Effortless Swimming

My guest today is Dan Atkins who is the Queensland National Performance Center Head Coach in Australia and has been working with top-end athletes. We will talk about some of Dan’s coaching philosophies and strategies and how they can help everyday swimmers and triathletes.

01:01 Swimming To Triathlon Coaching

Follow Dan on Instagram: @danatk08

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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 back to the Effortless Swimming podcast. My guest today is Dan Atkins, and Dan is the Queensland National Performance Centre head coach in Australia, working with a range of elite triathletes with the top end performers. So today on the podcast, I want to get into some of the strategies that Dan uses with those athletes, but how us as everyday swimmers and triathletes can use those as well, and to also dig into your coaching philosophy and strategy, because I love to learn from people who are working with some of those top end athletes and to get the knowledge and understand what people like yourself, Dan, are thinking about and are doing to help their triathletes. So Dan, welcome to the podcast. Thanks, Brenton, real honour actually to be here.

So I really appreciate the invite. Hopefully your listeners will get something out of me. You come from a swim coaching background, then transition to triathlon coaching. So what was that transition like for you? Because I understood when I started working with triathletes that I’ve got to take a different approach here, that they don’t move the same way. They’re not training for the same events. So I’ve got to change my strategy. So how was that for you when you made that transition? Geez, maybe I should start coaching. And that for me was 2003 when I was sort of questioning what I was doing as an athlete. I was pretty tired and I had a long time in the sports. And I’ve always been fascinated by swimming. As a young kid, I grew up in around some amazing squads and met some amazing swimmers in their prime, like Duncan Armstrong and people like that. That I just sort of were warm to as a young developing athlete

and had spent some time listening to Ian Finlay and Laurie Lawrence and the real legends of Australian swimming. And I guess for me, swimming was always fascinating for me as a triathlete. It was the most enjoyable part of it, which sounds crazy to think you’re going up and down a black line as opposed to being out on the bike or the run. But there was something about the pool for me. Once I got that inadverted commerce field for the water right, it was always my most enjoyable aspect of triathlon. So when I decided to start coaching, there was an opportunity to sort of take over a pool in my area in Brisbane and start doing some learn to swim. So I wasn’t necessarily looking at being a squad swim coach. I was just looking to actually make some money and there was a good little business that was a learn to swim business that I sort of threw myself into. But it’s interesting now after 20 years and since I was doing that

that some of my philosophies as a learn to swim coach is sort of transferred to being an elite triathlon coach. So I think just some of the language I use and the simplicity in how to deliver sessions has sort of rolled from teaching three-year-olds how to swim to teaching 25, 26-year-old elite Olympians. So it’s sort of like taking a full circle, I guess. The kids at the real test aren’t they, those young ones? You have to explain it in such a clear and simple way for them to be able to understand it. But you have to work that out. And when you first start working with those younger kids, like personally, I over-explained things to them. I was using words that weren’t simple enough. And so you really have to try and find the simplest solution to it or the simplest way to explain it. So I totally understand why that is. And is there anything that comes to mind? What are some of those phrases or ways that you continue to teach to the elite guys?

Yeah, I found that seeing the three-year-olds how to swim was obviously it was actually very rewarding. And the life skill like swimming is something that I’ll hold really dear and close to me as a coach. And I learned early on that kids are all they do is learn and crave knowledge or they just, they need to be somewhat like in teaching, they’re just being taught everything from how to eat, how to put their clothes on to go to school to even how to swim. So I found I was creating nursery rhymes through some stroke development. So to be, if I was trying to work on their exit of stroke, it’d be done past here, put it over your ear. So when we talk about getting our bicep going past our ears for a good length to keep good head position, I’d say put your thumb past here to go past your thigh to put it past your ear. So things like that, thumb past here, go over your ear, thumb past here, go over your ear. So I came up with things like that

that I know that they could, they could repetitively be saying that in their head as they’re sort of swimming up and down the pool whether it’s with a kickboard to start with or, and I found that was a real good tool to teach adults how to swim as well. So when I sort of morphed into creating adult swim, swim squads and age group swim squads for people that generally their swim was their weakest. I found myself saying the same nursery rhymes or writing it on the whiteboard for them to sort of continually keep checking and challenging themselves with. So, and I got really good leverage out of that with the kids most definitely and certainly got them in really good body positions from the get go with that sort of stuff. Yeah, it’s, I’m a big fan of using cues or trigger words to condense all these different actions of movements into one simple word or phrase because it’s, you just, especially in the moment, I mean swimming, the good thing about swimming

is you’ve got so many opportunities to practice the right thing. Whereas let’s say it’s cricket for example, well, you’re not going to get as many opportunities but it does just allow you to think about what you’re doing in a much simpler way especially when you’re in the moment. So whether it’s nursery rhymes or cues, trigger words, it’s like, it’s things that you add to your tool belt as a coach, isn’t it? As you develop and learn and grow. Yeah, absolutely. And as I said earlier, it’s stuff I still use now with the elite swimmers or elite triathletes. And I’m sure they hear my silly voice in their head when they’re swimming up and down the pool doing some drills or whatever it might be. And I try to keep things, as I mentioned, really simple in the sense that we don’t over-complicate drills. I don’t over-complicate sculling or anything like that to get that catch happening or that feel for the water. I think it’s really important to sort of, you know,

for a better term, dumb it down. And the less complicated I make it, the more responsive I find the athletes will be. And the more engaged I’ll be, as I said, my guys now are swimming 30 or training 30 hours a week including physio and recovery and gym and pilates or yoga or whatever it might be that over-complicate my language. And it’s just another mental strain on them, on already fatigue, body and mind. So it’s critical that the language I use is really easy to sort of load on top of everything else. How many swims a week are most of those guys doing? The top end guys would do between five and six times a week in the water. We have a variety of levels of swimmers in our group and different to when I was swim coaching to triathlon and I’m sure a lot of you listeners will understand this is that in swimming, you could get a lot of swim mechanics looking similar. I’m very fortunate that I swim beside elite swim squads.

I apparently swim beside Ash Callis and his sprint group at the moment. So you sort of see them do their drills and skills and it’s jaw drop. It’s just immaculate, their length of stroke and their high arm recovery. And then I look at my triathlon battlers and not a single one of our athletes look the same. And even when I go overseas and you have opportunities to put eyes on other international triathletes and the best in the world, whether it’s Norwegians or the Americans or whatever and nobody looks the same. And a lot of that’s got to do with the stress they put through their body or the shortening of the levers that we need in swimming through running and riding. Remember, Michael Bowles said to me, get them into a position that you think they’re capable of and then just train them hard aerobically. So there’s no sort of… And he said this with all due respect to age group slash triathletes because he’s trained some really good triathletes

in his day as well, but him being one of my early mentors and he was the one that told me to go from swimming to triathlon, he told me to pull my head in. So that was… What was that, do you think? Well, where… Well, I’d like to think because I was a threat to him but he probably won’t say that but we had sort of… I coached Georgia and interestingly, I realized early on that she would be a breaststroker because she couldn’t run and we would do a lot of dry land exercises or cross country running or whatever just to get their conditioning up because they were young kids and or we do obstacle courses or which looks very much like CrossFit these days. We would do that when they were 10, 11 just to keep the enjoyment there and Georgia and actually another swimmer in my Maddie Groves who went onto a silver medal at 216 Rio for the 200 fly that nearer them could run. So they had really loose hips. So I realized that their freestyle wasn’t going to be great

and once we transferred them into other strokes and Maddie clearly turned into a fantastic world-class butterfly and Georgia into a breaststroker. So the natural evolution for those two was to go from our school into Michael Bowles School at then with St. Peter’s which is now Boxel obviously then and his assistant coaches athlete actually someone I coached Maxine Sear as well. So there’s this connection that I’ve had back in the day with them and I actually asked Bowley for a job. I said, give me a job. I don’t care what it pays. I just want to work for you. And he basically took me by the shoulders and said, you’re a triathlete. What are you doing? There’s no one doing what you’re doing in triathlon. You should go and make it in triathlon. So I took that on board and away I went, I guess. What was the move then for you? Did you start a club? Did you just take on some triathletes? What was the next transition? Well, it was interesting

because it wasn’t necessary. It just sort of morphed into it because as I said earlier, I like to condition the athletes on land as well at young ages. I like to give them some lots of strength and conditioning around dry land. But also we were doing things like obstacle courses and setting up mini crossfit section things using the jungle gym down at the playground and then I had some of my mates who were elite triathletes turning up and I remember a Wednesday night was always a threshold session for us in the pool and the triathletes would be on their stationary bikes doing the 10-200 but on the bike. So they would sort of start when they start and stop when the first person stops. So they might be coming in on 2.30 and having 30 seconds rest leaving on three minutes and going again. So there was a real inquisitiveness from some of the younger swimmers and they sort of morphed into triathlon going on a bit bored with their swimming stuff.

Can we maybe ride a bike? And I sort of just started a junior program just out of boredom and keeping athletes in the swim club because I had a job to do for the swim club to keep people in the pool. And from there I was able to negotiate with the swim club that I set up a triathlon club as well. And the great thing for the swim club was is that they kept athletes through high school in the amateur swim clubs when normally they would leave primary school and go off into the wide world of high school or GPS systems or whatever and never come back to the amateur swim club. So we had a really good retention system going on where we would turn up to swim carnivals with over-aged swimmers in 19, 20-year-old swimming for us who were also doing triathlon on the side. So yeah, it sort of just naturally happened and then I applied to the AIS scholarship role for triathlon. And once I got that I sort of went head and arms into triathlon, I guess.

And what do you like about triathlon coaching? What is it that appeals to you? This podcast is brought to you by Form Goggles. Form empowers swimmers at every level to reach their goals whether they want to get stronger, faster, swim further or be more efficient. Get lap by lap motivation with real-time metrics and workout instructions right in your goggles and Form’s recently released Form Plans which included progressive series of workouts to help you achieve your fitness, skills or triathlon goals. You can follow along with the plan and your weekly swims will be automatically synced to your goggles. So you’ll swim through your workouts with real-time metrics and workout instructions all in your goggles. So it’s like having a coach right there with you. And I’ve had to look through these training plans and I think they are excellent for people who want to train for certain triathlons or reach certain fitness goals.

It will build on each week and a really good way to progressively build up your fitness. So if you’d like to follow along with some plans to help you reach your specific swimming goals then check out Form Goggles at formswim.com forward slash effortless and this will give you $15 off your purchase of Form Goggles. So formswim.com forward slash effortless to get your pair of Form Goggles. The one thing that I really like is obviously it’s been my lifelong sport. Started it as a 14-year-old and sort of dabbled in it while I was playing rugby league or swimming and I just love the complexities of it. It is a very challenging sport. I always joke with Ash Callas of how easy swimming is compared to triathlon to manage but I know how hard swimming is obviously but it’s my sport and it is very difficult sport to get right and it’s only getting harder by the day, the minute especially in Australia. So guess it’s just, I don’t know

it’s just an addiction I think that I can’t get rid of and thankfully I’m always searching for things to improve my level of coaching and those around me as well. So yeah, it’s just always been there and hard to let go of. I’d love to come back to swimming one day though, I really would. But there’s just so much more to think about isn’t there with triathlon and so many more things that can go wrong in a race. Things that the athlete needs to pack and prepare for and there’s a lot of moving pieces. And I mean, I look at what the some of the age group swim coaches have got to do and especially those guys who are like Dean Boxall or Ash Callas like even that, I look at that and go for that. There’s a lot of planning involved there. A lot of thought that goes into each session and the structure of the year and you’ve got these comps and for me and like I don’t I coached a master’s club for about eight years and so it’s quite different than an age group club.

And I just always sort of looked at that and I thought that’s not my strength. I don’t think I could, I think I could do well but it’s not what I’m most driven to do. It’s working on the technical side with people who perhaps didn’t grow up swimming. So I just sort of went with my strength that way. But yeah, there’s just so much to think about and so you must have a lot going through your mind every week, every day. You’ve got a lot of travel as well. We’re talking before like you just returned from South Korea with travel as well. So how do you try to manage all of those things that must be going through your mind? I fudge my way through it most times. No, I don’t think I’m a good bullshitter to put it bluntly. I think there’s a lot of knowledge in my head that after all these years of whether it was competing or training with some of the… I was the best training partner on the planet in certain periods of times I feel

because I would do anything and everything and went up and beyond for the athletes I worked with. And I worked with some of the best athletes, mainly females and I was their training partner for a long time. And I found myself just always thinking one step ahead. I always thought about well, where to next? What else? Whether we got through a session and I was thinking how could I improve that the next time? I like the athletes thinking it looks easy and as a calmness in the way I deliver sessions that a former dietician of mine said I’m like a duck. He said on top I look really calm but my legs underneath the water are going at 100 revolutions a minute. And I sort of… I like that analogy because if I’m forward facing to the athletes they need to see calmness and a patience and I relayed back I’m a Queenslander through and through and they say we’ve got two heads up here and all that sort of stuff and I’m okay with that

because I think that it helps bring the intensity of the athletes persona come down. So they can sort of come in and be a little bit calm about what they’re about to do to themselves or what’s about to be presented to them. So there’s a lot of organization going on behind the scenes and probably more than there ever has been not only in the prepedness of the body sort of area but also there’s such a massive space in the mental wellbeing space at the moment and how to care for athletes and it’s really consuming at the moment on how to get that right and it’s something that I’m incredibly invested into because the last thing I want is for an athlete to lead the sport and feel like they haven’t achieved anything. I want them to walk away and feel like they can walk into a job interview and be proud of what they’ve achieved as an athlete and that can carry through into everyday business or life. So that’s incredibly important for me

and that takes probably more time and effort to get right. The actual human interaction than it does to preparing a training session as such. I think that’s the easy part now. Yeah, and what does that look like? Is it teaching them or talking about life skills and all these other things that they’re developing as an athlete even if they don’t get a podium even if they don’t achieve this or that reinforcing that they are actually and learning these really important life skills? Yeah, it’s a conversation that comes up a lot. The athletes I work with, most of them have been lifetime performance athletes whether it’s coming across from other sports whether it be surf or running or swimming or whatever. So they’re so ingrained into a high level of sport that they’re still all really good to learn. I probably challenge them on the listening part. I want them to actually listen to how they’re feeling and listen to how they’re responding.

And so there’s some certainly some conversations you had with athletes about how to go into a job interview or how to carry yourself in the media or how to be professional with your equipment is staying on top of the latest goggles or the latest tires or pressures and stuff like that. So again, it’s just sort of simple conversations regularly that keep you connected with them. I think that’s incredibly important and always checking and challenging what they’re bringing through the pool gate or bringing to the bike session or bringing to the track or the gym and it’s all about their attitude. And for me, that starts with me. If they see me being positive and standing tall and proudly wearing the uniform day in day out representing our country then hopefully that feeds off into them. So I think it starts with how I carry myself. I sort of see myself as in the trenches with them and I know they know I’ve been through it

as well as an athlete. So there’s sort of that level of respect there and that’s why I like to continually look after myself too because if I’m in a terrible shit space well, that’s only going to feed off into them and I’m asking them to do things that I could never do and they’re just doing it and it’s quite extraordinary to be on a journey with an athlete that can swim consistently 6400 pace for a repetitive 2100s. That’s quite a thrill to see and they’re a triathlete. So it’s a privilege and I always sort of slap myself around and remind myself of that as well that this is actually a privileged position. It’s not a given. I don’t know where that’s come from but I’m a fan of my athletes. I think is probably the best way to describe it and yeah, I really love that part of it. I did some filming with Kim Alburton who trains with Dean Boxer a couple of weeks ago and just and a similar thing happened when I filmed Dan Smith

who’s up on the Gold Coast when he was training for the Tokyo Olympics. Watching those guys swim. It’s just something. Yeah, you just rarely see it. Yeah, but when you’re in the situation where you’re seeing that day to day it can become the norm. It’s like, well, this is how most people swim or it’s not that outstanding but when you yeah, when you’re working with people who might have only been swimming for a year like I do and then you see someone who’s swimming at that level in person. It’s just it’s magic to watch. So yeah, coming from the outside you can really like appreciate it but I get it when you’re in when you’re in the thick of things and you’re seeing that day in, day out it’s easy to not appreciate just how amazing these athletes are. Yeah. Yeah, and you do you have I often have and I’ve got an open book policy that anyone can come and see what we do because the taxpayers pay my salary and the taxpayers pay for my program.

So it’s the community that owned my program and love I’m a bit of a showoff. I feel like I was only talking to our Gen 32 coach today Dan about the fact that I find myself getting distracted because I just want to show off what we’ve got and who we are because people sort of feel like you’re sort of untouchable sometimes in these programs and the level at what they’re doing. It is normal for us and you’re sort of looking at them going oh yeah, they’re doing the same thing they did last week. So that’s great but you’ll get someone from the outside come in and go I can’t believe how good they’re going and you go Oh, okay, that’s just so you do have to catch yourself with that and as I said, I’m forever sort of reminding myself of the privilege position I’m in and I honestly say that and it’s not a day that goes past I don’t feel proud to pull on the green and gold and Australia, which is what I do. You mentioned about the athlete

well-being being a big part of what’s changed in the last couple of years. What are some of those other things that from a coaching perspective that you’ve had to take on board that you’ve learned that’s kept things really interesting for you as a coach that’s kept it new and vibrant and exciting to be able to focus on something different and just expand your knowledge base. What are some of those things? Well, the world continually evolves and there’s always someone out there coming up with something new and revolutionary, I guess. So I am a student of the sport. I love talking swimming. I’m fascinated by the way in the which the world is sort of progressing with times and fascinated with what’s happening in swimming right now with some of the times happening in the Asian countries. I’ll leave it at that and sort of I’m sort of going into the mind of those coaches that are competing against that going I wonder what they’re thinking right now

because for me, I’m always thinking what can I do to keep making what I do exciting and technology in the pool as far as we’ve never used heart rate in the pool and we’ve done the fingers on the pulse and stuff like that. But I want to sort of challenge what we’re doing not probably to say lactate test or anything like that but probably more to conserve energy. So I guess I’m looking at it from a different angle that if we’ve swam we’ll whip chances are we’ve got to ride and run the same day or gym or whatever. So I want to look at how do we conserve energy efficiently by using technology and I’ve got a great staff that work with me and I’m continually challenging them on different pieces of technology whether it be power on the bike whether it be aerodynamics on the bike or different carbon plated shoes or in the pool whether we need to do more tetherwork or whether we need to do more heart rate variability and controlled heart rate and stuff like that.

So that’s keeping me young as a coach like I’m 47 but I don’t feel it. I feel like I’m still 25 and just starting out. So it’s that sort of stuff. And if you don’t keep looking at that you’re going to fall behind because someone younger more vibrant more eyes wide open is going to come and sort of maybe take that away from me. So I’m still trying to be the very best I can at all times and keep putting things forward to the athletes to go what do you reckon we might give this a crack? So there’s so much out there that you can get lost in it but we’re sort of honing in on some things leading into Paris that I think could get really good leverage and some good changes out of the athlete. And I mean that the heart rate thing with I think it’s like polar does a that’s one for something that you can wear in your cap or on the arm and just in real time to the coach, right? And you just see what your different athletes are at.

Like that’s reasonably new, isn’t it? Like to be able to track all of that in the coach’s side. Yeah, I had I was training at Bonn Uni not long ago and spoke to Chris Mooney in depth about what he was doing in that space. And the great thing about good coaches is they love telling you what they’re doing and and Chris is very very gracious with his time and sort of telling me what he was doing and my physiologist spoke to his physiologist who has a triathlon background as well. So just that networking was so valuable to me to sort of get a sense of what what are the best swimmers doing, what are the best swim coaches or some of the best swim coaches working on and how can I utilize that? And this the heart rate sort of stuff with polar I’m really inquisitive around that and not necessarily to make them go harder but probably control their levels of fatigue better because I think triathlon now is more about how do we control fatigue in certain periods of time?

So when I say go, they really have the ability to go and they’re not hamstrung by high levels of fatigue. So that’s a real new frontier for us that maybe not for a lot of people but I think in triathlon it’s something that may be overlooked but unfortunate that I’ve got the time and sort of I’m willing to invest sort of money into that to try and see if we can get some gains out of it. No, it’s not when you’re going for the going for the Aussies. So that’s better be good to see what yeah what comes of that in the next six to six to 12 months. And I mean just a basic one there is I always see swimmers going too hard in there like aerobic systems and I was so I was guilty of this as a kid. It’s like every session is a chance to just push myself and work hard and without the understanding of well there you actually do need to sit at this lower heart rate for these sessions. That’s what the they’re there for but I always just want to push.

So like just that being aware of sort of what zone you’re in there for those easier sessions it can also just like you know exactly whether you’re not you’re pushing too hard because I always have to catch myself in those easier sessions to not be going too hard because you’re feeling good and then you see the times I thought I could go a little bit quicker and quicker and then you then you 180 heart rates. It’s one thing I don’t sort of necessarily have to challenge athletes on it. The elite level is trying to go harder. It’s probably the other side of it. We need to go easier and it’s probably not a day or a session goes past or I’m like I just want you to go a little bit more conservatively here because we’ve got to get ready for this or and that accumulation of sub 70% of workload is sort of critical for us to be able to get high levels of work done. Otherwise the body breaks and when they’re young and they’re

very highly capable from a physiological standpoint. I use the car analogy that they’ve got an engine of a formula one car but a chassis of like a V-dub beetle and we’ve got to match the two up that you can’t push the V-dub beetle to 12,000 revs because it’s going to break but you need to constantly fuel the formula one car to get the best out of that as well. There’s a very fine balance but as I said, it’s not often do I have to tell them to go harder. They’ll just naturally do that. Yeah, I can imagine. I saw her with the open water summer Shane Van Rwendoel. She’s from the Netherlands. She probably like the top top two or top three in the world for open water summers and she posted her heart rate data from the 10k at Ocean man championships the other weekend and it was average heart rate was like 190 for the 10k swim. It was like super high. There’s why I’m right up there the whole time just like yeah, red lining which is incredible to keep your heart

and I mean your athletes are probably around that as well but just amazing to see that someone able to sustain that for that period of time. Yeah, it’s interesting that the technology now as opposed an athlete in the early 90s through the early 2000s and there were so many athletes from those areas that have had heart conditions and talking to a lot of high level cardiac doctors and stuff like that. I was sort of really inquisitive around why was there a high level of athletes in our sport have tachycardia problems or and some of the conversation of heart is that they were just spending too long in that threshold or above heart rate zone that they were just never allowing the heart rate to recover and it’s almost burnt out the heart. So heart experience firsthand and seeing that with athletes where one day they’re killing it next day they can’t you feel their heart pulse and it’s there’s no beat between it.

It’s just a flat line of just a drone noise and it’s really scary to think that’s how hard we used to push because we just thought harder is better where I can honestly say the athletes I coach now do less intensity than I ever did yet they’re so much quicker than they’ve ever been and they’re so much more competent. There’s so much I mean technology’s gotten better in a way with running most definitely but and cycling swimming arguably hasn’t improved that much in a truck on sense but they’re getting out and running harder up to the bike so I’ve always said that our swimming must be getting better if our transitioning is quicker because the conditioning is so much better now than it ever has been. Yeah it’s it’s interesting with that isn’t it like I know a few athletes who have been through that too with the heart issues. So hopefully with this smarter approach to training that it doesn’t happen as as often because there’s

certainly been a change in that approach over the last 20 years hasn’t there from just harder the better the more you can do the better to actually being a bit smarter about things which thank God like as in for the athlete and for the athlete I think it’s just like it’s got to be such a better better situation to be in because I so training with a guy buddy Portia in Melbourne used to train with his squad and another guy willow and he was a butterfly on the Australian team and he was saying they do sets of like he was like 10 400s of butterfly and just like and they’d be doing that pretty consistently it’d be ten fours of fly one week and then it would be like 2200s next week and just go oh my God how do your shoulders survive that how does your heart survive that so yeah they train hard for sure but there’s a much better approach to it now absolutely and it was almost like the coaching was a real dictatorship back then as well.

It was do as I say and when now it’s I sort of sit back and reflect on my coaching strategies or philosophies now and I’m probably more like a soccer manager I was always I’m always been intrigued as to why head coaches of soccer teams are called managers not head coaches and yet I’m called a head coach but I find myself managing more than I’m sure on coming up with session plans and stuff like that but there’s a real athlete ownership and accountability on what they do now and you sort of giving them options into how to deliver sessions as opposed to the way I was coached was just go hard to go home go hard to full over sort of thing go hard to I’ve ended up in hospital after races and things like that not remembering the last part of the run and I’ll just look at that and that was a badge of honor where now as I said they’re going that much faster and they’ve got time at the end of the race to actually enjoy it so and it’s not that

they’re not going hard it’s just their physical ability is so much better so I like the way that coaching is going as a whole and I think the athlete wellness space has got a big part of that we’ve got to be so conscious in the way we deliver sessions and look after athletes because there’s such a history of bad athlete management throughout the years and I certainly don’t want to be a part of that I want to be remembered for being in only a good guy first and a decent coach second yeah there’s so many other options for people out there too especially if you look at age group swimmers or triathletes at 12, 13, 14 there’s so many different sports they could do there’s video games there’s so many different options so to have that approach of it’s my way or the highway and just be a real hard-ass coach most of them are not going to enjoy that they’re not going to stick around and they’re going to say to mum dad I don’t really want to do this anymore

so you’ve got to have a better approach and and build a good culture with the within the team and it starts from the top and yeah yeah and you’re responsible for that as the coach or the manager so it’s yeah you just can’t can’t have that approach these days as people will give up and then quit and you won’t have any athletes happy to come along anymore. No, I was away 14 weeks this year in Europe with my athletes and just got back from another two and a half weeks with them and I live on the road with them longer than they certainly do at home and there’s no way I would survive with the athletes unless I found a common ground with them I don’t have to live in their pockets or be at every meal with them or anything like that but certainly being on the road in Europe with them for three and a half four months is a very long time to be with someone and you’ve all got to get along and understand everyone’s characteristics

and I’ve got to be variable to that and once upon a time used to be no they’ve got to work in with who I am as a coach when now it’s I’ve got to work in with who they are as athletes because they’re all you’re all weird and wonderful in different months. Yeah, that’s what had to care on the podcast and she mentioned that like she was away for world champs and to fire so she just scraped into the 800 freestyle final at world champs this year it was and so she and she had a shocking swim and she was like oh that felt rubbish I don’t know if I want to do the final and then said to her I’ll just scratch go and just scratch it and knowing that she’s going to go no like stuff you are all right fine I’ll get in there and then he knew what to say to fire up yeah and then she said well yeah there’s others from as weird after sort of pump up their ties and be like no you’ve got this come on you can do it you just need to know the right approach for

your for the athlete that you’re working with and while it’s certainly more it’s more time consuming it takes a lot more brain space to be able to know how to work with all the athletes individually that’s what makes the difference between a generic program and coach to one who’s who’s really getting results from all the different athletes. Yeah and that’s what Dean used there’s called psychological reciprocity so it’s something that psychologists don’t like to use the reverse psychology method but I’ve certainly used it before and that’s because it comes from a place of knowing your athletes really well and it’s a great trick but you can only do it if they really trust you so and I certainly do it as well and you know the athletes are go hard told just so sort of thing and in the back of your mind you’re going to get the best out of you so good on you but it’s a good coaching skill. Absolutely. Dan this has been a lot of fun I appreciate

you being on the podcast and sharing your experience over the last number of years what’s coming up for you and what are you excited about over the next six to twelve. Well obviously the main goal for the next two years now is Paris we’ve got a couple of athletes that well on track for that and the next month is we have a world title in Abu Dhabi at the end of this month and then we’re really excited to have this has been the longest year of our my career anyway this with the extension of the season and things getting back on track post covid so I’m just looking forward to having a good break I’ve already put plans in place for the next three January February March for a really big building block and I’ve got a great team around me that is new and enthusiastic I’m looking to get the best out of them so that they’re the things I’m looking forward to and and hopefully fronting up the Paris with some really well prepared athletes and

giving you a good shot that’s what I’m looking forward to fantastic. Well best of luck in the lead up to towards Paris I’ll be watching Keenley and I hope the guys have the fitness and skills to do really well there as an Aussie I’m rooting for you so thanks so much for being on the podcast and I appreciate it. Thanks Brenton had a great time mate. 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 Inside High Performance Triathlon with Dan Atkins appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

My guest today is Josh Salley who is based in Wales and has recently completed his first half Ironman. Josh and I have been working for the last couple of months doing some stroke analysis and technique coaching. Tune in to this episode now!

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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 Josh Sallie. You’re based in Wales, Josh. And we’ve worked together for the last couple of months doing some stroke analysis and technique coaching. And you’ve recently completed your first half Iron Man and had a remarkable swim for how long you’ve been swimming for, which is less than a year. So I wanted to talk to you today on the podcast and just ask a couple of questions about how you’ve managed to do a 30 minute half Iron Man swim. And you’ve really been swimming since about February because I think a lot of people will be able to take away a lot from that. So welcome to the podcast, Josh. Thank you. Thanks for having me on. Tell me about how it all started. What got you into triathlons and what

made you decide to take the leap into swimming as well because you couldn’t swim much more than 25 meters when you first started? No. I think pretty common when people start triathlon is the difficult aspect is the swim for loads of different reasons. But mainly obviously technique, fitness. I decided to do triathlon. I was doing other sports at the time. Wasn’t really getting a kick out of them. And I had a few friends who were doing triathlon who I kind of watched from afar and watching on Instagram and things like that. And yeah, just really liked what they were doing. It looked like a tough sport. Enjoy running, enjoy cycling. I swam as a kid, just normal lessons with a teacher just so you can stay safe. But yeah, the actual thought of swimming those sorts of distances were just crazy for me to think. So yeah, I jumped in the pool. I knew the distance for the half was 1,900 meters. And I thought, well, I’m just going

to have a go at swimming 1,900 meters. Just see what happens. And I did do it. I covered it. I think it took me like two hours, but I did do it. I think it was like one hour, like 56 or something like that to be precise. It’s on my old Apple watch somewhere. And I was like, well, where’s the case? I had actually do the distance. So I thought, that’s fine. I’ll give a triathlon a go. Yeah, from there, jumped on YouTube. As I bet a lot of people do. You’re the big name on YouTube. Like your videos helped me immensely. And I’m sure 99.9% of people star there. So yeah, it was going through the videos. I can’t say I was any more confident of the do it. It did take time getting in the pool. And yeah, it just kind of took off from there, really. You must have improved fairly quickly because before you contacted me, you did an Olympic distance race. And I think your pace was a 145 from memory. So it’s like a pretty decent pace,

especially since it started swimming in February. So what was that progression like for you? Obviously your swim fitness improved a lot. Do you feel like mechanically or technically you got better as well in those first couple of months? Yeah, definitely. So in the beginning, I was focusing mainly on fitness, going more for distance because obviously in my head, I was just like, right, I need to cover this distance. The time to my race was fast approaching. I thought, you know, I really do need to be confident in covering this distance no matter what the time is. So that was my mindset. Like in hindsight, it probably wasn’t the best mindset to have. So I started focusing more on technique.

I did manage to get somebody to film me a couple of times. It was a bit difficult at the time because I didn’t really have the flexibility of filming all the time with people around me. So I took advantage of it where I could. So when I started watching the videos back, that’s when I saw, right, you know, I’m doing the distance but I can see why I’m not really doing it as good as I could be or as efficiently as I could be. So that’s when I started focusing on technique. And to be honest, I had the race planned and when the date was set, I was probably in the pool sometimes five days a week just making sure I can get the technique dialed. So I invested in, you know, snorkel, fins, like all simple stuff, like pull buoy and just kind of broke the stroke down. And, you know, that first swim was also my first open water swim. So it was in a lake and that was scary to say the least. Like I’ve come from a background of,

it’s like a runny joke in my family where like me and my younger brother, we’ve always been scared of water, open water. And what were you if he’s the classic one sharks, like sharks, sharks, it went in the lake.

So yeah, just what’s in there, the unknown, but to be honest, the more, I never thought I’d say this but the more you do open water swimming, the more you get the wetsuit on, the more you feel comfortable in that environment. It just, your fear just kind of goes away and take it from me who, you know, I had a really deep fear of open water. And the first time I swam at it, like it does help being around other people but more often than not, you can’t really see what’s in front of you anyway in there, which kind of helps but the more you practice it, the more you get used to it. I actually prefer it to the pool to be quite honest. If someone says, you know, do you want to jump in? Do you want to go to the sea and go for a swim? I’d be like, yeah, sure, go for a swim. So you’ve turned it from a fear where you’re probably dreading getting in the water to now looking forward to getting into the open water. What’s the mindset now when you do go to the open water?

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So if you’d like to follow along with some plans to help you reach your specific swimming goals, then check out Form Goggles at formswim.com forward slash effortless. And this will give you $15 off your purchase of Form Goggles. So formswim.com forward slash effortless to get your pair of Form Goggles. So the mindset when I go to the open water is what in terms of the fear aspect or the swimming aspect? They’re both. So what do you think about now? Is there still any fear there when you’re thinking about getting in or is it you’re looking at it like, okay, I’ve got, I’m going to do 1500 meters today. This is what I’m going to focus on. Like, how’s that approach changed for you now? So I say it’s a bit of both at first. I’m quite lucky where we’ve got an open water kind of facility here, which is about a two minute drive from my house. So they section up for a part of the water and age group triathletes and people like that.

We’ll go there, we’ll pay a fee and we’ll jump in. And it’s all kind of martial where you went to. So I really took advantage of that. So I was open water swimming twice a week in season all the way up to my races. And I just got more comfortable like that. But yeah, don’t get me wrong. Like I’m not saying I jump in there on my own for like an hour and be totally comfortable. Like if someone touches your leg, I think we’ve all got that kind of twitch where you go. But just getting in the mindset where you treat it like a training session, you turn, you’re ready to go. Look at it as a training session and just say, right, I’m going to swim for an hour. Well, this is what I did anyway. I’ll just say, right, I’d swim for an hour, turn the watch on, swim, jump out, see what I did. And that’s what I was doing twice a week. It was more of like an endurance swim, getting used to the water, practicing, sighting, being around other people.

That’s important for me anyway. Especially during my first swim, because my first open water swim was my first race. And yeah, being like shoulder to shoulder with someone, you guess someone who might give you a little pull or something like that. You need to get used to that and seeing gaps and going for gaps or knowing when to hand back or getting on someone’s feet is all something you literally can practice it and you can learn it. There’s quite a few takeaways from that is you put the work in at the start to be swimming consistently. And if you’re swimming five times a week, like that’s you’re going to get results that way compared to someone who’s swimming maybe once or twice. It really fast tracks the progress. And you also get start to develop that feel for the water and you begin to get that fitness and strength that’s required as well. And then being able to practice in the open water with the sighting been comfortable with others around you.

Like all those things just make such a difference. And to just throw yourself in the mix and getting there and do it is, I would think large part of why you’ve had a good amount of success in such a short period of time like you just got in there and did it. When we started working together, there was one of the main things initially was you’re quite wide with your catch like your arms, your hands are going out quite wide through there. Working on the bringing them in a little bit. Is that something that you were aware of before starting? And is it something that you had thought much about? I would say that is the main thing that you pinpointed straight away and has made the biggest difference to my stroke was when it’s what I was doing. I was hanging out at the front and kind of sweeping out. Wasn’t I like sweeping out and coming in like I’ve got the videos on my phone. And then you gave me the YMCA drill and the doggy scoop drill and doing that.

And I think once I had that, take it going from that to like that is when I really developed my feel for the war. I understood what people meant with feel for the war because I was getting a hold of the war instead of coming out and trying to muscle my way through like I had no lactic acid in my shoulders anymore. Yeah, it just completely transformed my stroke. When you do go out wide like you were doing, it tends to be more through front of the shoulders rather than being through the lats and more through the back because just because the position of the hand there. So that was a, you know, it’s just, it makes such a difference once you get it because you can cover, you know, you can get another 10, 20, even up to like 30% more distance per stroke when you follow the right path with the hand. And so that’s like, you did a really good job to change that. And I think occasionally, and maybe you sent a video like two times later

and yeah, occasionally it was drifting out a bit but it often happens when you’re making changes like some strokes, you’ll get it. Some strokes would be like how they were before but the more you practice it, the more consistent you get with those better strokes. So it’s like, it’s so much better. Same with the rotation. Initially you were rotating a lot going, I can’t remember how much you were rotating to but I think it was maybe 60 or 70 degrees through the hips and shoulders. Like you’re doing more than what was required. And I think that was partly causing over, so the wide catch and pull as well. And so this is something that we focused on a bit is just rotating to 30 to 40 degrees and just dialing that down a little bit. How’s that change been for you? Was it something that you can gauge easily or you’re not sure when you’re doing the right amount of rotation? I see the rotation for me is, it’s been the hardest thing for me to try and fix.

And that’s when, that’s where the video has come in really handy because you feel like you’re doing something but you watch it back on video and you’re doing the complete opposite. Like that’s one thing I’ve learned with swimming is the most bizarre thing is that aspect. So the rotation is still something I need to fix and yes, it’s still something I’m working on but I think if I kind of break it down I’m finding using a pull buoy is helping just to eliminate, just to isolate the shoulders or my hips just to see where it stems from really. And I think it could also be balanced somewhere because it kind of throws the stroke off but then using the tools has helped me realize that because say I have fins on, I have a pull buoy on, then the rotation seems great from what I can see. So I think that’s when tools are important but yeah, most of my swim and I’m trying to not use tools unless it’s for a specific reason.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. The other thing that that was kind of leading to was a lower stroke rate than what would be ideal for you going forwards. And so I think it’s good to look at there, what’s the cause of these things happening, not the symptom. And if we look at, well, okay, stroke rates are a little bit too slow here while it’s probably for that over rotation because it just takes too much time to get back from one side to the other. So that looks like it’s coming up nicely. And then the other, I think factor there is with the kick and this is what we’re working a bit on now is just keeping the kick narrower and just tightening that up because when I, I did some filming with Kia Melvaton a couple of weeks ago who’s Australian Olympian and she, when I was watching her as I was filming her at her really comfortable pace, she’s like 112, 113 per 100. Her kick was like, it was tight. Yeah, but I mean, she swam since she was tiny

and has, you know, she’s got been swimming eight, nine times a week for many years. And when she was swimming easy, her kick was very narrow, very small, just very relaxed out the back. And then she brought it in a little bit more. The kick got a little bit bigger as she picked up the pace down towards like 102, 103 which is more her like 400 to sort of 800 pace. And, but the kick was still very narrow. And it’s something that I’m working with quite a few swimmers on is just have the kick be effective where it’s not slowing you down. And then when it’s in that tighter zone where it’s more behind your body line, it can really keep things more balanced and stable. And I think that’s probably got a little bit to do with that over rotation as well. Yeah, yeah, definitely. It’s funny because when I’m swimming, I can always, if I glance across to the other lanes I can always recognize a good swimmer or like the levels that people are at based on that kick

because you see someone who’s a really good swimmer. And I’m not really looking like they’re catching pull. I’m just looking at the kick and their kick is just miles better than everyone else. It’s like you can tell that they’re a really good swimmer. So that’s something I really wanna fix and something I’m working on. Yeah, but I find that when the kick is working in time with the rest of my body, I’m obviously so much faster. And I just feel like my body position is higher and everything just becomes more effortless. Whereas if the kick’s wrong or I’ve missed time in it or I’m kicking too much, then you can literally feel it putting the brakes on for me anyway. So yeah, and I’ve experimented. I’m sure the people have maybe done this because there’s thousands of videos I think on YouTube about kick, what’s best? Like two beat, four beat, six beat. And I’ve tried all sorts of different kicks and I think that’s a really important one to train

and like even me now, like I’m still not 100% on where my kick should be or could be. So it’s my main focus for the moment. It ties so much into the stroke and when it’s great, it really does amplify the rest of your stroke, I feel. I think most people should start with a six beat kick and then work it down from there. So if you’ve got just an easy and consistent six beat kick, then you can start to bring it down to a four beat if you want or a two beat from there. Often with a wetsuit, people will just resort to a two beat kick because you’re sitting so high in the water. But I think it’s great to start with that six beat kick and what’s worked really well for me, just having my kick be well timed with the stroke in a session is just doing at least a little, a couple of 25s or some 50s of pure kick as part of the warmup. So kicking on the side, sometimes the front and back and when you’re kicking side on, you’ve got even pressure in the up and down kick.

Whereas if you’re kicking just on your front, you’ve got more on the down and a little bit less on the up because you’re obviously kicking up towards the surface of the water, there’s a little bit less pressure there. So I think it’s good to be able to warm up the legs and get the kick going by doing a bit more side kick as part of the warmup. And what I’ve recommended to a lot of people is doing four 25s, fast kick, doing 25 on your front, 25 on your left, then 25 on your back, 25 on your right. So you’re working all those different directions and that tends to warm you up pretty well with the kick. And I find personally, for me, that makes a big difference. In the feedback I’ve got from people who have gone through week, what is it? Week seven of the eight week faster freestyle course which is about the kick timing and connection there. So connecting your catch and your down kick, getting that to go together.

It’s one of the most frustrating modules because it’s like, until you get it, it’s like, man, this is annoying. I can’t seem to get it. It feels awkward and I’m not swimming well. But then as soon as I get it, things click and it’s like, wow, okay, this feels so easy and I’m hitting these times without really needing to try for it. So as you mentioned, it’s one of those things that when you’ve got it, you know you’ve got it and your times reflect that because then everything’s working together and it takes a lot of the pressure off the shoulders and the arms because you’ve got that that synchronicity in the strike from the front end to the back end there. Yeah, definitely. And one way I found to feel it is if you put fins on and just do a really light kick with fins and then see how the catch and pull feels and it feels like, well, effortless. Like it is so easy. And it’s just because I imagine everything’s synchronized properly, you know,

like your body position is higher and that’s what I would, that’s my goal. That’s what I wanna get to for sure. Well, I mean, and I think I said in the last video for you that you’ve got a really nice stroke like your catch and your pull is looking really quite good. And so it’s just tightening the screws on a few different things. So it’s all working together, maybe then increasing the stroke rate a little bit after that. And that’s where I see you’re going sub 130 pace in your races consistently because you’ve got a lot of those things actually dialed in. So it’s exciting for me to work with someone like yourself who you’ve gotten to where you are just on your own with the determination and the work that you’ve done and then being able to work with you and help tighten those screws and look at where those opportunities are to continue to bring it down. I’m really looking forward to seeing how far we can push that.

So yeah, I think it’s exciting looking at what the next six, 12 months can contain for you because I think there’s some good opportunities there to really see what’s possible for you sometimes. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And yeah, I gotta say I’ve really enjoyed working with you like sending the videos across and getting the feedback. I’m lucky enough to be able to film myself whenever I want in the pool. So that definitely helps. But an absolute game changer is filming yourself and getting feedback or even filming yourself. What I used to do was film myself and watch your videos or compare it to other people or other videos and just be really honest with where you’re at really. And yeah, it’s just one of those things you just don’t know where you’re at until you can film it or you’ve got a coach on deck to see how you’re doing. But yeah, that’s how you get. No, I was just saying I’m really looking forward to the races to come for next season.

So obviously starting at a different position now as I was before. So yeah, hopefully I can, while I’m sure I can push it on further with your help. Yeah, and for those that are listening, people sometimes wonder, well, how can I record myself? If I’ve got a pool that’s gonna allow me to film, I don’t know how to do it. So what’s your setup for recording? So I use a GoPro and I’ve got one of those suction cup accessory mounts with the Gooseneck. So I’ll stick it on the side. It doesn’t always work, but you just got to be persistent with it. So just get it to stick on the side and then you can just bend the Gooseneck to be like above the war or under the war, different angles. And once that’s stuck, it’s rock solid. So it’s not moving. But just bought one of those tripods I hear. I heard you say on another podcast, you can put it at the bottom of the pool. Yeah, like a gorilla pod type thing. Yeah, so I’ve been wanting to get one

and under the body view of the stroke because I haven’t really done that yet. So I’m looking forward to doing that as well. Yeah, cool. It’s one of those things that, like you don’t need a GoPro. I think GoPro’s, they got the best quality. You can get a second hand one for fairly cheap if you don’t want to get a brand new one. There are some cheaper brands out there that the quality is fine for what most people would use it for. Kaiser Bass is I think another one that’s in the States off Amazon. They’re like 100, 150 bucks for an underwater camera. And then like the tripods or the suction cups, they’re not much, they’re $40, $50. And in terms of like value for what you’ll learn about your swimming, it’s hard to go past it. And I think sometimes there’s a reservation there for from people who like, I’d like to do it, but I really don’t want to know. Like it’s like, I don’t want to know. I don’t want to be like, I don’t feel like

it’s going to be. It’s scary. It’s scary, the first few. I’ve still got videos on my phone. It is crazy once you look back to where you first started, to where you are now. And that’s a good thing of getting the videos is you can just look back at it at any time really. So if you feel like you’re not progressing or you know, you feel like you had a rubbish swim, all you’ve got to do is look back at those old videos and you realize that, you know, you are progressing quite well. And yeah, it can be motivating. But yeah, it’s a powerful tool. I’ve heard elite pros, like some of the best swimmers in triathlon say on video, that they’ve picked up mistakes in their stroke or they thought they were swimming a certain way and then they watched it back and they weren’t. And for me, that just said it all really. I was surprised how little videoing or feedback that a lot of the pro triathletes actually get. And even with a lot of the top swimmers,

the top like half a percent, top 1%, do you have that? Especially if they’re with like one of the top five clubs in say Australia. But then below that, they get very little actual video of their stroke and because they just don’t have that set up and it can be a little bit time consuming for say a coach to do like to film all his athletes and that sort of thing. But yeah, if they can get it, it just makes a huge difference because I have filmed, yeah, I’ve filmed a lot of good swimmers and triathletes and often there’s one or two major things that if they’re able to turn that around in three or four months, they are gonna be a lot faster. And then you’ve got the smaller 1%, 2% things there. So there’s always opportunities and it’s not often I’ve come across anyone where there’s nothing that they could improve. So it’s, yeah, it’s just, it’s such a valuable thing to do. So Josh, I know it’s very early morning there

for you in Wales. So I appreciate you jumping on to the podcast to share how you’ve gotten to where you’re currently at. So I look forward to working with you over the next couple of months and maybe we’ll do an update podcast down the track and see what you can get down to. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And thanks again for having me on. And yeah, I just wanna say, you know, you just help countless of thousands of people, you know, just getting into swimming, triathlon and you are the man on YouTube. And I, you know, you might even surprise yourself how many people you help just make the first step to get into the water and do the swim in the triathlon. It really is valuable information. So yeah, just wanna say thanks for that. No, I appreciate that a lot. And it’s great to connect with someone like yourself who’s been able to do that. Because yeah, I know over COVID I didn’t like, you know, I just missed coaching people face to face.

There’s only so much you can get through doing it online. So it is nice to sort of see real people like yourself. So yeah, I appreciate you trusting me with the coaching and looking forward to the next couple of months. So yeah, thank you and all the best. Thank you. Cheers, Brian. 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 [Case study] 1:45 to 1:35/100m in a Half Ironman Swim with Josh Salley appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

My guest today is Frank Huisman. He’s a swim coach based in the Netherlands. Tune in to this episode to learn more about becoming a faster and more efficient swimmer.

01:08 Working With Kristian Blummenfelt

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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 Frank Huseman. He is a swim coach based in the Netherlands and you run TriExperience. You work with a lot of athletes similar to myself, that are adults, they’re triathletes and don’t necessarily come from a swimming background. And we originally got in contact with each other when I sent an email out about the EO swim better, which is the smart paddle device that measures the force and the direction of it. And you were asking some questions about it because you were using something similar. And when we did get on the call, we found out that you’ve done some work with Christian Blumenfeldt, who for those that are listening here, you got third in Kona on the weekend just gone.

And so I thought it’d be great to first of all jump in and see what were some of those insights that you got from working with Christian about his swimming. So first of all, welcome and then be great to get your insight into Christian Blumenfeldt’s stroke. Yeah. Thank you, Brent, for having me here on your podcast.

Yeah. Well, let me introduce myself a bit and the reason why I got to basically work with Christian for a bit. Basically, I am asked for the Boer wet suits on a regular basis as a swim coach to test and improve their wet suits because, you know, my background is swimming. I’m a swim coach and well, coincidentally, Alex the Boer, the founder of the Boer wet suits is a great friend of mine. What we did last year, we went to Bergen to meet up with Christian and Olive Alexander as coach to test Christian in his swimming and also to test his, how he is reacting on a different kind of support in wet suits. So we did all kinds of experiments on Christian, which was very fun with all kinds of neoprene accents in wet suits and test what the effect was of his swimming performance and his energy expenditure. Of course, we did this. The goal was to develop a wet suit for Christian, which was ideal to do and swim the sub seven project

in to get him into the fastest time for the swim, actually. So and basically what what I as a swim coach was surprised at Christian as a basically fairly good level, very good swim level for a triad lead. And if you’re speaking in terms of Olympic swimmers, of course, that is a different ballpark also in swim speed, of course, but also efficiency. The thing we found with Christian is that he was able to he is able to gain a basically a high power output or a high and a high cadence for a long time. And I think that’s also within the other disciplines cycling and and running is one of his sense as well. And that’s why he’s probably so good. Well, I can share some of the things we tested. We found that might give you some insights. So let me switch. That’d be good. And one of the things I remember you mentioning was he hasn’t and this was tested with a wetsuit on as well. So like the stroke can obviously change a bit there.

But one of the things that stood out was he hasn’t got a really he hasn’t got a long reach or glide time out the front. He was pretty quickly moving into the catch. Yeah. And one of the other things that I found interesting too is that you with these devices, you look at impulse time. And when I first heard that term, I would have all impulse here. I was like, what’s impulse time? But I guess the way that I would explain it and I’d like to get your take on it too is it’s essentially how long have you first of all got that contact with the water through your catch in your pool? And then what’s the overall? I guess if you look at the graph of when of the power, how much impulse have you got? How much and does that sort of fill up the space there? I’ve obviously butchered that description, but that’s how I would sort of see impulse time. Could you talk a bit about how you view impulse so that someone who may not come from a swimming background

and hasn’t spent the last 20, 20 years of their career coaching, how could you explain it in simple terms? Yeah, basically, scientifically, the impulse is the force that you apply, multiplied by the time that you apply the force. That’s the impulse you create. And to be able to swim fast, the only way it’s very simple basically swimming, it’s very simple because it’s all science. So you already move forward if you put pressure or force with your basically as your propulsion surfaces, which is the hand and the underarm in the backward direction, right? So any other movement, you can debate about that. What if you need to have a deep catch or a shallow catch or, you know, and well, we used to basically almost still school also in making an aspirin because we want to push water that was not moving and therefore create a bigger force. But, you know, any other movement that you make that is not in the backward direction is a loss.

So because that will, the only way that you’re moving forward is to press water in the backwards direction with us basically as much force and in the longer path. So that’s funny and I recently saw a documentary. There was also Dutch guy who, a Dutch Olympic athlete who was getting into the techniques of Usain Bolt while he is running that fast. And basically, this is also scientific. The speed is determined by two major things. Speed is the product of stroke rate and stroke length. And any other element is impacting those two. So, you know, if you’re having a poor body position, right, and so you have more drag in the water that has an immediate impact on your stroke length. So your travel distance per stroke is impacted negatively, right, because else. So if you put away that, if you don’t change anything about your swimming technique, but you put away that, you pull away that, you take away that drag or minimize that drag, for example,

by putting on a wetsuit or a buoyancy short or whatever, putting the body up higher, then suddenly you see that the travel distance per stroke is increased by 25, 30% of so. And then the stroke rate. The only thing with swimming is, and it’s that stroke rate and stroke length, they also impact each other until a certain extent. And it depends on what kind of level swimmer you are. You can increase your stroke rate quite a bit without decreasing in stroke length. If you have, if you’re a starter swimmer and you start to really increase stroke rate, then the stroke length, because there’s, well, the technique is maybe not that good. Body position is not that good. And the body is not trained that well. The stroke length will decrease immediately. It’s a really good way to keep things simple, isn’t it? If you just like, oh, how can I get faster? It’s like, well, you can reduce drag to increase your stroke length

or you can increase your propulsion so it’s better catch and pull and better connection with the body. And then the other factor is stroke rate. So there’s a number of things in there. There’s heaps of things in there that you can do to find ways to swim faster. And usually the first place that I would start would be reducing drag. That’s because you could have the best catch in the world. You could have the highest stroke rate. But if your hips and legs are dropping down, you’re not going to get, you’re not going to be going fast. So there’s so many things that you can do. And I think for a lot of people, it’s just understanding what those things are and then maybe which order should you go about them? Yeah. Yeah, well, basically the biggest trait is for a swimmer to when you start to get into the swim sport and starting to learn the freestyle, the main goal is, and you probably need a couple of years for this,

is to get your swim efficient. Because if you take a look at, for example, swimming is, we call it like a cycle sport, basically. You know, you do a movement and it’s completed. Basically it repeats all the time, all the time. And cycling is the same and running is the same. So if you want to become a efficient runner or cyclist, we know that you first have to work on cadence. And if you know you can move in a certain cadence, you have an efficient movement pattern, then you can start putting on an extra gear and then you go faster or make your step a little bit longer and then you go faster. Swimming is because we’re moving in water, which is 775 times the density of air. It’s incredible, 775 the density of air. So if you go on a time trial bike and you cycle 40K an hour, that speed is very important that you have like a good aerodynamic position, right? Because if you get up, it immediately impacts speed.

So we’re not swimming 40K an hour, but if you’re never a swimmer, you swim 4K an hour. So that’s 10 times slower. But you do that in a medium, which is water, which is 775 times more dense. So in swimming, the aqua dynamics is, if you’re either by 10 aqua dynamics is about 80, 75 to 80 times more important than aerodynamics in cycling. So if you want to be a good swimmer, the first thing you have to work on is keep your drag low, your body drag. So and also every movement that you make will amplify. If you do it in the incorrect way, it will amplify. It will immediately increase your body resistance. So if you’re swimming and you’re breathing and you’re losing your balance and one feet comes out and it comes out of your body alignment, then immediately that kick on the side is immediately causing a decrease of speed because it’s causing drag. So that’s why it’s so important. So if you want to become a good swimmer,

you first have to work on stroke length only. And if you were able to keep a good stroke length, a healthy stroke length for about, let’s say 1 or 2K continuously, then start to work on speed. That’s my basically fishing and experience. Yeah, I agree as well because you, but the one thing I’d note there for those that are listening is that we’re talking about stroke length. You know, you want to reduce your stroke count, but not to the point where you’re overreaching and over rotating and doing these really big long strokes where you’re just going too far with it. The way that I would often explain to someone is if you were to do a 50 meter swim and you were to try and have your lower stroke count without stopping and pausing, you were just swimming at a normal rhythm and tempo. That’s what we want to try to maintain as you go for those longer distances, not where you’re just trying to overreach and you have your,

let’s say your stroke count is normally 40, you don’t want to be going down to 34 where you’re actually going much lower because you’re over gliding. So that’s just one thing to note when you’re going for it. And with reducing drag, so the thing that I come across and I’d be interested to hear if you hear this too, head position is obviously important and you want to make sure you’ve got the right head position, but a lot of the beginners swimmers that I come across think it’s the only thing that’s impacting their body position. So in order to get their hips up and their legs up, they will bury their head in the water. They’ll go very deep and they’ll be swimming with it too far under the water at times. So it’s just one factor that impacts body position. What are some of those other things that you say is impacting body position? One thing if what I see most head position of course is one thing and it has to do with breathing

and what I, with the most of beginners swimmers, they want to, you know, get out of the water to breathe. So you want to get up. So if you pull your head up, your hips sink and your legs are attached to the hips. So they sink as well. So that causes immediately, it moves you out of the horizontal position and it causes drag. And you can also correct it. Of course, put your head in the water, put your complete head on the water, but the surface of the skull is quite big as well. So it also causes frontal drag. And also if you put your head down, there’s a strain on the back which enables or prevents you to move and to stretch out freely because if there’s too much tension there, it will hold you back. So that’s also a cause. But the muscle, I think the most common thing I see is a knot in hips. So a lift slightly bent hip. And if you have a slightly bent hip, then that will mean that the kick will be more from the knee.

If the kick is coming from the knee, then the effect of the kick is, well, I always say you need to have an active kick because if you don’t kick, the legs are too low basically and causing drag. But the kick is very difficult because there is like it’s working in a positive way or it’s working in a negative way. So you do it correctly and it benefits you. But if you do it incorrectly, it’s your causing drag.

And you can work with kick techniques and do all kinds of exercises. But the first thing people need, and especially if I have runners, if I have runners who want to learn to freestyle, they have a very hard time in keeping their hips straight.

What exercises would you have them do to start to train that and to get familiar with the movement and the way they need to hold their body, their core and their hips to be kicking effectively?

Well, good exercises. I’ll put them a land exercise. I do supermans. I call them the swimmer supermans because it’s not the original supermans. But if you I lie them on the back on a mat besides the pool and then lift your feet and your hands up five centimeters and then your whole body. Basically the hips are the lowest point. If the hips, if you’re lying in the water like this and the hips are the lowest points then your body position is very good. And that’s basically a good base. It doesn’t mean that you have to be that all the time. But there should be this tension. And there’s one trick I’ll learn. This is like also a little bit aqua dynamics. If the body position has this surface, there’s tension on this surface, then the body will float. If the tension is on the backward, then the body will sink. So you need to have the tension on the in the freestyle on the front side of the body. So the chest and the belt.

So in that way, the hips should be the lowest point or and you wouldn’t see that if you see experience swimmer. You wouldn’t catch that immediately because of course the body, you know, they’re so well trained and they’re moving quickly. You don’t see that but for beginner swimmer that I think one of the biggest tips is getting you don’t have to look like a banana in the water. But the tension should be on that side. Then you will float and from that body position start a kick with a straight leg and a loose ankle. Then your kick will come from the hips. It doesn’t feel like that. And you may have a slightly bent knee kicking downwards. Only you should have a straight leg in the upward movement. For those that are listening, you’re showing that position with your hand and the correct way there is thinking about like you talked about a banana almost like a dish or a plate that sort of will rise up on the edges there. Holding your body that way

will allow you to essentially float a bit better. And I remember when we had our Hawaii camp a couple of years ago, the coach I had with me at Gary Haring was getting the swimmers to practice floating and if you are trying to float so you face down the water and you’re trying to float with your hands below your body and your legs below your body it’s not going to happen for you. As soon as you try and lift your hands above your head and your legs above your hips and torso that’s when you’re actually able to float which is what you’re talking about there which is an interesting way of thinking about it. It’s quite good because obviously a lot of people do bend too much at their hips and their waist because they’re not used to holding their body that way. It’s not something that they would be doing in any other activity probably. So it’s an interesting concept. I like it. Yeah. I guess I have some nice picture. It’s a nice footage of a swimmer.

It’s doing in a slow-mo. It’s an Olympic swimmer. It’s Ferry Weisman. He’s Olympic gold medalist on the 10K Open 1 Swimming Rio. A very exceptional swimmer because he’s a long distance swimmer but he used to have a national record on the 400 short course as well. So he’s quite fast on the mid-distances and also in the marathon here. The 10K is very good as well. And his straight as a basically his strength is as a long distance swimmer that he has still a very active kick. So by far he doesn’t have a passive kick and it usually said or debated that a triad lead or a long distance swimmer should minimize the energy minimize the energy and the activity of the legs because that’s also, you know, it’s tiring. You have to run and you have to cycle afterwards. But if you perform the kick in the right way it doesn’t cost that much energy. Not at all. But it has a fair positive fusion to the complete stroke. So a good kick

and a good timed kick is basically supporting the glide phase in the supporting the body roll basically the surplus in the stroke but also if you’re really able to bring that into practice you can basically when I say the least the parts of the body which are on the least resistance you can use those to drive your tempo. Maybe you’ve heard of the running arms so a model runner that is, you know, getting into the last part of the race last 10K he really has to activate the arms to get, you know, the legs are tiring they want to slow down to get the legs driving. It was a nice thing when Elliot Kipchok did his first try to get on the sub two in Monza he was in the last two rounds and he was on the edge of barely making it or not and Schoeswatz was next to him cycling says, okay, use your arms, active you know, keep your arms active because your cadence is dropping so he activated arms and he could be able he was able to keep his cadence high

the same thing with swimming if you’re a competent swimmer you can basically steer your stroke rate or manage your stroke rate of yours and also the length of your stroke by increasing and decreasing the frequency of the kick so you can even switch you can even switch for a long distance swimmer I always teach them, okay you basically if you try to have a six beat kick but there’s also sprinters and they decouple the kick they can do 10 kicks or 12 in stroke cycle

so you can also do four but that means that there is basically somewhere a disturbance if you have a four, a two beat is also because you know, we are you know, we move in a way left arm, right foot right arm, left foot you know, that’s how we are programmed as humans so you run in that way and you swim in that way as well if you want to be efficient and controlled Can you talk a bit about the 10 and 12 beat kick you’re saying that some distance swimmers will use that to for part of the swim to let their arms rest a bit more or what are you referring to there? I don’t quite fully understand that side of it No, if you took it, if you for example, if you analyse a the 50 meter sprint the 50 freestyle of the last Olympics and you slow down the movements there see how many kicks those guys are making into one arm stroke an arm cycle, it’s more than six, right? Right So for a long distance swimmer I think that the kick should not be a

the kick should be there basically there’s three reasons why you have kick the first reason is get your body alignment right so if your feet are up if your feet are up then the complete resistance of the body is low right, so that’s the first thing second reason is coordination so if you want to move in a human way left, right, right, left you should be having a controlled kick rhythm, right so if you don’t have that it will disturb your stroke if you have that it will make the stroke easier and more controllable, so it’s more natural and the third one that is propulsion and I was working in I’ve been working in swim lab in 2013 in Eindhoven in Holland we weren’t able to test it but for Olympic sprinters we did some drag measurements and active drag measurements and we estimated that the contribution of the Olympic sprinter which by far has them the biggest effort in in the kick of all swimmers basically the contribution of the kick

in proportion basically the speed is maximum 15% so for those guys 85% is arms if you take a look at long distance swimmer with an active kick the contribution of the kick in speed it’s less than 4% so 96% is arms but if you don’t use the legs then your stroke doesn’t coordinate well and your legs will sink and it will cause drag so you have to use it this podcast is brought to you by form goggles form empowers swimmers at every level to reach their goals whether they want to get stronger faster swim further or be more efficient get lap by lap motivation with real time metrics and workout instructions right in your goggles and forms recently released form plans which included progressive series of workouts to help you achieve your fitness skills or triathlon goals you can follow along with the plan and your weekly swims will be automatically synced to your goggles so you’ll swim through your workouts with real time metrics

and workout instructions all in your goggles so it’s like having a coach right there with you and I’ve had a look through these training plans and I think they are excellent for people who want to train for certain triathlons or reach certain fitness goals it will build on each week and a really good way to progress progressively build up your fitness along with some plans to help you reach your specific swimming goals then check out form goggles at formswim.com forward slash effortless and this will give you $15 off your purchase of form goggles so formswim.com forward slash effortless to get your pair of form goggles someone could listen could hear that and think oh it’s only 4% so I don’t need to worry about my legs but as you’re mentioning there when you when it’s not effective when it’s not working for you then you’re going to be much slower overall and that’s why it’s an important thing to get right and I’ll often say to

people at clinics that we’re coaching is that like you don’t want to be kicking hard especially if you’re doing triathlon but you want to make sure that your kick is effective and that it’s not slowing you down because it just slows so many people down that it’s something that’s worth getting right and spending a couple weeks just tweaking some things to make sure that it’s not making your life harder over the time that you’ve coached what are some of the things that you as a coach you felt have maybe come up with your own ways of describing things or getting people to achieve certain parts of the stroke because I’m thinking back to when I first started coaching it was getting inputs from other coaches and swimmers and then I think that the more you coach you tend to come up with maybe not completely your own ideas they might not be 100% original but they are an accumulation of all this information and knowledge that you’ve taken

on board and then you come out with your own ways of perhaps teaching things. Are there a few that come to mind with you because I’d love to get your take on that because I’ve taken so many things from other coaches and learnt from so many coaches that I like to get their perspective on different parts of the stroke and how they like to teach one thing we already spoke about you know is simplify the swim technique in this concept of stroke length and stroke frequency that determines speed so also what helped me a great bit also is I’ve been using the chart the stroke rate and time chart that Swim Smooth uses maybe you’ve heard Swim Smooth also basically a colleague of ours I can share that sheet if you’re listening to this on the podcast we’ve also posted this episode on YouTube as well so you’ll be able to see this chart here that Frank’s about to pull up so this is a chart that I use when I have some swimmers that are able to swim

100 freestyle so they’re in basically one of my courses to swim the freestyle and they’re able to swim four lanes of 25 meters in one go I’ll have them perform this test they just swim 100 meters easy controlled and what we do is we time basically the swim time of that 100 meters and we count strokes based on the stroke count let’s say if I have a swimmer doing 25 strokes and then it’s swimming let’s say 140 it will show a dot here somewhere so 25 strokes so I have this table here and you can see 25 strokes and I said 140 which is pretty good time for a beginner that means there’s a stroke rate of 76 strokes per minute that’s quite fast, right? all those numbers extrapolated out so you can see based on their stroke count and their time what the stroke rate is and in this table if you plot out that 140 and that 67 stroke rate that means the grip time is pretty good but 25 stroke is way too much so the travel distance so it’s inefficient in a way

that it’s inefficient in a way that he is swimming with far too much effort probably too much drag high stroke rate with short strokes and this is a pace that he isn’t able to maintain for long and the other way, and that’s what we talked about what you said as well, stroke length is good you can have a certain balance between stroke length and stroke frequency and the other hand if you’re swimming the same pace but you have a stroke of let’s say 45 which means if I say the same pace, 45 let’s say 46 so if you swim 140 and 100 meters and you need 16 strokes per lane 16 strokes and then turn and you spend of course not too much time in the turn, but you quickly turn after 2-3 seconds before the next stroke and the next lane again then your stroke rate will be 40 let’s say 46 and that’s a little bit too low so this is the part where you’re over gliding and if you’re over gliding you need to basically it’s a stand still it’s like a stop motion

every stroke you need to pull yourself up again that’s a good tool to diagnose where someone’s falling short is their stroke rate too low or is their stroke rate too low or are they doing things where they’re inefficient in their technique in that way you can see what it is to work on so will you use that tool with someone who comes to you and you’ll see where they are on that chart and let’s say their stroke rate’s too high to work on slowing them down a bit and to work on the things in their stroke rate it was funny because I had this test for example for a group yesterday it was very funny and for the most of the people if you do not count your strokes you just swim and you try your best, you just swim and I had a lady it was a small lady and since he needed 30 strokes and her swim time was over 2 minutes so she was basically off this chart

so also had a guy who swam he swam 140 with 25 strokes this example, this example so then we started some exercises first with a pull boy then without a pull boy just you know stroke counting said okay let’s take the average amount of strokes we call that X you now swim 50 meters in X amount of strokes so if your average stroke count was 25 and of course during the test it’s not always 25, they started at 22 25, 26, 28 or something like that so you see so the first lane is controlled then the strokes shortings and the last lane is struggling but okay let’s swim 2 lanes with X exactly the average and then they start counting and then suddenly they swim with less they swim with 24 strokes so after 30 minutes of exercise I was able to and we did the cooldown swim for 100-200 meters and those guys are trying okay let’s do 100 and the guy that was doing 25 strokes in the test he did 100 meter very easily in 21 strokes the lady that needed

30 strokes seated a 100 meter in 24 strokes so a 6 stroke reduction just because they were counting they were aware of what they’re doing lengthen the stroke a bit and getting more control so only awareness yes improvement already that’s a great example of using that tool first of all but also bringing awareness to what those factors of your speed are because most people don’t know that when they’re new to the sport and a good set that I did with the squad I swim with a couple weeks ago that I got from a friend of mine actually is we did 10-100s the first 50 is strong so first 50 is strong and then on the way back you’re going fast but hold your stroke count for all 10-100s and there was about 30 seconds resting between what I found in that set is that I got faster as I went through because your body you figure out a way to be able to get more out of each stroke while holding that stroke count and if you do come up one or two

sometimes your times increase because you’re not moving as well like I’m probably holding the same stroke rate but there’s inefficiencies coming into the stroke so just having that awareness there of how many strokes you are taking helps you maintain your form and your technique it can be a very good thing to focus on that’s a great example also what I also use is I’ll just go over a pull-boy and grab a set of pedals and then have them swim and then immediately because of the the propulsion force the extra propulsion force you have and also the pedal in the glide stroke gives you a little bit of support in the glide so the arm if you’re a swimmer you have them see that the arm drop too fast in the glide it supports that a bit you can suddenly do three or four strokes less for pull length and then if you condition yourself in that way of swimming which is more on stroke length and power once you take off that pedals and you swim another lane

you suddenly you’re conditioned on the power so you suddenly start to reach better grab better get some more pressure on maybe but you immediately you want to feel the same pressure so what you will do is you will accelerate the hand a little bit more to feel the extra pressure and of course you won’t have that the stroke count of the set that you did with the pedal but it surely is one or maybe two strokes less than you did before it’s like wearing a parachute or like a sponge out behind you like a drag that gets created but it also enhances your awareness of those things so adding some drag to it or with the paddles adding that surface area it can be such a great tool for teaching those things that’s excellent is there any other things that have worked well for you coaching athletes on those kinds of things let’s say for someone who has their stroke rate is too low what approach would you often take there oh yeah that’s nice

I usually I first try to have them swim with a couple of strokes more on the lane to shorten the stroke a little bit if that doesn’t work you can grab the finished temperature training for example and put the temperature trainer under your swim cap and then increase a little bit by bit so if you’re let’s say the first swimmer and there’s no golden numbers but if you see in the chart the white zone it’s like a zone right and if you take a look at the chart again you see that the slower you are the white zone is getting more narrow the faster you are the white zone is getting bigger so basically and the white zone is where efficiency is pretty basically okay so if you’re a swimmer that does one minute a one minute 100 freestyle without a start you just push off the wall and then swim you can be in a white zone with a stroke rate of 70 that’s the down basically the bottom side of the zone but also with 100 right so and this

so the faster you are the more varieties you see and it’s also the nice thing in swimming and if you’re studying elite swimmers and as we as coaches we certainly I think each coach has a certain ideal way of swimming the freestyle in efficient or effective way but if you’re if the level goes up the variety in the technique and the styles the variety of styles they are much much greater and they are you know they are far more different it’s a good point is that I mean you look at an Olympic final in the 1500 freestyle and there is so many different styles of freestyle there isn’t there beginner swimmers you don’t want everyone swimming exactly the same there are certainly different styles there but you’re right there’s a narrower narrower band of acceptable not acceptable but ways that you would want someone one swimming there’s less ways of being creative with the stroke and still swimming fast there like is only a few different styles there so

yeah it’s a good observation with that you run a lot of you do a lot of coaching obviously where you are you also run camps similar to us so for those that are listening what’s the best way to get in touch with you like what’s the website for try experience and how can someone contact you directly yeah that’s www tryexperience.com and all the information it’s a Dutch website but with Google translate you can obviously translate everything and what have you got coming up in terms of coaching or squad stuff we’re starting up some new courses swim courses we’re developing basically what we do is with new insights and new tools we’re developing new courses for a broad variety of swim levels each year also because if you’re in the coaching for more than 10 years and you do the same thing all the time it’s not that it’s funny so you always look to new insights new methods to improve so for example I have we have developed a swim module that is called

tempo trainer and technique and the tempo trainer refers to the finished tempo trainer where we use not only the tempo trainer to control pace but we use the tempo trainer to increase focus on a certain element of the stroke so and this came through because my wife is a trainer of dogs as well and if you train dogs it’s a lot of signal learning like the path law theory and practice so actually we’re doing I’m not saying that we train the swim which has dogs but basically we took the path lift method into a swim training by using the tempo trainer so we set the tempo trainer into a controllable beep for everybody everybody has its own comfortable stroke frequency and from there you can say okay you can catch on the beep or focus push out give that accent in the push face on the beep or you can even

you can even place your kick rhythm in the beep if you really focus so that way your focus becomes that part of the stroke but also the the beep doesn’t stop so it’s continuous and it’s very exhausting not in intensity of the swim but for people it’s like a huge focus they have to yeah yeah so and that’s it’s a very fun way to be and to teach swimmers and triathletes away and to improve the stroke that’s really good I’ve never thought of it that way or heard of it done that way so I’ve got a tempo trainer I just need to replace the battery so it’s something that I’ll have to try that’s a great way of going about it Frank thanks so much for being on the podcast and no doubt we’ll be in touch in the future and yeah I appreciate you sharing the insights on the podcast and for anyone listening go check out Frank’s website which we’ll show you in a few of our own notes and especially if you are over in the Netherlands get in touch with Frank because great

resource and you’ve had a lot of experience working with a bunch of different swimmers and I’ve taken a lot from this podcast so thanks very much for being a part of it yep thank you Brent 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 Figure Out Your Ideal Cadence And Stroke Length with Frank Huisman appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

In this episode, I will talk about stroke count and how to use it to your advantage to become a faster swimmer.

01:29 What Is A Stroke Count?

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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 back to another episode of the effortless swimming podcast. I’m your host Brenton Ford. If this is the first time that you’re listening to this podcast, we are a company that helps swimmers and triathletes improve their swimming through better technique and becoming smarter about their swimming. We run clinics around Australia in most of the capital cities with underwater filming and analysis, as well as having camps overseas and helping people through our online coaching with our different courses, and primarily the effortless swimming membership where you can access all of our courses, all of our workouts, and the video library of elite swimmers that you can watch and visualize yourself swimming like because I think

visualization is a very powerful tool. And there’s a whole bunch of different swimmers, elite swimmers and triathletes in that membership, where you can choose one that you feel suits you the best. In this episode, we are diving into stroke count, the distance per stroke, because I realize it’s something that everyone’s heard of, but they don’t quite know how to use it to their advantage. And we touched on this topic in a recent episode with Frank Huseman. And this is something that I think when you understand the power of it, and you know what to do with it, it can really make a difference to your swim speed. So let’s get stuck into it. So what is stroke count? Well, it’s how many strokes you take per lap, whether that being a 25 or a 50 meter pool, stroke count is how many strokes that you take. And it’s essentially what distance do you travel with each stroke that you’re taking. The importance behind stroke count is your overall swim

speed is a combination of how far you travel with each stroke and the rate at which you take those strokes. So for an example, let’s say you’re swimming in a 100 meters in a 50 meter pool. And let’s say it takes you 50 strokes to complete each lap. So it’d be 100 strokes total. Now in that 100 meters, your stroke rate, let’s say that was 60 strokes per minute, which would be one second for each stroke, just as a simple way of understanding it. Now if you’re taking a total of 100 strokes for that 100 meters, and it takes you one second to do each stroke, then your swim time is going to be 100 seconds, one minute 40 plus the time to push off the wall and the time to turn. So we’ll add on three seconds per lap. So let’s say it would be one minute 46 seconds. If those were your numbers, just as a simple way to understand it, keeping things as simple as possible, the way that you can get faster is to change either of those numbers, your stroke

rate or your stroke count. And we want to improve on both of those. So yes, you can swim faster by just having longer strokes, but you can also swim faster by increasing your stroke rate. And we just want to find that sweet spot between the two when it comes to racing. Now, what the best swimmers in the world can do is they can increase their stroke rate, so their cadence without sacrificing too much distance per stroke. I did some filming with Olympian and silver medalist at the World Champs, Keir Melleton, a couple of weeks ago. When I was filming her, when she was swimming at a easy, easy, like a fairly cruisey pace, she was swimming around 112, 113. And she was taking 35 strokes for each 50 meter lap. And her stroke rate was 62 strokes a minute. When I got her to swim at 800 meter pace, which is for her, it’s around about a 102 per 100 102 to 103 per 100 for her 800 meter pace. When I got her to swim at that pace, her stroke

count went up to 37 to 38 strokes per lap. So only went up two or three strokes. But her stroke rate went from 62 up to 79 to 81. So jumped up quite a bit. Now, what that shows is that her distance per stroke didn’t come down a whole lot when she increased her stroke rate. And that’s a sign of a very good swimmer. So for most people when their stroke rate would go from say 60 to 80, their stroke count would normally go up much more than that. So one of the things that as a swimmer we want to do is to be able to essentially hold the same amount of water to be able to travel a similar distance per stroke as we start to increase the cadence. Now, you’re not going to be able to do it exactly the same, but you do want to make sure that it doesn’t just blow out and come up really, really high. As you fatigue, your distance per stroke will often shorten. And so that’s one thing that we want to be able to train is as you fatigue and you go through a

main set, can you maintain the same stroke count or similar? Because that’s a sign that you’re training the right technique. Because if you if you can feel when your stroke starts to fall apart a bit towards the end of a session, there’s no doubt that your stroke count will be going up because you’re just not holding as much water and you’re slipping and obviously fatiguing with it. So what can you do with your stroke count? How can you start to use that to become a faster swimmer? The very first thing and I like when Frank spoke about this is he’ll have his swimmers do 100 freestyle easy, he’ll get their time and then the total stroke count. And that will give you a bit of a benchmark of or an idea of where you currently at. So let’s say you’re in a 50 meter pool, you swim 100 meters and it takes you two minutes. And it’s and you overall did 120 strokes just as a as a guess. That’s now your number of where you’re

currently at. If you’ve already done a bit of a warmup and then you do an easy 100 freestyle, you’re not trying to like lengthen out the stroke and change things at all. You just swim get an idea of where you’re currently at. We want to be able to use that as an indication of what’s my technique and my stroke currently like and we can improve on that from there. Now, one of the things that tends to happen when people become aware of stroke count being an important factor in their swimming is they will overreach and over glide and just pause with the hand out the front causes them to slow down too much and then their stroke count. So the stroke rate will drop in a big way. So we don’t want to think about trying to have a lower stroke count just by stopping and pausing and gliding because your stroke rate will come down too much. So when we’re talking about all of this stuff, we the way we want to improve it is by doing two things. It all comes back to the

technique stuff that we focus on. It’s how can you reduce drag and increase propulsion. So the ways that we can do that if we think of reducing drag, well, that’s body position. Make sure you’re horizontal. Make sure that you are well aligned. So your hands are entering in line with the shoulders. They’re not crossing over too much. We want to make sure our kick stays within our body line so you’re not kicking too big. They’re the main couple of things as well as when you take a breath that you’re not lifting your head up, which can drop your hips and legs. So they’re the main few things to reduce drag and then those things that will help you increase propulsion clean entry. So you enter in the right spot and reach forwards. Got a good catch and pull and you’re you’ve timed it and connected it well with your body rotation and obviously having an effective kick as well. So there are a couple of things that will help you improve your stroke count. So

that’s how we want to go about improving stroke count. So once you’ve got your number, you’ve done your hundred freestyle easy and you’ve got your time and your stroke count. See if you can reduce your stroke count by being aware of those things that make a difference or that can impact it like that. I just went through with reducing drag and increasing propulsion because sometimes just that initial awareness around, right, well, you are going to be best off. You’re going to be fastest. If you can maintain a probably a lower stroke count compared to what you’d normally do if you weren’t really thinking about it, where you might just be spinning the arms a little bit, slipping in the water a little bit. All right. So your distance per stroke makes a difference. And so if you can be aware of that first of all, well, that’s sometimes the first step at improving upon it. So if you can just bring it down, bring down the time and bring down

the even maintain the same time, but do it by reducing your stroke count. This podcast is brought to you by Form Goggles. Form empowers swimmers at every level to reach their goals, whether they want to get stronger, faster, swim further or be more efficient. Get lap by lap motivation with real time metrics and workout instructions right in your goggles and forms recently released form plans, which included progressive series of workouts to help you achieve your fitness skills or triathlon goals. You can follow along with the plan and your weekly swims will be automatically synced to your goggles. So you’ll swim through your workouts with real time metrics and workout instructions all in your goggles. So it’s like having a coach right there with you. And I’ve had a look through these training plans. And I think they are excellent for people who want to train for certain triathlons or reach certain fitness goals. It will build on

each week and a really good way to progress progressively build up your fitness. So if you’d like to follow along with some plans to help you reach your specific swimming goals, then check out form goggles at formswim.com forward slash effortless. And this will give you $15 off your purchase of form goggles. So formswim.com forward slash effortless to get your pair of form goggles. The other thing I want you to make sure you don’t do is just push off the wall, go as far as you can under the water and do six dolphin kicks under the water. So keep the push off the same, keep the turn the same so that we’re just going by your distance per stroke with your swim rather than trying to go 15 meters underwater. So that’s the first way to begin. Now the way that I would normally apply this when I’m in training and I did we did a set of 2100s last week 2100s on two minutes. And it was there essentially what I’d call best average. So holding as

fast as you can across the whole set. So the best sort of average time across the whole set that you can maintain. And throughout that set, I was counting my strikes on the way down, counting them on the way back. And I was also wearing my form goggles just so I could look back and check out the data. Now I found for the first 10. No, I like the first four 100s. OK, they’re a little bit slow. I was holding this in a 50 meter pool. It’s holding 111 110 to 111 for the first four or five 100s and the stroke count from memory was I think 35 on the way down and then 36 to 37 maybe 36 on the way on the way back. Then I started to pick up the pace a little bit, got down to 109s and the stroke count went up a little bit. I think it was sort of 35 36 on the way down and then around 37 on the way back. Then once I started to get into the 11 12 13 15 100 and so on. So after about 10 100s, I started to fatigue and my stroke count

started to increase. So I was going like 36 to 37 on the way down and then I was starting to get up towards 37 38 39 strokes on the way back. Now as I would hold the same times throughout the whole set. So averaging around 108 in those last 10. So I was going a bit quicker, but my stroke count came up quite a bit and I could feel myself just sort of spinning and slipping because I was I was starting to fatigue. But the way I was able to hold that faster time was because my my stroke rate, my cadence went up. So I just couldn’t quite maintain the same stroke count. Now it’s OK to let the to have that happen. But what I was working on and what I’m going to continue to work on with that set, because we will repeat it, is that I’m going to try and work on holding the same stroke count all the way through those 2100s, because that’s a sign that you’re able to hold the same amount of water per stroke. It means you’re training the

right things and maintaining the best possible technique in form over the 21 2100s. So that’s the that’s the aim of that set. So what you can do is start to count your strokes per lap in a main set. You don’t have to do it every single time, but it’s certainly a good thing to do just as an indication of how am I swimming? How is this compared to where I would normally be at? And then what can I do to maintain a lower stroke count? So if you find that normally you do 45 strokes per lap and today you’re doing 47, 48. OK, well, you’re not you’re probably not holding the water as well. Maybe you’re a bit fatigued. Maybe your technique isn’t quite on point as it would normally be. So what can you change in your stroke to be able to to bring that down? Maybe you need to keep you keep your kick a little bit narrower. Maybe you need to time your catch and pull a little bit better. Maybe you need to try and connect up your catch with

your opposite hip coming back. So figuring some of those things out and being aware of it, because that is that is the sign that is the indication of where you’re currently out with your technique. And so for the swimmers that come to our clinics, for example, they and I find this it takes quite a few weeks to sort of lock this in is usually in the beginning, they’re feeling good, holding better distance per stroke. And then two, three, four weeks after a clinic, sometimes it starts to the distance per stroke starts to reduce because maybe they’ve they haven’t quite got the same coordination and timing. Maybe they aren’t able to be as consistent with these new stroke changes. But if you can continue to practice those things, the consistency of each stroke that you take will increase. So down the track as you develop the strength to maintain the the technique and just have every single stroke be pretty much the same as the last one, that is when

you will start to see those times getting getting better down the track from any sort of stroke stroke changes that you’re making. And we had Kenneth Graham on the podcast who sports scientist and I’m doing a little bit of work with him with the EO swim better, the measurement devices. And on that podcast, he mentioned that the best athletes in the world are the most consistent athletes. So when you look at like a diver, for example, so diving off a off a board into the pool, they are able to just replicate the same thing again and again, same with the best swimmers in the world, they’re able to have every single stroke pretty much be the same. That’s what they train towards is that consistency. And so if you can work on being as consistent as possible with every single stroke that you take, which would mean that you’d take the same stroke count each time, then that is what is going to help you be a better swimmer. One thing to note before we

sign off here on this episode is with your stroke count, usually the first lap in any interval, so let’s say you’re doing 100 freestyle in a 25 meter pool, the first lap will often be one stroke less than one or two strokes less than the other laps, because when you first push off the wall, you’ll normally get a little bit further off the wall because you’re pushing off just just from holding onto the wall rather than doing a tumble turn and then pushing off. So your first lap will often be one or two strokes less. And then the second, third, fourth will usually be the be the same. Sometimes the last lap will be one stroke more as well, because you won’t have that turn. So if you would normally, if you’d normally touch turn, while your stroke count is going to be the same regardless of whether you’re going in for another turn or finishing an interval. But if you would normally flip turn or tumble turn, then sometimes it will

take you one extra stroke because you’re not pulling yourself into the wall and then flipping over, you’ve got to reach into the wall with your hand. So just be aware of those things as well with stroke count that you’ll normally do one or two less on the first lap, sometimes one more on the last lap because you haven’t got that turn. So I hope you enjoyed this episode and it’s given you a little bit of an idea of what you can do when you are in training and how you can be aware of your stroke count when you’re swimming. Now, see, this doesn’t work in open water. You can’t really count your strokes necessarily in the open water. But the same concepts apply, whereas if you can try to maximize your distance per stroke, so you’re not slipping. So and so you’re not like over kicking or anything like that either. If you can maximize your distance per stroke, well, they are the things that make you a better swimmer. So I hope you enjoyed this episode. If

you haven’t left us to review on Spotify or iTunes, I’d love it if you could, that helps us reach more people and get more new lists into the show. And if you are in Australia, well, we’ve got all of our clinics scheduled up until next year. So we’ve got clinics happening in Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney and Nusa. And we’ve also got some butterfly back and breast clinics for juniors as well in Sydney and in Brisbane and Melbourne as well. So check out our website at effortlesswimming.com should like to come along to any of those. Otherwise, I’ll see you next week with another episode of the Effortless Swimming podcast. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

The post How Stroke Count Can Be Your Secret Weapon To Faster Swimming with Brenton Ford appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

Gerry Rodrigues is coming back as a guest in today’s episode. He is one of the world’s leading open-water swimming coaches and the founder of Tower 26. We will talk about swimming techniques and tips for triathletes. Tune in now!

01:33 Ironman Kona

To learn more about Gerry and his work, visit https://www.tower26.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.

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming podcast. My guest today is Jerry Rodriguez, the man behind Tower 26. And Jerry, you were one of the very first guests that I had on the podcast. I think it was about seven years ago. So it’s been a long time between drinks, but we’ve got you back on the podcast to talk about all things swimming. And I love to get your take on a couple of topics that I’ve got written down here. So first of all, welcome back, Jerry. Yeah, well, thank you. I remember that. It’s gonna be eight or seven, eight years ago now, nine years perhaps even in your beginning days. And I was delighted that you contacted me because I’ve been following you from the time you got started. I always love when, you know, younger guys like you get involved and do great work. So it’s a pleasure for me to be on your podcast. But thank you. Round two. Yeah, I appreciate that because I know when I first started coaching and then moved more towards working with triathletes

adults, you were the name that so many people spoke about, even here in Australia, not just the US, but here in Australia, everyone knew of Tower 26 and coaching and the structure and the way that you approached swimming. And I’ve learned a lot from seeing what you do and how you coach over the years. So I appreciate you being on the podcast and you’re someone who I’ve learned a great deal from. And we were talking before we got on the podcast about Kona, which has just happened for those that are listening. This might have been a few weeks ago, but for Kona, so I haven’t had a chance to catch up on any of the footage. I’ve seen the race results, but that’s it. But I’d love to get your observations on what you store at Kona on the weekend.

Yeah, beautiful weather for both races, especially on the swim segment, relatively calm. There are some rollers, but nothing significant. And, you know, what’s changed, I guess, Brenton, over the years, you know, I remember going to Kona in the early 80s, it’s the depth of the field, right? Now you just have most of the field being quite decent swimmers. I can recall back when the med were swimming in the low 50s for, you know, for the leaders at top two or three, and then they’d be a gap to mid 50s before the pack would start coming in and then it would be strung out through, you know, 105 to 108

for the pros. Now, I’m not sure if there’s a pro that went over 55 minutes on the men’s side, and you know, a big pack of men’s side at 48 minutes, I think there were 16 or 17 of them in the load of mid 48s. And then another group not too far behind about a minute back, or maybe seven or eight around 49 and a half to 50. And then we got into the 51s, 52s with another 20 or 30. So you have these sort of three packs on they’re all relatively close together. So very competitive and much higher density of great, great performances on the swim. And the woman the same, close to 51 minutes on the water for Lucy Charles, 50 high. And again, the majority of the athletes in the 54, 55 range 56. So you know, the game has changed, you have to be pretty decent. You don’t have to be a great swimmer. And you know, that’s saying in Kona, you don’t want the reason to swim, but boy, if you’re free down for a bath, it hurts you quite a bit.

Absolutely, especially with the times they did for incredible and the fastest that we’ve seen there. What do you think has changed where all the pros have stepped up to that level? Is it that they’re not qualifying? If they’re not swing those faster times? Or is it something that they’re taking more seriously now? What do you think it has caused it? I think there are a few things that come to my mind since it’s a good question. And I’m not prepared to answer, but I’m sure there’s several reasons, but to quickly come to mind one, listening to podcasts such as yours, and acquiring greater knowledge. And therefore that hits one of our buckets, which is improvement of swim mechanics, right? So that’s indefinitely one. Another one is we now have, you know, it’s been a number of years that we’re starting to see the ITU athletes advance up to 70.3 racing and then to Ironman racing, well, some even jumping straight to Ironman

racing. So you have to be a good swimmer, or have improved your swim quite a bit to race an ITU because you’re not a decent swimmer. Once you get on the bike, you might get lapped and then you never get to put your run shoes on. So we’re just starting with a higher talent base. I believe the shorter races has has increased the level of swimmer that comes in or traffic, swimming, the swimming ability into Ironman at the professional level. Those are two quick ones. And of course, there’s evolution, right? I mean, just got 40 something years of evolving and learning and guys like you that put up great instructional knowledge and good coaching. It’s helpful to everyone. Yeah, is it with the pros that you’ve worked with, if you can think of an example, you don’t give names necessarily, but what have you seen in terms of someone who’s maybe come to their pro, they’re an average swimmer, so to speak, someone who’s made that jump to being a strong swimmer in

that pro field, what are some of those things that you see them doing in training with their technique to be able to make that jump? Because I work with the number of pros who are looking to get up to that front pack there. And for Sunderland, it’s like two or three seconds per hundred that they need to increase in speed to get there. And because otherwise they’re just missing that front pack. And then others that that would be aside might be 10 seconds and might be 15. But I know quite a few pros who are looking to make that leap to the front pack and a lot of them are only just a couple seconds off. So what are some of those things that you tend to consider for them? Yeah, so from my experience, and we’ve probably probably been exposed to a few hundred pros over my career coaching. And we don’t typically see the pros that are two seconds off the front pack. I think our reputation has been more that we get the ones that are two

seconds per hundred. That is, you get the ones that are 10 to 20 seconds for 100 behind. So these are really good bikers or runners that really need, you know, massive swim injection type thing. So for those guys, it’s all it’s four things. And we talk about this frequently with all of our athletes but the pros it’s four key things. One, you got to improve their swimming mechanics. Two, most of them need to increase their training volume. Three, you know, they need to the proper swim prescription or the proper workouts they need to be put together in a careful and methodical way. And then four, those athletes need some amount of accountability, as opposed to swimming on their own, taking their coaches, they need to be swimming with a squad where a coach can give them feedback. So it’s heavy accountability is needed. So those four main things on the level of to which one just depends on where they are in the progression, right? So someone who has

terrible mechanics. Yeah, well, that’s going to be their bullseye for a while. The person who has decent mechanics, but hasn’t been swimming much. Well, they’re going to need to increase volume and then some are out there doing silly training like because they’re doing an iron man, they think they need to swim 4100s with five seconds rest all day long. Oh, that’s just one type of training. You don’t get any faster. You just are able to do 4100s at the same pace. You’re able to do five. So you don’t go faster, you just go longer. Yeah, it’s right, isn’t it? And it’s not surprising if they don’t come from a swimming background there. They think that’s probably what they need, but there’s so much more that you should be doing. And one of the things that is surprising for a lot of people who don’t come from that background, I think is the amount of technical work that you should be including in your sessions

doesn’t need to be a hit, but you need to be doing some specific drills or kicking or whatever might be scaling just some things that are yes, you’re going slow, your heart rate’s not up, but you need to be working those things that will help you develop the feel for the water and the technique because that is such a huge component of swimming that you need to take the time to do it. And sometimes they feel like it’s wasted time because they’re not working hard. I understand that because they I mean, I’m the same sometimes I just want to get in there and just like I want to work hard in some sessions, but where a lot of improvement can come from is by spending the time on those things that will make you mechanically better.

You know, you’re absolutely right. But I’ve seen the evolution from before you were involved in coaching. And I apologize, I don’t mean to sound pedantic. It’s just I went through the time when we had a period where everything was stroke trills. There was a particular methodology or coaching that was being, you know, really bought into by the triathlon community and athletes, pros and non pros in particular would go do these stroke drills for 45 minutes. Well, it’s become a good driller. You don’t become a good swimmer necessarily. So I’ve seen the other side of that. So what you’re basically saying is we need a blend, right? And the blend of it between drills, you know, technical work and hard work, which is what you’re also talking about. That’s where the expertise of coaches like you come in to be able to help advise and structure from, you know, from a methodology for those athletes to follow so they can go from pack three or pack four

up to pack two or three and hope we one day get close to the front.

You think that is you’ve mentioned swimming with a squad swimming with other people’s important. Do you feel like those that weren’t pushing themselves hard enough, or they just haven’t got that accountability to stick with their pace or to finish off this session? Well, what do you think it is that that they were doing prior? Well, you know, there’s a breadth of variances what athletes in my experience have been doing and probably the easiest thing, the easiest way to answer that question would be to identify the punctured problems that have seen athletes, whether they’re professionals or non pros. And obviously the majority of our audience are not special athletes. They swim alone and they do some drills, maybe that you’ve prescribed, a lot of prescribed bill, others have prescribed, but they’re swimming alone, which doesn’t necessarily mean they’re doing the drills correctly because there’s no one supervising the drills, right?

And the problem with that is that it takes close supervision to be able to master a drill. So to your point earlier, join a squad, join, get a coach to be able to review what you’re doing, what a minimum if you don’t have that opportunity, get yourself a video reported, and I believe you offer that service and send it in to you and have you review it and get them feedback immediately. Because doing drills, it could be effective, but not if you’re doing them incorrectly. So you need a feedback mechanism, mechanism, right, which is back to our item on the core of accountability. Yeah, no, I work with a couple of people online with stroke analysis, and I often get them to film themselves doing the drills because I’d say at least half the time they’re not doing them right initially. So it does take that feedback to be able to do it right. Yeah, so they’re not as purposeful. They are, the individual is being purposeful,

but the execution of the drill, the outcome of the drill is not nailing the purpose that you have prescribed. So that’s why it’s necessary to be reviewed. It’s a very difficult sport. I mean, this is not biking or running, where it’s a lot easier to make influence and then the other two sports, which is why it’s easy for an Ironman athlete where 90 plus percent of the race is non-swimming and not want to spend much time in the swim. What’s the return, right? Yeah, that’s right. I’ve got a question for you that’s a little bit different to what we’ve been talking about here, but what is it that you love about the sport of swimming from a coaching perspective and from physically doing it as well? What is it that really attracts you to it? It’s a puzzle. It’s a giant puzzle. I presume I don’t play golf, but I presume it’s similar to golf. You might hit one or two, maybe, if you’re lucky, holds in one in your lifetime,

but you’ll never hit 18 on a course, right? And so you have this puzzle that’s very difficult to solve because you and I could come up with on the metrics that we want to or our ways to teach the ABC one, two, three of how to improve swimming technique. But it’s still it’s so still individual. Johnny or Mary may not be able to do a certain drill that you do it. Well, certain drill that you’re prescribing, or they just don’t have that skill set to really master something. So what do we do to put a patch on that? I’ll put a fix on it, right? So to me, that’s a fun puzzle to try to fix. There’s no perfection in it. That’s a huge part of why I enjoy it and still enjoy swimming is like this. There’s so many things that you can do to get better. And there’s so many different ways to approach it. And I feel like you just you’re never done. You’re never at that point where you try to a perfect game. You’ve hit that hole in one and you’re done.

But there’s always these things, little things that you can do to improve. And here’s from one another. I mean, I learned from you. I learned reading and listening to other coaches and super helpful to me. You know, the day we think we’ve made it. It’s a comment that I’ve made to Coach Mapdix and that over the years, Franklin coach that I used to coach many years ago. You know, the day you think you make it as a coach, it’s your last best day.

Yeah, because you’ve decided that you’ve reached your pinnacle and then you’ve stopped learning. Progression never stops. It continues. And so lately, I look back when I first started coaching and that is when I felt like I knew the most, the first year or two that I was coaching. And that and then I started to realize I know very little as times where I feel like you thought, I don’t know much about this sport. Like, I feel like I’m a beginner. And yeah, it’s just there’s just so there’s just so much going on. And as you mentioned, a lot like I love to learn from other coaches and even you learn from the swimmers that you coach as well, because one thing might not work with them. So you have to come up with a different approach. So it’s always learning, which is a which is why it’s so appealing from the coaching side of it to I’d love to get your your take on training in the pool for the open water because a lot of the at the triathletes

I coach, that is one of the things that this can be holding them back. Initially, it’s like that get the pool times quicker and then initially challenge to carry that into the open water with the wetsuit. So what are some things that you’ve seen work well for people to be able to train for the open water in the pool? Because here in Melbourne, the open water is freezing over winter. It’s nine, ten degrees Celsius and a lot of people are racing over the winter. So they don’t have that ability to get into the open water, at least not very often. So I’d like to chat about some of those things that you can do in the pool.

Yeah, you know, so another way of asking the question is what are we solving for? Right. And when someone is unable to transfer their swim speed in the pool to open water, and by the way, it’s never transferable directly because in the pool, if you’re swimming in a short course pool for every 100 yards in the United States on meters in Australia, although we have to have meter short course meter fluency or two,

you push off the wall four times and that’s the fastest velocity you’ll ever have. So you cannot swim a continuous 100 meters in open water as fast as you would in a pool because you don’t have in open water four walls to push off of. And if it’s a long course pool, 50 meters like you guys have, we have some also, you have two push-offs. So it’s there’s never going to be that direct correlation, but we don’t want to lose as much as what many athletes lose when they go to open water. So, OK, what’s we have to ask what’s causing this? What are we trying to really solve here? So what are the factors that contribute to slowness? Well, one of them we can’t fix, which is the wall push-off. So we remove that one, unfixable. Now let’s look at what we have solved for. So if an athlete swims very fast in the pool, maybe they don’t have very silky silk like siting skills. And every time they go to site, which is a skill that’s used the most in open water,

right, because you’re in a site highly frequently. If you’re sensible, at least if you want to swim straight, that’s the shortest distance, you need to be very fluid at it. So it’s not clunky. So that requires a whole lot of practice. And what a better place to practice than the swimming pool because you can build it into all of your workouts. In fact, for instance, June hour, we have a phase called a race ready phase. Right. And right before that, we have something called open water skill building phase. So it begins in our open water skill building phase and then continues the entire time through out our race ready phase. And our race ready phase basically is equivalent to the racing season. The four months of the year with a bulk of races occur. And I recognize races are now 12 years, 12 months around calendar. But basically four or five months are the bulk of the developer, right? So that race ready phase that we’re in every single pool work

out that we have has siting built into it, because that’s your number one most important skill to build out unlearn and to be able to make it fruitful for you and not have to cause any disruption to your swim stroke or and also not to indeed your performance, your speed. So you build these into your pool training sessions. Another thing that occurs in any open water race, triathlon open water races, that the beginning of races are always very fast, no matter how much we say, we’re going to slow down. We don’t the excitement at the start, the whole buildup of the event. And if you don’t build in race specific training

into your as part of your skills, you’re not going to be able to do it in race day. You’ll try to execute it in race day, but you’ll blow up after some period of time. So then it’ll also be a detriment to performance. Swimming straight is another one being able to swim as straight as you can as possible. One of the ways to solve for that, obviously, is higher frequency of siting. But also some people just more apt at swimming a little straighter than others. So we have to find out, OK, what’s your real deficiency? You pull to the right, people to the left, what’s your thing? And try to fix that. So go through all the variables that account for some inefficiency in open water, because the skills that we need in open water are different than the skills of the pool swimmers use to go to the Olympic games, right? Very different. So those pool swimmers, they don’t need siting. Those pool swimmers, when they swim the 1500 meters in the pool

that Australia always has a terrific athletes in, won multiple gold medals at Olympics. You don’t see them swim the first 100 meters in 50 seconds. But one seconds, no, they’re going out in 55 seconds. And then they’re pacing themselves equally throughout the rest of the race, generally, in open water, triathlon, we see fast starts, race, takeout, speed. So all of these ingredients, we then have to, these are part of the things we’re solving for, we have to build these into our pool training sessions at high frequency and want to say high frequency.

Pool swimmers, for instance, go into the Olympic games, they’re swimming anywhere from 809 to 12 sessions a week.

Most athletes are swimming two or three times a week, some pros maybe five or six times a week, maybe a little bit more for some. But generally, the range is two times a week to six times a week, right? Well, for the person who’s swimming only two times a week or three times a week, you better believe during the race ready phase, you should be building and siting the most important skill that will impede performance into every single session. So solve for those things in your pool workouts, build them in, build the confidence that you have those skills and you export it to open water. And of course, the opportunity, you mentioned that it’s not easy because the water is a little bit cold. So when there is opportunity when the water warms up, get to open water and start practicing those skills in open water. And we also mentioned wetsuits. Wetsuits can be uncomfortable for some, if you’re not familiar using them.

So you have to put those on in your pool sessions, use them for 20 or 30 minutes in a pool workout. And not just one time, two and a half or dozen times, many times. So none of these things are when you hear them, you go, oh, there’s no silver bullet or magic bullet there. These are just normal little things that we have to solve for. They add up.

The other thing I want to talk about here is a question I get quite often is someone will come to me, they might be around, say they’re 145 to two minute pace. And they say, I’m so much faster with a pool buoy on. And when I take the pool buoy off, I’m so much slower. Like, what, why is that? And obviously it’s because of the extra buoyancy, the reduction in drag with body position. So you’re kept together there. What do you normally say to people when they come to you and they’re inquiring about why they can’t swim as fast without a pool buoy? This podcast is brought to you by Form Goggles. Form empowers swimmers at every level to reach their goals. Whether they want to get stronger, faster, swim further, or be more efficient. Get lap by lap motivation with real-time metrics and workout instructions right in your goggles. And Forms recently released Form Plans, which included progressive series of workouts

to help you achieve your fitness, skills, or triathlon goals. You can follow along with the plan and your weekly swims will be automatically synced to your goggles. So you’ll swim through your workouts with real-time metrics and workout instructions all in your goggles. So it’s like having a coach right there with you. And I’ve had a look through these training plans and I think they are excellent for people who want to train for certain triathlons or reach certain fitness goals. It will build on each week and a really good way to progressively build up your fitness. So if you’d like to follow along with some plans to help you reach your specific swimming goals, then check out Form Goggles at formswim.com forward slash effortless. And this will give you $15 off your purchase of Form Goggles. So formswim.com forward slash effortless to get your pair of Form Goggles. So that’s probably one of the most common things, right?

Especially males and get this denser muscle mass in your hips and leg muscles. So they’re going to sink in. What happens is that athletes… So I’m giving you a little bit of a why before answering the question. Why are their legs sinking? Well, why are they not in this proper position or posture in the water? And the reason is simply lack of familiarity. You spend all your life in land. All of a sudden you’re in this form median and you don’t actually know and you’re suspended to some extent. I mean, you’re at 92% ish of subsidized body weight. So the hundred and… Well, I don’t know what you’re measuring in kilograms, right? Whatever that… Whatever someone’s weight is on land, most of it is gone and subsidized in the water. So they’re in this weightless state almost and you don’t have some great awareness of… It must feel like engagement. So proprioception. So we have to teach that. We have to let them know this is normal.

You’re no different than anybody else. Now, how do we fix it? What are we solving for? Well, so we’re solving for body awareness. We’re solving for people to talk to your muscles and get them to do something in the water. You might be able to talk to those muscles and get them to do it on land, but in the water it’s a whole different game. So we do those simple drills, by the way, or exercises where we would have somebody simply hold on to the lane line or hold on to the wall, both hands, right? Put your snorkel on. Get your face down in the water. And so your head is… The water level sits in the sort of the center top of your head, not the crown, not your forehead, but between your hairline and the peak of the top of your head. So somewhere midway, the normal head position for swimming, right? You want the water line to sit there and then have them close their eyes and see what happens to their feet. Their feet are extended fully out behind them.

So they’re fully elongated off the wall, right? Arms are stretched out, feet are stretched out. And for most, their legs are going to sink. And then we ask them to engage and we tell them which muscles to engage those muscles and hold your heels up to the surface, hold them up and hold them up there. And then they have to think about those muscles and they start talking to them and then they engage them and then they’re able to do it. Everyone’s able to do it. Then let’s go swim like that. And so what we’re really doing is creating the awareness, right? And then asking them to execute it. But it’s difficult. Next time. It’s interesting, isn’t it? Because as a swimmer from a young age, you never think about it when you’re a kid, but you just develop that awareness and you know how and what muscles to hold there. But for somebody who’s new to it, they’ve got to be taught those things. They’ve got to have them explain to them

and what they should be feeling through there. But once they can hold their body in that position, then you can really move on to the next things. But if they’re not, well, it’s going to be hard work because I’ve seen swimmers who will try and get their hips there. They’re thinking about trying to get their legs up and their hips up. So they try and stick their bum up in the air. So they’ve been through their waist and that’s honestly the wrong thing you want to do. So it is just a very… They kick a lot, right? They just try to kick it more. And most of us, you know, they’re not very good kickers because it’s difficult to be a good kicker, especially triathletes who have inflexible ankles and understandably so for running and riding. It’s also really difficult for pool coaches and even elite pool coaches to effectively coach even triathletes at times because there’s a nuance to what these adults need that some pool coaches haven’t…

It’s not part of their repertoire. They just deal with super elite athletes. However, the triathlete is attracted to the super elite swimming coach as if they’re going to solve their problem. But the super elite needs swimming coach. It’s coaching people. The majority of Olympic distance swimming races are two minutes and shorter. 85% of races are two minutes and shorter. So their skill set as coaches are to coach an athlete, swimming athlete at the Olympic level, the elite level for two minute races. That’s a whole different set of demands than what the triathlete needs. So there’s a craft that needs to be holed in for those that are coaching traffic. So exactly, you asked this question earlier and I meant to respond to it when you asked about the Kona race. One of the things I heard on the commentary when we touched on this a little bit, if it’s okay, I grow into it, about the commentary during the swim, I’ve heard two of the commentators talking about,

well, we’re now getting to the end of the swim and this is the time that you want to throw your legs in and start kicking more. Well, these two commentators, and let’s leave them nameless for the moment, are very elite swimmers. They swim at the elite level in college, one at Stanford and one at the University of Michigan and these are top 10 if not top three in the areas that they were there and C2A teams and both of these are super elite swimmers. And when they swim, engaging their legs will generate propulsion. It will also, and one of the reasons they were talking about doing this is so you can start increasing blood flow. Well, that may be fine for the less than 1% of athletes that are good swimmers, but for 99% or more that aren’t great swimmers, as you know, your coach, asking a traffic to start kicking more is probably one of the worst things you can do because they don’t generate much propulsion from it.

It starts to destabilize their stroke and their mechanics more and really at Kona in particular, you’ve got two minutes, a minimum of two to three minutes, two minutes of the elite in transition running to your bike. You have plenty of time to start engaging blood flow into your lower extremities. And we also have a system that’s pumping blood throughout your body. So I’m not a big fan of those comments and I recognize why those elite commented or elite swimming triathletes make those commentary mistakes or make those commentary comments because they’re swimmers but it doesn’t apply across the board. So you have to sort of also be able to know as a listener, as the audience, maybe as a triathlete, how to filter information that we receive also super important. I think that’s why I thought I knew the most about swimming when I first started coaching and then when I did start to coach triathletes, started to realize this stuff doesn’t work

and what I thought they would be able to pick things up straightaway. As soon as I say, maybe I’ll go this way or maybe have that way and I thought they could pick it up immediately, but that’s not how technique changes work. It takes time. It takes nuance. It takes sometimes drills as well and often a different approach for the triathletes. And boy, that took me quite a few years to really figure that out. And what you learned as a swimmer and you are a very good swimmer, what I learned, you know, having to swim for a number of years and those two commentators may not apply to who we’re teaching because who we’re teaching are, we collectively are at that high-end aptitude level because we have thousands of hours of practice on their amounts. They don’t. So we’re, we have to consider, are we asking, are we putting a demand on a participant that’s beyond their ability to execute it at this time? So you have to be super careful when we’re teaching it.

It’s not an easy task. Now, you talked about not bringing your legs into it at the end of the race for most people, but in terms of kick, it’s something that you want people to be able to do well, but not necessarily to do hard or put a lot of effort into during the race. So what do you see people doing with their kick that’s slowing them down? First of all, and then I know you work a lot of kicking drills and exercises into your program so that their kick is at least effective and it’s helping them with their balance and timing. So what are the main mistakes you see there for those that don’t have an effective kick? So we have to ask, I always come back to what are we solving for and what are we trying to peak the athlete to be able to

assist them the best that we can, given that the level that they’re at. And for the most part, kicking is not going to deliver much propulsion for most triathletes because they simply don’t spend enough time. They just don’t have the number of hours in a week given, let’s go back to those averages again, two times a week, right? Maybe some will swim three times a week, remove the pros for more two to three times a week. How much kicking can we really do and how much should we really allocate given that even if they became okay at kicking how much will it contribute to a bonus or propulsion? The answer is not very much. And so let’s at a minimum, minimize as coaches, minimize the damage that the legs create. And as for many triathletes and they will tell you they laugh about it. You put me on a kickboard and you ask me to kick without fins. I go backwards, right? So how do we at least not go backwards? Let’s try to neutralize that to zero if we can, right?

So we may not go forward, but let’s not go backwards. And even putting joking aside, let’s be able to get some propulsion and not be completely just wiped because these are large muscle groups that we’re putting a heavy demand on. So heart rate just blows up, goes super high and it’s not delivering much propulsion and you just get cooked. So okay, how much time do we really spend on this? So you mentioned we do kicking. Well, we use kicking mainly as a way to teach body caughtness on body awareness. We do a lot of vertical kicking during our recovery phase and our technical phase. Those two phases get grouped together at the end of the season, one goes through certain mechanics. And you mentioned this earlier about to see folks bending up their waist and in the pool and the legs are sinking and so on. So how do we teach them not to do that? So I give one example and you go to the wall while the other example is also vertical kicking

when you place your body perpendicular to the surface of the water and you have your arms out of the water hands in line with your shoulders and you kick with a very narrow amplitude and point your toes at a very small knee bend. And you’re trying to, as you mentioned earlier, not bend at the waist at all. And the first thing we see is people bending up their waist sort of leaning forward or call it sitting on a bar stool. Well, the pub’s for a point, not for it doesn’t belong in a swimming pool. So let’s work on this. So that’s where we do a fair amount of kicking and it’s all about teaching proper body posture because ultimately what are we solving for again? We’re solving for performance in the water and the biggest obstacle we have is great resistance, the density of the water. So if we can make the body as hydrodynamic as possible as slender as possible, as sleek as possible, well, we’ve solved a big problem like there to start with.

So it’s not about the kicking. We’re doing a kicking drill, vertical kicking, but it’s solving our body posture problem. And now you also like to do some normal kicking on different sides as well. Left side, right side, front, back to work to kick in those different directions as well. We do those, okay. So that comes on there. We have some technical categories that have all my years of kicking. Try to, what I’ve done is bulk the errors that I’ve seen by triathletes. Now remember, this is triathletes particular. So by swimming coach listings, this does not apply to you. For triathletes, we have three buckets that I put mistakes under. Taughtness, alignment and propulsion. In those three categories, there are a bunch of some, you know, sub areas. And under the area of alignment, a whole lot of things cause misalignment. And one of them, it would be over rotation. And that’s a massive one because that was one of the major pillars back in the 90s

and into the 2000s, 2000, 2010, that all these coaches were following from a particular coach that started that philosophy. You needed to rotate a whole lot swimming. So we do have people kick on their sides and we need to teach them how much on your sides you need to kick because what we see is too much rotation, generally greater than 45 degrees, is what we see where the mistakes are occurring. And we want that body to be turned, as you know, 30 to 45 degrees and real more than that. So we have them do a little bit of kicking on their sides and we have them encouraging to keep the kick very narrow and we use fins on these to start up. So the purpose is not necessarily about kicking. It’s one of the, we’re solving for a problem that’s occurring somewhere else because many times when we see a problem and you know this and you do this yourself because I’ve heard your podcast talking about it, you treat the problem.

You don’t treat the symptom. No, infrequently the symptom is the problem, but most times it’s not. The symptom is an effect that’s occurring from something else. We got to fix what the real problem was. We got to get to the core of the problem to fix it. So when we see these legs being this, you know, super huge spread of the feet as an example. Well, what’s causing that? When somebody wrapped like they’re kicking very wide, wider than their shoulders, right? Well, a lot of times that’s from over rotation. So we can tell them don’t kick as wide, but if they’re over rotating, we’re not solving the problem for them. So we got to fix the rotation problem to get to the legs playing out too much. So this is one of the reasons we use kicking on your side slightly to solve for these other problems. I really like the way you put that with the cause and symptom because many times when I’ve done analysis with someone, when I get them to analyze their stroke first,

I will watch through the video and I’ll ask them to pick out anything that they could recognize. And sometimes they’ll get those things on the head. But the reason that they’re not able to fix it, even if they knew already that they were doing it, is because they don’t know what the cause of it is. They know, yes, my legs are going apart, but they didn’t know it was from over rotation or looking too high to breathe. And it’s these other things that when you go to the very core of it, if you correct those things first, then the other parts of the stroke will improve. And so often people want to maybe start with the catch. So like, I’m not holding any water with my catch. And that can be really hard to have a good catch if you are over rotating because if you had a good catch, it’s going to put you in a very strained position with your shoulder if you’re rotating to 90 degrees. And so just by coming back to the fundamentals of the stroke

and getting those right and then building it up from there is such a better approach. And a couple of years ago, I came up with now, sort of like your three things with taughtness, alignment, propulsion. We’ve got our five core principles, which roughly sort of follow that. And if you go in that order of things and we usually just start with breathing, then we’ve worked on balance and then alignment and we go down from there. If you follow that order, then you can really start to diagnose what’s the true cause of some of these areas that are happening in the stroke. And that’s a beautiful word. That’s the correct word, diagnose because the only way to have a proper diagnostic is to be able to understand what causes the problems, right? And I’m just no different than you were in the beginning years. Oh, come on. Get your legs closer together in this example. It wasn’t fixing the problem of going, come on, guys, what’s wrong with you?

Well, what’s wrong with them is what’s wrong with me. I wasn’t delivering the proper message. I wasn’t being a very good coach. So, you know, I had to step back and go, wait a minute, how do we really fix these problems and remove all the books that I read and everything I learned about swimming in my years growing up as an athlete and look at it through a completely different lens, which is the lens of the triathlete that they didn’t swim as kids most of them, their land sports and ankles are inflexible and so on. So a lot of different pieces come into play here. So that’s all for all those things carefully. I want to talk about the concept of feel for the water. I’ve heard a top level triathlon coach say he’s only seen two or three triathletes in his entire career who have actually had a feel for the water, but I think it depends on how you define it. What are your thoughts around feel for the water? Is it something that a triathlete can develop

and do you ever talk about that when you are coaching them in the sport? So let’s define what is feel for the water and it’s this swimming terminology just like the word catch in swimming, which is a word I tend to not use in teaching that many coaches use and I don’t use it to capture the stroke because I don’t think it’s an effective way of communicating just this coach’s view. Because catch means something. Catch to me means catching a ball. What does that mean? Absolutely nothing unless you’re playing water polo which we don’t do in a triathlon then what does this word mean? So I think there’s our full communication issue as is feel for the water. What does that mean? Well, to me, I put my hands and I could put my hands around the water and I could feel the water. Yeah, I could feel it. What does it really mean? And it’s this indigenous swimming term over the years that really means what I think coaches and athletes are saying,

boy, today I feel really light in the water and every stroke that I took gave me lots of forward movement and propulsion. I just felt effortless. That’s what you do well, right? I’m part of your brand, right? Yeah. So that’s what feel for the water is. Well, that’s my understanding as to how coaches and athletes because an athlete that even an elite one can’t even really define it clearly. So this is my take on a feel, a feel for the water. So now, and if we could just make the presumption that I’m correct then how do we solve for it again? How do we get there? Well, some athletes and that elite coach that you talked about they just be highly gifted. And if they started that these triathletes started swimming at young ages, they might have been very elite swimmers. So he is correct that they may have this innate feel for the water. No different than we’ve had some Aussie swimmers start swimming at 13 and 14 and then make the Olympic team and become these sensational athletes.

That’s highly unusual. So they have this natural gift. It’s natural feel, natural athletic ability for the sport swimming, which is not the case in most triathletes. So how do we get there? Well, like anything else, it’s frequency, right? That’s a whole lot of touches in the water, more time spent and teaching the proper mechanics, your the ingredients. You have five. We put it on the three categories, whatever those are. And eventually over time that feel that sensation is really what it is. We’ll come, but it can only come from a high amount of frequency. Why? Because we don’t spend our time in the water. We’re religious to the land, not the water. So the more time we spend away from it, the less feel we have. So please, I’d be interested to get your take on it because I do think it’s somewhat complex and somewhat almost overused at times because I think it’s difficult to accomplish. I love the way that you put it dead.

I see it the same way is that when a swimmer feels like they’ve got the forward propulsion from what their arms are doing through the stroke and they’re coordinating that well with their rotation. And it feels effortless moving forwards where it’s not hard work, but they’re still getting good times and good speed as a result of it. That’s my take on tilt for water because when you have someone who isn’t moving through the catch and the pull very well and they’re not getting that forward propulsion and they do some things to tweak it and they start to get that the idea of it and they and they steal that happening. That to me is developing feel for the water knowing what it is that’s moving that can move them forward. So I tend to agree. I’d like to get your take on what some of the terminology what language you like to use around the catch. And I do talk about the exit is the release as well. There’s I’m sure if I’ve heard you mention that but yeah,

but we’ve used that word that the word that we typically I tend to try to use and teach our coaches is to remove the catch that word because I don’t think our job as teachers, which is what we really are, right? It’s how do we communicate effectively to our audience? So Jerry might use a few words and you know, I get 20 blank stairs and then Brentage uses a different word same concept and it is explaining it exactly the same way, but uses a different word and all of a sudden those 20 blank stairs and Jerry looked at you and look at Brenton and smiles. Oh, we got this guy is a real deal. A jury guy doesn’t know what the heck he’s talking about. Well, we both said the same thing. You just use different word checks. Oh, I mean it. And I think this is our job as coaches to try to find words to communicate effectively. I’ve never found the word catch effectively communicate what we’re trying to do in swimming. It’s just again, it’s another indigenous swimming term.

So I use the word set up and what is set up me? You know, in normal language, we’re setting something up. We’re getting ready to do something. We’re setting up the right pieces in place to be able to do something. We set up for an event, you know, if you go to a concert, we should we arrive to listen to the concert, but there’s a whole set up that occurs that when we sit down on the lights get turned on magic happens, right? Well, the setup in swimming. There’s no propulsion occurring in it, but we’re doing some key things more different than the sound system is being checked and the lights are being checked and, you know, all the drinks and the t-shirts and everything are being put out before the customers arrive for the concert. So when they arrive and the lights go on, everything’s ready to go. The setup in swimming is the same thing. There’s all this stuff that’s being done for a proper setup or during the setup to allow you to have effective

propulsion, right? So I prefer to use the word setup. What do we need to do in a setup as opposed to catch that I just think it’s too much of a swimming term, but that’s this guy, you know, you would find a way with that beautiful Aussie accent to use the word catch and everybody would laugh.

No, I think that’s great. I’m laughing because we so like I as you know, I use the term catch that position, but I also when I’m explaining stuff in clinics and in person talk about the catch phase and I refer to the catch is that when you’re out in front to linear and down in what I call the catch phase, we’ll call that the setup phase. So it’s I think I’m on the same page, but I drive that tenancy and use use catch and I’ll just explain one thing. You know, I hear it is up to guests of your podcast, but I apologize. I’m saying something that you know, that I’m not used, but again, our jobs to communicate with teachers. How do we communicate effectively for our audience to understand and come up with the words that you and for your athletes that you coach. Yeah, I think that’s I think that’s great. And it’s so important. Then one of the things that I came up with the word for a couple of years ago after hearing

different coaches talk about this position that we are talking about the power diamond when the hands are directly under the shoulders, just to describe the shape that you want to be armed to be in, which is you’ve got one arm. It’s like a half diamond if you’re looking at it as it’s passing under the shoulder and call it power diamond because it’s got both arms there. It’s like diamond and power because that’s typically when you’re going to have the most strength through the stroke, not that you want to muscle that that part of it, but that is when you’ll be strongest, especially compared to the movement of the catch or the setup phase there. So I think that the terminology that you use is so important. And I think it’s also good to have a few different words in your back pocket to be able to describe the same thing so that someone can get it to click for them. And I know that’s something that you obviously

use as well. Well, I’m one of these coaches I believe similar to you and as you know, I have tremendous respect and admiration for your coaching and I enjoy when athletes that we coach go see other coaches because those other coaches, let’s say they come to see you as an example. They’re in Australia visiting and they go check out brettan or take one of your video sessions. You they use different words, annunciate particular words differently than maybe I do and the athlete gets it. So that’s important, right? What’s the ultimate outcome we’re looking for? We’re solving for make the athlete better. You found a way to use certain words and it worked. I think it’s good exposure for athletes and I encourage it and job as the coaches are to make sure that we are not too caught up in ourselves and feel that our athletes shouldn’t talk to other coaches, which is kind of interesting and I’ll support you while we’re that’s the case at times.

I’ve always found it funny when coaches protective of their athletes, like I don’t want you talking to any other coaches. I don’t want you getting any other ideas. I mean, I do. I understand it through the coach. You’ve got this plan to your athlete and you want it done this way. And maybe someone’s got a tendency to chase shiny objects and maybe I can see it that way. But but yeah, it’s you know, and especially I think with what what we do, what I do here. It’s like, well, I primarily run clinics here in Australia and I’ve got athletes from all the different triathlon clubs from different swim clubs as well. So I’m not there to take their athletes and to take them on board here. I just want people to get good results. I just want them to improve and then same thing. That’s what you’re doing. I know you just want them to get better and you don’t care which way they take to do it. You just want them to get the results.

So tell the coaches who you’re talking to who have got that mindset and they’re the ones who are great fun to work with. Well, of course. And like anything else, when you have coaches that are very dogmatic about their approach. And so that’s very narrow minded. It means your approach. I have my three pillars. You have five. I’m interested in listening to yours and learning from it, which is stuck in my three again. I talked about this earlier. And I’ve had my last best day, right?

Yeah, that’s exactly it. Well, Jerry, I appreciate you being on the podcast and so much that I’ve gotten from this episode. And I know particularly the triathletes are going to listen to this. So I really don’t get a lot out of it. So thanks so much for being a guest seven years later on the podcast. And I really appreciate everything that you do with Tower 26 and the work that you’ve put in there because it’s been such a huge resource for triathletes looking to improve their swim. And I’ve had so many athletes who have come to my clinics who have followed the Tower 26 plans and then have worked with you. And that’s here in Australia. So you’ve got a huge reach, not only just in the U.S., but everywhere else. So thanks so much for being on the podcast. It’s been great. And I’ll get you on much sooner than seven years down the track.

Well, I’m appreciative of you just having me on anyway. So thanks so much. You know, and I said this before we started up. You are so very good at what you do and very open-minded and humble, which is a quality that I’m attracted to. So keep up your great work. I, you know, love seeing what you do and follow you closely. So thanks for having me. Thanks very much. Thanks, Terry. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

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In today’s episode, I wanted to talk about some of the key things I got from the other coaches and swimmers at the Maldives Camp.

01:13 Rotation

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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 back to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. I recently returned from the male lives. We had a swim camp there and had 14 swimmers along with myself and three other coaches. We had Gary Haring from New Zealand, ex-Olympic swimmer and coach. Phil Rush from New Zealand as well who has the fastest double and triple crossing of the English Channel. And also a friend of mine, Ben Geard, who’s an ex-national swimmer and also an age group coach and has a number of athletes at the national level. So we’re all there along with the swimmers and I wanted to talk about some of the key things that I got from the other coaches on that camp and from talking to a lot of the swimmers as well because one of the things that I find really helpful is sharing ideas with other coaches and

the camps are really good opportunity to do that. So there was a couple of things that stood out to me that reiterated some of the things I knew came up with some new ways of teaching things. So I wanted to share those with you on this podcast. The first one is rotation. One of the things that Gary was talking about was there’s a lot of power through your rotation, through your hips and through your torso. There is a lot of power that you can generate through the hips and torso without much effort. So if you are able to rotate the right amount and you’re able to connect that up with what your arms are doing and with your kick, then you can really be very effective and powerful without needing to force things and put in a lot of work. One of the ways he demonstrated this was you got people to partner up, stand face to face with each other. One person will put their hands on top of the other person’s shoulders and he got the person who had

their hands on top of the other person’s shoulders to hold them as still as possible. And the other person had to force their shoulders left and right. So forcing a rotation side to side and the other person had to try and keep them still. You can’t do it. There is to the other person is too strong with that rotational movement. So no matter how strong the other person is holding you, you cannot keep them still because of that power that can be derived through the hips and the core and torso. So it was a good way to demonstrate the power that can be generated there and with freestyle, which is the main thing that we tend to focus on that rotational movement. You don’t want to be flat swimming is not done flat. It’s done side to side, but you also don’t want to go too far and often when I see someone going too far, they’re going all the way to 90 degrees on their side, which is just too much. We tend to like 35 to about 40 degrees rotation

through the hips and shoulders sometimes a bit flatter through the hips, but typically 35 to 40 degrees somewhere in that range is really good. A drill that I quite like to develop that rotation and connecting that up with your through all the way through your hips and shoulders is front kick rotation drill. And back about 20 years ago now. I went to a clinic with Bob Bowman who is Michael Phelps’s coach and if my memory serves me correctly, he said at that at that at that clinic that when someone joins his squad, he gets them to do this front kick rotation drill for an entire week before they join him with the rest of the group. So this front kick rotation drill is on your front arms by your side with your face in the water, preferably using a snorkel and you may need to use fins for this as well and you’re just going to rotate from your right side to your left side and you can go to 90 degrees for this drill.

That’s fine and it’s not a bad thing to do for the drill. Yes, it’s more than what you’ll do when you normally swing, but for this drill, that’s okay. So he’d get into his front kick rotation drill for for an entire week and I think it is used for a number of reasons. One you’re going to develop a very good and effective kick that way, but you’re also going to get that feeling of driving your rotation from your hips in your core and making sure it’s all connected up with your your shoulders and your upper body as well while keeping your head still because your head should be dead center unless you’re turning to breathe. So head say still the body rotates around it. That can be a really effective drill for developing that. So I found that to be quite a good way to demonstrate the importance of rotation. The next thing that I picked up from from Ben, one of the other coaches there was the we’re talking about the catch and the and the pool and

we’re talking he focused a lot on the skinny S shape that your hands should make as you go through the catch in the pool. So 30 40 years ago, there was a big emphasis on a big S shape pool. I think that led to too many people going out too wide and in too much under the body. So too much of a curve with the catch in the pool. But if you look at the path of the hand with all really good freestyles, it’s like a skinny S. I would sometimes call it like a long S where when the hand starts moving when it begins the catch, it’s going to go outward. So away from the center and then come in a bit towards the back and that would make this long S shape or skinny S as you go through it. And one of the things you mentioned there was that when you do that, you cover more distance with you with your hand as you do it compared to if you’re pulling completely straight. And Gary had this good exercise where if you were in water that’s deeper than you are and you have

your elbows into your side, you head out of the water and you try and just push straight down with your hand. So you push down, bring your hand back up, push down, bring your hand back up on both sides. So it’s like this left, right, left, right pushing motion. It’s quite hard to keep your head above the water that way, but if you do this sculling motion, this left, right, left, right sculling motion with the hands you can lift yourself up much easier. And I found that to be quite a good way to demonstrate the importance of a curved motion with the hand as you’re going through the catch and through the pool. So not too much, but that is where you can generally feel the water better. You travel, your hand will cover that little bit more distance so you can get a bit more out of it and your hand will find the right position where you can be most powerful through all the different phases of the stroke. Another good example that Ben had there was

that when he said he’s teaching beginners, he’ll get them to face, be in the water, face the wall, put the hands up on the deck of the pool and get them ready to jump out of the pool as quick as they can. But when they do that, their hands are a bit outside their shoulders and their elbows are out to the side as they’re ready to push out of the pool. And he said he then gets them to look at where their arms are in that position and that goes to show where you’re going to be most powerful through that catch position, which is very similar to that power diamond that I like to talk about. This podcast is brought to you by Form Goggles. Form empowers swimmers at every level to reach their goals, whether they want to get stronger, faster, swim further, or be more efficient. Get lap by lap motivation with real-time metrics and workout instructions right in your goggles. And Form’s recently released Form Plans, which included progressive series of workouts

to help you achieve your fitness skills or triathlon goals. You can follow along with the plan and your weekly swims will be automatically synced to your goggles. So you’ll swim through your workouts with real-time metrics and workout instructions all in your goggles. So it’s like having a coach right there with you. And I’ve had to look through these training plans and I think they are excellent for people who want to train for certain triathlons or reach certain fitness goals. It will build on each week and a really good way to progress, progressively build up your fitness. So if you’d like to follow along with some plans to help you reach your specific swimming goals, then check out Form Goggles at formswim.com forward slash effortless. And this will give you $15 off your purchase of Form Goggles. So formswim.com forward slash effortless to get your pair of Form Goggles. The other way you can sort of figure out

where your hands should be too is if you’re face down the water and you’re doing a front skull drill. So where you’re face down, horizontal and the water, your hands are sculling left to right out in front of you, just a normal front skull. If you do three or four skulls and then you do a big pull-through with both arms back to your hips, where you will find that you feel strongest and you hold the most water is if you have this skinny-ess shape or you could think of it as like an old keyhole. Think of like a really old house. They’ve got this long key that goes into this keyhole. One of those old-style keyhole shapes where it’s kind of got a half circle in the beginning and then it’s like this almost triangle out the back similar to the skinny-ess shape that we’re talking about. That’s where the hands should follow through the path of the pull. So I quite like that. So there’s the rotation. There was the skinny-ess pull.

The other thing that stood out to me was the kick timing and connection. And I’ve had this feedback with our online course as well with the eight-week faster freestyle course. In week seven, we cover the kick timing and connection and getting that to match up. And the feedback there and the feedback at the camp from what people were saying and from me working with them was that it’s one of those things that if people didn’t have it initially, it was quite frustrating in the beginning and it took them quite a while to get things to sync up together. But then once it did, they could really feel the difference. And I had this comment in the eight-week faster freestyle course from a swimmer who was going through it too, who said it was practicing it, practicing it was frustrating. It felt really awkward. It felt like I was going backwards with it. But then once I finally got it, swimming freestyle was so much easier and much quicker.

So the kick timing and connection is something that a lot of people do right, but a lot of people don’t. And if you haven’t got that timed well, then that’s really going to impact your speed and your speed and your ability to kind of get faster. So the kick timing and connection there, one of the key things is you can either think of your kick timing is when your left-hand enters, your right foot should be kicking downward. So you can think opposite sides. Or for some people, they prefer to think left arm catch and left foot kicking down at the same time. So two different ways to think about it. It’s the same thing, but just see whatever works best for you. So it’s a really important thing to get, but can be frustrating initially. But there was a couple of swimmers there who the kick timing was the complete opposite. But then with enough practice, they eventually got it. And I added this, it’s not a new drill necessarily,

but I added this single-arm freestyle drill that you can do where you have one arm in front and the other arm is pulling through. So just normal single-arm freestyle. But if you do it with two kicks only and you time your kicks correctly. So let’s say your right arm’s out in front, you’re just holding your line with it and your left arm’s doing the stroke. When you are going through the stroke, you want to make sure that your right foot kicks down when your left hand enters and then you do the left foot kick when you start to catch with your left. I’ve added that drill to week seven of the eight-week faster freestyle course in our membership there. So you can take a look at that video if you want to see the visuals of it. But that’s a good way to break it down to get used to that sort of timing. And again, it took quite people quite a while to get it. But again, once they did, made a huge difference. The other thing that became apparent

talking to a number of swimmers is sometimes you do need to do more. I know you’re effortless swimming. You want your swimming to feel easy. You want to be comfortable. You want to be smart with what you’re doing in terms of your technique and your training. And you don’t want to overdo it. But it still requires the work to be able to get to that feeling and concept of effortless swimming. So minimum, really, should be three times a week if you want to see good improvement. But sometimes you will need to do more than that. Four sessions a week, you might really notice a difference. I know for me personally, if I’m doing four or five sessions instead of three, I notice a big difference in terms of how I feel, my fitness, my swim strength. For me, four or five is a really good number to be swimming at my best rather than three or sometimes two. So sometimes you do need to be doing more. Sometimes you do need to be doing more distance as well

in your sessions. So depending on where you’re at, if you’re only doing 1,500 meters in all of your swims, if you were to step that up to two or 2,500 meters, good chance you’ll notice a difference there. So it just depends where you’re at. It depends what your goals are. But you might need to be doing a bit more or maybe changing the type of training that you’re doing. So that’s another thing to consider is are you swimming enough and are you swimming far enough as well? And the last one is the time it takes to see improvement and thinking long term. So the feedback I got from quite a few swimmers a week, two weeks after the camp was things felt awkward and clunky when they got back to their normal training. And that’s expected when you make any changes to your technique and to your stroke. So it takes, it really depends, but it can take 6, 8, 10 weeks sometimes for things to really fall into place and to feel natural.

So if you’ve got the mindset of I’m in this for the long term, I’m willing to give up my faster training pace for now for the next couple of weeks while these changes start to become more of a habit for me. And I’m willing just to commit to these stroke changes with and sticking to the drills and the focus even if my times are going to be a bit slower initially and I might get a bit frustrated along the way because I’m maybe not quite as quick as I was initially. But with that long term thinking, it will eventually click and it will eventually start to become natural and you’ll look back and go, I can’t believe I was swimming like I was two months ago or three months ago and I’m glad I stuck with the process. So think long term with the results. Everyone’s different. Some people get faster straight away, which is very common too, but it’s not always the case. So if you’re just willing to have a little bit of that short-term pain

or as Gary likes to call it, the pit of discomfort where things don’t feel natural, feel a bit awkward and clunky and it’s uncomfortable. If you can make it through that pit of discomfort, you’ll come out the other end a better swimmer. So that was some of the key takeaways from the Male Lives Camp. We’re running that again next year. So we’ve got two dates. This is the time of recording. We’ve got August 29th to September 3rd and then we’ve got another camp straight after it, September 4th to the 9th. I think there’s only one spot left for that second camp and a handful of spots left for that first camp. So if you would like to come along and swim in Paradise with us in the Male Dives, it’s all open water. There’s no pool swimming. So we do all the underwater filming, the analysis, the technique work and swimming around the islands, swimming to sandbars. There’s tons of fish. There’s reef sharks. There’s turtles, manta rays.

There’s all sorts of sea life you can imagine. It was amazing over there. So we’re running two weeks next year. If you’d like to join us next year, go to EffortlessWing.com forward slash Male Dives and there’ll be a link in this podcast as well to be able to join us next year. So I’d love to have you over there if that’s something that’s appealing to you and I hope you enjoyed this podcast as well. If you haven’t already left a review, if you did enjoy the podcast, I’d love if you left a review on Spotify or iTunes and that helps us get higher in the rankings which exposes us to more people. Thanks again for listening. I’ll talk to you next week. 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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My guest today is Oke Büll. He’s a triathlete located in Germany and recently had some great success in Ironman Copenhagen. We will talk about how he was able to improve his swimming. Tune in to this episode now!

01:00 Getting Started In Triathlon

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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 Oki Bill. He’s a triathlete located in Germany. And you recently had some good success in Iron Man Copenhagen. Had a great swim. Nearly cracked the 60 minute mark, which is a very high level benchmark, I think for a lot of people. You about 30 seconds off it, but regardless of really good swim and saw some improvements over the last couple of months, using some of the things that we teach. So I wanted to get you on the podcast to talk about what you changed, what you worked on, and and how it how you’re able to improve your swim. And to be able to share that with the audience. So welcome to the podcast.

Thanks, Brent. Nice for having me.

You’re you’ve been doing triathlon for about 10 years, you said, but you didn’t really have a background in in triathlon as a junior. What made you start doing triathlons 10 years ago? Well, actually, really, a colleague talked me into it was, I mean, I was doing every kind of different stuff, all of whole lifelong, I started swimming as a junior, not on a high level, but I just did it. And then I played some other things that I thought I should go into surfing and wind surfing, which wasn’t such a really good idea. Like, I’m a really tall guy, like, 193 high, I didn’t really move like, like he used to move on a surfboard. So that was when I was a student. And yeah, then I did some running and stuff like that. And then a colleague came up and said, let’s start with an Olympic triathlon. I said, Okay, let’s give it a go. And I didn’t really know if I can make it was just like, I mean, I was feeling quite fit and was able to run 10, 15 case. But the combination

of three sports in one, I didn’t know I would make it. And so yeah, I tried to train a little bit for that. And then we towed the line. And I was completely blown away because it was so great. And then I looked around in my area for a triathlon club to join some structured training. Yeah, I’ve never looked over my shoulder. And what was your experience before starting triathlon? Did you learn to swim as a child? Yeah, yeah, I started swimming like I was, I think, four years old, four or five years about that. And I was born race in a small village. So there wasn’t much around like you can buy soccer, you can play handball. And you had this swimming club. And yeah, then I joined the swimming club as a child. And yeah, we it wasn’t like high level swimming, we didn’t go to really big races. But we did go to smaller ones. And that was really fun with going with a group of swimming and a competition. Yeah, and I did that for about

till I was about 12 13 years old. And then I popped out, which is a shame from my nowadays point of view. But yeah, that was basically my swimming background. So I learned all kind of swimming. And it was always normal for me to go for swim.

And 10 years ago, where would you say your swimming was at what level were you at when you first started doing triathlons? And was it something that came easily for you? Or was it something that felt a little bit like hard work in the beginning, until you started to get into it and do it more regularly?

Yeah, I think it was on an average level. And when you’re talking about triathletes, like, it was never a problem for me. It was just like, Well, let’s go for a swim. And what I thought about swimming 1500 meters in the Olympic triathlon was more like, Yeah, you should practice a little bit longest in swimming, but it wasn’t was nothing to worry about. So a lot of other triathletes, especially the late starters like me, they would they try and learn how to swim. They got pretty stressed like, like, Oh, my God, I have to swim such a long, that was not a problem for me. And so it really came kind of easily, like, I wasn’t really fast, but it was not a problem.

So the distance was okay, but speed was the thing that you wanted to improve on. And when you first came across our coaching, where were you at with your swimming, which was about 12 months ago, which you mentioned prior to the call? Yeah, yeah, it was when over the years of doing doing triathlon, the distances grew longer, longer, pretty fast. Like I was interested in the half distance Ironman. I was interested in the Ironman swimming Ironman distance. I started that about five years ago. So when the distances got longer, I and I tried to hit the water like, like I did before, like two to three times a week, I kind of leveled out with my with my speed. And I tried, I worked with a different coach then. And I tried to swim a lot. I tried to swim different kind of training focuses. And nothing really happened. What’s just like I came out of water like in an Olympic, like 25 minutes or about 30, 32 minutes and a half Ironman. And it

doesn’t really matter if I was heading in water more often or not. So I was kind of, yeah, I was, I tried to figure out what is holding me back for getting faster. And then I found your on the Instagram, I found your effortless swimming. And I was just like, Whoa, what’s maybe that would work. And so I tried it with a catch challenge. Yeah, and worked out perfectly.

Was there anything in particular that you changed or you felt made the difference?

I think for me, it was breaking down the stroke in all these different parts really helped me understanding what I have to do for catching water or getting a better technique and not trying to work swimming, so to speak. Yeah, so breaking it down into the components, because it’s, I find a lot of people will say swimming is this continuous movement, which it is, but there’s different phases to it. And if you can slow it, if you can enter in the right way with your fingertips first, and a lot of people who have done the course have said just that first thing where you if you enter correctly, and then you reach out in front of your shoulder, if you do that right for a lot of people that get through the bubbles, and it gives them that little bit of time to then reach forwards and set up the catch. Whereas people who are newer to the sport, they tend to rush that part. And when you feel like you’ve got time out the front, you feel

like you’ve got time to rest a little bit as you go on your left side and your right side. And I think that’s a can feel like a real breakthrough moment for a lot of people, if they’re just used to that continuous windmill type movement. So that’s yeah, that’s one of the one of the key things I think that can really make that switch for a lot of people. Yeah, exactly. That was what was what I was feeling as well. It was just like you got into a smoother movement. It felt so much easier. And you really got into this where you can should apply your pressure and not just trying to rush through the water. Like you said, that really makes such a difference that that got me so so much. Yeah, I felt like getting lighter in water getting higher up in the water. And yeah, that felt so good. And I wasn’t I was really stressed some a lot of times when I hit the water like like, I got problems breathing, not on a short distance. But just like I said, it was so much

energy I was using I was wasting. And that completely changed when I relaxed with this new stroke and the knowledge what I should what my hand should do what my where should I set up my catch? That was just, yeah, just awesome. Yeah, it’s when you can get to that point where you feel like you have lots of time where your hands and your arms are relaxed in the recovery phase and in the reach phase, then the heart rate comes down a lot, whereas people tend to hold a lot of tension through their shoulders and through their chest and hands and then they never feel good and they’re never able to relax. And it’s one of those. I mean, pretty much every sport you want to do you want to be relaxed as you do it because of the water component where not everyone feels comfortable. I think with your background, you obviously felt comfortable, but a lot of people don’t have that comfort because they might have a little bit of fear of water. It’s

unnatural. Then they tend to hold this tension, even if they don’t know it. And if they can get to that point where they can just relax and only enough tension to hold the right shapes and technique, then they get to this next level where they can really see a good improvement. And it comes with time, comes with practice, but also just knowing what to do as well. And what changed your speed? Did you see over those couple of months?

Well, yeah, as I said, I have the I did two races this year like one half Ironman one Ironman. And if I compare these both distances with the last years, I came down from, let’s say, half distance for half distance race like from 31 minutes to 29. So an improvement of two over two minutes and half distance race. And I came down from my last Ironman distance was in swim was in 2019. Like from one hour, two minutes to, yeah, just about one hour. So on two minutes improvement as well. And so I think it’s about five to 10 seconds on 100 k, depending on the distance. And that having said that, with not so much swimming like before, like, I didn’t manage to hit the water as often as I would like to in the last couple of months, but made the improvement time wise. Anyway, so that was just like I was completely blown away with that. Yeah, that’s awesome. And one of the things you mentioned prior to the call was that you focused a lot more on quality over

quantity this year. And you’ve seen that have a positive effect on your results. Can you talk a bit about that? Yeah, I mean, as I’m pretty time staffed, like I was I’m working full time as an user test, I got three kids. So family business is running and work needs to be done. And so and so if you wanted to put in all this training for long distance, prior long, you have to focus what to do when when you’re going to train, what you are really about to do, like I try to understand what I what is in every single training, what is the focus I have to be on. And so I see that not just putting in junk miles, each discipline, but focusing on the quality of the training you you want to do really helps me out. And it doesn’t really matter if you’re doing not so much hours like like other athletes might do, but you make improvement anyway, if you focus on this quality, especially in swimming, as swimming is so so technical for me, it helps me really just

to know when I get my my my technique really next to the next level. And when I focus on this stroke technique, I make improvement, although I won’t have that much mileage in at the end of the season, or comes race day. So yeah, that’s why this thing is really good to focus on on on the quality and not just getting out. And yeah, just for the for the reason to to getting out. And what did that look like with your swim sessions? In what would you what would a standard session look like in terms of time wise and distance? And what kind of training were you doing most of the time? Yeah, um, I live at the Baltic Sea. So only a few kilometers away from beach. So here around you can swim like from May to September end of September, depending on and so I tried to during summertime, I tried to to swim just open water, just going doing long, long distance swimming, like usually 45 minutes to one hour, the normal length of my my

sessions. And during wintertime, when you can’t really do open water swimming here, I hit the pool, and I tried to normal session would be like about an hour, we have some with our triathlon club, we have some pool times in the next city near near where I live in Kiel. And so it’s usually about an hour. And I’m trying to get in another at slightly longer session on the weekend, like about 90 minutes. And distance wise, I would say it’s usually about three K, like maybe when you’re doing when you’re in the pool, and you’re doing some technique tech training, it’s all it’s about two or two and a half K. And if you’re doing more the more distance swimming, maybe it’s about three and a half. Yeah, that’s my you my my normal sessions. And I think it sounds like the open water training makes made a big difference for you as well, because it’s one of the most common things that I’ll hear from people is transferring

their pool times across the open water, they find is a challenge. And if you are getting in the open water regularly, you develop this open water rhythm and style that carries on to your racing. And it’s something that I don’t think enough people do is open water swimming, especially leading up to a race, if you’re only getting in twice, two or three times before the before a race in the open water, it’s probably not enough to get comfortable and to get comfortable wearing a wetsuit. So if you can get in a lot more times in the lead up to it, I think it just it gives you that that feeling and that awareness of how you’re going to have to change your stroke to be able to feel comfortable in the racing and keep your speed up because it can be a very different sort of style. And did you have to change your stroke for the open water? Is it something that you’re aware of from your pool stroke to your open water stroke? This

podcast is brought to you by form goggles, form and powers swimmers at every level to reach their goals, whether they want to get stronger, faster, swim further, or be more efficient. Get lap by lap motivation with real time metrics and workout instructions right in your goggles and forms recently released form plans, which included progressive series of workouts to help you achieve your fitness skills or triathlon goals. You can follow along with the plan and your weekly swims will be automatically synced to your goggles. So you’ll swim through your workouts with real time metrics and workout instructions all in your goggles. So it’s like having a coach right there with you. And I’ve had a look through these training plans. And I think they are excellent for people who want to train for certain triathlons or reach certain fitness goals. It will build on each week and a really good way to progress progressively build up your fitness. So if you’d like to

follow along with some plans to help you reach your specific swimming goals, then check out form goggles at formswim.com forward slash effortless. And this will give you $15 off your purchase of form goggles. So formswim.com forward slash effortless to get your pair of form goggles. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Definitely. At least slightly as you didn’t find any, I mean, yeah, you can find perfect conditions in the open water as well. But you have to take it as it is. And the sighting of boys, the waves, wind, sun, when you’re breathing bilaterally, when you’re not able to breathe bilaterally, that can really mess up your whole race racing. When you when the sun come up, and you just can’t see anything and stuff like that. That really changes your swimming. And of course, your stroke is getting getting a little different from the pool where you just can glide right away. And the currents is another big thing. It’s not really it’s just

small parts coming together, which influence your stroke definitely. And putting up the hat every five, six strokes to see where you are, and not having any line on the bottom of your pool, which you can follow and finding out if you’re swimming straight, or just zigzagging through the waters, all these stuff, you really need to practice. And you should practice a lot of times because it’s when you’re feeling, as you said, when you’re feeling comfortable, and you don’t really think about doing that.

How did you go about keeping the stroke changes that you felt helped you with the catch challenge? How did you go about keeping those changes and carrying them into the open water? Because I was like you mentioned, it’s you’re probably going to have to start to catch a little bit sooner. You might not be as long with each stroke that you take. So when you have that shorter stroke, did you find you were still able to keep some of those elements that you learned in the catch challenge into the open water? Yeah, yeah, you can I could definitely keep that was what was one of my key sessions was the YMCA drill, like the thinking about what your hand is doing or what your arms are doing during the catch phase and during the stroke later. Coming back to that, when you’re swimming in open water was really helpful for me just rethinking where you should apply the pressure and where shouldn’t you apply the pressure what what

happens when you’re entering the water and after that, even if the stroke is shorter. That really made a difference for me and always the staying relaxed staying having your shoulders relaxed and that was another kind of mantra which was in my head when I was swimming in open water, just always this stay relaxed and because I can come back to that even when I’m a little bit exhausted or even if maybe the water is really choppy and you feel like you didn’t really get into a good rhythm. Coming back to that really helped me out like, okay, remember what it was what you was doing in the pool and what you should feel that really helped me. Yeah, that’s great to hear because with the YMCA drill, I think one of the biggest benefits for people is that you have lots of times about to get those positions correctly. And the main thing is for most people having the arms bent in your high elbow catch and in your power diamond. If you’ve got

that bent elbow position, you’re going to be so much stronger. Like if you’re up against if you’re in the pool and you’re up against the wall and you were trying to get yourself out of the pool, you’re not going to do it with straight arms. There’s not it’s not effective that way. So just having the elbows a bit bent through the second and third position in that YMCA drill carries in really well to your stroke because most people that I work with initially, they’re just too straight with their arms through the catch in the pool and they press straight down and they just don’t get much purchase or hold of the water big as a result of that. So a simple drill like YMCA drill can just make sure you’ve got those important parts of your catch in your pool. And when you’re in the open water, your body position is normally good because of salt water and you’ve often got the wetsuit on. And so really, if you can have a good catch and pull, hold

a decent stroke rate with the right amount of rotation, that’s going to take care of a lot of the things that are going to move you forward. So you can keep it pretty simple when it comes to open water that way.

Yeah, that’s true that that perfectly describes me like like applying pressure with the two straight arm and not going anywhere with that, but it’s getting exhausted.

Yeah, yeah. And that’s and some people might know about that. But unless you’ve really sort of seen it describe in or seen it visually and then been given a way to be able to make that change, it’s very hard to know what to do or how to change it. So that’s why I really like that drill progression. What do you think what do you think you’re capable of in the next 12 months with your swimming? Do you see sub 60 being achievable and and beyond that?

Yeah, I mean, I hope so. Like when you just almost made it a sub 60, you definitely want to break that boundary. So, yeah, I think I should what I’m hoping to progress to is is to get more consistency in my sessions. Like as I said, I didn’t work out that good heading in the pool or hitting the water quite consistently. And I saw that the consistency in my training for the bike and for the running really made a difference with these two disciplines for me. So I hope I can take that to the swimming swimming as well. And yeah, I reckon that that that should be I should be would be able to go below 60 on the Ironman distance. And I hope I can do that

because I think that that is definitely possible for me.

And one thing we didn’t mention is you qualified for Kona. You got your Kona spotted Ironman Copenhagen. Is that for is that for next year 2023? Now, that’s yeah, that’s a pretty pretty big problem for me right now. Like I guess you had to go this year and I wasn’t really able to put up a travel plan and to get some accommodation. It was just ridiculously expensive right now. So I have to cancel that. Yeah, pretty shame. But on the other hand, I said, well,

it was such a perfect race for me and Copenhagen. The qualification was, yeah, a really surprise. I didn’t really know where I was standing in the performance wise. So when it turned out that that’s perfect for me and Copenhagen, I think I can do that in the next year. This again, so we decided not to go to Kona this year but try to work it out in the next couple of years. So yeah, it’s it won’t happen this year. Yeah, yeah, it’s great to get that qualification anyway. So yeah, great to hear how I mean, it was just over nine hours, wasn’t it the overall time? So you’re flying there in that 60 second, 60 second, 60 minute swim sets up really well. Anything that we haven’t covered so far that you think would that you’d pass on to another triathlete wanting to improve best swimming or their overall triathlon?

Yeah, maybe two things. One thing, especially about swimming is relax and focus on your technique. And the rest really literally follow like, like don’t be stressed out in the water if you want to hit certain numbers or certain times. And the other thing for the overall triathlon training, especially as an age group athlete, is just

identify your

capacity time wise and you’re making make it good to schedule for your training session to get the consistency. Never the one special session you need to do like you were you read about all the posts to or everybody is doing that never really changes anything. It’s just like the consistency in your training. Keep going, having your weekly plan where you can do what and stick to that plan, no matter what. That is really that that would really make a difference, especially in this in these longer distances. And so coming back to that, when you’re getting a little bit when you struggle, that is really what you should do.

I love it to two really important things there that they can make all the difference. You know, focus on the technique, relax and just follow the process. The times will come and then just that consistency over time is where I’ve seen so many people get those results and and just being willing to stick with it because there’s not many swimmers who will have this overnight change where it’s things have improved in one session. It often comes with several weeks or sometimes several months of practice and work and then things tend to click. So having that patience is is very important. So, OK, I think it’s great for you to be able to share your experience and how you’ve improved with with our listeners. So thanks very much for being on the podcast and can’t wait to to see you at Kona sometime in the future when it when it works out. Yeah, I hope so. And yeah, thanks again for having me and giving me the opportunity to talk to you on your podcast.

Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

The post Breaking The 60-minute Ironman Swim Barrier with Oke Büll appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

In today’s episode, my guest is Suzanne Nottage. We will talk about the progress in her swimming over the last couple of years. Tune in now!

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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 Suzanne Nodige. Welcome to the podcast, Suzanne. Hi, Brenton. Nice to join you. I love to get people on the podcast to talk about what they’ve done to improve their swimming because I think first of all, it gives people a bit of inspiration and hope that it’s possible for them. And it also, I find, really helps people find ways that they themselves can improve because we’re not alone. Everyone has similar kinds of issues and struggles with swimming. And I find stories like yours can be really helpful for other people, which is why I love to get people on like yourself. So just for those listening, what’s your background with swimming? How did you get started with it? I agree, lucky as a kid. So before even starting school, that my parents wanted my brother and I to be really comfortable around the water. So we got to that point where we’d probably

date ourselves or swim a length or that sort of thing, but never did any saw their swimming at school in terms of club or anything like that. And then in 2009, when I was in my mid-30s, I was on the internet one night, late, and just entered an Iron Man and then went, Oh no, I’ve got a cigarette, how to learn to swim in the next six months. How hard can it be? And so, yeah, back in 2009, when I actually kind of started figuring out swimming properly, it took two or three years to really like it. But one thing led to another and then I got into long distance swimming, so channel relay and a Gibral the swim and Gibral frosting and things like that. And yeah, since then, it’s just kind of been a variety of things. But yeah, never at the front of the back and eventually just wanting to get a bit better and understand that more about the technique and actually make it fun as well as getting faster. And how did you make that first Iron Man? Did you manage

to swim in six months? I would very luckily with the months to go, I still couldn’t swim the distance. And of course, open water is completely different. It’s like cross country versus, you know, the hundred meters on the track. So I was still scared of, you know, every time I handed a bit of weed or something like that, I thought it was a shark in the lake in England. So someone suggested that I go and get a few one to one lessons and improve my speed by 20% because I don’t think like rotation and stretching out and all those real even putting my swim cap on the wrong way and it was what I was doing. So it was the best place to put your swim cap on the right way around. So here, just the real basics and that improved my speed 20% in four weeks. And so my Iron Man time for the swim was about one hour 52, which now it’s 108. So yeah, 1.32 is certainly and certainly lots of room for improvement there. Yeah, absolutely. Well, that’s an amazing

achievement just to be able to figure out how to swim in in six months or swim that distance and then do the rest of the Iron Man, of course. So that’s really impressive. And then with the longer distance swims, you’ve obviously fallen in love with swimming at some stage where you’ve enjoyed enough to train for those events because they’re certainly not easy things to do. And you’ve got to put a lot of time in the water to actually complete those swims. So when did you start to really enjoy it? To be honest, it took about three seasons of open water swimming to really start to feel comfortable with open water swimming. I still couldn’t tumble turn then. That was a wonderful coach, Michelle, the forced me to learn to tumble turn after about another three years, which was well worth the investment. But yeah, it took about three years to actually get comfortable and actually go in our comfortable sighting. I’m

comfortable swimming through moderate ways and comfortable doing those longer distances. You know, once you get to a certain point, you kind of know, actually, I could swim for as long as I need to. So just to get that little bit more efficiency where you could just stay out there. So don’t if you swim counts and start to hang around the right people as well, who just kind of knew how to do it and pick up from them. Yeah, how to pick it’s about static level. And by hanging around the right people, were they giving you advice or were you watching them swim and visualising yourself swimming the same way or trying to copy them? Where did that all come from? Yeah, it’s probably a mix of things. So I had a few different coaches and have really appreciated they see things different. So each coach was good for a specific part of the journey, but kind of didn’t really take all the pieces that I needed. And then just

hanging around other swimmers. They’re sun swimmers who are likely, you know, either physically or say back around and there’s some swimmers who are really different to me. So either they’ve grown up basically as water babies, they’re more of that plastic open water built, which I’m not. And yeah, just seeing how they approached things and even just seeing things like I saw some video work about a swimmer who I really admire, who was doing a North Sea crossing. And I just realised after watching him, just how much he accelerated through the water, which I just wasn’t doing. So again, you know, there’s something here that’s clearly different. I need to look into how he’s doing it because I can’t do it the way that I’m doing. So what do I need to adjust to my technique so I can get acceleration through? So you’re just exposing myself to different situations and different people, I think really, really helped. Yeah, it’s so helpful.

Like, back when I was coaching a master’s club in Melbourne, Daniel Kowalski, who was an Australian swimmer, I don’t know, maybe 20, 20 years ago or so now, he would sometimes train after the squad that I coached would finish. And I’d often get in and occasionally I’d do a training session with him. And I’d be watching him out the corner of my goggle, out the corner of my eye, and just watching his stroke and head, he sat so high and he had a very quick turnover. And so I would try and copy him and swim with the same sort of stroke. And in case it would work, it’s sort of not my style of freestyle, but it was really interesting just to copy what he was doing and see how he would increase the pace and he was swimming some really quick times. And yeah, just it’s and the other thing that I noticed as well was there was Mac Horton and Greg Paltranieri training together at MSAC here in Melbourne for maybe a year or two. And

I saw them training together a couple times and it was it was amazing, two completely different strokes. Max got your classic long, very long stroke, low stroke count, holding something like 32 strokes per lap for his 1500s, I think. And whereas Paltranieri was something like 39 strokes per lap, maybe even a little bit more. So very fast turnover and quicker strokes. And it’s just good to be able to see what works for different people and just to expose yourself to those different ways of swimming and they all work just depends on what suits you best. And for you, then after that, Suzanne, so you were obviously interested in technique and getting faster over those years that you were training for the longer swims. And then in the last, what is it, six or 12 months you had another round of improvement, I guess you’d say. What happened there and what did you change in your stroke or what did you learn? Yeah, I think like a lot of people

COVID disrupted my swimming. And so I ended up moving. So I lost a lot of contact with the club that I was swimming with, moved to a different area, discovered new pools, et cetera. And it was kind of a blessing and it was a lot of momentum and a lot of swimming. So I think I was out of pool probably for about 18 months. And so, you know, you’ve just lost that feel for the water, et cetera. So you’re starting to scratch. And I did get into a little bit of a rut as you do when you buy yourselves and you’ve got what you know, but you don’t have any fresh ideas, et cetera. So I started watching those videos, et cetera. And that’s where I’ve come across you before, but that’s where I started to follow you a bit more because I wasn’t enjoying my swimming again. It was very much going through the motions and just doing it to fitness. And so I just decided something had to change. And so in around April, I decided to sign up for the

side day catch challenge because I thought, you know, only 10 bucks. What’s the worst that can happen? And I was really blown away with how much value I got out of it. I did each day multiple times which a lot of people do. And thought, oh yeah, this could be amused for two weeks. And after four weeks, I was still getting a lot of value out of it. So I ended up doing kind of a two month boot camp on my swimming. So I was facing book plans at that time and amazing me up here on the North Shore to have always too many pools to count from. So, you know, every morning I was getting up before work and not doing loads of distance, but just it was it was that frequency, which to me is he is swimming all the tailpipe or something like the language to me because I didn’t do a lot of it at suppose those primary school years. So I do lose the feel for the water if I’m not in the pool frequently. And yeah, just for that that two month

I decided to swim as close to every day as possible. And I just really started to see improvements and that inspired me to keep going and then I see more improvements, et cetera, and and not just getting faster, but actually enjoying it. So that was a side benefit that I underestimated. And so yeah, the end of two months, which was the end of June. Yeah, I’d improved much more than much more than I thought and also gone on to the eight week program as well. Fantastic. And it’s such a good combination of the consistency that you’re swimming with and also having maybe one or two things to focus in on. And especially the catch because to me, that’s that’s the 20% of the stroke that can make 80% of the difference for most people. So it’s really worth getting good at it. And it can feel a little clunky at first when you’re trying to figure it out. But then the more you practice it with the right movements, it starts to become somewhat second

nature. How did it feel for you when you started to change things? Was it immediately like, yep, this feels better? Or was it a little bit like a giraffe walking? Yeah, I don’t think I’m a particularly fast learner. And so it was great that in the comments I had read that other people got a bit frustrated before they saw that that improvement. And I think, you know, sometimes we kind of know that when we’re doing change, there’s a bit of a bit where you go more slowly before you go quicker, but none of us want to believe it will happen once. So I mean, to be honest, from the first time I did the first drill, I did feel better. And I saw a small improvement, but it wasn’t even like, you know, five seconds that you talk about. And then I got quite frustrated. So it’s like why are all these other people getting improvements and I’m not. And then I got frustrated with my frustration and just decided to keep going. And then it’s

like, you know, I think, I think you sell you’ve written the comment just sometimes one day, just for you get that improvement. And so, yeah, like I remember the day when all of a sudden it’s, you call it effortless swimming. And for me, it’s like all of a sudden I’ve got a tailwind, like, you know, when you’re running, and you get a tailwind, it just, I don’t know, it feels like you’re on a matric carpet or you’re sliding or it’s just effortless. And you’re going faster. But how can it be faster and easier? But but it is. And so once once I got over that hull and started getting quicker, then, yeah, that just inspired me to keep going up and keep going to the pool while I had this two month window to just see how much I could achieve. So all that window was open. So have you been through all of the five days before and then eventually it clicked or was it? Yeah, the question I think it was actually I tended, I think I tended to do each of

the days about, you know, three to five times. I watched all the videos at the start before I started to know what I was getting myself into. And it was just like, you know, do I feel like I’ve kind of got some degree of mastery after doing the drill for the three or five days to move on to the next one. So yeah, it probably be, you know, in terms of the lapse time, it would probably be three to four weeks when I was starting to see real improvement, although I did get some improvement from, yeah, at the very first time. And was there anything in particular that you feel like you changed or you focused on to get it to click? Yeah, there were two things that you said that just like a penny drop like if I heard this 10 years ago, I kind of where would I be today type of stuff. So one was, and look, I’ve had this, you know, coaches explaining different ways and sometimes just the right words at the right time. So one of them was just

around what’s your your hand of the water and you’re getting that early vertical four hour, whereas you talked about how little the upper arm actually moves at one point at the stroke. And I realised that I’d actually, you know, you often get caught up in trying to do more. We think doing more is the right answer in life. But sometimes doing less is the right answer. So this is the place that they said, actually, once I just tried to mentally focus on keeping the upper arm having less movement at the early part of the step was that was a mental eye opener that really helped because that set me up nicely with the vertical four hour. And the second one, again, I’ve never heard another coach say this, it’s not actually any by big challenge. It’s in another video, but it’s about the timing of the hit with the arm. And look, it’s really obvious and restrained and butterfly, but I just never thought, hey, what if my arms and legs actually worked

entirely with each other in freestyle and doing that at the pool? Yeah, it’s a complete game changer. And like all of a sudden, I feel like my body is swimming with itself together rather than the top half and the bottom half kind of doing different things. Interesting. And and that it’s week seven in our week. Yeah. Of course, and I’ve got a few YouTube videos on that as well. So I’ll try and include that on our podcast notes if you’re listening in there with the first part of the catch. So if you’re listening to this podcast, rather than seeing it on YouTube through that movement of the catch so that initial part of when the hand starts to move down with a really good catch, that upper arm doesn’t move a whole lot. It’s just the hand and forearm moving down somewhat. And that’ll help you set up that high elbow catch. And it doesn’t need to be really extreme where you’re getting into a 90 degree position because it’s not that’s not

comfortable. But yeah, a little bit of that is what helps set up the the catch. And I was watching a video earlier this week of David Popovich, the 17, 18 year old who just broke the 100 freestyle world record. And I was just at him in training. And if you watch him swim, he’s just cruising along. He’s doing so little like there’s just every single stroke is just tip affection where there’s no wasted extra movements or anything like that. It is just pure efficiency. And he makes it look so graceful and effortless. And that’s what we want to work towards is where you’re not actually doing a whole lot. And you’re trying not trying as hard. That’s actually when you’re probably swimming the best. And it’s a funny thing is it’s the same same thing goes to many other aspects of life as well. The simpler you can make something often the better it is. But it takes a lot of whittling away to be able or chipping away to be able to get it to that simplified

version. Just like you mentioned. And the other one with the timing. So I’ve had a number of guests on this podcast talk about one thing that really clicked for them was the timing of the kick and the catch together. And for you was it something that you’re able to put in place pretty quickly? What you heard about it? Or it did so it clicked pretty fast when you did it. It was easy that I expected like to hit it on your podcast. And so I kind of stood up in the living room tried it and when this doesn’t make sense this is going to take ages to commit the hang off. And then I went to the pool and just tried it. It was super easy with sends on I think because the fans comb you don’t know maybe just make it easier to feel because you’ve got that extra weight on your foot. So I tried it brilliant for things on and just went oh my gosh this is I get it and this is easy. Yeah. Can I ask are you doing were you doing a six-beat kick or

two-beat kick? I typically I’ve gone from a triathlete with the mindset of why would I even want to kick. So I’ll do a very nominal two-beat kick just to keep my kind of ankles and feet breaking the surface of the water but not actually connecting it to power or you know anything useful. So yeah it’s a pretty much a two-beat kick. I’ve started to experiment a bit with four and six but I’m you know just having to get the two-beat kick nailed for the for the moment and most of the stuff I do is longer stuff as well. Yeah, cool. And were you thinking of what were you thinking about to time it together? What was the cue? Are you thinking of catching the same side? Yeah if you can catch on the same side. Wicked with completely counted my brain just like no we’re not what you know when you walk it’s lived hands you know it’s opposite opposite. But yeah for my brain that’s just what works is is right arm and right leg going in time. I know

the opposite can work. I mean that depends on what you’re talking about that’s what I’m talking about and it just just works for me. Yeah it’s interesting because a lot of people who try to say that works for them and then a lot of other people go I just can’t get that to work but then the other thing works for them which is yeah one hand entry so left hand entry right foot kicking down at the same time. It’s essentially the same thing but yeah different strokes with different folks it’s yeah it just depends what suits you best and I just added a new drill into that week in the eight week course where if you do a one arm freestyle drill with one arm in front and you breathe let’s say you’re stroking with your left arm you breathe to the left hand side and you do two kicks to each arm stroke and that way you time your right foot kick with you when your hand enters on the left and then you do your left foot kick as you pull through so it’s

kind of it’d be the same as a two bit kick really and it’s another good way to practice that timing and get the feel for it so it’s one arm freestyle drill but you’re just doing two kicks to each stroke and you’re timing it as I mentioned there so just I find that’s quite a good way to also get that that feeling so I only added that about two weeks ago I think but yeah just another way to to go about getting that and for so many people it’s that just gets the whole thing working together where the top half and the bottom half are working together and I think that’s where that easy speed tends to come from that effortless feeling because then it’s not just yeah top half doing something different to the bottom half what sort of improvement did you see in the last well yeah last couple of months I’m really surprised how big the improvement’s been so when I was in the my typical pace

between one and three K in the pool I in the past have avoided the shorter stuff although I’ve started to enjoy that a little bit more recently and so you know typically I’ll kind of do one K and 20 minutes which is splits are about two minutes to a hundred on that so that it’s a bit faster than that that’s a good depth it’s lower than that I get frustrated and annoyed with myself and yeah quite quickly I was getting down to the low 150s to kind of 151 152 is an average then I started to see some 140s and this is for the same another better to 100 and that was great I’m trying to make the screenshot that I that I posted on the five bear catch challenge about the amount of improvement was that I started seeing so I thought there are errors in my and like I’m so what I tend to do is if I’m doing like to just say 10 lap or 10 length set so to 250 meters of the pool that I was in is kind of 9 and 10 I’ll go not not as fast as I can but I’ll just try

and put everything I can in terms of the technique so how much of how efficient can I get which in a bit of bootings to seed yeah sort of thinking my watch is playing up because I’d start to see 120s and then occasionally I’d start to see like the best I’ve seen is a 170 and you know compared to and you know even even 10 years ago when I was super fit and do lots of club swimming it’s a drag to come in under 130 would be a really really good day and so to see the 120s and the occasional sub 120 is just far exceed my expectations and you do you just feel like a fish in in those lengths that’s awesome that’s a yeah huge improvement they must must feel good going at that kind of speed because you’ve got the water rushing past you it’s it’s you must be sitting quite high when you’re doing that like it’s got it’s got to feel good to have yeah it does and the next the next thing I’m looking at is trying to get rid of those slow lengths so you with the gun

and I can I could see each length after I downloaded it and at the moment over over at pay I’m just trying to get rid of those last couple of lengths where it slips into the 150s you know 150 one or 150 three and to knock up a whole a whole pay where every length of the pole has has been a 140 something more or better yeah yeah nice it’s a well it doesn’t sound like you’re far from that at all and and with the training sessions that you’re doing are you you’re making them mostly a continuous swim or you’re breaking them up with different sets what’s the structure yeah and before the five day catch challenge I’d got when I was in my real rut I basically turned up the pole jumps in dedicate on stop with no drills no warm-up no warm-up no variation of pace probably got the coach kind of had in his hands and that sort of thing but yeah it’s just sort of a rut I’m not enjoying it so why would I why would I why would I bury it I’m just getting get out

tick the box et cetera now it’s kind of like yeah during that that team of mock I really slipped it off his head so I followed what the coach said and did a you know do a proper warm-up then do a lot of drills did a lot of short stuff so my mindset changed from just get in and do a cane on stop to actually break it down and can I can I bolt together four good lengths and then can I bolt together six and then can I bolt together eight good lengths because there’s no poison there’s no point in building bad muscle memory so in my view particularly with swimming that’s so technical you know quite technical that’s that thing and running which I also do as a as a triathlete but I don’t want a bad build-in bad technique and have that become ingrained so I’d rather simplify it and short-revinged and really focus on you know just one of those drills for the for the session so whether it’s Swine CA drill or whether it’s a bit of unco or something like that

and just really just re-enailing that and getting getting that price and then try to build up the the distances again so it’s probably the first month that I did my own mini boot camp I probably didn’t swim anything beyond so about a 200 meter and then then I started to do the odds one K block etc but yeah I really just want to focus on keeping it short until I’ve got that consistency every single length and I know I’m doing that good technique so the the whole 400 meters etc around when you’re doing it right and when you’re not doing it right developed over that time as well yeah the question I think the video camera is probably that a judge of far a judge of that and I haven’t haven’t got one of those at the moment but like I mean I do wear my garment while I’m swimming and each time I tumble turn I have a quick look at it it doesn’t distract me in a bad way but it does let me know how that length was and I could kind of get feedback and if I have a few slow lengths

then I’ll just stop and have you know 15 second break for a 60 second break and regret you only need that short little circuit breaker or I do another do two lengths here some specific drill and then do another two lengths of swimming and see if that that improves things yeah yeah nice it’s I mean the I’ve had a lot of people video themselves recently who have either been through and one of those two courses that you mentioned earlier and they’ll send through a video for our for our members call and quite a few of them have gone oh my god I can’t believe this is me this is what I’m I’m doing but a lot of them especially those that have worked on their catch like a lot of them have got quite a a good catch it might just be out of time or they might just be you know rushing the stroke at the the front like they’ve they’ve been able to develop really good things in their stroke it might just be out of place in in one or two other areas and so when they can put that together

it makes it makes a big difference and I mean if you’re hitting those those times you you mentioned it’s you’re doing a lot a lot well there but the video is such a good thing to be able to see where those opportunities lie for you but yeah it sounds like you have got a much better feel for the water from where you were before and a much better understanding what those correct things are to to be doing in the in the pool because that’s yeah yeah it does look at what really some interesting for me is I so in that two week block I managed and at one point I knocked together 12 days in a row which I really really pleased about and again none of these days are more that’s between a K and maybe a mile so not the minus days but then I went off to I got a pool for a month because I went over to France for a wedding etc and so last week I was in Melbourne for where there was a pool in the hotel and I thought okay it’s been about a month since I did a proper swim let’s see how much I’ve lost

the fuel for the water and I’ve actually surprised I felt a lot more yeah just

usually I feel quite uncoordinated when I haven’t been in the pool for a while but I looked at my splits and they were you know a little bit slow but they were still on the right side at two minutes to K just cruising up and down the pool so yeah just through um practicing that technique and also getting to that point through that consistency every day for a while thankfully the improvements have really held on which which I’m really really pleased about yeah that’s great it sounds like you’ve levelled up with your swimming where you you work hard work hard and then you sort of get to this level and then that’s almost like your baseline or your where you somewhat not plateaued is the right word for that but you kind of move up and move up and then if you do take them up out of the pool while your new baseline is is that little bit higher and it sounds like that’s probably the the case which is which is excellent and I think part of that comes with confidence as well where you

see the times you hit and you maybe feel better you’re enjoying your swimming and and then that confidence carries over to when you get into the pool next and you you go I can easily be on the right side that two minutes because I’ve done that before and I know how that feels and yeah maybe there’s a lack of endurance there for now or I might need a bit of swim strength to develop to be able to sustain that for longer but your body knows how to how to do those things going forwards what what do you feel like is the next thing for you that will make the biggest difference what what do you feel like you’ll be focusing on for the next couple of months yeah the question I’d like to so I’ve got the eight week catch challenge which have only just started so I’d like to work through that I’m also tossing up about getting a video camera I’ve had a bit of video done years ago I’m totally aware with you that it’s definitely worth the investment to see yourself swimming and just the improvements

you can get from that so yeah I guess if we fast forward to Christmas I’d love to be knocking out a K with some of the splits I’ve been doing over 400 meters and also being able to hold that technique so the 3K as well yeah so there’s there’s probably the two golds going forward yeah fantastic and I mean if getting a camera I I’m point a lot of people to Facebook marketplace there’s heaps a second hand go pros there and if you get anything that’s the hero six or above that quality is is quite good it’s faster transfer across your phone or your iPad and it’s it’s fairly easy to record that way and you can also get I don’t have one here but it’s called a gorilla pod it’s like a tripod with your bendable legs and you can get a GoPro attachment for it and just sit on the bottom of the pool if you don’t have someone there to hold it or film you so there’s a lot of ways you can film yourself provided that your pools okay for you to do so and yeah it can be something that can be

pretty easy to do because you don’t need a lot of footage you know one pass going towards the camera one going across back and forth left to right and that gives you a pretty good sense of of where things are so yeah it’s it might cost couple hundred bucks I reckon if you get a second hand one on marketplace but it’s yeah it’s a good good tool to have if it’s something that you’re able to use at your local pool so that sounds exciting well Suzanne thanks very much for being on the podcast and congratulations on your improvement over the last couple of months and yeah so it’s exciting seeing where you’ve gotten to so far and looking forward to seeing what the next couple of months contain for you so yeah thanks again for being on the podcast and thank you Brent so I think there’s there’s thousands of us so here we’ve really benefited from your willingness to give away a lot of your knowledge and not only help us get faster but also enjoy swimming more yeah I appreciate it

it’s I’m glad that you missed you commented in the the five day catch challenge because I that’s the only way I sort of find out if someone’s had good results or anything like that and I think there’s so many people who can improve just by listening to the podcast or watching YouTube videos and and those courses I put together I wanted to have some structure for people to be able to go through if they are not sure where they should start so that’s that’s why I put together those courses but yeah I’m lucky to be able to do what I do and I love hearing results like yours so yeah thank you very much I appreciate it thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast if you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com

The post [Case Study] “I Thought My Watch Was Playing Up” with Suzanne Nottage appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

In today’s episode, I wanted to talk about the five common mistakes I’ve seen from around 6,500 analysis videos I did over the years. Tune in now!

01:34 Breath Timing

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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.

Hey, and welcome to this week’s episode of the Effortless Swimming podcast. Recently, I was in Tasmania doing a couple of group clinics. So around five clinics there with, on average, about 20 people per clinic, which is slightly different than the small group six person per clinic ones that we normally do. And out of that weekend, I ended up having about 70 videos to record of, you know, analysis videos for for people from those clinics. And it’s not the most that I’ve done in a in a week. I went to New Zealand in 2019. And we had around 200 swimmers do the clinics and the filming. So there’s quite a quite a bit of sort of follow up filming follow up analysis to do from the weekend. And I thought it’d be good to talk about what are some of those key takeaways or most common things that I saw in those 70 analysis videos from the weekend. And it’s not just from the weekend, you know, no matter if you’re

from Tasmania or from another part of Australia to the US. All right, these things are fairly consistent across the board. So I want to talk about the five most common mistakes that I saw or see made out of the six and a half thousand plus analysis videos that I’ve done over the years. Now from the from the weekend, one of the really one of the really important ones that kind of stood out was breath timing. Now there’s not quite a few people who were getting the breath too late in their stroke. And that really threw out the it threw out the timing of the rest of their stroke. So it would make it very hard to have a good catch in the right rotation and a whole bunch of other things when the breath timing is out. So what happens when the breath timing is out? Often someone will turn their head too late to the side and then bring their head back into the water after breath too late. Now what that looks like for people is, if you’re

bringing your head back in to the water too late, that means your eyes will be coming back down into the water. Usually when your catch arm is almost back at your hip. So you’ve kind of gone through your catching your pull on your arm in the water. But your face is still off to the side. You’ve got to bring your head back down or your eyes back down into the water along with your catch. So the latest you really want to be looking back down is when your hand is kind of passing under your shoulders at the latest. So it was just really common for people to to be getting that late. And you can see that there’s a lot of there’s a lot of like other things that come in because of that. So one of the things that I talked to them about implementing is having the cue of pull into the breath. So you should start to turn your head to the side when your hand is coming, like say one hand is coming underneath your shoulder.

That’s when you want to start to turn the head. So you pull into the breath. So you get your face out of the water nice and early, before that hand sort of exits, and then you can bring the head back in fairly quickly along with that opposite arm catch there. So we want to make sure we get the right breath timing. First of all, and those of you that have done the eight week course, our eight week faster freestyle course, I’m in the process of adding another segment to there to the to the first week, which is on breathing. I’m going to add another segment about breath timing and some drills that you can do to to get it. So that’s the the first thing is breath timing. Now another sort of part of that too is that some people were taking too long to actually turn their head to get the breath. So there’s a number of swimmers who as they turn their head to the side they took twice as long as they should actually get their

mouth out of the water. So they turn at the right time. But it was just like a long turn. They didn’t actually get their mouth out of the water until too late. So if you can be fairly quick, fairly snappy with the turn of your head, then you’re going to be able to get the breath quicker. So you got to make sure that the breath is is quick enough as well. The turn of the head is quick enough. So that’s the first one breath timing. Now the second thing that I saw was over rotation. I only had from memory one swimmer who was under rotating with their hips and their shoulders. So they were only going to about 25 degrees side to side from memory. We typically aim for I normally say 35 degrees, but it can be a bit more or a little bit less. But around that 35 degrees if we’re looking at front on how much should your shoulders rotate. Now with the over rotation, okay, it’s most common on your breathing side or

when you’re breathing. So we’d often see people will rotate to 70 or 80 degrees when they are taking a breath. And when that happens, they’ll typically have their arm drop down into the water. So I press down on the water, not get a very good catch. They’ll lose their kind of balance and stability there. And they find it really hard to get the breath because their arms really deep in the water. And then they’re sort of lifting their head up to try and get the face out because there’s nothing out in front to give them balance and stability. So over rotations most common on the breathing side, but it can happen on on either side. So you can either think of that is you want to be rocking side to side instead of rolling side to side. Or another way to think of your rotation is you don’t need to think of rotating side to side necessarily, think of rotating forwards. So when your hand enters the water, you’re reaching forwards, rotate

forwards, you’ll naturally get some rotation with it, but you’re unlikely to overdo it. And I got that from from Russell Mark from the he was the bio mech at USA swimming. So I really liked that queue. And then the rock versus roll one got from Carl and pipes that was a really good queue, I think to to use. So we don’t want to over rotate when we when we swim. So that was a really, really common one. And I mean, it happens, I think it happens a bit because people are told you need to rotate side to side, but it’s very easy to get carried carried away with it. So if you feel like at any point in your stroke that you’ve gone that little bit too far where you lose some balance in your stroke and maybe like that affects your cat or maybe your legs are spying out behind you because you’ve gone too far, then just dial it back a little bit to get the right amount of rotation. So if we if I’m filming someone they’re

swimming towards the camera, we’ll stop it at the furthest point of rotation and just measure how much their shoulders on the side compared to the surface of the water. And we want that to be about 35 degrees. This podcast is brought to you by form goggles, form and powers swimmers at every level to reach their goals, whether they want to get stronger, faster, swim further, or be more efficient. Get lap by lap motivation with real time metrics and workout instructions right in your goggles. And forms recently released form plans, which included progressive series of workouts to help you achieve your fitness skills or triathlon goals. You can follow along with the plan and your weekly swims will be automatically synced to your goggles. So you’ll swim through your workouts with real time metrics and workout instructions, all in your goggles. So it’s like having a coach right there with you. And I’ve had to look

through these training plans. And I think they are excellent for people who want to train for certain triathlons or reach certain fitness goals. It will build on each week and a really good way to progress progressively build up your fitness. So if you’d like to follow along with some plans to help you reach your specific swimming goals, then check out formgoggles at formswim.com forward slash effortless. And this will give you $15 off your purchase of form goggles. So formswim.com forward slash effortless to get your pair of form goggles. Now the third one is the is the recovery. Now the recovery is when the arm comes over the water. And in the recovery, the most there’s two two main mistakes. But the most common one I saw was a low or a flat recovery. So when someone’s bringing the arm over the top of the water, their elbow, now if you’re if you’re watching them swim from the side, okay, they’re sort of

swimming past you. That would mean that their elbow, the point of it is pointing behind them as they’re coming through. So the elbows quite flat quite low to the water, where it should be pointing is mostly up to the sky up to the ceiling, not directly up, but up in that direction. So that’s what I’d consider a like a high elbow recovery, not where you need the elbow coming like all the arm coming over really high and your hand close to your body, you don’t want that. But you kind of want the elbow to be pointing mostly up to the sky in your recovery. So some people just coming over and they’re really low to the water. And the hand was kind of swinging, swinging in front of their elbow really early. And then when they entered, everything was quite low and quite flat, rather than having the elbow up a little bit, and the fingers going in first. So often we’d the way I’d sort of describe making that change to them would be, you

want to imagine that you’ve got a piece of string on your elbow, someone standing in front of you and they’re pulling that piece of string towards them. So piece of string on an elbow feel like the elbow is coming is the thing that’s causing the arm to come over the water, at least initially. That way, when you come over in your recovery, your hand can relax your forearm can relax a bit too. That to me is why it’s called recovery, because you want your hand and forearm to mostly relax over the top there. So the piece of string on an elbow is quite a good cue to help with that recovery part of it. Now, when someone makes that change, I’ve seen people go too far with it, where they end up coming really close to their body with their hand and they’re like doing some awkward and uncomfortable things with their with their arm or their shoulder, you don’t want that. So just find that sweet spot where it’s comfortable and sustainable. You come

over fairly quickly without putting any extra pressure on your shoulders. So that was the third one was recovery. Now, the fourth one was a deep catch. So a fairly straight, fairly deep catch arm where there’s not really any bend in the elbow. That was very common one and again, when I run clinics, normally it’s a really common one that we that we would see. Now, if you’ve been through the five day catch challenge, you’ll have a really good approach and step by step approach it, making some changes with it. The main thing that I sort of see there is that we just want to make sure we can get the elbow to bend a little bit while your arms in front of your shoulder. So once you’ve entered the water and you’ve reached forwards and you’ve rotated a bit, then we want to move into a position with the arm where we get a bit of bend at the elbow while the fingers point down. And for someone who’s fairly new to swimming, they just don’t have that

movement pattern necessarily takes a bit of practice to develop it and get comfortable bending at the elbow to get that what we consider a high elbow catch. So a good way to sort of practice it is with some drills or even just a basic drill like front skull and just make sure you’ve actually got the elbows bent and you’re not completely straight in the water there. But if you haven’t done the five-day catch challenge, it’s on our website, go and check it out. It costs ten dollars and the results of people have got from that have been amazing. So I’d recommend the catch challenge if you’re wanting to improve your catch. And the thing about it is to me that is the thing that’s worth getting good at. Yes, you want good body position and everything else, but particularly say if you’re a triathlete and you’d wear a wetsuit most races, well your body position is probably going to be taken care of. You’re probably going to be

pretty good with your posture because everything sort of sucked in with the wetsuit held together well. So you probably just need a good catch and pull and you need to find a good rhythm and momentum. So I think the catch is really worth developing. Now the fifth one is head position and I’d say it was probably even between the amount of swimmers who were looking too far forwards and those that were looking too far down. So I would the way I teach head position for most people is I think they’re best looking slightly forwards and that if you’re swimming in a pool that’s probably like as deep as you are, you might want to look about one meter in front of you or three feet in front of you in terms of the pool tires. So looking slightly forwards and you want to lengthen your neck like you’re extending through your spine and your neck. Not where you tense with your neck because you don’t want to be tense but just lengthening through it.

So you’re keeping quite long through the head, neck and spine and looking slightly forwards and that should put the top of your cap just out of the water, just above the water. That’s usually where we’d want to be in terms of head position. So I saw quite a few people either going too far forwards, so looking out and there we’ll see their chin come forwards and most of the time that would lead to this big arch through their lower back and when that happens it’s almost like their top half and their bottom half is disconnected, not working very well together. So yeah you’ll have some natural arch through your lower back if you’ve got the right sort of posture and head position but you don’t want too much but you get too much when you bring your chin and your eyes too far forwards. So we want to look about a meter down and then we had quite a few people who were looking too deep as well. They were looking straight down or

even like slightly behind them and their head was a couple of centimeters under the water. Now sometimes I find people do that because they feel like or they think that their head is the head position is the thing that determines where their legs are in the water or where their feet are and they think I’ve got to push my head down to bring my back half up but that’s not the case. It is to a certain extent you know some people will be looking too far forwards so they’ve got to change it to actually bring their feet up but your legs are more determined by your hips and your core. It’s connected to that it’s not connected to your head so you’ve it’s more determined by how you’re holding your core and your your hips. So yes head position can matter but less than some other things so you don’t want to push your head or bury your head in the water to be um to be swing well and if you if you saw the 100 freestyle the 100 freestyle world record by

David Popovich recently and you have a look at his stroke you’ll see that he’s like he’s bouncing in the water his head will come up quite high in the water then he’ll sort of go go down then he’ll come up and go down come up go down he’s riding pretty high he’s got quite a loping sort of freestyle there and if he was trying to swim with his head buried in the water where it didn’t leave the water apart from if he was taking a breath he’s going to have a hard time because water is 800 times denser 600 times denser than air and so if you’re trying to swim really low in the water well you’re going to be working a lot a lot harder so I think especially for open water swimmers and anyone who’s and triathletes if you’re wearing a wetsuit you probably want to go for that slightly higher position in the water because it’s going to be more efficient and it’s probably going to feel more comfortable for you so there’s no need to bury the head and be

completely submerged with it so yeah that’s that’s one of the other things we looked at with with head position so I just want to make sure you’re looking in the right position so they’re the five things that really stood out from the the last 70 videos that I or last 70 swimmers that I analyzed recently but across the board for the last six and a half thousand people these are really really common ones so breath timing pull into the breath so you can bring your head back down along with your catch

over rotation you want a rock side to side not roll three is recovery make sure that you recover over the water with what I’ve considered a bit of an elbow-led recovery relax the hand and forearm number four is you don’t do a deep catch or don’t be a not a straight arm catch so we do need a bit of bend in the elbow to get our high elbow position and then the last one is just head position making sure for most people they’re looking slightly forwards with the top of their cap out of the water rather than trying to bury their head deep and be fully submerged the whole time so I hope you enjoyed this episode if you’re looking to improve your swimming the best thing that I would suggest is our eight week faster freestyle course which is inside of our effort the swim membership we’ve had a lot of swimmers go through that and just over those eight weeks you’re going to improve each of these things that I’ve talked about

plus the other things that we tend to see when we do underwater filming with people so I’ll put a link to that in the show notes as well if you haven’t been through that yet so thanks very much for listening I’ll see you next week on another podcast episode

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Excited to have Dr. Jim Taylor back to talk about the mental aspect of the race and some excellent practices for approaching races in a healthy way.

02:43 How To Get Mentally Prepared Before The Race

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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 is a return guest who was on only probably two months ago. Dr. Jim Taylor, welcome back to the podcast. Great to be back, Brenton. I always a lot of fun chatting with you. I had a lot of great feedback from our last episode from people who I met at clinics. They said they listened to it and they took a lot away from it. And even myself when we were recording the podcast, this is really helpful stuff. So I wanted to get you back on and on today’s episode, we’re going to talk about how to have a strong swim from start to finish. So those of you that are racing and competing, this episode is for you. And there is a lot that goes into the mental aspect of a race. And especially at the very top end, they said 99% mental, 1% physical at that point, where most people have done all the training or similar training. And it really comes down to who’s got the right mindset on the

day, which is very true on many occasions. So we’ll dig into this topic. And for you, Jim, how does this, how does this sort of play out in the work that you do with athletes all over the world? Like how much focus would you normally have on this side of things, the mental performance on race day? Yeah, well, certainly, everybody will say that the mental side is as or more important. But you certainly need the physical side, you still have to do the work. Okay, so I’ve still got to train. Alright, but it is the final piece of the puzzle, and one that’s quite often neglected as we talked about in the last podcast. And so so much, especially this time of year in season, and this applies to me as a triathlete, I just returned from nationals, and I’m getting prepared for Worlds in Abu Dhabi in November. And also my work with triathletes that being prepared mentally on race day, whether it’s a long distance swim, a swim meet

or a triathlon anywhere from a super sprint up to an Ironman, it’s so important to be mentally prepared, because really, whatever level you’re at, you’re competing against people of similar capabilities. That’s the nature of age group and so on. And so so if you can have your mind in shape the way your body is, and how it can be well trained that way as well, you’ve got a much better chance of taking whatever fitness and whatever good technique you have in your swimming and applying it to the race and having a successful race. Because as you all know, Brent, just being fit, just being technically sound doesn’t mean you’re going to go fast, or you’re going to handle all the unique aspects of competition on race day. It’s exactly right. One of the things that I noticed early on when I was swimming as a teenager and competing at a national level was that the mental side of things for me started during training. I’d often visualise myself in a

set thinking, all right, this is the last 50 of my 400 freestyle. This is how I want to feel. This is how I want to come home. And so setting it up from within training made such a difference. And there were so many times where I’d be racing and it’s like I’ve been here before. I know what I need to do. I know how it should feel. And that I feel set me up so well as just picturing myself or visualising myself in the race throughout training at least a couple of times a week. Yeah, it’s a great observation, Brent, and absolutely true that it’s just like you wouldn’t start working on technique or fitness in a race. You do it in training to prepare you for the race. And unfortunately, many athletes, many swimmers and triathletes have this idea that I just need to get mentally prepared for the race just before the race. And as I talked about in the last podcast, that I want swimmers and triathletes to approach mental training the same way they do

their conditioning, their input training, their technical work. And so it has to be done beforehand. So when you get to the race, it’s like, as you suggest, I’ve been there before. And hopefully maybe in another couple of podcasts, we can focus on using visualisation and mental imagery because it is the most powerful mental tool.

Yeah, I’m a huge fan of it in anything from sport, competition to things outside of that as well. I think it’s such a powerful tool. So let’s dig into before the race, how should people start to approach the race? Let’s say it’s race day, they wake up. Where should we start to drive or angle our thinking when it comes to on the race, on race day? Well, the thinking about the race should start well before the morning of the race. And I know you know this. And a lot of it has to do with the sort of the attitudes you have as you approach the race. Because I found that you can be pretty good and well together mentally in terms of mental tools and your mental muscles that I talked about last podcast. But it’s it’s the attitudes that you have going into the race that can really make or break a race even before you get in the water. And so there are three goals that I have that I encourage swimmers and triathletes to embrace before a race. And these

are three goals that have nothing to do with results. Because we spend so much time preoccupied about results, times, splits, who we’re going to beat, what place we’re going to finish, are we going to be on the podium, all these other things. And let’s be realistic. If we’re competitive swimmers or triathletes, we’re competitive and we’re in a competitive sport in a competitive culture. So results matter. Yes. But to get the results we want, you can’t think about the results. And so these three goals, I think are a great way to approach the race. And by the way, if you accomplish these three goals, the chances are you’re going to get a good result. So goal number one is before the race for you to be able to say to yourself, I’m just prepared as I can be. Because ultimately, Brenton, that’s all you can do. I mean, things happen in the pool, things happen in open water. And but if your feet, if you feel like you’re totally

prepared, well, then you’re going to be able to probably do the very best you can, given whatever circumstances you’re faced with. So in total preparation involves obviously your conditioning, your technical work and having a race plan, being mentally together, making sure you have your goggles, all those other things going. So so goal number one is for the race for you to be able to say, I’m totally prepared to swim my bath. Goal number two is during the race, bring it. And there are a lot of expressions dependent upon what sports you’re in. There’s bring it, there’s full gas, full send, go for a charge, attack, whatever it might be, that make sure that in the race, you’re putting everything you have into it. Now, obviously, if it’s 100 free, you’re going to it’s going to be like full truly pedal to the metal. But if it’s an Ironman 2.4 mile swim, it’s going to be a little different. But you still want to make

sure that you put everything you have into it. You put your fullest effort, your fullest intensity, your fullest focus into the race nonstop. And just a brief little aside on that, and then you can chime in, is that a lot of times, you know, I didn’t grow up swimming. So I don’t think I’m not a particularly strong swimmer, but my mind used to turn against me because I’d be in the middle of the race and it might be, you know, like a mile swim. And I’ll be thinking like, I don’t want to be out here. This is no fun. This is hard. And there you’re done with that attitude. And so if you can just go in thinking like, you know, however long it is, I’m putting everything I have into it. That’s I like Chris McCormack saying he’s his mantra was embrace the suck. And I think that’s especially for triathlon, especially for an Ironman, there’s going to be a lot of suck happening during the race. Like it is a grind. So I think that’s a great one for those

longer distance events where you’re just going to be right at the edge for a long period of time. Yeah. So yeah, and just kind of like as well that total knowing that you’ve got in with your best preparation, it just allows you to then focus on the race, because if you’re going into the race thinking, oh, okay, I missed a session here. I feel like I haven’t done enough volume. It’s like, well, you’re distracted from what’s in front of you. So yeah, just accepting where you’re at. And then it allows you to focus on the race a lot better. Yeah. And I think it also gives you confidence that you I can achieve my time goal. I can swim the pace I want, because I’ve done the work. Whereas if you like you suggested beforehand is like, I don’t know, I’ve been swimming that much. I’m not as fit as I can be. I’m not sure I can put it out there. And if you can’t say that, then goal number two is kind of out the window as well, because you’re not going to

bring it. If you don’t think you can bring it. So and then goal number three, after the race, no regrets. This is a big personal value for me, Breton, as well as professional this idea of no regrets in my life. So on my deathbed, when I’m 156 years old, I want to look back at my life and say, you know, things didn’t always work out the way I want because that’s life. But I left it all out on the course and I left it all out of my life. Every opportunity I took every shot I went for because ultimately, you don’t always get the result you want. And if you follow Lionel Sanders in Canadian Open, he didn’t have a very good race. And he’s really struggling with that. But and he has a lot of regrets. But if you can just look back and go, even if it didn’t work out, I couldn’t have done anything else. That’s a great way to live your life. And it’s a great way to approach a swim. Because all you can do is whatever you have at that

moment. And you can’t go back in time. You can’t rewind it and redo the regrets. But you can move forward and go, if I had regrets this time, well, the next race, I’m going to make sure I don’t. So so three key goals there before the race, total preparation on course, bring it after the race, whatever happens, good or bad, no regrets. I like I really like that last one because so so many of the important lessons that I’ve learned in swimming or sport, it’s come from not having a good race. So and it’s very hard to say at the time, you know, mostly you might be tied up in it, you might be frustrated with your performance or how it went. But then when you get a few days of space in between, you get to look back and go, OK, well, I realize I didn’t do this. Like, for example, I did the there’s a 20 K swim brought this channel over here in Australia. And I was going great up until about 15 Ks, 14 Ks into the race. I was I think top 10, I might

have been seventh and I was swimming really well, exactly how I trained. And then I started to get a bit hypothermic and my pace dropped. I think it was like from like a 120 something pace to like a 145 pace. Like it dropped off massively. I just could not move and there’s a bit of a blur the last six Ks. And I was disappointed with my time at the end. It was I think about 40 minutes slower than what I was expecting. And I was disappointed with my place as well. But I just didn’t know how much how cold I’d get throughout the race because I’d never done it before. I’d swum for that long, but not in those sorts of conditions and temperature. And so I look back and go, OK, well, I might have needed to have a little bit more fat on me. Maybe I needed to get a little bit more cold water prep. And there’s a few other things that I could have done better. But I just wouldn’t know that without having gone through it. So if I were to do the race

again, I’m going to be so much better prepared. And yeah, now I can use that knowledge to help others to not make the same mistake as I did. So yeah, it’s you just learn so much from those failures, so to speak. Yeah, more so than the successes. Yeah. And Brenton, a 20 K swim. That is some serious suck embracing. I can’t even begin to imagine swimming for that long. Anyway, so so having those goals and having that attitude about just I’m just going to do everything I can to have the best race I can is a great attitude to go into rather than worrying about whom I get to beat, you know, what my, you know, time per 100 is going to be where I’m going to finish things like that. So then on race day, getting yourself ready, a couple of key areas I think you want to tune in on. First of all, is your physical intensity. So this is range of physical intensity you experience on race day and you can be really relaxed to terrify and that

could be cut because it’s a race or because you’re not comfortable in open water or whatever it might be. And there’s an ideal level of physical intensity that each of us races best at. And this is a whole nother podcast, but I’ll give you the summary here. And so if you are we are physical beads, and if we’re not at our ideal level of physical intensity for the event, we’re not going to be able to swim the best we can, however technically good we are, no matter how mentally strong we are. So so being really first of all, figuring out what is my ideal level of intensity and it can depend upon the event. So for example, a super sprint is in triathlon. It’s like full gas start to finish about 250 to 400 meters dependent upon the length. So there you need more intensity because you’ve got to put the put the gas pedal along a race like like a 10 K swim or an Ironman triathlon. You need to chill out more. You need to be more calm

because you’re burning fuel. And so figuring out what your ideal intensity is and then race morning, checking in on it, like where am I at now? Well, I didn’t sleep that well. So I’m a little flat physically. So I need to I need to psych up or I’m really kind of nervous here. So I need to calm down. And so that getting yourself physiologically at that place when you and so when you enter the water, you’re at that ideal intensity. That’s really I find music is huge, it’s huge. You have a benefit or a way to be able to go up or go down with that intensity. And I was my event as a teenager was 400 I am. And I had the stock to dry still dry was my like my song that I’d listen to every time before this 400 I am. And yeah, and I’ve just every time I hear that song, I link it to to this event because that would sort of get me fired up in the right way. It’s 400 meters. You’re all my you’re not quite full gas for that the whole thing, but you’re

right on the edge. And that for me was like a great song just for that kind of event. And yeah, music is just so powerful because it just you can tune other things out. See, that’s where so many athletes with headphones on prior to a race is it’s it is just such a good way to get that right level of excitement. Yeah, yeah, I think music is an incredibly powerful mental tool because there’s been tons of research on this. And we all know at first from our own experience that it affects us psychologically, it affects us emotionally and affects us physiologically. And so I know a lot of the work, the world class athletes and Olympians and professionals I work with they’ll have their playlists depend upon where where they’re at. And and for me, I’m into ACDC and and Def Lepper. And so some pretty good metal there. And that just gets me super fired up, super confident and super happy. So music’s a great thing to have on race morning.

Another key thing is to have a pre-race routine. And so have a process that you go through to ensure that total preparation. That’s that goal number one. And so it starts with what you have for breakfast, what your morning warm up is, how you lay out your stuff, who you interact with is important. I remember the triathlon 80 years ago. I’m kind of an introvert. I like to keep to myself on race morning. And I had a friend who’s wonderful woman, but really outgoing and energetic. And before the race, he grabs him by the shoulders and go, Jim, isn’t this great? And I go, back off. And it was like a real mismatch in terms of energy. So so having really having a clear idea about what you want to do to get ready, where you want to do it, who you want to do it with and what you need to do it. Whether let’s say you need to roll out with a roller or a tennis ball and laying that out clearly because routines are so powerful because not

only do they get you ready. They’re also very powerful psychologically because they make you feel comfortable wherever you’re competing. Like I’m going to Abu Dhabi in November. I haven’t been to Abu Dhabi. It’s a very different environment than Northern California. And so and yet if I’m going through my routine, it’s just this is familiar territory for me. And so that’s the messages your body and your mind get when you have that good structured routine. Yeah. Yeah, so important. So I covered a couple of things so far. It’s getting yourself in the right level of excitement before the race. You can use music as a tool to do that. Having the pre-race routine that you’ve drilled in and you’ve refined over time. And I hear a lot of top semis and I mean triathletes as well. They’ve kind of refined it over time where they can pretty much like wake up. Let’s say it’s five o’clock you wake up if you’re doing it. An Iron Man might be super

early, but then they can almost switch off in a way where they’re just going through this routine. Right. And then they just get into the swing of things. And you’re not going to do that first time you try a routine. It’s going to come with the practice. And I think it’s another reason why the more experience you have, the more races you do, you really start to see what works for you. And including food, especially for a triathlon, realize what you can and can’t stomach. And yeah, and just pick up all these little one or two percenters over time and just start to include them in your routine. So that’s brought us up to pretty much the race. So let’s get into during the race. What are some tools and strategies that we can use to make sure that we stay on during the race and we don’t. And mine doesn’t drift off. We don’t get into a negative headspace, which is I’d say one of the most common things that I experience as a coach from feedback from athletes

is it’s just so easy to get negative during a race and have one thing throw you off. And that really just creates this downward spiral where people they all this hard work’s gone in. But it’s one thing is sort of set them off. And they just go into this. Yeah, this negative spiral. Right, right. So well, where it really starts is just before the race starts to review your race plan. So program your mind about this is what I’m going to do. This is the kind of pace I want to maintain. This is how I want to feel because what’s really difficult is especially with mass starts or wave starts like in triathlon and a lot of open water events in fact as well is there’s so much excitement. There’s so much energy. It’s hard not to just tear out that first hundred meters. And it’s like, oh my gosh, I got to get ahead. I got to get in front and everybody else is charging. So I need to as well. And then you’re cooked after a hundred meters.

And so by having that that race plan in your mind right at the start and then really focusing on technique and pace. So so I use the expression you want to swim within yourself because if you get outside of yourself, you’re kind of done. And so just in that first hundred meters really focusing very deliberately on good solid technique and maintaining a good pace and good breathing. It takes a lot of discipline because everybody’s charging out ahead of you. But if you’re if you execute your plan well and you stay within yourself and you focus on technique and pace then and your discipline, then you’re going to be passing those people the last couple whatever the race distance is. So so setting the tone for a good consistent effort is really keeping that the way I explain it to the athletes like coaches, you want to just keep your heart rate in check. You’ve got to not let that heart rate get out of control at the start because it’s just so easy to do

with all of that excitement. And you know, an example here is when I did my one and only Ironman event, my goal was to lead the swim was to win the swim. And so I was going pretty hard during the swim. And there was another swimmer who kept with me for it would have been four, five hundred meters. And I could see he was right next to me and I could see he was going hard, his stroke rate would have been high 80s, close to maybe 90 strokes a minute. Looked like he was going hard. And then after four or five hundred, he dropped off and he finished like a couple minutes behind me. And I just saw you. There’s no way that’s going to be sustainable for you. And that’s especially in an Ironman event. That’s really going to be a disadvantage later on. So yeah, just keeping the heart rate in checking it again, takes a lot of practice to sort of know where you can be with that. And I really like perceived effort sets in training. We’re talking about the form

goggles before we jump on this call and now so good at knowing your pace. And you can use, like, say the form goggles to know what your pace is. But you also, you know what your effort is when you’re doing that too. And it’s just being able to tune into where am I actually at in terms of my real effort. And I think people really struggle that when they’re new to the sport, if they’re a year in two years in, they don’t really have like a great measure of it. But they certainly do get that with more time. But yeah, being aware of that and doing some perceived effort sets where you might build up your effort throughout a main set. And then you might dial it back down, developing those different gears. It’s just so so important to actually knowing, yeah, if you can sustain the pace that you’re swimming at. Yeah, without a doubt that and that only comes from experience, know what you’re capable of for sure. And so then let’s say you

move to the middle of the race. Again, really important as you suggest to monitor your physiology. Are you out of breath? Is your heart pounding? Are your arms getting tired? Are you at a pace that you feel like you can sustain? And so really being aware of that can keep you within yourself and help you to, you know, get to the end where you want to finish strong. Another thing you alluded to is in the middle of the race, that’s when it gets hard psychologically, because it’s getting hard and you’re starting to hurt and stain positive. And it’s easy in swimming because you don’t have a lot of distractions around. You just have to site maybe if you do an open water. And so it’s easy to go to the dark side. That’s an expression I use from Star Wars, where you start to become your own worst enemies. Like I said, what used to happen to me is like, what am I doing out here? This is no fun. I wish I could get this over with. And it’s like, you’re

turning on yourself. It’s like everybody else is trying to beat you. And now you’re beating yourself. So I’ve practiced with a lot of open water swimming and long sets in the pool of just staying positive, like keep at it, keep going. And I’ll touch on that a little bit when we get to this talking about the end of the swim. And depending on the distance, just having an aggressive mindset. Like again, I’m still developing as a swimmer. And I think technically I’m pretty strong now thanks to your the effortless swimming videos. But I have not able to able to fully translate that into speed. And so like I focus on having a really aggressive catch and an aggressive pull. And that helps me maintain my pace. So so this idea of being positive and aggressive within the context of your pace is is a really good way to sort of stay in it and get to the place where now you can see the finish. And you know, in triathlons it’s usually the big round

and exit area. And then you can start focusing on what do I need to do to finish strong. Yeah, I like that. It’s you don’t. Again, I think this is I heard this from Chris McCormack as well. It was like, don’t be a victim out there because people are going to be swimming their own race. You might get swam over. You might get whacked. People are probably most people are not going to do that intentionally if they if it does happen. But if you become a victim and you sort of worry about what everyone else is doing, you’re on the back foot from the get go. So be out there. Be assertive with things. You’re not out there to swim over the top of people either. But don’t become the victim out there. It’s just so so important. It just comes down to you have so much more confidence in the water, in your race, when you have a sort of mindset and in terms of the like translating it into into pace, like the effort into pace, it’s just it’s one of those things

that it really comes down to to experience there. So what should we be thinking as we approach the end of the swim? Well, I want to back up to you start preparing for the finish of the swim in the days and weeks and months before you begin the swim. And so, for example, you can’t finish strong if you don’t have the fitness. So you have to make sure that you do the work in the pool and in the open water to make sure you’re fit enough to achieve your pace and your time goals and what you want to achieve that day. So clearly, you know, I often say how you can’t fake swimming. And like you can only go as fast as you’re capable of going. And same with biking and running. You know, other sports like maybe golf or tennis, you can fake it for a little while if you haven’t played in a while. But swimming, if you haven’t swum in a while, you’re not going to go fast. So so having that fitness is key. Also, another thing that I’ve been really

focusing on myself and suggesting to my the athletes I work with is practice finishing strong in training. So if I have, you know, a bunch of sets in the pool, even if I’m just doing a recovery set of let’s say 2,000 yards, I’ll make sure in that, let’s say the at 1600, I’ll pick up the pace and get used to finishing strong before I do my warm down set. And so you so basically you’re conditioning your body to go to be strong at the end of the race. And in my open water swimming, especially I put in my mind that that last 200 meters before I get to the end of the swim that I push it a little bit. So again, you’re conditioning your mind and your body to finish. That’s great. There’s, I love these sets. I just call them crescendo sets where like within the main set you sort of you’ll start at an easier pace and you’ll gradually build up and build up. And at the very end of the set, whether it’s 100 or 200 or 400, that’s going to be your fastest effort.

So you pretty much just leave it all on the table at the end there. And just that ability to finish strong and sustain the effort level through a whole set. I think I really like those kinds of sets. And the other thing that you mentioned before just about making sure that you don’t get into that negative spiral of thoughts like you used to have when you were early on in your swimming days, it’s I know in a race if I’m really going for it that there’s going to be a point where my mind’s going to say, you should slow down, you like, this is hurting, just back it off. All right. There’s nothing wrong with going easy. And that little voice in your head is going to tell you that it’s okay to just take your foot off the pedal. But I find that if I prepare myself for that, say, I know this is going to happen, probably around this mark. And this voice is going to be in my mind wanting me to slow down, but that’s when you’ve just got to acknowledge it.

Say, okay, isn’t that interesting? It came up here and then you just keep going. And I find that comes up a lot in training if I’m doing a hard set. And I might be three quarters through it and especially when in training, when there’s like I might have some other friends that I’m swimming with, but I’ve got an excuse to get out. I could say, I’ve got to go get the kids. I’ve got to jump out. And it happens all the time when I’m training hard. And yeah, it’s just about pushing through and just knowing that little voice is going to want to say something. And yeah, but it’s on you just to know that it’s going to happen and then to make a decision from there. Right. Yeah, that’s great. That’s great. Another really important thing sort of in preparation is make sure you fuel well. Meaning you’ve got the food in you. You got the liquids in you. So you’ll have the energy to go the distance. And one thing I love watching the Olympic 10 K for example

about they have the poles out from the boat and they pass the liquids out to the swimmers along the way. And obviously that doesn’t happen in most open water swims but making sure you’re fuel. And another thing that you sort of tied into late in a race when you start to get tired is that I’m sure you’ve experienced this. You feel like the tank is empty. You’ve run out of gas. But there’s been a ton of anthropological and human performance lab research that has shown that when you think there’s nothing left in the tank, there’s always something left in the tank. And it’s a purely evolutionary thing because back in the Serengeti 250,000 years ago when we first became humans, what the anthropologists found was that when cavemen would go hunting for gazelle, they’d sometimes track a gazelle 15, 20 miles before they finally killed it. And they sold to bring it back 15 miles. And so if they didn’t evolutionarily develop the ability

to have fuel in the tank to get home, they died and they didn’t pass on their genes and so on. And more recent research in the Human Performance Lab has shown that when cyclists, for example, think they’re out of gas, when they’re told that they don’t have to go as fast the next time, but they’re actually sort of deceived into actually going fast, they can. And so so much of it is about tapping into that, that reserve in your tank. And you can’t do that until you recognize that there is fuel in the tank. So let’s say you’ve got three or 400 meters to go and you’re really, you’re tired, you’re hurting. And if you go, I’m done, because my tank is empty, well, you’re done. But if you remind yourself, wait a minute, this still fuel in the tank, I just need to tap into it. And that’s where your mind has to take control of your body and say, you know, body, we’re finishing strong. And then your body will listen, it’s gonna resist

because it’s been taught through billions of years of evolution that it wants to stop because it thinks that it’s gonna die. But if the mind can send that message very clearly to body, the body will go, oh, okay. And then you’ll have that fuel in the tank. And then you have the energy to get to the end, even though you’re hurting. Because as you all know, Brenton, you’re not the only one hurting out there, right? Everybody’s hurting.

Yeah, that’s right. That’s such a good thing to know. It’s again, it’s one of those things where it’s like, okay, I’ve got the knowledge. I know that I’m built to have this reserve tank to pull on. And so if you can think of that as you’re racing, then it just allows you to bring it home strongly. It reminds me of when I did a breath, it’s kind of like a breath control course, like a big wave surfing, breath control course. And one of the things the teacher mentioned there was that when, if you’re underwater, then you can’t get up and you’re getting to that point where you’re sort of like gulping and you’re wanting to take a breath. You’re only, I’ve got this number wrong, but you’re only like halfway there. You’ve still got 50% of your oxygen in reserve to go, but you think that’s the end, that you need to get a breath straight away, but you’re only halfway there. So yeah, it’s amazing what the body’s capable of

when it really gets pushed, when it gets pushed to that level. Yeah, and like the freedivers, it’s an amazing example of mind over body, especially the pressure going down deep. So a couple of other things is focus on your breathing. And it’s a little harder in swimming compared to biking and running. But if you really focus on your breathing, the chance are you’re out of breath and what’s difficult about swimming is you can’t breathe whenever you want. But focusing on your breathing does a couple of things, psychologically and physically. It ensures that you get as maximum oxygen as you can every time you bring your head out of the water. Also makes you feel more control, which is something that we humans don’t like being out of control because on the Sarangedi 250,000 years ago, if we were out of control, it probably meant we were gonna get eaten or killed. And so again, we’re wired not to like that. So anything you can do

to increase your sense of control with your breathing, with focusing on technique, all those things are really… The last thing that’s probably most powerful for me at the end of a race is to create what I call power words or power phrases. And these are little one or two word sayings that you can repeat to yourself that’s basically sending the message to your body to keep going. And for me, it’s dig deep and finish strong. So that last 100, 200 meters of a race, I’m just constantly saying that to myself, dig deep, finish strong, finish strong. And in a way, it’s drowning bad use of the word I apologize, but it’s drowning your body’s messages in these positive, powerful words and phrases. And it’s like the body wants to go, wait a minute, excuse me, I wanna stop. And, but your mind, if you’re keeping using these power words, then you’re not giving the body a chance to chime in. And it’s gonna just do what you say

because they can’t get a word in edgewise.

That’s good. I think we talked about the cues and trigger words on the last podcast from memory. It’s, yeah, it’s such a powerful thing to have. One of the most commonly used ones, I think in swimming is easy speed there. And it’s that first part of the race, you wanna go out fast, but you don’t wanna, you wanna conserve a lot of energy. And it’s easy speed where, yeah, where you feel like you’ve just got a lot coming home. So I like dig deep and finish strong, especially when you said that, I pictured myself about 400 meters to go in a race going like, all right, this is hard work, but yeah, dig deep, finish strong and you can last the last 400 meters. That’s interesting. Yeah, one last little tidbit. And it’s a little bit more of a challenge in swimming than certainly biking and running, but it can still work. And that’s smile.

Smile. So we don’t think about smiling as a mental tool, but it’s actually a really powerful one. And there’s a ton of research that shows how powerful it can be that when you smile, a couple of things happen. First of all, we’re conditioned that when we smile, it means that life’s good and things are fine. Just through life experience. Also, there’s been some really interesting brain research that has shown that when we smile, it releases our bodies endorphins, our natural, our bodies natural relaxants. And so I try, I do this now swimming and it’s a little awkward, but I find when I breathe, I’ll go like this. And it doesn’t have to be every stroke, but by forcing yourself to swim to smile, we’re fundamentally physiological beads and it’s difficult to think and feel in ways that are inconsistent with the messages our body is sending. So if you’re frowning like this, then your mind is getting the message that I don’t wanna be here.

This sucks. But if you’re smiling, then that sends the message like, oh, things aren’t so bad, I guess. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be smiling. And it seems incredibly goofy at first, but I assure you listeners, and you can try this next time you swim, just when it gets hard, just every couple of breaths, force yourself to smile. And you’ll find that it hurts less and it still hurts, of course. It’s not like a pain killer, but it just makes everything more pleasant and that can carry you to the end. This podcast is brought to you by Form Goggles. Form empowers swimmers at every level to reach their goals, whether they wanna get stronger, faster, swim further, or be more efficient. Get lap by lap motivation with real-time metrics and workout instructions right in your goggles. And Form’s recently released Form Plans, which included progressive series of workouts to help you achieve your fitness, skills, or triathlon goals.

You can follow along with the plan and your weekly swims will be automatically synced to your goggles. So you’ll swim through your workouts with real-time metrics and workout instructions, all in your goggles. So it’s like having a coach right there with you. And I’ve had a look through these training plans and I think they are excellent for people who want to train for certain triathlons or reach certain fitness goals. It will build on each week and a really good way to progress, progressively build up your fitness. So if you’d like to follow along with some plans to help you reach your specific swimming goals, then check out Form Goggles at formswim.com forward slash effortless. And this will give you $15 off your purchase of Form Goggles. So formswim.com forward slash effortless to get your pair of Form Goggles. I know what I’ll be doing tomorrow in training towards the end of the session. That’s a good one. It reminds me of a tip I heard from a surf coach.

He said, when you’re in big waves and paddling out, there might be high levels of anxiety and fear. Make a fart noise because it’ll do two things. It’s going to make you exhale, it’s going to make you breathe out and it sort of relax that way. But it’s also going to make you laugh and it’s going to allow the levels of anxiety. That’s always stuck with me. So yeah, smile and make a fart noise. I think they’re two very powerful things you can do. I’ll have that laugh to my list from now on. Yeah. So there you go. Yeah, before a race, if you are nervous, maybe you could use mine and then smile towards the end and you’ll be set up well. Let us know your result. Well, it’s been in the start before a race and somebody goes like this. Everybody goes like this. That’s right. And by the way, I mean, consumer is also a phenomenally great tool for stress because if we’re happy, if we’re having fun, if we’re laughing, then we’re going to be more relaxed

and it’s going to produce different emotions, different physiology, different thoughts. And if you’re sitting there before the race going like, oh my gosh, the water’s rough, the water’s cold, I’m going to get beat, you know, levity is just a really healthy way to approach anything. And especially something that’s maybe a little scary or a little stress producing for people. Yeah, absolutely. And that takes us to the end of the race. What about post-race? What are some ways that we can go about maybe reflecting on the race or our performance? So we come out of it, we take the positives and take those learnings and don’t get into that negative downward spiral that we’ve talked about earlier. Yeah, yeah, great question, Brenton. And here’s my perspective. Don’t look at the results at first. Take some time and just think back and reflect and enjoy the experience, first of all. Cause obviously if it’s not enjoyable, why the heck do it?

And so remind yourself like, oh, that was so cool being out there and I felt really strong. And then also just do a little self-analysis of how did my race go without the time? Because the time can also be inconsistent with what you feel. And if you feel good, you know, technically I was really strong, I had a really good pull. I cited well, I stayed within myself. All these things are positives. And maybe yes, maybe you can add some things in. Oh, I needed to increase my kick a little bit or I needed to do a little better DPS, whatever that might be, but basically start off with just what the swim meant for you without all the external things that then pinch upon our judgment and go like, oh, disappointment. And so all of a sudden, if you look at your watch right away and it didn’t go as well as you wanted, then you’re just like wrapped in this cloak of disappointment. And that’s not a good way to be whereas if you focus on the positive stuff,

you create sort of an initial positive filter that when you see the clock and it’s not as good as you wanted to go, I did some good things, but it’s disappointing, but I can learn from this and go faster. And then if it was fast, it’s like, I felt great and I had a great time and I was fifth or whatever. And it’s like score. So it’s better to start off with just stay within yourself, your reflections, your evaluations before you start getting the objective stuff. Yeah, yeah, definitely. It reminds me of the race I did in March. It was probably the first, it’s first time I would have raced in about two years and I hadn’t trained that much up to it as a 400 freestyle and hadn’t done the training. I was sort of a little bit injured going into it and I did the race and I thought, okay, didn’t feel too bad. You know, that was all right for the first one back and I looked at the time and it was horrendous. And I was, yeah, I was disappointed at first,

but then I thought, hang on a minute, this is the first one in two years, it’s you haven’t done the training for it. Just be happy that you’ve managed to blow the cobwebs out. And it felt okay, considering the work that you’ve done, but you’re right, as soon as I saw that time, because you only look at the scoreboard when you’re doing a swim race, that’s where you get the elation or the frustration with your performance. Yeah, and I think one of the dangers there is you probably went in with some expectations based upon when you were fit and how you normally are. And like we said, you can’t fake speed in the pool. And so you probably went in thinking like, oh, I got this, I’m a great swimmer, but it’s better to go in like, I haven’t done the work. And so I’m not gonna, this is my first race back in two years, I’m not gonna crush it. And so I’m just gonna go out there and do the best I can and use it as a gauge of where I need to be

if I wanna go faster. And I’m just gonna have some fun because ultimately that’s why I’m doing it. Yeah, yeah, exactly right. And any other final sort of words of wisdom or tips that you’ve found have helped the athletes that you work with, post-race? Yeah, post-race is, and then just enjoy yourself with your community. Because it was swimming, triathlon, that’s one of the great joys of doing them is that you get to hang out with your friends and people you know and you get to hear their stories. And any one race, unless you’re a professional and even to a degree when you’re a professional is not life or death, it’s just a part of life. And if you can keep it in perspective, not only will you enjoy it more but you’ll actually go faster. So a whole other conversation about the dangers of expectations but go into races. Again, as I talked about how you enter the race often will dictate how you leave a race. And so if you go in with good attitudes

and good habits and good practices and good training, then overall the chances are most often good things are gonna happen. And Brenton, that’s an expression I use often because I can’t say you’re gonna win or you get a PR, but good things are gonna happen if you approach the race the way you want and the way that’s healthy and positive. And so if you’re struggling that way then you probably need to do a little re-riggering of how you approach races and your attitude and the importance of these races. And maybe you should seek out a sports psychologist or a mental coach even. And so because a couple of things is that most of us are in the game for two reasons. One, we enjoy training and we enjoy competing and we wanna see how good we can be. And so to do that, it starts with that attitude and some really good practices of approaching races in a healthy way. Jim, I’ve really enjoyed this. Thanks so much for being on the podcast again.

Those people that are listening, what’s there, DrJimTaylor.com Your website and for anyone who’s thinking, maybe I could get some help with this kind of stuff. What’s the best way to contact you? Is it to email you or through the website? Just through my website, I’ve got my email on there and I’ve got all the usual social media. And so even if people don’t wanna hire me they just have a question or a comment. One thing, the reason I like doing podcasts is not to generate business but to just engage with people and share ideas and hear their stories. And so I love it when people reach out to me and ask questions and tell me what’s going on with them. Yeah, that’s fantastic. And I mean, second episode, you’re gonna be a regular guest on the podcast because I’ve found that it’s just so knowledgeable with all of this stuff and it seemed to know it back the front. And also like you’ve got the experience as a triathlete

and came across you through the swimming through our videos, which is terrific. So I appreciate you sharing all of your knowledge on this episode. And yeah, looking forward to getting you back on talking about another topic. I think visualization would be good to focus on next because I just love that as a topic. So I think we’ll pencil that one in for the next episode. That’s great, Brandon. Always fun. I really 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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