Effortless Swimming

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

00:33 Meet Tracey Baumann

Melbourne Freestyle Clinic with Tracey:

Website: https://swimmasteryinternational.com/

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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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

0:11 – The starting priority for your stroke

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

open water?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The post How to Master Open Water Pacing, Swim Anxiety, and Stroke Mechanics with Brenton Ford appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

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

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

00:00 Introduction to Marathon Swimming and Tim Denya

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

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

https://www.redtopswim.com/

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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.

In this video, I’m going to share with you seven rules I’ve learned from coaching pro triathletes over the last 10 years. And if you’re an age group wanting to make your way further up the field and come out of the water quicker with more energy. In this video, I’m going to share with you the things that I’ve learned from working with some of the best in the world, including a little bit of work with Cat Matthews, who is the two-time Ironman pro series winner. Rule number one is rotate enough to easily recover your arm over the water, but everyone does it differently. Now your recovery is when your arm comes over the top of the water. And you’ll see this will vary greatly depending on the different athlete. And rule number one is we need to rotate our shoulders enough so that we can comfortably recover the arm over the top, because it’s called recovery, because we should be somewhat relaxed as we bring it through. We don’t

want to be stiff and tense and use a lot of effort there. But the first thing is you need to be able to rotate enough so that you can do that because our shoulder doesn’t work very well if we’re too flat. It’s hard to get that arm through. And you’ll see a difference between the different swimmers in some will be a little bit higher with their arm and their elbow. Some will be a bit straighter. Some will be completely straight. Everyone doesn’t differently depending on the style of their stroke, their mobility, the type of swimmer that they are. So it doesn’t matter too much what happens over the top of the water, unless it impacts what happens under the water in a negative way. And how that can happen is if you recover to flatten wide, if you’re too flat with your shoulder, or if you’re doing something like a really high elbow recovery where your hand comes too close to the body and end up jamming up your shoulder. So that recovery doesn’t matter a

whole lot unless it’s impacting you in a negative way. But don’t feel like you need to have this perfect pull swimming recovery, especially as a triathlete, especially in a wet suit, which might restrict some of your ability to move. So go with what suits best, as long as it’s not throwing the underwater part of your stroke off. Rule number two, your legs are not going to provide much propulsion, but you can kick more than you think. So with your legs out the back, they’re going to provide a small amount of propulsion, but they do have an important role in the stroke. And that important role is it provides a counterbalance to your arms and your rotation. So at the back, what it’s doing is helping stabilize you. So you feel like you’ve got something to press against as you’re going through your catch and your pull, and it helps you rotate back to the other side. So even though it’s not providing much propulsion, it’s important to have an

effective kick. And we obviously don’t want to use a lot of effort with our kick when we swim, because you’ve got a bike, you’ve got the run to come. But the thing is, you can still have a four beat or a six beat kick, which is a continuous kick, you can still have that while kicking very lightly, because we just want to make sure we’re not putting a lot of effort into the kick. And your kick will probably chop and change depending on whether you’re siding or the side that you’re breathing, the effort that you’re going or the part of the race you’re in. So your kick might go from a four beat kick to a six beat within the race, it might chop and change depending on those things. But the main thing is your kick remains light. And you will see in pro triathlon, whether it’s an Olympic distance, you’ll see those from his kicking likely a six beat kicking quite, quite hard or quite consistently, but the effort won’t be super

high, because that is going to be one of the first things to raise your heart rate, and the first things to tie you out. So let your legs kind of do their thing, as long as the effort isn’t high. Rule number three, your catch is important, but the muscles that you use through the catch and pull are more important. And what do I mean by that? Well, your catch is this first part of the stroke where we set ourselves up to get our hand and forearm facing backwards. So we’ve got this big armful of water that we can then accelerate and press back past the hip. And that’s going to be one of the main things that’s moving you forwards. And that catch position that we want is this high elbow catch, where we’ve got the elbow bent, the fingers pointing down. That’s an important position. But it’s not that effective if you’re using the wrong muscles through the catch and the pull. And one of the main muscles that we’re going to

use through this part, particularly as we’re going through here as the hand comes under the shoulder and down towards the navel. The main muscle we’re going to use through there is our lats, if we do it well. And one of the biggest realizations I’ve had over the last six months, since I ran a camp with Sharon Van Rivendale, who won the Olympic gold in Paris for the 10K, is that a lot of people don’t use their lats very well when they swim. And so if we can get to using them, and obviously our lats are underneath here, if we can get to using those, then yes, our catch is important. But we don’t need to be in any crazy positions with an extreme high elbow. You can be in a decent position, but if you’re using your lats mostly through this middle phase of your stroke, you’re probably going to be holding good water and you’re going to be connected very well with the rest of the body. And that means that you can hold a relatively quick stroke rate

and you can be holding that fast pace without much effort. So the question is, well, how do I actually use my lats through the stroke? Well, this is the thing that takes time. And I’ve done quite a bit of work with this with a lot of our swimmers that we coach online through our coaching membership. Now, one of the things there is that in the catch, this is where we need to let the shoulder slide up near the side of the face. And we need to just allow that shoulder to move. So the shoulder blades will sort of slide up along the rib cage to set up a good catch. But from here, as we go through this part of the stroke, that is where we need to get the scapula, the shoulder blade, coming back and down through here so that we can use the lats. And then the last part is going to be more about the triceps. And there’s a number of different ways you can go about it. We’ve got a TheraBand or an exercise band routine that we do prior to

swimming. There’s a number of drills that you can do like our YMCA drill that you can focus on having the shoulders in the right position. But I’ve seen a huge change personally for me in my stroke and the speed I can hold and swimming at less effort for holding those faster times because I’ve been able to use my lats because there’s some of these things I learned from Champ and Rivendell. So your lats are very important and almost, almost more important than your catch position. Rule number four, your stroke rate is important, but do it the right way. Now, part of your speed, the speed equation is how far you travel with each stroke and the rate at which you take those strokes. Now, typically we want to work on a longer stroke firstly, so increasing our distance per stroke. And that comes by reducing drag, so good body position. And secondly, it comes from an effective catch and pull through, so you get good propulsion

and you time that correctly. So we work on that first. But the next piece is, well, you’re going to have to increase the stroke rate or your cadence in order to get faster. And so the way that we can do that, firstly, you will go through your catch and pull with a bit more speed and you will put a put a bit more power into it. That’s certainly one aspect and you’ll accelerate through. But another part of increasing your cadence is going to be the recovery over the top. If you are relaxed and quite cruising over the top in terms of just not being forced or tense, you can recover quite quickly for very little effort. And then you can get over the top of the water fast. And that’s a big factor in increasing your stroke rate is that faster, very relaxed recovery over the top of the water. So there’s a number of different areas where you will increase the speed of it. And the catch and pull is one, but we don’t want to be too fast with

that part. We also need to make sure we get over the top of the water quickly too. And we do that by being somewhat relaxed and making sure that we sort of swing that arm forwards in front, because you’re going to carry that momentum over the top of the water and throw it forwards out in front. And that’s going to help you with the other arm at the back as well. So increase your cadence, but do it the right way. Lesson number five is learn to swim hard and hold it for a long time. Now I know this channel is called Effortless Swimming. I’ve run Effortless Swimming for almost 19 years now. The way to get effortless is to put in the effort first. So obviously techniques are a big factor there and having the right technique will allow you to swim very comfortably at a decent pace. But you still, if you want to compete at the top end of the field, you’re going to have to put the work in. And one of the types of sessions that I’ve seen

work very, very well for athletes who really want to be competitive are best average sessions where we do this every Friday where we’ll do hundreds off of two minutes and I’ll aim to come in under 110. So we’re going hundreds where you’re trying to hold as fast as you can for all of the hundreds within that main set. And you’re trying to be consistent across all of them. And what we worked up towards in lead up to our main events was 21 hundreds. Best average off two minutes and best average just means you hold the trying to average as fast as you can across all of them. So let’s say that might be say 120 for all the hundreds. You’re trying to be consistent. Now that is a very hard set to do. And I wouldn’t start with 21 hundreds best average. But in that set, you’ve got quite a bit of rest. And what you’re trying to work on is getting comfortable being uncomfortable and just holding as as hard as you can through that whole set.

And it’s not easy to do. But if you can learn how to swim hard and just be somewhat comfortable within that sort of intensity, that is going to help you so much when it comes to your racing, especially for those shorter distance races where it might be an Olympic distance, maybe a half Iron Man or anything shorter than that, you need to learn how to swim hard if you want to be very competitive. And that will make these faster times actually easier to hold. Now I wouldn’t start with 21 hundreds with a lot of athletes that we coach to our coaching membership. We have them start with just 10 100s best average. And depending on what pace you’re doing, you might leave on two minutes 30 or three minutes. So I like to leave on two minutes. And I try and hold under one minute 10 in a long course pool. So that’s about 50 seconds rest, which is a lot. But I find it’s a great way or a great set to get that intensity so that you can hold

a fast pace over your races. Rule number six, your hips are the engine room. Now when you are swimming freestyle, you’re going to be rotating a similar amount through your hips and through your shoulders. But I like to think of the hips as the engine room, meaning that that is where your rotation will begin. So you think of your hips as the engine room where they’re just rocking side to side. And that’s helping then rotate your torso and your shoulders. So the hips are where we control it from. And you don’t don’t need to rotate a lot through your hips 30 to 40 degrees at a maximum usually. But that is where we initiate the rotation. And if you think of having this, this is the engine room, then everything else seems to flow from there. Because the way that I got taught swimming is you want to swim from the inside out, meaning that your hips and your core, that is where everything starts from. And then we go out from there through the

shoulders, the elbow, the wrist and the hand, we’ve got to start from the inside out. And to me, the hips and the core, that is where it all initiates from. Rule number seven is breathe as often as required. You’ll see videos, you’ll hear people talk about breathing every three and making sure that you bilaterally breathe. Now the thing with that is it’s great to be able to breathe both sides. And I would highly recommend it within your training for 30 to 40% of your session. But when it comes to swimming fast, breathe as often as required. Because number one, you’ve got to get enough oxygen in, you’ve got to get enough air in to be able to meet the demands that your body is asking of you. And that might be breathing every two strokes. And I’ve interviewed a lot of great swimmers and great triathletes on this channel. And they all, they have all said that when that comes to going fast in training, and especially in a race, they

will breathe as often as they need. For example, Sam Short breathes to the one side when he’s racing. And so when he’s going hard in training and when racing, he just sticks that one side. But if he’s doing easier stuff in training, he will make sure he breathes to both sides. He’ll go one lap down on the left, one lap down on the right. And so that is a good approach for training. But don’t restrict how often you breathe because you have heard it’s better to breathe every three strokes or four strokes. That might need to be every two, especially if you are going fast and you are looking to be at the point to end of the field. But if that is every three and that’s comfortable, stick with that. But everyone’s different, but you do not need to limit yourself to breathing every three or four. Now, bonus rule number eight here is you don’t have to be the fastest swimmer in open water. If you have very good skills, you can swim with people who are

quite a few seconds faster than you per 100 and you can still match it with them. And the reason for that is open water is a different base than in the pool because we can draft and how straight you swim can play a big part of that as well. And I’ve seen so many swimmers get beaten who are faster in the pool, but they get beaten by people who are slower in the pool because they have much better open water skills. Now, some of that is drafting. So you can sit behind someone and save 20, 25 percent of your energy by sitting directly behind them or sitting next to their hip. You can save so much energy and swim a lot quicker by drafting well. So that is a skill that’s worth investing in. Sighting as well. So if you can sight without lifting your head up too high and having your hip drop, then you can also save a lot of time there by sighting effectively. Plus, if you can make sure that you swim a fairly straight course, you might

cut off 50 or 100, even sometimes 200 meters on an Ironman swim by just swimming more directly. And that can be a big time saving as well. So the thing I love about open water swimming is that you don’t have to be the fastest swimmer. If you’ve got good strategy and good skills, you can really be competitive and sometimes beat those fastest swimmers. And so that is one of the best things about triathlon by open water swimming. So if you can learn to use those skills to advantage, then you can really find your way towards that front pack. If you’re working on your freestyle technique, but you’re not sure where to start, click the link below, which will send you to our freestyle technique checklist, which will have the order of things to work on your stroke in. So that’ll tell you exactly where to begin if you’re not sure. 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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Most people assume ice swimming is just for the crazy or extreme athletes — but what if it’s really a gateway to resilience, mental clarity, and community? In this episode, journalist and ice swimming champion Chris Ballard reveals how daring to step into freezing water can transform your mind, body, and life. Whether you’re skeptical or curious, Chris shares mind-blowing stories of how cold water exposure can push you past perceived limits and build unshakeable confidence.

00:12 The Journey into Cold Water Swimming

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The post Chasing the Chill: Understanding the Attraction Of Cold Water with Chris Balllard appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

How do you break through a swimming plateau when it feels like you’ve already tried everything?

In this episode, I sit down with Sandra Surkamp to discuss her incredible swimming journey—from struggling to swim 25 meters without stopping to swimming comfortably in open water and dropping her pace by nearly 50 seconds per 100 meters.

Sandra shares the key lessons she’s learned over the last few years, including how revisiting the fundamentals, improving body position, refining her catch, and finding the right coaching cues helped unlock a major breakthrough in her swimming. We also talk about the frustrations that come with progress, why improvements don’t always happen in a straight line, and what it takes to make lasting technique changes.

Whether you’re stuck at a plateau, learning to swim more efficiently, or looking for motivation to keep improving, Sandra’s story is packed with valuable insights and practical takeaways.

00:00 Introduction to Sandra’s Swimming Journey

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

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

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

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming podcast. I guess today is Sandra Serkamp. And Sandra came along to one of our clinics in Brisbane a couple of years ago and has been doing some filming sessions in the past and has just continually worked with us. And recently you’ve had a bit of a breakthrough in terms of your times. And I wanted to get you on to talk about what you did, what those changes were, and then what you’ve seen and experienced since then because I think the people who listen to this podcast, they are looking to improve, but I think it’s also very relevant to know what you experience when you do make an improvement, whether you stay there forever, whether you go back, whether you go, how it all works. And I think people will be able to pull a lot from themselves from listening to your story. So Sandra, firstly, welcome to the podcast. Thanks, Brenton. It’s great to be here. Tell me about your swimming journey.

Where did it start for you? Yeah, so I grew up in Brazil and I had some swimming lessons when I was about 20-something. And I came to Australia about 20 years ago, but during COVID, my health went really downhill. And I have a really good friend who is a very strong swimmer and she was always telling me, Sandra, you should just go swimming and we should go into the ocean, et cetera. And to me, that was also so scary. One day, she lives in Melbourne. One day, she came up to Brisbane where I live and we went to a very small pool, a 25-meter pool. And I couldn’t even swim the 25 meters without having to stop halfway. Like, I would be completely breathless. But she was so positive and she was like, you should really try. You have great potential, et cetera. And that’s associated with my health. I decided, okay, I will try. And she gave me a target. She gave me the target of going and doing the port sea swim, which is one and a half kilometers.

You are assisted by the current, which is great. But for me, that felt like an enormous gap from not being able to swim the 25 meters to get to the one and a half kilometers. So that was November, 2022, more or less. I kept swimming pretty much three to four times per week, every week, and trying to increase my distance every week. And by the time, like the week before going to port sea, I could pretty much swim that kilometer and a half, like to a good degree, to a good somewhat, a good pace. And what I experienced during that time and with that swim was that, wow, how amazing you, you know, I was in a place where I didn’t know where to go. And I managed to create a plan to get there, to do the swim, and now I didn’t go. So I don’t stop and I don’t go back in my health. So since then, I kept just signing up to pretty much every swim that I could, but I also recognized that I needed some guidance because my swimming technique wasn’t there,

even though every time I saw my friends, and since then we created like a swimming group. So every time we see each other, we go swimming together and we help each other with the drills, et cetera, et cetera. So a couple of things that I thought was the internet, you always find information on YouTube and definitely swimming videos were actually really good and really amazing to help structuring a pathway to improve that technique. Very early actually, I did get your swim faster in five days program and I did do quite a lot of those drills for a long time. I did realize that in isolation day, it was just too quick and it is effective. Like I did manage to improve my times at that time, but I did sign up also to the eight week program which was extremely helpful at reducing my times. I did do a little bit of a timeline, so I’m looking at my other screen, but so yes, when I did my first critical swim speed test

at the pool, it was about like two minutes 37 seconds and I’m pretty sure then after that, so that did improve like after doing the eight week program that did improve to like two minutes 28 ish. So that was like a pretty good jump and I did do like one of your clinics at that time too, which was great also to troubleshoot and identify more or less where I needed to go to start with.

As I looked for more things to or more opportunities to improve my swimming and experience like open water swimming, I did join swimming holiday in Fiji and that was probably like the most challenging point and it was like a turnaround point in terms of being able to hold the same time for a long time for like long periods because we would be doing like five kilometers a day over two swims in the day. And that was the point when I realized I needed like some more coaching or like something that would be more consistent that I could get some advice in more regularly and it was one of the people with one of the persons that you interviewed from the Swing Mastery team that made me connect with them because they are local, they are here in Brisbane and so I started getting being coached by one of their team, which is a completely different experience because what the way that your clinics work and the way that most of the advice

that is on the internet works, it breaks down the stroke into smaller parts and then so you deconstruct your stroke and you put it back together once you could improve certain areas and the Swing Mastery team, they made me go back to square one. They made me go back to, okay, like what’s your body position? How do you like get more, the more string line as possible and how do you float better to be able to swim?

The way that they approach it was very, I guess, challenging to start with, but I could relate to most of the advice that I received, but it was, it feels like you are going back, it feels like you are, okay, I need to revisit this. It feels like it’s something I have done before. It feels like it’s something that I was good already at, but it’s obviously, it wasn’t because as they help me correct my body position, that improved or it made me go back to the same times that I was before I started the coaching sessions.

An important aspect, my husband also joins me on the swim. So he’s actually extremely, he’s much better than I am, maybe because he’s bigger, maybe because he’s more muscular, maybe because he grew up swimming. I don’t know, but he was the one who suggested to join your clinic earlier this year in April here in Brisbane. And whilst I was like, okay, I’ll join you, it’s fine. I don’t think it’s a problem that I mixed the both styles again, but it was very interesting because I think there were a lot of aspects that we covered at your clinic that is the work complementary to what I was going through with the Swing Mastery team. And it actually by doing the drills that we worked with and to correct certain issues that I was, that we identified like I was crossing my arm and I think my head position was also a little bit off. So that together with another cue that my coach gave me, my time improved like ridiculously.

So I was swimming at like a pace of like two minutes nine and then it went down to like a minute 48, two minutes 46. And what was that cue? Sorry? What was the focus? What was the cue? Well, the cue, so the cue was to swim like a monster. I don’t know if it’s nothing that you heard before. Like a monster? Yes. And what did that, what did that mean to you? It meant to me, first it meant freedom from a set position. I love on reflection and looking back when I started trying to think what is swimming like a monster. I felt that I was too rigid in my position and I was not, I was not allowing enough space to go wide with my stroke. And that space meant that I was patting the cat or that lack of space immense that I was patting the cat. So I couldn’t get a catch that would create the amount of energy that I need to, to move the water. And also it was creating difficulties with a high elbow. So it’s, yeah, it was very, it was very interesting.

And do you, so when you made that change to the way you were swimming, swimming like a monster, just a bit more, more freedom and not trying to be as contained and tight and narrow. Do you feel like that, that big increase in speed came primarily from holding more water because it allowed you to be a bit wider with the arms and the elbows to get more out of it? I think that’s one components. But I think also I think I float better because when you are, when your arm goes wider, you, you kind of cover more surface and that makes you more stable. So I think I was more unstable before. I got the notes from your last analysis here because the thing that made me reach out was you sent a message maybe a couple of weeks after the session. So about 100 paces improved by five to seven seconds. And then you sent another one not long after saying it’s increased by another five to seven seconds. So all right, let’s, let’s chat and see like what caused it

because I think a lot of people find themselves stuck at a bit of a plateau and they’re like, I don’t know what to do. And so one of the notes there was your right arm was swinging across the head rather than swinging forwards. And as you said, it was crossing over and that just leads to a lot of instability. Whereas when it’s in line with the shoulder, it allows that stability and streamline and length. And then also with your catch, it was like we saw that your elbows were quite narrow in that catch position. So yeah, laying them to go out wide with the elbow out wide. It’s just got so much more surface area for that high elbow catch. And the one of the key points to try and get across at clinics is in terms of getting that, that catch position, like the only way to do it is to have the upper arm and the elbow wide. It’s got to be out to the side because otherwise you’re just going to have that surface area that you’re

working with. And like it’s a kind of a simple way to think of a high elbow catch. So yeah, that’s a big increase in speed. And I think and you might be able to relate to this. It’s like when we think so much about our stroke and our technique, we tend to get this tension and rigidity and how that we move and hold the body. But you think of, you kind of want to be like water. You want to just flow. You want to be able to move kind of with it. Obviously there needs to be some form of tension and control there, but it’s only just enough to keep our shape and our form. And so we have to step out of that thinking side of our brain into that feeling side of our brain and just allow that sort of rhythm and flow to come into the stroke, which can be a bit of a challenge. And it sounds like you will be able to make that transition to that kind of stroke with that cue, which is an interesting one. I haven’t heard that before and it’s yeah, it’s a

good one to like just to try for people who feel like they just get contained by trying to get everything perfectly and not allowing themselves the freedom to move freely in the water. Yeah, and that would be me, you know, a little bit because of my own nature. I want to do things perfectly. So it does it does an interesting way to like release. Okay. I can actually just go crazy and swim like a monster. But yeah, I think something else that was interesting is that so when I reached out and I shared my this achievement with you and then I think there was a time or a whole week that it was pretty cold here and I didn’t go swimming that week and then I had the compounded with like going out to Victoria for work and like I was in original Victoria where it’s sometimes you don’t have a pool everywhere you go. So I think I had like a period of a week or so a little bit more that I didn’t do any swimming. And then next time I was in the pool, I

couldn’t repeat those times, which was quite frustrating and and quite annoying and it did make me feel a little bit like, oh, you know, was this was I making this up? Was I seeing too much on this or was my watch looking, you know, bad and funny or so? I had a couple of days that I was pretty frustrated and annoyed at myself. But after going back to the pool on a regular basis and then like going back to the basis. So doing the drills slowly and with intention and swimming following the cues. I managed to go back to that same time in a short period of time. So it’s obvious that it was not my physical condition that was stopping it. It was like my lack of technique, I guess, or the refinement of the technique that was impeding at you in those times.

Yeah, it’s such a good, good point to to make there is like, for example, I was working with a triathlete yesterday, a pro triathlete and in when was it in March made a good couple of seconds in improvement in his stroke and was feeling great. And then it’s just kind of going back to where it was prior to that. And so I had to look at his stroke and it’s like, well, unless it’s something say physical, like maybe having an off day, which always happens, but if you have a look at the stroke, well, it’s because those things that he had improved and changed that just that come back into the stroke. It’s like that. You got a rubber band and least initially that rubber band wants to go back to its original shape, its original movements. And so we just have to stretch it enough so that we change the shape of it for good. So we just went through basically the same process that we did in the previous session, working on just better body line, slightly better

kick and then just making sure that you had a catch in the pool where they had to be. And I think from here, we’ll start to see those times come back down, but it’s not, it might feel like a mystery. It’s like, why is this happened? But if we just look at it objectively, it’s like, well, the stroke has just gone back to what it was doing. So going through a bit of a drill progression and sequence and yeah, not, not trying to, this is a little bit, we were, we were, I guess, but like, if you, if you’re like looking at that and you’re frustrated, it’s like, man, I should be faster than this. I think it’s always good just to kind of accept, right? Well, this is, this is happening, right? Great. What can we do? What can we do to improve it? And just, I think that not trying to force things, not being like that frame of mind can make a big difference to how you swim. And when I look at the best swims I’ve done, there’s often been the combination of a bit

of maybe excitement or nerves if it’s a race, but it’s been combined with actually being quite like quite relaxed and sort of in a good mood. And I think that plays a big part in the way that we swim. Have you felt or experienced that with your own swimming? So I’m here like trying to think about, it’s, it’s an interesting, I think the ocean swim, it’s always, it always gives me a little bit of a buzz before you get in. But I did have quite some quite good swims that, yes, because I was not trying to do anything or because I got used to the, you know, like you get in and you get out and the ocean was not looking too, too rough. And I did have situations where it, yeah, sometimes the ocean was also looking rough and I would be like, okay, I’ll just go in and have fun and try to work with what nature is giving me. Yeah. But it definitely, it does,

it, I think it’s, the state of mind is also a matter of training it to like, you can like train yourself to think, okay, I’m getting to this pathway now and you are looking at it the long term, you know, when I started back in October 2022, I didn’t think I would be at this point talking to you about how much I have progressed. So, yeah. Yeah, it’s, and that’s the thing. I was sometimes, it’s like watching a, if you say the parent of a kid, you watch a kid grow up and they like, because the change is so slow, you kind of like, well, they haven’t really changed, but you look at a photo from three years ago and like, oh my God, so different. And the same thing with our technique and our stroke is, and just our abilities is if we do take that look back from a couple of years, yeah, it can be quite, quite surprising and quite a big improvement. And a few as well. So what role has there, has seeing yourself swim in that kind of video

and video analysis made for you in understanding your stroke and then how to change it? I think it’s, it’s pretty helpful because we don’t see ourselves unless, you know, unless we have a mirror at the bottom of the pool or, so it’s, it definitely assisted in identifying, okay, this is, this is what’s going on and perhaps that’s the reason why, why there is water going into my mouth. I don’t know why, but yeah, it’s, I think it’s, it’s pretty good and definitely I should be doing it more often to be able to have that record because this is also very good to look at, you know, a movie that you have done in this month versus one that was three years ago. It also shows that trajectory and how, how much flatter you look in the water. And yeah, it’s a, it’s a good indicator. Yeah. And one thing that you mentioned earlier also was just about where like going back to basics when, you know, worked with another coach going back to basics

and it’s just like, well, I thought I’d mastered this. I thought I’d like already got this, but it’s, and I do find that we’ve had the occasional persons go through our eight week course and they might do week one or week two and they’re like, now this course is too basic for me. But, you know, as you progress on, it gets more to the more, I guess complicated parts of the stroke. But if you haven’t got those foundations in place, then you’re going to find that you hit a plateau much earlier. And so getting those foundation in place and you get your breathing right. And often even swimmers who are very like, very quick swimmers like a, let’s say like a 130 average swimmer. Quite often there’ll be things that they can do with their head position or their breathing or their, like for example, I had a pro triathlete, like she was one of the best in the world a couple of years ago. She, she came to me and said, I’m struggling with my breathing.

I just find like it throws my entire timing of my stroke out and it just doesn’t feel comfortable. Everything else feels pretty good, but it’s just like my breathing is not right. And so what we, we just found that her head was too deep. So when she was turning, it was quite late to get the breath and then she was almost like underwater trying to get the breath and she was, her body was through the rest of the stroke. And so what we had to do is just have her head a little bit higher so she could turn quickly, get the breath and then it just flowed beautifully with the rest of her stroke and immediately she was like, yeah, that’s, that’s kind of what I needed. So, you know, it’s like basics like head position and breathing. No one’s above it, you know, it was like there’s always things we can do no matter how fast or how long we’ve done it. But I think it does take, I’m not being humble, but it’s like, yeah, it’s just knowing

that that’s actually the path forward. Yeah, I think there is nothing wrong in like revisiting those drills and those techniques like as you progress your swimming pathway for me is not a career, it’s just a pathway. But because when you, when you did that for the first time, you were a different person and you had a different technique and what you, what your body learned from that experience at a point in time is going to be different from how you do it now. So give you an example at the last clinic that attended with you, you did get us to, to be in a little bowl and then to stretch in the pool and then try to find what is their floating point where, you know, my, my heels and my bum in the top of my head are like on the surface of the water. And that was such a simple way to learn how to position yourself and it’s something that I haven’t done like that before but it was, for me, it was revealing. I was like, oh yeah, so I need to push a little bit more

this way or that way. So I think it’s part of, it’s part of the journey and revisiting those basics. It’s actually going to add value.

Yeah, absolutely. That’s one of my, when I do, when we do run clinics it’s their floating drills. So we go ball float, we go into what we call a Y float trying to be horizontal in the water. When people find that point of balance or even if they have say like muscular legs and heavier legs and they can’t actually float, they still get a pretty good sense of how you need to hold yourself in the water to basically, you know, float horizontally. And it’s that, I think like that discovery and that feeling that allows them to then just relax when they’re swimming and then when they’re relaxed, they, when they hold that position, they’re going to be horizontal when they swim and they don’t need to work so hard to keep their hips and their legs up which is a pretty common thing. And from there, everything else just seems to flow and what we like to do after that point is we do an easy 25 and an easy 50 of freestyle and try to make it as effortless as you possibly can.

And a lot of people after that, they’re just like, well, okay, like swimming can be super easy. I can, like, I don’t have to try. I can still move through the water at a moderate pace if I learn how to balance in the water. And I think that’s like, that’s the unlock for a lot of people where they’re like, oh, it’s always just felt like it’s hard work and it’s my heart rates up. But once you get that, then I think that’s a great starting point to progress from there. Yeah. Yeah. Are there any other cues or things that you’ve learned along the way that’s helped you with your own swimming? I think another one that was pretty good was that you are like a shish kebab as you are swimming. So the center of your body is actually almost always in the same position and it’s the sides that will move that was helpful. At some point, I decided, I don’t know, I think under the advice from my coach and I think quite a lot of the people

that you interviewed also support that you should be able to breathe to both sides. So I will naturally just breathe to the right-hand side but I was like, okay, I’ll try my left and keep going. And it was terrible in the beginning. I’ll be drinking water like all the way but also I realized that I would have like a little bit of a twist to the left-hand side that I couldn’t just move my head. So that cue was really helpful where to just keeping the center of my body fixed pretty much or like stable and then just try to move the heads. So I wouldn’t drink water and I wouldn’t be twisting. That’s a good one. I think like that thought of it like a skewer head still you want to rotate around the spine. That’s it. Yeah, we want to rotate on that axis and that’s whereas I think without, if you don’t know that it’s like, well, you think you have to move through the water like this, like this lizard or something but we always just want to rotate around the, around the spine

and then learning to breathe to the other side that’s probably going to suck. It’s not, you’re going to have a period of time where it sucks and you’re drinking water and you might have to stop halfway down but there’s always, well, that’s one because it’s, you know, haven’t practiced it and two, there’s probably some things that you’re doing that are causing that side to be more difficult as well and yeah, you mentioned one of those like you need to make sure that you rotate the right amount. If you rotate too far, you’re probably going to tip over and your arm will drop too flat. It’s quite awkward to get the breath and then with the arm in front as well a lot of people do crossover with it and then it’s very difficult to kind of balance with that arm and so we want to get them on the train tracks and just make sure they keep that arm out in front long enough to give them support and balance as well rather than pulling straight through.

So yeah, it’s such a good skill to do and it’s such a common question that I get at clinics and online is like, do I need to breathe both sides and how do I, how do I fix it? And like my answer is that’s always it’s totally fine to breathe every two strokes absolutely fine in a race to breathe the one side depending on the distance but you should be able to breathe the other side and in training you should mix it up. Maybe 30% of your session should be to the opposite side. Again, whether that’s every two or you’re doing some threes like it doesn’t matter too much but it is a skill worth developing and yeah, it gives you options in the open water as well. Yeah, especially not open water when you have like those days that it feels like you’re swimming in a washing machine. So it’s, it has been helpful. It was a long journey to like get it somewhat working effectively but yeah, I, in the beginning I was like going down the pool breathing to one side

and then coming back breathing to the other side but I started doing like just changing it every 100 meters and that’s because I felt that my brain was getting too confused because when I’m breathing to the right I need to focus on one thing and when I need to breathe to the left I needed to focus on a different thing and that felt overwhelming after a couple of, you know, after 500 meters you’re like, nah, I can’t do this. So I felt, I feel that if I go and I do 100 meters like solid to the same side it’s much better. Yeah, gotcha, gotcha. That’s good. Yeah, like I’m, I like to go, we’re in a 50 meter pool so I’ll go often 25 left side, 25 right side which just for me feels quite, quite balanced but yeah, everyone’s different and like the breathing pattern can change as well. It might, you can do like a two, three, two, three, two, three like play around with it, see what works best and going forward is there,

what are you working on at the moment? What’s your, what’s your focus here and what are you, what are you sort of feeling and experience with the thing you’re focused on? Yeah, so I’ll continue a little bit further with the master swimming. I will be off to Heron Island this coming week for a swim clinic with the swim mastery team. So I’m sure they are going to be adding more things for me to think about but there is still like on my last coach session is still I can lengthen a little bit further. So it’s still trying to be as flat as possible and try to move effortlessly. I think the master swimming also revealed that I can extend the rotation to my hips which was something that was not easy before or I tried before but it felt awkward because if you have the arm too close to your body it’s hard to achieve the rotation to that level. So it’s something that I’m excited to try a little bit further and see how it feels.

Sounds good. Well, thank you for being on the podcast sharing Bivvy your journey and how you’ve gone from 230 to 240 down to somewhere in the 140s. So that’s a great improvement over a couple of years and I’ve seen a lot of people continue to get better and I mean, particularly if you didn’t swim as a kid necessarily like there’s still so much more that you can get out of the stroke in terms of speed and it’s not always about speed as you know it’s just the fitness and social aspect of it there’s so much more than just speed but it’s always a good challenge to see what you can do to get better and it’s a bit like a video game I think in a way where you can just look into sort of level up your stroke and your character. So yeah, I appreciate you working with us over the last couple of years and yeah, looking forward to seeing how you go in the next 12 to 24 months. Oh, thank you and I appreciate your support too.

I think it’s so hard as like an older person not around that old but like as a, you know not a teenager or not a child to find someone that actually is happy to work with you and get you along the journey. So definitely same as my friend that’s, you know inspired me to start this. You were part of the journey that got me here. Thank you. Thank you very much. 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

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Join Adam Wilkie as he embarks on a year-long challenge to honor his Olympic champion father by attempting to match his legendary 2:15 record in the 200-meter breaststroke. Despite limited swimming experience, Adam has quit his job to train full-time, proving that dedication can make the impossible possible. Discover his intense training regimen, the emotional journey of honoring a legacy, and the mindset driving his pursuit of greatness. Follow Adam’s inspiring story on Instagram at Wilkie Swims and support his fundraising for SportsAid at inmyfatherslane.com. What’s your 215?

00:12 The Challenge Begins: Honoring a Legacy

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InMyFathersLane.com

SportsAid UK

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

to go all in for a year, basically.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The post He Quit His Job & Is Now Chasing His Father’s World Record appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

Stuck at the same swimming speed? In this episode, we break down how to smash through your training plateaus by fixing the “bottlenecks” in your technique. Drawing from 19 years of coaching experience, we share the exact step-by-step checklist to optimize your stroke: reducing drag through perfect head and body position, mastering breath control to avoid fatigue, and engaging your lats for a more powerful, effortless pull. Stop just training harder—learn how to swim smarter and finally unlock your next breakthrough.

00:00 Why swimmers plateau and the concept of stroke “bottlenecks.”

01:11 The simple formula for speed: Reducing drag vs. increasing propulsion.

01:35 Step 1: Head position, posture, and why you need an “open chest.”

03:22 The “Iceberg” rule: Balancing head weight to keep your hips up.

04:05 Posture secrets: How correct body position lets the water support you.

05:08 Step 2: Breath regulation and how improper exhaling causes CO2 buildup.

06:51 Step 3: Catch and pull mechanics (using the catch as a setup, not for power).

08:17 Mastering gradual stroke acceleration instead of pulling too hard early.

08:58 Muscle activation: Engaging your lats and triceps to prevent shoulder injuries.

10:01 Using video analysis to find your bottleneck and build a 3-to-6-month plan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

www.effortlesswimming.com

The post This Video Will Find You Right Before Your Next Breakthrough appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

In this episode, I sit down with Grant to share what I’ve learned over nearly two decades of coaching and racing in both pool and open water environments, including qualifying for Open Water Nationals as an adult.

We explore the gap between pool-perfect technique and what actually works in real race conditions like chop, fatigue, and contact. I break down why swimmers often struggle when they try to carry over overly rigid pool habits into open water, and how that leads to overthinking and breakdown under pressure.

We also get into how I now approach stroke rate, breathing, sighting, and recovery in a more adaptable way, depending on conditions.

A key theme is simplicity, learning to stay relaxed, trust feel, and avoid constantly chasing technical changes. We also cover what truly transfers from pool to open water, and why consistency and mindset matter more than constant technique overhauls.

03:51 – Why pool technique doesn’t always translate to open water

https://rephonic.com/podcasts/the-science-and-art-of-open-water-swimming

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

what had changed internally compared to younger self?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I think as you get older

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

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

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

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

I think the habits are

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The post The Science and Art of Open Water Swimming appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

I recently joined the That Triathlon Show Podcast with Mikael Eriksson for a deep dive into freestyle technique and what I call the “swim technique hierarchy of needs.”

In this conversation, we break down the key elements of efficient swimming including breathing, body position, rotation, catch mechanics, timing, and how to adapt your stroke for open-water racing. We also discuss some of the most common mistakes triathletes make in the water, how to fix them, and why many swimmers plateau even when their technique looks good on video.

We also get into topics like kick timing, front-quadrant swimming, stroke rate, drills that actually transfer to faster swimming, open-water skills, and what it really takes to become a strong swimmer as an adult-onset triathlete.

If you’re looking to swim faster, feel more efficient in the water, or better understand how to prioritize your technique work, this episode is packed with practical coaching insights you can apply right away.

03:37 A hierarchy of needs for freestyle technique

07:50 Building the frame of the body

12:20 Kick tempo and stroke rate

17:05 Training the Kick for racing options

18:40 Rotation

23:30 The catch and pull

29:32 YMCA Drill

35:10 Timing and creative freedom in racing

38:20 Speed versus stroke appearance

41:15 The importance of purposeful drills

46:05 Capturing your technique on camera

48:00 The nature of swim talent

52:46 Swim frequency and distance

57:00 Structuring swim workouts

59:01 Intensity distribution across swim sessions

01:03:30 Open water versus pool technique

01:07:20 The importance of drafting

01:08:36 Drafting and preparation for open water

01:15:50 – Racing bravely in the swim

01:18:42 -The Goggles

01:23:50 – Choosing the right lens for conditions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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