Effortless Swimming

My guest today is American swimmer Ryan Murphy, who has achieved incredible success in the Olympics Games, winning multiple gold, silver, and bronze medals. Ryan discusses how his motivation and training have evolved over the past decade, enabling him to stay competitive. We explore his unconventional beliefs, the obstacles he has overcome, including an injury before the Olympic trials, and the rituals that have aided his success in major events.

For those interested in receiving coaching from Ryan:

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Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. My guest today is American swimmer, Ryan Murphy. He’s won four gold, one silver and one bronze medal at the Olympic Games, including breaking the world record in the 100 backstroke and in the 4×100 medley relay as well. And on today’s episode, Ryan and I discuss how his motivation and drive has evolved over the last decade that he’s been competing, how he’s changed his training and his technique to be competitive in the sport for a very long time. And we also talk about some of the unconventional beliefs that he holds that have helped him going forwards and actually achieve his best in his swimming. We also talk about some of the obstacles that he’s faced, including injury just out from Olympic trials and some of the rituals and routines that have served him well in the lead up to some of these big events that he’s competed in.

So without further ado, let’s get into the podcast with American swimmer, Ryan Murphy. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. My guest today is the one and only Mr. Ryan Murphy. Welcome to the podcast. Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me. So Ryan, you’re a highly accomplished swimmer for gold medals and several other medals at Olympic Games and world championships. Is there any of those that really stick in your mind as your greatest accomplishment? Sure. Yeah. I mean, that’s a great question. And I think every race, every medal is so different. It’s hard to pick a favor because they were all very, very challenging to go after. I think for me, like, I would say that I guess I’ll go process of elimination here. I mean, the hundred back is I think the hundred backs, the easiest of easier of the two between the hundred and turn it back. So we’ll take both the hundred back medals out the 200 back medals.

I know that I’ve really had to really had to earn those like it’s it’s a very hard race. And you really can only you really only have success in those through just like, you know, really like old school hard work. So those ones I do mean a lot to me, but but ultimately like I’m someone where I’ve had success because of the people around me. Like I put in a lot of work every day, but the people around me are pushing me every day. Coaches are putting in a ton of work to help me improve teammates are are helping me get up, have a sense of urgency every day. And my family has had a ton of support and a hand in my success. So the real as I think are really emblematic of of why I love the sport. So the real medals are my favorites. I’ve heard quite a few other swimmers at your level say the same thing. It’s those relay wins that they cherish the most because the individual success is amazing. But when you get to share that success with a couple of other swimmers, it’s on that next level for them 100%.

I mean, and I think the interesting piece about swimming on on relays for Team USA is is the whole year. Like it’s not it’s not like I’m texting like Michael Andrew or Caleb or Zach Apples. I’m like we were texting every day leading up to the 2021 Olympics. But but we knew that each and every one of us was putting in the work to be their absolute best to be able to sustain that success over an eight day meter. And I think in the case of Tokyo is nine days because it because of prelims at night finals in the morning. But we knew that everyone was putting in the work to have success on that last day. It’s always it is really cool to see that come together. And then again, like the support from from the people in your life, the people that are that are really with you day to day. I mean, it’s not an easy sport to it’s not easy sport to be great. You definitely have to put in a lot of work mentally. You got to stay stay on track throughout the entire year.

And when it comes together in a way that’s successful, I mean, that’s that’s really just cherry on top. Has there been any challenges for you competing at that elite level for for such a long time? What’s helped you have that longevity in the sport? Is there something that you think you maybe do different to others? Or is there is there a ritual? Is there some sort of discipline that you see has helped you stay at that that top level for such a long time? Yeah, it’s a good question. I mean, I think I would say that like no two days are the same. So like, yeah, I mean, I think in in general, like the like some some foundational keys to success in my career, like I’m very process oriented. Like I I do enjoy looking at all of the things that we do in training and how they correlate to success at the end of the year. And so I’m really bought in like some of those some of those like longer aerobic days, like that’s not necessarily like the most fun.

But I know I need to do it in order to have success at the end of the year and really being able to really being able to frame that in the right way. And then I would say like, obviously there’s there’s unexpected things that happen in every season. And sometimes things don’t go the way that that you want it to. And I think the most important thing is learning how to frame that in a way that that makes you feel comfortable. Like I think one thing that that I’ve always had a long term view on the sport, like if one season is bad. Well, I went in and I worked really hard throughout the entire season. I felt like throughout the season I got better, at least in some aspects of my swimming. Maybe it wasn’t all perfect, but that progress that I made, that’s not going away. I know that I know that I got better. So it’s just going to take a little bit longer for those results to show. So learning how to frame perceived success or perceived disappointment is something that’s really important in turning it into long term motivation and things that can make you improve.

Have you ever had a season or like an A meet where you haven’t performed how you wanted to and you’ve looked back and gone, I just can’t put my finger on why that was? Or is it always in hindsight being obvious why you haven’t swum the way you wanted to? Yeah, I would say it’s never quite obvious. I think that the sport is a lot of trial and error. At the same time, like I would say probably a meet where I was most disappointed in my performance was 2019 World Championships. I was coming off of a really good 2018 where like I swam great. I was like a couple of 100s off of the world record in the 100 back, my 200 back, I won the best time. So I went into 2019 really confident that I was going to go faster, that I thought I was going to break the world record. I thought I was going to win the 200 back. And then I ultimately got fourth in the 100 back and second in the 200 back. And so coming off that one, I think I honestly matured a lot over that summer through that experience.

And it really, I think it really helped strengthen the relationship between myself and my coach where we took a week or a week or two. Where it was like, all right, just let this sit. Let the emotions of the meat kind of go away. And then let’s come to the table after that break and let’s talk about it. Let’s try to talk about it with as little emotion as possible. Like, let’s not get clouded by the emotions. Let’s look at each individual thing. Like, what do we think we did well? What do we think we didn’t do well from my perspective and his perspective? And those aren’t always going to be the exact same. And where we have differences, let’s talk that out. Like, why do you think something different than what I do? And I think just having that level of open conversation is really important in order to kind of flip that mindset after the meat of like, oh, I’m so disappointed to, okay, I’m really excited for this upcoming season.

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or use the coupon effortless at checkout. And that will get you 15% off your pair of goggles using our special link formswim.com forward slash effortless, or the code effortless at checkout. Is that the first time you’d sat down and had that depth of conversation with your coach, or you’d perhaps come to that meeting and said, this is what I think, this is what you think, and this is where we may agree or disagree? Is that what you’re talking about in terms of strengthening that relationship? Sure, yeah. I’m someone where I’m always asking for feedback. And so like, I would say in, in previous years, I probably was going in and saying, hey, like, what can I do to be better and not giving quite as much feedback? But I think like, ultimately, what, what I rise my mind around is like, look, the best way for me to have success in the best way for us to have success and realize that, like myself and my coach, Dave, during we have the same goals for each other.

I want to swim fast. He wants me to swim fast. And so understanding like where our philosophies, what might not perfectly align. Like that’s really important for us to just like throw on the table rather than like him getting upset at how I’m approaching sets or me getting upset at the way he’s writing sets. Like if we have differences in opinion, like that’s where we’ve got to, that’s where we’ve got to talk it out. Like if he’s got to go into salesman mode and tell me why he thinks about things in a certain way, I think that’s really important. So, so just, yeah, I mean, I think that was, that was definitely the first time we had conversations like that. But even after, but now, like even after successful summers or summers where we’re both really happy with the performance, that’s still something that I think is really important to do. And has your motivation changed in the last five to 10 years? So sort of in your earlier days of your career, do you feel like you were driven by different things than you are now?

Oh, totally. Totally. Yeah. I mean, I think in leading up to, you know, leading up to the 2016 Olympics, like it was, you know, I was, I was just like a young buck. Like, you know, I just wanted to get out there and race. Like in the improvement curve was, was so steep that it, you know, every time you got into the water, it was like, all right, I’m going to best time here. That’s, that’s going to be, that’s going to be a good race. And so the motivation then was like, all right, I’m chasing. Like I want to, I want to do some of the things that, you know, Ryan Locke, the entire career we’re doing in the 200 back, I want to do the things that Matt Griebers and David Palmer are doing in the 100 backs, like studying how they are doing things, trying to do, you know, trying to be like, create a player mode. Like growing up, I love playing Madden. And like, you could create a player however you want. And I kind of view the way that, that those guys were doing things as a menu.

Okay. What can I learn from Locke? Like what can he, what, what can, what does he do that I can do? And what are some things that I would maybe want to do a little bit differently? And you kind of, you look across enough good swimmers and you can make those, make those decisions in that way. And I would say coming off of, not coming off of 2016, leading into 2021. I think my confidence got to the point where it’s like, all right, like, you know, it’s a little bit, it’s a little bit more on me. Like I’m trying to optimize me. So like, what am I doing that I think I could do a little bit better? And you do look at other swimmers to figure that out. But it, but it becomes like every, every person is want to lean into your relative strengths instead of just copying what other people are doing. And then I would say now, like where I’m at is, is I’m really interested in all of the things that correlate with a good performance.

So, so looking at really like a lifestyle of success and all of the things that I could do to help myself have a great performance. Can you talk a bit more about the lifestyle of success that you mentioned there? So are you talking more things outside of the pool? Just how you go about your daily life? Is it a bit more of a, like a, not a wholesale approach, but like a bit more of looking outside of just a swimming portion of your daily life? Sure. Yeah. So, I mean, like when you’re, when you’re looking at swimming, I think there’s, there’s a tendency to, I mean, obviously, first you’re going to look at like your, your physiology and your technique. So like, am I in great shape? Am I swimming the most efficient way possible? And that’s like obviously a great place to start. But I think that’s like, I think that’s kind of just like baseline, like at the Olympic level, like everyone’s in incredible shape.

And the majority of people have also really good technique. And so like beyond that, like what are the things you can do to, to be even better? And so like, then you’re parsing apart, like, okay, what’s my nutrition look like? What’s the optimal, what’s the optimal like eating plan for me? Like at what times of the day, what, what types of, what types of meals am I eating? What are the macros in that meal? How has that changed throughout the season on the recovery side? Like, am I, am I doing the right things to recover practice to practice and really looking at the different ways to do that? So are you someone that responds to, to massage better or physical therapy or chiropractor? Like there’s, then there’s so many products that are coming out to also help with, help with recovery. So it’s like, what do you, what do you hyperize come out with? Like is that, is that a product that I should use on the, you know,

the mental fitness side? Like you definitely want to walk behind the blocks with, with a clear mind, understanding your strategy on the sleep side, just making sure that you’re staying on top of it and really like digging into that and making sure that you’re not, that you’re not overtraining and kind of looking at things through that lens. So I mean, those are just a couple of examples, but like everything you do in the day does impact performance. So most, I mean, throughout the day, like it’s honestly subconscious for me now, but like a lot of decisions are made with performance in mind. And it’s just going back to the, like coming into 2016, you’ve got that mindset of like wanting to prove yourself basically and get those results and then you win gold medals, you’ve proved that you can do it. And yeah, and now just when you’re behind the blocks, what’s that difference like for you when you’re behind the blocks wanting to prove yourself?

2016, get those gold medals. And now where you’ve done that, you’ve got the experience. Do you find yourself, because obviously there’s got to be more confidence there with the experiences and accomplishments that you’ve got over the years now. So where’s your head space at when you are behind the blocks? What are you, what are you thinking when you’ve got these younger swimmers who are where you were in 2016 wanting to prove themselves? How do you manage that in your head? Yeah, it’s a great question. You know, I think like you kind of set it in there. Like there’s a level of confidence that I do bring behind the blocks. And I think a lot of that is because I’ve been able to have success on the highest level before. But I think a lot of it also comes down to the training I do day to day. Like I don’t go, I’m going to try and think about it. I’ve never gone into a championship meet feeling underprepared.

Like I make sure that I am fully prepared or I feel that I’m fully prepared to have a good race. And that’s something I pride myself on. So there’s a level of confidence that comes from that as well. But I mean, yeah, there’s always young kids coming up. Like there’s definitely no lack of talent, especially in the backstroke races. And so like, yeah, you catch anyone on a day they’re hot and like they could go off. So I mean, you never go throughout the season and you definitely never go behind the blocks. Like thinking that you deserve this more than anyone else. That’s why you do the race. So I mean, I think that I thrive on pressure. Like I love that. So, you know, I want to say that everyone should approach a race like that. But, you know, that definitely, you know, having a level of respect for everyone in the field and understanding that they can probably go and win that race. Like that gets me, that gets the nerves flowing in me.

And that’s something that I like to feel right before a race. Which up and coming swimmer has caught your attention and impressed you the most recently? Not necessarily a backstoker, but is there anyone that comes to mind? Yeah, sure. I think, yeah, I mean, like in, I think in the spring freestyles, like, yeah, I mean, Papafichi is an animal. Like he’s, you know, he’s, he’s really cool and, you know, and a beautiful swimmer to watch. I think Joshua Endo is really interesting to watch. Like he’s, he’s very powerful. Like, I mean, watching him, I mean, even just watching him do starts, like really starts in the warm up pool last summer at Worlds. It’s just like, geez, that guy, that guy has got some spring in there. So there’s a lot of talent there. And from everything I hear, he’s a really hard worker and he’s going to, he’s going to continue to develop that talent. So, so I’m really excited to continue to watch him.

I would say, and this sounds bad. I don’t, I don’t watch a ton of the, the breaststrokes, unfortunately. So, yeah, I just, I always hated breaststroke growing up. So I just, it just never, it just never clicks for me. So I think I’ve, I’ve carried that pain with me and I just, I don’t follow the breaststrokes super closely. Butterfly, I mean, Malak is, Malak’s an animal. Like that’s, that’s really fun to watch. And you’ll see, I guess you’ll see Leon going in there in the 200 fly. There’s Japanese guys really solid in that. And then honestly, the, in the U S we’re, we’re not, we’re not quite at podium level yet in that 200 fly, but we’ve got a lot of guys that are, that are going to be doing it out. So I think they’re going to push each other to be better there. And then backstrokes, I mean, obviously I know backstrokes better than, than the others. So like, check on is, is really impressive. I think the, the young Polish guy, a butcher, his name, if I said it.

So, well, I guess I’ll say, I don’t know if that’s how you say it, but he’s, you know, he’s impressive. I think he went 52 five as like a 17 year old. So like that’s disgusting. Peter code says looking good. I trained with Hunter Armstrong. He’s, he’s looking really good as well. I mean, I’m just going through everyone. So like, yeah, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of young town. There’s a lot of young town in the U S as well. So I mean, there’s a crop of like 15 and 16 year old guys in the U S. Maybe they’re 17 now, but you know, those kids are, those kids are good. And it’s going to be cool to watch them develop over the next few years as well. And has there been anything that’s surprised you in being at the level that you’re at? So swimming at swimming professionally, basically anything that’s surprised you compared to what you thought is a 16, 17, 18 year old. What’s been different between what you thought and what you expected?

Oh, that’s a good, that’s a good question. I don’t think I’ve ever been asked that. That’s a really good one. Yeah. I mean, I think, I think when I was like, when I was like 16, yeah, when I was like 16, so that was, I was 16 at 2012 Olympic trials. You know, so like, I was looking at those guys as, as like total rock stars. Like, I think, you know, I thought that like, you know, I thought that like Lochte and, and Phelps and, and Griever’s were like, they were awesome. You know, I kind of thought they could like, you know, they could, they could do no wrong. And I think like, you know, obviously, like as you, as you kind of move into, you know, as you kind of move into a position as a, as a pro swimmer, like that’s, that’s obviously not the case. But I think when you’re, when you’re a young kid, like you’re, yeah, I mean, like, you’re just so excited. Like if you’re looking at these people, it’s like, oh, they’re so cool.

And like, and that’s like, I think that’s like the useful joy. And like, you know, I still have that level of like excitement and joy towards the sport. Yeah. But it’s not like we’re sitting here and we’re rock stars. Well, that’s the thing. Like you’ll have some 16 year old kids looking at you at the pool and going, man, Ryan Murphy is a, he’s a rock star. He can do no wrong. So it’s, you’re exactly right. It’s that it’s the view of someone younger. And then as you, and same as when you’re a teenager, you’re late teens, early, early twenties, you sort of look up to these people who might be five, 10, 15 years older than you. And you just think they’re on this whole other level. You kind of either get to that age where you get to know them. And you’re like, they’re normal people. They are no different to, to anyone else in, in many ways. And, and I think that’s a great view to have because you realize that you can reach those heights.

You can do a lot more. And, and there’s nothing exceptional in many ways about these people that are just normal human beings who have committed themselves to, to a challenge or to a cause and they’ve stuck with it and they’ve done things really, really well. There’s certainly there’s some talent there with, with a lot of people, but they’re no different than, than anyone else. Yeah, you nailed that. Yeah. I think that’s, that’s spot on. I think it’s really like, yeah, just people have, people have talent in different areas and, and really it just comes down to how are you going to, how are you going to maximize that talent? And, and I think that’s just like what the, that’s what the best do really well across like, and that’s, that’s true for swimming and, and a bunch of different industries as well. And in terms of just backstroke technique there, like if you were to teach a 15 year old kid at the pool, what would be some of the,

the key fundamentals that you would, that you’d talk about if you were coaching backstroke to a 15 year old? Sure. Yeah. I mean, so I think the, the caveat to this is like, you know, there, there are definitely different styles of backstroke. So the style that, the style that I do is, is different than the style, as say someone like Mitch Larkin, who, who had a ton of success in, in the stroke, but, but we just swim in totally different ways. So I think the way that, that I would teach it is, I mean, I think that the fundamentals is, I like to start with the kick backstrokes very leg driven. So the first thing is, is you want, I mean, you just want a, a consistent kick. So like, you know, I think it’s, it’s easier to have a consistent kick when that kick is small. So, you know, just, just working, playing around with the amplitude of the kick. I don’t think many people think about that at a young age, but, you know, think about,

think about the amplitude of the kick first. And then, and then just kind of work your way up. Like I, I swim a very rotation driven backstroke. So like, what that means is the things that I’m trying to do in the stroke is get the shoulder over, so I can get the arm up and over the water. Because I mean, if you look at me, like I have, I have big shoulders. So like I do not, I don’t want to be piling with my shoulders. So I want to get my shoulders up and over the water. And then when you enter, I mean, you really just want your, your arm in a strong catch. So like the freestyle catch and the backstroke catch are the exact same. It’s just a different angle. So it’s like, you’ve got all those same things you learn with a freestyle catch where you just want this strong angle. You want your elbow above your hand. It’s the same exact thing back here. And so you’re just getting to a strong position and then you rotate through.

So like if you’re a rotation swimmer, you’re going to be throwing the shoulders side to side and your hips are, your hips are going to be moving with it. So like you want your shoulders and hips to move at the same time. And then if you’re doing a shorter race, if you’re doing a sprint, the way you increase your tempo is you do less rotation. So in a sprint, you’re not going to rotate over as far, but you’re also going to be moving your, your arms faster. So I went through a lot of different things there and the keeper head back. So those are, there’s the, there’s the keys. Yeah. That’s great. In terms of like that, your stroke or your style compared to Mitch Larkins, what would be the key differences there? It kind of comes down to body type. Like Mitch, Mitch wasn’t as broad in his shoulders. So Mitch leaned the back way more in the water. So like he, he wasn’t necessarily getting his shoulders up and over the water quite as much as someone like me.

But as a result of that, his legs were higher in the water. I mean, if you put your head back further in your shoulders back further, your legs are going to be higher. So I probably swim a more leg driven stroke as compared to Mitch. And so that comes, that comes down to, to relative strengths as well. Mitch was, Mitch was really good at, at grabbing the water and pulling. And so he swam a technique that highlighted that where I’m going to be a little bit more leg dominant and, and so in that way. The way that we got introduced was through Baden from Skillist, who was on a very recent episode on the podcast. And so on Skillist, you’re on Skillist as a coach there. So people can send you their videos of them swimming or their kids swimming as well and providing feedback and, and analyzing their stroke basically. And I saw one of their, the backstroke videos that you did there with one of Baden’s friends, kids. And it was really good luck.

It was to the point and just left the kid with two or three things to focus on. And especially at, I mean, even for adults, but especially for those young swimmers, it’s like it doesn’t have to be complex. It just keep it really simple. Two things, maybe, maybe three and just to have them keep it in mind for when they’re, they’re swimming. Like what kind of technique feedback did you get as a, as a teenager? Was there a lot? Did you just naturally develop your stroke? How was that technique development when you were young? It was oddly enough, like I saw, I grew up in a, in a program that was like, we did not, we did not do very many yards. Like we were, you know, we were very technique based and I would not accept feedback on, on backstroke technique. Like at the youngest age, I was just like, you know what, like, you know, like you hear where you’re saying, it just doesn’t feel good. And so like, I just kind of went with it.

Whatever I was feeling in backstroke, I, I always went with it. I accepted feedback in, in all of the other strokes. And I thought that was super great. But at the youngest age, not in backstroke. And I think like throughout the high school years, so, you know, ages, ages 14, that’s 18. I think the, the biggest thing that we were working on is, is generating tempo. Like I was, I couldn’t get my tempo up at all when I was, when I was younger, I just swam really long and my stroke would get all out of whack if I tried to pick up the pace. And so we were trying to build tempo and figuring out how to do that while maintaining a good technique. And then, you know, once, once we kind of got that down, then we were able to hone in, hone in the technique a little bit more. But yeah. So my process was like build the, be able to build the tempo and the fitness. Once you kind of have that, then make these subtle adjustments. And then I think that worked well.

What did you change to be able to lift your tempo? I mean, we, we put in tempo trainers. And then you got to keep up with it. But it, but really kind of what I was saying earlier, it’s like it does come down to the amount you’re rotating. Like I, I love to, you know, I love to, I think the tuner stroke is much more natural for me than the hundred stroke. So like I like to lay on each side and really get some good distance for stroke. That’s my natural stroke. And then the hundred, it’s just rotating a little bit less, routine a little bit less with both the shoulders and the hips. And then ultimately like what that does is like, if you rotate less, your catch isn’t going to be quite as deep in the water. So you’re going to be able to rip that arms through a little bit quicker. And then you, and then you just got to build fitness on the leg. So like the, the general rhythm that I’m working with is it’s the same, you know,

it’s really the same bones. Like it’s still probably the same amount of kicks per arm cycle. So like if the arms are picking up the leg, the leg got to come pick up as well. And so those were, those were some of the things that we were thinking about. Hmm. Fantastic. And I just want to shift gears a little bit here is what comes to mind is like the most challenging obstacle that you’ve faced in your swimming careers. There’s something that stands out there that you look back and go like this, this was a really hard time or this was a really challenging thing that I, that I faced but looking back, I’m glad it happened. That’s a good question. I mean, I think like knock on wood. Like I’m fortunate that I’ve never, that I’ve never had a major injury. And so, you know, totally a very sympathetic to the people that have had like months on months of rehab and working their way back. I think that would, I mean, that would be really tough.

I think for me, like a big challenge in my, you know, a challenging time in my career was, you know, I did have a small back injury. And this was, this was like three and a half weeks or four weeks out of Olympic trials in 2016. So like, again, like taking, taking with the perspective of never had a major injury. So like I was in, I was in the weight room and we weren’t even like, we weren’t doing anything heavy. Like I was just doing like fast, fast movement squats. So just like quick up and like, I just felt something weird in my back. And I kind of was like, Oh, it’s probably just, I was killing going through it. And like, I woke up the next day and I could hardly walk. And so that was, yeah, that was tough cause it was like a week and a half. I couldn’t, for a week and a half, I couldn’t do a flip turn. And then like, I didn’t do a start until two days before Olympic trials. So like, it felt like we were kind of against the gun there on,

in terms of like the timing of that, all kind of like getting better. And I think what I would say, and this is something that I’ve really taken with me, my whole life is anytime you’re in a room with an expert, ask a question. So in that scenario, like I learned a lot about my body. It’s like, okay, why was, why did my back tighten up? And for me, like it’s, you know, you kind of go through the things. It’s like, all right. Like is it a back spasm? No, it’s not a back spasm. It’s more so like, I can’t bring my knees up. So, you know, kind of learned what, like what was the triggers to that? Like for me, that’s, that’s a, you know, tight glutes. So like, you know, my butt muscles were really tense and that’s pulling on my back in an interesting way. And my so as muscle was, was really tight as well. And so that’s pulling on the back too. So, so learning how to stay ahead of it so that it hopefully doesn’t happen again. That was,

those were some really good learnings. Yeah. I think back to any injuries that I’ve had. And I’ve never really had any with swimming. Luckily I’ve had like a very small shoulder injury from just lifting my swim bag out of the car in an awkward position with my arm. It’s like, okay, okay, I’ve learned that. I’m not going to do that again. But that was, that was pretty minor. But like in terms of last year, I thought it’d be a great idea to start running 10K a day from January 1st. And I got to day, day nine and I’ve done 10K each day. And then I went surfing, tweaked my knee and thought, I’ve got to keep this up. I still got to keep running 10K a day, then run 10K the next day. And then I didn’t run for about six months. And I look at that experience. And yeah, at the time it was, it was frustrating because I, I mean, it hurt to swim, hurt to run. I couldn’t really do a lot of the stuff that I love. But then it put me on to,

put me on to like a strength and conditioning program for my, my lower body, my knees, my hips. And it’s just been the, it’s made the biggest difference with not only just how I, how I feel generally, but also just in terms of leg strength, back health, all this sort of stuff. And I wouldn’t have probably come across it had I not had that, that injury. So that stuff can be frustrating at the time, but I think it forces you to learn and adapt and make some changes. Yeah. So any triathlons coming up for you? No. I did, I did one season of triathlons to see what it’s like because majority of the people I coach are triathletes. So I thought, I should know what it’s actually like to be swimming while I’m riding and running so much and how does the body change? And I can guarantee that my swimming did suffer as a result of all the running and riding. But yeah, no, not, not for now. It’s like me primarily coaching. I still swim a couple of times a week

and, and love that. But yeah, the fire for competing right now isn’t, isn’t that high, but I think a few years down the track, it probably will be when my kids are a bit older. And yeah, and when things, things change there, just to finish things up. Is there anything, anything for you that, like you feel that you have a contrary belief or unconventional belief about things compared to some of the other swimmers that you see? Ooh, I like that question. Yeah, I like that question a lot. I don’t, I mean, I don’t know that this is like, I don’t know that this is like, contrarian, but, you know, I think, I think the body is, the body is a lot more resilient than, than we give it credit for. I mean, I think in, in my experience, like, you know, if I look back over my career and my best seasons, you know, pretty typically my best seasons were, were coming off of years, like where the previous year, where we just got absolutely crushed in training.

And so like, you know, like, where, you know, frankly, like you’re, you’re starting to lean into the, like the negative effects of like overtraining. Like, so that, that was the previous year, but the next year, man, like rocket. So, you know, I think like the body, the body does adapt to, you know, I think pretty much anything we put it through, it just takes some time for, for those results to show sometimes. And I think that’s, that’s potentially a little bit contrarian. And I think that definitely like, you know, people listening to this, that will definitely throw me into like the old school camp. But, you know, I think it’s, I think it’s true. And I think it’s true in a lot of different aspects of life. Like, you know, I think if, you know, you, you go in and you go to a class for like, you know, five hours a day, you know, the first couple of weeks, that’s going to stink. And I guess your, your listeners are probably in like high school.

So they’re probably like, what a week, what a week example. But for people that have been out of school for a little bit, like you go to class for, for a couple of hours and it’s like, ooh, that’s hard. You know, but then a couple of weeks later, it’s like, all right, like I can handle a little bit more. And so, yeah, I mean, I think just the body can, the body can take a lot, it can adapt to a lot. And then I think the body holds those adaptations for a long time as well. So I think like, honestly, on both ends of the spectrum, I’m probably a little contrarian. Like in a swimming season, like, you know, my personal point of view is that you just get worked in the fall. Like do a lot of work. And then you could also taper for like, way longer than we actually taper for. So those would be my contrarian views. Yeah, I love it. That’s good. Most of the listeners to this podcast would be between 30 and 60. And a lot of them are doing Iron Man events

or half Iron Man events and doing quite a bit of training. So I think they would tend to agree with that as well. And I certainly do too. I think the body can really get used to some crazy workloads. And I was actually watching a duck on Netflix last night called The Alpinist. And it’s about this. It’s a very sad ending. I didn’t say it coming, but my wife did. And she’s like, he’s not going to make it. And I was like, no, I think he will. But it was like what that guy just got, what he trained himself to do and the temperatures that he could climb in. And like, for him, it was water for ducks back. He’s just like, yeah, it’s no big deal. But throw anyone else into those sort of situations and you’re like, how is that possible? But yeah, the body, the body adapts. So I think it’s a pretty incredible, incredible thing. And that guy probably isn’t even like he wasn’t producing adrenaline by the end. Like he had been in such like pressure situations

that like nothing, nothing got him nervous. He was so calm. Wasn’t he just on the sheer cliff faces and climbing for hours already. And he’s just calmly making these movements. And yeah, it’s just like your throat. Like you look at, if you look at that say, even like, I think 50 years ago, you look at that and go, would it be possible for someone to climb with just the backpack from here to here and go up and down in a day? No way. That wouldn’t be possible. But it’s just, it’s amazing what people can do. And I think a lot of that also comes from just seeing what’s possible and people go, okay, well, if he can do that, then I’m going to push the limits. And we see a similar thing in swimming, right? Like world records broken from 2008, 2009 with the super suits to most of those have been broken now. So I think that we just continue to evolve and improve, which is really exciting from a spectator’s position. But also I think in the, in the competitive realm as well,

where everyone’s just like really, really going for it and seeing how quick can we get. Yeah, totally agree. And I think it’s also interesting in swimming too, because like the technology that we’re wearing really hasn’t taken, like the restrictions have been the same since they banned the super suits in 2009. And so like we’ve been operating with the same amount of technology since 2009 and look at how much faster it is. Like the human body is really, really impressive. To the last question I’ve got for you, Ryan, what outside of swimming gets you motivated and fires you up? What really excites you outside of the pool at the moment? That’s a good question. So I love to compete. So that’s kind of like the underlying theme of everything. Just kind of given the area I’m in, I graduated from Cal with a degree in business administration. I’m kind of in the heart of Silicon Valley out here. And so I got involved with the venture capital group in 2021

and I’m advising them. And so that’s been really cool just to see people at the beginning of their journey of building a business. And through that, I’ve gotten to meet a lot of people who have gone from starting a business all the way through IPO or selling it to another company. And then I think that’s just a really, I just think that’s really cool. Like it’s really exciting to try to think about how can we do things in a different way and how can I do something that no one’s ever done and go after it, build it, get the right support team around you. I think there’s a lot of correlations between athletics and entrepreneurship. And it’s been cool to explore that a little bit. Yeah, it seems like a really relevant way to apply your skill set aside from just the swimming portion of it. But everything else outside of that, what a great way to apply everything that you learn in competitive swimming to another area of life

that’s going to serve you outside of swimming and after you finish competing. Very high performance, high achievers in that field. So I can see why it’s 100%. Yeah, it’s been really cool to just kind of dip my toe in there. It’s just fun to learn. I think I’ve always been someone like, I want to be continuously learning. Like now forever. Yeah, absolutely. And Ryan, for anyone listening to this, what’s the best way to follow you, find out more about you, or if they’d like to send through some videos on skillist, what’s the best way to do it? Yeah, yeah, so one skillist. And then my social handles, Instagram and Twitter are Ryan underscore F underscore Murphy. And I’m on Facebook as well. So yeah, all the social media on there. Awesome. Well, thanks so much for being on the podcast. It’s been great for me as someone who’s seen you compete over the last, well, really, I’ve probably seen you since 2016. And thank you so much for sharing your experience

and showing it with our audience. Of course, really appreciate you 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 What It Takes To Win Olympic Gold And Break Worlds Records with Ryan Murph appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

I’m excited to introduce my guest, Ben Geard, from Element Swimming. Ben and I go way back as great friends, and he was one of the coaches during the Maldives Camp last year. At Element Swimming, Ben offers lessons for beginners and helps swimmers progress from beginners to an intermediate level. That’s what we will talk about today—strategies and techniques for individuals who are complete beginners or relatively new to swimming, aiming to reach that intermediate level.

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 a good friend of mine and someone who came on the Maldives camp last year as a coach. It’s Mr. Ben Geerd from Alamed Swimming. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks, Brent. How you going? Good. Thanks. Well, thanks for jumping on this podcast with me. Thanks for a very long time and you’ve done a little bit of coaching with me in the past as well. And I often bring up stories from when you’ve been a coach because I think one of your strengths is knowing how to motivate people because you know that I don’t like to get beaten. You know how to push my buttons and fly me up. And I think that’s a real strength of yours as a coach. And I really enjoyed the times where I was coached by you and I know a lot of

other people do because you’re very good at manipulation in a positive way. That’s definitely the component of coaching that I like is trying to find what buttons to push on certain individuals and how to get the best out of them. It’s definitely a fun and enjoyable challenge in coaching. So yeah, I’m glad you liked it. Yeah. I think a lot of other swimmers do as well and you’re now up in Queensland running Alamed Swimming. So not Effortless Swimming but Alamed Swimming and I’ll make sure to give you a stick every time because it’s way too close to mine but it will take it. And so you run a couple of pools up there with Learn to Swim and you also have a big component of adult Learn to Swim and taking swimmers from beginners up to that intermediate level. And that’s what I want to talk about today for anyone who’s listening who finds themselves in a similar sort of position. I want to talk about some strategies and some ways that they can go from that

either complete beginner or fairly new swimmer up to that intermediate level. And just before we begin, do you want to give those listening just a brief background on your swimming and coaching experience? Because you’ve got a lot of success as a swimmer and also as a coach. Yeah, I don’t know about that much success as a swimmer. No, I competed at a lot of the Olympic and Commonwealth Games trials with the Open National Championships as a sprinter. But yeah, I was coached under your father for a long time until I joined you as a coach and then coached yourself and a lot of other good swimmers we had there. So yeah, I’ve been coaching for about 17 years now and that’s been a coaching director before I’m doing now. And I had coached a big private school here in Brisbane before we started our own thing here in Brisbane, helmet swimming. And yeah, it’s something I really wanted to do. I learned a lot about how to run a team from your dad and how to build a

culture and how to get the most out of people. And yeah, I’m really enjoying the challenge that we’re running here. And yeah, we were lucky to get it off the ground. We’ve got three pools now and learner’s swim is obviously the big, big component of it. But then we have all our squads as well and adult squads and we have a couple of national level swimmers as well now and national medalists. But yeah, surprising enough on the side, we really got the adult learner’s swim going and it’s become a massive component to our program now. And to the point where we’re constantly booked out and can’t fit enough people in. So it’s a good problem to have, but I tried to do a little bit different. I was doing them by myself at the start and I didn’t want to do it like everybody else was doing it. So we honed in on sort of a one-on-one and two-on-one program and it took off. It’s been really successful. And over the last seven years doing that, build quite a good program

and break it down to the process that we have that’s been able to get the success. And with that, it’s so hard to find people who will take someone as a beginner adult. Like there’s just very few programs and those that I have seen, there’s very few that do it well because it might be groups of four or five swimmers and it might be an instructor there who doesn’t really care if you get better or not. They’re just so I do some kick with the board. That’s it. But to actually have coaches and people there who they want to make sure that you actually get better and that you do learn to swim, they’re investing your results. It’s such a nice thing to see because it is such a hard thing to find. And I quite often get asked, I’m a beginner, where do I go? And I’ve got very few people or coaching businesses that I can refer people to. Exactly. And that’s, you know, I started doing it the same way, just in groups,

just to open up some group adult lessons. And what I found is just people are coming and going. There’s no consistency, different levels to deal with in the one lesson. And I just thought, this is not going to work. This is a waste of my time and a waste of their time. And it’s just not going to work for anyone. So that’s why we changed it and made it one on one, very specific to the person, individual, everyone learns at different speeds. People can commit differently. Consistency is a big one. It’s key. So we promote that a lot. So, you know, with that one on one type set up, it really forces this swimmer to be committed and through that, we get some really good results. So, yeah, now it’s definitely works wonders and we’re really enjoying it. And it’s not something I give to all of my teachers. I don’t, like you said, you go to some other programs and it’s just a uni student asked to give a few tips, basically.

But no, I’ve got eight coaches on board and six of them at the moment are taking adult lessons. So you’re not really getting that teaching style. You’re getting a coaching style, which, you know, works primarily for a lot of the adults, but for that other sort of, you know, 10 or 20 percent that prefer that teaching style, we have a couple of teachers that work with them as well, still under the same process, though. And you break it down to three levels. And do you want to talk a bit about the first level? Those absolute beginners who may have a bit of fear around water. What’s that first level involved to kind of just get them comfortable in the water and what are you focused on and what sort of processes have you developed over that time? Yeah, so generally we get people that, like you say, are afraid of the water, really afraid and even just scared to stand in the water. But we also get the guys that are not afraid of the water.

We just haven’t been taught how to swim. So they’re still all complete level one. It’s an education for those guys who aren’t scared before they move on to level two. And for the guys that are scared, there’s a little bit more to it. So it’s building that water confidence for those guys initially. And then it’s having them understand that this level one is the foundation. And generally in that foundation, we’ll work on floating and body position. So understanding how to float, first of all. And then from there, understanding the importance of how to get the correct body position and why it’s important. From there, we’ll learn how to kick. So kicking some big component. And then the third thing is how to breathe. So the breathing technique as well. So generally by the end of level one, our swimmers can kick to 12 and a half meters or even 25 meters, consensually kicking and breathing without stopping. This episode of the podcast is proudly brought to you by our sponsor,

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display where it’s actually telling you what your intervals are. So when I wear the goggles in training, I like that I know my split for the first 50 and the 100 and the 150. So every single lap I’m getting that feedback on what my pace is. And I find it’s such an important tool for being able to not only have different gears, where you can switch between the different speeds that you want to swim. But it helps you develop those gears and it helps you intuitively know how fast you need to go before you’re going to blow up or before you’re going to go a little bit too hard. So it helps you just get really good at judging your pace for when you do go to a race and even if you’re not wearing the goggles in a race, it’s that intuition and that ability to develop your pacing that these goggles can really help with. To get your pair of form goggles and say 15% off, use our link formswim.com forward slash effortless or

use the coupon effortless at checkout. And that will get you 15% off your pair of goggles using our special link formswim.com forward slash effortless or the code effortless at checkout. What are some things that you’ve seen taught that you’ve looked at and go, I think there’s a better way to teach that. Is there anything that you’ve developed in the last couple of years in that level of your coaching where you go, I think there’s a better way to do this? Yeah, probably in the kicking. I mean, we’ve tried a few different different ways. So we actually started kicking on the back rather than just going straight to the front and face in the water. Because I want the swimmers to be able to see what they’re feeling. So by kicking on the back, we generally use a noodle and get them in a sit-up, seated position. They can see how they’re kicking. So they can see the technique that we’re trying to get out of them and

they can feel it at the same time. I think that’s been really important and something we’ve really introduced into our junior learner swim stuff as well. So it’s been funny, I’ve learned a lot from the little learner swim, but I’ve also learned a lot from the adults and transferred the both between the two. So yeah, so the kicking’s definitely one. I think just the explanations, how to explain different things, different analogies work for different people. I know a few coaches have got their ways and I’ve got my ways and we share them all. And sometimes you’ll go through five or six different analogies or different explanations before it clicks. So it’s building that bank of that, that seems to help as well. That’s what I really enjoyed about having you on the Maldives camp. Because it’s been, we haven’t hung out that much in the last couple of years being in different states. We see it, you know, sorry each other occasionally.

But having you there as a coach along with Gary Haring and Phil Rush, who I’ve coached with fairly regularly over the last couple of years. You got this melting pot of four coaches from different backgrounds and experiences and it was great just picking up different vocab, different ways of explaining things. And I just love to hear those different styles and they end up picking one, two or three things and taking it back and incorporating that yourself and all just being able to use it at different times when it’s necessary. And that’s what I think was for me personally just from a coaching perspective that was great about that Maldives camp last year. Yeah, that’s right. I mean, you had four different angles coming in there. Like I was, I’d been doing a lot of adult learning to swim at that point. And I know Gary is a very elite high performance coach and comes from that background. And so he had his angles to come in.

I was coming in with a very simple basic angles for those who couldn’t quite understand that high level type language, I guess. And yeah, and then of course your work that you’ve been doing for many years with the adults and triathletes and that as well was. Yeah, he’s fantastic, three different angles. And I took some stuff back as well that would hopefully work for my swim as my adults. You enjoyed the Maldives so much that you’re going to run a learn to swim camp over there in September, which we’ll talk a bit more about. But yeah, such a good location for it with the lagoon there and those that want to push it a bit more can go around. And when people are relaxed, they generally swim better. They float better, they swim better and it’s a perfect location for it over there. That’s right. Such a, I think a lot of people like to go on a holiday, especially in a beautiful place like that was fantastic. And while they’re there, have an activity and

come away with something they’ve learned while they’ve been there or improve themselves somehow, it’s just like it’s a massive pulling card. And it’s something I’ll think a lot of people enjoy going away and having a holiday at the same time, coming back with a new knowledge or a new skill. So yeah, that’s definitely what the goal is here is to give people that skill to be able to snorkel, be confident in water and actually be able to put a lap of freestyle together whilst on holiday in the Maldives. How cool. And it’s it like, I haven’t, I don’t think I’ve seen another like learn to swim real beginner swim camp like this before you’ve got like your swim tracks and stuff like that for those that are already swimming. But you’ve got I guess like comparison there is someone who might go and like learn to scuba or like learn to snorkel on a holidays. Like it’s the same thing you can learn these things, especially in this

intensive environment where you’re doing it twice a day and you’ve got that hands on, you’ve got lots of coaches there to help you with it. So it’s yeah, like brand new kind of concept, I guess, but I can see how it can work in a place like Summer Island in the Maldives. Exactly, yeah. So I mean, we’ve obviously got to cap our numbers that we have on the camp and we’ll be we’ll be having five coaches there. So plenty of eyes and plenty of help. That’s, you know, something that’s going to be really important for that level of swimmer. So yeah, I’m yeah, I think it should should work really well. If, yeah, people are interested in them going to the Maldives, which for me it was a bucket list item. And so thanks for that. That was, yeah, really enjoyed that last year. So yeah, looking forward to the opportunity to perhaps teach some people how to swim and send them home from such an awesome holiday with a new skill would just be would be really good.

Yeah, absolutely. Good place to do it. So you’ve talked about level one and one of those things there is just having people see what they’re actually doing with the kick as is something that can help open their eyes. And that made me think about like the breaststroke course that we I just put together with Sam Ashby, who your friends with as well. One of the breaststroke drills that he talked about was having your head down, looking at what you’re doing with your kick and actually just seeing what’s happening there because it’s very hard to know. Am I going too wide? Am I turning my feet out enough? And I started doing this yesterday action and I’m like, OK, there’s a few things I could improve here because I just visually haven’t haven’t seen it. What’s level two comprised of? Yeah, so level two is usually I think a lot of people think well, level one is easy, then level two, then level three is the hardest.

But actually level two is probably the hardest and the one that takes a little bit more time because it’s that if you haven’t been swimming before, it’s learning how to feel the water and apply pressure on the water. And so that’s a big thing. So we go through a lot of sculling techniques, a lot of sculling drills so then to be able to learn that skill. And then we learn the pull phase. So the the pull the catch pattern that we want to have, how to set your arms up, your elbows up so that you can catch with the right muscles and and pull through in the right direction. So the catch phase is usually the most challenging for people haven’t done anything before. And then from there, yeah, we move into level three. I actually learnt one of the things that we use at clinics, learn a couple of things from from you, which is like in terms of so you got posture, right? So you got good posture and bad posture and how much stronger you are

with good posture. And then in terms of where your arm is, the exercise that will sometimes go through with people is when if their arms cross in their centerline, sometimes it’s a lot weaker and it can use more the front of their shoulder and can kind of pinch if their hands and arms out really wide, far away from their body, it’s very weak. And then when you get to the right position, which is just outside shoulder width, I’d say with with the arm, they’re generally a lot, a lot stronger because you can use those stronger supporting muscles through the back and shoulder. And there’s a couple of things like that and with head position that I learnt from you, just demonstrating the difference between some of these different positions. And I think that helps it click for a lot of people, probably more for that more intermediate somewhere rather than beginner, but you had a lot of really good ideas around teaching that and showing people the differences in

these sort of positions. So what sort of things there do you see light bulb moments going off for for those people? Like is it when they change the position of their hands with the skull? Is it when they like maybe do a drill and they can actually feel themselves moving forward? So there are any sort of particular light bulb moments that happen when you’re going through this process? Yeah, definitely. I think when we do we do a particular drill where they’ve got to use two arms to pull themselves through the water. This is after we’ve taught them the sculling angles and position after they’ve learnt how to feel and you know to be able to I guess to be able to move through the water with just your hands moving side to side in that sculling action for a lot of people they’re amazed at how far they can go and move through the water with just such a small simple movement. But it’s it’s getting the angles right.

It’s understanding what angles you need to have with your hands, arms to be able and head and body position to be able to move yourself forward. Then once we move into the pool phase and the pool pattern that we’re after and they can learn that they can push and glide off the wall and just do one pull through and travel like 10 to 12 meters with just that glide and that pull through. Yeah, they’re amazed. You know, they haven’t done any real swimming yet and all they’ve done is glide and pull through and then travel half the length of the 25 meter pool. So that comes back to that body position as well. So, you know, when they can learn to sit on top of the water beautifully, get the angles right for that catch, do that one nice powerful pull through and then travel 12 and a half meters. They’re stoked. Absolutely amazing. Yeah, it’s a good achievement for the coach as well because that’s a big, big part of it.

And so you’re talking about a double arm pull through where like we basically going through an entire pull pattern but with both arms together and then they should themselves forwards. Yeah, exactly. And that’s, you know, I think that’s the best way to learn because you’re going to get the most propulsion with two arms. Then the next step is then we start to work on that same process but with a in different drills with just the single arm. And that’s, you know, often feels a little bit trickier because you don’t have the same power and the same propulsion but it’s just something you get used to. And through the series of different drills, they get comfortable with it. And from there, you know, that’s the hardest part. If we can get them catching and pulling well under the water, the rest of it comes together pretty nicely. I’ve heard some coaches say, and there’s one particular real old school triathlon coach who I’ve heard say, he says like,

I’ve only seen three or four triathletes in my time that actually ever feel the water. And the rest of them, it’s just about power. And I think it comes down to how you define feel for the water. But I think anyone can improve their feel for the water. It’s something that you can have. And if you’re thinking of it in the sense of Ian Thorpe’s got feel for the water, but someone who’s swimming like a 120 per 100 doesn’t necessarily. Or then, yeah, very few people can actually feel the water. But I think feel for the water is a concept that is true, that people can develop that feel for the water. Is that what you’re saying? What are your thoughts on that? Absolutely. I mean, when we started out swim school, one of the first things I put into our low levels was all through all our levels actually is a progression of skull. Just having kids understand how to feel through the water, how to maneuver their bodies around in circles

in an egg shape and just turning their bodies around, just using their hands, then how to move forwards and then backwards with only their hands. Because if they can pick up that skill nice and early, then I think they’re going a long way to be able to put the stroke together completely and travel really well through the water. So you take the same concept to our adults. Their adult, their more mature, brains are bigger. They’re going to be able to pick this stuff up a lot quicker, and with a bit of practice, they do. So yeah, definitely a really important component that I work really hard on with all of our swimmers, but particular adults, because yeah, it’s in some programs not taught probably enough.

The biggest mistakes that I see with skull number one would probably just be like dropped wrist or dropped elbows. So then rather than having the hand and forearm together, perhaps with a slight bend in it and getting the fingers to point down elbows up. So just that is not instinctual for anyone who’s learning to swim the right skull position. So how do you go about getting them in that position with their upper arm and elbows up and their hand and forearm down a little bit? Because for me, it takes a little bit of manipulation, bit of movement, like physically. All right, let’s bring the arm up here. This is where you should feel like your elbow is. This is where it should feel like your hand is. Just actually maneuvering them or manipulating their arms to get in that position is really not the only way, but it’s probably the best way for most people that I’ve encountered. Definitely is. And that was the tricky part,

trying to describe and have people understand that position and it is totally not natural, was quite tricky, but fun at the same time. The best one that I probably come across was getting a fit ball and the exercise ball and getting to hold or press the ball towards their stomach and chest and having their arms right over the top of the ball, which essentially gave me the proper catch position they want. And then by pressing on the ball, it also activated the muscles that we wanted to use when they go through that pull phase. So I found that one worked quite well, but otherwise I just get them out of the pool and set them up with my own hands. So manipulate their own arms and hands and then apply pressure as they try and pull towards themselves. So I think it’s important that they understand which muscles are working and why they’re working. Another one I’ve done for the kids, that’s not as fun for the kids. So for the kids, I’ve got one of those big floaty mats

and put them on the edge of the pool, squirt a lot of detergent all over it on the mat. And then they lay on the mat with just their hands over the wall. So they’re chin on the mat ready and they just slide themselves into the water like a seal and then they’ve just got to keep their elbows up as well. So lots of detergent going in the water is probably not ideal, but that’s what chlorine’s for. But the kids love it. It’s good fun to slide them in one after the other like seals. But yeah, the only way they can do that is by keeping the elbows up and with the hands on the wall. So it forces them to hold the best position that we want. And again, they understand and start to feel the muscles that are working to be able to give them that propulsion and then that translates into the water. What sort of timeframe are you looking at with people who are quite new? And let’s say they’re, and depending on how many times a week

they’re going obviously as well, but what sort of timeframe does it take to get people comfortably moving forwards and more for me with that position? And it’s a good question. And it’s one of those ones, it’s like how long is a piece of string because everybody’s different. Everyone’s commitments are different like I said. And it wasn’t something I thought about at the start, but then people are asking me over and going how long is this going to take? So what I narrowed it down to over time is it’s either a 10 week or a six week program that we run now. So 10 week is for those that need to gain water confidence first. And the six weeks is for those people who have the confidence and just need to learn how to swim. Now that is a once a week lesson, but it’s also encouraged that you must do, well, you have to be able to get that timeframe. You need to practice at least twice a week and more is better. So the more I use analogies,

it’s like learning a language like Japanese. If you learn Japanese once a week for an hour and that’s all you did on your Japanese, it’s gonna take you a long time to learn. But if you take your lesson and then you’re practicing around that lesson and then you also put yourself in an environment around people that speak Japanese, so you’re hearing it and you’re practicing it, then it’s gonna happen a lot quicker. So we actually run free practice sessions for our adult learners to come in and we promote that practicing because they’re in there when squads are on, when adult squads are on, other lessons are on. So they’re in the environment and they’re watching and learning as well as practicing and of course they’re practicing. So yeah, they’re getting the environment, they’re getting more practice and I think that goes a long way into achieving those six and 10 week programs. Obviously it extends out longer if they start missing sessions

and missing practice sessions. And it’s noticeable, all the coaches know the ones that have practice and who haven’t because they can see the difference each week. So yeah. Yeah, it applies to beginners as well. We talk about, as coaches, you lose that feel for the water fairly quickly and the general of thumb has always been if you take a week out of the water it’ll take you two weeks to get back. Now it doesn’t extend out to like, take six weeks out, takes you 12 weeks to get back necessarily but it follows that sort of path. And if someone’s only getting in once a week it takes a while to be able to really improve. And so two times a week for me would be minimum for people and then three is even is much better than that. And then book four is you’ll notice it. And when I think about the swimmers who I’ve coached who have really had good, seemed really good progression. They’ve been in often three, four, five times a week

and it’s not even big sessions necessarily like some of them have just been 20, 30 minutes sessions but it’s just they build that feel for the water and it’s really just fast tracking that learning curve. Exactly, and that just comes back to consistency as key. So the more consistent you are touching the water and being in that environment the quicker it will happen for you. Especially if you’ve been given the right skills and the right things to get in. I mean, for example, we get some people that all that they can do a lap, not very well at all but they can put together, put together a lap but we’ll start them from scratch, teach them all the foundation give them some drills and skills to work on but then they’ll go away and practice a few of those get bored of that and think they’ve got the hang of it and start practicing the swimming component again and then they’re putting all those bad habits back into practice again.

So the one thing we really hone in on this making sure that they just go away and just practice those drills and those skills and then eventually we’ll put it together. I think if you get good at each little element, excuse the pun, if you get good at each little element then you should be able to put the stroke together nicely and it should happen a lot faster.

Yeah, and it’s easy for people to get bored of a drill and just switch off and go, I’ve got this but the point of doing them is to be able to subconsciously do these things and I’m coaching a swimman through the skillist app at the moment and he’s got a race this weekend we’ve been working together for a week and I said to him, when you race this weekend don’t even worry about the stuff that we’ve worked on because the race is for racing I want you to think about your effort, your pace and just race strategy. Training is when we’re looking to develop these habits or change these movement patterns. So I don’t really care how you’re racing this weekend and nothing’s probably gonna show at all from what we’ve worked on in the last week. So don’t even worry about that stuff now it’s just we need to be able to drill it in training and drill it over several weeks to actually have it become a part of your swimming.

That’s right, so yeah, consistency is key but patience is key as well. So being able to have the patience and just work on those small components put it all together eventually and then again comes back to learning a language you learn all the words singularly and then you’d be able to put a sentence, a paragraph and a story together eventually. So yeah, consistency and patience. Transition to level three for you which is timing. Do you wanna talk a little bit about that? How do you start to put all of these different words together into a sentence? Yeah, so yeah, then we move into I guess level three where we’ve learned how to breathe but now we’re gonna learn how to breathe to the side getting ready for the putting the whole stroke together. The other thing we’ll have to learn is how to recover how the arm comes over the water the best way for the arm to come over the water and then the timing of the stroke.

So for me, three things in swimming can make you move forward and that is your kick, propulsion, your pull phase and the timing of the stroke. So, we’re teaching swimmers how to swim properly like how to properly swim. We’re not leaving anything out. I figure if we’re gonna teach them anything if we’re gonna teach them how to swim I wanna do it properly and they’re adults they generally if we break it down enough and simplify it enough they can put it together and that way we’re given the best opportunity to swim as well as they can when they go away with all the tools and skills and drills that they’ve learned. So yeah, putting the level three together is a good achievement and something I enjoy watching and put the stroke together. Sometimes it’s with fins on and then we move away from fins after that. Fins are a good tool to have just to be able to make it a little bit easier just so you can keep focusing on those components

and not worry about speed and getting fatigue. So yeah, level three is all about putting together and achieving the goal. Something for people who are listening like I’ll often hear from people when I take my fins off, I’m so much slower and my body position is not as good and like it just doesn’t feel as good. It’s like obviously, like you put a it’s always gonna be the case that you’ll feel so much better and it’d be much easier with fins. That is standard and you’re not doing anything wrong when you’re swimming, it’s just how it is even for elite swimmers it feels great with fins on. So it will always feel worse and often that contrast from having fins on to then taking them off it can make you swimming actually feel worse than it did before for a few laps until you get used to it. And I see that in our clinics because we do the majority of our clinics with fins on for all these drills and they take their fins off and they’re like, wow, I

like this swimming feels really average because I’ve had fins on for the last hour and now when I swim, it’s just like, okay, it doesn’t feel that good. But if you sort of swim it out and you give yourself a couple hundred just to get used to swimming without fins and having that propulsion again you’ll generally feel hopefully better than where you did it at the start. Yeah, that’s right. I mean, if you’re doing hundreds of fins on and it’s feeling fantastic, I guess for me I would just with my adult squad I would pull them back and just do 25s just lower the distance so they can maintain how they were feeling hopefully as well as they could without the fins and then as they get fitter and stronger with that then we can get back to those distances. When we refer to adult learn to swim component of it I’ve tried to stay away from fins as long as I can. I mean, we’re only moving sort of 10, 12 and a half meter distances anyway

to keep it really simple and so they can hold their form in what we’re trying to do because that feel component of it’s so important I think when they’re learning. So yeah, it’s a real only if need be chuck the fins on but then when we get towards that level three put it together because they can if they go a little bit faster they can understand the side breathing a little bit and that pocket that they can achieve when they’re traveling through the water a little faster I find the fins helping that in that area and then they’re just about to relax and not be as fatigued when we’re putting this straight together. It’s definitely when the fins come into it. So I think when they’re used in the right way they’re a really good tool to have fantastic tool. Now for someone who who’s can swim maybe 25, 50 or 100 meters but then they’re gassed what things do you see causing that because I see it quite a bit like I get quite a few emails about this

and they just like they want to know what is it that is making me so tired? So is there a couple of things that spring to mind when I talk about that? Being a sprint to myself don’t even bother going past those distances. No, it’s definitely something I always battled with but yeah, I mean it’s obviously a massive fitness component to it. I think legs having a kick I know when you work with the triathletes and I work the triathletes occasionally too that we don’t want to overuse the legs and we’re trying to save the legs but I think for general swimming and pool swimming having, I think a lot of, well here’s an example I guess a lot of our adult squads here in Brisbane and adult swimmers in general don’t like to do kick because it does gass you. So then when they try to go fast or work hard they try to bring in the legs and if they haven’t done the kicking in the stroke or as a separate component in training then that definitely gasses them a lot.

So I always try to have after the warm up a little kick set there sometimes it’s just vertical kick if I’ve got all different speed kickers so we can all do the same thing together or just short distances even just to have them thinking about using their legs and then do a swim set off the back of that so they are using legs. So that’s definitely one component. The other one is probably efficiency and something to work pretty hard on making sure that we’re traveling good distances per stroke and we’re swimming as easy and as efficiently as we can, I know that’s your motto to swim effortlessly. So if you can do that you’re generally swimming quite efficiently.

Yeah, I mean with the kick it’s a funny one, isn’t it? Because with triathletes if they’ve got a wetsuit on they will hardly be kicking but I still want them to be doing some isolated kicking in their warmup because if you do develop the kick and make your kick effective then it can tie in really well with your rhythm and timing. And like a lot of people they’re just very ineffective with their kick. I see the feet like turning out to the side. I see their legs really like wide apart and it’s more just trying to balance themselves in the water. So it’s just they’re very ineffective with it and I see many swimmers just their kick is like a passenger to the rest of their strength they’re just dragging behind them. So if they can just incorporate the legs a bit well that’s a big one but then also like you do get people who are kicking really hard to try and stay afloat and that can gas them out. Gas them out as well

so it’s not overdoing it either. That’s right. And that’s where that body position comes into it understanding how to sit in the water the best you can without relying on the legs to get you there. But yeah, you’re right. That kicking component is something it’s got to happen. Even if you’re not using it hard like you said triathletes usually just floating in behind it just helps with balancing the stroke the connection of the stroke the core activation of the stroke it so much can come from it I think just without having to work it really hard. And if you do conditioning and training with that kick that way when you go to kick softly or you know, you’re too big kick or something like that then it’s not gassing you as much. I like to do with the squad that I swim with I’ll set the programs a couple of mornings a week and we’ll occasionally do some vertical kick and it’s a lot of them are like, here we go again you have vertical kick

but it’s a good skill to develop and it’s kind of fun because you can still chat to the person next to you you could get like a water bottle or kickboard and just start passing it around to make it a little bit harder for a few seconds as you’re doing it so it’s something that can be made fun even for those who hate kick and sometimes I’ll see people kicking with it hips bent, they’re bending their knees too much like they’re not kicking properly when they do that vertical kick so if they can just straighten up with their body keep the legs a little bit straight I still bend the knees but just make it a little bit more wave like you can iron out some of these kinks in your kick so that actually practicing the right technique exactly, it’s vertical kick is something I use with our Adelena Swimmers so once they’re comfortable enough they’re usually up to level two and they can scull a bit and they can kick a bit now

I’ll take them down to the deep end and we’ll do some vertical kick because you’re right people do stick their bum out I’ll call it duck bum so they stick their bottom right out and they’re leaning forward, chin over the water and it’s cheating basically you’re sort of floating on your chest a little bit so yeah, tell them to stand up tall through the chest because if you can do this while standing up tall with good posture your kicks must be really good and then getting them to make sure they kick forward of the hip and behind the hip because quite often they’ll kick just in front or just behind especially when they’re learning or if they’re not very good kickers so yeah, making sure the ankles are relaxed and they’re kicking from the hip and it’s just flowing forward and back from the hip is a good way to understand it and so yeah, we’ll do the same things hands out of the water hands in the water, hands on head

we’ve got to the point because you do, you’ve got to keep it interesting these adults, although they’re not kids anymore they still love to have that fun component so I’ll pull out the water polo balls and start throwing them around so they’ve actually got to catch it and throw them back so to do that, hold the ball and then be able to pass it back they’ve got to work hard for that five seconds or so whilst kicking so I like the different you can do it just steady and just keep your chin out of the water but then you can also put some real pressure on and try and get your shoulders out of the water and catch a ball or pass a bottle or whatever you want to do just to make it fun and interesting but yeah, very good skill, very good drill to do for those that are listening if they’re interested in either seeing what you guys are up to up in Brisbane in Queensland if they’re around that area or elementswimming.com.au is the website

but then also this Maldives camp which is tacked onto the back of our swim camps there as well, so later September so if you want to, we’ll put the details in our show notes there and just let them know that you came from you heard Ben on the podcast if you do book in there but anywhere else, where’s the best place to find more about elements swimming? Yeah, so like you said, just the element website we’ve got ads coming from Facebook as well so if you’re on Facebook we’ve got a web, a Facebook page as well elements swimming there and you’ll be able to see our promos going for this camp and we’ve got Instagram happening as well and then we’re just promoting it across the world as well to different sorts of countries that might be interested in a holiday and paradise and learning a skill for life so yeah, that’s probably the best places to come and find out people. Fantastic, well thanks for joining me on a podcast

as you said at the start, you were nervous but when you’re talking but when we’ve known each other for so long and you’re good at your craft and you know it back the front, it’s not hard so thanks for joining me on the podcast and I hope these camps are a success because I think it’s quite unique what you’re doing and I think it can be a really good fit for those people who want to learn to swim overseas and it seems like a long way to travel to like go oh yeah, I hope I actually do learn to swim but I’ve got no doubt that you can actually help those people and help people achieve those goals in that space of time that they’re there in the Maldives. That’s right, yeah, there’s definitely you know if you don’t put a whole lap together or 25 meters of freestyle together, I’m sure our team will be able to get you to a point where you can skull and kick therefore you’d be able to snorkel. A lot of people come to us and they’re like

I want to be able to tread water for snorkeling well if you do our course anyway and you learn the kicking, you learn the sculling you learn that the body control stuff in the water as well, you’re gonna be able to skull and tread water anyway. So I have no doubt that we’d be able to and that’ll be the goal to at least get some as to snorkeling and yeah, so they can enjoy that like every other person does when they go on holiday. So yeah, now I’ve enjoyed it Brent, thank you very much and I appreciate bringing me onto the show it’s been great, we watch a lot of your stuff and a lot of our coaches watch a lot of your stuff and I even pass a lot of our adult squad stuff onto your materials as well and videos so that they can all pick up a few more tips which is fantastic stuff, so good stuff. Thank you very much. I appreciate it, thanks Benny. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster

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

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Our guest today is Marc Evans, a former National USA Triathlon team coach. In this episode, we will introduce the M25 Lift Paddle. We will discuss the paddle’s purpose and why it differs from others in the market. Specifically, we will focus on how it helps improve the catch, which is an essential part of the swimming technique.

Triathletes in Motion: a Book By Marc Evans

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 part two of this two part series with my conversation with Mark Evans. If you didn’t listen to the previous episode, it might be worthwhile going back and listening to it. And if you haven’t heard, we’ve just released a new paddle called the M25 Lift Paddle. It’s on Kickstarter. We are raising funds to get that made into reality. And if you would like to get your own copy, your own pair of the M25 Lift Paddle to help improve your catch and develop your technique even more, then head to effortlessswimming.com.com. forward slash paddle or just follow the links in this podcast. If you take a kickboard, kneel on the deck of the pool, and you take a kickboard in your hands and your fingertips in your hands and you just put an inch or two

of the tip of the kickboard down on the water. You’re just kneeling on the next to the pool and you pull it straight back and you’ll just pull it back and you’ll go, oh, that’s really easy. And so what’s happening is the kickboard is moving the water backwards. It’s like a river just going straight down. If you put that kickboard back in the water, same position depth, and then you change the angle, either left side or right side. You rotate the hand, you will be able to barely move the kickboard.

And we’re talking just minuscule, like an airplane, a wing of an airplane, a little bit of flip, just the smallest amount of deviation of the angle of attack of the air lawns or the smallest amount of deviation of your hand when it’s in the water will cause you to have greater lift. But for me, it’s not so much you’re doing something with the hand. It’s that your slight internal rotation, like when you just did this a moment ago, I watched your shoulder and it’s a subtle motion. It’s not like you’re moving like so, but it’s just a very subtle motion and you get this beautiful high oval catch that causes that slight angle of attack to change in the sweep back and hold water. It’s not back, it’s more holding against the resistance. And the kickboard is a great little tool. I think if people, listeners went out and just sat on the side of the deck, held the kickboard in your hand, put the tip in, pull it straight back,

you go, oh yeah, just pull straight back. Well, that’s a straight arm pull. Your hand just slips right through like an old paddle wheel on a steam engine because those boards on a steam engine, those old things, they just pushed water straight backwards and it took 19 guys shoveling coal into the engine in order to keep the energy up. And then eventually there was a development of a propeller concept and this curved linear, curvier linear propeller, this curved shape. Actually, every time it turns, it turns into clean water or still water actually or air. That’s what you’re doing. If you’re pushing or pulling straight arm, you’re pushing water straight back and you cause any forces you do get are opposite. And so it’s basically these small amount of changes in the angle of attack that are what’s distinguishing the good swimmer from the not so good swimmer. And there is still water. And that’s why you see, if you’re looking at the path of someone’s hand,

it’s like this skinny, yes, it’s very slight curve of the hand. It’s nothing extreme. Yes, skinny, yes, I like that term, a skinny, yes, I’ve never heard that before. That’s really exactly what it is. And but it’s how you get there, I think is teaching it in that front quadrant, those catch up drills, looking at the videos, really helpful, you know, which I know you do a lot. The video is such a cool device, you know. And then making sure that they do enough repetitions of it. And I used to, I had this technique or this way of coaching, I says, pass or fail, you know. I mean, it’s just like there was no middle ground, you know. So like I’d have them swim 50 or something and then we’d film it. And I’d ask them, was each and every stroke, whatever the technique we were working on, because we usually just, and that’s everything, only work on one thing. You can’t multitask, you know, forget it, you know, in my opinion.

But we’d film it and I’d ask them pass or fail. Did you execute each and every motion the way that we were intending? And at a slow, relaxed intensity. And very often they would start to give me a editorial. I, no, no, no, pass or fail. And then we’d look at the video and that was so good, so helpful. And, you know, with all the cameras nowadays, that’s fantastic. I wish we had that years ago. I had this massive 80 pound camera that we used back then, but it’s still work. Not like the gay pros we’ve got today or the iPads made things much easier. Yeah, no, it’s fantastic. I mean, you can do FaceTime video with your coach from the pool if you want. I had an athlete come to a clinic on the weekend and he was a mountain bike coach and a doctor as well. And he was doing some research into learning new skills or new movements, essentially. And one of the things that he found was that when someone’s developing a new skill,

let’s say you’re trying to improve your catch, for example, when you are first learning it, you are going to be using more muscles. So more muscles that are not required, will eventually not be required to do that movement. So you’re using more of your upper traps and your shoulders and your back as you’re learning this. But then as you get better at it and you have more repetition, you’ve got that efficiency of movement. So you’re not using those muscles that aren’t necessary, but in the beginning you are because you’re still working out that pattern. You’re thinking about things a lot. So that’s why it can be very tiring to be doing something new. And I think part of that’s just the mental fatigue as well when you’re concentrating on your stroke, but also the physical fatigue of using, say, twice as many muscles. It’s burning a lot of energy that way. And so that’s why it can be quite exhausting and they can’t hold that for an entire session.

So I found that that was quite interesting. Yeah, I would agree with that. It’s the synapses of learning, not knowing the brain is dictating. The mind is telling thoughts, has thoughts about what you’re trying to do. And then larger muscles are being utilized because there’s this kind of disassociation from it. And that’s really pretty smart because it is more fatiguing at first. Absolutely. But if you’re a six-year-old kid jumping in the water and everybody’s going, I can remember, and you probably too, is they’re just beating you to death basically with volume. And then you go, OK, I’ve got to get better at this. I’ve got to get more smooth. I’ve got to get, and eventually the evolution of being in the water teaches you how to be more efficient. If that’s your goal, if that’s something you want to do and you have the propensity for it. But that was really smart. And that’s a good example of how people go about learning.

It takes time. Difficult things take time. And I’ve always tried to tell people, hey, we’re not going to change your hamstring or quadricep or piriformis or like hip inductors or glute media. All these strength issues have to be done over time. And also there’s underlying issues with each person. Everybody walks, talks, moves a little bit differently. But to my point about having that fundamental, if you’re not achieving that high elbow catch, then you’re kind of not going to probably get too much better. This episode of the podcast is proudly brought to you by our sponsor, Form Smart Swim Goggles. They’re more than a pair of goggles. Meet the world’s most powerful swim platform. CSOLF improve with Form Smart Swim Goggles, including a free one-year membership when you purchase your goggles for only $249 US dollars. They’ve currently changed up their offer where you can now get the goggles and you have one year membership included for free.

And if you’d like to continue with the membership going forwards, it’s only $15 US dollars a month where you get access to their workouts, training plans and custom workout builder. But you’ll always have access to the real-time data in the goggles. So you never lose access to that. My favorite thing about the Form Goggles is having the instant feedback of what times you’re doing, what stroke rate you’re doing, and also the ability to see what your heart rate is. Because never before have we been able to have these immediate feedback heads-up display where it’s actually telling you what your intervals are. So when I wear the goggles in training, I like that I know my split for the first 50 and the 100 and the 150. So every single lap, I’m getting that feedback on what my pace is. And I find it’s such an important tool for being able to not only have different gears where you can switch between the different speeds that you want to swim,

but it helps you develop those gears and it helps you intuitively know how fast you need to go before you’re going to blow up or before you’re going to go a little bit too hard. So it helps you just get really good at judging your pace for when you do go to a race. And even if you’re not wearing the goggles in a race, it’s that intuition and that ability to develop your pacing that these goggles can really help with. To get your pair of form goggles and say 15% off, use our link formswim.com forward slash effortless or use the coupon effortless at checkout. And that will get you 15% off your pair of goggles using our special link formswim.com forward slash effortless or the code effortless at checkout. Yeah, you catch and pull, that is where the majority of your propulsion is going to come from and you’ve got to connect it up with your rotation in your body and the timing of your kick. You’ve got to do that too,

but that is where most your propulsion is. Your kick doesn’t give you much at all. It is more balancing and stability. So you’ve got to get good at your catch. I agree. I want to just briefly talk about the N25 lift paddle that you’ve developed and we’ve worked on for the last couple of years. What’s the purpose of the paddle? Why is it different? We haven’t talked about that yet, but we’ve been talking about the catch and this is really what the paddle is designed to improve. So could you just talk a bit about how you’ve designed it, with the shape, the grooves and anyone who’s listening to this, you’re going, okay, I’m probably curious to see what it looks like. I’ll put some links in the show notes and we’re doing a Kickstarter for this paddle. So I’ll put those links in the show note, but could you talk a bit about the paddle itself and how it can actually help someone improve their catch? Well, I think we’ve really been talking

about how it was developed without talking about how it was developed. And all those years of research and understanding, well, first of all, if I go back into 1996, I developed a curvilinear, patented a curvilinear path with arcuate shaped patented shape of a swim paddle. No one had ever done that before and it was patented and I licensed it to Speedo and they sold, as you mentioned, worldwide all over the place, many, many thousands and thousands, if not over a million of those paddles. Also, it was knocked off by many companies too, but that’s okay. But the patent ran out in 2014 and once the patent’s done, then all of your major swim brands made similar looking paddles. And it was interesting, because I had just started this book and I thought, you know, because I invented that paddle during one of my earlier books because of the research that I was doing.

And I thought, you know what, I’m going to maybe have that opportunity again.

And of course, this last book took over three and a half years and sure enough, some concepts and ideas came to me and that’s what we’ve been talking about, movement. What initiates movement in order to get the high elbow catch? And I’ve mentioned, once you understand what the motions are, then the products are pretty straightforward. So I went about having never done that before. I went around about drawing what I thought the movement should be. If you look at wing shape, I looked at many, many different types of airfoils, what they do and their cause and effect on air and water. And I looked at, oh my gosh, just so many animals, fishes, turtles, seals in particular of their shapes of their bodies and their fins. And so, but it was based on what I knew

got the high elbow catch, which was that slight internal rotation, ad extension by the way, right? It needs to be out front. And it’s just so subtle and it’s that internal rotation. So I said, okay, well that’s what we want the paddle to do. Okay, so then I started looking at current state of art and I thought, well, the current state of art is kind of based on my paddle, the swim foil and the contour training paddle. It’s time and I go, well, they’re all made out of this polycarbonate kind of plastic. So there’s really nothing. And then I started thinking, so I started designing my own paddles and I became an expert at using a Dremel and foaming and I made many, many models, but it was interesting if I look back at my first drawings how similar the end result is to that because of the foundations, the fundamentals I was talking about. I kind of knew what I needed to build even though I hadn’t built it. And so the first prototypes were very close

and I often take to speak of some of the triathletes, I would take neophyte triathletes and put them in the water and watch film them and watch what happens to those straight arm poles, right? Because that’s what they’re doing mainly, I think, in that kind of the thing that they do. And I go, okay, that’s working a little bit because I’m not telling them what I’m doing. You know, I had a great pool in Colorado and Longmont, the director there allowed me to come in and do those things, which is nice. You need that kind of support too, right? I could come in there, take a lane, have all my stuff laying around and not being bothered by anybody. We filmed a lot of triathletes doing that. But the thing was, as I almost knew, I always knew if it worked with less than 25 meters.

I mean, I knew when I had it done. And finally eventually, you know, and I would test all these as well for sure, but I only tested them like 25 meters, that was about it. I knew within a first few strokes if it was making that shoulder internally rotate. Because that’s what I was trying to do. And so then I came up with this concept of, okay, what about materials? What kind of materials can we do, can we utilize that will have, well, one thing I’m not afraid of is telling what we do is because I know competitors will start doing it. But, you know, but we looked at buoyancy. You know, how buoyancy affects curvy, or linear motions and motions of the elbow. So basically this M25 lift paddle, and Brent and I, just for the audience, you know, we were talking about these things when we first started working together many, many years ago now. And I was telling the stories about how I invented the original swimfoil and the contour training paddle,

which were licensed to speedo. And I knew in 25 meters that it was right. And so that’s how we came up. And what it’s doing is lifting. It’s lifting and rotating. But we use a specialized shape, the curvilineature shapes, the leading and trailing edges are all geared to cause that elbow or the shoulder to rotate slightly. And it’s a tool. It’s a tool to help people learn something that’s very often takes years to learn. And we do that by the shape. We do that by the material. It’s unlike any other paddle that’s made. It’s got this very beautiful elastolin material. And it’s gonna feel like your hand and it’s gonna have different buoyancy in different regions of the paddle. And the purpose is so that it helps rotate. So it’s a complex patented design with unique material that came pretty straightforward because I knew what it needed to do.

It’s pretty simple. But the nice thing is, is you and I and our other partner Jane have navigated a very long process of how this was made. And not easy to do something like that. And that’s, we’re so excited to have finally got the prototypes. We’ve got all the manufacturing in order. We’re ready to go. And pretty exciting to do it to create a new standard again in paddle design. And we have not only this product, but we’ve got several others patented right behind it. That the good thing is, is we’ve got the manufacturing sourced here in the United States, by the way, which is fantastic. They’re within a half hour of where my home is. Not an easy thing. It took over five years to find that. And so we’ve got a great team. Isn’t it funny though, like we’re looking in Taiwan and other places. Yeah, we had sources in Taiwan and then COVID hit and then cost of shipping was crazy. And it just scared the heck out of me

to think that our paddle could be on a container ship. And then it gets stuck out there in the Taiwan Straits or the China Seas. And then it gets stuck outside of, I mean, we are so fortunate to have navigated this very lengthy process. But we are totally ready with the materials, with all of the elements that go into making a great product. And, you know, quite frankly, we’re looking for people to help us launch our company M25. And it’s a branded division of sports engineering group, which is my company now. I don’t coach anymore for the, I haven’t for seven or eight years now. So I’m totally into sports engineering group, designing and patenting these products. And we’re like right on the precipice of launching the M25 swim brand. And with people support, with viewer support, we’ll offer them opportunities to get early stages of product. And it’ll be great. And the different levels of support. And the nice thing is,

and basically what we’re asking people to help us with is to launch this company. It’s not an easy thing to do. The, all the patenting costs and design costs and the, you know, what is it, five years? We’ve been working on this, maybe I’ve been on it seven. So it’s, we’re really excited. I mean, we’re very, I’m very excited. And we’re going to have other products right behind this, this first paddle. And I’m super excited about our kickboard and pull boy and those kinds of things. It’s a good time.

And I mean, the reason we’re doing this is a Kickstarter is just the tooling alone for the paddles is more than $100,000. Just to get the tooling to be able to start making the paddles. So we, so we need to, we need to have about 10,000 people join the Kickstarter or 10,000 paddles. So it’s, it’s quite a big ask, but yeah, this is a, it’s a great product. And I’ve, I’ve swum with not the end version of them in terms of what it’s going to be made from, but I’ve swum with the paddles, a 3D printed version. And they feel great. Like it’s, they feel really, really good. So I’m excited to get them when they’re completely made with the, with the right stuff, with the right buoyancy. And yeah, and then we’re not too far from it. So I’m really looking forward to, to get into that point where people are able to use these and they’re able to have a, have a paddle that actually helps them with their, with their stroke. Cause I see a lot of paddles that are making their stroke

worse. There’s not going to mention what kind they are, but there’s a lot of paddles out there that I see people using. And when they come to me, I can actually see that they’ve been using these paddles that, that they have because they have these sort of hitches or things happening in their stroke that these paddles are causing. So there are paddles that can actually make your stroke worse. I want one that I want people to be using things that, that work and make them better. So yeah, these, these paddles are very, very different, very unique and, and there’s a reason why it’s taken so long to get to this point. But we finally got to the point where they can get manufactured now. Yeah, we’re, we’re super ready. And you know, I’m, I’m pretty convinced that this paddle can, can, you know, set a standard for, for a lot of people and, and be a significant help to people learning this high elbow catch. And the, you know, we’re, we’re,

the same thing is going to be with our kickboard. It’s going to change the standards of how kickboards are, are utilized. And now I’m from the shape. We have, I think some beautiful designs in these. And I think you mentioned, you might put up a couple of pictures or something. Is that right? Well, they’ll say the one, the Kickstarter page. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, it’s all good. I mean, I think, I mean, other companies are going to be doing good things too. You know, I just always based my designs on fundamentals of movement. And so if their criteria is, you know, that their product is saying it’s going to help them do something, that’s great. And, but yeah, to your point, you know, like the flat paddles of the old days, you know, is exactly that straight pushback paddle wheel that I was talking about. And that was when I had the aha moment in the mid 90s about making a curved paddle, which is the swim foil or the contour paddle with speedo.

And then just about every paddle that, and I haven’t really looked for a couple of years, but like I said, when our patent ran out, everybody was making a more curved or hand shaped paddle. I mean, if you look at the shape of a hand, it’s curved. It’s not flat. So, but between the, like I said, the buoyancy, the shapes, the leading, the trail edges, the curvy or linear shapes, the arcuate shapes of the paddle combined with the material and the way it will feel on a person’s hand. This is going to feel like you’re touching your own hands, which is really beneficial. And they’re, you know, they’re not heavy. And the buoyancy is something I’m really excited about and always wanted to, you know, be able to develop. And, you know, we found the right type of material for that. And yeah, and it is expensive. Patting is what, 115,000 or the molds are $115,000

in order for make left and right side paddles, left and right side straps. We haven’t even talked about our strap. Nobody has ever seen a strap as functional and streamlined as the one that we have. And it happened because it was a fundamental that I had.

And that’s why I keep going back to those. When you know what you need, then you build it. And that’s, it’s very purposeful. You know, I knew I wanted a strap that had no impact upon the hydrodynamics of the paddle.

I didn’t want it to in fact impact teaching the high elbow catch. And so when people see this and they realize how streamlined it is and how easy it is to use, I think they’ll appreciate that. You know, like, oh, okay. You know, it’s like a, I don’t know, a Jaguar or Mercedes or whatever. You know, it’s pretty nice looking, you know, or a Tesla, you know, whatever. They’re very functional. They’re not perfect, but you know, they’re really working in trying to provide fundamental comfort, safety, and design aerodynamics, all those things that go into it. You know, it’s, it’s, it’ll be great to have the support of your listeners and others to help us launch this company because we have a lot more to offer and it’s an exciting time for us to have made this long journey. You know, it’s a very long journey. And I think it’s merit worthwhile. Yeah, absolutely. Me too. And it’s, you know, we could have very easily just gone,

especially through COVID, when we’re almost sort of ready to get going. It would have been very easy to throw in the towel, but, you know, as long as you don’t quit, then you can still succeed. And we’ve, it’s taken a while to get here, but we’ve, we’ve gotten here. So it’s like training technique, you know, you have to keep after it, you know, you just can’t stop. It takes hours and hours and hours and persistence. And it’s the same thing that we’ve had to do with this project. It’s, it’s quite a story and, and we’re right at the precipice of it. And, but it’s, it’s very similar to, you know, what people need to do with their technique. And they’d be so surprised how focusing on it in a deliberate way is, can be super helpful.

So if you listen to this, it’s now up on Kickstarter. We’re going through the campaign now. And if you’d like to get yourself a pair of these paddles, you can jump on and I’ll put those links in the show note. So Mark, thank you so much for being on the podcast and joining about the catch and your, your philosophies with coaching, product design, and how to approach the, these different things. And it’s been very interesting working, working with you and chatting regularly because you think about things differently to a lot of coaches or probably more deeply than any other coaches that I’ve come across. And, and I think that’s why the things that you design are so, so unique and so different and have had huge success in the past with the paddles that have designed there. But I think these, these new ones that you’ve come up with a step far above from what you have done in the past. And obviously technology evolves

and all those sorts of things. So we’re able to make them now where that may not have been possible back then. So yeah, I’m looking forward to launching these and to getting them into the hands of swimmers and triathletes who just want to swim faster and that’s a big part of their life because when we look at swimming, it’s not just a sport or an activity. For a lot of people, it’s something that they love. It’s something that they want to get better at. They’re doing it regularly. They want to, they want to beat their mates. They want to beat their friends. They want to get higher in the results in their triathlons. So it’s much more than just an activity or a sport. I think it means a lot more to people than they will say. And I think that’s what you’re doing. It’s quite pleasurable to do things right and to feel like you’re making the right motions. And that’s really at the end of the day, it’s pleasure. And oftentimes that results in faster.

And, but I also would say Brenton, it’s been really a pleasure working with you, I guess now somewhere over five or six years. And your contributions to all these products have been at the highest level too. So I really appreciate all of your work. I know we have different roles here with our small company, but your feedback on testing and the performance and the specificity that these products are trying to accomplish was really very helpful and appreciated. Well, thank you, Mark. And we’ll no doubt chat soon. So thanks very much for being on the podcast. All right, thanks so appreciate it. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

The post High Elbow Catch Masterclass with Marc Evans Part 2 appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

My guest today is Mark Evans, who is returning to the podcast after eight years. He is a former coach for the National USA Triathlon team and is widely recognized as one of the most knowledgeable and extensively researched individuals in this field. In today’s episode, we will explore the catch and techniques for continuous improvement. (Listen to the PART 1).

Triathletes in Motion: a Book By Marc Evans

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 swimming goggles 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 Mark Evans, who has been the National USA Triathlon Coach and he’s also developed and designed multiple products, which he’s licensed to Speedo and they’ve sold hundreds of thousands of units over the last couple of decades. Now I met Mark on a triathlon camp five years ago and in that time we’ve actually been developing our own swim paddle. And we’ve finally got to the point where it is ready to manufacture. It’s called the M25 lift paddle. M25 after Mark’s design philosophy where when he used a product that he had designed, he knew within 25 meters whether or not he’d got it right. Hence the M25. Now the M25 lift paddle represents a significant advancement in swim paddle technology because it’s like driver assist but for your arm during the catch phase of the stroke.

Now we are launching this paddle. We’re releasing this paddle on Kickstarter because we need your help and your support to make this thing a reality. And whether or not you purchase one of these paddles, my only ask would be if you can share this with people that you know who swim, who are looking to improve their swimming. That would mean a lot to me. I’d love your help and support with this. Now the difference with the M25 lift paddle is it’s designed with a unique curved shape and strategically placed grooves and channels to enhance the water flow and create a more natural and efficient swimming motion. And this innovative design not only helps swimmers develop better technique but also reduces stress on the shoulders and improves overall performance. So I’ll put a link in the show notes and you can also go to effortlessswing.com forward slash paddle and that will take you to the Kickstarter page.

So if you listen to this, we’ve just released it on Kickstarter. So I’d love your support and your help. Thanks very much for your help and support over the last couple of years of listening to this podcast. Let’s get into the episode with Mark Evans. Here we are talking about the catch and what you can do to continue to improve your technique. And Mark is probably one of the most well researched and knowledgeable people on this topic. My guest today is someone who I had on the podcast eight years ago. It’s Mark Evans. Welcome to the podcast. Hey, Britain. Well, thinking back to our very first episode, you that episode was the most listened to episode that we’ve ever had. And I don’t know exactly why that was, but I have a good inclination of why people were interested in what you had to say because your background is national head coach for the US triathlon team. And your background with research and I think your interest in how people move, how you can get better and also just the amount of work that you’ve put into some of the books that you’ve published.

You’re a very deep well of knowledge for swimming and triathlon. So I think that’s probably why it was one of the most listened to episode or the most listened to episode we’ve ever had. So that’s why I want to get you back on the podcast, but also also want to announce what we’ve been working on for quite a few years now. Which is the M25 lift paddle and people who are listening to this will have heard me reference it now and then about the paddle that we’ve been working on getting made. And this is something that you’ve had in the works for a long time. And we finally got it to the point where it can now be manufactured. So we’ll talk about that on this episode. And I also want to talk about the catch and get into some details on that and how people can improve their catch and swim faster. So that’s what I want to get into today. Great. Good stuff. Now for those listening in a couple of sentences, how would you sum up your background and your experience in triathlon and swimming?

And I know we go back a long way there, but how would you summarize it? And specifically related to swimming or in triathlon? Triathlon as well. Well, yeah, it’s a long story, but I started being aware of triathlon in 1981. And I don’t think there had been 30 people or 40 people maybe that had done an Ironman. And there were some of us that were doing marathons and cycling and things like that. I swam as a young person, but it just caught my attention for some reason. And within two or three years, I decided that I wanted to be a coach. It was the completely unscripted thing that happened. And I remember being fortunate enough to have enough knowledge, if you will. I spent my time in libraries and in University of California, Berkeley and their sports science labs because no one knew anything about this stuff. And maybe Dave Scott. Dave Scott had an exercise physiology degree, so he was quite impressive.

But I felt like I needed to know as much as possible about how to teach, coach. And it’s not just like writing workouts and things like that. You have to be able to teach people. And in order to do that, you have to understand the physiology and what kind of goals you’re trying to accomplish. And it really just kind of started with that. That was kind of my nature from the beginning. It was just my nature. It’s so funny. I still have the very first workout that I ever wrote by hand. Can you get what it is? It’s crazy. It was like, because I thought, okay, three sports, seven days, 21 workouts possible. Dry land, weight training, nutrition, psychology. All of these things. And it started just because if you don’t look at those things, you’re kind of not really coaching me. Because they all come up. But yeah, it was handwritten. But it looked like an Excel spreadsheet before they had Excel spreadsheets. It was just handwritten.

And that was kind of the basis of it. But very quickly, within a few years, I started getting more and more complicated. And then technology came in. And I remember Scott Molina telling me one time, because he was from the same area. He was becoming quite a notable triathlete, obviously. It was one of the greatest. But he said, you know, Mark, you have to be as good at coaching each sport as possible. So I just took that to heart. It was like a dog chasing a stick. It was just like, oh, he’s right. I need to do that. I can’t just be a swimming coach. I’ve got to learn how to do dry land stretching, mobility, stability, swimming, biking, running, all of these things. I’ve got to know how to fit bikes. I have to know how to deal with psychology issues, nutritional issues. You know, I have to know everything. And as much as I could. And so that was kind of the fun part for me. I really just enjoyed doing that.

And your latest book, which was a couple of years ago now, Triathletes in Motion. So that is a very detailed deep dive into how to move, how to strengthen yourself for the different different sports. And when we were talking before, you were saying that was like three years of four to six hours a day of research and writing for three years. And you put that all into this into this. So your understanding of all this stuff is it’s got to be the top couple. You know, top few people in the world with all of this. And that’s what appealed to me when we first started chatting in 2015, because we met at a camp in 2014, very briefly, but we got chatting there. And then we continued to interact after that. So in 2015, I got talking and eventually we decided to, well, you had some products in the pipeline. Previously, you had designed products which Speedo had actually taken on board and had sold hundreds of thousands, if not millions of these products that you designed and they patented.

You had some products that you had been working on that just hadn’t been able to get them to market yet, because what we now know is that they’re quite unique or they’re very unique. They take a different way of manufacturing compared to what’s out there at the moment. And it just hasn’t been easy to find the people to be able to get these things to become reality. But we’ve finally done that now. So just in terms of that, so with your thoughts on designing products, how do you think about it? Because you’ve got a very unique way of approaching it, and some of the stuff that you’ve come up with is very unique and different to what I’ve seen. This episode of the podcast is proudly brought to you by our sponsor, Form Smart Swim Goggles. They’re more than a pair of goggles. Meet the world’s most powerful swim platform. See yourself improve with Form Smart Swim Goggles, including a free one-year membership when you purchase your goggles for only $249 US dollars.

They’ve currently changed up their offer where you can now get the goggles and you have one-year membership included for free. And if you’d like to continue with the membership going forward, it’s only $15 US dollars a month, where you get access to their workouts, training plans, and custom workout builder. But you’ll always have access to the real-time data in the goggles, so you never lose access to that. My favorite thing about the Form Goggles is having the instant feedback of what times you’re doing, what stroke rate you’re doing, and also the ability to see what your heart rate is. Because never before have we been able to have these immediate feedback heads-up display where it’s actually telling you what your intervals are. So when I wear the goggles in training, I like that I know my split for the first 50 and the 100 and the 150. So every single lap I’m getting that feedback on what my pace is.

And I find it’s such an important tool for being able to not only have different gears where you can switch between the different speeds that you want to swim, but it helps you develop those gears and it helps you intuitively know how fast you need to go before you’re going to blow up or before you’re going to go a little bit too hard. So it helps you just get really good at judging your pace for when you do go to a race. And even if you’re not wearing the goggles in a race, it’s that intuition and that ability to develop your pacing that these goggles can really help with. To get your pair of form goggles and save 15% off, use our link formswim.com forward slash effortless or use the coupon effortless at checkout. And that will get you 15% off your pair of goggles using our special link formswim.com forward slash effortless or the code effortless at checkout. Well, I appreciate the comments on the book.

First of all, it was a lengthy process and it really is a culmination of those almost 30 years of coaching that last book. And I will say to your viewers, I apologize for the first chapter in advance. It’s way too sports scientific like, but the rest of the chapters are about movement, mobility, stability, how to train technique. And the reason I’m mentioning this is because all of that knowledge in there and there are some coaches that I do hear from that use utilize it. But they are kind of what I refer to as fundamentals, like kind of basic things that you can rely upon to help yourself become more efficient. And but that knowledge and all the work forms the basis of all the products that we have. I have designed and together with you and have doing testing with them forms the fundamental basis for designing those products. And to be quite frank, the designing of the products is easier when you know the motions that the body makes in order to achieve those motions.

And in swimming, for example, it’s very clear. I mean, there are fundamentals in swimming for sure. But if we’re just talking about the catch, it’s and the high elbow catch is. And I’ll liken this to golf, for example, you know, you got the golf ball, you got the club face and all good golf shots meet at that same point. It’s a fundamental. Now, people get there differently. They swing differently. They have different grips. But at the end of the day, they are all at just that moment before impact or at the very same position at the professional level. Take that over to swimming. The high elbow catch is the same fundamental. You will see different recoveries, different entries. You’ll see a lot of those variations. You’ll see a six-speed, a two-beat kick, you know, depending upon things. But you will see in just about, well, you will see in every one of those athletes a high elbow catch. And the other. So what gets the high elbow catch?

It is perhaps just an kind of innate learning of what is optimal positions through years and years of training. It’s almost like an evolution. You know, they evolve into better, more efficient swimmers. But what is it that they’re doing? Is they’re internally rotating the shoulder. So if I hold my hand and I internally rotate, I’m not moving my hand. I’m not moving the elbow, but I’m simply internally rotating. There’s your high elbow catch. And so those are the kind of the fundamentals that we worked on. And I could talk a little bit more about, you know, paddle wheels and principles of lift and things like that. But that’s kind of the basis of it. It is a fundamental. A high elbow catch is absolutely fundamental in order to become a better swimmer. It’s the same thing as golf or tennis. You know, you need to hit the ball square. And that catch, I think, is quite elusive for many people. And it doesn’t come easy.

You’ve got to have a lot of practice with it. You’ve got to know what you’re doing and you need to make sure you’re not overdoing some of these concepts as well. And what I mean by that is that when people talk about internal rotation of the shoulder, I think sometimes that gets overdone or misinterpreted where they’re like rolling their shoulder forwards and they’re in a position where they’re putting way too slow through the front of their shoulder. Absolutely. And another way that this can get misinterpreted to is high elbow catches. Your elbow should be high in the water. But it’s more like an elbow forwards position. I think it’s sometimes a better way to describe it. So there’s all these different things that people hear and then they try and do without much guidance or coaching. And it can actually make them either slower or get injured. So I think it’s good to know exactly what you should be doing and what you are currently doing at the moment.

So with that in mind, how would you go about getting someone who’s pulling with a straight arm? For example, there’s no high elbow catch. They might be dropping the elbow. How would you go about getting them to work towards that optimum position? Well, I think another fundamental is, and I really kind of looked at that, but I mean, probably the greatest drill is a single arm catch. You know, with the catch up, kind of a catch up stroke, where you’re taking one or two, like three strokes with the right arm, three strokes with the left. And if you look at that, nine out of ten or whatever people that do that, it does a couple of things. It shifts your center of mass forward by being what is referred to as the front quadrant. It actually shifts your buoyancy forward so it elevates your body, which is streamlining is a fundamental. But to your question, how do you teach it? We used to use a stick, you know, a small dowel in the hand and then we would hold

and then you’d make one arm and then exchange. So it forces you to be in that catch up position. But if you’ll notice, once you start the pole or the hold rather, I like to refer to it, is you’ll see immediately your elbow is high. Because you’re in the quadrant, your buoyancy is forward and you’re able to be more economical. And it causes a curvilinear path or a small oblique change in the angle of attack and so you’re not pushing water straight back, which is what you do. You mention straight arm pole, that’s probably for neophyte beginning swimmers or people that are learning how to swim as an adult, it takes so much time. And, you know, like in my book, I break down these tedious repetitions of specific postures and positions. And most people will probably not, it’s like stretching. People just don’t want to do it. They’d rather go ride their bike or something. But, you know, if you practice these things with deliberate intention

and do it over and over and over again, eventually you’re going to get that feel. And as an adult swimmer, and maybe in particularly triathletes, they could really have tremendous improvement if they practice repeating movements that are more economical. And they need to get in the water more. You’re not going to improve two or three days a week, you know, in my opinion. You know, you need, like I took this one swimmer, this one triathlete female, believe it or not, she hadn’t swam much, maybe five years ago. And I had her doing, I said, here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to, we’re really going to put you into some volume. And I eventually got her into like 23, 24,000 meters a week. Well, that build up, and that didn’t happen over the course of weeks, but it happened. And, oh my gosh, the changes that it made in her feel for the water was tremendous. And her results were just tremendous. So combining really good technique with volume, I think, is super important.

But practice, deliberate practice. Yeah, that’s it. It doesn’t come from just watching videos or thinking about your cats. It comes from that deliberate practice. You need to put in there in the time. But it’s really helpful. It’s very helpful to have like video or your eyes or someone’s eyes that really know fundamentals. And then you said about a deliberate path. I mean, I’ve seen it work so often, but I’ve also seen, you know, I’ve seen people in the water, they swim the same workout every day. They never change it. They never do any non-freestyle. Like backstroke is an amazing way to learn freestyle. Because it’s basically upside down freestyle. It’s the same catch position, isn’t it? It’s exactly the same catch position. And, you know, I heard one of your podcasts or saw a clip of it on Instagram. And you were talking about a diamond shape. And I says, well, yeah, that’s the shape you want when you’re doing backstroke.

And it’s that high, it’s a high elbow catch, but you’re upside down. And if you think of it as a diamond shape like you do when you’re, you know, when you’re, when you’re doing freestyle, it’s an even breaststroke. All of them that are the same as far as I’m concerned, you know, they’re all the same high elbow. They’re exactly the same. All, all the strokes. So they should be doing multiple strokes. And, you know, a lot of people, and I’m kind of shifting here, but a lot of people struggle with how to coordinate their legs with the movement of the arms. So vertical, vertical kicking, I think is an amazing tool for swimmers. And especially adult learn to swim. It’s those fundamentals. And it’s not like I’m trying to make up stuff and sound like these are magic answers. They’re just fundamentals. You look at what the fundamentals are and the elite swimmers. And, you know, the work I’ve done with, with my, one of my co-authors, Jane, Jane Kaepert,

she was, she and I worked at the Olympic Training Center, Olympic International Center for Aquatic Research, worked together there. You know, it’s pretty straightforward what the science is. That’s why I like science. You know, science is pretty clear about what it does, but it also has always this potential for change. You know, it always, always has this, but there are certain, you know, formulas and fundamentals like streamlining, high elbow catch. One of the things I was kind of just thinking earlier today, because I knew we were going to do this, like, you know, how do you, I mean, one of the things I’m not an expert on is how much breath holding and exhalation you do off of your turn. So this is the crazy thought that came in my mind, but there are probably fundamentals in that too that I haven’t really thought about. But, you know, using fundamentals, knowing what the mobility stability, like mobility stability, flexibility of each client,

which is the foundation of those books. It’s like, if you tell somebody to do something and they’re, you know, chest are tight or their hips are tight or their piriformis is tight or their hamstrings or something, they’re not going to be able to do it. So you need to screen. You need to screen for movement, I think. That’s where physical therapists are such a great tool for coaches. I mean, if you have someone that has motion movement limiters or strength limiters, and we have screens in the books, you know, extensive stuff, you know, and again, apologize for chapter one, but it’s there. And, you know, if an athlete really wants to get super good, great physical therapist, get yourself musculoskeletal, pay attention to your movement stability, flexibility, and then have coaches help you with, like yourself, with the fundamentals of what you’re trying to achieve. And if you’ve got greater range of motion,

then it’s going to be easy to achieve some of these positions. So there’s no reason why you can’t get better at that. And a lot of people might feel like they’re very tight through the shoulders from sitting at a desk in the car or same with the, with the ankles as well, but you can improve, you can get better. And it doesn’t, it doesn’t mean it happens easily. It takes time and it takes consistency with that stuff, but you can get better at it. And then combine that with learning the right technique. That’s how you can, and then combine that with the volume, combine that with the consistency. And a lot of the swimmers that I’ve worked with through my online coaching, who send me videos regularly, a lot of those that have done even just a couple of weeks of more, more sessions, more volume, that has fast-tracked their progress a lot. And because they just start to figure things out, they get that, that feel for the water.

And they’re probably, you know, they’re doing twice as many repetitions, twice as many strokes within that, say, forward. And there’s also this, you know, the physiological adaptations are super beneficial. You know, more mitochondrial, more, you know, fatty acid, you know, all these things are kind of developing with a little more volume. And it doesn’t have to be hard volume. You know, it just, there just needs to be volume. And you know, we used to, and I know, I know you’re probably doing that as well. I mean, like open water swimming and long-course 50-meter pool swimming and, you know, those kinds of things are just super, super helpful, especially for swimming. And I think, you know, pretty much, you know, you can swim a lot of distance and your body can tolerate that versus running, of course. You know, running is a, you know, a little different, difficult, you know, discipline for sure on the body. But, you know, there are ways to, you know,

mitigate injuries and overuse stuff with all of the sports. But you need to count, you know, it’s like there’s no one clear answer, but it is mobility, stability, flexibility, technique, volume, proper dosage of intensities, proper dosage of volumes. Those are the easy things to kind of figure out. In fact, it’s interesting, you know, most of the top-level pros, they’re pretty much following similar plans. You know, and there’s obviously genetics and all these kinds of things. There’s no real magic bullets. But if the magic bullets are in fundamentals, what makes that golf ball go is center face, what makes that swimmer go high elbow cat? If you can’t get there, mobility, stability, flexibility, or you’re just training it improper. Like you say, you probably see a lot of people pulling straight arm. I put them in the front quadrant that goes away. But they have to do it over and over and over again. One of the things that some of the feedback I got from a swimmer

who had been to a clinic up in Sydney with our coach Mitch there, he said, this was really interesting because he said, Mitch told him that when you change what you’re doing with your catch, it’s actually going to feel like you’re holding less water. Now the reason for that was this swimmer was pushing down with a straight arm, putting a lot of power into the catch. So he’s feeling like he’s holding a lot of water, but it’s moving in the wrong direction. He’s using the wrong muscles and he’s doing it the wrong way. So when he improved it, for him it actually felt like he was applying less force and like he was holding less water because of what he was doing prior to that. So that to me is quite an interesting concept because so many people are just pushing, pushing straight down on the water. So it’s going to feel very different. I got a great, great thing that we learned at the Olympics on Jane Kappert, our partner did,

is that the gold medalists are actually utilizing less force than everybody else. So they’re more efficient, which is exactly what you’re talking about. And anybody that pulls in a straight arm, I used to love this diagram that I would write, I had a window on our swimming flume and I would use a dry marker. If you’re pushing down, straight down, so every time that hand moves to a new position, the resulting forces go in the opposite way. And you really want to be having your forces moving forward and the high elbow is putting you in that forward motion. So I mean, you’ve probably heard the analogy is if you’re reaching up and you’re pulling yourself up over a ladder, you know, look at that high elbow. I mean, it’s just natural. But if you’re just climbing a ladder, you’re going to do that high elbow every time. You’re not going to climb that ladder with a straight arm, but it’s a very common thing. And I imagine you, I’m guessing,

I mean, you’ve coached thousands of people. So, and I was different coach too. I was doing mostly one-on-ones for years. I mean, years and years of one-on-ones. Thousands of swim, bike, run lessons. And that was my requirement. I said, look, if you want to be coached, we’ve got to do six or eight hours together. And those were very helpful to them and to me. And you say, look, you know, if you’re going to pull straight arm, the forces are going to go in the opposite direction of us wanting to go in that direction. So your guys are absolutely right there. I use that cue of the ladder quite often because people who are new to the sport will, they’ll be trying to do their catch and pull as moving their arm through the water in what they think is the right shapes. So they’re just trying to pull their arm through and just move it through. But if you, the goal is to try and place that handed forearm in the water and almost anchor yourself there and the body moves past it.

That’s what we’re working towards. It’s a whole ladder below you. You place it on the run and then you are moving to the next one and you just, your body’s just… I almost, I almost, I’ve actually, I think I write about this a little bit, but I don’t like the word pull. I think it’s wrong. It’s a hold. The elite swimmer puts their hand in a point and it comes out ahead of that point. A neophyte swimmer puts their hand in the water and it comes out by their hip. The elite swimmer is actually holding water and they’re scrolling, small ways of scrolling. They’re changing their angle of attack and it’s very little going, I don’t know if I mentioned this kickboard technique. Did I talk about that?

The post High Elbow Catch Masterclass with Marc Evans Part 1 appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

My guest today is Mr. Sam Ashby, a coach who has trained swimmers to national medals. In this episode, we will talk about the benefits of practicing different swimming strokes. It helps the body move differently and can aid in recovery and developing swimming skills. We will also discuss common mistakes that occur during clinics for butterfly, backstroke, and breaststroke.

33;53 Common Mistakes in Breaststroke: Maximizing Drag Reduction

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Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. Are you tired of feeling heavy, slow and short on confidence with your swimming? Are you frustrated with your progress in the water? Well, I’ve got the solution for you. Introducing the Effortless Swimming Membership, the only 100% online swimming program that uses five proven principles to increase your speed and endurance in the water by building on your existing technique. Whether you’re a beginner, a casual swimmer, or a competitive athlete or triathlete, the Effortless Swimming Membership program is designed to help you become a faster, more confident swimmer in any distance, no matter what your experience level is. Imagine swimming with these and feeling like you belong in the water, and finally breaking through those frustrating plateaus.

With my program, you’ll get access to the structured, bite-sized, on-demand lessons that you can follow at your own pace, right on your smartphone, tablet or computer. My coaching is built on five highly specific principles to help you achieve more speed and confidence in the water. And I simplify important technical concepts into easy to follow cues and clearly identify your next steps without overwhelming you with details. So what are you waiting for? Transform your swimming experience today and join the Effortless Swimming Membership program at effortlesswimming.com and start your journey towards becoming a faster, more confident swimmer today. It also includes the new fly back and breaststroke courses that I’ve filmed with our guest today, Sam Ashby. So check those out inside the Effortless Swimming Membership at effortlesswimming.com. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. My guest today is Mr. Sam Ashby, the OG, and I’ll explain why in a second.

Hey, welcome to the podcast. Thanks, Brentie. Nice to be here. So the reason I called you the OG is because in 2008, we recorded our first, I recorded the first product that we ever released, which was a freestyle course called Mastering Freestyle. And you were the swimmer, you were the star in this course. And this is when you were back competing at a national level and you ended up making the Australian team. And yeah, you were there 2008, 15 years ago, I can’t believe how much time has flown. And what’s, I guess, happened in those 15 years is, well, you made the Australian team, which was, which was fantastic. You’ve also coached and had people achieve national medals. And now you’re coaching with us, you’re running our flyback and breast clinics. And you’ve, we’ve just finished filming our flyback and breast courses as well. So it’s great to have you on the team and, you know, and working together. And also just learning from, from you and your expertise, because you are a terrific

swimmer when you’re swimming competitively. And also a well experienced coach, very thoughtful coach. And I’ve enjoyed just watching you work with the swimmers at the clinics and helping them improve. And the feedback that I’ve got from a lot of their parents, especially in breast stroke, I think that’s like your real strength. Like you’ve had swimmers who have come to clinics and won national gold medals. They’ve meddled or finalled at state championships. And I think the results that you’ve got with a lot of those kids who have come to clinics have been unreal. So what I want to talk about on this clinic is flyback and breast. I know we talk mostly about freestyle because a lot of triathletes listen to this and open water swimmers listen to this, but it’s good to do other strokes. It’s good to do some backstroke to get the arms going in a different direction, the body moving differently. And you can certainly learn and develop feel for the water with the other strokes.

I think it’s useful as some recovery, useful as developing your swimming. So even if you’re not doing much of these other strokes, I want to have this as a really actionable podcast so that people can listen to this and take some key things away so that when they get to the pool next time, they’re a bit more comfortable, a bit more efficient swimming, these other three strokes. So that’s, that’s my goal on the podcast today. So after that long-winded intro, do you want to give a bit of a background on your swimming journey? Because we grew up together as kids. We were down in Gippsland for a couple of years swimming together. So that’s how we, we met and then you, you moved to Melbourne after that. So we’ve known each other for a very long time and you’ve had a long career in swimming competitively and coaching. So do you want to just go through that? Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, first of all, it’s, I love working with you, mate.

It’s, it’s the best thing about swimming for me was always being part of a great team because you know, results come and go. You have good meets. You have not so good meets. You have good seasons. You have not so good seasons, but when you’ve got a really tight team around you, that makes a difference. That makes, makes the hard work fun. So yeah, being able to work with you on effortless swimming again is, is a pleasure going on. You know, they’re just the car rides we have or the flights or, you know, missing a flight and then being able to talk about it. So yeah, no, that’s good. And I just want to, ironically, like the first ever freestyle clinic or not clinic, sorry, but the product mastering freestyle. My butterfly was faster than my freestyle. So I have a faster 100 butterfly PB than I do a hundred freestyle PB. So I’m glad you’ve moved on from my freestyle. What was your hundred fly PB? 50 to one. 50 to one.

Yeah. 50 to one of the semifinals of the World Championships in Shanghai in 2011. What do you think you could do now? If I could break a minute, I’d have to put some effort into breaking a minute. But actually, like, so finish, I missed the Olympics in 2012. I had a sort of a pathway before missing, well, not before missing, but leading up to the competition was I make the World Olympic Games and continue swimming, or I missed the Olympic Games and I travel with my brother through Europe. And so I missed the games, but then had the consolation prize, you could say, of being able to travel with my brother and my best friend through Europe for eight months. So that was my consolation prize. But when I was away overseas, I got to have some really nice reflection on the sport and I still love the sport. I still love the people involved with the sport. I love the fact that it’s once you’re in the pool, you’re in next to nothing.

You’re practically naked aside from, you know, some bathing material in your goggles and cap and you earn respect and credit through being a good teammate and through working hard. Not who you are or what you’re wearing or what your job is. So I find the pool as a great equalizer. And so that’s a nice aspect of the sport that I love to be involved with. It doesn’t matter yet what background you’re from. Are you a good teammate? Can you train hard? They’re the two things that people like the most when you’re in the pool. So yeah, got into coaching, coached at MLC, had some really good success. I had a state squad and transitioned that into a national squad, then went over and worked with our good friend Ash Delaney, who’s now in Sunshine Coast, doing absolutely amazing things up there. So we coached together for two years. And again, working with your friends is just a ball. And then I moved down to Geelong and was the head coach of Geelong Swimming Club

for four years. And that was tough work, but it was really rewarding. Yeah, taking a squad of three national swimmers at the time up to a squad of 17 national swimmers and just the momentum that you get from that. And I couldn’t have done it without another coach, Lucky Wiracoti, who’s a very good friend and my sort of mentor and idol as well. So we used to kind of like what you and I do, we’d just, we’d go over to each other’s houses, we would banter, we would talk, we would plan. And then, yes, I had four good tough years of that. And then middle of last year, I finished up, unfortunately I was just a bit burnt out four o’clock, get up, most mornings, eight o’clock, get homes at night, working during the day, working on the weekend. And I didn’t wanna leave the sport disenchanted or not enjoying it or not being in love with it because I do love it, so I wanted to keep it that way. So finished up, not really knowing what I was gonna do.

And then obviously just conversations with you and myself and opportunities arise and here we are. Yeah, I was speaking to my dad about this too because he was your coach growing up like he was mine. And a second father and a mentor for sure. Love, love, Brian Ford, hi, Brian. So I’m sure he’s gonna listen to this as well. So I hope so. Hi, dad. And yeah, we were chatting when you resigned and you said, it’d be a great waste for you to not be in swimming still, just with your knowledge and experience. So it’s been awesome to have you being able to work with someone still. And I think like what we do with the technique clinics, we do the filming, do the analysis and it’s just a very intensive couple of hours where we’re working just on technique where you can have a big impact on someone and you can just deep dive into technique which is very hard to do with a squad of 15 to 20 swimmers and they’re primarily there for the workout.

So we run small group clinics, maximum six swimmers. So you can really have hopefully that impact on someone in those couple of hours that they can then take away and practice. And especially for a lot of the juniors that you’re coaching at these clinics, that can help just change the course of their stroke and their swimming, hopefully a couple of degrees and that can actually have big results down the track. And from what, in our conversations, you’re really enjoying that side of things, being able to just be there and have that impact and just using all of your experience that you’ve built up over time, that knowledge you’ve built up over time and even continuing to refine that, working with lots of different swimmers and things like that. Yeah, like refining, I think is a key word there, it’s having the opportunity to refine your knowledge because when you’re a head coach and when you’re in charge of a large group,

20 swimmers, 30 swimmers, 40 swimmers, that’s just managing, really. You’re just managing a group. You don’t get to, and when I say exploit, I don’t mean a negative exploit, I mean exploit like what you have. You don’t get to exploit your knowledge and I’m 100% a better coach now than what I was a year ago because like anything, if you get to really hone in on one aspect, if you think of a sport, let’s say swimming, you don’t just do underwater filming and technique, you do pace sets, you do weekly planning, you do macro, micro cycles and all those sorts of things. So it’s been a real pleasure to hone in on just technique and particularly underwater footage and refine what I know and find out what works. What’s the, cause I love, I love a, all coaches love progressions and you’re trying to just find what is the best or most efficient progression and where you can have the most impact. So it’s been a real joy for me

to come out of the sport and feeling like, oh, like I just didn’t feel, like I was just tired. So I didn’t feel like I could have that like impact and I’m a, I love being happy like everybody does. Like I like being a happy, joyous person. So to be able to now be back in the sport and be happy and exploit the knowledge and refine it at the same time has been a pleasure. And you were saying as well, like with the underwater filming that you’ve been doing at the clinics, you’re picking things up that you wouldn’t have seen above the water, things that you wouldn’t have picked up just watching it at normal speed. And it’s such an eye-opening thing, isn’t it? When you’re just going frame by frame through a video and it becomes really clear what the issue is for someone or the mistake that they’re making and you can then show it to that person and okay, yeah, that’s the issue. But it’s very hard to pick this stuff up

from the pool deck looking at 45 degrees in full speed. Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%. And then having like, you might have like five seconds eyes on that person and then you’re like, you’ll die to the next person, you have five seconds eyes on them and then you’ll be like, hey, Bob, you’re dropping your elbow on your left arm, like keep a high elbow on that catch. But then like, yeah, don’t get the opportunity like you’re giving the information but then you don’t stay, you can’t like some coaches do and I guess that’s a difference but like you’re trying to give everybody something to work on but having the working with the clinics, you give them something, you show them what they’re doing and you show them and then you slowly build them up, you build their knowledge base to go, this is what it feels like when you’re dropping that elbow and this is what it feels like when you hold your elbow up higher or you know, whatever it is you’re working on

and then having that sequence of drills to go, okay, this is, because you can do, I love saying as sort of kids like, because mainly obviously with the form strokes, I’m just, I’m working mainly with the kids. Every now and then we have adults but it’s mainly with the kids and the adults are really good because they have a bit more awareness of their body but with the kids they need to be shown and guided a bit more with what it feels like to do things. So you can do the same drill or one drill can have six or seven different focuses depending on what you need to work on. It could be a timing thing, like let’s say single arm backstroke, you might need to work on your catch or maybe your catch is really good but the end of your stroke is a little bit slow so you can focus on like the push and release. So having that the drill sequence that we’ve been working on and I’ve been working on is really good because it’s like, all right, if you have this issue,

you can do this drill and focus on this area but then if you have another issue, you can still do the same drill but focus on this area and the kids having that one-on-one attention and having the visual of the underwater filming to go, ah, I get it now because in squat situations, you have your set and you’ve got to try to work within the set that the coach designs for everybody whereas with our clinics, it’s six people and you can stop and start and if you’re unsure, you can put your hand up and you can refer back to things and the pace is a little bit slower. Yeah, and it’s like a lot of times you’ll say terms if you’re in a squad, you’ll use terms as a coach that the kids might not fully grasp or actually understand what it is and what they need to do so it can take quite a bit of time to just go through that and have them actually understand it so I think that’s a big benefit of it as well and what I want to move into now is just

I want to touch on some common mistakes that you’ve seen across the board at clinics for fly back and breast because with the freestyle clinics that I’ve run for the last nine years or so, some very common themes do occur and that gives us a good way of understanding what most people are doing and giving them some direction on what to work on so let’s start with butterfly, what are you seeing there? I’ll keep it at two things for each stroke and sometimes I’m greedy though so I might try to fit a third thing in but so for butterfly, I would say it’s breathing for one

so either breathing too early so if like the swimmers are landing with their arms out the front, they’ll either lift their head first or they can sort of drop their arms down

and then lift their head out so then they change their body position and it’s too sharp so you want to like have a really flat like nice undulating fly but if you lift your head your elbows tend to drop down and the pressure instead of catching that way you end up pushing on the water down because your head is up

so the timing of the breath is really important so like keeping a neutral head position like catching or as you catch and apply the pressure back to push behind past your feet you tilt your chin forward to breathe although like they’re pulling on the water and then they’re lifting their head and trying to get their arms over at the same time so that would be like the most that’s the most impactful issue that I see with the butterfly technique and how are you changing that with them? So it’s identifying trying to identify where to take the breath and we’ll even go back from that it’s identifying that they or giving them the opportunity to feel what they’re doing so half the time they don’t even know that they’re lifting their head with most people it’s like they don’t actually know technically like why their timing’s out or what’s going wrong so trying to get them to go oh, I do notice that I lift my head and so that’s the first step

is always the recognition of what you’re actually doing I don’t like to try to change anything without them knowing why they need to change it or what it feels like what they’re doing why they’re consciously going oh yeah, my eyes are looking forward so my head’s up and then so from a drill point of view like doing butterfly pull through so like starting freestyle kick and it’s just a butterfly pull through and then they’ll recover underneath their body and then so do that to start with so they get the feeling you wanna catch first then press through and out the back okay and then where do you want the breath you wanna initiate like a breath between like as you’re catching to like maybe just when you’ve caught and you’re pressing underneath your body so between like initiating the catch and when your hands are underneath your bodies when you wanna initiate the breath

so just yeah, the butterfly pull through and then from there you can you might like work on single arm butterfly right and so like single arm butterfly a thousand different things to focus on but you can focus on your breath timing with just one arm so you’re not getting as fatigued having to do two arms so you can get more repetition in

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or use the coupon effortless at checkout and that will get you 15% off your pair of goggles using our special link formswim.com forward slash effortless or the code effortless at checkout. And that’s the thing, it’s such a high strength stroke that requires a lot of strength, it’s very fatiguing. So just breaking it down with some drills and having that single focus with whatever drill it is is a great way to start to make that transition. So that’s a good one. So the breath timing with Butterfly, what’s the second one? Probably, oh there’s like, so some, this is probably gonna be a bit cheeky. So like maybe like people like coming in and like hitting their hands together and then like kind of maybe diving down into the water

and then like then almost taking like a breaststroke stroke out. So you kind of just wanna land shoulder width apart with your thumb slightly down. So then from that position, you can hook straight away whereas if you bash your hands together the point from there to there is almost dead space. There’s no, you don’t get much power unless you’re extremely flexible. Like I had the luxury of being flexible, not like I still am now I guess, but like for most people being able to put their arms up behind their head is quite difficult. So yeah, you just wanna land shoulder width apart. But like that’s, but I would say the rhythm, which is a really hard one to get. The rhythm and butterfly, the timing, I would say is probably of all the strokes the most difficult to get because it requires that strength. And because you can’t just do lap after lap of butterfly like you can with breaststroke or you can with free solar backstroke,

you just can’t get as many reps in. So trying to learn the rhythm of butterfly, which is like, and then like the flexibility, like there’s so many moving parts in the rhythm of butterfly, like kick when your hands enter, but you wanna have the flexibility to be able to like have your arm land behind your head rather than your arm falling in front of you and then kick when you exit and then using that kick to push the hand and throw the arm over. So then you’ll ask me, all right, Sam, how do you work on that? And that is probably the biggest challenge in the clinics is to,

and within half, let’s say within 40 minutes, try to get them used to, for those that struggle with the rhythm, how do we do it? Start off with the fly kick first because like the fly kick, they gotta wanna have like a nice, so like arms above head. You know how you do like a freestyle kick with your arms above the head? For the freestyle clinics? Similar thing for butterfly. So arms above head, just get the feeling of kicking from your chest and out your toes and trying to have a constant rhythmic kick rather than like a kick and then stop, kick and then stop. And then let’s go back to single arm. So you got you, and you’re gonna breathe to the side. So I like breathing to the side because it just makes, you wanna make the drill as easy as possible to have an impact for what you wanna focus on. So I don’t like doing single arm breathing to the front unless I want to focus on the breath timing because it’s quite difficult

swimming fly breathing to the front. So breathe to the side and then focus on the rhythm. So as you enter, you know, kick, glide, take the stroke, kick again. So like you’re getting the rhythm with one arm. Same drill, different focus. And the answer there is, it’s like progress through it. Don’t try and just swim and then try and get your rhythm, build it up from an easy starting position and then progress through there. And as I was putting together all of these drills that we filmed for the courses that we’ve got on our website now, it’s one of the things that I liked when I was going through the actual video is like the hand exit, like making sure that you’re, I can’t remember the terminology that you use but it was like about sort of pressing back but you’re just looking to like sweep the hands. I think clearing the hips. That’s a good one. Yeah, clearing the hips. So as the hands push back, you’re clearing the hips to help them come over

because people often, they either get a bit stuck there and then they can’t get their arms over or people are actually like really wide at the back of the stroke. And that is a strength thing but so many swimmers are doing their catch and then the exit is like 30 centimetres wide of the hips. Like there’s just no, there’s no power there and they’re not finishing far enough back. And obviously, yes, it requires strength but if you can clear the hips like you’re talking, it just helps transition into that nice recovery. And I see a similar thing in freestyle where people typically pushing back too far and they get stuck and their arms straight and they haven’t cleared the hips and then they have trouble getting over and the whole rhythm is out of. Yeah, and they’re kind of like muscle, like they have to like use instead of using that because it’s all about momentum, right? Rhythm and momentum, all strokes. So if you like, if you stop your momentum

or your rhythm by like pushing back and leaving your arms by your hips, you know, like you’ll then have to use your muscles to then pull your arm over. It doesn’t matter if it’s fly or free but if you’re using the momentum of pressing through and then pressing out the back and press and lift, that’s easy momentum to get the arm up. And then all you need to do is just have a light press, say for freestyle or fly. Fly, you wanna try to throw the arm over freestyle, like, you know, get it up nice and high and then just slide in through the entry. Yeah, energy conservation. And then now, so that’s butterfly. What about backstroke? Head position for sure, but in most people would know or at least heard of that but like for those that have it, like it’s a tricky stroke because you can’t see where you’re going. So people have a tendency to just lift their head up too much, so go on the side here, like lift up and they’re either looking down

at their toes or they’re looking at the lane rope or maybe they’re looking to see that who’s behind them. And it just will just drop their hips. Like, you know, if your head’s up, it’s like if you go watch the form stroke videos, we actually do one of the drills where lifting the head out of the water, kicking for half a lap and then kicking with like letting the head rest back and you see like visually perfect, like the hips as the head goes back, the hips just lift up. And you know, just like if your hips are in the water, okay, let’s say that’s the head and you’ve got your head up and your hips are down. You’re either carrying water on your hips and trying to move through the water or your body’s on an arc and like the water’s just like, you’re just pushing through too much water. Get the head down. The hips should come up a little bit. It’s also tied to how big your kick is as well, but like if you think like head back,

toes up to the surface, you’re generally gonna have a much better body position. And it’s essentially like the face that you just went out of the water, right? Like a lot of people have their ears out. You’ve got to cover the ears when you’re doing back. Yeah, well, yeah. Like think like the water’s like cutting down the side of your face. Like, yeah, like it’s kind of like slicing off your ears almost. That’s like a really good like position to be in. And I think a really sort of basic thing there is that a lot of people have goggles that don’t allow them to see peripherally enough when they’re swimming. And so they have to like look down to see where they’re going. And I’m talking from like experience as well. I’ve got different sets of goggles and some goggles I just can’t see where I’m going. So I either hit the lane rope or I’ve just got to have my head up. So if you get some goggles that do just allow that vision off to the sides,

like I love the Swedish goggles, which I don’t know, I don’t think they’re cool anymore, but I love the Swedish goggles. They’re always gonna be cool. Always. They’ll never not be cool. They’re like, yeah, I still buy them and I wear them quite a bit. But like they’re great for backstroke because they’re clear on the sides and you can just see where that lane rope is. So just get the right set of goggles if you do like backstroke and you can’t see where you’re going. Try something like the Swedish ones or there are some that do have a bit probably more comfortable for people. But that’s just, I think it’s something that’s not spoken about pretty much. No, yeah, good point. And I guess there’s like, you know, swimmers, if you’re growing up in squad swimming, you kind of just learn, like it’s just things that you pick up along the way. But yeah, Swedish goggles, it’s great because you can just like dart your eye to the side.

You don’t have to move your head at all. Just dart the eye, have a look at the lane rope. Yep, still there, have it crossed over. I’m not gonna hit someone in the head coming the other way and off you go. But it’s repetition as well. Like it’s an awkward stroke to do because you can’t see. But do you think like how comfortable, if you’re not comfortable doing backstroke, how often you’re doing backstroke because that’s a huge thing is how like the repetition, like if the more you do something, the more comfortable you become with it. So I think it, yeah, a lot of it has to do with how many laps of backstroke you’re doing compared to freestyle, like how comfortable you’re doing freestyle, very comfortable because you do so much of it and you get the bonus of seeing backstroke, can’t see what you’re doing and you don’t do not nearly as much to get comfortable with it.

And it’s a, I think it’s a really good stroke to help with your freestyle. Some of the reasons that we spoke about, like working the arms in another direction, but the catch is the same, but just on your back and you’re working your kick really well too. And you’re really working that, like, well, if it was freestyle, it’s up kick, but with backstroke, it’s like the down kick sort of thing. You’re working it in the other direction really nicely. And it’s just good for working on core strength and stability through there too, because backstroke requires good core strength to hold the hips up and the legs up and that translates really nicely into freestyle as well. So I think, yeah, if you can get more comfortable doing backstroke, it’s a great one to throw into the mix. Would you say another one, the common mistake that you see is, like the entry and recovery for people, like a bent arm coming through rather than a straight arm in line with the shoulder?

Yeah, for sure. Like, yeah, like, and it’s so easy. Like, let’s see if I can move this up. Like, for whatever reason, like, I guess it’s like, it actually takes a bit more effort to like kind of lock your arm or to have a straight arm. Like when you want it above your head, like to do that, you know, I’ve got to like kind of flex and work hard to hold that position. Whereas like, if I put my arm up above my head, like if you’re asking that you’ve got a question for the teacher in the classroom, you know, that probably feels, that for me, that feels comfortable right now. And for those listening, you’ve got a bent elbow, your hand sort of crossing your centerline up above your head. Absolutely. So like, you know, if you’re coming over and that’s, you know, but that’s not a very strong position to be in. When you’re swimming, you know, cutting across the other, other like, you know, my nose is the centerline, my arm and hand is above or across.

And then I’ve got to, I’ll have to like sweep out no strong catch until it’s past my body sort of thing. So trying to like, and you then, but it actually comes from the shoulders. So it’s like, I like thinking, like leading your back stroke through your shoulders. So like, say you finish a stroke off, pop the shoulder, let the arm, like follow the line of the shoulder. And then as you’re at your highest point, you want to sort of drop your shoulder into the water, the opposite shoulder is going to pop out of the water and just click, like sort of land your hand to the side of your ear. And that’s about, you know, that’s perfect, like perfect catch. I’m not even in the water, but that’s like, that works about right. So like lead the stroke through the shoulder, lengthen the arm, like, yeah, I’m a relaxed hand, but lengthen the arm as you’re coming over and then just slot, like, enter to the side of your ear.

Rather than like, yeah, just, it’s not intentionally lazy, but it’s just like, just a bit like when that, it’s just like, you don’t have that extra effort into like locking your arm out. And I think, well, first of all, it’s from people not knowing what they should be doing. And they think, well, like, I got to bring my arm over in freestyle, I have a bent elbow, so I’ll do the same thing in backstroke. So they come over that way, but it’s, yeah, it’s a slightly different recovery with that straighter arm elbows locked out a little bit and then, yeah, getting it over there. And if you can do that correctly, I find like it just makes your whole body and your stroke so much longer and straighter, because if you’re coming over with these bent arms, there’s a lot of wriggle going on and there’s a lot of side to side movement. Kind of like a disco. Yeah, it’s rare. Yeah, I can’t think of another analogy for what we want to do with the straight arms,

but we’ll have to come back on that one. Yeah, let me think about that one. Yeah, but that’s a big one that I see if I’m coaching backstroke. Let’s move on to breaststroke. This is your bread and butter, I think, when it comes to coaching. This is what you’re very good at helping people with. So what are some of these common breaststroke mistakes? Well, go like generic one common one that you ask is the kick. Is the breaststroke kick? And it comes from learn to swim. Not only, we could have a whole podcast about just teaching breaststroke at learn to swim level, but I’ll maybe say that for another time. I don’t know if too many people want to hear me yap on about breaststroke and learn to swim, but effectively, like when they teach breaststroke at the learn to swim level, like they kind of like get the, they teach the kids to get the heels up to their bum. So come back a little bit. So like, let’s pretend they’re the knees,

they’re the feet, hands of the feet, elbows of the knees. They’ll like get them to bring their knees out to the side and the heels up to their bottom. Then they’ll turn their feet out and then I’ll kick out and then around. Yeah, like a frog, frog kick. That’s exactly what I’m teaching, exactly. So that’s a coach’s nightmare, that is. So I, and I’m really actually, I’m real pleased with the how we do the breaststroke kick and it’s really effective and it’s like, you know, put them on the wall next to the wall, vertical kick and then go through the different stages of the breaststroke kick. So like heels up. Okay, just get used to heels up, heels up, relax. Heels up, relax. And then go, okay, what does it feel like when my heels are up, but my knees are still on my hips and then turning the toes out, and then as repetition, trying to get their brain to function down to their feet. Okay, knees are still in line with my hips,

turning the feet out. All right, then from that position, you know, I kick down. What does it feel like to kick down with your knees in line with your hips and your feet turned out and build them up? Build them up. So I like, it’s such an easy thing to do and it has such a positive impact with majority of the kids that we’re doing it with. Because they don’t know any different. And then the sad thing is that if they’re taught like that,

so then in the future, when they’re 14, 15, 16, they’re like, oh, I’m not a breaststroker. No, I can’t swim breaststroke because they can’t do the kick or they’re taught the kick wrong. Where it’s like, no, you can still swim breaststroke. Like this, so breaststroke is probably more about drag reduction than any other stroke. You’re trying to minimize the amount of drag you create. So if like, let’s say you’re a big, you know, strong person got really, you know, maybe you’re a butterfly and you’re really powerful, but you’ve got like this really wonky breaststroke kick. We’ll just do the smallest, tiniest kick that you can get away with. So literally like, come up, turn the feet, go back, but then just have a massive upper body stroke. Like that’s still breaststroke. You just to have a tiny kick and utilize your upper body. But then, yeah. And the way that you go through the kick at the start of the breaststroke course

or the clinics when you’re running them is, I can, when you look at it as like, that’s really basic. That’s really simple. Except how else are you gonna change your breaststroke kick if you don’t just break it down? Like you might be able to change it like that if you think about it, but why not just break it down into this easy way to learn it where you’re on the wall and you’re doing it in these sort of, you know, three or four progressions and just keep it really simple to get used to that movement. And yeah, like, and I think people when they’re watching the videos, they’ll be like, oh, this is like, this is really simple stuff. But if it was complicated, it’s harder to do, you’re less likely to get it right. But simple doesn’t mean ineffective in many cases. And I think you’ve, you knew this coming into it, but in the clinics, you’re starting to boil down what are the foundational things that someone needs to know

and what’s the simplest way to teach it to them. So they get it to click because, you know, if you give them six hours of backstroke drills to do or breaststroke drills to do, they’re not gonna do them all. They’re gonna get confused. So we need to keep it as simple as possible. And I think that’s why, like, the five day cat challenge that we’ve got, we’ve had more than 10,000 people do this five day course. And I think, and a lot of it’s come from word of mouth because it’s so simple the way that we teach it. And so if you can just keep things simple, I think that’s where you can get the best results but sometimes people will look it and go, oh, it’s too simple that it can’t work. Like it, or it’s not gonna do anything. Yeah, yeah. But it’s quite the opposite. No, I don’t wanna, kind of like, like, yeah, mastery in a way, right? Like you don’t want to, you’re paying, like you’re paying a professional to make it as simple

for you to understand to get the best result possible.

And I’m not saying we’re masters but like we have been in the sport for a long time. So, you know, there is an element of knowledge that we’ve developed over time. So yeah, like you said, simple doesn’t mean not effective. It’s probably the opposite. The most simple you can make it the most effective will be. And then like anything, it’s like then you put your own flair and style onto it. Like maybe like having your knees that close together is too much. It’s not effective for you but like you can move your knees out slightly wider. Like, and that’s where the element of bringing it back to the clinics that we run on the weekends is like the onus on you is to explore. Like, I can give you the answers. You can give them the answers, Brenton, but unless they’re connected with what their body’s doing and willing to try something different, it won’t be as effective. And it comes back to what I spoke about with the butterflies.

You got to recognize, like how do you change it? We got to recognize what you’re doing first. Like, and so you have to be the one like thinking about it and going, oh, this is what it feels like. Oh, this is what, and it feels different now. It feels worse, it feels better. But unless they’re engaged with it, you won’t, we don’t get as much impact. And to finish up here with the podcast, I want to leave people with a couple of key points that they could think about with each of these three strokes. So next time they’re at the pool, they, if they’re looking to do some breaststroke, what are some sort of simple takeaways or even cues perhaps that people could be thinking about next time they get in the pool? For each stroke? Yeah, for flyback and breast. Cool. One more, I’m going to, I know we’re at about a 40 minute mark for the podcast, but the other breaststroke, because I said I’d give two. So the other breaststroke thing that I see is just,

swim is not going wide, not using the outward sweep to move forward. So they might let their hands drift apart and then on that corner catch up here, move in. But like right from the get go, like the out sweep, you’re trying to like make a hole in the water and move through the hole, move through. So that’s the other thing. And that’s just sculling and identifying, okay, I can use my hands to move forward, even though I’m pressing out wide. So it’s more of like a, you’re saying it’s more of like a passive movement of the arms, but they’re not using it to move themselves forwards with it. Yeah, yeah. The upper body breaststroke stroke, the arm is like, I think of it like sailing. Like the boat wants to go that way, but the wind is going that way. So then how does the boat move forward if the wind’s going that way? Well, they’ve got a sail and the sail catches the wind and pushes the boat forward. So it’s same with the hands.

Just because you’re not planting out the front and pressing behind you, doesn’t mean you can’t move forward. You’ve just got to use, change the pitch of the hands. Like that’s probably a bit too much and that’s just sliding. So you want to play around with the pitch of your hand and then like move forward with the out sweep. So the good way I heard like, and I like that analogy of sailing. One that I heard that’s kind of related is, is it’s like a propeller. So propeller, if you think of like a steamboat, then it’s got this like a paddle steamer. It’s got these like flat things and it takes a lot of energy to sort of just move it around. So it’s very inefficient. Then you’ve got a propeller that’s got this sort of curved and it’s got the curved blades and that’s helping it move forwards. And it’s a similar thing with like your, your out sweep and your in sweep where it’s like you have this propeller blade to, if you’ve got the right angles,

that’s going to actually help you move forwards like that propeller blade. So similar, a similar concept. Like that articulation for sure. Like, and yeah. So yeah, there’s your breaststroke. So all right. So a few tips for each of the strokes.

Butterfly, use fins and do short, short bouts of butterflies. Try to like swim really, really good butterfly. And then as soon as you feel like your technique or your rhythm’s going out, stop.

Like it might, let’s say you’re doing like 25s, yards or meters, it doesn’t matter. You do 10, 25s, but you can only do about six strokes before you find your technique goes out of whack. We’ll do five really, really good strokes and then some easy freestyle to the wall. And then also single arm butterfly, lots and lots of single arm butterfly. Because you can do lots of it. You can do 800 meters of single arm butterfly without not nearly the same like energy expenditure. So that would be my two points. Backstroke would be, yeah, for sure playing around with your head position.

And yeah, do it wrong, practice doing it wrong and then practice doing it better and see how the body feels.

And then my, probably my secret trick that I’ve been absolutely loving is and thanks to Ryan Murphy, American Backstroke, a phenomenal, like what is like up there with like the best backstrokeers of all time. He’s like, he’s in the conversation. I remember listening to an interview or a podcast and he from memory does a lot of backstroke swimming with a pool boy between his groin, but he’s still kicking.

So like, you know, people think I’ll pool boy on, not out to kick. Whereas he’s like, nah, I still kick and I was going, what? Like, so yeah, it’s phenomenal too, because like a lot of people tend to have like too big of a backstroke kick. So it forces them to have a shorter, tighter backstroke kick which is really good. And it also just gives them that like, that lift of the hips in the water. So they’ve got like a perfect body position. And that’s one of the jokes you’ve gotten in the program too, Osso. Yeah, yeah, definitely. So that’s, yeah, that’s like one of the best things I’ve ever seen to help a few different aspects of backstroke. It’s such a good little trick. And I’m actually, I’ve got him on the podcast. I’m recording a podcast with him next week actually. Ooh, get him up over it please. I will, I’ll remember. Can I be a fan boy and just drop into the podcast and just say hi? Yeah, yeah, we can do an audience and everything.

Cool, cool. So there the two, yeah, backstroke is play with your head position. And if you find that your hips are dropping or you’ve got your kick is too big, whack a poor boy and then keep going. And also alternate. I know we’ve got to wrap this up and I apologize, but like alternate like two 25s backstroke swim with a poor boy, but then try to maintain the same technique and same body position and same kick intensity as you did when you did have the poor boy in. So you’re mixing and matching. Like it’s baby steps at a time, like that progression that I was talking about. Breaststroke, play around. Yeah, I would definitely like sculling. So like freestyle kick. If you use a snorkel, like front snorkel on and then play around with like trying to move forward with just the out sweep, like how far can you move forward?

And you don’t want to out sweep so your hands go behind your shoulders. You still want to have like how far can you get back with these headphones? Like so if that’s in line with your shoulders, you want to definitely go like twice as wide as your shoulders sort of thing. So how far can you move forward with just an out sweep like that? And like I quite often see a lot of breaststroke is very narrow. Like the hands aren’t going wider than their shoulders. So you’ve got to go wider than your shoulders. And then obviously the opposite of that where people are going too wide and the hands are sort of past their head. So there for those that are listening and not watching on YouTube, like your hands are not really going back at all there. It’s just the out sweep part of it. And yeah, just getting used to that turn out of the hand. And yeah, just getting used to that turn out of the hands to help. And yeah, what angle do you need

to help you move forwards there? What angle turn out of the hands? Because a lot of people do just slice. Their palms are down, they’re slicing out. And there’s no benefits to that whatsoever. So you’ve got to be that sale or that propeller with the hands to help initiate that movement forwards. Yeah. Well, the equivalent is like karate chopping the water if you’re swimming freestyle and trying to like karate chop to like you don’t. You have a flat hand like to capture that water. Like you don’t slide karate chop or slice down because you just go anywhere. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So that and then just like a, again a really simple basic one is like grab your kickboard hold the kickboard at the back. So you’re not gripping on the top of the kickboard. You’re holding the kickboard at the back like a pencil grip. And then put your head down in the water and look at your breaststroke kick.

Look at it. Like what does it look like? Is your knees coming out way wider than your hips? Like, okay, then what does it feel like to keep your legs, you know your knees in line with your hips and visually look at it and go, okay, oh wow. Like my kicks actually pretty narrow. So that’s good. Or no, my knees are going out way too wide. I think, yeah, like looking and seeing what you’re doing gives you that it’s not it’s kind of like video, the video footage but just in real time. Yeah. And that visual feedback is very beneficial because most people don’t have the proprioception to know exactly what they’re, what’s going on there. So if you can just look down and we say this at freestyle clinics too, it’s like for this, this part of it if you’re not, if you’re still crossing over in freestyle, look forwards and just check. See if you are and see if you’ve corrected it. So you can do the wrong thing, you know, change your head position in the wrong way

but to check whether or not you’re doing something correctly. So I think that visual feedback is a great tool that people can use.

So Sammy, thank you very much for being on the podcast. It’s been great chatting and I really enjoyed working with you and those people that are listening that are members they will have seen your answering questions inside the membership and in our courses as well. So now they can put a proper face and voice to the, to the names. Yeah, shout out to the members. I really, funny enough, like yeah, not funny enough at all but like I enjoy actually like reading some of them are so insightful when like you just read them and go, wow, like you’d be a really good athlete to coach. Like, and that’s what like with, with adults you get you get a bit more inside, a bit more, what would you call it? Yeah, just like rep, rapport, yeah, rapport with, with, so I really enjoy like and then, and then having the feedback to say, oh, thanks that really worked quite well or I didn’t really understand what you’re talking about there, please explain again, Sam.

So yeah, shout out to the members who I’ve been in comms with. And yeah, no, thanks to have, I think the last time we did this, Brenton we were in a car driving back from a surf it would have been about 10 years ago now, maybe seven years ago. And I, I listened back and I was like, oh my gosh, Sam, like your speaking is shocking. Like I was, you’re so many, I was like, mm. And I was, I was quite embarrassed. So I’m quite pleased. I feel like I’ve done a better job at articulating myself this time around compared to after post surf, Sam. There’s nothing like listening back and hearing how you sound. I know I’ve listened back to, to podcasts and go, you’ve got to be better at that. Get rid of the arms, get rid of whatever, yeah, whatever else I’m doing. And there’s always room to improve but you’ve, you’re speaking, speaking well. I think you communicate well at clinics and that communication is a huge, a huge tool that you can use to help get your point across.

So I’ll have to listen back to that podcast, actually. That’ll be early phase. I started this about 10, 10 years ago before podcasts were cool. So yeah, it’s hopefully we’ve both gotten better in 10 years time. Yeah, yeah, I hope so. So we’ll leave it there and thanks very much for being on the podcast and I’ll get you back on. Again, you’re about to head off to, Europe and the US for some time over there and we’ll keep this rolling because I think we’ve got a lot to talk about. Oh, always, I look forward to the next one. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

The post How To Swim Effortless Fly, Back and Breast with Sam Ashby appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

My guest today is Scott Dickens, a two-time Olympian. And now director of Business Development at Form, who is one of our sponsors of the podcast. We will talk about the 8-Week Faster Freestyle course, how you can ensure you’re making progress and the improvement you would want to see. Tune in now!

48.34 The Optimum Goal Is To Be Able To Relax

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

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming podcast. My guest today is Scott Dickens, two-time Olympian and now Director of Business Development at Form, who is one of our sponsors of the podcast. And today, we are going to be talking about how you can make the most of the eight week course that we’ve got. And there’s been thousands of swimmers who have gone through that and how you can make the most of that course to make sure you’re making the progression and the improvement that you want to see. And this is going to be relevant, even if you haven’t got the course or done the course, what we talk about here is going to be relevant for you. And make sure that you get something out of the podcast. So Scott, welcome to the podcast. First of all, thanks for having me, really excited to be on it. Well, before we decided this call, you’re actually just talking about your last Olympics in 2012 and something that you technique change that you went through and what

you experienced. And I thought, that’s, that’s really interesting. Someone at your level, an Olympian working on their technique and having some changes feel like they weren’t the right changes to make, but you just had to trust yourself and they eventually turned out to be the right thing to do. Do you want to talk a little bit about that? Because I thought that was an interesting conversation. Yeah, I mean, swimming is such a technical sport. And you know, you look at the best swimmers in the world and whether you think they have the best technique or not, they’ll never master it because there’s always going to be someone to break that next world record. So it’s a matter of fine balance and finding the right kind of technique that works for you and your body because everyone’s different. You know, I started swimming and made my first Olympic team at 19 and, you know, young and silly and dumb thought I was just going to keep getting

better. And, you know, technique was always that thing that was my driver of my success. I was never the biggest or strongest breaststroker, only enough from a six foot five breaststroker built like a butterfly. But the stroke chooses you. But, you know, as the sport progressed, and, you know, I could see others kind of moving faster and a faster rate than me. And my world ranking kind of just almost stagnant or even going down, but yet I’m actually doing best times and improving. It leads you to question what’s going on and why am I not, why am I getting left behind and why am I not keeping up? So, you know, going into the 2012 year, I knew that was probably going to be my last, you know, run at Olympic Games, give him not maybe not age is not really a factor, but just I kind of made that decision with my family. And I looked at my coach after the World Championships in 2011 and Shanghai and I came, you know, 18th, I came 19th

at the 2004 Olympic Games. And it’s like, it’s been seven years kind of just doing the same thing. And that’s kind of the definition of insanity. If you look it up, doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. So I think something can be a pitfall where we, we think and wonder why we’re not improving. And, you know, you work harder, you know, you find maybe a new coach, you try a new plan, but if you’re technique and there isn’t like those minor adjustments, you might not ever see those incremental improvements or that leap that you’re expecting. So I looked at my coach and I said like, you know, we’re starting back up in a couple of weeks. I don’t want to go into this year saying what if and don’t want to leave any stones unturned. So I said, I’m willing to fail, but I’m willing to try something new to fail. So I’ve accepted whether we’re going to make the team or not make the team because I’ve made a team in 2004. I missed

the team in 2008 by a tenth of a second in the finals of the trials. Got wrenching, but you learn a lot about yourself and you move on. It makes you the person you are today. So going in, we decided like, you know, he talked to some of the best, you know, coaches in the world, like, how is Ken Benenberg’s coach training him for, you know, a hundred meter breaststroke and some of my other key competitors. You look at them, they’re big. They’re like, their breaststroke had turned into a very power oriented stroke. And, you know, look at Adam Pease, like built like a CrossFit athlete, athlete, right? So I had, you know, great technique, but still wasn’t a technique that was a power technique. So very much generating high power with my pull and kick. So we essentially looked at what can we do to one, increase your power and that one, what adjustments can we do in your stroke to help you utilize that power? So we started in September

and first we started with the power and we went from something nine times, 10 times in the water week to down to six and really focus swimming. No more than about 4K. So I went from doing tons of yardage to just really specific, meaningful work in the pool, whether it was technical work or just working on my 50 pace, 100 pace, 200 pace. But it was very much to the point and the rest of the time I was powerlifting, doing explosive work on the track, just doing other cross training elements to really develop my body and try and put on weight as well as develop that, you know, explosive power. And then there came the technique where I, you know, we did a couple of video analysis workouts with some technicians, but also analyzing some key, you know, brushstrokers in the world and how they were doing their technique. And based on my size and my wingspan, actually it was me looking at kind of Bremen Hansen stroke and identifying that, like, she

almost does his full pull before he comes out of the water. We’ve seen a couple of recent female brushstrokers do that. It kind of almost reminds you of 217 that was broken just last week. You look at that stroke, she’s got such a powerful pull, comes out of the water and then rides that, you know, glide with a kick. So we essentially started to incorporate that. And, you know, with the adaptation of more power and trying to gain mass and changing my technique, I kind of like started the season here. And we had a goal in mind of like going like 59 three and 100 meter brushstroke. Best time was without a suit 007. So it’s a big drop. So the target was be able to come back in 30.8. And how do you do that? You have to, well, be out in 27.8 and then incorporate the, let’s say full second for a turn for a full six foot five individual and then that equates to 30.8 through a push. Long course. And the goal was like, how do we do that at 18 strokes

at 95 percent effort? So that was like, OK, what can we do day one like after a couple of weeks of, you know, base training? What can I do at 18 strokes at 95 percent effort? Like 33 high, 30, maybe 33 low. And then it was like 34, 35. It just got worse and worse and worse because I would change my stroke. It felt awful. My brain was telling me, saying, like, why are you swimming like this? You swim one way for since you were six years old and you did really well doing that. Go back. And my body’s also hurting because, you know, it’s just fatigued from all the weight lifting. And it’s mental battle. You see the time of the clock where you’re trying over and over, doing drill work over and over again, getting slower, getting more tired, eating like 10,000 calories a day. And it wasn’t until about December that I finally saw like a little, little squeak of light in the tunnel and I was at like a development that could just to meet me had

in our own pool in December before the Christmas break. And I dove off and went like a one on one six. And I was like, you know what, like, at this time of the year for how I’m feeling, I’ll take that. And then it kind of went on a training camp after the Christmas break. And it was just like, I started to believe in it. So it was one, it was about like, my body doesn’t want to do it. My mind doesn’t want to do it. And yet I started to see that time drop and consistently just get better and better and better. And then I started to find like new limits of in terms of what I thought was like pain threshold and what I was capable of mentally. And I realized I didn’t have any limits. And once I realized that and like I could push through the pain threshold of like when your fingers are cramping, your forearms tighten up and you just have nothing left. And yet you find a you find a way to push off again and go faster and do it again.

And that was a bit of an aha moment I had in January. And then all of a sudden they became an addiction. And I was just like, I know this is working. And I’m just going to stick to it. No matter how bad it feels even technically and still going faster. I’m just going to stick to this. So even when I was racing, I had to work so hard mentally at doing this new stroke because still you can go full back into habits, but it’s your mind that forces you to do a new formation that your body maybe doesn’t want to do. Eventually it became like natural. But it still felt awkward because of like 20 plus years of doing a stroke one way and then just changing it. Anyways, I ended up making the team and then getting to the Olympics and you know, making final in the relay, breaking the Canadian records in 100 and 200 going 59.8 didn’t quite get my 59.3 but full second drop that year is pretty substantial in 100 meter sprint. But it was all because of like

looking and evaluating and deciding to make this change like you want to go best time and running want to go best time swimming. It requires you to go to the drawing board and almost be willing to sacrifice and the hardest part will be the mental part. Like can I do what this plan or this coach is asking me to do and because it’s not going to feel good. Change doesn’t feel good, especially in like sport. When you change a technique, all of a sudden you have to go through adaptation and most people don’t want to deal with that adaptation because it takes too long. So it’s a matter of how can you stick it out and how can you look forward to what’s on the other side but accept from day one that’s going to be hard. That was the thing that stood out most to me is you consciously made the decision to sacrifice potentially making the team for this change because you’d got to that point in your career where you were I guess fed up with not making any

improvements and doing the same thing again and again and you just wanted to you thought I’ve got to try something new here. And that’s a big decision to come to for a lot of people and I’ve spoken with them and worked with a few pro triathletes and for a lot of them I think they’re at that point where they’re not willing to make that sacrifice because the payoff time they might see as being too long and they don’t want to sacrifice the next maybe six months of results. But those that do and are willing to potentially go a little bit slower for the first few months they’re the ones that can improve. So yeah, I think that’s a huge part of it is that that decision and knowing what to to expect. And yeah, it does not feel good. No it doesn’t. And I think the other thing like when you look at it like if you do make those sacrifices but you do come out on the other side what you’ve also done is increase your efficiency which in the intern

will increase your speed because that’s what it relates to. Your stroke length DPS is your ability to hold and do technique. The rating is your how well you can sustain that and that’s going to equate to how fast you’re going. And at the end of the day going like 32 long course at 14 strokes felt easy. And that’s like because I just got maximum efficiency in my stroke as it related to the power I was being able to generate through the stroke because of the work I was doing out of the pool. And that was like kind of that also all home was like I can’t believe this is happening like I can consistently do you know 50 on 50 going such a low stroke count but going this fast. Yeah, it’s because I see a lot of swimmers in like they’re limited their speed is limited by their technique. That’s what’s holding them up and and something that comes to mind there is working with a swimmer at the moment and we’re really having trouble making some changes

to his to his technique. And I said I want you to do this one drill and it’s long dog paddle drill because I see there’s a lot of correlation from doing that drill well to swimming well at least for some of the changes that we want to make to his stroke. And so we’re spending like a couple of weeks he’s sending videos back and forth to get really good at this drill because I can see that if he can do this drill well with the right timing making sure he’s finishing his stroke at the back making sure he’s keeping his fingers pointing down and not like coming in and coming underneath him if he can just do that right with the drill which is the easier way to do it then that’s going to help him do it in the swim straight because there’s been other things that we’ve tried that just haven’t haven’t worked. So yeah it’s just just willing to persist with it. And initially when I said I want you to do this drill and we want to get really good at it

and he’s just like oh yeah I’m trying but it’s just not I just can’t see the relevancy of it like what’s the point so that’s what I think in coaches where all can be is like you’ve got to let them know this is why we’re doing it this is the point of the drill and this is what we want to get to in the next couple of weeks time or couple of months time was it a conversation that you had with your coach at the time or is this something that you just come to on your own and then you spoke to your coach? I think it was that like kind of mutual like understanding where we had such a great year in preparation leading into the Shanghai World Championships 2011 and like the times I was doing like in season so in season being like in work not rested not shaved not tapered we’re set like we’re like you know I’m going to do something good here it’s finally like you know the year before I like went one 007 did well kind of bronze in the 50 at the Pampax

so you know the training quality was much better in 2011 and it was just like we looked at each other he’s like I’m sorry like it was like that to hear that from a coach and him say that you know I feel like I’ve let you down like what what can we do better and he’s like I don’t know what that is right now but let’s come back to the drawing board and figure that out so that’s what we did and that was that’s where our relationship I think also took off because it was now based on communication and so every workout was almost like he wrote the workout and I was like here’s your section it was in the spring group and he’s like here’s your section like I was only brushed over in the group so he became very focused on like making sure there was an adaptation of the workout for me because I can’t train like a sprint freestyler because I’m a breaststroke there’s totally different and it took a while to learn that so it was very much like

look at the workout tell me what you think I came very involved in that process and there was a lot of drill work and a lot of things that we were doing a lot of isolated pull a lot of isolated kick and then a lot of kick, pull, swim component build sets and then there was like those couple of times a week we were strictly full stroke focusing on particular race paces but the isolated drill work is you’re breaking down the stroke and forcing yourself to focus on one thing at a time but when you do that in high repetition it becomes very much forced and natural and that’s where like I think a lot of people don’t understand the importance of doing kick and isolation, doing drill and isolation or doing like different forms of pull and isolation without pullboys and without paddles and those enhancements to really like develop the muscles and the muscle memory of the part of the stroke that you need to develop on.

Yeah, I wanna go to that for a bit is the kick because and I think probably six, seven years ago I was like like triathlete don’t worry about your kick however, I’ve gotten a bit smarter in the last seven years I think and just seeing that the kick is letting a lot of triathletes down not that you need to kick hard like we know that but it needs to be effective and often there’s things that people are doing that their kick is slowing them down and if they were to just isolate the kick and do a little bit of kick work and some of their workouts they’re gonna start to waken up the legs they’re gonna help make this kick much more effective and whether that’s doing some vertical kick kick on the side even just like over kick like fast legs, slow arms just start to wake up the legs and do that as part of your warmup I’ve seen really good results with a lot of the swimmers that I’ve coached and it takes time like typically two to three months

of just doing that consistently but boy does it make a difference like I’ve seen times come down fairly significantly primarily as getting the kick to be rather than a passenger to the rest of their stroke it’s becoming a part of it and they’re able to work it in with the rest of their stroke this episode of the podcast is proudly brought to you by our sponsor Form Smart Swim Goggles they’re more than a pair of goggles meet the world’s most powerful swim platform see yourself improve with Form Smart Swim Goggles including a free one-year membership when you purchase your goggles for only 249 US dollars they’ve currently changed up their offer where you can now get the goggles and you have one year membership included for free and if you’d like to continue with the membership going forwards it’s only 15 US dollars a month where you get access to the workouts, training plans and custom workout builder but you’ll always have access to the real-time data

in the goggles so you never lose access to that my favorite thing about the Form Goggles is having the instant feedback of what times you’re doing, what stroke rate you’re doing and also the ability to see what your heart rate is because never before have we been able to have these immediate feedback heads up display where it’s actually telling you what your intervals are so when I wear the goggles in training I like that I know my split for the first 50 and the 100 and the 150 so every single lap I’m getting that feedback on what my pace is and I find it’s such an important tool for being able to not only have different gears where you can switch between the different speeds that you wanna swim but it helps you develop those gears and it helps you intuitively know how fast you need to go to before you’re going to blow up or before you’re going to go a little bit too hard so it helps you just get really good at judging your pace

for when you do go to a race and even if you’re not wearing the goggles in a race it’s that intuition and that ability to develop your pacing that these goggles can really help with to get your pair of Form Goggles and save 15% off use our link formswim.com forward slash effortless or use the coupon effortless at checkout and that will get you 15% off your pair of goggles using our special link formswim.com forward slash effortless or the code effortless at checkout You make a great point because like you think about the triathlon stroke rate it’s probably much needs to be much higher because you’re up in open water and you need to hold a specific rhythm if you’re not able to attach the right kick to that stroke rate, you’re at a rhythm so you got half your body trying to do one thing and half your body trying to do another thing so unless you condition the legs the same way you’re gonna be kind of fighting your own body

and I think that’s really important like you said not only does it help develop that strategic leg strength

but how much does that correlate to their biking and running because when you’re kicking you’re using every muscle in your leg and you’re fighting resistance at the same time so whenever I kick freestyle I know it gasses me way more than if those brush stroke kicks. Yeah, that’s right and if you do it incorrectly as well it is a lot harder. I remember doing some, we were just doing some filming for just I think what it was for for our beginner freestyle course that we did last year and I had to swim 50 meters where I was kicking like someone who’s doing it incorrectly so I was kicking like someone riding a bike bending the knees, doing these really big kicks all from the knee and I was toast at the end of that 50 I was so exhausted kicking that way and I thought it was no, yeah I was so no wonder that people get tired like kicking that way and then when you change it to just a smaller kick slightly straighter legs

it’s much more efficient so there’s things you can do to help make the kick a lot easier to do so I think it’s good to isolate it. I wanna jump into a couple of things to do with the eight week course because two weeks ago we just added the form workouts for the eight week course so those are listening if you’ve been through the course you know what we’re talking about if you haven’t been through it this is our eight week faster freestyle course where best to go through each element of the freestyle stroke and have specific drills to do as part of your warm up each week and there’s a video that goes along with it and then there’s three main sets three different workouts and we’ve just added the ability to download them to your form goggles and follow those sessions just along with on your form goggles there so if you are listening you’ve got the course well that’s now in there and what I wanna sort of cover here is a couple, a few of the different weeks

I wanna talk about some of the technical aspects there and what you can focus on and what you can look for either on your form goggles or if you’re using just a watch like a Garmin you can track that as well just to how to correlate the technique and the data that comes along with it so the first one that I wanted to touch on was week two which is posture, head position and kick and when we think about improving the stroke it’s reduced drag, increased propulsion whether that’s breast stroke whether that’s freestyle you can boil it down to those two things and the first thing we wanna make sure we do is reduce drag especially in breast stroke as you know like that’s such a high drag stroke that anything you can do to reduce that drag is highly important I mean thinking of your technique what was the sort of focus there in terms of reducing drag with breast stroke what were you looking at? Yeah that’s a really good question

because you know you look at freestyle and backstroke even butterfly predominantly they’re very consistent in terms of the acceleration points in stroke it’s very much based on like a flow pattern whereas like breast stroke you really have pauses in the stroke and you have to one get back to that most minimal resistance part of the stroke which is the glide and so your pull and your kick need to be narrow and snappy so that you’re getting back to that position so one of the things I had to do was work on the smooth slow catch and then establish the pull of the stroke with the high elbow catch the catch in butterfly breast stroke and freestyle is the same it’s just how far you’re pulling back really but then it was like a nice strong established pull and then once you’re only pulling like a quarter of the amount of a butterfly stroke or even a freestyle stroke but then it’s like you gotta bring the elbows in struggle shoulders and get your body up and out

and ready to be in that glide position so from here once you’re done I was really focused on like that sheer acceleration of getting my arms in and out into the glide phase so that I could essentially surf on top of the water not because you wanna look at a lot of brush strokes they dive under the water they come back out and then they glide the surface so you have to learn how to lay out on the water that comes with a fast recovery so that when you kick you just to keep extending on top of the water so that was really one of the things I had to focus on was the acceleration of the recovery but also the acceleration of my heels to my essentially the recovery of my kick to accelerate the kick so because if you pull your legs up gradually you can only get your heels so high but if you accelerate them and use that elasticity you can like essentially kick yourself in the butt and then it forces your legs back and that’s where I think brush stroke

kind of differs from the other stroke is that mindful acceleration of those two elements to get back to, I would say, the most efficient part of brush stroke which is that body position with your heads down your head, hips and heels are in line and you’re in that glide phase. Yeah, that’s, and that reminds me of the what I call the base position in freestyle is when you’re on your side your arms extended, your other arms just near your hip because you finished your stroke that to me is the position that we kind of wanna return to or get really good at just holding and being in because that’s when you’re creating the least amount of drag that’s when you’re ready to set up the catch and that’s when you’re ready to rotate back to the other side as well and with that start point or base position and just dialing that in it gets you really good at feeling for that strain line position because the comparison there would be someone

who’s not really good in that base position is their arms typically crossing over maybe their fingertips are rising up but the head might be too high and they’re either over rotated so their legs are spying or they’re under rotated and they’re too flat and just yeah, so if you can get really good at that position and that’s sort of covered in like weak kind of a little bit of weak too because we talk about like head position posture and the kick but then also in week three when we go into balance alignment and hand position it’s just getting good at that position there and quite often when I’m running clinics we spend the first half of the pool session working on that position and just getting them to return to that position and being quite specific about making sure that they are in that position and giving them lots of feedback and changing these little 1% is because if they do that then they can reduce their drag

and they can swim faster and over the course of 2000, 3000 strokes in a race or in training that really starts to add up so what you may look for there is if you, let’s say you do like a 400 meter swim and it’s just like a 60% effort so pretty comfortable and you have that as your baseline before you do the course and that way you can get your stroke rate your distance per stroke and you’ll see all your stroke counts and stuff like that now you might do that at 60% but it’s also not bad to do that at like a 400 meter time trial as well if you just wanna see where your pace is but then as you go through say week two and week three what you might start to look at is all right, when I’m actually getting good at dialing these couple of things in you should see your stroke count come down for that same sort of effort and your distance per stroke same thing going up

Yeah, that totally makes sense and one of the ways I looked at how do I improve those positions is I stopped actually using a kickboard and did all my kick brushstroke in a full streamline position almost underwater I would do three kicks fully arms out extended head down in perfect position three or four kicks underwater come up, quick breath and just keep going down and I do all my kick repetitions that way whether it was 50 meters, 100 meters, 200 meters one it increases your lung capacity like crazy and especially when you’re kicking fast and load but it forces you to develop that position and have it formation like you said that side position of kick like if you did all your kicking or half your kicking on your side in that position it would start to be ingrained of knowing what that feels like because you’re overdoing it but in a sense that is like sometimes what it takes.

You wanna try and correlate the drills that you’re doing or the kick that you’re doing into your normal swim stroke and I was the same when I was doing a lot of breaststroke as a teenager so I much prefer to have my hands in the water same getting what I’d do if I was swimming because I felt that that had a much better relevancy to my actual swim stroke. Yeah and I did a lot of that with just even wearing a snorkel and like using my arms as a kickboard and also you don’t realize how much like stability muscle generation you need to do like holding a tight streamline can be tiring especially at the end of the race so you have to develop that muscle fatigue and stamina and I think that’s really comes down to again like what kind of what are you willing to put in even if like you know it is more comfortable to train on a kickboard or you know throwing your fins or just swim with a pool boy. Yeah, yeah that’s right. I come across a lot of swimmers

more triathletes I’d say is they’ve had a huge reliance on wearing the pool boy in their sessions and they’re weaning themselves off it and sometimes they need to go cold turkey or sometimes they’ll only allow themselves 300 meters at the end of the session and like I mean kind of in two minds about it like I think there’s nothing wrong with using a pool boy when you train however it does become a crutch for a lot of people and if they can, yeah if you can just swim well without it then it does help develop your kick which I think can help a lot of swimmers so I know I see both arguments and it really depends on the individual. Yeah, I mean I was very much the breast choker that wore fins a lot of the time because I didn’t know how to make my arms and legs like I didn’t know how to kick freestyle most of them like I either had a two beat kick or full of sprint for freestyle but doing that have a consistent kick I could just never pick it up

coming from the breast stroke background but when I wore fins it was much more natural because I could feel that like increased resistance of the fins and I used it as a way to condition my legs. Yeah I think that’s a good point as well just in terms of wearing the fins so if a lot of people that do come to clinics sometimes when they put the fins on they maybe haven’t worn them much and it’s a different sort of movement there and if you’ve got really heavy fins I think it can actually make the kicking a bit harder so get yourself a good set of fins and I really like the DMC elite fins or I think arena power fins or arena power fins fairly similar but I love the DMC brand if you get yourself a good pair of fins it is night and day from a crappy pair and that way you’re actually going to strengthen the legs in the downbeat and the upbeat and usually when people are doing some of these kick drills initially there are a lot of swimmers

who are just like doing this half ass kick because they’re not used to using their legs and so they’re hardly moving anywhere and so we try and just get them to have this steady and consistent kick and then it starts to wake up that motor pattern and then they can start to utilise their legs much better when they swim but it does take a while but if you can recognise that if you’re doing just like a front kick drill hands in front face down and if your legs are just doing like one kick per second then you need to wake in the legs up and have a more consistent and steady kick and just start with that and you will eventually become a lot more effective with your kick. Yeah I mean it’s a great point and I think about like you know I’ve been doing a lot more running and biking lately and in my warm-ups of those workouts where they’re running or biking I do specific parts of the warm-up where I wake up my legs where if I’m on my bike

I’m doing like three or four rounds of 30 to 40 seconds of trying to get my RPM close to 100, 115 so it’s like over doing it but it’s waking up that neuromuscular connection and if I’m on a treadmill I’m doing short bursts of like cranking it up to like nine miles per hour speed or nine and a half just like force like body to like wake up and you know like it reminds me of like swimming warm-ups where near the end of the warm-up we would have multiple like 20 meter bursts whether it was kick or you know float like swim or doing it with fins it was like that okay like you know wake up the body your bodies are still tired from the day before the weeks before so like it’s exactly what you’re saying if you’re not used to it like you need to do it more often. We used to do 15 meter over speed if it’s in a lot of our warm-ups where it’s like you’re gonna be slipping through the water your stroke rate is gonna be up above 100

and you’re just gonna be spinning the wheels but we wanna do that because then when you come back to like 70, 80 strokes a minute it’s gonna feel easy it’s gonna feel much easier and in week eight of the eight week faster freestyle course we look at stroke rate and we’ve got this seven by 100s kind of like a ramp test where we just increased the stroke rate by four strokes a minute and so you end up I think it’s on maybe 80 strokes a minute for the last one now a lot of people may not have been above 60 65 strokes per minute so as you get to those higher stroke rates in the high 60s, low 70s you might be spinning the wheels but we wanna start to wake up the body a bit and just get used to changing out our stroke rate and you can use either a tempo trainer or if you’ve got form goggles you can use that live stroke rate data bear here you can use that official yeah cause like it’s just you just don’t know what you’re doing otherwise

and if you follow that seven by 100s where you’re just ramping it up you’ll be able to track whether or not like where’s your sweet spot with stroke rate where do you start to slip where does your perceived effort go way up but your speed doesn’t go any quicker I mean as a former late swimmer like that’s something that you really get quite attuned to is your limit of where you’re starting to slip and when your stroke rate goes too high like that’s something that you just get dialed in like a race car yeah it’s true and it’s through max repetition and also like your coach with their eye your technique and being able to identify like I saw it, it happened here and it’s like thinking back it’s like that’s you know I felt like I was just like spinning my wheels to the water I wasn’t pulling anything it’s like yeah that’s where you since you lost hold of the water and one of the things that I had to learn over and over again

and I think a lot of swimmers do a lot of athletes is that swimming at the end of the day at the end of the race it’s who can slow down the least you’re gonna slow down and the best swimmers in the world essentially stay in the course better than everyone else like Michael Phelps you look at you know that’s their ever been and what they do is they don’t try and up their rating it’s hold the rating and when you it’s like you look at if you tried to pick up your you know speed by increasing your stroke rate you might actually slow down because you’ve broken a rhythm of your body and now you’re just chopping the water and I used to do that in that last 25 or brush stroke and I would actually start to slow down that’s where my coach is like if you just hold what you’re doing finish your stroke and just one at a time it will feel like not going in there but you are probably holding more water and going faster than trying to pick up your rating

because all you’re gonna do is you know especially in breaststroke like you said you’re fighting so much more resistance you’re just pushing water at this point so push less water and you’ll go faster it was I was looking at the splits of the women’s tone of breaststroke world record that just got broken and it was something like I can’t remember the times exactly but you got the first 50 obviously that’s the fastest with the dive but the next 355 within like 0.1 or 0.2 of a second all of those last three fifties almost exactly the same it was amazing yeah and if you look at her second 50 which I thought was I felt like I was like amazed she went 15 strokes on the second 50 and like I’m not sure how many people are listening for a female breaststroker to go 35 in a race all going 15 strokes and then the next thing I think was 16 or 17 is just out of this world high glide super efficient she was so far ahead of the field as well

was that was amazing I just want to come back on a point you mentioned just about perhaps not looking to increase the stroke rate to go faster at the end of the race they’re only like the main exception there would be in like a 1500 where you see the guys bringing it home that last 50 or perhaps the last 100 but something like a 200 freestyle it’s who can slow down the least because you just ride on that edge that rev limiter for a whole 200 so I just want to make that clarification and for a lot of people listening they are more sort of distance swimmers all of you doing triathlon look you probably don’t need to probably don’t want to bring up the stroke rate too much towards the end of the race because you want to just keep that heart rate down but yeah there are obviously exceptions there and I think that’s a big part of it is the nuance to technique and to advice for different people as well and I’m sure that’s something that you’ve seen

as your four years at form where you’ve probably become a lot more accustomed to the type of training and the type of swimming that triathletes do compared to pool swimmers because when I first came from a pool background to coaching triathletes and even open water swimmers for that matter it was quite, it was very different than what I had originally been taught and I really had to get my head around it and start to change the way I was teaching Yeah, it’s 100% and you know it’s even if I was like even myself preparing for a triathlon I struggle because you know I have good freestyle but I’m a six foot five and I have a really long freestyle stroke so I tend to like really ride and glide on my side in my arms but like in the open water that like I find I can’t go the pace I want to unless I swim a bit this requires stroke rate but I don’t train that stroke rate enough so I can’t hold and sustain it so I get stuck in that like comfortable

you know probably easy speed I’m still going probably fast but in relation to what I could do it’s very challenging for me because I need to learn how to train that stroke rate

Yeah, I went through a period when when was it, it was probably sort of mid 20s where I’d come from the pool background and then I just started doing mostly open water swimming and I remember I swam at a competition in the pool and I did the 400 freestyle my time was okay but I remember a friend of mine saying she’s your stroke look rubbish there and I was quite offended because I was coaching I’m swimming a lot and getting good results in the open water but I hadn’t done much pool swimming and I knew it was right as well and I could sort of feel it too but I just I’d really changed my stroke to be good at open water where I was coming over quite high with my left arm and just like quite quick and good at getting my stroke rate up to be like in the mid 80s and if I was normally if I was like in the pool doing like a 400 free I don’t know exactly what it would be but it would probably be like maybe low 70s I would imagine even like maybe

yeah, probably around 70 so it’s just this very different stroke that I developed for the open water and I took offense to that comment but it got me thinking look you’re right and the reason I’m offended is because I know he’s right so when I do swim in the pool or if I’m training for pool competitions I’m gonna have to change the way I train and the way I approach it because I was doing a lot of sessions in the pool where I was getting my rating up really high towards the when I was working that sort of higher threshold because I was doing this set of I did a set of 10 month 50s and I did it with there’s a guy Daniel Kowalski who was an Australian Olympian distance freestyle and he was training at the same pool that I was at so I did this set with him because he was swimming after I’d finished coaching and when he was going faster because we’d build one to three he would just go like rating he’d go from like low 60s to 70 something

and then to like high 80s when he was doing the faster one and I thought, all right, I’m gonna try and match that and I got pretty good results with it but it made my stroke very scrappy and he could do it and just still look really good but yeah, I just got into this habit of just rating up and the technique kind of falling away a bit and now I’ve sort of come back from that focusing a bit more on better technique and not just going for writing after that. Yeah, I have a challenge just even getting over 60 strokes per minute right now how long and big my body is but that’s the tell guy problems but it’s still fine away but yeah, I mean, when you think about like the amazing eight week course you have to get faster, you know one of the biggest benefits of like, you know utilizing a platform like form and relation to the effortless eight week courses you only get that data in real time to see whether, you know or you’re doing these target stroke rates

or these increases in your stroke counter decreases in your stroke ground as it relates to your time and your pace you’re able to track all that data through the app as well and really focus in on like, okay, week one that’s like my base but then you can see all this like every swim you do is recorded and you have that ability review so it’s a way to kind of like hold yourself accountable if you’re being instructed to do different drills or adhere to a new technique change and that’s the benefit, right? Yeah, that’s right you can look back at it and go through the data and the numbers there and quite often we’ve had people do like week three like up to week three, week four like, oh, this feels great my times are improving and then it might be like week five where they’re like, oh, it all fell apart this week and it doesn’t feel great and that’s going to happen I can guarantee it’s going to happen as you go through the eight week course

that it’s not going to be this upward trajectory that everything’s just wonderful and it feels great you will have some times where you’re asked to make a change or do something different where it will be different than what you’ve done in the past and it’s something that doesn’t immediately improve you so expect that to happen but you can look at your data and see, all right, what actually happened there? Was I taking five more strokes per lap? Was this change not the right one I need to make? So that’s certainly a benefit of being able to track that and see what the difference is and even just with the pacing like we do quite a bit of build work in some of these main sets like for example, like nine 100s, build one to three and if you’re looking to and buy build one to three it’s like the first one’s easy second one’s medium, third one’s fast and if you’re going in a 50 meter pool let’s say your first lap is 45 seconds

and then when you do the medium one if it’s still 45 seconds and then the fast one, the first lap still 45 seconds, well, you’re not really building so you need to make sure that on that first lap at least you need to be going out the second faster second lap, another second faster just to have that gauge because you can get really good at gauging your pace and using the goggles to actually see if you are getting faster on the way out then you can start to get a better idea of if you’re doing what’s required there. Yeah, and you talked on two of the most simple things that our goggles do with two of my favorite like I love seeing my splits of the turn just because it is a way to track your pace in a very finite way pace for hundreds of amazing metric but it’s an average whereas your splits of your turn down to the hundredth of a second are a true correlation to what you’re doing and how you’re executing and if you have real time stroke rate

as a metric you’re seeing while you swim it’s like you can kind of understand like to what splits or pace is my optimal stroke rate. So if you’re doing that build set and you start at 60 strokes per minute if you’re still at 60 strokes per minute like you said on the third well you’re probably going the same speed but if you gradually increase your stroke rate in the optimal way you’ll see the splits come down too but you’re like we talked about sweet spot it’s like what’s your sweet spot for your easy speeding what’s your sweet spot for your 80% speed or 70% speed every kind of different effort range requires a different combination of the metrics to optimize your swimming performance. And it’s a lot less than what people expect I think in terms of like stroke rate like for me if I’m going like a build set I’ll normally start off at like 60 strokes per minute and then when I’m going at like sort of threshold it’s like 65 strokes per minute 66

like it doesn’t increase that much when I’m just having this gradual build but I think people expect it to be like start off at 50 and get up to 70 it’s like it’s no you’re just turning the dial up a little bit like increasing that rev that rev you know the revs from like 3000 to three and a half thousand to 4000 like it’s very minor changes now obviously it takes time to get used to it but it yeah it’s a lot less than what you might expect. Yeah, I agree you’re just slightly tight in the book just a little bit more and that’s the key is like you’re not looking for these huge income like massive changes it’s a small incremental change but small incremental change in pool can be very impactful but can also come with a lot of different sensation and how that feels because you’re pushing more water like it’s interesting like add an element of resistance at all points of time when you’re in the pool changes your perception

and if you don’t come from that swimming background it’s like I’ll compare it I’m like I took out skiing as an adult and it’s very technical to me I think it’s a very technical sport and my brain at the end of the day is just exhausted because I’m so focused on the technique I’m learning from like instructor and trying to keep doing that technique when I’m skiing on my own and like swimming I hear the same thing if you don’t come from the swimming background I’m like I feel exhausted mentally and physically at the end of the day because if you are interested in getting better you have to focus so hard on what is that thing I’m supposed to be doing you know Brunton told me like you know roll on my side establish my high elbow catch and pull straight back through the body like it requires a lot of thought process I had someone attend a clinic a few weeks back and he is a mountain bike coach and also a doctor and he’s looked into what happens

when you’re learning a new skill or a new movement and he was saying that you end up incorporating a lot of the unnecessary muscles so the muscles that you wouldn’t use at the end once you get good at this movement but you end up using a lot more muscles so you’re burning a lot more calories that way plus you’ve got the mental load as well burning a lot of calories so that’s why it’s exhausting making these changes for those two reasons so I knew about the mental load because I think they you measure someone’s like how much energy they’re burning someone playing chess it’s like they’re using a lot of calories just thinking things out so you’ve got that side of it but then also just the unnecessary muscles that when you do get efficient at that movement they then switch off and you’re using only what’s required but not at the start and I’m guessing that’s probably what you experienced when you were changing your breaststroke

100% like that tension, those yeah, everything it’s like it was mental and physical exhaustion to the extreme and I think once I hit that like aha moment like I started to be relaxed in the new technique and I think that’s the key is like swimming does have a form of like tension when you’re learning it but once you get to that like flow state and that rhythm that it’s like I hear a lot, you probably hear this too it’s like I have to focus on when to breathe when I swim when it does become that like you don’t even realize you’re doing it that the tension has gone down and like that amount of energy you use to do that has gone down yeah it’s exactly right I do see when people are doing some drills at clinics and there’s a lot of thought going into it they’re trying to make the positions right and one of the things I think of is our YMCA drill where it’s like you hold your arms in those four sort of key positions for freestyle

initially there’s like there’s a lot of tension there they’re just like really holding it hard and then as they after they do it a little bit I just ask them just all right now just relax in those positions and if they can or when they can relax there it’s like okay I can actually hold my arms here and it’s quite easy I don’t need to muscle this position but it’s just the initial reaction to when you’re concentrating on something a lot so that’s the optimum goal is to be able to relax through the movements but it is unlikely to happen straight away no it takes time and effort and patience I would say a lot of patience and dedication I think that’s a good place to end at Scott well thank you very much for being on the podcast is there anything that comes to mind in terms of what you’re sort of looking forward to with form what you’ve got in the works of what’s been released as well because you guys have been a sponsor of the show

for quite a few years now which I really appreciate and I mean one of the things that I may not have mentioned is just like the custom workout builder there’s been a lot of development going on behind the scenes you want to talk a bit about what’s coming up what’s just been released because I don’t think I’ve mentioned a lot of that lately yeah so I would say over the last year and a half our really big focus is going from just a pair of goggles that gives you a heads up display and you can track all your data in real time to being a full blown swim platform so now we have you know some platform that’s powered by our goggles in the heads up display so now we have you know over a thousand guide workouts in the app 30 plus training plans whether you’re looking to some longer increase your endurance some faster increase your technique or training for sprints you know Olympic half iron or full iron we have all those but then we also have

now got the custom workout builder where you can put those coach workouts that you have or if you’re following an eight week plan you can load those using the custom workout builder in the app it’s very fast for the efficient but having that guiding workout especially when you’re not something to squad it holds you accountable because when you have something telling you what to do you’re more likely to do it versus kind of like maybe you’ll just do one last or I don’t feel like trying at 70% when something’s in your face saying something 70% more than likely you’re going to do it and then some of the future iterations and feature releases that we have coming up this year can’t go too much into it because there are going to be some big launches but what I can say is we’re going to be great enhancements to the overall swim form experience and we’re really excited about that sounds great well thanks again Scott appreciate you being on the podcast

and I just I love the fact that I love to hear the story of someone who at your level has been able to actually make a change there technique and take two steps back to go three steps forward I think it’s a it’s really great to hear that from someone at your level because I think there’s people out there who are they might be swimming three times a week and doing triathlon or doing open water swimming and go I just can’t I can’t afford to to make a big change to my stroke but if you can sure they can as well so yeah thanks again for being on the podcast it’s worth the effort of the time but thanks again for having me and have a great rest of your day 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 Using Swim Data To Measure Technique Changes with Olympian Scott Dickens appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

My guest today is Baden Schaff. We will talk about one of the best analysis tools that I’ve come across called Skillest and how athletes and coaches can use video analysis to improve.

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Welcome to the Effortless Swimming podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming podcast. My guest today is Bate and Shaft. Now, Bate and we’ve known each other for a long time. And we first got to know each other through just through swimming and coaching. But about seven years ago, actually, you introduced me to this app that you created called Skillist. And this is what we’ve been using to do analysis and coach people at our clinics, because this is the greatest analysis tool that I’ve come across and use as part of our swimming and coaching. So I wanted to get you on the podcast today to talk a bit about the app itself. And it doesn’t need to, you don’t need to sell the app. It’s just amazing. I’m going to talk about it. But I want to get you on just to talk about how athletes

and coaches can use video analysis and how to use remote coaching to improve. Because I’ve had a lot of experience over the last couple of years with you, Skillist, for about seven years now. It’s only gotten better. So I just wanted to get you on to talk a bit about that. So welcome to the podcast. Awesome, mate. Thanks so much for having me. I’m a long-time listener, so this is what we call. Before I heard about Skillist and found out what you were doing, we were running clinics and we do underwater filming and analysis. And I would employ someone two days a week to name, export, download, re-upload, and then send out the videos. It was a cumbersome process. And it just made me not like, I almost didn’t want to run the clinics because there’s so much backend work afterwards to get everything out. And then you introduced me to Skillist. And what we do now is like, it’s just we film, upload it or add it to the app.

I do the analysis and I’m talking over drawing lines and angles. And then I hit stop after that recording. And then when I get back home, I just hit upload and it’s done. The person can get the video. They can get their analysis and communicate back and forth. So it’s literally saved me two days of full-time employment of someone to do all this backend work, which was really clunky and sometimes we get things wrong there too. Like it just makes things so simple. So it’s just been the biggest, it’s just been such a game changer for what we do for in-person coaching. And I think a lot of swim coaches don’t actually know about it because I mean, you primarily golf out. That’s how it started, but now you’re branching into other sports. But do you want to like tell those listening like how did this come about? What, why did you create it? Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, we created it for a bunch of different reasons, but the primary one was that

because the platform itself is obviously this incredible in-person tool that, you know, the way you use it, you’ve done over six and a half thousand lessons on the platform now. But the cool thing about it is that it’s like the number one online lesson tool in golf, right? So anyone in the world, any coach in the world and any student in the world can like interact with each other completely remotely. So obviously during COVID, it was, you know, fantastic for us, terrible event, obviously, but incredible for golfers. Like to be able to literally stand in their backyard, you know, put up a net, get balls and interact with the best coaches around the world. So it is this beautiful combination of an in-person tool, but this incredible online tool and that inspiration came many years ago. It was like 20 years ago, I, because I’m a PGA member, I’m a teaching pro, you know, 20 years ago, I remember getting my first ever golf lesson,

it was 25 years ago, I got my first golf lesson and I was just inspired by the whole event, like how you could move someone’s body and change their wrist angles and it completely changed their ball flight. And I was just like blown away and I turned to the coach and said, right, how do I do this for the rest of my life? And I meant coaching, I didn’t mean, like how do I learn how to become a pro player? I just loved the idea that you could fix someone’s golf swing so quickly and help their game. And I’ve always been a bit of a technique freak, grew up swimming, absolutely loved swimming. That’s how you and I know each other. You were actually giving me swimming lessons even before you got on to skill us. But what happened during my sort of growth and process? I moved to Queensland. I know I’ve worked with this guy, this coach called Gary Edwin, who’s one of the greatest golf coaches in the world. He’s a player that won like $80 million globally

playing on all tours around the world. And Gary was literally doing online lessons 20 years ago. But his version of online lessons, like even before I got there in 2002, people were sending VHS tapes, right? Of their golf swing doing from like Holland and New York. It was unbelievable. He’d then create a video and send it back through the mail to, you know, for them to what they need to work on with their motion and things like that. But obviously that had evolved by the time I got there, email was getting bigger, video sharing inside emails and nightmare, but people were so desperate for his IP that go to any lengths to like send their golf swing. So even like online banking wasn’t even working properly at that stage, PayPal was, you know, fledgling and YouTube. Like it was just a nine meter share video. But people were going, doing anything to get his information. So I was watching what was happening. I was like, well, this is clearly the future

when someone figures out how to make it actually work properly. And then I went overseas. I taught over in Europe and Southeast Asia. And when I was overseas, and this is just so applicable to all sports and any coach out there and any student, any swimmer out there will be able to appreciate this. When I had the student in front of me, it was amazing. Like you could fix their ball flight. They hit it the best they’d ever hit it. So it was swimming. It’s the fastest they’ve ever moved through the water. I totally can feel that. But as soon as they disappeared, it was like, it would just go, like they’d have it for three days. And then, you know, they come back two or three weeks later and they’re like, yeah, I had it going for a while. I was pretty good, but I’ve lost it. I didn’t know ever feel myself. I didn’t know what I was looking at. And so basically, you know, we sort of then, you know, then in probably about eight years ago,

I was teaching one of my students who was a student obviously coming at the same problem from the opposite end where, which the main problems were, I need to interact with you far more often than this. Like, you know, a brief interaction standing on the mat. Like that’s, as I’ve said to my students now, that’s 2% of it. Like the mat interaction or the driving range interaction or the pool interaction, that’s like 2% of it. It’s like what you’re doing on your own, which is the most important bit. But then I was also acutely aware that every coach out there was right for a student, but that student might necessarily be in their geographical area. So the coach that I learned everything from, this guy Gary Edward, was unbelievably different in the way he taught to everyone else. Like literally, you couldn’t like get two more diametrically opposed models from what he believed to what the, you know, the average person believed.

And it’s the same in swimming. Like you watch, I’m not gonna name any names, but like there’s so many, you know, styles you watched, you know, on Instagram and everywhere. It’s like, well, that guy’s saying that thing and that girl’s saying that thing and that guy’s. So obviously it’s true for some people, but what we had to do was create a marketplace that not only allowed you to coach in person, coach people around the world, but be discoverable by our students, by swimmers, by golfers all around the world, essentially. So, so now when you go in and have a look at your profile, Brenton, that’s got like, this is what Brenton is, this is how much he charges for online lessons, this is where he, you know, coaches it and he’s done 6,000 golf lessons. And these are all of these ratings and reviews of which I was reading one of your reviews the other day, mate, and I don’t know if you saw it, but the gentleman said unequivocally,

the best sports coach at any sport in the world or something like, wow, he’s good. I’ll take back. Yeah, exactly. But there’s no other platform in the world that actually allows a coach to have a consumer-facing profile that makes them discoverable by any student or swimmer, a golfer, whatever it might be around the world. So the exciting thing is now, Brenton, I suppose, is that we’re now for the very first time. I’ve been holding back for seven years and Brenton’s been the only coach, literally the only coach outside of golf for seven years that’s been using the platform, but we’ve proven that it does work in swimming and we’re now launching and swimming quite literally in the next day or so. By the time this gets out, it will be up and running, so you’ll be able to click through. This episode of the podcast is proudly brought to you by our sponsor, Form Smart Swim Goggles. They’re more than a pair of goggles.

Meet the world’s most powerful swim platform. See yourself improve with Form Smart Swim Goggles, including a free one-year membership when you purchase your goggles for only $249 US dollars. They’ve currently changed up their offer where you can now get the goggles and you have one-year membership included for free. And if you’d like to continue with the membership going forwards, it’s only $15 a month where you get access to the workouts, training plans and custom workout builder. But you’ll always have access to the real-time data in the goggles, so you never lose access to that. My favorite thing about the Form Goggles is having the instant feedback of what times you’re doing, what stroke rate you’re doing and also the ability to see what your heart rate is. Because never before have we been able to have these immediate feedback heads-up display where it’s actually telling you what your intervals are. So when I wear the goggles in training,

I like that I know my split for the first 50 and the 100 and the 150. So every single lap I’m getting that feedback on what my pace is. And I find it’s such an important tool for being able to not only have different gears where you can switch between the different speeds that you wanna swim, but it helps you develop those gears and it helps you intuitively know how fast you need to go to before you’re going to blow up or before you’re going to go a little bit too hard. So it helps you just get really good at judging your pace for when you do go to a race. And even if you’re not wearing the goggles in a race, it’s that intuition and that ability to develop your pacing that these goggles can really help with. To get your pair of Form Goggles and save 15% off, use our link formswim.com forward slash effortless or use the coupon effortless at checkout. And that will get you 15% off your pair of goggles using our special link formswim.com forward slash effortless

or the code effortless at checkout. Yeah, it’s really exciting to have that ability for swimmers or triathletes to be able to go through skillist and choose a coach that they feel is right for them. And then they can just send their swimming videos through and get an analysis, get a lesson from that person. There’s going to be some elite swimmers on there. And we’re gonna have one coming up on this podcast as well, who people will see really soon. And then also elite coaches and in swimming. And I think triathlon as well. I think there’ll be a lot that will sort of come on board. And for me, like this is kind of my bread and butter. This is what I do at Stroke Analysis, it’s feedback. So by sort of sharing this I’m opening up the options of people to choose from different coaches. And as you said, I might not be the right person to coach someone, whatever they’re working towards. They might have a better option.

So by sharing all of this, it’s like, well, I might have less swimmers they’re sending their videos to me but I really like this platform and I’ve just found it so beneficial as a coach. And then for the athletes that I work with, it’s just like, it’s magic. What I love seeing is if I’m coaching in person and we upload a video, we’re going through the analysis. People are seeing themselves swim in there. They’re jaws on the floor like, oh my God, I cannot believe that is me. And then we slow it down and ask them, what can you, like, is there anything you can see here that you think you could improve? And sometimes people will get it and they’re like, okay, my hips are dropping. I can see them over rotating. But then sometimes people are like, I’ve got no idea where to start. And either way, it’s like the videos can show and you really just need to slow it down. And even me personally, like I can’t pick things up

straight away. Sometimes I just need to slow it down and dig a little bit deeper. And with being able to just sort of go frame by frame with it to be able to draw the lines and the angles and just use the tool, it makes it much easier to do that. And I also want to just talk about filming tips as well because I get asked this so often, how do I film myself swimming? Well, if you don’t have a friend or coach there to film you, then what I’d suggest is if you’ve got a phone just front and side views, good. And if you’ve got a GoPro or an underwater camera or even a phone, just get like a waterproof pouch as long as your phone’s somewhat water resistant in case it does leak, but just get a waterproof pouch and film yourself from the front and side angles as well. Just make sure you’re far enough away from the camera. So probably a lane across so you can see everything that’s happening. And the other thing as well with that too

if you have a GoPro, you can get like a tripod. They’re called Gorillapods, they’ve got bendable legs and you can wrap that around a lane line, you can wrap it to the stairs or to the handles on the stairs or you can just sit on the bottom of the pool which a lot of the swimmers like coach do. So there’s a lot of, or you can get a GoPro clamp as well and attach that to the lane line as well. So there’s lots of options there but something like a tripod with bendable legs that you can wrap around something or sit on the bottom of the pool and angle it that is, that’s all you need. So it takes a little bit to get set up but once you’ve got it, like it’s very easy and the swimmers that I coach are just like, yep, all right, five minutes so I can film these different angles and I just set, then they just send it to me and it’s just a part of their training. That’s awesome, yeah. And I mean, I use it with you. Like I was lucky enough, I will,

my wife goes to the gym and I’ll be in the pool doing my version of a set. And as she comes down, like at the end of the set I’ll be like, hey, can you just grab your phone I’ll grab my phone and capture this. She gets me coming up and down the lane and then goes around to 90 degrees, I suppose side on it and captures that as well. And I mean, even without the underwater GoPro stuff which is probably, if you could get that, that’s unbelievable but I just get so much out of working just those angles that I source of footage myself. We’re actually up on my Bucks party a few months ago and we went out on a boat out in the middle of Sydney in Carver and we had a race out around, you know out around the yachts and came back and my brother actually captured it and I was like, hey what form was pretty good there considering I’ve had three years sort of things. So it was good to be able to see it and go, oh wow that’s like, that’s really getting towards where

I want it to look sort of thing. So it’s great. Yeah. And I want to sort of just touch on some of the themes that you’ve seen working well with remote coaching because I know a lot of the triathletes that I know and that I coach they have a triathlon coach that is remote they’re sending them programs via training peaks or today’s plan. And so they’ve been coached remotely already and I think it’s people are quite accustomed to that remote coaching now whereas back 10 years ago, not so much necessarily. So what are some themes that you’ve seen working well with a good student coach relationship in golf because you know, hundreds of golf coaches and athletes using the platform and I’m sure there’s been some common threads there that you see helping people make good improvements. Totally. It’s sort of the way the platform is that like you know this now Brenton and you watch the evolution of it like probably when we first set out to build it

what we built was something which was it was taking the in-person experience and putting it online, right? So we sort of just took, all right well the platform is all about video analysis effectively and it was just about video sharing and like it was about hardcore analysis and stuff like that but as times are bold that you’ve seen these tools we’ve built in you know like there’s now a messenger inside, you know skillist which is like I message on steroids it’s got like, you know Zoom integrated it’s got the analysis tool it’s got payments integrated into it’s got voice and text and all that sort of stuff obviously is that what a golf lesson is and hopefully you know what these swimming lessons and the swimming relationships become is they become like what we call it the little and often learning model. So rather than having huge amounts of IP just dumped on you in one go you might actually interact with your coach

four or five or six times a week now that interaction can be anything from leaving a voice message where you say you’ve just swung like you’ve just competed in like an Olympic triathlon and like you basically just jump on, you know jump on the messenger and you’re paying the subscription to your coach as well so it’s like it’s basically 24 hour access with all these cool consoles inside it and you’re just leaving voice messages you might share a video from the race but you might like, you know or you might leave some stat sheets or something like that but like a lesson is not just about here is my golf swing in terms of golf like fix my goals when give me a half an hour breakdown of this swing a golf lesson literally might be a voice message where a student jumps on after a practice session goes okay I think I understand that feel you’re talking about should I be thinking about like this blah blah blah blah leaves the voice

bang the coach gets to what it replies that’s what we’re that is what learning is now about like in golf right it’s these constant and often interactions that aren’t you know impossible to digest like you know sometimes when you’re in a pool like even when I’ve had in-person lessons with you it’s quite intimidating to get borrowers to try and move through water because you’re trying to get through the water but you’re also trying to be perfect you know because you I’ve only got you there for half an hour and I’m trying to get my you know my technique absolutely perfect and I’m sort of like oh God I don’t know what I look like and this is super intimidating but if I could just like do like literally capture one little bit and send it back to you and go is this what you meant like when I’m working it on it on my own that’s everything like that’s a lesson like just like a you and you don’t even need to like do a complete breakdown

of the new stroke you’re just like you’re on the right track keep doing those drills or whatever it might be does that make sense so that’s where it’s now evolved into okay you now pay bridge and basically to have 24 hour access to your brain and so I can just bounce ideas off you you might even see something like if you watch a meet on TV and you see someone with a ridiculous stroke or something and you capture it on your phone send it to Brenton and go this guy’s doing straight arm stuff and why should I be like trying that and you’re like oh don’t do that or whatever it might be so that’s what that’s what it’s become let’s just like this amazing conversational tool video sharing, video analysis is a big part of it but yeah it’s just so much more than that now I think I think to before I started doing remote coaching I was of the well I was thinking I don’t think that could work you know the only way you can improve

is with someone looking at you and giving you in-person guidance except that now it’s just so much easier to get video with the phone it’s just so easy to get that video and then there’s no pressure when that person’s doing they’re swimming, they’re doing the filming to like to perform on the spot so they’ll just record it as you say send it off and I’ll be like okay this looks good but you need to go deep with your hand for this catch and whereas in a lesson sometimes people they tighten up a bit like I’ve got to get this right now or I’ll never get it right so yeah it’s something that I was really surprised by with how effective remote coaching can be and I think it just puts people at ease more they know they’ve got more time to be able to get things right and then they usually swim better because they’re a bit more relaxed and they can have that back and forth more regularly totally, yeah totally I mean I think about a golf lesson environment

is a horrible learning environment like you’ve got like an hour to get it done you’ve got this intimidating golf bro standing over the top of you like just do it this way blah blah blah and you’re standing there like semi frozen the worst environment is trying to execute really you know like it’s absolutely terrible you’re trying to get an absolute perfect and it’s so often like I’ll be say I’m giving someone a golf lesson it’s only when you walk away and you go and get some more balls for them or whatever it is they’re like I’ve got it I’m flushing it and then you get back there and they shake the next one along the ground or something like that and it’s because like you know it’s that pressure that like prevents you from actually executing the right way so what you want is like all right give me my information give me my IP I’m gonna go and work it down on my own I’m gonna upload some stuff to you and I’m also gonna go on a journey of self discovery

which is really important as well like I remember you said that to me as well once where you were like all right here’s two little things you should be thinking about and so maybe they don’t both work together but just keep your eye on the clock and see which one moves you through the water a bit faster right and so you can do that in your own time and then you can go yeah I think this is I’ve got it like I’m moving faster and he is you know some footage of that so yeah it’s just that that you know do it in your own time in a comfortable environment lack of pressure and then constant failure back hmm yeah I like even at clinics so we film at the start and look people will generally swim pretty close to what they would normally swim in the beginning sometimes a little bit quicker because the pressure of the camera is there and they’re going hard and you know we might say swim at Ironman pace and they’re going at like 100 meter pace

however like yeah we can still see probably what they look like now we got them we do the analysis and we get in the water and we go through drills and we start working on things and then before we do the last filming I had them do a couple of 50s just practice what you know what we looked at in the video and generally they’re looking pretty good there they’re at least making some changes and then when we get the camera out not all the time but quite often starts to fall apart of it they’re like oh I know I need to work on my rotation except like I’m also thinking about my kick in my and my catch and then it tends to fall apart because I’m thinking about too much there so if I could have this secret camera this hidden camera set up in those last couple of 50s before we film they would look a lot a lot better so I explain to them look it’s not about how you look here it’s about what you practice when you go away and these are the things I want you to work on

and I want you to work on this one thing to start with for a couple of weeks when you feel like that’s changing move on to the next one and so on yeah that’s good that’s great yeah the hard thing with golf is that which is so is different to swimming in a way is that you’re always reacting to the ball flight so like you know in golf like people like they think they get a good one they think they’ve made a good swing if that makes sense sort of thing so yeah anyway like a sort of a bit besides the point but it’s look these are all these are the challenges of being like having a coach student relationship and helping students understand what it takes to get better and what a process it is but what we’ve done as coaches in the past we’ve been jits to be perfectly honest we’ve been terrible like what we we’re quite transactional at times we’re just like all right when they’re in front of me I’ll give me that give them my full attention

but then they’re on their own when they’re not standing in front of when they’re not standing in front of me we don’t give them the you know the tools required like to understand all right these are the drills this is how often you need to do it I expect to see you here send something through then and like yeah it’s um I think as coaches look I don’t want to speak for swim coaches definitely but I know in the golf space we’ve definitely been a little bit lazy in that sense

and in terms of the like the the tools some of the ones that I really like being able to use with skill is so one is the comparison so you can pull up a got someone’s video you can pull up I’ve got like I’ve got a library of elite swimmers looking at different angles and a range of different styles as well like different freestyle strikes and same for the other strikes as well so sometimes I’ll pull up the comparison there I’ll look at the front view and say all right this is this is what Katie Lidecky is doing through her her catch and her pull see here how you’re going out really wide and then you’re coming way under the body all right we want to we want to look like this and you can just sort of link it up and play it frame by frame through that movement and I think for for most people they’re like wow okay I can see what I need to do here this is really clear where I’m going wrong and being able to just pull that up is a massive one

and the other one that I really like is like the angles tool is just is really simple except it’s just it opens people’s eyes up and we’ve got like a range that we want people to be in with their shoulder rotation with their catch also with their head position so there’s all these sort of different boxes that we want people to fit in to be within the ideal range no matter what sort of style that they’ve they’ve got and when we can just show them ah here at 78% this should be 30 to 40 degrees but to them it’s really clear that you know that they need to make a change there and rather than just telling them change this you can show them very clearly with the angles or compared to an elite swimmer that all right this is what needs to happen and it builds up that belief and I think trust in that like you know what you’re doing you they can see what a what a good swimmer’s doing as well the visual the visual is everything

like the visual from like seeing how other people are doing it but then as you said before the visual of seeing yourself relative to that like when there is just like I remember getting my very first golf lesson like you know 25 years ago I remember walking in going oh can’t be much wrong with my belt swimming this has got to be perfect and then I saw it on camera I was like oh my god that’s a train wreck sort of and you know you can I can explain things to my students until I’m blue in the face because feel is not real right because the way something feels is not how it is they won’t believe you like unless they see it they’re like no it can’t be that it can’t possibly be that and then when you use the visual it’s like oh my god like it is that and so they can push past the way something feels they can push past how bad something feels because then they know they’re getting closer to what could be you know right

that you know in verticom is sort of thing but it’s that’s one of the hardest challenges that we have as coaches is because you only need to change something a millimeter on camera and it feels like three mates you know in terms of their body feel so once you can film it show them you know how far out it sort of is and they can appreciate that because they’ve got the comparison they then also know how differently it has to feel for them to move it right so they then exaggerate things they get better used to exaggeration which is the hardest thing in like for what we do like it is we have to get people to exaggerate so hard to move it a millimeter so the visual is critical for helping students have that you know that that mental dissonance like this can’t possibly be right and they look at it go that’s perfect yeah yeah that I was I’m working with a guy at the moment on his on his swim and one of the things he does is he’s very shallow through

his catch so he’s in a good position to start his catch and then he’s basically just pulling straight through and even moving the hand and the arm almost shallower than where he started so I need but he needs to get his hand and forearm going downwards more just to get a better catch get more surface area and so we’ve got it a little bit deeper one arm’s looking good the other arm is is still too shallow but he’s gotten it down a bit and so the recent feedback that I gave him I said I want you to do 2050s with 20 seconds in between just keep it 60 percent and I want you to count your strokes for each 50 now I want you to experiment with what you’re doing with your right arm because this is the one he’s too shallow with and I said look I want you to feel like you’re going straight down super deep you’re not even like bending the elbow and just count your strokes and then I want you to do one where you feel like you’re keeping

the the hand really wide because he’s kind of coming under underneath himself and the fingers are pointing to the side and so I gave him a couple of other options to be able to just try different things experiment I said let yourself just fail here but the one that gives you the lowest stroke count provided you push off the same provided your efforts the same the one that gives you the lowest stroke count is likely the one that’s going to be the best change so use that feedback there in that 2050s just to figure out what what you need to do there but like you said you’ve got to exaggerate it because yeah it’s just it just feels so different than what you what you what you think totally and you know getting back to the platform and I don’t want to you know carry on too much about it we know it’s great but um so that conversation you’ve had with him can happen over the process you know the sort of the duration of a week or a month

do you know what I mean like if you just see them in person and go okay good luck with that especially if you’re doing clinics like you’re doing which you’re only in Newcastle or Sydney or wherever you are at any one time you know you might only go there three times a year sort of thing like you know how how are they supposed to know if they’re doing the right thing unless they have that ability to keep bouncing off you um and so that conversation you just discussed imagine like he like can literally go and do that drill again the next day upload some footage or even just leave a voice asking you a question or even upload some time it’s awesome data from you know from his watch you know from his garment or whatever it might be and you can bounce off that and keep working with them I just think you know that’s it’s got to be the future of progression surely yeah I think so and I mean even just because with on the student side of

things do they have the ability to slow things down as well like they can essentially maybe not use I know can they use all the tools there as well yeah so students can analyze their own swing sorry swing their own stroke and like you know and they can save it and then they can upload like their own analysis of their own stroke to you and say hey is this enough angle have I got enough rotation is my kick hard enough whatever it might be

it’s really cool because I I just see and like we put a lot I put a lot of videos out on YouTube analyzing strokes and people see that which is really cool and I think the the swimming IQ of the people that come to clinics has risen over the last sort of five to ten years that I’ve been doing that because people have watched the videos and they know what they should be working towards so I certainly see a lot more awareness around what a good stroke is and the things that they’re they’re aiming for and so with the ability to actually analyze themselves with the tool I think that’s that’s great because I often get asked what tool do you use for analysis because coaches I used to be used to be the one that coaches would use and I mean that’s not that’s not supported anymore and like it’s I think it’s just it’s already shut down but I think it’s shutting down end of the year or something and but even even then like it’s just it just doesn’t compare to

what what I’m able to do with skill us now. Awesome. Yeah I mean the cool thing about what we’ve obviously built is that it’s a complete end-to-end solution so once students go home they become part of your digital academy they can watch public videos that you’ve made they can pay to continue to interact with you so we’ve got payments and all that into into integrated so at the click of a couple of buttons they can get 24-hour access to you you then obviously a viewable like any swimmer around the world to be able to discard you know your profile sort of things so it’s it’s sort of not just an analysis tool is it it’s sort of like it’s a marketplace an end-to-end solution and then obviously for students it’s a place where they can store all their analysis and and be able to ideally you know I’ll stick with you obviously Branson but discover coaches and you know and be able to interact with them whenever they want. Yeah and look it might sound like we’re

like trying to sell skill us through debt the reason I wanted to get you on is because obviously I’ve used it for seven years it is it has made the biggest difference with in-person clinics that we’ve run it’s basically just the loudest to to run them because if I was still having to do what we were doing to get the videos out I don’t think I’d want to it was just such a pain the ass for all the back end work and now it’s just made it so so easy. Similarly on that just really really quickly we used to have golf coaches that literally in their Instagram page would say no online lessons in capital letters from it because there’s a nightmare like how did people used to like email stuff and expect it for free and then you’d have to you know do an analysis on it so all of you now every single you know golf pros around the world like we’ve got 900 coaches or something that you know sort of weekly active or something coaching on the app and and teaching online

on the app I should say now they just put their little deep link inside their Instagram account that in within two clicks any student around the world can be literally in their profile and chatting to them and potentially paying them for online lessons. Yeah it is just such a great tool so if you’re if you’re an athlete listening to this get on to your coach whether you’re a triathlon coach or you swim coach and like even if you’re in a squad and I’d be thinking if you’re like even a junior swimmer like just if your coach sets up a skillist profile they can record you swimming at training you know and then just upload it to the app and you can just watch that back and they might they’ll be able to do an analysis in person as well it doesn’t need to take take long or if you’re like a triathlete you’re working remotely with with your coach you could they can set up a profile and skillist and you could just send them your video of you swimming

and get some feedback it’s a really easy way to get that feedback and it makes it easy for the coach as well because I think that’s a big one too like squad coaches I know are very time poor they’ve got a lot going on and for them just to be able to give like a few tips here and there once a week once a fortnight to the soon as it can make a huge difference and this is a way where it can it doesn’t have to be time consuming or it doesn’t have to be extra admin for them it’s something that can be done in the session and done really you know really easily so if you’re an athlete like I think that would be like just say hey check this skillist thing out I think you’d be be worthwhile just like can you give me a hand here or if you’re a coach then obviously I think the the benefits are pretty obvious there of how you can use it with you with your athletes 100% and obviously I’d love to help any any coach or student out there to get on board

it as well and understand what it’s all about but quite literally I’m just so excited about this because like having spoken to you know like I was in America recently and you’re having this gentleman on next week onto your podcast so we won’t sort of we won’t do any spoilers but one of the you know greatest swimmers of our generation really and you know he was just saying that like for him well as successful as he is he just can’t even make that much money I think he does all right obviously but you know there’s 100 Olympic swimmers in his states that you know don’t quite make the money they shouldn’t if we can give them an opportunity as well the coach on the platform and train kids and adults from around the world like it’s we really just hope we can change the way the sport is learned and taught and help coaches ideally make a little bit more money and students get faster in the water more efficiently as well like that’s the thing like getting

lessons from you in person it’s not the cheapest thing in the world and to get the best you know the most out of that money they’re spending you need that constant interaction that follow up

well I mean I aside from the clinics I don’t even do face-to-face lessons anymore because I just can’t I just I don’t have the the capacity for I don’t have the time to to do it whereas with with skillers you know I can do things I can do online lessons and just makes it so much easier for me with you know everything I’ve got going on so yeah it’s it’s a great tool and I just want to share this with those that are listening because whether you are an athlete or a coach there is a benefit there you can you can use it to get faster and if you haven’t done any film before just whip out your phone and get someone to to film you and I know there’s submit yeah sometimes pools won’t allow it but if you’re in that situation where you can it’s it’s the best thing you can do for your swim because it’s going to be eye-opening for better or worse it’s going to be eye-opening and it will certainly give you an idea of what you can do to get faster absolutely yeah so

yeah really excited to launch and I suppose we’ll put the link maybe in the show notes or something brand to for anyone that wants to come and join skillist and as I said like more than happy my email is also bayden at skillist.com so B-A-D-E bit of a strange one but I’m going to live with it and yeah at skillist.com and if you email me I can help anyone on their journey as well fantastic thanks for being on the podcast thanks bye thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast if you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlessswimming.com

The post The Secret Tool I Use To Analyse Technique (That Almost No Coaches Know About) with Baden Schaff appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

In today’s episode, I got professional triathlete Joshua Lewis to talk about swimming, training sessions, and most importantly, opening yourself up to opportunities and experiences.

34″42 Consistency is king

Coaching with Joshua, visit his website.

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Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. My guest today is professional triathlete, Joshua Lewis. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me. I got a text message a couple of weeks ago, a couple of text messages actually in a few emails saying, oh, this guy, Josh mentioned you in his YouTube video talking about an aspect of freestyle, like the catch and kick timing. So I had a look at the video and I thought, oh, that’s really cool that you’ve mentioned that. And you coming from a swimming background, learning and still picking things up. I love to see that from athletes of your level. So that’s how I came across you. And then we obviously got in touch and I wanted to get you on the podcast to talk a bit about what you’re up to, what you’re doing.

But also just to chat swimming in general, because you come from a swimming background, you’ve made it to a pretty high level in swimming. You’ve also competed at the Com Games in triathlon as well. So high level athlete in many sports. So I thought it’d be great to get you on to chat. So for those that are listening, what’s a little bit of background on your swimming career and then that transition to triathlon? Yeah. Well, firstly, again, thanks for having me. I can’t believe that people were messaging you in terms of trying, well, mentioning my YouTube video. It’s always a shock. I constantly get surprised when people have actually watched the videos. It still shocks me. So yeah, to have someone that I’ve watched multiple times on YouTube actually contact me is a privilege. So yeah, thanks. In terms of my swimming career, I’ve basically been swimming since I was two. I think it was, but competitively.

Yeah, it’s been a massive part of my life and I can’t really explain or go into detail about how much it’s influenced my whole career in terms of both education and sport. So yeah, I guess like in terms of highly competitive stuff, I’ve been to quite a few island games, which for those who don’t know, it’s a smaller version of the Commonwealth Games for islands rather than countries or bigger countries. And it’s one of those championship events where the whole team gets behind you. You’ve got your whole island. I’m from Guernsey. So I go and represent Guernsey, which is obviously a massive privilege in itself just to be able to represent where you’re from. And that’s every two years. So not quite on the four year cycle like the Olympics or Commonwealths, but it’s an unreal experience nonetheless. And it gives you that motivation to carry on doing what you’re doing carry on being a competitive swimmer because I think for a lot of people.

It’s easy to not push on through the elder years. If you don’t have those sorts of targets, if you’re not quite at the national level that you can kind of target and then go and compete. So it is really good from the islands from Guernsey to keep you interested. So I was massively kind of grateful for that. And that actually carried me through things like the youth Commonwealths, but also through to university when I went there because it kept me wanting to carry on swimming because I had that island games target. And I think the one where I was in first or second year of uni was Bermuda. So it was a massive kind of motivation for me to carry on because I really wanted to go out there and compete. So yeah, that was such an important part of education and sport because it kept my structure through my days and allowed me to study at the same time and be effective in both. So I think about it can’t be underestimated how much structure and kind of dedication and motivation it gives you to do both things and be efficient with your time.

So yeah, no, I really think that those early years of swimming have massively helped in all aspects of my life to be quite honest. And you finished swimming competitively at 24. And that’s six years after finishing school. Majority of people, myself included, stopped training the same amount that I was usually when I was sort of full time when I went to university. So when I was when I was 19 and I was still swimming twice a week, I think, but not of any great intensity or or volume. But if you can keep it going that sort of 18 to 24 mark like you for a lot of males like your peak is actually like late late 20s. Sometimes early early 30s as well. And so many swimmers do just stop because it is a massive commitment in terms of time and effort and sometimes priorities change as well. But if you can just even keep something going some sort of regular regular session or swim, it makes a huge huge difference going forward.

And as you said about the structure over COVID when there was like we couldn’t go to the pool when I lost that structure of actually of swimming having my regular squad sessions. That was really hard. I need something in place to just give me that give me that habitual sort of cycle to to get into. And it’s very hard. It was hard to not have that. So the fact that that kept you going through university and kept you on track. So you I’m sure studied well and got the results that you’re after. I think it’s a it’s a very important thing is that that structure. Yeah, 100%. I couldn’t agree more. And it’s just the kind of dedication as well to to whatever you’re doing. I think sport has a massive factor in that. So I was able to transfer that between education and sport and like the whole ability to be able to break down a goal was then also into into smaller chunks. For example, was something that you obviously do throughout your life within the sport because obviously you’ve got your end goal of a time or an achievement or accomplishment.

And then you’ve got to be able to break that down. And I was able to luckily that straight into my studies in architecture. So I was like, OK, what does it take to get this result? And I was quite good at breaking that down with the marking criteria and then being really efficient with the time spent doing that in order to get the results that I kind of wanted. And that’s what sports really good for is it’s such a clearly defined goal that you can have, whether it be time based, whether it be making a team. It’s very clear what you’re working towards. And also what you need to do to to get there. Like it’s not it’s not rocket science what needs to happen. It’s like I needed this many sessions a week. I need to hit these times over the next six months and maybe this sort of volume need to work on my technique in this way. So it’s very clearly defined. And I think sometimes outside of sport, it can be a bit more wishy washy and less defined.

So it’s easy to drift off track. If you don’t sit down and think about what it is you want your life to look like or you want your your lifestyle to be like, whether it be work or family and those sorts of things. And the times where I’ve spent like no phone, just sit down, piece of paper. I’ve got questions written out. What what do I want my family life to look like? What I want to be doing in three years, those sorts of things. If you actually take the time to sit down and write it, things become much clearer. And it is hard with the distraction of a phone. If it’s there all the time, it’s just it’s just hard to have those moments in that time where you’re thinking very deeply about things. This episode of the podcast is proudly brought to you by our sponsor, Form Smart Swim Goggles. They’re more than a pair of goggles. Meet the world’s most powerful swim platform. See yourself improve with Form Smart Swim Goggles, including a free one year membership when you purchase your goggles for only 249 US dollars.

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And I find it’s such an important tool for being able to not only have different gears where you can switch between the different speeds that you want to swim, but it helps you develop those gears and it helps you intuitively know how fast you need to go before you’re going to blow up or before you’re going to go a little bit too hard. So it helps you just get really good at judging your pace for when you do go to a race. And even if you’re not wearing the goggles in a race, it’s that intuition and that ability to develop your pacing that these goggles can really help with. To get your pair of Form Goggles and save 15% off, use our link formswim.com forward slash effortless or use the coupon effortless at checkout. And that will get you 15% off your pair of goggles using our special link formswim.com forward slash effortless or the code effortless at checkout. Yeah, I completely agree. And I actually think of what you’re talking about as dials.

So if I say I’ve got four different dials, for example, I might have more, but let’s call it four. And I’ve got my relationship, I’ve got my sport, I’ve got my business and I don’t know, social. You can’t have all those dials turned up to 10. You’ve got X amount that you can like dial them up to say they’re all at seven and that’s your kind of working capacity on all of those. If you need to push on and one of them, one of the other ones have to go down. So, yes, it’s getting the balance right. If you don’t want to balance, that’s absolutely fine. And sometimes you can’t have a balance, but it’s, it’s, you’ve just got to be able to prioritize correctly and having those priorities by doing what you’re saying and like jotting it down and knowing what you want and what your goals are and how to achieve them is really important to be able to prioritize what you want. And I think that’s something that I’ve had to learn over time to be able to do more effectively.

When you switch to pro triathlon to essentially full-time triathlon outside of your job, did you look at that beforehand and go, am I willing to commit the time and the energy into doing what it takes to become a pro triathlete? Because it is a big time commitment. It is not an easy sport to train for because there’s obviously a lot of moving parts. There’s three different sports. And what’s required is a lot of, a lot of hard work and, and physically pushing yourself very, very often, very regularly in those three different disciplines. So did you sort of look at that and go, yep, I’m willing to commit and do what I need to reach the goals that I’m looking to do? Because, you know, you basically look at what are those that are in the top of sport? What are they doing? And am I willing to make that commitment? That’s a funny one. Like, I don’t think I ever sat down and thought about it like that. I almost fell into it in a way.

So I don’t think I ever sat down and was like, I want to be a professional triathlete. That never really happened. Basically, for my fourth year of study, I had to go to London to work. So I was kind of unable to train swimming as much as possible. So what I ended up doing was pivoting into triathlon because I was able to cycle and run a little bit easier in and around London rather than not having a swim club or a decent pool around me. So the pivot to triathlon happened in that year. And then from that, I basically was relatively good in terms of the Guernsey triathlon scene at the end of that year of training. And they kind of put on my agenda or made me clock the fact that I might be able to qualify for the Commonwealth Games for triathlon. And that was like a big deal for me. So I then kind of went back to university in my fifth year and was trying to juggle study and training at the same time.

And to be honest, I knew that professional triathletes trained between that 25 and 30 hours a week. But I wasn’t physically able to do that with having to study like 60 hours of architecture a week, which is probably a lot less than the majority of my year group were doing. So it was a case of how do I kind of get the best result in architecture? Because I think I was I was like teetering on potentially getting a first, which is I think it’s changed now, but I was like, I think I know what it takes to get a first. But then at the same time, I really want to qualify for the Commonwealth Games. And again, it was that priority thing of this is what it takes for getting qualifying. This is what it takes for a first. How do I balance those? What do I want more Commonwealths for sure? Because that’s potentially a once in a lifetime opportunity. A first, will it actually make a difference in my life? Probably not.

So it was a case of transition or making that decision to concentrate a little bit more on triathlon than study, and then it did manage to qualify. And then when I qualified, I then went full into triathlon to focus on the Commonwealth Games. So it was like a weird transition. And then when I spent that year, basically, I had part time work, like just trying to fund myself to be able to do the triathlon. When I did that, it was almost like a seamless transition into, OK, now you’re kind of a professional triathlete because you’re almost full time. And then you then you just fall into the system of training with an international squad, because I was fortunate enough to have one almost built around me, not because of me, but it kind of happened in the same area that I was training. So like it formed in the same place that I was training. So I was training with the international triathletes. And then all of a sudden you’re on this conveyor belt, similar to, I guess, what happens in education quite often.

You just get conveyed through the system until you get to the end of university, say, and then you’re like, what am I doing with my life? But because I had the seamless transition of doing university and then conveying straight onto the triathlon scene, it wasn’t an active decision to become a professional triathlete. It was just the next step, I guess, in what I wanted to do at that time. Yeah, it’s interesting. It makes me think back to when I first started coaching. So I was at university first year, and I was living on campus at Melbourne University, and they had a swim squad that was training twice a week. And the coach there was was finishing up and someone I think said, oh, look, they got a coaching role there. You know how to swim like you’d be you might be good at that. So I took on this coaching role and my dad was is a swim coach. My granddad was a swim coach as well. But I never thought I’m going to be a swim coach.

It hadn’t entered my mind, but I did like teaching people. I did like working with people. And I think my brain was very much oriented in that kind of direction in the teaching coaching. Anyway, that’s what I really enjoyed. Just based on school. I wouldn’t shoot at people, but I helped them with different subjects and stuff like that. And I really enjoyed it. And then so I got this coaching role twice a week, enjoyed it. One of the swimmers there said, oh, we’ve got a master’s club. Our coach there is leaving. We’d love you to come and see if you want to do it and ended up coaching seven sessions a week there for about eight years. And at that time I started effortless swimming while I was at university and then just sort of started that was coaching for about 12, 13 hours there at this master’s club. And yeah, like same thing. I just sort of fell into it, but realized that I loved it and then just see what you really enjoy doing.

And you just sort of follow that, follow that path. So yeah, for me as well, it wasn’t just an active decision where I’m like, all right, what do I want to do with my life? You’re just, especially at that age, you just got to figure out what it is that you good at what you like and how you like to think. And what you’re doing at the moment is teaching architecture at university. And so you obviously sort of thinking that way as well. And you’re coaching triathletes as well. So probably very similar sort of mindset to mine, I imagine. Yeah, I’d say definitely very similar. And the way that you describe, well, I say falling into it. And I realized that I explained my transition into professional travel and it’s falling into it as well. But it’s far more, we should give ourselves more credit, I think, because we’ve both put ourselves out there to do things which we thought we might be good at or had an interest in and actually pursued it.

So I think that I always forget that I’ve put myself in the position to do these things. And whilst it is falling into place and things like that, it’s actually far more, you’ve given yourself the opportunities, you’ve put yourself out there, you’ve explored what you might be interested in. And I mean, I’d never have it any other way. I’ve definitely never been shy to put myself in positions like try and help other people. I was always like putting myself out there to like be a year rep or tutor people before I started actually tutoring after university. It was, there was an option to, I think, tutor younger years and I would always like put my name forward just because I enjoyed it. And then, yeah, it was, again, almost a seamless transition. I went for an interview at university, not for tutoring necessarily, but I think it was for a graphic design role. And then they were just like, oh, no, actually, we’d prefer you to tutor if that’s okay, your skills are more apt for that.

So I was like, amazing, literally amazing. That was what I’d prefer to do anyway. So it was like, again, falling into place, but you put yourself out there for the interview or whatever it was. And that’s where I really, really put my passion for teaching, which I very much find similar to coaching. I think we were saying before, like, teaching and coaching is a very similar sort of thing. You’re just delivering information to people in a way that they’re able to understand it and then also execute it. So, yeah, like for the coaching side of things and teaching, I absolutely love the puzzle of delivering information to different people in different ways so that they can actually achieve their goals. So, yeah, no, it definitely sounds a similar sort of kind of trajectory as to what you found with your teaching and coaching. And I also have to remind myself that people who are starting out swimming and it’s the same thing with triathlon is that can be a very big step for them.

If they don’t have a background in any of the sports or even if they’ve got a background in running, but they’re new to swimming or to cycling, it can be quite nerve wracking for them. It can be, people can be quite reserved and very conscious about how they look or in the water, what they’re doing, those sorts of things. So, getting into a sport like swimming or triathlon can be a big life decision for people. So, just have to remind myself that not everyone’s comfortable or confident walking into the pool and you don’t know how it works in the beginning. You don’t know that you’ve got to go around in a circle and get in the right lane and there’s all these little rules that we have to learn. And so even just some of those basic things can be life changing for people when they learn them. And in terms of putting yourself out there, I think it’s like those things that do, that you hesitate to do that are a little bit scary are the ones where you look back and go,

I’m so glad I did that. And some of those ones for me were when I started this podcast, which was about, I think it was about 10 years ago now. Like this was before podcasting was cool. I started the podcast because my coach said, look, you should do like start this podcast. And I was like, so I thought about it for six months and then I’m just like, I’ll just, whatever, I’ll do it. And I had a guest, Michael Clemont, who’s an Australian Olympian, and he was my first guest and I was so nervous talking to him. I was just asked, I was there like an interview, I just asked him questions and there was no back and forth because I’m just like, who wants to listen to me first of all? And then I can’t believe this Australian champions decide to come on my podcast. But I’m so glad I did because had I not taken that step, we wouldn’t be talking. Most people probably wouldn’t know about effortless swimming. And I wouldn’t have developed and grown as a person and as a communicator.

And I’ve learned so much from this podcast with guests I’ve had on and just improved my communication skills because of this. And we’re nearly 300 episodes in. And I’m just so glad I took that step. So it is those decisions that can be a little bit scary initially that you often look back at and go, God, I’m glad I did that. Definitely. And yeah, it doesn’t matter what it is. And I did the same thing. I think the biggest step for me was YouTube. And that is putting myself out there massively because it’s weird for one, staring into a camera. And two, it’s weird talking into a camera, but especially in front of people. I think that’s like a really, I found it a very embarrassing thing to do. So, but then I kind of had the two to three year plan of trying to like put myself out there trying to educate people, entertain people, whatever it is, inspire people to do those different things, enter triathlon, for example,

or help them out with certain specific things. But it was still terrifying. Like, I kind of, I guess, sandbagged it in front of my friends and which was like, yeah, so embarrassing, whatever. But I was just like, I know I have this end goal of trying to help other people. So it’s something I really want to do. But I still kind of wanted to diffuse it in the eyes of others, I think for a long time, until I started getting the affirmation, I guess, from other people when I met them or the comments on YouTube, being like, it is really helpful. We love what you do. Like, and again, like I said earlier on, like, it shocks me whenever people watch them or watch the videos and then comment or talk to me about them, because I’m like, it’s baffling that people actually are interested in what we have to say or what I have to say. Like, it does shock me every time, but it’s really nice. I do love it. It means everything to me.

Yeah, I think taking that first step is the biggest one, especially when you’ve got no followers, you’ve got no audience. It’s like a little bit nerve wracking. However, the good thing about that is no one’s watching you when you’ve got no audience. So it doesn’t matter what you say. It doesn’t matter how you do it. No one’s going to be watching you anyway. And so you can just get better over time. And it’s the same thing when people are new to swimming. Like, they’ll go to the pool and be nervous about it. People, what are people going to think? But no one’s watching you. No one cares how you swim. So it’s really just, it’s just you in the pool. And if you can just keep chipping away and keep doing those things that you need to do to get better, you will get better. So people are really only thinking about themselves. And that’s advice that I’ve taken on board the last couple of years that whenever I’m,

if you’re ever self-conscious about what you’re doing or anything like that, people do not care about you. They are just too busy thinking about themselves for better or worse. So that’s why I think filming yourself in public, talking to a camera in public, that’s only going to help in the long run. Now I want to just shift gears a little bit and talk a bit about swimming. So you’re obviously accomplished from yourself, still looking to improve like I think all the good swimmers are, all the good triathletes are. What are some of the fundamentals that you think about personally, not for your athletes, but for you personally, what do you always sort of keep in the back of your mind as you’re swimming? Firstly, I think technique-wise, it’s a bit of an obsession. I think that it’s so important with swimming, despite obviously having swam all my life and loads of things already being automated or intrinsic and just having a good feel of the water,

I still think that no matter what you need to be concentrating on what you’re doing and really focusing on technique because as soon as you start slipping up there and not concentrating on it, it really makes a massive difference as to what you’re doing. I think what I’m concentrating on primarily at the moment is still that timing, to be honest, and at different speeds. So making sure that the catch-kick combo or whatever you want to call it is really happening throughout the different speeds. So like the faster I get, I’m making sure that that’s still happening and doing it with different leg speeds, so not just a 2B but a 4B as well. I don’t think you need to go any faster than that for long-distance triathlon. For me, it’s all about conserving energy. So yeah, I guess that’s going on to the main point with triathlon specifically is it’s all about going as fast as possible for the least energy possible

because swimming is just one of the three disciplines and yes, you need to be at the front of the race as a professional, otherwise the race goes away from you. But you’ve got to do that for the least cost possible. So my current focus in swimming is just efficiency in the water for the best speed. And have you found yourself going too hard in the swimming in races in the past? Because when I had my brief stint in triathlon for a season, I really only cared about winning the swim. That was my main goal. So I learned a lot of matches in the swim to the detriment of my bike ride. But if I was racing pro, I think I’d be a little bit smarter about that. But have you found yourself going too hard in the swim at times? Oh, I’ve been burned so many times. So it’s a tough puzzle because as a swimmer specifically, you produce a lot of lactic acid because you are constantly working the VOT max system. And yes, you’re training at the different levels as well.

But I think because to go fast, you have to be able to produce lactic. That system is constantly being kind of used, improved, and to be a good triathlete, you have to kind of do almost the opposite in terms of training to produce less lactic for the same effort speed so that you can get out of the water and cycle a bike. But the biggest burn that I’ve ever had was swimming quite well in the lead-up to the 2018 Commonwealth Games. And I was getting hyped up by a fair few people, including the Brownies, to be honest. I’d done a bit of training with them in Australia and Nusa before the actual Gold Coast Games. And they were like, ah, you can lead us out or whatever. And they probably just completely had me on. But I started the race and I went full guns blazing. And I was like in the kind of line of just the head, I think. And then obviously just started tying up completely. I think going around the first boy at the far turn point,

I was just completely full of lactic acid. I was going backwards very quickly. I think by the second turn boy, I was five from the back. It was terrible considering that I could probably swim like a 55, 56, 100 meters, which is way faster than the majority of the other triathletes could do. But then they could swim 106s constantly. And I could by the end of the race was probably swimming like 120s, 130s and coming out like a bag of spaghetti. Was that the excitement of the race? Or was it because you’re like, ah, okay. Like the Brownies are saying, I’m, you know, I should be at the front here. Was it mostly that? Or was there part of that sort of excitement of the qualifying race? Both. It was a case of you’re in the Commonwealth Games, you’re excited, you’re amped up. But also I think I had a complete misconception of where I was actually at in terms of my thresholds or in terms of my actual swim ability. So yes, I was able to swim fast,

but I wasn’t able to swim 750 meters without putting in, well, without conserving energy for the rest of the race. And then with that experience, we are able to take that learning into other races where have you found now that you can just find that threshold and you’re just happy to sit at it and you’re not spurred on by trying to maybe make a breakaway or be the first out of the water? Yeah. It’s been a long painful learning curve. I’m going to call it throughout my draft legal career because I think draft legal and non drafting are completely different for me in particular. So draft legal, you can’t let the race go because if you miss the front bike pack, then you’re out of the race almost. So you need to be near the front. You need to be trying to make that pack. And I think that excitement or that kind of pressure to make it caused me harm because I was constantly thinking that I should be at the front of the race

and just not having the ability to. So I definitely had to learn how to race like you’re saying and just keep a lid on things, especially to that first boy so that I didn’t completely gas myself. And then I have learned that was the backend of my draft legal career. And so for people who don’t know draft legal is when you can like cycle in a little peloton, whereas non drafting, you have to keep your 12 meter gap or 20 meter gap and challenge events. But when I’ve gone into non drafting racing, it’s a lot easier for someone like me who’s notoriously a pool swimmer because there’s a thinner field of top quality swimmers. So you get a little bit more space around you. You don’t get clattered and I’m able to swim a little bit more like in a lane. So I’m able to swim a little bit more efficiently as well without being hampered because as soon as I get hampered by people, then I’m like panicking, building up lactic

and yeah, struggling for the rest of the swim essentially. And in terms of swim sets and sessions, people do like to hear what kind of sets people at the top level are doing. Are there any regular sets that you’d be doing and what sort of circles are you on? What sort of places are you holding? Yeah, we do some disgusting sessions to be honest. We do some quite meaty sessions. I think one of my favorite ones is we do all our main sessions long course. So one of them is 14 times 300 meters and we do it off of a, I think long course it’s a 85 base. No, 82.5 base. So we come in off of like a 330 ish and then we go on a 340 or a 355. So it’s a fart lack. So on one of the reps we come in on a 330, go on 340 and then on the next one we’ll come in on a 340 and go on a 350. Does that make sense? Yeah. So yeah, it’s a fart like over under and we do that for 14, 300s. So seven rounds of the over under and that’s a pretty meaty session.

That’s a solid one. That’s a challenge. And is that something you had to build up to if you sort of gotten better at the time with that? Yeah, definitely. I think it’s easy to look at some of our sessions now and say, oh, that’s fine. You know, three times 1500 descend is like normal. But when we look back over the past couple of years it’s definitely not something that we used to do. We’ve built up to it slowly over time and that’s testament to our coach Luke. Like he’s managed to trick our brains into how to do it over a long period of time. So yeah, maybe three times 1500 was never split up into that. Maybe it was split up into 250 meters 500 meters and then it’s three times 500 meters. Three rounds of that, et cetera. So yeah, notice it’s breaking up over time and then building up to it over time and not expecting to do fast times straight away and having realistic kind of expectations of that. And it’s been really good.

And like where we are now, I think is a shock to when freshers come and join us at university and join the performance squad because they’re like, what are these sessions? And then yeah, we just need to kind of like, you’re like, no, just start out like this and then you’ll be where we are by the end of your year. So yeah, it’s good. Yeah. And you might be listening to this going 14, 300. Like my, that’s like my whole week of swimming that much distance. But it’s, and we spoke about this on the, I spoke about this on the podcast last week is like, it’s just start, start small, make it doable. Don’t try and swim at places that you can’t sustain out of way. Like it’s all just gradually built up over, over time and over, over many, many years. So if you, if you can just have that patience to be willing to be at whatever time you’re at and you keep working on your technique and you keep getting to the pool on a regular basis.

Like the times will come down. You will get fitter and faster, but a lot of times people see what their friends are doing or other athletes are doing on Strava or on a podcast like this and go, Oh man, I’m not, I’m not doing enough or I’m, you know, I need to, to change what I’m doing. Yeah, maybe that’s the case. Maybe you need to, to do more, but you have a huge background in swimming. You’ve competed at a high level in triathlon for many, many years. And this is at the upper echelons of triathlon. So you don’t need to, to get there straight away. Just take your time and thinking of an athlete who’s been on the podcast, who lives near Josh Salley. He only started about 18 months ago now, started swimming and he’s already doing some pretty decent volume in his sets. And, but he’s taken, he’s been very regular with it, getting to the pool a couple of times a week and he’s consistently focused on his stroke and over that 18 months, he’s just built it up over time.

So you can fast track things, but you can’t fast track it without doing the work. It’s like, you just need that consistency over time. And it sounds like, I mean, you’ve had that consistency for many, many years. So you just, there’s no getting around doing the work. No, I couldn’t agree more. Consistency is king. That’s something that I try and teach in architecture when I’m tutoring or whether it be my coaching philosophies. Like the overarching goal is to be consistent. And that’s something that I’ve, I’ve had throughout my life, but specifically in triathlon is, is just keep turning up, keep doing what’s necessary, be patient. Like you say, that is the key. Focus on yourself, not on others. That is something that every athlete falls foul to I feel from time to time. And it’s one of the key things that I think that enables you to be consistent is to have the intensity control, the kind of whereabouts to be like,

this is what I need to do for myself rather than this is what someone else is doing. I need to copy that. So like, I don’t think that anyone should be looking, I very rarely look on Strava myself because I’m very confident in what I’m doing, the program that I’m doing, and don’t feel the need to kind of seek out what other people are doing to compare myself to others. I am a strong believer of what I’m doing is good enough. And therefore it doesn’t really matter what other people are doing because I’m optimizing every, everything possible for myself. So if other people have the same belief, yes, Strava is fantastic for social for all of that sort of jazz, but don’t be trying to compare yourself to others and what they’re doing to improve what you’re doing. If you’ve got a good coach, if you’ve got a good training plan, then you need to put full trust into that rather than trying to look for other ways of doing things or what other people are doing.

I don’t use Strava a lot at the moment because I haven’t been running heaps, but whenever I’m, if I’m ever on it, I’m just like, I don’t, I don’t want to see anyone else’s fade. I don’t care what they’re doing because I know it’s more than me. I just, I just want to see like, all right, where’s, where did I run this, this last time? Or what was the elevation? So that’s all I care about because seeing them, the only thing I could get from it is maybe some motivation where I’m like, I’ll stuff this guy like I’m fast. I’m fitter than him. Like, all right, I’ll do more. But yeah, really it’s just, if you’re focused on yourself, then you just keep working on it. That’s where the results will come. So Josh, I appreciate you being on the podcast and also for mentioning effortless swimming in your, one of your videos recently. And I’m glad you did because it’s put us in touch and great communicator. You seem like you had a good head on your shoulders and obviously

a very high level athlete as well. So I wish you all the best for your pro triathlon journey. And I’ve got no doubt you’ll go a long way because you’re very well spoken. You’re doing a lot of things with your triathlon, the YouTube working as well. So you good time management as well by the look of things. So I wish you all the best going forwards. Where would you like to direct people to if they’re listening to this and would like to follow you? Yeah, it depends where what people are interested in. If they’re interested in coaching, like please do drop me a message or visit our website entire PC.com. Or if you just want a little bit of motivation or insights into what I’m up to on a weekly basis, then my YouTube’s probably a good, good shout. I don’t know where you can find the link, but I think it’s at Josh underscore Lewis on YouTube as a URL. But yeah, that’s probably the best bet for people if they just want

a little bit of an insight into what I’m up to and maybe some tips. But yeah, like I said before, credit where credit’s due. Effort of swimming is a fantastic platform. I’ve learned so much from it myself. I direct a lot of my clients there as well for swim technique tips. So yeah, no, it’s been really nice to chat to you as well and get in touch and just hear a little bit more about what you’re up to. Yeah, I appreciate that. Thanks so much, Josh and great chatting. Likewise. 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 Swimming Instills Lifelong Discipline with Pro Triathlete Joshua Lewis appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

My guest today is Brian Johns who is a three-time Olympian former world record holder in the 400 IM and, the head of coaching science at FORM. In this episode, we will talk about improving your technique using FORM goggles and how important reliability and consistency are to transform 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 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 Brian Johns. And Brian Johns is not only a three time Olympian, former world record holder in the 400 IM and has also coached a range of different abilities. But you’re now head of coaching science at form and forms obviously one of our sponsors of the podcast, which we really appreciate. And I’ve really enjoyed working with him over the last couple of years. So Brian, I’d love to welcome you to the podcast today. Thanks for having me. So to kick things off, your background in competitive swimming you’ve competed at a very high level for for many, many years there. What would you say is your biggest achievement or what were you most proud of with what you’ve done in the past with your swimming career? Well, I was pretty fortunate that I had a fairly long swimming career at the national team level. And so I went from being the youngest person on the Canadian national team

in 1998 to being the oldest person on the national team in 2011. So kind of had the full spectrum in between for me personally on in my swimming career kind of one of my more proud moments was to kind of coming back from injury. So I broke the world record in the 400 IM in 2003. And almost immediately after I tore my rotator cuff and swam through the next like year and a bit leading into the Athens Olympics. And then like overtrained and stuff like that. And it was a bit of a recovery to come back from that relearn how to swim properly. It wasn’t just about swimming hard, it was about swimming smart. And I know that’s something that you can relate to as well. And being able to take the lessons I learned from that took me about 18 months to get back to like regular training. And that regular training was about 70% of the volume that I was doing before I was injured. And then another year or so to come back all the way to the level that

I was at before and then in 2007 I swam at the World Championships in Melbourne and was the first Canadian to break two minutes in the 200 IM. So that was a pretty big deal for me. And then carried that success on to the Olympics and make the final in the 400 IM. And so it was like to get my highest peaks after a pretty big injury that’s kind of one of the things I was most proud of. Isn’t that interesting that the break the world record 2003, which in terms of achievements, that’s probably the greatest one, right? But then it’s when you come back from injury and you have to you have to do the hard things. You have to go through those hard times to then come back to that success that that’s what you’re most proud of. And I find that it’s just so it happens so often where it’s like it’s not necessarily the big things that people see or read, but it’s these other things that sees personal challenges that we we overcome that we end up

being most proud of. And you have to go through those difficult times or those there’s more rewarding when you have to work hard for it. Yeah, absolutely. Like the that’s kind of like the pieces I feel most proud of and it’s like funny looking back where it’s like that was like the individual performance I was the most proud of. But then of course, like you’re like on the national team for a long time or on a whole bunch of different clubs or universities or whatever happens to be. And it’s like the pieces that I find reflecting on is like the relationships I made, or like the surprise swims that we had or other things other than my like absolute best. It’s like I was bronze medalist at world championships. That was probably my highest like performance level and then breaking the world record. But like when I often think about like my favorite races, it’s like I was at the university games and we were expected to be

not in the top five in a relay. And we all swam ourselves and came silver. And it’s those types of things where it’s like you share those moments with people where you’re coming over some sort of adversity. And those are the things that kind of stick with you for longer rather than just like the single absolute best. And have you been able to take those experiences and relay those those onto the athletes that you’ve coached from all the different levels that you’ve coached? Because I know, especially when someone’s say young, they’re 17, 18, 19, and they’re very competitive and talking about national level athletes here. And it’s just all about, you know, want to get the gold or like I’ve got these high high goals that they want to achieve. And then perhaps they don’t don’t hit them. And they hit that roadblock or they go through that hard time. How do you explain that to someone, especially that age who’s hyper competitive and may not have the

experience that you’ve got under your belt and I think as you get more mature in your mid 20s, late 20s, and then into early 30s and so on, you just have a different perspective on things. How do you go about expressing that to the athletes? Yeah, like there’s a couple things there where my big focus, and this is tough for me as a swimmer, but the better that I did it, the better I was was to be just focused on the process and like being able to identify where you need to put your effort today to get a little bit better so that you’re just a little bit better tomorrow and be able to like identify those little things where it’s like, okay, I’m going to come today and I’m just going to get a little bit better. I’m not going to have a great workout. I’m not going to have a bad workout. I just want to get a little bit better today and then tomorrow a little bit better and the next day a little bit better and those incremental gains

like get up there and that’s where you really see your biggest improvements is where the like training day after training day just accumulates. You’re putting money in the bank and then you get to the race and you’re just withdrawing all the money so that you can spend it right in one spot and to be focused on the process and I’m just thinking about the collaborative atmosphere. I think this was a big piece that I focused on as a coach and I think that a lot of the best coaches out there don’t just like think about, okay, here’s my single swimmer. This is what I’m going to do with them and like they might have like the biomechanic background or bioenergetics or whatever happens to be in do like the exact right scientific thing. But the environment around that summer becomes so important to be engaging so that that summer is coming to like they might be doing literally the same workout every day. But if you’re providing an environment

around them that is exciting and can foster improvement, that becomes really more important thing to have that summer excited to improve. And so whether it’s like a group of like four or five that’s like some sort of elite program or like a universe, I always find like the university atmosphere works so well where we have like 25, 30 swimmers, maybe they get subdivided into your sprinters or distance or whatever. But you get those common like friendly rivalries where you’re trying to push each other that little bit further where if you’re by yourself, you wouldn’t have been able to push yourself that hard. But because you have some a teammate or somebody that you’re challenging or somebody that’s like a friendly competitor with you and you just get that extra push to find yourself somewhere where you couldn’t have taken yourself. Those like environmental factors end up being a big press on like helping those summers get

through the hardest times because you’re sharing that with other people. Yeah, absolutely. And I’ve seen that with a lot of summers that I’ve coached where maybe they were doing only solo swims, solo training, which you can certainly get good benefit from. And I think there are advantages to that as well. But get yourself in a squad environment or at least training with one other person. And you will get that competitive rivalry that will probably help you push a bit harder, be able to maintain your pace for longer. And it takes your mind off the session quite a bit as well because your mind isn’t just thinking about alright, this is what I’ve got to come. It’s you’re thinking about the other person next to you trying to stick with them or stay ahead, whatever it might be. It’s a good thing to be able to change up that environment. And I’ve seen this in some of the swim camps that we’ve done. We have run camps in Thailand for the last couple of

years and it’s basically a week. We call it how weak. I wouldn’t say it’s quite as hard as some of the how weeks that the elite squads are doing. But it’s swimming twice a day for seven days and people are getting pretty tired towards the end of it. But with that environment that you and culture that you foster at a camp like that where everyone’s getting up nice and early and we’re going through these hard sessions together, it really builds this camaraderie between everyone and you just it’s very hard to get that on your own. Yeah, absolutely. And like come back to like the things I took away from my own swimming. It’s like those types of moments like carry with you. And that’s where you can really learn about yourself. And those are the skills that you apply beyond the sport and like that that willingness to kind of like go that one more or like work within a group to help each other get better. Those are kind of the

skills that have definitely stuck with me as I get into like real person life as it were. And being part of like whether it’s an organization, a company, another swim team, like those are the pieces that really stick with you. Now you’ve you’ve been with form goals for about six years. Six is what I’m saying. Six months, I should say so. And so being part of their or head of coaching science. What’s your process? What are you thinking about when you’re looking at features to develop the workouts? Like how how are you taking your experience as a swimmer and a coach into the role that you’ve got now? Because I would imagine that you’re thinking, right, majority of the people who use this yeah, likely triathletes, but obviously a lot of open water and pool swimmers as well. But how can we get the best out of the people who are using our product? What can we do to make them faster, more efficient and get better results in there? There’s something

so what’s your what’s your thought process when you’re sort of looking at the future with with form goggles? Yeah, for for me, like the approach that I’ve taken kind of bringing that coaching perspective into form and being able to help swimmers get better using the goggles. Like I’ve had my a little bit of background of like master’s coaching or triathlon coaching where it’s like you have your eight lanes and on one side you might have like somebody preparing trying to qualify for Kona or like doing something like elite level triathlon program. And then on the on in lane one, you might have somebody who’s like adult onset summer learning how to do their freestyle properly. And you have this whole range. And the users that we have with our goggles definitely fit that full range of like very elite, very good triathletes and pool swimmers all the way to like maybe they like miss the water or haven’t swam in several years or just

trying to learn how to swim a little bit better and trying to use the goggles to get there. So any sort of like feature or concept that we have is trying to make sure that whoever is using the goggles in that full range is going to get something impactful out of it. I think for me like my background as a coach has always been so focused on like my main thing that I’ve always focused on as a coach is stroke reliability. And within that is things like technique, being able to apply that technique over time, being able to apply that technique over time at the pace that you want to race at. And so that always comes down to a technical foundation and everybody can either learn how to swim a little bit better with their technique or learn how to apply their pretty good technique a little bit better depending on what their goals are. And so kind of starting with that foundation, being able to build out from, okay, here’s how we can do to

make them a little bit better technically. Here’s how we can make them a little bit better in their pacing. And then just being able to build and build on that experience so that they can kind of take it where their goals want to take them. If they’re going to be super elite, then maybe they’re going to be more geared towards like the workouts and the plans that are going to get them there. If they’re geared a little bit more towards just like staying fit or using the goggles to get a little bit better. There’s metrics in there to help you and it helped guide you along to that improvement too. So what sort of metrics would you be looking at or do you think the majority of people should be considering? Well, for me, it always like comes back to the relatively simple framework of your distance for stroke and your stroke rate is your speed. And like that very like classic sort of DPS stroke rate speed equation where if you’re

going longer on each stroke or you’re doing your strokes a little bit faster, you’re going to get faster in the end. And so right now with form, we have we have real time stroke rate, which I find as a coach to be extremely powerful, along with the ability to either measure your strokes in distance for stroke. So either the meters for each stroke you’re taking or the number of strokes that you’re taking during a length, which is pretty much the same thing. And if you’re using those pieces in coordination with the time that you have, and within the form goggles, you can touch the wall, you see the time right there, or you see the running clock, you don’t have to look at find where the clock is and stuff like that. It’s all very easily seen in the goggles and be able to use those factors, the distance for stroke and stroke rate along with your time. Those are so vital to understanding how you’re swimming in the moment and how your future

improvement is affecting your swimming. And it’s like if you’re taking, if you’re with a coach, and they’re telling you, okay, let’s try and like add a little bit more catch up to your stroke, for instance, you want to have your hands a little bit closer together on the entry, just using an example. Well, in the goggles, you can see it’s like, well, my distance for stroke went higher, not a big surprise, but my stroke rate dropped a lot. How am I going to keep my stroke rate the same, keep the distance for stroke to become a better summer? And understanding how those pieces tie in together will help them understand how to swim better technically to help them be faster in the end. This episode of the podcast is proudly brought to you by our sponsor, Form Smart Swim Goggles. They’re more than a pair of goggles, meet the world’s most powerful swim platform. See yourself improved with Form Smart Swim Goggles, including a free one year

membership when you purchase your goggles for only 249 US dollars. They’ve currently changed up their offer where you can now get the goggles and you have one year membership included for free. And if you’d like to continue with the membership going forward, it’s only 15 US dollars a month where you get access to their workouts, training plans and custom workout builder, but you’ll always have access to the real time data in the goggles, so you never lose access to that. My favorite thing about the Form Goggles is having the instant feedback of what times you’re doing, what stroke rate you’re doing and also the ability to see what your heart rate is because never before have we been able to have these immediate feedback heads up display where it’s actually telling you what your intervals are. So when I wear the goggles in training, I like that I know my split for the first 50 and the 100 and the 150. So every single lap I’m getting that feedback on

what my pace is and I find it’s such an important tool for being able to not only have different gears where you can switch between the different speeds that you want to swim, but it helps you develop those gears and it helps you intuitively know how fast you need to go to before you’re going to blow up or before you’re going to go a little bit too hard. So it helps you just get really good at judging your pace for when you do go to a race. And even if you’re not wearing the goggles in a race, it’s that intuition and that ability to develop your pacing that these goggles can really help with to get your pair of form goggles and say 15 percent off. Use our link formswim.com forward slash effortless or use the coupon effortless at checkout and that will get you 15 percent off your pair of goggles using our special link formswim.com forward slash effortless or the code effortless at checkout. Yeah, I think it’s easy to over complicate what’s

required to get faster and I mean there is a lot that goes on when you are swimming and there’s so many different ways you can improve your technique. But if you just bring it down to the essentials, it’s it’s stroke rate and distance per stroke. So if we just always go back to that, we can make adjustments in either either direction. And I was working exchanging emails with with someone who has been doing this set five two hundreds set. And we looked at his data from about 12 months ago and today and his times were a little bit quicker than what he was doing about 12 months ago. And one of the things we saw is that his distance per stroke has increased quite a bit. And I think he’s taking on average about one second one second one stroke less per 25 meter length. So about two strokes less per 50. But his stroke rate has gone from 71 to 73 average down to about 67 to 68 strokes. So what we’re looking at is all right, if you can

maintain that same stroke length but have that faster rating, that’s going to be five to 10 seconds quicker for each 200. So a couple seconds quicker per hundred if you can maintain that. So just playing around with those numbers and it’s quite it’s quite fun to play around with that and see what the result would be. And if someone listens to this, if you strike rate 60 strokes per minute one stroke per second on average and let’s say you’re doing 50 strokes for a 50 meter length, you can get that down to 45 strokes per length, hold the same stroke stroke rate, that’s going to be about five seconds quicker per per lap. So just mucking around with the numbers there. And now it’s easier said than done. I think it certainly takes some some practice and some work to work on either of them. But it’s about finding that sweet spot between the two. And have you got any sort of advice for those listening about how they could find their sweet spot with

stroke rate and stroke length?

Yeah, absolutely. And like to kind of build off that point and carry it through to this is that like with the goggles we have real time stroke rate. And like, when I was swimming, it was like touch the wall, wait for the coach to bark it out to me. And to be able to see that stroke rate in real time as you’re swimming, I think is a big way to understand that relationship between distance per stroke and stroke rate where, okay, you’re doing a 50. And maybe like, you have a sense that it’s supposed to be like 60 strokes or like your stroke rate supposed to be about 60. But the start 70 in the end 50. It’s like, well, you’re not really training in a way that’s reliable, that’s going to affect your race. Or if anything, you’re actually like training in the opposite way that it might actually be hurtful for your racing. And if you want to be there, you actually have to learn how to be smoother at the start, hold on to it and

just like roll on that stroke rate. And so thinking about how to find that sweet spot for the stroke rate, I think it really comes down to understanding like, for me, the distance for stroke piece has always come first, where it’s like, the distance per stroke is your technique. Then you apply the technique to your stroke rate and that comes with training. And it’s like, in theory, you could tell somebody it’s like, go in and do 90 stroke rate. It’s like, well, they can physically do it, but not in a way that’s going to be helpful for their long term success. You have to be able to learn your technique. And then it’s like, okay, your technique right now, and your stroke count right now has yet 45 stroke rate. Let’s try and keep the same technique, hold the same stroke count, and bring it up to 50. And right there, you’re going to get some improvement. And then you might find that as you make some sort of other technical

improvement, increase the stroke rate, your distance per stroke may not increase like in the first length of the 200, but your seventh and eighth length do. And then that’s how you really get the technical reliability going from start to finish. So to find that like sweet spot of stroke rate, I think it comes really down to what are you training for? So if like you’re trying to train for like a 100 meter freestyle or a sprint triathlon or an Ironman, it’s a lot of different demands between that. So having the end goal in mind, know what you kind of need to go for that and then work backwards from there. Have your goal. My goal shouldn’t be x stroke rate. How am I going to train that here? And then you find that you’re accomplishing it a little bit earlier than expected, you can build it up and be actually better than you had anticipated. We do this set of 7 100s like a almost like a ramp test where in our eight week faster freestyle course, which

we’ve we’ve which we’ve just got added to. So if you’ve got form goggles, you can basically just add those workouts or those sessions to your to your goggles. Now, one of the things we do there in week a week eight, I think it is is the 700s test and we’ll get them to bump up their stroke rate by four strokes for each 100. And it doesn’t have to be for you could do it do it less. It might be three because four is a relatively big jump. But what we see there and if we start them on 56, I’ve got 56, 60, 64, 68, 72 and so on. And if you look at the the time and the strip time and the stroke rate and also getting to measure their perceived effort as well. And if you’re wearing a heart rate monitor, that could be the same thing essentially. But we find there’s typically a sweet spot there where some people will get to say 64 strokes per minute. And let’s say they’re times 130. And then they will go up to 68 strokes a minute, 72 strokes

a minute. But their speed doesn’t actually change because their distance per stroke is shortened so much. And they’re really just spinning the wheels. But the perceived effort is increasing. So then they’re going backwards. It’s not working for them. So it can help you find the sweet spot that way. And just, you know, if you can sort of, if you see that and you do a test like that, it gives you a bit of an idea of where you might be looking to sit, maybe a 1500 meter swim or a 1.9 K, K swim. And if you see when you when you’re doing this that there is no change in speed with any difference in in stroke rate, then we really just want to work on just some basic technique because the feedback that I get from a lot of people when they first start with me is I’ve only got one speed. I can’t go any faster. I can’t go any slow. I’ve just got this one speed. You can change that that can be fixed. That can be changed. But I think it just comes down to

knowing some basics of technique and making sure in training that you’re not just swimming at the one speed, make sure that you’re giving yourself the chance to actually vary your your speed and adjust it. And I know you like to do that with with some of the workouts that you’ve got with the with the form goggles as well. Do you want to talk a bit about like progressive voting and how you’ve set up some of those workouts in form? Sure. And just to kind of double back on that on something a little bit more specific around the stroke rate is like thinking about the 7 100s the set that very common set for like the elite summers would be like 7 200s classic step test where it’s like your last 200s supposed to be your 10 seconds away from your best time and you start your first one like 35 seconds away. But what I like to do and like that would be more about like we might measure lactate and heart rate and all that stuff. That’s

great and and all. But I found it more effective actually on the stroke reliability side where just take the middle five. So we’re not going to go to an all out effort at the end. But you’re also not going to swim like really really slow at the start you’re taking the middle five still trying to send. And the most important measures that I found was if you’re doing two hundreds and we usually did it long course but you do it short course to would be the third 50 first 50 you’re pushing off the wall you’re fresh things might not be like not reliable. Second one could be okay but you’re just to take down it’s that third 50 that like it’s a little bit more realistic to how you train at that speed on an everyday basis. And if you’re descending it’s like the first one is like this is how you usually train like an easy speed and moderate and strong and moving up. If you look at that third 50. What is your distance per stroke on that 50. What is your

stroke rate on that 50. And really trying to see where that breaking point ends up being through those five. Okay it’s like you said I only got one speed you can only dissent that like your first one slower your second one’s faster but the rest of the same. Well that’s your break and speed we’re going to start there. And then over time will find those gears and your breaking point is going to be a little bit later. What’s your stroke rate when you break there what’s your distance per stroke when you break there. And finding that like I find two hundreds to be helpful and finding the middle of it to be a little bit more realistic to how people are training every day. And be able to apply that into their swimming. And so kind of taking that point into like a progressive overload sense is like what I like to do is like find that breaking point and that’s I like your starting point. So an example might be I’m going to train for

Olympic distance triathlon. I know I want to break 20 minutes for the 1500 at the start. So right now I already know I need to go like 120 for my like per 100 pace all the way through. Okay that’s like my goal. I’m going to start I’m just going to make sure that I can actually swim that fast in the first place. I’m just going to do four 100s. I do four 100s at that speed. And then I’m going to progressively add some distance to it. And depending on who you are maybe you can add a little bit more quicker but might be four at the start. Now can I do eight. Can I do 12. Can I get closer to that full distance that I want to do for my goal. Great. You get to that distance. Maybe at the start you’re doing it on 30 or 40 seconds rest something that’s going to give you some time to recover. But you want to make it more realistic to the race the closer you get to it. So starting at 30 seconds rest now I’m going to do it on 20 seconds rest then on 10

seconds rest. Now instead of doing 100s I’m going to do 10 200s and then going to do like four 500s and keep on making it progressively closer and closer to the specific goal that you have in mind. And then like by the time you get there you’ve swum so much at that pace that it just becomes second nature by the time you get into the race. Yeah that’s that’s good. I was had to had a swimmer on recently who just broke the record for the Cook Straight which is swimming between the North and South Island in New Zealand. And he was talking about a very similar approach to to his training where they would that basically do that just he became very efficient at swimming 110 pace and he ended up holding that for the four and a bit hours that he did this Cook Straight swim which is just ridiculous but just but he took a similar approach. He just got to that point where he’d done it so much in training that he was able to do it very

efficiently and you don’t start by doing holding a going 110 and leaving on 115 and doing 100 of them. Now you might start with four with 30 seconds rest. So it’s a really really simple but good approach. I think to being able to I think first we’ll have the confidence that you can do what you need to do there but also just training your body to become efficient and become familiar with what it’s like to swim at that sort of effort and speed. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And like the coaches here that I’ve worked with Tom Johnson as my coach in in Canada and Randy the late great Randy Bennett coached in Victoria for like Tom felt like he coached Brent Hayden to Olympic medalist in the 100 freestyle and he felt very deeply that he just needed to practice swimming at that speed. Now you’re swimming a hundred meters there and the speed is very high and you might not be able to do that every day. So let’s do it with fins. Let’s do it with paddles.

Let’s do it like just feel what it feels like to be that fast in the water and practice that over and over again. So the progressive overload might go in a different direction where it’s like OK we’re going to do like four twenty fives with all the equipment with lots of rest and do it. And then over time less rest you take the equipment away stuff like that and you get closer to it. And then on the flip side was Ryan Cochran who Olympic medalist in in the mile coaching with Randy. And it was like same type of approach where he’s trying to go fourteen forty for fifteen hundred. And it’s like well you got to hold fifty eights. So let’s try and do four on two minutes and go fifty eight seconds. And it’s like just start with knowing that you can do the speed and then finding the little ways to increase the challenge so that that challenge gets more and more race like the closer you get to it. And then by the time you’re there like you’ve you’ve done

all the work you know that you’ve done it and you’ve made it as specific as possible to the race that you’re preparing for. Now the one thing that someone listened to this might be thinking is well that’s that’s great. I I swim at two minutes per hundred and I’d like to get down to one forty five. That’s my goal but I can’t I can’t hit one forty fives yet. What would be your advice there. Yeah like you can even start shorter where it’s like you’re that might be the first goal. Well let’s try some fifties. You want to go you want to go one forty five. Can you go fifty two or fifty three seconds for a fifty. Maybe not yet. Try twenty five or twenty six seconds for twenty five. And like just know what it feels like to be that quick. And it’s like it’s OK to have success at the start. I know us swimmers just want to try hard all the time and like buttons for punishment but it’s OK to have success and be able to see you hold that pace in some way

with lots of rest in a short way. And it’s like OK yeah I’m capable of doing this. And then you just find that little tweak to make it a little bit harder next time. And so like what I find myself doing and like now that working at form and we are able to like you build a workout and you can put it into the goggles yourself. And it’s like what I find myself doing is like OK I’m going to start with something small and it’s like for me it might be 10 100s but it could be any set could be 16 25s could be 8 25s. And I’m just going to edit the same workout. And it’s so simple to just go into that same sense like OK last week I did this set I did 8 25s on 30 seconds rest it’s right there in what you wrote last time this time I’m just going to go in and I change it to 12 instead. See if I can do it again. And now I’m going to change it from 30 seconds rest to 25 seconds rest. And you’re just taking the literal same workout and you’re making it just a little

bit harder in little tweaks week to week and be able to over time incrementally gain your way to your goal. Yeah that’s good. I like that. And I think as well some is that around let’s say one 45 to two minute pace which I work work a lot with. There is typically things in your stroke that you’re doing that are creating a lot of drag or you’re just missing out on a lot of propulsion. So there’s things that you could improve with your catch and pull. So it might be worthwhile. Let’s say you do some filming get some analysis or you have someone just coach coaching you try and maintain that stroke change that you know is specific to you and is going to make you faster try and maintain that stroke change for 25 meters and then you might do a couple of those or maintain it for 50 because it’s usually going to feel quite often quite challenging quite difficult to hold that change in the beginning for more than 100 meters. It’s just your body is not

used to it. You use different muscles. It just takes time to be able to do that efficiently. So I think the approach that you’ve mentioned is really helpful for even just when you’re working on on something like a stroke change because the feedback I get so often is like when someone comes to a clinic we do underwater filming analysis we work with them quite often they’ll be quicker after a couple of weeks they’re like this is hard work like I just can’t hold it for that long. So if they take that sort of approach that’s how you can start to build up build up and develop that muscle memory and the ability to hold that stroke for longer distances is start small. Yeah and like the progressive overload concept like works for technique as much as it does for pace where it’s like OK you might be trying to overload like getting that progression for whatever your goal time is but it also works the same way on technique where it’s like OK I know I

want to improve my technique but like you said I might only be able to hold that stroke for twenty five and with lots of rest or it’s like common thing of like oh man this feels weird I don’t know if I can like coordinate myself that way for longer than a length or two and it’s like again it’s OK have success have a little bit of success and be understanding like there’s the little bit of change and then just try and increase the amount that you can make that change for longer and longer from workout to workout and like it’s it’s kind of crazy to put in perspective of like you’re trying to make this incremental change of like put your hand a little bit over here or finish out a little bit further back and it’s like I mean if you’re doing a four thousand meter workout and you’re doing thirty like strokes per fifty meter length like you’re talking about thousands of repetitions in a single workout it’s like swimming is so unlike any other sport

where maybe you can make a single change and you can see an immediate effect you can see that in swimming but you might not be able to hold it for the entire time so being able to like working with a coach understand what the change is first and then slowly over time increase the application of that change is so helpful. Absolutely one of the things I really like about so looking back at data from a session is I like to see because often I’ll swim at the goggles and I’ll mostly just be using my pace my times in training just to make sure I’m hitting the right the right pace and then post session I’ll look back and see OK that that was my stroke rate when I was stepping up the effort a little bit so I like to look at that way and if we’re doing like a descending two hundreds set usually if I’m at around sort of seventy percent effort I might be around sort of sixty sixty one strikes per minute and then when I’m starting

to almost like almost go max my stroke rate will be up around sixty six to sixty eight if it’s like two hundreds for example and one of the things that I I believe a lot of people don’t understand if they’re new to the sport is that these changes to stroke rate and effort are very incremental. I think people often go from here to here just straight away and it’s like no it’s just you just need to step it up slightly so and it takes it takes a lot of practice to be able to manage those little incremental this is an effort or or stroke rate and just and getting really good at that will help you just get into the right gear when you’re racing. But it does take time but it’s a lot less than what people actually think. Yeah. And like what I find with using the goggles and on a day to day basis now is like the information I’m getting in the goggles helps me stay kind of in the moment and how I’m doing a swim and like kind of coming back to the

process of swimming it the right way. So it’s like I usually focus on like my pace if it’s on a longer interval and my stroke rate my real time stroke rate where it’s like OK I’m doing like two hundreds. Am I keeping the same stroke rate the whole way. Am I just like swimming steadily. And for me I’m like closer to 50 52 and so it’s like OK as long as I’m like keeping it in at 50 I’m not letting it dip down like I know I’m just kind of rolling it through and then having that compared to the time and the time is like the same from length to length. I know that I’m following a good process of swimming well then go to the app afterwards and look at it. It’s like OK those are my actual numbers but I know that I need my stroke rate to be this for the race or next time this was like a long aerobic set next time I might be doing like a threshold set or a best average set. I know that I need to be here and just being able to go back

and forth from like look at the result interpret it and be able to apply that into your next training session so that you can be focused on. I just need to do this today and focus on the process of being a little bit better and then that back and forth between training a little bit better reviewing OK I need to do this next time and then bring it back to the next training session that back and forth becomes such a key piece to finding those gains from work out to work out. Yeah one of the ways that we use that with some of the Swimmers I coach is we’ll look at their race data. Let’s say I’ve done a half and just and see what their their stroke rate is and the time that they got obviously like distance per stroke that sort of thing is just it’s not not as relevant I think when it comes to the open water swimming side of it but we can really use that stroke rate and what their overall overall time was and what what I’ve seen with a

couple of Swimmers is like their stroke rate has been too too slow in their races. So we’ve used we’ve used that and so I’m thinking of a swim that I’ve been working with her stroke rate was I think low 70 72 from from memory and or not might mean like 68 actually and for her she needs to be up around that mid 70s to be competitive with those other girls that she’s racing against and in the last race it was I think 75 or 76 she had a much better swim she was quickest one she’s she’s done and so but we use that data from her race in her training and with her video analysis where we saw okay well this is this is what you need to work on with your stroke but we need to start getting up into those faster ratings because you’re just not going to be able to have that big enough distance per stroke you’re not tall enough your wingspan is not long enough to be able to hold that sort of distance per stroke at the stroke rate that you’re currently

at. So we’ve got to work on on these couple of things. Yeah I think that like using the real time stroke rate from the race into the training especially is such a key piece where if you’re thinking about just pace and it’s like okay trying to break 20 minutes I want to go 120 I’ll roll 120s in a pool maybe not because like 120s in the pool is not going to translate to 20 minutes in open water and so understanding like what the stroke rate is where like you said you can like go either way where it’s like yeah you look at the stroke rate and it’s like in training you can hold a higher stroke rate so maybe you got to be able to apply what you’re doing in training a little bit better into the race and you have the data to back it up there. The other way would be like okay that was your stroke rate in your last race come back now you’re going to understand what the pace is supposed to be in training to apply it to what you want to do here.

So it’s like okay we knew that last time you did stroke rate you did a 70 stroke rate it got you to 20 minutes but in in the pool that actually means like holding 118 and so next time it’s like okay I want to do 71 72 73 stroke rate that translates to 116 115 now you’re actually going to see an improvement on the open water that’s a little bit more realistic to the way that you trained in the water and applying it to the open water. And if you listen to this and thinking why is it faster why don’t I need to be faster in the pool to have those times in open water you’ve got the turns and you’ve got that push off the wall which gives you that extra speed in the in the pool. So if you can be a couple of seconds quicker well then what you or race target pace would be that’s that’s why because you have those turns and those push offs the wall and for someone who can turn well usually a short court their short course times will be faster than their

long course time. So going from 25 to 50 because you’ve got more more turns more chances to push off. And I mean you’re so your 400 I am world record was a 402 all right which is incredibly incredible. What was your PB for long course. My best is 411 411. So I did that in yeah so it’s like you’re talking about a one second per 50 difference just between a 25 meter pool and a 50 meter pool let alone trying to apply that to 1500 meters nonstop. I think that like it’s a good point on on the walls but the relating the stroke rate from the open water to the pool can also help you like individualize to that summer as well where it’s like OK maybe this summer was like former competitive summer they have to be a little bit quicker than you think to match the pace. Somebody else where it’s like can’t even do a flip turn and maybe that the difference between their push offs in the pool isn’t as great but having that stroke rate from one to the other is a

piece this objective that you can apply from one to the other and then wherever that individual ends up at that stroke rate in the pool that’s a good starting point and then you can kind of like move up from there however you feel like the goals are for that individual and with all of the data and all the swims that you know that you have there at form has there been anything that that surprised you or you thought oh that’s that’s interesting just based on based on what you’ve seen with all of this swim data that forms collected who has a tough one because there’s definitely been a lot of data that we’re mostly thinking about like we’re working on what we want to do in the future and trying to see like where where are we right now with the summers that are users that are using the goggles right now and what are the things that we can do to kind of push them to be better summers wherever they’re at and so we’re starting to collect a little

bit more data on things that are a little bit more specific that could be effective for technique it could be effective for how they pace and being able to measure how good of a pacer they are and it’s those types of things that are like new and novel where wow we might be able to really affect somebody from like a more literal weight on their technique just by measuring how they’re moving their head in the water and stuff like that it’s down the line but at the same time it’s like it’s pretty exciting to think that having these goggles on there like again I find like the DPS and the stroke rate if you just get that and understand that concept you’re going to go a long way and but to be able to get that like one little extra piece to get a little bit better really understanding how to pace well and understanding how to use those numbers to be better technically help a lot and be able and we’re starting to get new data of like wow we

might be able to have some tools here to get you even better and those are kind of the things that I’m looking forward to applying in the future. Yeah that’s that’s exciting and it’s I always have to remind myself that people who are newer to swimming they don’t have this background knowledge and information that we’ve had growing up swimming and learning from lots of different coaches. So sometimes just knowing the fundamentals and the basics go a very long way especially for someone who’s been swimming for only only a couple of years and those fundamentals that you talk about distance per stroke stroke rate the relationship between the two and also consistency because the best athletes in any sport are the most consistent. So if you can get very good at just being consistent with hitting your numbers whether it’s stroke rate or stroke count and aiming to hold the same pace across the board that you’re going to go a long way there. And

typically the swimmers that are winning races are those that don’t slow down but slow down the least towards the end of end of a race. And too often if I’m looking at people’s data they go too hard at the start. They blow up and then they’re just sitting a couple seconds below what they could be holding in terms of pace for the rest of the race because they just went out too hard. So just taking it easy thinking of that easy speed at the start and just keeping the heart rate in check just relaxing and then just settling into your speed is much better approach than just going helpful leather because it’s just you’re going to blow up and then you’re not going to be able to hold what you could hold. Yeah that consistency piece is such a key piece for swimmers especially where you’re going through the medium of water and it’s like the way that you are learning to move your body through that foreign substance is like it can be very

challenging. And so it’s like even just staying the same is a hard thing to do let alone build up off of it. And like the one more thing that I just add to that is like I consistency is like great. I like to think of it as reliability where it’s like are you reliable like are you the same summer at the end of a 400 as you are at the start of a 400. If I took a picture of you at the start and took a picture of you at the end could I tell a difference between the two and just being reliable from one side to the other and like just thinking of like triathlon and pool swimming examples of that where somebody like I mean Ian Thorpe is a great example of like OK yes he’s got the world record in the 200 and the 400 but he gets in the 800 he gets from the 100 and like any great swimmer can hit a range of these are not just a specialist in like one specific distance they’re able to if they’re good and they’re reliable they can do it over different ranges and

then on the triathlon side where you see people like like Christian Blumenfeldt and Gustav Eiden being able to go from like Olympic distance to Ironman that like completely different levels of demand but their reliability and it takes them from one to the other and those skills are able to transfer over from whatever the demand is from the race if you train in a reliable way and being able to understand like OK this is my stroke count when I do 100s it should be the same as 200s and 400s and thousands and beyond or this is the stroke rate that I’m training at and I keep it there for the whole interval whether it’s no matter the distance and so being able to have that understanding of reliability and consistency that really goes a long way to and it’s a good it’s a good challenge it’s a good challenge of your mental ability to stick with it keep switched on and obviously the physical challenge as well because if I’ve ever

drifted off through a session where I’m thinking about whatever’s happening that day or I’m daydreaming about something normally my times will reflect that so if you can just keep mentally switched on and I think the goal is to a great job of just keeping that in check because I think you like a pilot and you’ve got all the you got these numbers you got the dashboards and you’re just making sure things are staying where they should be so that you don’t crash same thing with the swimming you’re getting that instant feedback where you can in a way it is like you’re just this pilot and you’re controlling things and yes there’s a lot of effort involved their physical effort whereas a pilot just sitting there but I think it actually helps you just get keep keep your mind focused. Yeah absolutely that’s what I find it’s best as well where it’s like it can be like very overwhelming to see that much data but then at the same time it’s just like this

is just how you’re swimming at this moment and like you’re just checking the dashboard like you’re driving down you’re driving your car you’re checking it’s like yep I’m at the rate speed limit yep I’m in a good spot and you’re just giving a little check and you’re just on pace or you’re on track for whatever you’re trying to do absolutely. Brian thanks so much for being on the podcast we’re probably going a little bit longer than I said at the start but when I have someone like yourself who’s got great experience in competing and in coaching and you’re working on the data side of things with form there’s always a lot to talk about so I appreciate you being on the podcast and no doubt we’ll chat again and see what you guys are up to. Yeah absolutely thanks for having me and I’ll come back on anytime you want. 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.

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In this episode, we talk about magic words and how you can use the power of language to become a faster swimmer.

Magic Words by Jonah Berger

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Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. Welcome to episode number 277 of the Effortless Swimming Podcast. This episode is about magic words. How can you use the power of language to become a faster swimmer? Before I get into this episode, I want to let you know about a swim camp that we have just released, which will be held up in the Whitsundays, which is in tropical North Queensland. It’s going to be myself and eight swimmers on that camp. It’ll be run from June 4th to June 9th. And if you want to improve your swimming and get coached by me and improve your stroke every day with coaching, feedback, videoing, and all the things you hear about on this podcast, then I’d love for you to join me up in North Queensland in early June. Now, at the time of recording, there’s only two spots available, so they may be gone by the time you’re listening to this.

But you can check out effortlesswimming.com forward slash Whitsundays to get more information about the camp or click the link in the podcast description. And each and every day, we’re going to go out to some different islands, some different locations. We’re going to swim there. I’m going to be giving you feedback on your stroke. I’m going to be coaching you there so that not only do you leave feeling good, having swum each and every day, at least twice and having improved your stroke, but you get to enjoy it like it’s a holiday, which it certainly will be. And you get to enjoy the good food up there as well and the sunshine up at the Whitsundays. So effortlesswimming.com forward slash Whitsundays if you’d like to grab one of those last two remaining spots. Now, I’ve been reading this book called Magic Words by the author Jonah Berger. And one of the things he mentions in this book is that in the early 70s, they started running these studies with young kids.

And they found that the way that the words that they use with young kids, and I think it’s the same with adults, can have a very different impact or result depending on what words you use. So for example, what they did with the kids is they had these toys on the ground and they found that by changing one word, they got a 30% better result in the desired outcome. So there was these toys on the ground and they either asked the kids to help them pick up the toys or to be a helper and pick up the toys. And when they asked the kids to be a helper, they got roughly 30% more of them picking up the toys and helping them. And they think that the reason for this is that kids want to identify with a positive identity, a positive behaviour, a way of being. And identifying as a helper is a positive thing. And they think that the kids want to lean towards that, they want to move towards that positive identity. Whereas just helping, it doesn’t elicit that same sort of response or movement towards that kind of identity.

And I think it’s very similar with people who identify as a swimmer. Quite often I’ll be running clinics and when we do the introduction there’s people who say I’m not a swimmer. But if you can change that in your mind and tell yourself that you are a swimmer, that I am a swimmer, I think that gives you much more confidence and I think that actually helps speed up your progression and your improvement. Because if you keep telling yourself I’m not a swimmer, you’re probably not going to do the things that are required of a person who’s going to get better. And I know you may not feel like a swimmer, especially if you’re quite new to the sport and maybe it’s 10 to 20% of the time that you really feel like you’re getting into a good rhythm and a good groove with your swim. But if you tell yourself that I’m a swimmer and identify that way, you’re going to do things that will actually help you become a better swimmer.

And quite often I can see it when people turn up to the pool, those that do identify as a swimmer carry themselves differently. And there’s nothing stopping you from identifying as a swimmer. There’s no one saying you are or you aren’t a swimmer. It’s just yourself. So I think that can be very powerful. And I’ve been using this since I’ve read the book. I’ve been using this when I’m going about the different things that I do. I already identify as a swimmer. I’ve done that since I was a kid. I’ve started identifying as a surfer over the last couple of years that I have been doing it quite regularly and I think that’s helped. But also with this podcast and with the YouTube videos, what I’m telling myself when I go into that activity is I’m a podcaster or I’m a YouTuber or I’m a business owner. These different roles, I tell myself that that is me. I’m that identity. And that actually helps me do the thing that’s required at the time.

So I think it’s one example of how words can be really powerful. And if you’ve heard a couple of these podcast episodes before, you will have heard some of the cues that I like to use with athletes. And that’s just another example of how words can have power. One phrase, one word can really change how we view something. So I think it’s a very powerful thing that is quite often forgotten. This episode of the podcast is proudly brought to you by our sponsor, FormGoggles. They’re more than a pair of goggles. Meet the world’s most powerful swim platform. See yourself improve with form smart swim goggles, including a free one year membership when you purchase your goggles for only 228 US dollars. Now they’ve currently changed up the offer where you can now get the goggles and you have that one year membership included for free. And then if you’d like to continue with membership going forward, it’s only 15 US dollars a month where you get access to their workouts, training plans and their custom workout builder.

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The other thing that I quite liked in this book, another example of how words can have some magic to them is if you replace can’t with don’t. And the example he uses here is that if you were to have two people together and they’re going for the same thing and the example I’ll use here is someone who’s training for an Ironman. And they said, oh, I can’t do anything less than two sessions a week or I’m not going to swim 110. I’m not going to swim 110 for my Ironman swim. And then you had another person who said, I don’t swim anything less than two times a week because I’m going to do a 110 Ironman swim. You’re much more likely to put your money on the person, on the second person because they are much more definitive. And their identity is someone who doesn’t do anything less than two sessions a week. Whereas someone who says, I can’t, it leaves it, it leaves it open. It makes it sound like they’re forced to do this thing that they don’t want to do when they use the word can’t.

And the same thing goes if you’re on a weight loss journey or you’re looking to get healthier or fitter. It’s those people who have this definitive statement of I don’t eat sweets or if they’re doing ketotes, I don’t eat carbs. These definitive statements, they’re the people who I think have much more success. So you can replace can’t with don’t and that way it changes how you identify with something. And the third and final one here that I found was quite helpful too is rather than saying or asking, what should I do to swim faster? Replace should with could. What could I do to swim faster? Because if you say, what should I do? It narrows it down to thinking that there’s one definitive solution, that there’s only one option here to choose from. What should I do? Whereas in reality, there are a thousand things you could do to become a better swimmer, to swim faster, to make it easier. And if you pose the question of what could I do to swim faster?

It allows you to be creative, allows you to come up with different solutions and allows you to think about more than just one solution that is already predetermined. So I think it just allows the possibility of more creativity and more options. So replacing should with could. And quite often people will ask, what should I do in my workouts to swim faster? Or what should I do to improve my technique? If you phrase it as, what could I do? Then we can brainstorm, then we can come up with some different things, rather than thinking it’s just this one pigeon hold solution that’s going to give you that answer. So they’re just a couple of examples that I got from this book, Magic Words by Jonah Berger. I highly recommend it. I think it’s excellent, not only just for how you approach your swimming, but if you are in any sort of professional capacity or with your family or friends, I think that words can really have a lot of power and using them the right way and having these tools to be able to draw upon in conversation can really help.

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