and you’re going to set the catch so you’re bending or you’re folding at the elbow just with the upper part of the arm

and the and the body you’re saying you don’t want that angle to to change so that angle of the shoulder and I really like that point because if I’m demonstrating on video what I want someone to do at that point we just want that little bit of a movement where the upper part of the arm doesn’t move much like it’s just it doesn’t move much at all and you’re getting that bend at the elbow and people will look at that and go I just don’t have the mobility to be able to do it and yes maybe you’re really tight because we see people like that but I think like everyone can still get some sort of movement in that sort of position and it might not be perfect but it’s going to be sufficient to still get a decent hold of the water and yeah and I think the most important thing about this position and it’s it’s the thing that I’m one of the things that I’m most passionate about you know in terms of injury prevention which is you know what what swim

mastery is all about on that note I have a discount code for all your listeners for our injury prevention course so I must remember to give you that at the end is the fact that when you get into that position and I will remember this is a podcast so getting into my rotated position and I’m demonstrating it standing up so I have my streamline up in the air and as I fold I literally imagine I’m folding over a ball or over over a wall if you like but it’s a really high and what happens is as I fold over that that it’s not it only is it okay but join mechanically my hand must come inside of my my shoulder line and what if we keep the hand on the shoulder line we’re putting the the shoulder joint the shoulder go to lintel compromise position so it’s about understanding that we start in our streamline position down one line as we fold over the ball this elbow as it as the arm internally rotates the elbow

goes slightly outside the line and the hand actually comes slightly inside the line which makes the catch pathway happen kind of I always say thumb goes along the same line as the eyeball down the pecs down the inside of the the front side of the hip rather than trying to keep that catch pathway in line with the shoulder which then will create definitely impingement so and and send the swimmer in the wrong direction because it it’s not what the joints want to do so you want to think about what position we would put our arms in if we were going to climb a really high wall and we would automatically go into that exact same position that I’ve just talked through and demonstrated and that’s the best way we can keep people’s shoulders safe but also to allow them to tap into those larger muscle groups that I talked about so it’s safe and stronger therefore we’ll end up being faster once they’ve figured it out yeah well an exercise that I’ll

sometimes have people do at clinics is we’ll get them into to partner up and go into a good catch position and we’ll get what the other swimmer to just hold their forearm and then we’ll have them them press against that nice and they can feel their lats working and then we’ll have them drop the elbow you know in that in a poor position and then they’ll sort of press against them and they really feel the top of their shoulder load load up and so you can see with that mechanically better position then they can actually use those stronger muscles and they can feel it and that’s such a fantastic way to get people to have that that contrast of feeling what what you want them to do versus what you don’t want them to do and it really gives that that’s a really great way of giving them that picture and I love the the concept of you know holding and just moving your body past it or the concept of of anchoring because it’s very common to see people

trying to muscle their way through the water or pull their arm through but it’s not that the concept that we’re going for it’s that and I think you may have mentioned it last time but I love the the cue of a ladder on the bottom of the pool and you got rungs on that ladder and we’re just placing a hand on it moving past it and you’re always going to have some slippage you know you’re not going to be perfectly anchored with the arm or holding it in the exact same spot but we want to work a little bit towards that and that’s what you see the best rooms in the world the world do and especially when they when you feel like you’ve got that hold and then you initiate that rotation you really get a get a sense of it where does the kick come into that for you what do you do you have or the the legs where do the legs come into that for you this episode is brought to you by pillar performance our new sponsors pillar

are a sports micro nutrition 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 stability cook yarn for dino ben canute as gentle tailor nib amongst the host of other well-known swimmers and triathletes where pillar differs from other micro nutrition 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 pillar performance dot shop and enter code effortless for 15% off that’s effortless for 15% off all first time purchases or for anyone in north america enter the same code at the feed dot com so so kick happens to be a now freestyle swear word book and we do all four strokes so the only stroke that I actually use the word kick is breaststroke all the rest of of the the strokes kick is on this one marty swear word book just because again and I think I mentioned this in the last podcast but just for anyone who didn’t listen to that again the brain’s connotation with the word kick the movement pattern that the brain wants to do and I can imagine that 90% of everyone who is listening to this is has the image of picking something probably a ball and pulling the heel back and you know winding the foot through and and picking the ball or

something and obviously that’s exactly the movement that we don’t want in swimming what we want is to have the legs just as an extension of that frame that starts at the shoulders and that we’ve knitted together at the pelvis and the legs are just part of that however they also are have to and are anchors and they also act as a counterbalance to the rotation so it was interesting I’m in the middle of doing several different coach trainings at the moment and I was doing one coach training call last night and we were talking about flutter and and and what it’s for and obviously there’s a lot of information out there that would suggest that your legs or the kick is there to keep the legs up and whilst whilst the legs if you do nothing with the legs they will sink I was explaining to to the new coaches who are who are training with me at the moment I was explaining that we have to have a leg action in order to press or connect at

the back end with the water so that we can use our engine and and using again the analogy of the outboard motor you’ve got the engine and you’ve got the propeller propeller on its own I eat catch and kick doesn’t do anything and the engine on its own without propeller doesn’t do anything just so so it’s this really this marriage of these two parts that that have to go together so when I talk about legs I talk about using them as a tool to press and counterbalance so it and it doesn’t matter which kind of movement or how many movements necessarily they are doing with their legs so long as that’s their job and that’s their intention is that they’re staying behind the body they are pressing water behind them in order to send them forwards and they are never together they’re always a part to be a counterbalance for the rotation and the other the recovering arm on the other side that’s that’s great I think

a one thing you mentioned there was you said they’re always either behind you or behind the body so you know picturing filming someone from the side they’re not obviously you know below you and I was I was talking to the guy Ash Delaney the other day who’s just started coaching Carl Chalmers and he said if you look at Carl’s kick he actually comes out of the water quite a bit because he’s sprinting and his feet actually come out quite high but you look below the water below his body line no not it’s just it’s all staying within that body line so he’s very streamlined very very efficient and that counterbalance action is yeah that’s you see someone who rotates too far the legs will will splay and like you see it splay because it’s it’s trying to stop you from going even further it’s trying to counterbalance you at the back but obviously that’s not a good movement below yeah and it’s just like this big parachute that just

goes out behind you each time and for anyone who’s doing that it’s just such free speed to gain when you make that that change we had a few summers at our clinics on the weekend where they were going really wide and going really far on their side and and I said it’s the only thing you take from today is you know you make that change your flatter keep the kick together you could be five or ten seconds quicker if that’s all you took but there’s always more than that so yeah it’s uh yeah exactly right and you mentioned it doesn’t matter not necessarily how many kicks or what your your bait is like it’s and obviously that can can change can you talk a bit about the the two four six baits what do you like to sort of do in terms of teaching that or recommending a certain style for a certain person where’s that fall for you so first and foremost so I don’t I don’t sit on any I kind of sit on the fence with this a little bit because I’m not

in any one camp what I’m about is what is best for the swimming in front of me and for some swimmers who are in front of me it’s definitely going to be a flattensill and I think there’s there’s so much information now out there on youtube and people spend a lot of time watching youtube and going to the pool and trying to do things in their stroke that they’ve watched on youtube right and then they come to you for lessons I’m sure you’ve experienced this so much yourself and haven’t quite got the message and so they come with this like oh I’m doing let’s say a two and two beat we call it a two beat press and you know it’s this real huge massive scissor scissor the literal kick because it actually actually is a kick because they’re using quads and hamstrings and they’re just winding themselves up and doing this massive kick in order to rotate and then ending up in this streamlined position that the legs pin together behind them and

they’re like oh it’s going so great and I’m going in it’s not going so great because you have got no counterbalance you’re putting that parachute like you were talking about up and putting the brakes on it’s like it’s like riding your bike holding the brake on and you’re disconnecting your entire body and just loading up tiny and smaller muscles so you get enough fatigue quicker you’re gonna risk injury and so so for people like that I would absolutely definitely recommend that they break it down and start learning a really well integrated well timed flutter first even if they want to do the two beat I think the only way through to a really great two beat is if they can do a very well timed and connected six beat so flutter and I I don’t go in the middle I don’t touch four beat at all because it puts the legs into the wrong place and then if you do four you haven’t got the pressing leg in the right place

because it’s on the other side so a four beat only really I think one of the Olympians they doesn’t have to mind right I think Sun Yang Sun Yang did a one two three which ended up being a four which ended up with the legs in the right place for the next one but if they just did because a true four beat is one two and then one two but then they don’t have the pressing leg in the right in the right place so it doesn’t become connected that really can only work if the cage and pelvis isn’t connected and they’ve got a bit of a twist and therefore then the legs can kind of do their own thing but if they’re connected all the way down the body and they have that shoulder to feet one unit then a two or a six is what I what I go for so I’m having that and it’s really interesting because when you connect the body up and you have them send their head away from their feet and you get that long line like you were talking about

you doing with your client this weekend at the clinic and you start to observe their legs with the connection through the body it’s fascinating to to to watch because their legs start to just fall into place because they kind of can’t not because they’re now connected from the inside out I was doing a lesson yesterday with with one of our fetches in the studio and she got in in the pool and she started sewing and her legs what literally all of us quite normal in the endless pool where people will start off they’ll get a bit flustered because they’re a bit not used to it and after sort of 20 seconds and I was videoing her and we have all yeah over and I know what cameras on the swimmer at any one time and it was so fascinating that once I gave her just send your books or your head away from your feet through the machine and that’s all I said to her and then we filmed her again and she went from this crazy undisconnected

discombobulated leg movement behind her to this most amazing well-timed two-beat press and I hadn’t even talked to her about legs and said anything about it legs I just gave her back her middle line so I feel very much that if we get people connected from the inside and then give them the instruction of really sorting the legs out from the thigh bone then they will start to develop what’s best for them either a six-beat or or a two-beat and I often find that sometimes they can switch they should be able to easily switch between the two so when I come on to what I recommend to to answer the last part of your question it very much depends on the the technique of the person executing the the flutter or the two-beat press so for marathon swimmers and long-distance swimmers if they have a really well connected well-timed two-beat press absolutely that’s going to use less energy no there’s no two ways about it that that’s

going to use less energy if they don’t if they have a really discombobulated two-beat press is probably going to use more energy than if they just did a really great flutter so what I say to people is be open to exploring both ends of the spectrum and and through that exploration of both ways so if you’re really into a flutter try a two-beat and if you’re really into a two-beat try a flutter and there’s so much learnings to be had from your from your own body for your own body to learn from practicing those those two and feeling the connections and really making sure that whatever happens is that every time you rotate you’re pressing on the correct leg backwards whether it’s a two four six ten twelve eight twenty I don’t know it doesn’t matter how many so long as you’re always pressing water back at the moment that you are rotating and not using the press to rotate so those are kind of some of the key messages that I talk about when when talking

about how many yeah good so you mentioned going from two to six and and playing with that it’s not a continuum but playing playing with those different ways to kick and I think that’s such a good way to do it especially for the longer distance swimmers because as you said a two-beat is going to be more efficient if you do it well and in the ocean you’ve got the salt water and you’ve got that extra buoyancy similar with the wetsuit on and a lot of people will just gravitate naturally to a two-beat kick if they’re swinging those those longer events so they might not necessarily use that in the pool so that’s where you can have this slightly different stroke from when they go from pool to open water so it’s good to be able to you know to mix that up and then depending on the speed and the effort that you’re putting in that can change as well and it can change within a race as well so just giving people these different

gears that they can shift shift between adds a lot of different yeah different ways for them to be able to change their speed within a race and yeah you might not start with that if someone’s learning to swim but for someone who’s got some experience you can you can certainly give them these different things to try and exactly for triathletes I think it’s so important that they you know certainly if they’re doing anything more than an olympic distance so olympic carve or iron man you know they they really want to be doing really great stuff with their legs because they could have a lot of stuff to do with their legs after them after the swim swim bit so they don’t want to be have getting their legs in the way in in that water and at the same time they’re also racing and they they want to you know they want to use their strongest discipline to you know make up make up the numbers so being able to give them the tools to you know so the large

part of the the swim part of the race to to have a nice relaxed connected to beat and then when they just want to kind of take over some people just at the end of the race or at that beginning to have them be able to turn on that that six beat and really make it into something that applies pressure in the right direction and kind of just gives them this kind of outboard motor to send them past without going into the quads and hamstrings which are really oxygen heavy muscles is such a powerful tool for triathletes so yeah learning both this is excellent for them for sure

and in terms of the four beat for some people i’ll have them try and develop it and the way i would normally teach it would be rather than like the you know one two one two i find that can be can be hard for a lot of people and and what i’ve seen doing some filming with with some high level swimmers is especially at that like 800 1500 sort of pace if they’re using a four beat a lot of them will just will do one two three four so it’s one kick and then three kicks yeah with the strokes so that has worked with some people that i’ve that i’ve coached and like i had a young kid who i was working with he triathlete and he had was kind of like a three or semi like four beat four beat kick that he was using before that it was but it was just kind of all over the place it wasn’t well connected so we got that rhythm and and that timing to be better where we went to the one two three four and actually the way it sort of ended

up was and the way i had him think about it when he was going fast was actually it was one two three four one two three four so it’s it’s the same thing but just in his mind that’s what helped him sort of connect it and he ended up like taking off two or three strokes per 50 and it was about a second and a half quicker so just like kind of using what he was he was doing for getting that to be better timed and better connected and and you mentioned at the end there with the with the with the last you know using that to help help with the rotation so just timing it with the rotation so could you talk a bit more to to that and how that works in for people yeah so so and i think this is probably exactly what the the student you were just talking about probably felt so in the UK used to work a lot with competitive swimmers and they used to come to the embers pool they used to do all their training with their club

they used to come for technique sessions in the embers pool and they would come with this i don’t know i don’t even know what to call it this there were lots of lakes going there were lots of lakes happening at the back of their body lots of splash and i would be filming because i don’t have all the cameras on them and under the water i’m seeing the the back end of their body is just kicking up and down i’ll just use the words that they were actually doing they were kicking up and down and the front end of their body was rotating because they’d been told to use their shoulders to rotate so they had this completely disconnected body so this front half was rotating the back half was doing can’t make my hands do that up and down and nothing was talking to anything else but everything was working really really hard and they were effective they they were you know that some of them were the the best in it you know nationally and they were they were really really effective and when when i

spoke to them about the idea of the whole body being being one unit and that the legs are simply used to as as if so so how i teach it is i have them stand on the floors upright and i have them just go on to their fronts of their feet their balls of their feet and just swivel and then i have them as they swivel i have them send their head up to the ceiling as they swivel so they can just feel that kind of anchor as they swivel but it’s the whole movement of the swivel of the whole body i.e the rotation in in the water that is pressing off of the water at the back end in order to send the head forwards so when we then play around with that and we go okay so one two three and what i do is always click i go one two three and it doesn’t matter how many numbers you count after that but so long as the one is on that rotation one blah blah blah one blah blah blah and they get that idea that at that moment that they’re rotating they’re always

pressing with the leg that’s on them underneath them if you like it’s behind them and underneath them on the bottom and then they get this beautiful anchor where as they rotate they press they press on the water here and they press the water behind them and send their head and fingers forward and they get this amazing amount of propulsion by by finding that thickness in the water that as swimmers get better and better they start to understand and start to think about and then if you key that with the catch at the front end with the rotation then they’ve got these amazing almost concrete blocks that they can press on hold on and push on at the back end in order to rotate and generate and send and direct the energy forwards so i think that it’s it’s it’s a really important thing to help the students understand what it is that we’re looking for and then what happens is it it just be it just happens often what i do is i will say to them right so that i

for for the next swim i want you to do i don’t know six to eight strokes just with my breathing just focusing on whole body rotation so and shoulders to feet and just rotate your head and fingers forward and i’m just going to observe what happens and it’s the only time i’ll say to them don’t use your legs and because i just want to observe what happens and then i video and i have them just do that but the whole focus is in whole body sending head and finger nails forward and i video it and they i said did you use your legs and they’re like no they were just pinned together for sure and then i played the video straight back to them and they’ve got this most amazing either two beat or this very well timed flick flick press press on that rotation because the body if it’s connected will always look and find an anchor and if we can rely on the body to find it rather than trying to instigate it it’s going to be better and well timed more

better well timed because we’re not trying to break up body parts so that’s kind of how i how i try to let it evolve as a default or byproduct of great connection down the body and pressure that ties in really well with what i’ve with what i’ve seen coaching and especially when it comes to the legs so if someone’s thinking about their legs you know if they’re thinking much about them the rest of the stroke tends to fall apart and it’s just like it’s too much going on so we we don’t want to have to really think about the legs at all we want that just to naturally come into its own yeah so if you do those other things you’ve talked about if you if you get those in place first generally it will come into its own we’re not having to be thinking about what’s what’s happening at the back so yeah it’s interesting to hear your take on that because i just see that so so often so i love to yeah love to see it explained in a in a different way

because yeah yeah we all we’re all working with similar people and we just yeah and so we’re going to see this the same things so that’s yeah a great way because we’re we’re all what i love about swimming is we’re all human and for the most part we all have 206 bones in our body and for the most part we all have 360 working joints and the the body and the skeleton and the joints are so amazing they they they they work and if we allow them to work we tap into allowing them to work in the right way and kind of don’t get in the way of that natural process they they do beautiful things and they do amazing things and i think i think if we can really trust the skeleton to do what it’s designed to do it it just does amazing things and i see that all the time especially with the legs it’s fascinating it fascinates me every time all these years later it still fascinates me i was blown away yesterday when i when i saw that it just is so cool i love it one thing that’s

that’s somewhat related to it is when i was talking to astra kahl’s kahl charmers cage one thing he mentioned that i that just like a small yeah a small sort of just offhand comment that he made that i found was really helpful was that when he’s working with his swimmers he he gets and it’s very similar to your pros actually he says you get some to think about their shoulder and then connecting that with with the hips so there’s cross-body connection through here but yeah you know provide they’ve they’ve set their catch you know they’ve got that hold you know don’t think about like holding through the the arm necessarily it’s like if you can stabilize that shoulder if you think about the shoulder and connection with the the hip and the rotation so it’s just that’s easier to think about because obviously the arms connected to the to the shoulder if you get the shoulder right you’ve got that stability

then you can get that connection so these little small like comments that i get from different coaches i yeah i just sort of add them to my my teaching toolbox and yeah use use them if necessary so yeah that’s that was an interesting just offhand comment that i heard him heard him say and just to sort of finish up here we’ll just talk a little bit about stroke rate and cadence what’s what’s your general approach to to work with people there and increasing speed and all that sort of stuff yeah so it’s and this has been this is a another huge battle this is such a big world when we when when we come on to this it’s like a massive topic and i have literally spent the last two weeks or three weeks talking about non-stop because i’ve been doing an advanced coach training course where we introduce the metrics and tempo and stroke counting in gears and and everything and to the coaches so it’s been it’s been a wonderful exploration of all

of these things in these things in depth the last few weeks and it’s been really exciting to watch the coaches get really excited about how how speed can evolve and it was something that i always learned from from terry amongst many many other things is speed happens as a by-product of doing the right things with your stroke and then increasing tempo without losing form and i sweep you know as i’ve gone through the years and that and played with that that thought process and and played around with the the increase in tempo and stroke count it’s been a really interesting process and i think that through the years there’s been some very very mixed messages that have come out yeah all over the place and you know what i want to say more than anything else is stroke count SPL is important for sure tempo is important for sure it was permitted important for sure the all these things are really really important that they are dangerous

in isolation so if we just focus on tempo or strokes per minute in isolation we are asking for trouble in our stroke if we just focus on strokes per length in isolation we are asking for trouble in our stroke because one’s going to create these these swimmers who are creating massive dead spots because they’re trying to get their stroke count down to zero or you know silly numbers that they just shouldn’t be doing and just focusing on tempo or strokes per minute creates these windmillers that are becoming more and more inefficient because they’re after just tempo rather than figuring out what that’s actually doing to their stroke so say for me it’s always building on this happy equation of of three things strokes per length tempo and rpe and if i can work with my client and i can start to play around with stroke count i can start to play around with increasing and decreasing tempo because there’s things to learn for us in both ends of that

spectrum and always get them to tell me what their rpe is ready to perceive as which is obviously their own measure then i’m going to have a byproduct of speed so i’ve been doing lots of virtual coaching since since COVID since lockdown and it’s blown my mind i’ve worked with people that i’ve still never met and i’ve been sending them sets and i’ve been virtually coaching them and i’ve been writing you know all sorts of gear sets and tempo sets and stroke count sets and with these these two people in particular that i’m i’m thinking about it was only after two years that i started to add any time into their sets so i never gave them time as a measure we could always work out time because it’s just a maths equation yeah if you’ve got the length of the pool you know that bush else then SPL and tempo is going to give us the time but i never asked them to look or think about time in all that in all in over the two year period and what was

really fascinating is that when they started with me they had their watch that i don’t let my students use stroke counting with the watch because it’s completely inaccurate and they’re not in there in their heads there it means nothing is that and all what’s happening in that length so they have to count their own strokes and what started happening they looked at their watch at the beginning they were doing like 157 100s you know just over an Ava and then two years later they started looking at their watch and they were doing sub 140 so they couldn’t swim they all their things it didn’t matter whether it was just a warm-ups were more anything all of their 100s were sub 140 and and we hadn’t even talked about speed so for me speed is something that is a byproduct of getting great getting great technique getting great connections in your body and then playing around with increasing tempo and seeing what happens and incrementally increasing

that equation because that equation will always result in speed if we do the opposite and we go and chase speed then sadly we turn into terrestrial mammals again and you watch someone it’s fascinating you watch someone who you have them do I don’t know three repeats 350s if you like the first one slow medium fast and you give them that instruction and it’s fascinating to watch what happens differently and if you video them on the fast one their stroke completely changes and their arms and legs disconnect from their body because they now suddenly going to go fast and they lose all of that beautiful connection and therefore they just become exhausted and start just turning the water rather than moving through it so we want to have speed but with great connection and great rte rate of perceived effort so that a keep the shoulders safe most importantly but also so they can swim further and further and further for longer and longer and longer both in terms

of distance but also in terms of age lots of stuff there that’s a great way to think of it because we there’s no point focusing on the the results it’s about the inputs and and they are the three things that that’s just it’s kind of as simple as that it’s like when we look at speed you know it’s just it’s the history things that are going to to make the difference and I think yeah I’ll see about this this today it’s let’s say someone’s a two-minute swimmer and they want to get down to let’s say they want to get down to that 150 like they’ve just got this goal of 150 in mind but you know long term but they could be like a 140 or a 130 swimmer in terms of pace it might be they might be able to get to a 150 quicker just by like you know maybe maybe going harder and spinning the wheels and just like you know going for it but and that can happen quicker but long term if they just focus on the right things there’s good connection

good technique the right stroke they will then be able to get to the 140 or the 130 but if we just kind of yeah exactly but if we’re just chasing that that speed and that certain result well you might be doing some things that will long term you’re not gonna you’re gonna have worse connection and a worse stroke so if you can have that patience of just being able to keep chipping away and chipping away and not worry about what your times are doing then like that again just when I see swimmers who have done clinics it’s those swimmers who have had the patience just to keep working at it and they come back six months later 12 months and they’re the ones that have improved not often the ones who are just like who are chasing a certain certain time they’re doing willing to do whatever it takes to to get that even if it means just like getting a getting too scrappy with the stroke so it’s a really interesting mindset thing for me I think I might have

mentioned on the on the last podcast I had I’ve had someone who had been working with the last two years and the focus has been totally on on getting faster getting faster getting faster and with their hundred time they in two years I have taken maybe one second off like nothing then they did some work with with me and literally all I worked on was their their frame their streamline position their amount of rotation and nothing else we didn’t even talk about any of the propulsive phases of the stroke nothing and then they went back to their club and sent me a text and said I’ve just done five consecutive 100s on 123 seconds after you know just fixing their frame like really simple stuff and yes I spoke to them a few weeks later and they still they’re still doing 123 123 24 but two years they could take only one second off and for me that was it was I think the difference was is that they surrendered to the fact that they have to

not going to pull certain kick sets they have to actually work on the connection of their their frame and what’s important and it was really fascinating to hear the difference in the outcome when the mindset changed yes absolutely I see that a lot when if we ever do stroke count work where we might like sometimes I’ll get people to do just normal swimming swimming how you’ve always swam all right but takes you 25 strokes for a 25 all right now let’s just work on the the frame the head position body position that’s usually when the biggest reduction in stroke count comes yeah as we work on catch and pull yet sometimes but that’s I think a bit more of a long-term play but the biggest improvement can come from the really fundamental and basic things like you like you just mentioned there so Tracey for anyone listening what is the best way to get in touch with you where can they find you what do you how can they they work with you

yeah so my website is swimmonstery.online I think that this discount code that I gave last time for the book the swim mastery way that I’ve written is still in place perhaps we can just link that and keep that going for a bit so they can find that on amazon or the link that hopefully you’ll put under this podcast and then I also have we’ve done a swim mastery prevention injury prevention course and I would like to offer your listeners a 10 cent discount code off of that which I’ll send you the details for so the code will be effortless 10 all in capitals but I’ll send you the details for that and then there’s opportunities to virtual coaching that they can sign up for online and we have some camps coming up we have turkey and grease coming up we have some exciting things happening down in Sydney that we’re going to release at the end of this week we have a clinic happening in Boston in October so if anyone in

America come and find us there and yeah hopefully we’ll see some of you around fantastic thanks again Tracey we’ll chat again on another podcast there’s still a lot more we can cover so thank you again my pleasure thank you so much thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast if you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com

The post Finding Rhythm And Connection In Your Freestyle with Tracey Bauman appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

In today’s episode, we’re diving into a Q&A session where I will answer your questions submitted on Instagram! Tune in for helpful tips and insights on how to improve your swimming.

This podcast is brought to you by NanoClear — our own range of anti-fog swim goggles, designed by Effortless Swimming with the anti-fog treatment bonded into the lens itself (not sprayed on, so it doesn’t wear off after a few swims). Check out the NanoClear anti-fog swimming goggles here and use code PODCAST15 for 15% off.

If you find that your arm drops, particularly when you take a breath, more than likely you are over rotating.

The thing with body position is it’s somewhat tied to your head position, but it’s not the only factor. The biggest factor is how you hold your body and it’s your posture. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

Today is more of a Q&A episode where I’ve had people submit questions through our Instagram. If you’re not following us on there, go to ateffortlessswimming and we post a lot of regular content on there and from time to time we’ll put out stories where I’ll get you to submit questions for our Q&A episode of the podcast. Now, our first question comes from Nick and Nick said, I tried adjusting my head position, but I feel like my legs sit too low. Any recommendations? The thing with body position is it’s somewhat tied to your head position, but it’s not the only factor. The biggest factor is how you hold your body and it’s your posture. So if you have really poor posture where you’re hunched over and rounded through your shoulders, you’ve got a big bend through your waist and you put your head down. It’s not going to lift your legs up. You’ve got to have this connection through the middle of your body first to then really have any impact on what your legs are

doing. So the way that we would normally teach this is think about getting your head away from your toes. So you’re long through the spine and through the neck.

You want to suck your belly in a little bit, squeeze your butt cheeks together slightly. So there’s a little bit of tautness through the midsection. If you do that and then have your head in the right position, which I would normally teach as being 0 to 45 degrees and keeping your head like an iceberg, 10 or 20% of it above the water, the rest of it below. Then you will generally have quite good body position. So you need to make sure that you actually have the right posture and hold your body right first. I just from a recently at a clinic who had very low legs. I’m talking like 40 centimetres, 50 centimetres below the surface of the water because she was pushing her head down super deep and her shoulders really deep as well. And the hips are up high, but the legs are low because she was like this is this pyramid or this triangle in the water because there was no connection through the midsection. So then when we change that up, we got that posture, right?

Then the head position was able to impact the rest of the body. So it’s not just about the head. There’s other factors there that we need to consider. So we always really just want to work on those few things together. It’s head and body together. The next question comes from Domo Ag who said, how do you keep your hand up and gliding during the reach phase? Now if you find that your arm drops, particularly when you take a breath, more than likely you are over rotating. It’s difficult if not impossible to keep your arm extending and reaching forwards. If you’ve over rotated because it puts too much strain on your rotator cuff and just physically it’s very hard to keep that arm extended. So you always want to make sure that you’ve got the right rotation and something that might be causing you to over rotate is how you’re breathing. So if you’ve got a big lift and turn of the head and you’re looking up to the sky, that might be causing you to

over rotate. So we need to consider the breathing in that as well and trying to look directly to the side, maybe keeping part of that bottom goggle in the in the water as well and keeping the head centered. So imagine you’ve got this skewer through your head, neck and spine. And when we go to breathe return the skewer so the head turns, but it’s not coming much off that line if at all. So that’s often the main cause of someone struggling to keep their arm extended. Another thing that I often see there too is that if you are entering at with at full extension. So you’re coming over the water reaching out as far as you possibly can and entering with your elbow first you’ve kind of got nowhere else to go and you’re just going to drop that arm down. So I would teach most people to enter with their fingers first have that elbow bent so it’s raised above the water. So they’re entering at about wrist length is good.

You know if you’ve got your other arm in front you’d be entering somewhere about in line with your wrist and then having that last bit of extension or reach happen in the water. So sometimes how you enter as well can be a factor and the drill I’d normally do there and the one that we teach on the first day of the five day catch challenge our online course is we get them to do one arm freestyle with a kickboard and that kickboard that you’re holding the back of out in front will force you to enter fingers first because if you overreach you’re going to hit the kickboard and struggle to get the hand in the water. So that’s a good way to just get that dialed in and force yourself to enter in the right position. So that’s another factor to consider. So there’s certainly other things but if you follow the right process if you’re going through the stroke and say our five core principles that we’ve got inside of our membership.

You know we want to start with breathing making sure we’re relaxed and breathing properly. But then we go on to posture head position body position and go through these things and then everything else can come together because you know if we just look at while my arms dropping down so I’ve got to focus on the catch. There’s probably other things causing it. We’ve got to go through them in the right order. The next question comes from Lou one Leo. See she said he or she said how do I ensure I feel my lats during a workout rather than my traps and upper back to me. It sounds like you’re probably hunching your shoulders too much so I’ll come across some swimmers who are trying to really hunch their shoulders up around their ears and they’re trying to cover their ears as they’re going through their reach and their catch. So that’s just it’s not putting your shoulders in the in the right position. So if you’re not feeling your lats it’s probably

just again that posture or what you’re doing with your your shoulders through the reach and catch. So think about that length first get your posture right get that right number one then as you’re reaching forward your shoulder will sort of come up near the side of your face just near your cheek. So your shoulder blade is just going to slide along your rib cage and that shoulder should stay near the side of the face but not covering your ears. I see some people teaching this like cover your ears with your shoulder as you go through your catch but it’s it’s just not where you see the best swimmers in the world and it causes you to use your upper traps way too much so that to me is a pretty common cause of that happening. It’s just how you’re how you’re holding your shoulders through that part of the stroke. So just look to try and keep try and keep yourself relaxed free mobile and not hunching too much through the stroke.

The next question comes from Derdan H. She said I went from 145 to 132 pace in four months thanks to you now hitting a wall any general advice. So there’s a couple things with that you having made that improvement in four months it could likely either be you’ve improved your technique and that’s helped you make that change. Perhaps you’ve increased your fitness but I’m saying I’m guessing if you’ve said it’s been thanks to maybe our videos that’s probably more to do with technique more than anything else. So what you might look to do from there is just lock in those improvements in technique build some fitness around that and then depending on what your goals are to but and then looking at what would be next. So what did you work on what did you change if it was better head and body position that could account for a pretty big improvement in a short space of time then you might need to look at the the next thing.

So making sure that your kick is effective and not causing you to slow down maybe you need to look at making sure you’re rotating correctly then the recovery and then the catch and pull. So I would follow those five core principles follow that same order and and go through the stroke that way but then you want to just make sure that you’re building some some fitness around that too. So if you’re swimming once a week then maybe you look to increase that to two maybe three times a week but it all just depends on your goals. If your goal is to doing all that hundred as fast as you can it’s going to change in if you’re doing a triathlon and looking to hold a one thirty two pace across a fifteen hundred meter swim. So really just just depends but that’s like that plateau is very normal especially if you’ve taken thirteen seconds per hundred off your times you’re going to probably stick to that for a little while before

seeing the next round of improvement. So being okay with that and expecting that to happen like that you just need to sort of be okay with that now not to say you can’t get faster keep working on some things and and keep trying to find areas of improvement but knowing that it’s it’s very normal to hit a bit of a plateau for while before making that next improvement. I think that mentality and mindset around it’s a big a big factor. The next question comes from S. Chalek they said can you explain the timing for rotation and catch phase. So on your as you’re reaching forwards and you’re on your side and you’re about to begin your catch we want to make sure we’re rotated 30 or 40 degrees number one. Now while you’re still on your side you’re going to go through the catch so you’re going to you’re going to bend at the elbow you’re going to have your fingers pointing down and then you’ve set yourself to be able to hold

or anchor in the water at that point. Now from there we’ve then got a good hold of the water where we can then begin the rotation back onto the other side and connect everything up now with the timing of that it’s going to be timed with a kick on that same side that you’re doing the catch on. So when you’re let’s say you’re on your right side your right arms in the water you you’ve set your catch around that time we should see your right foot doing this small movement down and that’s going to help you move on to the other side and we want to feel like we’ve got this connection from our arm and our shoulder across our body through to our opposite hip as we go on to the other side so we want to make sure that’s our that’s our timing. The mistake I see people making with their their timing is that they will be say on their side and they go through their catch and they’ve gone and they’ve gone through their their pull and their arms almost back

towards the hip before they start rotating back so we want to get really good at that sort of timing where we’ve just finished our catch then we’ll have this small kick as we then go back onto the other side. So that’s what we kind of think of as like a three-quarter catch up where we’ve always got something in front of our head a very common thing I see with 30 40 percent as we come to clinics is they’ve got nothing in front of their head so they don’t have that three-quarter catch up or front quadrant timing so I think just generally a few ways to think of that is you want to be a little bit slower out the front as you’re reaching forwards and then you want to accelerate a little bit out the back so it’s slower and out in front quicker out and back so that we get this change in speed we don’t have this constant steady turnover of the arms it’s going to be slower once we’re in the water and reaching through and just beginning to catch and then

it will speed up a little bit that can help you have the timing that we’re after in the stroke this podcast is proudly brought to you by form smart swim goggles the smart swim to is the next generation of forms award winning augmented reality technology they haven’t integrated heart rate monitor for constant real time heart rate monitoring which allows you to accurately train your heart rate zones which is the first time that you can do this in the pool something we’ve had when biking and running but the first time that you can now do it in the pool another huge feature that they have released is the swim straight feature this is something that allows you to swim in a straight line without needing to site it’s a digital compass in the Google display and it’s race approved by world triathlon USA triathlon as well as other leading race organizers and athletes are already shaving valuable time off their swims by swimming straighter I’m a huge

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 to 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 form swim dot com forward slash effortless and to get 10% off the smart swim one goggles use the code effortless swim on check out

that’s form swim dot com forward slash effortless and use the code effortless swim on check out for 10% off the smart swim one goggles

now the next question comes from Richard Richard nearly says how long does it take to go from being a leisurely to highly competent swimmer this is different for everyone depending on what their sporting background is their age how much time they’re spending in the water so I’d say like with with intentional practice if you’re swimming an hour a session three times a week you could expect to make some really good improvements in the space of 6 to 12 months going from being leisurely to to very competent 6 to 12 months for some people that will take longer for some people that will be shorter but I think having a you know giving it at least 12 months is is what you should expect and for many people that that can take longer and it depends on what you mean by highly competent so you know if we’re talking like two minute pace down to maybe 145 okay maybe that’ll take you might take you 6 to 12 months or if you’re thinking highly

competent is being like a 130 pace while that might take that might take a bit longer that might take two years if you’re coming from a two minute pace obviously depending on the on the swimmer so it normally takes longer than what you think it will you know most people are coming into things whether it’s like you know whether it’s like starting a business whether it’s at swimming and you know expecting to see this huge change and it certainly can be relatively quick but if you are just if you are happy to just work on the process and the stroke and not actually worry too much about your times the times will come anyway that’s a consequence of the imports as a consequence of you doing the training putting in the the effort and focusing on those things so if your time focused that’s not always the best approach I think it’s best to just work on perfecting and improving your stroke and feeling this this connection and then looking at you know looking at becoming

that highly competent swimmer so yeah it’s it’s different for everyone and you know for some people that it can take three or four years and a big part of that too is just how often you’re swimming as well so if you’re swimming once a week for an hour it’s going to take you a while it’s going to take a long time to I think see see those improvements because if you’re doing three sessions a week instead of one well you’re going to fast-track that if it ends up being four again you’re going to fast-track that so it just depends on how much you yeah how much you’re committed to it how much you you really want it and how much time you you can spend on on improving your swing the next question comes from Gigi to lad he said how do you improve the skill of feeling the water so in terms of feeling the water there’s two main things I’ll be thinking of there it’s that connection and feel that you have on the hand and on the forearm of the water

so it’s that that proprioception and and that feeling of connection through the hand and forearm which is your main paddle in the stroke so that’s one factor the other factor I think is the is the timing and connection through the body how everything sinks together so we need both of those things how you can develop the the feel is a lot of either sculling drills or like short dog paddle or doggy scoop drills I think they can be some of the best ones to to help develop that sensation of pressure on the hand and forearm so front scale is where you’d have your arms directly out in front you want to point your fingers down at about 45 degrees make sure your elbows are bent and you should be scaling out outwards and inwards with the hands now a mistake that people make here is they try to do a breaststroke skull or a breaststroke pull it’s not a breaststroke pull it’s like a little figure eight with each hand so you’ll you’ll make this little figure eight

sort of sculling or scooping motion with your left hand and the same thing with your right hand and the concept that we’re going for is you want to try and keep that same piece of water on your hand and your forearm outwards and inwards so it’s like you wouldn’t lose that same piece of water and that way you’ll develop this pressure constant pressure on the hand outwards and inwards now a lot of people will just be pushing I’m turning the hands outwards turn the hands inwards and they’re going to be losing that pressure so you’ve got to have this very subtle figure eight or it’s like infinity sign with each hand as you’re doing the skull so that’s that’s one way to do it the doggy scoop drill is where you’ll have your arms fully extended in front and then you’ll go through this catch motion with your left hand where you’ll do this scooping catch motion down to underneath your shoulders and you’ll come back through the middle of the body

and you’ll do the same thing on the right so you’re going left right left right and that that’s a similar thing where we want to try and have that constant pressure either on your left hand either on your right hand but they would be my to go to drills to develop that connection and that feel now the other part of that that feel is having everything connected and working together and a big part of that comes down to what I mentioned at the start with the posture making sure we get that right first but then just making sure that we connect up the the movement of the catch and our shoulder with the rotation of our body which I referred to a bit before so that’s the other element of it because if things are disjointed and disconnected through the middle of the body where you feel like your legs are doing one thing and your arms are doing another thing there’s no concept of feel there we have to try and you have to work things together

so that’s that’s how you can improve on on each of those things so if you are slower than a 150 to 2 minutes per 100 if you if you’re around that pace or slower you might want to work on the second element of that which is the sort of connection and the posture and then if you are like a sub 145 average swimmer maybe 130 then you can work more on the feel for the water aspect with this with the drills you can do both no matter where you are but that’s like that’s where the more low hanging fruit would be depending on on your pace now the next question is from liar Bill he said when I push hard on on the pool it speeds up my entire process how do I keep the cadence regular my guess and you know being a triathlete Bill I reckon you might be going too hard within your within your catch and pull so I don’t know I don’t know how true this is but I heard this from from another coach you said you can only put five kilos of pressure

on the water any time so if you’re trying to muscle your way through and you’re putting 10 pounds of pressure or force on the water five that is wasted effort because you’re going to be slipping through the water so there’s only so much force we can apply until we actually slip through the water so we need to be somewhat measured with how much force we’re putting in and where we apply it as well so your catch needs to be the setup phase of the stroke where we’re just looking to to press on the water get a bit of feeling a pressure there but then we will start to build up the pressure as we our hand comes underneath our shoulders so that’s where it will be the most as we’re coming underneath our shoulders and then we need to accelerate out past the hip but not too much either so just being somewhat measured with it think alike swinging a golf club if you do your happy Gilmore and whack as hard as you can you’re probably not going to be as in control of it

so it’s more about the technique and the control of it and making sure it follows a good line that’s more important than the pure force that we that we put into it so a couple of things I always keep in mind with that is the slow to fast that I mentioned earlier so we’re slower in front a bit quicker out the back use the catch as the setup phase and the pool or the press is more of the power phase and also just making sure that we don’t look at that in isolation we don’t want to just be thinking of the arms it’s how does that connect with the rest of your body because we need to make sure that we’re that we’re rotating at the right time and connecting our catch without with our hips and the rest of our body there so it’s not just all separate we need to work those things together I remember talking to to someone who used to work I think it was for speed and she knows used to work for I think swimming USA and she said they did a test where they measured the force output of elite swimmers compared to

like mid range swimmers and they found that the more elite swimmers were actually putting less power or force on the water than some of these mid range swimmers and the reason that they were faster is because they had better angles with their catch and pool they’re holding more water but they had a little bit less force and it was better connected as well and they had less drag because better body position better alignment and those sorts of things so force is one element of it which is important but there’s so much more that goes into it so we need to consider those things as well now the next question here is so Peter said I’m an amateur self-taught adult swimmer first focus priority kick or catch and self-taught so I would just go back to the five core principles and I keep mentioning it but just go back to the five core principles go through it in that order so number one we start with breathing we want to make sure that we can be relaxed and comfortable in the water

so if you have this short shallow panicked upper chest breathing it’s very hard to progress from there so we just want to get comfortable breathing first of all then we start then we go on to the head posture and body position okay so we get that dialed in making sure we’re reducing drag we can float and balance well in the water then we can start to move on to the the kick and the rotation after that then we can look at the recovery over the top of the water and then the catch and pool and then we can look at rhythm and timing and connection so just follow that order and actually we’ve got the we’ve got this freestyle check list that you can go through that covers things in that order so we’ll put a link to that in the show notes the freestyle technique checklist and you can download a copy of that that’s kind of got the right order so focus things on things there all right now the next question is why swimming focused on rep time cycles

instead of work to rest ratios 90 to 30 seconds rest I think with swimming because we’ve got the the pace clock and we’re often doing yeah we’re often working off the pace clock it’s pretty common to know roughly what would be coming in on and that way we can just hold a an interval of say like let’s say we’re coming in on 120 and we’re leaving on 130 it’s easier to hold that on the pace clock whereas if we are looking to do say a minute 20 of of work and we want to take 10 seconds rest well if you come in on 122 or 123 and then you’re leaving on the 132 or 133 that’s just that gets a little bit a little bit messy that way so I think that’s probably probably why there are sort of like depending on the set you do you will have some like work to rest ratios but yeah more times than not it’s it’s just going to be based off intervals instead now the last question is from TPH 4M said my stomach drops but head and legs are up resulting in this weird U shaped form

how do I fix it so some of that comes down to posture and I think core strength as well so when it comes to posture you’re probably sticking your chest your belly too far out we want to try and be relatively straight through the body so head away from the toes lengthen through there like I’ve mentioned a few times on the podcast so we need to try and be straight rather than just really going chest out and I like that I like to think tall and proud but I’ve had some swimmers take that too far where they do go chest forwards and they create this big lower back arch the other aspect of that too can just be head position if you’re looking too far forwards and your chin comes forwards your lower back will typically have this big lumbar curve in it so that’s another thing to consider just make sure you’re looking in the right position the other factor there is is core strength so the water is this unstable surface that we that we’re operating in

and so it takes a good amount of core strength to hold ourselves flats and so straight in the water and not that you need to be like big and muscly but it takes it takes a certain amount to sort of hold that over a long period of time and your core is not just your your six pack it’s all these muscles around there as well so all of that comes into your core strength so looking to develop that and build that is is another important thing to to look at so there’s sort of them they’re the main things that I’d consider when it comes to yet your body position so posture get that right get the head position right and then maybe you are just lacking some specific core strength to hold that over over time so there are all the questions for today’s episode if you’re not following us on Instagram go to at effortless swimming and you can follow us there and if you’ve got any questions you want me to answer on another Q&A episode

then either send it through to our support desk support at effortless swimming dot com or just send it through on Instagram and I’ll make sure to answer it on our next episode thanks very much for listening I’ll see you next week on another episode we have another guest Tracy Bowman she was on a few episodes ago great feedback from her episode so I’m getting her back on to talk about a few of these things that we’ve covered a bit today with the connection the timing and the rhythm as well as what type of kick to use and when so that’ll be in next week’s episode of the effortless swimming podcast thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast if you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com

The post How To Stop Your Arm From Dropping Like A Rock appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

In today’s episode, we have Laura Quilter, a New Zealand swimmer and coach who has previously been the national champion in the 50m, 100m and 200m freestyle. Laura has achieved a lifetime PB at the age of 31, with only a third of the training she was doing in her earlier years. She’s also ventured into the sport of ice swimming (water under 5 degrees celsius) and is coaching through her platform at Aura Move. Tune in now!

02:14 Introduction and Background

Follow Laura on Instagram

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

View our freestyle clinic schedule around Australia:

Get 15% off our 8-week Faster Freestyle course by using the code 8week15

Try PILLAR today, head to pillarperformance.shop and enter code EFFORTLESS for 15% off, or for any North American listeners, enter the same code at TheFeed.com.

Watch the episode on YouTube:

I think it was Cameron McAvoy, he talks about the fact that someone’s a cyclical sport. And basically, as long as you get that one cycle correct, all you have to do is replicate that for 20 to 30 seconds. I don’t know what made me start this habit. I do every training session, I do a lap of dolphin dive, and that’s like two parts to remember to just enjoy and, you know, have a bit of fun, and also just relax my breathing. But I definitely think the enjoyment has to be there. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast, the show that helps swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer, and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. Hi, and welcome to today’s podcast episode. How do you get faster as you get older? That’s a question that we ask on today’s episode with our guest Laura Quilter. She is a former New Zealand swimmer, and she is a swim coach. She was on the 2014 Commonwealth Games team.

She has been New Zealand champion in the 50, the 100, and the 200 freestyle at different times of her career, as well as the 50 butterfly. Now recently, Laura set a lifetime PB in the 50 freestyle at 31 years of age, and that has come with about a third of the training that she was doing in her younger years. So I asked Laura about how she’s managed to swim faster than ever before with less training and what she’s done to achieve that, as well as what she’s doing now with some challenging things with ice swimming. So if you’re looking to find some different challenges in the water, if you’re looking to get faster as you get older, and if you’re looking to improve your technique, we have got a lot in store in today’s episode. So let’s get into it with Laura Quilter. My guest today is Laura Quilter from AuraMood in New Zealand. Laura, thanks for jumping on the podcast. I’m keen to talk about quite a few topics today because just saying from your socials

and chatting to you before some of the things you’ve been doing lately, not out of the box, but they’re just really challenging things to do, and pushing yourself mentally and physically. And also seeing you go swim some PBs as you get older is a really incredible thing to see. So I want to dig into some of those things and just get your take on how you’re managing to do it. So firstly, welcome to the podcast. Yeah, it’s awesome to be here. Thanks for having me on. So for those that are listening, what’s a little bit about your background? You’re a very well accomplished swimmer and life saver. For those that are listening, a bit of background on your swimming history. So I’m a I’m a lifetime swimmer. I was chucked in as a as a baby from mum and dad, grew up in quite a small city on the east coast of New Zealand. And then just I was the kid that always loved training. And that did did help me as I grew older in terms of swimming.

I did compete for New Zealand at the Commonwealth Games in 2014. And also that was three world championships for surf lifesaving. And those were some awesome experiences. I did it quite crack the Olympics. I had to go a couple of times, but then now one of my 32 years old, I’ve kind of had this almost second hack at competition again, which I’d never had expected. And that all came out of doing a master’s swimming event in 2023. So it’s been quite the journey. And I feel very lucky that I am one of, you know, a lot of my friends who swim at a high level, they don’t enjoy swimming anymore. And I’m an absolute fanatic, I think. Swimming is one of the coolest activities. And it’s it equips you for so much more than just let some in. So yeah, it’s been awesome. And why do you think you have stuck around or you’ve got this renewed passion for swimming? You said you did the master’s competition. What did that spark inside of you?

It was actually quite a contradictory feeling. So I swam off the back of almost no training in a tri-squad, which was not sprint specific. And I threw down a couple of times that weren’t too far off my best. And so I was like simultaneously quite like amazed and then also frustrated being like, well, is there, you know, another way that I could do this? So the context when I was swimming in my early 20s, I was training about 16 hours a week in the water. And then this year I’ve been training about three to five. And you did a PB in the 50 free, the 50 fly this year at Olympic trials. And you were only 0.6 of a second off qualifying to the 50 free, which is a huge achievement. Talk a bit about what you’ve changed in your training from now to back then and maybe what you wish in you back then compared to what you know now.

I think it’s a few things. I’m a lot more fascinated in what swimming is all about. And that’s both physically and mentally. So I picked apart the stroke and I’ve done a lot more research and looking at elite athletes and how different people swim. And I didn’t even know, you know, the stroke changes so much for the 50 freestyle versus the longer distance events. And then really manipulating my stroke to kind of reflect that sprint styles. You know, a surprising one for me is more flexion at the knee for the kick. And that’s for extra propulsion, whereas in your longer distance things, you know, swims, you’re not kind of bending as much. So it was this obsession with technique on the one side. Another side is I’m just so much more relaxed. Like I’ve got I’m working full time nursing at the moment, got, you know, a relationship. So I was actually told, I remember by one of my first the high performance coach in Auckland, he said, I live and die by my training

sets, which just basically meant if I had a good set, I was, you know, on top of the world, I was really positive, laughing. And if I had a bad training day, I was down in the dump. So I felt like I was, you know, I was one of those summers that tied my identity to swimming. So I was going, well, I was happy if it wasn’t going well, I wasn’t. And having that time away, I’m a lot more. I enjoy the whole process, even if it’s a really shocking training day. It doesn’t affect me globally in my life anymore. So the obsession with the technique, I think, been a lot more chill and then getting way stronger. So my I really enjoy the gym and my partners are physiotherapists. So I’ve been very lucky in throwing myself into understanding how the body works, especially around different training modalities and methodologies and being very lucky in this position, being a bit older to actually put the brains of different coaches

around New Zealand. And that was something that, you know, when you’re a bit younger, you’re you’re with that one coach. And there are some amazing coaches, but I was in a very fortunate position that I could chat to a few different ones. So that’s probably the three key differences. And what about the sprint strike? So you said you started to understand some of those differences. How would you describe, say, a 50 sprint technique to someone? One of those things that you’re stealing for or trying to achieve when you are sprinting? It’s like calculated chaos in a weird way. So you need to be performing with the most amount of aggression and power that you can. But it has to be funneled through an effective mechanics. And I quite like I think it was Cameron McEvoy. He talks about the fact that someone’s a cyclical sport. And basically, as long as you get that one cycle correct, all you have to do is replicate that for 20 to 30 seconds.

So when I started to change my stroke, primarily, it was focused on my hips, staying a little bit more level in the water and a lot more rotation through the upper body and the shoulders. I did notice that in the early stages, I’ve got quite limited thoracic mobility and that kind of felt like I was jammed up a bit. So I did have to spend a bit of time on mobility as well to actually even swim like that. And with the sprint style, pulling a lot straighter under the water was a new concept to me. And that came that comes with a whole lot of other challenges. I wouldn’t go tell most people to swim a 50 style because it does put so much more pressure on the shoulder, which really emphasised the need to get a lot stronger in the gym. So the three key aspects I did start to train with, I was using resistance training a lot more than I had formally. So that was, you know, your parachutes, fins and socks, which I’d never use.

I really like drag socks, actually. More than the parachute, I actually really detest the parachute. So a lot more resistance training, a lot more work on the dive mechanics and then just that, you know, still hits with a big kick and the power coming through the shoulders. And with the socks, so the drag socks for people listening, it’s not just normal socks. These are special sort of swimming socks. D-R-A-G-S-O-X. Is that trying to think of that’s the brand? But like, they’re things that kind of drop around you just while you’re calves, right? Yeah, so you can actually, if you’re more beginner, you can do them up just below the knee or you can have them around the ankle. And the reason I really like the drag socks is I feel that my stroke is affected. So like my body position is still the same with the parachute. I do feel like it drags me a little bit lower in the water. So my mechanics are slightly altered versus, say, a bungee,

which I didn’t use because I didn’t have training partners in that very often. But the bungee, because of where it’s anchored, or same with the power stacks, you know, it’s anchored above you versus dragging down. So there were all these kind of minute changes that I don’t think I would have even noticed when I was younger. But I feel that one of the reasons I love swimming is it’s just such a mindful activity that I could start to actually just really feel what one body was doing and how it was changing depending on the training set or even the different tools I was using. And one thing I found coaching is that the sprint stroke is it’s the techniques. I wouldn’t necessarily say harder to coach, but it’s all happening so quickly that it’s very much like, yes, you need the power. You need the strength, but it’s like it’s you just got less time to sort of think about it, having to to tune into that feel

throughout that calculated chaos, as you mentioned. So I’ve found that like a challenging thing to sort of coach for sprinting. I find like I really enjoy coaching more, you know, middle to long distance swimming as the triathletes, because there’s just a bit more time to to work through that stuff. So what have you found there? Because you like you do a lot of coaching, you provide a lot of advice and tips for people. And like, what have you found in terms of coaching those sort of different styles and getting that message across and getting people to take it on board? Yeah, that the speed is definitely one of the more challenging aspects. And also just I think the biggest thing with coaching is the frustration that it feels like you’re going backwards initially. Any change to your mechanics, whether that’s how you walk, run or particularly when you swim, often that change will make you feel worse. And I think psychologically, one of the key parts of the coaching

is actually just setting realistic expectations that you’re probably going to feel pretty awful, but just give it a bit of time to actually see whether it’s going to make a change. So that was probably the key aspect. In terms of that, you know, changing the stroke at speed and technique, one of my favorite tools was kind of this mindful approach to technique. And so I would focus on or get my athletes to focus on one limb at a time. So the first thing would be working from kind of the center out to be all about the core. So that’s not just, you know, your ads. It’s trying to think about like how you lengthen. I mean, when you breathe, so say that the athlete is breathing once or twice in the 15, making sure that even though it’s fast, it’s coming deep and the diaphragm still being used. So you’d say, for an example, for the central approach, you do 825s. The first lap of sprint, you consider what is my trunk doing?

Like is my core engaged? The second lap, you’d think about the shoulders. How much are they rotating? The third lap, you wouldn’t think about anything. You’re just sprint. Fourth lap, going down to the hips. Fifth lap, thinking about the left hand. Sixth lap, thinking about nothing and so on and so forth. You basically only think about one aspect of the body at a time. Going through this really intense focus period, really understanding how the water pressure feels. I think understanding how you can generate pressure is one of the key aspects. But then also allowing the mind to relax and just enjoy the swimming because ultimately you need to combine this, you know, thoughtful process with just being in the moment and swimming with the water. So that was kind of this flow between heavy thinking and just swimming. I think that’s such a great point that you make there. I often talk about you’ve got the thinking brain and the feeling brain

and we just need to go between the two of them. And when we ski too far one way or another, that’s when we tend to not see improvements because an adult really tender, especially who I think listen to, say the podcast or maybe watch, you know, watch a lot of content. They can tend to ski too far inside the thinking side of things and just not enjoy being in the water and not just feel for those things. But swimming is so much about that feel and that pressure and being aware of it. And I think as lifelong swimmers, if we started young, we are very good at that feeling aspect of it because that’s really, I think talking for myself here, but I’d be curious to get your perspective on this. But like drying up, yeah, I thought about my stroke, but it was very much about feel. You’re doing that much volume, that much training and you just become very attuned to how you’re moving through the water. And that’s how you tend to improve.

And then as we get older, we look for other ways to get better and we start to think about things a lot more. So I think a balance between the two is really key. What are your thoughts on that in terms of as a youngster? Yeah, was it all about sort of feel for you or were you thinking about your technique as at a young age?

Yeah, on that, I think one of my favorite podcasts from you, actually, because I am also an avid listener. You talk about the paralysis by analysis and as a coach. And I think you would have experienced that too. You can see it happen in live time. The whole body, it’s like so tense. When I talk about swimming, it’s kind of like you’re engaged, but it’s fluid, right? So if you’re sat on the couch watching TV, you’ve got zero engagement in your muscles. Ten, you’re about to do your max deadlift. The whole body is engaged. You want to be sitting around that seven, where, yes, you’re using your muscles, but you’re able to kind of move with the water. And in terms of how much I thought about my stroke growing up, on reflection, I actually do think that I was considering technique the whole way through. I used to have my stroke used to be too long. I used to flick my bum because the stroke would kind of come out

so far that the hand would flick and then come over. But I do actually remember quite interestingly when I did go up one level in squad swimming, my stroke fell apart because suddenly I went from leading the group to coming last. And it got really scrappy and short. And I had this amazing coach called Pat and Gizbin, and she did a couple of one-to-ones with me, just focusing on maintaining that length, not so far that I was pushing that far back. And I think that was actually really helpful. And I was often the last person in the drill set because I didn’t care about how fast I was doing 25s. I was actually thinking about when I’m sculling, what I can feel and what happens if I move my wrist in a certain way or, you know, whether I’m rotating through the whole body and whatnot. So I did consider swimming my whole life. But as you see, I think as a kid, you also have lots of fun. And some of my favorite sessions, we pretended to be animals, right?

Like dolphin dives for two hours. So yeah, I think you’ve got an asset growing up as a swimmer because you’ve got so much more time to embed as long as it’s done well, embed those good technical aspects. One thing you touched on there was the fun aspect of it. And I think it’s easy to take things too seriously as an as an adult and having that element of play and fun, even in your swimming and even in your racing, that makes such a big difference. Because I think not the less you care, the better you can do. But I think it’s like you talked about now, you not putting so much pressure on yourself to perform in training or in the races and being able to enjoy things and just not have that unnecessary stress. Then I think you can we can really just do a lot better. And I find that now I’m just not as competitive as I used to be. I don’t care as much as I used to in terms of the places that I get and things like that.

But it doesn’t mean that I don’t train hard or I don’t do do well. It’s just that I’ve got other priorities. But I think that can help you in a lot of ways that you can just be really enjoy just the racing and the training. And now I use it more as like a physical outlet. It’s more of a challenge just to see how well I can contest myself. But if they were bad session, have a bad race, it’s like, well, all right, let’s move on to the next one. But as a kid, it’s probably a bigger part of your your life. And as adults, we’ve got other things dying on. And we see what the real what’s really important there. So yeah, I think that’s a really important part of it. This episode is brought to you by Pillar Performance. Our new sponsors Pillar are a sports micronutrition company. And the easiest way to describe it is that while hydration and carbohydrates, products will take you through to touch the wall as fast as possible.

Pillar’s mission is to get consumers to the starting blocks in the best condition over and over again. I recently started taking Pillar triple magnesium after a friend had recommended it. And it’s been a game changer for my sleep and recovery. I take one scoop 30 minutes before bed each night in the same way that you might start your day with a coffee. I finish it up with a magnesium and recover better for tomorrow’s session in the pool. Pillar performance is used by some of the biggest names in swimming and triathlon, including Zack Stubble to cook, Jan Frodeno, Ben Canute, Ash Gentle, Taylor Nib amongst the host of other well-known swimmers and triathletes. Where Pillar differs from other micronutrition you may have taken before is both the quality of the types of magnesium and the tangible results that I see on my garment each morning. If you’d like to try Pillar today, head to pillarperformance.shop

and enter code effortless for 15 percent off. That’s effortless for 15 percent off all first time purchases or for anyone in North America. Enter the same code at thefeed.com.

Yeah, there are two things I really liked about what you just said. The first about having fun, I feel like we almost get this fear that if you’re joking around, you’re not being serious. But I actually don’t know what made me start this habit. I do every training session, I do a lap of dolphin dive. And that’s like two parts to remember to just enjoy and, you know, have a bit of fun and also just relax my breathing. But I definitely think the enjoyment has to be there. And then the second part you said about not being as competitive. It’s interesting. My competitive drive is now so isolated on an obsession with the execution of skills. So even at trials this year, I had my own goals. But instead of being, you know, outwardly focused, how I used to look at my other competitors and probably think too much out of what was outside of my control and trying to beat other people. I was absolutely obsessed with, you know,

getting a quick reaction time of getting my six kicks underwater and that first breakout about really getting the arm free and seeing that last little T on the bottom to be like, OK. That’s where we lift the stroke rate a little bit. And it was quite funny. I didn’t really think about that until we just brought it up that my competitive focus is now shifted quite significantly onto the execution of skills and those things that are inside of my own control. Yeah, that’s that’s so interesting. I what I find when I’m racing is and especially being a coach, I want other people to do well, especially if I may have coached the people I’m racing or I know them like, I really want them to do well. So to be like, I’m going to I’m going to really beat this person. Or that’s not fair. But yeah, you’re right. It’s the pressure you put on yourself to to want to perform to to what you know is possible. And yeah, not not worrying about the the others.

That’s yeah, it’s interesting. Yeah, I think I think what helped with motivation as well because a lot of people are like, oh, how do you stay motivated? Or, you know, and I think discipline is definitely a key aspect. But I think curiosity was one of the key elements about consistency for me. So if I was having, you know, a day where I was like, so tired, I think the curiosity about what my body could do on a set day or during a specific training set, that was actually quite fun because I felt like I approached this whole return to something as an experiment. And I think having that curiosity in the gym and also in the pool was quite a cool, I suppose, reframing of how to approach training. Yeah, I like that. And a couple of things there. So the first one is, with longer you can go without expecting to see a return on it, I think you can set yourself up really well to have have great success. So whether that’s with your technique or your strength training,

it’s like I’m not trying to get results within two months. Like I’m just going to use this as an experiment and just practice it and just see what happens. So just being willing to delay the payoffs, I think is a big part of it. And then just back to the sort of fun and play aspect. One thing I’ve started to do with the squad that I train with and I set the programs for, especially on a Wednesday, which is our sprint morning, we like we do a couple of things like yesterday we did some partner toes. So we do like 50 meters where you grab onto someone’s foot for 25 meters. They’re tying you along and then they’ll tow for 25 and then they’ll sprint for 15 and go easy to the end. And you’ll just alternate doing that. So you’ll swap that around. Then we do some, you know, a couple of fifties or go 15 front scale, 15 bucket scale, just on your back, feet forwards, scone, feet forwards. And then swim into the end, some dolphin dives.

We sometimes do just partner up and race. But that you can make sessions challenging and fun and you still get the benefit from it. And it’s often a lot more enjoyable. But I remember coming out of yesterday’s session where we were doing that stuff like that was I’m really glad. I’m really glad I went and did that because I kind of felt I’d been a kid again and we still got just as much benefit from it. And it was just it was it was a lot of fun. So I think if you can work that into your sessions, then you’re going to have a much longer career in the sport and you’re not going to be dreading going to the pool much at all if you’re doing those sorts of things. Yeah, couldn’t agree more. Now, you’ve you’ve recently returned from the ice swimming championships and New Zealand ice swimming championships. For those that don’t know what that is, could you explain what ice swimming is for them? And then what spurred you on to to enter these events

because you don’t get the full context just watching videos until you’ve experienced actually how cold sub five degrees is. So yeah, what is ice swimming for those of the listening? Yeah, if you had told me even a month ago that I was going to be doing ice swimming, I would have told you you’re absolutely insane. I’ve never enjoyed the cold, which was part of the motivation to get into it. So essentially, ice swimming is like a sport that started in 2009 and it involves people competing in water that’s less than five degrees Celsius and just a standard swim costume and silicon cap. So all the people out there are thinking they’re going to wrap up in a wetsuit or a wetsuit cap or even rub yourself in fat. All of those aren’t allowed. There are events ranging from 50 metres all the way up to the most coveted event, which is the ice mile. So that’s 1.6 kilometres in sub five. And I’ve only just realised there’s also something called an extreme ice mile.

So that’s 1.6 kilometres under two degrees, which is pretty wild. But yeah, I’ve also had an interesting challenge because I live in Auckland, which is not known for its freezing cold temperatures. So I basically went in with some mindset of as frequent exposure to cold water as I could, realistically. And some of the other unique sorry, aspects about ice swimming, there’s no dives and there’s also no tumble terms and that’s just for safety. And you also race in a belt. So if you pass out, the safety team can pull you out.

There’s a lot of people will probably think this sport like absolutely nuts, but there is a lot that goes on into the background to keep athletes safe. And I found it really interesting talking to the medical team because they have got a whole bunch of things they’re looking at as swimmers are competing. And one of the more interesting ones is the mouth. So when you get really cold, well, sorry, normal swimmers will roll to breathe and they will open the mouth to breathe. When you get really cold, you can get a jaw retraction and the carotids get really cold. So often the summer will roll and the mouth will be fixed open. If the medical team noticed that, they’ll just tap you on the head, ask a couple of questions, check your cognition. And if they deem you safe, you can continue swimming. And if you’re not, you know, they’ll drag you out. So yeah, it’s a pretty, pretty wild sport. And it was such a cool experience.

Did you experience any of that? Could you feel your jaw starting to be sort of fixed or you didn’t get to that point? When I first started training, I had a good friend’s ice bath that I was doing most of my sessions in. When I started with the face in, I it was it was quite pronounced for me. Like I did notice that and I found it challenging to speak because almost not what my throat was closing, but all that muscle, all the muscles were going quite tense for me. The because I only originally was going to do the hundred meters thinking, you know, this is a good challenge, but it’s not too out of the box. And then, you know, with a bit of encouragement from a friend, I decided to put my head in and I did do the 500 and then been a little bit competitive at the actual event. I went all the way up to the thousand meters and it was 2.1 degrees at the nationals. So, you know, 15 minutes of that kind of temperature was wild.

And when you say about, did I experience that there’s flip cards like you would have in the 1500 meter race at 10 laps to go? I did take a moment because I felt like that was getting quite uncomfortable. And in my head, I thought, you know, if this gets any worse over the next two laps, I’ll pull pin and it didn’t get any worse. I still felt my breathing and my mental status felt 100 percent. So I was like, you know, I got this in the bag at that point. But in terms of the actual statistics, that was pretty wild. So my fastest 50 was 34 seconds and my slowest was 51.

And my stroke count went from something like, I think it was 14 or 15 up to 19 strokes, which for me is if you told me to go do that in a pool today, I’d struggle to swim that slow with that many strokes.

And was that was the first like the fastest one? And then progressively started to slow up as you got colder? Yeah. So we were given a bit of advice before we jumped in about how to approach that because I was, you know, that is probably the most nervous I’ve ever been for an event. And the person that it was giving us a bit of education said to approach it like a negative split. She said, physically, you’re unlikely to negative split, but psychologically, you should start comfortable, not actually super slow, because then it’s difficult to raise the pace. So that was kind of how I went in. 34 is actually still relatively fast for how relaxed I felt. But the only kind of like scary part is in the last 100 ish meters when I was rolling to breathe, I could see rain. But logically, I knew that it was definitely not raining. So I did have a couple of like somewhat mild hallucinations, and that kind of did carry on after the event.

I got myself out of the pool, but I couldn’t I couldn’t stand upright. So I kind of had two people under my armpits taking me into the medical. And do you know what? Like the recovery was actually so much harder than the actual event, which, you know, I didn’t really expect. I thought I was going to bite through my tongue with a shivering, but it was such a such a wild ride. Like, yeah, talking about the recovery. So are you talking about the post two hours or post 24 hours? And what did you do to warm up after that? So the focus is mainly you just strip all the wet stuff off and then you want to get warm centrally. So I had to be assisted to kind of get changed. I had my eyes closed the whole time because I was really nauseous. So they, you know, walls the first layer because that wicks away moisture, but it also heats you at the same time. So I think I had three layers of wool, a synthetic layer, a big jacket.

I had polyprop on the legs, ski jacket. And then I was laid on a bed with like four or five blankets. And then they just pack hot water bottles around you. So like had one on top of my head, which in one of the videos you can see like shaking. And I think the reason I I enjoyed was probably a weird word, but I enjoyed the experience is you just have no control. You just have to sit with this just absolutely intense reaction. So they and I mean, they do talk to about an after drop, which is where the body continues to cool even after you’ve exited the water. And that can be quite a dangerous thing if you’re not prepared for it. And that’s something to do with like the the cold water that’s kind of the more sorry, the cold blood in your extremities recirculating centrally. So what happened for me is I kind of I was shaking a little bit and then it got really violent and then you get loaded to this false sense

security because you’d stop shaking, you could talk, you’d feel OK. And then you just plunge back in and have this uncontrollable shaking. So that process was probably 40 minutes of that kind of wild shaking and recovery. And then I was completely warm, happy as two hours later. But then what I didn’t expect, you know, I’m about a week on or just under a week on from the event, I didn’t train for like two days. Like it was the most intense full body fatigue I’ve had. And I do wonder whether the physiological after that event was a lot more than I had anticipated to the next day. I did like a light gym session, but that Monday and Tuesday, I got home and I slept for three hours after my nursing shift. I was so tired. Well, that’s so interesting. It makes sense, right? Like it’s just what you put your body through to be that cold all the way through to then have to reheat. And yeah, that’s that’s really, really interesting.

And I’m kind of similar to you. I’ve started to do a little bit more cold water stuff this winter for the reason of I wasn’t good in the cold. And I just wanted to prove to myself that I could actually train myself to get get better in it. So we I mean, it’s about 13 degrees, maybe 14 degrees here. So I’ve been going for a couple of swims just out to the boy and back. So not far, but it’s just I like that physical challenge of your standing on the edge. It’s cold. You got to strip down and then get in. And I say to myself, I’ll stay in until I get to that point where I go from being like, this is uncomfortable. Man, I can’t breathe to when I then relax because you only get to that point where it’s like, this is actually quite nice. So I just always say to myself, stick around until you get to that point. And then you kind of want to stay in anyway. And by the time the swims over, actually, that was I wouldn’t mind to keep keep going for a bit,

depending on how long you’ve been in for, obviously. But yeah, it’s it’s actually been quite enjoyable. And I can see the appeal. I can see why people get addicted to that kind of feeling because it that endorphin release and the way that you feel afterwards is a is a really, yeah, really nice thing. And I feel if I don’t do it for a few days, I kind of need my fix again to go out into that cold water. Yeah, I had no idea why people would do this before before I got into it. Like, as I said, I’ve just got zero interest in the cold before I decided to try. And just like you, I feel like I’ve jumped on the bandwagon and that whole like cold water exhilaration is an actual true experience. So when somebody asked me about, like, did I have any health benefits from that thousand? I don’t think so. I think that was just a hard graft. But I tell you what, the 50s and the 100s, they were so fun because you get out and you’re like cold,

but you just absolutely buzz in. So the 50s and the 100s, gosh, they were so fun. But the the 500 and the K for me, that’s probably close to my limit. But you know, what’s interesting is it was actually there was a competitor from Australia and when I saw her after the thousand, honestly, she could have just done that in a regular pool. She wasn’t shaking at all. She was so relaxed. She got herself changed and I was standing there be like, Oh, oh, that’s amazing. Like, you know, people are just so different. And I think one of the the best things about this whole experience has been that true reflection of how much the mental game matters, because when I was just doing the ice bath theme and I was gradually building up the duration and the submersion times, if I wasn’t prepared mentally, my tolerance for that cold was so diminished. Like I couldn’t tolerate, you know, half of what I normally could. And that was quite I enjoyed that challenge of being like,

I feel tired. I’ve just finished a busy shift. You know, I’ve got to do all this stuff at home. But being like, no, we’re here right now. Get it done. Couldn’t always do that. But I quite like the fact that the exposure was so reliant on the mental state. It’s such a huge part of it. One thing that I’ve noticed with that is I so the grip that I strummed with, we did a like a winter mock race down here where I knew where I live. It’s about 1.2 Ks and we start from the pier and we swim into the into the beach. And everyone else wore wetsuits this year and I went without. And I think just that, like, you sort of convince yourself, like, no, it’s fine. And you and I sort of see myself as like, now I’ll be like, I don’t I don’t need a wetsuit. You kind of train yourself to be a bit tougher and to like the way the way you sort of want to see yourself or the way that you sort of mentally see the cold can make a huge, huge difference.

So now I see it as like, it’s actually not that bad. Whereas had I done this last year, I’d be like, there’s no way I’m getting in the water without a wetsuit on. So such a big part of it is part of it mentally. Now, you’ve you’ve been doing quite a bit of coaching over the last last couple of years and doing a lot of content and things like that. What what would you say some of the things that you’ve learned over the last few years that maybe five years ago, 10 years ago, you either didn’t know or like any perspectives that have changed since you’ve been doing a lot more coaching and putting out content and studying the stroke and things like that. Yeah, I feel like I’m such a different coach from five years ago. I was very binary in my thinking. A few years ago, you know, like everyone had to some like even thought they had to be long, they had to be a perfect high elbow. And I think one reason I really enjoy working with adults

is understanding them in the context of their own capacity. So, you know, are they carrying injury? What’s their history with swimming and particularly what are their goals? So five years ago, I would have wanted everyone swimming 50 meters with under 30 strokes, having a nice solid kick. But, you know, that suits a competitive swimmer doing, you know, two 400 meter. I think my perspective now has been really focused on getting the most out of the person in front of me. So having the patience to and the creativity to, I suppose, help them develop a stroke that’s the most effective for them if they say can’t get a high elbow. And I’m sure my partner won’t mind me saying, you know, he’s a kaiakon, he’s really strong anteriorly, but it also means he’s got really reduced range of motion through the shoulders. So he can’t effectively get a high elbow catch when he swims. So to offset that, because when I first saw him swimming,

you know, I thought in my head, I was like, I’m stumped. Like, I don’t know what I would do. So this was, you know, six, seven years ago. And now it’s like, well, the first point of call would be to try and improve that mobility. But the second immediate one is, well, you’re strong. So we’re just going to have to offset that high elbow by increasing the stroke rate and getting as effective kick as we can. And, you know, just developing the fitness with the style that he can manage. And so I think that’s probably been the biggest growth point is knowing what excellent technique looks like, but not being afraid to adapt that based on the capacities of the person with me. I’m also, you know, quite like, in terms of that wanting to see change straight away, I’ve had to be a lot more patient with how quickly people progress. I think swimming isn’t, you know, an overnight fix. And I did have to, you know, take my level of understanding

in my own, you know, understanding of how it feels to swim down to what people can understand. And particularly that was kind of highlighted when teaching people to tumble turn. You know, I’ve done this, I’ve done this skill since I was probably 10, if not younger, and to actually break it down and understand the pain points and what people struggle with was really fun. So, you know, I’m probably telling a wordy person and having to get a lot more concise with my education and developing ways of coaching either through description. So, you know, some people work off metaphors, other people want to blend off mechanics, understand exactly how the body works. So that’s probably been also another challenge is learning different ways to educate but in a simple, concise way. Yeah, I see a lot of parallels with my journey as a coach as well. And yeah, especially when you start working with adults who don’t have this great range of motion a lot of the time,

you just can’t get into some of those positions. So you just got to work with what people have got. And it doesn’t mean they’re not going to swim fast either. Like I’ve done a lot of filming with a lot of very good triathletes who either front pack or second pack and like some of them, like the stroke doesn’t look that good, but they’re really quick. So to me, that’s been, it’s like, all right, well, how are they actually this quick when their stroke doesn’t look that nice? So what actually matters here? And that’s something I’ve really had to learn as well. So Laura, thanks so much for being on the podcast. I really enjoyed chatting about these types of things and even just watching you compete over the last sort of six to 12 months and seeing you hit PBs in your early 30s. And I’m looking forward to seeing where it, where you can go with that to see if you can continue to get faster. And I’ve got no doubt that the commitment’s there

and the thought about how to do it is there. So I’m really looking forward to seeing what that brings. So thank you so much for being on the podcast. And for those that are listening, go and follow Laura on Instagram, we’ll include the links in the show notes here. So it’s at or remove NZ, is it on Instagram? Yeah, it will include those links there. Anything you want to finish with Laura? Stay persistent, stay consistent and enjoy the process. I love it. Well, I’ll be sure to get you back on and yes, it’s been great having you on. Thanks Laura. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

The post Get Faster As You Get Older with Laura Quilter appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

In this episode, we welcome back Nick Jankovskis, a sports scientist and endurance performance coach at METS Performance Consulting. Nick is an expert in improving endurance performance through accurate analysis of physiological testing. We dive into fueling and how to test physiology for endurance sports, particularly focusing on Ironman events and long-distance races. Nick shares insights on the new equipment at METS Performance that allows for more detailed testing and provides better numbers for fueling requirements. Tune in now!

Related Content: Don’t Let The Numbers Rule Your Swimming with Nick Jankovskis

This podcast is brought to you by NanoClear — our own range of anti-fog swim goggles, designed by Effortless Swimming with the anti-fog treatment bonded into the lens itself (not sprayed on, so it doesn’t wear off after a few swims). Check out the NanoClear range here and use code PODCAST15 for 15% off.

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. My guest today is someone who was on a couple of years back and we’re talking about fueling and how to test physiology for endurance sports. And I’ve got Nick from Mess Performance back on the podcast because they’ve recently got some new equipment in the lab where they can test things in a little bit more detail and get better numbers around what’s required for fueling when it comes to doing Ironman events, doing any sort of long distance events. And so I want to get stuck into the details and the data with what you’re looking at at the moment. So Nick, welcome back to the podcast. Now, good to be back on. So tell me about the recent upgrade in equipment that you’ve got in the lab and how

does that improve the ability for you guys to look at what’s required in terms of fueling for these long distance events? Yeah, so I guess the simple explanation is that the really major change is we just can measure carbon dioxide. So for those who don’t really understand the capability of that, it’s all of our old equipment and most metabolic devices or all metabolic devices have a capability to measure option consumption, which is great and tells us a lot of information around training zones, what we can implement in terms of training strategy, etc. But it doesn’t tell us necessarily about the breakdown of fuel utilization. It can tell us how much energy is required, but we don’t know what’s the percentage fat versus carb or how many grams an hour of carbohydrate, for example, are we expending at a particular intensity? And that’s where being able to measure someone’s carbon dioxide production can be really, really critical

because now we can have a look at what’s the ratio between carbon dioxide being produced and oxygen consumption being taken in, basically take that CO2 number divided by VO2, we then get an understanding of what’s the breakdown versus fat versus carb. And essentially, that comes from more carbon dioxide being produced is an indicator that more carbohydrates been being utilized. So that really is just kind of an add on to what we’re already able to look at to then enable us to be a bit more refined in, or how do we understand and assess someone’s ability to utilize different fuels at different intensities and how do they do that? But then also off the back end, how can we manipulate or utilize some of that data to best inform how an athlete would be able to fuel up for a race? We’ve already been able to be pretty good at understanding maybe their pacing in the past and relative percentage of physiology, but now it’s

taking it that one step further to just open up that last little bit, which we know a lot of insurance athletes, they train the house down, they race pretty well, but then just fall over on the fueling side of things. And this is a way for us to get a clearer insight on how could we maybe get ahead of that and be able to ultimately prevent a little bit of that bonking effect or fuel flat, that most people sort of feel middle to back end of races. Like, can we eliminate that as a bit of a factor so that the race can go as best you can the whole way through. And in particular, we’re really talking the long distance stuff. So most of this data is only really going to be massively important for those events that go for two, two and a half, three hours plus. Think shorter than that, not as massive requirement in terms of the fueling. And most people intuitively know, like if you’re a 10k runner, probably not going to need to take much fuel if your

race is done in 40 odd minutes. Whereas when you’re out there for four, five, seven, 10, 15 hours, however long, yeah, it’s pretty important we get the fuel back in and we do it in a way that it’s going to mean we get the most out of ourselves, but maintain as much of our performance as we can. So what are the issues that you would come across when someone’s not fueling correctly? Like you talk about overfueling, underfueling, the maybe having taking out on the wrong type of fuel as well. So like, what are those issues that people do run into? Yeah, the classic, the classic ones are like gastrointestinal upset is that is the classic one, like a feeling of sickness, vomiting, whatever it might be, that can come from a few different, few different means. It can be set up by what you ate in the days leading in. So what was your, what was your fueling strategy leading into the event? Are you more sensitive to certain types of foods

that day to day in your training, probably it’s needed here or there, but in a race circumstance, when the pace is on your working hard, you then trying to smash in something quite potent, like a gel or, or lots of sports drinks, whatever it might be, you might have already delivered a bit of gut damage there. So heading into the race, you kind of already you’re kind of setting yourself up for a little bit of failure there. So that can be part of it. But then the other ones are like significantly overfueling, never really ends well. And also significantly overfueling, like there’s probably an argument to say, if you’re taking it a bit much on the bike and then a little less on the run, it kind of can balance it out a little bit. But if you consistently weigh over a good example, just arbitrary numbers, he would be like, if someone only needed 80 grams of carbs an hour, but they were trying to take 120 just because it’s more doesn’t necessarily

mean it’s better in your individual circumstance for other athletes, it might, but you might not. And then what you end up with is a bunch of carbs sitting in your gut. We get redistribution of blood flow away from your digestive system in endurance. So the more you work, the more you start sweating, blood flow goes away from the guts. Okay, it’s harder to break down. So what’s it going to do? It’s just going to sit there. And that’s that sick feeling you’re starting, you’re starting to get. We just aren’t able to break it down. So over over can be an issue. The other side of things is maybe not necessarily from a gastrointestinal upset, but significant underfueling is the one that probably most of us at some point in time of experience of hitting the wall. And you just go, I just feel like I can’t. I don’t feel too bad, but I just feel like I can’t produce the intensity. Workload drops. Why we’re running out of carbohydrate, we don’t have

we don’t have the capacity to get enough back in. So we have to start utilizing fat as more of a fuel source. What does that mean? Well, if we’re doing that, requires more and more option, it takes a longer time to break down to get the same energy requirement. So our intensity has to drop. So you feel not too bad. You just have that that sensation of just can’t keep going at the same pace I was before. That’s probably the other side of it. When you get that fueling wrong more so from an underfueling perspective, rather than the over, but then it also comes down to like, well, what was the combination? And you point out there like taking sports drinks, gels, like those who can, like you ask most athletes, like that typically go, gels and fluids is a bit easier. And yeah, the more simple the source or the more liquid, I guess, if you want to put on a scale of solids through the liquids, more liquid, typically the

easier it is to get down. But I mean, some athletes can take bars and solids. That’s great. What’s within that? Even in the more highly or the easier stuff to get down, like fluids and gels, like what’s the mix? The classic one that’s been around for a number of years at most to be aware of is, well, a bit of research showed that 60 grams of glucose was all we can really absorb in an hour. So how do I get 80 or 90 and will I have to use something like a fructose or a different, like a different method of transporting that carbohydrate or a different kind of carbohydrate, which is where we start to see the multidections of sucrose, like different combinations, these two to one mixes in gels now. But positive in that regard, we can get more in. Negative, like if you’ve got an intolerance to fructose, gels that have a high amount of fructose in them are going to be no good. Like, so there’s this, there’s a lot of individuality that has to come

into play here to get that fueling aspect right. And as we mentioned before, I mean, like that’s where some of the testing can come into it to understand, well, how much do you actually need to dial in the amount of fuel to put back in, which makes it then a little bit easier to navigate that, like it can help prevent you from significantly overfueling. Or if you need a lot of carbs, well, what is actually the best method? What ratio for you is going to be a little bit better? What sits best in your guts practicalities, like some guys might want to go all fluids, but if you’re in an Ironman, you’re on the bike and you can only carry maybe two, maybe a third bottle, is that going to be enough of your own customized nutrition to get you through the bike leg? Or are you going to have to pick up on course and how does that change the dynamic? So that individual aspect plays a big role in terms of then getting that right. And as a result, we’ve

got all these factors laid out so many more. You can see why a lot of athletes do often get it wrong. Yeah, exactly right. There’s just so many different factors, right? So how do you recommend someone figure out what works for them? So obviously the testing, I want to talk about how you do the testing in a moment, but how would you recommend that someone say in training, I guess to figure out what what they can hold, what what tastes good, what they can keep down, that sort of thing. Well, the obvious thing is you have to practice what you’re about to race with, at the very least at an equal amount in the exact nutrition. Like four, six weeks before, ideally, so the latest it’s like you should have a couple of times in your training gone out, practiced exactly what the race nutrition is going to look like because you’ll find out really, really quickly in a training session if that’s going to work or not. The number of times I’ve had

conversations where an athlete and it might not even been their own foal in terms of I lost a gel out the back of my pocket, coming off the bike and so I got onto the run and I had to pick up a different brand on course and I had no issues in training and then on the day I just had a gastrointestinal upset because the gel was a different brand, it was a different mix. So something like that can be a bit of an issue. So going and practicing it like anything else in your acts, like you practice your swim bike run, you go and practice your transitions, you practice being aero, like those things we need to practice, but you need to practice what does your nutrition look like because then you can also you’ll get a pretty good feel of what feels about right. You don’t have to initially go and completely race your whole race four weeks out to then go oh it’s the exact intensity I’ve done, what was that like it some practicalities involved as

getting it close to but for the most part you’ll have a pretty good idea of well can I tolerate like 10 gels across a three hour ride for example you’ll know pretty quick because you get pretty sick pretty quick. This sits with it a bit but if it’s constantly an issue of okay after the seventh gel I have issues but anything seven gels or less I don’t okay maybe the additional source of carbohydrate has to come through fluids. So there’s a bit of trial and error of what your body responds to, tolerates what you like things like flavor fatigue are big like you want to do this a couple of times but don’t use your favorite gel all the time because then when you get to race day like if you’re sick of it by the before you even start probably not going to want to take it in like how do you respond to caffeinated gels versus non-caffeinated gels is a good example. Some people don’t have really any difference, some people find

they get a different response when you add caffeine into their mix. So like first and foremost go out train practice it start pretty cautiously so I’d probably if you’re doing this practically with no data inside it’s like I’d start on the lower side take a little bit less than you think train through train through and you can gradually sort of raise that and sort of see where that limit is of okay I’m probably tipping the limit of feeling a bit sick here versus like well what do I need and you typically going to find a pretty good mark. Like often you find most people are going to be pretty okay pending the type of event like we want to use iron man as an example most people should be pretty okay somewhere between 70 to 90 grams an hour and this is regard like if we’re taking in most people’s body size like that that all plays a factor most males in particular going to be like 70 to 90 you’re probably going to be okay as an

amateur. It’s still a broad range and that’s why you just need to go and do a bit of trial and error if you don’t have any data. If you do have the data though then it’s easier because we can pinpoint well what are we trying to raise that as an intensity well what does that mean as a grams of carbohydrate being used per hour as an example so that it’s a little bit more plug-and-play to narrow that target or even start looking at we know and people here all the time it’s like well the pros are using 120, 130, 140 grams an hour potentially or higher well okay there’s a reason for that because they’re writing average or normalised powers of like 320 watts for 90 k like it’s it’s significantly greater when the average amateur can cold so there’s an added energy expenditure in that most of us who are writing mid to low 200 as an example in in a 70.3 probably don’t need to be fueling at 120 grams an hour you just probably not expending that much

energy so well there’s a way that maybe we could keep the energy expenditure down by just focusing on a different part of our performance but baseline point is like you just have to go and practice it and then probably the second part to that is once you get a bit of a strategy and you go okay I reckon this is going to be pretty good let’s say that was 80 grams an hour the one I like to do is go out a couple of times with some more difficult sources than what you’re going to take on race day so training session might be instead of taking all my stuff through gels and fluids like I’m going to do on race day I’m going to try and do a couple of those gels and some of that fluids as some solids so maybe take some bananas with you or bars choose whatever might be not with any intent to use them on race day but just to get you a little bit a little bit more comfortable with some gut tolerance whether it has a significant effect or not it’s a bit

debatable which was but arguably it’s like most of the anecdotal evidence is most people go out they train with a bit more difficult source body gets a little bit better or they feel a little bit better at breaking it down and take and keeping it down so that when they take the gels and the fluids it’s like this feels nice and easy I can get it down it’s not an issue on race day and the icing on the cake to that would be if you’re going to race at 80 grams an hour if you could train maybe at 85 or 90 grams an hour a couple of times just to give you a taste of that harder stuff you then go back on race day and you race a little bit lower you’re pretty good there’s sort of some practical ones you can use before you get into the details of testing and what about how regularly you should be taking it in do you have a sort of rule of thumb does it differ for people what’s that timeline look like yeah it’s going to differ it’s going

to differ a little bit and then ultimately it’s going to differ a bit based on the source you’re taking in so something like a like if you’re going solids and bars of course they’re going to take a bit longer to break down so you’re clearly not going to have to take it in as frequently like you probably don’t need to put a bar a power bar for example down every 20 minutes you’d make yourself sick really quick typically gels like again pending the race and how much you’re trying to get back in and what the size of the gel is like the precision like 90 gram gels now like the massive ones you might you might want to take a third of that every half hour for example like that that might work often like we tend to say gels sort of every 20 to 30 minutes is a pretty typical window for most athletes are pretty comfortable with fluids is kind of a floating one of it plays a bit into your hydration so

how much fluid are you taking on is probably going to be a little bit linked to how thirsty you feel as well

some days you might be taking more fluids more regularly other days you might take bigger bigger blocks of fluid like every 30 to 40 minutes tip it like something like a gel like if you worked off a strategy of I’m going to take it roughly every 30 odd minutes in a race as an example probably isn’t going to be too much of an issue it’s then more looking at like well what’s the big picture like if I’m going to be on the bike for four four or five six hours have a long or I’m out there running for three hours four hours whatever might be what is my total energy requirement likely to be what do I need to get overall to kind of manage that deficit and then ultimately like how much do I need to put in an hour to kind of keep me in the range once you get that like and this is where the testing is useful it’s like now you can start to go well that does probably mean a gel every a gel at least every 40 minutes and so you can now go okay

if a gel’s got 24 grams you can start to calculate it out and work out that spacing but then the individual plays like if you’re if you’re feeling like you’re needing a bit of extra fuel like you’re going to start a fade a little here back into the back end of Iran or whatever it might be like top yourself up like it’s probably a pretty clear sign no difference to when you see from a dehydration perspective if you feel thirsty drink like that that’s not that’s not a bad thing like your body’s telling you a needs more fluid so if you can tune yourself to understand that sort of change as well like you’re probably going to be able to adjust that on the fly but I I’ve never been a big fan nutrition or hydration wise of here is the exact you cannot deviate from every 20 minutes you have to take this gel every 20 but it’s like there’s a lot more play to that and what happens in the race circumstance that you need to be a little bit more

flexible with something as simple as aid stations like okay we know where they are in an Ironman course but we get to race day and there’s a howling headwind so it’s going to take you 10 minutes longer to get to that aid station you don’t want to run out of gels 20 minutes ago you still got another 10 minutes you now you got nothing to get through for half an hour till you get to the aid station and you’re like now I have to pick something up and it’s probably a bit late near you scrambling your best plan might have been great but it gets thrown out the window because of a headwind so like there’s there’s a little bit of back and forth so I always encourage a little bit of flexibility with that have a clear idea of where you roughly want to be but then it’s a case of be flexible with what happens on race day how it plays out and be flexible with okay if things go wrong well what’s my backup plan or if I lose a bottle what’s my backup plan

that how much am I going to pick up or how can I make that up or substitute it which that’s where I’ve always liked some of the brands that have very seamless nutrition like a good good example is like back when I think they’re still around performance was a thing it’s like on the the side of their gels and their like drink mix it was like the same combination so how it like can’t remember the exact numbers but like how many scoops of your drink mix meant it equal to gel etc like if you can know that kind of math and a lot of brands had that near but like if you know that kind of mass it gives you more of that flexibility when things go wrong to then make decisions on the fly to then either get back on track or or make up for something you’ve lost but for me from the psychological stress of I didn’t take a gel like my race is blown up like no yeah used to gel on the 20-minute mark and you took it on the 23 like it’s

it’s probably going to be pretty insignificant yeah absolutely and and what about with training sessions so is there kind of a with with training sessions let’s say it goes for an hour is that something that you should be fueling for and then if not what sort of point should someone start to take on some sort of nutrition with their with their training sessions depending on the duration because most people are probably swimming for I’d say 45 minutes to an hour some some people would then be going an hour to an hour 30 and then if you’re doing some probably more endurance based swimming or longer distance swimming you’ll have some sessions that are in the two hours possibly more if you’re training for you know doing a solid 8k to 10k session but what’s it what are your thoughts there with the duration of sessions and when you should start to take fuel on yeah I think it’s a really interesting one from a training perspective and definitely like there’s

there’s a little bit more noise around it I reckon particularly from what the Norwegian triathlon program’s doing like and they put it really well they talk about like a calorie budget so everything that we do is essentially governed by energy in versus energy out like so if you look at us like a swimmy a tibial swimming week of I don’t know if you had you’ll keep it simple if you swim every day of the week so seven days a week seven sessions within that you’re probably gonna have some sessions of the longer sessions of the shorter more intense less intense realistically like across that whole week there is there’s an amount of energy you are going to have to expend to get through all seven of those sessions as long as you are fueled up appropriately for that and can balance that out effectively you should get to the end of the week and like the calories that were expended were were pretty much met by the calories that you put back in

so where it starts to become interesting is some sessions you probably won’t have to feel you go and do a nice easy 30 40 minute sort of recovery swim cool you’re probably not going to need to take a lot there having said that if you had a like an hour and a half swim in the morning big long endurance set we just accumulating some volume you probably want to fill up within the back end of that if you had to jump back in the pool later that day and double up into a second session because there’s only so many opportunities for you to get that fuel back in okay it’s a low intensity you’re you’re not expending a lot at the time and you could probably make that up pretty well immediately afterwards by you jump in first thing in the morning you have a bit of a meal afterwards you’re probably okay but what we’re actually looking for there is the fueling during that session is probably actually just trying to get you ahead for the next one

where you’re going to jump in and do some hard hundreds fifties whatever it might be intensities up energy expenditures up so we’re not initially fueling for now we’re kind of fueling for that that future as well if you approach your week kind of like that you’ll start to see opportunities where it’s like yeah probably do need to maybe top up a bit more here you might get through and go yeah okay all I’ve got today is a an hour pretty easy tomorrow is going to be a rest day well yeah you can have more than enough time to fuel up off the back of that hour the rest of that day the rest of the following day big hard session on the following day after that you go okay I’m pretty topped up ready to go for it but I know this is going to be a big energy cost so what is then coming up after that do I now need to fuel in that big hard session for then the day after that but I think yeah that perspective of looking at the whole week and going

well I’m going to need fuel for everything here but where the more important sessions where I definitely need a lot where I’m going to be expending a lot more aka longer more intense typically and as a result you can start to play around with like a session leading into that probably need to take a little bit more having said that as well like you then look at some opportunities in the week where you’re like probably okay to be on pretty low fuel if I if I don’t have if I had a solid day yesterday I fueled up though have a kind of rest day and then I’m going into like an hour of just cruising like volume building aerobic k’s maybe some technique work you can potentially go into that session off of the back of a rest day where you’ve fueled up heaps you can then go to sleep overnight basically be 10 hours fast to jump in the pool to an hour and not have any issues fuel up afterwards and go so you can start to build this sort of undulation throughout the week and

plan for it in terms of so that kind of looks at less traditionally then often it would normally be where you fuel in your long sessions because you’re in there for a long time like you get past an hour you’re going to be start you’re going to be starting to need maybe a little bit anyway if it’s sort of less than 40 minutes you’re probably more often than not don’t need to take much or anything at all maybe tiny bits like from a sport performance perspective recommendation on nutrition typically it’s like anything less than 60 minutes most of the time we you don’t really worry about like if you want to take something it’s pretty minimal like you might like one that gets thrown around in different environments probably not the swimming side of things but like team sport would be like carbohydrate rinsing so if it’s a short intense game basketball you might not want to actually drink a lot of calories or eat a lot but you might just

swirl some Gatorade in the mouth and spit it back out and we actually get a little like sort of neurological stimulus from that that can aid a bit of performance we get out to 90 minutes okay you probably want to take a little bit two two and a half hours plus is more the length of session we’re looking at where it’s like you kind of have to be taking something now if you had a time trial pretty much as solid as you could go for 90 minutes

pretty fair to say by the end of that 90 you’re pretty much going to be out of carbohydrate so like that if the intensity is down you go a bit longer it’s like yeah I’m probably gonna have to fuel if the intensity is up but it’s a bit shorter yeah maybe I need a bit as well they’re the kind of levers we can start to pull but often anything really 60 minutes or less it’s kind of like there’s going to be a low need to put carbs in at the time but that doesn’t mean you don’t then finish the session jump out and don’t don’t take anything in for hours it’s like well you would just have to make sure you’re taking in something immediately post to top up what you expended but as I said before like if you’re doing like double training days like that’s probably the one that for me where I go a lot of athletes who do a session don’t take fuel during just try and top up afterwards and then get into another session might be missing out a little bit there

it might just be an opportunity get some extra fuel early bank that you’re still expending at the time finish that session have a bit of rest sure you can get some in but based on time pressures etc you might have have a huge amount of time get to the second session you just want to make sure that you’re meeting the requirements enough because it’s pretty easy when the case go up or volume goes up weight to weight most injurious athletes and it’s pretty easy to then start see start seeing the weight come down pretty quickly on the scales and really a lot of that is why I’m in a deficit typically like I’m taking in not enough calories for what I’m expending

which if you’re trying to get the weight down not too bad if you’re trying to maintain performance and in the session and you don’t really want the weight down well clearly we’re not putting enough back in so are we missing an ability to push harder in those sessions because you don’t have the fuel to do it maybe yeah yeah it’s I think in swimming in particular it’s like helping the tourists for not really fueling within sessions and I’m guilty of that as well and

towards the end of a session if you are trying for an hour and a half and you’re doing some pretty solid work in there yeah you’re likely to start to fill it in that last 15 to 20 minutes but yeah it’s just something that I think because we’re in the pool we haven’t really got you do have options to fuel but it’s just something that’s probably less considered than it is for the running or the or the riding I think so it’s I’ve told this on the podcast quite a few times but every year we do 100 hundreds we do a 10k swim prior to Christmas and it’s only been the last two three years that I’ve actually fueled properly and I’ve gotten faster through that 100 hundreds because I’ve kind of loosened up gotten into the groove and I’ve got that fuel to to use whereas 10 years ago when we were doing that I would fade so hard in those last 30 100s and it’s all no surprise because I’ve I’ve had probably 30 grams maybe 40 grams of carbs an hour when it really had to be

probably twice that so yeah just that is a realization that came really late to to me but in hindsight it’s just so obvious but it’s just one of those things that I’ve never really considered because it wasn’t you know with swimming it’s lots of intervals our events are very short but the training sessions are often quite long so I think it’s just something as a as a kid we never really considered a whole lot of it was are you drinking enough but not really about the fuel side of it yeah and that that’s where like 100 hundreds it’s a great example of like it’s probably an extreme end of no one’s really going out doing that session as a regular session but you think about that principle of you get to that same point you feel like you’re starting to fade from a training perspective if you get into that point in training sessions and you feel like you’re starting to fade just think about the the difference of well if I can prevent my if I can prevent that

fading effect or enhance my ability to maintain the quality through that back end of the session

logically it has to have a better training stimulus doesn’t it it’s like if there was if you get through or 100 hundreds out of that or you get through 60 or 70 of them pretty good and then you start fading in the last 30 if that was actually a training stimulus as the example I go imagine the difference consistently if you were able to hit those extra 20 even extra 20 or 30 typically 30 of those efforts more consistently all the way through like because you’ve got the energy to do it well if you were then applying that to a race circumstance we had to be on do at 10k or or you were racing if your race was 100 hundreds as a race quickly could then it’s kind of like or as consistent as you could you go I’m going to be better serve because I’ve got better training stimulus because I’m not fading I could keep the same pace up for another 20 reps which means the muscular endurance component has got a far greater stimulus like we’re influencing these other factors

as well and that’s the important bit so if you’ve got the fuel there your training quality typically when that volume is up there it’s just going to be a bit higher and if any any way we can get your training quality higher largely is going to mean we’re going to recover like if you’re going to recover better from that you’re probably going to perform better off the back and I’d even say too probably without the sports as well but for swimming you’re going to maintain your form and your technique a lot better because you can hold those positions and hold that technique which is going to be training training better technique but on the other side of that too is when you do fatigue and you might be rotating more and you’re dropping your arm and you’re compromising some of those positions so that can lead to injury as well so I think it’s got benefits outside of what you mentioned as well

yeah definitely now just in terms of the like the testing where should someone start so someone who’s an endurance athlete whether that’s long distance swimming or triathlons long distance running what would you say would be necessary things for them to do if they are considering their their fueling as in when they come to someone like you what are what are those couple of tests that you think this is what you need to do

this podcast is proudly brought to you by form smart swim goggles the smart swim too is the next generation of forms 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 sight 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 peaks 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

yeah so there’s kind of like the way we sort of split it up is for the most part you need you need pretty long periods of time to assess like specific intensity so we’ve identified as like we really want at least sort of five minutes at a particular intensity so often that can look a bit like a step test like traditionally where we looked like things like VO2 max you know one minute or three minute step tests and things like that you probably want a bit longer time to steady state to look at it we sort of provide that as a bit of a starting point for most amateur athletes in particular if we’re looking really at the refined end though I go for the elite and pro side of things you can go much longer and you can be as much you can kind of get as specific as you like in terms of and we have a discussion with guys around do we want to come in and do half an hour of race intensity or do we want to get you on the trainer for like we’re discussing this

the other day with guys like do we want to get you on the trainer for three hours like not put anything on and then we’ll start assessment at the end of that three hours because we’ve put you in a very specific state so like you can go quite extreme with that I guess the the purpose is well what are we trying to look for

but then it’s also like we’ll practicalities I mean not everyone’s got the time to be able to come in ride say ride for three hours on the bike at race intensity and then be able to go and assess what is their fuel utilization look like at the end of that so we sort of look at a bit of like a five-minute step test go very gradually in intensity not trying to get you to max at all like as I mentioned right at the start that fat carb contribution really kind of is only important to us until about well until we get what a we call a value of one as a respiratory quotient so that would indicate 100% carbohydrate that pretty much lines up with most people’s threshold so that like that traditional like 40 to an hour so anything above that 100% carbohydrate so it’s it’s kind of like it’s not really relevant to us we want everything from below that to look at that percentage split so yeah we’ll put some on the bike say five minutes at something really low

maybe like 100 watts and then every five minute blocking like over 20 or 30 watts very gradually until we get up to that that’s what a threshold point call the test there because that gives us more than enough scope to look at those refined intensities but then where I see these working really effectively is doing this is as part of that lead-up preparation so you might have six or eight or so weeks before a key event you’ve got a pretty good idea of where you’re going to be sitting like it there might be some added little fitness you might gain on the top but we’re not talking you’re going to be 20% better in that time you might be a couple of percent better over that last six weeks

so a good example would be from a triathlon sense like on the bike okay you’re pretty we’re pretty confident based on your training based on all of your other data and some assessment we might have done previously at the start of your prep it’s pretty clear you might be able to hold roughly between 200 let’s call it 220 to 250 watts throughout the Ironman like that that’s kind of the range you’re going I reckon it’s somewhere there let’s try narrow it in this is where that this testing becomes really useful because then we can look really specifically at well what do you like at 200 what do you like at 220 what do you like at 240 what do you like at 260 that there is going to be very clear as to the energy requirement the fat versus carb utilization at each of those intensities to then also make a clear picture of 200 watts yeah like you might be 70 30 split in favor of fat utilization awesome like he’s super effective you get the 220

it’s like yeah it’s still pretty good you got a 240 watts and now it’s kind of 70 30 the other way like that’s a bit of a break point for you okay pretty clear that if you’re going to try and race on that limit of 240 to 50 is that doable from a carbohydrate utilization maybe maybe not whereas say 220 could be really effective like based on how many grams an hour you’re utilizing what’s like armetry numbers let’s say it was like 120 grams an hour you’re using it at that intensity 110

a lot of people can sort of put that back or get close to putting that back in especially on the bike so you go we could kind of be not net zero completely because you’ll never be but pretty close to minimizing how much we’ve actually expended or got left by the time we’ve expended and put it back in by the end of the bike you go up that stage up 20 30 watts it’s like well now this is becoming unrealistic for us in terms of what we can carry how much we can actually put in and tolerate so

looking at that at that timing as I said like six to eight weeks then gives you that scope to take that information and as we mentioned before go and practice it and go and actually say well how does this work practically what do I have to carry with me how much how often you can plan out that does that now mean it’s 20 30 40 minutes apart those gels or so it gives you that ability to go and play with it we’re still enough time before race day to still tweak and refine some of that that individual adjustment or that that sort of trial and error aspect that you have to do with some parts of it at least we’ve narrowed the gap really really close to go this is pretty much where we’re at

go and jump in training sessions see how that plays around then we can make some further adjustments so then you’re not going straight into a race off oh well we tested we tested on Monday and I was feeling a little bit fatigued because I hadn’t fully finished my taper yet like oh okay Nick said I’d probably need to take about 85 grams now but I’ve been training at 60 races on Sunday the first time I’m going to do it is race day terrible idea so that that’s where I sort of see that part of it working really effectively the bonus of our new equipment though is like at the beginning of a preparation you could still assess that to then have a look at well what has changed over a training block so over a 12 week block at 220 watts have we become less reliant on carbohydrate as a result of our significant increase in aerobic form or fitness like how is that that profile slight slightly shifted you can get some insights there and we can get some of that

little bit of insight from our

typical testing protocols that we do when we look at things like VO2 max like we’re still assessing that covered off so production in the background it’s just most accurate when you get those longer periods to let it really stabilise and steady statement intensity and and ultimately that’s what you’re doing on race day like most of these events we’re talking two and a half three hours four hours plus you’re not going to be very volatile in your intensity it’s it’s going to be pretty consistent pretty constant so we want to lock in and get a really accurate representation of where you’re out there so yeah there’s no ways you can do it but the the way we’re finding is going to be quite effective and practical to then come in do a session and get some pretty close numbers is is doing something like a five minute little step test to then get some get some more clarity and really zone in and I think that’s that’s an important one to remember here is like

we’re not we’re not necessarily claiming to be able to 100% be like bang this is the number this is exactly what you need to take and it’s going to be foolproof it’s not like it’s it’s narrowing narrowing the focus as close as we can because we understand that there are so many other little variables like hot conditions most people expend more calories in hot conditions so we can talk about these numbers great for a Melbourne based race but if you then head up to Cairns later in the year or the next year and go on race and try and utilize that exact combination of numbers it probably is going to be slightly different because you’re utilizing more just because it’s hot like so we it gives us that ability to narrow it in and eliminate some of the big error

that subtle refinement still is a bit of the art behind it of how it works for you and actually like okay do we need to go five five grams up five grams down like is it more bottles less bottles more gels less gels like that type of stuff is then you just have to kind of work with the numbers to then get to well what is the exact outcome for you because that the numbers on paper could look very similar athlete ABC but then what that translates to on course on race day could look a little bit different because of those individual differences and what about a swimmer who maybe listen to this and they’re not not doing triathlons but they’re into the longer distance from being how how does the testing apply to them so you said it’s on the on the bike does that still apply like you’re looking at you’re looking at heart rate and then how many carbs they’re burning at a certain heart rate like what’s how’s that work for swimmers yeah it’s it’s an interesting one

because it it’s it’s just difficult to test right so the the optimal scenario would be fine for us to find a way that we could test in the water which most of the text not really water friendly but like where we’ve done a bit before with particularly some of the open water swimmers on the bikes probably the getting into the lab and looking at some things on the bike as much as it’s not exactly the same you can then have a look at well there’s going to be some similarities around well what’s maybe a heart rate response or your total energy expenditure what does that sort of break down to the major difficulty you’re always going to find from a swimming perspective of some of this testing unless you can specifically test at a pool or in the water or at the very least on some form of swimming erg so to speak like I’ve seen them you were saying and like that’s the pool hand pool handle things that that look a bit ridiculous but like that’s at least closer to mimic it

that like the specificity aspect is is pretty key in terms of like how well you move through the water because swimming is a really great example right similar no different to I guess cycling aerodynamics where you move through the water really well your energy cost is probably going to be a little bit lower for the same speed as someone who moves through the water poorly so that then plays into total calories which plays into fat best carb percentage and ultimately grams of carbs per hour I’ve played around a little bit with some more portable devices like that don’t measure the carbon dioxide but oxygen consumption at the pool and I think that’s potentially one further that I want to keep looking out to get some comparisons of well what does that oxygen consumption look like from a swimming perspective it’s a bit tricky and it’s a bit estimated but you can get kind of close but then how do we take some of those numbers and compare that to

say how the same person would react in a bike test look at the oxygen consumption the energy the energy cost and try and overlay and match that a bit to get it a bit closer that’s definitely something I’d like to be exploring a bit more in the future I think that’s kind of the practical way to look at it I mean you’re going to get a good indication but like like I said like the difference the difference between say 160 beats per minute in the pool and 160 beats per minute on the bike for the same person could actually still have quite a bit of variance in how to utilize and fuel again talking about a sport that’s very low body dominant versus up body dominant and that specificity is going to throw it out a touch so that’s where it does like in all honesty it does become hard like is it something that yeah if we had unlimited budget it would be nice if we could have an endless pool or a or an ability to be able to test guys in the water

because I think that would be that would be perfect but also the reality I think as well from a swimming perspective

you can ask this probably better for me it’s like

for most people other than if you’re going and swimming like an English channel right is it fair to say that like most swimming events most even like long distance swimming events would be two hours and less

yes

yeah I’m thinking like a a 10k swim which is kind of the start of what you consider a marathon swim for most people that’s the elite guys will do that just under two hours yep so most people will take yeah three probably somewhere in the sort of three hours there I’d think so but yeah most most of the events would be would be pretty well under that two hour two hour mark unless they’re starting to do marathon swims yeah and so that’s where I go like the marathon swims become significantly different but those most of those events under sort of like two hours as we said before like you’ve probably got about 90 90 to two hours of carbohydrate at a solid intensity if you’re swimming at a pretty low intensity relative to be sustainable enough you go you might want to top up 30 40 grams an hour maybe 50 grams an hour if you feel like you need a bit more you probably get away with that if you went higher like if you’re a bigger bigger athlete

you feel like maybe you don’t move through the water as effectively as someone else like you just sort of powering along you might want to go a bit higher to 60 or 70 but

within that that’s kind of like if across that two hour period like if you took say four typical gels so that’s that’s going to be like 24 25 grams an hour and maybe you had a way of getting some liquid carbs in like if you could get 250 mils down of a carbohydrate mix in a bottle partway through that or even across the event you get through a whole 500 mil bottle of carbohydrate you might get another 40 to 60 there okay that would typically for me probably be more than enough and again the time duration is your big saviour so like unless you’re going to go swim for six hours like that that’s where it probably becomes far more relevant to really be pumping up really specific amounts but if you if you’re swimming for say like an hour hour and a half solid distance major things have made sure you got enough fuel in you before you start and then if you’ve got an ability to take something during it’s going to be useful probably no different to

like an olympic distance triathlete like it’s for most people it’s too too in a bit out it’s like you can get away with taking a couple of gels but you don’t probably don’t need to plan it as as specifically because of the duration requirement like you might be expending a lot but the duration requirement dictates that you’ve probably got enough to get you through that kind of event but yeah I mean optimal scenario would be like if you’re doing something longer like that’s definitely you got four or five six marathon swim type stuff six hour plus like yeah you you probably want to be having a look at like what are you specifically utilising at different intensities as best you can because there’s just much more risk of you running out of fuel

yeah definitely and I mean I can I know a lot of and coach quite a few people who are doing those longer longer swims and it’s just yeah something that they’ve got a they’ve got a really consider and yeah I was curious about the testing and the relevance of it if they’re they’re on the bike and whether that just like looking at the heart rate and the oxygen consumption how how well that ties in but as you said it’s it’s very it’s quite a different sport being on the bike compared to swimming so and then you’ve also got the factor of sometimes they’re in cold water sometimes they’re in in warm water and that can obviously play a part of it too so yeah and it’s it’s kind of like you know what’s the you know how how does someone swim fastest like it’s just so different right it’s like it’s why you come get a swim analysis because what you need to work on is very different than another person same with the nutrition requirements so yeah a lot of different

different factors there and just to sort of finish off here I mean you’ve you’ve done what you’ve done for a very long time work with a lot of different athletes what any sort of lessons or things that you’ve come to learn over the last couple of years where is common knowledge for you and you’re like well everyone would know this right but when you see someone who’s sort of brand new and you’re talking about this stuff they’re like my god I can’t believe like I never knew this before and I know I’ve talked about a few things already but does anything else spring to mind? in terms of like fueling specifically or or anything else that comes to mind as well yeah I think like if you if you’re talking sort of brand new like you make the assumption that we’ve sort of got like an amateur there and I go most most of the time most people are getting into it think a lot of the stuff that we do and I I do in particular is exclusively pro and elite at lowest

at lowest level if you like top and age group and it’s like well no like the same principles we get from what the pro and elite guys do we’re looking at maybe can I find half a percent so

great example is take some of the best swimmers in the world like

the one that always sticks in my mind when I talk swimmers always Michael Phelps because I grew up watching him and unbelievable but you go yeah there’s probably a few things we could talk to him about about swim technique but the end of the day is the fastest bloke on the planet like maybe he’s doing something pretty well oh like we might be able to find we want to find half a percent but like he’s already right up there the bonus of working with somebody who’s brand new is a lot of the stuff that we do to find that half a percent in that top end athlete will give the brand newbie amateur like 15 20 percent because it’s easy wins right we’re looking at on your side the technique aspect I go like yeah teach someone to swim properly like is it such a fundamental part of the sport to make them swim better like we can talk about training sessions and zones and all that but like if you can’t swim you can’t swim triathlon and that no different like

cycling wise the number of amateur athletes who go who come in and like we put them through so testing we’re like gee you can punch in pretty good numbers and then you look at their race time and then you look at a photo of their race and you’re like on the bike

they move they’re like their movement and flexibility is pretty good but they just have never even considered well what could I do to be a bit more aero because I actually punched them pretty I can punch them good power and I feel okay and I don’t have any issues in a race pretty okay but like they didn’t even consider that aerodynamics was something they have to worry about like choice of skin suit like how many of us as amateurs in the past you go I’ll just get the one that’s on sale it’s like well if you spent the extra 50 bucks like that could have actually been a time saver of a minute two minutes like so like things like that I think not like making sure that even as the amateur is like you’re not necessarily showing away from some of these things that seem complex and sports science he’s like oh it’s just for professionals because quite often like some of the little things that we can take from that those learnings will then make big differences

like number of times we’ve seen people have just got into running or triathlon and they come in they do a test and then six months based on those zones that they’ve got they just implement really a simple training strategy but they’ve refined it because of the numbers in the lab they come back in six months time they’re miles ahead like it’s that’s the type of thing that we’re just trying to help accelerate for you by using these principles like there’s a reason the things we learned from elite athletes are useful it’s because like they’re the best in the world and they’re like we’re finding ways to improve them if if those little things improve them there’s probably parts of that that we can take and implement to the newbie who is then going to get significantly better as a result like it’s not going to turn you into a pro overnight and we some of the really refined stuff probably still we go okay we might not use some of that because that’s a bit advanced

or complex particularly on the training side of things like I’m not going to ask a brand new athlete to go and do like fight like 30 seconds at 500 watts on a bike like straight out the gate like yeah probably going to work our way to that but like some of the basic stuff is like just keeping a zone two like he keeping it and in a zone two that is actually your zone two not just one that Garmin told you it’s like well we actually assessed it and he is the marker and the threshold well you go and implement that for three months you’re going to be significantly better off so like that is kind of an overall principle is the way I approach it like it’s no like real one thing it’s it’s just embracing the fact that yes sport sport science is is far bigger than just Olympic level world championship type stuff it’s like yeah plays a big role there but what we can learn from those people is is just as important to then apply to someone who’s

getting into it for the first time because if you can if you can train a little bit more effectively I can guarantee you if you’re an amateur who’s got to work a nine to five and you go I can’t do 300 k’s a week like a professional marathon runner can but I can do 50 k’s a week well how do we make that 50 k’s as effective as possible so that you can still rock up to work and not be exhausted and then get home and see kids and not be exhausted like there’s other factors at play like best in the world sometimes all they have to worry about is wake up, train, eat, sleep go again yeah but yeah that’s where that the sports science side just helps dial it in a little bit you don’t have to go overkill but it’s just like taking those little bits and just really like trying to learn the little tips and tricks that’ll make you significantly better at your level with the realistic expectations it’s like okay yeah we can probably gain a fair bit out of this

but it’s not going to mean I was not going to turn me into a pro athlete and I don’t have to be a pro athlete to go and do it but all I’m trying to do is find ways to get me better like if you look at like that that’s that’s the best way to approach it yeah I remember listening to like yesterday the day before I was listening to a guy who used to be a personal trainer and he was talking about how over like the like 10 years you know he’d just get people in the gym they wanted to lose weight and you know for them it’s just like it feels like it’s a really big thing but he’s like well look if you just yeah if you eat less eat better food start moving more it’s like it’s just it’s really straight forwards right and so he’d have thousands of different people come in get these results and he’s just like yeah like obviously that’s gonna gonna happen but for that person it can feel like you know really really big deal kind of thing and like it’s hard for them

to achieve the results that they see with others but I think the benefit that like we see working with a lot of different kinds of people it’s like well if you implement these things it’s like it’s gonna it’s gonna happen it’s like it’s not surprising if you follow these these steps and have good good fundamentals and just follow the basics and you might not know what the basics are right now but it doesn’t mean that you can’t you can’t learn them and take them on board and yeah you know give it enough time with following those things and you’re gonna you’re gonna see the results it’s just not not a surprise anymore so that’s it’s really good point and and for those that are listening I mean you’re you guys are primarily based in in Melbourne how can people get in touch with you go through the tests that we’ve talked about if they’re looking to perhaps work on their their fueling or just know what training zones to stick to and that kind of thing

yeah so easiest way to get in contact my email nickatmetsperformance.com you can find us on social media so atmetsperformance Instagram from the easiest or or on my personal account but yeah it’s like click as an email get in touch yes we are primarily based in Melbourne we have thought and maybe at some point we’ll try and get interstate a little bit but it’s just difficult with a few other commitments but but yeah get in touch even if you are interstate and you’re able to get access to maybe to a university nearby and and do some testing more than happy to to tee up something online to have a chat through the data because like sometimes just the way that it is explained or or broken down can be the key difference like whether you’re in our specific lab and do the test like says a lot of people who’ve reached out about setting up their own labs whether it’s overseas interstate and it’s sort of like well running the test is the easy bit but like how do you know

all this data stuff it’s like a lot of it just takes time in terms of we spend a lot of time looking at a lot of data over the years but but breaking down that data and understanding how it applies is the key bit so even if you’ve got some data you’re able to go to somewhere that’s that’s not us and you want us to have a look at it like yeah feel free to get in touch as well because like that can that can be a really good way especially for anyone who’s listening overseas I’ve had that a few times go and get a test and then get in contact with us and we can help break it down because as well we know sometimes you go to a university it’s like they’ll do the test what you did as a research study but it’s not really their job or or role to explain it because they’re they’re worried about just the data collection like that’s cool yeah if you’re able to if you want to send through some data and us to have a look at it yeah more than happy to do that

but if you are in Melbourne yeah coming up to the lab I’d love to get people in there to test it and keep collecting some more data on our end to keep understanding how different people respond I think that’s going to be a key one for us over the next little while is continuing to say well what patterns can we find and different kinds of athletes or similar athletes and then how can we further utilize some of that data to to make better decisions on our end as well

Fantastic Nick thanks again for being on the podcast I said we’ll go for 30 or 40 minutes but as always we know how to go over we’ve got lots to talk about so I appreciate being on the podcast again thanks mate all good thanks for having us Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast If you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlessswimming.com

The post The Science Behind Swimming Faster For Longer with Nick Jankovskis appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

I’ll share some helpful tips from the clinics and sessions we run that will improve your swimming speed and efficiency on today’s podcast. I’ll also discuss some new equipment I’ve purchased that has improved my strength, made swimming more enjoyable, and boosted my overall performance.

00:18 Introduction

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

View our freestyle clinic schedule around Australia:

Use code SQUAD when joining the Effortless Swimming membership to get 50% off your first month:

Get 15% off our 8-week Faster Freestyle course by using the code 8week15

Try PILLAR today, head to pillarperformance.shop and enter code EFFORTLESS for 15% off, or for any North American listeners, enter the same code at TheFeed.com.

Watch the episode on YouTube:

We know if you’re doing any sort of open water swimming or triathlon, your kick is more there to support you and balance you and not to provide much propulsion. However, your kick can also be there as a can kind of work against you sometimes before that, I just couldn’t support myself. I wasn’t strong enough to do it. So in the space of about four weeks, I’ve managed to to make pretty big gains in that in the upper body strength. And I’m starting to feel it now in my swimming. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

Welcome to episode number 340 of the Effortless Swimming Podcast. Today is a solo episode. I’m going to talk about a couple of things that I’ve seen work well for people in some clinics and some sessions that I’ve run that might give you a few ideas of where you could find additional speed and efficiency in your stroke. I also want to talk about some things that I’ve bought recently as well that have helped me in terms of strength, enjoyment of swimming or just generally with my swimming. And then I want to talk about some things that we’ve got planned for 2024, 2025 with Effortless Swimming and with the business. So we’ll talk a little bit about that as well at the end. Now, in terms of some things that I’ve seen recently at clinics. So I’ve had a few people who are actually breathing too early in their freestyle. So the head is going before the rotation of their shoulders. And I think it sometimes comes from when people making sure

they don’t want to breathe too late because that’s a really common thing as well. But if you turn your head too early, then it can actually throw the rest of your stroke out and make things a little bit awkward. So what I would aim for there and good timing of your breathing is turn your head along with the rotation of your shoulders as you go out to breathe and then bring it back with the rotation of your shoulders. Now your head is going to have to turn more than your shoulders because if you turn your shoulders to 90 degrees, well, it’s going to be too much, but you want to turn it at the same time to initiate it and then turn the head that little bit further to get the breath and then come back along with that shoulder rotation. So how to swim. I did a session with and he was breathing just way too early head was turning before the shoulders had gone and it was really impacting his ability to to get a good catch and

to keep things well aligned and straight and streamlined. So when he got their breathing in sync with the rest of his rotation, then everything just kind of came together. So that was a bit of a bottleneck for him that was stopping him from from progressing and achieving some of the other things that we were trying to do. So sometimes there’s a little thing in the strike like that that can actually be stopping some other things falling into place. So it’s always good to see or try and check what that might be and a good order to follow things in is so the five core principles that we have inside the membership like follow those along in terms of breathing want to get that right first then we can move on to head and body position and those sorts of things as well. Now another thing that I’ve seen recently as well is kicking now. We know if you’re doing any sort of open water swimming or triathlon your kick is more there to support you

and balance you and not to provide much propulsion. However, your kick can also be there as a can kind of work against you sometimes. So I did a session with a young kid. He was doing almost like a three beat kick. He was just doing a kick on one stroke and then this sort of two kicks on on the other stroke. So it’s kind of like a three beat kick and it was okay, but it wasn’t really working very well for him. So his upper body was looking pretty good. His his catch was quite good, especially on one arm. He had the right rotation. He was breathing well, but he just was lacking a little bit of connection through the stroke. And one thing that we saw was that his kick was was just not really connecting very well with the rest of his stroke. So what I had him do was try and do a more of a four beat kick and really get into the the tempo and the mantra of it. And for a four beat kick, you can sort of think of it

sort of two ways. It’s it’s typically going to be one kick on one leg was a one kick on one stroke and then three kicks on another. And so the tempo will the mantra in your mind can be one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. So that’s the timing of the kick. But there’s another way that you can think of that timing and I see it depending on the different swimmer. The other way that people will sometimes do it is it’s like a one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. So there’s that break in between because they’re only going to do one kick on one stroke and there’s going to be a bit of a delay or a pause while they’re kind of writing that out and then getting into the next stroke. So either one of those tempos for a four beat kick can work and it just depends on what what works best for you. Now I saw with this young kid that when he was going easy, anything easier than 80%, he had the one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four.

When he picked up the pace, it was a little bit more continuous. So it was the one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. So similar thing, but there’s basically a little bit less of a break after the three kicks there. So it’s a good thing to play around with and develop your your kick, especially if especially if you’re not doing as a typical six beat kick. If you know that in a wetsuit, you might have a two beat kick, maybe you do a four beat kick. It can be good to experiment with some of those things and just to find what works and actually found with him, he did 30 36.5 with a better kick for a 50 and he did 37 eight for the for his standard kick at the same effort and he actually took three less strokes with with the different kick as well. So we can see that the the result was was pretty positive. A second and 1.3 seconds difference for a 50 is a is a big improvement there. So it’s always good to just assess with the

kick and he said, I’m not kicking any harder. I’m not trying any harder, but it just feels like everything is much better connected and the rhythm is there and it’s a bit easier and you can see it when he was swimming. It was it was night and day between the two different ones. So that’s something that’s always good to check in with. Now, the next one is just in terms of what the things that make you tired. So if you’re relatively new and you feel like you get gassed out a lot quicker than what you should a lot quicker than what your general fitness should should allow. It’s usually from the way that you breathe kicking too hard and not feeling like you are relaxed and comfortable in the water. So it’s usually combination of those couple of things and I did a session with someone recently and he was kind of getting tired after 50 meters, sometimes 100 meters and generally fit guy, but was just struggling to push past

that 50 meter distance without needing a break at the end. So the first thing that we we did was just work on getting comfortable with the breathing. So what I noticed was he was breathing into hard and out too hard trying to take in too much air. So we just worked on smaller inhales smaller exhales. You don’t need to get that much air in to be to be feeling like you’ve got enough air like it just doesn’t have to be that much. The other thing was I got to do some sink downs. So it’s where go to the end of the pool. Take a breath in and then exhale everything. So there’s nothing in the lungs and you’ll find yourself sinking to the bottom of the pool. Once you’ve emptied the lungs, you jump up get another breath and then you exhale again and sink to the bottom and I’ll find that that can just get people to calm down and relax and just be okay with feeling like they haven’t got much air when they’re swimming as opposed

to that short and shallow upper chest breathing. The other thing I got him to do there was just to work on floating and feeling the lungs or the lungs support or provide the buoyancy. So your lungs are what fills with air. It’s like pushing a balloon down into the water. If they’re pushed down to the water, then they want to come come up. So by practicing just like a ball float where you’re you take a big breath in, you tuck into a ball, you hold yourself there. That way you’ll feel yourself floating at the surface of the water. No matter what your buoyancy profile is, no matter how tall you are, how short you are, everyone can float in that position. So I got him to do a little bit of that and just feel that support through the through the lungs and then we did a little bit of swimming where I had him just lean on his chest and practice just pressing that chest into the water, almost where your sternum is and

getting used to using that for that balance and support. Now what happened initially was that he was ducking or he’s pushing his head too deep as well as pushing his or leaning on his chest. So he found it hard to get a breath. So I just made sure that he the top of his head was just above the surface of the water as he was swimming while he was leaning on his chest and that made a lot easier for him to turn to breathe to the side and then come back down. So we worked on that. Then we also just worked on holding the right posture. So like Tracy Bowman talked about last week, it’s get your head away from your shoulders. We want that tall and that proud posture and that allowed him to just get out of his legs to take that effort out of the kick which he was doing too much of because then he had better balance in the water. So there’s much less of a need to be kicking hard. So going in that order of the breathing the posture

then can help with the legs rather than just thinking about trying to back off or be easier with the legs. And the last one is and I heard Dan Smith mention this. So Dan Smith, he’s featured in one of our one of our most watched videos on YouTube where he does a one minute 10 for a hundred meters, but it looks like he’s going at two minute pace. I was chatting to him recently and he was saying that like one of the one of the things he gets his swimmers to think about and he thinks about when he swims is when you’re about to start your stroke, your catch out in front. You want to be on that side. So let’s say you’re going to begin your right arm catch. You want to be on your right side, which makes sense. Then as you go through your catch and you’re about to begin your your pool as you’re coming under your shoulders. You want to start to rotate from there and then as you release out the back you’re going to be opening up through

the hips and releasing there. So you’re on one side to start you’re on the other side to finish. Now it seems obvious when you when you talk about it like that, but what I say with a lot of swimmers and I’ve been doing some follow up filming videos and some yes, some filming with with people who have come to clinics and I’ve seen it with it with a few of them where they’ve been on their side for too long through the stroke. So they kind of get stuck on their side and they’ve gone through their catch. They’ve gone through that like the power diamond when their hands past under their shoulders and then they start to rotate back but by then it’s too late and so their arm kind of gets stuck underneath them. They get this wriggle or the snaking through the hips and through the body and it really throws their timing out now. Conversely, I’ve also had a few swimmers who are doing doing it the other way where they’re starting to rotate too

early. So they’re on their side as they’re going to begin their catch. They start rotating back to the other side immediately. And what I was saying there was when I was looking at their front on view rather than being flat or back to neutral as their hand has passed underneath their shoulder. They were already on their other side which was too early. But if you look at any any really good swimming, you look at the footage that we’ve got of Andy Donaldson, Kim, Alburton, Dan Smith, you’ll see they’re pretty much back to neutral or close to it as their hands passing under their shoulder. They’re not already on that other side because if you’re on your other side you’re not really anchored in the water very well with your arm. So getting the timing of the rotation right can make a really big difference. So think about it as you want to be on your side as you’re beginning your catch that way you can anchor with that arm once you’re down in

the catch. Once you’ve anchored then you can start to rotate back to the other side and you’re on your other side as you release out the back with that hand. So getting that timing right is another one that I’ve seen quite a bit of lately and trying to get that dialed in as well.

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 consumers 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 Stubbulty Cook, Jan Frodeno, Ben Canute, Ash Gentle, Taylor Nib amongst the host of other well-known swimmers and triathletes. Where Pillar differs from other

micronutrition you may have taken before is both the quality of the types of magnesium and the tangible results that I see on my garment each morning. If you’d like to try Pillar today head to pillarperformance.shop and enter code effortless for 15% off. That’s effortless for 15% off all first-time purchases or for anyone in North America enter the same code at thefeed.com.

Now some things that I bought recently which have made a big difference to my swimming. The first one was is custom earplugs. So I used to use these $10 Zog’s earplugs which were okay, but I still got a lot of water in. I was always fiddling with them and it was just wasn’t very reliable. So I went to a place in Melbourne called ear lab and this isn’t sponsored or anything. I went to ear lab. They did a custom custom mold of my ear or both ears and then I just got some custom earplugs and they stay in without needing to have a cap over the top. So I don’t even need to wear a cap to keep these things in and they stop the water 99% of the water getting in so they’re really reliable and not only has that been great for in the pool but also in the ocean. So it’s pretty cold down here. It’s about 13 degrees 14 degrees Celsius in the water at the moment when I go for an open water swim and I used to hate that feeling of getting really cold water

in in my ears and you get this bone growth as well that kind of covers covers your ears so you can’t hear as well. That happens over time. So one thing I didn’t want to do was keep doing this cold water swimming without any ear protection. So getting some custom earplugs has made a massive difference to my enjoyment of swimming out in the open water but also just in training in the pool because I used to just really bug me where I’d get water stuck in there for half a day and it was never an issue when I was younger but the last three years four years it’s really become a bit of an issue. So some custom earplugs was was money well spent and they cost a few like couple hundred dollars but you know the amount of times I swim to me that’s been a good good investment. So I’ve actually recommended that to a couple other people and they’re getting some done as well. So depends if you have issues with water stuck in your ear but yeah these these ones are

great. Now the next thing that I’ve bought recently in this I bought this about a month ago is a chin up bar for just for home. So I got from base blocks. I got it’s called the big bar and it’s a chin up bar and it’s also got some dip bars coming off that as well. And I got that because on a recent recent podcast one of the guests was talking about how he started doing a lot of dead hangs from a chin up bar and I’d start to do a little bit of that I was already doing some chin ups and things like that I was getting a little bit stronger but not really progressing as much as I’d like. So I got a chin up bar for home and I got this this big bar and every day I’ll go out there a couple times a day in between analyzing videos or doing a video a YouTube video or doing a podcast and just go through a sequence of exercises and in the last four weeks I have made huge improvements on not only just overhead strength and on dead hangs and

chin ups but also progressing with some core exercises. So being able to hold on and then lift both legs up vertically to touch the bar and come back. I can do four or five of those now whereas before I couldn’t do couldn’t do any. The other thing I noticed was I went to the playground with my kids last week and this was the first time in my adult life where I’ve been able to actually go across the monkey bars before that I just couldn’t support myself. I wasn’t strong enough to do it. So in the space of about four weeks I’ve managed to to make pretty big gains in that in upper body strength and I’m starting to feel it now in my swimming. I did notice that I because I started doing more of this it was quite tiring and I was feeling pretty fatigued and tight through my not tight through my shoulders but just fatigued through my lats and back when I was going to training but I’m starting to get on the other side of it now where I’ve got

that base level of strength and now it’s starting to result in some you know some better times in the pool especially for shorter stuff 25s 50s and that sort of thing and hundreds as well. So I feel like I’ve kind of gotten slower over the last four weeks while I’ve had to build this strength and I’m turning up to training pretty fatigued and heavy but now I’m starting to come out the other end of that. So that’s been money well worth spending on a chin up bar for home. I didn’t want to secure anything to the wall because I just don’t trust my handyman skills to be able to do that. So getting this base belt this called the big bar from base box has been has been a really good investment. The next one is anti foggoggle. So I actually got sent a pair of these just pretty basic goggles but the person who sent them to me said like the anti fog on these is meant to be like 10 times 8 times or 10 times better than your standard pair of goggles.

It’s meant to last a lot longer and one of the things that really bugged me when I was going on these trips like to the Galapagos Islands to the Witsundays we’re doing these beautiful open water swims so much sea life and coral and things to see but my goggles would be quite foggy. That really irritated me. So he sent me some goggles and I took them to the Witsundays trip at the start of June which is up in Queensland doing some swims there and the visibility that I had with these goggles was amazing. They just didn’t fog at all and that was big contrast to the goggles that I’d normally wear and normally I’d get a pair of goggles and after 2 to 3 swims they would start to fog up fog up after 5 to 10 minutes. These ones I’ve worn how many times now? Probably 20 plus times if not more and they’re still as clear as they were on the day I got them and it’s just I love swimming in the pool. I love swimming in the ocean with them because I can just

see so much. So it’s been a massive difference with just again my enjoyment of swimming having these these fog free goggles that actually work. It’s the first time I’ve actually had goggles that have have actually lasted for more than a couple of swims. So I’m talking to the person who sent me these goggles and just seeing if we if I if we can do a deal there where I can get these goggles for cheaper and if we do like a big order and then we can get them cheaper for you guys. So I’ll keep you updated with that if you’re interested in it especially if you swim open water and you do like to kind of see to how to see what’s beneath you and see the bill is easier. I think it’s again well worth while we’re spending some money on these things. The fourth one is actually a magnesium product that when I went to Thailand last year one of the coaches who came on the trip Mitch he’s a close mate of mine. He gave me some magnesium powder

at night and I tried that because I normally have like magnesium tablets just from my supermarket. He gave me some magnesium powder from Pillar and like well man I slept like a log last night like I just feel like I’ve I’m rejuvenated in the morning. So I bought some of this magnesium powder and just started having this 30 minutes before bed and just started doing that a couple of weeks ago and it’s been terrific with just how I wake up in the morning feel refreshed. I feel like I’ve had a really deep sleep and I’m ready to go in the morning. So I actually contacted them and I said look this I love this stuff. Would you like to sponsor the podcast because I use it already and I think it’s a really good product and they’ve jumped on board. So depending on when you’re listening to this they’re a new sponsor of our podcast for the next couple of months. So if you want to try a good quality magnesium product then I’d recommend check these guys out.

I’ve found a big difference with it. So I’d highly recommend it and I approached them because I was already using the product itself.

Now the one thing that we’ve just started doing is I’ve just released the ES squad. So if you’re a member you will have already seen this but the ES squad each week I’m providing three workouts and there’s two different levels and level one is between one to two kilometers per session level two is between two to three kilometers per session and in the CS squad we’re just providing you with the workouts that you can take to the pool and follow along with. So if you’re not sure what you should be doing in order to get fitter and faster and improve your your stroke and your efficiency you can follow along with these workouts. Each month I’ve structured it as the first week is a test and technique week. So you’ll go through a bit of a test set on the first session and then you’ll go through two primarily technique based sessions which will focus on different aspects of your of your stroke and then the next three weeks within the month will build upon each week.

So within four weeks you got test and technique week then two, three, four you’re progressively building up on the sessions that you would do the week before and then we’ll sort of go back retest and start again each month and this sort of structure can really just help you obviously track your improvement and track your progression but it can also just help you build that that fitness and strength and knowing exactly what to do and what I wanted to make sure was clear on there is each of the workouts has not I wouldn’t say a lengthy description but I wanted to explain exactly what you should focus on for the drills and in each set because I find what some what a lot of sets or workout planning is is lacking is the description behind why you’re doing it what you should be focused on and what the what the goal is and so what I try and do if I’m ever coaching a squad or you’re running a session is make it clear on why we’re doing something

what the key things would be to actually focus on there and and how you can approach it and maybe what you should feel or what times and paces you should be should be doing. So that’s what I’ve I’ve done here with the ES squad so we’ve just released our first month what I’ve done if you listen to this you can go and try it I’ve set up a coupon code for podcast listeners put the code squad in when you go to join the effortless swimming membership that’ll give you 50% off the first month and that’ll bring it down to 16 US dollars for the for the first month there. So if you want to go and try out the ES squad go put squad in the check out page there if you want to try it and and join our squad because I find a lot of people have asked me what should I be doing in my workouts? How do I incorporate good workouts with working on my technique? We’ve taken care of that with these ES squad. So I’d love for you to try it get your feedback

and just going to continue to make these workouts better and more effective and just continue to build from there. And the the last thing is the camps that we’ve got planned for this year and next year. So one thing I really love to do is going away on trips and meeting new people and being able to coach people in these great locations and destinations. So next year we’ve got quite a few that will be running. There’ll be more details coming very soon and once I do have these camps available for booking I’ll let you know but so far we’ve got the Maldives and Thailand in September and October they’re fully booked at the moment so there’s just so you won’t be able to get on those but for next year we’re going to have a Galapagos trip in May and Olympic coach and New Zealand swimmer Gary Haring is going to run that trip and Gary and I have worked together for the last couple of years with our Maldives trips and our Thailand trips so he’s going to

he’s going to run that that camp over there and that I went on that trip this year in May one of the most amazing experiences that I’ve ever ever had. So if you’ve wanted to get to the Galapagos Islands and just see some of the like the the turtles their iguanas the seals the the sharks the fish absolutely amazing over there so I wanted to put that on again for next year so that that will be in or late April I think 2025 so I’ll have more details about that soon we’re going to run two trips in the Whits Sundays one will be our our normal camp where we’ll where you do two to three kilometers a swim we went there again this year amazing fish and coral and and sea life stingrays turtles so much stuff there and a beautiful location in Australia so it’s along the great great barrier reef there so we’re going to run one normal trip and then a distance trip as well so for anyone who’s training for events that are a bit longer 5K but probably more you sort of 10 to 10 to 20K

this trip will be for you and there’ll be a certain criteria that you’ll have to meet to be able to join this trip because there’s going to be quite a bit of swimming for this five or six day trip so you will want to have some K’s on the about and it’s probably going to be a minimum of a sort of 145 pace for a K so you need to be able to hold 145 for a kilometer to be able to join that trip so there will be some some qualifications there then later in the year we will have male lives Thailand and then one potentially two trips in in Europe so I know a lot of European listeners have has have asked if we’ll go over there so we’ll have one possibly two trips over there most likely for October potentially November and again we’ll have more details to come soon but we’ve got a big year of clinic of camps next year so if you’d like to join us on on any of those we will have those details coming out soon on our website so this has been a little bit of a sort of catch up episode but thanks

so much for listening when I first started this podcast I didn’t know who would want to listen and and how we’d go but that was over 10 years ago and now just the amount of people that I see at the pool or at clinics who say I listen to the podcast that means a lot to me so thank you very much for for listening and if you haven’t reviewed the show on Spotify or Apple iTunes that would mean a lot if you could because that helps more people see that people enjoy this podcast so that’d be a small favor I’d ask if you’re listening at the moment just to go and review the show and rate it if you haven’t already so thanks for listening I’ll see you all next week with another episode of the effortless swimming podcast thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast if you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com

The post 4 Freestyle Mistakes That Are Costing You Time And Energy appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

Join us on this episode as we sit down with Tracey Baumann, the co-founder of SwimMastery and author of ‘The Swim Mastery Way’. With over 20 years of teaching and coaching experience, Tracy has worked with swimmers of all levels, from beginners to English Channel swimmers. In this podcast, Tracey shares her expert insights and cues from her book, offering valuable tips to help you become a faster and more efficient swimmer.

exchange and calmness

Website: https://www.swimmastery.online/tracey-baumann

Buy the book here and save 10% using the discount code SWIM10:

This podcast is brought to you by NanoClear — our own range of anti-fog swim goggles, designed by Effortless Swimming with the anti-fog treatment bonded into the lens itself (not sprayed on, so it doesn’t wear off after a few swims). Check out the NanoClear range here and use code PODCAST15 for 15% off.

I personally believe it’s the only way that someone can continue to improve their swimming, is if they can really tune into that proprioception, that ability to know where they are in time and space in the water and to be able to feel both the inside of their body and the outside and the effect that the elements, whether it’s the air or the water, is having on their skin. Stay over rotate. Everything goes. The legs will go. We will never get it. If you’re over rotated, you can never get a catch. So really having that honed in and that amount of rotation honed in will really, really help the swimmers maintain that connected, long body position.

Tracy Bowman is a swim coach and co-founder of Swim Mastery. She’s also authored and written a book called The Swim Mastery Way. On today’s episode, I’ve got Tracy on here to talk about some of the things that she’s mentioned and written about in her book that can help you become a faster and more efficient swimmer. I think she’s got some really good insights and cues and takes on different parts of the stroke. And I think for anyone who is an adult who maybe didn’t learn to swim as a child, that there’s some very good takeaways from this podcast. Even if you did learn to swim as a kid, I know that you’re going to learn a lot from this episode that I did with Tracy Bowman. Let’s get into it. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming podcast. My guest today is Tracy Bowman. Tracy, you have a long history in swimming and we got in touch recently. We got introduced by someone who we both mutually know. And you actually, and I was sent your book as well and I’ve been going through that and

there’s some really, really good things to talk about from your book because I’ve picked up a lot from reading it. And I’d love to share some of those things on the podcast today because most of the lists of my podcast, they’re either triathletes, open water swimmers or recreational swimmers and they’re people who just want to get better. They love to focus on their stroke. And I think you’ve got some really good approaches to be able to improve. So that’s why I wanted to get you on a podcast today to share some of those things. So welcome to the podcast. Thanks very much. Looking forward to chatting with you today. Tell me about where your journey as a swim coach started and what got you interested in teaching swimming? Yeah, well, I think it’s probably like many people. I actually started off as a swimmer myself. So I was a competitive swimmer from probably about the age of five in Harari Zimbabwe and ended up competing my whole school career and then ended up

doing some triathlon. And it kind of just snowballed from there and started doing a little bit of teaching and just felt absolutely fell in love with being able to pass on knowledge. And basically, I think it started off that I just really like to tell people how to do things and explain how to do things. And it just was like, oh, I take my love for swimming and I get my love to tell people what to do and how to do things. And it kind of just evolved from there. Yeah. And 28 years later, here I am still doing it. And who would you say is your the people who you tend to work best with or who you really like to work with? Like what sort of swimmers are they? Where are they in their swim journey? I obviously work with lots of different people, right? But who would you say is your sort of specialty? Yeah, it’s a really difficult question for me to answer because I love working with all types of swimmers. I have a secret love for working with competitive

swimmers. And I was able to go to the Brisbane trials a couple of weeks ago. And I was just like, Oh, I love this world. And so I’ve done I do love love that. Well, however, probably the marathon swimming, the open water swimming world has become sort of my niche market. People wanting to, you know, swim for longer and better and stay safe and injury free and just, you know, be able to swim for longevity, learn great technique and do things they never thought they could ever do before. Yeah, it’s fantastic. And like I think about who I can help the most. I think it’s like your tri athletes who are maybe that two minute mark to 145 and they want to get get beyond that. And but it’s like, yeah, you love working with all different kinds of people because they challenge you in different ways. There’s different things that they’re looking to get out of it. And it can be enjoyable in a lot of different ways.

So in terms of someone who is looking to get into the pool, often one of those things is there’s a lot of fear of either open water or just being in the water and not getting tired. Like there’s that first element they need to get over. And I’m sure you’ve dealt with this a lot with people is how does someone go from being short of breath and being fearful and panicking to then just being someone who gets comfortable in the water? What are some of those barriers that they need to overcome? And then how can they approach it? And what causes them to tire so quickly and become pain? Yeah, lots of great questions in there. And I think it all comes down to the fact that we are terrestrial mammals, the fact that we are actually not designed to be in water, we’re not designed to survive in water. So before we even start, we have that natural survival instinct that’s saying, get me out of here. And all the bells and whistles

are singing and the alarm bells are saying, what are you doing? So there’s an element of having to calm that natural instinct to not put your face in water to begin with. And I like to really use what we call air exchange breath management as a way to really start working with people. And it literally doesn’t matter who comes to me. I tend to work with air management with everyone first. So really teaching people about how to breathe in with the diaphragm, not taking thoracic breaths, making sure that the breaths are quiet and calm, exhaling out through the nose and just teaching them air exchange mechanics really serves two purposes. One, it calms their breathing and gets them having that better exchange of the gaseous exchange in the lungs. But what it also does is it calms the nervous system. And once you can calm the nervous system, then you can start really working with the client, because until

that point, they’re shut down and not listening. So once we’ve got to that point, then we would start working on the actual stroke skills that will be needed for getting them in. But I often find that once they’ve started working on the air management, that they start to feel so much more comfortable in the water right from the get-go. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it’s such a fundamental thing to get right. And even for, let’s say, a more elitist, someone who’s got a lot more experience, even just learning how to manage a breath can make a huge difference. I recently did a session with a free diving coach. And one of the things that, probably one of the main things I’ve taken away from it is that he encouraged me every time at the wall in between a set, I might have 20 seconds rest. He’s just like, as soon as you can, just return back to nasal breathing. Feel like low first, and then you can sort of feel like the rest from there. But since I’ve been doing that for the last couple of weeks,

I’ve been able to just hold slightly faster times through sessions, and I’m not getting as tired as quickly. So he’s like, all right, you might be tired at the end of an interval, but just get rid of that carbon dioxide, just sort of blow it off, and then just return to nasal breathing as soon as you can. And to me, that’s been a massive hack in just being able to swim faster for longer. And I’ve swam for a long time, and I guess I sort of knew it was better, but I never really thought about it. But since I’ve been doing it, it’s made a huge, huge difference. So just breathing properly can go a long, long way for people of all abilities. And I think that what’s fascinating about what you just said is that you have been swimming for a long time, and you’re a really, really competent swimmer. And for everyone who’s listening to really realize that it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been swimming, that really coming back to

just the fundamentals of breath management can really help you. And something that we as humans don’t think about too much, because we wake up in the morning, and I don’t think we spend a single second throughout the day of thinking about breathing. So it’s quite a hard one for people to kind of get their heads around. But I think it makes such a huge difference in people swimming. Yeah, absolutely. And even sometimes with people, we’ll get them to just practice that they’re floating to start with, where we might get them to float in a ball, and we get them to take a big breath in, and then tuck into a ball and just see how they float in the water. But occasionally, I’ll get swimmers who, we wanted to take a big breath in, but they only take a very shallow breath in, and then they’re almost sinking in the water. Whereas everyone, if they’re taking a deep enough breath, they get enough air in, they’re going to float. But to me, that just shows that they’re breathing very shallow. They’re

using their upper lungs, they’re not filling up using their diaphragm. And that in itself, you can kind of see those faults that they’ve already got established there. Yeah. And the differences as well is in the body position when you’re taking the air into the thoracic cavity, so into the upper lungs, the whole weight distribution theory and the center of mass is different because the air is higher up, so there’s more weight behind it. So the whole way that the swimmer actually sits in the water changes, depending on whether they’re taking a diaphragmatic or a thoracic breath. So actually taking that diaphragmatic breath gives them a better body position in the water as well as all the other benefits. There’s so many benefits. And also it puts the ribcage into a better position for the scapulae to work with the arm mechanics and stuff. So there’s so many things that just a simple intake of air can actually do. I could talk for hours about it if they’re exciting.

Just on that topic, so once you teach them how to breathe using their diaphragm, one of the I guess one of the challenges that we then have is when someone’s swimming normally, they don’t have the same amount of time to breathe like if we’re just kind of slowly breathing in, breathing out on land. So how do you then make that transition from teach them to breathe using their diaphragm to then having them swim and breathe in a similar way because it’s all happening a lot quicker. Yeah. Yeah, it’s another really great question. I think that the important thing is to help the swimmers to realize how little they need to inhale. You know, you typically don’t know, you’ve probably experienced this so many times in your career where you hear, you can hear people breathing. So you can hear them go, you know, and they take that really big deep, what they perceive to be deep, which actually means thoracic and actually

high in the chest and breath, and they overfill. And, you know, I say to people when you take that deep breath, actually all anyone ever wants to do after that is just let it out. Whereas if you explain, if we explain to the swimmers that they’re taking much less air than they think they need, because as you just said, they are doing it more often, then they can just take that really quick diaphragmatic inhale that’s really quiet. And then they as soon as they put their face in the water, they start to exhale out through the nose. And then as they go for the air, they do a bigger exhale just before they inhale so that they have that circulation of air happening. And they don’t kind of get filled up and then get to the end of 50 meters and go, oh, I need to just stop and get rid of all this carbon dioxide. That’s really important that they learn the cycle of inhale, pop, pop, pop, we call it just like little just a bubble, bubble, bubble out and then exhale. And then the inhale

almost just happens, the diaphragm creates a vacuum and they just as soon as you exhale, the diaphragm will just almost suck the air in for them. And it’s, it’s the amount of air that they take in that actually makes them be able to do it for, you know, across the channel, for example, and not just be able to do it to 50 meters. I love that point. You can sometimes hear people breathing and it’s can just be so forced when you hear someone who’s really struggling for it, you hear them forcing it in, you hear them forcing it out, you can hear them, you know, breathing out really loudly and it just doesn’t need to be that much, that much in and out like I picture it as though someone’s just going for a stroll down the street. It’s like you don’t see them breathing excessively in and out. You can have a breathing a similar way when you’re swimming. And in terms of that exhale, it’s like a, that doesn’t need to be overly forceful either.

It’s like blowing out a couple of candles and that’s it. You’re blowing out the whole birthday cake. It’s, yeah, you know. Exactly. Like that. And then in terms of how often someone should breathe, what’s your, what’s your perspective there? Should people be breathing two, three, more than that? And what’s appropriate for different situations? Yes. So it’s the question that we get a lot. I’m sure you get it a lot. I get it a lot. Everybody wants to know how often shall we breathe? The reality around it is a lot of, the answer is going to depend on tempo. So the slowest someone is the tempo, the slower tempo someone is swimming, obviously the more often we’re going to want them to breathe. But if you look at it, and I’ve said for years, my advice has always been breathe every two, but breathe every two equally on both sides. So, you know, I always say to my swimmers, pick a breathing wall and always just breathe to that wall. So you know,

you’re practicing both sides equally, you’re getting air every second stroke. And it’s been really fascinating to watch the elite swimmers over the years. So we’ve been saying this for reasons, I don’t know, 2010. And now we look at the elite swimmers, and it went through a period where just the men, the elite men, the Olympians were breathing every two. And but quite a few of the women were still breathing every three. And now, you know, I said I went to the Brisbane trials a couple of weeks ago and pretty, pretty much, and there’s always, there’s always anomalies and people outside the box, obviously, but pretty much across, across the whole afternoon that I was there, every single one of them were breathing pretty much every two. So I always say if they’re breathing every two, there must be a really good reason to breathe every two. And the reality around it is the difference between breathing every two and every three is, is something between you get

13 breaths per minute breathing every three and somewhere but over 20 breaths per minute breathing every two. And our muscles need oxygen to work. So we just kind of do the maths around it. And we want to give our muscles what they need. And we want to stay oxygenated and we want to keep that going. So I always suggest breathe every two, but equally to break both sides. So I never condone just learning one side, because obviously they create an asymmetry in the stroke. What do you suggest? Very, very similar, very similar. I mean, there’s just such a hesitation for a lot of people to breathe every two because they have learned somewhere that that’s wrong. And yeah, and it’s just breathing too, too much. But I mean, I put like, I think of my own swimming personally, like if I’m, I can breathe every three or maybe every four, if I’m going at 70% or lower, I’ve got to be going pretty, pretty comfortable to hold it. Anything above that, I’m going to really struggle to hold that

over longer distances. And yeah, and so it’s just yeah, breathing every two, there’s nothing, nothing wrong with it. And yeah, you can even mix it up like you can mix it up within a lap, you can mix it up within a session if you if you want to. And so if you’re in a 50 meter pool, I don’t mind if you go maybe every two off the wall, then maybe you do a couple threes if you want, then you can go to back to two as you go into the wall and then hit your turn and repeat. But it’s the turn takes a bit out of you. So you do, you often either have that too. And you look somewhere like the 400, 800, 1500 meters from us, they will breathe, even they’ll go left, right into the wall, right. Yeah, into the wall. And even sometimes off it as well.

Exactly. So yeah. And like there’s I think the women’s 400 short course record, I think it’s the Chinese, she was breathing the I think the last three strokes into the wall, and then maybe even the first two strokes off the wall. So everyone. Yeah. So it’s just to show, right, that we need oxygen. And I think I think the fear around it is that a lot of people are learning freestyle technique. And that’s, you know, we’re focusing on freestyle here is, and they learn great freestyle technique, but their breathing always gets in the way. So they try and avoid it because they want to stay streamlined. It slows them down. They don’t like it. It doesn’t feel great. And my advice to everyone is the more you practice doing it, the less uncomfortable it’s going to feel. So do it more, not less. And make your breath fit into your stroke. So there’s no difference between your freestyle stroke with breathing or without breathing. And then you

can breathe as many times as you need, because it doesn’t interrupt your, your rhythm, your stroke, your technique, your pattern and so on. Yeah, very true. There’s only, there’s only so far you can swim before you’re going to have to need to breathe, breathe regularly. So yeah, if it’s, if you’re breathing, stuffing up your stroke at the moment, then, you know, just, if you can figure out why that is, and then trying to make it so your breathing just fits in with it, like you mentioned, then long term, that’s a much better plan than trying to avoid it. I do like, and I think I was reading this in your book is, you know, it can be good to, if you’re doing 25, for example, maybe you push off the wall and you do your first six strokes or seven strokes where you’re not breathing, just so you can focus on your technique. And that’s why we use snorkel occasionally, just to be able to focus on the stroke and

take the breathing out of it. So there, you know, there’s times where it is appropriate to breathe, to breathe less, but just in a general sense, I think every two is the way to go for most people. Yeah, for swimming, when we’re practicing technique, I actually take breathing out of the equation all together. And I get them just to practice the technique without breathing. And then we put breathing in and, and sit it together. So we kind of take the stroke along and put breathing in with the stroke technique rather than having a separate breathing stroke, because it’s such that the brain just will learn much quicker if it can just kind of get on with it and doesn’t have to take the brain away to survival every, you know, every second or third stroke. So yeah, absolutely. We do a similar thing in clinics with quite a bit of snorkel use so that they can just focus on the task at hand or they can focus on maybe what their arms are doing or their rotation and the breathing

will come, will come separately. Now, in terms of body positions, obviously a big one and the next thing we want to go on to there and just learning how to hold the body and how to let the water support the body as well. So what, what sort of things or cues do you find it really useful for helping someone learn how to use the water to support them? Yeah, so I think that the, the biggest hurdle for swimmers is our human body makeup. It’s a massive hurdle for freestyle swimming because we have such a big hinge at the hip area and we’re horizontal and we’re lying on our gravity and it’s pulling us down and, you know, everyone’s fighting to keep those legs up behind them. So what they typically do is they’ll pop on a pull buoy or a buoyancy shorts and they’ll keep the legs up that way. And obviously when they then come to do their race or their event, you can’t have them and it becomes, it becomes a little bit of a battle of wills.

So what, what we try and do is we try and teach them how to connect their legs to their torso so that they have one long vessel rather than a vessel that breaks in half. So I, I equate it to sort of like Lego pieces. So they have a Lego piece for their legs and a Lego piece for their torso and then we find the connecting piece so that the, you know, everything works, works as one. And so what we want to do is we want to make sure that the pelvis is in the right position. So I talk a lot about bones and I never talk about muscles. I talk about putting bones and joints into the correct position and the muscles are attached to the bone. So it’s great when you put the, move the bone, all the muscles around it are going to do their thing and it’ll we’ll get more muscles hopefully involved because they’re all attached. So what we want to do is we want to create length through the body. So I work a lot with analogy. So a lot of my cues

are, are getting people to think about doing something and moving, moving bones and joints into certain directions to create connections. So my favorite cue, I think that, that I use to do this is I get them to imagine that they’ve got a book on their head to, to set the correct head position. And then I have them just imagine that they are taking that book away from their feet and sort of getting air in between each one of their vertebrae in between their hip bones and stuff and just really putting space between that. And what they tend to find is that all the muscles around the core area, recognizing that the core is all the way around and huge. It’s, it’s not just made up of abs, which many people think. And that then sets this beautiful long sort of head to feet line that then allows the water to support it because it’s one unit rather than lots of moving parts. And obviously the moving parts get in the way and the one unit just

sits beautifully in the water. And then you add the breath into the right place within that unit. And you have a much better idea of balance. And then obviously we go, we go on from there. So that’s where we start. Yeah, that’s great. I was just doing analysis before this call of a swimmer who there, there was very little connection from the top half to the bottom half. There was kind of screwing, screwing across like that. And, and that’s why it’s always great. I think just to start with how you holding your body and how you’re thinking of that. And it’s very easy to go skip over that and go, let’s, let’s focus on the kick. Let’s focus on the arms. But if this isn’t, if this isn’t together, if that’s not one unit, then nothing’s going to connect up very well. And you’re going to be working, working very hard against yourself.

What about in terms of a lot of people that I work with do have tight hip flexes? Obviously that can impede things, but do you think it can stop someone from being able to get into these positions and hold them? So I think the, my question would be is why do they have tight hip flexes? And are the, are the hip flexes tight on land or are they just presenting as tight in the water? Because often what happens when someone goes horizontal in water, because they, you know, probably subconsciously know that they have to keep their legs up, it often makes them try and try and keep their legs up. And it actually anterior tilts, tilts their pelvis, which then will shorten the hip flexes, which then makes it harder for them to connect into leg mechanics for an effective, for an effective, what we call flutter. So that would be my first question. So my question then would be, let’s see what movement they’ve got on land with, you know, getting that length from, from their head away from their

feet and then seeing what they can do with their pelvis and just see if they can tap into length through the hip flexes on land and then give them the cues in the water to, to maintain that length. And as soon as they feel that comfort level that they will most probably let go of their hip flexes because they’re not trying to keep their legs up. So I think it’s about how we talk about it. The legs will stay up if we change the relationship between center of mass and center of buoyancy by putting the body into the right position, including, including the arms. And that then releases the legs to do what they need to. If that’s not in place, then the legs are kind of then, like you said earlier on, they’re trying to stabilize and get in the way and that will shorten the hip flexes. I’m not sure that answers your question, but I think it’s, we work from the inside out. So if we get that inside, then the outside will react differently. If we don’t get the inside, the outside will

continually be stabilizing and shorten the hip flexes as an example. Yeah, good. That, that makes a lot of sense because I, you know, so we often use the, the cue or we think about the head’s relationship to the, the legs and we want to make sure the head’s not too high because that can obviously drop the, the hips. But sometimes we see people bury the head and then they, you know, we talk about just lean on the chest or press that in because we need to use that to support us. But again, sometimes people can just try and they lean down too much here and it causes the hips to bend. And then they’re kind of sticking their bum out of the water, but they’ve, they’ve broken that, that line halfway through their body. So I see, they’re, they’re, they’re pelvis in that point as, as they have anterior tilted them and they just collapse. That, that’s interesting, you know, to say, yeah. And it’s, I see it as almost trusting. It’s like, you’ve just got to trust that if you hold the body

as you’ve explained there, that you will actually float better and sit better in the water rather than, yeah, trying to, to do too much of those other, other couple of things. So I think in a way it can be a bit counter, counterintuitive because people are trying to get their hips up. So they stick their bum out, but then they, they broke that chain. And it has the opposite effect. So a really good thing to do is give the body something to do in the direction of travel and in the direction that the joints want to move. So, so what we do is, as we send the swim off, I say to them, send your, your head or your books or, you know, where they, where I’ve told them their book is their head away from their feet forward. Then what that does is it creates the length in the body that they are feeling when they’re doing the standing rehearsal on land and then moving and sending the joints away from each other.

And it keeps the, keeps the connection, but it also keeps them thinking about movement rather than static because statically, they’re never going to stay balanced in water. They have to do it with movement because of physics, right? So it’s an interesting thing to observe by telling someone to, to move their, their head away from their feet and noticing how much easier they can maintain that connection through the body and therefore then their position in the water. And then as you’re introducing the, the kick after you’ve sort of introduced that, that body position, how they, they hold it. What are some, some cues or, or things that you’ve learned along your years of coaching on maybe how not to teach it or, you know, good ways to, to explain it, to, to get people to kick effectively and have that flatter, as you mentioned earlier. Yeah. So, so the first thing I do is I call it a slaughter because we want the,

the swimmer to tap into the, the hip flexors, the glutes, the abs, the obliques, all, all, all, all of those muscles rather than just their quads and hamstrings. As soon as they tap into quads and hamstrings and they’re trying to think about moving their feet, then that’s going to anterior tilt the pelvis and they’re going to collapse and lose, and lose their legs. So we, we talk about using the flutter and I talked to them about imagining that their whole leg is, is, is one unit and that they want to flutter with the whole, the whole unit. So I get them to really focus on moving the thigh bones. I just keep the language simple. I mean, we could go into all the actual names of bones and stuff, but I want people to know what we’re talking about. So I just say move the thighs behind the body line, front of the body line at quite a quick tempo. And what happens is it then uses the bigger muscle groups and it helps them to use the whole

leg for their flutter rather than bending at the knee. And that helps them keep that length in the hip flexor and the connection to the torso while they’re doing the flutter.

Good. So you’re talking about, well, you’re getting them to use that upper part of their leg. And then if they just go back and forth from the, from the pelvis, then, then that’s naturally going to create that bit of a flutter as opposed to maybe thinking that they’re the feet. So you’re starting at that point closer to the, to the middle of the body really. So the middle of the body. Yeah. Yeah, good. And then, and then with, with rotation, trying to get someone to maintain that, that position, but doing it as they’re going side to side, what sort of, what sort of things are you seeing people want to do that might be causing them to either rotate too far or lose their position and then how do you sort of bring them back and get them to, to hold that position as they go left to right. This podcast is proudly sponsored by Form Smart Swim Goggles. Form have recently released their new Gen 2 version of the product, which includes an integrated heart rate

monitor, as well as a swim straight digital compass for open water navigation. They’ve also updated the eye seal. So they’ve got a new proprietary eye seal that accommodate a wider variety of facial structures and they ensure for a more comfortable and secure fit. I’ve been testing these new goggles for the last couple of months. And I’m a huge fan of the new heart rate monitor. This is the first time that I’ve been able to see my heart rate in real time when I’m swimming. And that’s allowed me to adjust my effort and my output based on my training zones. So if you’re a triathlete or someone who wants to make sure that they’re not going too hard or too easy within a session, this is a really good way to do it. You can see your heart rate in the top corner of the goggles. So it’s always there right in front of you. And that can make sure that you are actually training in the right zone, where I find a lot of swimmers do go either too hard or too easy.

So this has been a real revelation for me in terms of the effort that I’m actually putting in when I’m going at certain speeds and certain paces. So if you’d like to grab yourself a copy of the new Gen 2 version of the Form Smart Swim Goggles, go to formswim.com forward slash effortless to get yourself a pair of the new Gen 2 goggles. If you’d like to get the Gen 1 goggles, you can save 10% going through that link at formswim.com forward slash effortless. Yeah, so it’s such an interesting question. I did a Mastery Monday and we do every Monday we do a Mastery Monday. I did Mastery Monday this week on the streamline position. And I think that the first question I ask everybody is where do they think they should be rotating to? And often when I say to someone, so I’ll say to my students or something, I say to them, if I were to put you on the floor in your streamline position, in your rotated position,

what parts of your body are going to be making contact with the floor? And 99 times out of 100, they show me the side of their body. Nine times out of 100. So already I’m now inside their brain knowing that every single stroke they do, they’re going to end up on their side over rotated. So the first thing that I do is I have to change what their brain thinks they should be doing versus what we need them to be doing because we don’t want to go up on our side because A, it takes too long and B, when I go up on my side, I’m just going to sink like a knife through butter. So we want to get the rotational angle by talking to the brain about how far we should go. So we talk about what parts of the body are going to actually make contact with the ground when I’m in my rotated position and it changes the whole way they think about it. Because as soon as they over rotate, everything goes as the legs will go, we will never get it. If you’re

over rotated, you can never get a catch. So really having that honed in and that amount of rotation honed in will really, really help the swimmers maintain that connected long body position. And then the flutter just becomes something that just fits into it and is a diagonal movement, depending on whether they’re in their left streamline or their right streamline, they’re always fluttering in the same direction as the rest of the body. That’s a great way of doing it. And where I guess you’d see someone, if they were lying on the floor on their side with the correct rotation, it’s like it’s kind of through the front here. Correct. Like it’s not on the very edge there. It’s their pecs, pecs front to hip bone and front side to thigh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then the way I sort of see that working for people is that whenever we do a side kick drill, sometimes we’ll use like a little on core kickboard, just a mini kickboard, put the hand on top just to press down there.

And the swimmers that hold that position really well, they’ve got the opposite shoulder out of the water. And those would be the contact points. And the other two sides of that is people will either be very flat and there’s no rotation and they think they’re rotating. And then the other people are just twisted on their side and they’re way too far. And usually when we, because we do the analysis first, we’ll see them. Usually how they swim is how they’re going to do this side kick drill. And yeah. And so my suggestion to them is, yeah, exactly. And if you can make this change in the drill and get the feel for what you need to be doing here, that’s probably going to be the first step at actually making changes to your swim stroke. So just be aware that any things that aren’t ideal in your video, that’s going to come out in the drill. So just be mindful of that and see if you can get into that better position when we do these drills.

I think the really good thing about Streamline as well is what’s happening to the head position because as soon as you over rotate, you cannot maintain what I call the non-negotiable hull of your boat. If you like middle, middle prong of your trident, whatever you want to call it, but as soon as you over rotate, the head will go offline. And if that head is offline, then the swimmer is not going to swim in a straight line. It’s physically impossible. So it’s a really, it’s another good sort of indicator or feedback loop is, is my head, am I having to strain to still see the bottom of the pool or is my head going offline or one side or the other. And can you explain the trident in a bit more detail because this is again a good cue or a good kind of analogy for people to use, I think. Yeah. So I sort of have the idea that from the top of the head all the way down to the feet and coming out through the top of the head is kind of the middle prong of a trident.

I just say to everyone that it’s a trident that’s parallel, that’s got parallel prongs, not the typical one you see on the cartoon because otherwise we’re going to have people swimming all over the show. So they’re parallel. And then the other two prongs of the trident, so the base of the prongs come across the shoulder line. And the other two prongs actually come out through the middle of the scaps. So yes, they do end up, they start at the scaps and end up out through, I always say the middle finger. But and the middle prong is the one that’s got the whole pole all the way down to the floor. So it’s a really good way to make people really understand that if that middle one isn’t there, the other two can’t be there because there would be no trident because there would be no middle pole. And so then we have a queue that gets people to really think about going middle and right, middle and left, middle and right, middle and left.

So they’ve always got that parallel going on. And it’s always happening from the middle line and the scaps out through the through the middle finger rather than thinking of the streamline as left and right on its own. So that’s where the trident analogy came in. I have some really crazy analogies. The crazier, the more memorable. So that’s not a bad thing in my books. Yes, that’s what I say. And just with the talking about the the scaps, so a common misconception that I that I get from people is that the thing they ask is, should I keep my shoulders down and back the whole time when I’m when I’m swimming? And the answers obviously like do not do that. And you can see if someone is doing that because they swim very short and they’re not getting any any form of catch. So what what’s the relationship between good, good length in the stroke, good reach and also the catch in how that ties into how your scapula is moving? Yes, another really great question.

And it always comes back to what are the rest of the joints doing? So we can talk about scaps. But when we talk about scaps, we have to think about the relationship between the scap that slides up and down the rib cage, the rib cage, the effect that that has on both the pelvis and the skull and obviously all other three and 60 joints in the body. So what I always say is that yes, we want the scap to be sending this forward, we want to have this beautiful ability to slide that scap along the rib cage. And the only way that we can do that is if our middle trident is in place. So soon as I think about putting my shoulders down and back, if you were to just do it now, just feel what happens to your rib cage, it pops the rib cage as soon as that happens, it affects what my my head is doing. So my my ability to tap into the scapula mechanics lies in my ability to maintain my middle trident. Once I can do that, then I can tap into the the scapula and I can use that to get a length. I

like to use the word length that goes as far as I can keep my middle trident because as soon as I go too far, it pops my rib cage. And I lose my middle trident. So there’s a there’s a sweet spot and it’s the same for every it’s it’s the same sweet spot for everybody it might look different for everyone depending on their mechanics, but everyone can find it because if I reach, then now I’ve pulled everything I’ve lost everything. And if I push it down, then I it affects my skull because now my rib cages has popped. So it’s the relationship between all the joints that allows me to tap into those great scap mechanics and shoulder girdle mechanics to get that amazing catch. That’s that’s a great way to explain it because often we’ll see people will sometimes be rounded and hunched through there. And you just cannot you just can’t let that shoulder move in the right way if they’re hunched like here. And again, I did an analysis just

before we jumped on the call where some lady was saying, Oh, look, I just feel like I’m not getting as much strength or power through my catch here. I can feel my lights working in the in the gym when I do this catch and it just feels really weak when I’m swimming. And we have looked at her position, her head she was burying her head so she was just too deep below the surface hunched over. And so she wasn’t reaching well and wasn’t catching very well at all. And so she just wasn’t tapping into those stronger back and shoulder muscles and back through that that movement. So you’ve got to always start from your right you’ve got to start from the head on head on down, keep that there. And then you can start to get those other things right. So now going through the through the catch, a lot of coaches will explain things differently, use different analogies. What are some ones that you found to be really

useful and helpful for then explaining that part of the stroke? Yeah, it’s always the first question, how many people have come to you? And they’ve said, Oh, do you know what, I’ve got this swimming thing, I’m really I can swim, you know, I’m really good at that. But what I really want to know about is how to catch. And you’re like, Yeah, I’m not going to tell you that just yet, because we need to build up the middle first in order for the extremities to work. And what’s so exciting. And I was talking about it just this morning, I’m in the middle of running an advanced coach training course for some coaches. And I was talking to them today. And I was talking to them about the progression of catch and how we how we teachers. And I said, I can’t even remember the last time that I ever used this progression because we don’t need to, because when you set up the middle and you work from the middle out, and you put the joints into the correct position, and you allow the joints to

move and you give the correct use and you give direction of energy and momentum, then what happens is the body taps into its natural ability to catch and hold. If I put my body into a correct streamline position, and then I want to think about holding, it’s going to create the position as a byproduct of setting it setting up the correct joint mechanics. So it’s a really tricky question for me to answer because I often don’t teach it because it often just happens. So what I often do is I tap into getting people to feel the water and feel sensation so they can tap into their natural joint mechanics more, but that only works if I’ve set up the streamline position and the middle trident position correctly first. If I was to teach it kind of step by step, like I was talking to the coaches about this morning on the coach training course, I’m going to get them into their streamline position. I’m going to get them

really connected with their scaps and I’m going to teach them how to fold and imagine folding and holding on a rung of the ladder or over a ball or a concrete slab or something and teach the swimmer about the fact that the catching side is stationary and that the body is going to move past it and that they’re never bringing this back ever. They’re just holding on and moving along and holding on and moving along and so on and so on and so on. So that tends to be how I tackle catch. A lot of good points there. So one thing you mentioned was the fold and hold. So I think that’s a reading that in your book. That’s a good way to think about what needs to happen at the elbow because really common thing is people lock the elbow out and they’re very straight through that part of the stroke and they just don’t hold much water at all when they do that. So folding the elbow and then the hold part is we’re not looking to muscle to

pull our hand through the water. We need to hold it and think about that anchoring and just moving the body past it and I think that’s a good reminder either a good reminder for people or a good thing for them to know that what’s moving forwards is your body but with the ideal catch your arm is not going to move. Now it’s obviously going to move but we don’t want it to. That’s what we’re working towards is just having it stay in that same position. So getting as little slippage through the water as possible and then I think that takes a lot of the pressure off people trying to pull themselves through and if they relax more then they can hold a better position. Hold more, yeah. Because otherwise if they’re trying to be too forceful with that first part of the stroke they end up compromising their position because you just don’t move as well if you’re tense and muscling it. Correct yeah it’s and the synchronization goes so then it just throws the whole stroke out the next stroke

then they just become they lip they end up limping when they try and pull themselves along like I call it limping. And what about having people tune into their either the sound of their swimming or how they feel in the water because I think building up that body awareness for people can go a really long way but it’s just something that there’s a lot of sensations happening when you’re new to new to swimming and so it’s not easy to do that but what’s your what’s your guidance for a lot of people in terms of developing that feel and the body awareness and those sorts of things. Yeah so I personally believe it’s the only way that someone can continue to improve their swimming is if they can they can really tune into that proprioception that ability to know where they are in time and space in the water and to be able to feel both the inside of their body and the the outside and the effect that the elements like whether it’s the air or the water

is having on their skin and the better they can become at that the better they can become as a swimmer because they they have more control because they have more awareness. So I start building that awareness if we we do the same drill that you do with with the breathing and right from that position there I’m getting them to tune into so when I get them to take in a nice diaphragmatic breath and they slope in the ball I get them to start one of the things I’ll get them to do is start to feel where they can feel the water on their back and where they can feel air on their back and then I get them to just bubble out and just get them to feel what changes what’s cold cold and wet what’s warm and dry you know cold and dry warm and wet and that starts to really build in the awareness of tapping into the elements and then when we start doing some of the cues like send your head away from your feet I’ll get them to tune

into different parts of their body and tell me how it feels different and if they can’t tell me how it feels different then what I’ll get them to do is I’ll get them to do it how they did it before so i.e. let’s say like you were saying trying to keep their bum up and they anterior took their pelvis and then I get them to send their head away from their feet and then they get the contrast between the two feelings and the two sensations and that allows them to then tap into the feeling and give me some words so with my clients if they we carry on until they can give me a word because if they can’t give me a word they can’t take it away if they can’t tap into the sensation they can’t go and practice it they’re just practicing random stuff so it’s a really important part of of of what we do and it annoys some people because they’re like I don’t know how it feels I’m like here we’re gonna find out and we’ll

just discover it together so yeah but having them have to stop and and think about it is what it’s really the only way to actually have them build that that awareness and and something that’s worked really well for me in the in the clinics we run is after certain sections in the the clinic I’ll get them to stop and I’ll I’ll ask more we focused on these three things okay one of these is probably more relevant based on your video let’s say it’s head position how does that feel when you make that change and what change did you make and share that with that person in your in your language and then they get that because if you just go through an hour and a half of swimming and they haven’t stopped to actually digest it and talk about it they’ll unlikely to remember very much of it and so one of the best things that I I learned I actually went to a course where the the guy was he taught teachers how to teach

and one of the things I learned from him was was this it’s like all right if you’re going through a lot of information get people to stop get them to chat about it and then they actually retain that a lot better and actually learn things a lot better and I find that really useful is yeah stop ask some questions get them to articulate it and then it really helps them go from that feeling to verbalization puts it into the brain so but yeah that’s really really great that you do that in your in your clinics they’re ready to take it away one of the things you mentioned when we jumped on a call a couple of weeks back was having the tactical getting people to change things like it can be great to have them tactically sort of you know feel feel things so if you’re if you’re having trouble making a change to stroke how can you have that person you know be more tactile with the thing that they’re trying to to change so could you talk a little bit about

that yeah so tactile feedback is is I think the most powerful that that and video analysis are the two most most powerful tools I think we could we could ever have as as swim coaches so what when I’m coaching I’m always in the pool with the swimmer and I’ve always got my hands on either their fingernails or their scalp or you know they’re the top of the head or in their oxy oxy put just just here at the base of the skull or you know all all over the show and even when they’re doing the standing rehearsals because our touch sensation is so powerful and it’s like we can give messages directly to the body and we can bypass the swimmer’s brain by by using our hands and we can also pass on that information to the swimmers I think you know in in my book often I’ve got on some of the the rehearsals is you know for example when I say to people you you know find the bottom of your scapulas I’ll just get them to take their

thumb behind their back and just by doing that it kind of pops the bottom of the pops the scap out and they can feel the bottom of the scap and then I say use the bottom of the scap there and then just squeeze your fingernails and then just have the thought that that that place that you touched on the scap and the sensation of just squeezing the finger the actual just the nails it seems really weird but it really works and just send that to to the ceiling puts the body into exactly the correct position that we want to to be put in and and I don’t even have to think about the brain because I’ve touched the parts of the body and I’ve connected the scap to the fingernails and made it one year and I’m just using this as a as an example so it’s a really powerful tool to use tactile feedback both on your swimmers but even for your swimmers to use on on themselves yeah that’s great I really I really like that one and another good cue that you used was in the book about I think you

called it opening the gate that for that for the recovery so something that that’s very common that I see is we have this thought of a high elbow recovery and quite often that means when people come out of the water they bring their arm out very high right alongside the body and in this really awkward and uncomfortable position for the shoulder and then it makes then it kind of stuffs them up over the top of the water and it makes it hard to then keep their balance and keep their trident as you’d say and it can really throw a lot of things out and like generally I generally I would be thinking the recovery doesn’t matter that much but if it’s ruining other parts of the stroke and causing you to lose your alignment then it does matter so yeah it matters to a certain extent so could you talk a little bit about that that recovery and that cue and and how you teach how you should come over the top of the water yeah so I could speak

for hours on recovery because I think that it’s probably one of the most important parts of the stroke because when we think about just from the fifth a physics point of view as soon as we take any body part out of the water it instantly becomes 10 times heavier than it just was in the water so we can then understand why the recovery has such a huge effect on the body position under the water because we’re in an unstable environment we’re on an unstable medium so if I lift something up here and I’m on an unstable medium here then there’s going to be a whole lot of stabilizing going on under the water to to counterbalance whatever I’m doing with my my arm above the water so it makes it then really important to make sure what’s happening above the water it’s going according to plan so that I don’t have to stabilize under the water because I always will it’s the third law of motion right so it’s really really important a from a shoulder safety

point of view which you know is probably one of the things that I’m not just shoulder safety but injury prevention per se like it’s very attached to making sure that swimmers are swimming safely and they aren’t putting themselves into compromising positions that they could get injured from but also from a physics point of view that they have to create this arm recovery that’s wide and and safe so that they’re working within the frontal plane of the shoulder and they keep that shoulder joint really safe and they can tap into larger muscle groups as soon as they take it behind them they the shoulder joint gets stuck in that in the shoulder girdle and then they have to do some kind of weird thing to clear it to get to get the the the hang forwards so it’s always an interesting thing because we talk we hear a lot about people wanting to create a high elbow arm recovery the reality around it is when we create a a correct arm recovery it should

just be a dead straight line from this shoulder to this elbow the thing that’s making it look like it’s a high elbow recovery is my rotation but actually the arm recovery is just a straight line so having them think about one of the cues we use open the gate is really having them think about taking the inside of the elbow out away from the rib cage so that they can keep this joint safe but also so they can use the arm recovery a bit like a stabiliser wheel on a bicycle because it’s happening low and wide and that then creates less need for stability in this unstable medium in your streamline side so that’s kind of the thought and then we can maintain the middle and left trident if you like while we are opening the gate or and recovering this arm on this side as well as that we’re also shifting weight and sending weight in the direction of travel so it gives us kind of free speed and helps us tap into tap into that rather than sending

weight behind us which obviously is going to upset that that center of mass as well that’s that’s good i i’ve used some similar sort of cues i’ve talked about i just i’ve i have called it an open recovery compared to a closed recovery where we’re thinking like closed armpit we want we need open up or underarms water need to open underarms under the water at the front as well in in terms of the like the momentum that you get over the water your arm weighs i don’t know a couple of kilos and then when you’re swinging it around over the top you can really get good good momentum over the water and carry that through it’s that free free speed and when you see someone who’s not getting it who throwing themselves off balance and they’re coming way behind their body like you really notice it and it just it does impact how well they flow in the water so yeah it is if you get it if you get it right you notice a big a big difference and i’ve i’ve tried to turn that thought of a

high elbow recovery into like the point that’s high it’s like i think if the elbow is pointing mostly to the sky as you come through in that that middle part okay that’s that’s what i’d think of as a high a classic high elbow recovery but yeah certainly not coming literally high over the water with it yeah i think that’s where people get get thrown off and yeah there’s a lot of good footage and photos from you know Olympic trials whether it’s the american ones the australian ones and if you look at some of those footages yeah the shoulders the arm or so the upper arm that is it’s pretty much straight over the top and when we look at the footage of a lot of swimmers sometimes they’ve got these weird angles going on you gotta not surprise you haven’t you know you haven’t had some shoulder issues and quite often they have and you can show them exactly why that’s that’s happening yeah it’s so great if we can spend time just helping people

minimize shoulder injury and swimming then that’s a that’s a good day for me yeah too much injury and swimming yeah and it’s thousands and thousands of repetitions and um force being put in the wrong in these in these awkward positions as well so yeah there’s a there’s a lot of things that when you slow it down and you look at it it’s very obvious why people have shoulder issues in in swimming so it’s not yeah it’s not usually a surprise when you actually look at the stroke so well Tracey this has been excellent i think we could go on all day and i’ll love to get you back on the love to get you back on a podcast because i love learning from from coaches like yourself who are there in day in day out you’ve worked on this stuff and thought about this stuff a lot and to actually put together a book on all of this and you have to know your stuff back the front so for those of the listening we’ll put the links and and i think you’re going to let us know about

a discount code as well in the show notes so if anyone would love to to grab Tracey’s book the swim mastery way you can do that we’ll put that in the in the links but where else can people follow you and find out more about what you’re doing Tracey yeah so swimmastery.online is our website and then we have Instagram and Facebook which are called just swim mastery and then yeah i’ve organized a discount for all of your followers for the for the book and get it on amazon but there’s also another site and i’m just going to quickly look it up because i can’t remember the name of it called thereallygoodbookshop.com.au and we will give you a 10 discount code that you can put in there if you if you want to go on to on to that website well i think you’ll be able to send links out yeah we’ll put that in the show notes so Tracey thanks very much and i’m looking forward to getting back on i love chatting about this stuff because that’s what i

think about every day so and i love just love getting different ideas and different cues and perspectives on things so i really appreciate your time thank you my absolute pleasure thank you for having me thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast if you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com

The post Freestyle Mastery: Practical Tips for Perfecting Your Stroke with Tracey Baumann appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

Felipe Telles broke the magical 60-minute barrier in his first ever Ironman swim, coming in at 56 minutes with an average of 1:28/100m. When he first started swimming a few years ago, Felipe struggled to go faster than 2:00/100m. So how did he manage to increase his speed by that much? Find out in today’s podcast episode.

00:56 Swimming Background

Follow Felipe on Instagram

Change your technique and swim a smoother, easier freestyle with the Effortless Swimming membership:

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

Get 20% off wetsuits at Great Ocean Wetsuits with code ‘EFFORTLESS20’:

5 Day Catch Challenge:

Get 15% off our 8-week Faster Freestyle course by using the code 8week15

Related Content:

Watch the episode on YouTube:

I don’t like to do many drills, I hate them, but I know that it’s just learning how to write. It doesn’t feel natural at first, it doesn’t feel okay sometimes, but once you get the steps, the little steps, it’s much easier. And once you understand the importance of it, it’s much better to to progress. So this helps a lot because these little details in the end of the day, they make a big difference. Swimming is about technique and power. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

A goal for many seasoned Ironman athletes is to swim under the 60-minute mark for their Ironman swim. On today’s episode, we have a guest who managed to swim 56 minutes in his first ever attempt at a full-distance Ironman. And this person wasn’t a swimmer as a youngster, didn’t have a swimming background. When he first started training for triathlons only a couple of years ago, he was around the two-minute mark per hundred. Now in his Ironman event, he averaged less than one minute 30 per hundred. So on today’s episode, I wanted to dig into what he did to improve his fitness to get to that point. But more importantly, how did he manage to improve his technique and his comfort in the water to be able to swim at that speed for that long? Let’s get into the episode with Philip Tellers. My guest today is an athlete who did his first Ironman swim in the time of 56 minutes, which is just under one minute 30 pace per hundred, which is a huge achievement for

not only your first Ironman swim, but for someone who really only started a couple of years ago. And we exchanged messages for quite a while. We’ve gotten to know each other, we’ve worked together a bit. And I remember three years ago, you started off at two minute pace per hundred and you’re now obviously down to under one 30. So I wanted to get you on the podcast to talk about how you did that, because I think there’s going to be a lot of lessons there for anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation. So Philip, welcome to the podcast. Dave Redman, thank you for having me. And it’s been an awesome journey to get to this point. And of course, you’re a great part of it. I’m very happy to be here talking to you about. Tell me a little bit about where you started with your swimming and your triathlon. What was your background in in swimming, if you had any at all? So when I was a kid, I had a little background in swimming. My parents used to take me to the

pool and have some classes, but nothing crazy or serious, maybe like three months at a time, like four or five times during my childhood and teenage years, just to get a feel for the water and not to drown myself. I always go to the beach. So it’s important to to learn how to swim. But other than that, I never been a good swimmer or practice for a long time. And I got into triathlons before because I wanted to lose weight. I was in a journey to lose weight and three years ago I said, okay, in three years I’ve been doing an Ironman. And so the journey had to start somewhere. And I didn’t know how to swim with the proper technique or fast or anything. I was over a week and I was living in a city that we didn’t have a coach or a teacher to get alongside with us in the water. So I had to teach myself how to swim. And then from there, I picked up their videos or classes, I was swimming analysis and everything got better from from there on. I did like five 70.3 Ironman distances with great

results, always improving my swimming. And almost a month ago, I did my first Ironman, and I wasn’t expecting it at all. I was doing about one hour of swimming. I just got there and it’s been like I used to do every every week. And I was very happy to get out of the water 56 minutes. What was that feeling like when you looked at your watch after you came out of the swim? So in Ironman Brazil, the one I did, the twin is divided into two parts. The first part you go out into the ocean and you come back and you go again in the sand. And then you go back to the ocean and go back and then you go to the tradition area. So the first 2000 meters, I look at my watch when I arrived at the sand and I looked it was like 30, 30 something minutes. And I was very happy. I knew I could swim an hour. It was something I planned. So but I know that the current in the second leg of the swim, the second part was in favor of our destination.

So I thought myself, okay, I can swim faster because now the current will help me. And then I could stay on the feet of some people that were a little bit faster than me. I could visualize the buoys very well. So I knew that I was swimming very well and it wasn’t make a lot of effort to do it. And so when I arrived at the beach, just passing the marker, and I looked at my watch, I was really, really happy. I knew it was going to be a good day. And take me back to when you first started swimming and training for triathlon, what were you experiencing when you were swimming? What were some of the maybe the frustrations that you had? How did your stroke feel back when you first started those first couple of months? Yeah, so it felt like something that’s not natural. I always tried to push myself. I’m a very dedicated person. So I always got into the water and looking at my times, I felt very frustrated because I know I knew some other people, of course, they were much more

experienced, but they were swimming much faster than me. And I knew I wasn’t making progress. So I knew that just making an effort without technique wouldn’t be enough. So I’m a person that likes to learn about things. I’m always looking at forums, at videos, at what people are doing, new techniques. So I found some videos on YouTube on our channel teaching how to swim properly. Just very basic technique, like, okay, how to breathe, write, how to kick your legs, how to position your body on the water. So these techniques, I started to put my to put them into my swim and I could see that I was improving little by little because it’s really frustrating when you go to swim and you cannot swim like 50 meters without guessing out or having to get out of the water because you’re not feeling well or not having making any progress. So when I started to learn these things, I knew that my effort was was less and I was swimming faster. So I tried to

reach for more knowledge and I knew that it was possible if I learned the right technique to be better and to reach my goals. So I always try to improve, but not only improve, but learn how to do it right. It’s the most important thing is swimming, not just making the effort, but how to make the effort. And were there any key parts of your technique that you had to focus on over the last couple of years that you felt made the biggest difference for you? Yes. One thing that when I started to swim was that when I was breathing, I was moving my body to the side like this. So I was breaking every time my body, my head went out of the water. So I knew that this was something that I must stop. You know, of course, it’s not easy. You have to control your muscles. You have to position yourself from the water. You have to be comfortable in the water for do that. So it took me a lot of time, but after learning that everything is connected like

that. How your hands goes into water, how you push the water and how you kick, everything comes in a chain and you start to get straight. You know, you don’t have to push yourself. You don’t have to push your body too much to a dream right. You don’t have to make an effort, a big effort to stay without turning yourself. So everything was much better when I started to understand this. And the most important thing I think it was how to get my hands in the water and start to pushing like that. And I could feel that I was going faster. I was making an effort. And if I focus on that and how to be stronger with that, I know that my swing could be better. One thing you brought up there was you said you don’t have to do as much. And that’s something that I see a lot of is that whenever I’m analyzing people, they’re usually doing too much of something. They’re kicking too much. They’re rotating too much. They’re lifting their head too

much to breathe. So often the change that people have to make is to do less and to relax and hold the body right. And often it’s going to be a lot easier that way. So it’s not about adding more things. Usually it’s just about taking them away or reducing the amount of something that you’re doing. And that for a lot of people, I think can be a moment of realization that if they just allow themselves to relax and think about being long and smooth, then it’s not only a lot easier, but it’s just so much faster as well. But I mean, a part of that too is if you knew, then you don’t have that balance and stability in the water and it takes a little while to develop that and that level of comfort. But once you get past that point, then you can really make some big inroads to faster times and to a better stroke by just learning what are the key fundamental things that will help you be smoother in the water.

Did you do any drills when you were training or was it more just about just practicing those things when you were swimming? Yes, I don’t like to do many drills. I hate them. But I know that it’s just learning how to write. It doesn’t feel natural at first. It doesn’t feel okay sometimes. But once you get the steps, the little steps, it’s much easier. And once you understand the importance of it, it’s much, much, much better to progress. Because just like your channel says, effortless, if you’re trying too hard, if you’re swimming like, okay, I must do this, but I have to try really hard to put the hand. I have must try really hard to put the body in the water, then it doesn’t become natural. You suffer a lot. And imagine doing this in an RMM or 70.3 distance that you’re at least half an hour more than that in the water, you’re going to feel really tired after that. So doing the drills, you learn how to be natural.

It will start to feel natural for you. And the drills also, especially in the five day catch challenge, I think it really helped because one of the most important things that I felt doing during this course that I always recommend to people, I have over 50,000 people follow me on Instagram, and I always recommend that people always come to me and say, okay, really help. Because the drills makes you realize what you have to do right, and especially what you’re doing wrong. Because if you’re like pushing on the other way or your elbow is not working right, you’re going to start to feel it during your stroke. So drills are very important because of that. They not only teach you how to do it right, but they will show you what you’re doing wrong, and you’re going to fix it much faster.

That’s so many people that I come across don’t enjoy doing drills because they feel like they’re wasting their time. They want to get a good session in. They want to feel like they’re working hard. But sometimes it’s a necessary thing to do to develop those skills. Like you said about writing. My kids are young and they’re learning to write and read, and we’ve got to do these exercises in order for them to have that base level of understanding. I don’t think you need to do a whole lot of drills, but if you do just a handful of them correctly, then you can really make some big improvements from there. So I’d like to get it. Some people that swim with me and what I realized after some times that they don’t have as much as progress as I did. Not because of many things, but some people they just want to go there in the class and suffer a lot and do all the training. But sometimes you feel dedicate like 5-10 minutes each session to go in the water and do the right thing, position your body,

like pay your toll. You know, learn how to do things right. You improve like the same as you would in six months during just during the strengthening exercise or doing the pull exercises. Yeah, I totally agree. And tell me about the type of training that you’re doing leading into the Iron Man. How often were you swimming? What was the distance of those sessions and was there a certain type of session structure that you’d have each week? Just tell me a little bit about that. Okay, so my first year and a half swimming, I used to swim by myself and my wife, we used to go to the pool together. It was a really small town, we didn’t have a coach. So I’m gonna say it was really hard. I hated swimming because it was cold and we didn’t have anybody to put ourselves to push and to talk and to play sometimes, you know, to raise them. So it’s really hard. I really congratulated people that can’t swim by themselves. Not that common

here in Brazil. We have lots of spring clubs. So during the first year and a half, many things I used to swim like three times a week. And after my first 70.3, I wanted to swim sub 30. So I was talking to a friend of mine and he said, okay, if you want to swim above 30 minutes, maybe you should start swimming more. So I tried to swim more four or five times a week.

It was hard. I didn’t swim much. Maybe like 80% of the weeks I could do that. But then I moved to a bigger studio and here we had a swimming club that was the same as my triathlon court. He was doing classes. So I started swimming with the people. We have a very big class. Sometimes we have like 20 people in the pool with us. So it’s really nice to swim with them. And things got much easier. After that, I start to swim four times a week, every week from a year and a half now. And our sessions are usually like 20 minutes warm-up. Then we do freestyle, whatever we want. Usually I try to swim a thousand meters, but sometimes a little less than 15 minutes with technique and breathing. And after that, a lot of pushing and racing and various fast sessions, depending on the schedule, of course. And after that, usually the class, we go for an hour and a half. The last 20-30 minutes is just swimming around and opening your volume. Yeah, yeah, nice. And did you start to notice the

benefits, the fitness benefits to doing that? Did you start to feel like you could hold your pace longer, like you were stronger? Did it take long for that to kick in or to feel that? No, actually, I don’t consider myself like a swimmer. In the pool, I have many, maybe it’s an ego problem. I swim faster than me and try to catch up with them. But there’s people that swim like, for their professionals, triathletes, swimming with me. So it’s not a fair comparison. But I tried to swim five, six times before a week. But when I started to do that, I felt really tired and I felt that the sessions were really good quality. So I started to swim less. And now it’s swimming four times a week. I know that I have to control myself not to push so hard in the warm-up or after the sessions, because I know that the next day, my session is not going to be a very good quality. So you have to be smart, not to push yourself all the times. You have to control. It’s really important for endurance

sports, you know, how to maintain your endurance zone all the time, not to push yourself so hard. So it took a while for me to get in a pace that I felt relaxed, maybe six months of swimming with everybody in this swimming club. But I’m always having to control myself and try not to push so hard because I know that I will suffer in the next session. Yeah, that’s something that’s taken me a long time to understand and realize as well. It’s about winning the war, not the battle. And those battles are the sessions. And you want to train your best, but you also don’t want to push every session to the point where you’re just are going to either get sick or get injured or that you just have one or two sessions that are total rubbish because you’ve pushed so hard the session before. And there is a time and a place for those harder, harder sessions, but especially for endurance sports, whenever I’ve listened to some of the best pro triathletes, often that realization that they have later

on in their career is that it’s about just being steady and consistent, not having these big spikes up and up and down. It’s about that consistency. And then you are much better prepared for your racing and you’ve got better fitness as well because you haven’t got weeks away from training because you’ve pushed too hard. Yeah, especially when you think about Ironman, you’re going to swim almost four kilometers. It’s going to be at least an hour and five minutes. You’re not going to push yourself, you’re not going to be cast out. You have to swim in a comfort of pace and to swim in a comfort pace, in fast in a comfort pace, you have to really be in the space. A lot of time doing your training because you have to train your body to adapt to it.

And if you’re swimming three to four times a week and you’re training for an Ironman,

you really want to be doing some good volume within those sessions. And you’re doing probably three and a half to four kilometers in those hour and a half sessions, maybe a little bit more at times. And that I think can make a big difference because if you’re stopping your sessions at two kilometers rather than four, well, you know, those four sessions you might be getting a total of eight Ks done instead of 16 kilometers. So that’s a big difference over many months. You have to know that especially when you’re first Ironman or even if you’re a really experienced athlete, Ironman training is not easy. You’re going to bike, you’re going to run a lot. So you’re going to go into pool and start to feel tired. You’re not being 100% of the time. So you have to push yourself sometimes to swim 4K, three and a half. You have to, I’m always one of the first in the water and sometimes most of the time one of the last to get out. And I know that it pays off because I’m swimming

much faster than some people that been swimming for more time than me. But it’s really a discipline consistent strategy, you know, of course you don’t have to be every day inside the pool or sacrifice everything. But sometimes those 10, 15 minutes that you put yourself a little, they’re push yourself a little bit, they make a big time in the end, you know. Yeah, it can really add up, especially if you are busy and look, you’re going four times a week. Well, if you can squeeze in that extra 10 minutes, that’s, you know, it adds up a lot. And one of the things you mentioned was just your session structure. So you said you would normally do like 1000 meters, maybe a little bit less of just easy swimming and warm up, then you do another 10 minutes or so with some drills and skills work. And then you have your main set. That’s very similar to what we do in our squad. It’s often just 600 meters with fins on,

just choice. And then we go into some, some drills, some kicking, maybe some breath control. And then the end of the warm up will do some either building efforts, just to get the heart rate up something like 3 100s, build one to three, or 450s, build one to four, just to get the heart rate up. And then we’ll go into our main set, which might be anywhere exactly. And it might be 2k to 3.5k for the main set, depending on what we’re doing. But that, like to me, that’s like, that’s a very simple structure that can work for 90% of people. And there’s no, you know, I think it is important how you structure your workouts. But if you are doing in the, if you’re in the pool for an hour and 15 an hour and a half, and you’re doing something a bit like that, I think that’s going to get most people a long way to those goals that they want to achieve. Yes. And I mean, okay, people may be maybe listening to this and think, okay, it’s too much

one 15, one 30 minutes. But once you realize how much time it takes for you to get in the pool and change and take a shower, sometimes you can be a little fast. And these things, you know, and squeeze a little time in the pool, but and also people care too much sometimes with the bike and with the run, but some they forget about the swimming. Very commonly in Brazil, and maybe some other parts of the world as well, they say, okay, why, why would you care so much about swimming? It’s the, the, the smallest part in the triathlon, you’re going to be one hour, one hour and 20 minutes into a big Ironman in like 10 hours, 11 hours, even more than that. But what most people don’t realize is that this first hour, it really sets the pace for everything. If you get out of the water, really tired, if it’s really a big effort for you to swim the far, for almost park kilometers in the Ironman swim, you want to be in a rough spot going to the bike and also just going to translate that into

around. And I mean, it’s sometimes these little details add up and you’re having, you’re going to have a bad day in the end, you know, people said to me, why you waste so much time swimming? And I said, I feel much better in the water. I don’t feel panic. And I like to be in the water. I know that the people that are in my age group, they are suffering much more than I am, because I know that I’m putting more work than that than them. And also going to the bike and they run after that’s much easier. You want to get a very fast group. You want to keep up with them. It’s very, very easy mentally to keep up with them. And you’re going to have a very, very much more easy racer. You know, of course, it’s not that simple, but it helps a lot. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you also get like in the pool, it’s not hard on the body. It’s, it can be good recovery. You get great aerobic training as well with it too. So it’s not like

the swimming is only improving your swimming. I think it can help your cardiovascular system a lot as well. And it’s just, it doesn’t have that. Yeah, it’s just a lot easier on, on your muscles being in the, in the water as well. So it’s, it’s got benefits outside of that too, I think. And for you, with your catch, you said that was a big aspect of your stroke that you had improved and you felt like it made a big difference. What were some of the things that you changed to be able to improve your catch?

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 effortless20 at checkout. So enter the code effortless20 at checkout at greatoceanwetsuits.com. And no matter where you are in the world, if you’re in Australia, the US, Europe, there’s free shipping worldwide. So get yourself a great ocean wetsuit.

I personally use the gold model of the wetsuit. It just depends on what your goals are. So greatoceanwetsuits.com effortless20 at checkout. I know you’ll like them. It’s really doing the drills that help you understand what you should do and what you shouldn’t do in the beginning. So you start to understand, you start to feel your muscles, you start to feel your back, start to feel your shoulders, how they should feel. Once you get used to it, it’s much easier to try to feel the water and how can you swim faster? Like, okay, I’m going to do a really 50 meter really fast. So I know how hard I can push, I know how my frequency of the strokes must be. And also you start to change a little bit from time to time to get a little faster. So one thing that I’m always looking for, sometimes there’s this guy that’s swimming next to me, I know that he’s faster than me. So I know that I relax with my catch or I relax with my stroke. He will pass me. So he’s a good test for me to know

if I’m doing good at my technique, or if I’m lazy and my catch is not really that good. Sometimes just changing a little bit or just like pushing a little harder or put my arms a little to the side. I know that we’re observing him that these things make a difference because sometimes you’re swimming by yourself, you cannot see your watcher, you don’t have that feedback. But if you have someone that is next to your side and it’s faster and you know that you have to put everything to pass this person or at least to keep up, it’s much easier to understand how these little things can help a lot. And if you do it right, you’re going to feel in the end of this session, your muscles going to be sore, but you really feel that you made some improvements regarding your technique. It’s a great way to know whether or not you’re catching, pulling correctly is what muscles do you feel towards the end of a session. And

if you are pulling quite well, you’ll likely feel it in your in your lats and a little bit around the back of the shoulders as well. And usually when people make a significant change to their catch, rather than pushing down on the water, they roll over a ball and they get their fingers down and they’ve got a good catch. Usually they really notice that and they notice for my lats are starting to feel this a bit more. Okay, great. Keep working at that because that is where you should be starting to really feel it. So if you feel it through the front of your shoulders in a painful way, well, you’re probably not moving correctly. Or if you are feeling it in your upper traps as well, that’s that’s probably not great either. So yeah, there’s and there’s ways that you can correct it. And usually and probably what you know, you may have been doing at the start as well is often people are they drop their elbow,

their fingers point forwards when they’re moving their hand through the first part of the stroke, rather than going over that ball. And when you have your arm and it’s very small and narrow position, you’re just you’re not opening up through your underarms and your lats. So if you think about being very open through your underarms, that can help a lot as well because then you’ve got a much bigger paddle to to work with. And it sounds like you and you know, thinking back to your videos as well, like you’ve made a big change to what you were doing there. Yeah, it’s not hard. I mean, it’s not natural in the beginning, but once you get two or three sessions doing that, it’s gonna be gonna feel natural. And you’re gonna miss it when you are not doing it too right, because you’re gonna be so much slower. But after you get it, it’s game changing. You’re gonna do it all the time and you’re gonna be faster.

And when I think back to like when I’m working with people who are around that two minute mark, usually they’re like their body position, head position and alignment’s not great. And their catch and pull isn’t very good either. So if they do improve their their body position, usually by fixing their head position and breathing, then they will often be swinging a bit faster. But if they’re still stuck around that like 150 to two minute mark, it’s likely that their catch and pull is not very effective. So if you know, if that’s if that’s you, then you might want to look at the catch and pull after that. But we always want to get the head and body position right first like you talked about, and the alignment, and then we can start to work on the catch and pull after that. But if I was to think of what’s like that, what’s the bottleneck for people at these different paces? It’s usually head and body position around the two minute mark 150, it’s probably catch and pull if you’ve corrected

those other things. Does that’s how does that with where you were with your with your pace? Well, exactly. You were describing me. And I see with with other people as well, people that have trouble that their legs are too deep in the water or they have trouble getting their butts up. And it’s I mean, it doesn’t you imagine it’s very hard once if you’re not doing it. But once you start to realize that your head position changes a lot, and you start to put your leg a little bit just by changing your body position. Of course, being in the pool with swimming, we also strength your muscles. So your core is going to help these things improve. So it’s a little bit of everything. And that’s exactly what I felt. Once I start to improve my body position. And after that, the catch, my paces are worth more getting faster. Now, talk to me a little bit about the power aspect of the catch and pull, because one thing,

like with it with the catch challenge, we work a lot on their position and getting a good catch and our power diamond and exit getting all these positions right. But if someone goes slower after improving that, I find that the thing that they’re usually lacking is power. And maybe their stroke rate has gone down too much. Their cadence has dropped too much. So I think a really important aspect after getting the catch and pull right is is figuring out how much power you can apply and how to speed up the stroke. So can you tell me a little bit about the power aspect of it? Where do you feel like you put in power and it works well? And when you end up swimming at the same speed as that swimmer next to you? Yeah. So it’s hard to describe, but unless you get into the water and you’re just going like, this is the water and this is your hand, you start to feel like that. It’s hard to describe, but I think paddles and help they help a lot realizing what you should do with your arms and

how much power you use, you know, it’s really, it’s really important to understand how much power you should put in where to put it. Otherwise, you’re going to waste a lot of energy doing the wrong stuff. So it comes down to be the water and really try to feel how your energy is using the right way. Because sometimes if you pull just like, oh, when your arms are almost in the end of the stroke, of course it helps, but not so much as in the beginning. So these little things, these details, of course, just like you said, they made a lot of difference for me. And sometimes you have to be in the water, be conscious about it like, okay, this time I’m going to go to the water, go to the viewpoint, the first 15 minutes, I’m going to change a little bit how my force has been applied to, okay, I’m going to try this, I’m going to try that and see how I feel. And of course, one thing that helped me a lot was watching the videos just before going into the pool or

sometimes even inside the pool, because we had the pools for ourselves. And so you used to watch the videos in the pool. So this helps a lot because these little details in the end of the day, they make a big difference. 20 minutes about technique and power. And it’s much easier to get this technique right when you’re watching someone explaining to you right, right before you do it, then just imagining how you’re going to feel, you know. A lot of swimmers that I’ve spoken to will do that. I’ll watch a video or listen to a video on the way to the pool as they’re driving or they might just watch it before they get in. I like to watch a video of a top level swimmer and just visualize what that would feel like, how it would look if I was to be swimming like that. And to me, that has a huge positive impact on my swimming. And then with the power aspect of it, I heard a coach mention this last week and I don’t know how

true exactly it is, but it makes a lot of sense. You said you’ve only got about, you max out at about five kilos of force in the water with your catch or pool. So if you go any harder than that, you’re going to be flipping and it’s wasted effort, but if you go less than that, well, you’re not maximizing it. So I’d like to think as your hands are passing from just in front of your shoulders to just past your shoulders, that middle section of your, of your catch and pull, that is where you want to have four to five kilos of force. Now that’s very hard to judge, right? We’re not going to be measuring it, but, but you know, if you’re putting too much into it.

Yeah, exactly. You know, we’re going for just one kilo, which is very, very light, and we’re not going for 10 kilos where we’re just really trying to muscle our way through it, but there’s that sweet spot where you feel like you’re not slipping. You’re just, you’ve got your hand in the water and you’re moving your body past it because you’ve got the right amount of force. You’ve got a strong position with your arm and you, the more you can repeat that kind of stroke there, the better off you’ll be. So I think it’s worth experimenting a bit with the power aspect of it, like, like you did. And one drill that I’ve started to get people to do now is it’s like, it’s called power pulls. So if you’re kicking face down, you’ve got both hands in front and when you’re ready, you pull through with both arms towards the hip, just like if you’re doing a butterfly stroke under the water. And your aim is to get as far as you can with each of these pulls. So pull through,

see how far you can travel with your body once your hands are at your hip. And what you start to figure out is where you need to apply the power. Because if you try and go too hard at the start, you like, you don’t get a good catch and you slip. But if you gradually build it up and you get your fingers pointing down, like you’re getting over over a ball or a barrel, and then you really put most of the force in under the shoulders and you accelerate through the back. That’s when you notice that you travel the furthest. So I think that can be a really good drill to do to kind of figure that out as well, which we’ve started to do. Yes. And one way to get faster is to stop doing the things that make you lower. So

once you apply pressure to the right spot, it’s much easier. You don’t have to make power. You don’t have to make an effort all the way. You don’t have to kick all the way. You don’t have to breathe hard. I mean, you have to take it easy. Swimming should be, surely it should feel easy, natural, effortless, just like I said a certain time I said, but it’s true. Once you’re in the water and once you’re doing the laps, it’s going to be feeling natural after sometimes if you’re doing it right. If it’s a big effort, maybe you have to change something.

And is there anything that we haven’t talked about on this podcast that you think could be helpful for other triathletes who are out there around that two minute mark who wanted to try and get quicker with their swimming? Yes. Just like I said in the video, watch the courses, make the video analysis. This every time I did the analysis, I draw two to three seconds. It really helps a lot. It’s very, very small things that you do that help you go faster. Just like I said, sometimes it takes three months training to go down two seconds, but sometimes a small technique change will help a lot. Also, strength training for me helped a lot. I don’t know if in the beginning it’s much necessary, but after sometimes I felt that my game changed a little after I started to hit the weights, especially for running and biking also. They helped get out of the injuries, but triathletes don’t have to be afraid of the water and don’t have to

be scared of going to the pool more than two or three times a week. It makes our life so much easier during the races. I think triathlon, it’s going to take a lot of our time. It’s a long day racing, so it should be enjoyable and going to the water feeling that you’re going to have a good time and enjoying it. It’s much easier. Swimming is a really nice sport. It’s a really fun sport once you know how to do it. If you’re going to the water panicking or don’t know how to do it, it’s not so pleasant. Take some time. You don’t have to spend hours in the pool. Sometimes a little bit of technique change, a little tip that you get helps a lot. It happened to me in one month using the five-day catch challenge. My swimming drops, my swimming time is dropped after the video analysis also. If you want, you can watch my other podcast, you see what I’m talking about. That’s what I have to say. Work or swimming,

you’re really going to appreciate it in the end. I appreciate that. It sounds like I set you up to promote the catch challenge. You converted me because me and my wife, we got so much better and it was so much easier. Just like I said, I used to go to the pool without a coach, without a teacher. In the middle of nowhere, I imagined myself that I had no background or really how to swim fast or really how to do things. Just watching videos on the internet, getting faster. One of the things that I love to do is teach people how to enjoy the sport. I got into this part to lose weight, to have a better life and many people are following that.

If I can make better lives easier, and one step that I know that helps and surely helped me was your courses. Of course, you didn’t say anything, people, the Brenton didn’t say anything in the beginning of the video. He never mentioned, okay, talk about core courses like that. The video now is what I’m doing because I’m really grateful for what he has taught me in his videos and everything. I mean, what, $10, the five-day couch challenge?

Yes, like going to take a coffee after you go swimming. It’s really worth it. Well, Felipe, thank you so much for sharing all of this on the podcast. For those that are listening, and a lot of I’ve seen that before and after video, I think, of you maybe running when you first started to where you are now, just look like a different person. I’m sure you probably feel like that as well. Day to day, you probably just feel like you’ve got so much more energy and you’ve just transformed yourself in a couple of years. Where can people follow you on Instagram? They might need to use the translation tool on some of your posts, as I’ve had to do, but where can they go and follow you on Instagram? Yeah, my name is Felipe Mendoza. It’s Felipe, F-E-L-I-P-E, and Mendoza, it’s N-E-N-D-O-N-C-A. I’m trying to make some content in English, but if you’re listening to this and you don’t speak Portuguese, you can dare me in English. I’m glad we will answer to you.

I love to talk to people, love to help people and I’m really grateful for speaking to my experience. This is a very happy day for me. I couldn’t imagine myself three years ago being here talking about this. Yeah, well, you were on our podcast two years ago, it was April 2022 that you’re on to the first episode. So I will also link to that in the show notes if anyone wants to go back to that. There we got really into the technique that you’ve changed and improved. And I love saying two years later that you’re able to go under 60 minutes for an Iron Man swim, which is a big goal for a lot of people. And it’s no small feat to be able to have done that. So that time I wanted to swim 140, I remember that, you know, half hour or so while 30 in a full, it’s a big improvement. Absolutely. Well, I know you’ve got New Zealand, the Iron Man World Champs, half Iron Man World Champs in New Zealand in December. So good luck for that. And yeah, everyone listening,

go give Felipe a follow and follow his journey. Thanks again. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

The post How This Non-Swimmer Broke The 60-Minute Barrier In His First Ironman Swim with Felipe Telles appeared first on Effortless Swimming.